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9/03/2018

Blogging....

Is it still a thing?

Do people still blog; or is it all Podcasts, Twitch streams, going live on YouTube and many many other things which only serve to confuse me as I am now 46 and am therefore old enough to panic when "stuff" appears on my devices.

Stuff that tells me I can connect with people from all over the world. So... My question is this...

Is anyone still receiving this blog?

Send word... It's been a while.
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Mahalo.


Ross.

7/04/2015

John Hinds.

John Hinds was an unsung hero who passed away today following an accident at the Skerries 100.

John was not a racer, he was a Dr. He was the medical motorcyclist who strapped his kit on a bike and set of to save someone who'd had an accident around whichever track he was working at. John was, according to those that he met him over the years, a brilliant man and always had time for people.

The number of professional motorcycle racers who owe him their continued lives is in the hundreds.

"We are all shocked and saddened by the loss of Dr John Hinds. He saved so many lives. Absolute hero. Our thoughts are with his family" The Ulster Grand Prix organisers said on twitter today.

Keith Amor said "So sorry to hear about the passing of Doc John Hinds Quite a lot of us road racers owe him so much, RIP my friend."

#deathisawanker 

7/02/2015

Joey Dunlop, legend.

A legend who left us all behind...

It wasn't the first time Joey Dunlop had left people behind... Countless racers had sat behind Joey in hundreds of races around the world and watched with awe as the wee fellah disappeared into the distance. Sadly, on this day fifteen years ago in the small city of Tallin, Estonia he pulled away and didn't return...

With 26 Isle of Man TT wins in many different classes, 5 Formula 1 World Motorcycle Championships and many other wins and podiums the world over Joey was world class. He was known across the world of motorcycling as a hero.

He is much missed.

7/01/2015

It gets aboot eh...

 As it's Canada day today Here are some intersting facts about Canada.
  • The largest city in Canada is Toronto. Toronto is home to as many as 78 people. 
  • From 1994-1999 one fifth of the population was employed in the making of Due South.
  • Canada and Scotland have been at war since July 1867 over the use of the word Moose.
  • The most famous Canadian in the world is Paul Gross.
  • A child can carry a gun at three months old.
  • It is illegal in Canada not to know how to skin a wild bear.
  • A Mountie can go without food and water for three months thanks to fat stored in their hats.
  • The National Anthem Of Canada is The Lumberjack Song by Monty Python.
  • It has been at number one in the Canadian charts for the last forty five years.
  • Canadian money is accepted in every country in the world except Canada.
  •  The second most famous Canadian is Diefenbaker the dog, now known as Celine Dion.
  • All residents of Winnipeg must carry at least two fresh fish at all times.
  • A traditional greeting when you met a Canadian woman is "Nice Beaver Eh"

There now follows a short Advertisement on behalf of the Canadian Tourism Board.


Only four hundred Canadians are left in the wild.
They are forced to walk miles every day for food.
Stores in America leave food out for them but they often die during the journey.
If you act now we can save this wonderful animal.

 Mahalo.


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Tomorrow

Or, more specifically, later today I'll be trawling the web finding web design courses.

It's all part of the grand plan. Web design, social media, content generation...

Mahalo.

6/30/2015

In the begining...


There was Instagram...

And lo, it was good.
 
For posting pictures of your latest meal, pictures of your dog and holiday snaps Instagram is the default way to share images online. The app is easy to use and sharing is a doddle. Even a child can do it. Look below, there's a child using a mobile phone...

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/20000/nahled/child-and-phone-1330009422EAw.jpg


This little chap is probably uploading a photograph so the other kids in the playground can view his latest attempt at colouring in but I'm above that. I think. I'm not sure. I've not had the chance to any colouring in for quite a while now.

Anyhoo... Instagram is where we all now drop our memories to keep us from having to remember all that stuff that takes up time between waking up and going back to bed.

Surely all of us can make a little bit of cashola from these images was my thinking when I stumbled across Instaprints. It's a fine looking site that allows you to use your images to generate money. After logging in it's pretty simple to choose which images you wish to sell and creating galleries if you're so inclined is also a walk in the park.

