Don and Dusted

Rangers have seen off the French and German champion, Celtic have beaten the European Champions (and one of their "fans" has taken a girly swing at the goalkeeper) and our national side is riding high above the World and European Champions.

Yep, Scottish football has forgotten it's supposed to be pish. Obviously a 3-0 away win against Kings of Lyon is more impressive than a last-gasp home win over lowly AC Milan, but I'll eschew any gloating - it's been a good month to be a Scottish football fan.

So can the dandy Dons complete a hat-trick tonight? In footballing terms, an away win over Dnipro would be great. But I hope they don't - I've got money on the Ukrainians, as it's a great way to wind up the hordes of Dons fans in my office.

At the time I place the bet, it seemed like an easy way to win money. Just wish I'd had the balls to bet on Rangers to beat Lyon in France....

On The List

Today, to pass a slow afternoon at work, two colleagues and I engaged in a lively debate on Top Five Hottest Female Soap Stars of All Time. (This discourse was similar in structure to our semi-regular debates on the All-Time Best Football XI.)

Anyway, as an overview of the general standard of the discussion, my decision to leave Kylie Minogue and Kimberley Davies out of my list raised some eyebrows, and we stepped off on a lengthy tangent as we debated whether Baywatch was a soap opera or not.

Having exhausted our mental lists of soap actresses, we threw the game wide open and changed it into The Ten Hottest Women In The World Today.

I'll spare you the gory details of the inner mental workings of three bored men in their mid 20s, other than to say that Eva Longoria is one man's pocket-sized Latina sex goddess and another man's irritating midget clothes horse.

But eventually, we reached the defining question of our debate - Britney Spears: Yay or Nay?

Do you shut your eyes and remember the Slave For U years? Or are you mentally scarred at the prospect of making Buckasaurus (the mythical grunting beast with two backs) with a drink and drug-addled, tattooed skinhead thug who's recently had their children taken away?

If I remember the discussion correctly, Mrs Federline received a unanimous thumbs down from the panel. Which, considering she's 26 and should therefore still be at her peak, is a depressing indication of how far she's fallen from grace in the past five years.

And the whole "remember the glory years" debate truly reached its nadir shortly afterwards when, returning to the soap stars theme, one member of the party (who shall remain nameless) uttered the words (electronically at least) Barbara. Windsor. - basing his justification on Carry on Camping.

That, dear readers, is why you should never allow young men to get bored.

Hollywood Schmollywood

A while back, I added a post that linked to Ten Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do.

And that got me thinking: what other barely believable crap do we put up with in our movies?

So I started drawing up a little list, which I like to think (in my own muddle-headed, delirious and dream-like fashion) will build up into a substantial compendium of nonsense peddled by directors over in LALA Land.

Here are a few for starters:

1) It is possible to have a high speed car chase during daylight hours in any city on Earth.
I've never driven in London, LA or New York, but I have driven in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Edinburgh and Glasgow (not to mention on roads in Thailand - but that's a scarier post for another day). It is not possible, in the centre of any of those cities, to drive at anything above 20mph. In most of them, most of the time you're barely moving at all. So how is it therefore possible to drive at speeds in excess of 60mph in any of the world's major Metropolises? (Should that be Metropolii?) If you drove that fast in any city on Earth during the day, you and countless other people would be dead very quickly. And your car would be extremely dead as well.

2) It is possible to knock someone out with one punch. OK, this may actually be possible. But, having worked in some pretty boisterous pubs on two continents and as a security guard at football matches, I've still never seen it happen. And, from what I've seen of movies, it mostly happens to minor villains, the type of muscled goons that Big Bosses use to man doors and guard prisoners. Now, it strikes me that if your sole job requirement is to be hard and menacing, ending up out cold after one punch would be a major hinderance to your long-term career plans.

3) Simultaneous orgasms happen every time a couple has sex. Let's just leave that one be....

4) 28-year-old women who look like Denise Richards are Nuclear Physicists. I'm not saying breasted humans can't be nuclear physicists. Or that scientists can't be good looking. Just that I would imagine that if you're a nuclear physicist experienced enough to be dismantling warheads in Kazakhstan, you're probably not 28.Or female. Or good-looking. Or called Christmas Jones. You're a 45-year-old man with a beard. Called Neil. (The 45-year-old man that is, not his beard.)

5) Sarah Jessica Parker is attractive. Need I say more?

Feel free to add to this list of Hollywood absurdities - there are plenty more to choose from....

Return of The Mark

I'm back. Not only back, but holidayed out. I swear, I'm more tired now that I'm back at work than I was before I headed off on holiday.

Anyway, what did I get up to? Played football a couple of times, including featuring in my company's debut in the Aberdeen Oil and Gas League at the local five-a-side centre. We've joined at the end of the season to replace a side that dropped out. That is the first excuse for our 22-0 defeat. Others include the fact that we've never played together as a team before, the team we played are about to be crowned champions for the fifth time in six years, our goalkeeper was missing and we played an injured non-goalkeeper in goals. The fact of the matter is that we were "only" 3-0 down at half-time, which in five-a-side terms is a pretty slender margin. And we conceded what felt like an atomic fuckload of goals in the last five minutes as we desperately chased a strike of our own. But yeah, 22-0 is a pretty horrific debut.

Prior to that, Mrs Wife and I visited the central belt to catch up with some friends, visit Stirling Castle and venture down to the Falkirk Wheel for the first time. The wheel is pretty special, another triumph of Scottish engineering, designed to lift boats from one level of a canal to another. The sun shone and we enjoyed an hour-long boat ride, so a good day was had by all.

We entertained Mrs Wife's parents in the latter part of the week, allowing them to sample the hospitality at Dungroanin' for the first time.

And on Friday night we attended a comedy night in Montrose, where we were thoroughly entertained by Patrick Rollink, Des McLean, Joe Heenan and Des Clarke, all stars of the Scottish comedy circuit. A slight over-indulgence on alcoholic beverages during the performance left me in a fragile condition come Saturday, so I've spent the time since then recuperating and preparing for a return to work.

Apologies to my fellow inhabitants of the blogosphere, as I've not been able to keep up with your sites as well as I would like. Whilst I was away, Ian over at Or So I Thought kindly presented me with the Awesome Dude Blogger award, which is given out to those of us who can tick the boxes beside "Blogger", "Awesome" and "Y Chromosome".

I'm extremely grateful to have received the award, especially from Ian, whose blog is one of the best I've encountered - an incredibly informative and entertaining site written with a great deal of skill and knowledge.

In this spirit of dudeness, I should really pass the award on, so I'll pick out three awesome dudes from my own blogroll: Eric (the Straight White Guy who is also my blogfather); Elisson and The Tomahawk Kid. May you venture forwards and enjoy their sites.

Fecking Computers

I'm in a frenzy of excitement here in the Dungroanin' sitting room at the moment.

The reason for this excitement? Sega has released the demo version of Football Manager 2008, which I am currently downloading.

Only there's a problem. My steam-driven laptop is notorious for freezing completely, leaving no option but to turn off the power and reboot.

And, having reached the 30% mark in the 523MB download, this antique piece of crap decided to take a rest, forcing me to switch it off and back on. And cancelling the download in the process.

So I've started again. And at a download speed of less than 30k per second, it's going to take a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.

The download manager is estimating that it will take a further five hours to finish downloading. So, from 6pm tonight, you can expect no further communications from this humble outpost of the worldwide interweb for a while....

Who Answers?

I'm still alive and still on holiday, which I hope will explain, if not excuse, the lack of postage here at this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb.

Visits to the central belt, visits to Dungroanin' by Mrs Wife's faither and mither, two games of football and repairs to a car have limited the free time available to yours' truly, but I'll be back soon, promise....

Anyway, to pass some time, here's a good reason why Lego is STILL the coolest toy in the world:

Bill Gates Could Be A Terrorist

Seeing as how no-one fancied stepping into my shoes and contributing to this webs(h)ite over the next few days, I'll leave you with this little funny courtesy of Cracked.com.

Five Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do - my personal favourite is Independence Day's Mac-compatible alien civilisation....

We're All Going On A (Post) Summer Holiday

Next week, Mrs Wife and I have a full week's holiday for the first time in what feels like ages.

No firm plans have been made beyond a couple of days in Falkirk visiting friends, and probably stopping in at the Falkirk Wheel and Stirling Castle.

As I'll probably not be within reach of a computer for some of the week, I'm throwing out an invitation to any of you strange people of the worldwide interweb who would like to have a bash at filling the empty space and time here at Groanin' Jock.

