Uncle's Rant

The Daily Rag

2006-08-11T18:05:00.000Z

Now I'm not a fan of newspapers, even though today I'm featured in a full-page article about blogging with fellow blogger Tim Clague in our local newspaper, the Bournemouth Daily Echo.

I think local newspapers are great, how else does a small community get it's local news? I don't like the tabloids for obvious reasons (see picture!), and I don't like the broadsheets because, well they're just too... broad.

So I like a local newspaper but I rarely buy one. Why? Well there's one thing I hate about all newspapers, in fact it's something that makes me feel physically ill. You see I just can't stand the smell of them. I'm not talking about the ethereal stench of a tabloid, I'm talking about the general smell of every single newspaper in the whole wide world. I can't stand it!

I can't even tie it down to one thing either.

Is it the ink? I don't think so, I have ink around me in various forms all the time and that doesn't bother me.

Is it the cheap, sometimes recycled paper? No, the more recycled paper the better!

So what is it then? I think it must be a combination of the two, what else can it be?

Why can't a newspaper smell nice for a change? Maybe if they sprayed it with a bit of Gaultier (the perfume not the man himself spraying the papers like a cat marking its territory), as it leaves the production line. Or if somewhere in the recycling process they included rose petals in the press, that could help too.

Of course today I bought 5, 'cause I'm in it and the family insist on all having a copy. I still don't like the way it smells though.

Let me know if newspapers get up your nose too.

I just can't stand it, to me it all smells of yesterday's... er... news.

The Spam Tin: The last spam

2006-08-08T08:27:00.000Z

We've come to the final day of the Spam Tin experiment and we end with a jape from little Frederic Haynes. Spam usually takes itself so seriously but in this instance I really had to take my hat off to Fred for sending me my first laugh-out-loud "clown spam"(tm).

It reads:

Ha. Ha.

Nice try Fred but I'm afraid it all smells of yesterdays coke.

The Spam Tin Day 7: Mince pie, sky high!

2006-07-31T08:09:00.000Z

Today little Gerhard Carroll has kindly sent me an eye test!

Thanks Gerhard I needed that test, although I'm not sure that I passed as all I could make out in the bleary haze was something about "yesterday's shit"????

The Spam Tin Day 6: Day 5 The Sequel!

2006-07-29T22:22:00.000Z

Hot from my mailbox is this little nugget from my dear old mate Tom Silva. He took the bait from yesterday and has at least responded but unfortunately not quite in the manner that I'd hoped for. It's all a little bit too generic you see. I shall endeavor to evoke a better response this time.

Take two:

Dear Friend,

Thanks for your response to my email and your assurance that i can rely on you.

Tom. For you, anything. I feel we have now moved on to the brotherly stage and I know that it won't be long before I can nurtue you with my financial teat.

Please i will want you to understand my situation better, for now to say it in the short form it has been a very bitter tale, from the death of my father to the maltreatment i have been receiving from my relatives who have been envious of my parents because they were not well-to-do as my parents were, for that reason they are hostile at me.

Jealousy is at the root of all hostility. I never allow my roots to show and using techniques that are just for men I can keep them that way!

I am entrusting the only left hope into your care, the rest of my parents properties have been taken by my wicked uncle who is even seeking my life. My father put the money in a portfolio which is kept in a finance trust for safety this is my joy and reason to be alive since you can understand the life here is very hard.

I had a wicked uncle once who kept me locked in a tower until I had spun him a yarn of infinite testosterone. He hurt me deepr than you can imagine.

Before i give you details of the portfolio and the finance trust i will want to know more about you if you do not mind. Kindly tell me, what you do for a living, about your family, if you are married and how many children have you? This is just to know you better.

As I explained in my mail yesterday I own and operate many businesses, which I run under the cover of my day job which sees me packing fudge for Cadbury's. I have been married 3 times and I love all my wives very much. We all live together in a lovely big bungalow happily practicing the art of polygamy. Between us we have 11 children, many of which have an above average IQ. Willfred is probably the most special child due to his extremely happy nature which is surprising as he has a excessive amount of extra nipples located on his inner thigh. We love him just the same.

Well to give you more details i will first like to let you know that i have planned coming over to your country to settle down with this money for investment and as well further my education. The money right now as i write to you is in the finance trust where my father deposited it before his death. I am an orphan so i would want you to stand as guardian to safely get the portfolio claimed from the finance trust then after the portfolio has been claimed make arrangement for me to come over to meet you. The reason i need your help is because of the agreement my father had with the finance trust which is that the portfolio should be released to a foreigner as he planned using it for investment abroad, so i am not able to claim the portfolio without your assistant.

My assistant, Mr. Jingles is available for an extra fee. I can contact him if you like, maybe we could have a conference call together?

Kindly call me on the telephone +22508846869 so that we can discuss more, it is important that you call me upon receiving this mail.

