Just for a change, Chris and I thought with the US election just 2 days away we should all spare a thought for the out going President.  After all in many respects he has spent the last 8 years being the most important man in the world..but soon he will have to give up that power and hand over the missile launch codes to someone else.

 

Next January he’ll be scratching around itching for a new challenge.

Chris and I put our thinking caps on and came up with a bunch of useful suggestions.

Perhaps if our readers have a few suggests we can pass onto him in an email?

 

 

Jobs That George Could Do

Double-glazing salesman, because he makes me glaze over.

 

Special envoy to the EC to make sure America’s relationship with Europe remains strong?

 

Become a Washington lobbyist for some of his foreign friends

 

Go on the lecture circuit and speak about the damage that alcohol and cocaine can have on the mind and body.

 

Become a Minister for a Southern Gospel Church and speak about the damage that alcohol and cocaine can have on the mind and body.

 

Join Former President Carter’s house building project and help build houses for the new homeless of America.

 

Lobby congress for tax breaks if they own a hybrid or electric car.

 

Make sure Washington DC reaches its potential as the nation’s hottest wind farm.

 

Open a vegetarian restaurant on Capitol Hill called “Friends of Pork Barrels”

 

Design a simpler voting machine to prevent further hanging chads.

 

Invest in the future by grooming Bush children for the White House.

 

Build a legacy Bush library and stock it with big print books.

 

Become an Internet Motivational Speaker.

 

Due to its recent tarnished image form a new political party called the

New Republicans and seek advise from Tony Blair.

 

Write a best selling book, foretelling that weapons of mass destruction will be found in a remote underground complex inside the Kurdish zone of Iraq in 2012.

Evidence with also be found in the complex that Osama bin Larden occupied the complex for about 6 months in 2006.

 

Things He Should Avoid

Whilst hanging upside down in “Gravity Boots” George W became convinced that he owned MacDonald’s.

 

Write a second best selling autobiographical book called “How to be the leader of the free world for dummies”

 

Going to the remote parts of Pakistan as an Evangelical Preacher.

 

Advise his Governor brother Jeb to re-instate a hanging death penalty for anyone called Chad

 

 

 

 

 

I like a good moan once in a while. It’s great to get things off my chest and vent some spleen. But the things I, as a grumpy old man, moan about are all things I can’t personally change. I don’t mean the weather, wasps and other natural phenomena, because there’s nothing anybody can do about those, so you’re on a hiding to nothing if you fume away instead of just accepting that they are as they are.

 

No, my complaints are all about the things somebody else, or society as a whole, ought to do differently, like forcing traffic wardens to face the human consequences of their disgusting little tickets, or bringing back the death penalty, specifically for car clampers and purveyors of reality TV.

What I would never do is say to somebody else, “Don’t you dare go ahead and fix the problem until I’ve finished ranting about it”. But that’s the difference between a man-rant and a woman-rant. If it’s possible to correct a situation, I’d rather just mention it to the person who’s in a position to do something about it, and maybe I’d throw in a few helpful suggestions where appropriate. Or fix it myself if that’s possible.

Women don’t think that way. It drives them crazy if you start looking for answers before they’ve agonised about a problem in the minutest detail. The dog’s just dumped on the carpet?

 

Man solution: get some toilet paper, pick up the cack and flush it down the loo,

clean the carpet, abuse the dog, end of problem.

 

Woman solution: describe it in all its awfulness (size, smell, texture), make it perfectly clear how upset you are, hunt through all your old invoices to prove how much the carpet cost, declare that it will never be the same again, ask whose job it was to house-train the dog (yours, of course), imagine a situation where somebody comes to visit with a baby crawling across that very spot, picking up God-knows-what infections and going blind… and now comes the really clever bit. Criticise the man for just standing there while the guggy soaks into the carpet, or if he’s leapt into action already, complain that he never takes the time to really listen to you.
Not only is it impossible for the man to win in a situation like this, but at the end of it, he’ll be just as much in the dark as he ever was about ways to avoid it happening again. Chalk another one up to the little lady, even though the man isn’t playing the same game at all.

I'd pay for the old boot to join the Bingo club if I could only find one in Timbuktu.

Ah. that's better.

 

 A fellow blogger, a nice lady found a concrete penis drawn outside her house on the pavement, if this wasn’t bad enough for this respectable housewife, the penis seemed to be pointing towards her house.  Helen claimed that the penis was in-fact due to her husband

moving furniture and scrapping said furniture on the paving stone, you judge for yourself.

http://belle-diaryofahousewife.blogspot.com/2008/09/of-missing-dogs-and-humungous-cock-up.html

Now I don’t know about you but I was never that handy with an etch-a-sketch, let a lone a dresser!

