Girlfriends

Women I Love to Love

Today I think I’m going to write about girlfriends.  And I don’t mean the girls you take to the movies, and to dinner, and then try to sneak a kiss with in the park later.  I’m talking about women who are friends. 

I had a few girlfriends growing up.  I would always laugh when a lot of these girls would tell me that they don’t have many, if any at all, girlfriends themselves.  I was always told this was because women are catty and jealous of each other and they always create too much drama.  I would have to agree with this statement a lot of the time.  Males don’t create as much drama.  There are always the exceptions to this, take the guy off in a corner crying because someone didn’t like his new hat.  Yes, those guys are out there too, and no I never had any male friends like that.

But getting back to women, the world wide web has changed a lot of things including how many female friends I now have.  I have quite a few that I’ve never even met in person.  I have met quite a few women through Facebook.  They’re friends and live all over the world.  I have some girlfriends in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, I think one even lives in France somewhere.  I love seeing pictures they post, and making fun comments when they post something.  And for the most part, these women understand that I can be sarcastic and silly and accept me for what I am. 

Some of these women are married, some have kids, some are even married and have kids! *chuckle*  Anyway, the point of all of this is that they are friends.  I didn’t make friends with them because I thought I might get lucky.  I never expect anything from any of them.  We’re just friends.  So why am I writing about this?

Because some guys don’t seem to think this way.  I’ve lost track of how many times I see one of my female friends posting on Facebook that they ARE NOT AVAILABLE AND THEY DO NOT WISH TO RECEIVE PHOTOS OF MALE PRIVATE PARTS!  … … … I sit here thinking to myself “What the hell is this?”  Really?  Some idiots are sending photos of their private parts to my friends?  Who the hell does this?  And more importantly, WHY would anyone do this?  Are they thinking that once these women see their equipment they’ll do anything?  What the hell is wrong with the world?

Some don’t get pictures, but instead get messages that say things like “I think you’re my soulmate” or “you’re so beautiful, I need to be with you”.  Some of the men sending these kind of messages are hundreds, even thousands of miles away from the women they’re sending them to!  What do they honestly think they are going to get for a response?  “Oh yeah baby, I love the pictures of your hairy ass, I want to be yours now!”

One friend solved this very nicely.  She took a photo of her husband’s junk and sent that back to the guy.  He was smart enough to leave her alone after that.  I’m not sure how to handle messages from idiots like these guys other than to laugh about it and block them, but women aren’t like that.  They aren’t wired that way usually.  Things like this really upset them and when a friend of mine is upset, I’m upset!  This sucks!

Moving onward, some girlfriends I’ve had have just disappeared.  That’s quite a trick considering they’ve had a large internet presence.  How do you just up and go away?  I love the internet and would really miss it!  I wouldn’t even begin to know how to wean myself off this magical thing!  Without giving away names, I met one girl online and was stupid enough to travel hundreds of miles away to move in with her in Minnesota.  Things didn’t work out and within 6 months I was back in Las Vegas.  She had always been online.  Now I can’t find a trace of her.  Maybe she’s dead?  That wouldn’t surprise me at all.  I haven’t seen her in 10 years and it is entirely possible that she either died, or ended up in prison.  Yup, she wasn’t the smartest person and may be in prison. *chuckle*

Another one became quite a surprise.  The first one, the possible prison woman, I had met and left probably over fifteen years ago so the internet really wasn’t the size it is now.  Facebook wasn’t even around.  I met her through MySpace if you can believe that!  Moving on I had another friend just about two years ago.  She was another author and lived on the other side of the country.  Eventually we began talking over the phone, texting, and emailing each other all the time.  I thought we were pretty tight.  She decided she was going to marry another guy and one day I receive a message saying not to text or email her anymore.  So I stopped.  And then she just dropped off the internet.

Now this wasn’t instantaneous.  She disappeared over the course of months, but she just went bye, bye.  I finally figured out that she’s still around, she didn’t disappear, she changed her name.  At least her last name.  She had written a number of books and they’re gone now, too.  That’s a long story that I won’t go into, but how do you just turn your back on friends? 

A few of you who read this might know who I’m talking about.  If you do, don’t mention her name.  If someone wants to leave my life, they’re more than welcome.  It’s just so surprising to me when I get treated like one of those guys who sends out pictures of his junk.  I don’t do that and never treat my girlfriends with anything but respect.  Getting married shouldn’t mean you can’t have me as a friend anymore, especially if you live hundreds of miles away.

Ok, I’ve ranted long enough for this morning.  Disappear if you want to, I’ll find more friends somewhere.  Until tomorrow…Ta!