I hear your urgency and I tried ringing the number a couple of times but unfortunately all I got was the speaking clock and the second time I tried I could smell a strong day-old deposit which made me feel rather queasy I'm afraid so I gave up.

Tom, I feel I must tell you my time on this world is drawing to an end and if I do not help you soon I really do think it will all be in vain.

Help me to help you.

Yours,

Bram Davenport

The Spam Tin Day 5: Investment Funds

2006-07-28T22:48:00.000Z

Super-spam week continues with a most fortuitous opportunity from little Tom Sliva. A golden opportunity indeed as he has even supplied an email address for me to respond to... results here hopefuly in a few days.

Here is my response to Tom.

Dear Tom,

I feel I must begin by thanking you warmly for this heart-felt email, for it is indeed not often I get moist on my cheeks from such a moving tale. Your problems have touched me in ways so unimaginable I can barely begin to comment but no matter how difficult I will try.

My name is Tom Sliva, I am 22 years old boy. I lost my parents and my only brother of 19 years to the war in my country. I am lucky that I was taken to this country Cote d'Ivoire by some good sameritans who have families here in Ivory coast.

I am truly sorry to hear of your loss. I too have visited the Ivory Coast recently on a hunting trip for the tusks of a mammalian sperm otter. Those little rascals sure are truly hard to catch and if you don't handle them using a Bavarian leatherette monkey sock you run the risk of snapping of their little erdections completely!

I am from sierra leone but residing in Ivory Coast west Africa now, I would like to appeal to you confidentialy to assist me concerning my late father's deposit in a (security firm) Financial Institution here in Abidjan of $10,000,000 ( Ten million USD) I want to move out of here because the crisis that started here for years now is still on, and there is no sign that it will end soon. Also my condition in this country is not condusive for me.

Tom, you seem to have missed out which security firm this deposit is with, suggesting instead an angular generalization on your text ? Perhaps you could fill in the blanks for me as the kind of money you are pontificating about can be easily passed through my horse gonad recycling firm within a working day.

Can I trust you to help me retrieve the treasure from the (security firm) Financial Institution as my (foriegn partner) foreign business associate and also provide a place for me to stay in your country? Can I also trust you to safe keep this fund and also help me invest this fund in a profitable business in your country when this money get to you?

You can indeed trust me Tom, when it comes to finding treasure I am your man. I once completed the great Constantinople treasure hunt in less than 12 parsecs!

I run a number of different businesses so it would be easy for me to invest your money wisely within one of them. In terms of capital return I would heartily recommend my chutney ferret packing service as the annual retention has to be seen to be believed! Or if you would rather invest in a charity I can vouch for the Queen's own "Bidets for Midgets" scheme.

If you are willing to help me please indicate in your next mail.

I am willing most able to help, in fact I consider it my duty.

I will discuss with you some details, Let me know also from you what will you deduct from the total money after the funds is transfer to you

My handling charge would be somewhere in the region of $69.95 as I can claim no more due to the hard-nosed tax men we have over here.

Do please furnish me with the information below for easy processing of the transfer;
Your contact Telephone number..........
Contact address..............

Unfortunately I cannot give out such details upon first contact. A response to this mail would guarantee to me your honesty and sincerity, which would then mean we can progress to second base.

God bless you.

And you Tom Sliva, and all who sail in you.

I eagerly await your response.

Yours Faithfuly

Bram Davenport

P.S. do you smell something around a day old?

The Spam Tin Day 4: Double bill, overboard calamity!

2006-07-27T20:32:00.000Z

Today in The Spam Tin we have a 2-up special! Both Francois Veillon and Luisa Vangelder felt they really must tell me about the same hot offer.

It's a super special day too in that the cheeky little winkle-pickers both sent me a lovely image featuring their offer:

Tut, tut Luisa

Francois, you naughty sprite.

Dear Francois and Luisa,

I fear you have both copied your work from some other unsuspecting spammer and passed it onto me as your own. Even worse you couldn't be bothered to type up your scam and instead chose to scan in your spam. It really is the laziest, sloppiest work I've seen within the many hundreds of emails I've recieved...today.

If you continue along this track I shall be forced to use my cane and beat seven shades of yesterday's shit out of you.

F-

The Spam Tin Day 3: Apologies but here it is

2006-07-26T17:30:00.000Z

Today's spam comes from little Benito.

Dear Benito, before you begin I'd just like to say that your subject line "Apologies but here it is" is a little backwards in coming forward. Don't apologize for something I haven't even read yet, you could put off many potential clients by dropping the seed of doubt into their minds that what you've sent out is actually a pile of old shit before you've even begun.

Moving past the subject line he writes:

Take delivery of a substantial cut on your pills safe characters, prime quality.

