First Day Of Spring

Yep…it’s officially the first day of Spring here and it’s fucking snowing for the third day in a row.  That said it’s got to be coming to an end soon (the snow I mean).

The garlic crop I planted in November has sprouted through the earth and is standing 2-3 inches tall.  The dead car (not mine) that has been sitting in my driveway since December was removed yesterday so I have a whole driveway to park in now.  I’m learning a shit ton of good stuff in my ‘other life’ as an internet marketer and expecting great things from that.  I wrote a whole new chapter for my Neural Network Racing application which I expect to have up and running by mid summer.  I feel like things are starting to fall into place on many different fronts so I’m embedding a fine tune (slightly remixed) to project the way I feel right here right now.  Enjoy 🙂

 

Real Madrid v Man Utd

And the Man of The Match award goes to………………………..

 

Los Blancos 12th man, Felix Brych. What a tosspot. Countless fouls not given in favour of Man U when they absolutely should have been and then the ultimate smack in the face he blows for time just as Utd are about to take a corner right at the death. I wonder if that had been a Madrid corner whether the same rule would apply. No fucking chance imo.  Game is fooking bent I tell ya.

Swearbox Answers His Critics

As anyone who actually runs their own blog will tell you we, as blog owners/Admins, have an Admin panel through which we can do a bunch of back end things like write posts and other good stuff like that.  We also get to see how much traffic we are getting and where it is coming from and, one of things I really like, what keyword searches result in visits to our sites.  I often look through the search engine terms that have brought traffic in and when I see something odd I’ll enter the exact same search term into Google to see how that term resulted in a hit to my site.  The most curious example I can give you would be ‘shitting on a glass table’.  I kid you not.  That search term brought in 1 visitor to my site and to be fair it didn’t take me more than 20 seconds to figure out why but I digress so before I wander completely off topic I’ll get on with the post.

I was looking at a particular search term that was captured yesterday and eventually it led me to a post on another blog that was openly criticising this blog.  As I’m a benevolent kinda guy I don’t mind linking out to the blog in question but to save hopping back and forth between here and there I’ll reprint the whole post below entitled When is a blog not a blog?  lifted from Soccerdude.

“When is a blog not a blog?

Answer: when it becomes a weird losers forum for the twisted, vindictive, mindless individuals who surely have no home life, no friends, and absolutely no edge in the betting game.

What am I on about? Well, I pop onto the Betfair forum every now and then, even though it is serious decline and is seemingly about to become completely moribund. Anyway, when I did have a look recently, I saw there was the usual break-out of spats between the various childish people on there – with one long-running argument between a couple of people who seem to have nothing better to do than spend all their time on the forum. Jesus, do these people even have time for betting?

I think I signed up for the Betfair forum at the beginning of 2008, and in those five years I think I’ve made less than 200 posts. But there are posters on the BF forum who have only signed-up a few months and yet have thousands of posts, and appear to have opinions on absolutely everything.

Don’t ask me why, but I did revisit the forum again recently, and noticed that one of these individuals, a particularly sad specimen who used to trawl any running thread to see where he could make trouble, had managed to get himself banned from the forum.

Swearbox from the blog The Expat Punter, and someone who also managed to get himself banned from the Betfair forum, posted an entry on this individual (HERE) – and it duly sparked a running flame war in the comments section of that post that continues even now. There are now over 800 comments for Swearbox’s post, including multiple comments from the subject of the post, who of course has nowhere else to peddle his poisonous views.

So now that blog has seemingly turned into a mini-forum of some description – although I do warn you. Don’t spend more than three or four minutes reading the absolute shite in there as it will surely melt you brain. Talk about old women, it’s unbelievable. Backwards and forwards, going over the same ground time upon time. It’s breathtaking how much time some people are willing to dedicate to absolutely nothing.”

It’s fair to say we’re all entitled to our own opinions and I’m not shy when it comes to expressing my own so this post is my response to Soccerdude’s comments above.  When I started this blog I genuinely thought that I would be doing myself a favour in that if I was going to publish some of my day to day betting endeavours for all to see it would force me to be a bit more disciplined.  But I wanted this to be more than just a P&L blog…nothing is more boring than reading a couple of lines saying whether someone was up or down for the day/week/month…so I tried (and still do try) to write engaging posts that aren’t difficult to read.

As a Betfair exchange user and an active member of the Betfair forum it was inevitable that my experiences there would get written about on here, and I’m talking about BEFORE I got banned from the forum.  AFTER I got banned I had plenty to say on the subject but I won’t revisit that as there’s enough been written in other posts on here for those who care to look.  Following my current ban there was a lot of unfinished business to attend to.  Some folk were dragging my name through the mud on the forums safe in the knowledge that I couldn’t respond to them so I took to crafting my responses on here and, leveraging the help of friends who could still access the forum, get my comments in front of the noses of my detractors.  I also took advantage of the fact that I had other usernames that hadn’t been associated with my swearbox account to get some of my messages published.