Petrol Gas

The Price of Gas in China

So, do you own a car?  A lot of people do and that means we all have to buy gasoline, or petrol as my English friends call it.  And how much is petrol, gas, or whatever?  Well, since the huge letters above say China, let’s take a look at China’s gas prices today.  As of right now, the internet tells me gasoline costs ¥7.94 Chinese Yen a liter.  One liter is equal to a quarter of a gallon and in America we buy gas by the gallon.  So basically gasoline in China today costs ¥31.76 Chinese Yen a gallon.  That may sound like a lot, but converting it to American dollars that would be $5.19 a gallon (I bet my math teacher friend is loving all these numbers! *chuckle*)

When I went out to fill my car up with gas for the week a couple days ago, I paid $2.98 American dollars a gallon.  I’ll bet the Chinese are pretty jealous!  What cheap gas we have here in America, right?  Wrong, back in 1989 I remember gas only costing $0.79 a gallon!  The stupid oil companies are just greedy!  Anyway, let’s get back on track.

How about Jolly Old London, England?  How much do you suppose petrol costs there?  Do you think the Chinese will be jealous of English gas prices?  I can already feel my English friends shaking their heads and muttering profanity.  *chuckle*  The internet tells me that as of today the price of petrol in London, England is around £1.33 a liter (Or litre as my English friends would say)  Adding that all together to make a gallon, petrol is £5.32 English pounds a gallon.  Converting that to American dollars, my English friends are paying $8.51 a gallon.

….

….

….

That can’t be right.  It can’t!  Really?  $8.51 a gallon for gas?  Holy shit!  I drive around in a car with a 10 gallon tank and usually gas up when I’m at about a half a tank.  My last trip to the gas station cost me about $13.50 or so!  In England I’d be paying about £26.60!  That’s $42.57 in American dollars!  I can’t afford that every week!  Damn!  On the other hand…

This is a Honda CRX.

These nice, little babies got around 55 miles per gallon of gas!  Great mileage!  They’re gone now.  Well, not exactly gone, but they aren’t made or sold in America anymore.  If you come across one, buy it!  It’s worth its weight in gold now!  At the most, modern cars here in America get around an average of something like 19 miles per gallon. Some get worse.  A great mileage car like a Hyndai ( I drive a Hyndai) get around 35 miles to a gallon or so.  Check out this vehicle:

YEAH!  That's a 2014 Bugatti Veyron Super Sport Performa!  I’ll bet I could really attract a few gorgeous English ladies while driving this, huh?  Fantastic looking car!  It also gets about 10 miles per gallon.  For you English mates keeping up with the math, that’s about 2.5 miles per litre.  Is it worth it to drive that now?  Can you AFFORD to drive this now?  Even if someone gave you this car and said they would pay the insane car insurance for it, I don’t think I’d be able to pay for the petrol to drive around!  What a crock of shit!

But you say you still want a convertible without really shitty gas mileage?  How about this one?

This is a FIAT 500C 0.9 TwinAir Cult 85HP Dualogic.  It gets about 75 miles per gallon!  You may not pick up the self-centered, gold digging, bimbos in this, but you’ll certainly attract all the sensible minded ladies!  *chuckle*  This thing gets about one and a half times the gas mileage the Honda CRX did!  But can you get one of these here in America?  HELL NO!  You can pick one right up in England, though!  At least I think you can, I found this while doing a search for the cars with the best gas mileage in England.  I KNOW you can’t get vehicles with this kind of mileage where I live!  Phooey!

I can get one of these here:

This is a Ford F150 Raptor pick up truck.  It gets about 11 miles to a gallon.  I’ll bet country girls here in America would love me in one of these!  Of course if I really lived in the country I wouldn’t be able to afford one of these because I don’t have enough money to pay for the damned gasoline!  For crying out loud, it probably costs $50 in gas just to drive this monster to the corner post office! 

Now I’ve forgotten what I was even writing about in the first place.  Gas, or petrol, or something.  Chinese cookies, maybe?  I know there was something Chinese in here somewhere.  For now I think I’m going to go off and dream about driving through the English countryside in a Bugatti Veron with the top down.  All my money flying out of the back of the car as I speed down the road.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more senseless stuff.

News or not?

News for Numbskulls

Whenever I take a trip somewhere and people find out I live in Las Vegas (Actually Henderson, Nevada which is a suburb of Vegas), they always ask why I left and think living here must be so exciting!  In some ways it is exciting, but probably not for the reasons you might think.  Living in Las Vegas is exciting because you never know if you’re going to get robbed, ran over by a car, or shot by someone.

Do I sound overly dramatic yet?  After living here for a while you sometimes stop noticing all the bad things that are in the news.  Every day there seems to be either someone shot, robbed, or killed in a car wreck here.  Now people may tell you that drivers are crazy where they live, but are there this many accidents?  And a lot of time the accidents don’t even involve more than one vehicle!  Here are a few incidents from just this past week:

Coroner identifies woman killed while crossing U.S. 95 after accident

Why would you even try to cross a busy freeway?  I’ve driven 70 miles an hour on the freeways here and people still pass me like I’m standing still!  And this woman tried to walk across one.  Brilliant.  The article notes at the end that there were four traffic related deaths this weekend.  Wow. 

Let’s take a look at another fatality from this weekend.  This one is a few brilliant young people.  Ever wonder why they came up with something called the Darwin Awards?  It’s because of people like this.  If you haven’t heard of the Darwin Awards, Google them.  Both amusing and frightening at the same time.  Anyway, on to the injuries!

