EddieB

Cool.. I am watching that now... I have actually been to William Randolph Hearsts house (castle). It is so ridiculously plush. Ill let you know my thoughts later... ^Mockingbird... I do get that that definition is probably most commonly accepted (although I have always wondered if that meant food, air and sleep are drugs (interestingly what causes dreams is your brain releasing serotonin... (probably)... secreted naturally, which is also the active ingredient in lsd and dmt - so technically dreaming is actually a class a drug experience) - my definition is more my personal opinion of what I think a drug should be defined as, but as a firm advocator of democracy and liberalism, I am happy to accept the standard definition whilst practicing my own... I don't mean to sound rude, because you actually what I would consider to be the best and most reasonable standpoint on drugs. I have seen a lot of people destroy themselves on drugs, to be honest ranging from caffeine through to heroin, via prescribed drugs by way of socially acceptable drugs, and too many to legitimately say that drug use should not be discouraged.... But I can't help but think there is also a positive function in society for drugs, especially the ones that help you to think radically. I think the human condition would be a whole lot further down the evolutionary path if some of the revelations people had when high were actually practiced in society...

lol - its actually also on my 101 things to do before I die list - but before I am 30. What do you reckon the chances are of organising a Villatalk outing?? Maybe during the world cup next year... I get a bit funny about people calling plants that grow naturally a drug. For me a drug is something that goes through a chemical process to be made... although I know that the literal definition says I am wrong on this. The natural ones tend to expand your conciousness, but the man made ones tend to narrow it. I can never understand why people would go to town to basically get tunnel visioned and fall over, when you could find a nice 'clearing in the woods' and explore space, time, and feel completely at ease and one with the entire universe. I just want to add the caveat that I am not some kind of drugs bum.. I actually consider myself to live quite a wholesome, healthy, and stereotypically successful(ish) life. I just like exploring the caverns of my mind sometimes. On a side note... it is the single most ridiculous piece of legislation in the world, that hemp is illegal. I think this is a crime as big as any in the world today...

My feeling is that the reason drugs like cigarettes and alcohol are legal is because they are easy to tax. Like they have a production process that can be seen and needs a lot of investment in (yeah you can fire homebrew in my face but its not the same). Sweet Mary Jane is illegal because any dude can grow it, ergo it can't be taxed. Alcohol is clearly the drug with the most destructive effect on society, at least in terms of the number of users, but ironically it is also the most boring of drugs. Whoever said that drug problems shouldn't be treated by the NHS.... I disagree sorry. The worst and most destrictive drug upon my life that I have ever taken was citalopram, which was prescribed to me by the NHS. As someone with aspergers syndrome, and a historic difficulty in relaxing, I think weed is a godsend. I have found positive effects in all different parts of my life which I attribute to it. Does anyone have any thoughts on drugs that really expand your consciousness like ayahuasca? I think there is enough circumstantial evidence around that drugs that expand your mind are something that have had a positive effect on the human historical trajectory...

Again, no disrespect meant, but this is so far divorced from reality as to be unanswerable in a sensible fashion. So I'll leave it... Could you extrapolate and say why this statement is so far divorced from reality? To be honest it seems like quite a reasonable point, and also based upon a fair amount of evidence. I know you have said that you can't answer it in a sensible fashion, but I would like to hear your response. x

last one to post wins a wigan pie!

yeah I will have you seen 'crab goalkeeper'?. I still feel so bad about the rat. It was supposed to be a mercy killing though I have never killed anything since not even a fly and when I see roadkill I do that little thing that latin footballers do before they go on the pitch even though I am not christian...

the worst bit was there was blood everywhere and if it was hard to kill it was impossible to clean up

yeah I do know what you mean. I was dying at the coathanger part, and shit you have reminded me of another confession. At uni there was a rat wedged between our fixed oven and the wall and it was clearly dying. There was nothingwe could do to get it out, so after a few jays my friends and I decided a mercy killing was best, so we fashioned a contraption with a bread knife on the end to help us kill the poor creature. It didnt work that smoothly and it took what felt like 10 or more stabs to finish the beast.

