Know how he feels

I had a problem yesterday. To a student or kid not that big a problem but to a member of the '9 to 5' workforce a bit of a biggy. I slept through my alarm. Which would have been a problem but I was saved by the kid next door. This is because this kid is a little so and so and really really does not like going to school or getting up in the morning. So he throws tantrums and screams. Actually no scratch that, using the term scream is a understatement. This kid has a full on sonic attack. Which fortunately is loud enough if not to wake the dead, was able to wake me in this instance, ten minutes after I got up, so it wasn't that bad.

Ironically enough he was a quiet as a mouse this morning, not that I would have needed that noise due to the fact that as I was aware I had slept through my alarm yesterday I woke up early before it went off. In fact I woke up very early, by nearly a hour, and then I couldn't get back to sleep for more then five minutes at a time. so in the end I gave up and got up nearly half a hour before I really had to.

Of course even more ironically there was the mother of all traffic jams this morning, so I was five minutes late to work. Isn't that just great. I wake up a hour early and even leave the house ten minutes early but I get to work five minutes late. How the heck did that happen???

We had some technical problems at institute last night. Bro H's computer crashed right at the start of the lesson which meant we weren't able to view any of the slides he had prepared. So the lesson ended up, ending nearly 20 minutes early! That was even with a lengthy question and answer session as well!

The YSA Conference sounds like it might be in trouble. Apparently the number of people who have signed up so far is very very low. Not much surprise there for some people :-)

later!

The YSA Grad Ball ( make your own captions)

Hey Everyone, as promised here are some photos from this years YSA graduation ball. Please feel free to post your own captions. I'll add the best to each photo.

Face to face with the truth of where pork comes from.
The Leicester YSA who were there at at the ball

Bosslady
Bro H " Fonz meets the Terminator"
Medik, cordeila and Technik
Coredila Again
Bro H's 'gang;

general status report

I thought as I hadn't written i na while I would write a very quick list of bullet points how things are, as I'm kinda hitting a brick wall mentally.

• I finally graduated from institute. I got my certificate yesterday and had to get and speak. They were only two of us graduating. Me and cordeila. I can't remember what I said but apparently it made sense.
• It was the graduation ball on Friday. It was a 1950s theme. I'll post the photos later.
• Grumpy went on Holiday and came back. He now has his new car as well.
• Social has broken her toe. On a sofa apparently. I have no idea how she managed that.
• Engineseer is now the institute class president.
• we have three hedgehogs living in the garden.
• My car passed a service without any work having to be done to it. It's the seventh sign, the apocolypse is almost upon us!

later!

Virgin on the ridiculous

See what I did there. Clever wasn't I?

Why's everyone shaking their heads.??

Anyway back to my point and the odd post title. Just when I thought TV couldn't get any worse or sink any lower, surprise, surprise the TV bosses seemed to take up the challenge and come up with two programmes which I found horrifying in their sheer 'ucckkkness" both of Channel four as well.

The first of these is " Sex in Court" which according to the official programme description "takes a look at bedroom politics within modern relationships" which when translated means you have two people on a program in a fake court revealing details about their relationship which they should never, ever do. The second is " Virgin school" and I only saw a brief advert for it but turned the TV over in disgust. It seems now that being a virgin into your 20s seems to be some big no/no, and your in some freakish majority. well at least according to the part of the trailer I did see and yes I am paraphrasing here.

TV sucks sometimes doesn't it.

You can't just get good spam anymore

Like you, mr or mrs internet user I find Spam to be the bane of my life especially at work. It's uncalled for, annoying and rude. However I have noticed a somewhat degradation in the spam I've recieved recently. It's almost as if they have grown as tired of it as we have. But if their going to send me a email advertising the latest miracle drug, my pre approved loan or some woman on the far side of the world who wants to meet me before her husband and waste my time, they could at least appear as if their thought things through.

Case in point. Today I recieved a email from a man who stated and who I quote
" I am an European soldier a citizen of United Kingdom [U.K] attached to UN peacekeeping force, I am serving in the military of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq, as you know insurgents everyday and car bombs are attacking us."
well I know the UK army has equipment shortages, as it appears that spell and grammer checkers are one of them.

and he continues
"We managed to move funds belonging to Saddam Hussein's family. The total amount is US$25 Million dollars in cash, mostly 100-dollar bills."
You know it's amazing how many emails we get from 'soldiers' who managed to find funds belonging to Saddam Hussains family. They can't find WMDs but apparently their knee deep in cash over there. Must have kept that quiet.

