9:22 PM - The Halloween contest (updated)
Category: Blogging

When I first started at MySpace, I was surprised at the total level of idiocy that I found in the top blogs and had great fun poking people.

As the months rolled by, and people actually started to read me rather than burst in with a stream of invective to support their favourite fuckwit, the idiots started to throw themselves at me.

I have to say that this particular one is definitely my favourite to date.

How NOT to run an online blogging contest:

1. When you decide to run an online blogging contest, it is pretty much a given that you don't try to interfere…attacking your contestants is possibly not the best way to conduct yourself.
2. Going on to make a hate blog about them when they are actually the greatest advert for your contest, and then telling them that they are not allowed to respond on that hate blog….not the smartest move.
3. Deleting and blocking that person when you stated in their blog that they were not deleted is not high on the list of intelligent moves
4. Then going on to make the entire thing private so effectively the only people who can vote are those who have been vetted by you…now that is just plain dumb.
5. If, due to an obvious waning response you then decide to cancel the contest as

 "I have had some unexpected medical issues with my arm and will be going into some pretty extensive surgeries, that will be limiting my time on myspace."

Is that so? Is that why you are blogging every day?

 I have no problem with dishonest people providing they are not obviously barely literate and incapable of backing up their own con.

The thing is Jaynie, you made a prick out of yourself and that is fine, but you used the people who were taking part in your contest and lied to them. Some of them were pretty loyal to you throughout your acts of gross stupidity and you repaid them with your sulking and petulantly taking your ball back.

So guess what? I'm taking that contest, revamping it and hopefully a few people can actually have some fun.

So here it is guys….one Halloween competition :

1. One post to be delivered by midnight GMT on October 17^th
2. The post can be individual or as part of a collaboration but the banner will be shared in that case if they are the best Halloween blog.
3. The blog can be in any form, but must have one of the following Titles:

-          A Thoroughly Modern Spectre

-          The Ghost Train

-          An Italian Werewolf in Walmart

-          Witches, Bitches and Goblins

-          Trick and Tryst

-          Evil Residents

-          What's your poison?

-          Frankenstein's school report

-          Murder of the Orients Empress

-          Bats attack NYC

Oh and you guys get to choose which one I do – you have twenty four hours from time of posting to vote for that one.

The voting will take place at a Trish (Dances with Vodka) blog which she will set up on 17^th.

Who is up for it?

Completed Blogs

Trick or Tryst by NYM

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12:22 PM - Adopt a bat for Halloween
Category: Blogging

Note: This is not written as Mrs Clayton

I am making a plea today; after all it is all the rage in MySpace.

I am not after the contents of your wallet, nor am I requesting that you 'bling up' your favourite underwear and offer them to perverts for money, unless that is your kink. In that case we shall happily settle with your fetish is not my fetish and leave it at that.

No, Ladies, gentlemen and honourable others, today I want you to adopt an old lady.

I am not talking one of those 'Pilates Pensioners' who complete a Pentathlon before breakfast in order to 'keep in trim'

Neither am I referring to those hatchet faced old crones that you see in the Post Office.

You know the ones; they arrive at the counter mid conversation with one of their deep sighing heavily bosomed friends, emit an imperious "one moment" before continuing their character assassination of the lady three doors down:

"That Elsie Johnson is no better than she should be"

What the fuck is that about? I mean, Elsie Johnson is obviously not a bad sort. She is just as good as one could reasonably expect it would appear, but old sour face has appointed herself the moral arbiter of all she surveys. Poor Elsie has been weighed, measured and obviously found wanting for some minor misdemeanour that no body else could possibly fathom.

Where was I? Oh yes adopt an old bat…

What I am talking about are those of pleasant aspect,wide smiles,strange whiskers and a faint smell of wee. The ones aware of only one day of the week; 'pension day'. They make a daily trek to the Post office to enquire whether this is that blessed day and inform all and sundry how their cat coughed up a hairball.

Our post office doubles as the village shop and so there is a little round trip involved. The old dears collect their money from Maureen and then toddle around the aisles ready to deposit it with Christine at the adjacent till.

You could make a difference in the lives of these ladies simply by shouting through their letterbox, the following simple phrase four days a week:

"IT ISN'T PENSION DAY TODAY YOU DAFT OLD TROUT!"

