"illegitimum non carborundum"
Legless Blog - Ian Reed / John McMiken
Legless blog archive for October 2008
For my current Blog click here!
British expat amputee in Thailand
'Let it be'
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". Listen to the music.
We are both legless!
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You can email me anytime at: blog@leglessfool.com
'The Legless Blog October 2008 by The Legless Fool'
I try to keep a seasonal touch on my websites at this time of year, so I am spending Halloween preparing my website backgrounds and content for Xmas at the moment. I normally implement the changes at the start of November, so I have to get them ready for tomorrow. I don't usually celebrate Halloween, but I shall have my 13 beers tonight just to be on the safe side, I wouldn't want to upset the spooks, so I shall just have to force myself to drink them all whilst I am working legless at my computer 
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Cheers for now 
The legless fool at Halloween 
I first decided to create a high profile on the internet about two and a half years ago when the final draft of my first book Legless in Thailand was completed. I figured that to try and sell my book effectively, I would have to have a reasonable web/internet presence for the book title 'Legless in Thailand' and also for my writing name 'John McMiken'. It has only recently started to really kick in properly after a couple of years of very hard work aimed at the search engines and search engine rankings for my websites and related keywords.
One of the side effects of this, is that my real name 'Ian Reed' has also become quite high profile on the web / internet too and although that doesn't really help my book, one thing that it does help, is that I am very easy to find for someone looking for me. A result of this is that late yesterday evening I received an email from someone claiming to be searching for the next-of-kin to a recently deceased person in the UK and telling me that I was the beneficiary to a reasonable amount of money, about £500 ($1,000). But with my daily pastime of playing with internet scammers, I first thought that this was just another scam using a new tactic, but reading the email carefully, they stated that they were also in touch with my younger brother and younger sister and quoted their names correctly, even using my sister's married name. They went on to say that the deceased person was related to my mother and had the surname of McMiken.
So hopefully I should be receiving a little bit of extra beer money soon and all because of my high profile on the internet, I just have to beat my bank to it . I shall keep you updated with further developments on this.
Cheers for now
The high profile legless fool
During the day I usually drink lots of tea and I really find lemon/lime tea very refreshing, yesterday though I ran out of limes, so I had to go to a nearby supermarket to replenish them. At the supermarket I routed about in the fruit section and eventually I found a large packet of what looked like large limes and purchased them, I also topped up my beer stock whilst I was there.
This morning I put the kettle on, put a tea bag in my cup, opened the packet of 'limes', took one out and sliced a large portion off ready to squeeze into my tea cup, but then I got a shock, it wasn't a lime at all, it was a small orange. Why Thai oranges are green I don't know, I never usually buy them and the writing on the packet is in Thai, so I didn't try to read it, so then I just thought "Oh what the hell!" and I made myself a cup of orange tea, it was certainly different and a new taste, not one that I want to get used to though. Today I had to go back to the supermarket anyway, because it is the nearest place to me with an ATM machine and I had to beat my bank to my money again. Whilst I was there, I did buy a few packets of real limes today and I made a mental note of where they are stacked, because they are not stacked with the normal fruit, they are kept on a chiller shelf. I like to make lemon/lime tea to keep as a cool drink in my fridge too, it is really refreshing on hot days here and I restrict myself to only drinking beer after 18:00 when the sun is just going down. 
Cheers for now
The legless fool
It has been quiet on this blog for a while, mainly because I have had nothing of real interest to talk about, but last night I was doing my usual SEO and search engine result ranking work and I was trying some of the words in the content of my websites on them. The words that I tried were mainly from my new 'Legless Fool' website and I used the words 'legless beer drinker' which really sort of describes me and I was surprised that my site came up number one on almost all of the search engines, sometimes even number one and number two including one of my other sites. Just like the search engines came up with my internet name of 'Legless Fool' it seems that now I am also classified as the number one legless beer drinker on the web.
