Ha. Where do you start?
I don't know if it's just me, but this year has been a night-mare.
Housing market, Interest Rates, Fuel prices, council tax, Redundancy, Injury etc.
When you've been stuck at home for 8 months day in and day out, you have two options available to you. The first is the one most people take. That is to go stir-crazy and insane!
The second is less easy, but more rewarding. That is to try and re-educate yourself so that being at home 24/7 becomes a worthwhile experience.
Thanks to my education, traveling, experience of life and an over-whelming hunger for knowledge, I was able to teach myself web design and all that goes with it. Naturally, I started out as any red-blooded male would and built an adult site. Yep, me and the wife caught on film during some of our more intimate moments. What the hell....it sells!
Not happy with just one site, and wanting to reach a wider audience, I built a photography site. This site works well and the wife and I sell our (non-adult) images here. We have found ways to add our images to all kinds of products (cups,T-shirts,mouse-pads etc) and generate some much needed income.
I'm sure we're not the only people suffering at the moment. The sub-prime situation in the States has had a world-wide knock-on effect, not least here in the UK. As is always the way, the idiots who allowed this to occur have been protected by the Government and the poor little guy at the tail end of it suffers! I didn't ask for these financial institutions to over-stretch themselves. I didn't ask the Government to wipe out billions in debts to third-world countries. I didn't say "Yeah, let them all in and give them benefit entitlement.
I have had to have 5 independant medicals just to receive the (meager) disability payments, and yet you can turn-up on our shores from anywhere in the world and get the lot.
Strikes me as though something is wrong here. Surely it makes sense to look after your own before others. After all, as the saying goes "Charity begins at home!"
Sitting opposite the numpty at the job-centre for my "back to work" interview, I was asked "So what kind of job can you do?" I replied, "One where I can sit for 20 minutes,stand for 20 minutes,walk about for 20 minutes,lie down for 20 minutes,exercise for 20 minutes,then sit for 20 minutes,stand for 20 minutes...well, you get the idea.
Bright as I am, I haven't been able to think of a job that fits that description, and I've been putting my brain to it for nearly a year! Needless to say, the young,inexperienced oik sat opposite me couldn't think of anything either!
I suggested that, as my predicament was not my fault, and I am registered disabled since my work accident, maybe they could just leave me alone and give me the benefit. I'm still waiting for their response!
Moving on. I must stop watching day-time TV. I have never seen such a load of mindless pap in my life. Anti-wrinkle creams advertised by 23 year old beauties who won't see a wrinkle for at least 25 years even if they smiled continuously 24/7, sun-bathed 8 hours a day in the Gobi desert and washed their faces in sulphuric acid. Do women actually believe this hype?
Bacteria. One advert tells you the product kills 99% of all known bacteria, and the very next ad tells you to drink the yoghurt because it's full of bacteria!
My latest pet hate is ECO friendly stuff. I worked hard to achieve this point in life, and in so doing contributed to the world today, as have millions of others who've gone before today's do-gooders. I want to leave the largest carbon foot-print I can. After all, it's probably the only thing I will leave! Despite claims, there is NOTHING new about organic food. Man was putting cow poop on his vegetables thousands of years ago. Artificial fertilizers didn't come into being until only 50 years ago. Why does organic food cost so much? Cow eats grass and produces......dung! It's genius. And it's free!
We spend so much time, effort and money on global warming. Why? Global warming is a natural phenomena. You watch one documentary telling you about how man's destroying the planet and the next program tells you that only 100,000 years ago (a speck in the history of the earth), London was a tropical rain forest! The earth is an ever-changing place controlled by nature. Man's contribution, good or bad, is insignificant.