noncon4mist.com

My friend was one of the extras in Sherlock (2010)  so I watched it and even though she wasn’t in the last episode, I was still intrigued enough to watch as the “moriachi” result of the first episode wasn’t explained.

I’m sure we were supposed to be scared by the villain Moriachi (Mariachi?), but I was too distracted by how much he looked like both Ant and Dec! If Ant and Dec had a baby boy, this is how I reckon he would look when he grew up (although that’s impossible of course… he’s  only a year younger than Ant and Dec   )

Anyone with me on that?

You’d think I didn’t have any work to do from the image above (Heaven forbid anyone should ever come between Ant and Dec).

More interesting observations on Musicians-in-your-city.co.uk/mids/agbs.cfm?land=uk. This site gets better!

On its T&C it requires vocalists to sing down the phone to give a sample of their voices BUT states:

“Singers and vocalists who record unmotivated/bored voice samples shall also face deactivation of their account.”

Wouldn’t that exclude an awful lot of commercially successful singers whose deliberate style is such? Every indie band I can think of sounds bored. That’s the style. God, almost every 80s artist sounded bored as hell. Depeche Mode, The Pet Shop Boys, The Smiths, Japan, The Cure, Pulp, and David Bowie (to name but a few) certainly wouldn’t be allowed to register on this site!

Isn’t it also subjective whether someone is unmotivated or bored-sounding?

And why would they care whether someone does sound bored when singing? Are they assuming that these people are just ringing up for a laugh? You have to pay to join, so that doesn’t make sense.

What if an indie band are looking for a bored sounding singer?

I think this is a ridiculous rule. The site is based in Germany despite having sister sites worldwide. Well it couldn’t be British, could it, with a rule like that?

OK I know everyone makes typos and spelling mistakes, and the internet is crawling with them, but sometimes I find spelling mistakes that make me laugh as they can often be ironic or have a double meaning. Here’s one I just found at Musicians-in-your-city.co.uk.

A local band advertised themselves online with these compelling words:

“are aim is to make music that is true and real.. we have a wealth of experience accross the bored.. style/ country rock/blues. semi pro”

Although there are several mistakes it was “across the BORED” that made me chuckle – especially as they’re performing musicians.

Keith joins one of The Oldest Professions

Those egg poaching pans with the little plastic dishes are useless for poaching eggs. You have to grease the plastic, which defeats the object of using no fat. then if you want a runny yolk, you’ll have to put up with runny whites too unless you want to wait half an hour.

And poaching eggs in a saucepan is no good either. You need a frying pan, in fact the perfect poached egg looks exactly like a fried egg should, but without the oil.

There is a huge poached egg / vinegar myth – you do NOT need any! Who the hell thought of that? It’s supposed to bind the egg, but eggs can bind perfectly well on their own, and the vinegar makes the eggs stink!

I manage to make perfect poached eggs every day using a frying pan, hot water and no vinegar, and yet whenever I stay in hotels I get qualified chefs telling me you HAVE to add vinegar to the water to poach eggs. I’ve even been inside the kitchens twice to prove you don’t need a saucepan or vinegar! Did they knock anything off the bill for my expertise – no chance!

If I’m having egg with chips (fries) then I won’t mind the taste or smell of vinegar, but vinegar has no place at the breakfast table, thank you.

Just a bit of salt to bring the water to the boil quicker is all that is needed. Then you just add your egg to boiling water in a non-stick frying pan and cover with a pan lid.

Once it tries to or does boil over, turn the heat down and do your toast.

X Factor's Little Lambs John and Edward

When I first heard that Louie invited John and Edward to be part of the live shows, I was perplexed as they clearly cannot sing, and their choreography timing is atrocious – they’re more dyspraxic than I am!

But then I remembered what I was told by someone who worked in television when Same Difference were in a similar position as John and Edward today. The only aim of the show is to make money. Advertising revenue only goes so far and the money to be made from the act who actually wins cannot be determined beforehand. But the phone lines are what shows like this are all about.

What better way to explode the number of phone calls the show will get from the public, than to throw in an untalented act to cause anger and controversy among the public?

John and Edward were specifically chosen for their ability to divide the nation. They had everything that a Sacrificial Lamb act needs:

1. For a start, not only can they not sing in tune, but they have very little strength in their voices (which if they cannot sing in tune, is a great blessing).

