The Hovis Commercial Is Better Than Their Bread

This commercial for Hovis Bread has been out for quite some time, but I've recently rediscovered it. I absolutely love the commercial, which might possibly be my favourite commercial of all time. The advert follows a young boy's journey to bring home a loaf of bread, but it also takes you through some of Britain's defining moments in history. The poor boy has to take his loaf of bread through wars and protests, making this the most dangerous bread delivery of all time.

Personally, I would have left the loaf at one of the wars. Doesn't even taste that great.

Dana White Twitter Account Suspended? That sucks.

[Nov 10, 09:45 Update:  If you have an RSS feed of Dana White's Twitter account, you'll still be able to get his tweets. Weird. Watch this space for updates if you can't access his tweets and want to know where he's giving away free UFC 105 tickets.]

[Nov 10, 16:31 Update: Dana is giving away 25 tickets in London and 25 tickets in Manchester. "I will give away 25 in london and 25 in manchester. So I only want people from london who are going to make the trip to MEN for sure." "Stay tuned!" Nuts. This is a far cray from the 3000+ tickets he gave away for UFC 104.]

[Nov 10, 17:05 Update:  I can't stick around to update the tweets any more, but I did find an alternative way of viewing Dana White's Twitter. If you managed to get tickets through my updates, let me know!... and save me a ticket?]

Dana White's popular Twitter account has been suspended. Dana's last tweet on DanaWhiteUFC was sent on 17:56 GMT, with him announcing that he's "taking off!" to London.

The outspoken UFC president has also promised to give away free tickets to this weekend's UFC 105 in Manchester while he's in town. But instead of finding the Dana's latest tweets, visitors are greeted this image instead:



Dana White's Twitter has been down as early as 20:00. Somebody ought to tell him, but I can only reach him through Twitter and he can't check for tweets while his account is suspended. Anybody have his email address?

Dana has been using Twitter really effectively as a marketing tool, and this really sucks for him that his account is down. More so for me, because this was going to be the only way I would be able to see the UFC and Randy Couture fight live. Can some body keep me posted on when his account gets back up? Cheers!

What does a 112 year old man and a 11 year old girl have in common?

Shocking headlines, that's what.

First a 112 year old Somalian man marries a 17 year old girl. Days later, an 11 year old Bulgarian girl gives birth to a baby on her WEDDING DAY.

What?

This 11 year old girl got knocked up by a 19 year old kid, and I guess they were trying to do the "right thing" by getting married before the baby was born. When she arrived in the hospital, she was still wearing her wedding dress.

The 19 year old is now facing jail time for having sex with a minor. I'd like meet the minister who conducted the ceremony and thought that marrying an 11 year old girl to a 19 year old boy was perfectly acceptable.

From Yahoo:

Eleven-year-old girl gives birth in Bulgaria

A Bulgarian schoolgirl, aged 11, has given birth to a baby girl on her wedding day.

Eleven-year-old girl gives birth in Bulgaria

Kordeza Zhelyazkova reportedly went into labour during her marriage to the child's father, 19-year-old Jeliazko Dimitrov.

It is reported the bride-to-be was still wearing her wedding dress when she arrived at hospital and gave birth to a healthy 5.5lb baby daughter, Violeta.

Zhelyazkova, thought to be the world's youngest mother, told the News of the World that she would not play with toys anymore as she has "a new toy now".

Her husband now faces up to six years in jail for having sex with a minor.

Every 112 year old Somali man's dream... is to marry a 17 year old?

Random office banter this morning led to a rather amusing news bit about a 112 year old Somali man who married a 17 year old girl.

Seventeen years old. This guy is almost 100 years older than his wife. That's mind boggling.

The best bit for me was reading his quote in an article on The Guardian's website.

"Today God helped me realise my dream," he said.

It's the same quote that you'll find when a baseball player wins the World Series, a fighter wins a championship, or even when a celebrity wins the latest edition of Masterchef. I wonder when he started to dream of marrying a 17 year old girl. Maybe he was having a full life crisis?

From The Guardian:

Somali man aged 112 marries girl of 17

• David Smith in Johannesburg
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 October 2009 19.05 GMT

He is old enough to be her great-great-grandfather. But Ahmed Muhamed Dhore, a Somalian who claims he is 112 years old, said he had realised a "dream" by marrying a 17-year-old bride.

Dhore – who says he was born in 1897, the year that Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee – already has 13 children by five wives, but said he would like more with his newest, Safiya Abdulle.

Hundreds of people attended the extraordinary ceremony this week in Guriceel, in the region of Galguduud. "Today God helped me realise my dream," Dore said. He and his new wife, who is almost a century his junior, are from the same village in Somalia, he said, adding that he had waited for her to grow up to propose. He says his children and two other wives agreed to the marriage, as did Abdulle's parents.

"I didn't force her, but used my experience to convince her of my love, and then we agreed to marry," the groom said. The bride's family said she was "happy with her new husband". Somali adolescent girls are often married off to older men.

Dhore has 114 children and grandchildren. His oldest son is 80 and three of his wives have died. This was his first marriage for three quarters of a century.

