Christmas Time Blues, Dwarfs and Movies.

As far as Christmas's go, this last one has seen me age about twenty years almost overnight, although I hasten to add that I hope to be back to my normal age quite soon.

 

My reasoning for this statement, well for many reasons this year I just could not get into the festive spirit no matter how hard I tried and so in the end I gave up and gave in to my boring side.

 

( For those who are beginning to feel "oh my, its another depressive one - I can only say, "hey mister, this is MY blog, its not a personal email to you ... if you want to read something light hearted and jovial go back a few entries or better yet, go pick u something from Spider Robinson or Craig Shaw Gardener" :o)

 

I have to admit that it all started when my friend from the train let me down by not repaying the money I gave to her back in February of this year. Despite begging, threatening, cajoling and otherwise trying to get her to repay it, she has steadfast refused to budge and thus seriously harm my bank balance.

 

Partly because of this, and a few other things of course, meant that I have heavily relied upon my overdraft facility. I was unaware that this is considered a serious faux pax by the British Consulate's across the world as was a major factor in my ex-girlfriend being refused entry for Christmas. ( nb. she was still my girlfriend at this point! )

 

When I found that this use of my overdraft had gone against us I decided to refinance the house mortgage, so that I consolidated all my debts in one place and wiped out my overdraft at the same time.

 

However in order to do this it meant I could not afford to continue to send over to her any more money and THIS was when she got all personally affronted and we decided to call it a day. It deeply depresses and saddens me to learn that less than a week after receiving the last amount of money was sent over she can suddenly fall out of love with me.

 

Of course, the truth is that she can only have been after me for my money, and despite the precautions I took to protect myself against this kind of false affection it still happened.

 

My only real crime was being prepared to try and find love abroad. Many of my penfriends have found love which has led to marriage and children for some, however my luck / choice of partners has not been so smooth or fortunate.

 

Knowing that this is not even the fist, second or even third time that I have fallen prey to this kind of pseudo affection, I have been forced to admit that I am a bad judge of women's intentions and as such will no longer look for love abroad, or even in this country for the foreseeable future.

 

As all this came to a head in the middle part of December, and I had already planned out my entire Christmas > New Year > January holidays around her stay here, I was at a lose end for much of the holidays.

 

With the fiasco of the UK airports, and my finances in the most appalling shape in my life, I did not really want to face the prospect of trying to grab a last minute holiday, and with my lodger away for the main four days, I turned my attention to an old labour of love of mine, to wit ... my Dwarf Army.

 

Apart from the trip to my mothers for Christmas Day meal, the entire last four days I have remained at home, in front of my television for amusement and mental stimulation whilst ploughing through the arduous task of transforming two score and more of dullish grey two inch lead figurines into units of battle scarred and hardy Dwarf Warriors, in preparation of pitting them against the mighty forces of the Dark Elves, High Elves, Lizardmen and the undead fiends led by their own nightmarish Vampire Lords.

 

Without the aid of a magnifying glass, or powerful lamp, I set about a strict regime of at least twelve hours of under-coating, base-coating, detailing and then fine detailing at least fifty of my most used models. I also recreated a Anvil of Doom base and the movement base for over a half dozen powerful war machines.

 

I do not think for a second that this was my best work, but then I have had little practice in over a decade of painting such fine detail on this medium, and furthermore there is only so much you can do with a limited variety of brushes and an equally limited number of paints. I am content that my painting is at least on a par with my fellow group of gamers, but it would never even get past the preliminary round of a Games Workshop Golden Demon Award competition.

 

During this obsessive bout of modelling, I did manage to watch, or at least listen, to quite a lot of television at the same time ( mainly watching whilst the paint of drying! ) however I was aggravated on more than one occasion by the overly long duration of adverts.

 

Not only do may adverts have very annoying jingles, but they seem to go on, and on, and on - repeat themselves two or three times during a single break, and one totally gobsmacked me by advertising for a savings scheme for a Christmas Hamper in 2007 ... on BOXING day 2006. Talk about trying to get in early, but woooow ... that's just not even funny.

 

On the up side though, the Royal Institute Lectures are as good as ever, I have eaten my way through about a kilo of chocolates and mince pies and have re-watched at least a dozen good movies, as well as another dozen no so good flicks.

 

And now, the painting is done, my lodger has returned and with his the usual bedlam and broomsticks are also about to restart, my remortgage is imminently about to complete and as part of my New Year celebration I always resolve to put aside the mistakes of the past year and look forward with eagerness to a bright new start.

 

So all in all ... Hold on 2007, Dickon's coming ... :o)

How many presents ???

My family decided a few years ago that this time of year was getting a little too expensive for all our tastes. Coming from a big family who almost all now have large families of their own, having to buy presents for all the uncles and aunts, sisters and cousins, it became clear that there were just too many presents that need to be bought.

