Bit of Big Brother talk tonight, yesterday saw Maxwell and Saskia both up for eviction against each other. These two housemates haven’t done themselves any favours in recent weeks and have really made it a case of ‘Them vs. The Rest of the House’. So to see one of them guaranteed to leave on Friday will be interesting.

I have never liked Saskia, she is a real dirty chav, has a terrible manner and even prostitutes herself with Maxwell in a vain attempt to win votes.

Saskia MUST leave the Big Brother House!

I have gone right off Maxwell too, when he first entered the house I thought he was an alright bloke, as his friendship with Saskia grows though he is turning into a real twat.

Hopefully Saskia will piss off back home on Friday and Maxwell will change back to his original, entertaining self and not the loud mouthed, gobby git he is now.

Now onto Leeds United, its less than 6 weeks until the new season starts and the squad is starting to look very good. A few weeks ago I was feeling a little pessimistic, especially with the sale of young Aaron Lennon.

Since then, two new players have signed, Eddie Lewis from Preston and Steve Stone from Portsmouth. Both play on the wing so manager Kevin Blackwell will be able to play super striker David Healy up front (he spent most of last season on the wing where he is wasted).

Steve Stone should play a vital part for Leeds next season

While I don’t want this to come back to bite me I’m going to make my season predictions….

Final League Position: 5th place – enough to make the play offs

Carling Cup: 5th Round (although this is a lottery, depends on who Leeds get drawn against)

FA Cup: 4th Round (again, a lottery)

The opening game of the season is against Millwall. This game is to be televised on Sunday 8th August, this creates a little problem. I am on holiday that week in a boat going around the Birmingham area. I cannot miss this game so therefore will need to ring around all the pubs on route to make sure they are showing the game. It will be a difficult task finding a pub to stop at but I am determined to succeed!

It very often seems that when I make an expensive purchase something always goes wrong in one way or another – the camera’s flash a few weeks ago, Sky+ last year… I thought I had got lucky with my laptop and avoided any problems – I was so wrong!

The laptop is fine, it works a treat, in fact I am sitting outside in the sunny, hot garden writing this blog entry! No, the problem this time around was money.

When paying for my laptop on Thursday the first attempt to charge my debit card failed as the stores computer crashed. No problem I thought as the shop assistant assured me that I would NOT be charged and the transaction had been immediately cancelled.

Then, Saturday morning I checked my bank statement. The funds for the laptop had been debited and were on my statement in the correct way BUT a further set of funds for my laptop were “ear marked” to be debited from my account. Although this money will never be taken out, it means for up to 4 working days I will not have access to it – a nightmare considering that yesterday my final payment for my holiday in August was due!

Makes me wonder where MY MONEY actually is!

This lead to me ringing my bank and the PC retailer on countless occasions, never really getting anywhere. The closest I got was the PC Store manager cancelling the authorisation for the mistaken payment. This didn’t help.

In the end I managed to borrow the funds for my holiday, but let this be known, the PC Store have not won. They will be receiving a strongly worded letter of complaint along with a bill for all expenses incurred by myself (telephone calls, overdraft fees, etc).

Nothing ever goes right with these things!

It’s been a few days since my last update and phew hasn’t it been hot! I really like the heat (although wish I didn’t have to work in it!) as we don‘t get weeks like this too often.

Due to the weather, a lot of people are having problems sleeping at night, I haven’t really suffered from this as I have set my sleeping area up very well. Sleeping on top of the bed with throw, wearing light clothing and in front of the massive, floor standing fan I bought last year.

Last night was too hot for me though, it was so humid. I think I only managed to get 4 hours of sleep! The air was cleared today with one massive thunderstorm, I hadn’t seen one so big since I was on holiday abroad.

Yesterday was a busy one for me, I went off to Bristol to buy a laptop as I have been meaning to invest in one for quite some time. It’s a very cool model – Compaq Presario V2250EA.

Here’s a brief specification:

- Intel Pentium M Processor 725 (1.6 Ghz CPU Speed)
– 512 MB DDR 2700 RAM
– 60 Gig HDD
– DVD RW
– 14” WXGA High-Definition Widescreen Display
– WiFi (wireless internet which is great!)

I bought the laptop from a leading PC supplier, now I know how these large companies work. If you even give the impression that you’ll take up one of their finance option they’ll roll over and shit Mars Bars with delight. They’ll also offer you a sack load of “deals”.

I was offered a nice laptop bag, crappy Lexmark printer, USB lead, useful anti-surge plug, Norton Security 2005 and a 1 months subscription to some support service (which I will NOT be paying for on Month #2)

Originally I was offered all this rubbish for £50 which I turned down. The sales assistant looked shocked I didn’t want to take up this “excellent deal” it looked like he was about to burst into tears! He then disappeared and came back and offered exactly the same package for £25. I took him up on the offer and did NOT take the finance option :o)

So I left the store with my nice, new laptop and a whole bundle of rubbish. It was like I had been shopping at Iceland (“buy a packet of Fish Fingers and get a Sunday Roast, crate of crap lager, 10 litres of ice cream, 5 beef steaks and a Cornetto free)

Apparently the package is worth over £150, I would have sooner left the crap in the store and got an X-Box which retails for £125. Don’t think they would allow that though.