I hear "safe characters" are all the rage, do you have any in bondite blue?

whopping range, including backbreaking to find drugs 0 prior doctors approval indispensable.

I'm not sure about breaking any backs to fill my cracks. Are these drugs particularly heavy? Or maybe you sell in such large quantities that everytime you ship a load out of your Columbian sweatshop you snap a few vertebrae getting them onto the fleece-wagons.

Here I am, on a cannibal island, hundreds of miles from civilization, with no way to get back, he reflected Now it's blue, complained the horse

Oh Benito, you were doing so well. So well in fact you almost had me sold. Then like everybody else you went off tangent with a silly non sequitur. This horse, is he a bondite blue?

These cannibals do they smell of the shit they excreted yesterday, much like your mail?

The Spam Tin Day 2: Better life, well-seasoned

2006-07-25T16:02:00.000Z

Today's message comes from little Shauna Vigil. It upset me so much she made parts of me itch that I never knew could itch.

As usual my response is intertwined with her message. It reads:

Your cre dit doesn't matter to us! If you OWN real est ate

My "cre dit" is none of your business, whether it matters to you or not. Erm, what's a "cre dit"? Is it the noise one of those psychedelic bufo toads make when you lick their backs?

and want IMMEDIATEQ cash to spend ANY way you like

"IMMEDIATEQ" makes me think of BBQ and when i think of BBQ you'd better go and hide your meat.

Oh, and Shauna I'm really not liking this SHOUTING tone you're raining down on my ass.

, or simply wish to LOWER

I'll "LOWER" you if you don't stop shouting.

your monthly paym ents by a third or more, here are the dea ls we have TODAY

...final warning!

(hurry, these ofers will expre TONIGHT):

A little bit like your soggy, sorry ass of a corpse after I've finished with you.

$488,000.00 at a 3.67,% fixed-rate5
$372,000.00 at a 3.90,% variable-rate6
$492,000.00 at a 3.21,% interest-onlyS
$248,000.00 at a 3.36,% fixed-rateH
$198,000.00 at a 3.55,% variable-rate6

Wait a minute, that's an awful lot of money at a very reasonable rate, you just seem to have omitted the most basic fact of the period of term. I reckon if i picked the top amount I could just about have it paid back by the time I'm 192 years young.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

With the sales patter over little Shauna then went on to tell me a story, rather like little Bridgett Conner did yesterday. Maybe they had the same training...

realized that they were trapped. The heat was increasing, over- whelming
Where have you seen a good system? When have you ever seen me under a good

HOW EXCITING! A FIRE, A FIRE and a person looking for a good system...

I wouldn't be giving it to anyone now, but as you see, my arms have gotten
lower lip was split. But all in all, okay.
that the dry grass was not rustling underfoot but squeaking like cornstarch,

Oooooh that cornstarch can chaff down below you know. I think I had an email somewhere about a cream...

an abandoned construction site, yawned before them. It was covered with
some game between some giants. It had not been carefully placed here, it had
Watching him, Noonan remembered what had happened when Boyd's lab
have been it as far as injuries.

Who IS this Noonan? He wasn't in the story before. You know I thought you we're an ok gal, but now you're obviously just making things up.

Noonan's a fool: Redrick, Red, you violate the balance, you destroy the
Now they were moving parallel to the embankment. Every step brought

Don't call Noonan a fool, his character's not been established enough for that kind of abuse. As for Redrick Red, well I'm starting to think this all smells of yesterday's shit.

The Spam Tin Day 1: Your future, nut rush

2006-07-25T13:29:00.000Z

Todays spam comes from little Bridgett Conner. It reads:

Even if you have no erectin problems SOFT CIA5LIS would help you to make BETTER SE6X MORE OFTEN! and to bring unimagnable plesure to her.

Well Bridgett that's very interesting, and even though I must admit to not having "erectin" problems, mainly because I do not know what an "erectin" is I really must say I would be intrigued to find out how to bring "unimaginable pleasure to her", whoever she may be... maybe she is you. Grrrrrrrrr.

Just disolve half a pil under your tongue and get ready for action in 15 minutes.

This "pil", does it go under my tongue before or after I brush my teeth?

The tests showed that the majority of men after taking this medic ation were able to have PERFECT ERDECTION during 36 hours!

Is "medic ation" like dedi-cation, you know like Roy Castle used to sing about at the end of that show? 36 hours of "PERFECT ERDECTION" could be a little long for me and I don't really like Steven Seagal movies, particularly not at that length.

VISIT US, AND GET OUR SPECIAL 70% DISCROUNT OFER!

You really should get your copy checked before spamming so many people. Did you know 40% of all internet sales are lost due to bad spelling and grammer leading to buyer confusion? If you learn nothing else today, learn how to use a spell checker.

Finished with the sales schpiel, Bridgett then goes on to try to build some rapport with her customer by telling me a story...

