London Lifer

2011-05-10T17:40:00.003Z

This has got to be the dumbest sack of shit ever . . . Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/movies/abraham-lincoln-vampire-hunter-rewrites-history.html

For the benefit of the terminally confused Abraham Lincoln was NOT a vampire hunter.

On the other hand only 4% of American's think that Vampuires are real. That seems a reasonlably low figure - about that number believe they've been personally abduncted by Aliens - and you know you're polling the same gene pool there.

On the other hand 17% of people still beleive Barack Obama was born outside the US . . . I guess there's no limits to what people will start believing if they want it enough.

Finally the Met is Brought to Book

2011-05-03T16:56:00.003Z

And some sort of Justice for Ian Tomlinson. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13268633. I say some sort of Justice because until the CPS actually brings charges against Pc Simon Harwood nothing's changed but some words.

Chances of that happening . . . well I wouldn't hold your breath.

Police - Ian Tomlinson

2010-07-22T10:34:00.004Z

I see that plod is getting away with it as usual

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10723274

There have been any number of recent cases where members of the public have been charged and convicted of murder where an assault that was not in itself that serious led to further complications and death.

Seemingly the rules that apply to members of the public don't apply to the groups of yobs roaming our streets calling themselves policemen. How much clearer does it have to be - the police are clearly shown attacking Mr Tomlinson unprovoked from behind and still nothing is done.

The police first lied and tried to cover their tracks and when caught out have just brazened it out and got away with it.

Why should citizens continue to have any respect for the police or co-operate with them in any way when their own standards of honesty & legality are seemingly non-existent?

The problem is that the Police have become completely balkanised in their little plod world. In their eyes the Police are not members of the public but somehow above the public - that seething mass of potential criminals. In their eyes the police should not have to be held to the same standard as the public, or, seemingly, any standard.

Paul Fucking Weller

2010-07-20T11:19:00.002Z

Long time no blog . . . a lot has happened since my last post. A lot. On the other hand I have a hangover so some things never change.

I see that Paul Weller has been shortlisted for a Mercury. Why????

What is it about Paul Weller. I look and all I can see is a short man who was briefly popular at the end of the 1970s. But somehow there's a certain sort of bloke (and trust me, they're ALL blokes) who just adore Paul Weller. This bloke is the kind of crashing bore who has a subscription to Q, Mojo & Empire and can be found lurking by the toilet door at parties sucking in his gut, drinking Real Ale & hitting on other people wives. Of course he'd prefer to be hitting on women 25 years his junior but naturally there aren't any of those at bloke's party.

Do not be deceived by his tales of seeing Siouxie et al in 1978. He worked then for Bromley Council then and still does - at least until they can think of a way of getting rid of him.

Seriously mate - just Fuck Off. And take Weller with you while you're at it. And if you can't manage that then for the love of God please stop nominating him for stuff. No-one cares.

The 'Modfather' my arse.

Long time

2008-04-26T17:21:00.001Z

for some reason I have felt no real urge to blog lately, but suddenly I do again . . . it seems to conincide with romantic failure. I have just batted an unprecedent 0 for 7.

Good going.

I can't believe

2007-08-15T16:32:00.001Z

that no-one ever reads this drivel. It's fucking hilarious.

Abbey National

2007-08-15T15:35:00.001Z

Are truly a joke.

I've been waiting for a new card to access my Current Account since the last one expired. Last month!

15 days late so far. It's just not acceptable. Every time I ring them some hapless gnome says they don't know where it is, what's going on, what colour the sky is, la la la, I'm not listening.

The latest I heard was that the reason for the backlog of cards was that their card manufacturing facility was flooded in July. Ah-huh. I'd be more disposed to give this much credence if they'd told me that when I first started hassling them - 2 weeks ago!

What is really annoying is that I have received not one letter, phone call or email from them explaining, or, heaven forfend, appologising for this massive inconvenience. If I hadn't spent several hours chasing them I'd still be completely in the dark.

OK, OK, it's not the end of the world, but I'm supposed to be going away next week and if I can't go because I'm still waiting on this card (which accesses salary and company payments) I'm going to be really pissed off.

Halo 3 - Footage

2007-08-15T12:49:00.000Z

I just saw this, and it may not be new to everyone, but it's new to me . . . and it's making me hot.

Mmmmmm Halo 3 . . . I suppose that a lot of people have never played Halo being an xbox only title, but trust me - you're missing more than a treat. Halo ROCKS!

London housing

2007-08-07T16:41:00.000Z

OK I cannot aford *anything*. And I'm not poor. So why is it that the majority of us spend our days hunched over our PCs we're all still expected ro turn up at the office.

Isn't it odd that durin the day all our little flats and houses stand empty and during the night all the offices are as silent as the grave. You'd be forgiving for thinking that in the current environment that sort of arrangement is as dumb as a bag of hammers.

Beard

2007-07-20T16:26:00.000Z

When my beard is at a certain length - ie longer than stubble but not yet at Rabbi - it has a really interesting consistency . . . sort of like wire wool, with clots in.

I love it.

Insomnia

2007-07-17T17:41:00.000Z

I'm just not sleeping . . . exhausted at work and then unable to sleep till 3, 3.30, 4, 4.30, whenever. It's not good.

I'm having, even by my standards, a crap time at the moment. Just when I thought I'd done them all I've been finding new ways to be blown off. And not in a good way.

Grrrrr.

In fact every thing's pretty shit right now . . . what can you do?

And my colleagues can spend hours and hours talking about their cats. It's driving me stark staring insane. Dear God people, GET A LIFE.

Cansei De Ser Sexy "Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex"

2007-07-11T16:57:00.000Z

This is just the *best* song. Terrible video though - looks like it was done as a school project. For the under 10s

Well I was wrong

2007-07-10T02:01:00.001Z

... I was!

so far

A new low

2007-07-09T17:17:00.001Z

I'm now being rejected by people I haven't even been out with yet. What next - total strangers are going to start ringing me up to tell me they don't want to meet me, not ever, no way, not no how.

Not in a million years. Not in a million, million years.

I guess it's all my own fault for assuming that just because people pluck your phone from your hands and put their number into it for you they may actually be considering that dinner offer.

Well that taught me didn't it?

Cigs

2007-07-05T16:59:00.000Z

Now been 5 days. I'd slay Harry Potter with a dirty hacksaw for a wheeze on a gasper.