Didn't I see this in Saw 3?

A quick thinking doctor in Melbourne, Australia, saved a young boy's life by using a household drill to make a hole in his skull. I wonder if he's a fan of Saw 3? (Ok, it wasn't a drill in Saw 3, but the idea was similar)

Taken from Canoe.ca:

MELBOURNE, Australia - A doctor in rural Australia used a household drill to bore a hole into the skull of a boy with a severe head injury, saving his life.

Nicholas Rossi fell off his bike on Friday in Maryborough, hitting his head on the pavement, his family told The Australian newspaper in a story published Wednesday.

By the time Rossi got to the hospital, he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The doctor on duty, Rob Carson, quickly recognized the 13-year-old was experiencing potentially fatal bleeding on the brain and knew he had only minutes to drill a hole through the boy's skull to relieve the pressure.

But the small hospital was not equipped with neurological drills - so Carson grabbed a household drill from the maintenance room.

A Melbourne neurosurgeon talked Carson through the procedure by telling him where to aim the drill and how deep to go and soon, a blood clot fell out, relieving the pressure on the boy's brain.

"Dr. Carson came over to us and said, 'I am going to have to drill into (Nicholas) to relieve the pressure on the brain - we've got one shot at this and one shot only,"' said the boy's father, Michael Rossi.

Rossi was airlifted to a larger hospital in Melbourne and released Tuesday - his 13th birthday.
Carson was modest about his feat.

"It is not a personal achievement, it is just a part of the job and I had a very good team of people helping me," he told the newspaper.

Michael Rossi was more effusive.

"He saved our son's life," he said.

Freak Out!!

These videos are way funnier if you understand Cantonese. Even if you don't, enjoy the sweet sounds of Chinese banshees wailing in denial and discontent.

Thank goodness I'm marrying Scottish. ;)

Coming Soon: Newspapers on the Internet

I think this internet thing is going to stick around for a while.

Miley Cyrus = Brooks & Dunn = Arsenal Football Club

I received an email from a charity auction today, selling signed celebrity memorabilia to raise money for the greater good of mankind. Sad to see that a Miley Cyrus guitar is going for the same price as a Brooks & Dunn guitar, which is going for the same price as a soccer jersey signed by the ENTIRE Arsenal team.

Maybe it's because there's a guy named Tom Cruise playing for Arsenal. That would bring down the value of your team for sure.

How to sell a bike on eBay

If you're not laughing your ass off, you have no soul.

Did you hear the joke about...

James Iha (guitarist from Smashing Pumpkins), Taylor Hanson (from... uh... Hanson), the bassist from Fountain of Wayne, and the drummer from Cheap Trick walk into a bar one day...

http://www.tintedwindowsmusic.com/

A Quiet Anniversary

I looked at the date today and realized... it's been a a full year since I've moved to London. Hmm. Wish I had clued in to that earlier, I might have made it a bigger deal of it than working a full night on my freelance projects. I did have a beautiful roast pork dinner made by Jules though, and it was so good it can be considered a celebration on its own. So no complaints.

Looking back at my first blog, I've come a long way since I stepped into that Zoom flight a year ago. I've seen places I've never seen, heard accents I still can't understand, and worked jobs that has given me interesting experiences (and stories). Most importantly, Jules and I have defeated the nay sayers by being extremely happy together still.

Not bad for Year One.

Who steals chicken? Honestly?

Some of you know that my workplace delivers lunch to our desks daily, all of which are supplied by Marks and Spencer's. Each of us have a modest daily budget to order with, but some of us have devised an ingenius plan of ordering large portions of chicken and then rationing throughout the week. For me, these chicken portions have been vital for my pre-Jiu Jitsu class meal, so I look forward to making my chicken sandwich at 5pm every tuesdays and thursdays.

This morning, I open up our fridge to find that SOMEONE HAS STOLEN MY CHICKEN. Not only that, but the bastard just left the empty container in the fridge for me to clean up. This is like stealing candies from a child and then handing back the wrappers. NOT COOL.

Now I know what most of you are thinking right now: "he hasn't blogged in a while, and his first blog in a month is about chicken?"

Right. But who steals chicken, honestly?

LEARN BRAZILIAN JIU JITSU

A nine year old boy used brazilian jiu jitsu to save a twelve year old girl from a pit bull, and he had only been learning the sport for a couple of months. Below is an excerpt taken from The Bakersfield Californian:

"(9 year old) Drew was walking with his neighbor after getting the mail last week when the pit bull started attacking the neighbor's dachshund. She tried to save her dog, but the pit bull started attacking her instead.

That's when Drew, who his mother described as a "passive, sweet little boy" who "gets beat up all the time" in class, stepped in. He wanted to kick it, he said, but thought the dog would just bite his leg. Instead he put the move on him. "He was moving really hard, like one of those rodeo bulls," Drew said. "Then he went limp."

For more than 20 minutes, Drew held the panting dog until Animal Control officials arrived."

He used a rear naked choke. BAM. Give him his blue belt.

[ read the whole article ]