Eurovision song contest drinking game.

This is not my usual blog post, that is still to come. This is merely a handy repository for the rules of our Eurovision song contest drinking game. Usual disclaimer about responsible drinking, do not condone or encourage, etc,etc. But if you are lucky, unconsciousness slips in around song four!

Rules for Eurovision drinking game. V2.0

There are 3 categories of drinking action, sip, gulp and finish.
Whenever one of the following actions occurs you must do the appropriate drinking action.

Sip.
The word "Love" is used.
The singer or a group member is particularly unattractive.
The singer sings in any other language than their own.
The use of nonsense words.
Any facial hair.
Performer winks to camera.
Excessive amounts of flesh on show.
Hats and/or use of props.

Gulp.
Hats with horns.
Removal of any clothing.
Pyrotechnics or fire on stage.
Key change in song.
Singer falls to knees.
Backing group starts dancing.
Woman has facial hair.
Stage entrance or exit by any other means than walking.

Finish.
Uncertain gender or cross dressing.
The wearing of national costume.
Singer not from country they are representing.
French entry sings in English.
There is a contortionist or animal on stage.

These rules are in a state of flux, if you think of a good one or feel that some need removing, please let me know.
Oh and good luck UK. Josh I think they call him.

Today I am a Guinea Pig.

Today, for a change, I have donated my body to medical research. After replying to an advert some time back and under going some blood tests and psychological profiling, which I must have passed? I spent my day being poked, prodded and scanned. The research is about the efficacy of anti-depressant and their effect, if any, on the brain, an area of research I was quite interested in, in an earlier life and I belong to a rare group of people whose skins are just too thick to become depressed by the shit that life throws at them (or maybe just too thick)! The protocol involved me having a huge cannula in my arm into which they would infuse either saline or an anti-depressant (a double blind study) and from which, they would take an armful of blood every 20 minutes or so. All this whilst having an MRI and performing more psychological testing. How best to describe having an MRI. I was once told that it sounds like NiN tuning up, but that's not quite right, it's more like having your head clamped in a metal bucket which is being beaten by the Kyoto drummers, with spanners. But strangely the hard bit about it is trying to stay awake! And when doing the testing I kept trying to work out which finger was on which button and press those keys in time to that incessant rhythm. So, after spending 4 hours at a research lab and at least an hour in that infernal machine I received a tuna and cucumber sandwich, a hole in my left arm and the hope that I may have advanced medical science just a little.

Hunky-Dory?

This is just a quick follow up from a previous post, Windows 7 install. Good news! Almost everything is hunky-dory, the system itself is still stable and quick enough for most of my needs. disk space is looking good with no excessive churn, temp is o.k, yet I have a couple of black flies in my Chardonnay (thank you Alanis).
1. Photoshop elements 8 won't run for more than a couple of minutes without crashing! Annoying but not earth shattering. will just roll back to 7. There are better editors out there but I like the organiser and I've been with it since Photodeluxe 1.
2. Intermittent network problems. For some still unknown reason, at times I cannot connect to my mail server or the web but my Torrent client still downloads, my Twitter client still updates and Windows still says I'm still connected! Haven't worked it out yet, can't decide if it's hardware or software related. Also even if Firefox connects IE won't!
3. A complete failure of all my usb ports. Except my mouse! In the process of uninstalling all the drivers and starting again.
That will do for the moment and I appear to have used up my entire quota of exclamation marks for the month! Whoops! And next months! Best stop now.

Mood swings courtesy of bureaucracy.

This post was supposed to be about the importance of friends, family and birthdays but no. The government had to go and mess it up!
Just lately I seem to have been having lots of meetings at the Jobcentre. If not signing on then Restart. If not Restart then New Deal and it's impossible for them to schedule these to be on my signing day, so I've been on the premises at least once a week for the last month. At my last Restart interview, my advisor had worked out that because of my length of unemployment(ages) and where I lived(deprived), I would very soon be eligible for the chance to compete for some of the part time jobs they hold in reserve. So, a further appointment was made which took me past that date of eligibility. in the interim, an interview was arranged for New Deal, which is for people who have been unemployed for a certain length of time and the condensed version of this seems to be "here are some jobs, if you don't take them we'll cut off your benefit" but that's paraphrasing a bit.
Went for the interview, very nice lady talked me through New Deal, helpful, pleasant, new appointment made and joy of joys, on my signing day. A first.
Six days later, I attended for my Restart appointment. The security guard couldn't find me on his clipboard but, because I had my card with me, he let me up. Got to reception and lo and behold, no appointment! After a period of tooth gritting and requesting to see somebody, since I was there, I eventually saw some one, not my advisor, who knew what had been said at our previous meeting, but some one who had never seen me before. It conspires that New Deal takes precedence over everything else and once I had started on that particular beast it automatically cancels all other appointments at the Jobcentre. But doesn't tell anybody. Neither Restart or I were informed. Not happy. On a happier note my new advisor had a list of about thirty jobs, of which twenty six were for the 16 to 24 age group, three were suspended, which left two part time filing jobs, which I didn't quite feel qualified for.