Anyone who'd like a set of keys to this humble site for a guest post next week can let me know in the comments or email me at groaninjock@bigfoot.com.

I'm ready for anything....

The Sixth Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge

For the first time, more than half of the tunes in the Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge were correctly identified. Misssy led the way with two correct answers, after The Tomahawk Kid had recognised Motorhead's Ace of Spades. Answers to that quiz are now in the comments on the post.

Here are this week's lyrics. The object of the game is to identify the artists and tracks plucked at random from the Magic Tune Box. Answers in the comments. No Googling.

1: I was gonna take the time to sit down and write you a little letter, but I thought a song would probably be a little better.

2: I know how you want it, hot, sweet, and tight. The girls can't stand it when you're doin' it right.

3: Now my advice for those who die, declare the pennies on your eyes.

4: Why don't you kneel me down, why don't we try, try, try?

5: And I know it's getting harder for you to choose - who will lie?

Smiley Smile

Some of you strange folks out on the worldwide interweb apparently find this site funny - probably just very occasionally.

In recognition of this, Tish over at The Kat House has presented me with the You Make Me Smile Award.

Says Tish: "Groanin’ Jock has a wonderful sense of humor, and I can always expect a laugh when visiting his blog."

My sense of humour is built almost entirely on sarcasm, which I have been told is the lowest form of humour, but the highest form of wit.

Anyway, to keep the torch burning, I should really nominate a couple of folks as recipients of the same award. Two of the sites where I can always expect a laugh are Horton's Folly and The Misssy M Missives. And what do you know - both Horton Carew and Misssy are Scots. I guess we're just the funniest race on Earth.

The Naked Footballer

You know that feeling you get when you see something you wished you hadn't, and long for the ability to unsee it or claw your own eyes out?

I've got a similar feeling at the moment - except, because I've been forced to think of something, I wish I could yank my own brain out through my nose or ear, so that I never have to think of it again.

Yesterday afternoon, someone arrived at this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb having searched on Google for "naked pictures of Ian Durrant Rangers".

Aaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhh! The pain - make it stop.

Mobile Madness

Oh the joys of predictive text messaging on my mobile phone.

Yesterday, I attempted to send the following message to a friend:

"I'm on holiday all week, so free any time"

Which my mobile thoughtfully translated to:

"I'm on holiday all week, so free boy time"

Which is a completely different message entirely, I'm sure you'll agree....

Quizzical Education

Tonight, in an effort to forge bonds between co-workers where there were no bonds before, our company is holding a quiz night.

My team of four, which includes Mrs Wife, one of my colleagues and his own Mrs Wife, will be up against everyone else from the office as we attempt to prove we're the brainiest of the lot. (In fact, all we should be aiming for is to avoid finishing last).

A quick spell of random questions this morning between myself and my colleague proved one thing - I don't know half as much as I thought I did, and I know considerably less than I did when I was a kid.

As a teenager, I represented the whole of the Brechin area in the Masterkid of Angus competition. And whilst at high school, I appeared on Radio Tay several times as a member of our school's quiz team. (Good God, why didn't anyone tell me to STOP BEING A GEEK!)

Back then, I think I had a pretty good grasp of 'general knowledge' - ie, loads of useless crap that somehow lodged itself in my brain.

But I'm finding that nowadays, that crap doesn't stick as well as it used to. Maybe it's because I have to work for a living and remember relevant facts about the oil industry, not to mention deadlines, which reports I should be working on, which databases I need to update and the like. Or maybe I just don't have the time to sit and read newspapers and magazines the way I used to, devouring information for information's sake.

These days, when I get home from work, I'm quite content to sit in front of the television or play computer games. And no-one ever won a general knowledge quiz through their ability to recall the plotlines from Lost, or the best players in Football Manager 2007.

Or perhaps I'm just getting stupider. Brain cells die and are never replaced - that's a fact of life. And as my head fills with new knowledge, such as information about mortgage rates, the price of fuel and the ins and outs of squirrel sex, maybe there's just no room in my head to remember which is the most common element on Earth (it's hydrogen) or what the Rolling Stones' first single was (I Wanna Be Your Man).

I'm sure we'll found out this evening.

Soundtrack of My Life

Each month, Mojo magazine interviews three celebrities or musicians for its All Back To My Place page, asking the same questions each month. I figured I'd prepare my answers just in case they ask me for the next issue.

What music are you currently grooving to?
I don't know if it can be classed as "grooving", but I'm listening to The Enemy's debut album We'll Live and Die In These Towns a lot. It reminds me of The Jam, in a kind of vitriolic, call-to-arms, sound of the suburbs sort of way. Nowadays, I listen to music most when I'm driving to and from work, but I have a car share, so I tend not to subject her to anything too outrageous or loud. I'm also waiting for my copy of Hard Fi's Once Upon A Time In The West to be delivered.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album?
The Stone Roses' debut album has been my favourite album since I was about 18. I can't really put into words what it is that makes it so important: the whole package transcends the individual songs and the individual players. But the opening rumble of I Wanna Be Adored, the psychedelic punk of Made of Stone and the epic closer I Am The Resurrection are enough in themselves to make it the greatest record of all time.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
It was the soundtrack to the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on cassette from John Menzies in Dundee (now replaced by a Tesco Metro) in 1990 or 1991. I'm always surprised when rock stars are interviewed and asked what their first record was, and they say The Jam, or The Beatles, or The Sex Pistols. I went through a long phase of liking shite pop music, a phase I call "being a kid". Kids don't buy Sex Pistols records - they buy novelty records, movie soundtracks and pop. Anyway, the soundtrack to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles included the awesome T-U-R-T-L-E Power by Partners In Kryme, This Is What We Do by MC Hammer and 9.95 by Spunkadelic, all of which I have recently downloaded from the internet. I think I might still have the original tape hidden away in either Mither's or Faither's loft.

Which musician have you ever wanted to be?
Anyone who can play an instrument. I envy people who can pick up an acoustic guitar and rattle off five or six songs faultlessly to entertain a roomful of people. I'd love to be able to play drums like Dave Grohl, bass like Flea or guitar like John Squire.

What do you sing in the shower?
I always used to sing in the shower, but nowadays I get up at 6.15am, which means that I tend not to, for two reasons:
a) 6.15am is not a "singing in the shower" time of day
b) The bathroom at Dungroanin' is en suite, and Mrs Wife would probably not care too much for being woken up at 6.15am by me running through a medley of Super Furry Animals songs.
On the occasions when I do sing, I find that Elvis songs sound great in the shower, as the cubicle makes my voice, which is quite deep (especially when I'm tired), echo. So I'm quite partial to belting out Devil In Disguise and Suspicious Minds. I also like singing Reef's Naked, for someone reason that I haven't been able to fathom, but which may well be Freudian.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?
If it's one record that I'll put on before going out, it's The Stone Roses' debut album, cranked right up so that the bass rattles the windows. I have to listen to the whole thing, finishing with the instrumental at the end of I Am The Resurrection. However, in this age of CD burners and MP3 players, it's all too easy to make up a playlist especially for Saturday nights. When I was at university, my flatmate and I made a going out CD that included Primal Scream's Kill All Hippies, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, The White Room by Cream and White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, amongst others. No-one else liked it, but we thought it was ace.

And your Sunday morning record?
I tend not to listen to music on Sunday mornings, but when I do, it can be almost anything. A bit of Motown can start the day nicely, as can The Beatles. Probably not Metallica, Motorhead or Probot though.


I know many of you can't stand memes, but if you want to play along, feel free. I'd be especially interested to hear how The Tomahawk Kid and Erica would answer.

The Fifth Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge

Time for an update on the non-famous game no-one is waiting for.

Misssy was the only entrant in the Fourth Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge, correctly spotting some of Morrissey's finest non-Smiths lyrics. Answers are now in the comments for that post.

So here's the next batch of words for this unheralded worldwide interweb-based game of "Name that tune".

It's easy to play: identify the song and artist chosen at random by the Magic Tune Box from the lyrics given. Post your answers in the comments. No Googling!

1: I'm rich, like a hot noise.

2: Playing for the high one, dancing with the devil, going with the flow, it's all the same to me.

3: Where have you gone again my sweet? Everybody wants to know.

4: The crap rolls out your mouth again, haven't changed, your brain is still gelatin.

5: Out on a limb in the carnival of me, raising the temperature 100 degrees.

