'Ours is to reason why, to tell the truth and open eyes'
Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for February 2009
For my current Blog click here!
British expat amputee in Thailand
Legless Blog -I first decided to create this blog page after seeing all of the bad publicity given to and constant hounding of my fellow legless celebrity, Heather Mills on many other websites and in the media in general. This page I created as a place where I can state my personal opinions, thoughts and musings openly, and just share my views and feelings with the Internet World.
This is my legless website, I pay for it and I am the manager, owner/boss/ruler of it, so 'legless or not', as 'freedom of speech' is still a basic human right in true democratic countries where you can view this blog, then I feel that this is somewhere that I can speak my mind without recourse. This is not a commercial page, it is just my own social media page. Nobody has forced any of you to come here and nobody is holding you here, so if you don't agree or like what you are reading here, then please feel free to leave at anytime!
As someone who has exactly the same physical injuries that I have, I find that the hounding of Heather Mills by the media is disgusting. I now see how celebrities, legless or not, can never have a normal life, because they never have time to themselves without someone from the media trying to drag up any kind of dirt from what would just be a normal everyday incident to anyone else, but in Heather's case any normal incident gets sensationalised by the media. Heather's physical disability seems to incite them more, and being honest, if I personally was hounded the way that Heather is, then some of these media personnel would consider being only 'legless' a bonus after the physical injuries that I would personally inflict upon them. I am thoroughly disgusted at the treatment of Heather, I suppose you could call it a feeling of 'Legless unity', so if any of the media responsible are reading this blog, then in Paul McCartney's own words "Let it be".
'The Legless Blog February 2009 by The Legless Fool'
A couple of days ago I told you about the music website imeem, well I am totally hooked on it now. I have always liked music and different songs remind me of different times in my life, not just the songs that were popular at that time, but the songs that I personally chose to play on my music system (stereo, computer, etc.) at that time. I do have a huge collection of songs on my computer now, but occasionally a song will come into my mind that I do not personally have a copy of and it will drive me crazy until I can find it somewhere and play it.
Well imeem has the largest database of music/songs that I have ever seen anywhere and I now spend many hours each day just searching for and playing songs that I have not heard for years, but that I really like. It has got to the stage now were I am spending most of my time trying to remember songs from the past and searching for them and imeem finds them and plays them for me every time. I think this is a wonderful website and it is really filling a need. As a standard member of imeem it costs you absolutely nothing and you can search for songs, save them in your own playlists and it even keeps your personal search history, so that you can easily find songs/videos that you have already looked for before. As a VIP member, you can download your music/video playlists to your mobile phone and play them on there too, but that does cost a little money per year and the price depends on the amount of access that you require.
Whilst I am writing this post tonight I have some music playing on imeem in the background, it is 'You'll never walk alone' by Gerry and the Pacemakers, because this has special meaning for me. Gerry played this song just for me one night when we were drinking together many years ago, but that is just another story that I haven't written about yet 
.
Cheers for now 
The Legless Fool FBE- The music lover 
Looking for some music again on the internet yesterday, I found this great website named imeem, it has just about any music that you could possibly want, in my searches on there, there is only one song that I cannot find and I have been looking for it everywhere on the internet for a very long time and cannot find it anywhere, so I am not really surprised. They have just about everything else though and many videos too and they can all be embedded on webpages, so I have decided to 'music' many of my webpages now.
The main page that I was looking to put music on first though is my 'Legless in Thailand' book page and I was trying to think what music would be appropriate for it. So I was thinking about my story and I could not really just put one piece of music to it, because although the book is already published, the main story 'my life' is still ongoing and I intend to write more editions to the first publication in the future. So I was still trying to think of some music that would interest people and that I also personally like and would be appropriate for me, I was trying to think about a song that would cover everything and then I thought well, I am not dead yet, unfortunately, so the story doesn't end here and then 'immediately' the obvious choice of music hit me, a song that I hadn't thought about for a very long time, but that I used to like very much before 'Never ending story' by Limahl.
I found the song very quickly on the imeem website and it is very convenient, as soon as you play a song, the required code to embed the track on a webpage is available immediately just below the song itself. So I copied the code, applied it to the 'Legless book' webpage, uploaded the modified page and it was running with music on it in about ten minutes flat. So now maybe I have to call the second edition to my book 'The Legless Never Ending Story' .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- hoping to find an end to the story 
Still not quite tired yet and nothing really important to do, I have been doing my usual thing of playing with the search engines to pass the time. I have been coming up number one on the search results for a long time for the keywords of 'legless beer', so just playing around again, now that my sites are under the heading of Legless Empire, I put the keywords of 'legless empire beer' into the search engines and sure enough! My sites came up in the first three, on the first page results on each search engine.