=========and one day they will see what you see. Forgive them, and help them to that the rescue squad had climbed into their helicopter, the firemen were Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Translated from Russian by Antonina W. and started explaining his graviconcentrate phenomenon to me--that is, the The clouds broke apart, his escorts called, "Happy landings, year. I'd been with him from the start, but I still wasn't quite sure what "... thousands and thousands of gulls. I know. " Sullivan shook his like a snap. Just throw the nut and be on with it.

Hmmm. I'm struggling to follow you here Bridget. Let me just recap. There's a rescue squad, a couple of firemen, a Russian translator and thousands and thousands of gulls... are you talking about that Steven Seagal flick again? When you say "Just throw the nut and be on with it", I really couldn't agree with you more.

Dearest Bridgett, I thank you for your offer and as tempting as it may be I really do think it smells of yesterday's shit.

The Spam Tin

2006-07-24T20:25:00.000Z

My colleague Tim Clague and I have noticed a real upsurge recently in the amount of spam mail we are recieving. This is particularly surprising to us as we recently had a wonderful new spam filter installed at work which does a wonderful job of missing all the spam and trapping any mails I try and send in its tiny little crab net.

Spam is getting more clever you see, subject lines are created in some random word generator, content is for the most part spelt in bizarre ways and in many cases the whole mail can be just a huge image.

Tim said he thought it would be great if someone out there responded to the spammers like you would respond to any email of interest. So for one week only I have taken it upon myself to do verbal battle with these spammers right here on this blog! Each day I shall pick my favourite spam mail, found loitering in my inbox when I get to work and respond to it in a way only a gentleman would.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you - The Spam Tin.

Feel free to leave your own wonderful examples right here on this blog.

Star Trek 2.0

2006-07-20T16:17:00.000Z

I love Star Trek. I hate the fact that they went too far with all the spin-offs. The reason Star Trek: The Next Generation worked so well is from the 2nd hand popularity of the original series and the early movies. It turned up a good 20 years on which made it fresh.

Star Trek has now died off in terms of TV production which is a real shame, even though it had become a bit of a soap opera.

Star Trek 2.0 is a breath of fresh air. I, like so many others discovered it on YouTube but it is actually a series of short promos designed to advertise US channel G4TVs 11pm weekly showing of Star Trek the original series.

It's hilarious. Check it out here.

Call Centre Spam! (pling)

2006-07-19T21:03:00.000Z

"Oooooh look at us, we work in a call centre harassing helpless mobile phone owners and we're so happy!"

I got 8 missed calls last weekend from what appeared to be an American number (+1). Everytime the call came in I just seemed to be away from my phone and I'd miss it. I was starting to get worried that it must be somebody desperately trying to get hold of me for whatever reason.

Finally I picked up the call and a person with an Indian accent informed me in his potted English that I was elegable for a phone upgrade. I informed him back that this wasn't true as I'd just got a new contract on my phone. This threw him and he panicked and asked me another question, his exact words being "How much cash you pay each month?"

I refused to tell him this and instead suggested that he should already know that if he had my details and knew I was elegable for an upgrade. This just confused him more. "How much cash?" he repeated. "I'm not telling you that", I responded. "Please. How much cash?"

I could stand no more and told him to politely go away and hung up the phone.

The company I work for handles all kind of sales training, as well as the video stuff I do, so I understand the need for cold-calling better than most people. I also understand how it should be handled too. Our company has in fact supplied India-based call-centre training for a number of large financial institutions that have moved their operations over to India. The kind of training they demand is really pretty minimal and usually consists of 2 episodes of East Enders, an episode of Coronation Street and a description of a typical British Sunday lunch. This of course explains a lot, particularly to those of you suffering off-shore call-centres and wondering why they are so bad.

So, it's not the staff that's the problem it's the training.

Next time you get cold-called from somebody with a heavy, unintelligable accent spare a though for the person at the other end of the line and before you slam the phone down explain to them you're sorry that you can't be bothered to listen to them anymore, it's not their fault and they should get better training (SLAM).

Feel free to leave your own call-centre rant below.

Do you have a moment to complete this survey?

2006-07-14T21:19:00.000Z

So tonight I'm at home in my front garden minding my own business and spraying some ants with ant powder when a girl comes running over. Now the road we live in is a little strange in that we've lived here 5 years and we only know a couple of neighbours, the rest would rather not even say hello. So this girl came over from a house just over the road and she approached me in such a manner that I thought she was going to tell me off for murdering the ants but this wasn't the case at all. She explained that some guy had just knocked on her door and had tried to enter her house, she'd pushed him back out but in the process had now locked herself out. Worse still the guy was still hanging around down the road and she was clearly upset by the whole thing. She pointed the guy out to me and I said I'd go and confront him.