Following ‘Swearbox”s ban there came the famous fuck up where Betfair altered the forum code so that anyone could change their forum username and once word got out there was a rush to get in on the action.  A rush that I am proud to say I took no part in as I knew it would spell trouble.  Several bans were dished out as a result of taking advantage of this name changing feature and to this day there are some posters who unfortunately now have to put up with a forum name they probably don’t want…the forumite currently known as ‘718’ will probably bear me out on this.

So we entered a time where a record number of forumites were now banned as a result of the incident above plus the inexorable increase in casualties due to grassing and reporting.  Then, out of the blue, I had occasion back in May 2012 to write a post specifically aimed at Bob Vegas which was short and to the point and it was that post that appeared to fire up people’s interest in commenting.  A couple of months later I wrote the post about the suspension of new forum registrations and things went ballistic…1648 comments on that post alone to date.  It got around that people who no longer have a voice on the forums can say their piece on here without the threat of expulsion or being grassed up.  Apart from a handful of times I’ve let posters say what they want, the exceptions being some unpleasantness aimed towards Bob Vegas that was totally stupid and uncalled for (and the posters were given plenty of heads up beforehand that if they persisted I’d have to boot them out).

So here we are today with what amounts to a ‘mini-forum’ as Soccerdude puts it.  If I could I would attach a forum to this blog as using the comments for forum style communication isn’t the best way forward but alas this is a free WordPress blog and plugins aren’t allowed.  I’ll agree that many of the comments posted are childish and repetitive but you take the rough with the smooth.  I, and the rest of the banned guys, see it as a way of communicating with forum folk that we couldn’t otherwise talk to.  Since Bob V got the boot he’s been like part of the furniture here and while he rarely gets anything nice said about him he does still get attention which is great as far as I’m concerned because it keeps this blog in the public eye.  Same rules apply for the individual alluded to in Soccerdude’s post (Hejik).  There is a tremendous amount of lurking going on here if my stats are anything to go by so that in and of itself tells me something draws people here so it’s either my riveting blog posts or the childish spats taking place within the comments.  I’d like to think it was the former but in my heart of hearts I know why people come here daily…it’s not because I’m a prolific poster that’s for sure.

Following Soccerdude’s post the very well respected Cassini weighed in with his comments over on his blog and I echo his sentiments that the BF forum is pretty much a complete waste of time these days (and here’s me with designs on planning a return).  It used to be a great place, lively, some genuinely interesting threads, but the good posters are either banned or forced into the shadows to avoid having an ‘alter ego’ banned after the mods link their accounts.  I do have the ear of one of the movers and shakers at TSE and I’ve communicated to him that if things carry on the way they have been going then I can see Betfair doing a Betdaq and dumping the forum altogether but he’s convinced me that isn’t going to happen.  Again I’m digressing so back to the topic.

I have posted a comment on Soccerdude’s blog following his post but as yet it’s gone unanswered but hopefully he’ll get round to addressing it sometime.  I just hope that his readers won’t be put off coming here  from time to time as I do actually try to be engaging and interesting.  I’m sure when he says “Don’t spend more than three or four minutes reading the absolute shite in there as it will surely melt you brain” he’s referring to some of the comments as I’d be pretty miffed it that wasn’t the case.  Going forward though there’s no changes going to be made, so come one come all, read, inwardly digest and comment if you like or just lurk if you prefer.

Shiny Disco Balls

By request here’s a new post that should be quicker to load than the current one being used by the masses to, ahem, ‘exchange views’, and post up any other shite that they see fit.

Plenty of music vids get embedded in the comments and while I love that as I get to see what others are listening to and get exposed to gems that I now can’t do without (Tillmann Uhrmacher comes to mind – cheers Kal ;-)) they can affect load times for guys on tablets or other mobile devices so now and then a new post is called for to start afresh. This is it so have at it…and by the way here’s what I meant by Shiny Disco Balls…

Is Hejik The New Bob Vegas….Or Worse?

I can’t remember there ever being a time on the Betfair forum(s) where someone hasn’t been in the business of making a name for themselves. There’s something about the anonymity aspect of public internet forums and message boards that brings out the Mr Hyde in many people who probably wouldn’t say boo to a goose in reality.

As the recipient of a lifer ban from the Betfair Community I can’t post (obviously) but look in now and then to see who is doing what to whom and I see that a new player is emerging from the primordial swamp that is the forum collective and is currently pushing all the right buttons that will catapult him to notoriety. Whether or not he will take King Bob’s crown is uncertain at this early stage but he seems to be applying some of the methods that Bob used to successfully shape the world around him, forum world that is.

In fact there are many who are starting to claim that Hejik is actually Bob….the following forumite is clearly convinced and you can find his and

many others’ comments here.