Potter, and his little friends too.

Lift Rage

2007-07-05T14:53:00.000Z

My lift phobia is starting to reach our of control proportions. I work on the fourth floor and have now taken to walking up and down the stairs all the time. All well and good - won't do me any harm I know. The problem is that I'm not doing it because I want more exercise (merely a handy by product) but because I can't get into the lifts.

This isn't because I'm afraid of lifts. I am unconcerned that they may plummet to the ground. Being trapped in them fills me with no dread. Agrophobia - nahh.

But I seem to be developing lift rage. Whenever someone else gets in with me I resent them immediately, and the various things that they then do can only make their position worse. Pressing any floor in between where I want to go and the current one is bad. Traveling one or two floors only: very bad. Traveling one floor downwards: apoplexy. Inserting your hand in between closing lit doors to make them reopen so you can sneak in will earn you a violent and protected beating followed by being locked in a coffin full of broken glass, set on fire and thrown down a lift shaft.

It's really much less aggravation to just take the stairs.

Smoking Ban

2007-07-04T16:16:00.000Z

I haven't had a drink or a cigarette since Saturday, and I feel . . . awful.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not gasping for a fag, I'm not pining for a cheering pint of cockney fizzy keg. I'm just fucking bored. I mean under normal service I'd spend 2-4 evenings a week either down the pub or recovering from same. It sounds awful, but it's not. It's just the way of many 'traditional' Britons. So now you can't smoke in the boozer anymore, what the fuck are we supposed to do with ourselves? I don't even want to go to the pub anymore - a non smoking pub isn't really any sort of a pub at all, it's merely a designated alcohol consumption centre. And who likes the sound of that? Not I.

Maybe I should just give up imagining I'm allowed to do anything resembling what I actually want and sign up for a load of accountancy night courses, or become a prison visitor or counsel disadvantaged yoofs or whatever it is the New Labour Experiment is so clearly expecting us to start doing. Alternatively I might just start hanging out in the park with Ve Kids and the Deros and some cans. At least you can have a fucking fag there. So far.

Amazon porn

2007-06-25T15:34:00.000Z

There's a certain joy in having your dirty books delivered to you at work.

Just looking at that Amazon emblazoned hermetic cardboard package sitting innocently on the desk is making me laugh.

Wot larks eh?

Sweden in the 1970s

2007-06-22T13:18:00.000Z

I can't put my finger on what exactly is wrong with this video, but there's something deeply, deeply disturbing about it.

ABBA eh?

Music Freedom

2007-06-18T12:22:00.000Z

Here at work we have a lot of Macs users, myself included. The great thing about this is that you can see everyone else's iTunes as well as your own . . . thousands and thousands of hours. Of rubbish.

Seriously, you wouldn't believe some of the shit people have in their music collections. And not just shit, but really freaky combinations. I mean who has "The Best Christmas Album Ever", 'The Wamdue Project' and 'Violent Femmes'?

Freaks, that's who,

Unfortunately you can't tell who is who . . . so the real identity of 'Weeza's music for better thinkin' will remain forever a mystery.

---

Haven't been blogging much later - been busy. But just work stuff, nothing fun. And the project *still* isn't launched! Eeeesh.

Cyndi Lauper

2007-05-25T14:36:00.000Z

Cyndi, Cyndi, where are you now?

And speaking of Wwhere Are They Now I wonder where the 'German' strumpets from Ferris Bueller are right now?

L'Ange

2007-05-23T17:03:00.000Z

I went to see L'Ange at L'Insitut Francaise last night.

Imagine if you'd read a movier review that described a film as "A sexy South American romp with a lorra lorra laughs" and what you actually got to see was Aguirre Wrath of God. Well mu review said (amongst other things) was "Connected by the recurring image of floating, disarticulated staircases, Patrick Bokanowski's equally transfixing, mysterious, and impenetrable magnum opus, L'Ange may be characterized as a synesthetic composition - a series of aesthetically distinctive, self-encapsulated chamber pieces, each revealing quotidian, if fantastic, acts of obsessive compulsion and moribund ritual." And I still got burnt! It's not like I don't know what "synesthetic composition" or "moribund ritual" mean in film critic speak (its a bit shit) but MY GOD that was hard going.

I actually fell asleep for most of the second half which is actually a shame because it was only 70 minutes long and one rarely gets . . . experiences . . . quite like that. Both my companions confessed to trying to make themselves fall asleep or at the very least lose consciousness, but they were unable to overcome the adventurously discordant score which, for some reason, I found strangely soothing.

On the other hand, if you ever get the chance to see it I would recommend one of the following strategies.

1) Walk away very fast thinking about something else (recommended)
2) Go and see it with a cup of coffee and some headphones. Ideally sitting in a different auditorium altogether.

Actually that's not true. Should you ever have the chance *DO* go and see it because, truly, there's nothing like it. But don't expect "Weekend at Bernies". "Weekend at Casper Hauser's On Drugs", maybe. Put it this way - after it was over and we'd all had a quick drink we had a jolly good laugh at our earlier naivete - wondering if there were going to be subtitles or not. Ha ha ha. Hilarious!

On the other hand IMDB gives it 8/10 which just goes to show that there are either a) a lot of pretensious tossers out there or b) a lot of jokers trying to trick middle America into seeing something that would, quite literally, make their heads explode.

Foyles

2007-04-27T16:18:00.000Z

I was in Foyles buying some books yesterday. For those of you who don't know Foyles it's a very odd shop. Nothing like as odd as it used to be but still a bit weird. It's not the biggest bookshop in the world any more, in fact it's not even the biggest in London (in terms of square footage) but it has one critical advantage: in terms of number of titles stocked it kicks ass. I don't know if it carries more titles than any other book shop in the world, but it's up there. I certainly never found anywhere with more actual books in New York - it is, after all, one thing to have 100,000 square feet of store space but if 50,000 of that is taken up with Harry Potter, Dan Brown and Michael Crighton you may be shifting more units /square foot, but who cares? Kinokuniya in Times Square, Shinjuku could probably give it a run for it's money, but to be honest it's quite hard to tell really.

Anyway, I'm confident in saying that Foyles has probably the largest number of titles actually on it's shelves of any English Language bookshop in the world, which means that if you can't be bothered to wait for something to be delivered you probably have more chance of being able to pick it up there than anywhere else.

