Why are those Japanese people on TV talking about Houston's local news? That just doesn't make sense.

Notice anything ridiculously unhelpful with this picture?

This is a shot of the Heroes season premiere featuring Hiro and Ando. Fans of the show will know that these two particular characters are Japanese so when they are talking, subtitles appear on the screen.

So it's a good time for the local news to flash up an advertisement telling us what is coming up at 10pm.

Seriously, do these muppets not even think before they do something like this? Maybe wait 30 seconds until there aren't subtitles on the screen? Or position the advertisement elsewhere on the screen?

Hmm, maybe they think that this is the only time when the eyes of the entire audience will be focused on the same area trying to read the fucking subtitles so they think it's the perfect place to get maximum exposure!

Why do the local news need to advertise? Nothing ever happens on the local news. They tell you what the weather was like today which you already know because you were there. They try and guess what the weather will be like tomorrow and for the rest of the week, then repeat this every three minutes in between telling you what else is coming up later (e.g. The Tonight Show, weather, sports).

Thanks for that.

Muppets.

I did check my local listings thank you very much and it said this channel would be showing the game

Last week the UEFA Champions League returned and Manchester United had a tough game in Turkey against Besiktas.

After the collapse of Setanta in the UK, added to ESPN losing the rights to Champions League games I had to search through some little known channels to try and find coverage of the game.

Luckily, I stumbled across eight consecutive channels called UEFA. The listing for each channel showed one of the eight Champions League games taking place that day so I found the one with the United game, set it to record so I could watch it when I got home from work and thought nothing of it.

When I sat down to watch the game, I was relieved that it had been recorded and there was 2 hours and 15 minutes of exciting Champions League build up and action. Then I clicked play and was greeted by this screen, for the full 2 hours and 15 minutes.

In case you can't read the text, it helpfully states "This match may be available on your local cable sports network. Check listings for coverage in your area."

If only I had thought to do that.

Muppets!

P.S. Our walls aren't really orange. It just looks that way in the photo for some reason. It was taken at night so it must be the affect of the big light on my iphone's camera.

More nasty, pointless, evil little scumbags, that fly!

I recently posted about fire ants and wondered what their actual point was. Well, last weekend we went down to Galveston and we were attacked by another similarly pointless evil species. Mosquito's.

What is the point in mosquito's? Do they actually do anything to benefit anything?

Last weekend there were thousands of the little bastards who clung to any exposed piece of skin as soon as you went outside.

The only slightly good thing is that there were also lots of huge dragonflies who eat mosquito's but unfortunately they weren't quick enough, or hungry enough to get them all.

It's new to you if you only have one channel on your TV

Have you seen Jay Leno's new show? It started last week on NBC after Jay quit The Tonight Show at the end of May.

The new show is pretty much the same as the old one, except it's on an hour earlier.

Starting this week, Jay has an exciting new feature where his guests race around a specially constructed race track in actual cars to see who gets the best time.

On Saturday morning, the Today Show did a special feature on this and how they all laughed how this is what happens when you give Jay Leno three months off work.

Indeed. He watches Top Gear on BBC America who have been doing the same thing, only much better, for years.

Crazy.

Why make up a word combining two words when one of the two words does the job just fine??

Been busy lately? Been up to much?

Or have you just been chillaxing?

There's a word I don't understand. Well, I do understand it, but I don't understand why people use it.

It's a combination of Chilling, and relaxing, which means erm, relaxing.

So why combine two words to make a word that does not exist, when one of the words you're bastardising works just as well on it's own?

Insania.

This is exactly why we don't let you sleep with us more often!

For a treat, the other night my wife and I decided we would let the dogs sleep in our bed.

The next morning, I woke up earlier than usual, clinging to the edge of the bed. My wife was almost on top of me leaving me hardly any room to manoeuvre.

Boomer on the other hand had over half the bed to himself. He took advantage of this by spreading out, length ways as if to rub it in our faces.

