Brought to my attention by Mark Connelly.
Author: Greg
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Leeds United Exodus
Just over 3 years ago Leeds United were in the semi-final stages of the UEFA Champions League, chasing the dream as they said at the time…But that dream cost a lot of money and after failing to qualify for the lucrative Champions League the following year they posted massive debts and a downward spiral began. Big name players such as Rio Ferdinand, Lee Bowyer, Johnathon Woodgate and Harry Kewell were sold off to relieve the debts but things just got worse and worse and having just avoided relegation last season, they struggled to find any kind of form this season as more players were offloaded, and the drop from the Premiership was secured.
And the apparent exodus continues unabaited as first goalkeeper Paul Robinson moves to Tottenham Hotspur for £1.5m, some £1m less than they offered not six months ago, and way below most peoples valuations, and today Alan Smith joins Manchester United for £7m, again way below most peoples valuations.
The price of chasing success…
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Gratuitous Girl-On-Girl Action
What the hell is going on here?
On second thoughts, I don’t want to know… This place has become a bit too weird recently…
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Move Along
Nothing to see here… Oh, what? I suppose I should fill you in on what I’ve been up to since I safely got back… Well, I made it through Chicago O’Hare Airport’s security (twice!) without incident and successfully met up with Robyn… After a little, OK large period of public displays of affection we decided to head into downtown Chicago, if only to kill some time.
We didn’t have much time in Chicago, about 45 minutes in all, enough time to walk 3 blocks and get something to eat, but the whole trip killed a few hours which was the whole point. We got back into Atlanta about 9:30pm and back home about 10:30pm.
It was straight back to work on Friday before Phil, Erika and I went to a bar for a few drinks and something to eat before looking at new houses on the way back, some of which was even better than the one we saw before I left… Then I spent the weekend with Robyn, hanging out mostly but on Saturday night we went out to her friend Courtney’s birthday party in Buckhead, but not before we had a a few drinks at her friend Becky’s. Anyway the birthday party was pretty uneventful, Courtney turned up an hour late, and her husband was a bit… well, a bit of a fratboy to be honest. The cries of “get ‘er done, son!” will linger on I’m sure, especially when they were making a big deal of knocking back a Jager Bomb… I took one no problem.
Sunday was another lazy day, me and Robyn shared some songs on our iPods before driving about looking for a place that would sell Ben Folds Five’s “Naked Baby Photo’s” cd, we then came back to watch “Big Fish” with Phil and Erika…
And apart from working Monday and Tuesday that’s it, nothing else to report… Made it back alive and well and now getting back into the groove.
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Beer for Breakfast and Assorted Tales of Woe (Redux)
Current Location: Off the eastern tip of Canada, over the Labrador Sea, en route to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.
Well, the day has barely begun and already it’s been highly stressful and pretty eventful. Where to begin? At the start I suppose, in Glasgow Airport… Checking in for my flight to Chicago and as I get up to the security checkpoint prior the check-in, I’m asked a ton of questions, a TON and one thing led to another and soon I was told I wasn’t getting on the plane…
What???
Yeah, cause the first time I went to Atlanta it was on the one week ticket I bought back in November of last year, so at the start of April I bought a return ticket from CheapAir.Com to take me back to Scotlad and back to Atlanta… I think you can see where this is going already huh? Well, as I was returning on the return part of the ticket, I had no return to return to Scotland (not that I particularly want to) so without a return I wasn’t getting on the plane…
Great!!!
What should I do? I’ve not got enough money to buy a ticket, so I call up Erika, waking her up in the process (not that she really sleeps, but that’s a moot point), and laying down my tale of woe, you know the secenario:
Erika: “What?”
Me: “TheywontletmeontheplanebecauseIhavenoreturnticket… Ineedareturnticket,youguysgottahelpme… Please!”
Erika: “What????Or words to that effect, So anyways, Erika is on the job like a fly to shit and hallelujah… She’s got me on a flight from New York’s JFK to London Heathrow on the 21st of July and back again a week later… $624 to save my ass… So within 30 minutes of me bricking myself publicly, I’m getting “yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir” off the American Airlines staff, I’m pretty sure they know the scam I’m running, but as long as I had that return ticket, my ass was covered.
So in between the time of phoning Erika and getting on the plane I drank about 3 pints of beer, just to calm my nerves, beer for breakfast… Reminds me of my student days.
But now I have to pay Erika back somehow, I’ll be living off bread & water for the next millennia most likely, but I got her an extra bottle of Bailey’s at duty free as a small token of my appreciation and eternal gratitude, I’m gonna try and get her sainted one day, but in the meantime I’ll just build a shrine in her honour.
