Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Olympic Cheating: Even the Horses are in on it!

"After high-profile doping offenses by Irish riders at both the 2004 and ’08 Olympic Games, Horse Sport Ireland officials embarked on a massive campaign to eliminate such infractions from Irish sport. In 2004, Irish rider Cian O’Connor won individual show jumping gold but had the medal revoked when his horse Waterford Crystal tested positive for prohibited substances. There was a scandal when the horse’s B sample was stolen before it could be tested, but in June 2005, the FEI stripped O’Connor of his medal and disqualified the Irish team, which had placed seventh, from the ’04 Olympic Games."
via     
You couldn't make this stuff up.
Stolen horse-pee!
About as unlikely as cup-peeing fairies


Or here(drug user racehorses)

My feelings about cheating in sport are pretty rigid.
Get caught just once and that should be the end of your career.
Either that, or as one wag suggested, have a third, cheat's Olympics:

1. The Olympic Games (No cheating allowed)
2. The Paralympics, (where it's kinda hard to figure out how to compare different handicaps)
3. The Everything Goes, Doping, Cheating, Backstabbing Wacky-Races Olympics.

And in number three, well, you're free to sniff coke, inject rocket-fuel, transfuse kangaroo-blood, wear motorised skates, and nobble the competition. Whatever you like, to gain an unfair advantage.

Like strewing chocolates in front of half-starved gymnasts, for instance.

The Everything Goes Olympics would no doubt have a fair number of competitors dying from the overindulgence in  bath-salts, or whatever, but we could have a special extra section for morticians, and taxidermists, to collect those whose bodies couldn't take the increased stresses.

Extra
It seems Oscar Pistorius will be running in the Olympics, not the Paralympics, on his carbon-fibre prosthetic blades. I'm overawed at what he's done, to be a world class athlete, but I don't think this should be happening. Different studies disagree as to whether his blades are an enhancement or a handicap. However you look at them, they're a significant disparity.

Yes, have a race with blades versus feet, but recognise you're not playing like against like.

Bibliophilia

My Google Search Ranking Triumphs....

I'm at number 1 for search term "fairies peeing in a cup"!!!!!

Total Visits:

1

Location:

Smyrna, Tennessee, United States

IP Address:

At&t Internet Services (99.**.**.***) [Label IP Address]

Search Referral:

 www.google.com — fairies peeing in a cup #1

Visit Page:

 gritinthegears.blogspot.com/2011/11/save-sugar-plum-fairy.html

 

Now, I may be pretty big in stuff about "Youtube not playing in Firefox", and I'm top on the list for searches about Gene Seski and his fatal crash with a truck load of bananas in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 

Google also thinks I'm the go-to guy for tractor-porn, despite my post being more satirical than actual. 

If you want to see how to get around "running out of space in blogger", Google sends you here. 

Neil Gaiman's Saucers, 

Subliminal gnomes... 

Camel Toe?

Oh yes Despite my feeling that I know too little about everything, it seems that in many areas, Google deems me to be the expert. What can I say?

Other than "Don't believe that Google always knows best!"

My most important question is "Why is someone in Smyrna, Tennessee looking for information on the cup-peeing habits of fairies?"

Perfidious Albion

The Albion, on Armley Road, Leeds.

A few years back, it was a thriving pub with cosy rooms, tiled fireplaces with coal fires in winter, very traditional, dark varnished wood, stained-glass decorations and fine woodwork.
My brother and I would often drop in for a couple of pints, and a game or two of pool, maybe a plate of sandwiches, (the sandwiches, like the beer there, were excellent). A friendly place, the front bar was across the width of the pub, that was the place to lean on the bar, chat with the regulars, and the back rooms, on the left was a cosy sitting room, and on the right, the room with pool table, dart board etc. Old blokes playing dominoes. On the walls, pictures of local history, the big engineering works and railway yards that, like the pub, are just memories now.

"The building dates from the 1860s when it comprised of two shops, one originally a beerhouse which became the Fleece Inn in 1873, and the other which became the Albion Hotel around 1886. Both were later bought by Peter Walker & Sons. After the First World War the council began refusing to renew licences to uneconomic pubs and the Fleece and Albion were threatened, but were given a reprieve when they agreed to a merger instead. The name The Albion was chosen for the merged pub, which was sold to Tetley's in 1925."

As you can see in this picture, the old windows and doors were quite ornate.

Tetleys, in the 1970s declared it a 'Heritage Pub', a distinction they gave to pubs that had retained much of their original character, this designation was supposed to confer protection to the pub against the scourge of regular onslaughts of 'themed' interior decoration, which robbed so many of them of their character.

 

A year or so back, I noticed it had closed its doors. The windows were boarded over, the sign fascias were ripped off. Recently, however, it's been sold. It looked for a while as if the demolition men were moving in, but it seems they stopped at just ripping out the interior, and those ornate windows. Oh. And the front door. In place of the fine woodwork, nondescript pvc framed windows, no more stained glass, but at least they didn't knock it down.
stop press: it's a grade 3 listed building, an application to demolish would probably have been rejected, on the grounds that it's a handsome piece of history.

It might be too much to hope that the sign will be saved?

This sign will soon disappear. The old pub's about to become offices.

Beautiful red tiles, the colours and the inserted borders mark them as products of the  Burmantofts Pottery Works, from north-east Leeds. Across the road from the pub is the railway, and one of the more unusual claims to fame the pub might have is the fact that it appears on numerous model railway layouts! In the 1980s, a model railway accessory firm, called Superquick, sold a card model of the Albion, as a typical victorian town pub. If my internet connection had not just died, I could look to see if it's still available, and I could post this.

Ha. I can find plenty of references, but no examples. I also just learned that the Luftwaffe managed to damage the Albion during WWII. That's a surprise, as Leeds got off very lightly compared with many other industrial cities. The raid that damaged the Albion was probably aimed at the railway, or maybe a straggler from the raids on Kirkstall Forge, a couple of miles further up the Aire valley.


Stop Press! Ead-itter's  note: From the comments, I realise that 'Perfidious Albion' has crunkled many a brow, so I have to claritify my title. 'Albion' is one of the oldest known names for Britain. It goes back a couple of thousand years, when it was just a mysterious place on the map, a distant land on the edge of the world to greek and roman, carthaginian, phoenician alike.


Perfidy is treachery. I think it was a frenchman who coined the phrase Perfidious Albion, but I refuse to look it up. A pub called "The Albion" is thus quintessentially british, redolent of roast beef, Union Jacks, St George, Nelson's navy, british bulldogs.
This pub now not a pub? Perfidy!
Office workers where once flowed the foamy beer. I shudder at the thought.

Grumpy

 

Good Morning, America, How Are You?,

Patents Pending.

I went to the Patent Office yesterday to register some inventions. The lady at the main desk pulled out a form. She wrote down my personal info and then asked me what I had invented. I said, "well, a folding bottle, to start with" She said, "OK. And what have you called your folding bottle?" "A Fottle", I replied. "What else have you invented?" she queried. "A folding carton", I said. "And what have you called that?" she replied. "A Farton", I confirmed. She sniggered and said, "Those are silly names and one of them sounds a bit crude." I was so upset that I walked out without telling her about my folding bucket.