“CJ70 19 Dec 12 22:48

Bob, why don’t you just get a grip? You had the perfect opportunity to go under the radar, integrate yourself, prove yourself without hassle.

You’ve taken that chance, f**ked it off in favour of being the forum pest that led to you being banned in the first place.

Go sort yourself out and then come back a different person.”

There are others, however, who aren’t in agreement with the above forumite as the following post lifted from the same thread shows…

“Biscuit1979 20 Dec 12 10:24

Whilst it’s becoming fairly obvious with every passing day that hejik isn’t quite who he makes out he is, i am certain that he definitely isn’t bob vegas.

Aside from the fact that hejik uses betting terminology that vegas would never dream of using, the two of them used to argue loads on here and hejik even reported vegas for ‘vile and racist abuse’.

So unless bob was arguing and reporting himself, they’re not the same person.”

Regardless of what anyone thinks, our friend Hejik appears to have a much darker agenda than Bob ever did. I’m fairly sure that Bob and Hejik are polar opposites when it comes down to it. Bob took a lot of flak (before the meltdown) for asking a lot of questions, many of which were repeated to anyone and everyone who gave him their time. I’ve no doubt that, while this could be construed as irritating, it wasn’t borne out of anything other than a genuine desire to do better on the exchange. In other words our Bob was simply looking for answers from those who gave the impression that they were doing alright thank you very much.

Hejik, on the other hand, talks a different talk. He appears, on the face of it, to have a bit more of an idea about all things betting, ie understands the concept of value, knows how to price up an event, knows all about entry and exit points from a traders perspective, etc. So this negates the requirement to do a Bob, instead his focus appears to be to engage others in a pissing contest with the sole intention of drawing a remark or post that clearly contravenes TSE’s terms and conditions so that he can then report it and have the ‘offender’ removed from what he appears to think is ‘his’ forum.

If you want a taster of what I’m talking about you can visit the thread I linked to a couple of paragraphs above this and you’ll find the following exchange…

“smithy91 21 Dec 12 08:05

well it was only a matter of time before you got your own thread hejik well done sir.I was just wondering tonight is mad Friday I’m off out round

burnley for a night out perhaps you should come along and meet some real people. please don’t tell me your spending another night on the forum ;(?

this week’s price ramp is arsenal at 1.79 surely 1.75 tops at lunchtime tomorrow. please inform bob!”

“hejik 21 Dec 12 09:16

would be easy to assume you were “offering me out” there smithy91
i’m sure you would wind your neck in if we were to meet in person
of that i have no doubts

on the price ramp side of things
work is in motion to get you exchange banned for breaking T&C
please laugh again 🙂 “

I’ve written to Betfair many times about their forum moderation policy and in particular about the fact that the odds are stacked in favour of the few (idiots, babies, sensitive types) who can, if they so choose, get pretty much anyone they don’t like removed by having that handy little report button right there in front of their faces. I’m not saying that every report generates a ban but I am saying that if the reporter whinges loudly enough then they’ll have their wish granted. It fucking stinks to high heaven.

If this bullshit is allowed to continue then there will be no forum left. The people that want and use the forum for what it was meant for (small fallouts aside) need to make their voices heard and tell TSE that this crap cannot stand. The few CANNOT be allowed to control the many. Moderators need to re-evaluate their job terms and start coming down hard on the subversive fuckers on there before it’s too late.

I have it on good authority that the current forum issues, namely the ban on new user registrations, are actively being worked on and will be resolved but please don’t hold your breath as you will most definitely expire before the changes are implemented. I, for one, would like to see a revision of TSE’s T&C’s to coincide with the introduction of the ‘new’ forum that even out the playing field a bit more so that the guys that make the forum an enjoyable place, people like Twomatchpoints for example, don’t get banned on the whim of another guy with an axe to grind. Now I’m not having a pop at Bob here, I’m pointing out the flaws that exist in ways that common sense dictates shouldn’t.

The current campaign that Mr Hejik appears to be undertaking will no doubt result in some poor fuckers removal, probably as a result of someone finally losing their patience with him and writing something that he or she rather wished they hadn’t (that would be the instant they receive the email telling them that they’ve been banned). Hejik, if you’re reading this, stop with your bollocks and realise that it isn’t your forum alone and, as has been pointed out by others on the threads that you’ve invaded, you aren’t whiter than white, you’ve broken T&Cs yourself many times but you’ve lived to tell about it because others have seen fit to ignore your comments and let it drop.

The price ramping crusade you appear to be on is a non starter too and I can only assume that you started it as a result of being suckered into a bet that you later regretted and decided to take it out on some of your fellow bettors. Using ‘price ramping’ as your smokescreen for your underhanded activities fools nobody. Word of wisdom, never ever put your hard earned down as a result of reading something on an anonymous forum. Do your own research and draw your conclusions from checkable facts and stats. That way you only have yourself to blame when your selection gets beat by 20 lengths or the wrong team wins. Thanks for reading.

