213th post end of year Hogmanay Spectacular in 3D! (selected areas)

Hoots Ma Boab and Jings! Welcome to the 213th Post end of Year Hogmanay Spectacular Post! Why 213th?  Why end of year? You ask? 213th because I missed the 200th posting and end of year because it's 31st of December, you dumb fucking twat. Do try to keep up. Anyway, I thought I'd take this chance to have a look at my readership, similar to as I did on the 100th posting. That means this is all about you, yes you! and you as well. That one at the back. OK, I asked a favour of you last time and I'll ask the same favour. When you've read this post please leave a comment. It only takes a second and I know I've installed anti spamming measures, but you know, I write this for free, for you. Go on, don't be a cunt.

Do as the monkey says...

So lets take a walk down Google Analytic lane and see how many folks have strolled this same way over the past year and a bit:

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!! Over 20,000 visits!! Who are you people? Where are you coming from? What the fuck is going on here!! OK, OK that's not the whole story, the actual visitor number is a bit lower, but it's still over 16,000 people:

The mind boggles with what people hope to find here. I only started writing this so Craig could read what I was up to in Iceland, what could people possibly want with this blog? Buts lets take a look at where they are coming from:

Good God! People from 144 countries have landed on my blog! About the only place people haven't come here from is China, mind you, my writings are probably banned along with everything else in the Internet universe by the Great Firewall of China. I've even had a reader in the Congo who decided to read at least two pages of this shit! Even someone in Greenland has read a portion of this blog. I didn't even know they had electricity in Greenland! Disappointingly North Korea hasn't sent anyone over to have a look. It's a bit of a shame that really, I've been reading a lot of books recently about North Korea and I would have thought they'd have repaid the compliment.

Go on Kim, you know you want to...

Well, let's turn our attention to how people are finding their way to these pages. As usual the search engine phrases that are used to get here show the best and worst of the people using the internetz... Well, some of it makes for depressing reading. Why someone is searching for the operating times of the Boston abattoir I will never know. Maybe it was their first day on the job and wanted to get to the pig sticking plant nice and early so as not to piss off their boss? Other interesting searches to note here are 'abattoir poker' and 'abbatoire [sic] avatar':

Woah. American Masturbators Society? I can't even find the words:

Who in their right mind is searching for Bin Hookers in Belfast? Are they searching for Nazi boots, or claiming that Boots the Chemist are Nazis? And what has that cunt Bono got to do with air raid shelters in Italy? My mind is literally blowing...

I seriously doubt someone was looking for a holiday cottage in Rotherham or Singapore. I just hope they don't go about their business dressed in a costume of Germany...

You think you've seen it all, but it just keeps coming. Like a torrent of madness. What kind of world do we live in when someone calls their son Somme? Hang on, what kind of world do we live in when people search for pictures of dog slaves eating shit? No wonder they're dole scum...

Hooray! I'm not the only one! Maybe we should start up some kind of Sweetcorn survivors group!

I can't Imagine there being any sex in Litchfield, never mind tantrid [sic] sex:

Pot Noodles on planes? Pot Noodle bnp? What flavour is that? Anti-immigrant?

What is it with the Internetz and Nazis:

And I couldn't leave this search engine search without a good bit of old fashioned abuse of your truly:

I think we've all seen enough? I certainly have. You lot scare the bejesus out of me. OK, today is New Years Eve, for most of you tonight is the night you all go out and stand six deep at a bar waiting for three hours to get served, just so the drinks can get sloshed over you as you make your way back through the crowded room to the corner you've managed to secure for yourself until the bells chime out twelve o'clock. Have a good one what ever you do, BUT DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT! See you in 2011 for more shit!

Anti-Christ's Mass

So that's Crass Mess all finally over and only 364 shopping days left until the next one! I'm going to tell you what I've been up to since the last posting. After working in sub-zero temperatures during the day my nights have been packed with far more festive fare! Thursday night saw the annual Treeton Towers drink-a-thon at my local. The whole night was given a special festive sparkle when a fight erupted between Deveaux and Bennett which involved drinks being tossed across the room, karate chops to the neck, effeminate punches thrown and Bennett screaming 'Get him out of here, he hasn't even got a proper name!' It was akin to the misdemeanors of Kid Rock and altercations outside of a Waffle House, you can't get much more redneck than my Rovrum mates. Paul was calmed and sent home covered in beer and, allegedly, his own shit whilst Bennett was left to lament his bite marks and collapsed wind pipe. Funny how it was only the terminally unemployed ones that ended up scrapping... It also marred the arrival of Pettigrew in the village after an eighteen year absence.