The saddest part was Robyn, she’s meeting me in Chicago in about 4 hours time, and all that was going through my head was “damn, I’m not going to be there, she’s wasted all that money flying there for nothing”. I miss her and the thought of not seeing her again made my stomach ache. I think we’ve been apart for too long already, an indefinate seperation would not be good for both of us.
But all that aside, I’m on my way now, almost there actually…
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Andy Kaufman Alive??
Well, after Sunday’s post about Andy Kaufman being dead or alive there is a bit of speculation he is, in fact, not dead at all. In fact he is supposedly alive and well and blogging…
How can we be sure this is the real Andy Kaufman?
How do you ever know anything is really what you think it is? It would take a DNA or fingerprint sample to prove that I am the real Andy Kaufman, which I’m more than willing to do if need be. I’m sure there would even be doubters if I did that. People will believe what they want to believe. I’ve spoken to my parents and a few old colleagues, like Bob Zmuda. You can ask them if I’m the real deal.
Why did you lie to all of us, you bastard?
It was the only way to seal my status in history as a legendary performance artist. I want to be remembered for so much more than having played Latka on Taxi. The worst part was lying to my family and closest friends.
Or is it just some punk kid with a strange sense of humour? Well, that’s the general consensus.
Of course, a blogspot blog and a hotmail email address just screams of the real deal, doesn’t it? Not to mention the PRWeb “press release”…
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Starbucks + HP
Now this sounds like a good idea.
From 65 HP Tablet PC-based listening stations, customers can listen to entire CDs, read exclusive artist interviews, and explore special features in Hear Music’s digital library. What’s more, music aficionados can also choose from a catalog of songs to make their own personal compilations, then instantly burn them onto a CD at an interactive Listening Bar.
The robust CD burning and printing technology is powered by HP xw6000 Workstations running HP-developed applications. With the help of HP Business Inkjet 1100D printers, customers also receive professional-quality CD labels, cover art, and liner notes created at the interactive Listening Bar.
I have to say, I enjoyed the high speed wireless at Starbucks when I was in Portland in March, and this sounds like a winning idea.
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Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Resident Evil: Apocalypse is due out this summer/fall, and as a way to drum up interest, and possible way to reduce advertising costs, they are running a “Design a Resident Evil Movie Poster Competition“…
The guidelines are simple…
Must be 481 pixels wide by 715 pixels tall at 72 dpi.
File Size must be no larger than 300k.
File must be submitted as a JPG or GIF.
For posters that use images of cast members, you must include Milla Jovovich’s image at least as large as any other cast member’s image.
Milla Jovovich’s name may be used as part of the artwork title (either above, before or below). Her name must be at least 1/5 the size of the title treatment. Her name must appear if any other cast member’s name is used in conjunction with the artwork title. In addition, her name must be in first position among the cast members.
And these small things too…
In order to become an official movie poster suitable for all audiences the poster must follow the guidelines listed below:
No nudity or sexual activity
No gun to camera/no shooting to camera
No gun to victim/no shooting to victim
No more than 2 guns may appear
No reference to drugs/drug paraphernalia
No offensive language or gestures
No blood
No violence towards women
No cruelty to animals
No mutations/mutilations/cadavers
No excessive violence or brutality
No rape/molestations
No people on fire
No people in explosion/people blown out of explosion
No exploiting/capitalizing on rating (i.e., “R has never gone this far”, “Banned in Boston”)
No demeaning of religion, race or national originSo with that in mind I’ve thrown together two really quick mock-ups.
Both done really quickly for fun… Maybe I’ll try a bit more seriously later on.
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Imovable Type
After wrestling with Movable Type 3.0 for the best part of the weekend, I finally made a breakthrough only to meet another brick wall… And it seem’s like I’m not the only one to suffer the inability to login to the CMS under the Melody Nelson persona.
So what to do now, I’ve already asked for help from various sources, I’ve installed and re-installed multiple times with no luck. Now I think I’ll just leave it, karma and all that.
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Andy Kaufman – Dead or Alive?
