Happy New Year from Blooloop

Take a look at the New Year's message on Blooloop's on-site blog, Bemusement.

See Blooloop's New Year message and also have a look at recent E cards we received for the holidays, see Themed Entertainment and the Art of the eCard

Also for an account of 3 British children's trip to Orlando see: Themed Entertainment: A UK family with three children visits Orlando

Blooloop, Bloo-Jobs and Dog Blogs

Getting closer to the Blooloop jobs board going online.

A lot of thought went into this, first of all the name. I toyed with "Bloo Jobs" but decided against it for obvious reasons. I want traffic but I'm not sure if I really want the kind of one-handed visitor such a keyword might attract....

A similar misgiving stops me from calling the video page we will soon have "Bloo Movies".

Called "Jobs Blooloop" right now so maybe I'll just add a little "@" sign, you know in red to show that this is an on-line as opposed to a paper based publication. That ought to do it.

In the dog house today. Two reasons, both unfair.

1. New white duvet cover on bed. After ten minutes, four enormous grubby muddy paw prints on the same. Not my own you understand but the dog's whom I had just taken for an enormous, grubby walk in the wet muddy fields. Somehow I am to blame.

2. My wife was reading a book by a guy called Alain De Botton. (Yes that's his name and he didn't change it by deed poll). I reminded her that - and I'll admit to being a tad insensitive here- the Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker had described him as "an aching bell-end of a man", which I thought was both fair comment and funny. This was seen as being a tad insensitive and I agreed, although of course calling a fellow a "bell end" is of course insensitive in itself.

(As an aside, the guy is in fact deserving of such opprobrium from strangers. Outside of that Oirish lad in X Factor, a curious, puppy-eyed, preening, blubbing man-child who had 2008's most punchable face, De Botton does indeed possess a face simply designed for vitriol. Go on look him up on Google images so you can punch a hole in your screen.)

Later found out he had been described as "an absolute aching pair of balls of a man", so I was wrong.

They say one you should never do in a blog is talk about your dog. However, as I play fast n' loose with the rules, being a maverick like Starsky and Hutch and Sarah Palin, I will do just that.

He's getting old is Homer, grey whiskers now and he struggles to his feet from his bed, his back legs not being what they once were. Sad to see, poor ol' fella. Still chases the cat. Had them both for 8 years, dog sees cat, each and every time it's the first time he's ever seen a cat and sets off in now not-so-hot pursuit.

Homer still thinks in 2 dimensions. Lean out the first floor window, when he's in the yard and call him. He looks left, right, left again, right again. Never up or down. Never. After a while he reckons he's getting wise to this subterfuge, this disembodied voice calling his name and turns around to look behind him.

Oh take a look at this latest feature on Blooloop, an ex-president of Disney World chats with Chad Emerson...

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum..

I saw a guy yesterday, driving past my house in a black open-top Porche 911 Turbo. He had the obligatory blonde girl in his passenger seat , sunglasses and as he drove by, being of a sunny disposition, I naturally thought "Yeah well, I'll bet he's inherited his money and is thick and uninteresting and ill-read and embarrassing company and even if he is happy then he is too stupid to actually properly appreciate either the car or the woman.." and my mental chuntering continued in the standard fashion as he disappeared up the road...

And then I noticed his number plate. A private one for sure. Bought and paid for. And you know what it was? "K1UNT". No word of a lie. I know this 'cos I had to go and collect my little boy from nursery and came up behind the tanned Lothario in his gleaming black Italian look-at-me car. Chugging along behind a fat blue tractor he was, one of those wonderful Devonian tractors whose very size and deep thudding tone seem to speak of both a "oneness" with the beautiful hills around them and a big "fuck-you" to any motorists unlucky enough to be stuck behind .

This is how fast I am going to go, no faster and neither are you. This track bends like a struggling snake so you are with me like it or not.

Anyway, I was up close to Mr Porche and so was able to verify his number plate. What you reckon my humble reader(s)? A Joke, this guy a pimp? Did he buy the car in blissful ignorance of the sales guys laughing at him as he drove off the forecourt?