Police identify teens involved in car hood-surfing accident

Who knew it wouldn’t be safe to try and surf on the hood of a car driven by someone who was really drunk?  I mean it sounds safe, doesn’t it?  You can’t get hurt when you’re young…and drunk….and stupid…and…ok, yes you can get hurt.  You can get very hurt as these idiots found out.  I’m sure the girl who was driving will cry at her court hearing and say “I didn’t think anyone would get hurt!”  The first three words in that sentence are at least correct.

Ok, enough of car accidents.  I don’t even want to think about those anymore.  It’s bad enough I have to drive to work on these streets!  Let’s see what else is in the news here.  It’s got to be something exciting, right?  After all, this is Las Vegas!

HIV positive woman accused of shoplifting threatens to infect Walmart employee

What…what the hell?  What is this?  This news is from Dallas, Texas!  Why is this in my Las Vegas news section?  It does sound like something that would happen here, though.  There are a number of homeless people here who are HIV positive and like to threaten other people with that. 

To hell with it then, forget Vegas.  Let’s look at some national news.  We’re coming up on elections here in America and I’m sure there will be some news about that.  I mean national news should be really interesting, right?  Uh…damn.  I don’t even believe this one. 

Meteorologist caught urinating during newscast?

Is this a news article or a question?  I guess Mike Seidel had to go and figured there was no better place to piss than in the snow right there.  So do you suppose it was cold out where Mike was?  Did his penis shrivel up while he was trying to water the weeds?  I should email him and ask.  In fact, let’s all email Mike Seidel and tell him what a rude pig he is for pissing outside on national television!  Let’s tell the station manager! 

Honestly I did go to the Weather Channel web page, but there isn’t an email listed for you to send any complaints.  I’m sure they don’t want to hear any complaints from anyone.  There is however a “Feedback” section here:

How can we improve weather.com?

I’m so tempted to leave a comment asking for their weathermen to be potty trained.  Maybe teach them that it’s not appropriate to piss outdoors.  I’m sure you’re now asking yourself if I’ve ever pissed outdoors.  Yes I have, but never on camera.  If you’re going to do the weather on tv you should at least keep your pants zipped up until your report is finished!

Oh hey, they found some bones at nearby Lake Mead!  Human bones!  Fabulous.

Coroner identifies bones found at Lake Mead

The ad that comes on is ten times as long as the news story!  And you can’t really call this much of a “story” anyway, can you?  It’s basically a sentence long.  Why is there even video?  The written part says the “bones” belong to Charles Finely III.  I wonder what happened to the other two?

Ok, I’ve had enough of news for today.  Time to start racking my brain about what I’ll blog about tomorrow.  I’m sure I’ll come up with some more senseless shit.  Until then stay safe and don’t let anyone find your bones in a lake after pissing in the snow.

British Soldiers

The British Military

Seeing the title of this blog you may wonder why exactly I’m writing about the British military since I’m an American.  To be honest, this all came down to a video game for me.  It’s a game called Company of Heroes.  It’s a fairly graphic World War II military simulation thing where you control squads of men as they run around killing each other.  So what does this have to do with the British military?  Ok, where to begin?

In this video game American soldiers run around and shoot at the enemy.  They can use grenades and mortars and all kinds of things.  There are also British units you can use, but they operate differently in the game.  I played a short tutorial mission with a British unit and found out that they perform better and get a few bonuses if you create a Leftenant (Lieutenant) and assign it to the British unit.  As a veteran myself, this insults me!  Yes I’m an American veteran, but British soldiers aren’t just a bunch of back alley morons who won’t do their duty unless someone is keeping a close eye on them!

I realize (Realise? English folks spell things differently sometimes. *chuckle*) that this is just a video game and the “lieutenant” is just a part of the gameplay element, but it still seemed a bit insulting to me.  I mentioned this to an English friend of mine and he suggested I write a blog about it.  So being the diligent lad I sometimes like to be (sometimes I honestly need a leftenant to be behind me making sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, but aren’t we all like that sometimes?) I began to look into the real British military.  I wondered how it compared to the American military that I know.  Let’s take a look at what I found:

Boot camp.  What can you say about that?  To me those two words represent a huge amount of things.  British Army boot camp is 14 weeks long.  That’s if you’re going into a job other than infantry.  If you plan on being in the infantry and being an English infantry soldier your training will last 24 weeks.  That’s a good amount of time for training.  So what goes on in British Army boot camp?  Let’s take a look at the promotional video!

Let’s take a look at a US Army boot camp video.  Right away you’ll see quite a difference.

What the hell is with all of the loud music?  Is this boot camp or some rock and roll concert?  This video talks about the army’s “core values”.  It doesn’t tell you a whole lot of what kind of training you’ll get, it just says “you’ll do this” and “you’ll do that”.  There’s more to being a soldier than just firing a weapon.  Personally, the British military video looks better to me.  If you’re joining the American army for lots of excitement and loud music, you really don’t have your priorities straight.

