Special Guest Blogger: Pachacuti

My name means 'he who shakes the earth' and i was the ninth Sapa Inca of the Kingdom of Cusco which was little more than a small hamlet which i transformed into the Inca Empire complete with the Inca site of Machu Picchu.
I did that by taking over from my brother, Urco, after he ran away from an invading army of our arch-enemies, the Chanka, but i took charge, beat them and took the crown. I captured many Chanka leaders and presented them to my father Viracocha for him to wipe his feet on their bodies, the traditional victory ritual.
I was much more ruthless and conquering than he was and had a vision to expanding my dominion from the valley of Cusco to nearly the whole of western South America and i set out conquering many ethnic groups and states and engineering a reputation as an exceptional leader, the Incan's even began calling me the son of the Sun.
I ran massive programs displacing hundreds of thousands of people and resettling them to colonise the most remote edges of our empire but my most successful tactic was being such a nut that nobody would dare take me on.
I'd behead them and drink from their skulls, pull out their teeth and wear them as charms and make flutes out of their bones but i had a special punishment for any rival chiefs we captured.
I would disembowel them, stuff them full of straw like a gross scarecrow and then rest their fingers on the stretched skin of their belly so in the breeze they'd tap that belly like a drum.
My reputation meant that rather than going through the whole hassle of invading, i would just send a message to other leaders inviting them to join our empire and most accepted peacefully rather than become part of the thigh bone flute orchestra.
I don't know if the rest of my family had a defective gene or something but my other brothers were terrible at the whole conquering thing, honestly some people are natural leaders and bravely explore uncharted territory while other people are lucky to get their loin-clothes on in the morning without serious injury, so i had no choice but to have them killed and two of my three sons turned out to be from the same side of the gene pool so they ended up a bit dead also.
My eldest son was a chip off the old block though and he succeed me when i died and the mighty Incan empire lasted for years and could have kept going if it wasn't for the disease riddled Spanish turning up determined to drag as much of our gold back to Spain as their galleons could carry and sneezing all over us.

Special Guest Blogger: Frank Worthington

The Seventies were football's Sixties and i was part of the generation of rock n roll footballers, a bunch of footballing gypsies, travelling from club to club, rarely winning trophies but having a hell of a time.
In my career i played for 24 clubs in England, the US, Sweden, South Africa, the Republic of Ireland and Wales and despite being described by the England Manager Joe Mercer as one of the best centre-forwards of all time, i only got 8 caps because Revie and Ramsey never fancied me, Ramsey never forgave me for turning up to an under-23 trip in high-heeled cowboy boots and Don Revie played me for 87 minutes across his first two matches before giving up on me because he didn't like my off pitch behaviour which he thought was unbecoming of an England player.
Then there was the hair, the clothes, the women, the fast cars which saw me make four court appearances for driving offences within a single year and i could be a bit stroppy, falling out with one club manager after refusing to go on an outing to a vineyard and with another when i was not allowed to play my favourite Elvis cassette on the team coach but my most enduring moment was my almost move to Liverpool.
Bill Shankly was desperate to sign me but i failed the medical for high blood pressure and Shanks sent me away for a week of relaxation in Majorca before retaking the medical.
Seven days of carousing, which involved two Swedish blondes, a night with Miss Great Britain, a casual encounter at the airport with a woman whose name i didn’t catch and a night with a young Belgian beauty, i came back and retook the medical and my blood pressure was even higher.
The Liverpool transfer therefore never happened so i moved to Leicester instead, and spent the following summer on holiday in Mallorca with George Best where i met the former Miss Sweden Birgitta Egermalm.
By the time we returned she was pregnant and we were engaged leading to an attempt at domestic life that was so unsuccessful Leicester eventually paid to move me out of the family home and into a hotel.
I did promise Leicester i would attempt to settle down a bit and i did, instead of going out seven times a week on the lash, i only went out six so it was a great time to be a footballer but over the years my fellow football wild-men, guys like George Best, Rodney Marsh, Peter Osgood, Stan Bowles, Charlie George, Tony Currie all died and i carried the coffins of many of them although to be honest, that wasn't easy to do one handed while keeping the other free for a fag/ champagne flute/ betting slip/ comb/ Miss World or keys to the Ferrari.
I went to the great changing room in the sky aged 72 after Alzheimer's did for me but there won't be many from today's footballers making it into football's rock'n'roll hall of fame, they all try too hard, aren't pretty enough and there isnt a decent pair of sideburns amongst the lot of them.

