Cluster Fuck Jobcentre Style

So today's supposed to be my 6th month review at the jobcentre and i'm supposed to go to and discuss why i'm failing at finding a job. The appointment was set up the last time i was at the jobcentre two weeks ago and the kind lady made the appointment for the same day i signed on so i didn't have to make two trips into town.

I get there five minutes before my appointment and join the masses already waiting to be seen. after about 20 minutes of waiting im starting to get a little wound up because its extremely hot and most of the people who were queuing with me have been seen and have gone home. Being a polite British person i don't kick up a fuss and wait another ten minutes, so after half an hour and most of the other people seen to i go ask why i've not.

The guy i ask takes a look at the letter and bashes around on the computer for a couple of minutes while looking really confused, eventually he looks up at me and says "go see Tim", "er.....which ones Tim?" without even looking up from his desk the guy points across the room and shoos me away. I go over to see Tim and he fiddles about on the computer and asks me "did you not get the letter?" my heads screaming at him WHAT FUCKING LETTER??? but i stay calm and simply tell him i've had no letters from the jobcentre for months. "Oh well you're appointments been changed" well thanks for letting me know you gits, he prints me off a new letter with the updated time and date and shoo's me away without an explenation as to why its been changed. But im not going anywhere i have more questions for you, you rude man! "I'm supposed to sign on at 3.30 but the lady that set up this appointment said i they would sign me on while i do my 6 month review, what do i do now? do i have to come back at 3.30 to sign on?" All credit to the bloke he tried to help me out here and he gave me back my old copy of the letter told me to go downstairs and tell them what happened and they will let me sign on early.

So i venture downstairs and go up to the front desk and explain the situation. Read this and see if u get as epically confused as the woman i was talking to apparently did. " I came for an appointment today but the date has been changed and i wasn't informed, im supposed to sign on at 3.30 but i was told that i would be signing on during my appointment this morning but seen as that has been cancelled the man i spoke to said i can sign on now". Confusing?

So she takes my book off me and goes and puts it in the pile with the rest of the 100's of people waiting to be seen and i go stand in the middle of the room and wait. As im stood waiting in a room full of dirty chavs melting i can feel myself getting more and more wound up, until a lad i used to go to school with walks in and we stand chatting for a while, then his name gets called out and i realise all the people that came in after me are getting seen first, i look at my watch and realise i've been there another 30 mins, im fucking fuming at this point & just as i'm about to go and find someone to complain to they call my name out. AT FUCKING LAST!!!!! So i sit down and she asks me the usually bullshit, she hands me my book and i get up to leave.

Now as i'm leaving there's a bit of paper sticking out my signing on book, i pull it out and have a gander at it. To my surprise its a late slip with slept in the reason given, so i go over to one of the blokes working the front desk to ask him about it. When i ask him why its in my book he tells me it's because i was late for my appointment. In my head im going fucking mental at this point and i just want to yell in his face "which appointment am i late for sir is it the one i'm six hours early for or is it the one you cunts changed without telling me and im now fucking four days early for?" I tell him through gritted teeth im not late and explain what happened, he appologises and says the woman that put my book in with the pile must not of understood the situation and put me in with the late pile.

Was the situation that hard to understand?

So i ask him if the reason i've been waiting for half an hour is because the woman marked me as late he said yes and i would of been seen much sooner if it hadn't been there. Now i'm really proud of this moment because i don't usually kick up a fuss but as i was leaving i said quite loudly "well i've been here an hour today mate and you've done nothing but cluster fuck me"

That kids is the latest in a long list of reasons why i hate the jobcentre :)

Sprotbrough Eagles

So you've probably seen the kits i dreamed up in photoshop for my team on FM Live and although they might be a little simple i had fun making them. So i was racking my brain as to what else i could do and i rembered the kits i used to play in for my local team as a kid and thought i could give them a modern twist.

First off let me give you a little history about the Sprotbrough Eagles, the team came about around 96 or 97 when all the local kids played for a team called Sprotbrough Crusaders and at the end of one summer when the new season was approaching all the kids that weren't all that good got kicked from the team. One of the dads whos lad didnt make the cut set up the Eagles and he and another lads dad ran it. There was a reason why we didnt make the cut for the Crusaders and suffice to say we were thoroughly smashed in every game wa played, most defeats ending up in double figures.