Now before I continue, let’s take a look at Marines.  When we talk about training there will always be someone screaming about how US Marines are the best trained in the world.  The English have their Royal Marines.  Are they less well trained than the US guys?  I don’t think so.  But from what I’ve studied, US Marines and Royal Marines are two different animals, no pun intended.  Here is a Royal Marine video.  They go through 32 weeks of training and not everyone makes it through.

British Royal Marines go through 32 weeks of training.  Conversely US Marines go through a 12 week boot camp.  Are the English better trained?  Honestly, I don’t know, but 32 weeks is a long time!  Another difference is that in American boot camp, be it Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine, we’re always being yelled at.  There always seems to be some psychotic drill instructor, or training instructor, or whatever you want to call them screaming like a maniac.  The English don’t appear to yell as much.  In some training videos I watched you can tell that they don’t have to scream as much to get through to their soldiers.  Yelling isn’t always the best option.  In America, we’re used to yelling.  It’s common place to have some idiot yelling as loud as he can in your direction, so I guess that’s why we incorporate it into our military training.

Don’t think that because the English don’t yell and scream as much in their military training that they aren’t as well trained.  Screaming and yelling doesn’t necessarily make for the best training environment.  Yes, you have to learn to work under pressure if you’re going to be a soldier in a war zone, but screaming doesn’t have to represent pressure.  I saw one comment on the British military where a lad wasn’t happy because he didn’t have enough “free time”.  Sorry kiddo, when you’re military your life belongs to them.  They aren’t required to give you time off for some billiards and pints down at the local pub.  If you think joining the military is like getting any other job in the civilian world, you’re dead wrong!

 Anyway, getting back to the subject I was supposed to be writing about in the first place, I was looking into the British Army.  (Or I was writing about some video game or something? I don’t remember.)  Going to the British Army web site, you can see some of the jobs you can get when you join up.  One of the career fields in the British Army that drew quite a bit of interest from me was the Intelligence Corp.  While in the US Air Force I was a Communications Analyst.  My job was pretty much an office job.  At the end of my fabulous 4 year military career I was stationed at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas and was in a “mobile unit”.  I never actually went mobile, and most of my time was still spent in an office.  Considering I was also Air force, my job would differ a bit from an army job.  Anyway, a British Army Intelligence Analyst does way more than I was ever trained to do!

Starting out, British Intelligence Corp folks go through 2 years of training.  Yes, I said two years.  They are taught another language and are in part not only analysts, but also translators.  They’re also kept up on how to be regular soldiers.  That’s a lot of training for these young boys and girls!  If you want a nice white collar job with computers and communications though, I don’t think there’s a better career path than being in the British Intelligence Corp.  And since you get so much training, you might even think about staying in the military until you retire.  But after all your training and your four year enlistment let me tell you there’s no better feeling than applying for some position at a company and being able to say, “Yes, I was in the military and served in the Signal Corp.”  (Trust me, don’t tell civilians you dealt with “intelligence”, it just draws too many questions.  *chuckle*)  Take a look at this:

Have I promoted the British military enough yet?  *chuckle*  And all of this came out of a video game.  So I guess to end this long, ranting blog I’ll just say that I really don’t think British soldiers need a leftenant to keep them in line.  Company of Heroes is still a really fun game, don’t get me wrong.  I just disagree with how they presented the English soldiers.  And of course before I go I’ll show a bit of Company of Heroes.  Here’s the tutorial for playing the British Army.  I have nothing against real life British Lieutenants (Leftentants?), but I do think a British unit should be able to work just as well without one.  Enjoy this video, but beware; parts can be a bit graphic when fighting is shown.  After all, it’s World War II.

Secret relationships

Let's Hide the Truth!

In books secret relationships are exciting and neat!  The princess has to hide her relationship with the local peasant boy because if her father found out about what was going on, he might have the boy executed!  It all sound so wonderful, doesn't it?  So romantic and secretive.

In real life, a lot of guys want to keep a relationship a secret because they want to sleep with as many women as they can at the same time, and also want to try and keep each woman from knowing about all the others.  Or, there are the people who are boss and subordinate who are sleeping together and don't want the coworkers to know about the relationship because then it would be apparent why one of the people is getting special treatment.

I've seen both of these situations.  To me, both are stupid.  When I was younger I tried to warn a few girls who would get involved in a "secret relationship".  I tried telling them that the guy they were seeing was also seeing other girls and didn't really care about them.  I would always get the same response:

"You don't know him like I do."

Ah...actually, I knew these guys better.  I lived in a dormitory and drank with these guys all the time.  I listened to them go on and on about how the girls they were seeing were stupid and naive.  Here's a fantastic story about a couple I met while in the Air Force;  They met, they were attracted to each other, and so they planned to get married.  They had known each other for three months.  I really wish I could remember their names, but I guess the names weren't important enough for me to remember.  Anyway, I was curious and so I asked the guy why he wanted to marry the girl so soon after meeting her.  His response went something like this:

"Dude, look at her, she's gorgeous!  She does my laundry, cleans my dorm room, and I'll get laid whenever I want!  It's win, win!"