I’ll admit it… I never liked Andy Kaufman. Oh, the Mighty Mouse bit was funny the first time you saw it, and the Elvis/Foreign Man bit was amusing, and Latka was cute on Taxi (though I always preferred Christopher Lloyd’s bizarre Reverend Jim). But overall, I never understood why anyone thought he was funny, or even clever. I do now. Maybe it’s that Kaufman was ahead of his time. Long before “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, when the WWF/E was just a beginning to evolve into its 1980’s heyday as a bunch of affable clowns, Kaufman was taking professional wrestling over into the realm of hostile aggression when he whipped up an audience of Southern redneck wrestling fans into a frenzy. Long before Jerry Springer’s staged television weirdness, Kaufman was punching out people on talk shows. Looking back at Kaufman’s career, it appears less that Kaufman was the mentally disturbed jerk he seemed at the time, and more that he was on to something.
The tragedy of Andy Kaufman is less that he died at age 35 of lung cancer after being a health nut who never smoked, but more that it appears (and the film “Man on the Moon” makes clear) that there never really was an entity “Andy Kaufman”. He really was just a series of alter-egos, such as the lounge lizard Tony Clifton, and events. But the question has lingered: Did Kaufman stage his own death? Was it just another performance? It would be perfectly in character for him to do so (unlike the late Jim Morrison, for example), and indeed, he did talk at one time about wanting to fake his death. Yet aside from hard-core Kaufman fans, no one really has cared.
Before Kaufman died (or “died”) on May 16, 1984, he told several friends that he was planning to fake his death, disappear and return in 20 years, precisely. So, on May 16, 2004, Comic Relief, the charity organization Zmuda founded in 1985, will present… something. Something secretive, something at House of Blues on Sunset Strip. Title: Andy Kaufman – Dead or Alive?
More info courtesy of the House of Blues.
Andy stated that were he to fake his death, he would return 20 years later to the day. MAY 16TH, 2004 IS THAT DAY. Over one hundred personal ads will be taken out, across the country and abroad, reminding him of his words. Will he show? This historic celebration will include a special premiere showing, along with star appearances by Rodney Dangerfield, Caroline Rhea, Bob Odenkirk, Paul Rudd, Rich Voss, Jerry “the King” Lawler, Andy Dick and a rare performance by International singing sensation TONY CLIFTON and his CLIFTONES. Also “Man on the Moon” co-screenwriter Larry Karaszewski will be joined by Andy’s closest companions: George Shapiro, Lynne Margulies, and Bob Zmuda . Tickets $99.95. Special $250 VIP tickets include select seating & celebrity reception (hopefully with Andy).
So will he or won’t he?
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Not-So-Movable Blog After All…
I managed to find someone to help with the MT3 install (thanks Hanni), but alas it was not meant to be… My webhost is missing some components needed to run Movable Type. Now should I ask them to install them just for me? Do I feel dirty for cheating on b2?
I might ask Erika if it would be a bother to install the missing modules, but again it all goes back to the old “if it ain’t broken” line. Sure, I can’t do the multiple weblog thing, I can’t do a lot of things really, but I have things working just right now.
Maybe I’ll wait for the proper release of Movable Type 3.0, once it’s past the Developers Edition phase, before I think about things in more detail.
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Boring, Boring Arsenal
For the first time since Preston in 1888/89, Arsenal have gone through an entire league season without losing a game. Thats 38 games, 26 wins, 12 draws and no losses.
Not bad for a team once known for boring 0-0 draws, and as the chant goes “nil-nil to the Arsenal!”. Can they keep it going next year? Finally achieve some success in the Champions League…
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Movable Blog…
After everything I said last night about not moving to Movable Type, I succumbed and…
No, I didn’t buy it, fools. Like I have that kind of cash to throw around.
I downloaded the free version that gives you next to nothing, and signed up for TypeKey in the process. Of course I still have no idea how to install this shit, so any Movable Type users who may happen to read this place, can you help? Don’t make me beg…
I’m just curious about it, that’s all…
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Moving Blogs?
I always said I’d wait for Movable Type 3.0 to arrive before deciding if I should change this place over to it…
Well, it has arrived… And I think I’ll stay right where I am thankyouverymuchly…
Let’s look at the pricing schemes shall we?
So… $69.95 for the cheapest option, there is a free option, but that requires a TypeKey login and comes with complete lack of support from SixApart, no access to paid installation service, no access to fee-based services, no promotion of your weblogs through the Recently Updated list, no commercial usage and no more than one author and three weblogs… Though not all of that affects me much.
I’m still daunted by the whole installation process of Movable Type, the best thing about b2 was you downloaded the files, edited the config file and uploaded it to a directory and you were good to go (more or less), MT requires all kinds of geeky shit that’s way beyond me, and I know I’ll break shit if I try it and risk running the wrath of Erika if I do…
And I’ll wait to hear from Mark at R80o to give his verdict on WordPress before I consider moving to that.
But if it ain’t broken, why fix it?