It would not only save them a wasted journey, the frayed nerves of Maureen the postmistress, but also gives them ample opportunity to pontificate on the rudeness of the youth of today.

It is these little things that can make such a difference.

I considered adopting Elsie Johnson, but frankly I wanted one that was not even as good as she should be and so I now have my eye on a lady who lives at the end of my lane. I pass her back garden every morning while walking the dog and there are always the following items on her clothesline:

1. A pair of tights (pantyhose) in tan

2. A pair of extremely large underpants worthy of the war effort

3. A tea towel

I am quite convinced that in the event of a collision with a double Decker bus; she will have no reason to be ashamed of her unmentionables (providing she keeps her nerve)

I am, however, somewhat concerned that I never see any outer garments on the line. I have seen her in a housecoat, polishing the wheelie bin, but the housecoat (and a bra for that matter) remain strangers to the other items. I know she is not prancing about daily in just her pants and tights, flicking people with a tea towel, although it is a compelling mental image.

To remind her as to her priorities, I may hide behind her wheelie bin and jump up and pelt her with mud when she comes to polish it. That should encourage her to put the fucking housecoat in the washing machine with the tea towel. I like to give it the personal touch.

It is your time and effort that means so very much, not your money. Should you wish to send money to a good cause, please feel free to contact me privately and I will furnish you with my PayPal details.

Shout at a random pensioner today and make a difference in your neighbourhood.

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10:02 AM - Task 2 Mrs Halloween - Let’s rip it up
Category: Blogging

Hello! It's week two of the Halloween thingy. A few people dropped out of the competition and my name seems to have been accidentally left of the list in the same way as I also appear to have accidentally been deleted from Jaynies friend list. Rest assured that I have forgiven her the omission and re-requested her.

I would like to thank her for her little fan blog in which she appreciated my modesty and asked me not to reply to. I do worry that it may leave me with an unfair advantage over the competition and, as an impartial organiser, I am sure she will do the same for those left in the competition.

Now this week she wants people to play dress up with each other so here is my picture of Maggie…a mummy because she is one. She is one dangerous mother! She killed me here

 _________________________________________________________________

Anyway, thinking about dress up led to the fancy dress parties that we have at Halloween and the characters that do and don't feature.

We like our 'Jason' and 'Freddie Krueger' because we know they are just film images. We don't mind a little lizzie Borden, and occasionally someone will turn up as Doctor Crippen, just to be told that he is a very good Charlie Chaplin, but we neglect our serial killers aside from one.  To appear as a serial killer at a suburban fancy dress party is a serious faux pas.

Many have an interest in serial killers, wondering what it is that makes them do what is so completely against all of society, but to bring that particular type of horror into a nice middle class home is just not done. Painful death at the hands (or other instrument) of a serial killer, who has no connection to you or feeling towards you, is often considered the worst of all nightmares.

There is one exception to the no serial killer near the punchbowl rule and that is because as real as his crime remains, he is himself a somewhat unreal figure.

JACK THE RIPPER:

I was surprised how many Americans had never heard of him (particularly since the Johnny Depp film From Hell)

Jack the Ripper is the most written about serial killer in the world.

Between 1888 and 1891 there were a series of eleven murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel which are collectively known as the Whitechapel murders. It is worth remembering that there were many conflicting gangs running the girls who were in extremely dangerous position and only five of these have been attributed to the one man.

Currently reading : Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation: A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals the Ripper’s Identity at Last! By Trevor Marriott

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8:14 AM - BLOGOPHILIA and CLUELESS
Category: Blogging

I was asked about the 'incident' mentioned in my last blog and thought I oughtto explain.

It's Marion Fergusons fault really. Well I suppose I can't blame her entirely, but she was a little over the top.

It was the 31^st October 2006. The Major was dressed as the wicked witch of the East, although his skirt was considerably shorter than in the film, and I don't recall a visible suspender belt holding up those stripey stockings before.

Mr B had a sheet…a double sheet.

He spent most of the walk into the village, blundering into ditches and tripping over the bottom of it as he had not thought to cut eye holes.

Now regulars to this blog will not be surprised to hear that this was one of the bright ideas that strike the Major after a long session in the Firkin with Mr B.

And so the two gentlemen happened to be trick or treating for cans of beer and miniature bottles of spirits.

As they had forgotten to bring a bag, our heroes were forced to bravely  consume their spoils immediately.

