Chindie

The only sandwich I regularly have is cheddar with salad cream, touch of salt and pepper, tasty. In other news, it's odd being back in Brum somehow. It just seems strange there's in front of me any more. Well nothing definitive anyway. For the last couples of years sooner of later I'd be back in Wales.

I think 'being late' in moving is bollocks to be honest. Yes, we don't buy players at the start of a transfer window, but the singing of a player is the very end of a transfer, theres much wrangling before then. I suspect O'Neill/Villa may be guilty of being a bit of a hard man to win over in terms of fees and cash, he only seems to pay genuinely big money for players he seems exceptionally keen on, Milner for instance. I suspect in some way that may be down to the budget he has, I've always felt that O'Neill may have been given a finite amount of money for a set period and he's had to spend to a limit often, as well as try to drag the club up and bulk it out, hence his squaddie signings and short term fixes he's often gone for. I also suspect that we play a waiting game to see others show their hand because of this - we don't want to show our own hand on players we don't intend to get into bidding wars on. Sometimes that may be unavoidable and again, that'll draw things out, especially as the club has a few things it can't escape from, like being in Birmingham. We prefer to wait and see what other clubs may do and jump in late on with firm offers. Of course, I can;t prove any of that because I'm not Randy Lerner, Paul Faulkner or Martin O'Neill, but it seems to make sense and doesn't just say 'Oh, MONs a slow coach', which to my mind would about the least logical thing in the world to be as a football manager.

Maybe he doesn't, thats just the way it turns out. Truth is, we dunno. I'd, however, suggest that logic dictates you'd want the players in quickly because that's better for you. Doesn't mean everything goes your way and doesn't mean you can just get them in.

The Pizza Express Sloppy Guiseppe is a good pizza. Thats a great deal. Whack em in the freezer, everyone's a winner. On the frozen pizza front however, I maintain the best are Chicago Town's Takeaway range - they've brilliant. Made all the better by knowing it's horrendous for you. But across the board they're fantastic. Ever the plain old 4 Cheese, mouthwatering.

Apparently the standards of Religious 'Education' in our secondary schools isn't good enough. Good.

I don't think it's a good film by any means but I think it warrants a watch just because... well, it's **** weird. Even knowing every detail of the plot I don't think does the sheer nuts nature of it justice. It's somehow made better by being a bit shit as well.

I've just watched a 1991 film called 'The Rapture'. Possibly one of the most bonkers films I've ever watched. At times it's actually vaguely disturbing in how nuts it is. The plot revolves around a woman that is unhappy in her godless life as a swinger, and becomes a particularly mad brand of Born Again Christian. She eventually convinces one of her swinging partners to join her in this new life and we skip ahead 6 years to see them having a daughter and both being nutjob Bible bashers. Her husband gets murdered at work, she starts to have doubts in her faith but also decides that God is coming to bring about the Apocalypse and was giving her a sign, and because of that she decides to go and spend the end of her days in the desert to wait for God to collect them both. This leads to a 20min section of the film of them bumming about near a rock whilst the little girl (in an attempt to be more annoying than Newt in Aliens) basically demands her Mom kills her. Which she eventually does. She then can't kill herself because she won't get into heaven as a suicide. Her love for god is now gone, which is understandable after you just killed your daughter I suppose and ends up in prison. It then turns out that she actually wasn't nuts and the Apocalypse is about to happen, and the film goes for it properly Biblicly literal style, or at least they would have if they'd have the budget, all they managed to get was a smoke machine a couple of horses a scythe and prison set that could fall apart. And at the end, she ascends in the Rapture, and actually then denounces any love for God entirely on the basis of him being a word removed and is stuck in Purgatory. The last 10 mins comes completely out of nowhere and everything before that was generally mildly disturbing, caused at east in part by some of the acting, it's so bad that it's almost convincingly real and at times you half expect 'the Saved' characters to have a little psychotic twitch above the shit eating grins they get whilst talking about the end times.

I believe the explanation to hot coals is a combination of them actually not being that hot, comparitively, and the time you spend on the coals is exceptionally little. Your feet get exposed to less heat than you might expect for such a small amount of time it's difficult to get burned by it.

On the useless trivia front.. The Leidenfrost effect allows you to dip anything, if you're stupid enough, into an exceptionally hot substance for a very short amount of time, and not be burned, provided whatever you put in there is wet. The example used is normally your hand in molten metal. As the water on the hand touches the molten metal it vapourises and insulates the hand very briefly against the heat. I wouldn't recommend trying it though.

I did think it was a map of connections between them, but what I know of the shows in it (i.e. not a lot), I didn't know what the connections would be, as it didn't seem to make much sense. I get it now though. Still doesn't mean a lot as I've never watched an episode of I'd imagine nearly all of those shows, but I get it.

...I'd love to say I knew what that meant, but instead I just looked at it for a moment looking quite gormless and wondering what the **** it was.

My last night out in Aberystwyth lead to an enormous hangover and being out till the sun come up. Packing stuff up today is gonna be hilarious.

That is my plan, except I already have the last part I'm going with something similar, although rather than arm candy I'm going for drinks rather a lot hopefully with a lovely lady. Roll on the bloody World Cup though. I'm having my feet up.