2. They were also twin brothers, which is seen as both cutesy and annoyingly sad and embarrassing, depending on your views.

3. They are young and naive, and don’t know they are untalented – perfect! The show can take the piss as much as they like, and the boys won’t even know!

4. They are also good looking enough to ensure thousands of teenage girls will be running up mum and dad’s phone bills.

So Simon Cowell and Louie Walsh agree beforehand that if such an act comes along, “grab em quick so we can clean up!” They must have thought it was Christmas when John and Edward came along and ticked all the boxes.

So with the twins’ only talent for frightening and angering people, the stage is set. Because there are so many more talented people in the competition, the family and supporters of the acts that really do have talent are incensed more and more each week that the boys stay in the competition. And they do everything in their power to get as many people to vote for their loved ones and try to give the twins the boot.

Several exceptionally talented acts have already been victims of this cruel TV practice including the brilliant Rachel Adedeji. But as they went out due to not enough public votes, it’s not a case of a potential winner losing out to this practice – unless they actually win!

The thing that confirmed this theory for me was last week when it was Big Band week. Louie could so easily have given the boys a classic big band song and got the lads to dress up smart and just stand and sing, but no. The boys are now a circus act, so the more vomit inducing colorful dancers there are, the better. The more dancing the twins have to do the better – they’ll be even more out of breath and the poor singing will be even worse. Also the less serious the song the better. ‘She Bangs’ by Ricky Martin was the perfect song to maximize ridicule for the Grimes brothers.

I actually wonder if the female judges are even in on this conspiracy. Dannii shakes her head in despair before remembering to continue the diplomatic charade. Cheryl in particular seems to genuinely believe that Louie is in love with Jedward as they are now known. Then again, Simon will probably have instructed the judges all to act their socks off when commenting on John and Edward’s performances. But comments like “Out of all the acts, yours is the one I most look forward to” tells me Cheryl’s no actress.

I doubt the Grimes can win, but what do I know? Is it possible that the Sacrificial Lambs could sacrifice the integrity of The X Factor itself and actually win? It would be horrific, but kind of a strange karma for the show to have its plan backfire.

I have only just noticed that my videos are missing. It seems the site where they are hosted; Xtranormal, are making lots of changes and one of the changes was to add new directories for all the existing movies, meaning the embed codes are all out of date. Great.

So once my movies are back on Xtranormal’s site, I might get the new code and amend them. Or when I get chance I’ll probably get the code from YouTube. They’re less likely to be messing about with the code.

Anyway, that’s why Jaz and Keith, Melody and Sabrina and Boyfriend Girlfriend are missing. But my channel on YouTube is GeneralLawlessness if you were wondering what’s supposed to be in the blank spaces. Wish I could get the viewing figures on YT that I got on XN, but Jaz and Keith 3 that had over 80,000 views last time I looked, is now nowhere to be seen on Xtranormal.com. I find it so depressing that it only has 18 views on YouTube.

And I am NOT going to give a link to the cheeky $%*&# who stole my Jaz and Keith 3 and made my two innocent boys speak terrible bad language. But he’s just a kid, and he acknowledged that the movie was someone else’s and he put “Jaz and Keith” in the description (which is how I found it on YouTube), so it is searchable. It has more views than the far superior original, but then good clean fun isn’t very fashionable now is it?

I heard that old overused myth again the other day about hair growing back thicker if you shave. A woman told her twelve year old daughter she should not shave her legs because the hairs will grow back as thick as her father’s beard.

It was the first time I had met this woman and she was in front of her whole family, so I didn’t correct her (I would have done a few years ago when I was a bigger nonconformist). But if a person, male or female, shaves any part of their body; legs, face, anywhere; the only thing that will happen is that the new hairs will grow back with a blunt end instead of a fine tapered end.

Shaving never causes hairs to grow back thicker for as long as you live. Here’s a few more incorrect myths including that one.

Here’s a shaving fact that isn’t a myth: A money saving tip (or should that be money shaving tip?) would be to ditch your overpriced shaving foam or shaving cream. Use hair conditioner instead – all it has to do is soften the hair and skin, and hair conditioner does that perfectly well, at a fraction of the price.