Anyway onto the kits, the home kit we used to play in was just an old school plain blue and white striped shirt, i think the home kit was the only one that was manufactured by a sports company, i think it was pony or errea but i could be wrong. I like this shit the most out of the three and i think it could work as a bad ass Huddersfield Town shirt. I went with Erima as the kit make because i had no idea who the hell they were and i went with the Free Press as the sponsor just because it's Donny's local paper and i couldnt find a decent sample of the Advertiser's logo.


Over the years we had many away and 3rd strips, i think it just came down to whatever the bloke who was running it could get his hands on. The one we wore most was bright yellow like the shirt above but the collar was this irritating bright blue V-neck and it had big blue elasticated cuffs. I kept the yellow but i went with a darker blue because the first draft i came up with looked like the leeds kits of years gone bye.


Now from what i rember i know we played a few games in an all white kit and i think one or two games in an all blue shirt but i chose to revamp the orange kit we played in because i scored one of my 2 goals for the club in this shirt. The orriginal was a plain orange shirt with a dimond patchwork worn into it, it had a simple black collar and black trim around the end of the sleaves. I have a love hate relationship with this one i like the design and the colours but the black just doesnt look right at the moment.

I've been tweaking this shirt and the yellow one for a few days and i could go on doing it forever but i felt it was time to post them otherwise i'd never stop. If i ever get a new job im planning to set up another FM Live account so chances are these will get some use in the not too distant future.

FC Awesome FM Live

So today i got bored and started to fiddle arround in photoshop and this is the end result. You are looking at the kit design for FC Awesome's 5th season in the AFA in the Greaves gameworld. The previous four season FCA have had the same colour scheme for all kits and i was getting tired of looking at it, the old home and away kits were the same style as the Ajax home kit, with the FCA home kit being red with a black center stripe and black trim and the away being white with a black center stipe and red trim.

Unfortunatly you cant change the colour of the GK kits in game you're either stuck with the green shown above or a bright green with black trim. The new colour schemes aren't a drastic change but they give my hompage a fresher feel.

Home

I made some custom kits for FCA when i fiddled with the database in FM08 and had Converse as the clubs kit maker back then so i figured i would continue the tradition. I chose DC for the sponsor just to see if it got any comments and i'm thinking of changing it to The Parish because the old kits had it on the front.

Away

My original plan for the away kit was to have somthing like Arsenal's 3rd kit from the 07/08 season but it just didnt look right in FM Live so after trying many different colours i decided for simple black and white hoops.

GK

Now the home and away kits can be seen on my manager hompage in FML however i didnt post the GK shirt simply because every team has a default GK kit and it cant be changed, I made the GK shirt just to complete the set.

So far the new look has been nothing but bad luck and FCA cant buy a win at the moment, having last week achieved my highest ever ranking of 107th i'm in freefall at the moment crashing to 139th and struggling to draw with teams ranked in the 300's.

DM was a real problem last season and i'm hoping to bring in Michael Johnson to help build on last sesons 2nd place finish in the AFA Premiership and a Semi-Final place in the AFA Afernoon Cup.

Awesomly Super Birthday Tastic

So I’ve just been browsing the web and found out this year the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turn 25. If they were real people they would be in boring mid level IT jobs by now. It’s hard to believe that the lean green fighting machines are 25; I’m now 21 so it shouldn’t come as such a shock but it does. After all my entire childhood revolved around these four turtles so to think that they are pushing 30 comes as quite the wake up call.

I really mean it about my childhood revolving around the turtles, I loved Ghostbusters and Transformers but none of them really came close to the TMNT. I still have pretty much all of my old toys and 80% of them are turtles related. I had posters, video games an endless sea of video’s taped from the TV, bedding, badges, bikes, wallets, stationary, backpacks, t-shirts, shorts, socks, watches, pez dispensers and a tone of other stuff as well.



Thinking back me and my friends never played Ghostbusters or Transformers as kids only TMNT, (I was always Raph) and I can ever remember us trying to do the 4-way high five and never once getting it right. One of my favourite video games of all time is TMNT II the arcade game for the NES, yes there are better turtles games but this one I spent my entire pre-teen youth playing and it holds a lot of memories.

At one time the TMNT were the biggest thing on the planet and rightly so.

Truth is I still love the TMNT, more than I probably should, after all I’m what some could consider a grown man now (spend more than ten minutes in my company and you’ll realise its just a rumour) and that I shouldn’t have such an affiliation with something so deeply rooted in my childhood. I went to see the last movie at the cinema and thoroughly enjoyed it, I even bought the tie in video game which was poor but I still enjoyed it because it had “the guys” in it.

