This is the captain of the ship, calling...

I'm going to London for the weekend, to visit my brother, and to enjoy (hopefully) the 'give it a name' festival featuring the likes of Funeral For a Friend, Finch, Coheed & Cambria, Rise Against, Alexisonfire, Lucky Nine, Fightstar(!) and Mae, actually thats all of the acts. Writing this has reminded me that I haven't put the tickets in my bag. Such. A. Dumbass.

The capable hands of Duncan shall be in charge of the bigguybigcity mothership till I return. He's intent on writing articles rather than personal tidbits, so it should be something new, maybe even a little bit scary, but hey, new things are invariably good. Push the boundaries Duncan. Man, I am so typing like it's 3am, cos it is.

An Expansion of Interests

"Even the most piddling life is of momentous consequence to its owner." - James Wolcott

Ok, so this is new, a blending of the hierarchy, and this is my first post. This is part of an expansion of the blog as part of the www.bigguybigcity.com family. I'm the first guest editor, a larger part of becoming pop-culture. So this is the part where I introduce myself, I'm Duncan, DC for short. I'm twenty-one, and originally from North London, although I'm studying with Bone at Leicester University at the moment. I don't claim to be cool, popular, handsome or intelligent, so there must be some other reason Bone asked me to be a guest editor, but as yet there is no given reason.

There are business strategies in play for developing the site, but we need to remember it's a community for the people by the people (well us for now, but you'll see). So this is my introduction to the site, as well as the site's introduction to a larger consciousness. This growth will see an evolution of the site as we plan to take over the world, and so this is the end of my Jerry Maguire bit.

- Mission Statement Out -

Matt looks perhaps a bit too happy to receive (sorry...) his free sample of KY warming gel that I kindly ordered for him. No word on its effectiveness or the reported burning sensation that may be experienced. More info can be found at http://www.k-y.co.uk/bgdisplay.jhtml?itemname=brand_sample&mi=2 

Outpouring of love for the blogosphere

I put a thread up on bloggerforum a couple of days ago asking what people thought, and how I could be more successful, I wasn't expecting a huge amount of interest. Lo and behold I was welcomed by the residents and received some excellent advice, as well as messages of encouragement. One guy even linked to me on his blog (Demoncratic Blunderground), looks like things are changing around here.

Some people have been saying that I need to say where my freebies came from, so in future I will do that, but as a starting point I use portal sites such as talkfreebies.com and freebieholics. You Amercians have a lot more sites than us Brits for this stuff so googling it and using freebie forums tends to yield the best results.

I have a new freebie to blog, so lets keep the ball rolling.

Now this is freaking awesome. I love NATO/OTAN, that is to say I love their public diploamcy division. The sent me 2 giant posters, a timeline, a handout on the Balkan conflict, and another handout on how they are tackling the new threats from terrorism. The last thing was in French, but it was still pretty cool to look at the pictures and say "ooh la, la." To top it off, the NATO branded package came all the way from Brussels, as is demonstrated in the picture. Actually, my finger is pointing at Amsterdam, but it works for both they're both such small countries. And yes, I know Amsterdam isn't a country. 

This is a sample bottle of Listerine citrus mouthwash, with a coupon for 50p off my next purchase. I'd tell you what it tasted like, but I can't get the damn thing open. All in all, a bit disappointing. 

More washing powder, this time from the good folks at Surf, and this one entitled me to a free salsa lesson, an offer that I probably won't be taking up. I haven't done any washing since I got back so it would be foolish for me to comment on the quality of the product. 

Okay, these are the 'Impukse Thrill' dice, though die is a more accurate description. In Britain Impulse are a comapny, or at least a brand that make deodorant for girls, yet my masculine name managed to slip through and my die arrived in all it's pink glory. 

This freebie gets the award for most innovative packaging, since it actually looked pretty cool, rather than just a jiffy bag. We can't actually use a caffe crema pods since we don't own a pod machine, but there has to be some way to get the caffeine enriched goodness to our desperately tired student souls. 