So perhaps I should start a new business of brewing beer and marketing it under the brand name of 'Legless Empire Beer', I am fairly sure that the name would catch on quite well and people would want to try it. I just wish that I had the money to invest in some of my legless ideas sometimes. Oh well! time for the legless beer emperor to have some more beer now and try to sleep .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- With beer on the brain
I work with the major search engines everyday and they still never cease to amaze me with their logic. I had finished my usual routine with them for the night yesterday and I still had some time to kill, I remembered that I had not checked the search results for my friend's hotel in Penang for a long time, so I thought that I would check it for him.
I made the webpage for his hotel just as a friend, he helps me sometimes and I try to do the same for him, so I put the hotel in Penang on one of my website pages http://www.expostfacto.co.uk/bluediamond.html. When I started searching for this last night I used the kewords: 'hotel' 'Georgetown' 'Penang' because the title that I gave the page was 'The Blue Diamond Hotel - Chulia Street, Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia - Recommended by Legless in Thailand'. It was very difficult to find it for these first keywords with any of the search engines, so eventually just getting annoyed with the search engines, I typed in the keywords 'Legless hotel' and my friend's hotel came up on the first results page on every search engine.
So how do you work out the logic in this? In the first searches I put the exact location of the hotel and it was very difficult to find, in the last search I didn't even specify a country and it came up on the first results page each time??? The only deduction that I can come up with is that it is the word 'Legless' that the search engines are relating to this and automatically relating it to me and any hotel that I am connected with .
So what do I do now, do I try to get my friend in Penang to change the name of his hotel to 'the Legless Hotel' ? Because I don't think that many people searching for a hotel in Penang are going to use the word 'legless' normally in their search 
. One thing is for sure though, I need more beer now and go to sleep soon.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool FBE- Trying to make sense of the search engines
After going over my recent life history once again yesterday, I decided that having not just been an ordinary fool, but being a confirmed fool of the very highest order, I deserve recognition for this fairly unique achievement. So being a British Citizen and also being distantly related to the British Royal Family, I felt that I was fully qualified to bestow an award and a title upon myself in recognition of this achievement. Therefore, without too much ceremony and with just a couple of beers to celebrate with, I awarded myself the FBE at 18:00 hours Thai time (11:00 GMT) on the 17th February, 2009.
The FBE is a new Order of the British Empire for this millenium and this is the first one of it's kind to be officially awarded to anyone. So as I now hold the order of the Fool of the British Empire and the title of 'Sir', I can now use these with my name on any correspondence that I write and that should certainly confuse some of the scammers that I play with .
Cheers for now
The titled Legless Fool - Sir Ian Reed FBE 
or should that be Sir John McMiken FBE 
I decided this evening that it would be a good idea and a nice gesture from me if I could give a little something back to the people that have bought my book 'Legless in Thailand' . The only thing that I can think of, is to give each one of them a personal webpage on this website for free. So thinking about this a little more, I have created a new directory on my website, I named the new directory 'LIT Club' and and I have put just one basic page on there for the time being and uploaded it to this site to give the search engines time to find it before it starts to go fully operational. So any of you that have already purchased a copy of my book and would like to have your free webpage on this website, all you have to do is to email me at: litclub@reedinter.co.uk and send me a copy of your book purchase receipt and we can then arrange to make a suitable page for you on here. To take a look at the Legless LIT Club page now just click on this line anywhere.
For those of you that have not purchased my book yet but would like to and have your free webpage too, then just click on this next link to purchase a copy now: The book Legless in Thailand can be purchased here http://www.redleadbooks.com/leinth.html
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - giving away free webpages for his valued customers
Legless empire is going well now, but playing with words on the search engines 'Fool's Empire' needs some work. Although I am happy with the high profile of legless empire, I would also like fool's empire too, but these words are very highly competitive on the searches and so far, I am well down on the SERPs for these words. I know that Google and other search engines update for this blog regularly, so I am using this blog today as a tool to increase my presence for the words 'Fool's Empire'. The search engines also take notice of anchor text in links, so next I shall be linking to my sites on here using appropriate text for them.
Link to Fool's Legless Web Empire HQ
Link to Fool's Legless Empire Webcast Upload Packages
.Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - The Fool's Empire strikes back 
Updating my main website Legless Fool, I decided that I needed some new words on the page to try and help people to notice my new site. Because I have many websites and many domain names now, in the past I have used the words legless group to refer to them all and I use legless HQ as my main website title, but I decided a couple of days ago to give it a new reference of my legless empire and it seems that the search engines have picked up on this very quickly, because already my website comes up in the number one position in search results for the words 'legless empire' on all of the major search engines and I am quite happy with this .