I recently delved into my DVD collection and fished out the first turtles movie, I was really surprised by how well it had stood the test of time, the second film is very kid orientated and the less said about part three the better but the first film has a very adult theme running throughout and still a very enjoyable watch (a lot of the first film was based on the original black and white comics, hence the more adult theme). This in fact is one of the only ever films that’s made me cry (all be it as a small child) and I was really impressed by the big rubber suits and how much facial expression they got out of them.



Whilst I’ve been writing this blog my mind wandered and of course I ended up looking for the TMNT on eBay, I still get giddy when I see something rad that’s turtle related, so much in fact that I just bought a comic and I’m contemplating buying the most awesome hoody iv ever seen (damn dole money).

I know I’ve gone slightly off point (was there one in the first place?) but I just want to get my point across that after 21 years on this earth I still think 4 cartoon turtles are on of the greatest things in the world.

So to Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael & all of the TMNT universe I say happy birthday and I truly hope you’re all around for another 25 years.

And I would also like to say a big thank you to Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird my childhood would have been very different were it not for your fantastic minds.

A Perfect Reason To Never Visit The Doctors Again.

Is there a form you can fill in and send off to the cosmic dudes that run everything so you can get the last two hours of your life back?

No I didn’t think so. So anyways as to why I want my time back, I have just spent the last two hours (seemed more like days) at the doctors, which is normally one of the most tedious tasks you have to put yourself through, but this one my friends took the biscuit.

So my appointments at 10.40, living across the road means I can get their early and try and get in and out as quick as possible. I get there for 10.30 and find a waiting room full of old people and babies. Now in my doctors they’ve installed a touch screen computer so you can let them know you have arrived without having to bother the very busy staff, only they’ve stood it on the front desk….where the receptionist sits……not doing very much. So rather than fuck around I just tell the receptionist I’ve got an appointment, she looks at me with pure hate in here eyes, how dare I not use the touch screen, now this poor girl has to look at her computer screen and click her mouse button once, how fucking dare I.

After being scorned at and told to sit down I look around to find virtually no seats, I eventually find a seat next to a huge chav woman and her evil looking mother. Now its an unwritten law in the doctors that you whisper if you have to talk, unfortunately for me, these two delightful people have no concept of a whisper and continued to bellow loudly for the first 20 minutes I’m there. I now know that it’s the old lady’s son’s 40th birthday on Friday, their brother/son in-law’s 50th is next month, the old lady’s grandson, Kyle won another competition for his dancing and got another trophy and that neither of them watched TV last night because there was nothing on, at this point I think I slipped into a coma for a while. Fortunately for me the tedious fuckers were called for and fucked off to see the doctor.

At this point its around 11 o’clock and the fat chav and old lady have wound me up a little and I’m wondering when I’m going to get to see the doc. 11.15 comes and goes, 11.30 comes and goes, 11.45 comes and goes, 12 o’clock comes and goes. During this time I’ve been treated to the endless cries of around ten babies, another old lady and her daughter wondering what the flashing screen is on the receptionist’s desk and a woman complaining that she had been waiting for over an hour and finding out that the wicked awesome touch screen I didn’t use hasn’t confirmed her appointment and the doc doesn’t even know she’s arrived.

Anyway at 12 the waiting area is virtually empty and I know I’m next because the only other people waiting came in after me. Another five minutes pass and the doctors not called anyone in, then low and behold who should appear behind the receptionist desk clutching a some flowers, my fucking doctor. My appointment was 10.40 it’s now 12.05 and I’m really fucking wound up. He disappears and over the speaker system I hear a muffled sound that vaguely sounds like Mr. Freeman. Wondering if it was indeed my name he had called I get up and wander into his office, where I find him reading something.

Now he doesn’t look up from what he’s reading for a good minute and I’m having doubts as to whether he called for me to come in, so now I don’t know if I should sit down or go back outside, so rather than do either I stand in the middle of his office like a lost child not knowing what to do. He eventually looks up and says “hello sausage”, I’ve been seeing this doctor my whole life so I’m sure he must have some grasp that I’m 21 and what some consider to be a grown man.