 

Is Pokey too popular?

If any of you have tendencies towards guilt look away now.

No I’m not talking about sexual intercourse….you are a smutty lot!

Nor prison… though it is a slang term in some parts and indeed it’s popularity is at an

all-time high.  Or even a child’s version of poker, though I’m sure in my lifetime

gambling for the under 18’s will be legalized.

 

 No…..This is ideal pet for the busy person or a great idea for kids that are pestering you for one, It’s a computer puppy dog.  If you a member of facebook or myspace

You can at no cost load this program in. You choose your puppy describe him/her and then play.   You give your puppy water and he very cutely comes and gets the water bowl, drags it and a hand fills the bowl with bottled water.  Then you can feed your puppy, which earns you a bone (you uses bones to get more puppy food).  You can also scratch and pet you puppy that earns another bone.   Much credit should go to the creators for making such a life like computer puppy, but perhaps there in lies the rub.  You see I, a grumpy old man started to feel guilty about feeding or not feeding Chocolate the puppy.  Wait a damn minute…then if I spoke to my daughter (5years old) she would ask, “Have you fed Chocolate Daddy?”

And now that my ex is also on Facebook so daddy can be checked up on …to see if he is telling porkies. And if all that guilt wasn’t bad enough other facebook members can stop by and feed your puppy if they think he has been neglected!!!!!!!!

 

Boner revived

The Cerne Abbas giant also know as the rude giant has been in danger of disappearing. Thankfully some concerned volunteers took turns this September to dig and hack at the outline of this most eccentric hill figure, replacing the old, grubby chalk and making sure the figure can be seen from miles around.

The job was a tough one. It took about a week for the existing chalk to be excavated to a depth of around 10cm (3in). Seventeen tonnes of new chalk was then be poured in and tamped down by hand. . The 180 ft (55 m) high, 167 ft (51 m) wide figure is carved into the side of a steep hill, and is best viewed from the opposite side of the valley or from the air.  In his right hand the giant holds a knobbed  club 120 ft (37 m) in length.  * Now those are my notes I read and wrote for myself but I’m not quite sure what a knobbed club is?  Chris said it’s a sex club on the outskirts of Watford.  I asked him how he knew that and he just smiled.  I then said like a fool, “Well if you know about this club…what’s it called?

                                                                                         “The Watford Gap”, he answered smugly.

 

 

Last night I made a long train journey, for the whole of which the young oik on the seat across the aisle from mine had his boots on the seat opposite him.

 

I was considering saying something to him, at the risk of starting a rumpus that would hold the train up even more than it already had been (damp tracks or something) when his mobile rang and he started mouthing off a stream of high-octane swearing at the person on the other end, oblivious to the fact that there were young children in the carriage. He seemed to think he was in a soundproof bubble, if he was thinking at all.

 

Everybody pretended not to notice, until a young mum said to him, "Oi, you ignorant little sod, mind your language in front of my kids. And get your bleedin' feet off the seat while you're about it!"

And he said, "Sorry, missus" and put his feet on the floor.

 

Now, what really annoys me about this is the fact that it had to be a woman. Before I became a grumpy old man, confronting oiks was a man's job, and people could be shamed into behaving themselves with a few well-chosen words, man to man. Now it seems as if only women are entitled to display any balls at all. AAAAARRRGGGGHHH!!!

 

No I’m not talking about a bottle whisky, or even a crate.

No my story has it’s beginnings in Tea, which will no doubt raise a few eyebrows amongst my American cousins.

You see that is what she moved, in such a graceful and wind-filled manner.

Against all odds, against all comers, she was the fastest all right.

You think with a description like that she must be loose, but no she’s as tidy and tight a ship as any in her day.  The Tea clipper called the Cutty Sark.

 

Cutty Sark's name derives from the famous poem, "Tam O' Shanter" by Robert Burns about Tam being chased by a scantily-clad witch called Nannie, dressed only in a cutty sark, an archaic Scottish name for a short nightdress.  Yes there a strange lot the Scots…………. and maybe I was wrong about her not being loose?

 

Built to last only 30 years, the 1869 clipper was in urgent need of conservation work by the end of 2006 when The Cutty Sark Conservation Project started. The ship is of composite construction, and so the conservation process is a complicated one! 

 

 

Unfortunately this long restoration became an ever more daunting task when a fire broke at 4.45am on 21st May 2007.   The London fire service worked heroically and managed to put the fire out by 06.28am. 

