Is it me or is the WHOLE WORLD over reacting a bit about this Swine Flu? First it was the Mad Cows Disease, then the Bird Flu, and then SARS somewhere in the middle, now Swine Flu, they are just making their way through a big long list of farm animals, Mad Farmers Disease? And when I say ‘they’ I mean scientists, news broadcasters, and any other person high up enough in society to brainwash people into thinking everything has gone to shit.

There was also a Swine Flu PANDEMIC in 1976…1 person died from the actual virus, and he was the first to contract the virus, he was a soldier. Now I wouldn’t class this as a pandemic. Of course the US Government was quick to give the public of America a vaccine, although one side effect of the vaccine was Guillain-Barre syndrome, which basically CTRL-ALT-DELETES your nervous system thousands of times in one second resulting in paralysis followed by death. 25 people died from the side effects of the vaccine, and they didn’t even have Swine Flu.

“The government had long feared mass panic about swine flu — now they feared mass panic about the swine flu vaccinations.” This became a strong setback to the program.

Taken from Wikipedia….can a government fail more then that? I don’t think so, unless they pull a pin out a hand grenade, hand it to the public and say its a vaccination.

‘Where are all the tourists?’

Now apart from Mexico being a really crap place to live, and a PANDEMIC ON THE LOOSE, who is going to visit Mexico ever again? Probably not many.. except Jewish people.

Oh Joy, the London Marathon has come round this year again, the only time when Captain Jack Sparrow and Spiderman, holding hands is normal. It is also the last year Flora is sponsoring it (who cares?). Well anyway me and my Mother went up to London to watch them, and hopefully catch a glimpse of my Father. It was the first time I had seen the Marathon live, in fact I think its the first time I was awake in time. I had to get up at silly hour to get to London in time…..On a Sunday.

I like running, but only short distances, like to the toilet, chasing rabbits, or even running away from a crazy homeless guy. But running for 26 point whatever miles is stupid. Then you get those people who say ‘oooh its for a good cause’.. My Father was raising money for Deaf Children..now no offense to the deaf children, being deaf must be horrible, but its not as if they are dying, like the kids in other charity’s. Now I sound really nasty, but if there was a rating on charity’s, Deaf Children wouldn’t rate very high.

I saw everything, rhino’s to Spiderman, and even the Queen…..But then, looming over the horizon, came this monstrosity:

*Jaws music*

Now running 26 miles in shorts and vest is one thing, but running in a 11 foot high …nurse?, that truly is mental. Maybe its a robot.

There was quite a lot of old guys there too, maybe they are going through their midlife-midlife crisis (in between your first midlife crisis and dying, usually around 80). Maybe they think they are merely 72 again and can run 26 miles and only be bed bound for a week, some of them looked in bad shape, gasping for air, one even stopped near us and, from what I was hearing, was asking for directions to a tube station (possible cheater).

HERE HE IS!

‘Hi I’m Les and I don’t know where I am.’

Another cool addition to Sunday’s series of mental events, was the Adidas website, which you could track a runners progress by typing in their number. Too good to be true?..yes, apparently my Father was going 34 miles per hour in the first stage:

Cheater..

A COOL idea that my good friend suggested for me was to make an online shop at CafePress.

Basically CafePress is very SIMPLE but its free, I am able to upload a image and place it on various clothes, and other random stuff like stickers, mugs and even pet clothing..

I showed my friend a New Era hat that I designed and he suggested I should create an account with CafePress, so I did.

Here it is:

I added one of those annoying hallmarks so that anyone who wants to STEAL it will have to open Photoshop…

Unfortunately, like I said, CafePress is simple to use, and it doesn’t have any New Era caps, and you cant place the image where you want on the item, but it is still something. Anyway, here is the link:

Click the image…

P.S

I am not doing those stupid Dig it links anymore, because who actually clicks them anyway?

YOU HAVE TO PAY TO USE THE TOILET!, as if giving them my own excrement was not enough, and don’t they get enough money from the drugs and prostitution. We was traveling to Holland, and on the way through Belgium we had to stop at a horrible service station to empty the main valve. And inside this toilet, much like the scene in Trainspotting, it was the Worst Toilet in Belgium, and what made me laugh the most was the graffiti on the walls, and on the toilet seat itself. First I saw the nicely written ‘Fuck England’ to me left, which made me giggle a little. Then I looked down to the toilet seat and it said ‘Czech Scum’, then, the most pointless bit of graffiti I have ever seen was on the toilet roll holder, Ive been so kind to Photoshop it because, who actually brings a camera into a toilet apart from George Micheal?