We...are...alive!

The portal page is up in its beta state over at bigguybigcity and I think it looks pretty good though I do have some other Ideas for it.

So that's stage one of world domination over and done with then.

It begins.... again

The return to uni greeted me with quite a haul of freebies, one even came from Belgium! I'll post and review them tomorrow since I'm going to bed soon and I need to check through an essay.

I've only gone and done it!

Guess who owns a .com..... yeah, me! bigguybigcity.com is now mine (and Richard's) for just $18.40 for 2 years, so we're only paying £2.40 each a year for a domain, apols for the switching between currency but Richard gave me £4.80 so it's pretty obvious how it goes. Now I need to design a portal site so that everything can be linked from one page.

Now we can legitimately try and find sex-ay models (other than me) for the clothes, an item of which I'm going to purvhase now.

P.S. I'm back in Leicester for the start of the term, nothings changed here, and its good to see my housemates again.

We're Amsterdamned...

In all the recent excitement of linking to shed loads of random stuff I forgot to mention that we finally sorted out the hotel for the Amsterdam trip. So that's that sorted, there's nothing stopping us now. And I've got both the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide's to Amsterdam, so we are thoroughly prepared. I guess I'd better get some hard core drinking in so I can built up my system for the onslaught.

Amazon.com: Capitalism: I love!

Amazon.com Free Music Downloads: Top Downloads

So amazon.com are doing free MP3s now, awesome. You have to be able to sign in though, can Brits sign up?

I Hearts the Intarweb

IFILM - Naked Joke of the Week! Collection

I know I seem to pimp Ifilm a lot here, but I love it, so there you go.

This series of video's really highleghts the glory of the internet, to the extent where I feel that really, really short sentence should make my point clear. Pornstars. Naked. Telling jokes. For Free. Genius.

Also, since when did Ifilm become porno heaven, fair enough they only last a couple of minutes, but do you really need more. ew.

Lookin' good Jeff

IFILM - Viral Videos: Styling with Mr. T

Why do I have 18hours or A-Team videos when all I needed was this 4 minute segment...

Wear your own name... or better yet, wear my brand, I'm terrible.

mtv.com - News - Audioslave Performing Rage, Soundgarden Material At Shows

mtv.com - News - Audioslave Performing Rage, Soundgarden Material At Shows

Oh my god!!! Oh my god!!! Oh my god!!! not it isn't often that I'm brought into fits of girly giddiness, but that is huge. I thought my chance to see any Rage members performing Rage songs died five years ago, but no, on June 23rd at Brixton Academy I will (probably) be treated to an audio delight. Oh, that wasn't an intended pun.

The store link didn't load up, so here it is again

War diaries of John Bruce Cairnie

JANUARY 1915: "The company was withdrawn to the reserve line - fortunately as some of the shells were short and made a dickens of a mess of our own trench."

This man is clearly a master of understatement. He doesn't talk about his counterparts much though, Cairnie, you're a brave man, and a fine writer, but you aren't aiding my search.

well... go on then...

I know what I said before, but I figure there's no harm in putting just a little link to the store on here, now tha I've got 14 products up there, including hotpants!

I think I should probably focus more on y'know, uni work, so I can get a degree, but this is a lot of fun, and much more creative than trying to find archived primary sources about Frist World War soldiers and their opinions of their French or German counterparts...... and the worst thing is, I picked the topic!

I've finished both both my mini-paragraphs with exclamation marks, better keep the trend going with this one!

Not...good...enough

Newcastle tend to have a habit of showing promise then blowing it in the end, which was proved this week with two consecutive 4-1 defeats in the cup competitions that were keeping our extremely mediocre season alive. But just for the record, Man Utd's 4th goal was definitely offside, and even though the game was alreadt over at that point it shouldn't have counted.

Well, at least we're the first team to score against them in the FA cup this season.

