Flipping Typical

According to a survey in Men's Fitness magazine (out tomorrow):

64 per cent of British men are unhappy with their bodies.

Just two per cent think their bodies are perfect.

71 per cent of men believe their partners are unhappy with their bodies.

63 per cent of men wish they could eat less.

One per cent of men think having a good body doesn’t matter.

49 per cent of British men most want a physique like Daniel Craig’s.

33 per cent of British men most want a physique like David Beckham’s.

Right.
It is noticeable that, at least according to those questioned by Wilkinson Sword (who sponsored the survey):

• 7% of men are pretty certain their partners are unhappy with how they look, but don't agree or care.
• Nearly all the men unhappy with their bodies think they are not skinny, plain, or suffering ducks fever, but simply fat.
  
• 35% of men believe that having a good body DOES matter, yet don't feel unhappy with their own physique. In other words, even though only two percent own up to it, seven men out of every twenty think that they are personally hot.

I was going to moan that I had never managed to be involved with a single one of that sort, but I think I am probably pleased. Gah, ye gods, Himbos. Who needs?

Faffing about with Facebook

Facebook doesn't love me, at all.

For two or three days it was letting me in on either of two passwords, but forcing me to sign in all over again to access stuff like my own settings. Just for a giggle, it would then decide both passwords were incorrect, leaving me signed in enough to edit my profile or send emails, but locked out of everything else.

Eventually a very nice, very helpful woman got to my request for help and decided to reset my password. Obviously, it goes without saying, that the Facebook app had JUST settled down and started to behave itself, a day before help arrived. Equally obviously, the new password is a short mix of letters and numbers that mean nothing to me. I don't like writing passwords down any more than I like relying on my Firefox password manager.

But that's OK, right? Because now I have a new password and Facebook is behaving itself, all I have to do is go into my account settings and pick a new one. And she is very nice and helpful and now that I have her attention she answers emails really fast.

Except.

Except now if I click on account settings it boots me back out to the sign-in page. It LETS me sign in (that's an improvement) but only back to my profile page, from whence I must click a link to the account settings page, at which point it boots me out again. And so on and so forth.

Does anyone have any better ideas? I have cleared the cache and cookies every five seconds, it seems, to no avail. I have rebooted the machine. I have even done a little dance of supplication, forced a smile and begged it, please, please, with sugar and a cherry on top, to pull its chubby finger out of its sweaty butt and just fucking function be nice and work for me.

Oh, and just to make everything lovely in the garden, an Aussie newspaper has pointed out that the popularity of facebook and the race to supply add-ons has opened the door for malicious code, and identity theft.

You download an add-on, and you effectively swap outside software for all your personal details, which are then subject to that third party's privacy policy, so you could, technically, buy a computer virus, by handing over the rights to use your details for any purpose. I've been adding on things like the graffiti wall and the Vampire app; all the fun stuff, and I've never even noticed a link to terms & cons or a privacy policy. Oh trollocks.

I am so frickin depressed with it now.

Damn.

(I only signed up because of these guys)

Oh Buggritt!

Yea verily thou mayest mock and abhor me, for I am dust.
I am the worm that turned to come crawling back home.
A wimp.

*cough*

And that's all the whimpering and voluntary submissive do-wotsits that you'll see here. Join the opt-in list at the bottom of this page to see more. Joke.



Yes, after all those demeaning efforts to quit blogging, I appear to be back, like the sanctimonious ex fag smoker who flashed her patches at all and sundry, only to be caught hovering in the darkest corner of the nicotine shed come coffee break. If people shuffle nervously and say nothing for not knowing WHAT to say, then I completely understand. My page rank bottomed out while I was gone anyhow - not enough rude words to keep even misdirected perverts from accidentally landing here, so if all you good guys have also gone elsewhere and I am talking to the wind, I understand that too.

Its you lot - all your fault I'm back(ish). All those compliments, you are so MEAN.

The little school job, you might have guessed, went up the swanny. I sat and watched it float away into the hands, let's be honest, of someone far more suited to the 9 to 5 than I will ever be.

Still, for some bizarre reason the other half has taken a break from growing ulcers on his ulcers (and then sharing them) every time a bank statement comes in. I think that has something to do with accepting that no job search can really be attempted with the kids home for the six week summer break, so I have taken the opportunity to:

a) throw caution and reputation* to the wind and return to blogging, and
b) join the Thirty Day Challenge, during this quiet truce, to see if even I can make an honest buck or two (I could only sleep nights if they were honest) during this delicate hiatus.

(The people at Thirty Day Challenge actually want me to have a blog. I don't think this is what they mean.)