I have mixed feelings about this though, I am pleased that the search engines are picking up on my new website quickly, but being classified as the number one legless beer drinker is not really a good reputation, but who would do a search for a legless beer drinker anyway? So maybe it is just something that I have to accept and maybe it is something that I can talk about with my friends the next time that I go down to the pub .
Cheers for now
The legless beer drinker
Even though my unprofessional, irresponsible web hosts Fasthosts UK closed my web hosting down one month ago, they still have about eight of my domain names registered which are paid for one year in advance. The search engines are still picking these domain names up, but they are redirected to the now defunct Legless Headquarters website. So this evening, I decided to login to Fasthosts UK and change the redirection of my domain names that they have, but when I login, I am just redirected to an accounts page that asks me to pay for the hosting that they have already closed down and they will not let me access control over any of my domain names that are paid for in advance. So I cannot now change the redirection of any of my domain names with them because of the total unprofessionalism of the Fasthosts UK company.
The domain names that I purchased from them were under their subsidiary domain www.ukreg.com and I used them for this because they appeared to be considerably cheaper for domain name registration than other companies in the UK. Well now I know why, because they are just a company that is totally unprofessional and has absolutely no idea about customer service. Why a problem with my hosting with them should cut me off from access to my prepaid domain names with them is completely illogical to me but I now expect it from this useless, second-rate outfit. So if anyone in UK reading this blog is thinking about registering a domain name or hosting a website, then from my experience I recommend that you avoid using www.ukreg.com or Fasthosts UK like the plague.
Ultimately though they will pay for what they have done to me, because I shall not renew any of the domains that they hold for me when they expire, because they are relatively superfluous for me now anyway.
Cheers for now
The legless fool with his back up
A responsible and dependable web hosting company that I can recommend
It was only whilst I was tidying up some of my archives and fixing some of the links, that I realised that this blog is one year old today. I remember starting it on the farm in Nakhon Sawan a year ago, but many other things have happened since then and I had forgotten the date that I actually started this blog. There have been many revelations for me over the last year and consequently I am now residing in Bangkok. Because I just write what is in my head at the time, I can't remember every post that I have written on this blog, I do remember some of the things that were important to me, but I cannot remember all of the 'words of wisdom' that I have written over this period, much of it depends on what is foremost in my brain at the time and many things can affect that, even the surplus or lack of beer .
Hopefully the next year will be different, because I am more in control of my life now than I have been for many years before. The one thing that I cannot control however, is the stupid antics that my bank plays with me, so I am not as much in control of my life as I would like to be. The only way that I can be sure of saving money these days is to take my money out of the bank as quickly as possible after it goes in, before the bank can get their hands on it. It is a ludicrous situation really, I can't save money in the bank for fear of what they may do with it, so my only way to save money now is to keep cash around me and take it out of the bank at the earliest opportunity. I hope that no burglars in Thailand are reading this blog 
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To the next year of this blog "Cheers!" 
Cheers for now
The legless fool's anniversary
Just after I had my left leg amputated a few years ago, I then started having problems with many other things. My normal logic didn't seem to be functioning as it used to before and I made a lot of stupid mistakes in my life, many of these can be read about in my book 'Legless in Thailand'. I am now trying to analyse some of the things that I did at that time and compared to the way that I think now, I was acting completely irresponsibly and without any logic at all. Reflecting on all of this, the only conclusion that I can come up with, is that part of my brain cells were lost in the left leg that was amputated and they have just started to regenerate again now, where? I am not sure, but it surely isn't in the part of my left leg that is missing, unless my regenerated brain cells are 'phantom' just like the pains and itches that I still get there .
Cheers for now
The legless fool in reflection
The scams that I told you about on a previous post, all went as semi-expected. The $X millions due into my account, came under a 'stop order' as I expected, but this time the so-called stop order was due to some government tax requirement and they wanted $7,750 to clear it, these are a very greedy group on this scam. Obviously, that was the point at which I gave up on that scam. The lucky draw scam that requested my bank details, I never heard from again, so I don't know what their game was really.