What love, huh?  A live in maid who you can have sex with whenever you want!  Who could ask for more?  And so wanting to see if the girl had the same response, I asked her the same thing.  Why did she want to marry this guy after only knowing him for three months?  She said something like this:

"We're really good together.  He knows what I like and I love him."

Wow.  So there you go!  They're good together and she does the laundry.  What a great start to a relationship, right?  Let's move forward three months.

After three months the couple filed for divorce.  They hated each other's guts by then.  What happened?  They were so good together and she did the laundry!  And there was the problem.  He treated her like a live in maid who was supposed to clean everything and provide sex on demand, and she didn't want to do that.  And so being the curious guy I was, I asked them again about their relationship and why they wanted to get a divorce.  Here was the guy's response:

"She's a bitch!  She's lazy and wasn't doing the laundry.  It's her job as a wife!  And she stopped having sex!  Every night I wanted to have sex she always had a headache!  What a waste of time!"

And of course I wanted to hear her side of things.  Would she admit to being a bitch and not doing the laundry?  Would she tell me why she refused to have sex on demand?  Her response went something like this:

"He won't talk to me anymore.  We never do anything together and he just wants sex and to treat me like some kind of maid.  I've tried to talk to him, but he doesn't want anything to do with me.  He was such a waste of time."

So he stopped talking to her.  I wonder if he had talked to her in the first place.  So obviously in my mind the relationship was based on the guy being physically attracted to the girl and wanting sex on demand.  That's not really a reason to get married, is it?  But people are stupid!  They lied about the relationship to themselves.  I think the girl just wanted to get married and had fantasies about what her new husband would be like, and in reality he just expected her to do the laundry and lift her skirt.

Now not all guys are like this.  There are a lot of really good fellas out there, so think every guy you meet is some kind of idiot.  I'll admit that quite a few of them are, but there really are some good ones around. For all the women out there who read this, talk to a guy before you marry him.  Get to know him before you sleep with him.  Don't just figure that since you're attracted to him and he seemed nice that a marriage will work out.  Think about why there is so much divorce in America.

On the other hand, there are also some really sleazy women out there.  Some of them sleep with managers in the work place and then get special treatment.  Don't think people don't notice this, because they do.  The "couple" always think they're keeping the relationship a secret, but people always know.  I saw one girl sleep with a manager and get pregnant.  She went home and told her boyfriend who had a vasectomy that she had visited a "sperm bank" on one of her days off and that's how she got pregnant.  I guess her "boyfriend" believed that.  Or maybe he just didn't care.  Trust me when I tell you sperm banks don't just let you make a withdrawal in one day.  That's not how things work.

Ok, time to end this little rant.  This was good practice for November when I'll be trying to write 50,000 words in my blog for NANOWRIMO in November.  

Hot Christmas Toys? Maybe.

What do kids want for Christmas this year?

Why would I be thinking about buying Christmas toys right now in October?  Because now is when you want to start buying, people!  Don't be stupid and wait until the end of November when the stores are full of idiots and the shelves are emptying out quickly!  Get the things your kids want now and save yourself the hassel.

I guess the next questions would probably be how do I know what kind of toys your kids want?  *chuckle*  I think about the kinds of things I would want if I were still a kid.  (Let's not kid ourselves, I would still be running right to the video game aisle!  But there are still a few other neat things that might catch my fancy, too.)

So of course video games will be the hot items.  But do you really want your children sitting in front of a tv or computer screen playing video games all day?  Of course you don't and for the little kids, they need other things to play with.  Tonight I took a walk through a Toys R Us store to see what I could find.  Let's see what caught my fancy:

How about some garbage?  Would you like your little ones to be encouraged to play with garbage?  *chuckle*  I'm not even sure what the hell this stuff is, but here's a garbage truck that you can use with some garbage characters.

It comes with two trashy characters!  Now as an adult this might seem a bit nasty, but kids like what kids like.  And of course if you buy this, your kids will want extra characters to play with.

I thought $19.99 seemed like a bit much for the trash truck, but Amazon.com is selling it for $29.99.  Are these things somehow popular without anyone actually knowing about them?  *chuckle*  A great gift for little boys, but you'll end up stepping on the little things in the middle of the night when you're barefoot and trying to make your way to the bathroom.

They sound as bad as Legos, don't they?  And since we're on the topic of Legos, they're always really expensive!  The one Lego thing I found while walking around was this Lego Speed Train set.  I always loved trains and cars as a kid, and so if I were still small I know I would love one of these!  

It looks like you can put your expensive little Lego people inside the train!  I love it!  And it's $149.99 which is insane.  I like Legos, and I like trains, but I wouldn't pay that much for one of these.  If you've got the extra money to spend on your kids, you go right ahead.  But for those of us who might like to keep within a smaller budget, this is way too expensive.

Here's something that's a whole lot bigger than the Lego train set and I really have no idea what it really is.  It really looks fun, though!  And it's a bit cheaper at $119.99!  What little boy wouldn't love to wake up and find this under his Christmas tree?  It even looks cool to me as an adult! *chuckle*

How about something a bit sciencey?  A learning toy that could be a lot of fun?  I've always wanted a rock tumbler, and it looks like they still make them!