10,000 Maniacs

Shortly after 9.30pm last night, the 10,000th visitor crossed the threshold here at Groanin' Jock.

Anyone who's been paying attention will know that this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb was a year old last week, so it's taken just over a year for you hardy souls to venture out here 10,000 times.

It wasn't one of my regular readers who reached this momentuous landmark, but someone from Germany looking for a picture of Uluru.

Thanks to everyone who bothers to check back here now and again. Here's to the next 10,000 visitors.

C'est Magnifique

I know I said that no further comment on last night's events was necessary, but I couldn't resist it:

0-1 McFadden
Uploaded by manu1400

France 0 - 1 Scotland

I need say nothing more.

Nerd Herd

I've got a stinking cold and an atomic fuckload of work to do, so in lieu of a proper post, I'm just going to prove that I am a nerd, courtesy of a quiz I encountered over at Blog d'Elisson.




A slightly dorky nerd king? Hey, at least that's better than being a nerd wannabe....

Lost Classics II: The Music - The Music

Briefly, at the start of the 21st Century, a handful of British bands threatened to throw off the shackles of Britpop and emerge as heirs to the thrones recently vacated by Blur, Oasis, Suede and Pulp.

Starsailor, Turin Brakes, Alfie and The Cooper Temple Clause were all bestowed with the tag of "the next big thing". And, for one reason or another, none truly ascended to the level which had been predicted of them.

Amongst those bands were The Music. Four teenage upstarts from Leeds, their sound was a mix of The Stone Roses' early guitar somersaults, heavy beats and Robert Harvey's high-pitched rock howl.

All 1,000 copies of the band's vinyl-only debut single Take The Long Road and Walk It sold out almost instantly. The song encapsulated The Music's sound in one five-minute burst: one scintillating guitar riff backed by a disco beat and Harvey's screaming, barely-decipherable vocal.

The single was followed by the You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me EP and The People EP, both of which suggested that a classic debut album was in the offing.

But, when debut album The Music arrived, it was distinctly underwhelming. (As an aside, is it strictly true that if an album has no title, it is simply given the name of the band that recorded it? Or should it just remain untitled and be referred to as "the band's debut album"?)

The first disappointment was in the track listing. Neither You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me - a great, rollocking, rock'n'roll tune - nor electronic masterpiece Karma was included on the record - a terrible oversight on both counts.

But the biggest travesty was in the production. Live, The Music are powerful performers, the rhythm section to the fore and Harvey breakdancing and bodypopping between lines. However, on the album, the production is muddy and fails to bring any of these aspects to the fore.

Listening to the album on the way into work this morning, I had to crank the car stereo up way beyond its normal setting just to hear what was happening. On a record that could have had a huge aural impact, that's inexcusable.

Setting aside the production gripes, the quality in the songwriting is plain to hear. An inferior, re-recorded version of Take The Long Road and Walk It is included, with the closing slide guitar refrain masked by unnecessary layers of guitar. The track follows opener The Dance, which stands as one of the record's strongest moments. Glacier-like walls of guitar open, to be joined by a Harvey mantra and delicate cymbal taps. Then, almost a minute in, the bass thunders in and the band is off at a gallop. Of all the tracks on the album, it is The Dance that is most reminiscent of The Stone Roses, and it is the track on which the band sounds most confident.

Elsewhere, there are hints at what the record could have amounted to in different hands. Human, which follows Take The Long Road and Walk It, fails to properly test the band's strengths, relying on guitarist Adam Nutter's best John Squire impression to carry a weaker than expected Harvey vocal.

Stand out track from the record is The Truth Is No Words, a furious bass groove combined with Harvey's most absorbing vocal. And it is on moments like these that it becomes most apparent that poor production severely limited what should have stood as a landmark record.

Part of the record's problem is that the band sometimes can't seem to decide whether they want to write a dance record, a rock record or an acoustic record. When they weld the guitar histrionics to the disco beats, such as on Float, The People or Getaway, they are peerless. When settling into a slower-paced ballad such as on Turn Out The Light, they fail to capture the imagination.

As it opens, Disco could almost be vintage Black Sabbath, so towering is its riff and assured its vocal. Two minutes in, the band accelerates into a Led Zeppelin rock storm and Harvey is given free reign to indulge his inner rock god. But, instead of using the track to close what could have been an outstanding record, the band follows it with the ponderous Too High.

Whilst Elastica's The Menace could never have been considered a classic by any stretch of the imagination, The Music's debut record should have been. The strength and tightness of the band and the quality of their songwriting could have seen them elevated immediately to the rock'n'roll A-list, their debut sitting comfortably alongside Definitely Maybe, The Stone Roses and A Storm In Heaven.

Instead, it merely hints at what might have been.

The Fourth Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge

What with all the hubub and hooha over the last week, I completely forgot to post the answers to the The Third Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge. The answers are now in the comments on that post.

And now, here's the fourth instalment in the quiz that no-one is waiting for....

It's simple - identify the songs from which these lyrics are taken. Post the answers in the comments. No Googling!

1: Reggie Kray - do you know my name ? Oh, don't say you don't.

2: She's got hair down to her fanny. She's kinda jet set, try undo her panties.

3: If I don't last this one tell them when I've gone, that playing with you was incredible fun.

4: What can you say, millions apart and miles away.

5: The stiller the oxygen the harder you breathe, the draining away just like an old man's dream.

What's Up Doc?

Can anyone guess what Mrs Wife and I brought home with us last weekend?

Bearing in mind that we were at a music festival, the obvious answers are:

a) Two tonnes of genuine Inveraray Castle mud

b) Stinking hangovers

c) A car boot full of food that we took with us and never got around to eating

d) An unusual disease unseen in Western Europe since World War I.

In truth, we may have returned from deepest, darkest Argyll with the first three (maybe the fourth as well - you never can tell), but the most important thing to arrive back in the comparative metropolis of Montrose with Mr and Mrs GJ was....

....wait for it, it's good....

....a rabbit.

Yes, a genuine, living, breathing, shitting, rabbit.

Mrs Wife decided long ago that our lives weren't complete without something small and furry to clean up after. And, following a recent trip to an Aberdeen pet emporium, set her heart on a rabbit - a house rabbit no less. (How one trains a rabbit to do its business in a litter tray is anyone's guess, and Mrs Wife's problem.)

I've never had a proper pet before. Back when I was a wee laddie, Faither was a gamekeeper, and always had at least three dogs to assist in various hunting activities. But as they were working dogs, and therefore employees, they had to live in staff quarters, namely kennels outside. This was probably best for practical reasons - have you ever tried to eat your dinner when watched by two labradors, two spaniels, a Jack Russell and two border terriers? And also because working dogs stink.

Anyway, I digress. Dungroanin's smallest bedroom has a new lodger, going by the name of Pepper. Her name was going to be something else entirely during the two days when Mrs Wife thought she was a boy (the rabbit that is, not Mrs Wife), but a quick trip to the vet ascertained that Pepper is and always will be a girl.

The first few days living with this black bundle of fur have been entertaining, for want of a better word. To begin with, she was terrified of us, hiding permanently in the bed box at the back of her cage. But, left to her own devices to explore Dungroanin', she's gradually coming out of her shell. She's still at the stage where she'll bolt if she suspects that someone wants to touch her, hold her, pick her up or prise her gums open in an effort to stick a syringe in her mouth to facilitate the administration of antibiotics (I think I'm probably with her on that point).

So hopefully, as she settles into the laidback lifestyle at Dungroanin', she'll start to earn her keep by doing useful little tasks around the house, like fetching beer from the kitchen.

And if not, she'll make a lovely stew.

(If you're reading this Mrs Wife - THAT WAS A JOKE!)

Rumours of My Demise....

....Are greatly exaggerated.

Seeing as how it's been a week since I last spouted some nonsense on these hallowed pages, I guess an update is well overdue.

Thanks to all those who thought to check I was still alive (well, Erica did anyway). It's been a pretty hectic week, all in all.

The festival was as good as I expected it to be, although a tad quieter than both myself and the organisers had anticipated. The highlight of the weekend for me were Primal Scream, who rattled through a furious greatest hits set.

Seth Lakeman played a great hoe-down set in front of a receptive audience doing a drunken Strip The Willow in the mud, the Super Furry Animals managed to include Power Rangers helmets and crisp eating into their repertoire, and Teenage Fanclub showed everyone why they should have been the biggest band in the world.