The store is well upon its way, though domain registration still needs to be sorted, I've done 8 products now, and uploaded 2 vector designs for approval before they can be put on more products. I'm giving myself around 10 days to launch because it's not just me doing this so I have to clear it all with Richard, and hopefully get some input from Duncan too. Richards talking about a viral campaign to spread the word, and I've thought way ahead of myself and already thought out the super-sexy video ad that I hope to circulate via e-mail/Ifilm/atomfilms and all that jazz.

The Amstel Botel people haven't e-mailed me back yet and it's been a few days now so I think I'll give them a ring tomorrow and hope thet their English is good.

NUFC.com - stirring stuff

NUFC.com: "Once more unto the breach....

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Cardiff here we come.

Sunday gives us the chance to right the wrongs, to forget the damage brought upon this club by those charged with its stewardship. To show the world what Newcastle United is all about.

The thing that no-one can ever take away from us is that regardless of who is in charge, no matter who wears the shirt on the field, the club belongs to the fans. Without us it is nothing.

Make sure you go to Cardiff wearing the black and white with pride. Let's have a show of strength from the people that make the difference - us.

If you don't normally sing and make a noise, make this the exception, if you usually sing, make this exceptional.

If we go behind, double the volume. If we go two behind treble it. Even if we leave Cardiff with our tail between our legs, let's make sure we growl, snarl and bark out our message until the final whistle.

Let's make it clear that everyone knows who the real United is - 30,000 of us with one voice. It could be some time before we get the chance to do it again.

Regardless of what happens on the pitch we need to leave Wales with our heads held high - if we are failed by those on the field then we can still return victorious.

A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. As someone once said...."

Boy does that inspire me, I really hope that people take this to heart and everyone on the black and white half go home with hoarse throats.

RollingStone.com: The Baghdad Follies : News

RollingStone.com: The Baghdad Follies : News

I just thought I'd add that it is a very 'blue state' article, so you are warned red state people!

RollingStone.com: The Baghdad Follies

RollingStone.com: The Baghdad Follies : News

Who would've thought that Rolling Stone would write an article about journalists living in Iraq, and that it would be good? Well not me, but it certainly is good to get a nice surprise every so often.

Would a days blogging really be done if I didn't post a picture with some of my attractive girly friends in it.... also I think we need something to remove the taste in the mouth that seeing Richard (pic below) leaves. 

So this is the guy that's gonna help me make my millions in the web t-shirt business? Well, you never know... On the store front I've swtiched allegiance to spreadshirt.net becuase it gives me more options in terms of design, although prices are slightly higher, but I think the product will be of a higher quality so it's worth it. Theres no point me linking yet because there's no products, but there shoulod be some soon. 

Love it

Stolen from this weeks Popbitch mailout:

David Hasselhoff walks into a bar and says to the barman, "I want you to call me David Hoff". The barman replies "Sure thing Dave... no hassle."

There's no reason for this picture of a gift that Luxembourg presented to the UN except that I don't want to open w.bloggar or the blogger dashboard to put another post. As I've been talking about for a while I want to obtain some domain names for here and the ongoing expansion of the blog..... well, there's been some developments that look promising. I've enlisted the help of Richard on the store side and we're gonna purchase a domain name for that, so it can be promoted as a separate entity whilst I can still tag it to this blog. With Richards help we'll be able to provide higher-quality designs which will hopefully lead to greater profits, though as stated before profits will cover expansion (and now, our drinking). I also e-mailed my friend Duncan as he's always wanted to design t-shirts and hopefully he'll be a great asset. On the blog side of things I think I'm just gonna stick with andrewbowness.com for now, add .co.uk later (with forwarding). Also I've been promoting heavily over the past few days and hopefully this will pay off in terms of returning visitors. Hopefully. 

Helen and I, dance superstars, no doubt about it. I always have this feeling to call her Hel's Bells, but I'm sure I would get burned so bad for it since it's just such an obvious nickname. 