Yep it's real, the film is based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rum_Diary_(novel) Never seen it though, heard it wasn't amazing.. But still probably worth a watch, can't see it being as good as Fear and Loathing tbh.. It really wasn't nearly as good as I had hoped. But definitely see it, you may feel differently. the last film I watched was called birdendemic: shock and terror. It can only be an improvement on that...

unfortunately that wasn't the only hole. although I dont remember there being proper penetration. He was never the brightest, but he had a special talent for drawing so I like to think he has done okay

lol. I live in northampton and there is a local legend that Johnny depp was trying to persuade alan moore to let him make a film of from hell, and alan moore was stubbornly refusing. Apparently he camped in Alan Moore's front garden until he let him make a film. That film looks brilliant. I trust it is real and you didn't just whip that up...

My new years resolution was to LOL more. I think this thread has helped 2013 be better than 2012. A few of mine, not in chronological order... 1) when walking up the hollywood hill to see the letters, I realised I needed a dump, so I took the opportunity to break through the fence and go for a dump right in front of the big 'O'. The worst bit was that they have a security megaphone that kept shouting at me to scram. It scared the hell out of me so I did. I never got to wipe properly. 2) a similar incident occurred in the Rothschild chateau when I was watching my dad do the marathon medoc in bordeaux. Due to my political leanings I thought I would make the most of the opportunity to 'miss the toilet'. I felt a bit embarrassed afterwards because it probably wasn't the rothschilds who would use the toilet next but some marathon runner or their family. That is the effect wine can have. 3) I got a boat between panama and columbia once, as it is the 'safest' way to travel between the two countries. However the guy whose boat we was dodgy as hell. For a five day boat journey he forgot to bring any food, so all we had was a shitload of rum, some mary jane, rain water, and a few potatos. Anyway the guy locked up our passports at the start. As the ship went on, we actually started to consider mutiny, particularly when we got wedged on some coral. Anyway on entry to cartegena, he tells us he isn't given us our passports back unless we give him all our money. My friends started to argue and get... um physical. In the meantime, I went into his room and robbed the box with his passports, and then we did the classic 'leg it'. It was only later that we realised his passport and stuff were in the box as well. I always did wonder what happened to him. 4) The middle school incident. There was a poor chap at school who used to get a bit of unfair abuse. I actually quite liked the kid. However I was at his house one day and came across one of his mums 'toys'. Being 12, I found this quite funny and stole it and took it into school to show. Anyway it got around and some of the slightly more unabashed group of kids decided to pin him down and 'experiment'. I always felt a bit responsible and disgusted by the incident to be honest. 5) When I was young, my friends house had a lock where with our little arms we could reach through the letterbox and unlock the door. When his family went on holiday, we broke in, and re-arranged all his furniture. We moved all the cutlery into a big smiley face and moved all the sisters stuff into the mums room and vice versa. When they came back they were shit scared that someone had been in the house. They moved in with family for a little while, and my friend even came to stay with me that night. They had the police round and it was pretty sketchy for a little kid. They never found out it was us.