Bjork's set wavered between out-of-key Icelandic yelping backed by a fluorescent horn section to a spectacular laser light show during the majestic bass-driven splendour of Venus As A Boy. And The Go! Team were the best surprise act of the weekend, bringing the opening Friday night to a moshpit-bouncing close.

Seeing as how the festival site was knee-deep in mud by the end of the first day, it was a good feeling to be staying in a caravan with a shower, cooker and real beds. I must be getting old, but the prospect of standing in the pishing rain all day before walking through a dark Scottish version of the Somme to get to a tent that has collapsed and flooded just doesn't appeal any more....

Anyway, a three-day pear cider bender isn't the ideal preparation for a week-long oil industry conference and exhibition. Offshore Europe is essentially just an excuse for a bunch of very rich companies to get together and give away lots of tat. The Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre this week is awash with free pens, sweets, stress balls and key rings. Hats off to Edda Accommodation for giving away leather attache cases containing USB pen drives and calculators and to Eni for CD wallets - at least their free shite is almost worth keeping.

So, I'm a tad exhausted, which is the reason for the complete lack of postage over the past week. If I'd had any foresight, I'd have handed the keys to the blog to someone else for a week to keep y'all amused - but I don't, so I didn't.

Oh, and Tuesday marked the first anniversary of this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb. I'm still surprised that anyone bothers to stop here at all, but for those who do - thank you. Please come again. (And have a nice day.)

Connected

I'm off to the Connect festival this weekend, spending three days being entertained by Bjork, the Beastie Boys, Jesus and Mary Chain, Modest Mouse, Primal Scream and Idelwild, to name but a few.

And then next week I have the delights of the Offshore Europe conference to look forward to. So posting is going to be a bit haphazard over the next few days.

So, as way of apology, here's a video of the band I'm most looking forward to this weekend - the Super Furry Animals - performing their greatest song.

The Golden Balls Will Burst

I've never hidden the fact that I think David Beckham is a bit of a fud.

Admittedly, he's a very well-paid fud who has made the most of his limited footballing abilities, honing them so that, at his peak, he was the best right-footed dead ball specialist in the world.

On his day, such as when Beckham booked England's place at the 2002 World Cup with a last minute free kick - to draw with footballing leviathans Greece - he was immense, covering every inch of the pitch and pressing his team mates forwards.

But he's never going to feature in anyone's All-Time World XI.

If the truth be told, I don't actually mind the on-pitch Beckham too much. Despite an irrational hatred of Manchester United (Cristiano Ronaldo and Darren Fletcher excepted) and the deep joy I take from each defeat bestowed upon England's national side, I don't feel the same loathing for Beckham that I do for some other professional footballers (the names Lennon, Bellamy, Thompson and Sutton spring to mind).

It's Beckham's off-field activities that irritate me. For years, he and his real-life, 3D Photoshopped wife have uttered vacuous desires "to break America". Why? Why must they inflict themselves on another country - in fact, another continent? Would it not make more sense for them to continue working in the UK after Golden Balls hangs up his boots, but to live in comparative anonymity in Hollywood?

The simple answer (can there be any other type when it comes to the gruesome twosome?) is no - they cannot rest until everyone on the planet owns a product touched by the hand of one of the Beckhams. Whether a Spice Girls concert ticket, an LA Galaxy shirt or a pair of Police sunglasses, everyone must buy into Brand Beckham.

But before this rant descends any further, the purpose of this post was actually to show some sympathy to David Beckham.

Much has been made of his new trans-Atlantic lifestyle now that he is plying his domestic trade in the United States whilst attempting to recreate his international glories on the battlefields of Europe.

Boo-hoo. Beckham knew what he was doing when he signed his 250 million dollar Galaxy contract.

But when you see the extent of his travelling laid out in front of you, it is pretty formidable. Between September 8 and October 18, Beckham's schedule (presuming he were fit enough to play in all matches, and selected for the relevant squads) is as follows:

Saturday September 8: London
Wednesday September 12: London
Thursday September 13: Los Angeles
Sunday September 16: Los Angeles
Wednesday September 19: Utah
Sunday September 23: Los Angeles
Thursday September 27: Kansas
Sunday September 30: Ohio
Wednesday October 3: Vancouver
Sunday October 7: Houston
Wednesday October 10: Minnesota
Saturday October 13: London
Wednesday October 17: Moscow

Thirteen matches in 40 days, in four countries. For a fully fit professional athlete at the top of his game and his physical peak, that would be a punishing schedule. For a 32-year-old who, after finishing a punishing season in Spain's top flight, travelled straight to America to play for LA Galaxy, whilst also resurrecting his international career, it's impossible. And that's without mentioning the fact that Beckham isn't even really fit enough to finish ONE match, let alone 13. Or the fact that he'd also have training between those matches - ideally at least, although travelling across America, over the Atlantic and around Europe will have a huge impact on that. And on top of all that, he's probably also signed up for countless days of promotional work and advertising campaigns.

For once, I feel sorry for David Beckham.

Sending Crime Underground

Police in Manchester have apparently foiled a planned robbery after the discovery of a tunnel heading towards a cash machine in a video shop.

What a completely genius plan - dig a tunnel all the way to the machine and then empty it underground before making a sharp exit.

Is it just me, or do the police seem a bit dimwitted for announcing they'd found it - wouldn't they have been better observing it whilst the would-be thieves continued digging, thus catching them red-handed?

Or is that too much like common sense?

The Birthday Meme

Tish over at The Kat House tagged me with The Birthday Meme.


Here are the rules:

Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday (month and day).


Write down three events, two births, one holiday and tag five friends.


There are five slots in the Birthday Meme. As you are tagged, you have to remove the name in the first slot and bump everyone up so that your name can be added to the bottom.


Three Events That Occurred on My Birthday
217 - Roman Emperor Caracalla is assassinated (and succeeded) by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus.


1820 - The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.


2005 - Funeral of Pope John Paul II.


Two People Who Share My Birthday
1962 - Izzy Stradlin, American musician (Guns N' Roses).


1963 - Julian Lennon, English musician and singer (and God's own first-born son).

One Holiday Celebrated on My Birthday
Buddha's Birthday, the birthday of the Gautama Buddha. Traditionally celebrated in East Asia on the eighth day of the fourth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, is an official holiday in Hong Kong, Macau, and South Korea. The date varies from year to year in the Western (Gregorian) calendar.


Five People I'm Tagging

1. The Tomahawk Kid

2. Big Rab

3. Erica

4. Colin

5. Sho

Previous Participants

1 This is a miracle
2 Mariuca
3 Mike
4 Tish
5 Groanin' Jock

You Shook Me (All About) All Night Long

I'm a big music fan. The sitting room at Dungroanin' is home to a couple of thousand CDs, with more stashed away in a wardrobe elsewhere in the house. In some ways, I'm glad that I missed out on the vinyl years, otherwise I wouldn't have room in my house for anything except my record collection.

One of the many things in music I like is the unusual cover version. Over the years, I've been impressed by Travis' take on Britney's Baby One More Time, by the White Stripes' interpretation of Dolly Parton's Jolene, and by Hayseed Dixie's reinvention of Ace of Spades.

But, in all my days listening to music, I never thought I'd hear AC/DC break into The Hokey Cokey.

Now, thanks to Erica's YouTube sleuthing skills, I can die happy, having heard my favourite Australian-Scottish band tackle the children's birthday party staple.

Well, not quite. It's comedian Jim Breuer imagining what the "Hokey Pokey" would sound like if played by Angus Young and Brian Johnson. (What the hell is the Hokey Pokey? Sidewalk, restroom, gas and soda I'll tolerate but Hokey Pokey? It's Hokey Cokey you numbskulls.)

Enjoy. Then pop over to Erica's blog to say hello.

The Third Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge

Well, if the first Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge was tough, it seems that its successor was even harder - only one correct answer (in fact, only one answer) from the lot of you.

So, for what may be the last time, here are this week's five random selections from the Magic Tune Box. Can you name the songs? Answers in the comments, no Googling!

1: Sitting here wishing on a cement floor, just wishing that I had just something you wore, I put it on when I go lonely, will you take off your dress and send it to me?

2: I need someone to be around, cos I'm breakin' into life, somebody stop me, cos I'm lookin' for my, lookin' for my high.

3: I know that you think I'm a fool. But couldn't you try to forgive a fool one more time?

4: Let's drink to the hard working people, let's drink to the lowly of birth. Raise your glass to the good and the evil.