Making my way down the street I noticed he was leaning rather forcibly against a car with a woman inside, as I approached he saw me coming and backed away at which point the lady got out of the car, locked it and walked away quickly.
He was a shady looking character with a clipboard, probably middle-aged and a little creepy looking.
I asked him what he was doing and he showed me his I.D. and explained he was doing a survey on transportation. Now as it turned out he seemed to check out ok and his problem was really in the manner with which he conducted himself. For example when I asked him what he was doing he immediately responded with "I'm looking for girls aged between 16 and 35", now what the hell kind of question is that to break the ice with.

Now pushing him to one side I'll get to the point of this rant. We're all told when we open the door to a stranger we must check their ID, right? Well how on earth are we supposed to know what a real ID is and what a fake one looks like? This guys ID stated he was working for Virgin Transportation, but like so many IDs it looked kind of like he'd just printed it out on hit state-of-the-art "dot matrix" printer circa 1989 and then got it laminated before finally sticking the cherry on top by ramming a safety pin through it.

With all this fraud and danger around the public need a new way of ID-ing strangers. With the wireless home just around the corner surely they could soon be given something we could scan to check with a central database.

Next time somebody comes knocking on my door I'm going to open it with a video camera rolling. If they don't mind me filming them, and signing a release form so I can show it the world over, heck I'll talk to them about anything!

Results here, if it ever happens.

Nigerian Scamalot

2006-07-13T11:46:00.000Z

I've recently had terrible trouble selling a mobile phone on eBay, most of it stemming from a scammer.

Over the last few months I've noticed a real increase in the amount of eBay listings stating at the top in larger than life letters "No Nigerians", or "I will not ship to Nigeria", or "Nigerians are banned from bidding". Until my experience I thought this to be a bit of a racist thing to say. Why would you tar an entire country with the same brush?

On my auctions I rarely ship worldwide but with something like a mobile phone it really does increase your market potential. So in this instance I said I would ship to UK, America, Europe and Australia (notice there is no mention of Africa).

The auction went well and somebody in the USA won.

Shortly after the auction I got an email from the winning bidder which read...

"Hi Mate,
Am the greatfull woman that won your item and i will like to buy this item to my husband in west africa(Nigeria 234020) as a birthday gift,i will like the item to be ship via Royalmail 1st class and i will be paying you via paypal so kindly get back to me with your full name and paypal email address including the shipping cost to Nigeia so that the payment can be made.
Thanks for the business.
waiting for your reply.
Jennifer.M."

Birthday present? Husband? Nigeria? OH NO!

I resonded by saying I would not ship to Nigeria and would only ship to her US address.

A day later another email came through from her/him saying they'd paid and her husband was looking forward to recieving the phone in Nigeria soon. Yeah, right. Then came the icing on the cake, a fake email from Paypal telling me what a wonderfully trustwothy person the winning bidder was.

Now I consider myself to be very careful and wary of such things but I just wonder just how many people they rip-off like this? For the uninitiated it would be very easy to look at that Paypal mail and think you'd been paid.

My point is are these Nigerians spoiling the reputation of every Nigerian on the planet or are they all really this corrupt?

I raise a challenge to any Nigerian to post a comment here and defend yourself and your country.

Go on I dare you!

Pling off!

2006-07-12T20:41:00.000Z

This is a pling. Most people would know it as an exclamation mark, in fact that's how I prefer to know it.

I've only ever heard one other person in the world call it a "pling" and for that I'll forever hold a grudge against him. His name was Norman Byers and he taught me graphical communication at A-level.

Everytime I see an exclamation mark my brain automatically sings "PLING!" at me, you know kind of like you'd expect an exclamation mark to sound if it made a noise.

I just thought Norman was mad but it turns out he wasn't. Driven to insanity by the constant "plinging" in my mind I decided today to actually check it out. Wikipedia has a definition here. It's not until you get to the bottom you'll actually discover the term "pling". According to Wiki a "pling" is the term used in BBC Basic programming. Yes folks "pling" is official.

This explains a lot as we used Acorns at college and it just so happens that "!" is an executable command for programs with RISC OS. Good old Norm always got his kicks by telling us how to load stuff on the Acorns, "Pling Boot" he'd tell us in his usual unexcitable style.

Norman you've "pling-ed" me enough and I'm sick of it.

Dirty Burgers

2006-05-08T08:06:00.000Z

So the Lansdowne Lunch Loafer blog is coming to an end. Friday 19th May 2006 is D-day, a sad day indeed, the day we finally kiss goodbye to our crappy (but nicely open-plan) offices, and say hello to our new offices a mile down the road. The upsetting thing is there is nowhere to go for lunch around there, a tradition we have tried to upheld since the very beginning, aided and abetted in more recent times by our blog.

The idea was simple; to provide a forum in which we could all discuss our lunch plans for the day without having a huge debate at lunchtime, wasting precious troughing time. Soon this will be a pointless debate as we will all be on sandwiches.