Which holocaust are you referring to? The Armenian one? The Rwandan one? The Cambodian one? East Timor? The Jewish holocaust? NSSM 200? Or the largest holocaust in the history of humanity and the most successful? That of the native Americans? Thatcher is not responsible for all of these.... Great now we're going into tin-foil conspiracy territory. I think it skipped tin-foil, flew past fahrenheit 911 and went balls out straight into bat shit crazy. Still it's nice to know Thatcher wasn't a genocidal maniac and wasn't writing policy for the US national security council before she was our PM, or is Eddy saying she was... er, nurse! Its Eddie... and what conspiracy theories have I mentioned? Washington consensus? Hard fact. NSSM 200? Hard fact? Rwandan genocide? Hard fact. Etc etc. The people who funded Hitler and Thatcher? The body of evidence agrees with me. With regards to US policy, I am talking about her agreeing with the core themes... which she did... not that she decided on US policy. But she was in a position where she could say something about it, and she supported it. And hey you wanna talk conspiracy theories? Everyone is a conspiracy theorist. 9/11 ... you are a conspiracy theorist if you think the american government conspired to blow the towers up, but you are also a conspiracy theorist if you reckon Bin Laden orchastrated it from a kidney dialysis machine in the American Hospital in Dubai... its a theory of a conspiracy, with an astonishing lack of evidence.... Chemtrails? They clearly occur and there is limited scientific reasoning behind them other than longevity of steam at different temperatures. HAARP? Are you seriously suggesting HAARP doesn't exist? Some conspiracy theories are stupid. Like the Denver International Airport one. But others have the vast body of reasonable evidence supporting them, like 9/11, like JFK, like the existence of centres of power above our government (don't be a child and call it illuminati). At which point the conspiracy theory term becomes weaponised, and at that point as a reasonable human being you need to question why the term is so weaponised. Look my long and wordy point is... Thatcher was mixed up in some pretty bad stuff. She was an ideological chick, but the main thrust of her idealogy was never ever to make the world a better place. It was to make the world a better place for a few. And this wasn't done just in England. Her policies (not just hers admittedly) went across the whole globe and caused a lot of problems that are still around today, and are worse than ever. And for the record you dropped the conspiracy theory bomb. I am still unsure where you got that from...

Which holocaust are you referring to? The Armenian one? The Rwandan one? The Cambodian one? East Timor? The Jewish holocaust? NSSM 200? Or the largest holocaust in the history of humanity and the most successful? That of the native Americans? Thatcher is not responsible for all of these. However... she was clearly supportive of the policies that have lead the way towards NSSM 200. She sold weapons to dudes she knew wanted to use them for murder of children, woman and men. On more than one opportunity. In fact whenever she got an opportunity. If you are standing in a room with a little girl, a guy and yourself, and you have a gun, and the other guy says, hey can you give me the gun so I can shoot this girl... then I reckon you are as guilty of murder if you give it to him. Do you honestly disagree? Also the Washington Consensus... can you even conceptualise how many people across the world have died, because of these policies (which were malicious)? Thatcher wanted this - enough have died from these policies to have it spoken about in terms of any holocaust. Have you any idea how forcefully the neoliberal policies advocated by Thatcher (and others) have ripped South America and Africa to shreds? Based upon some weaponised theory that free markets and free trade will make you rich? Can you name me one country which has got rich through fair trade? Do you know what Thatcher did? She put people into debt and created an economy based around debt. Do you know what debt is? It is basically slavery, except unlike the more traditional conception of slavery people don't have a clue they are enslaved. It means longer working hours, more stressful jobs just to be able to afford the right to have food and survive so that you can work some more. Can you explain how this isn't slavery? And yeah okay it wasn't just her. but she is the symbol of this... and however you put it I consider that a crime against humanity. Ok its not just Thatcher... I would speak also of Obama (any US politician since Carter), Blair (any UK politician since Heath). Did you know that in the early 1990's the definition of genocide was changed... so that the activities of Western countries could no longer be defined as genocide (oddly the same has happened with the term terrorism about two times since). Did you know that the same people that funded Thatcher financially and back both the Labour and the Conservative government are the same people who financed Hitler and the West in World War II? I don't mean to be rude but its like the version of history you quote is taken directly out of an Usbourne history book. And I estimate that AT BEST 70% of history as 'commonly accepted' in the media and educational establishments is bull.