We Hate RAF Armourers

This post is inspired, if you can call it that, by the person that uses that exact search term ‘we hate raf armourers‘ in Google or wherever to find his or her way to my blog.  It’s not like it’s a one off as my stats show me that this search term has been used on no less than 7 different occasions resulting in page views etc.

As an ex RAF Armourer myself with 15 years of service behind me I got to wondering why anyone would actually feel hatred towards us.  Jealousy yes, I can see how all of the other ancillary trades (Leccies, Engine Bashers, Riggers, Stackers, the list goes on…) would be jealous of us but not hate us.

As I recall back in the day when I was a line armourer at RAF Brawdy the Airman’s Mess was organised such that the centre tables were exclusively used by the armament tradesmen leaving the rest of the tables, satellite tables if you will, for the rest of the world.  It was like we were their Sun and they liked to bathe in our light and warmth.  Definitely no hating there, only love for what they obviously regarded as their betters.

When I think about the plight of the ‘other trades’ who, after realising they weren’t in the same pay band as us, tried in vain to pretend they weren’t bothered that we earned more money than them and could drink more beer than them, it brings a tear to my eye.  From laughing of course.

The Armourers always seem to be blessed with having more nutters than any other trade and that’s not a bad thing.  It’s things like that that ensure you get perks like the centre tables in the Airmans Mess (closest to the drinks island ;-)).  Other trades don’t fuck with you.  Well most of the time they don’t but I do recall the MT Drivers getting all up themselves during my time in South Wales.  Seems that they had a bit of a bad ass posted in who did a bit of boxing and slowly a few of their number began to get increasingly more rowdy on the base.

The Armourers on the station (RAF Brawdy) had already been gathered together and all housed in one barrack block, Esmonde block if memory serves, in a bid to keep all the nutters in one place.  As the MT guys, led by the boxer, started to gain a bit of notoriety the powers that be decided to place them in Esmonde block as well.  Marvellous move.  Now we had all of the station nutcases in one block and the MT guys were desperate to make their bid for emerging as the top boys, to use a hooligan term.

One evening we had a power outage and so the obvious thing to do was to vacate your room and head off to the NAAFI bar to drink beer.  The place was lit by candles and some people carried torches and it made for a satisfactory ambience and much ale swilling took place.  All of the various trade cliques would form and each would mind it’s own business but be aware of one another’s personal spaces.  As plumbers, the given slang term for armourers, we were respectful of the other trades’ need for their own bits of NAAFI real estate in which to drink their beer so encroachment was rare but would on occasion take place if our numbers swelled unexpectedly.  Strangely enough the reverse was never so, probably because as I said earlier we were loved by one and all.

Anyway, during this evening of dimly lit drinking I felt the need to piss so I made my way to the toilets.  Upon arrival into the bogs I was met by several of the MT boys who were no doubt loitering in the confines of the mens urinal because that’s how they rolled.  Now I’m not suggesting they were all a bunch of puffs, but I find it strange when a bunch of guys prefer to spend their time in the gents as opposed to the bar.

So, the self appointed 2 i/c (second in command) who made a habit of standing behind the boxer when he had shot his mouth off in the past shouted me over and the boxer stepped up and offered me a pint.  Since we had all been housed together there had been a very much heightened awareness of each others’ presence to the point that you knew it was going to kick off at some point but nobody knew exactly when.  Instead of passing up his most generous offer I stupidly assumed that this was some sort of peace offering and chugged half the glass down.  I thought at the time that it must be American beer of some sort because it was weak as piss.  Warm too.  That’s because it was piss 😦

‘Very fucking funny’, I said as I chucked the glass into the corner and made my way through this dimwitted crowd to the urinal where I proceeded to answer the call of nature.  I made my way back to my mates and told them what had happened and told them the boxer was going to get it for what he’d done but I needed their backs in case it became a free for all and I got outnumbered.  It was agreed upon and we left the NAAFI shortly after last orders.

Upon arrival at the block I could hear excited shouting and the usual bollocks you hear in a barrack block after the beer taps are turned off and I made my way upstairs to ready myself to make amends for what went on in the NAAFI bogs.  As I neared the top of the stairs I caught sight of 2 i/c out of the corner of my eye going into the laundry room and heard him laughing, probably about how they put one over on me.  I went in and there was the boxer joking around with his mate.  I went straight for him and asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing taking the piss (actually administering the piss if we’re being accurate) and at first he denied it simply laughing it off.  I stood my ground and challenged him again getting a reply  along the lines of ‘What you going to do about it?’.

Before he’d finished his sentence I’d already nutted him and was proceeding to give him an up close look at my nicely polished brogues (yes, they were in fashion then).  It was all over in a matter of moments.  The boxer held his hands up and asked me to stop which I did.  I told him I couldn’t have simply let him get away with it and as far as I was concerned the matter is done with and we move on.