The scam that wants to put some finance into my bank is still going on and I am quite surprised at the amount that they want to put in my bank, they intend to put in two installments of £48,000 that would be quite nice for me, because the first thing that I would do is clear off my credit card debt and that would get my bank off my back. I consulted my Nigerian friend about this one, because I couldn't understand why they would want to put money in my bank, but he informed me that it was a money laundering trick with some stolen funds and if I forwarded the money onwards then I would be guilty of money laundering, so he advised me to just hang on to the money when it gets in my account and let the scammers get frustrated. That sounds good to me!
Cheers for now
The legless fool with money in the bank, maybe!
This is the first time that I have intentionally lived alone within the last 36 years and I am now just realising some of the benefits of this. Because I am now retired and I do not have to keep to any particular timetable, I work on my computer and websites when I want to, I sleep when I want to and money permitting, I drink beer when I want to. Oh yes, I almost forgot! I do eat sometimes too . Because I am in a room on my own and it is quite hot here in Thailand, I keep my curtains closed, I switch the fan on and just lounge around legless and in the nude, I don't receive any visitors, so it is not a problem for me. I would imagine that if any of the Thai people around here knew about this, they would think what a strange character Legless is! Just sitting in his room all day nude at his computer, sleeping when he feels like and drinking beer when he wants to, I wonder why he doesn't want to mix with other people like we do?
Well, everyone to their own! I am finding that I quite like this semi-reclusive lifestyle now, the only person that I have to answer to is myself and the only people that I ever really talk to are my readers on this blog and apart from the odd one or two of you, the conversation is quite one-sided .
Cheers for now
The legless recluse
My last pot of hotpot was drained yesterday, so today I had to go and spend some of my precious beer money on relatively irrelevant things like food and spices so that I could make a new pot to feed me for the next week or so. Eating is not something that I do at regular times these days, it is just an annoying necessity sometimes when my body tells me that it needs some food. I am sure that I get quite enough minerals and vitamins from my daily intake of beer, but maybe because beer is just in liquid form, my stomach tells me that it has other ideas at times.
So I had to waste the equivalent of six litres of beer money about £3.50 ($7) on food today and start cooking again. The cooking itself I quite enjoy, I consider myself to be a very good chef and my meals always taste excellent to me. Also, whilst I am cooking, I always keep my beer mug full and handy to sip at and to give me inspiration .
Cheers for now
The legless chef
Music has had a big influence on my life and whenever I think of certain times in my life, it is the music that was popular or had meaning for me at that time that I remember mostly. Conversely, whenever I hear certain songs or music it reminds me of certain times in my life when that particular music had meaning for me. Because music has played an important part in my life, very often a tune will just pop up in my head and will stay there all day, songs that I have not heard for years will just start playing in my mind and I have tried to analyse why this happens. It is not always because you are thinking of the times when the music was popular with you, but what I have found now, is that music / lyrics that have meaning, will come to me when my mind is thinking about something that this music or the lyrics has a particular meaning for and is relative to.
The reason that I am writing about this today, is because today it happened again, a song that I have not heard for almost thirty years came into my head and would not leave and I found myself singing it to myself, whatever I was doing today. The title of this blog post 'Forever Autumn' is the title of the song that is in my head today, it is from a very old album by Jeff Wayne named 'War of the Worlds' it was an album that was very popular with me almost thirty years ago, when I was in the RAF in Germany, unfortunately, I do not have the album now or I would play it to clear it from my mind. Why this particular song came into my head today I do not know, maybe it is a subconscious thing linked to what I am thinking about, I am sure that any psychiatrist could come up with some obscure reason why this happens, but I like to psycho-analyse myself a lot these days and this I am now trying to understand, because this is not the first time that this has happened, it happens almost every other day with me these days.