But back in the olden days Foyles was truly mad - like some sort of exercise in Victorian doublethink :-

Computers were banned - everything was cross indexed manually
The fiction was arranged by publisher (ie all the Penguins together followed by the Picadors etc etc). This meant that unless you knew the Publisher of the book you were looking for as well as the author you had to engage with Foyles entirely non-computerised cross reference system to find anything.
You couldn't just buy a book. Oh no. You had to find you book, take it to the assistant's desk who looked it up in some insane ledger wrote out a chit for it gave the whole lot back to you and then take the chit to a different floor queue up again and give the book, chit and money to the cashier who;d give you a receipt. If you were lucky you'd get the book too sometimes. One can only imagine this was some sort of primitive stock control procedure, but who knows
Everything above floor 2 was covered in dust
All the staff were insane - either rabidly obsessed with their own area of book specialisation or rabidly obsessed with hating the customers. Either way it didn't make it easy to pick up something to read on beach.

Actually the shop may now mostly look and operate more normally but both points 4 and 5 still have some validity - up at the top you could still be crushed to death by a stack of, ooh, lets say 'Non Metalic Minerals of the Trans Ural Massif (1934)' and no-one would notice for years. And actually now that regular books can be found and purchased in a normal manner its really good to have assistants that care about the subject matter and not just selling the lastes blockbuster. Nerds love Foyles.

So there I was in book nerd heaven. I'd made my selections and was sidling up to the counter to make my purchases when the specky geek suddenly ducked out of the way and was replaced by a chick. A hot chick. Well hot for Foyles anyway. So what's the problem? Let's just say I don't think I could have been buying a selection of books better designed to tell everyone within earshot "I am still a virgin" if I'd tried :- Build a computer from scratch, The Elfish Gene, Y The last Man: Unmanned

So:- a DIY manual for building a computer in your bedroom, a fantasy role playing memoir and a comic book. I might as well just have bought something called "Animal Cumshots: A Celebration!" and be done with it.

BBC Archive

2007-04-19T12:46:00.000Z

Sometimes blogging seems like a completely pointless exercise. How can adding my voice to the incessant babble stream of the internet help in any way? Is there anything I could possibly say about Virginia or Iraq or Gordon Brown that would in any way help?

Well no, not really.

So instead take a look at this instead. This is my project and it's gonna kick ass.

Knackered

2007-04-16T16:23:00.000Z

Can't be bothered to blog anything about the weekend other than to say it was a rock and roll rollercoaster of alcohol, bowling, dancing and, er, alcohol.

Didn't make it home at all on Friday night and got in at 6am on Sunday morning.

Felt a bit poy most of yesterday to be honest, but surprisingly OK today. Just a bit knackered. Seem to have quite a few UDIs as well . . .

Michael Lyons

2007-04-13T16:13:00.000Z

Exactly how stupid are we supposed to be? Does anyone seriously believe that Sir Michael Lyons has been appointed as anything other than a Treasury stooge. I mean, lets be objective here, what do we know?

1) He's some sort of incredibly dull local government cost cutter.

2) He's a member of the Labour Party

3) He's worked for Gordon Brown

4) He has absolutely no experience of broadcasting

Which. I'm afraid, equals Treasury Stooge. Gordon Brown hates the BBC as can be witnessed by his recent evil License Fee settlement. He basically sees the BBC as just another government department that needs to be bullied and brow beaten until it loses the will to live, and Lyons is, in his mind, the man to do it.

There is though, just one problem. Every government of whatever flavour thinks the BBC needs bringing into line and they're forever sending missionaries to knock it into shape. Trouble is, they always go native, and then you have an even bigger problem - your stooge is, sometimes unknown even to themselves, secretly working for the BBC, but still privy to governments' privy thoughts.

I mean Tony and the entire establishment attenpted to fuck the BBC over Hutton. He may have won on paper, but the court of History gives a different verdict. The government were lying and everyone knows it, whatever anyone else says.

Lyons has no chance. Media is a tricky world. You need big guns and he's got nuthin, Realistically appointing such a non entity can only have one of three outcomes : 1) He simply becomes a government catspaw, taking his orders direct from Gordy 2) He goes native and becomes a BBC evangelist 3) He becomes politically irrelevant as the real players sidestep him completely.

Time will tell, but I'm going for 1. With a side bet on 3.

Joan as Police Woman

2007-04-13T12:43:00.000Z

That was awesome

Joan describe Real Life (above) as a love song, and I suppose it is. Truly an amazing talent.

But will I never learn not to drink 4 pints of lager before worming my way into a packed auditorium . . .

Joan as Police Woman

2007-04-12T16:01:00.000Z

I'm going to see Joan Wasser this evening and to say I'm a bit excited is quite considerably understating matters.

To calm myself down I'm drinking a Green Goddess from Crussh. It's almost, but not quite, exactly like drinking the contents of the grass box off your lawn mower.

Is 'grass box' rude? It sounds rude.

Depressed

2007-04-09T23:26:00.000Z

It's depressing to achieve nothing. I spent the whole day in bed dozing, coughing, blowing my nose on a t-shirt and wondering if I'm ever going to feel well again.

Goddam viral infections. And I'm super depressed as well.

If I go to the gym tomorrow I'll feel better. And be very surprised.

Spain, Ear, Duffel Coat

2007-04-08T23:29:00.000Z

Well I didn't go to Spain like I was supposed to. Ear is still bad and I just can't seem to shake my cold. OK, maybe on their own they're not sufficient reasons to stay home. I guess some part of me just didn't want to go. For whatever reason.

So I've been having a quiet one over the holiday . . . watching some telly, avoiding my chores, went to the Park with Els today. Sat in the 'sun' all afternoon - and not even a hint of pink. S'pose it is only April . . .

BTW, Phil, if you're reading this, while I very much admire you're refusal to comply with the expectations of society I can't help thinking you must have looked a bit unusual skiing in a red duffel coat. LOL. Respect.

Google, YouTube

2007-04-04T17:38:00.000Z

Has anyone noticed the way that Youtube pages have suddenly started appearing in Google search results. Were they always there? Have they just somehow crept up the rankings? Mysteries within riddles . . .

At first I though Google might be pulling a fast one, but some research shows that if anything they're being more than fair. Lycos, Altavista and Yahoo all put the same YouTube page at No 2.

