It's a mug's game! (redux)

Tempting fate there.

Ha ha.

A footballing spanner was thrown into the works yesterday. I had a punt on Rosenberg, who are the Manchester United of Norwegian football. Against Odd Grenland, they were winning comfortably 1-0, before putting one into their own net with 15 mins to go! Final result 1-1. I'll be putting my visits to paddypower on hold for a while, methinks.

And it keeps on piling up..

I won't bore you with the back story. It's just the gambling winnings are still coming(???!!!)

The European competitions are just starting, so I thought Id have a punt - both bets have come in - I'm £377 quid (further) up!!! All this stuns me, as my luck just keeps on running.. better touch wood as I think this. My latest jammy moment was a last minute winner for Maritimo versus Sporting Fingal. Sporting.. Fingal???!!! Sounds like a team from Craggy Island, right? Well, they held on till the 89th minute before the Portugese finally grabbed a winner for 3-2.

Out of curiosity I checked my record in the last four months. Of the 32 bets made, I've won 29 of them. I've earned 4 grand and been given me financial freedom unlike any I have ever had. So, what I'm gonna do is leave 20 quid in my online gambling account, and see how when it runs out. Will post the bets here just for my own amusement, with details on my progress... stay tuned..

Alex

My latest scheme/ sanity preserver.

Sisyphus had a hard life and it's on days like this I feel like I know what he went through. My working life feels repetitive and futile right now. All I do is push that rock up the hill and it keeps on rolling straight back down again. And again. And again.

To keep me sane, and stop my brain leaking out of my ears in a grey sludge, I often take up something creative to entertain myself. Here is my latest effort which I'd like to share with you:

Streetdaq is billed as the 'new internet goldmine' by its developers. Prospectors own a 5 year lease on a piece of 'virtual real estate' and can advertise on it/blog about it. Here's a piece of my property empire - it cost me a fiver but for my own mental health I consider money well spent.

Alex

I Am a Paleontologist - They Might Be Giants w/Danny Weinkauf

Xander likes his Beck...

No purple dinosaur s**t for him!

He also happens to be a massive They Might Be Giants Fan, remember them? TMBG have been about for about 30 years now, and recently their output has consisted of some educational (and incredibly catchy) kids albums. X, me and Ellen paid a visit to The Royal Albert Hall to catch their family show.. and what fun it was! Below is the metallic silver penguin which glided over our heads during the show, much to the astonishment of the little ones in the audience.

The band spray a massive stream of coloured confetti over the audience.. much to their astonishment and great pleasure..

X mid mosh, he had a fantastic time and was seriously bummed when it was all over.

'Avatars' of the Two Johns. Operating two puppets above their head, singing clearly and making it an entertaining experience on a massive screen in front of a thousand people takes some doing. Their creativity has to be seen to be believed.

Being surrounded by parents and their young children made me think, 'f**k me, I'm a dad now'.. and that a feeling I am enjoying greatly at the moment.

On a similar note, we've gone garden crazy recently. I picked up one of those garden incinerators from Argos to do belated battle with the garden. Everything from apples, to old thorny shrubbery to a dead hedgehog have met a fiery demise in 'Ole Smokey'. Of course, being a former firebug in my youth I find this tremendously enjoyable. Also, it gives me some satisfaction and order in my life which is often lacked...

Oscar the Grouch really should've replaced the batteries in his smoke alarm..

The only time my team will be top of the table

Coventry City in playoff contention...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/coventry_city/default.stm

How does this fat fool keep getting on my telly?!!

Someone will express this better than I, but her is my $0.02 on the matter.

Dunno bout you, but I wasnt invited to the meeting that decided James Cordon would be the football voice of the people. This guy seems to have broken out of his bumbling and not funny niche and suddenly done a Parkie on us. He writes a column in The Times and has a post match talk show on ITV for goodness sake!???

Seriously, I'm racking my brains to see what worth this guy has. His WC scribblings are insight and humour free whilst he has minimal passion or entertainment on telly either! For me he's the bastard child of Chris Moyles and Terry Wogan; without the spiky subversive charm of the former or the smooth appeal of the latter. This fat, football everyman has none of the comedy of Baddiel and Skinner, whose banter and passion ITV obviously hope he will update. Cordon is like the out of shape drinking dudes I work with, not much fun to be around, with only their self deprecating blokeishness as a redeeming factor. Think Peter Kay without the laughs or the energy.

Does this guy really deserve the exposure he's getting right now? Are we really that devoid of TV personalities that we've adopted the fat, annoying one off Gavin and Stacey to be our sporting, cultural representative? With the banality and lack of imagination floating on our airwaves and screens big and small, it doesnt suprise me. It still saddens me a little.

Alex