Special Guest Blogger: Emperor Maximinus Thrax

Growing up, you will be told that to be a success you must try hard at school, get a good education and try your best but sometimes growing into a a huge lump is all you need, well that worked for me.     
Coming from Barbarian stock and knowing about 4 words in Latin and two of those were swear words, ending up as Emperor of the Roman Empire was unexpected and it all started off when i approached Emperor Septimius Severus and asked if i could compete in the military games that he was holding.
He said why not and 16 beaten opponents later, he was impressed enough to offer me a job as his personal bodyguard.
I protected his body so well that when he died i became the the next Emperors personal bodyguard as well, then the next one, then the next one also and was made Tribune of the Fourth Legion, and was given a legion to train.
Eventually Emperor Alexander made me the commander of the entire Roman army, which didn't turn out well for him because that army rose up and executed him and the soldiers declared me Emperor.
The Senators were not pleased, we can't have a barbarian running the Empire they said but the army had spoken and they didn't want to argue with a few thousand men armed with swords so they begrudgingly accepted and it was all hail Maximinus!
Things began pretty quietly, i made a lot of cuts and put up taxes but i fixed the roads and infrastructure and even led a successful campaign into Germania but Rome was a very murdery place and i was always waiting for the Senators to replace me and after an unsuccessful coup, i got in first and began executing them.
Killing them didn't go down well with the surviving Senators who decided to not bother trying to kill me so when i was away in Gaul, they planned to just crown a new Emperor so they picked Pupienus and Balbinus, two of their own members, as co-emperors.
I said i wasn't haven't any of that and marched back to Italy to reclaim my rule, but when i came to Aquileia, i found the city gates closed, appears putting up taxes and cutting food really ticked off the citizens and they showed it by firing Sulphur and fire at me and my soldiers outside the gates.
The siege dragged on, the army ran out of provisions, and i blamed the soldiers and had the generals executed which united the soldiers, unfortunately united them against me and a group of them stabbed me in the head with their spears several times while i was sleeping which by some freak chance proved fatal.
They mounted my head on a pole to show the people of Aquileia i was dead and then sent it on to the Senate but as 238ad became known as the year of six emperors, i guess the next five didn't fare any better.

Pagan's Approve Of Your Easter Tree

A Jehovah Witness, Muslim and a Christian sounds like the start of a joke but it is the three people i said 'Nah' to today when they tried to hand me something and engage me in conversation about their flavour of religion but with Easter coming up, this is their time to shine or it would be if anyone but them really gave a stuff or even knew what Easter was about apart from eating your own weight in chocolate.
Easter with it's bunnies and bonnets has always been the poor relation to Christmas with its twinkly lights and decorations but walking through the town center shops this weekend i saw something new in the shape of Easter crackers, Easter wreaths, and even an Easter tree.
Obviously the Christian's and the shops are hoping that the long bank holiday weekend will begin to look a lot like Christmas with special Easter decorations in the shape of bunnies, chicks and eggs to hang from the twigs of the Easter tree which means we have gone full circle back to the Pagan Fertility Goddess Eostre who had all that and more in her Anglo-Saxon period celebrations.
What the Christian's are hoping is that everyone has forgotten that almost every Christian festival is taken from other older religious festivals and it was Saint Augustine who was responsible for the whole rubbing out the original Gods and pasting in his own Christian guy thing but he obviously got lazy with Easter and didn't change the name enough to disguise the origins of Eostre so decorate a tree, hang a wreath and enjoy looking at the liddle bunny rabbits and remember what Easter is all about, a celebration of a Pagan Goddess and nothing whatsoever to do with a guy and a cross.  

Tory Hat-Trick For MP David Warburton

Conservative MP David Warburton was little known outside of his constituency but the married father of two has found himself catapulted into the headlines when a picture emerged of him next to four lines of suspicious looking white powder, several women reported him to parliament’s harassment watchdog for sexual assault and the parliamentary commissioner for standards is investigating a £100,000 loan from a Russian businessman, Roman Joukovski, without declaring it.
One former aide says Warburton coerced her into returning to his flat and then touched her inappropriately and the second was taken to his flat, touched her against her will and physically stopped her from leaving. Both women struggled to get a hearing due to his wife being the parliamentary aide responsible for reporting it is his wife.
Following the Tory MP hat trick of sex and drugs allegations as well as trousering Russian money, Warburton has had the whip removed and insists that he has 'enormous amounts of defence, but unfortunately the way things work means that doesn’t come out first'.
The ever dependably ridiculous far right Daily Mail journalist Sarah Vine thinks that the MPs alleged sexually assault, snorting cocaine & receiving Russian money is a sign of a midlife crisis and she may have a point so to all you people pointing fingers, let he or she who has not been accused of alleged multiple sexual assaults, photographed with lines of cocaine and loaned £100,000 by a dodgy Russian businessman cast the first stone.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do (Except in January, March, November Or December)