 

This is a three fold self inducing curse as a) we don't have the money; b) we don't have a clue what to get that many people who would otherwise already be getting more than a dozen other presents from the family ( so asking other people what so-and-so wants is more confusing than illuminating ); and c) we don't have the time to find and buy that many presents.

 

As none of us have won the lottery, married a millionaire, or inherited a vast fortune, we mutually agrees a few years back to limit the number of presents to just out immediate family, our mother plus one sibling, the one being drawn blind from a hat of names.

 

This ensured that everyone gets at least one sensible present and no one is forced to either remortgage their house or take out a loan just to keep up the rest. It also ensured that you don't just get a collection of tiny presents that are as cheap and random as the contents from a dozen Christmas crackers.

 

It might not work for every family, but this suits us and ours just fine and dandy thank you very much.

A Christmas Message

I hope this letter finds you healthy and in good festive spirits.

It is now December 12th at 7.59am and I have just posted the International Christmas cards to my friends abroad that trust me enough to give me their addresses.

Apparently there is also a western tradition to include with the sending out of Christmas cards a letter that briefly covers all the things that have happened or been important in my life in the last 12 months.

I have never done this before, but I feel that in email form, it might be a great time to start my own yearly highlights letter.

Of course far too much has happened to put in full details, but I feel it would be nice to at least give mention to a few things.

So here are a few of the things that I remember about 2006. It has not been the best year for me, but I have tried to remain positive throughout.

Two of my international pen pals got married to their respective partners and six more have announced news that either they are soon to get married or have become pregnant. Sadly also three friends have split apart from their previous partner.

Following my employers being taken over through a corporate buyout, the rules and conditions of my job have changed and it has become a job I no longer enjoy working for and eagerly am trying to leave.

I turned 30 in April and to celebrate I held a large part and invited all my family and friends I knew. I was very happy that all my close family travelled down to attend.

It also showed me how rare true friends are, as despite being given months notice some still did not know where it was, while others did not even attempt to attend, saying that they could not make it without even trying to see if they could.

The other cruel lesson I learned about friends, money or myself, is the old saying "Neither a borrower nor a lender be". I have always tried to help out others wherever I can and if this means lending them money then I would willingly give them as much as I could in order to help them out.

Sadly every time that I have done this I have been badly let down by the person who I lent the money to, and this has placed me in a lot of financial debt and worry. The simple truth is that unless you are a large company with the ability to take people to court and blacklist their credit rating, most people will make no real effort to repay a loan given to them.

This is true for both men or women, near or far, old friends or new. If people do not have the money to buy something large then lending them the money is normally folly as it is also unlikely that they will have enough spare money to repay you what they borrowed.

The other half of the lesson is that I am far too soft emotionally, and need to toughen up, as half the problem is my own in offering the money in the first place. Although it pains me to do so, I have now firmly had to decide that no matter the person or the situation I will not place myself in financial debt again to help out another.

I managed to find a new lodger to come and say in my spare room, however things did not work out as planned and she left shortly after having a disagreement with her old boyfriend. However the timing was good as it gave my old friend Leigh a chance to move back as my lodger once again, after he became ill and had to give up his job til he recovers.

My mum and sister completed their garden conservatories which they have both been looking anticipating.

My friend David has had another book published and this was the first one that I actually went out and bought as soon as I saw it in the shops. Unfortunately due to a printing error the publishers did not include an acknowledgements section and so I have not managed to see my name in print again.

I managed to visit my 20th country ( including all the major parts of the United Kingdom ) and fell in love with a woman from the Dominican Republic.

Sadly her Visa to visit the UK and stay with me in December was denied for some very minor faults and although it has prevented us from spending time together this Christmas, we will try again in April for my birthday.

Other countries I managed to visit this year were Northern Ireland, Scotland, Hungary, Norway and Sweden. On my travels I met lots of wonderful people and experienced much that each country had to offer, however they were all done on my own.

Despite arranging to meet people in a few of them I have also learned that it is best to plan your holiday on our own and around yourself and not rely on meeting up with anyone. This at first seems selfish but in the end it is just a prudent course of action and will prevent you being stranded in a foreign city or country with no idea of what to do or where to stay.

Well that just about covers the big points for 2006. It had many small points both good and bad that sort of evened out in the end, sadly most of the big points this year were negative.

However I am keeping my head held high and am looking forward to a bright and challenging 2007, where I can move on and take the second step on the road to my creative dream of becoming a travel writer.

The Christmas tree in my front room smells wonderful and all the festive lights and decorations are up in my house, as I prepare to celebrate another year in my house. It also reminds me that my current house, where I have lived for the last 5 1/2 years is also the longest that I have ever lived at the same address.

It took me 25 years, but I finally think that I have laid down some thick roots and so until I am ready for my next big jump, most probably abroad, I am content to remain here for the next few years as well.