I am though reasonably certain that if you'd put "calling occupants" into Google or any other search engine a couple of months ago you wouldn't have seen youtube anywhere in th top 100 . . .

So what are we saying? That in about a year audio visual content has moved from nowhere to top of the tree . . . looks that way.

This is a very boring post isn't it?

And don't ask why I was looking for the flaming Carpenters in the first place, but there was a very good reason. Probably.

Drunk, deaf, Palestinian

2007-04-02T21:46:00.000Z

Boy oh boy did I get drunk on Saturday.

In fact I was so pissed I got the bus home. I got off somewhere about Highbury intending to walk home. But first I went to the shop to buy some matches and a Dr Pepper, and got talking, as you do, to some guy in a wheelchair. So after a bit we rolled out of the shop (him literally, me figuratively) and began one of those late night London street drunk conversations that begins with 'So how did you lose your legs' and goes down hill from there.

I've no idea what we were talking about but two of his friends turned up and they were a) The drunkest women I've seen in a long time b) About 45 c) Deaf. Really. Anyway one of them decided she was going to have 'Steve' (my new friend) and climbed into his wheelchair to engage in some serious tonsil hockey. I can really only describe her position as straddling his stumps, and the other one decided that she fancied a piece of me as well. I have to say I clearly have no spirit because I fled the scene rather than sticking around to see how it ended up. Last memory walking backwards down the Holloway Road finger signing "I'll call you later" while 'Steve' can still be plaintively heard begging me not to leave him with 'these crazy women'. He didn't stand a chance poor bastard.

Think about it - I could have had a four some with a couple of middle aged deaf ladies and a legless Palestinian. Why don't I ever take these oppotunities when they come up?

Can vaguely remember engaging a copper in conversation at some point after that so probably lucky I didn't end up in jail.

Next memory - Sunday afternoon.

Ack

Veronica Mars. Plague.

2007-03-30T22:28:00.000Z

It's the Cause Of All The Trouble's birthday tomorrow. I got her present ages ago - it's a hoody + 3/4 sleeve T screen printed with Veronica Mars crap. Or more specifically, Neptune High crap. But as I did the graphics myself it's a lot better than the junk you can buy online. She's a big VM fan.

I'd put up a picture but it's on my old mac and I can't be bothered to boot it up and reconnect everything.

I've been in bed for two days with some sort of lurgy. It's just a cold but it feels like flu - aching bones, headache, flem, snot, maudlin self pity. I'm such a weed - real people would have gone to work anyway and infeted their colleagues with disease, whether they liked it or not.

But anyway, I don't know whether I really want to go the shindig tomorrow, but having looked at all the options carrying on as normal seems the best bet. If I was still ill I could claim disease, but as I'm feeling a lot better even if everyone else believed me I'd know it was bullshit & I'd feel bad. Plus I could do with some fun.

My problem is that I always end up getting drunk and having a good time at these things - I can never maintain a proper demeanor of mournful scorn. The alternative version is that I get drunk, start having a go at people and make an utter ass of myself. Either way I never get to look like Dorothy Parker drowning her sorrows in gin and cigarettes, just some manic depressive nut case . . .

Haven't had a dream in a long time

2007-03-28T16:16:00.000Z

I was struck to the lyrics to Let Me Get What I Want

Haven't had a dream in a long time
See, the life I've had
Can make a good man bad

So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time

I know exactly what that means. After a while you just give up caring about things, caring about ever achieving happiness, you just go from day to day, one foot in front of another.

And then something happens which gives you hope again. Somehow a modicum of animation enters your life again, you begin to believe that there's some point to it all, that maybe, maybe, maybe, this time it's going to work out, that it won't end in disaster again. You start to let yourself have faith again.

And every time that happens it's just that little bit more painful when that faith is disabused once again. Presumably there's only so many times this can happen. There surely has to be some cut off point where the well finally runs dry and it's over and nothing can ever get you going again.

I honestly don't know whether I want that day to have arrived or not. All I know is that I didn't have a dream in a long time, and that would have been by far the more sensible place to stay.

And I can't believe I'm ill as well. As if there wasn't enough wrong with me already I've got some sort of chest infection. My whole insides are slowly migrating there way outside. Actually there's only 4 other things wrong with me - compression injury in my left foot, ear infection, depression. And chronic flatulence.

Kill me now.

Shanty town art sell out!

2007-03-28T13:11:00.000Z

I had the strangest dream about someone I don't really know last night.

I dreamt she'd moved to New York and was living with her boyfriend . . . so far so normal. But it wasn't really New York it was mystery Art Technology Metropolis, riddled with crime, overrun by the homeless. Her and her boyfriend built a beautiful shanty town like complex under a freeway out of scrap metal to live in.

Later, after they'd become famous for their wicked cool house, they moved out to live in a purpose built replica of the same place in an up market part of town that would give them better access to the ominously named 'Ants Causeway' that feeds the needs of the city's Super Citizens, who live in the sky above everyone else.

Now that's what I call a dream.

New Mac

2007-03-27T18:05:00.000Z

My brand spanking new G5 turned up today.

Talk about a thrill.

Actually I'm not sure it's that much of a thrill. I mean, once you've got used to the Mac it's not like getting a new one lets you do anything particularly new and exciting. On the other hand it certainly looks the bill and Twin Processors, 4 Cores, 2GB Ram . . . there's a core geekness there that demands respect.

Plus I don't have a crappy plasma but a proper 75Mhz gigantic monitor that takes two people to move. Actually I'm going to have to get a crappy plasma if I want to use the second screen facility, but there you go, beggars can't be choosers.

---

My friend's wife got him a Wii as a surprise present. Talk about cossetting . . .

Bastard

School sports

2007-03-23T15:08:00.000Z

Out of my office window, across the 6 lane elevated roadway, squeezed in between the prison and the tube line is a school playing field. Every afternoon I watch the little dots endlessly hoofing a ball from one end of the muddy windswept pitch to the other. Even a couple of years ago the sight would have made me shudder and settle into my seat with the warm glow of knowing that I'd never have to freeze my bollocks off doing that kind of nonsense and being expected to enjoy it at the same time again.

Now I just think - "Well, I'd rather be outdoors doing that then stuck in here with these morons".