So he asks me what’s wrong and I simply say “my eczema’s playing up”. NEARLY A TWO HOUR WAIT FOR 4 FUCKING WORDS!!!!! He then turns to his laptop and commences to type using only one finger for four minutes without saying a word to me (yes I am timing everything at this point I’m that pissed off). He eventually looks at me and asks how collage is thus confirming to me that he has no idea I’m 21 and that’s why I still get called sausage. We go through the usual doctor, patient small talk and he gives me a prescription. I was in his office seven minutes. Seven fucking minutes! I had to wait nearly two hours for just over five minutes with the doctor.

If you’re reading this and you’re think the funs all over then you’re in for a surprise. So I finally get out the docs and toddle down the road to the chemist. I get in and hand over my prescription and the woman behind the counter asks “will you be waiting?” fuck sake more waiting. She then asks me if I pay for my prescription and then mumbles something else, I say “sorry” because I didn’t hear a thing she was saying, she then looks me dead in the eyes and says in as stern a voice as possible “sign it please".

I’m sat looking at the prescription and cant find anywhere to sign it so I ask here where I have to sign. She looks at me like she wants to punch me in the face and turns the prescription over and points where I have to sign. I know I sound like a pleb but surely if you’re asking someone to sign a document you put the side with the signature box face up. Then she takes a look at it and tells me I’ve not filled something else in. I honestly don’t think I’ve met an angrier woman. After I fill it in she snatches it out my hand and signs it herself. Watching her sign the prescription I notice she can’t even hold a pen properly which winds me up no end, she looks at me like a retard because she can’t communicate simple instructions and she can’t even hold a fucking pen, bitch.

I wait for about 15 minutes and a bloke emerges with a carrier bag, which it turns out is for me. I don’t go to the chemists often and all the medicine I have ever seen has come in a small paper bag, this is a huge carrier bag full of rather large bottles. I get it home and find all kinds of shit in the bag, in the past the docs given me a small tube of cream but in this bag of wonder I’ve get antibiotics, two huge bottles of cream and some stuff to put in the bath, all of which aside from the antibiotics have got paraffin in. Good times.

This is why I don’t go to the doctors when I’m, ill I just man through it at home, I was perfectly fine if not a little itchy today what the fuck would it of been like if I was felling shit?

Two hours after I left I finally return home, to find my copy of fables I ordered from Amazon lovingly thrown by the back door, by this time I’m fucking starving so I grab some breakfast and start venting my rage in this blog.

Who Watches The Watchmen?

**Warning Spoilers**

Last night I finally finished reading Watchmen again and I think it was even better the second time round. The thing is I had completely forgotten the last two chapters (how?) so I was very familiar with the characters and knew their relationships and how they intertwined but the ending was still a real jaw dropper for me.

However now having read the comic again some of the excitement I felt for the film has turned into fear. How can Zach Snyder successfully make the ending work while maintaining the integrity of the source material? From what I have seen so far the film looks like it is going to be fantastic but I just don’t know how Snyder can work the “Alien in New York” ending without alienating the audience.

It works in the comics fantastically because the comic book audience are an open minded bunch where as regular cinema goers may sit through an hour and a half of great story telling to have an “alien” being spontaneously appear and ruin the film. I know Watchmen fans would enjoy it but would the people who don’t get the history and what this film means to the comic book world.

IGN.com has already stated changes have been made “Two critical changes are made to the original storyline, but they lead to the same outcome” hopefully Snyder will have done these alterations well and they wont leave the comic book crowd vying for blood.

I’m still really excited for the film if only a little apprehensive; I have full faith in Snyder’s abilities as a director and by March 6th we will all know if it was worth the twenty year wait.

Warning This Blog May Have A Mild Laxative Effect

So as some of you know I’ve been rocking a wicked case of the man flue this week. Its gone through various stages from dizziness, migraines and a fever to a nose that doesn’t know whether to let everything run free or let absolutely nothing (including oxygen) pass through. I’m feeling a little better now although I’ve now got a really bad chesty cough which comes out in fits every time I laugh and a wicked awesome saw throat.

So for the throat I’ve been munching a shit tone of Strepsils that are two years out of date. Suffice to say they’ve been doing very little to help. Today my mother kindly brought me some new ones that are in date, and after chugging eight of the things in as many hours, a friend warned me to not take too many.

Why their like Tunes surely? Apparently not while Tunes may be eaten like sweats Strepsils shouldn’t. Reading the back of the packet I realised the grave mistake I had made “This product contains isomaltitol and maltitol syrup, which may have a mild laxative effect if several are taken a day.”

I am at brown alert kids, every time my stomach rumbles I’m worried I’m about to explode.

Good times :)