 

Millions of viewers watching part of our famous heritage go up in flames on the national news.  I remember the speculation at the time, that perhaps vandals had done this terrible act, or even worse?

 

The damage was so great it was fear this great ship could be lost but thank god the experts were able to restart the restoration work.

 

Then just the other day the newspaper report finally cleared up the mystery of who tried to burn down the Cutty Sark, who had done this callous act?  

 

Thankfully the culprits turned out to be lazy British workmen.  You see at the end of each day an industrial vacuum cleaner was used to clear up the mess. And being lazy in the best traditional way the often left this cleaner switched on.  The cleaner filled I presume with all kinds of wood shavings etcetera when it over-heated it was bound to set fire.  This was then further compounded by the dishonest security guards who the newspaper story alleges did not actually visit the site that night and indeed filled out a report dated the morning of the fire timed at 7am…..all’s well nothing to report.

 

So if like old sailing ships or even scantily-clad  Nannie’s please visit their site and if able give a little to preserve the past and tell ‘em two grumpyoldmen sent you. http://www.cuttysark.org.uk 

 

 

 

 It seems that there is a growing gap between reality and the comfort of perception.

Supposed good, caring parents are allowing their teenage kids to get drunk and get into all kinds of experimental sexual behaviour.

 

Age

Being in the restaurant business I often come into contact with teenager and the things they say…in a very matter of fact way would curl your hair.  Girls telling me that at 14 they often sneaked back into the house drunk after drinking sessions at the park.  Now I’m not talking about the typical troubled kids that are constantly in and out of court…no…I am talking about nice girls and boys studying for A levels. …when they are sober enough!

 

The Web

Young women I work with told me about her 15-year-old sister who was in trouble with her dad for posting semi naked and suggestive pics of herself on the Web

A handful of social sites like myspace, facebook, bebo and others need to be a lot tougher on the issue of policing the age and the content they allow young teenagers to post.  Basically the Internet is akin to the Wild West where anything goes, and they drag their collective feet and whine about censoring our freedoms when they are challenged. If a teenager…. your teenager sees this behaviour by their new “so-called web buddies”….. there’s lots of temptation to copy.

In trying to promote my blogs I recently joined several of these social networks and I couldn’t believe the stuff I saw!! Young teenagers offering cam-to-cam sex to other teenagers of either sex! 

 

The Media

Often reports things like paedophiles trying to groom teenagers but never to my knowledge tackles this bigger issue of so much unsupervised Internet activity.

 

Computer Games

Any creative game writer must know that his or her games are played by a much wider audience then the so-called viewer ratings (which are mostly ignored by parents).  Writers of such violent games like Grand Thief Auto which is basically a training video for wannabe criminals…. those writers should be forced to do community work in deprived and dangerous inner city areas to understand the social cost that their hate filled (especially authority) game generates.

You only have to talk to teenagers to realize their opinions on sex and violence has moved way outside the line of what was considered normal 10 or 15 years ago.

 

The Culprits

Parents make lots of excuses for their children,

To the teachers at their schools

To concerned grandparents who don’t understand where they went wrong

To ex-partners who don’t approve of their kids behaviour since the divorce

They used to use Television as a cheap babysitter (out of sight etc) but now the Internet with its total lack of decency or use of common sense.

 

Plan of Action

Their needs to be a big clamp down on any shop that sell alcohol to underage people.

And if during a stop and search police find kids drunk the parents should be fined.

 

If these social networks cannot police the behaviour of teenage users then they should ban all teenagers from using them before the age of 18.

Government should also bring pressure to bear on these Internet companies that are having a profound effect on our teenagers. Fine them heavily because that is the only rule they go by.

 

Again if we as a society cannot keep 12-17 years away from the hate mongering and violence glorifying in games like Grand Thief Auto then they need to be banned.

Finally…to parents (that supposedly love their kids) this is what you do to regain control over your children. 

Remove all TV’s and computers from bedrooms, allowing kids to watch and use them only up until bedtime.  No mobile phones to be taken to bedrooms after bedtime.

Harsh yes…. tough love definitely!!

It might cause strange reactions like more talking between the family members, more sharing and interaction, they might even go to bed before 3am and be fresh and alert at school.

 

I know at first the reaction from kids will be hateful, but part of being a parent is keeping your child safe from harm…especially when that harm is already in their bedrooms.

 

 

Do you know where your Grandparents are?

