Evil Santa

Now this is my kind of way to scare kids in a Christmas Parade…

Santa cart with deer heads instead of reindeer...

Santa cart with deer heads instead of reindeer...

From There, I fixed it


Always With You

Via a range of weird and wonderful links (just don’t ask, OK?) I came across a site called “Pictures of Jesus 4 U” which really has to be seen to be (dis)believed.

For me, the worst/creepiest ones are done by a guy called Larry van Pelt, (Pelt also has his own site here) which raise bad art to a new level. Go on, go and have a look.

What’s even scarier is that (I assume) some people actually pay for these images. There’s just no accounting for taste, I suppose…


Obsessive Behaviour

Over the last few months, as I’ve written about before, we’ve been attending one of the local Slimming World groups in an effort to lose a bit of weight. Obviously I’ve got more to lose than Herself, but we’re both working on it.

So far it’s been fairly successful – we’ve both lost a stone over that time. We could, in all honesty, have lost more, and/or in less time if we followed all the rules and weighed everything obsessively.

But that’s the key word – in my opinion, there’s an awful lot of this weight-loss stuff that is actually about doing stuff obsessively. We’ve seen three (I think) “group leaders” now, all of whom have lost significant amounts of weight – and absolutely fair play to them for doing so, they’ve done fantastically well – but all of whom are (to be polite about it) just a little bit crackers. There’s a number of examples of this, although right now I can’t be arsed to list them.

The one that keeps on coming back to me, though, was the one who was still utterly obsessed by food – all she’d done was replace high-calorie foods with low-calorie ones. But there was still that slightly crackers gleam in the eye when she was talking about being able to eat “whole bowls of no-Syn trifle to yourself” and so on.

And I find I just don’t have that obsessive part to me – and to some degree it actually leaves me feeling quite uncomfortable. I’m not obsessed with food, nor do I collect anything obsessively, or really anything else. It’s simply not part of me.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, to be honest. It’s just something I’ve noticed and wanted to write about it. And maybe that’s it, maybe writing is my obsessive behaviour, whether it be D4D™ or other writing projects. In some ways I’d actually be quite happy if that were the case. I just don’t know if it is.


Big Win

Since the weekend, the media’s been full of stories about the two sets of EuroMillions Lottery winners, who both won £45.5 million pounds. It’s not something I’m massively interested in – fair enough, they’ve been lucky enough to win, and that’s great for them. I think if I were in a similar situation though, I’d be pretty certain to go for the “no publicity” bit – after all, I’m willing to bet that this publicity will generate loads of letters to them from people begging for help/loans/gifts/donations. That would do my head in straight away.

Actually, I don’t know that I’d actually want to win that much money. (Although of course I wouldn’t turn it down or anything!)

I would, of course, love to win a decent sum on a lottery – although even then I’d probably be just as happy to earn that amount if one (or more) of my business ideas or plans were ever to take off properly. But £45million? I don’t know. Personally I think that kind of money is too much, it’d just leave you reeling.

There are so many instances of people winning massive sums and then either just blowing it on stupid stuff (houses, cars, drugs) and ending up back to being broke with nothing to show for their win. Just about every “What happened next?” story about lottery winners describes the amount of begging letters from people, the family members coming out of the woodwork, and all the crap that goes with suddenly – and very publicly – getting a massive dollop of money.

And to be honest, I don’t think I would want that much stress and hassle in my life. Sure, the money makes up for it a bit, but I don’t know, it’s just not my thing really.


Ugly

Every so often, you’ll see someone and just think “Why?”. Other people create websites dedicated to that moment…

First there’s Ugly Tattoos, which does exactly what the name says. Some seriously weird and ugly tattoos where you’ve got to wonder a) why they were done in the first place , b) what the people were thinking in the first place and in some cases c) how come the tattooist didn’t get sued.

Then there’s Wedinator, with wedding events/photos that are certainly strange andsometimes just plain wrong.

Any time I wonder whether I’ve been too cynical in my estimations of people, let these sites stand as witness to the fact I can never be that cynical.


Hallowe’en Quizzage Results

The village quiz last night was – as expected – quite a laugh. What was really good to see was that it was far busier than the previous years we’ve attended, to the point that they had to set up some extra tables in order to seat everyone. Auspiciously, there were 13 teams/tables taking part.

Our table ended up with a “best-decorated table” award, mainly because of Herself’s mother, who had excelled herself with a chocolate cake made up to look like a graveyard, which got taken on a tour round all the other tables by the organisers.

In the end, we came third out of the thirteen tables, only five points off the winning score. That suits me/us – yes, it would be nice to win, but I’m usually content with a “Top Three” position. (And we’ve managed that at each of the village quizzes we’ve attended so far) After all, it’s not the winning, it’s being there and having fun with the entire thing.

All told, a fun evening – allbeit one that also makes you realise just how feckin’ nutty some of our village people really are.


All You Can Eat

Seeing this story on the BBC about Taybarns (an all-you-can-eat restaurant whose business is growing during the recession) I was reminded about something I was going to write during my time down in London staying at a Travelodge, and again saw the other weekend when we stayed down in Berkshire. Buffet-style catering – and particularly buffet-style breakfasts.

Personally, I try to stay pretty sane in ‘all you can eat’ environments. From what I’ve seen at Travelodges and the like though, I seem to be in the minority in that aspect.

I lost count of the number of times I’d see people with plates piled high with food for breakfast and/or going back for second, third even (on one memorable occasion) fourth helpings. Obviously some people were just hungry, but others were doing it out of greed, and some kind of misplaced “Well I’ve paid for this so I’m going to get every single penny’s worth out of it” attitude.

I don’t understand that attitude – no, that’s not true. I can see the way some people’s minds work. I just don’t like it, and it’s not a mindset that will ever sit with me. I’d rather have the food I want, not necessarily what I feel I deserve, or that is mine because I’ve paid £x for it.

There’s more to this, I just haven’t yet got it straight enough in my head to be able to get it written down properly.