So as the days eb away the original four loafers came up with a strategy to get the most out of our limited time. A list was formed of all the great places we love to eat at so that we could re-visit some of our favourite holes before we disappear for good.

All sounds good so far I hear you say, where does the "rant" come into this? Well here it comes...

This is a tale about eating establishments being at the pinnacle of the lunchtime culinary trade and then suddenly tumbling down below the lowest of the low without much warning.

Oriental Views Chinese restaurant on Old Christchurch rd in Bournemouth is my first hit. An establishment once steeped in glory and myth due to it's fantastic lunchtime £5 deals. A place where we would regularly overeat due to the massively oversized portions, yet we were never let down by quality... until recently that is. Our favourite "hot and sour soup" has turned from a glorious bowl of surprisingly hot spices and marvelous meats into a steaming congealed bowl of something that smells like liquidised wet chihuahua.

The disappointment doesn't end there, no. Main courses which were always such a treat are now reduced to a choice of meat covered in Chinese "sauce", nay not covered in but swimming in.

The Chinese tea is still a winner though, and I'm not sure how they could get that wrong anyway.

"Peckers" greasy spoon is next on the list of eateries that really grind my gears.

Peckers opened up about a year ago and when we first visited we were completely amazed. It looks like you average greasy spoon yet the quality of the food in there is impeccable, and at transport cafe prices too. We loved this place, for price and quality you can't beat it.

Recently however things have started to slip. We apply the "3 strikes and you're out" rule to everywhere we eat, it's only fair, get it wrong 3 times and we never step over the threshold again.

Here are Peckers 3 strikes.

Strike 1: No Peckers Burgers. Peckers Burgers (tm) are incredible, 2 decks, loads of extras, chips, a veritbale plate-full, you can barely eat them without embarassing yourself. On this occasion 4 people wanted them, only one got it - bear in mind this was at 12:30, who sells out before 12:30?

Strike 2: Peckers Burgers, nothing else. 12:30pm again, nothing left, at all, not a sausage - quite literally. We could get Peckers Burgers though, but nobody wanted them this time.

Strike 3: Everyone orders Peckers Burgers only to be told after waiting for 5 mins that they only had enough for one again. Even worse The Gorv had tried to order a jacket potato only to be told they didn't have any, so he ordered a Peckers Burger instead only to be told 5 mins later he couldn't have it. I decided to have something cheaper on the menu, chips and chilli (even that was rubbish), and it was another chore trying to get the £2 back that I'd overpaid by. In the end the money came direct from another paying customer, instead of putting it through the till. Outrageous.

We are good, regular customers who deserve better. Now we are getting better elsewhere.

Idiots.

Pizza Slut.

2006-03-23T19:13:00.000Z

So Pizza Hut have a new all you can eat £3.99 lunchtime buffet offer, replacing their previous £4.99 lunchtime offer.

Sounds great right? It's not.

Firstly in the old deal you had access to pizza, pasta and salad. In the new deal you only get the pizza, if you want salad and pasta too there is another deal but that will cost you £5.49 - a hike of 0.50p from the old deal.

Obviously we weren't getting conned by this so we stuck to our guns and had just the pizza, which as we all know anyway is the nice, unhealthy bit anyway.

So the food was ok. This rant is not about sub-standard food quality or the staff's fast turnaround on getting the food out, both of these were pretty good.

No this rant is about how downright dirty I felt just being there.

This morning I saw an episode of the show Planet Earth featuring pirana fish in Brazil having a feeding frenzy. Looking at the buffet counter I was very much reminded of that image - the Pizza Hut visitors are just rabid animals! As soon as that buffet counter was filled again the people would just pile in, and unfortunately you can't help yourself you just have to join in the mentality.

It's WRONG I tell you, just plain old wrong.

People sit at their tables rapidly scoffing their food just so as not to miss the next round of warm stuff arriving on the counter. Their beady eyes dart around feverishly, as a mexican wave kicks off around the restaurant with people bobbing up and down like a pack of meercats desparate not to miss a chance at hot food.

It's just ugly, really, really ugly.

Why can't people just take their time? There's no rush, the pizza will keep on coming and hey here's a thought, if you take your time chewing and digesting your food you'll be able to eat a whole lot more and you'll feel more comfortable at the end of it.

There was just too much pushing and shoving. No manners, no etiquete just pure animal greed.

What have we become.

Harvester please bring back your "Lunch for a Fiver" offer, I don't know how many more trips to Pizza Hut I can take.

Blog's up!

2006-03-16T19:02:00.000Z

As promised my new blog has arrived. The Possum Pie Travelogue Blog will be a short lived blog-affair detailing exactly what me and the missus did for 22 days over in New Zealand recently.

Above all it's a diary so that we don't forget our time there, but it's also an observational piece on Kiwi life compared with the life we all know and rant about over here.

Check it out - The Possum Pie Travelogue Blog.

This rant's pants!

2006-03-15T18:41:00.000Z

Well it's been a while, far too long in fact since my last post. There have even been a few of you moaning verbally to me to get on with posting on my blog (you know who you are!).

In my defence, and it's not much of a defence you understand, I have been regularly posting for the last few weeks on the lanslunch blog. Here you can find stories of my culinary adventures whilst on holiday in New Zealand - much more appropriate for a lunch blog I'm sure you'll agree!

So as I'm such a regular poster on here I thought I'd launch another blog (!!!!), details of which can be found here soon.

A Happy Rant!

2005-12-06T00:01:00.000Z

You may have noticed my blog has been a bit quiet of late, well appologies for that but it is with good reason.

You see for the last 2 months myself and Kate (my superior half), have been working on an old fashioned childrens style animation with a view to entering it into the annual Landcrab Film Festival. It's been an incredibly long two months and it has seemed that most nights have been spent working on the damn thing but it was worth it in the end.

It was the festival this weekend that has just gone, and the competition was tough but we came away with a prize...the top prize in fact, best in show, the Palm Door. So all that hard work wasn't in vain after all, people did actually seem to like it, they laughed in all the right places and we got some great feedback. It even took some people back to their childhood which was nice to hear. In the next few days there should be a live version on the Landcrab website for you to watch as and when you get the urge.

Both myself and Kate really enjoyed making a kids style animation, it was great fun (in amongst the sweat and tears). Maybe next year we'll do a remake of 'Bod' or possibly 'Chorlton and the Wheelies'!

Other films of note at the festival were Adrian Ward's and Glenn Sadler's Chronic Bolton - a film which revealed far too much of it's stars/creators at times, quite literally and won Peoples Choice! Also Tim and Kim's long awaited and technically accomplished animation Hope which was an emotional ride for a number of people in the audience and came away with Best Drama.

In it's 8 year life the festival has gone from stength to strength, it now really is one of the biggest independant film festivals in the South.

Where will it take us next year?

Quartz Shorts starts here!

2005-11-01T08:24:00.000Z

Quartz Shorts has launched!

It's the first in a trial series of 365 Films Presents, in the run up to the launch of the mother of all concepts - 365 Films

From today onwards our new video blog aims to tackle the massive subject of love head on.

The blog is a sense-overloading hybrid of short films, quotes, music, thoughts and ideas and you know what the best thing is? You can have YOUR say. Tell us via the blog what you think, tell us what you want to see, tell us your take on love - YOU are in control of what you see here.

Without your guidance and interaction this experiment will fail. So log on now!

You can get it via the web, iTunes, any RSS reader and even on your iPod!

You will also need Quicktime 7 which you can get here, if you haven't already got it.

It's all very exciting. Catch it here - Quartz Shorts and subscribe to the TV of the future.

Celebrity Gaffers

2005-10-22T18:23:00.000Z

It's been a while since my last post and for that I appologise and my only excuse is that it took a while to find a certain picture I needed to make my point, and after all that I still didn't find what I wanted.

Yes that's right folks, today I'm having a dig at Charlotte Church.

Not at her music, on the contrary I'm not a fan but I believe she has made a very difficult leap between her styles of music reasonably successfully.

Not at her hyper-celeb lifestyle either, the press handle that one well enough.

I would like to concentrate on her video for her latest song - "Call My Name".

Now I did try and get a screen grab from the video on her website which can be seen here- Call My Name, but ufortunately it was impossible hence the mock-up you see in this post as an example.

Just what the heck is going on with the lighting when she is dancing around with the dancers, she's only lit from the tits up! The other dancers are lit correctly so what on earth is going on.

I deduce it's one of 3 things:-

1. Her own people looked at the shot and whispered to the DP - "Charlotte's looking a little chunky can we mask it off a bit?"

2. Charlotte herself was feeling a little vulnerable in that skimpy outfit and she insisted on not going in front of the camera without help from the lighting department.

3. Or maybe it was just it a gaffer who took it upon themselves to light her that way whilst nobody was looking..."You know what, this shot would look really good if Charlotte was only lit from the tits up"

Whichever one it is, I say it's bloody rude.

If it is Charlotte that was feeling self aware, I say to her don't be ashamed of what you have to offer under the udders, don't go hiding it in the shadows, skinny celebs should be the ones doing that, instead set it free for the world to admire.

The Second Coming

2005-10-18T17:20:00.000Z

Yes that's right folks the lamb had a second outing last night - cold lamb and a variant on the mash from the sea bass dish the other night with roasted carrots instead of peppers and brussel sprouts (posh bubble and squeak!).

Gorgeous.