You sound like you want to read 'ready player one' by Ernest Cline.... or 'enders game' by orson scott card. Although dark materials like the other dude recommended is pretty awesome to. If you like fantasy as well reading the kingkiller chronicles will be more than worth you time, and perhaps more rewarding than all the aforementioned...

because during the the westernisation of Russia, following the Russians realised very quickly that any wealth they had in the banks would end up in the hands of Roman Abramovich and the other oligarchs. Taking this into account the middle rich Russians decided to move their wealth out of the country, as it would be safer there. The poorer russians kept it under their pillow, which is partly why Russia has such a reputation for a black market. I guess as of today, the poor Russians are feeling slightly cleverer than the middle rich Russians, and after the sacking of Di Matteo both are feeling cleverer than Roman Abramovich. For an interesting read on the Oligarchs - check out World on Fire by Amy Chua...

Sorry but this is just a lazy way of stealing citizens dosh. In the West we give it fancy names to disguise it and make it seem legit. It started off being called capitalism.... then fractional reserve banking was invented (which is the ultimate route of the financial crisis), and then people started to smell fish, so socialism came along, which also helped to steal people's wealth, then fractional reserve banking had reached a point that some people were able to both indebt governments and use political influence as capital, and enough wealth that they could legitimately pull a fast one on the banks. Then, surely by coincidence the great depression happened, which allowed a few select few to buy up even more of the wealth, and fund both sides of World War II to great profit for themselves. And then they convinced the people that tax was good so the wealth could be redistributed, which it was... but not to the poor... to the government, who had conveniently decided to privatise the central banks, because of course, the public should not have a say in the wealth creation, but the rich people who like wars should, which meant that every unit of currency in the western world came along with one extra unit of debt, which basically shafted the populations hope of ever living in an economy (or technically an anti-economy) without debt... If you want to see a spectacular theft from the public purse... google $2.3 million dollar fraud. Sorry did I say million, I meant trillion. But after spending all the time writing this out it appears that we actually agree (damn aspergers). It seems a shame to waste this though. My main theory of it all is that the recession is basically made up brainwashing. Having worked for a corporate entity, you kind of see how they brainwash you subconsciously, and if you apply this same critical thinking to watching the news, it is a peace of piss to see when people are getting brainwashed. It is when meaningless statements/catchphrases are repeated over and over and over, such as 'economic recession', 'global warming' and my personal favourite 'terrorism'. And this news story is another part of it. Just something to keep people scared and obedient as we move closer and closer and closer to fascism. The wealth has already been missappropriated, the food supplies are nearly undercontrol, the people are nice and ignorant. And all we can do is sit back, watch the Villa, and hope they had our best interests in mind all along. I will leave you with a coincidence though... in 2000 there were only seven nations in the world without a privatised central bank ... afghanistan, iraq, syria, sudan, north korea, libya, iran.

I am a good auditor. As a novelist (amateur) - I am pretty shit hot. Sometimes I steal names of thing I see on here to take for character names. For instance Villan is the name of a ship, captained by Big Eck, a big brute of a man with a fiery hue about him, whether it was his withered ginger locks, or the blood that constantly simmered under his skin, and threatening, always threatening to boil over. And when he spoke, there was silence, and not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of the joy getting sucked out of the world. His first man at sea is Morpheus, who is jealous of magic users. One of which is on the ship...and it is gunna call all sorts of shit... Anyway this ship gets mutinied...

no but sometimes from where I work I can smell the fried chicken from a nearby kentucky fried chicken through the air con. maybe they put crack in their burgers? I prefer writing stories to songs normally, and I think I may stick to those after the reception my foray into song smithery caused. The other idea I was working on was a reworking of run to the hills by iron maiden... run to the hills, run for your lives, bentekes here lock away your wives sorry.

sorry. I have just been auditing since 8.30am. And this is my distraction. please forgive me

Benteke Benteke, Kentucky fried chicken and agbonlahor Paul Lambert Paul Lambert, Kentucky fried chicken and a Benteke Ashley Westwood Ashley Westwood, Kentucky fried chicken and a Benteke Brad Guzan Brad Guzan, Kentucky Fried chicken and a Benteke Benteke Benteke, Kentucky fried chicken and a john carew Mcgrath Mcgrath, Kentucky fried chicken and a Benteke Benteke Benteke, Kentucky fried chicken and a Bret Holman Blues Suck Blues suck, Kentucky fried chicken and a carson yeung Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a benteke and repeat. over. and over. again.