'It's my round!'

'No, it's my round!'

Christ's Mass Eve was spent in the company of the family at large, drinking copious amounts to dull the pain of the afternoon. This was followed up on Christ's Mass day with a trip out to Mr and Mrs Cat's for the now famous annual quiz. This generally revolves around sport, so this makes it pretty tough for me, but given that the rest of the family have difficulty writing their own names, I tend to come out somewhere on top. Last year's quiz was under suspicion due to claims of cheating, with little Tommy aledgedly feeding answers to his dad, Darren. This year, precautions had been put in place to stop such nonsense. Tommy was tied up to a pole in the back garden. I came second, due to a tie-breaker situation, with my mother winning outright. We kept the prize in the family at least. My prize? A bag of vacuum packed dead robins:

Om Nom Nom

Christ's Mass wouldn't be Christ's Mass without cards and this year was no exception. I got the usual amount of abusive cards from various friends, mostly with the words FUCK and OFF printed somewhere either on the outside or inside of the card. But the best by far were the two I received on Christ's Mass Eve from Justin and the Evil Herr Docktor Clay. I really have difficulty deciding which I like best. I like Justin's for its homemade qualities and I like John's for its thoughtfulness. I'll allow you to decided which you prefer.
Justin's card, made from a cheep lager box:

John's card, note the added beard, glasses and attention drawn to the feet of the character:

John's card interior.

And speaking of Clay, on a final note here is a text message I receievd from him on Christ's Mass eve:

It's christmas eve and i'm wandering around homebase in a raincoat with a bottle of sherry. Is this the shape of things to come?

Spinning Stephenson!

Over the latter part of last week my car started to have a funny turn for itself. Not only did it refuse to turn over but once finally started it began blowing billowing clouds of thick condensation out of the fans obscuring vision. The windows refused to demist unless they were all wound down. This made driving up and down the motorway to work rather difficult. So difficult in fact, I decided it needed to go the car doctors so he could look at its tummy and make it all better again. It turns out that it's nothing to do with the car's tummy (they don't have tummies, apparently...) but it was the air flow matrix. It was as fucked as fucked can be. It would cost as much to buy a new unit and replace it as the car cost in the first place. It was a cheap car but I'm not doubling the cost of it to keep it on the road. So the poor old block of cheese has been assigned to history. I'm not sure what to do with it yet. My choices seem to be, sell it on eBay and hope the buyer doesn't notice the clouds of condensation or the misted windows, sell it for scrap or parts or my personal favourite, set fire to it and roll it down a hill. Time will tell.

Time to claim on the insurance...

So as a consequence of this situation, further confounded by the fact Tim and Cath won't allow me to stay at their place anymore (I am still confused as to why the cat was in my bed, dressed in a pink tutu), I have had to turn to the HILARIOUS VAGARIES of Public Transportation. Since owning a car I have been able to bypass this mode of transport favoured by peasants and the clinically insane, but now I've been thrown back into the circus like a Christian facing down a lion. My story begins as most public transport critiques do, with complete incomprehension as to how the entire system is handled. At my local bus stop there are NO buses in the morning except on a full moon when Scorpio is in the ascent. And only then do they come once every three hours and seventeen minutes. How does First Buses think people are going to get to work every morning? But of course! Public transport isn't for the employed, they can afford their own vehicles. Only the bottom feeders and dole scum use the bus to go and sign on. We don't need buses in the morning, we only need them to start running after Jeremy Kyle's finished.

'Have we finished here yet? I need to go and sign on'

An aside about buses: When I lived for a while in Dublin the bus stops had the timetables written up, so you could see when your bus was about to arrive. Except it wasn't that simple, no, you get nothing for free in this world, the timetable would only tell you what time the bus set off from its origin. I'm sure you can already see the MASSIVE FLAW in this system of operation, what if you had no idea where the place of origin was? I mean where the fuck is Ballickmoyler and how far away is it from this bus stop that I'm standing at? How long will the bus take to get to me, even with a strong tail wind? The timetables were less than useless. Just think about that for a second.

Whilst you're thinking about useless Irish things, think about this; this man is still alive. Where is the justice in the world?