"We want to move this money to you, so that you may invest it for us and keep our share for banking. We will take 40%, my partner and I. You take the other 60%. No strings attached, just help us move it out of Iraq, Iraq is a war zone."
Thank you for clearing up the state of Iraq, seeing as I haven't seen a newspaper or news programme in the last three years. Oh wait!

"We plan on using diplomatic courier and shipping the money out in one large silver box, using diplomatic immunity."
Obivousily well connected soldier as he has diplomatic courier connections. But wait a minute thats $25 million in 100 dollar bills. That's got to be one HUGGGEEE!!! Silver box. Can you imagine that at customs? Whats the value of this item? $25 million dollars, and whats in the box? I just told you $25 million dollars!

"If you are interested I will send you the full details, my job is to find a good partner that we can trust and that will assist us. Can I trust you?"
Of course you can, and I'm sure I can trust you, random guy from the internet who I have never met before, sends emails out at random, claims to be english but seems to have great trouble with grammer and stringing sentances together. What is there possibily to be wary of??

oh wait.

You know what makes this infinately more funny and sad is there are people out there who do fall for tricks like this. You see them on the evening news, " I gave this man my bank details, £20000 and all my personal details without meeting him and I lost all my money. He seemed nice in the email though, but I now want to warn everyone else about these scams" Yes all those people who have no common sense whatsoever

I was also checked our spam today, by our reckoning 47 african princes and 60 african kings have been killed so far this year, who all left large sums of money that their relatives can't get out of the country without 'my' help. Strangely enough all of these emails come from relatives who are stuck in damp, squalid and horrible refugee camps. Which all seem to have internet connections.

funny that,

later!

And thats all I have to say about that

I've been wondering for most of the weekend exactly how to broach this subject on here and not say anything that could be misconstrued by different people. So I've decided to just keep to the KISS Principle ( Keep It Simple Stupid).

Coolcat and I have broken up. Unfortunately things didn't work out .

and that's all I will say about it.

It wasn't me, it was the one armed computer

So they I am at Church on Sunday morning. Rather then the normal sacrament and lessons we were going to watch the final session of conference. I had driven in using Grumpys car after he had parked it behind mine on the drive and offered through gritted teeth that I could take it to church if I wanted. The Elders Quorum President wanders over. They had decided to reshuffle the hometeaching assignments again and I was now going to be partnered with Bro P or Bro bigwig as I shall henceforth refer to as. He then proceeds to give me our home teaching list. Do you want to guess which two 'families' were at the top of the list, that's right Tapdance and Me and Grumpy. Yes somehow I had been given myself and my parental units to home teach. I proceeded to point this out to the Elders Quorum president who stood confused for a few moment then looked more closely at the list and asked " Are you sure?" then " Oops, don't know how that happened" ( and this is from the person who was making the list) and finally " Well there was nothing to indicate on the list that you were related" apparently living at the same address and having the same surname as the first two names on my list wasn't a big enough clue. So he wandered off again with the list and said that they had some more reorganizing to do. Which I think is one statement we can all agree with.

Later

What's going to happen here then?

Well it's that time of year again. This years national YSA conference has just been announced and already people are unhappy, myself included. Why? well they seemed to have decided to tighten the rules this year. A lot! They seemed to have decided to use the guidelines from the youth conferences. Which admit ally although fine for youth are a bit too strong for 'adults'.

Here's an example from the dress and appearance guidelines for Young single adult men;
"Young single adult men are expected to be clean shaven; if worn moustaches and beards of any shape or size must be cleanly trimmed."
See the problem here already? How can you be clean shaven you also have a moustache? Cordeilas suggestion was maybe you can have 'half and half' one side of your face clean shaven and one side with a beard. Any suggestions?

Next line;
" Ponytails, pigtails, braids, designs, carvings, completely shaved heads, unnatural hair colour, and any type of extreme or distracting style are not permitted. Sideburns should not extend below the earlobe or onto the cheek."
Right, I don't know how it is in the US but guys in the UK do not wear pigtails. Ponytails maybe if they have awfully long hair, but pigtails???? Is this even a serious line or did someone make a mistake in the copy and paste. I think if a guy did turn up in pigtails he's got a lot more problems then his odd choice of hairstyle! And what have they got about sideburns! Is someone going to be walking around with a ruler!

Next Line from the dress and appearance guidelines for Young single adult men;
"If girls or women desire to have their ears pierced, they are encouraged to wear only one pair of modest earrings"
Interestingly they seem to have put guidelines for girls into the men's guidelines. Make your own jokes here!