And that was it….

Pointless graffiti and having to pay to piss aside, Holland, and Belgium, was very nice countries to visit. Well I cant really say I visited Belgium, I only stepped foot onto Belgium that time I needed to goto the toilet. Holland was cool, very different to England for obvious reasons. But one thing that surprised me was, unlike England, there is very few ‘youth trends’ or ‘classes’. In England we have tons: chav, emo, goth, grunger, scene, hardcore, the list goes on, and often these have different names depending on where you live. But in Holland all I really saw was two, Hardcore, which is basically chav, and Alto, which is short for Alternative, which is basically anyone with long hair. Dutch Hardcore is very different to English Hardcore scene. Example:

Dutch Hardcore

Basically what we call chav in England. They listen to Drum and bass, they look like wannabe gangsta’s.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPaMdxC6CQI]

An epileptic in mid fit standing up?

English Hardcore
One of my favorite genres of music, very similar to Punk, but with the similar guttural vocals from metal/Death metal.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qACnquW0y_Y]

Hmm which one is more ‘Hardcore’? let me see…

Another thing I noticed is, no offense to the Dutch, I think they are awesome, but most of the youth all dress the same, I hardly saw any ‘Alternative’ people, and me walking around with long-ish black hair everyone stared at me as if I was a freak.

Walking around Amsterdam was an experience. I was just walking around and I turned to my left and there was a big high street and at the bottom there was a big building with a massive Neon sign above it saying SEX SHOP, so naturally I walked down there. I also saw the most famous ‘Coffee shop’ in Amsterdam.

I am pretty sure no one goes in there for their coffee.

Down the high street there was various porn shops, kinky dungeons, and smaller coffee shops. I even passed two prostitute windows with a Childcare Center in the middle of them. And just as I thought I had seen it all, I saw a shop that ONLY sold condoms! All different sizes and shapes, and designs. One had Big Ben on it:

After browsing an extensive selection of condoms I came out of the shop only to be staring straight at this shop:

I am not even sure if this is a shop, it was probably some sort of kinky dungeon where you are given a ‘safe word’ before you enter.

Prostitutes… it was strange walking around a public place with semi-naked women in every window. And what made me laugh was, down the alleys there was not so good looking middle aged prostitutes, and on the main high street there were the porn-star look alike’s. Some looked really young also, and I’m pretty sure one of them that I saw was a man, which is dangerous for drunken English tourists.

Holland reminded me very much of America, the roads are very similar, very straight, and every half mile there is crossroads.

ONE other thing to mention. The Dutch are mad cyclists. They cycle everywhere. There is even a separate bike lane next to EVERY road. To show you how much they like cycling I took this photo…of a Multi Story Bicycle Park:

Mental

So after Holland, we drove all the way back to Kent, South East England, only to set off an hour later to North Wales. I was in the car for 16 hours that day and it sucked.

Wales was ok, it was cold, I had to sleep fully dressed, plus a jumper, because we was in a static caravan. We went on walks…hiking…the most pointless (sport?) ever, I will probably make a post explaining to hikers the errors of their ways, and why they cant just do something normal like running, its so much faster.

P.S I have added all the photo’s to my Flickr which you should see to the right of this page.

Tomorrow I leave to visit some friends in Holland, so I wont be making any new posts for a while. So I decided to make a post dedicated to the Dutch!
First things first, are there any fat Dutch people? I am yet to see one, I go on holiday to the South of France every year and the campsite is mainly Dutch people, and hardly any of them are fat, and the ones that are fat just turn out to be German anyway. For an English person it is hard to distinguish a Dutch person from a German person because the language is very similar.
I have come up with a theory, which I think all Dutch people are hiding: they don’t let fat people go on holiday.

Another thing is the several laws of which are not illegal in Holland but are every other place on the planet. And because of this an old English joke was formed that the Dutch police never have anything to do. Mainly because no one is getting arrested for prostitution, or taking/dealing marijuana. And the marijuana leads onto another point, I bet there are hardly any murders in Holland simply because everyone is too ‘chilled out’, (I have no proof for this accusation, and I am not saying every Dutch person is high all the time). The only murders are probably committed by drunk and disorderly ‘giving a bad name for the English’ English people. So if the Police have nothing, or less to do than English Police, then they can splash out on expensive crime busting gear?