Well, enough of this Freudian analysis now, I have to get back to my missing links
Cheers for now
The legless fool with music on the brain
I am still playing my games with the internet scammers at the moment and as usual I have about five or six on the go. Three of them have intimated that they are going to send me money within the next few days. The first one was supposed to have been remitted to my bank account yesterday and they sent me a very official looking money wire transfer slip and informed me that the $X millions should be in my bank account on Tuesday 7th October. I have had this situation many times before with these scam games, what usually happens next is that either the day before or the day that the funds are due into the bank account, an email will arrive from some well-known financial or government institution with the subject 'Stop order' and they will say that the fund transfer has been suspended due to the lack of required documentation (anti-terrorist certificate, non-drug related certificate, etc.) and this is where they call for the advance fee, usually about $2,500 to acquire the necessary documents, which of course is all false because there is no transfer taking place anyway, it is just part of the game to get money from you.
The second one due to send me some money is quite interesting, because it does not conform to what I have ever had before. I have won a draw that I never entered and I am due to be paid $500,000. Usually when I have had these lottery / draw scams before, they call for money to send your cheque and certificates to you by courier and always state that they cannot pay this fee from your winnings because it is insured and under international gaming laws it is not allowed to be deducted from, advance fee again! But with this one that I received today, all that they have asked from me is my bank account details and SWIFT number to transfer the winnings to me. Even with my years of experience with these scammers now, I cannot work out how they are going to call for an advance fee from this scenario, which I have never seen before. I shall keep you informed on here when I get an update from them.
The last one that is due to send me money, is a scenario again involving millions of dollars, but because I stated in the course of the scam game that I didn't have funds to pay for the transfer fees, this scammer has arranged for a financier to loan me the money and send it to my bank. This one I can work out, they expect me to receive the money from the financier and then send it to them, supposedly to pay for the transfer fees, then they disappear with the money and leave me to pay the loan back. Well, I have my own plans on this scenario, I have been trying to get a personal loan unsuccessfully for many years now, so if this loan money goes into my bank account, then it is not going anywhere but into my own pocket.
Cheers for now
The legless fool scamming the scammers
Working with the search engines most of the time now trying to get my new 'Legless fool HQ' website highly ranked with them, most of the search engines seem to be picking it up quite well now, primarily led by Google. With the keywords I use now my internet identity of 'Legless fool' works very well, but what surprised me today is that they have also latched on to the words 'Legless beer' and 'Legless times' too. I am sure that many people must go to my website expecting to find it to be a drunkard's hangout and it probably wouldn't be very far from the truth in my case these days.
Another good thing here though, is that the search engines have picked up my new site in almost record time for them, just a couple of weeks, a task that usually takes months, even years for people new to this work. I know that the standing high ranking of my other sites that now link to my new site has a bearing on this, but even so, the search engines have excelled themselves with me here. Maybe now I can spend more time getting back to my stories, blogs and Asian diaries and a little less time worrying about what the stupid, irresponsible web hosts Fasthosts UK did to me.
Cheers for now
The legless fool having legless beer times
The Ramsay Hunt Syndrome (RHS) that I have been suffering with for 8 months now, seemed to be gradually declining and as from about one month ago, I can now drink straight from a beer bottle without spilling any and I can close my right eye properly when I go to sleep. But now, when I look in the mirror, the right side of my face which had dropped before, seems to have over-compensated itself in recovery, the right side of my mouth now is slightly higher than the left and gives the impression that I have a slight smirk on my face. 
Also, my right eye now feels like it is trying to close all of the time and appears like a slight squint, I still cannot whistle though, which they reckon is a full recovery indication, but the fact that I can close both of my eyes when I sleep and I can drink my beer without spilling any now are the best signs of recovery for me, I dont whistle very often anyway!
Today's main chore for me is cooking, I usually keep a full pot of my 'Legless hotpot' on the slow cooker and it usually feeds me for four or five days at a time, but with being in Penang recently, I have to start cooking a new pot again today. My hotpot isn't exactly the same as a normal Lancashire hotpot or Scouse, I am quite inventive when it comes to cooking and having my own restaurant here a few years ago, I have come up with some quite unique dishes, my hotpot is very similar in appearance to normal hotpot, but the spices that I add to my dishes would certainly make your eyes water, clear your nose and ears and it goes down well with lots of beer.
Cheers for now
The legless fool hungry after the hunt
To my blog Archive for September 2008
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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