So all in all I am very happy with the laptop, I am actually using it to write this blog entry!

Tonight I went out to the cinema to see Batman Begins. I really liked the 1989 movie and Batman Returns. Batman & Robin and Batman Forever were terrible though. Batman Begins was totally stunning and more than made up for the latter two.

As the title suggests the film is a prequel and focuses on how the young Bruce Wayne progresses into The Caped Crusader and takes on his first real baddie, all with the help of his faithful ally and butler Alfred (played by non other than Michael Caine) The film uses the latest in special effects but still keeps the theme from the early 90s movies.

I seriously recommend this movie, you have to see it!
That’s the lot from me, there were other topics I wanted to cover, but I’ll have to do it in the morning or afternoon. Due to my lack of sleep last night I’m rather tired now!

Remember back on 7th June when I wondered what would happen if you touched a fly killer designed for exterminating flying insects?

Well I found somebody who touched it!!! Better still I have it all on video for you all! You will be pleased to learn that the person touching the zapper did live to tell the tale. You can download the video here.

I must state for legal reasons and for stupid people, this was an experiment undertaken by trained professionals in a controlled environment. We do these tests so you don’t have to. If you choose to try this out yourself Sparkster.net cannot be held responsible for any death, loss of bowel control, schizophrenia, pregnancy or indeed anything else which may happen to you.

However, if you do chose to hurt yourself for fun in a “Jackass” style please upload your clips and send me the links. On a serious note – any attacks on unwilling people (e.g. “happy slapping”) won’t appear on this website but will be forwarded to the police. You may still end up on a website, but it’ll be on this website here.

Big Brother has been good this week, a task has been set where the housemates are workers who have to perform degrading tasks such as sorting coloured maggots. The real shits and giggles part of the task is that only 1 of the 9 housemates has to do the work while the others party. The unlucky worker knows nothing of this!

The original unlucky worker was “loud mouth-cum-boring cow” Vanessa. When she found out about the maggots she totally flipped and ran to the toilets crying. When one of the housemates showed concern for the blubber-guts Derek replied with possibly one of the best lines of the series “Of course she’s alright, she’s not been bitten by a lion”. Dry, no nonsense humour at its best!

“These maggots are off the hook! I could just eat ‘em!”

Maxwell took the place of Vanessa and therefore is undertaking he horrible tasks while the housemates and the nation laugh at him, the poor fat cockney.

So Wimbledon is back for two weeks. All tennis fans will get excited about the British players like Tim Henman and how “This is our year”, like with most English sport fans it’s inevitable they’ll end up disappointed.

Mr. L’Ego is one of the favorites for winning Wimbledon 2005

I don’t watch or follow tennis, the only reason I have actually noticed Wimbledon is on is because Neighbours has been cancelled for two weeks! Typical of the BBC (still I won’t be complaining when Neighbours is cancelled for the Football World Cup next summer!).

I would like to congratulate the English cricket team for beating the Aussies yesterday in Bristol. Like with tennis, I am not a cricket fan although was dragged into watching the last half hour of the match. It was (a little) exciting to watch and good to see England beating Australian. I am informed this is the same as the national football side beating Brazil.

Well done Pietersen, now it’s your turn Beckham!

There was more sport yesterday, the USA Grand Prix. What farce! Due to safety fears over tyres, 14 of the 20 cars pulled out. The FIA did bugger all to prevent this, the sport has heavily declined over the years and yesterday’s decision did nothing to change this.

Still, the best sport in the world isn’t far off. The Championship is back on TV on 6th August, The Premiership the following week. All the fixtures are released this Thursday.

There doesn’t seem to have been many football transfers so far this summer. OK, there have been a few small moves; Leeds held their annual sale selling the excellent Aaron Lennon to Spurs. Usually though there’s a big £20-£30million signing, mind you besides Chelsea it seems every football club in England is broke and cannot afford these transfer fees, let alone the crazy wages these players command.

“Boy for sale! Boy for sale!”

I expect Leeds are lining up a £60million double swoop for Adriano and Gerrard. They’ve already turned down an offer of a loan for Frank Lampard from Chelsea as they cannot offer him a regular first team place! Now if you believe all that, you probably trust Tony Blair :o)

What a fantastic day, the weather has been so great it has felt like the Mediterranean. Anymore of it and I’ll be smashing plates, eating snails and organising bull fights.

I’ve been spending the majority of the day and evening in the garden making the most of this climate as no doubt the muggy and wet weather will be back next week.

Last night was also a great evening too, I went out for a BBQ. I highly recommend the BBQ Flavoured Burgers from Sainsbury’s, they’re delicious!

There are millions of people like me who like this heat, but unbelievably there are lots who don’t like it. If you are one of these people, I don’t know what your problem is, so in the words of Peter Kay “Have a Solero and shut the fuck up!”