I have a few images in my Instaprints gallery and all are now available for sale in various different formats.

Whether or not anyone buys them is another thing.


Mahalo.

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New Images for sale...

I now have an Instaprints page up and running. It can be viewed here.

You can follow me if you're a member or place an order really simply.





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And so it begins...


Again... Kinda.

I've decided it's about time I earned some money from doing what I do. Every single bit of "work" I do has a value to someone and as I can't seem to keep a job that has a boss hanging over me or forces me to deal with the other people that inhabit this planet I really should try to gather as much of that value in monetary terms as possible. Mostly to allow me to stop having to have bosses or interact with people.

A mobile phone with a camera can now take an image with such high quality that the days of being able to call yourself a photographer and lugging around a Nikon camera are gone... But not really... There are still professional photographers out there. Highly skilled in what they do they make the big bucks (No doubt some of them will be laughing at that statement) because they have years of experience in knowing what makes a good photograph.

I don't have years of experience in taking photographs. Anyone who's seen my Instagram will know this already. But I am able to edit an image into something worth looking at. And guess what? Some fool may want to pay me money for it! The fool! Ahahahahahahahahahaha... Oops, sorry, got carried away there.

So; Where was I? Oh yeah...

I'm currently finding ways to make my photography available for sale in as many different ways as possible.

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Ideas

I'm sat here at 2:40am wracking my brains for ways on how to earn a living from online selling.

As a heavy social media user with writing experience I really shouldn't find it hard to do so. I should be able to find some writing gigs if I can find somewhere to find sites looking for content. I'm also pretty sure I can sell images and other creative projects.

What I need is a brand of some sort.

6/24/2015

Somewhere deep in the bowels of Scotland...

 So, it’s been a wee while since I last posted anything on here and as I’m getting back into writing I guess I had better fill you all in on what I’ve been doing instead of blogging. I’ve been tweeting.

I’m also a member of The Married Man Club, a move that at least a few of my old readers will find hard to believe. A few may even cry. Or think seriously about killing themselves. After all, I’m only getting married once in my life and I’m quite the catch if you like ‘em chunky and funny.

As I mentioned I’m getting back into writing and in an effort to force me to keep at it I really should post at least one thing on here per day to keep all four of my fans on here happy. I do have a thousand followers on twitter but I’m not sure how many of them would sit through the shit I’ve written on here in the past so I’ll take it easy for a couple of weeks. Ease them into it so to speak.

Has it really been more than 2 years since I posted anything on here? Jeez, time flies…



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3/19/2013

Has it really been so long....

Since I wrote anything on here?

Selah. So it goes.


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8/10/2010

It's been a while...

Since I last shat anything onto here. And why is that? Cos I've been tweeting the shit outta myself.

Followers of my feed are no doubt damn good people so if you're a tweeter why not follow them all and make some friends. They're mostly comedy types or motorcycle racing related people so if that's your gig then get ye some.

In other news... In the last month I've won two competitions and have found myself someone who makes me happier than a pig in shit. No more details will be posted about the person who makes me happy 'cos you are just being nosey. So fuck off.

The competitions I won were both motorcycle racing related and were courtesy of the great tweet feed of @Expressbikes and the equally wonderful twitter feed of @motorbikehub. Follow them by all means. Tell them I sent you.

For my followers on twitter who are reading this blog for the first time, I shall make a promise to update it more often. I'll not get rich and famous for just tweeting my inane sense of humour in 140 characters now will I?

Mahalo.

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3/10/2010

Guess who's back?

Yup, it's that man again. The one your mother warned you about. The one who your teachers showed you pictures of and told you not to accept any candy from. The one who, if given a chance, would make everyone shout "I was raped by Jesus" in church and would make it legal to spit in the faces of those who attempt to tell others exactly "What God Meant to say was..."

So what's been happening in the life of yours truly? Well, nothing much if I'm honest. In fact if I'm honest I'd have to say Fuck All. Life goes on around me and I watch and wonder what it is that I do not have that seems to drive everyone else to be all that they can be. Perhaps it's a lack of a certain chemical in the old noggin or maybe it's a case of too many chemicals have pickled my brain. Whatever, all I know is that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.