Years ago when I worked in Amsterdam, you’d often see something amusing or amazing …or both.    Once a week it happened the coaches would pull up inside the red light district.   The bus doors would open and out stepped several coach loads of pensioners and they would pile straight into the nearest sex shop!!! Well…….I never. What was even more amazing, I discovered that these frisky pensioners were all from Britain.   They didn’t just browse either you could see them clambering back onto their buses laden down with videos and sex toys.

 

The sex shop owner Andre told me two old British female pensioners had a cat fight over a big black dildo called Johnny Wad. It was on sale and it was the last one in his shop.   The fight carried on until some Hells Angels broke it up.

 

The Tale of the Blood Sausage

was working in the centre of Amsterdam at a rather plush hotel called The Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, along with a handful of Brits and 1 American.

Each February Amsterdam holds a Catholic festival that included a carnival parade, when it was still very cold…however it definitely brightens up the winter.

One of our 2 favourite local bars decided to hold a masquerade (fancy dress) party with a 400-guilder prize (which back then was about £100…a very decent prize).  So we decided as a group to go to the party.

If you can remember the cigar smoking baby in Who framed Roger Rabbit add a beard & moustache then you get some idea of how Steve looked in his bath towel sized Nappy (diaper). Only someone larger than life and full of confidence would dress like that, did I tell you he was a scouser?

On the other hand Phil was the kinda guy who if he couldn’t get a women then the next best thing was a fight, with strangers or his friends he showed no bias, an enigima of a man sometimes likeable sometimes loathsome…but never boring.  Phil, had just returned from a long weekend back to the UK so with no time to prepare went as the Jolly Green Giant by rubbing green food colouring all over his body. During the long evening he fell asleep but not before trying to chat up Tony the hooker. Only when Tony finally convinced Phil that he was a he did Phil give up his chat up line…..and then he fell asleep on my coat making the inside for ever green.

Tony was a nice young lad from Ireland, a likeable guy who was so good looking he should have been a model and it was due to those pretty boy good looks that the girls had decided to turn him into an Amsterdam hooker, complete with makeup and a wig.
I have no idea how long the transformation took but I do know the girls stripped him naked before they started. I had to admit walking towards the bar Tony looked like a very convincing, attractive young woman and even turned a few heads and attracted a few whistles as we walked.

Hans, the bar owner was a tall fit man, who obviously spent ever waking hour in the gym. Even so he was a very decent guy and allowed us to dance on the bar when the urge came upon us. I t was during the course of this particular evening that the urge did indeed come amongst us and we complied. After that……… the rest of the evening went a bit blurry as they sometimes did back then.

It was several days later when I popped in to Hans place and found Mial & Phil sitting at the bar; they seemed to looking over Polaroid photos of the party. One in particular seemed to be very amusing to them. I asked if I could take a look. At first glance it was a shot of 4-5 of our group dancing on the bar, but when you looked more closely Tony had his skirt hiked up and his manhood was dangling out of his pantyhose.

Several minutes later Tony walked into the bar, as we all made a concerted effort not to fall about laughing…you see in the interim Hans had pinned the offending Polaroid in amongst the other hundred or so photos and other bric-a-brac that made up the collage on the bar wall. Since the montage of photos had been there for several years Tony didn’t really pay it much attention. In the end it took a full two weeks before Tony realized……….that his blood sausage had been hanging out on display for two weeks for all of Amsterdam.

 

 

 

 

 After so many false dawns (you know that slapper that lives down the road, she’s really an alcoholic cross-dressing he).  Could this be the second coming? No I’m not talking about an overly long continental style of rumpy pumpy.

 

Shhhhh!  (then whispering)  I’m talking about the team…the footie team…3 lions.

After giving Croatia the drubbing they so richly deserve many others and I over here are holding our collective breath.  Has manager Fabio Capello got a winning formula?  Is England about to become the real deal? After so much cross-dressing and self-love by the players?   And self-love is fine in the privacy of your own home why do they choose to do it in front of 70,000 people?

 

The last time we had such high hopes was 7 years ago after trouncing the German’s

5-1 in Germany.  Just a day before that match I remember being goaded by an over confident German co-worker to back the England team.  I had a rush of blood and up the anti to £10 to win plus £5 a goal for the winning team.

 

 That day we gave the Germans a master class in winning a football match and served notice to the rest of the world we were a team to watch.  Then as quickly as our newfound dominance came……………. it went, leaving a puzzled look on the then coach’s face.

 

I’m sure when some of that generation of footballer’s look back on their careers they will wish they had fore-filled their football potential, instead of their earning potential.