My guess is that he's being ironic , in a post modernist existentialist kind of way, he is joking with us, the joke is not on him cos hey, he's with us, he's in on it. He knows we think he is a twat as he drives past so this is his wink at us , he knows what we're thinking and so his number plate confirms this for us. He knows we know he knows. It tells us that not only does he have a bigger car than us but he has a blonder girl and a nice touch in irony. He is still a K1UNT though.

Acupuncture. (Which, although I am not sure, might well be bracketed with all the other pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo clap-trap-snake oil doing the rounds out there such as homeopathy, dowsing, crystals, angels etc .)

But I digress..My mate John, was to take his chair (he is a furniture designer) to London for a high profile meeting with a group of Investors. Before getting on the train for the big smoke, he went for a session of accupuncture. The accupuncturist was, apparently, a bit out of sorts as he was having trouble with his wife. Session over, John gets on the train, arrives at Paddington, goes via tube to The City and then does a presentation (which goes down very well) to group of 20 or so investors, designers, buyers etc. After doing so he is approached by one who asks him if he had seen an accupunturist that morning. John replies that yes, as matter of fact he did but how on earth did the guy know? "Well" he replied. "you have a needle sticking out of the top of your head!"

(The images at the top of course have little to do with black Porches and human accunpuncture but I found them on google so what the hell. The first popped up on a search for "black porche man" and looks rather like a typical day at work for me, except without the woman and the chandelier and the second (needles for cats) just goes to prove that however mad you might think the world it can always get madder. I read recently an article about a woman who was in debt. It said in passing that now she was recovering her situation and was training to be a Pet Bereavement Counsellor. That phrase is worth repeating: Pet Bereavement Counsellor.

Plant porn and homosexual birds

As you might note, my posting today is of a distinctly racy nature as we are disussing sex. OOO-er. Two stand out news items this week, the first landed in my in box and I initially thought it a joke. The item in questions is titled (get this)

"World's First Porn Theater for House Plants Opens in California"

However, upon examining it carefully, reading and re-reading it, I still have no idea. Is it a joke? You decide, here's the link..
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid={3BF42EC8-F4AA-40BE-B91A-3F935C9D1038}&siteid=nbk&symb=

I suspect it is real , as having lived in London for ten years, I have seen enough nonsense at the Serpentine Gallery to last me a lifetime. I understand that the definition of what is and what is not "art" is necessarily blurred but a trip to the National or the Wallace will quickly disabuse you of the notion that the qualty(or otherwise) of a work is always in the eye of the beholder.

See any number of paintings about which this question (art/not art?) is redundant. Caravaggio.. is that art? Erm yes, cos it's fuckin' outstandingly heart-wrenchingly brilliant; it's genius ain't it? Rembrandt? Titian? Hogarth? Yes , yes and yes. My guess is that if you are not sure then it probably isn't. Tracy Emin's cruddy bed sheets? Damien Hurst's latest almost-comically-poor "work"? Probably not art. (You have to heard that wonderful quote of Tracy's: about great artists having maybe one seminal work in their lifetime, yet she had 2 by the time she was 30. "Seminal" love that!) The skill involved in selling this stuff is of course almost an art form..

So I think plant porn is for real and yes, yes its another one of these "conceptual" or "performance artists" being busy. Back in Oldham we also had a euphemsm for such indsutrious folk: "Bell Ends."

Next in line an attack on the sexuality of Britain's birds. A burglar, John Addison (thanks John) stupidly left his name written on the wall of the youth centre he burgled. Daft of course but not what caught my eye. On a poster of "British Birds" he had written, by the side, wonderfully, "R Gay." " R Gay". I am wondering if he is first of all dissing the birds (hey readers, I'm down with the kids, lookit me , using all thes terms, croiky, I'll be rapping soon and listening to 50 Per Cent and Coldday !) and next if it is any specific species he has it in for . Robins? Thrushes? Wrens? Did he espy some illicit ornithological activty?

Also, today brave Ol' Osama has released another video. He must be getting very imaptient now, all his followers blowing their heads of in the name of some particular brand of superstitious claptrap but he hasn't had his chance! "Sorry lads I'd love to join you but, erm my leg is playing up. Again. It's always something, at Glasgow airport I really wanted to do my bit but, turned out it was my auntie Ethel's birthday picnic.." Courage of a lion that man.