Woo, television

Wahey! The BBC News are in the Lake District, it's always really cool when home is on national TV, although 'we' always tend to come off looing ra-heally rural.

Oooh now there in Threlkeld, I've driven past there!

Maybe posts like this are why I get no visitors?

Superficial strikes gold again

This superficial posts makes a lot of sense. I've always found Madonna to be a bit annoying, like everyone always goes on about how great it is that she can change her style, bra-goddam-vo, I could do that if I had a stylist, actually, I do do that, I look the way I want to look and it reflects my personality, and I don't need to pay people to do it for me. I don't mean to go on, but did anyone see Swept Away, it was... terrible, I assume we're meant to think it was ironic that such a 'strong female role-model' fell in love with someone that pretty much raped her and treated her like dirt, and the plot didn't even make any sense... I really feel sorry for Guy Ritchie for getting caught up in the whole thing.

Of course, I don't know Madonna so I could be way off.

Normal coverage (pictures of me in various hats) will be resumed shortly.

edit: the link isn't showing up for some reason.

For those of you who've always wanted to see me dressed as a cowboy, here you go, ya big hyper-fetishist freaks. Seriously though, I look good in uniform, ha. This was from New Years 2003/2004 when we dressed up like the Village people (did they even have a cowboy, ummm don't think so). That's Katy with me by-the-by, another of my desperate attempts to increase interest by adding a bit of sex-ay imagery. As if I wasn't enough... 

Right, I've lost this jumper and have no clue where it is, I simply can't recollect the last time I wore it. This is the only photographic evidence I have of it, well, the only photographic evidence I have where I'm being hugged by a girl. It was damn expensive as well, the jumper, not the girl, just so we're clear that Jemma doesn't do *that* 

Except for the two people in the front (Becky and Waple) these people constitute about half of the groups heading off to Amsterdam. When I posted a picture with girls in it, it gained me a comment, surely this image of hot slabs of man-meat will warrant the same attention. By-the-by, I the hottie in the middle at the back. P.S. this post drools sarcasm 

Ok, if you can't read that it is my fortune and it says "you will do well to expand your business" and I think, hmmm, perhaps the cafepress store should have at least one product. And if you're wondering ehy there is an intact cookie next to my fortune, I didn't magic the paper out of its cookie enclosure, there was two, guess what the second one said "You are soon going to change you present line of work" So I need to expand my business and change my line of work. Well I don't have a job except for accounting and odd-jobbing for my parents business, and errr this, which takes up quite a lot of time, but I'm not gonna call it a job till I get paid by someone, or till I go into debt by doing this full time after my degree. 

This is the girls (+Ed) before we went out on Saturday night. It was a pretty decent night out, rob got pretty wasted and spent ages going "dude, me and you, in a room in Amsterdam" like, I know it's a very open city but I don't intend on being THAT crazy. The girl in the middle, Anna, claimed that we hadn't seen each other for over a year and a half. Isn't it annoying how you lose touch with people sometimes? Still it was good to catch up. 

Now THIS makes sense

I was watching Viva La Bam last night and Sean Penn was one, he seemed pretty cool. It's a good thing I've got the Superficial to set me straight.

Sean Penn is the most hateable person on the planet, and it’s really not even close. You ever notice coal miners and fisherman never seem to get “exhaustion”. They don’t pull that crap because they know they’re buddies would just smack them in the head, call them lazy and tell them to get back to work. Sean Penn mumbles for a living. And he doesn’t even make up the stuff he mumbles. Someone else does that for him.

Anyone who saw him at the Oscars knows what a joyless, spoiled prick he is. He’s a NRA opponent who keeps loaded handguns in his car. He’s an environmentalist who drives a 260hp muscle car. He’s an anti war activist who spends three days on a guided tour in Iraq and then lectures America like he's an expert. I’ve spent more time than that at Magic Mountain, it doesn’t make me a fuckin engineer.