I'm sure this is loud and annoying.  It's something you can buy for a niece or nephew, or maybe a grandchild.  *chuckle*  Something for them to use when they aren't at your place.  Besides being loud, if your little one really likes this you may end up finding polished rocks all over your house.  At least they probably won't have pointy edges when you step on them at night on your way to the bathroom.

On to Barbie.  Barbie dolls are classics, right?  How about if we make them really, really small so you can step on them on the way to the bathroom at night?  Or maybe find them lodged in a couch cushion?

Trust me when I tell you these are small.  It's hard to tell from this picture, but they're the size of Lego figures.  Tiny.  Step on them on the way to the bathroom tiny.  *chuckle*  And what the hell is a little girl supposed to do with a tiny Barbie doll?  Why have a yacht party with all her tiny figure friends!

Perfect for bath time I guess, until one of the tiny figures ends up going down the drain.  Better get everything out of the tub before pulling the plug and letting the water out!

I wonder what happened to the regular Barbie dolls.  They're still around.  Here's a Barbie who's ready to get married!

I'm not sure who the male doll is.  The package says Barbie.  Is it supposed to be Ken?  Then why doesn't the package say Ken?  I'll call him Jed.  "Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed, poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed.  then one day he was shootin' at some food, and up from the ground came a bubbling crude..."  Jed's rich now!  Time to marry a trophy wife named Barbie and get down!  *chuckle*  Yes, I have a very vivid imagination when it comes to dolls or figures.  Does Barbie's mother come with the marriage?  Barbie's a princess, right?  Maybe her mother is an evil queen?

Now that's my kind of action figure!  *chuckle*  Now how often do you find a Disney Evil Queen figure?  I almost bought this myself tonight, it was only $19.99.  To be honest though, I really wouldn't have anywhere to put it.  It's still neat, though!  If I were still a kid, I'd love one of these.  I would keep bringing her to my sister's Barbie Dream house.  I would just have her point and laugh.  "HA HA HA HA!  Would you like an apple?"  *chuckle*

Speaking of dolls for little girls, if you have a really young girl that you're buying for, you'd better find one of these.

Get your Frozen stuff now.  Trust me when I tell you that come December when everyone's looking for this stuff, it'll be gone.  It's popular now and that means it's more than likely going to be popular for Christmas.  By the way, never give a balloon to Elsa, she'll "Let it go".  If you get that joke, it's actually pretty hilarious!  *chuckle*  Don't pass this stuff up thinking you'll find it later, because you won't.  If the little girl in your life likes Frozen, grab this stuff up now.

What about boys, though?  Isn't there some neat, really hot popular stuff for them?  Besides video games I mean.  *chuckle*  Do you have a back yard?  Or somewhere where there's a bit of dirt that your little boy can go out and dig in?  He needs one of these then.

Don't go for cheap plastic crap, the best dirt toys are metal!  These did have plastic wheels, but most of the rest of the stuff was metal.  And metal lasts!  Hours of dirty fun with this stuff!  And to the grandmother I know who has been known to play in the mud with her grandson, I'm sure he would love this stuff!  *chuckle*

Here's a fight waiting to happen.  I think both English and American boys alike would like one of these, especially if you have a brother.

Now let me explain how these really work.  I have a little brother and we would have loved something like this.  You start playing and then someone gets angry and frustrated and pretty soon one kid ends up throwing the ball at the other one and they end up pounding on each other.  Then mom comes in and decides that because brothers can't get along, the toy has to be put up somewhere.  Now the brothers are upset because it was such a fun toy to begin with!  They still want to play and promise to be good!  Ten minutes later they're arguing again.  *chuckle*  But that's all part of being a brother.  Years and years later you always remember something like this as a favorite toy.  You'll both always remember what fun you had playing with it (fights and all!).

And yes, eventually you'll be stepping on the ball while you're trying to go to the bathroom late at night.

How about some "Minions"?  Everyone loves Minions, right?  Despicable Me was a great movie and I know Minions are a hot thing to watch on YouTube now.  This seems a bit expensive to me, though.

$26.99 for three small stuffed Minions?  Really?  REALLY?  Yeah, I'll pick some of these up right after I get the money for that $149.99 Lego train set.  They're really neat, but just seem a bit over priced to me. 

Last, but not least I have something that is actually for a video game.  It's sort of an accessory.  But I'm thinking this will be something that you won't be able to find soon.  People may be looking pretty hard to find one of these, so if you see one you might think about picking it up.

Yes, it's a Disney Infinity Elsa figure.  It goes with last year's Disney Infinity video game, but you can still use her for the new Disney Infinity 2.0.  This was the last one at the Best Buy nearby where I live.  They may get in more, they may not.  The new figures for the Disney Infinity 2.0 are everywhere, but it's getting harder and harder to find some of the figures for the older game.  A figure from the Incredibles called "Violet" went from $12.99 to $26.95 on amazon.  I haven't even seen a Violet figure in any store lately.  I think the same thing is going to happen to Elsa.  