(Image at top courtesy of John Addison and Hull Constabulary)

Here is a photo of a man relaxing with a baby polar bear

For no real reason other than that I have been sat at my PC all day and have done nothing at all worth writing about. Didn't even go to the pond and engage in a futile search for the 3 mussels I bought from E Bay which I released into the water and have not seen since. Nor did I go kayaking with the slight hope of seeing the same 3 elusive molluscs happily grazing(hopping?) around among the pond weed. Instead I sat here alllll day typing and working. Did some searching for flights to Hyderabad, which it seems I can fly to from Bristol. Bye for now, readers.

Messed my labels up

Another try, here's a pic of Malaysia's big wheel, KL? Anyway check out the labels...

On how to label...

I have no idea how to label so, this is another experiement. Others bloggers appear to have "labels" ie keywords at the end of each posting, presumably so people can find interesting content. Not sure how to do this, so will try now. Here's a bit of text from this weeks North Devon Journal:

"Bishops Nympton still have aspirations of Division 4 cricket next term after their defeat of Barnstaple & Pilton 3rds in Division 5 on Sunday.Eric Beer brewed up a 67 as Barum made 169, but sharp bowling from Mark Chaplin (4-40) and Charlie Reed (3-30) stopped any further damage."

OK so they spelled my name wrong but hey ho, this always happens. Rachel's mate Jane is around today, they are drinking wine downstairs whilst the kids are playing outside. Gabriel is watching "Finding Nemo" for the 600th time. Ruth gone to her mate Maddie's for the afternoon so today should be incident free, ie no tantrums, suliking and the like. I am working. Sigh. (NB the image should be moving, it's a GIF and animated, not sure why blogger doesn't seem to like GIFs..)

This is my mate Ian shaking hands with Liverpool Legend Ian Rush

Saturday 9am, talking to Ian, who resides in lovely Phuket in Thailand. Lovely in fact doesn't do the place justice. Not at all.

In fact it is amazing and tropical and full of lush greenery and incredible wildlife and dazzling underwater reefs replete with a stunning array or multicoloured marine creatures. Diametrically opposed one migh think to Oldham, my home town. Which I might add is home to a whole variety of wierd and wonderful beasts, mainly on a Friday night and often to be found dancing at "Henry Afrika's" (note the "k" to add that touch of class) on the sticky-with-beer-tears-and lord-knows-what dancefloor.

But I digress, Thailand is jaw-droppingly exciting and I plan a return, hopefully for a good while.

Just seeing how this looks...

Looks ok. Think I'll use that on my site. My real one that is. One that people actually go to. Unlike this one. Which is just me.

Still experimenting..video today.

Love the above video (if indeed it appears above and not below). The player at the end, the Scot Stuart McCall, was in fact a strong player and I think he played for the Latics once upon a time. Personally, my days of double /triple back flips are long since behind me and I haven't cavorted around a football pitch in such a manner since last June.

Had a great cricket match at the weekend. League division 5, North Devon (I am obviously very good.) We are going for promotion, second before the match and were playing Barnstaple, third, at their ground. They batted first, got to 150 for 4 with 10 overs left and it looked like we would be chasing well over 200. Enter yours truly who took 4 quick wickets to help finish the innings and a blinding catch to dismiss their top scoring batsman on 67 who had looked to be taking the game away from us.

The pavilion was busy with a Christening party and lots of people happily drank and helped celebrate the entry of the tiny pink baby into our world .

Well, when I say a blinding catch I mean a blinding catch for me, which means it was in the air and I did not drop it. Also to give you a minor insight into the standard of the league in which I play were I to suggest that the batsman who scored 67 was also 67 years of age I wouldnt be out by a decade....

A Nail biting game...

Anyway. We were set 170 to win. As our openers started out with our , erm assault on the target, a fight broke out in the pavilion between two young mums, both of whom were grand looking and posessed the delicate turn of phrase that would not be out of place in a docker's pub. On Saturday night. After closing time. This was not two members of the gentler sex having a mild contretemps a la Jane Austen (although I've not read all her novels; perhaps Mansfield Park has such a scene) , oh no, this was like one of those curious arguements/ barnies they have in Eastenders where despite the fury not a single swear word is uttered. But with the foul langauge and a lot of it at that.