I would carry on this post but I must away and do some shopping.

Mahalo folks.

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1/10/2010

It's Cookery Corner! With your host... Me.

What you will need...

Chicken Breasts. (Diced or cut into thin slices)
Red bell Peppers.
Green bell peppers.
Baby Corn.
Tomatoes.
Cajan spice.
Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce.
Honey.
Tortilla wraps.

First, prepare your vegetables. The best way I find is to slice the peppers and baby corn reasonably thinly (You can slice them as thin or as thick as you want depending on personal preference) and quarter the tomatoes. Remove the seeds from the tomatoes.

Take a wok (or deep based frying pan) and get it nice and hot. Add a small amount of oil to the pan and add the chopped chicken. Whilst the chicken is cooking add a some of the Cajun Spice. Doing this adds a nice flavour to the chicken and adds to the overall flavour of the finished dish. Remove from heat when cooked and place to one side. For best results place the chicken onto some kitchen towel to remove any residual moisture.

Wipe the frying pan clear of any residue from cooking the chicken and once again, get it nice and hot. Add a small amount of oil again and get the pan as hot as possible. Stir fry the prepared vegetables in the pan and add the Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce, the Cajun Spice and the honey. Depending on personal preference fry the vegetables to whatever bite you like. I like my vegetables to be slightly al dente as it makes a nice counterpoint to the chicken.


Add the pre-fried chicken to the pan of vegetables and stir the mixture thoroughly.


Place the mixture onto the tortilla wraps and serve.



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12/26/2009

This message is brought to you by Pepto Bismol - The perfect gift for boxing day.

So, Christmas has come and gone, Santa has hung up his work uniform and has contributed to the rising levels of unemployment amongst midgets and elves and Mrs Claus has resigned herself to the fact that he now has to put up with her fat cunt of a husband sitting on the couch for the next 335 days where he will drink heavily and rant at how it's all the fault of the Jews...

Which is tragic really, when you think about it. The poor bugger only wanted a wee part time job to get him out the house and thought that the idea of Christmas wouldn't last much longer than a couple of years. Little did he know that as soon as he'd got his feet under the table (a house was one of the perks of the job) of the cottage in Lapland the Boys from head office appeared and turned it all upside down...

Gone were the handmade wooden soldiers (for the boys) and the handmade wooden dolls (for the girls) and in came the production lines, health and safety, time and motion studies and unpaid overtime for people under the height of 4'6". From that day forward Santa was been stuck in a job he hates but can't quit because he'd lose the pension and the heath plan. (Mrs Claus has terrible arthritis due to the cold.)

Because of this Santa has became bitter and twisted.

In the early years of Christmas all the people of the earth got a gift upon the day of Jesus's birth and all was well in the world. Muslims, Jews, buddhists and non believers were treated equally and no one complained. This lasted for about 60 years. Then Santa turned nasty...

"Fuck these people!" Yelled Santa one day after a particularly long session on the sauce. "They'll wish they were never born when I'm done with Christmas!" He ranted. Thus began his downward spiral. Gone were the days of gifts for all faiths, never more were the naughty children treated the same as well behaved children and God help anyone who didn't leave cookies and milk for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer.

In the early days of his breakdown Santa was occasionally known to make stool on the floor of the house of anyone who dared not to leave full cream milk and chocolate chip cookies. The boys from the office soon stopped that though when they threatened to give Santa the "Heave-ho-ho-ho" (The boys from the office were humourless, soulless pricks and thought this was funny. It isn't. Only a simpleton [or a traffic warden] would think that was worth a laugh and not a groan.) for punching Rudolph the reindeer on the nose, causing an unreversable reddening of his nose...

And that is the story of Christmas that isn't much told these days. The church has tried to ban its teaching and there is a papal order to "Neutralize" anyone who tells it. I'll be fine though because the papacy and I have recently reached an agreement. They'll leave me alone if I stop sending my followers to punch the pope...


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12/08/2009

Journalist? Schmournalist...

