Rugby Mad Blog

Freebie paper Metro ran an interesting little piece today, about the “guilty secret” tracks we have stashed on our iPods, which we dare not admit to liking but can’t help having buried in an obsure playlist:

1. Livin’ Thing - ELO
2. More Than A Feeling - Boston
3. Don’t Stop Movin’ - S Club 7
4. I’m Not In Love - 10CC
5. Rock ‘n’ Roll Part 2 - Gary Glitter
6. Cold As Ice - Foreigner
7. Rebel Yell - Billy Idol
8. Whatever You Want - Status Quo
9. Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty
10. I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
11. Since You’ve Been Gone - Rainbow
12. Centrefold - J Geils Band
13. Summer Of ’69 - Bryan Adams
14. Never Ever - All Saints
15. Mr Boombastic - Shaggy
16. Owner Of A Lonely Heart - Yes
17. Manic Monday - Bangles
18. Don’t You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds
19. Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
20. Rock On - David Essex
21. How Tou Remind Me - Nickelback
22. Mandy - Barry Manilow
23. If You Leave Me Now - Chicago
24. Walking In Memphis - Mark Cohn
25. Life Is A Rollercoaster - Ronan Keating
26. Can You Dig It? - Mock Turtles
27. Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes
28. Electric Avenue - Eddy Grant
29. Chant No 1 - Spandau Ballet
30. Boogie Nights - Heatwave

I was quite alarmed to learn that, of these top 30 (compiled by Q magazine), I actually have 8 on my mp3 player. Yikes! I’m not telling which, though. And thankfully, some of the naffest (#3, #5, #20 #22) are not on my playlists!

It’s amazing what you can get from eBay these days.

As you may know from my other blog, I’ve been having troubles with Technorati not indexing my blogs properly. So this morning I was trying a test to see if it had been fixed, as promised in a recent email from their tech support. I did a search for Danny Grewcock and their results came up with this sponsored link first… If only it were that simple, eh?

As there’s not much rugby news about, I did promise to spout about other subjects during the summer, and so I thought a quick mention of last night’s cracking season finale for Dr Who was needed. Daleks and Cybermen in the same episode! Marvellous! It was pretty good action-wise, but still retained a sense of humour.

For starers, there was one exchange, when the Cybermen first meet the Daleks, and they have a lengthy exchange which runs along the lines of “Identify Yourself!”, “No You Must Identify Yourself First!!. This goes on for several rounds when all of a sudden the Dalek says “Daleks Do Not Take Orders!!” and the Cyberman looks smugly at it and says “You have identified as Dalek”. You can see the Dalek’s rubber sink plunger quivering with rage at itself for having been so stupid. It reminded me of the classic moment from Dad’s Army when the Home Guard have been captured by Germans and are being quizzed for their names. Captain Mainwaring, fearing that the young, foolish one will give the game away utters the immortal line “Don’t tell them, Pike!”

My favourite bit of dialogue from last night occurred between the two leaders of the Daleks and Cybers, viz:

Cyberman [apoplectic after a Dalek has just shot one of his mates]: “You have declared War on the Cybermen!!”

Dalek [in equally apoplectic metal tones]: “This isn’t war, it’s just Pest Control!!!!”

Classic!

My usual commute to work includes at least half an hour sitting on the Central Line (lovely – NOT), and in order to mitigate the tedium, I pick up the freebie paper Metro and have a gander.

Page 16 today has a fab little piece about stupid comments from holidaymakers, and includes such gems as:

• To a travel agent – “The Brochure says no hairdressers in the resort – we are trainee hairdressers, will we be able to go there?”
• In a letter to Airtours – “I’m never flying to Jamaica with Airtours again. It took us nine hours, but it only took the Americans three hours”
• Letter to holiday company – “I had a wonderful holiday in Kenya but I think I should bring to your Health & Safety department’s attention the fact that the animals were not fenced in”
• At airport check-in – “Can I have a window seat please, it’s a long journey and I would like some fresh air”
• During a hotel Quiz Night, on being asked “Which beetle did the ancient Egyptians revere?” – the reply was “I know this one, it was John Lennon!”

But my favourite has to be:

• To travel agent – “I believe you need a visa for Egypt – will MasterCard do?”

I met some really nice folks last night at Roger Kondrat‘s Blogger/Web2.0 event, and it was great to talk with other people who are so passionate about the web and future developements.

After the round of swapping business cards, I was browsing the blog for Crowdstorm (run by two great guys, Chris and Phil who I chatted with quite a lot last night). Phil had posted a rather silly picture he’d seen in Wimbledon Village, showing a Pelican Crossing For Horses which rather tickled my funny bone. This led me to remember one silly image I’d taken myself, during my Arctic Husky Adventure (see right) – Parking For Dogs.