Mad, mad women and cars

The one woman, drive off at high speed , at least 60mph in her range rover, after having consumed, I was told , 8 pints of Smirnoff Ice, arriving back 5 minutes later. She then drove directly onto the cricket pitch, aiming her her car at the players. I was umpiring at the time. I have seen a lot of bad behaviour on the field of play but this was the first occason on which I genuinely thought I might be run over during a game. She did a hand brake turn on the square, reversed over the stumps then ran her car, again at around 60, at the slips. The umpire at the other end , showing considerable and commendable composure in unusual circumstances ruled a ball dead as the car scythed through the bowlers run in, stopping him in his tracks, then again the next one as the slips had been forced to dive to either side as the offending vehicle shot through them.

This being cricket and us being English, we expressed mild suprise at proceedings and got on with the game which we won by 6 wickets.

I do wish they wouldn't put all that guff up about astrological signs and star signs next to my name at the top of the profile.

Cos its all madness you know. Astrologers are the highest paid journalists across Fleet Street yet are snake oil salesmen of the first order. I don't subscribe to any of that kind of superstitious nonsense, and while I am here can say much the same about the "predictions" of Nostrodmamus, dowsing, homeopathy, crystals, angels on my or anyone else's shoulders and decent estate agents.

Its about the evidence. Nothing esle. The evidence. And evidence does not include a friend of your auntie Ida's, who swore by Arnica cos it got rid of all those nasty bruises, it need to be non-anecdotal. A hundred million anecdotes are still pretty meaningless; after all how many billions profess to believe in a benevolent man in the sky, who although being mighty busy still finds time to care about what each individual one of us wears , how we conduct our daily lives and whom despte being omnisc.. omn.. all powerful nonetheless needs his ego pumping up each day by each of us praying to him.

Forgive my mid morning rant, I need a cup of Earl Grey and I don't want to alientate my reader. It's us Pisceans you see, we are naturally sceptical. (photo at top is my 3 little loves on the beach in Thailand..)

Last thing at night...

Heroes is pretty compulsive viewing you know. Lord knows whats going on but it is great.

There's an Indian guy with a stern face who (much like the viewers) exists in a permanent state of bewilderment, an apple-pie, mid-Western teengage cheerleader who can overcame all manor of debilitating injuries, two brothers who can fly (unlike R kelly, these guys when they "believe they can fly, belive they can fly, believe they can touch the sky," they really can), a stocky cop with a flighty wife and the ability to mind-read, a single mum who is a stunning beauty and a diverting if distracted conversationalist and , my fave, the comic turn, a couple of Japanese who flit through each episode like an oriental Laurel and Hardy, pausing only to stop or bend time. As you do.

Interestingly, the producers saw fit to have the young mum spend most eposides wandering around in her lingerie and not the stocky cop nor indeed the equally stocky Japanese...

And like back in the 70s, the next show is next week and I'm dying to know whats happens next.(In point of fact you might think that as I have little idea what has already happened in the show so far, what happens next is really neither here nor there). So I will wait a week and not be tempted by finding out what happens via the internet where I'm pretty sure they are already up to series 6 inwhich the heroes children take the stage...

And you know what? I don't mind being lost as I am pretty sure the writer makes this stuff up as he goes along. The script is so heavy with clunking cliches, the cast are weak and the ideas are clearly not thought out. it could be of course that its just that I';m not wquick enough to follow the plot . In fact on second thoughts, thats probably it.

Hello people

Hello people its now midweek and not much has happened in my household this week. Tonight I will watch Heroes (watchable, American and rubbish ) and finish work before 9 for a change. Wondering what image to post here, enjoying ths blogging now, though it still feels mad cos its only me. Still better than talking to myself whilst riding public transport. Or hanging around the shopping centeres of North Devon chuntering to myself. This allows me some kind of release.

I work day to day with some great guys bassed in Hyderabad, India and a bomb went off less than 2 km from their offices. Glad they are all ok. Talked with my mate Anshu about the madness that these terrorists subscribe to, "They don't know their own brains" he said with which I couldn't agree more.

Thinking of violence, I recently read No Country for Old Men (above right), which was, as with all his other works, mind blowingly good. He uses langauge like noone I have read. Give him a try. His best I think is Blood Meridian which manages to be both horrifyingly, graphicly violent and beautiful and moving at the same time. Some writers, you read them , you think "I could do that". John le Carre, Graham Greene, Truman Capote, I read them, I reckon, hey, I know all those words, could possibly do that, you know with a different life, literary skill, imagination etc. but you know its just possible.. But with McCarthy, as with Balzac, you realise there is something different going on. I could have a million lives and not come close. Almost not human to write so well.