It may happen, it may not.  But around December 20 when a coworker is saying they've been looking everywhere for a Disney Infinity Elsa figure, you can let him know that you have one that you'll be willing to part with it for $149.99.  That will be just enough for the Lego train set!  *chuckle*  (Yes, sometimes I'm a shark.)

Go out and walk around in a toy store yourself sometime.  Think back about the toys you used to have as a kid and check out some of the new stuff.  G.I. Joe has all but disappeared from most store shelves.  Sad, but true.  Take a look around, there are still plenty of fun toys beyond video games.

Robert Re-writes Irish history

The Middle Ages

What do you suppose happened during the middle ages?  We know a few historical facts, but we really don't know any specifics.  What were those people really doing back then?  I've come across a game called Crusader Kings II that lets you try and run royal families all across Europe during the middle ages.  There's not a whole lot of military strategy or things like that, the whole goal of the game seems to be to keep your family line around as long as you possible can.  In a way, this means you want to be the biggest sex fiend you can be and have as many children as you can.  This actually poses a few problems as your kids may end up fighting over who gets to be the next heir to whatever throne or title you have.  Maybe one of your kids may even try to kill you so they can take over.  And so here we go with my own "Game of Thrones" episode!

First off let me say that I started out trying to play as a historical figure in Italy and I got my butt kicked because there is still so much I don't know about this game.  And so I re-started as an Earl in Ireland.  To start off I will be playing as Earl Dunchad of Ormond.

All or most of the names here should be pretty much historically accurate.  Or not, I really don't know that much about Irish history.  But my Earl starts out in this small province called Ormond.  I don't have any Dukes or Kings above me and am running my little province as an independent territory for the moment.  First things first, my Earl is 24 years old and single.  He needs a wife so he can start having kids.  But who to marry him off to?  

I find out that a "Princess Ximena" of a place called Navarra is single and arrange a marriage with her.  That will give my Earl a lot of prestige to marry a princess!  And here she is:

Ok, to be truthful that's not really who the Earl married.  That's actually Miss Xemena Navarrete.  She's a Miss Universe.  *chuckle*  The name is pretty close though, you have to admit!  Actually Princess Ximena probably looked more like this:

Now the first part of this is going to be a bit slow.  I thought things would heat up quickly, but they didn't.  My Earl had two sisters.  I married them off to kings.  Arranged marriages can be fun!  I married one sister named Sile off to the King of Scotland.  I figured this would be a good move to have family in the Scottish royal court.  That didn't work out for long as the king died shortly after the marriage and my sister wanted me to then marry her off to someone else.  This time no kings were available and I had to marry her off to some other Earl.  I married the other sister off the the king of Asturias, where ever that is.  I had no idea, but he was a king, so it seemed a good deal.

The Earl had one brother.  i married him off and he started having kids right away.  I'm married to the Ximena woman, but wasn't seeming to have kids!  How am I going to have an heir if I don't have any children!  Damn!  My brother began banging kids out immediately.  He has a son named Selbach.  then he has a son named Scoan.  What the hell?  He's popping out kids left and right and I'm still trying to have my first!  Finally though my wife gets pregnant!

I end up with a son, but don't want to go with the Irish name the computer wants to name the kid.  At least I think it was Irish?  I don't know.  Anyway, I name the kid Wally.  Now things began to go bad in Scotland and the new king doesn't like me much.  It's a good thing Scotland is a ways away from where I am.  Screw their new king!  *chuckle*  Wife gets pregnant again and has another son.  I name this one Elmo.

Now in my "court", my mother is the "Spymaster".  It's always nice to have family watching your back, and Mom is pretty good at intrigue!  Along comes this kid named "Brian" and he wants to take over Mom's job.  I tell him no and send him on his way.  My Earl finds himself wandering around a village and sees some drunks having a brawl.  He goes over to participate and wipes the floor with the drunks.  He's not too bad at defending himself!  Very nice!  He catches and beheads a spy.  We're doing ok, if living an pretty bland and mostly uneventful life.  Finally the Earl's mom dies at age 57.  She was old, infirm and insane by then and a new guy named "Bundachan" becomes the new spymaster.  I don't think he's as good as Mom was, but he'll have to do for now.

Ximena has another son and by now I'm a bit bored and name the kid Moose.  I don't seem to be taking these names very seriously, but on the good side, I have a few heirs for the Earl.  Ximena ends up pregnant, but not by me.  That whore was screwing around on the Earl!  How dare she!  And it was with the Earl's Chancellor, a guy named "Mael-Fathardaig"!  I had thought the Earl might do some screwing around, but not his wife!  What a horrid turn of events!  Her bastard daughter is named "Munia".  I'll have to figure out what to do with her when she gets older.

The Earl apparently can't keep his hands off of Ximena and promptly jumps back into bed with her again.  Shortly after that he dies at age 41.  Now his heir will take over the kingdom.