 

It’s not often that I count my blessings at being an older man but in this case I get reverence and hushed respect as I recount and embellish to younger males that I was there! watching the 1966 final on the Telly live that England won 4-2, and how magical it was.  I don’t tell them my mum dragged me out to help carry the shopping half way through the match and I didn’t find out the result until later.

 

I do hope Dawn stay’s away from this party cus holding my breath isn’t as easy as it was 7 years ago.

“Japanese Women must be gagging for it”, pronounced Chris.  “Yep it certainly looks that way”,

I concurred.

 

Your probably wondering how on earth two old geezers living in England might have any notion as the sexual proclivity of Japanese women.

Well normally you’d be right and you could frankly dismiss this wild assertion, as lunacy……….but not this time.

 

Too much Love

REUTERS news agency reported the other day: "When 45 year old Engineer Tabo arrives home, it's not his wife or girlfriend that's waiting for him. But his love dolls, neatly and quietly sitting on the sofa.... "

The man’s small apartment is crammed to the rafters.  He then very lovingly adjusts the wigs on one of his “girlfriends” before the voice over continues…

"Tabo is one of the increasing number of Japanese men who has given up on dating or marrying women in the real world, and turn to these dolls for love, affection and sex. Tabo has spent more than $170,000 to buy nearly 100 of these sex dolls."

 

These $6,000 love dolls I guess could say are the Rolls Royce of sex toys and are not the blow up kind.  They look a lot more realistic have 35 moving parts and weight 27kilo.  The Japanese company that makes these “companions” said originally we made these dolls for handicapped people but they seem to have taken off.  The manager went on to say we now make 100 different models at the Tokyo factory.

I squinted at Chris pushing my glasses more firmly back onto my face…and then said  “I wonder when we will be able to get them on the NHS?”

Chris licked his bottom lip and squirmed around in his chair.

 

“I could see”, I told him.  “In a couple years time a factory in Mid Wales helping to revived the local economy (putting on my best Welsh accent) and we could call them

Valley of The Dolls”.

 

Sorry...the explitive in the headline was Chris's idea.

I thought since this was British Food Fortnight Chris and I should "do our bit" to encourage our fellow counrtymen to eat real food.  www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk

 

Kids and Food
I’m so tired of hearing the phrase “My kids wont eat that………there finicky!”
Oh…..was my reply….so what do they eat then?…… “Well they like chips, and chicken nuggets of course and burgers as long as there is no salad in the bun”. “I can never get them to try vegetables…so I have given up”. “I know…I know I let them have a breakfast of crisps and a tin of pop…..but what can I do?…..I don’t have time to make breakfast these days”. “What’s the point of having a dinning table?……they usually eat their TV dinners on their laps in front of the TV or computer. Then the child adds“My mom burns everything if she tries to cook……..that is why she only uses the microwave”.

 

My questions & comments
If you love your kids why do you feed them so poorly? …you are shortening their lives with a junk food only diet. By the time they are in the 50’s they will have the physical problems of someone in there 70’s.

Food can be the social cement of a family, a chance to be together and not just a bunch of strangers living in one house.

The food choices of UK children have not always been bad and unhealthy…in the end kids eat what we allow them to eat.  When I was a kid………. restaurants didn’t have “A kiddie menu” they offered half size portions of the adult menu.

There are lots of unused powers still available to parents to encourage good eating habits.  Pocket money…..mobile phones….rewards and treats such as Easter eggs, sweets, magazines, Videos or DVD’s….the list is often endless and yet these powers of persuasion are rarely used.

 

So know what you are Eating

Read the labels the largest ingredient is always listed first.

Did you know that E numbers are basically in food to mask and enhance poor quality ingredients?

Did you know that cooking from scratch is cheaper than ready made meals?

Did you know that if a drink is low in sugar it usually has artificial sweeteners in it.
Artificial sweeteners like aspertaime (which is sold under the name nutrasweet).

Don't take it as so that all foods sold in supermarkets are fine...........they're not.

Never presume...which kinda bring me back to a story I read in the newspaper when I was 18.

I was eating a tasty greasy bacon sandwich covered in brown sauce when I read that some poor unfortunate old lady had a treasured dog for her companion, it was like her child she never went on holiday, because she couldn't bare to be seperated from "bobby".  There was a new restaurant in her town that she want to try out and she of course took her beloved dog.  When she tried to enter the restaurant the manager told her sorry no dogs.  Just as she was about to leave the owner, not wanting to turn business away offered to put booby in the back until she was ready to leave.

She agree to this but unfortunately no one told the chef.  After finishing her delicious meal she paid and got up to leave, when she asked for her beloved pouch the embarrassed waiter explained....sorry madam...you've eaten him.