5: I leave the mic in body bags, my rap style has the force to leave you lost, like the tribe of Shabazz.

Publican Relations

Scotland, for one reason or another, always seems to be defined in one of two ways: as the tartan, shortbread, Highland cows and kilts stereotype or as the violent, drunk, socially-deprived slums as portrayed in Taggart, Trainspotting and most other television and movie dramas filmed in Scotland over the last couple of decades.

The latter depiction of Scotland always focuses on one of two cities: Glasgow (Taggart) or Trainspotting (Edinburgh). Which is a wee bit unfair. The rest of Scotland can be just as rough as the country's first and second cities.

Take Aberdeen for example. Per capita, probably Scotland's most salubrious city, thanks almost entirely to the money derived from North Sea oil. A city where young single men who have spent five weeks at sea arrive home with the best part of five thousand pounds in their bank accounts. A city full to the brim with seamen.

Sure, Aberdeen's wide, tree-lined, granite streets look very grand and refined. But venture down to the docks at night time, and you'll see man's base instincts rear their ugly heads in two forms. Drink and hookers.

For a first-hand account of a night in one of Aberdeen's seamier holes, check out this post over at The Misssy M Misssives. Or watch the video below. (Ignore the plummy-voiced twat from Front magazine who speaks at the start).

Kat Loves My Blog

Another week, another award.

Tish of The Kat House, also co-founder of Blogs We Luv, has decided that she loves my blog.

What can I say - I love it too!

Under the rules of the award, I'm supposed to pass the award on. So, if you take a look to the right of this post, you'll find my Blogroll. I love every single one of those blogs, and for a variety of different reasons. Have a look through them all - it'll be well worth it.

The Last Supper: Jedi Style

Very cool religious Star Wars artwork, as seen at Neatorama via Alastair's Heart Monitor.

The Greatest

Like many men, I'm a compulsive compiler of mental lists - the 10 best albums of all time, the greatest female singers, the best gigs I've ever been to, my five favourite cities - and so on.

Frequently, the focus of my list-compiling is football. I'll often think about the strongest Rangers 11 made up only of players I've seen in the flesh, or the three best matches I've been to (for the record, they are the 2002 Champions League Final, Rangers' 3-1 win over Aberdeen to win the league in 1996 and a 4-0 Old Firm victory in either 2000 or 2001).

A game that I often play with friends, or with work colleagues on those days when time is passing slowly, is to name your ultimate, all-time, greatest football eleven, drawn from any player in the history of the game.

This seemingly innocuous pastime can often descend into bickering as people debate the relative merits of Peter Schmeichel and Andy Goram, or whether Ruud Gullit was a striker, midfielder, defender or all three.

But the biggest debate always centres around one question: who was The Greatest?

Generally, there are two belief systems in operation when it comes to this question: those who worship at the altar of Diego Maradona; and others who stand by Pelé as the most gifted individual ever to lace up his boots.

I'm a member of the former camp. Maradona is, quite simply, the most prodigiously gifted professional footballer I have ever seen (sadly, not in the flesh).

And there lies the root of the problem: Pelé's peak years occurred long before the blanket television coverage of football existed.

I was born a full decade after the Pelé-inspired Brazil team of 1970 conquered all before it to lift the World Cup. In truth, I was too young to appreciate Maradona's achievements at the 1986 competition, Hand of God and "The Greatest Goal Ever Scored" (TM all Scottish football fans) included.

But by 1990, I was an avid follower of The Beautiful Game (a phrase coined by Pelé himself), and watched as El Diego almost single-handedly carried a poor Argentina team all the way to the final, as he had done four years previously.

At the 1994 World Cup, Maradona was awesome. Every time he touched the ball, he looked menacing. His previously chubby frame seemed more muscular, and he dictated the play.

In truth, his increased vigour and physical bearing were due in no small part to the cocktail of drugs swimming around his body throughout the tournament. Admittedly, the physical aspects of his game had been pumped up by the artificial enhancers - but the dazzling ability he demonstrated at those finals before he was thrown out was God-given, and unparalleled by anyone I had seen before or have seen since.

And so, to the modern day. I figured that, with YouTube continuing to expand at a frightening rate, there had to be a Pelé montage floating about, so that I could at last see more than the shot he missed from the halfway line against Czechoslovakia and the header that Gordon Banks saved in the 1970 World Cup.

Sure enough, there are many Pelé videos on the worldwide interweb. I looked at a few, but this one seemed to do him most justice. The speed, the quickness of mind and the inventiveness are all on a par with those displayed by Maradona at his peak (fast forward to the goal about three minutes in to see Pelé with the ball at his feet). But what stands out from the video are the sheer power of his shots and the height he could jump to meet headers. And the number of brutal fouls he was subject to.

It should also be taken into account that the balls used in Pelé's day probably weighed twice what modern balls do, yet his shots still look cannonballs.

So, have I been converted to the Pelé camp?

In a word - no. Despite the three World Cup wins, the 1280 goals in 1363 games, helping to kick-start football in the USA and the constant ability to act as an ambassador for football, I can't move into the pro-Pelé camp.

Maybe it's the flawed genius theory - that Maradona's mean streak made him the player that we all secretly wanted to be, a wild and wayward figure who could be the world's best ever player one minute and the world's most truculent spoilt brat the next. Or maybe it's because of this goal.

The Montrose Sessions

Today I'll be joining two of my mates under the pretence of a band practice.

Thankfully the others have a fair bit of talent between them, which means that they can just tell me what to do.

Our sessions rarely produce anything worthy of note, but it's not entirely about the music - it's just a way of relaxing and excusing spending a day drinking beer, eating pizza and playing PlayStation games.

Anyway, just to prove that we DO occasionally produce something that borders on worthwhile, here's one we prepared earlier. It's pretty rough, as befits a recording made by three partially drunk guys on a four track with only a drum machine for company. For anyone who cares, I'm on bass.

Number 9,000

Three posts in one day - man, I'm on fire.....

Anyway, the aim in completing this unholy trinity is to point out that the 9,000th official visitor has crossed the threshold here at Groanin' Jock.

If I'm any good at tracking IP addresses, I think it was my favourite Jewish Brooklyn Wiseass who was the 9,000th Groanin' reader - congratulations Erica, your prize will be winging its way to you just as soon as I can cobble together a nasty piece of Photoshopping find something suitably grandiose for you.

The Second Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge

Maybe The First Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge was a bit tough - only two of the five songs were guessed correctly. The answers are now in the comments on that post.

Let's see if you weird and wonderful people can do better with this batch. Post your answers in the comments, no Googling!

1: The cards on the table have changed, the ones who have left can't be traced.

2: Burn Hollywood burn, taking down Tinseltown, burn Hollywood burn, burn down to the ground.

3: Ev'rybody had a wet dream, ev'rybody saw the sunshine.

4: There's no combination of words I could put on the back of a postcard, no song that I could sing.

5: I've got a pen in my pocket, does that make me a writer? Standing on the mountain doesn't make me no higher.

What's An Anal Jock Strap?

OK, I realise this is becoming a bit of a theme, but I couldn't resist sharing one of the latest batch of Google search terms that brought someone winging my way.

"free anal jock strap videos"

Why?

Daily Blogger Award

Once again, I've been honoured by Tish, who has presented me with the Daily Blogger Award.

The award is intended for bloggers who post at least five times per week, give or take. According to the creator of the award, “these bloggers get up every morning, get their creative juices flowing, and start unscrambling the alphabet into words, sentences, and phrases. Rain or shine, just like the postal service, they are hard at work delivering their messages to you.”

Well, that may be over-egging the pudding ever so slightly, but I try my best. Creativity may occasionally be in short supply on this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb, and as for being hard at work to deliver my message - what's my message? That strange people want to sniff piss and see pictures of naked Scotsmen in kilts? That I'm the only person in the world who likes Elastica's second album? Or that I don't like birds - even dead ones?

Nonetheless, I'm honoured to have been, emm, honoured by Tish. I'm just surprised that some of you strange people feel the desire to come back here day in, day out, to read what I'm groanin' about.

Tish has asked that I pass the award on, so my six worthy recipients of the Daily Blogger Award are:

Eric (everyone's favourite Straight White Guy)

The Tomahawk Kid

Elisson

Chickie over at Blissful Bedlam

Erica (AKA the Wiseass Brooklyn Jewette Nice Jooish Girl)

Mirksome Bogle

A New Low

I've posted before on the strange Google search terms that bring people to this far-flung outpost of the worldwide web.