The Halfbakery always raises a laugh, and today I stumbled across the fantastic suggestion for a Rubber Toilet. Should save countless injuries of rugby-club members who get very drunk on an evening out, pass out in the loo and hit their heads on the porcelain. The RFU should make it mandatory that all Club Houses have them!

Actually, it wasn’t just the concept which tickled my elbow, but also user 2 Fries Shy of A Happy Meal‘s wonderful parody of Billy Joel‘s “It’s Still Rock & Roll To Me”, verse two:

“What’s the matter with the can I’m priving?
Can’t you smell that it’s out of style?
Should I get a set of white wall toilets?
Are you gonna crap the miracle pile?
Nowadays you can’t be too experimental.
Your bounce back poo’s gettin you excremental.
Hot stunk, cool dunk, even unflushed old chunk
It’s still just a bowl to me. ”

Priceless!

I have seen several personalised number plates recently which have caught my eye.

The first is on a shabby looking pickup, and reads E9UUS – without a gap. The font of the “9″ has been tweaked to look more like a “q”. One can only assume the driver is into horses in a big way.

Another one I see regularly parked at my station is a smart Mercedes sports jobbie, with the plate which used to read C1SC X - I always wondered if it belonged to some fat cat manager type who worked for CISCO (makers of internet hardware routers and switches – an “x” being shorthand for a switch in networking circles). The driver seemed pretty dull so I haven’t approached to ask him! And I notice recently that The Boys In Blue must have had a word with him about the non-standard spacing of his plate – it reappeared recently reading C1 SCX as it should!

But one has to wonder about the psyche of someone who is happy to drive around in a car with the plate which reads B19 POO - in this case the “9″ looked distinctly like a “g”!

Off to see Hilly’s benefit game on Sunday, which should be fun. Loads of big names in the World XV team. But the weather looks a bit iffy, so it might end up being a bit of a muddy affair.

OK, I’ll come clean straight away and admit the following is a straightforward cut-and-paste from a forwarded email I got a while back, but I was trawling my inbox just now and re-read it again. There’s some great definitions!

NEW OFFICE SLANG

World Wide Wait – The real meaning of www.

404 - Someone who is clueless. From the Web error message, “404 Not Found,” which means the document requested couldn’t be located. “Don’t bother asking John. He’s 404.”

Chips and Salsa – Chips = hardware, salsa = software.
“First we gotta figure out if the problem’s in your chips or your salsa.”

Cobweb – A WWW site that never changes.

Cube Farm – An office filled with cubicles.

Egosurfing – Scanning the Net, databases, etc., for one’s own name.

Keyboard Plaque – The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on some people’s computer keyboards.

Mouse Potato – The online generation’s answer to the couch potato.

Oh-no-second – That minuscule fraction of time during which you realize you’ve just made a terrible error.

Open-Collar Workers - People who work at home or telecommute.

Plug-and-Play – A new hire who doesn’t require training.
“That new guy is totally plug-and-play.”

Seagull Manager – A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, dumps on everything and then leaves.

Stress Puppy – A person who thrives on being stressed-out and whiny.

Under Mouse Arrest – Getting busted for violating an online service’s rule of conduct. “Sorry I couldn’t get back to you. AOL put me under mouse arrest.”

Xerox Subsidy – Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace

In order to maintain a modicum of rugby relevence, I’ll put a link to the England team to face the Barbarians. My first England game was against the Baa-Baas in 2004 (England lost!) and you can see more of the photos here. Jason Leonard was propping for the Barbarians, the only time I’ve seen him on the rugby field.

As a regular reader of the excellent Halfbakery website, I quite often get a chuckle out of some of the suggestions which are posted there. I came across one today that I thought was really great – not in a funny sense, but one which would actually work, a proposition for Beginners Commentary.

What struck me was this – if I’d had access to such a commentary for rugby earlier, then I would probably have been watching it for a lot longer than I have – it was really only the lack of knowledge of the laws which was stopping me from getting into it sooner

And talking of rugger, Saracens are away to Sale this evening. I don’t hold out much hope of a win, since Sale have been at the top of the table for most of this season, and as mentioned before, Saracens are going through rather a black patch at the mo. But I hope they put up a good fight!

Another juicy weekend of Six Nations games await… England v France being the one I’ve a vested interest in, although I will watch the other two on video over the weekend. I’m also looking forward to going to a friend’s Birthday lunch on Saturday, hence having to record the games that afternoon. See – despite what you may think, I do have a social life!

Another nice thing to happen today, I got an email from an old chum and we have arranged to meet up and catch up next week. We’ve known each other for, my god, 10 years now! Time flies. We met through a shared admiration for Canadian Mountie comedy/drama show Due South, and have discovered lots of shared interests in the meantime. Not least that she is a rather obsessed photographer, much like myself! It will be good to see how she is and what’s been going on lately.

Ah well, not a lot more to add today. That’s All Folks!