domdavis.com

OK, so this year is already sucking due to the impending lack of bonus and pay rise (do you think if I went to the Singapore government and sold them shares in me I could raise a few billion to cover the slight downturn in expected earnings this sub prime thing is causing me?), however, I wasn’t prepared for the amount of suckage that today was going to throw at me.

It all started just before lunch time. We got up to head out and noticed a brown envelope in the post in tray. My natural reaction to these things is one of fear, so to placate my natural worry I decided to see who the envelope was from and which poor sod it was for. Closer inspection revealed that it was from the HMRC (formally known as the Inland B**tard F**king Revenue) and that the poor sod was… you guessed it: me

Anyway, it turns out that my delightful ex (who, after nearly 2 years probably still burns effergies of me on a nightly basis - not that I didn’t deserve it mind you) wasn’t forwarding on my post like I’d asked and I’d rather neglected to tell the tax man that I’d moved so they were rather wondering where I lived. I have now told them this information and wait with baited breath to find out just exactly how much they’re chasing me for, how much interest it’s racked up and how much of it is fines (what, you think they want to talk to me for something benign?).

While we’re on the subject of the blood sucking bar stewards (and forgive me if I’ve mentioned this before), why is it that we get excited about tax rebates? Here is an organisation that has stolen money from you throughout the year and is now, finally, giving it back to you. If, God forbid, they thought you owed them money they would chase you with demands, apply interest to the outstanding amount and probably apply lots of fines too. Not forgetting, of course, that you’re guilty until proven innocent with those buggers.

Anyway, my erstwhile employer (or at least some of it’s employees) managed to misplace something in the region of $14 billion an despite claims that I am a valued employee during these troubled times I rather suspect my valuable contribution is going to be rewarded with anything like money in the form of a bonus or pay rise. I’ve already budgeted for this rather substantial loss to the annual household income but if the dear old tax man decides I need to give them more cash I’ll be slightly skint this year.

OK, so I’ve been going to the gym regularly at least twice a week month for a quantity of time now and I’m pleased to report the following:

• I now weigh over 2Kg less more than I did when I started.
• I now have the physique of an Olympic 100m butterfly swimmer pie eater.
• I now have the stamina of a marathon runner 100 year old 120 a day smoker.

Yes, clearly something isn’t quite going right here. Obviously I am not pushing myself hard enough and need to work on blasting my lats (whatever the hell that means) or something, but since I’m unlikely to stop doing what I’m doing already I’m going to have to resort to checking the pennies (more on that in a later post) and getting me a personal sadist to show me what I should be doing. That way I can find out that perhaps the gym isn’t for me, continue paying them £30odd a month to use the pool twice a year and not bother about how fat I get

The following items are now regarded as sub optimal activities: Drinking a litre of grapefruit juice over the space of just one hour. That will be all.

Hurrah! My CD collection is now in alphabetical (by artist, then sorted into live and studio albums, then sorted by release date) order. Been meaning to do that for a while now

OK, so it’s my birthday in a few weeks and I thought I’d give everyone adequate notice of what I would like. As you may or may not know I’m a sod to buy for so here is the list:

My preferred item would be: Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Seriously, I quite liked the no gifts things at Christmas and it makes it easier for everyone.

Given that not everyone will go with that my second option is for you to get me something from here. That way someone is made happy, I don’t have to find somewhere to store anything and you can’t get me something I don’t want/like.

If you really, really, really want to spend money on me and don’t want to help out some poor, starving  unfortunate then I’ll accept John Lewis vouchers.

You don’t need to worry about cards either. It’s not like I ever remember to send any.

I’ve given up with PayPal. My account was hacked a few weeks ago and they suspended it. Turns out I hadn’t updated my address details with them so they kept asking for a credit card statement for the registered card at the address they had. I finally managed to explain to them that I no longer live at that address and that since it was a debit card I don’t get statements for the card. They told me to send in a bank statement with the old address on it so I did. They then decided they wouldn’t accept that as it wasn’t recent enough.

A few phone calls later and I finally manage to get them to accept I’ve moved. Now they want utility bills for my current address and a copy of my passport. My utility bills are all online (as are my bank statements) and I’m not sure they’ll accept the electronic copies of them. I think I’m just going to give up and let the account be closed by them (eventually). I hardly ever use it and it’s obviously not as impervious to fraud as they’d like you to think.

I want this used in clothes now. I’d buy an entire new wardrobe if it was.

So, according to the adverts, if you’re female you need to get special hair dye that comes in 15 different bottles, with 36,000 different shades of the colour being applied, a special brush and details instructions explaining the 4 day process for applying it. The adverts go on about the active ingredients and how they contain boswelox, calendula† and bullshitium and how the die nourishes the hair, takes it out for meals and treats it properly.

If you’re a man, get die, shampoo on, 5 minutes later you’re done, go pull birds.

Someone somewhere is lying to us.

† Seriously, who here also thinks that calendula sounds like an STD?

As Dan pointed out there’s been a little bit of a prang over at Heathrow. I read about it on the BBC website, however, here is how I suspect the sequence of events went.

• Plane comes down early of runway, a few people sustain bruises, the plane is slightly bent.
• The Media get wind of things, initial reports on the 24 hour news programs.
• BBC News 24 notices that Sky News is running something on it and so elevate the importance of the story. The same thing happens at Sky.
• It’s decided that it’s a Major News Story. Reporting on other news ceases, the endless speculation and repetition starts.
• A brief article is put on the website.
• The ‘experts’ are wheeled out, more speculation, more repetition.
• More ‘detail’ based on the speculation is put on the website.
• Reporters get to the scene are start getting statements from witnesses. This is added to the endless round of speculation that have now been going on for hours without any hard facts other than “someone bent a plane“.
• Finally something else pushes the story out and the story becomes a non event.
• [Several days later] The real reason behind the incident is released by the air accident investigators. No one cares.

If you saw it on the news let me know how right I am.

Our web filter at work blocks any url with the word hotmail in it, which means I can’t do a google search for that term.