A pattern started to emerge as the evening wore on:

Mr B would stagger along the path, veering off to trample the flower borders, followed by the major tottering along in his ruby slippers. They would then knock on the door. When it opened Mr B would pull the sheet up to show his head and both men would grin expectantly.

Fortunately most of the village was aware of what was expected from them and had stocked up accordingly.

The evening wore on and Mr B became decidedly fed up with pulling the sheet up in order to be recognised.

This was when the Major had another gin soaked flash of genius. Nipping behind the large Yew tree in the graveyard Mr B removed his outer clothing and the sheet was loosely fashioned into a toga. The Major promptly confused the toga with a kilt and insisted on Mr B removing his underpants as it would be bad luck otherwise. Mr B complied, but was resolved upon the retention of his argyle socks.

Thus it was that Mrs Marion Ferguson opened her front door to an inebriated wicked witch of the East and the ghost of Nero. All went swimmingly, particularly as she presented them with a half bottle of Bombay Sapphire, until Mr B, through force of habit, raised the sheet.

Mrs Ferguson is not a fainthearted maiden. Like my good self, she favours practicality and durability over the fripperies of fashion.

So it was that she raised a robustly, yet sensibly, shod foot which was placed firmly in a usually unrevealed area of Mr B. (Mr Kahzi may be interested to know that it is uncircumcised) A girlish shriek was emitted before Mr B fainted clean away.

The mere memory of the incident causes the poor man to shake uncontrollably and he is now in self inflicted solitary confinement every 31^st October, in the cellar.

The challenge was to write a blog under the title of Solitary confinement. The blog must also contain reference to a superstition (the underwear under a kilt) and a Disney character (the Wicked Witch of the East).

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4:51 AM - Mrs Halloween task 1
Category: Blogging

I have gone and done it again chaps. I entered a competition at Just Jainies blog. The idea is that you do various tasks and at the end people pat you on the head condescendingly and then vote for the person they talk to most.

So this is the first task:

It's Halloween night!

You are a pumpkin.

You have been forced to sit atop the banister of your porch as children come and go screaming" Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat.".

The pitter patter of small feet and screaming teens has got you thinking some pretty weird thoughts.

At midnight you have an opportunity to actually come to life as a pumpkin for one hour.

Tell us what it is you'll do for that one hour.

What kind of pumpkin are you? A happy one? Psycho? Scared? You must desribe to us how and where you will spend YOUR ONE HOUR of Halloween.

____________________________________________________

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2:28 PM - platypus thingamajig and I am out for the weekend
Category: Blogging

I thought I would do the lot rather than pick one

1.    Write about your favourite blogger, and how you would like to kill him

Me. I love me and I have no suicidal tendencies. A few of my friends have as can be seen here (actually you can't see without ploughing through or remembering the post where I invited people to kill me...and lots of them did as there is a bit of a technical hitch)

2.    Write about a pet peeve which you yourself have done.

If there is one thing I hate it is people who don't scoop the poop. Harvey (my cocker spaniel) is pretty well trained in that he will only defecate on the back lawn….sadly for a short period of time the major was not as well behaved and I would be damned if I was going to scoop that!

3.    They Could Have Been……

This was a tricky one as I could very easily have settled into a serious turn of mind, and indeed I shall. Any English gardeners out there will be feeling my pain as I bemoan the fate of my outdoor tomatoes, doomed never to ripen in the sun, forever to remain green despite fending off the worst of the slugs.

4.    Heroic failure.

See above

5.    Fast Food Restaurants

Fast food restaurants are regarded as exotica by many of us rural types (not to be confused with Erotica which is oh so prevalent) and so the prospect of something unrecognisable and generally smacked on a griddle and spat upon by adolescents inspires delight amongst the more adventurous of us.

6.    Birthday parties/gifts

I am not fond of being reminded of the passing of the years…mainly because I lost track after that really hot summer in the seventies when my goldfish died

7.    A trip to the zoo.

Done that here (yet again you are missing out on the delights of Mr B and an Amur leopard- you should have read me more)

8.    Air Travel Mishaps.

Bearing in mind that 65000 travellers are abandoned right now, perhaps losing my best knickers on a flight to Dublin is not really so important.

