As you may or may not know I like singing. However I have only ever sung two songs on Karaoke.

I need to expand my reportoire for way we next have Karaoke at CASPA ... or any occasion where there is karaoke present!

Two songs that are on the regulars list:

1. Muse - Starlight
2. Lostprophets - Rooftops

Songs that I would prefer to sing on my own if they can be converted to karaoke form:

1. Fightstar - Floods
2. Muse - Bliss
3. Muse - Sober
4. Weezer - Pork and Beans.

Possible collabs go here:

1. Muse - Plug In Baby
2. Enter Shikari - Jonny Sniper
3. Muse - Time is Running Out

Comment with your suggestions or if on the off chance that YOU want to sing any song with me!

Also post the songs that you want to sing if you want!

Will be adding to admittedly short (OMG it's a pun!!!) lists in the near-ish future.

Since you guys all pretty much said the same thing about the first "Some Punctuation" (apart from Jad and those that didn't read it!) I have decided to make this installment somewhat shorter ... enjoy!

I may not show it in my bright, sparkly whinges on this webpage, but I am deeply troubled at the moment. For the first thing, I'm losing money. I've finally run out of luck when it comes to money, left now with a growing problem of paying money to my parents (fortnightly and in bets that didn't go well ... ASK MY SISTER!). That said I'm not broke so don't pity me for that.

So anyway to my MAIN point, I'm back looking for jobs (on top of my ongoing voluntary work), and my agency assures me that they have another job for me, an ongoing one with some office company (too far away) where my task will doubtless be something that I didn't ask to do.

A question that nags me is this: How come you never see a newspaper headline reading "Psychic wins Lottery"(LOL)? But the question that nags me most of all goes like this: Why am I finding it so difficult to find work? Why am I having to rely on an agency to find menial monkey work once every blue moon?

Here are a few suppositions I've come up with.

1. Trapped in Employment Limbo

I'm not unqualified, I know I'm not. I've got nine GCSEs and a couple of City and Guilds qualifications in an adminstrative assistant role. I know how to use a computer and how to file. Surely I have all the necessary skills for temporary/ongoing office work, but whenever I ask for it, I'm told I need more experience in an office environment. It's the typical catch-22, really. So I toddle off to the office next door to see if they've got any menial warehouse work I can pay the bills with, but they frown and shake their heads(I don't really but I thought it went with the story). I'm trapped in the little gap between menial work(that I don't want to do anyway!) and less menial work, too qualified for one and too inexperienced for the other. Really makes me want to spit.

2. Parents Conspiracy

Once I ruled out bad references and qualifications there was only one thing left to explain why I had failed every interview(all three of them!) I've attended for fourteen months. Conspiracy. The first party I looked at through narrow eyes was my parents; would it not be easy for them to phone my interviewer later behind my back and say I had suddenly fallen off a bridge or got another job offer(insert own example here)? But why would they do this? Personally, I think they don't want me to leave home, and want to keep me locked up in this house like some kind of pet. Jokes on them, though. If I ever find this out to be the case, I'm going to murder them both! Ha ha! (Dark sardonic humour doesn't come across well in text format does it?)

3. World Conspiracy

After laughing that last one off, I started getting paranoid. Why would my parents conspire to keep me unemployed? I'm quite spiteful to them but they need my rent payments. So ... I guess it must be a conspiracy on the part of the whole world. Let me tell you some more about the last place I applied to. The agency had struck upon gold. The company in question was looking for a "certain type of employee" with me coming under that "certain type" ... or so I thought! Looking back I am still struggling to see where I went wrong and this is real life, its not like 'The Apprentice' where you get fired and then get chastised by three so-called experts (or 2 if Vanessa Feltz is on the show) and Adrian Chiles. At least on that show (The Apprentice - You're Fired) you find out where you slipped up/ why you didn't get the job. Not so in real life, OK I turned up on time, I was dressed appropriately AND most importantly ... I accepted their offering of a glass of water!!! No I'm kidding (well not entirely as I DID accept their offering of a glass of water) but I did do all the other things that tick the boxes; I remembered the interviewers names (there were

Hey hey, I'm back with a NON-music based blog, its a bit random but also (hopefully!) funny. It's part of what could end up being a series if well received (working title - Some Punctuation)

Why is the seat next to me on the bus always the last one to be filled?

I only really noticed the phenomenon a while ago, on my way into London for another delightful data entry assignment (I prefer to call them 'assignments', because, pathetically, it makes me feel like James f*****g Bond). Being car-deficient and too lost in my own little fantasy world to pass my driving test, I have to get the bus, and you know how people complain that they always have to sit next to the weirdo on the bus? I have a funny FEELING(key word lol) I AM the weirdo.

I can't understand why(bet you can though...). Let me try to describe someone else I saw on the bus recently. She, for I presume it was female, had a shaven head but for a forelock at the front. She wore eyeshadow to such a degree that it looked like Cleopatra(or modern equivalent) had tried to clumsily apply her make-up with a black permanent marker while drunk. She had on a spiked dog collar er... thing, and I don't mean the sort priests wear, and her ears were so stuffed full of bits of metal and plastic she could probably qualify as a Dalek(if she had a REALLY long nose I would have been slightly nervous despite sitting a whole three rows behind her). Her wrists were buried in bracelets, ranging from studded metal to the sort of plastic thing you get in Christmas crackers(or fancy to cheap if you prefer). She wore a black t-shirt with a red Anarchy-esque symbol. And just to round off the whole ensemble, a goddamn Bob the Builder backpack. I estimated her age at just shy of 30.

My point is,that during the journey when the option came up to either sit next to her or me, oncoming passengers went to HER first. Now, let me describe myself. Handsome/Rugged/Average English fellow in sensible attire up top and blue jeans, with perfectly normal(for want of a better word) generic black nike bag(not a handbag!). Sensitive hair with surfer boy styling. Looks kind of pale but well nourished. Fairly tall. Full, womanly lips(as opposed to manly, chapped, split lips).

You know, going over that description, I have realised the(read an) answer. Other passengers clearly think I am the vampire Nosferatu(go to wikipedia NOW!), who will pounce and devour their precious crimson as soon as we go into a tunnel/under a bridge/as soon as night falls.

Anyway.

There seems to be some kind of unspoken etiquette when sitting next to a stranger on a bus. I can only presume this has gone on for many many years, since the time when all the cavemen would climb aboard a big mammoth and ride to the caveman commercial district(use a less generic example if it makes you feel better).

If you are sitting on the window seat and a stranger sits next to you, you must immediately take a lively interest in the scenery going past outside. Similarly, if you're on the other seat, you must discover that the floor is suddenly a wonderful world of discovery and magic which you must watch earnestly. This is because, as is well known, looking at someone who is sitting next to you instantly means that you are in love with them and want to bury your face in their (apparantly) delicious buttocks. If you do accidentally glance at them, glance around at the rest of the bus, too, so they either assume you are glancing around idly or that you are a total whore(because everyone is as paranoid as you).

Secondly, never allow your knees to touch. Always make sure both of you are sitting at angles away from each other, because when your knee touches someone else's knee, it means you are gay(to the larger demographic at least). Unless the other person is of the opposite sex, in which case it means you are a rapist/pedophile.

Thirdly, no talking. You can talk to the people you sit next to on aeroplanes, because you're all on a magic