More here

P.S. the picture they chose just screams "I'm not an actor I'm an artist."

ooooh shiny

banner time, hotsed by the good folks at walagata

AdSense, think about it

When looking through loads of blogs on BlogExplosion I notice that lots of people have ads that advertise surfing holidays, which is odd becasue I've never found a blog dedicated to surfing, on a board, on water. It took me far too long to realise that this came about from people saying stuff like this

I was surfing the web and found this...

and the AdSense robot picks up on the word surfing, relates it to the sport rather than the web slang, and then you get ads based upon it. I guess there's no other way that it can be done, but I can only assume that it isn't beneficial for the advertiser or the blogger.

And yes, I just know what my next ads are gonna be about.

Look before you leap

It would appear that perhaps I've been a bit hasty in my signing up to CafePress, it seems that some people just don't like them, or their products, and t's hard for me to know whether it would be quality that *I'd* be selling, so I've been searching for alternatives so that I know what else is out there. Also, looking at the prices they do seem a bit high, compared to most other t-shirt stores I've seen, though I guess the low amount of t-shirts sold by me would be represented in this figure.

is very much the same, apparently it has the same kind of range (though a bit smaller) and has a better interface for creating products.

, I like the look of this one, it seems to be more what I'm looking for, and they have a european site aswell, so I'd be able to receive products quicker, which would be a personal bonus, but if I want to make moeny I should be more US focused, considering the country stats for that I've been getting from the trackers. The prices on this site do seem to be a bit higher than normal, but maybe they have better products, who knows?

, this is my least favourite one, I don't know why, it's just something about the site, I can't put my finger on it.

Another problem I've found with all the sites is that they all seem to do digital printing rather than screen printing, obviously this is due to costs and the relatively low volume that there would be per t-shirt so making a screen for each one would be impossible.

Boatel? now this I gotta (probably) see

Thought I'd throw up an update about the Amsterdam trip, since my thoughts about the first batch of hotels have largely gone sour I turned my attention to something a bit grander, I managed to find the Radisson SAS 5* hotel for just £42 each per night, admittedly £36 over our projected total but I came up with a financial plan for everyone, for one out of the eleven weekends before we go don't go out and get wasted at the Wheelhouse. Surprisingly the guys were pretty happy with my plan.

But alas, fate dealt me a cruel blow and expedia.co.uk now has no availability on those nights and the best other price I can get is £47 per night each, which is probably a much tougher sell.

So I moved on and now my focus has turned to the Amstel Botel, is it a boat or is it a hotel? It's both. It's spot on for our budget, has that novelty character I was hunting for, is just minutes from the Central Station, and is located near everything we want to be near *wink wink nudge nudge*. Now if only Scott would get his ass in gear and get our numbers confirmed before everything we want gets booked up. Like his job would take 30mins-1hour max, and I've already spent over 10 hours searching for the best hotel we can get in our price range.

Also, I found some awesome looking apartments over at Amsterdam Escape but they're just too expensive for our group, but if I were going with just a couple of people it'd be a good option, or maybe when we're older/richer.

The Bowness behemoth marches on in the capitalist world

As if the AdSense wasn't enough I've now opened my own store at cafepress with the catchy title of 'a big guy selling in a big city' with the large amount of cafepress stores being the imaginary city. I admit that if I ever see profit from this (considering that any sales is profit) I'll be a very lucky boy, but even if I don't at least I'll get to design my own t-shirts and junk. As such, if you ever feel the need to buy a t-shirt from someone you've probably never met before you have my personal guarantee that it would be a product I'd buy and wear, but then again of course I'd wear it, I designed it, therefore I think it's cool. Also, my prices will be barely above cost, just enough to cover the planned purchase of andrewbowness.com/.co.uk though I'll probably buy this before I even design a tee.

I've just realised that with the name of the blog, and the name of the (practically non-existant) store that I'm gonna need to remain a big guy for a while, I may as well stop 'working my guns' and putting my stupid ankles through hell, thanks blogosphere!