In fact when I think of the effort I used to put into avoiding games at school it's a miracle I can still walk at all. On the other hand a youth spent sidling off for a crafty fag or lurking in the library 'reading' Stern or just ghosting into the background provides you with a much better set of life skills than rushing red faced and over excited onto a frozen patch of dog shit to exhort your peers to play up, play up and play the game for two hours.

More Healthy

2007-03-20T21:23:00.000Z

Well I feel better today. More like my old self. I guess 3 days without alcohol or cigarettes does that. Actually I'm dying for some of both, but am holding firm. Absolutely no getting pissed, at least for a while. Let Mr Liver and Mr Kidney have a little holiday. More healthy food tonight by the way. I'm keeping a log again. I'll bore you with it later.

All I need now is to get back to the gym :(

Quinoa. Again

2007-03-19T21:21:00.000Z

I've been cooking hippy food again. Today's recipe : - tomatoes, red onion, lemon, corgette, garlic, ginger & garlic. When that's cooked down add a chopped up piece of white fish (hake in my case) and the pre-cooked quinoa mixed in.

Looks vile doesn't it?

Clouds in the sky, Emotional, Vomit.

2007-03-19T15:25:00.000Z

Shot this from my office window a while back. Can't remember why it's taken me so long to post it . . . but there you go.

Friday was, predictably, a bit grim but I managed to put a very good face on it. Which begs the question - when you're really pissed off with someone is it better to maintain your poker face so they never know or let them what they so richly deserve . . . given that neither reaction will change reality one iota.

Spent the rest of the weekend getting unfeasibly, unbelieveably shit faced. Had 6/7 pinits of strong lager on Saturday afternoon watching the rubbish rugby and then went to Rowan's in Finsbury Park for some all night bowling. It all starts to get very hazy, probably somewhere around pint number 11 or 12 . . . can remember meeting some funny Ukranians called Egon & Igor, but after that it all starts to get a bit patchy. Think Els had to walk me home . . . also have the distinct impression that I might have done some crying on her shoulder . . . urk.

Have a very vague memory of falling arse over tit attempting to bowl at some point. You may be wondering why I didn't get chucked out, but honestly that sort of idiocy is pretty much expected at Rowan's. To be entirely frank it's not an enormously classy establishment ;-)

Suffice it to say that yesterday was just awful. Honestly about 6 o'clock I thought the game was up and death was finally going to claim me. And I didn't much care just either. The best thing that can be said about such a mind melting, gut strangling, paranoic, dizzying, sweating, shivering, hyperventilating, DTs-tastic hangover is that at least you have something to think about other than 'Les affaires du coeur' as our French brethren would say. Even if that something is working out how to swallow the piece of dry bread that's been stuck in your mouth for 5 minutes and not pass out at the same time.

Ack.

Icelandic Comic Genius

2007-03-16T15:36:00.000Z

Should You Be Laughing at This by Hugleikur Dagsson? Undoubtedly not - he needs to sort his head out, and clearly so do I. At one point I had to close the book and look out of the window trying to breath and curtail the hysterical sobs of incontinent laughter. These are a couple of the tamer ones - you have to buy the book to get, as Daisy Steiner would have said 'The Good Shit'.

Waxy Build Up™

2007-03-16T11:52:00.000Z

My ear is now so completely bunged up I'm completely deaf. Why this happens I don't know but my left ear has been giving me gyp in one form or another since I was a teenager. Anyway, it's very irritating. On the plus side the Tube is a strangely calm and surreal place when you can't really hear anything. As a general rule announcements on the tube are incessant and delivered via a staccato and incredibly loud PA system on trains, on platforms, in the station by drivers, platform staff, control room staff and pre-recorded announcement. The instructions and advice contained therein is frequently contradictory, and it generally makes tube travel fairly testing. If however the have Waxy Build Up™ like me the whole palaver is reduced to some sort of background mumble "A wubber wubber a wub wub a wub wubwub in wub directions"

But it doesn't really make up for the inconvenience of having to have the telly on max volume like some deranged septagenarian and of the washing machine is on as well I can't hear what my flatmates are saying at all. On the plus side it means I can ignore people with impunity at work ;-)

And the other problem are the ear drops I'm taking to try and get rid of the stuff. They're incredibly smelly so not only does it make your ear smell or Cerumol, (who goes around smelling ears) but pretty soon you start to smell of Cerumol as well, and of course due to the whole interconnectedness of the ENT network, pretty soon everything starts to taste of Cerumol. Which is not good.

Tasty!

Mimi's frozen fucking hand . . .

2007-03-14T19:08:00.000Z

I'm going to the ENO on Friday to see La Bohème of all things. Now normally I could cope with that without breaking a sweat - La Boheme may be a bucket of sick (with added sugar) but it's harmless and it's still The Opera, so always a good night out, even if it's not the ROH, which, being a crashing snob I much prefer. Excepting Tristan & Isolde of course which is shit.

Only problem is that You Know Who is going to be there as well. First time I'll have seen her since the Skiing incident. It won't be that uncomfortable because, frankly, there's not really much opportunity for interaction at the opera - G&T before kickoff, glass of filthy muck and a gasper at half time, quick pint after the final whistle. But it's going to upset me all the same.

Goddammit!

Why do I get myself into these ridiculous messes?

Quinoa

2007-03-14T13:58:00.000Z

I've finally found a way of preparing Quinoa that doesn't make me want to hurl. This is important because I've been gazing at boxes of the stuff for eons and have finally decided that I just have to get on with it and eat the stuff. It is, after all, one of God's Wonderfoods.

Quinoa Chicken Pilaf

1 Lemon
3 Red Onions
1 Red Pepper
5-6 Cloves Garlic
Chicken Pieces
1 Beefsteak Tomato
Chile
Olive Oil
Mustard Seed
Cardomum
Quinoa

Cut a lemon into quarters and squeeze juice into a foil bag. Add the leftover lemon pieces and 3-4 cloves of crushed garlic and a roughly chopped red onion. Score the chicken pieces and add to the bag sealing carefully. Steam in the oven until cooked. The time for this will vary depending on the size and quantity of the chicken pieces used ~ 30-60 minutes

Prepare a finely diced ratatouille of 2 red onions, 2 cloves garlic, 1 red pepper, 1/2 a chile (to taste), 6-12 green olives (to taste) & beefsteak tomato. Season with salt & pepper, black mustard seed & cardomum.

Prepare Quinoa in your usual way.