But we hit a new low today - "piss sniffing. the facts".

All I know is that this person was from the UK and stumbled along here at 3.30am.

I don't think I want to know any more.

Cynic? Yeah, right.

I'm pretty cynical. I'm Scottish and I'm a journalist, so it's to be expected.

But I thought that I was more than 56% cynical - I'm not sure how you put a percentage on cynicism, but the strange people of the worldwide interweb managed it.

You Are 56% Cynical

Yes, you are cynical, but more than anything, you're a realist. You see what's screwed up in the world, but you also take time to remember what's right.

How Cynical Are You?

As seen at Big Rab's site.

Weird and Wonderful

Working as a reporter for a small local newspaper is an ideal way to meet strange people.

I don't mean psychopaths or really dangerous people, although I did meet one or two of them as well, but just unusual folks with their own strange way of going about their business in the world at large.

One of the most memorable was a middle-aged man who appeared in the office in which I worked almost as soon as we opened the doors one morning.

He told me that he had a story, but I'd have to come outside to find out more.

So, heading out into the rain, I followed the strange man. (My Mither always told me that I shouldn't do that, but I was curious. I should have followed her advice).

We crossed the road and arrived at his large estate car, parked in a busy shopping street.

The man unlocked the doors and told me to sit in the passenger seat.

Taking further leave of my already distant senses I followed his instructions. As I eased my way into the vehicle, my nose was met by a pungent stench.

Having grown up in the countryside, I'm used to the smells associated with animals. Faither, a gamekeeper when I was a boy, kept dogs and ferrets, and we also had chickens, ducks and guinea fowl over the years.

Sitting in that car, the smell reminded of that you would get from a ferret's cage, the musky odour of rodents that don't care too much about their bathing habits.

The strange man, sitting in the driver's seat, began to tell me his story. He liked to watch swans. He liked to feed swans. But, for the most part, he felt that wild swans should be left to get on with their affairs untroubled by the machinations of mankind.

He was most upset that, the night before, when he had ventured along the Crinan Canal to watch the swans bobbing on the water, he had encountered a dead swan lying on the towpath.

It was at this point in his tale that the strange gentleman removed a black binliner from the back of the car, revealing the stinking corpse of a two-day dead swan.

Those of you familiar with this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb will be aware that I have a phobia of birds. Admittedly, this swan was dead, but it was still only a few inches from me.

Nonetheless, I managed to maintain my composed demeanour, and asked the strange man why he thought I should know about a dead swan. As I succinctly put it, animals die every day, and those passings generally don't make the pages of the press. (Which headline sounds least exciting - "Dog bites man" or "Swan dies"?)

The strange man said that he believed that this swan, if not callously murdered, had been unintentionally killed by someone who had moved it from the open sea to the Crinan Canal. He explained his theory that, as swans need a good 20 metres in which to land when they've been flying, this unfortunate swan had become entangled in overhead power lines and had met its sorry fate.

It was the strange man's belief that this swan didn't normally spend its days on the canal, but had been transported there by someone who thought it would make a nice addition to the view from their sitting room window.

I gently explained that, without proof, there was little I could do - the local press isn't in the business of slandering suspected swan slayers. The strange man continued, stating that a dead swan was newsworthy regardless of the circumstances of its demise.

After much to-ing and fro-ing as we debated the media ethics behind the story, I finally relented. Keen to be free from the man's pungent swan hearse, I agreed that we should get a photograph of the swan. The strange man then drove us (myself and my ex-swan travelling companion) up to the bank of the canal, where he happily posed for photographs holding the lifeless bird's neck up so that its beak faced the lens.

Satisfied that he had done his bit for swankind, the man left, taking the body with him. We did eventually decide to run the story, primarily because we feared that if we didn't, the strange man might return with further dead animals.

There are very few aspects of my work with the local press that I miss - the hours were long, free time was scarce and the money very poor. But occasionally, I think of the strange people I encountered and wish that, just once, someone would turn up in the oil industry carrying the carcass of a dead bird. You know, just to liven things up a bit.

Wild Things

I think everyone should pop across to see this video at The Tomahawk Kid.

Shuffling The Pack

I've done a little tidy and reshuffle of the old Blogroll - apologies if I've missed anyone out, just drop me a line and I'll fix it straight away.

The First Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge

I'm going to shamelessly steal borrow an idea from my friend the Tomahawk Kid for this post.

Every so often, TK will post lyrics from the five most recent songs to play on his MP3 player when set to shuffle. It's then the readers' responsibility to name the tunes.

Good luck with the inaugural Groanin' Jock lyrics quiz. Post your answers in the comments, no Googling!

1: So if you don't rate, just overcompensate, at least you'll know you can always go on Ricki Lake.

2: One day we change from children into people, one day we change.

3: Spin me some sad story, sell me some excuse, to help me understand the things you do.

4: I was born in a force-ten gale, it takes more than hot air to blow the wind out of my sails, and my eyesight's poor, but I am the future.

5: But you can learn how to play the game, it's easy.

Can I Have A P Please Bob?

Tish tagged me with this "Seven Ps" meme. Play along if it takes your fancy.

Passion - Music. The right music can calm me down, wind me up, put me to sleep, wake me up, make me angry, make me happy, make me laugh, make me cry and make me jump up and down in a small, dark club full of sweaty, hairy men.

Purpose - To enjoy my life. I always thought I'd end up working in London, commuting to work and living in a tiny flat with only lines of traffic to see out my window. But I've long since realised that there's more to enjoying life than what you do for a living. I'm much happier where I am.

Pursuit - A long(ish), happy, healthy life with my family and good friends.

Position - On top (of what, I don't know).

Pummeling - My debt into submission. This time next year. Within a few months, I expect to be debt free (mortgage and student loan excepted).

Progress - Slowly but surely.

Personality - Laid back. Ambitious, but not to a detrimental effect on my lifestyle.

Escape To Victory

An interesting article on The Times website today on some homeless footballers who have gone AWOL:

African participation in the Homeless World Cup, a football tournament designed to improve the confidence of former vagrants, was under review last night after 15 players went on the run at the finals in Denmark.

The competition’s aim — to offer a golden opportunity for homeless people to change their lives — was taken literally by seven players from Burundi, four from Liberia, three from Cameroon and one from Afghanistan.

Danish police were looking for the footballers last night but admitted that they could easily have travelled further afield in the Schengen system of 15 “borderless” EU countries, which do not require visitors to show passports. The players’ visas expired on Monday after the tournament ended.

Kay Byles, a spokeswoman for the Scottish-based Homeless World Cup Foundation, said that it was the first of the annual contests — which started in 2002 — to experience runaways. Arrangements for next year’s cup in Melbourne would be reviewed, she said.

Is it just me, or does the concept of the Homeless World Cup seem a little naive?

You take 500 homeless people, many of them from third world nations, to Denmark and expect them all to play in the tournament before returning home.

Why would homeless people from Cameroon, Liberia, Afghanistan or Burundi want to return home to their own countries when faced with a golden opportunity to start afresh in Denmark?

True, they will still be homeless in Europe, and are effectively in the country illegally. But I think I'd sooner take my chances on the streets of Copenhagen than on those of Yaounde, Monrovia or Kabul.

And, instead of flying homeless people around the world to play football, couldn't the organisers make better use of their time and money by finding them somewhere to live in their home countries, and by giving them training or finding them jobs?

By the by, Scotland won the tournament, defeating Poland 9-3 in the final. Let the record show that Scotland won the World Cup in 2007, and that England havne't won it for more than 40 years.

I Pity The Fools

I've always known that I'm a genius, it just takes a little longer for other people to see it.

But proof, as always, comes from the worldwide interweb:

Am-I-Dumb.com - Are you dumb?

As seen at Blissful Bedlam

"Super Penetrative For Enhanced Tool Performance"

As a working (sometimes) journalist (allegedly), I receive a lot of press releases every day. Most of them are fairly dull stock exchange announcements from multinational oil companies, but every so often I get one that makes me smile. Like this one:



Performance Tool Lubricant's super penetrative and advanced synthetic formula helps enhance tool performance and keep all tools as good as new. Dramatically reduces friction and wear to any power tool. Perfect for use on high speed moving parts of performance tools, as well as a number of surfaces and components. Helps promote long lasting protection and corrosion prevention, to maintain the effectiveness of your tools.



No, it's not a release from Vaseline, but from WD-40, purveyors of industrial lubricants to the masses. Quite why I'm receiving WD-40's press releases, I'm not sure.