That's for another blog, though.  We'll check in on the reign of "Earl Wally Mac Dunchad of Omond" in another blog.  For now, stay bored.

Accrington Stanley

FIFA 15 at its best!

I didn’t grow up with soccer.  As an American I grew up watching baseball and American football and really never knew much about soccer. I never really learned much about the sport until I was up in the later years of my life.  But now that I’ve learned quite a bit, I love it!  I’m actually a bit sad that I can’t watch some of the lower league matches on tv!

What I can do though is play them out in a video game.  When I was a kid video game soccer looked like this:

Now what can I really learn from this?  Not much.  But that was years ago.  In the past couple of years I’ve been learning more and more about English football, transfers, player loans, and things like that.  Now I’m by no means an expert, but I think I could run a team with a reasonable amount of success.  I’m sure every sports fan thinks that though, don’t they?  Walk into any pub in England and I’m sure you can find a group of people who will tell you exactly why their favorite team isn’t run correctly.

And so we come to the video game FIFA 15. This game gives you a chance to play with not only English football teams, but teams in leagues all over the world!  But of course I wanted to try playing in the English leagues.  My first choice for a team was Port Vale.  They earned promotion not long ago and moved up into “League 1” from “League 2”.  They have a bit of money, and it was fun trying to manage them for a few games, but I was curious about more.  I tried managing teams like the Tottingham Spurs and Manchester City.  Both have a lot of really good players (Both are also top teams in the Barkely’s Premiere Leage or BPL.  That’s the top English football league.) and money to spend on transferring in any players you might like to add to your squad, but this seemed a bit easy.

I wondered who was the bottom of the English leagues.  Who was the one team that was just struggling to survive.  I went into league two and found a small team called Accrington Stanley.  Feel free to click on the name and check out the real life team.  I figured I can take control of them in FIFA 15 and move them right to the top of the English leagues no problem at all.  I looked them up on YouTube and found a few really nice videos about them.  Their motto is “The team that wouldn’t die.”  I like that!  And so I started my career as Accrington Stanley manager.

First off, they don’t have much money.  And even if they did have a lot of money, they’re part of League 2 which means that even if I could afford to buy some big time players, they won’t want to play for a small time team like this.  Ouch. So I’ll have to start out with some young players.  No problem though, I figured I could find a few 17 or 18 year olds and pick them up cheaply.  Then you just develop these guys and end up with a good team, right?  Right…?

Again, Accrington Stanley doesn’t have much money which means I can’t afford to buy any players with tons of potential.  Damn.  Maybe if I transfer a few of the older Accrington players I can get more money to buy the younger players?  That didn’t work out either because poor Accrington doesn’t have very many players.  I need everyone I have just to keep them playing!  I manage to transfer in two guys before I run short on money.  They are CB Stephen Best who is 17 and LM Fionn Reilly who is 18.  All these guys are real life soccer players too, which makes things interesting.

I do have a few other youngsters on the team and will have to make due.  So I divided my small team into two team sheets.  One with a lot of the younger players on it, and one with most of my older players.  I figured I could rotate them as I played matches and keep everyone fresh and rested.  Before my first “friendly” match one of my 18 year old players named Luke Greaves asks to play even though he’s not listed as a first team starter.  I do have him starting on the younger team sheet, so I’ll just play that team in the friendly.

We play a small club called Latina for our friendly.  Luke runs out happily onto the pitch ready for his big start!  The game begins and Luke Greaves ends up with a torn hip floxor within a few minutes of play.  He's now out for a few weeks.  That's not good.  I was a bit short handed to begin with and now I have to wait for this player to heal!  This isn't a very good start.

If you’re interested, here’s a look at some real life Luke Greaves highlights!

The team must move on!  And so after two more friendly matches we moved into regular league play.  Now I’ll admit I’m playing this game on “Amateur” setting.  So it’s not horribly hard, but it’s not the easiest thing to score either.  I thought at first I would be able to just steamroll other teams with this setting and get my small team some instant success, but things didn’t work out that way exactly.  I won a couple matches and then ended up with a draw with another bad team called Portsmouth.  I didn’t like the look of a draw, but their goal keeper seemed like a wall!  None of my shots seemed able to make it past him!  We moved on to the J. Paint Trophy Cup.  I figured maybe I would try something new.  I had a 17 year old striker just sitting on the bench named Max Hazeldine.  Why not give Max his shot and see what he could do?  So I put him in for one of the J. Paint matches.  He scored the one and only goal and always seemed to have the ball!  I love Max now!  He moved right up to starter after that performance! (I now follow the real Max Hazeldine on Twitter.  I hope he has the same success in real life!)  My next J. Paint Trophy Cup match will be against Port Vale.  They are a league higher and I'll really have to work to score against them and move on!  Now we're finding a challenge!

And so here we are.  I may keep writing in my blog about what happens with this Accrington Stanley progress.  I'm having a lot of fun seeing what I can do with this team.  I may end up back at Tottenham or one of the other big teams eventually, but for now I like the little guys.  And I may have to keep an eye on the real life Accrington Stanley team.  Win or lose, they've found a new supporter!