Nearly There.....

The clock is ticking.......
Not long now till University year 2005/2006 is well and truely over.






Hopefully by the time I've written this, it'll be 4 essays down, one to go. So far I've sucessfully rattled off a 'Journalism in Context' essay, got through a 'Radio Broadcasting' presentation, and polished off a 'Sociological, Historical and Political Aspects of Sport and Leisure' assignment (sound posh eh?).

By the time this post sees the light of the www, I'll hopefully have a 'Sport and Media' portfolio done and dusted, leaving just a Media Law and Regulation essay to hand in by June 9th and then I'm done!

Beers will be in order to celebrate, followed by a Rhinos game at home to Wigan, before more beers to celebrate a hopeful Leeds victory.

What to do in the Summer though? I've got a holiday in July and a weekend in that London for the Challenge Cup Final and a work placement lined up. Obviously, there's the World Cup and no doubt a bit of cricket to boot, but apart from that, i'll probably be putting my feet up.

Who says students have an easy life?

Plenty of Reasons Why Students are a Good Thing

You may have read my post about stocktaking and how retail work is the route of all evil. After all, I'm approaching five years service so I think i'm fairly qualified in passing judgement.






Well, someone from the 'Hand Car Wash', (well, not that particular one) took exception to this in my comments section. He even went as far to label all students as 'skiving parasites'.

Now now, that's not right. Below are several reasons why students are a good thing:

1. Without students, Northern based comedians would soon run out of material.
2. Students collectively pay vast amounts of beer, wines and spirits duty, probably more than any socio-economic group.
3. Britain's taxi drivers love us.
4. We all live in one house, freeing up other houses for everyone else.
5. Supermarkets would have to close on weekends and at night
6. McDonalds would shift hardly any Breakfasts if it wern't for students coming down in their pyjamas at 6:00am
7. No other group of people can cram 8 people into a Ford Fiesta. Nobody car-shares as much as we do.
8. We recycle. Clothes, books, you name it.
9. If it wern't for students, there would be no Universities, so who else would do all that pointless but ammusing research?
10. Plenty of students give themselves for medical research programmes for a bit of easy money. Who knows what sort of medicines we would be without if it wern't for us?
11. We fully support safe sex campaigns.
12. Where else would Tony Blair find an extra £3000 per head?

Oh, and there's also the small issue of their being no doctors, dentists, teachers, law professionals, accountants, IT technicians, marketing execs...............

Our Feline Feinds

What is the attraction of cats? I don't get it.
I really don't see why people take these things in, they're horrible creatures.






OK, maybe this article is partly fuelled by the fact that a neigbour's cat is constantly shitting in my back garden, but despite that I still think they are horrible little bastards.

If you want my twopenneth (and if you're reading my blog, then you're going to get it), if you're going to get a cat, then there's not much point in getting a pet at all. These anti-social, stinky arsed, sleep all day furniture destroyers and neighbour 'pisser-offers' serve little purpose, unless I suppose, you have a mouse problem and even then, it'll be too busy crapping in my garden to chase after the thing.

They're cocky little feckers aswell. Whenever I bang on the window to get it to sod off, it just stares stupidly at me, like it has a right to deposit a steaming number two amongst my gerainiums.

I just don't understand the joy they bring to people, I really don't.

I May Have to Slit My Wrists: Pt II

It's that time of year again, it's stocktake day.

Those of you that don't work in retail, distribution, warehousing or similar lines of work might not know what that is but trust me, avoid it like the plague.

Unfortunatly, thanks to Tony Blair's "education, education, education" promise, I now have to pay my way through Uni by slaving away at a highstreet electrical retailer.
Most of the time, it's just about bareable. Once you factor out the maniac boss, incompetent trainee's and customers expecting the impossible, it's not that bad. It pays the bills and to boot, it's more interesting than stacking shelves at ASDA.

That is until one Sunday around this time of year. Next Sunday is our annual "100% stocktake". That basically means the store is closed for the day, but the possitves end there. We're in at 8:00am and spend the next however many hours counting every stock item in the store. Considering that the store is about 7,000sq ft and we have about 11,000 different lines, that's no mean feat.
After we've done that, we get someone to head down to Costco, pick-up some of 18in pizzas and charge them to the company bill (OK, I lied earler, this is now where the possitives end).
After we've done that, we have to count the stuff again. Then, we count it again and if we're really lucky, once more for good measure.

And you can guarantee something will go wrong. It's an inevitability in the same vain as the moon changing, Christmas coming once a year and it raining at Odsal. Either someone will count something wrong, someone will mistake a 6 for a 9 or that a handheld scanner will crash / break / get dropped / get thrown across the room in a fit of rage.

Last year I ended up starting at about 7:00am and leaving about 11:45pm although this year I have a plan. Last year one of the lads got away early by pretending to fall asleep - that'll be my trick this time around (assuming that my gaffer doesn't read this, in which case I would never dream of such a tactic).

If all you people didn't want to buy things, then I might get an easy life. So when you're sat in the beer garden next Sunday enjoying the weather, just spare a thought for the poor bastards who have to work in the evil retail machine.

We're Having a Party!

Woooohooooooo!

It's party time folks. My old man's 50th to be precise.





After he and the lads got back from a boozy weekend in Amsterdam, it's time for his kind of 'reunion' party. We did try and book a room at the local boozer, on the grounds that the place never shuts, but they're apparently "full-up that night" (probably remember what happened the last time we booked that room)

They'll be music a-playing, middle aged women a-dancing and plenty of grub. Which grub depends on the weather. If the rains stays away, I'll be firing up the Bar-B-que. If not then I suppose we're stick with finger food.

Oh, and they'll be beer, lots of beer.

So far my stocktake shows that we currently have the following:


48: 440ml cans of Teltleys Bitter
36: 440ml cans of Boddingtons
18: 440ml cans of Fosters
A total of 8880ml of Stella Artois
30: 300ml cans of Carling
6: 440ml cans of Calsberg and Calsberg Export
18: 440ml cans of Old English
4: 330ml bottle of Budwesier
20: 330ml bottles of Heineken
4: 330ml bottles of San Miguel
4: 440ml cans of Stones

I make that a total of 94.88 litres of beer, and that's not counting the following:
My mum's wine
My brothers Jack Daniels
Anything else I manage to find by tomorrow evening.

It's not all for me mind, oh no. We've so far got about 30 people on the guest list.

It's a strict door policy aswell, so don't try anything or Max & Paddy will have you!

Look out for some drunken ramblings on Sunday, after I've phoned in sick through probable alcohol poisoning.

Are you local?

Every day I tend to pick up the local rag, the Yorkshire Evening Post. As the name suggests, it's a paper that's available every morning, and has lots of news of things to do with Yorkshire, except stuff in Bradford, Halifax, Hull, York, Scarborough, Doncaster, Sheffield, Huddersfield or anywhere not within spitting distance of Leeds.

Inside, you've got the typical local type things that you'd expect. You've got the day's burning headline, usually featuring some pie-in-the-sky rumour about some multi-million development that might be coming to the city, you've got the typical "ahhhhhhh" story, the pointless space fillers and more local sport that you can shake a stick at.
You've also, bunged somewhere in the middle, got the letters page, which is always cause for some amusement.
You usually get the village idiot or the local snob moaning about how such and such is the end of all civilisation as we know it, how all the roads shouldn't be resurfaced and how we should all have to drive around on dirt tracks so that the bi-centenary roadworks don't cause traffic jams and how breast-feeding in public is the root of all evil.

At the moment though, I've been engrossed in the current drama that is the smelly bus drivers.
Basically, the paper ran a story of the 'pointless space filer' catagory saying that a survey found that buses stink. Now we all know that buses stink in the colloquial sense, but this survey focused more on the litteral term of stink, reffering to the unsavoury odour of Leeds' bus drivers.
The day after, the paper must have been absolutly inundated with a letter agreeing completly with the surveys findings and how the smell of the bloke sat in the front cab was the very breason why he doesn't use public transport, much preffering to drive his Mercedes to work. Two days after, around three more letters, two from bus drivers completly denying the charges put before them and then, another day later, a helpful reader give her advice on how people could stay B.O free by simply using anti-persperant and washing their shirts. A sort of public service if you will.

It's over a week and a half since the story ran and the letters are probably still flooding in. I sometimes question why I buy the paper, seeing as there isn't that much 'news' of interest, but the comedy value sometimes is unrivaled!

I may have to slit my wrists this Summer.

That's right. This summer could well be my last. I may well just lose the will to live altogether although, to be honest, I don't know how I've made it through Summer for the past seven years.


Yes, those delightful people at Channel Four have decided to inflict yet another dose of 'Big Brother' on the unsuspecting British public.
This year though, we're told it'll be different with Big Brother being "more twisted than ever." OK, ignoring the fact that Endemol's marketing guru's have being using the very same phrase for the past six years, how could Big Brother be more twisted?
Well for starters, there's only one bedroom and one bathroom, both of which are surrounded by glass walls. Let's face it, we all know what they've been trying to get the housemates to do, so it's good of them to be honest about it!
Next I see that the house will be 'inside-out' with grass in the kitchen and carpet in the garden. Sounds "wacky", or even "zaney".

But of course, there has to be the annual 'original' idea, something that's never been thought of before. Apparently, this year, they're putting a series of golden tickets in chocolate bars to decide the final contestant. Genius! Who'd've thought it! I bet the Endemol marketing team were burning the midnight oil thinking of that one (or rummaging through their kid's DVD collection).

Of course, I'm not the only person who can't stand the prospect of Big Brother, my younger brother also hates it.

So turn on the TV, unplug the phone, tell the neighbours not to pop round and prepare to see this years batch of dellinquants in their search for fame and fortune.

The World is Coming to an End!

On Monday, on a rare Bank Holiday off, me and the gang headed over to the wrong side of the Pennines yet again to see the Rhinos take on the Warrington Wolves at the shiny, new Halliwell Jones Stadium, a ground famed for it's '2-pint pots'.

It had to be said, we were fairly confident. Warrington are the sort of side that can beat the very best on their day, but can also lose to the very worse. But anyway, Leeds were on decentish form, the dry weather would help our running game and the Wolves were without last season's marketing stunt, Andrew Johns.

It looked even better when Leeds took a 6-0 lead after 8 minutes through a Lee Smith try. So, you could imagine our suprise when Leeds completely fell apart from then on, going on to lose 44-16 to a very impressive Wolves side.
It was the Rhinos worst defeat for 2 years when we lost 56-10 to St Helens. That result was put down to just 'a bad day at the office' and to be honest, it was just that. Leeds went on to win the Championship that year and thrash St Helens 70-0 in the rematch.

So the stewards enquiry began on the ride home and continued on the Rhinos fan site 'southstander.com' with many proclaiming that this was the end of the Rhinos as we know it, some with the 'I told you so' attitude and others contemplating slitting their own wrists.

But before these 'supporters' contemplate hanging themselves from the South Stand rafters, it's important to take stock of the situation on Monday afternoon.
Firstly, shit happens. Sometimes bad things happen and you have 'one of those days', 'bad day at the office', call it what you will. Passes were dropped and things just didn't work - big deal.
Secondly, Warrington were good, in fact, they were very good. Their offloads stuck, their pack drove well and their kicking game was excuted to perfection, keeping Leeds pinned inside their own 20m for much of the game. There arn't many teams that could have lived with them on that form.

Call me a 'one club supporting belivist' (despite the fact I support more than one club) if you will, but Monday's result is hardly the end of the world. One result is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Leeds are still sitting in 2nd place in the table, safely in a play-off place and therefore, still have a chance of making the Grand Final. Whilst we're at it, we're still in the Challenge Cup and with a home tie against National League opposition, our place in the quarter finals is practically booked.
On top of that, Leeds are currently the most sucessful club off the field, with a brand spanking new East Stand almost ready (obviously not built by Multiplex), a new North Stand on the way not to mention a likely operating profit, something that few, if any Super League clubs can boast.

Keep on smiling people!