By now two squads had formed ready to have it out but I waved my lot off and went back to my room and got ready for bed.  I’d been in bed no more than 10 minutes when in bursts the boxer challenging me to round 2.  I told him to fuck off as the matter is now closed.  We don’t need more fighting.  He said to me that either I come out for round 2 or one night real soon he’d be back when I was asleep and put a steam iron over my head.  With that he left.

So once again we had to get the battalion roused and I had to ready myself to meet the boxer one on one again.  The MT boys had their crew ready and we had ours.  The agreed way to settle this was for me and the boxer to go outside in the carpark and go at it again.

We squared up and this the time the boxer was on his toes bouncing around like boxers do.  I remember thinking at the time that I’d beaten this guy once so why not twice?  My preferred plan of attack this time round was to start off with a nice hefty boot to his balls which, had I executed properly, would have seen a very different outcome to what actually happened.  A wild swing towards the boxer’s testes was easily dodged and before my boot had found the tarmac that it had just left he stepped in and popped me right in the eye which knocked me to the floor.  He proceeded to try to kick me in the face but failed and I pretty much did what he did and held up my hand.  It was over as quickly as it had started.

‘We’re even’ was all he said.  We shook on it and our two gangs departed back to their respective rooms.  We didn’t exactly hang out together after that incident but we always let on to each other, be it in the bar or the mess or somewhere on the station.  The armourers and the MT guys never had a fallout after that day to my knowledge.

Now that little war story goes back to 1979 / 1980 ish and there’s no real reason for reproducing it here save to engage you for a few moments and maybe even distract you momentarily if you’ve had a crappy day.  Getting back to the reason for posting today, that being that some poor misguided soul out there hates armourers, I was rather hoping to get a reply back from the mystery person who doesn’t like us so much.  That thought cheered me up that I could have some dialogue with him (or her, but less likely I think) but then I got to thinking…what if this guy’s a Rock Ape (RAF Regiment) ?  You’d get more meaningful conversation out of a desert boot.

See ya next time 🙂

120 Days Of Night

120 days of night is the term I use to describe the Winter period here in Ontario because that’s what it feels like.  We got off lightly last year but all the forecasters, professional and otherwise, are telling us we’re going to get a battering this year.  If the levels of snow that have fallen over the past three days are anything to go by then there’ll probably be an increase in the seasonal suicide rate in these parts come April.

I hate the winter season for many reasons, not least the fact that it’s fucking freezing cold and somewhere therein lies the Christmas period (yuck), and this time round the beginning of the snow was accompanied by a new pain that I’ve never had to deal with before, namely a tooth extraction.

Around 25 years ago I had a root canal job done by an RAF dentist and sometime in the past 7 years that same tooth broke in half but wasn’t painful due to the tooth having no nerves to speak of.  Recently though it became abscessed and I had booked in to get the root canal redone as, apparently, the RAF dentist didn’t do that good a job.  Anyway, off I popped two days ago to get it attended to and after scraping about a bit the dentist informed me that the decay had broken all the way through the bottom of one of the tooth roots (it was an upper deck molar) so the decision was taken to yank it out…a first for me in all my years man and boy.

7 needles full of anaesthetic saw to it that I didn’t feel any pain during the extraction, just a lot of pressure and a strange cracking noise transmitted through my jaw to inside my head.  Of course the freezing has long worn off and now the pain is way worse than before I went in to have it done so I’m leaning heavily on good old T3’s (Tylenol 3 for those who don’t know) to see me through this stage of the procedure.

Moving swiftly on and changing tack completely I’m strongly considering a rethink on the punting side of things.  The markets on Betfair, particularly on the footy, are so tight it’s driving me mad. That, coupled with the fact that the game of football itself has changed to a point that it’s almost unrecognisable to the game I grew up playing and watching, makes me want to give it up for betting purposes altogether and go back to an equally bent sport, that being horseracing.  Or I could just stop betting altogether but one thing is for sure and that is that I need a completely fresh look at the way I do things.

Just as this post starts to get interesting I’m going to sign off.  I’ll save my betting related woes for another post.  This post was just for my mate Paddy who wanted a new thread to post insults at Bob V because the thread currently being used takes too long to load on his netbook.  So can all you Vegas haters (you know who you are) start using this thread for the abuse until it becomes unmanageable then we’ll start anew.  Cheers chaps 🙂

Drinking And Gambling – A Recipe For Disaster ?

