Do you ever see or hear something and be so convinced it's on ething only to be told it's something else. Then the next time you repeat the experience, you are once again convinced it's the first thing you thought it was despite being told otherwise? No? Well I do. Here are some things I often get mixed up:

The Olsen twins
I reckon their own mother has difficulty telling them apart. It'd probably be easier to tell them apart if they stopped appearing in the same films and TV shows, I reckon the people who decide who appears in films just wanted one but just couldn't decide so they hired both! Or maybe their mum is really pushy and one of them (for arguments sake, Mary-Kate) is a lot more talented but the mum insists that she lets Ashley play actress as well.

Renee Zelwegger and Reese Witherspoon

This one might just be me, but I used to have such difficulty telling them apart. They're both blonde, actresses and have an R as their first initial and a late letter as their second initial, you can see why I was confused. Thankfully the success of Bridget Jones and Legally Blonde respectively has led top a dramatic fall in the number of Zelwegger/Witherspoon mix ups.

Akon and Kano
Oh dear lord! They're both awful and have names that are anagrams of each other, I reckon Kano could pretend he's Akon and get away with it. I think Akon did Lonely which was a cancer on the music scene but for some reason, incredibly popular. So some music talent scout probbly saw Kano, got confused and thought that Akon was unsigned and so snapped him up, only to be gutted at the outcome. Actually, a similar thing happened in football a while back, some Italian team wanted to sign John Barnes from Watford, but accidentally bought Luther Blisset, who wasn't quite as good.

 

One of them is friends with Justin Timberlake, one wears a plaster on his face, one of them released two albums on the same day (or something). I don't know which one did which, they're too alike! I've taken to describing them as Nusher. though I do know that it was Nelly who did 'Over and over' with Tim McGraw, because that was quite good.

 

Lemar came THIRD in Fame Academy (for those who don't know, Fame Academy is a poor mans Pop Idol, which is a poor mans X-Factor, which is just a shambles, so it really says something about Lemar that he came THIRD), Simon Webbe used to be in Blue and seems to think that wearing a suit jacket with nothing underneath is fashionable. Basically, they look alike, sing the same soul rubbish and both want to be Craig David.

 

Bizarrely I've been likened to both of these in the past, which is bizarre as I look absolutely nothing like them. Though they look exactly the same in my eyes.

Caramel and Toffee

I think toffee is caramel thats been in the sun for too long. But then I ate a Quality Street and it was hard caramel, Caramac bars are hard, but the inside of Mars Bars are soft. So confusing, the difference in taste is so negligble that the texture is the only thing to differentiate them and that seems to change all the time! To make things more confusing you only have to consider fudge, which tastes a bit different but it's the same colour and so has to be put in the same category.

Coldplay and a drowning Lemur
I don't get these mixed up as I've never had the misfortune of hearing a Lemur drown, I'm just specualting that it would sound as dismal as Britains number one band.

 

ntl: and a bunch of incompetent fools
See below

 

Before I start, I'd like to point a few things out about ntl: and then I'll go into why I personally hate them so much.

1) What is with that name? There's no capital letter and the semi colon at the end is just plain stupid, it looks like a child has come up with the name.

2) This is a company who thought it was a genius idea to sponsor both Celtic and Rangers football clubs despite the rivalry between them being possibly the most intense in the world. You see, when a company sponsors a team, sales go down amongst supporters of their main rivals, of course they go up amongst fans of the team itself and neutrals are exposed to the brand. But the fact that they effectively made almost every football fan in Scotland (and Ireland where Celtic are well folowed) wary of buying their product is just plain daft.

3) ntl: have a bit of a reputation for bad customer service, I found this out the other day when I read something about their proposed merger with Virgin, it was said that the only reason they were doing it was to borrow some of the excellent customer service from Virgin. There is even a website devoted to people with issues with ntl:, I think it's called nthell.

 

Now my 'beef' with ntl occured at university. They're pretty much the only broadband provider in Loughborough, so every year they get a load of students signing up. Things were fine in my first year, in my second year aside from the long delay from signing up and actually receiving a service, everything was fine as well. In my final year we again signed up, after being told there was a shortage of modems so they couldn't serve everyone. You'd have thought that they'd have enough products to go around, it's not as if all the students came back unannounced, they come back in late september every year, no one was suprised by this, except ntl: it seems. Anyway we had another huge wait for our modem, and then we had a problem. When the guy came round he told us we had an internal router system built in the walls of our house and so wouldn't need to buy a £45 router and also wouldn't have loads of cable in our house. When we got the modem we plugged it into the socket and . . . . . it didn't work, one 45 minute mobile phone call later (all on hold) and I was told that it wasn't ntl:s problem as the modem did work. I then called out a computer technician who told me there was no internal router system, this cost me £20, then of course I had to buy a router and cables, I was disgruntled to say the least.

Things didn't end there. At the end of my tenancy, I rang them to get the service disconnected, they set a date which was in early July. Fast forward to early december and I see that £35.49 has unexpectedly come out of my account, who could have taken it out? No prizes for guessing ntl:, turns out they'd still been taking money out of my account, 5 months after I cancelled the service. I phoned them up and was told that since there was no record of me cancelling the service they couldn't do anything. To which I replied 'Isn't it obvious that you wouldn't have a record of me cancelling it, if you had the record, you'd have cancelled it when I asked'. Clearly all record of my phone call has been lost or ignored. What is more worrying in this story is the fact that, despite the account being in my name, changes had been made to the account. Yes! When I had ntl: I had just broadband service, it cost £24.99. As you may recall, I was billed £35.49, it turns out my account now has a phone line. 'How has that happened?' I hear you ask. The truth is I really don't know as they should have asked a security question when someone wants to change my account (it seems obvious to me that the current occupants of my student house are using the account). Clearly this was not asked, unless the current occupants were very persistent and kept guessing my date of birth, hanging up when they got it wrong. Anyway ntl: owe me about £145, they do seem awfully reluctant to give it to me though.

Oh, not entirley ntl: related, but Charnwood Borough council are trying to charge me £60 council tax for a period of time when they KNOW I wasn't in the county, the £60 includes court costs, now I'm scatter brained sometimes, but I can assure you I haven't been to court recently.