When cooked, shred the chicken. Combine with the ratatouille, cooked quinoa and left over onion pieces if desired. Season.

Something Tragic

2007-03-12T18:50:00.000Z

I have 1 friend on myspace. And it's Tom Anderson.

Everyone has Tom as a friend. Tom has 162 Million friends and that makes me a big loser.

Actually I think it's kind of a weird picture to post if gazillions of teenagers and geeks are going to be looking at it. I mean what is he saying here with that enormous grin "Hi Guys - you don't know it but actually I'm naked from the waist down and sitting in a huge tub of papier mache made from the all the leftover $ bills I couldn't squeeze into my bank account"? And why is he rather coyly turning away . . . has he just written the word 'knickers' on that whiteboard behind him?

Maybe he's written "RM SUX DIX"?

Heh

Do we suppose that every morning Tom gets a long list of all people who deleted him from their friends list and then sends them wicked flame mail, gives their email address out to every spammer he can find and finally organises a denial of service attack on their blog?

I want to delete Tom so my homepage can be truly tragic . . . but now I'm scared . . . maybe he really does get a list and picks one person at random to consign to interweb hades. That's what I'd do.

He'll never know . . . or will he?

Damn you Tom!

Skiing

2007-03-11T02:11:00.000Z

As you can tell my skiing trip wasn't quite the garden of eden I was hoping for, but at least the skiing was good, and, by and large, a cool bunch of people. You can see the pics here

But in the meantime :-

Artistic, like

Pan, looking about at his coolest. Tragic, I know.

The cause of all the trouble . . .

Mountains : very dramatic

The excitement of comedy food

Ugh

2007-03-10T18:04:00.001Z

I'm never drinking again . . . until this evening I guess ;-)

Boring boring boring

2007-03-09T16:37:00.001Z

So anyway, here I am on Friday afternoon in work and it's *SO* boring. I don't just mean a bit boring, but the proper match sticks in eyes, itchy feet, horror boring.

This is because I don't have anything to do really, I finished a work stream yesterday and at this stage of the project that's pretty much all there is - slogging through the grunt work - and there's no way I'm starting a new one. It's boring, but tricky, a lot of words and numbers to be constantly sifted and pored over. Dullsville.

A couple of colleagues have sloped off already (it's half 4) but as I'm going for drinks at 7 that option is not available. Normally I'd just go shopping but I'm trying to save money, and also feeling rather disgusted with the amount of crap I seem able to buy . . . if you look through your Amazon history and don't even recognise half the things it's not a good sign.

Anyway this post is as boring as I am right this second, so I'll leave it there.

Yawnsville

On a more interesting note, every single person I've spoken to guessed immediately who the person I've got the problem with was.

My question is : If it's that obvious to everyone else, why isn't it to her??

Change is good

2007-03-08T23:37:00.000Z

Something has to give. Can't go on like this.

And an outward sign of this is to change how my blog looks, to remind me.

Something has to change. And how.

Maudlin

2007-03-06T17:55:00.000Z

I've spent the whole afternoon listening to this :-

Sentimental wallowing much! But it's just wishful thinking - am not going to be anyone's cigarette. Well at least not the one I want to be smoked by. Analogy getting a bit strained here.

And then I started listening to Local Hero by Mark Knophler, God help me . . .

Fucking Mess

2007-03-06T14:25:00.000Z

Long time, no post! I've been busy.

Well not so much busy as occupied. And on holiday. have done 2 skiing trips in 6 weeks. Not bad going and am now official Ski God. Actually not.

My Friend Who May Not be Named is still way better. But I don't want to talk about her. Suffice it to say that between the two of us we've managed to turn our friendship into a roiling train wreck which has left both of us battered and bruised.

Well it's left me battered and bruised. She has the interior monologue of a hermit crab, so probably feels just peachy.

It's a teapot full of lost opportunities and regret any way you look at it. Actually it's been a mess for ages except now the mess is articulated and can't be fixed. Well I can't fix it on my own anyway . . .

Ugh

2007-01-03T13:20:00.000Z

Wii

I want one. I've enjoyed the ole 360 but I totally get what Nintendo are saying - the whole thing is becoming much too hard core and, not to put too fine a point on it, expensive. For the amount I spent on the XBOX 360 console and the various games I could (almost) have had an entry level mac book. And that's just nuts.

Plus I have to admit that beyond the fps & adventure game genre (Prey, Gears of War, Tomb Raider) and the odd driving game (PGR) the whole game thing is starting to leave me a bit cold - there's just no way I'd step up to the PS3 just for more of the same. Re-invening the whole user interface thing sounds fantastic - just what I need to re-invigorate my inner game geek. And it's Ninetendo so everything's going to be just that little bit quirky. I used to love Mario Karts. And Zelda, even though I was always a bit shite at it. Having said that I also loved Final Fantasy VII on the PS1, but somehow I don't really feel the urge to return there . . . maybe it's the online bit - never really got into WoW enough to justify the cost. Maybe I should return.

I have a feeling that after the hard core game kids have slaked their shopping thirst the Wii is going to kick the PS3 from here to upside your head and back again, at least in terms of return on ¥ invested even if not in total figures. it just seems like really good timing - forget the $$$ processor arms race and get back to having fun. And let's face it - at half the cost but double the cool it's going to be everyone's platform du choix. IMHO.

2007-01-02T17:25:00.000Z

Another year closer to the grave

All things being equal and ignoring such possibilities as being run over by a bus on the way home here are 10 things that :-

A) I'll definitely do this year

1 Get falling down drunk
2 Feel guilty about not ringing my parents
3 Eat a dinner costing over £100
4 Look at internet porn
5 Fantasize about having a job that requires walking through snowy forests at dusk instead of sitting at a desk slowly irradiating myself
6 Have a conversation with my flatmate on the topic of Donna vs Jackie
7 Visualize jumping into the void at work and have to force myself to step away from the edge to get rid of the sudden compulsion
8 Fall over skiing
9 Get turned down
10 My FUCKING TAX RETURN!!!!!

2) I might do this year

1 Confess all to the one I love . . .
2 Seek counseling
3 Buy a flat
4 Get a new job
5 Start learning Japanese
6 Visit Argentina
7 Write some slash fiction
8 Go to the gym
9 Sleep with someone because I'm drunk
10 Create a shitty piece of modern sculpture from broken electrical appliances

3) I definitely won't do this year

1 Shop at Iceland
2 Clean up my act
3 Vote Conservative
4 See Tony Blair & New Labour get what they so richly deserve
5 Ditto George W Bush & the GOP
6 Sort out the rodent problem once and for all
7 Write a scientific paper
8 Climb a mountain in Antarctica
9 Believe that my boss knows better than I do about anything
10 Make any sense of any of it.