Anyway, as I was saying, as there were hardly any buses before 9.30 I had to choose one that would get me to the train station before the train left that I needed to take to get to York in time to meet Berny for a lift to site. It happens that the only bus that was on offer was one at 5.17am. It got me to the train station about an hour and ten minutes BEFORE the train I needed. Talk about lack of communication between various transportation executives. So I get to the station nice and early, at which point I noticed that the information that I'd gleaned from the National Rail Enquiries site was actually wrong about the trains departure time and kicked my heels until the ticket office opened. When it did I was told that there were no trains running for the first part of my journey to York, between Rotherham and Doncaster. Cursing Thatcher for privatising the rails, I ran like a demon back to the bus station and jumped on a bus to Doncaster instead. I got there just in time for the train to York and endured the quiet carriage surrounded by the Canadian-Asian guy blabbing into his telephone about 'just having to get to London today' and using the word 'so' as punctuation and the girl who talked incessantly for twenty  minutes into her phone and ended the conversation with 'OK, gotta go, call me back when you get this message.' It made me feel like screaming; IT'S THE QUIET CARRIAGE YOU IGNORANT CUNTS!!! But I would have been breaking the carriage rules myself.

The sign is there for a reason you twats!

In other countries, public transport is an exciting way of seeing the world, in European countries you marvel at the double decked trains and the impeccable sticking to timetables, in Japan one can watch in awe as the team of cleaners take a bow to the train before cleaning it spotlessly. In Africa you can wonder if the bus will make it round the next hairpin bend at 200mph whilst weaving around the corpses of the passengers of the last bus that tried it. It's exciting and adventurous, in Britain it's a fucking grind where as many people as possible are packed in to the carriages after paying extortionate prices for the pleasure of smelling someone else's armpits or listening to strangers mobile phone conversations. And that's if the fucking train turns up in the first place. For fuck's sake, Britain invented the train. How can we get it so wrong, so many times? In the end I did make it to work on time, but this was my misfortune as we were forced to work in -12 degrees, breaking rock hard ground. Just like a North Korean labour camp.

You work now!

There's sick in my hair

I woke up in someones guest bedroom, with a head which felt as though Thor was forging hammers in it, a mouth that felt as though a tramp had broken into the house during the night and shat in and vague recollection of violently arguing about the validity of executing soldiers in the First World War. IT MUST BE FESTIVUS!!

It all began on Tuesday when Tim, Cath and I had a Festivus meal at their place. All the elements were there, the pole, the feats of strength and the airing of grievances. Mainly about leaving the toilet seat up. If only this had been mentioned three months ago, it would have been fixed instantly. But oh no, Timmy likes to wind himself up and take the silent moral stance. We even had crackers, stuffed with middle class cracker trinkets. A hair bobble, a tiny roll of sellotape for pixies and a set of six dominoes. Seriously? Six dominoes? What fucking use is that?

Should you ever need to tie your hair back, play a very short game of dominoes or wrap and tiny parcel...

Anyhoo, after I wrastled Timmy to the floor and won with three submissions to one I went to bed with my tiny mind swimming in alcohol.

Festivus, where the fun never starts...

The next day at work was a grind, with gulag like conditions and Wincey being unrepentant and unheeding to my hungover needs. Like a lie down in a nice bed. Or a big sleep.

'FASTER!!'

'But I've got a headache!'

The evening saw me back in the bosom of the ghetto for Elmet's Festivus celebrations. During this one I mainly gossiped with Colin about the current state of British archaeology and slagged Dane off for punching above his weight. We were wowed by the barman and his David Blaine impressions. I had to take it quiet this time since I was still suffering from the previous evening and had to drive. But I still had a good time.

Fuck Christmas

Then Friday rolled around and Onsite had their annual party held in what appeared to be the kitchens of Pizza Express in York. Berny and I dropped a massive bollock and arrived after everyone else, this led to us sitting on the kid's table for the meal. We blocked it out by sinking as much wine as humanly possible. A quick repair to Thomas' bar after brought a reemergence of a two day long argument that Barry and I were having. He claimed he'd won it. I claimed he was a cunt. Kate tactically moved away and left us to it. I finally got to bed at about 4.00am only to wake up in the state described in the opening sentence of this post...

No one parties like the jerks at Onsite...

As usual this week I have had my fair amount of ridiculous text messages from Herr Docktor Clay. This latest one came in last night during a discussion about what would be better than watching the Morgana Show:

I'd rather be raped by a gorilla while sucking off another gorilla which was on fire, with lots more gorillas stood around laughing and jerking off in my face.

Not a fan then, Clay?

More shit for your dumb eyes

In other news, yesterday saw the sad death of Captain Beefheart. The word Genius is used a lot these days and generally comes no where close to describing whomever the epithet is applied to, but I think in this case we have lost what could be described as a musical genius. Why is it always the good ones? Why couldn't it be Elton John or Paul McCartney?