9.    Hall Of Fame.

I am officially the sexiest brain on MySpace. Nuff said. (true but I can't link you to that either)

10 If you were a God/Goddess for the day

if? See above

11 An Exciting Travel Story

Done in a blog I wrote regarding roadtrips....no seriously I did and it led to a campaign for me as head of the womens institute)

12. Anthropomorphism

Frankly that is overly catered to in the religion section

No need to thank me for sorting all this out before I proceed to get disgustingly drunk with Mr B this weekend and find new and inventive ways to sleep in peoples wheelie bins.

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8:33 PM - The CLUELESS Bullet
Category: Blogging

Clueless has, what could charitably be called, an intermittent police force. Technically it comes under the district of Offish Town, but there is a certain amount of hostility between the two communities. This has resulted in the long arm of the law contracting when it comes to Clueless.

Occasionally we are sent a policeman straight from Hendon College, but they seem very fragile. None if them have lasted more than a week. The two that have remained with the force are on extended sick leave and heavy medication.

We do however have Earnest Whittleby, AKA the Clueless Bullet. I know it sounds reminiscent of a name you would give to a steam train, but as Mr Whittleby rightly points out, a lot of the top flight superhero names have even taken over the years.

As a retired investment banker, Mr Whittleby approaches every task in s serious and methodical manner. He is aware that a certain dress code is expected with the position and to that end he purchased a pack of fifty denier tights and a pair of Day-Glo green Lycra cycling shorts. At eighty four years of age, Mr Whittleby can hardly aspire to a six pack; however egg cartons fixed to the inside of a sweater have proved to create an interesting effect on ones torso. He remains resolutely attached to his comb over.

Mrs Whittleby's pashmina and a butterfly domino complete this stunning ensemble.

Every evening as darkness falls (providing the weather remains clement); the silhouette of the Clueless bullet can be seen at the top of Clover Hill. It remains perfectly still for a number of seconds, then abruptly disappears.(Mrs Whittleby is a martyr to her arthritis and she can't stay long, keeling on the damp grass, backlighting her husband with an ever ready torch.)

Although, not as agile as the young constables, the Clueless Bullet does not waste his time and resources persecuting the innocent distillers of healthy cordials to be found in the top woods. The Clueless Bullet is a champion of our interests, always ready to name and shame a dog owner who has not scooped the poop, to write a stern letter to the chronicle on waning standards of decency, or to take his part in the charity whist drive. (This year we are halfway to out target which will allow us to purchase a goat. If third world villages can have one than we shall make damn sure we can too.)

The Clueless Bullet also devised the satisfactory arrangement now in place regarding the one family crime wave that is the Johnsons:

Every month the Johnsons hold an open house. Each visitor pays ten pounds which entitles them to the return of any and all goods that they identify as their own together with assistance in delivery from one of the myriad of little Johnsons. The major has doubled his collection of Royal Worcester through this event. The proceeds go towards maintaining Mrs J's crack cocaine habit and compensating local retailers for the shoplifting experienced in the previous thirty days.

It has proved to be extremely effective.

Despite the aforementioned distinctive comb over, Scottish accent and tendency to wear his navy blue mac (the others in the village favour grey) Earnest likes to believe that nobody is aware of the true identity of the Clueless Bullet

We try to humour him by saying "Who was that masked man with the colostomy bag?" as he leaves and I send him pairs of tights anonymously. Last year Wilf crocheted a jumper with the letters 'CB' on it and we left it in a plastic bag on Clover Hill with a card.

Earnest Whittleby has been the Clueless Bullet for seven years now and that is a wonderful achievement when compared with the young police officers.

As I mentioned before, Earnest is eighty four and it led me to suggest to his wife, Marjorie that perhaps he would rather conduct his superheroing tasks from the comfort of home, but apparently Earnest loves going 'on patrol'. She seems resigned to her role as sidekick and recently told me how it all came about that a quiet man with a responsible background in eth National Westminster Bank, came to become a superhero upon his retirement:

"I came home early from doing the church flowers as Mr B had forgotten to drop off the Chrysanthemums again. On going in, I saw Earnest admiring himself in the hall mirror, wearing a string vest with his Y-Fronts on over a pair of my tights.

As I am sure you can imagine, I was a little surprised as Earnest had never shown a kinky side before. Earnest made me a cup of tea and explained his leanings towards a life of crime fighting, and well, I thought it would be good for him to have a hobby and keep active. I hadn't expected to be shining a torch up his jacksy every night on Clover Hill, although it isn't so bad since I bought the knee pads"