Look at me! I'm on TV!

I could probably make TV blogs a weekly segment on its own given how much I watch, complain about and how bad they are (or occasionally good) so I'm gonna go over the past week or so's events.

I came across a new quiz show on the BBC. 101 ways to leave a gameshow. Quite simply, you get a question with 9 answers, 9 people choose one of them and one of them is wrong. The loser leaves the gameshow in a stupidly outrageous fashion including falling off a trolley, getting taped onto a board and slowly tipping down and being hit my a gigantic hammer (none of them were made up!). The is a measly 10 grand which in fairness wouldn't be enough for me given the disappointment you get in the end for not leaving the gameshow. Personally, I'd enjoy some of the ways to exit that I'd probably purposely choose the wrong answer so I'd bungee off down into a massive swimming pool.

Next up is Come Dine With Me, a cooking show I would probably never watch if the voice over guy wasn't there. The normal shows have some interesting people as well as annoying people for that matter. The celebrity version however annoyed me so much since it was full of absolute nobodys that had nowt better to do than to get on TV. Pretty much everyone is hatable in the show including Janice Dickinson (no idea who she was, had to wiki and apparently she's now a reality tv whore, which would explain why she's on here) that had no reason to be there except to make [bad] tv by annoying everyone in there as well as me. Turned straight off.

Other things to hate is Channel 4 and E4 because it's full of big brother, They had to replace decent TV such as Scrubs for 'live' coverage?! Yuck.

More TV Music Talent contest were out in the form of 'Don't Stop Believing'. A 'Glee' Show finding the best show choir. I've watched 2 episodes of Glee. It was approachable at best but nothing to actually keep me fully interested. Sort of like High School Musical without the Disney. But this show however, is a competition between real show choirs and making covers of a song. Actually, it's not a cover, some of them are 'Mash Ups', a portmenteau of Mash Potato and Fucked Up!.

Occasionally I can be a massive critic on music and this is no exception. Would people PLEASE stop mashing two songs together please?! The only advantage you get from this is that you murder two songs at once instead of one! Mash ups (like mash potato) need to be mixed with something good such as bangers and gravy but mixing mash with mash is rubbish. Essentially, it's adding extra lyrics into the original song and the lyrics aren't original and stolen from another song.

All the songs the choirs did sound like they came from bad musicals. A particular one I remembered watching was a male choir of about 30 people singing 'Sex on Fire' by the Kings of Leon to this 1 girl on stage. Before I mention how awful the music was, the dancing bit was just awkward and seemed like some massive gang bang is about to happen. But anyway, the music was the equivalent of a crowd singing Sex on Fire on stage, which is not always a good thing. No harmonies, and some very annoying choir versions of the guitar bit. Almost made me want to throw up because of how bad it was.

But as well as bad shows, I still have to mention there's been some decent TV on lately such as Mongrels, a late night puppet show which was actually not too bad, Top Gear which is always enjoyable to watch. And Celebrity Masterchef, another show I enjoy watching :)

TV's done for the week and I need to get out of the house so toodles!

...

(wtf is toodles and who the hell says it to say goodbye anymore?)

When I'm Sixty Four (and when I pick up my OAP Bus Pass)

Old people have begun to annoy me. This may also be directly linked to that my gran has come to visit me for 3 months (3 months?! staying for 3 months is not 'visiting' it's more closer to 'free loading!' :P) and my gran can be a handful.

I'll avoid aiming this blog directly at my grandma cos it seems unfair that I criticise her when she can't understand english and is as quick to understand things as the police are trying to capture a fujitive. (yes people, I have just made a Raoul Moat reference. It feels wrong...) so let's talk about old people.

At the moment, I am currently suffering from a sore throat. It may be because I have a cold coming along but I've been trying to have conversations with my gran lately and she's deaf and the only way to speak to her is with a megaphone, (which I don't carry along with me all the time because it's impractical and bit heavy to carry all the time) so I simply have to speak louder. So this makes me lose my voice...

Being deaf means you should be wearing hearing aids to help hear stuff. But instead, you have people who are stubborn to use them and thinks that their hearing can be healed if they do nothing and everyone else shouts a little louder. I think talking to a brick wall gives a better response at times.

Almost every old person I've met have a lot to say about me. And not in a good way. There's always something wrong and something to complain and rant about. (Oh hey! maybe that's where I got my ranting from!). Yes no one's perfect but there's no need to ruin everyone's self confidence (or what's left of it) by reiterating what you've already said. It's like beating a dead horse after complaining about it a few minutes ago that it doesn't move and began starting to stink of rotten flesh...