I wonder if Vaseline have a press release mailing list?

Everywhere You Go

It's been a funny summer so far here in North East Scotland.

April was scorching, with weather that you'd more typically expect in July.

June and July weren't much to write home about - in fact July was pretty much wet and overcast throughout, the occasional day of sunshine aside.

But on Saturday, August at least threatened to play by the rules, with hot sunshine and a warm breeze coaxing Mrs Wife and I from our shelter. Montrose was busy with Saturday shoppers and football fans heading to Links Park to witness the dawn of a new season and the start of Irn Bru's sponsorship of our national game. By all accounts, it was a drab match that ended in a 1-0 defeat for the home side, so I'm not too fussed that I missed it.

Sunday came, and, typically, so did the rain. A lot of rain.

So much rain, in fact, that the road I take to work was flooded this morning, forcing me to take a detour and, as a result, arrive at the office late.

Every man and his dog now seems to think that global warming is to blame for everything. But we've always had weather, and it doesn't always stick to the plans we'd like it to. There have been mild winters and cold summers in the past, but there have also been years where we've had six-foot snow drifts in February and six weeks of sun in the summer.

There's not much we can do about it. In fact, there's nothing we can do about it except get on with things.

It won't stop me wishing for a bit of sunshine mind you.

Naked Ambition

Honestly, you'd think this was a porn site based on the search terms that bring people to this far-flung corner of the worldwide interweb.

Today, for example, someone from the USA dropped by having searched for "gay naked Scotsmen in kilts" - at 6.23am their time.

Firstly, how can someone be naked AND wearing a kilt?

Secondly, what the hell are you doing looking for naked Scotsmen at six in the morning?

And thirdly, how the hell did you end up here? There may be the occasional bout of nakedness, but there aren't any gays. At least there weren't the last time I checked.

The No-Longer Missing Links

Today, I'm going to take the opportunity to help you strange people of the worldwide interweb steer your browsers in the direction of a couple of sites that I heartily recommend.

First up, and most important of all, is People Who Don't Blog...But Should. As the name suggests, the site manages to track down blogs by those people who don't actually blog. It's quite a feat, I'm sure you'll all agree.

The reason I'm bigging up PWDB...BS is because I have become a contributor, so that those of you who don't get enough of my crap at this site can find some more to wallow in over there. It's the brainchild of Misssy Martin of the Misssy M Misssives, whose site I stumbled upon recently via Aberdeen Blogs (who, as yet, haven't added me to their list). I'd heartily recommend that you take a look at the Misssives as well.

PWDB...BS will probably get us all sued (the URL isn't Celebrity Litigation for nothing) but hey, it's better to die in poverty after being sued by the Beckhams than it is to....emmm.....do something else.

Next up is The Dangerous and Daring Blog For Boys and Girls, as recommended by Elisson. It helps those who are growing up in the age of cartoon channels and electronic toys to find worthwhile things to make and do themselves, without resorting to what the Britney clones on MTV are telling them to do.

Included is a step-by-step guide to making a rocket. Which may be an activity that I can engage myself in this weekend.

Don't say I'm not good to you....

Kidding On

Sometimes, I think I'm 27 going on seven.

Take last night for example. I get home to find Montrose basking in warm sunshine, a condition which I believe was known as summer in days gone by.

Joining Mrs Wife in the garden, the conversation goes something like this:

Mrs Wife: "Perfect weather to cut the grass"

Groanin' Jock: "Yep"

MW: "Are you going to cut the grass then?"

GJ: "Nope"

MW: "Why not?"

GJ: "I'm playing Football Manager and reading a magazine."

This is a fairly common conversational thread at Dungroanin'. Typically, Mrs Wife will suggest I partake of a thrilling activity such as cleaning the bathroom, washing the car or picking my clean clothes up off the floor and putting them in the wardrobe.

I will then usually explain that I am already engaged in an activity, such as filing my CDs in alphabetical order, scanning photographs to put on Bebo, attempting to download Laurie Anderson's O Superman from the internet or kicking some serious dinosaur ass on Final Fantasy X2.

Is it normal for a fully-grown adult male to spend whole days and weeks engaged in such infantile pursuits? In the past few days, for example, I have spent a couple of hours dicking about on Ebay looking at Transformers toys and comics and researching the history of the Autobots on Wikipedia. I have easily devoted more hours to thinking about the way forward for my Everton side on Football Manager than I have on mortgage repayments and car insurance, and I've been more absorbed in repeats of The Simpsons than in the day's news headlines.

And if, in the next few years, Mrs Wife decides to pop out a Jockling or two, will this situation improve or worsen? Would the sleepless nights, nappy changes and feedings adultify me, or would the easy access to toys and Teletubbies send me closer towards the point of no return, when I quit my job so that I can devote more time to my more favoured pursuits?

(Not So) Good Morning Vietnam

I recently published a post that harked back to an email I sent to the folks back home whilst travelling around the world in 2003-2004.

The story I posted was that of the exploding Mitsubishi that drained our finances whilst we were in Western Australia and almost forced us to return home just a few months into the trip.

But before that sorry episode (which turned out well in the end), we'd had a far more exciting time whilst in Vietnam.

This email, sent on November 11 2003, had an ominous forewarning of the problems associated with the rain in southern Vietnam:

As Hue is further south than Hanoi, it is currently in the middle of its rainy season. It has barely stopped raining since we arrived here, but when it rains, it is still very hot. The rain can be pretty ferocious at times, and our hotel room is on the top floor of the building, so we are right underneath the roof, and the rain was clattering off the roof and balcony all night.

We were supposed to be taking a boat trip around various tombs and pagodas today, but the Perfume River is too high and fast after the rain last night, so we had to go by car instead. The tombs and pagodas all tend to look the same after seeing 15 of them, but some of them are quite picturesque, depending on the importance of the Emperor buried there.

In the centre of the city is a walled citadel known as the Forbidden Purple City, which was the home of various royal dynasties of Vietnam. The complex is quite large, and was occupied by the Vietnamese royalty until 1945, when they surrendered power to the Vietnamese people (the civil war destroyed much of the city, and the Communists from the north effectively seized power over the whole of Vietnam).

We have one more day in Hue, then we get the train to Saigon tomorrow morning. The journey is almost 24 hours long, arriving 10am on Thursday, which means we only have a day and a half in Saigon before we fly to Bangkok.

But those well-laid plans were threatened when we attempted to make it to Saigon for our flight. The following email was sent from Singapore Airport on November 15:

We have finally made it to Singapore airport from Vietnam, but for a while I doubted we would ever see anything again except the inside of an ancient Vietnam Railways train.

Our train from Hue to Saigon was supposed to take around 23 hours overnight, which we were prepared for. Waking up at 6am to the terrible Vietnamese pop music blasting through the tannoys, we realised that the train was not moving. The train staff spoke no english, so we couldn't find out why.

After two hours, we spoke to a Malaysian-born London man, who informed us that the train was stopped due to water on the tracks ahead. It had been raining torrentially for around two days, in which time about two feet of water had accumulated on the tracks.

After sitting around the train for another four hours, we were informed, again by means of our Malaysian translator, that the train was not likely to move for 12-24 hours.

With flights from Saigon to catch today (we woke up on the train on Thursday) we decided to take alternative measures. Six of us, all from Britain, left the train and walked along the tracks in the pouring rain to a local station, where we managed to ascertain that no taxi would drive through this weather. Instead, we began walking along the main road towards Nah Trang, the closest town of any note, 17km away.

We managed to flag down a local 'bus' - I use the term loosely to describe a van filled with people, crates, baskets of fruit and veg and with bicycles strapped to the roof - which agreed to take us to Nah Trang.

Squashed in amongst all of this stuff, we took around an hour to travel the 17km, but we were eventually deposited at a petrol station in town, where we flagged down taxis to Sinh Cafe, a travel agency which can book flights and buses to Saigon.

The woman in Sinh Cafe told us that no buses were running as bridges were down between Nah Trang and Saigon, but the cafe next door assured us that the roads were clear and that we could make it to Saigon for 4am (this was at 6.30pm).

We decamped to an Italian restaurant for some much needed food, having spent 26 hours on the ill-fated train with only Pringles and biscuits to feed us.

Our bus left shortly after 8pm, and things looked good. We travelled for around three hours, when we reached the end of a 15km traffic jam. Contrary to the man in the cafe's assurances, the bridge was under two feet of water, and we would be unlikely to move before 5am. Our driver, with remarkable foresight, drove us to the front of the tailback, where we parked for the night.