An individual’s attitude towards risk can make or break them financially, of that there is no doubt.  Those that rely on their ability to make money solely from gambling or similar (stock markets for example) simply cannot afford to throw caution to the wind on a whim and bet the farm in a bid to increase their wealth.  That would be dumb because the risk so much outweighs the reward it’s unthinkable.  However, when you add drink into the equation things change. There are others who may be not so cautious after a drink or two and decide it’s a great idea to lump on over 3.5 in an Argie B footy game at 4 in the morning only to face ruin 90 minutes later when the game finishes 0-0.  And then there are others still who, tanked up on the the equivalent of racing alcohol (Google it), will risk their mind body and soul and not give a flying fuck for the outcome when they are pissed up, especially when holding a one way ticket to Heathrow linked to an exit visa from the Middle East. Cue another war story…

In 1988 I was seconded from the RAF to British Aerospace in Dhahran to teach Saudi Air Force chaps the finer points of loading assorted weaponry to their shiny new Hawk T65 jet trainer aircraft…except we had no trainees to teach. The year I spent there was one of the best I ever had during my time in the RAF.  Here I was doing a job I loved but with no trainees for the whole time I was there.  It was like being back on the flight line at rain sodden RAF Brawdy in S Wales only with brilliant sunshine the whole year round.  That, plus the fact that everything we as Westerners held sacred was banned…so getting pissed up and going partying was so much more enjoyable because we were getting away with it…in spades.

All good things come to an end eventually, and all too soon, my year in Saudi came to a close. I could have stayed on for another year and had I been single at the time I would have signed on the dotted line in a heartbeat but alas I was married and staying out there a second longer would only have got me a decree nisi which in hindsight would have made 1993 a much better year than it turned out to be as that was the year that, for other reasons, my wife and I divorced.

Weeks prior to my scheduled exit date I had shipped all of my worldly goods back to the UK and only had enough kit to basically go to work and go out on a weekend so packing for my flight home was a breeze…all I had was a sports bag which I intended to carry onto the aircraft rather than stow it in the belly…travelling light was the plan all along.

My flight was scheduled for a ‘weekend’ so it fell on a Thursday as I recall (Thursday and Friday are the Saudi equivalent of Saturday and Sunday).  I spent most of the day flitting from villa to villa (some converted into pubs) saying my goodbyes to the many very good friends I had the pleasure of working drinking and socialising with.  The local hooch, affectionately known as ‘Sid’ (short for Siddiqi, ‘my friend’ in Arabic, because after drinking it everybody is your friend), was the order of the day and let me tell you it takes a fierce hold of you when you least expect it.

During the course of my day of goodbyes several people handed me VHS tapes that they had borrowed from  me at some point in the past, all of which were crammed end to end with porn.  Porn, much like booze, was a kind of currency over there.  If you had either in sufficient quantity you could move mountains.  My own personal porn stash, which numbered in the hundreds of tapes, had already been shipped and these few tapes made up the remainder.  Waving away the words of those wiser than me “You don’t want to get caught in Saudi customs with THAT.” my Sid addled brain decided that it wouldn’t be a problem and bunged them into my sports bag as there was ample room.  Eventually my afternoon of drinking and handshaking and address swapping came to a close and I was on my way.

Cut to the queue at Dhahran International airport and there I was waiting for my ticket to be checked to board the shuttle flight over to Bahrain and my main concern was whether or not they would allow me to board the flight due to being extremely drunk rather than what they might find in my bag if they searched it.  No such worries…the exit visa that accompanied my ticket saw to it that the Saudi official stamped it promptly (no doubt glad to see the back of another debauched Westerner) and onwards I went to the departure gate.

The hop over to Bahrain is short, so much so that just as soon as the aircraft starts to climb it then begins it’s descent…all over in a very short space of time.  So now I’m in Bahrain with around 6 hours to kill before my BA flight whisks me back to Blighty.  The obvious thing to do is to get out of the airport and go bar hopping in the many hotel bars that are in close proximity (Bahrain is an independent state with no stupid drinking laws like Saudi has).  Making my way to exit the airport I must have gone through 4 or 5 different security checkpoints, some manned, some electronic, until I arrived at the final one which appeared to be unmanned.  I could see the taxis outside queueing up to take people to wherever they wanted to go.  I placed my bag on the rollers and walked through yet another electronic doorway and just as I was about to collect my bag an airport official appeared as if from nowhere and began to quiz me.  Where was I going?, where had I come from?, WHAT WAS IN MY BAG ?

Emboldened by drink I fronted him out and answered his questions trying not to appear too fussed when he removed the porn tapes from my bag…

“What are these?”, he asked

“Oh, just a bunch of videos”, I replied

With that he told me to wait and then disappeared into a room with my tapes and quickly reappeared and told me to pick up my bag and follow him.  I was led to a fairly large hallway with a row of chairs placed up against the wall of an office, the door of which was open and traffic in and out was exclusively made up of people wearing police uniforms.  My heart sank.

After what seemed like an age one of the junior coppers came out bearing a tray with a small glass of tea on it and offered it to me.  I was slightly bemused…here I was in a Muslim country where they scribble in black marker pen over any and every picture of any female flesh in every copy of every newspaper and I’m carrying a whole bunch of explicit porn yet I’m being offered hospitality instead of being beaten with a rubber hose prior to being gang raped.