Whilst I was thinking today about the time when I was running this dating agency before, I realised that although I do mention about it in my book, I should really devote a short story to this period in my life and I made the decision today to write my next true short story about this period, so I suppose Valentine's day does have it's use a little bit for me, but as for the romantic side of things, that is something that I gave up on a very long time ago and certainly something that I have absolutely no interest in, especially in my present location. But I do hope that all of you that are lucky enough to be in a good relationship with someone can enjoy yourselves in the true spirit of Valentine's day today .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - Emperor of the Legless Empire
I didn't mention it before because I thought it was not important, but just after my last trip to Penang I had developed an annoying shaving rash just below my bottom lip on my chin that would not heal easily even applying cream and shaving again just made it worse each time. So I decided to give it some time to heal by itself and try to help it by not shaving for a while.
After a couple of weeks it did seem to settle down a little, but it was still a little painful to the touch and I needed to shave because in the heat here my neck was becoming uncomfortable. So I just shaved around the area where the problem was and left that and my upper lip totally unshaved. I realised later that I had inadvertantly started to grow a goatee beard and moustache and that is the way that it still is today, I never set out to do it and I always wondered before to myself why other people chose to grow these goatee beards, but now I think that I know why.
Putting my new found goatee to one side now, I managed to get my money through eventually this week, so I could pay off my debt to the local shop and go shopping for real food again. I have now developed a huge appetite and make large meals for myself at least twice per day, it is just so good having the food stuffs that I like available again and I have been making all kinds of edible concoctions this week being the inventive chef that I am .
It must seem strange to the local Thais here though, seeing this unshaven, legless alien around sometimes and getting all kinds of unusual cooking smells eminating from my room, but then again, I am just the local recluse here now, so what the hell do I care what they think! .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - With a goatee now
Sitting at my usual position this evening for my beer break, there were very few people around, which I like, I just sat there and started mulling over my present situation in my head, as you do when drinking beer! I am fine for the main essentials now, beer and cigarettes, thanks to my local shop owner 'Pod' giving me credit, but my secondary essentials like basic staple food is now running at an all time low for me. I usually make a batch of food that lasts for a week, I keep it in the fridge and just reheat it as required, but I am now down to my last day's supply and my usual stomach-fillers of bread and potatoes are finished 
.
This is one of the biggest problems of living in a foreign country, my local shop stocks what it considers basic requirements, but that is aimed at the Thai requirements, I don't blame him for this because 98.5% of the residents in my apartment block are Thais. Even though I personally have lived in Thailand for more than twenty years now and the food that I personally make is very spicy, the basics of my own food still revolves around potatoes and bread and these are two of the things that my local shop does not stock. I have to get my basic food supplies from the nearest supermarket which is about one kilometre away, but with no money even for transport to go there and zero funds available now, I couldn't even buy any essentials even if I walked there. I can buy rice or noodles on credit at my local shop, but rice and noodles to me is just like the way that Thais look at potatoes and bread, it is nice to eat occasionally but not what I want to eat on a daily basis.
I just hope that my monthly money is in my bank account tomorrow, because I do need to buy some staple food again now, none of this rice and noodle crap, but real filling food like potatoes and bread, the accompanying, meats, toppings and sauces can be as spicy as you like, in fact I was one of the pioneers of what they now call fusion food, but staple food like potatoes and bread are very important for me.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - Out of bread!
I told all of you on here a couple of weeks ago that I had found a good story named 'Legless' on the internet, well I decided to contact the writer of the story and ask for her permission to feature this story on my website. The theme of my websites is legless anyway and a good story with the same title could only benefit both of us and be good for the readers too.
I eventually received her permission to feature the story yesterday, so today I have been busy making a new webpage, designing some graphics that would complement the story and made a banner to link to it. I eventually finished the new page and uploaded it, it was late this afternoon and by the time that I had finished it was my beer break time and nothing interferes with that! 
.
So just about one hour ago I finished my beer break and now it is time to write about this on here and do my blog post. I have placed a banner below linking to this story and I do hope that you will read it because Brianna does have some very good writing talent, I have also put her email address at the end of the story, so if you enjoy the story please let her know, I am sure that she would be quite pleased .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - With a legless story by Brianna
Yesterday morning, sleeping the strange hours that I do these days, I woke up at about 11:30 am. really hungry. Because of my financial situation at the moment, I don't have a lot of choice of food in my fridge, but what I did have in there was a bowl of minced pork mixed with herbs and spices that I was preparing for my next week's batch of curry. So without thinking about it too much, I patted myself a burger from the contents and fried it, I fried some onions and tomato and put them all together with some cucumber and chilli sauce on a bun and it was delicious. This is not really something new for me, it is just second nature, having had my own restaurant before, I always made my own burgers and they are always better than the ones that you can buy normally at any fast food venue. What is new for me though is eating a burger for breakfast, I don't know why, but I have developed a huge appetite of late and I always seem to wake up ravenous these days .