Another thought, y'know I said I'd buy anything that I created, well, they sell thongs, and I like the idea of having an Andy branded thong being worn by numerous ladies, but I probably wouldn't buy one, unless I had a freakin' crazy girlfriend, good crazy.

Andrew Bowness CEO sounds good...

So, I'm thinking of buying andrewbowness.com or at least .co.uk simply because abigguyinabigcity.com just looks stupid. Thing is, if I'm gonna buy a domain then I'm gonna want things to look professional, and does the blogspot banner at the top really scream professional? but I don't really want to move to a different provder. I've noticed that Trent over at pinkisthenewblog.com is hosted by Blogger so maybe you can pay to have it removed. edit: I get the feeling that if I hosted the blog on my own server then there is an option to remove it, but then I'd have to host my own site, which would cost, and I'm not prepared to do that, yet...

Also, I am again thinking of creating a store at cafepress.com, even if it just means I can design my own shirts and stuff.

I went out twice this weekend, to exactly the same bars as we've been going to for the past 2 years, and that is in no way sad (just a little anchorman reference there).

miles to go belts

miles to go belts

Okay, I need to design a site logo so that I can put it on a belt, then when people see my interesting belt with it's interesting logo on the buckle, people would be like "whats that logo for" and I'd be like "my blog" and they'd think it was popular. (false) Popularity breeds popularity, so this could get me up to about 100,000 hits a day, right? Then I could take on the mighty Gawker blog empire, not that I have anything against them, even though I received no response when I suggested they (well, the Gridskipper travel blog) take a look at my Amsterdam post. But lets be clear, I am in no way bitter about that, it's not like I was checking my e-mail every five minutes hoping for that big-blog approval.

Where was I? Yes, belts, I think I should design one, well, maybe 3, one for here, one for the Photo Hole (I don't know why, but I think that would be cool) and a third one with my face on it giving two thumbs up, Fonz style (whats with the recent Fonzie obsession?) or perhaps wearing a funny hat. Obviously I wouldn't sell them, cos who'd want them, except for other members of the Photo Hole, and I doubt my friends commitment Photo Hole accessories to be honest. And this blog is in no way popular enough to warrant a clothing line (though I do love the whole cafepress.com thing). Though I can really see a market for people wanting my face on their belt buckle...

What a horrendous waste of a post.

Oh come on, we've all googled ourselves

Finishers� FOR GREAT LANGDALE 1: "60 472 ANDREW BOWNESS M UNATTACHED 01:43:16"

Ok, so I was just googling myself to see if the blog was near the top of the list, when I got a shock, 'I' had finished a half-marathon in Great Langdale. Obviously it isn't actually me, just someone with the same name, but the weird thing is that Great Langdale is the valley next to the one I live in, Little Langdale, which is just really weird. Using some Google-guesswork I reckon that he is from Staveley (near Kendal) and plays football for the local team. Congratulations 'me' for being such a healthy individual, I guess he doesn't spend all his time on the internet like his handsome namesake. At least if I go off on a very Dave Gorman-esque challenge then I have a starting point.

p.s. when I saw that the entry said Unattached I thought "OMG I'm single too" not realising that it meant attachment to a running club, dumbass.

IFILM - Viral Videos: The Fonz Jumps The Shark

IFILM - Viral Videos: The Fonz Jumps The Shark

Ok, I know this is the second time in a week that I've linked to Ifilm but I had a thought, but you have to bear in mind that I'm 20 and can't properly remember the episode. Why did the Fonz need to jump over a Shark? Like, did someone question how cool he was so the only answer was to get Ron Howard to skipper a speed-boat so that he could jump over a well marked-out circle that had a shark in it, clearly it was the way forward. Also, if you bother to watch the vid, how far did the Fonz fly? The man defied physics, what couldn't he do..... well I guess he couldn't hang out with people his own age and so picked up a couple of cheerleaders, but I guess 16+16=32 so it works out in a non-legal and disturbing way. Well that's enough rambling about the Fonz.

