X Factor having a 'theme' so that the judges and 'mentors' can completely ignore that 'theme'.

So apparently it was rock night tonight on the X Factor, not that you could tell with those world renowned rock artists of Cee Lo Green, Kesha, Salt 'n' Pepper and Cher all covered tonight. Where were the stella guitar rifts, the amazing drum solo's, the up tempo and heart rate increasing tempo, the risky lyrics and dancers to match (no wait, X Factor did have the last bit, in fact that is something guaranteed and it cold be that the dancers are the most talented people on the show)?

Mean come on Tulisa, you're not that stupid, you know "tik tok" is in no way a rock song and if you were in any doubt a quick check on Wikipedia would have told you it is a "dance-pop and electropop song that uses a minimalist video-game beat interpressed with handclaps and synths. The songs verses use a rap-sing vocal style while the chorus is sung; throughout the song the use of Auto-Tune is prominent." (remember kids, wikipedia is gospel)

However I shouldn't be surprised really because the stupidity, blindness and lack of honessty in what are deemed to be judges of musical talent is there for all to see. Who do they think they are kidding when they try to pimp the chances of there several mildly talented singers that are just there to make up the numbers? Are they really trying to make me believe that the likes of Jonny, Frankie, Crag, Sami, Janet and 'Rythmix' (i assume there is some irony in this groups name) will be mega selling artists that will stand the test of time... really Louis... really??? FUCK OFF!

What you really want to do with these two-bit comedy acts is to make as much money out of them as you can, as fast as you can, while they are working for peanuts and the contestants themslves hold the false impression that fame and fortune is only a small number of phone votes away? I'm not saying there aren't some with talent, but had they only included these we'd be looking at a 4 week show.

It is the utter distain the whole show has for the public that watches it that riles me, all it wants to do is shaft kids of the pocket money on downloads, shaft the parents of these kids with increased telephone bills due to incessant phone voting and shaft those with week minds in believing mediocre can get you fame and is acceptable to put in front of a whole nation at prime time on a Saturday evening. Come on Cowell, your cash cow is running out of mik, time to rebrand (properly) and sell the same shite to us over again with a new name on the door!

Washing up

What a pain in the absolute bottom washing up is! I've just sat down for a cup of tea and online winge following round 1, but have round 2 of tonights battle to look forward to when I can be bothered to move again (which might be soon if the Ms puts on Law & Order.... dun dun!)

I appreciate those of you who are Greek, or rich enough to be able to afford a dishwasher, or maybe even servants, or those of you who eat out of takeaway boxes each night won't really understand where I'm coming from but for the rest of the few that may stumble across my rants I am sure you can sympathise.

And tonight is no normal washing up task, it's a particulary horrid one as 'her in doors' has cooked something quite enjoyable for dinner which is all very lovely when your getting stuck in, but as you dish out the third different type of veg from the third different pan it then dawns on you that it is you and you only that is expected to do the washing up.

Tonight's exact line up of items includes, one largish pan, three saucepans and lids, 5 big plates (there's only 4 of us, who had the other one?), 2 small plates, a pirex dish, 2 rather grease filled baking trays, a large lunchbox, 1 microwave cover, a gravy jug, 3 tea mugs, 3 glasses, various larger utensils included a bloody difficult to get open masher machine thing (what is wrong with the old style masher and brute force?) and of course the never ending run of knifes, forks and spoons - how the he'll did the few items I ate amount to this?

There's some really horrid items as well, ones that will leave little bits of vegetable, meat or other minting things stuck in the plug hole meaning you have no choice but to prod at the plug hole with your fingers, or if the water is looking particularly gunky and poo coloured, a spoon!

Conveniently, most people in this house get into the habit of either dumping the washing up items in the bowl, resulting in the need to taking all of the items outs before you can start filling the bowl with water and the special three squirts of washing up liquid or simply hiding the items they've used around the house meaning before I can have a nice little game of hide and seek before I get to the task at hand.

So I've filled up the bowl, chucked the cutlery in and submerge the opening item only to find I've left the hot tap on all the way through and the waters about 1 million degrees. Never fear, I'm a man and will get through it, as my hands turn a bright red and the first few plates i stack up relieve themselves of excess steam.

Things are going swimingly, all the plates and cups are down and there's only a couple of peas and some weird stringy stuff in the water, but then I notice the pans - they really should have been rinsed first, but fuck it, they go in. Then there's the gravy jug and potato masher and perhaps they should have been too, so I move the bowl so I've got a little gap to the sink below and try and give them a little bit of a wash over so to not dirty my water anymore. "Ah shit!" that's still hot!

So I've burnt myself, my fingers are all prunney and the kids have kindly come in, dumped some extra items for me to wash and left without even the thought of picking up a tea towel or saying "you sit down with a cider, I'll take care of this" god damn. But the fun is not over, as the game of draining board tectris is starting to get exciting. I have a whopping great big pan in my hand but only the space for a egg cup remaining, but if I move this here, that there, turn that upside down and rest this on top of that... I end up smashing a plate!

So I'm stuck - I have no more room, but 10 or 12 items to go and with everyone else claiming to busy my only choice is to pick up the tea towel and do the drying as well, grrrrrrrrrrrr. After childishly insisting for the first few items that I won't be putting them away, I give in and put them in the appropriate draws or at least the draws I think are appropriate, I await to be told that yet again I've put things in the wrong place (well if they're in the wrong place, how did you find them?).