You gotta wonder what it feels like to be old though. Retired, money coming into your account and nothing better to do than to lounge about the house and complain about stuff you don't like. (Actually, typing this now makes me think that doesn't sound like too bad of an idea :P, My OAP pass can't come any sooner! :D)

Right that's enough of my blog for today. I had a longer one planned on old people but it turns out my internet thought I was being offensive to old people and didn't publish the whole thing and forgot to save what I wrote. FML

So I'm off to pick my supplies of OAPs (that stands for OAP Assistance Precautions) that includes my ear plugs, Noise cancelling headphones, blindfold and sleeping pills... Ta Ta!

Get Rich Quick Money Making Schemes

I think the ideal goal to make money is to make a lot of it in as little as possible. Being an overnight millionaire would be the ideal money making scheme. Of course no one makes that kind of money in a day unless you're Steve Jobs, winning the lottery or if you're a robber and managed to mug Steve Jobs in the streets (in which case, well done).

Although they won't make you a millionaire overnight, he's some quick ways to make some money. I cannot say that I have done all of these but I can imagine some are entirely possible to make a living out of.

Sperm Donors - Does what it says on the tin. Spunk your way to make some cash. I believe you get about 30 quid per cup. Doesn't sound bad for 10 minute's work. Although making a living out of this means that you will have one arm abnormally more muscly than the other for a long while. The other downside is that the kid that comes out of your tadpoles can eventually find you and I think you'll have a pretty hard time trying to explain that you gave someone your sperm so that you can afford that new PS3 daddy wanted back in the day.

Professional Gambler/Poker Player - It's simple. Bet half a million on red and you'll double it do a million just less than half the time :). Time taken: about 30 seconds, time to recieve: about 10 seconds. Time to realise you spewed off half a million quid in 30 seconds: half a second. Or start with a $100 and work your way up and see how far you can run like God and then trip up like a dog.

Becoming a professional poker is another risky one. Simply play for half a million against Tom Dwan (those of you who don't know, Tom Dwan is one of the biggest cash game players in the world) and then just go all in every hand and hope the cards go your way :P

Get Spam for Free iPods! - Would you like a free iPod? Alright, you can get one by giving me your house address, your privacy and personal details along with 20 other people's personal details so we can spam you with junk mail for the next 2-200 years and you can (possibly) get it for free! These pyramid schemes are massive and the effort you need to get these things aren't worth the effort. To make it, you first of all sacrifice your email details, personal details, house calls as well as 5 other friends (or any other people) to do the same thing (meaning you need about 25 people altogether) and then they'll send you your iPod. This process will probably take a good few months not only to find the people but also for the company to cough it up. I wouldn't be suprised if it never comes out. You can probably get your iPod for free in less time by working for a few weeks in a shop of somesort (also known as A JOB!).

Here's an obvious one that many people won't always realise...

Hobo/Bum/Beggars - With enough work (or begging), you can dress up as a bum and beg for cash. Work well enough and I'm pretty sure you can make minimum wage in a day. Dress is pretty cheap. No need to pay for showers, uniforms or legs. It's always worth a punt. Of course you're always against competition with the real hobos so you're gonna have to get an edge somehow. Steal their bag of 'Big Issues' and start selling them and keeping all the sales perhaps.

Patent the Wheel - You'd make zillions off of that. But I think that's taken so....

Selling a kidney - Since people can actually survive with 1 kidney, you could sell your other one for a decent price. Just make sure that you have 1 spare and that you're happy to go under the knife. I'm not sure about the price but I've heard there's a wide range of prices but I can imagine you can buy a small boat with it (or maybe a raft perhaps)

I also have one more get rich quick money making scheme to give out but if you really wanna know, please pay £100 into my account and I will tell you :P

(Let's see how much I can make off that last idea :P)

Welcome to the Real World Graduates!

I came across a BBC article regarding graduate jobs and applicants.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10521559.stm

It mentions how this year's graduates are up against last year's graduates for jobs as the recession hit the unemployed last year (and this year for that matter). With so many people coming out with all sorts of degrees this year, it almost makes the credibility of a degree almost negligable. Whether you get a first or a fail, your experiences and knowledge you learnt at uni rarely apply to the real world.

I was very critical about my degree throughout the past few years after noticing the amount of actual practical work in my course was minimal. Even my final year project was only research based and I was automatically given this. In the past 3 years for an 'Engineering' Degree. I made a model car, a brake system and a puzzle that eventually didn't get made. I've felt that I spent more time learning about the facts and information but not applying the work to anything, not seeing anything in action and not getting a visual view of the facts. I found this hard to understand without seeing it in the flesh.

You can claim that funding becomes a problem, or claim that so much focus has gone into meeting curriculum or accredited standards that the practical element seems to have disappeared but I've felt short changed from the 10k I've spent for my degree. I don't feel like I've learned anything practical from reading lecture slides and copying notes. I feel short changed. I won't say that I learnt nothing but what difference in information is there from learning through the books and getting work experience/jobs/apprenticeships and gaining first hand knowledge?

I'm not saying that my degree is worthless because there are things I've learnt from going through uni that I probably could not ever learn such as meeting new people, understanding different views and learning new ideas. All of which apply both degree and non-degree related. But I still feel I haven't learnt enough about working in an engineering industry without trying it first hand. And the practical experiments and mini-projects just aren't enough.

It's like learning to swim. Yes you can read a book telling you how to swim fast, how to move and how not to drown (in which case, I'd be fucking Michael Phelps by that logic) but throw yourself into the swimming pool and you'll probably end up sinking faster than a dead elephant! My point is that I've always followed my view of 'Experience beats knowledge'. There does not seem to be many situations where learning from your mistakes, picking it up as you go along and doing things yourself is the minor part of life. You can't spend your life reading and absorbing information without putting that information into good use. There are obvious exceptions to this point such as learning/researching brand new stuff, learning about unknown stuff, skydiving, poison testing, experimenting how high does it take to jump off a cliff without killing yourself, you get my point.

If I owned a business (and god help us all if I do), I wouldn't care if you got a first in Cambridge, lost your whole social life through studying and knew the periodic table backwards while managing to solve a rubiks cube and keeping a ball in the air with your feet (although I would recommend you to the circus if you actually manage to do that). I would base a person on trust, determination, ambition and focus on what they have to do. Forget your firsts and fails, if you can't actually do a job, you're going to end up running to shit.

So good luck to everyone looking for a job this year (and myself). Hopefully we'll all eventually be millionaires and someday laugh about how we all once had a degree and turns out we only needed them to get the first foot in the door and we did everything through jobs.

Another World Cup Year, Another Disappointment

Sometimes I can have a limited knowledge in some sports but I do have a decently vague knowledge of the football.

Yes England played badly and yes there was THAT lampard goal that didn't get in. And yes, we had our arses handed to the germans for them to make bratwurst out of and sell back to us at an inflated price!

I do feel that testing a team's ability within 3-7 games is not a true reflection of how a team will play. Luck plays a pretty big part in tournaments like this and it's all about who's got the biggest hunger for the win, who has the bigger lion chasing right behind them and who has the bigger weapon to take down their foe. In other words, it's all about the balls!

Having said this, I cannot use this as an excuse for how England played, they played awful through all of that game (and against USA and Algeria) and the German's made frankfurters out of England's pigsty of their defence. Saying that, there was about 20-30 minutes of very good play during the end of the first half and about the start of the 2nd and it's a shame that only 2 actually went in and only 1 was counted.

Yes, the debate kicks off again with referee's and their mistakes. If there wasn't a big enough reason already as to why football is flawed, this is one of them. Lampard's goal was clearly in by a clear few yards and the whole world saw it except for 1 person. One person on that pitch who's only job is to check if that ball was in or not in that situation. (How hard can that be huh?)

I've compared the referee's on football to the referee's in WWE wrestling. Both have the final say in the final outcome and both are constantly argued about and can be at times more blind than Stevie Wonder. Of course WWE is acted whereas this World Cup is real.

The shot is almost a direct homage to the legendary 1966 match where Geoff Hurst has a similar position and the goal was (eventually) given. At the time, there were no goal technologies or camera angles to show that it was in. That was 44 years ago! Why are we still using 44 year old methods to detect a goal where in that time we have cameras, crowds and video technology to prove that it was in?! TV has shown when players are offside, when players are commiting fouls, every little bit of detail on the game. If this is the case, then why is football still living in the past and using age-old rules in a modern technological age of sports? We have all the technology in the world from robots, to cameras to visual aids and yet FIFA still insist on using the one pair of human eyes to determine a goal!

Mistakes are part of life and that has to be accepted through this. What infuriates me more is not reacting to the mistake. It's bad enough making the wrong decision but it's even worse not to do anything about it! Argentina and Mexico is another clear example. Tevez clearly offside for everyone to see, and even the Argentinians themselves said they were offside and the big screen showed it as well. The referee was aware of it and yet STILL no action was taken to change this! The refs require split second decisions and they are always decisions that don't have to be taken so quickly! Tennis and cricket has hawk eye, Rugby and American Football has video replays (even the bloody americans have a better way of determining calls and their footballs aren't even round!) to determine decisions, seriously FIFA, why not you? Your methods and traditions are more outdated than a petrified lump of cheese!

So there's my 2 cents. Football has too many flaws and stubborn policies. When the USA got knocked out, the New York Post wrote as their headline: "This Sport is Stupid Anyway". And I can't rephrase it any better myself...

Few things have happened since my last post.

First, big match tomorrow with England v Slovenia. GL to Fabio's Fab 23 and hopefully prove people wrong.

I was planning to make a blog about coming back home to hartlepool but the house now has a downgraded internet connection from 4MB to 0.5mb. My mum got convinced to have a smaller connection instead of actually cutting it off. Nice idea but 0.5MB connection is UNUSABLE! It's actually worse than 56k connections back in the 90s! I can't access anything so I've resorted to using my phone to check my emails and websites as well as my mum's 3G connection back home. You know your broadband is fucked if you can access your emails on a 3G connection and on my phone about 2 minutes before my broadband begins to even load the first image! I think it's just donating 5 quid to Virgin so we can waste electricity attempting to make a vague internet connection. argh!

Other thing I've glimpsed pass this week on TV is the most awful acronym ever to have appeared since AIDS was discovered: BB. Yes people, Big Brother is back, I was forced to watch one episode. Turns out the theme is on the circus and it seems fitting since we seem to have a very big freak show on it. So from what i've seen so far, it looks as dull as ever. Simply people incredibly desperate for TV fame and then becoming a minor celebrity. The prize money is probably no where near the actual money they get after the show from all the other stupid shows they further appear on.

But since it's the last ever series, I suppose I can let them do what ever they want since I'm not interested, the world cup is still on and I'm not ever gonna see it again.

Can't think of much else to write so I'll end it there I guess. I'll find something else to write about soon.

P.S Yes I am clearly aware of some of the hypocrisy in this blog.

Single and not that bothered at the moment

There are two types of people/couple that I hate:

1) Couples that cannot keep their hands off each other everytime they meet, on the bus, outside the house etc.

2) People that whine about relationship problems and post breakup whines.

I've gotten into trouble about this a few times mentioning my opinion on relationships and whatnots so I'm going to tread pretty carefully in this blog.

Okay, I am single and those who know me probably know that I am an anti-relationship kind of guy. That doesn't mean that I wanna stay single for the rest of my life. I'm just critical of people in relationships that's all.

If all people do in a relationship is do them two things above over and over, it almost makes me wonder why anyone would ever be in a relationship in the first place. Yes there are perks and stuff but it's a constant cycle to some people: You get together, you do stuff and then you break up, you whine, you get over it and you find someone else. This goes on until

a) you finally find 'the one'

b) you're dead

c) you become asexual

or d) you are the last person on earth

I see this a lot on Facebook (notice how my blogs seem to always have a lot to do with FB.... coincidence I guess). People going 'I love you' and 'You're the only one for me' or 'I'd die for you'. and when they break up, SOME people then go 'OMG i can't believe he/she left me! men/women are bastards!' and then they go through some sort of similar emo phase and decides to tell all their friends that they still hate him/her. Yes I understand they're still grieving like their dog still died and they want to let out their frustrations but things like this turn Facebook into Frownbook :(. Maybe they can vent their frustrations through another medium perhaps (how about blogging?)

Perhaps you can call me the unromantic type and I probably won't realise these problems properly until I actually find a girlfriend (in which case, all of you are more than happy to criticise my hypocrisy about this blog and pretty much take the piss out of me for it :P ) and go through the same stages.

So to anyone who reads this thinking 'Oh I'm going to stop ranting about my relationship problems because Will Ho said So!', that's not my point in what I'm saying, I mean yes I hate people who do it, but go ahead and vent your frustration! Just don't expect me to keep interested in your topic for more than a couple of weeks (and probably expect me to hide you people from my news feed for a little while). There's some sort of algorithm for how long people get over a relationship, I think it was off Friends. Was it a quarter of the time of the length of a relationship or something?

On this note, I should probably say I'm not sure if I ever give good relationship advice to people at times so take my words with caution I guess.

Oh and btw, I'm an absolute hoot during Valentines Day(!) :P