‘OK, now what?’

I found the Dutch Police department website also, I am not sure if it is for real:

http://www.police.nl/

That site is probably just a front, the entire Dutch Police force is pictured above..they only work weekends.

This weeks photoshopped image is to do with the G20 meeting, and the great shit-storm that it produced in London:

I dont like the way I have done Gordon Brown in this image..meh.

Yes yes, I am an ex-World of Warcraft player, I confess it. I used to love playing a bit (hell of a lot) of WoW. I played it for three years, started playing it at 16 years old, in the middle of my GCSE’s which is not a good idea. World of Warcraft has been heavily criticized for its addictiveness, and when the news is not talking about emo’s, chav’s or Princess Diana (still), they talk about how dangerous it is to play World of Warcraft. This is what I hate about the news, the way they try to scare us. Like in the famous documentary made by Micheal Moore (I cant remember which one, they are all good) he mentions how, in America, they bombard the nation with fearful news headlines, hardly any positive headlines are published. Its always about murders and shootings and other depressing crap. Back to WoW, I saw a news broadcast about a ‘WoW addict’ who plays it 24/7, now the news has got all the Mothers in the UK worried that their child is an addict too. Same with the outburst of emo headlines, the Mothers got worried about their child self harming. And with the Chav headlines which lasted about 3 years before people realized that these Chavs aren’t dangerous, they are only 12 years old with 3 kids under their belt.

I hated calling it an addiction, an addiction is something that you consume, like drugs, or food. But with WoW, I preferred to call it an obsession. When playing WoW, it is very competitive because of it being a MMORPG (massive multi-player online role playing game), there is thousands of players on each server of whom to compete against. You always had to get better gear than the other player, had to beat players in PVP (player verses player). Because of this, WoW really does become a full time job. If you stop playing for a week, you drop behind other players because they have one weeks more experience, or gear than you. It sounds pretty lame now that I think back to what I used to be like. I stopped playing WoW in September 2007, I got up that day like normal, a day off from college, getting up early to play WoW. 15 hours later and the days gone, and I just thought, why am I even bothering to play this anymore. It was like I had grown out of it, it just felt right to stop playing. I do miss the people I met, they were awesome, and that is why WoW is so successful, which brings us to my first point:

Things I miss:

Community

The community inside World of Warcraft is very strong, and the one of the reasons why people play it for so long. If the game was one player, and not online, it would be pretty boring and you would end up getting annoyed by the graphics. But with a strong sense of community, it makes it all worthwhile.

Let the lag begin..

The sense of achievement

The World of Warcraft is an easy way to get a sense of achievement. When working as a team with your friends to kill a boss is what most high end players do. Even little things, like getting a cool item you have been waiting for gives you a nice feeling inside that probably causes the addictiveness of this game.

The players

Sure you get some assholes, but most of them were great to play with. And probably the thing I miss most from World of Warcraft. When I quit it was like I was abandoning a whole bunch of friends. Even though we had never met in real life, but after playing WoW with the same people for three years you grow strong bonds with certain players.

That is actually all I can think off that I miss from it..

Things I do not miss:

Everything else

I guess I can sum up everything I do not miss by just saying everything else. Blizzard, the creators of World of Warcraft deliberately made World of Warcraft the way it is to make people play it ALOT and keep on paying monthly. I do not like Blizzard for this, they claim that WoW is a game where anybody can play it, the casual gamer can just log on for a short period of time to play for a little bit, whereas the hardcore gamer can play for hours too. This is just untrue in my eyes, you cant play WoW for a short period of time and get anything significant done. An instance can take hours, quests can take hours too. All the casual gamers in WoW suck because they do not play it enough to get into a proper raiding guild.

The graphics are nothing to rave about, but as I said before, the graphics do not matter when your playing with a community.  I hate how much time of my life WoW consumed, I honestly believe I could have done better in my GCSE exams if I hadn’t have played WoW so much.

There is one other thing I didn’t like about WoW. Its nerdy-ness, WoW is a very nerdy game, and I am not insulting everyone who plays WoW, it is just geeky, and maybe that isn’t a bad thing.