Take care and I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Operation Acoustic Kitty (OAK)

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=636

 

I spotted this link as part of a comment on my friends blog and I just had to write my own piece about it.

 

From having followed the link it appears that the CIA scientists spent more than 5 years and $15 million dollars ( from the years 1961 to 1967 ) trying to create a cyborg cat as a spy listening device.

 

As I read it, I could see that despite its absurdity, it was just as likely to be true as false. And thus I decided to write my own account of how it was likely to have initially occurred.

 

This is loosely based upon the meagre crumbs of credible evidence I came across and also heavily laced with sarcasm and my own flavour of artistic licence.

 

---

 

Operation Acoustic Kitty ( a.k.a. My cats got no nose, how does it smell? ... terrible!!! )

 

Back in the early 1960's a couple of long haired Uni grad students were chilling in their dorm room, smoking a bit too much of the old wacky backy and listening to their Elvis EP's.

 

In the news they had just heard about the Commies shooting down a U2 spy plane and in their drug fueled state of mind began to kicking round a few ideas for alternative methods of spying.

 

Neither of the two lads, Dan and Wez {for surely they were both male and had typical names}, had any real goals in life and their only objectives seemed to be booze, drugs, chasing campus chicks and dodging real work.

 

Among the ideas that floated round their dorm room ceiling that fateful night was 'ways to disguise spy devices as cobwebs', 'what colour are sheep in your dreams?' and 'why can't you buy mouse flavoured cat food? '.

 

Then all of a sudden the idea struck Wez like a bolt from blue. Flipping back through an old history book he comes across the piece of text he had been thinking about, to wit "Russians train dogs to carry explosives into battle ".

 

Despite the Commies unsuccessful efforts, Wez feels sure that, if done properly, the use of domestic animals as spy devices is still a great idea. Sadly their Uni prohibits dogs on campus grounds, so instead to test his theory Wez turns his hazy attention onto his own pet pussy.

 

With Dan stroking him furiously to occupy him, Wez began to blow smoke into 'Frees'' poor face, for that was his cats name. Thus is was that Free, for that was the cats name became their first volunteer cat test subect. Once they were sure that Free was suitably intoxicated, Wez ordered Free to go across the room and listen to their other roommates sleep talking mumbles.

 

In response to having smoke blown into his face, Free carefully jumps down off his owners lap and crosses the room to where the air was slightly less thick with fumes.

 

"Eureka" cries Dan, "We got ourselves a walking spy carrying device. Now all we got to do is to fit a recorder to him and were all set."

 

A few months later ... after much trial and error, Dan and Wez feel that they have got enough of an idea to get some proper government funding to finish their project. Not only will the project allow them to finish their Thesis, but if they can somehow drag it out long enough, they can also probably bum around and escape doing any real work for the next couple of years at the very least to boot.

 

Enter onto the scene, a complete loon of an CIA officer, one Victor Marchetti.

 

Now Victor was not the sharpest tool in the work box so to speak, but he knew enough about inner-politics, and when he heard about a few Uni kids with an idea for making a spy-moggie he thought that this could be his ticket up the ladder of espionage success.

 

On the upside, if it worked then he can claim full responsibility and thus all the credit and benefits attached with coming up with a new technique to get one over the Ruskies, especially as they were about to beat the US into getting the first man into Space.

 

On the downside, if it all went tits-up he could deny all knowledge and be sure that he could bury his involvement and the corresponding paperwork for the next 50 years, and be fully retired before anyone further up the chain of command became any the wiser.

 

Plus finally, the best bit of all, was that it wasn't even his money that he was playing with, for as usual it would fall to the good-old US tax-payer to foot the bill.

 

So Victor went to see Wez and Dan and gave them a grant, plus their own private lab sealed off from the rest of civilisation, in exchange for exclusive rights on the spycat.

 

For their part, it was the best day in Dan and Wez's lives, a real bumper payday, and whenever Victor grew impatient or curious to see where the fruits of his belief were, all they really had to do was produce a few meaningless graphs and baffle him with some semi-plausible sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo until his eyes glazed over and decided that it must be proceeding nicely and then go back to stuffing themselves with pretzels and cappuccinos.

 

Thus it came to pass that Dan and Wez succeeded in reaching their ideal positions of finding as many different ways to pass the time of day as possible, without ever doing much anything, and all in the name of helping the country.

 

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and even for a patient man like Victor, 5 years is as long as he could fiddle the numbers before he had to shelve the idea. Luckily for him he was also 5 years closer to retirement and had already found another golden goose to go after.

Losing sight of my Life's Dream

Well I have finally had enough of playing Mr Nice Guy.

Life and ex-friends have screwed me over tooooooo much for me to just sit back and hope that it will all get better.