So! What's for dinner tonight besides beer?
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - Thinking about food
Yesterday evening, I had finished all of my usual search engine work, I took my two hour beer break at my local shop on credit and then sat back at my computer again afterwards. As usual when I have nothing really to do and because I am connected to the internet 24/7, I started playing with some of my keywords on the search engines. Just for a change, I decided to leave out the word 'legless' even though this is the theme throughout my websites and this word is now virtually directly linked to all of my websites from the search engines, basically I had nothing to do and I was just having a final nightcap and in a playing mood 
.
Choosing some of the words from my website's contents, descriptions and page titles seemingly at random, I started entering them into the search engines and I was quite surprised at the results that I got, it seems that not just the word 'legless' mixed with other keywords are linked to me, but I was now appearing on the first results pages (SERPs) for a few other words that the search engines now link to me and again all of the search engines seemed to agree with these results. But due to my high ranking on the search engines for my usual 'legless' keywords, I now find that many people on the internet are copying my page titles, descriptions, content, my name and my book and story titles and some even copy and paste the posts from this blog in full on their sites, just trying to get internet traffic without really working at it for themselves .
Well because of this, I shall not write on here what the other keywords are that the search engines are now linking to me, or these lazy website owners / brainless morons, will just copy them and start using them on their websites too, but I am quite sure that the average reader of this blog is of a high enough level of intelligence to work out what other words the search engines are now linking to me, without being 'legless' .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - It's only words and words are all I have to pass the time away!
This evening, having arranged to get credit at my local shop for my beer because I don't have any money at this time, I was relaxing with my first beer and just feeling happy that the shop owner knows me and trusts me well enough to give me credit for a few days. Then a Thai friend of mine arrived that I hadn't seen for a couple of weeks and sat down drinking with me. He is involved with the supply and contract of English teachers for schools in Thailand and he was feeling quite happy with himself because he had just landed a new big contract for English teachers in Chaiyaphum in the North East of Thailand. As we started talking, he then told me that although he now had this new contract, he didn't have the native speaking English teachers to fill the positions and asked me if I personally knew of anyone that could take up some of these positions.
I had to tell him in all honesty that I personally didn't know of anyone that could help him, because I never go out anywhere and I don't meet many people these days. Then I thought that I do have the internet, so I could maybe use my blog and websites to try and recruit suitable people for him and he was very pleased with my offer of help. So I have spent the rest of this evening putting what I consider, a good advertisement for English teachers on my websites for him and the last update for today is this post to my blog tonight. I do hope that my internet sites can help him, because he really is a nice guy and the new teaching jobs that he is offering seem to be quite good for people to apply for.
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - in recruitment mode
Doing my usual search engine work yesterday, I found that my Ex Post Facto short story page is now appearing quite highly in the search results and this is not due to my influence, so other people must be searching for the stories and clicking on them. What this has brought home to me now is, that the stories are a part of my websites that I have ignored for a very long time.
The problem is, that I personally find that I have to be in the right frame of mind to go into 'writing mode' and it is not something that I can just switch on and off at will. I have to clear my mind and feel completely relaxed, usually with the aid of a couple of beers . But with my present financial problems, this is virtually impossible for me, especially when I open a bottle of beer and I am wondering to myself whether or not I have the funds available to buy another beer when this one is finished .
So even though I have a backlog now of about fifty stories to start/complete, I can't get myself into the right frame of mind at this point in time to start on them, even just this blog now takes a lot of effort and willpower, if I could just get my pension payments sorted out again after my useless HSBC bank in UK screwed them up at Xmas, then everything would be fine again and I could ease back into my writing mode .
Cheers for now
The Legless Fool - getting back into the write frame of mind
To my blog Archive for January 2009
For my Current Blog click here!
To my Legless Fool Headquarters site
P.S. "I don't remember reading the small print when I signed on for this life, in fact, I don't remember signing on at all, I was probably legless then too! So seeing as you wont let me resign, can we renegotiate the contract please?"
My first published book - Legless in Thailand
My other blog at the St Helens Star newpaper, UK
My home town St Helens, UK and their famous rugby team
Some of my short stories HERE
Biography of author John McMiken
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