The Freezing Moon

This has been a week that has seen massive student protests and riots against a LYING TWO FACED coalition government and their ridiculous plans to destroy several centuries of education in one swift swoop. But I'm not going to dwell on this as it just makes me angry and depressed. Instead, come with me on a journey of Polar exploration, a magical trip to the land of ice, a tundra landscape dotted only with rocks to serve as navigational points. Come with me to share the joys of last week's work!

Nov 6 1912

Broke camp on Ross Ice Shelf. Bade a sad farewell to Chef and Patty. They take four dogs with them and small amount of supplies. -14 degrees recorded by thermostat in automobile. Not sure it's working correctly but bloody cold anyway. Camp at base of glacier, the men are in high spirits. Sense of adventure is high, everyone happy to be here.

Farewell Patty!

Every journey begins with one step...

Nov 7 1912

Glorious day of bright sunshine but still sub zero temperatures, storm moves in by afternoon. No land marks causes hard going but we push on and make six miles today! Last of the dogs die in the evening, finish the day by pulling the sledges by hand. Camp still in good mood despite the hardships.

Nov 8 1912

The men are tired. Scrump has come down with a fever and Jonty seems to be having fitful sleep. They show me a brave face though. It can't last. Finished off the last of the dogs, a stew with the precious few vegetables we have. No tinned food left and all perishables are now rotten.

 

 Nov 9 1912

A storm brought fresh snow fall and collapsed three of the tents. Tick-Tock and Old Captain Merry took quite ill. Kept the party awake for the duration of the night. Merry announced he was going to attend to his ablutions and walked outside. No sign of him since. I pray that the furnace will hold out. Had to find alternate food sources all of which were unsuccessful.

Nov 10 1912

Lieutenant Farington and Corporal Tubes along with Tribby and Slack, the stokers, found dead in their cots. Froze to death over night. Terrible business. Storms getting worse and visibility down to nil. No hope of rescue coming. Not even sure where we are, all compasses are frozen solid. Had to burn the last of the sledges to keep the fires going. Damn this place. One last toast with the remaining brandy: Gentlemen, The King!

'for God's sake look after our people'

Death would freeze my very soul, Makes me happy, makes me cold!

OK, here is the obligatory snow post. As my UK readers are aware the country has been under the ICY GRIP OF WINTRY DEATH for the past week. Chaos has reigned as people have taken to digging out their basements to use as shelters and storage for canned goods for the forth coming apocalypse that is always heralded by the arrival of the snow. In supermarkets up and down the country people have been seen fighting pitched battles over the last bottle of HP sauce. The BBC has a 24hr 'grit watch' in the form of updates every ten minutes. We need to know which councils are unprepared for snow after all their money sunk in Icelandic bank accounts a couple of years ago. Old folk are freezing to death for fear of spending some of the money stuffed under their mattresses on fuel bills. Abandoned cars litter the streets where only ghostly figures move like spectres seeking shelter from the grim fist of cursed white.

Looks like I'm not getting to work tomorrow...

I'm loving it. I love snow, I even love the chaos it brings. Nothing delights me more than watching idiots struggling in their cars to get to work because the cracker factory would really fall to pieces without them being there at their workstation. I've not been at work all week, on Monday I did attempt to get to York from Rotherham and made fifteen miles in three hours. I decided to turn back see what would happen if the sun came out and melted the stuff. It didn't and more fell so I've not been able to move the car all week. It does make me feel a little guilty that the guys are all out on site working whilst I'm sitting here on my fat can in the warm drinking tea and eating biscuits. But the feeling doesn't last very long.

How I left site on Friday...

...and how it looked on Monday, photo courtesy of Logan Josh

What has pissed me off is that fact that last night I missed seeing Wolves in the Throne Room play in Leeds. I'd had the tickets for ages and even rung the venue to see if they'd cancelled the gig themselves. Turns out they were braving the weather and played. I should never have called... But taking advantage of the inclement weather; Dave, Jon and I set out last night to get some promo photos for Abwehrschlacht. I keep getting asked for band photos to illustrate interviews but we have none, so last night we took advantage and headed into the woods. Jon came along as official photographer. He used to work as a gig photographer for the Corp back in the day, so he was a great choice. We stood in the woods, he snapped some pics, we walked through the woods, commenting on how warm it was, he snapped a few more pics. We said 'let's go up on top to where the field is.' We did and instantly wished we hadn't. The icy winds that whipped across the open fields threatened to blow us back into the trees. Mind you, this is Black Metal and it was grim enough for good photos so we took it. They've turned out excellently, here's a couple that have yet to be farted about with. Jon described them as photos from a serial killer's family album...

To celebrate the snow, here's a few Videos for your delight: