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In todays news, information about a miracle powder, which if sprinkled on a wound, promotes tissue growth.
The story cited a man who had lost the top of his finger at the first knuckle. The powder which is made from pig bladder scrapings promotes regrowth of bone, nerves, sinew etc.
Pinky pictured here said from his sty today "First it's pork chops and trotters they want us for, now even our bladders are fair game. I'm pig sick".
Yesterday, in an attempt to convert some of my stock from the sadly defunct Socks by Post venture into a little ready cash, I put some socks on E Bay.
This morning, I received a "sitting on the fence" message from E Bay telling me they had removed the item due to a complaint from someone named James Clark at No Ordinary Designer Label Ltd who believed I was in breach of their intellectual property rights.
I had to do a bit of searching to discover that this appears to be the company holding the Ted Baker brand name, but oddly Clark seemed to be hiding behind a hotmail account.
I've rattled him off a sternly worded e mail asking whether he can provide evidence that these socks are fakes, or is his interference based simply on a "feeling or suspicion".
I'd got one pair of Ted Baker being offered with a pair of Henri Lloyd with a starting price of 99 pence.
Where I stand is: This is my property and if I want to sell it for 99p having maybe paid £ 9.99p then that's my business, it just shows me to be a bit of a failure in the economics of business department.
As for protecting their brand name. A Fiesta has a Ford badge on the front and back, so am I insulting Ford's intellectual property rights if I decide to run an ad in Auto Trader offering it for sale under its brand name of Ford ?
If Mr. Clark offers me irrefutable proof that the Ted Baker socks I have in my possession are not the real McCoy tm or even Ted Baker tm I shall of course apologise for upsetting him and offer to burn the heinous articles, providing him with photographic evidence that they have indeed been destroyed, preventing them aver reaching the feet of an unsuspecting punter.
If as I suspect, he is merely talking out of his arse, I shall be seeking his apology in writing and a free relisting from E Bay where reference to the counterfeit allegations will be made.
These days, I have little time for E Bay or anything they say. BBC Working Lunch have recently done a good job in exposing them as con artists, where listing fees and their claims to have lowered them are concerned.
As for Ted Baker - Can I just ask you not to buy his overpriced merchandise, just as a favour to me ?
I was out at ten to seven this morning, walked down to town. Managed to unblock my PIN for my debit card, then into Tesco for much needed bread, milk and Coke Zero. Bought lemons to make chicken tikka, but they hadn't got any tikka masalla which is a worry, because I may have given my last to Mr. Chalk a few weeks ago. I'll have to have a root about in the spice cupboard.
So this morning, I'm having a posh glass of Coke with a slice of lemon in. It's the sort of thing that sets welfare trash apart from the civilised part of society, that and a fascination with places like Poundland, Costcutter and Matalan.
So here it is, not even 8 o clock yet and I've been like Tigger on a spring morning, but now I have nothing particular to do, except maybe housework and I'm not in the mood for that.
Doubt I'll hear from anyone today other than the Chalkmaster. McBark's gone to Ireland golfing and OBC has gone on a peasant shoot (or at least I think that's what he said).
Discovered over the weekend the false economy of buying cheap cartridges off E Bay for my HP all in one. First the red went wonky after only a little colour printing, a few sheets and then yesterday the black ran out and that too has only given minimal service even when compared to a generic ink pot from Staples.
My bacon was saved with the black, because PMG left me a pucker HP No 56 following the demise of his old HP printer, but it looks like I will have to sell the family silver on E Bay to get a new colour. Everything will be OK, as long as I don't need to print anything with the colour red in !
Honest, some of the things that they try to pass off as art. On BBC news I just watched a piece about an exhibition in London, which was just a white room, with what looked like boxed in enclosures running round the perimeter, but with a groove cut in.
Punters are expected to lean down and put their nose by the groove to smell things like "the smell of Communism". I wonder how much the "artist" levered out of the arts council for that ?
I may pop down the church hall later and do the same, but with a few Glade plug ins secreted in cardboard boxes donated by a local business, say Lidl or even Poundland, to illustrate the working class struggle against the establishment.
Then, as an artistic jape, I could have a box with nothing in it, so when the punters say I can't smell anything, I can joke that they obviously can't smell bullshit.
Charlie Chalk and I were talking about old records this morning and he told me he had one of those flimsy vinyl discs you used to get with the likes of New Musical Express. In this case it was petrol from National (no more) promoting Gerry Anderson's Supercar (1961), "In which Mike Mercury, Jimmy and Mitch are on the trail of MASTERSPY" !
Because of its extreme rarity, I reckon Charlie could get quite a price for this if it was advertised in the right place to catch the eye of "Fandersons" the colloqialism for Anderson fans.
I'm still emotionally scarred, because my mother decided I was too old for my Corgi cars, Superman and Batman comics ( a huge collection) and just about everything else and got rid of the lot !
I came home from school and that was it, I was considered a teenager and too old for Thunderbirds...
For all others who grieve for their lost childhood and discarded toys which are now making fortunes on E Bay, here's a little compensation in the form of the Supercar theme tune you would find on this record if you had a record player.
Download supercarTheme2.mp3 and as an extra bonus, who remembers Torchy the battery boy ?
Download torchyEndTheme.mp3 Give a little sigh and enjoy.
Channie and I suspect Dean, believe that a Dalek was a spammed up R2D2.
Talk about an insult. Firstly, Daleks are not robots and they don't bleep. Further more, they don't hang out with camp twats like C3PO.
I've had to explain how Daleks have caused disruption and misery around the universe in space and time, which is more than you can say for the Borg or even species 8472 (but they live in fluidic space, so that doesn't count).
As for R2D2 - Bloody swing bin if you ask me...
The face only a Dalek mum could love.
Finally - short but nasty, a Sontaran
It's been a day for tossers, I mean recruitent specialists / professionals or whatever they want to be referred as.
This evening, I received a Dear John e mail, which was entitled (Re BULK Sales Admin blah blah blah).
Technically speaking, the BULK bit means my e mail went straight into a junk box because they'd applied some sort of filter at their end, based on age, height, weight post code or whatever.
Well, it's not like I'm reliant on this arse for anything, so I just sent her a polite reply suggesting that with a bit if training and web savvy, in future, she will learn to remove the word BULK when she replies, so punters like me will think her rejection is a genuine response.
If that ruins her morning coffee and KitKat, I'll be happy.
If you read my last post, you'll understand, I've had quite enough of tossers for one day.
I'd a prescription that needed filling just up the road and that just happens to be next to the Wheatsheaf pub, which was a bit of a draw.
I sent OBC a text, to see if he might be interested in joining me, but as he has an empire to run, I didn't get a response.
So there I was, sitting at the bar, when this woman came in. She was carrying a pharmaceutical bag similar to mine. First off, she messed about with her hair, then she played with her blackberry, her goosberry and probably her loganberry. I whispered to Jean behind the bar, that if she was lucky, she might get a text or e mail what this woman wanted to drink.
Then, this Indian bloke came in, also carrying a pharmaceutical bag. "The plot thins" I commented to Jean.
The woman a power dresser (if Matalan is capable of producing such a look), realised she'd been waving her pharmaceutical bag at the wrong punter and joined the Indian at a remote table.
When I left, they seemed to be getting along just fine. All I'd got in my bag, was pills for my diabetes and high blood pressure. Christ knows what was in theirs !
I had a productive meeting with my Job Centre advisor on Friday and came out with about 5 leads to follow up today. One had a description certainly written by an "HR Gavin type", as it called for someone to act as "buddy" to the "Process Champion".
Duty bound and armed with buzzwords such as focused and goal driven, I contacted the agency by phone, then sent my cv by e mail. Someone called me back and began going through the detailed written description, comparing it to my work experience. Do you have SAP she enquired. I asked her what exactly SAP is. She didn't know and as she continued into her interview, she dug herself in so deep with newspeak, that she had to apologise and offer to call me back. She hasn't and do you think I am upset?
In addition to my fortnightly meeting with Ambreen, who is really helpful, I receive daily e mail alerts from online job agencies.
One very responsible sounding position came in, so I logged in and clicked apply. An hour later I received an e mail from a G mail account, offering me £ 1400 ($ 2800) a month plus commission, to work from home.
Alarm bells rang. There was attached a very important looking agreement to complete, with my bank account details and everything.
Now, if you google "work from home opportunities", you will turn up hundreds if not thousands of these opportunities and they will all be the same which is A BIG CON.
You needn't have web savvy to spot them, just like the fake lottery winning alerts and numerous Nigerian wankers who write to you in confidence asking your help in spiriting away a few mill.
What does send me incandescent with rage is that a so called professional outfit in the business of screening applicants for jobs and taking a commission for providing such, will put these spoofs on their books and then send out a reworked job description to innocent jobseekers.
It certainly shows these "recruitment specialists" aren't worldly wise even in their own sphere of activity or could it be they are just so greedy for a result for no effort, they will advertise anything to elicit a big punter response, thus increasing their chances of earning their commission ?
Maybe I'm just a cynic.
I've written to this outfit and we'll see if they respond and indeed do anything about the spoof job alert they are putting out. HR professionals ? I've flushed the loo on better.
Saw this on the Clevedon Flickr group today. It's heartbreaking to see a fine old building like this left to fall down.
Situated right next to the pier, I used to drink in here on summer evenings in the 1980's when I lived in Clevedon. The town still has hotels and a bit of a seasonal tourist industry, so I can't understand why it has been allowed to fall into this state. Oh to be rich and eccentric and buy it just because it is a beautiful old building.
The other day when I told Charlie Chak that Wally the Welder is off to Poland for a few days, he said "that'll be another 1500 pictures on Flickr to look out for then".
Well, it's going to be 15 hundred and something, because he was out last night being fed again, so here's the best of the crop.
Just enough to keep him going...
At six o clock their mumies and daddies will take them home to bed...