So there I sat and every now and then a brown face would appear from the office doorway and cast a glance my way as if to check out the international porn smuggler they had caught.  When my gaze caught theirs they smiled sheepishly and  ducked back into their sanctum.

Finally I was summoned inside and told to take a seat whereupon the fatter twin of the prison guard in Midnight Express lumbered into the room and sat opposite me.  I swear this man had never seen his feet for decades.  Brandishing one of my tapes he began his interrogation..

“What is this?”, he asked

“It’s a tape”, I cockily replied

During my spell sitting ‘outside the headmasters office’ the drunker part of me decided that I would take a chance on them not having checked the tapes and would front this out no matter what.  What will be will be.

“What is on this tape? Describe it for me.”, came the reply

It was at this point that I noticed they had a whole bank of VHS players sitting on shelves in a room just off the one we were in.  It was 1.01 they’d looked at every tape I had.

“I taped it off the TV.”, I offered

Technically it wasn’t a lie.  Back in the day that’s what you did.  You played the original onto the TV so that you could see what you were pirating.

“What is on the tape?”, he pressed

“Women…”, I answered

“Pornography”, he countered

“Well, yes I suppose so.”, I admitted

I then figured that a change of plan was required and fucking quickly as the deck heavily favoured the house and further gambling on their ineptitude might lead me into trouble, if not the black hole of Calcutta (or it’s equivalent), so I switched my play.  I decided to go with my gut and be honest and forthright.

I pointed out that first of all I was on an exit visa back to the UK so there would be no coming back.  I pointed out that I had just arrived in from Saudi Arabia which is where I got the smut.  The Commandant’s jaw dropped.  I then told him of the drink drugs and debauchery that was commonplace in Saudi and he looked like he was about to pass out.  I told him that these tapes were my personal property that people had given back to me earlier in the day and if he wanted to take them off me then that was fine.  I told him that if he wanted to give them back to me then that would be OK too.  I told him that I wasn’t an international porn peddlar and I wasn’t hell bent on trying to corrupt the people of Bahrain…I was just a guy trying to go home after a year away in a foreign country who happened to have a handful of sex tapes in his bag. Big deal. Your call.

I was sent back out to the chairs outside the office to await the verdict.  There was another western looking chap occupying one of the seats so I sat next to him to find out his story.  He was found with a suitcase full of women’s underwear though he told me (and presumably the cops) that he was a lingerie salesman.  More little glasses of tea arrived which we gratefully accepted.

My chat with the other guy was cut short when I was wheeled back into the office once again and sat opposite my fat tormentor.  He asked me about my flight home, what time it was due off etc so I showed him my ticket and he asked me what my plans were in the meantime.  I told him I was going to go to the hotel bars and waste some time there.  He said that was OK but I had to report to his office upon my return to the airport so I said fine and I was escorted ‘sans videos’ to the taxi area.

After an uneventful tour of Manama’s hotels I dutifully made my way back to the airport’s cop shop and was ushered in to see the fat controller.  He sat opposite me and produced my porn, all shrink wrapped in a Bahrain customs bag bearing the legend “CUSTOMS CHECKED” in red in both English and Arabic.  He pushed the bag across the table to me and basically told me to get out of his sight and had two of his men escort me from his office all the way through every security checkpoint right up to the boarding gate where they remained until I boarded the aircraft.  Several hours and one tremendous hangover later I landed at Heathrow and skipped through customs without a care in the world.  I was home and I still had my smut.

Of course this tale could have ended very differently depending upon a number of factors but I think it’s safe to say that it wouldn’t have happened at all had I been sober at the time the tapes were offered back to me. No way would I have chanced taking them through customs and risk getting caught. While this particular story has a happy ending the outcome could have been very much the opposite.  Don’t drink and gamble folks, you know it makes sense 😉

If You Hate Spammers Then Read This

Apart from kiddie porn there’s nothing more odious in the online world than spammers who bombard you with endless bullshit emails advertising all manner of garbage that no-one in their right mind would touch with a 10ft pole.  Thankfully the vast majority of the excrement that finds it’s way through contains at the very least a link through which one can unsubscribe an email address thereby making the spammers aware of the fact that we don’t want them to send us any more unsolicited emails…ever.

In most cases that’s all it takes…click the link and you are redirected to a page with a form on it that you fill in with your email address and, once sent, the emails stop.  Then you have the ‘other’ type of spam email that doesn’t have a link but has instructions on how to stop further mail coming your way…’simply type in the word REMOVE in the subject line and send it to us at  spammer@arsehole.com’.  It would seem that this second approach isn’t as effective as the first one mentioned.

I am currently being plagued with email coming from some tipping operation whose website can be found at www dot maxtips dot info.  I haven’t linked to them as I really don’t want any traffic going from this blog to their site by the way of backlinks.