From Robert K edoancap@gmail.com
To rossalandouglas@gmail.com
Date 28 November 2009 22:16
Subject ~ blog
mailed-by gmail.com
Signed by gmail.com


Hi,
Im a freelance reporter investigating various online scams, particularly relating to online classified sites. My question relates to your last blog post. Where did you see this add? I assume Gumtree and what section was this add posted in? Can you send me the full corosponance. I would be happy to plug your blog.

Thanks

Robert


From Ross Douglas rossalandouglas@gmail.com
To Robert K edoancap@gmail.com
Date 1 December 2009 16:07
Subject Re: blog
mailed-by gmail.com


Hey there Robert,

Can I call you Robbie? How about Rob? Bob maybe? Perhaps I can call you Boo Boo Kitty Fuck?

So, you're a freelance reporter are you? I guess you're mostly employed by such venerable news outlets as the Daily Sport and the Sun... You have as much of a grasp on punctuation and spelling as one of the barely educated monkeys that read those rags.

Fuck me dude, "I'm" has an apostrophe in it (It's a simple contraction, take two words, shove 'em together and add an apostrophe) and correspondence is not spelled that way either.

Anyhoo, I've not got time to sit here and teach you the skills you should have in order to further your career I've got bigger fish to fry, being as I am, in the middle of rewriting the basic rights and laws of society so that the average man gets a fair shout at life. Please don't worry though, you'll not be affected. You're way below average.

Mahalo Boo Boo Kitty Fuck,

Ross.

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11/19/2009

If you were to ask me why...

I signed up to write a fifty thousand word novel in less than eighteen days I'd tell you it was because I was confident of being able to do so. But honestly I'd be lying out my teeth. I did it because I was looking for something to keep my mind off cigarettes.
I've smoked for the last 20 years and recently gave up the demon weed because I had the horrible experience of seeing someone I care about lying in a hospital bed with pneumonia. She was breathing (if you can call it that) oxygen from a tube stuck up her nose and had a drip in her arm. The colour had gone from her face and there was an underlying look of fear in those pretty brown eyes of hers. So that was it for me. No more cigarettes. No more lighting up, no more inhaling smoke deep into my battle scarred lungs and no more looking cool.

I should prepare for the following days of sitting in front of the computer; I should outline a story; I should think of characters that add depth and give you the reader someone to care for; I should get a whiteboard and some highlighters and do a complicated time-line to help me with the plot; But I've not got the time to do that so, fuck that nonsense. I'm just going get get stuck in.

I mean, surely fifty thousand words can't be that difficult. Shit, Keroauc sat down and wrote “On the Road” in one sitting. Or is that just Urban Legend? Who knows. Wikipedia probably does but I've not got the time to look it up right now. Well, actually I do but if I am to ever finish this gig I must stay away from the time stealing distraction that is the internet.

I love the internet. Love it. Like nothing I've ever loved before. Where else can you find, not only, the accumulated knowledge of the world but also video of stuff like Two Girls One Cup and more porn than one man can reasonably look at in ten lifetimes? Nowhere.

But that's not getting anything approaching a novel done...

So, plot... Should I write a thriller in a Dan Brown vein? At least that way I can write pages and pages of utterly pointless descriptive narrative in order to pad it out and make it look wordy. Or should I write something in the TeenVampire/TeenWizard/TeenMonster genre in the hope that it'll take off like J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and I can get rich and spend buckets of money buying my own island somewhere.

Then again that's gonna take something approaching talent and I'm short on that right now.

I could do with a cigarette right about now. Sure it's not good for me but it helps get the creative juices flowing. Well, that's what I think anyhow. And who are you to tell me different? Huh? Who the fuck do you think you are? God? Ha! Fuck you! I spit in your eye and call you a big girls blouse...

I'm sorry, I've no idea where that came from. Maybe I should stop thinking about cigarettes and start concentrating on characters for this novel. I should have at least one male lead so I'll start with him...

He's a handsome rugged type. He's sporty, well educated and suave. He's of Italian parentage. He's dark haired with what women would call “Smouldering” eyes and good manners. He's probably named Fabio St-John Farthington, has perfect teeth, is tall, tanned and toned like a Grecian God and
he's getting on my nerves already. Fuck him. He's being killed off in the first chapter and I'm going to replace him with someone we normal people can associate with.

