Looks like it might be good...

Just came across a preview for HBO's new comedy show Bored to Death. It stars Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson and looks like it'll be pretty funny. Click here to see the trailer.

Alex Ferguson - Asshole (fact)

Here's a great example of why I fucking hate Alex Ferguson so much. What an asshole. Be happy with the fact you have one of the best teams in the world and are the current league champions. This kind of shit is what makes people hate Man U, when really, they should just be hating you.

Democrats are the new Republicans

Though I'm a huge Bill Maher fan, I don't always completely agree with him. In fact, over the past few years, I've posted just three of his closing monologues from his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher.

This latest clip, from the 19 June show, is absolutely right on the money as he accuses Democrats of not really being Democrats anymore. They've moved so far to the right as to now be a sort of centrist-right party, while Republicans have also moved so far to the right as to be, for want of a better word, lunatics.

At 3:16 in the video, Maher outlines exactly what a Democrat SHOULD believe in, in the traditional sense of the word Democrat. As he correctly states, these aren't radical ideas and a large portion of Americans already agree with them, while even more would agree if they were presented/argued properly.

But enough. For the third time, I completely agree with everything he says in this clip and think it's a shame that he's seen primarily as a comedian, rather than a serious political commentator (though this may be starting to change). Watch the video.

Zombies. Yes, that's right. Zombies.

Does this look great, or does this look great?

The New Job

So yesterday I started a new job with telecommunications company Vodafone. It's the largest mobile phone service provider in the world and it's a company I've wanted to work for since 2004.

My role in the organization is that of "Real Time Business Support Manager".

I work in the Credit & Collections sector of the company. In other words, we deal with the contracts consumers and businesses have with us to provide their mobile phone service. Everybody from regular consumers, to small businesses, to large companies such as BMW or Johnson & Johnson, to government agencies such as the National Health Service, the cops, etc., get their mobile phones and service through Vodafone.

Specifically, I work in collections. When people or companies don't pay their bills on time, the information comes to us and we try to get them to pay their bill.

In my role, I look at the processes of 1.) how we try to get them to pay their bill, 2.) of why they don't pay it on time, and 3.) at what point during the collections process they will usually pay their bill. I have a team of three credit experts who work for me and together we look at all of the above data and we try to come up with ways to save the company money and provide better service for our customers. For example, I'll be given a goal by my boss to reduce costs due to late bill payments by x% and then my team and I try to find ways to reach this goal. If it looks feasible, we'll implement.

I also have to analyse data myself to see if I can identify ways to provide better service and/or reduce costs.

So basically, it's a role that encompasses management, IT, marketing, finance and business. I have quite a lot of experience in a lot of these areas (though not all) and so it seems like it's a great fit.

Now that I'm out of the USAF, I think I've finally found a company and line of work that I want to stay with for the long-term. I see my future working for Vodafone and in the IT/telecoms sector.

Vodafone have offices around the UK in Newbury, Banbury, Nottingham and Stoke. I'm based in Banbury which, as luck would have it, is about 20 mins. from my house in Buckingham! I'll have to travel to the other three location approximately once a month each, but I'll also be able to work from home four to eight days a month. The company issued me with a brand new Dell laptop and Blackberry.

The Banbury office is actually a complex of two huge buildings in a business park in the English countryside. Each building has its own staff restaurant and Wiis and XBoxes are dotted around the two buildings for the use of the staff. There's also free drinks and free tea or coffee which is great.

My boss works in the Stoke office (about two hours north), but has told me that she'll let me decide my own hours, when I work from home and seems very smart and really nice. I am part of a team of three managers who work for her and the other two guys are also very friendly and helpful.

In short, I think I may have found the perfect job. There are great prospects for moving up or moving to other sectors within the company such as sales (getting companies to choose us for all of their organization's phones) or marketing. Financially, it's great money. I get to wear whatever I want (which after years of business suits and military unifroms is quite liberating). The people I work with and for seem to be genuinely nice and it's close to home.

What more could you ask for?

The greatest (and as far as I can tell only) Denzel Washington impression EVER!

I've never seen anyone do a Denzel impersonation, but this guy has it down cold!!! (and his Morgan Freeman isn't bad either)

"Be Italian!!!!"

OK, so Bruno is gonna be hilarious, Star Trek will, I'm sure, be hugely enjoyable and The Road looks fantastic.

However.

My MOST aniticipated movie of the year IS. THIS.




Though this 2009 Sundance AUDIENCE Award winner (which means that it WILL be great) looks pretty awesome too.

The New Statesman - Comic Relief 1988

I've always loved Rik Mayall (The Young Ones, Lord Flasheart from Blackadder, The New Statesman) and I REALLY love this New Statesman Comic Relief special from 1988 (especially the part when Alan turns into Rik from the Young Ones).

I remember watching it as a kid on the night and re-watching it again and again (I used to "tape" every year's comic relief telethon) over the next few years.

Eventually I lost or threw out the VHS tape on which I taped this and have been looking for it ever since, both on DVD or on YouTube.

Someone finally uploaded this a few months ago, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.

Note: If you didn't live in the UK in the 80s much of this will go over your head, but I think you'll still find it funny anyway

No medicine for Creationists

Here's a video clip I uploaded to YouTube today of Bill Maher's closing monologue on this past Friday night's show. Essentially he says that Swine Flu is a virus. It EVOLVED. And if any creationists contract swine flu, they're not allowed to come running to science for medicine...they have to "pray it away". Genius.

Texas and "Evolution"...in the same article!!

From an article by Christopher Hitchens in this week's Newsweek (again, the red highlighted parts are mine)...


[L]ast week [the] Texas...Board of Education, in a muddled decision, rejected a state science curriculum that required teachers to discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. Instead, the board allowed "all sides" of scientific theories to be taught...

...It's not just that the overwhelming majority of scientists are now convinced that evolution is inscribed in the fossil record and in the lineaments of molecular biology. It is more that evolutionists will say in advance which evidence, if found, would refute them and force them to reconsider. ("Rabbit fossils in the pre-Cambrian layer" was, I seem to remember, the response of Prof. J.B.S. Haldane.) Try asking an "intelligent design" advocate to stipulate upfront what would constitute refutation of his world view and you will easily see the difference between the scientific method and the pseudoscientific one.

But that is just my opinion. And I certainly do not want it said that my side denies a hearing to the opposing one. In the spirit of compromise, then, I propose the following. First, let the school debating societies restage the wonderful set-piece real-life dramas of Oxford and Dayton, Tenn. Let time also be set aside, in our increasingly multiethnic and multicultural school system, for children to be taught the huge variety of creation stories, from the Hindu to the Muslim to the Australian Aboriginal. This is always interesting (and it can't be, can it, that the Texas board holdouts think that only Genesis ought to be so honored?). Second, we can surely demand that the principle of "strengths and weaknesses" will be applied evenly. If any church in Texas receives a tax exemption, or if any religious institution is the beneficiary of any subvention from the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, we must be assured that it will devote a portion of its time to laying bare the "strengths and weaknesses" of the religious world view, and also to teaching the works of Voltaire, David Hume, Benedict de Spinoza, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. This is America. Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a thousand schools of thought contend. We may one day have cause to be grateful to the Texas Board of Education for lighting a candle that cannot be put out.