2007-01-02T13:22:00.000Z

New Year Exhaustion

My New Years dinner was, I think, a bit excessive. I certainly didn't want to eat much of it, but that's fairly common. I was basically completely knackered the whole evening, and kept wondering how long people were going to stay for.

it's a shame because normally there's nothing I like more than staying up till 5am setting the world to rights. No one else was really up for it either, except Jules and she really had to take The Riggmeister General home who was a bit pissed ;-)

At least someone was.

I basically spent the whole day running around shopping and cleaning and then spent the whole evening slaving over the stove. But the end result was fairly impressive.

That horror menu in full :-

Hors D'Oeuvres
(marinated artichokes & olives)
-
Oysters
-
Fruits de Mare (Lobster, Alaskan King Crab, Giant Prawns)
-
Roast Lamb stuffed with Crab with a White Wine Gravy
Jerusalem Artichokes with Scallops & Razor Clams
Lettuce & Watercress Salad
-
Tarte Abricot with Fresh Fruit
(Apple, Nectarine, Cherries & Miniature Tangerines)
-
Cheese & Coffee

2006-12-22T14:54:00.000Z

Irrelevance

Thw world's going to hell. The icecaps are melting, animals are going extinct, we've eaten pracically every fish in the sea, Iraq's in freeform meltdown (still), serial murderers are wandering the streets, my project is days away from a terminal crash and burn, it's nearly Christmas and I still have a ton of shopping to do.

But does any of that concern me? Not really, no. Instead the question that is perplexing me is this : Why is it that when you heat up some pasta in the microwave the bowl may be the same temperature as a Saturn V exhasust cone but the filthy tagliotelinni (or whatever) is still completely icy. It doesn't make any sense . . . microwaves are supposed to heat water, not porcelain.

I'm confused.

2006-12-01T15:55:00.000Z

Music

This is just the best, best, best ever internet jukebox. It kicks last fm & pandora into the proverbial cocked hat. A Fookin' cocked hat.

I think it's French . . .

2006-11-30T18:05:00.000Z

Chrsty Moore

I went to see Christy Moore the other week, and can safely say it was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. His voice is just amazing, and Declan Sinnott's guitar playing is nothing short of miraculous. This is one of his jollier ones :-

2006-11-30T15:56:00.000Z

Christmas

I just realised that Christmas is coming up. Again. Perosonally I'd be perfectly happy to live under the White Witch in Narnia - always winter and never Christmas.

I'm not absolutely certain why I dislike Christmas so much. I quite like presents, I don't hate carols, I'm not even that fussed by the rampant commercialism. I think it's more to do the whole thing reminding me that another year has passed and I have still achieved nothing, and as year after year passes I'm somehow stuck, stalled on the runway of life.

How did this happen - it certainly wasn't in the plan. And I'm not even that unhappy most of the time - shuffling along alone - you get used to it. Even to like it. I guess it's the Christmas, family, totting up what you stand for thing. I've go no partner, no kids, no permanent job. I don't even have a mortgage. You could be mistaken for thinking that makes me some sort of wild eyed desperado marching to the beat of a different drum. It doesn't, it makes me a loser.

Happy Holidays, Kids!

2006-11-15T16:52:00.000Z

GOD! People who get in the lift to go one floor! The stairs are RIGHT THERE assholes. And it's not like you couln't stand to lose a bit of weight either.

And on that note I had a bean salad and two apples for lunch today. But that was to make up for last night's lager & nachos incident. And now I'm eating a ham and cheese panini. With Salad.

I'm feeling angry today, but not as angry as this morning. I was livid then. And I don't really know what about either . . . weird.

2006-11-10T18:17:00.000Z

I decided that I needed to get a PC at home. I don't have one, and despite the fact that the mac is clearly superior you just can't get everything for it. Anyway, a quick root around online and I was straight back to Mac. PC land : So many models, specs, bullshit, and dammit they're UGLY.

I'm gonna stick with my Mac purity and just learn to live with the lack of software. Since I exchanged my PC at work for a Mac as well I've been living in a Gates free world, and it's nice!

Never gonna give you up, never gonna say goodbye . . . what was I thinking??

2006-11-10T13:56:00.000Z

I'm starting to wonder just how relevant this whole 'internet' thing is to the world in general. I mean the problem is that the demographic make up of the majority of net users, and in particular prolific users and early adopters (who for want of a better word I'll call the 2.kids) is so off whack as to be virtually meaningless. Surely a case can be made that the internet is massively amplifying the voices and opinions of a bunch of politically and socially infantile geeks.

Of course I could count myself amongst their number, but chew on this for a moment :

Number of videos on youtube matching "Nelson Mandela" : 115

Number of videos on youtube matching "Ann Coulter" : 375

But let's keep this in perspective. How many for Madonna? 13,491.

2006-11-01T17:40:00.000Z

Is this what it is to get old? Follow the sequence :- 1) Eat too many lentils for lunch 2) Suffer indegestion all afternoon 3) Go to Tesco Metro to buy some rennies to asuage said indigestion 4) Queue up 5) Fumble in pocket looking for change 6) Discover packet of rennies in pocket 7) Remember you bought some at lunchtime 8) Repalce second packet. 9) Creep from store wondering if they're going to accuse you of shoplifting the original packet.

Like, DUHHH.

On the plus side my back is a lot better today!

2006-11-01T14:12:00.000Z

Things that don't mix no 1,462 : lentils & ginger.

Ack!

2006-10-26T13:13:00.000Z

Today for my lunch I'm having a chargrilled chicken pasta salad from Tesco (390kc, 16g fat) and I can safely say it's one of the vilest things ever. Bland, soggy, badly seasoned. ACK.

On avergae it takes 8 months to develop a new ekiben. How long did Tesco spend on their chicken 'salad'? It wasn't 8 months was it?

2006-10-23T17:56:00.000Z

Went to see Metamorphosis at the Lyric on Saturday, and can say that it was astonishingly good. Mesmerising. Plus at only an hour and a half with no interval you're out of there by ten past nine and have time for a proper dinner / trip to the pub. Or in our case both.