Alfie Stark ~ A Butchers apprentice from Chester. He's down to earth, swears in the company of the boys but never says the word “Cunt” in front of women; He goes to the football every Saturday and cheers on his local team but has never joined in on the whole “Football is more important that life” nonsense that many of his friends ascribe to. He's got a squint nose from when it was broken in an accident involving a bacon slicer. (The Bacon slicer subsequently moved away and patched things up with her husband.) He's what his friends would describe as a “Salt of the earth” type. He's a good guy in a world where values are no longer valued, where morals are considered immoral and where holding a door open for the wrong woman can bring accusations of chauvinism. In short, he's pretty well everything to everyone. Except the husband of a former bacon slicer. To him he's a fucking prick and should be strung up like so many pounds of whitepudding.

So, that's my male lead sorted out. Now I need a female lead...

Erin McFadyen ~ She's a projectionist in a local old style cinema. She lives in Chester now but was born in Nottingham and raised in Loughborough. She's travelled about a bit thanks to her dad being in the T.A and longs to go to Thailand for an extended holiday. She's socially awkward and just a little bit of a geek. She's red-haired, nothing spectacular to look at and feels out of place wherever she is. She's a film buff who rates the early work of Hitchcock as his best and thinks Quentin Tarantino is a big chinned fuck. She knows her way around a computer and has more friends online than she'll ever have in real life. She's had one boyfriend and one awkward lesbianistic fumble with a girl from Scunthorpe.

How's that for a female lead? Yeah, I thought so too. Now I need a setting. Looks like it's going to be Chester. Maybe I should look up some interesting points in Chester, for background. All I know about Chester is that it's got a zoo. At least I'm sure that there's a Zoo in Chester. Maybe I dreamed that... Nope... According to a tourist website I just looked up Chester indeed does have a Zoo. Not only that but it has “A wide variety of walking tours” and “Boasts the largest garden zoo in England and is the UK's number one wildlife attraction.” Well, fuck me, who would have thought Chester was so full of such wonderful ways to spend your time...

Maybe I need to rethink the location of my novel. Going by what the website points out as “places of interest” Chester seems to be a bit of a shithole. Perhaps I should make the location somewhere more exotic, somewhere where the sun shines more than one day a year and the populace is less miserable than a chronic depressive at a Morrisey concert.

Lyon ~ France. Home to many attractive people and places to visit. There are twenty museums in Lyon alone. Twenty! Good lord, that's a lot of museums. Chester has one. And it looks like somewhere the dead wouldn't even visit... Lyon also has a river running through it. It looks quite like somewhere I'd like to go for a weekend. It looks clean and the people look like they've read books with complicated words in it. Unlike Chester, which looks to all intents and purposes like no one there has ever read anything that didn't have pictures to help explain what was going on in the story. The people of Lyon have read Jean-Paul Satre, the people of Chester think Jean-Paul Satre designs jeans.

Of course if I move the setting to Lyon then the main characters are going to have to be adapted to fit the location. After all who's going to believe that those two people could in any way be French? The French are suave and sophisticated and those characters would be as out of place as someone with talent being on the X-Factor. I'm sure we'd all agree that's something that's never going to happen.

So, now that the location has changed I should alter the main characters stories to fit. Alfie is now Alfredo. The rest can stay the same. You don't like it? Tough. I'm the one writing this thing. Not you. And quite frankly if I don't keep writing I'm going to run out the door like a world champion sprinter straight to the local shop and buy a pack of cigarettes.

Next I need a basic plot. Should it be a love story? Or an adventure story? Maybe it could be a farce? The French like a good farce. Look at their history for gods sake! It's one catastrophe after another and they always manage to get through it with nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders, a “Ce la vie” and the casual lighting of another Gauloise... Christ I hate the French.

France is out and frankly Chester seems too bloody dull to set a story in so I'm going to have to rethink this whole thing and instead do what most writers do. Write about what I know. And therein lies a big problem. I know nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Well, that's not strictly true, I do know some things. They're just not that interesting. Not really.