The old expression claims that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all but if you have found yourself suddenly single, always remember there are plenty more fish in the sea although whether a relationship with a Halibut is a good idea is your own affair but as we have just moved into April, your relationship is probably okay for now because it isn't one of the five times in the year when the population of Dumpsville increases.
Using facebook data as a guide, it has been calculated that the most break-up-iest times of the year when relationship implosions happen are January 1st when one partner decides the start of a new year is time to reflect on their life and they want to begin the new year with a fresh start.
Make it past the New Year and the next danger date is February 14th as Valentines Day as all that talk of love and relationships forces any cracks in your relationship to show but the next danger date comes around before the cards and chocolate wrappers are still in the bin as Mid March brings sunshine, more time outdoors and the realisation that being cosied up at home in Winter is very different to the soon to be
here long, sultry nights.
So you make it through Summer and the sight of each other in bikini's and budgie smugglers and then the Calendar pages turn to November and the Christmas things are in the shops and thoughts turn to the opposite of the mid-March period and whether one partner really wants to be holed up with the other person for the next five months.  
The final time to navigate is early December when Christmas is steaming at us over the horizon and that focuses minds on whether they want to spend money on a present and stuck with someone they are not all that into over the fun Christmas and New Year's Eve periods.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that all things happen for a reason and now that he or she is out of your life you can find someone that isn't an absolute douchebag because lets face it, if they dumped you because they didn't want to buy you Christmas Present, they are complete douchebag's and it wasn't you, it was 100% them.

Vampire Appliances

Unless you are multi-millionaire, don't even think of looking at your Utility bill or your ceiling because the first would have gone through through the second after 1st April and as much as the Government are trying to blame Russia invading Ukraine for it, they were on their way up long before Vladimir Putin decided that what Ukraine needed was a lot more missile craters.
My nan had a thing about going around turning off everything electrical at the wall before she took out her teeth last thing at night because as she said 'I'm not paying for something i'm not using at night' which could apply equally to her teeth or the TV but the wee small hours is when i charge my mobile phone and my vape batteries and when i turn off the living room light their are a number of little orange glowing lights of things on stand-by so was nan right and should things be turned off at the wall at night?   
A recent study by the UK's largest supplier of electricity says too right we should as as much as 25% of our electrical usage is down to what they called vampire devices sucking our power during the night even when we think they're switched off.
I always assumed that once my phone, Kindle or vape batteries reached 100%, they just stopped but apparently all chargers draw energy constantly, even if they're not charging.
TV's use power constantly unless switched off at the mains, anything with an LED display or a stand-by light does also such as the microwave, oven and thermostat, stereo and DVD player, wifi router, printer and Sky box, dishwasher and washing machine I begin to count the number of chargers in my house that i never bother pulling out of their sockets and all the vampire appliances i leave on stand-by and doing some quick mental calculation based on my latest reading, it comes to approximately a billion pounds a year i am wasting which means i either have to bang a wooden stake through the Sky box or just remember to switch it off at the wall.