This is exactly why we don't let the dogs sleep in the bed more often. They take up all the room. They get really close to you, and every time you move a little bit to get more comfortable away from them, they move up to get close to you again meaning that by the time morning arrives, I'm on the floor, and my wife is clinging on to the edge of the bed by her fingertips!

Maybe if they both just found a small place out of the way we'd let them more often.

Come on, play the game boys.

There's help for us all now you fat cow!

Footballer's wife Alex Curran is an example to us all.

Married to Liverpool player Steven Gerrard, smart cookie Alex realised the media spotlight may shine her way.

Unhappy with her figure, Alex went on an eight month fitness kick, cutting out the burgers and take aways she loved so much and now says shes "never felt better".

She goes on "I love the new me and Steven does, too. He loves the fact that I’ve ditched my unhealthy habits and has helped motivate me to keep up the hard work.”

For anyone keeping count, Alex Curran lost a total of 8 pounds on her fitness kick. 8. pounds.

You can read the story and see the pictures here. For reasons of decency I won't dig out the before pictures.

How did her body cope with carrying all that extra weight? How did her heart not just give up years ago?

Seriously. She's about 3 stone now, so before she must've been a good 3 and a half stone. I can't imagine she'd seen the inside of many chippies or take aways.

Is this story really supposed to be an example to us all, and to show us how, with a little hard work and dedication, we can all lose 8 pounds and weigh same as a four year old?

You can't fix stupid

If only someone invented a type of hat that could keep the sun out of your eyes..

If you end the series on a cliffhanger it is not really a cliffhanger, we know there will be another series next year!

Have you ever watched Rescue Me? If not, it's a show on FX about a group of New York firemen struggling to keep it together after 9/11.

It's full of dark humour and is a good show.

Anyway, my wife and I watched the "season finale" the other day and it ended on a cliffhanger.

Only it didn't. The fact that it ended on a cliffhanger tells us that the show will return next year.

If the show was not returning, they would tie up the loose ends and tell us that Tommy is dead but the fact that we're supposedly left wondering tells us that he will recover just fine.

Why do the editors of US TV shows give the game away so easily? They really think they're being clever and keeping us all on the edge of our seats but if you watch closely enough, you get to learn their tricks and sometimes it ruins things because you know exactly what is going to happen.

Muppets.

What is the point in those nasty, poisonous little scumbags?

What is the point of fire ants?

We went to Galveston for the weekend and the grass around the beach house was covered in lots of small fire ant mounds.

This made walking the dogs a lot more tricky than it should be as Busby has a habit of annoying insects that sting or bite.

When we got home we weren't sure where our house was. We're pretty sure we left it where we usually left it but we couldn't see it. It was blocked by the two biggest fire ant hills there ever was!

What is the point of these creatures?

Maybe somebody somewhere actually wants their soil piled up into nice little mounds around their garden, but surely even they have no use for the nasty, poisonous little scumbags that will use their psychic powers to make sure they all attack you at the same time causing maximum pain.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than pouring poison on top of their nest and watching hundreds of them come crawling out to see what is happening, then happily carry the poison into the nest to share with their friends. Bye bye scumbags.

Alive and kicking

I just checked wikipedia and Bob Greaves is still alive.

He's 75 though so maybe I should add 'at the time of publication' to that statement.

Keep Christmas in December

Last weekend, my wife and I had to pick up some cards for various upcoming birthdays, anniversaries etc so we stopped by the local Hallmark shop.

When you enter the shop you're greeted by a big Halloween display, which is fair enough I suppose.

However, as you venture further into the store, behind the Halloween pumpkins, they had their Christmas display already set up.

This was August. The end of August granted but still fucking August!

Does the shops make Christmas earlier and earlier every year or am I just turning into a Grinch?

Bob Greaves would be turning in his grave, if he was dead.

Is Bob Greaves dead? He was quite old on Granada Reports so he could be.

Jumpy little cursor making me click on things I don't want!

I wrote last week about how text sometimes disappears from the screen when you're typing.