My girlfriend ( but mine for how much longer? ) from the Caribbean has been refused an entry Visa to the UK for Christmas.

The two main reasons stated were :-
a) that they don't believe that she will go back after the holiday, and;
b) that I use my overdraft regularly and cannot prove I am able to support her during her stay in the UK.

Realising that neither of these are really my fault it has done nothing but left a foul taste in my mouth.

I now hate with a passion, hitherto never personally experienced, all the "so-called-friends" who have borrowed money from me, then screwed me over by refusing to give it back.

At the very top of the list is a woman that I have known for many years because we catch the same train, work in the same area of London and meet up regularly for drinks and meals.

I have explained the situation to her on many occasion, but she has revealed her true inner bitch by not caring in the slightest.  

Others who have incurred my subtle wroth are others for much the same reason, but nowhere near the same extend or level of pure "I-don't-give-a-shit-about-you"-ness.

 

However one did manage to leapfrog herself above the rest by saying "I can't give you any money this month as I need to buy lots of presents for my family". My only reply was as sarcastic as I have ever been, with something close to "Gee then its a good job I don't come from a BIGGER family myself really, isn't it!!!". Such selfishness I never expected from that one individual and it cut me deeper than the rest, though I do my best not to let it show anymore.

 

NB - I am lucky to still have both parents, 4 sisters, 1 brother, 9 nephews & nieces and a myriad of cousins, half cousins and the many related in-laws, almost all of whom I am on very good terms with and who live virtually on my doorstep.

In order to try and avoid using my overdraft at all, I have had to remortgage my house, a thing I hate to do ESPECIALLY as I am not even at the end of the current deal and thus I am liable to pay plenty of fat fees just for the privilege of moving mortgage brokers.

 

So in short ... "a very big thank to all those who take and don't give ... one and all you have succeeded in pushing me to the brink of financial ruin and distancing me from my life's dream by at least a decade ".

 

I refuse to give in on my dream, but I have to accept that I have am too soft to make it in the cold hearted and ruthlessness of the London business community, and that if things do not change soon then I may become too old to fully enjoy my dream house when I finally get there.

 

And just when I thought that things could not really get much worse, { without losing my health, which I am forever grateful is and has been great through my life }, my girlfriend tries to hang me up with guilt over not sending over her some money this month.

 

However, having stated that it is her own fault, combined with her daft friend who suggest she state to the visa department that she is my long term fiance, I now have to save every penny in order to clear my overdraft immediately and for at least the next three months.

 

Thus I said I was unable to, and gave her a classic Hobson's choice. "Money now but don't come over until at least September or no money but come over by April at the latest?" - Sadly she chose to go for option 3, to wit, she suddenly asked could I "give her a moment" and then instantly disconnected. Seeing as I had already waited up until almost midnight to have this most important of all conversations, this was not the best way to say goodnight or to resolve this tricky situation.

 

But at this is typical of her behaviour as of late, I am inclined to take some offense at this, and wrote to her in my broken Spanish saying just as much. I would not be too surprised at all to find myself dumped and on the "free and singles" market again in the very near future. However, seeing as in the last 5 months all she has done is ask for money, muck things up officially and send me photos of her wearing skimpy bikinis, I am sure that I can do much better for much less without even trying.

 

After all, the Internet is filled to burst with images of scantily clad women of every possible background and most are completely free to view, save or download!!!

38 Unclassified Persons

In the UK there are exactly thirty eight unclassified figures.

These are people that somehow do not {or no longer} officially exist in any capacity what so ever.

They are not accountable to anyone except themselves and their single contact with the real "classified" world.

How they live, or how they became unclassified, I do not pretend to know, but what IS believed to be known, is that these are highly trained individuals that and able to dispatch any opponent, regardless of experience or weapon, in under ten seconds - even someone as accomplished as Jean Clause Van-Damme.

What else do is believed to be known about them, is that they do not look like toned athletes or bronzed Adonis's, but instead appear like regular Joes the same as the likes you or me.

They hide behind the smokescreen of their story being so ridiculous that no one would believe them and I personally know that at least one hangs out in a quaint little wine bar just off Berkeley Square.

And how is it, that I seem to know such facts about these shadowy figures? Simple, because one got drunk at the venue of our office christmas quiz and told a fellow member of our staff, who thought it so bizarre he could not wait to tell me.

So what do I believe?

Well, considering that Bruce Lee was the most famously skilled Martial Artist alive, having studied dozens of fighting methods and techniques, and even created his own style-less form called "Jeet Kun Do", yet even HE only boasted of being able to defeat any opponent in under sixty seconds, for someone to suggest that they can defeat anyone in under ten seconds is nothing but drunken optimism bordering on mindless drivel, at least IMHO.

As for the rest of his claims? Hmmm, maybe he was just play acting the part of the classic drunk to disguise the truth behind the facade ... but I doubt it.