Sabrina meets Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes

It’s only 3D when it’s the RIGHT way round!

Over at THIS site, these two pics have been put side by side with the Right pic on the left and the Left pic on the right.

But people are still claiming they can see it in 3D!

How could I tell? After struggling to see it immediately, I suspected something was wrong. Then I noticed that the gap that appears orange between the stairs on the right and the stairs underneath is wider on the right. It should be wider on the left where your left eye is further away from it.

This staircase is actually the perfect subject for a stereo photo too as it has both near and far away things in the frame. I’m all for nonconformism, but I’m afraid with 3D it won’t work unless you conform – so 3D images need to be the right Left and Right!

This is how it should look. Just relax your eyes and line up the two images until, instead of seeing two images, you see three. The middle one will be in 3D:

I’m aware of automatic article generating tools that rewrite articles and exist in order to prevent being penalized by the search engines for duplicate content, in the case of submitting the articles to many sites (or to change stolen articles). And after seeing some of the results that these tools produce, I’m not in favor of any of them, even if I were to use them ethically.

I’ve stumbled upon several low quality sites that are spewing out this crap, but most were in the day that you could make one-page jibberish sites and earn a small fortune just from people clicking on the ads. I even found an awful, jibberish site by a highly respected marketing guru (although I’ve since learned of this person’s feet of clay) who claimed (when looking for a great vacation destination), “…you can’t go past London” - (you can’t beat London).

A quick “phrase match” search to see if the site still exists, tells me it doesn’t, but proves that the person wasn’t the only one using that same crap article generator tool.

Today I got a very long spam comment on this blog ( I have to install Akismet – I just haven’t got my API key yet) and apart from the huge list of medication I was kindly provided with, the article has to be seen to be believed. Not only has it clearly been through one of these incompetent  ‘word machines’, but I’m not convinced the original author even knows the English language.

If you’re not familiar with these types of articles, they work (or not) by a thesaurus tool replacing certain words for alternative words that are supposed to mean the same thing. But as we all know, the English language ain’t that simple, is it? For example; I’m guessing that “go danger medical notice” should actually read:  “seek urgent medical attention”.

Here’s an edited version of the article:

Obtain [PRODUCT NAME REMOVED] positively as it was prescribed also in behalf of you. Do not steal it in larger doses or looking for longer than recommended close your doctor.

Pocket each dispense with a full glassware of water.

[PRODUCT NAME REMOVED] can be captivated with or without food.

[PRODUCT NAME REMOVED] is normally bewitched not when needed, yon 60 minutes ahead sex activity. The medication can escape effect an erection when genital stimulation occurs. An erection determination not chance very recently by bewitching a pill. Flow your doctor’s instructions.

Do not terminate [PRODUCT NAME REMOVED] more than once a day. Countenance 24 hours to pass between doses. Phone your doctor or go danger medical notice if your erection is exacting or lasts longer than 4 hours. A prolonged erection (priapism) can check compensation the penis. Keep [PRODUCT NAME REMOVED] at room temperature away from moisture and heat.

It only occurred to me today that bad press isn’t the only downside to fame. You and I can choose to go to a funeral, or choose not to. But if you’re a celebrity, you get a truck load of grief (pun intended) if you don’t go to an old colleague’s funeral, even if there is a legitimate reason for not going.

Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna were all heavily criticized for not going to Michael Jackson’s memorial service. In fact I read about this type of criticism all the time. There’s always someone whinging about who’s snubbed whose funeral.

Peter O’Toole is the latest victim of this phenomenon, as he didn’t go to the funeral of Keith Waterhouse. He says it was a private funeral, and that he is going to the memorial service. Read more Here.

How many people do we meet over a lifetime? And the older we all get (if we’re lucky and outlive our peers), the more funerals we find ourselves going to.

Celebrities almost certainly meet a lot more people than the rest of us. I mean, think about it – if someone of O’Toole’s age and status were to pay their respects to everyone they ever worked with, they’d have to be at a funeral every single week!

Whether there’s a legitimate reason or not, it’s no-one else’s business which funerals they go to. The average funeral attendee hasn’t spoken to the deceased for years anyway. Showing your love and respect to a person during their lifetime should be more important than turning up out of obligation once they’re dead.