Onto the Casual dress explained section;
The following items of clothing are considered appropriate for Casual Dress: blue jeans, blue jean jackets, cargo-style trousers, trainers, hiking or work boots, flip-flops, casual T-shirts, and brightly coloured clothing.
We're only allowed Blue jeans? But what if we have black jeans ( or in coolcat's case bright orange jeans) does that mean we get sent back to our rooms to change? Cargo-style trousers? Only have regular trousers is that allowed? what the heck does Brightly coloured clothing mean ?? Ohhh I can see a lot of people trying to push the limits on this one.

Onto Best address and Sunday dress explained. Now granted I will give them this one. Some of the interpretations from people last year as to what exactly constituted sunday dress were what could be described as a 'bit lose'. However there is one line that has worried some people

" There will be activities throughout the weekend where Sunday Dress clothing will be required"

See through the weekend. Not just Sunday this year. It also states that you should have a conservative tie. But what if you only have a new labour or lib dem tie??? Okay cheap joke, I'll leave it alone.

The guidelines for the single adult women more or less the same with a few differences. For example it says in their guidelines that hairstyles should be clean and neat with no extreme styles or unnatural colours. Obliviously their allowed pigtails :-) One part of their guidelines that cordeila found amusing was ; "Blouses must be modest in fit, extend below the waistline, and be long enough to cover the stomach and lower back, especially when bending over or raising hands or arms" She said that she though from brother hardy that it was ankles you shouldn’t show not your stomach :-)

Now onto the inappropriate clothing list;
" Inappropriate clothing includes underwear styles; pyjama or sleepwear styles; grubby or sloppy styles, including patched or torn clothing; gym-type clothing; and any clothing with suggestive or inappropriate wording or pictures. Also, anything which is sleeveless or immodestly revealing is not permitted. Trousers must be worn at the waistline so as to not reveal underwear. Footwear should be worn in all public areas. Hats are approved for outside wear only. Headbands and bandannas are not permitted during any activities "
Gym type clothing? Does that mean no sport this year. No oddball Olympics either. Imagine my distress at the oddball Olympics going, he, he, he. ( check my blog entries in August 2006 for a explanation) and what’s wrong with bandana and headbands? Especially for girls with long hair during service projects? guess their going to have to go and buy scrunchies.

Right moving onto accommodation.
“For the 2007 YSA Conference you will be staying in bedrooms.”
Well thank you for stating the obvious I didn’t think we would be staying in tents this year. In fact we stayed in bedrooms last year!
“ Wake up every morning”
Well I don’t think many people are planning to sleep through the whole weekend.
And finally the line Grumpy found hysterically funny
“We just ask that you take care of them as they were your own bedrooms.”
I think his comment was along the lines of “ Don’t they want the room back in one piece?
Trust me anyone who has ever seen my bedroom will get how funny it is.

Moving onto activities. Apparently during the Saturday evening dance/ball there will be a one hour variety show. First question. Why during the middle of a dance and where exactly are they going to hold it! And where do the audience go? Theres not enough room in that hall for chairs. No one’s going to want to stand up for a hour and I can’t see any girls wanted to sit on the floor in dresses!
Dress code for performers.
• Costumes must be modest
No pussycat doll outfits then. Shame J

• Shorts must come to the knee
and I thought shorts could be classifed as gym clothes. Loophole, loophole.

• Shirts must always be worn and no revealing tummies
No revealing tummies? I think they missed the rules about not to pull the girls hair or push their faces in the mud. Not forgetting the medics are their to fix owies.Dance wear must be modest-if it is too tight or revealing
So no chance of technik, medik and cordeilas superman routine being repeated then,

Guidelines for performers
• Acts must not contain and vulgar or suggestive movements
So no Prodigy or 50 cents songs then I’m guessing

• No food or liquid of any kind may be used (including toothpaste)
No food or liquid I can understand, but toothpaste?? I want to know what happened and where to merit them feeling that they have to add toothpaste to the list.

• Songs must not contain any suggestive words or messages
No Natasha beddingfield then or Lilly Allen

• Because we want to respect the reverence of church music, please do not auditionwith any Church-related numbers
This one I can understand.

Well all in all I can see this year being a interesting experience. Don’t you? It will be interesting for me at least to see if people accept this without any complaints as it from a church leader and you support your church leaders. Now before anybody worries I'm going apostate this is far from the case. I'm interested to compare this to the furore over Eldar Johnstons remarks last year. He was a church leader yet came in for a hidious amount of criticism from some YSA who wouldn't or couldn't accept anything had been wrong with the dance. Will the same people just accept this guidelines without comment?

I for one have no idea, but I get the feeling it will be fun to find out.