Perverted Church Views On Conversion Therapy

If there is one group who are preoccupied with what people get up to in the privacy of the bedroom it is the religious crowd and it is they who tried to force the Government to allow conversion therapy and they were partially successful because the Government backtracked on their promise to ban it and then did a u-turn on their u-turn and announced that they will ban gay conversion therapy after all, but not trans conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy is a form of 'treatment' that aims to change a person's sexual orientation or suppress a person's gender identity based on the theory that being lesbian, gay, bi or trans is a mental illness that can be 'cured' by techniques which include chemical castration with hormonal treatment, aversion treatments such as electric shock, nausea-inducing drugs and masturbatory reconditioning.
When the conversion therapy ban was promised in the Queen's Speech last year, the government said "these abhorrent practices" can cause mental and physical harm and at last year's Tory conference, Boris Johnson claimed he was "completely committed" to extending LGBT rights.
The NHS and other professional bodies have warned all forms of conversion therapy are 'unethical and potentially harmful' but that doesn't seem to bother the Churchy types with the Christian Institute saying the initial reports that the government was to ditch the ban was 'welcome news', the Evangelical Alliance, which represents 3,500 churches, said the ban would restrict religious freedom and 2,500 church ministers and pastoral workers signed a letter to say that imposing a ban on conversation therapy was a clear breach of their legal right to manifest their religion.
Quite why the creepy religious lot are so obsessed with other peoples sex lives, if it was heterosexual's they watched so closely they would quite rightly be labelled as perverts but it appears they get a free ride if it is men or women but we know the religious view on most things are outdated but if anyone is abnormal, it is them with their keenness to force their awful and twisted views on to other people.

Happy Birthday To Me

As i had the good fortune to be born here on Earth with its breathable atmosphere, today marks the first day of my 53rd year that i have been on this planet but if i was born on Mercury my birthday cake would have 330 candles on it today.
If my passport said Venusian i would not only be a very hot and sweaty 79 but as average temperatures on Venus are 462C, i wouldn't have to worry about candles as they would have melted long before i got around to blowing them out.  
The Happy Birthday badge and banners would have a big 28 on it if i lived on Mars but if i grew up on Jupiter i would be 4 Jovian years old and would not receive the usual stares at the restaurant when i eat my ice-cream with my fingers and stick smarties up my nose.
Elsewhere in the Solar System i would be 1 on Saturn and even younger on Uranus and Neptune but the fates decreed that i was born and raised on Earth so it's listening to my family and friends singing Happy Birthday to me for the 53rd time.
As for the other members of the 01/04 Birthday Club, i will see you at the usual place Chris, Philip, Susan, David and Jimmy unless by some set of unfortunate events i find myself on one of the Gas Giants in the outer Solar System in which case i'm not old enough to drink Latte's so will raise a lemonade and hope you have a great day.

Find Out Your Age On Other Worlds

Special Guest Blogger: Abraham

I don't know if it's the lifestyle or the food but something i have noticed about you modern people is that you don't live as long as we did back in our day, i was 175 when i died and my wife and/or sister was 127 but then we had good genes, descending from Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Grandpappy Noah who was 950 when he curled up his toes.  
What we also had then was a far more chattier God, it was him who told me to travel to Canaan to claim it for his people when i was a sprightly 75 year old so me, wife and/or sister Sarah and my nephew Lot went there but it was a dump so we went to Egypt instead but the Pharaoh took a liking to my wife/sister Sarah but God put paid to that pervy little game by afflicting Pharaoh and his household with plagues so they kicked us out.
God you see, had promised us the land for his chosen people and also declared that Sarah would have a child and then also that all men would need to be circumcised so that was a painful couple of weeks, maybe i should have asked for a few weeks between these things as or at least until things were a little less tender.  
Not far from where we pitched up was the town of Sodom and Gomorrah, it was a cesspool of filth and degradation and Lot and his new wife would go there quite a bit and report back how awful it was and i knew God was planning something and i said give it a chance, it can't be that bad but it's hard to negotiate with a man who had nine generations earlier wiped out almost everyone on Earth and he smote it good.
There were no more worries about the neighbours i guess but unfortunately, Lot's wife was unable to resist watching the the destruction and was transformed into a pillar of salt. God knows why he did that, seriously, only he knew.
For a 90 year old, Sarah was a bit of a babe and King Abimelech of the Philistine's took a shine to her but God once again stepped in and said if he made a move for her he would kill him as she was married. He said he thought she was Abraham's sister which she was, but as i explained 'she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother and she is also my wife'. Nothing complicated about that.
So Sarah became pregnant with a boy, Isaac, and after all that God then said to offer the boy as a sacrifice and just as i was about to slit his throat, the big galoot said 'Just kidding, i was testing your loyalty'.
As i had him all trussed up and was about to slit his throat, Christmases at our house would have been frosty to say the least but thankfully, Christmas hadn’t been invented yet.
Wife and/or Sister Sarah died aged 127, and after her death i was heartbroken so took another wife, a concubine named Keturah, by whom we had six more sons before i died at a relatively young 175 so i died young and left a beautiful corpse, oh, and God's chosen people obviously.