Yeah but Ireland and Bannan did play under mcleish

To be fair... having lived in Northampton and gone to a lot of Cobblers games... Bunny is probably the most naturally talented keeper (sweeping statement and if it is incorrect I can assure you it isn't far from the truth) in the country. His problem is a lack of height, if but for a few inches he would be Englands number one, I suspect. Not saying we shouldn't pepper him... just don't expect to have any more luck than with another keeper... his weakness is crosses and dominating his area...

yeah I know what you mean and there are negatives for sure. I try and forget that Southampton game... I do firmly believe that there is a lot of football that it is not easy to see and people get wrapped up looking for the eye catching. For instance statistically speaking liverpool are far more likely to lose a game of football with Gerrard in the team than if he is not in the team (as of his career up to about 3 years ago). But he is an eye catching player who can do the spectacular therefore people see him as a great player, and don't really notice how it is harder for a team to hold their shape with him in the team. On the other hand a player like carrick can come into a team and be a constant fixture in a lean mean football outfit reaching champions league finals and winning the league, in part due to Carrick getting the simple things exceptionally well (positioning/passing), but because he is not spectacular he will always come across unfavourably to Gerrard. Now my point is basically, we are starting to do the simple things right, and holding a good shape as a team, which is something to build on. It isn't spectacular and we do still make misstakes, but teams aren't looking spectacular against us either (okay there are a few exceptions to this). Also it is football, not an exact science, so as to where things go in the future... But yeah I share your concerns about QPR at the weekend.

I think there are a few more positives from this game than are being bandied about. The main ones for me are... teams seem to play badly against us, with perhaps a few exceptions such as Man City and the second half against Man Utd... Sunderland, Swansea, Newcastle, Arsenal, Reading and WBA for instance. A lot of people seem to take from it being a dull game that it makes us relegation fodder, but looking at it from another perspective, teams find it very hard to play us, which at this stage of the season is a very good positive even though it makes for dull games and we may not look spectacular. Reading for instance ARE capable of banging in goals, against decent opposition (2 against chelsea, 2 against wigan, 5 against arsenal, 3 against fulham etc), and we (without Ron Vlaar) looked VERY comfortable in defence (bar a few wobbly, if not disasterous moments). For a young team, I think this is a really good foundation which leads me onto my next positive... Benteke is a beast... and could be a very good premier league striker. He hasn't struck me as the prolific sort quite yet, but yesterday, I started to get the feeling that with better service we could have a striker that could not only get goals but can offer a high level of all round play and operate as a lone striker effectively which would allow us to pack the midfield, which we seem to favour. Creatively we haven't been amazing and is my main worry, but as Benteke settles in, I think there is enough talent and work within Ireland, Bannan, Agbonlahor, Westwood and Holman to provide enough support that when (and if) it gels, we should have enough ammunition to trouble anyone, and at least keep us out of too much trouble. Corners. They are a big part of the game and a tiny part of our game. Yesterday we saw how in a close match set pieces can be the difference between three points and zero points. And to be honest we have been terrible at them for awhile. I think if we had decent corners last season we would have been comfortably mid table, taking into account the amount of close matches and draws we had. In the start of this season, they haven't been good at all, but we provided enough of a threat from them last night that it is clear that this has concerned Lambert and the squad, been identified, and has been worked on in training. Baker and Clark also came close from corners, plus there was a brilliant whipped in ball that somehow eluded everyone. I dont think floaty corners are necessarily an evil, as some people think, I think there is value in a variety of corners which makes them unpredictable, and thus harder for defences to deal with. I want to see this become more of a part of our game in the next few matches, I think we may get some joy against qpr in this manner... And yeah there were negatives, but other peoples posts in the reaction thread seem to deal with them more than adequetely.