The Dutch should top the group fairly easily, however their defence is ropey as ****. The rest of the side nears about strong as you'll get in this tournament, but the defence is laughable. Which might mean theres an arseload of goals in this group. I'm not sure on the Danes, I don't quite see whats so exciting about them. They're solid. Certainly it's between them and Cameroon for the second place and I suspect that, if Cameroon click and Eto'o is on form, Cameroon might take it.

You should feel for my mate at Warwick Uni. 12 exams this semester. For comparision, in my 3 years at uni, I've done 16 exams.

Serbia aren't to be underestimated. A lot of quite good players, dangerous and not the hardest group for them. Their main problems are that it'll be difficult for them to top the group which means they'll most likely have to play us in the next round which might be too much for them. But they are a good side. With a better/luckier draw I'd almost not have been surprised to see them replicate Croatia in 98.

I've revised in the pub before now. It actually worked. EDIT - and whilst playing poker. Never have been that good a reviser.

Far too long. I've donated a bit. It'd probably be more and more regularly if/when I'm earning.

The GKs of Germany's World Cup squad have less than 10 caps between them.

I certainly don't mean this as any kind of insult but a huge amount of your posts on here revolve around how depressed and unhappy with your life you are. Why don't you want to give that up? I meant the side of me that I'm happy with - my interests, my personality when I'm being more upbeat. I wouldn't want to sacrifice that to being singleminded on a child like I've seen people do, and seemingly going by what Laura has said I'm not alone in that. Maybe Dundee is right, I just don't get it. I don't want to. Calling the pictures hateful was me exagerrating btw. Congrats to anyone who has decided it's for them and I hope everything turns out well. It's just not for me, I don't think. At least not for a long while yet. EDIT - Didn't quite come across right.

I'm not saying it's sad because I don't want kids, I'm saying it's sad that people give up so much that made them who they are to have kids. As Laura said you get people going from fun fierce independant... whatever, into mummy/daddy mood where their life is absolutely dominated by having a kid. They can't talk about anything else, every free moment becomes about doing this or that or the other for the baby. It's sad that a lot of people waste 18 years, at least, of their lives being like that. If more people I'd known managed to juggle being a parent and also still being pretty much the same person they were before (within reason of course) I'd see it in a better light. But as I said, I know one person that has more or less managed it. I value people a lot and to see them become... well, shells, is quite sad. thankfully not too many of my friends have gone through it yet, and none of my very close friends. I'll wish them well when inevitably they do go through it but I'll be hoping what made them be the people I wanted to have as friends wasn't too heavily sacrificed to being a parent, as I think it'd be the death of a small part of them for a while.

I only know of 1 person it hasn't happened to, and thats my sister. She's had 3 kids, isn't the most mumsy person in the world (which is probably a factor in not turning into the glorified baby sitter Laura says above) and is still pretty much the same person she ever was. She's the kind of person that is so bloody minded and fiercely independant though I don't think anything could make her change. Everyone else I've known becomes a different person whose life revolves around their kid. Even blokes. It's quite sad, really. I wouldn't want to give up on my personality and freedom.

Don't think you'll be allowed an answer there claret75, it's a tad illegal . But I'm sure someone will PM. I really am curious as to how Harry Brown was quite so rated. Michael Caine gave a good performance but the rest of it is... well, it's Daily Mail the movie. All these feral youths a-murderin' and filmin' it on their bleedin' mobile phones, bleedin' animals, what they needs is a .38 to skull, thats what, and you know what? The police should let someone do it. Soon sort the 'kin drug takin' bastad 'oodies out. I mean the revenge thriller has been about for donkeys and they usually make good throwaway films but generally SPOILERS they have some sort of morality to them that almsot always sees the guy seeking vengeance realise that in doing so he became little better than what he fought. In Harry Brown he murders people left right and centre and walks off scot free, and the film at the end actually hints that he was doing was the right thing(!). /SPOILERS

I hope you're intending to be waiting for a while Mike, in my case especially! Going on Laura's 35 rule, it'll be 14 years... Hopefully more. Lots more. Like indefinitely. But yeah I more or less agree exactly with what Laura said. It's just something I can see myself wanting to do. I don't like kids, I've never been a kid person, and my patience frankly isn't long enough I don't think to manage being a dad. Everyone that knows me knows this. My parents have said it's lucky my sister had kids because my brother is unlikely to have any and if I do they'll be shocked. And it does turn people, in my experience, into more or less shells of who they were. Someone I knew from school recently had a baby and every time I log into Facebook it's 50 more hateful pictures of her offspring doing nothing more than being there, followed by a few statuses that may as well amount to 'OMG! Jacks breathing on his own!... OMG! Jack just gurgled!... OMG Jack just had a shit!' It's just... eurgh. Wheres the dignity gone? Wheres the independance? Wheres what made her her, gone? Thankfully I'm only 21 so I've got years before I even have to contemplate it, and perhaps it'd be even weirder if at this age I actually actively wanted to have children - after all my life's ahead of me. But I can't quite see it myself - I suppose it's easier to do when you're single.

Asides from Michael Caine, I didn't like a thing about it. **** up morality from start to finish, and of course every 'youth' is a 2D bastard. Finished off my nights viewing with Jacobs Ladder. First watch for me despite wanting to see it for donkeys, it's class. I kinda knew where it was going, annoyingly, but it's a good watch... I wouldn't call it fun mind. Very, very dark. But recommended if you've not seen it in the 20 years since it's release .