Second post. With an Abyssssinian man.

Here it is, how does it (he) look? Bit of bold too, I'll type like Katie Hopkins talks, with random emphasis of words at slighty odd places. Like now.

I shall now try to add the kitten . Fun this you know, am getting into "the blogosphere." Still feel alone though. Also a little mad. It'll be voices in my head soon. I'll be one of those fruitloopers that write insistant letters to public figures, harranging them because of some imagined grievance or minor slight , eventually taking a gun and becoming violent and aggressive in a fast food restaurant.

Soon I should actually start to write about my life. Maybe about how I was almost run over during a cricket match yesterday, or about thow I have 8 pairs of eyes watching each tiny movement of my fingers as I type this very word. I'm going for a cup of tea , see you all soon.

Been adding an image to my skype panel. First of all I decided on the facing photo as I work in the waterpark business and it shows a popular and exciting ride called "Flowrider". However, upon closer inspection I found that it also showed a women in a bikini and thus decided that if I posted that image I could be giving the wrong impression (either that I am a woman in a bikini or that I like women in bikinis to such a degree that I demand an image of one next to my name) so I then changed it to the next image (you might realsie by now, perspicacious reader that you are, that I am testing whether I can add pics to this blog and if I can what do they look like) which I of some , erm ,man, an Abbyssinian(sp?) or the like, at least a guy who was not strong on dress codes and carried a spear or some other dangerous implement.

Then I thought that maybe peope would think this was me and that I was naked. or possibly that I carried a spear. This is something I never do. Probably never will.

Finally I opted for a kitten. Cute, appealing and twee I know. But at least it has no cleavage nor does it carry a spear. So I'm in the clear for now. Wondering how I can post two other images without there being great blank spaces by their side , can I post 3 in one posting, I think not.. oh well, Bye for now you throngs of people.

Back from holiday.

Well, a week in the rain and cold of Northumbria, in a castle by the sea has been well worth it. For the firsat tiem in age I had a few days off from work and I do ineed feel refreshed. As this is my personal blog and as there is currently only one occasional reader (Hi Tracy!) this is still an exercise in madness, in reality a method of filling up a few stray minutes in the day.

This week I read a couple of great books- a gumshoe/ crime novel by Ross McDonald (superb and under rated American writer) and a biog of Mark Twain. Spent time at the castles of Alnwick and Bamburgh, the latter literally on the beach and the former on a quite staggering size and scale . The castle is still lived in and it was pretty interesting to catch a glimpse of a life so far removed from my own. Know when you drive past a house with a lighted window at dusk and you can see in? This was like that only more so and with Canalettos and a Titian on the wall.

Anyways. Back to work .I have no idea how people find these blogs just now but my guys are working on our business blog which will be an altogether different animal of course...

The next day..

So, my second day. half an hour trying to actually get into my blog and now forgotten waht I was going to say. Still being as i am only talking to myself then i can tell myself later on, perhaps as I am driving the dog to the kennels.

3rd posting and an experiment

Im guessing I can add links in here and I'll try to do one now. Here goes.. http://www.blooloop.com There did that work? lets see...

My second Blog

So, if my first posting was meaningless, my second promises to be even more so. Have spent th-e last half hour adding various facilities to this blog, wondering why oh why am I doing this and drinking a cup of weak Earl Grey.

Just noticed I can not only add bold but italics too, which will of course come in very handy when, as in this exercise, (I am essentially comunicating with myself,) I want to add extra emphasis...

A bit of bold , and now some italics and to finish off how about some bold italics?

I suppose I should make this blog have some kind of focus...

Phew.. here goes, my first ever blog.....

Ok , ok, breathe slowly, stay calm. Am here now, that wasn't so bad. So this is blogging and rather like my brief trip into Facebook, I'm in and I now have very little idea either what to do or indeed why I should do anything at all anyway.

So I'll post this, my first ever submission and I imagine not my last. Been working all day so its nice to spend a little time with myself to gather my thoughts . They don't amount to much right now but thats not the point.