So, having existed for less than an hour Alfredo and Erin are now consigned to the bin of characters that never were and I'm back to square one. I've not passed go, I've not collected $200 and I'm still 48,394 words short of finishing this thing. Maybe I've overstretched myself on this one. It's basically a long rambling screed that's on par with the worst writing ever committed to paper. Or pixels as the case may be.

Right! First things first, I need a coffee, and a cigarette... Fuck.

Anyway... Back to the writing. Or at least I'm trying to but there's three women having a conversation behind me, my sister and two of her pals, and they're doing the usual “we're-having-a-conversation-so-everyone-should-hear-us” thing and it's putting me off. What's the gig with women? How can they possibly have a conversation with four, five and sometimes six of them involved, all be talking at the same time and yet never lose the place any of them are at? If four guys were to try that their heads would explode like they were starring in a David Kronenburg film.

Then again, blokes can piss standing up. Who'd not like that as a skill?

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Just when I thought the perfect job had come along...

From ~ Leona Hynde admin@age-verify.info
To ~ rossalandouglas@gmail.com
Date ~ 19 November 2009 17:32
Subject Re: Reply to your ad: Writers needed, £272 Weekly Wage

Hi there,

Thanks for your interest in our online writing vacancy. As stated, we require people with a good sense of humour to review adult websites on the net. The position we have will be home-based and the wage is £350 per week, rising after 6 months. You will be required to write 12 100-word articles per week.

If you think you have what it takes to be part of a successful writing team, we require a little proof of your abilities and commitment to the job. We would like you to give a detailed 100 word test review of the members area at a new adult site we've personally selected (www.realdrunkgirls.info). You will need to sign up for a free account there to do so (make sure you cancel within 3 days though to avoid being charged)

It's new and we've already reviewed it. When we receive your review, we'll compare your thoughts to ours and it'll give us an insight into the kind of perspective you have. Be creative, there is no set house style.

Please submit this to us within 48 hours if you're still interested.

If not, thanks very much for your time

Janet Smith
Write 4 This Love Media



*************************




From ~ Ross Douglas
To ~ Leona Hynde admin@age-verify.info
Date 19 November 2009 18:20
Subject Re: Reply to your ad: Writers needed, £272 Weekly Wage


Aloha Ho,

I initially applied to this job thinking "What the fuck, you never know if you don't try" and really did think I'd be sent a standard reply saying that the company involved was not interested in hiring my services but would keep my details on file.

Then, imagine my surprise when I received your mail saying you were looking for reviewers for "Adult" websites...

"Jackpot!" I thought, getting paid to look at poon for two hours a day then bashing out 100 words in between bashing a few off of the wrist... Piece of piss for me. I'm a goddamn porn maniac. There's not a porn niche I've not plumbed into at some point in my time and I'm talking some seriously hardcore stuff. I'm not easily shocked and didn't even blink when someone showed me Two Girls One Cup because it's not all that bad really. Give me the hardest of hardcore to review and I'll spank out 100 words in between spanking one out of myself! 


(I have to state that I'm not into kiddy porn and would of course report that sort of filth to my local police department or priest if I thought I could blackmail the swine into giving me some cash...)

And then I read the rest of your mail and saw through the bullshit... You're not actually interested in hiring people to write reviews, you're looking for mug punters who're willing to put their credit card details into your system so you can sting them for membership to your "services". In short, this was nothing but a phishing scam. And that's just made me angry. And here's why...

I'm genuinely looking for work and would hate to think that fuckers like you are praying on people who are seeking employment instead of just making a decent website with quality porn. Trust me, there's fucking billions being made in the porn industry, BILLIONS dude! All you need to do is find some cock hungry whore that's willing to fuck for money on camera and a stunt cockswordsman (I'd like to apply for that gig if this mail doesn't send you over the edge) make a video or two and bung them on a website. Boom! Bob's your mothers brother...

Anyhoo Leona (If that's actually your name) I'll not berate you any longer cos I've got shit to do that doesn't involve telling you where you're going wrong.

Take care and please let me know about the stunt cock gig. I've not fucked anything that wasn't my hand or a watermelon with a hole in it for 9 (nine) years and can guarantee loads that would make Peter North look like a part time wanker.

Mahalo.



Ross Douglas.







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