Of course today I've had a terrible case of the screaming squits and I blame the lamb.

I'm not going to that bloody butcher again, I don't care if his lamb is well hung.

Rom-com-con!

2005-10-17T22:32:00.000Z

Ask anybody in the media business if they have faith in what they see on our teleboxes and they'll all give the same answer - "No way!"

Being fed twisted tales, skewed perspectives and disinformation is what makes up our daily injection of so called TV truths. All it takes is a simple tinting of the image, a shot of somebody crying and a downbeat reporter and even the happiest news report can be contorted into something that doesn't convey the truth.

Of course the power often lies with the simple old editor.

Check out these examples passed onto me earlier by Tim Clague.

I particularly liked the re-edit of the trailer for The Shining:-

The Shining

West Side Story

Titanic

Imagine how shocked you'd be if you turned up to see ol' Stanley's horror masterpiece thinking it was a romantic comedy!

Sometimes us people in TV/film-land have too much power... or maybe just too much time on our hands.

Fully Roasted!

2005-10-17T15:33:00.000Z

Here it is folks, the golden joint.

I admit it, it was one of the greatest, most tender joints of lamb I've ever tasted but was it worth the cash? As a one off now and then yes but I'm too tight for that most of the time so next weeks roast will be coming from Sainsbury's I'm sure.

If anyone is interested here's the recipe:-

Slow Roast Lamb

It's a really simple recipe and incredibly successful every time.

How much?!?

2005-10-15T21:12:00.000Z

I'm currently trying to get myself back into the old way of thinking - local shops, local produce, better quality. Is it really cheaper though than heading off down the nearest Walmart inspired store? I'm not so sure.

I went down the local fishmonger today, and when I say local I don't just mean a short walk down the road. No. I had to drive a good 5 miles just to go there. It's worth it though as I've been there before and I know it's good, but... boy is it expensive.

Today I bought a large sea bass, just the one mind and it cost me £9.10! Eeek! Yes there is enough for two, and yes I'm sure it will be fantastic but at that price it's more of a treat than a regular meal.

At least I made it out of the shop without choking this time, last time I went there I was given a piece of sea asparagus to try, which went down the wrong way, made me look like a cat with a furball in it's throat and if it hadn't been for the swift action of the lady fishmonger getting me a drink of water I would have surely sicked it all back up again right onto the cod roe.

Next stop was the butchers next door. I'm a big fan of the cookery shows on TV, and the chefs are currently saying we should all be heading down our local butchers for low cost, high quality stuff. Plus even better you can ask there advice on how to cook stuff. Great.

Today I wanted a lovely lamb roast for tomorrows Sunday dinner, so when I spotted a small boneless leg all neatly wrapped up I asked the butcher to give me a price on it, and boy did he give me a price. "£13.95!!" I coughed. He saw my despair immediately and began to justify the price. He explained that it had been hung for 3 weeks for added flavour, and that I'd never taste another bit of lamb like it.

So with great pain I handed the money over, I'd been sold. I don't know what I'd been sold, but I'd been sold nonetheless.

Yes I know it will do two meals, and yes I'm sure the quality is fantastic but I can't help thinking back to the leg of lamb I bought in Sainsbury's last time which was twice the size and half the price.

Anyway the proof is in the eating and I aim to have gobbled up both of them before the end of the weekend, so I guess I'll let you know.

I'll probably burn it anyway.

Bottomless coffee makes me happy!

2005-10-15T07:38:00.000Z

Ok, I'm new to this whole Blog thingy but I've realised I'd better get hot on it pretty quick as my friend and colleague Tim Clague is launching us headlong into our first video blog next week. This will be a series of short films which ultimately the audience will have full control over whether they want to see more of the same thing or give us something completely new to work on.

It's the start of something big alright and our real masterplan can be found here - www.365films.com

I didn't want to start my own blog really but seeing as you get the chance automatically when you sign up as a user of Blogger I thought I'd better get full use out of it.

I guess this Blog will be about anything and everything but mostly it will give me a chance to have a rant about stuff and see what gives.

First up is - why is it only in America that I can go into just about anywhere and get free refills on my coffee??

Over here the chance for an infinite slurp on the black demon drink is seldom offered but when it is it's greatly recieved (unless it's like quaffing my own warm bile and then I barely make it to the end of the first mug).

For a while Harvester did an offer where you could get such a drink, but it was hidden away and rarely advertised on the menus. Now it is gone once more.

My fave place for a slow feed of caffeine has to be a diner just outside of London on the M40. It's called Starvin' Marvins and right from the outset you know what to expect as the glorified greasy spoon is housed in a glorious American silver trailer.

So come on you big guys, the Starsluts and Coffee Repubic and the like, what are you waiting for? Is it really down to the independents to keep me at the level of addiction I'm accustomed to?

Hey I'll even buy a muffin!