Slowly but surely, the draining board is cleared and the task at hand is looking a lot more manageable so a second wind flows through you and you start speeding through the next few items. However, this is a foolish thing to do, as when you come round to do your second set of drying with the damp rag that was formly a tea towel you realise you haven't done a very good job, there's stains remaining, bloody great Big noticeable ones. Ah well, you've already dispensed of the filthy water which is trying to negotiate it's way through the plug hole so the only thing for it is to rub at the stain with tea towel as hard as you can... But then it remains on the tea towel... And then it transfers to your next drying items... So you decide to hide them (like putting a plate at the bottom instead of on the top) in the hope no one will use them... But they do... And they always notice... The ungrateful sods, if you wanted a good job why did ask me to do it?

And so finally the job is done, or so you think - the Ms wants a cup of tea now, and so the never ending cycle begins again.

Addiction

God I hate addiction, it's just so... addictive!

As a man that is far too easily sespitcal to addictive tendencies and has very poor will power I'm constantly finding myself in different states of blooming addiction - fags, booze, gambling, cleaning, chocolate, crisps, caffine, credit cards, Red Bull, Family Guy etc, etc, you name it, I've pretty much become addicted to the lot (thankfully not all at the same time, otherwise I'd be a skint, fat, hyper maniac, with a terrible headache, liver disease, cleaning the
kitchen 17 times a day, only stopping for several KitKat Chunky's and a packets of frazzles).

The only things i'm not addicted to is drugs (phew!) and sex (because god knows, i'm pretty shit at it and no one gets addicted to something that they're crap at, with the exception of gambling.)

Take fags for example - I started smoking in my teens and from what I can recall at the time, the idea behind it was to fit in with a girl I quite liked that also smoked (women - the stupid things you do to impress them). At the time, I remember thinking to myself that I wouldn't get addicted, I'd quit after I was 21 or something. Now I'm well on my way to 30 and I'm still puffing away, after several pretty crap attempts to quit. I tend to last only last a couple of hours without before caving in - I reward myself with fags, how messed up is that!

Then there's alcohol - I've never been a really big drinker, so to say I'm addicted is perhapse misleading but I'm definately drinking more than I used to. It used to be the odd Cider on the weekend and the occasional night out with the boys, but it's now got to extent that there's a nice bottle of top standard Russian vodka chilling in the fridge.

Red bull - there was the one a day routine for an entire month, but luckily I weaned myself off that, partly due to the fact your pee starts to smell funny (or maybe that was just me), although thinking of Red Bull makes me think of how well it would go with that chilled Vodka in the fridge.

And may i introduce you to my new found addiction, gambling - I blame winning £300 in a day from the spare £5 in my account for this, as the evil addicted
side of my brain now tells me there's gold to be made from those horses. I find myself betting on random things - soccer in Columbia? I haven't a clue who these teams are, but put a fraction next to them and I'm suddenly interested.

Fecking addiction and all the evil but fun things associated with it - it really does suck.

Footnote: if the missus ends up reading this, I did not gamble the kids uni fund... honest... and yes, believe it or not I did have a cleaning addiction but the cleaners anonymous support group got me through that one pretty quickly.

The Rugby World Cup being held in New Zealand

So this years Rugby World cup is being held in New Zealand, one of the eternal power houses of rugby and to most it will seem fair that they have their chance to host this moderately sized sporting event.

But whoooa, hold on minute, what time do the games kick off? 5, 6 o'clock in the morning GMT - well how bloody inconvenient of you New Zealand! I didn't even realise the clock went to these times in the morning, so deep in my slumber I am at these times!

So who's fault is it? The IRU? New Zealand? No, i blame the person devising the god awfully complicated time system across the world time and the tectonic plates for moving New Zealand to practically nowhere - I'm surprised the place got found as quickly as it did, as it's not exactly close to Australia in nautical terms and surely any explorer that had bother to get as far as Australia would have said enough of this and turned back home?

Work does really need to go into finding a way to bring New Zealand closer to the rest of the World as it's a really nice place (I've heard) but a 56 hour flight is not of interest to me at all and making an artoficial all around the world sun so that we can all use the same time.

Yes the New Zealand people could appease us Northern Hemashpere watchers by moving the kick off times so they are inline with our normal watching times such as 7 / 8pm in the evening, even if that does mean they have to play the games at 3 / 4 am - they're not totally blameless in this.

Hopefully they do a good job in hosting and no doubt the All-Blacks will sparkle all the way to the final before falling flat and losing in the final to 'those nice guys from South Africa' but sadly I won't be watching a my eyes wouldn't function at that time even if I wanted to.

Ranting is big in the Netherlands apparently?!?

"Hallo" my Dutch friend (i don't believe there's more than one of you, despite what the stats might suggest!). "Welkom" and "Waar zijn de toiletten, alsjeblieft?"

Neil Warnock

What a tosser.

iPhone / iPad auto complete

The people at Apple think they're pretty clever, producing swish looking gadgety things that make many a man and women lose control of their wallets or purses and hand over their hard earned cash to the evil machine - and I know the feeling, I've been afflicted with this brain wash technique twice.

Yet, one thing that annoys me about their products, more than anything else is the auto correct feature in which in apples infinite wisdom, they have decided to use the spacebar/punctuation as an indication you want to accept the prediction of what you were actually trying to type. How bloody stupid, regardless of whether I've got the word right or wrong, the buttons I'm naturally reaching for immediately after will be the spacebar or if I'm at the end of a sentence a full stop, question mark or if I'm feeling fancy an exclamation mark!

This results in me having to type several words over and over again, which is very grrrrrrrrrrrr! God knows, it's happened at least 10 times just typing this shit.

And another thing - is the fact they are called 'apple' ironic considering this was the infamous forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve (or was it Steve) couldn't resist? Perhaps all us Apple users will be going to hell (or he'll according to the decking auto correct) and if the love of all things apple related does result in a meeting with Satan in the past life, my love of cider and apple pie/crumble (how did you get 'dribble' from crumble Apple?) means I'm royally screwed!