More of the same tomorrow please Mr. Weather Man

So, as announced live across the world last night, Michael Jackson has been cleared of all charges. I haven’t blogged this trial up until now, mainly because I didn’t have a strong opinion.

In my eyes Jackson, like anybody on trial is “innocent until proven guilty” and as I wasn’t on the jury and had not seen the evidence could not even guess as to what the outcome would be.

Of course his die hard fans, friends and family believed his innocence and they must be over the moon to see his convictions quashed.

I hope this whole thing hasn’t harmed his career and he can now, finally return to making music without lies and allegations being made against him.

Michael Jackson is yet to comment to the media about the whole incident, but Sparkster.net has been able to gain an exclusive comment from the “other Michael Jackson” who stars on The Bo Selecta television show….

Chamone Mutha Fucka!

I’m Michael Jackson and I’m free from going to mutha fuckin jail thanks to me main man Tommy Mez-a-ray, he da guy with tha long long white hair who look like a wizard – owww!

Now I’m out of da clink I have loads of plans for y’all. Me and Bubbles are recording a new album called ‘Inn-o-Ce’ and me main man Bobby Gel-dooorf is letting me sing at the G8 fest for my starvin’ marvin’ muth fuckin’ friends!

Martin Bashier is also keen to do another doc-u-men-tay with me, hope it don’t end me up behind bars!

Now I’m outta going down I can chill and eat me Kentucky Fried Chicken. I ain’t eaten anything but carr-a-tay juice and I am as thin as that Ally McBeal biatch.

I’m off now to watch the Big Brother. That Science is one bad, invincible mutha fucka with the throwing of the bins and pouring water over Kermal. Kermal, he like a mutha fuckin man-woman, there’s lots of them doing time, glad I’m not going down now!

Owwww!

My digital camera has been changed! I went back to my local PC World where, as expected, I was told that there were no replacement cameras in stock and I could either have a refund or a replacement from Bristol. I decided to go to Bristol for the exchange.

Off to Bristol excepting an easy and pleasant transaction. Remind me for future reference “Easy”, “Pleasant” and “PC World” do NOT go together!

While at the Customer Support Desk some charming lady told me that as I had 10% off the camera yesterday, due to it being an ex-display model I would have to pay £12.99 extra for a replacement new model. So hang on, if this camera were to EVER break I would have to pay this extra charge? Not what I was told yesterday.

When this was explained to the “helpful” lady I was told in so many words that it wasn’t the problem of the Bristol branch and I had to take it up with Bath where I originally bought the camera EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE IN THE SAME CHAIN OF STORES!

After much persuasion about the practicalities of this and what made logical sense I rightfully left with a new and working camera, still with £12.99 in my pocket which has paid for a case to keep my camera nice.

The remaining £3 was used to buy a very interesting product from The What Shop in town. If you do not know what this shop is, basically it sells a load of old tack in bulk. People go mad for the junk and idiotically fill their houses with cheap looking chairs, ornaments and pictures of holiday resorts.

I bought some Spider Repellent. Apparently if you spray it around doors, windows and any other places you would expect spiders to enter your house through it keeps them at bay.

Taking full use of my new camera to take this photo!

With the summer here and my windows open nearly all the time, these scary creatures may see my home as theirs. Hopefully the repellent will smell so foul it’ll make them turn around and go back to wherever they came from.

To me the repellent smells like a cheap household cleaner or nail varnish remover. I suppose to a spider if smells like faeces and vomit smeared all over the wall. I just worry it won’t attract some sick and twisted exotic spiders who have a fetish for foul smelling chemicals. You hear about people who like sick and disgusting things after all….

I went to get a new digital camera today as I have been meaning to buy one for a long time. I chose to go to PC World as it is relatively close to where I live.

After consulting a website which compares cameras and looking in store I went for a Canon A75, it seemed a good choice. All was going smoothly, the camera was demonstrated, money was getting ready to exchange hands, I was happy. I wasn’t even peeved when I was told that they were out of stock and I had to take a display model, although I did request a discount and was offered 10%.

After paying for the camera, along with a 256MB memory card and card reader I went home to play with my new toy (via KFC for a lovely Zinger Burger). There I took a few photos in my bedroom, removed the card from the camera and downloaded the pics onto the PC.

This is where it all cocks up…. I discovered that the photos were very, very dark even though the room they were taken in was very much light. After over an hour of pissing about with settings and modes I realised the flash on the camera was broken, F-ing marvellous!

My camera looks like this although mine is as much use as a used toilet roll….

So now I need to go back to PC World, speak to the brain dead employees (and lets be honest, they are!) and exchange the camera, trouble is they have none in stock!

Which isn’t useful for much at all really

They will of course order me a new camera which I hope to arrive ASAP so it’s not too bad. At the end of the day I suppose it’ll work out well, I was given a 10% discount for my ex-display model and I expect the replacement to be brand new. Not too bad, would still prefer a working camera now though!