A while ago on two separate occasions about a week apart I managed to succumb to an email borne virus of some sort that managed to change my Yahoo password and then send a bunch of mixed spam to everyone in my Sent items folder.  There weren’t many recipients as my Yahoo account isn’t my primary email (which is also the reason that there were no mails sent out to my Contacts list as I don’t maintain one in Yahoo).  Since I managed to get that issue sorted out I have since taken the steps of, after each time I send mail, moving the mail from my Sent folder into another custom folder that I created just in case the same thing happens again in the future.  However, I only move the Sent mail out for people I know.  Any replies I send to spammers (to take me off their list) or to the Nigerian 419 scammers (I actually reply to them to see how far I can get for a laugh), or anyone else I consider to be a cunt, I leave in the Sent mail folder so that if there is any re-occurrence of my account getting hijacked then they get all the pills and porn emails.

So, a quick check of my Sent folder reveals that I’ve mailed the above mentioned pricks at Maxtips on 5 separate occasions asking for them to remove me from their list.  They simply ignored my request and kept on sending their crap.  I strongly suspect that the wording I used in my replies to them may have something to do with their not complying with my ever more abusive requests for them to cease and desist.

A bit of research into this ‘company’ reveals that they hide behind a domain privacy registrar thereby shielding the actual real owners and operators from any WHOIS lookups.  I suspect they may have done that after their site got hacked into by a team of Kuwaiti hackers, most notably a Mr.L4iVe and his pals Xrapt0r & Cyb3r-Dz (top work guys :-)).

Now, as far as the quality and quantity of their tips go I can’t say as I’ve never been, nor do I ever intend to be, one of their members.  If you visit the site you’ll see plenty of posts bigging themselves up on their fantastic tipping performances and outrageously massive priced winners but I’ve been around long enough to know that that is the way these people operate.  They’ll make up all sorts of shite to suck in potential subscribers and good luck trying to get your dough back if the first ten horses you get tipped go lame.

Also if they can’t manage a simple fucking request to remove someone from their spam list then that displays an ignorance and arrogance that I would want no part of.  The site in it’s entirety stinks to high heaven.

So, here’s my personal request to anyone reading this and especially all you lot on the BF forums who have a refreshingly brutal way of dealing with spam posters…when you have a minute hop on over to their site and leave them a comment on my behalf….I don’t care what you put…’Please unsubscribe Swearbox’…’Swearbox says fk off’…whatever you like.  It won’t appear immediately, in fact it probably won’t ever appear…it might be that while it says ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation’ no-one actually bothers to read them but there’s a very good chance someone actually will see that the comments section in the admin panel is full to bursting when they log in to post their next bunch of lies and take a look to see what’s going on.

Oh, and while I’m at it, there are a couple of links at the bottom of this post for Facebook Twitter and LinkedIn…hit those as well why don’t ya and spread the word to those in your own circles that may not read my blog. Even if it’s only for a day help me to piss these guys off as much as they piss me off by continuing to ignore my requests for them to stop sending me their spam.  Thank you in advance to all who go out of their way to assist, and spammers…go fuck yourselves.

UPDATE>>>>>>>>>  It would appear that someone at maxtips has finally heeded my repeated requests to be removed from their spam list as I haven’t received any mail from them since the day after this post first went public (Oct 28th).  In the words of the old BF forum legend PPKing it is ‘a pleasing result’.

CONCACAF Champions League 2012/2013

Santos Laguna won’t be winning this comp…this year.

Just finished watching their dismal performance against Toronto FC and while they came away victorious with a 1-0 win they didn’t give me the impression they were the same outfit that made it to the final last year (losing 3-2 on aggregate to Monterrey).

Toronto actually had at least three very good scoring chances in the first half but they don’t possess natural born goalscorers so they failed to capitalise.  Shame really as the match was desperate for a goal and maybe if they had found the net in the first half I might have reserved judgement about Santos’s future in this competition as I feel sure they would have picked up their game.  Having said that they did have their moments but equally inept performances in front of goal (and admittedly shut out by both the woodwork and a couple of heroic off the line saves) saw to it that only a bullet of a shot from Hercules Gomez could separate the two sides.

But let’s face facts…Toronto have been shite this season and this match was pretty much the equivalent of a cup final for them…mathematically if they beat the Mexicans 3-0 or won the game by two but scoring at least four they were into the quarter finals but it never looked like going that way. SL haven’t exactly set the world on fire so far this season either having failed to win in their last three domestic league games and currently occupying the 7th slot in the Liga MX table.

Back to the game and exasperatingly not one but two TO players were booked for TIMEWASTING of all things… Terry Dunfield and goalie Freddie Hall both had their names taken after the ref decided they were running down the clock. WTF ? Toronto need all the playing time they could get so it made no sense to waste it…ref was a dick imo.

All in all it wasn’t a very memorable performance by either side and while we know that Toronto are now out I wouldn’t be placing any of my hard earned on Santos Laguna to be lifting the trophy this time around.  Lay the bollocks off SL…you know it makes sense.