Well, this week I have something similar that annoys me.

There I was, innocently updating my Netflix queue when instead of clicking update, my cursor decided I wanted to redeem a gift card so he jumped up to the top of the screen at the exact second I was about to click update.

I don't know what made my cursor think I wanted to redeem a gift card. I don't actually have a Netflix gift card to redeem. In fact, I didn't even know you could get gift cards for Netflix.

I'd even typed new numbers next to the films I wanted to move up my queue so if the cursor had anything about it, it would've known all I wanted to do was update my queue. The clue was that I was actually aiming it at the update button.

I'm pretty sure the cursor's sole role in life is to point at things while I click on them using my mouse.

Deary me.

My iTunes chart is taking over my life!

I have a problem.

I listen to a lot of music and probably have most albums ever released but that's not the problem.

My problem is iTunes. I love iTunes and buy most of my music from there these days but I have a problem when listening back to music.

iTunes keeps count of the number of times you've listened to a song and this is where the problem starts.

First off, for it to count, you have to play a song all the way to the end. This is not normally a problem, except when listening to songs through iTunes.

For some reason, I want iTunes to keep an accurate record of which songs I listen to so it compiles an unofficial sad Andy chart.

I suppose this comes from when I was younger and I used to compile my own chart based on which songs I'd heard on TV or the radio each week. It was imaginatively called The TV & Radio Top 30.

Anyway, because iTunes keeps track of the songs you listen to, instead of just moving on to the next song when I get bored of the current one, I have to skip to the end of it so it gets it's point, and then click on the next song I want to listen to.

As iTunes is keeping count of all the songs I play, I find myself listening to songs that I think should be at the top of the chart, or at least need a little help climbing a few spots.

Disaster almost strikes when my wife decides to listen to music during the day. Sometimes she even goes as far as creating a playlist for her to listen to while she works.

You're probably wondering what the problem is aren't you?

Well, please allow me to educate you.

My wife has about 25-30 songs on the playlist, and she just leaves it playing all day, on repeat so it plays the same songs over and over.

When that happens, it destroys all of my hard work in getting all of the songs in the required order and we end up with Britney Spears & Lady GaGa shooting up the chart as they've been played 34 times in a day, which then has the knock on effect of pushing Oasis and the Stone Roses down and I for one would be suitably embarrassed should anyone pop in to look at my iTunes library and see Britney Spears proudly sitting on top of some proper bands.

So the result is I never get to listen to songs in their entirety as there is still so much work to be done to make sure everything is in the correct order and properly reflects which songs I listen to, and like, the most.

In case you're interested, the current number one song is Take That's Rule the world. It was the song of our first dance at our wedding so I suppose it's ok.

Now my peaches are all brown after 2 days!

I know I've already posted today but just to rub in the whole bananagate fiasco, the peaches that we bought 2 days ago, the same peaches that were hard to the touch and we thought would take a few days to ripen, have now gone off.

They are brown and furry, ok, so they were already furry, they are peaches after all, but they shouldn't be brown!

They're going to call this peachgate aren't they?

Bananagate update: Green with a hint of brown

You've probably been on tenterhooks the last few days so I thought I would give you an update on what has rapidly become known as bananagate. If you have any hooks left, they're sure to be tentered.

You will remember that in an attempt to buy bananas that would last until at least half way through the working week, we picked up some green ones from the local supermarket.

It is now day 19 and we have some developments.

Although they may look a bit yellow in the picture, they're still mostly green but what's this? We have some signs of brownness.

Not only have the bananas failed to uphold their side of the bargain and turn a nice edible yellow, but they've decided to skip that phase entirely and go straight to the mushy browny, must be thrown away stage.

I know.

Piss all over the floor

If you're a man and you work in the same office as me, I have one small request.

Please stand a little bit closer to the urinal in future.

Having to wade through all the piss on the floor is not nice. It's obviously not as big as you think.

Maybe you just need some target practice but it's pretty disgusting at your age.

Thank you.