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!

Eastenders

End.

The useless National Lottery Button!

Why have all the who ha about pressing the big red shiney button on the special podium when we all know the bald guy with the white gloves blatteny presses a button to the side of the machine (Guinevere, Lancelot, sir bob, what ever the machine happens to be called) immediately after the celebrity or Jodie Pringer presses down on the red knob.

Can these celebrities not be trusted to sucessfully press a real button? Why hasn't one of the celebs gone "what the duce, this button does nothing?" out loud on the show? Why do we have to have the big song and dance about a lottery which is dying on it's arse - I remember when jackpots went up £10 million a week, nowadays your lucky to win a million, unless it's the farcical euro millions.

It's all bollock Camelot so stop it... and while your at it, get rid of the plus 5, dail play and thunder ball draws no one really gives a toss about these (they can keep dream number I likebtrying to guess the numbers when they come out)

End rant and breath.

People using heavy machinery in the early morning!

Will the bastard drilling into the road outside please refrain from doing so to at least 8:30! And is it really necessary to reverse that truck quite as many times as the reverse bleeped is suggesting? Not very pleased :-(

Madonna

The fact that at even at the ripe old age of 82, I probably still would! Can she not just grow old and ugly?

Ill advised restraint

You study the form, you like the look of the favourite in the last race and contemplate putting on a bundle of cash because your overall betting performance hasn't been great and your misus is gonna notice the cash hole when she plunders your hard worked cash whilst shopping tomorrow.

You check the price across sites, you have a £100 bet keyed in, you like the fact that £300 would be yours if you win but then in cmes your conscious... What about little Jimmy who needs new shoes? Gas bills coming up? Gyres on the car look a little warn?

So you tell yourself no and step away and pat yourself on the back when you see the horse make a poor start.

But then what's this, he's picking up places, he's now near the front, oh bugger he's romping home! There I am frantically yammering my phone keys, hoping the betting site has an unfortunate lag and will accept my after the event bet - no it does 't, and so the evenings ruined with you constantly thinking of what you could have won.

Bugger, bugger, bugger!

Realising your getting older

In your hey day you think your invincible, old people are funny and you imagine that you're never going to go the way of your dad.

But then slowly but surely, father time starts catching you up. It starts with little things, such as experiencing a small degree of difficulty and discomfort when getting off the sofa, the sudden interest in news and current affairs meaning your more interested in the times headline than who's on the front of FHM and you end up watching Newsnight by choice.

Then the bigger bomb shells start dropping non you as you discover your idols are either past it, or the new ones are younger than you, you've started using phrases you parents would use, your getting increasingly concerned about your chlestrole level, even though you haven't a clue what it is, it's just advertised a lot and seems something to do.

You find yourself interested in how many miles to the gallon your car does, qvc replaces the midnight views of babesation, you scoff at paying £100 plus for a pair of jeans, choosing to go for the cheaper option instead and declaring them as much more comfortable. And names - you never know who anyone is anymore, you cycle through several names beginning with the letter you think it is, only to find out your no where near... And that it's a stupid new fangled name that back in the day wold have been piss take material -but not now as everyone's called Spraticus now and it wouldn't be 'PC'.

Reminiscing becomes all too frequent and you long for the good old days when your wife's breasts stood up on their own accord. You still take a good look and a cheeky wink at the new female office temp, and being a silver fox there's some interest back (you maybe older but you haven't lost all functions...yet)' but the feeling of guilt and wrongness due to her beginning 'young enough to be your daughter' gets in the way.

And finally the most clear sign of all that you've finally reached older age and your can no longer be consider young - you prefer to sit down on the toilet than standing up.

Cherish your outh young uns, cherish it - and if yu see any of the above happening to you, buy a sports car and grow older disgracefully.

Sheep

Sheep really grind my gears. There they are, all fluffy and eating grass trying to avoid the advances of natives from over the boarder what do they do apart from that... nothing... Worse than nothing, They provide wool which is then given to me in the form of horrendous christmas jumpers.

I don't care if some believe these to be back in 'fashion' they look ridiculous, as do men in tight jeans and quiffy hair. It's not the eighties, we established we looked ridiculous back then in the 90's so why bring these statements back - the misguided thoughts of outh.

And there's another thing - outh these days have little to no respect, whats going on here? When I was a outh I was scared of older people, yet these kids have no fear - there all for smashing the windows of tesco and looting loads of monster munch.

But don't get me started about Tesco's. They fecking everywhere, I can't avoid the beggars even though I do try. The caniving sods, luring us in with the funny adds with the flatly towers lady, making us think they were on our side by providing us with cheap poor qua
Ity food, but no, they were realng us in so they could gain control of us and en jack up the price. £2 for pringles - sod off, it's a potato and a bit of salt!

I'm hungry, quite fancy some crisps if I'm honest so that's it for now.more tomorrow, if I can be bothered.