I am IT-man, get me a cape

Today I put my nerd powers to good use and fixed my mums decade old accounts computer, this things a 1st generation pentium, 150mhz and somehow it's running windows 98 (not my idea) and the cd drive wouldn't even read cds anymore. I based this upon dust, that's right, dust. My uni housemates are well aware of my hatred of dust within electrical components, and in this case, I was spot on again. A decades worth of dust is quite a built up, I cleaned the tower in the paint booth in the workshop using compressed air, but stupidly I stood between the PC and the fan, so all the dust got sucked towards me. Then I took apart the CD drive and cotton swabbed the lens. Then popped it all back together and thank god, it turned on, it even read CDs, although the tray doesn't actually open anymore, or close entirely but who really needs a *working* tray anyway?

IT-man, away!

IFILM - Viral Videos: Madonna's Student Film

IFILM - Viral Videos: Madonna's Student Film

Hey look its Maddona back when she was a young student who was willing do anything to be famous, including gargle a raw egg, though lets be honest she's shown a lot more in the past and been a lot more suggestive. Though I must admit, she looks pretty darned hot.

Amsterdam Hotel Research

So me and my mates have decided to have a crazed long-weekend in Amsterdam in July, and I've been trying to find a hotel for us, my criteris was that it needs to be city centre and about £30 a night per person. I wrote them this big e-mail and figured I may as well post it here as well.

I've noticed that expedia and the other portal search sites tend to all go for the same expensive hotels so I think we can get a good deal by going straight to the smaller hotels that will have a bit of character as well. I've tried to stay around the £30pppn budget.



http://www.hotelarena.nl/ this the former orphanage/hostel I told you guys about. Looks really nice though it is a bit out of the centre (0.6miles from the central train station, 1.2 city centre), but there's trains/trams etc every quarter hour. It also has its own club. It was £69 per twin room per night on Expedia (a special price meaning we'd pay for the whole thing when we book, which would be a a lot, I'm not sure whose credit card would cover it), but I found it for £30 per person based on a twin room with breakfast, it's a big place so there'll be no curfew, though there's no mention of all male groups.



Since we are going to Amsterdam, I assume that many will have a little schmoke, which is why we could go to this place http://www.the-greenhouse-effect.com/ it's a hotel that is based above one of Amsterdam's finest coffeshops (described as not being 'dark and seedy'), we'd even get a discount on their wide array of 'product' if we stayed there, happily for us breakfast is inclusive and goes on till 12 which would obviously be convenient if we're staying out till 5. They also have a bar where, apparently, it is happy hour all day. It's located in the heart of the red light district which makes it a good choice for location. They have a variety of various sized rooms, all of which are themed (pictures on the website) so prices vary but as far as I can tell they're around the £30 mark again, though I'm not sure of availability. Looking at the rooms I think this would be a brilliant place for a truly mental holiday.



If we want to visit the smallest gallery in Amsterdam then we should stay at http://www.winston.nl/ and view their toilets. All of the rooms have art in them as well (I know you don't care but it's quirky). They have a club as well, which is Open Stage from midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, Greeno, bring your acoustic guitar and we can take Holland by storm!!! This one's in the Red Light District as well, just a couple of minutes from the Central Station. The prices seem to be a bit lower than our magical £30 mark and they have a wide range of sizes, accommodating 1-8 people with the 8 person being just £18.36 a night each. As with other hotels I don't know what the availability is so we'd have to e-mail. I think this would be a good option if they have enough rooms available. The website is a bit tough to navigate though, darned art-people.



http://www.hotelmisc.com/ is admittedly a bit out of our price range but it looks like a really nice place, only 6 rooms (all themed), so we'd pretty much take it over but the rooms do look very nice, maybe too nice for us. They do mention that they do bachelor parties on a page so I guess that means that 10 guys would be okay, and I can infer that there's no curfew. They also do special offers so if I e-mail then we might get money off because there is so many of us. They also have free wifi, I know you don't care but we could e-mail everyone telling them how much of an awesome time we're having. Its not in the Red Light District (10 minutes away) but is very near to everything, apparently. They have a nice website.