It's not easy sleeping on a roasting hot coach full of moaning English people (apologies to any southerners reading this) and surrounded by Vietnamese people laughing at us, but we tried. We were stopped in a small village, which at least allowed us to eat and use toilets.

By 8am, nothing had moved, but we were told it would only be another few hours (an hour in Vietnam is not like an hour in Britain, in that it is not a rigid length of time - it is an indeterminate length of time no less than one hour).

As the sun rose, we were joined by local children who had been excused school due to the floods. The were highly amused and intrigued by our presence, asking us a barrage of questions in near-perfect English. The Vietnamese football tops sported by myself and another passenger proved to us the international status of the England national side - the shirts are red and bore the numbers 7 and 10, sparking cries of "Beckham" and "Owen". They scampered off to locate a ball, and we spent around an hour being humiliated by their footballing prowess.

We finally moved around 1pm (we were meant to be in Saigon at 4am), and saw the Vietnamese rapidly attempting to repair the bridge. Nevertheless, we made it across.

We presumed that, because we had travelled three hours the previous evening, that we would have only five hours to go. We were a little surprised, then, to roll into Saigon at midnight!

All in all, our journey from Hue to Saigon took 61 hours, this was to cover a distance of 10,000 kilometres.

We checked into the first hotel we found in Saigon, and slept soundly after much-needed showers.

This morning, we walked across the road to get money for our airport departure tax. As [Mrs Wife] input the amount of money she wanted, the cash machine went dead. The power had cut midway through the transaction!

The woman in the shop found this hilarious. We, needless to say, did not, as [Mrs Wife's] card was still in the dead machine. The woman called the bank, but I'm not sure that she appreciated that we were due to fly an hour later.

Eventually the man from the bank arrived, removed [Mrs Wife's] card from the machine, and we went back to our hotel and our still waiting taxi - the Vietnamese don't give up on a western fare.

As we still had no money, the hotelier paid half of our taxi for us, and we made it the airport on time, paying our departure tax in Singaporese dollars. So we have finally made it to Singapore, and leave for Bangkok in an hour. Sorry for the lack of Halong Bay/Hue-type imagery, but all we've seen is rain, water and the insides of buses and trains.

The age-old cliche that "you can laugh about it in hindsight" comes to mind, but spending three nights on crowded trains and buses wasn't much fun at the time. But I suppose it allowed us to see "real" Vietnamese life first-hand. Unfortunately, it also meant that we didn't get to see any of Saigon, which was a disappointment.

Fives Alive

Last night, I played my first "competitive" game of football in over a year, when I turned out for my employer's five-a-side team.

By competitive, I mean a match that wasn't played between groups of friends or fellow employees.

Our opponents last night were a team of men in their late teens, who it immediately became apparent have more opportunity to hone their fitness levels than we do. The average age of our side was probably somewhere in the 30s.

And it showed early on, as we trailed 4-1 at half time, and also suffered an injury to one of our players in the opening ten minutes, leaving us with only one substitute for the rest of the match.

Nonetheless, we showed an increased vigour in the opening spell of the second half, bringing the score back to a respectable 4-4. But fatigue took its toll. A final score of 11-6 doesn't really tell the whole story, as there was definitely not a five-goal gulf in class between the teams. In fact, on another day, with passes finding their intended targets and shots flying into the corners of the goal instead of hitting the posts, we'd have beaten them.

As for my performance, it wasn't absolutely dreadful, but it was far from magical. I'd forgotten the difference between a "friendly" kick around and competitive league match, even at five-a-side level. There is no respite from the action, no possibility of drifting out of the match for a few minutes as you attempt to regain your puff.

I hit a few shots wide, swiped wildly at a couple of balls, scored a couple of goals and missed a penalty. Which is probably a fairly accurate description of my contribution to football over the past 20 years or so.

Sumptuous Cinema

This weekend, Mrs Wife and I, having nothing better to do, went to the cinema twice.

In back-to-back showings, we saw Transformers and The Simpsons Movie, finishing a fairly lengthy run of kids' movies that we've seen lately. So, how did the summer's big blockbusters fare?

Transformers was, quite simply, awesome. I may be exaggerating ever so slightly, but not much. You see, for someone who was a five-year-old boy in 1985, it doesn't get much more exciting than seeing Optimus Prime and Bumblebee appear on the big screen and transform before your very eyes. The effects were incredible, and the violence was pretty good for a kids' film. My only disappointment was that Hot Rod wasn't in the movie - but maybe he'll make it into the sequels.

The Simpsons Movie was a bit of a disappointment. Which shouldn't really come as much of a surprise, as the show itself has been treading water for a long time. The general impression I got was that if you'd seen the trailers, you'd already seen most of the funniest jokes. It wasn't a complete turkey, because The Simpsons is still funnier than most other programmes kicking around at the moment. But when the asides and throw-away jokes are funnier than the main plot of the movie, something isn't right.

So this evening, when I have three hours to kill between work and a football match, I'm going to the cinema again. Unless Die Hard 4.0 or Goldfinger is on, I'll be going to see either Transformers or The Simpsons Movie again. Optimus Prime or Homer Simpson? More than 20 years later, there is no competition.

Lost Classics I: Elastica - The Menace

In what will probably be an occasional series on this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb, I've decided that there are some records out there that are deserving of more recognition than they've been given in the past.

Some of these records will truly be "lost classics". Others may simply be records that I like that have been much-maligned by others. And some will be records that, whilst they are no classics, show a new or interesting side to an otherwise popular band, or have a handful of great tunes hidden away amongst the dross.

Elastica's second album The Menace, released in 2000, fits into the latter category. Released five years after their barnstorming Britpop debut, the album was almost unanimously panned by critics. In fact, it proved so unpopular that I managed to pick up a second-hand copy for two pounds just a few months after it had been released.

And in truth, it's not a great album - not even a very good album. But amidst Justine Frischmann's half-baked tunes and Trio covers, there are two or three small hints at the songwriting smarts behind Connection, 2:1 and Line Up.

It's easy, more than ten years later, to forget that Frischmann was Britpop royalty in 1995 - a former member of Suede who was half of the scene's number one couple as Damon Albarn's squeeze. Liam Gallagher's promise that he would shag her was one of the many incidents that sparked the Blur v Oasis feud.

But there was a five year gap between albums, and Britpop had long since died a death by the time The Menace was released.

Nonetheless, opening track Mad Dog sounds like Blur's later work, with off-beat drums and yelping vocals. Miami Nice could almost be The Cooper Temple Clause, with sparse electronic percussion and throbbing bass, and penultimate track The Way I Like It successfully blends acoustic guitars with Frischmann's disinterested drawl.

The final track on the album is a cover of Trio's Da Da Da, as unexpected as it is unnecessary. But strangely, amongst the irritating electronic bleeps and Damon Albarn's keyboards (Albarn was credited on the album under the pseudonym Norman Balda) what emerges is the track on the album that sounds most like the Elastica of old - spiky punk-inspired Britpop melodies that sound like a band enjoying themselves.

Elastica are long since a footnote in rock'n'roll history, consigned to the Britpop scrapheap alongside Sleeper, Menswe@r and countless other indie chancers. Oasis and Supergrass may continue to fly the flag for the class of 1995, with Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon ploughing their own post-Blur furrows and the reformed Shed Seven and Dodgy attempting to recapture former glories.

But, with the benefit of hindsight, Elastica's debut album deserves to be recognised as one of the hallmark records of that brief time when Camden seemed to be the centre of the rock'n'roll world. The Menace falls a long way short of that standard, but at times it acts as a small reminder of what Elastica were capable of. We should mourn the fact that, unlike Jarvis Cocker and the rest of the 1990s indie gliterrati, Justine Frischmann is no longer recording.

And The Living's Easy

I'm almost loath to write this, but (whisper it) it seems that summer may finally be here.

So far, July has been an almost complete washout here in Angus. By my reckoning, there have been two days of sunshine so far this month, with the remaining 25 days marred by heavy rain, howling winds and towering black clouds.

But this morning I awoke to glorious sunshine, a cool and gentle breeze and blue skies as far as the eye could see, dotted only occasionally by fluffy white clouds.

By acknowledging that summer has begun, I've probably gone and jinxed it, and my planned lunch hour in Duthie Park will instead turn into me seeking refuge in the car as hailstones batter down on northeast Scotland.