Gary Writes A Blog

Was listening to a radio show recorded on Saturday called “Your Call with Jim Traynor” except this week it was with Chic Young…

Anyway, after it had finished they have  a show that tells you all the football scores from around the country and the guy who does the reporting for the highland league obviously knows that no-one listens to him as he kept on throwing in comedy references throughout. You can listen to the 1min clip here (only understandable if you are from the U.K)…

highlandleague.mp3

“The teams were more positive than a Kieren Fallon drug test…”

For those of you who have been living under a stone for the last year, the Wii is a games console from Nintendo that has a higher than normal degree of physical interaction.

There is a new add-on for the Wii called the “Wii Fit”, a pressure sensitive board that you stand on and get fit, or as Nintendo puts it…

“The board is used for an extensive array of fun and dynamic activities, including aerobics, yoga, muscle stretches and games. Many of these activities focus towards providing a “core” workout.”

Of course there is a promotional video to go with this (but I think someone has been messing with the voice-over… Sarcasm is the lowest form of comedy :)) Watch with your speakers on!

One of the best things about living in Sweden at Christmas is Julmust, the special drink for Christmas that is both delightful and suprising.

It’s certainly a delicacy for this time of year, as it’s only really on sale in December and January. It’s my second favourite type of “must”, my favourite being Påskmust which gets sold around easter and has a cheekier flavour with a hint of the easter-bunny.

I looked up Julmust on the Internet and according to Wikipedia…

“Must was created by Harry Roberts and his father Robert Roberts in 1910 as a non-alcoholic alternative to beer. The syrup is still made exclusively by Roberts AB in Örebro. The original recipe is said to be locked up in a safe with only one person knowing the full recipe.”

“45 million litres of julmust are consumed during December (to be compared with roughly 9 million Swedes), which is around 50% of the total softdrink volume in December and 3/4s of the total yearly must sales. In Sweden, Julmust outsells Coca-Cola during the Christmas season; in fact, the consumption of Coca-Cola drops as much as 50% over Christmas.”

Whahey! Julmust is the Swedish version of Irn-Bru!!! Will never be as good as the mighty ‘Bru though. Here’s my favourite Irn-Bru advert where the snowman flys past Scottish landmarks.

I was checking out an article on the Scotsman newspaper when I saw an advert for their Haggis Hunt website.

This is worth signing up for. You can look at 8 different webcams of around Scotland and if you see a haggis, you can report a sighting and win prizes!

When I looked, all the webcams were showing an extremely wet and windy Scotland, not good haggis spotting weather, so I looked at one from London and saw a visiting haggis no doubt queuing for West-end tickets!

I reported the sighting to the Chief Ghillie…

Dear Farquhar,

I saw a haggis on Haggis Cam 9 (Leicester Square, London) at 12:03pm GMT on Wednesday, 5th December 2007.

Yours sincerely,

Gary

An update on BBC news as Wendy’s Labour minions decide to back her.

Wendy’s pic…

The guy who donated the illegally accepted money (why don’t they have a picture of him trying to play an imaginary trumpet?)…

Wendy giving her press conference (why the funny camera angle, are they dentists? Are they trying to see if she needs bridge work?)…

I really think I am onto something here about the pictures of the Labour leader in Scotland, Wendy Alexander (See the post that is two down).

I said that somehow there is always ridiculous pictures in every article about her and that I think this is because male political editors deliberately choose these to make her look stupid because she is a woman.

Further evidence today from the BBC website. This is the picture from the latest story about Wendy… (UPDATE: The picture hass now been changed, but not before I recorded it here!)

Let’s compare that to the picture in a story about the Prime Minister Gordon Brown on an identical topic (illegal fund raising by Labour).

Brown is no oil painting, but who looks like a strong leader and who looks like a wee lassie? OK, we can all agree that Wendy does not photograph well, but I think there is something more disrespectful at play here. Today, I’m launching “Wendy Watch”, where I’ll report any more sightings of deliberate usage of stupid mug-shots.

Our old TV was a 14 inch number from 19-canteen. Think it was the first colour TV in Sweden.

On Sunday we bought a brand new (5 years old) TV from the apartment opposite us. It’s got all the high-tech  modern features such as stereo sound and even a remote control! The luxury!

I’m looking forward to putting it to good use tonight as Swedish TV is showing the AC Milan – Celtic game. Hopefully I can get the commentary off Radio Scotland then settle down to enjoy.

Unfortunately, I predict 2-0 to Milan though

The leader of the North Britain branch of the Labour Party is in a wee bit of bother. She’s called Wendy and she is the leader of the opposition in the Scottish Parliament.

She only got elected a couple of months ago and now it turns out that she received 950GBP from an oversees tax exile (I am oversees, but I live in the worlds highest taxed country and don’t have 950 quid) to help her get elected (receiving donations from abroad for that amount is illegal). This amount is a bit strange, if it was 1000GBP it would have to be declared publicly, but I’m sure there was no cover-up going on.

Now of course there are calls for her to resign etc. but she’s hanging on for reasons too boring to go into here.

I say that everybody should get off her back. If she wants to stay, then that’s fine. Everybody’s innocent unless proven guilty and the issue is now with the police. I’m sure that they can be trusted to push for a prosecution if there is evidence of funding wrongdoing?

Anyway, it’s only 950 quid and it’s not as if she’s eaten anyone’s babies…

That makes me think, you never see a picture of Wendy that doesn’t look as if she is glaikit or evil or the hungry caterpillar. Sometimes she even looks like a glaikit, evil, hungry caterpillar.

I think that the use of these pictures are probably just to undermine the fact that a woman is in a position of relative power. I don’t think that people in Scotland really take women politicians seriously. I would have hoped that she could prove a few people wrong, but it looks like she has fallen before the race even got going.

For the last week I’ve had a cold, but yesterday I decided to get out the house and head down to a Christmas market at the art school.

It was nice, but too many people.  I was just standing at the back while Maria got stuck in and bought some earings and a necklace.

Came home and collapsed in exhaustion! Need some tasty beverage to help me get back to speed, any suggestions for a Christmassy drink?

At GaryWritesABlog.com, we follow the “clean desk, dirty mind” philosophy…