* Re reputation - purlease! I've spent a couple of years slating GPs, builders and County staff, not to mention the number of times I've talked dirty. Sex, slander, swearing and self admonishment = not an employer's dream. Fuck 'em.(**)

** Bloody hell, I knew I only aired the expletives on this blog but I didn't realise what a couple of months abstinence would do to the guilt factor. I feel all brave and liberated and naughty, now. Gosh. *blush*: "Fuck!" Hee-hee.

And there she was; gone.



No honestly, gone.
Except for meebo and twitter and facebook and answers.yahoo and homeworking.com. Look me up if you are on any of those.

The thing about this blog

We all know the secret joy of diary blogging.

When I say that this is me, but at the same time its not, my regular blog friends will understand completely.

I wouldn't wander around naked in the supermarket; that's behaviour for behind closed doors. Similarly I wouldn't swear like a trooper, joke about sex or voice my more strident (if passing) opinions in the physical world - those are intensely liberating delights I've discovered here, that will remain here, in blogdom.

If I already had a job, this wouldn't be an issue. I am just rather concerned that if you combine the right name and geographical info, this blog can be found by anyone looking to find me, and whilst one might not Google one's existing colleagues, a potential newbie is fair game.

Lets just say that most of the content here is NOT what I would use as interview material.

Working from home (as I have done, on and off for a good few years) can, in some cases, be a right royal cop-out, by which I mean that the primary luxury of such an arrangement can also be the main drawback.

See, you get set up, and then someone contracts you (very clearly and specifically) to adopt a responsibility or complete a piece of work.

You get the (clearly defined) work.
You do the work.
You send it back.

Obviously you can have several clients/contractors and there's often some face to face contact in there, then the rather pleasant matter of payment and even warm, positive feedback, but essentially things are decorous, plain, clean, professional. Constantly.

I miss the mess of working for an organisation, of working with, beside, or in spite of the team. I miss other people's bad hair days and I miss being visible during my own. I find I am more creative and more inclined to develop as a person in a less predictable environment.

I miss the whole social melee, not to mention the externally enforced routine that forbids me to 'just do a little bit more' at eleven o'clock at night (the curse of all self-motivated self-employed). There are some cases (and mine is one) where working for oneself isn't particularly fair on the children.

So I am looking for a job. This may take some time as I have very narrow and specific requirements, but that just means its even more important to bury the blog, because every chance counts.

I'll be in here cataloguing my posts, reorganising, and removing incriminating details before deciding whether to download the lot and wipe this site clean, or whether I have made this bland enough to escape a half hearted name search.

In one respect I am lucky - most of my namesakes are either scientists or porn stars. I can see the attraction in both vocations. Its just that none of them live here.

Grief this is going to be hard - blogging is more than an addiction; its a community, a life. Giving up isn't like moving town either - you'll all still be there.

Damn.

Oh, and hugs. xxx

Oh dear, was I shouting?

CILLIT BANG LIME N' GRIME !!!!

IT CLEANS YOUR SINK !!!!

BUT IT WON'T CLEAN YOUR EARS OUT !!!!


By the way their own site says that Barry Scott is a fictional character. Presumably that means there's no disability here and some jerk actually instructed an actor to shout like a fucking moron? Go figure.

Seen Too Much Daytime TV

Unlucky, Donald.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know; but I'm not really here.

You didn't see me, right?

Its just that I have a fly up my nose, literally, and when one's cranial cavities are hard at work decomposing the invading forces, well then, gee, it always helps to share.

So there I was, pottering around just outside the front door, waiting for the workmen to turn up when I turned into the path of something large and black that was heading for the bay tree and/or rosemary bush, directly behind me.

Please, remind me for next time; if a flying insect of any variety should happen to do the whole bastard kamikaze thing, top speed, into one's right nostril, it really, really, REALLY helps not to gasp.

I resisted the urge to squirt water up there after it, for fear of flushing the entire carcass along toward my throat.

Big mistake.

I tried and tried to blow my nose hard enough to shift my unwanted visitor, but he is wedged somewhere above the roof of my mouth, round the corner and out of the draft, so no luck.

So now the builders are here, and I am wandering around, painfully conscious that a battle is going on - my defences are hard at work trying to subdue something with a large exoskeleton, which is probably still very much alive and thrashing about a bit, like Donald Pleasance in Fantastic Voyage.

Every so often I feel the twanging nasal pain normally reserved for those who accidentally sniff up chlorinated water at the swimming baths, then find myself rushing to find somewhere to discretely spit mucous. I had no idea my body contained so much readily available water.

I can't help it, I aim for the sink bowl and not the plug hole, because I simply must have an opportunity (however brief) to establish whether the whole demolition process has begun. I mean, you see those damn winged things land in a bucket or a puddle, and they can survive for hours. Days, maybe.

I feel the need to go spit, again, but shall do so in the full and totally smug knowledge that now I have shared.

Lucky me, lucky you......