http://hotelvijaya.com/index.php Looks like a nice clean hotel in 'the heart of the city' (5 minutes from central station) but doesn't really have the character of the others I've seen, though it is 2 18th century buildings so I may well be wrong. As usual, the rates bounce around our £30 mark with a twin/double being £32 and a room for five coming in at around £25, again, unfortunately, the site says that we cannot reserve rooms for 2 persons, though I'm not sure if this is really the case as parts of the reserving system don't seem to be working properly.



http://www.acrohotel.nl/index2.php This hotel looks pretty cool, the rooms don't look all that huge but I don't think they ever are in the city centre. The people on the guestbook seem happy with the service (I don't know if bad comments are removed). The bar is open 24-hours a day, so, we may well not sleep for the 4 day period! It is located in a 'beautiful residential area' but is 'only a stone's throw from Amsterdam's lively cultural centre'. The advertised rates vary according to high and low season but even if we're included in the high-season rate (which I suspect we are) it is still around the £30 mark though perhaps a bit over.



http://www.quentinhotels.com/index.asp have 3 properties in Amsterdam, one of which was described as fantastic for stag parties, so I guess we'd be welcome. One of the hotels (the Arrive) was noted for having a 'sexy receptionist', boys, the decision is obvious, this is the one! All three have atleast one twin room available, at either 99 or 75 euro, so £34 or £25.5. Clearly the new manager is quite something, she's mentioned all over the guestbook 'and what a great ass she has got and she is single'.



More general information can be found at http://www.timeout.com/amsterdam/

Further research on channels.nl and their hotel reviews suggests that some of my choices have been a bit mis-guided, specifically on the Greenhouse Effect and Winston, but I don't know just how much I can trust these reviews. Looks like this could take some time.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

A picture of a Conservative billboard that says "I mean how hard is it to keep a hospital clean" apols for the image but I was in the car and had to take what I could get. Whilst this isn't a political blog, and I haven't decided upon my political swing yet, or who I will vote for in the inevitable May 5th election, I took offence at this campaign of billboards. It IS hard to keep a hospital clean. Just consider how many people go through any hospital on a daily basis, and I would imagine that keeping people alive and making them better is slightly above cleanliness on a hospital 'to-do' list. Yes, I am well aware that a dirty hospital would be contributory to the degradation of certain people's health in certain condition. The more I think about it, the more I hate this poster, cos it's just a question, it doesn't offer any answers, and even worse (in my eyes) it doesn't directly attack labour, it's like some tongue-in-cheek underhand sarcasm that people who think they're clever would say in an argument. And now I'm angry that this is gonne be the post that everyone sees when they come here from BlogExplosion for a couple of days, rather than the fun stuff I put up before. Bahhhh! 

Hey look, it's me pretending that my eye is a camera! I'm soooooo original. Dammit I miss my long(er) hair. And everyone can calm down, I don't intend to post new stuff every 3 minutes for a long time, I'm just making up for laziness. 

This is one of the few pictures of my recent road trip to see Feeder that came out as hoped. I knew the 2x zoom on my camera would struggle a bit with this and it really showed, if only I was popular and could earn enough from ads to buy an uber-camera. Feeder in my own words were "predicatably awesome". And the trip was lots of fun, and yes, I have just realised that I may well have already blogged this but I figure that I gots'ta put a story to a picture. 

This is one of my many pictures from Wednesday nights England game, it was a pretty good match, but we just couldn't finish enough chances, as such the tally of double figures I was expecting wasn't achieved. And it took us 2 hours to get out of the car park, which was ri-god damn-diculous, I drove home in less time than it took to leave a freakin' car park. Madness.