However, and I can't say that the Lyric seats were to blame but they can't have helped, I know have the most excruciating lower back pain - shooting pains down the legs, sudden stabbing pains etc etc.

Of course could also be related to the horse incident a few months ago as well . . . or all that dancing I did last weekend . . .hard to say . . . I'm am clearly a bit of a cripple though. Ho hum.

2006-10-16T17:06:00.000Z

This made me laugh :-

2006-10-16T12:30:00.000Z

This morning I was so hungry I was actually in pain on the tube and had to have a double bowl of muesli when I got to work. Fair enuf but not when you consider what I ate yesterday :-

Breakfast : n/a
Lunch : Prawn Jambalaya with rice, 2 Apples
Snack : 1/2 packet pork scratchings
Dinner : Roast chicken with roast potatoes, gravy, garlic bread, green salad, baked chocolate pudding
Supper : Tin of sardines, bowl 3 bean soup, 2 apples.

It's disgusting isn't it? The dinner etc was cooked by my friend Ana. I'm not a bad cook but it's quite effortful and by the numbers. It's the opposite of natural. Still though, the results are not too shabby. Ana's cooking is entirely relaxed, casual, almost lazy in appearance and seems to generate no washing up. The results : absolutely sublime. She just understands it at some deeper more intrinsic level than me - it's the difference between Salieri and Mozzer. By the standards of the day they were both fantastic, but in comparison to each other one was a genius and the other a lumpen fingered musical hod carrier.

On the other hand I can make a Hollandaise sauce and she can't so there. BTW there's a lot of guff talked about Hollandaise sauce - it's not that hard, you just need to pay attention.

2006-10-13T16:00:00.000Z

Stupid Amazon

What can I have possibly done to deserve this as a landing page :-

Are they mocking me?

2006-09-07T12:54:00.000Z

This is a horrible story. Ugh. Imagine. Finally getting rid of fuck face Tone to be replaced by . . . shudder . . . I can hardly type the words . . . J O H N . . . . R E I D . . . .

ARRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

Hopefully the Guardian just wrote this to give us all a good scare and to make sure it didn't happen by accident in some way. Still - breaking out in a cold sweat here.

2006-09-07T12:40:00.000Z

The other night I dreamt I was standing on a bridge which was then washed away in a flood and me with it.

You don't have to be brain of britain to know what that's not a good dream. I interpret it as a 'lack of control' dream: I fear that outside events - aging, employment, illness control my life more than I do.

On the other hand I also dreamt that Jack Black came round, so it just goes to show you can't trust your dreams.

I don't even like Jack Black. Why would he come round?

But moving on, it looks like my impassioned ranting has done some good and TB has finally fallen on his sword (a bit). An idiot to the end I love the way he's protesting he'll last until May. Not one chance in a billion. I give him 2 months tops.

2006-09-04T11:47:00.000Z

Well that was a rubbish weekend. Spent the whole thing in bed illing. Really freaky weird dreams as well. On the plus side managed to resist indulging in excessive comfort eatng / drinking, though quite what the point is, I don't know.

I personally can't see any difference if I've spent a week eating bacon baguettes, cheese strings and crispy duck than if I've spent it eating lentils, chick peas and green leaves. Ho hum.

Lunch today = lentils with artichokes & spicy sausage. Yes, I know, but I'm prepared. I have a cork. And anyway, this'll benothing compared to tomorrow. I have 500g of yellow split peas soaking at home which I'm going to cook with squid in it's own ink and maybe some ham . . . mmmmm . . . by tomorrow you'll be able to run a small camper van off me.

2006-08-31T18:41:00.000Z

So Tony comes back froom wherever the fuck he's been hiding out and are the first words out of his mouth "I'm really sorry about Iraq, and I'll be pissing off now Gordon"? Indeed they were not. Quelle surprise. Instead we're told that Tony is looking at new ways of telling even more people how to live their lives : Blair to tackle 'menace' children

This is really just taking the cat's flipping biscuit. Iraq is tipping into civil war, Lebanon is a ruin, the Middle East is in turmoil, The Arctic is about to break off in one piece and Tony thinks he can distract us with this shit.

"His aides say people are more interested in problems like anti-social behaviour than in talk about when the prime minister will quit."

That is just pathetic. I mean really. We're totally used to Tony lying his fucking face off but seriously ffs! how stupid do you think we are? Tony, take a tip from me and just fuck off. The only thing people are interested in is when you're finally going to get lost and we can start cleaning up the colossal carpet of turds you and your bum chum Goerge W have spent the last 9 years expelling onto anyone unlucky enough to pop up on your radar. You're done mate.

And as for your policies outlasting you? Dream on.

The only thing that'll outlast you is the melt down in Iraq and the intense desire of a large number of people all around the world to blow us all up. Oh, yeah, and the ASBO. Actually I don't have anything against ABSOs per se, if only there was some evidence that they were in any way effective . . . still, time will tell, though clearly our great leader doesn't think they're working.

But seriously, Tone, who the fuck do you think is going to bing "some sense of discipline and responsibility" to these horrible kids you're so freaked out about? Social services, GPs, The Police? Who? Who? Or are you going to create a whole new department, possibly employing all those civil servants soon to be released from their travails at the Child Support Agency : The Department of Eugenic Correction (DEC)? Yeah, that sounds about your speed, you munter.

In fact, why not combine ASBOs and The DEC - go down to the park and round up all the kids wearing hoodies and gobbing at pensioners and have them spayed. Alternatively I'd be quite satisfied if you could manage a few more guards on the trains at night, get the police to actually do their jobs, and stop people from running me over with their flipping bikes on the pavement - your choice!

2006-08-25T13:21:00.000Z

Wise words from the Donnas :-

You're a zero on the rock-o-meter,
You wanna get hot? go turn on a heater.

Haven't heard that for a while - heard it on Pandora. Which amazingly for a recomendation engine really seems to work. Still have some way to go before they're up with 6Music tho.

And speaking of hot in the last 16 hours I've eaten well over a litre of lentils and broad beans. Trust me - it's getting hot in here.

2006-08-24T17:08:00.000Z

Yeah, Fuck You Pluto! You fucking loser. I can't believe you've been hanging around the solar system all this time passing yourself off as a real planet. You are, frankly, no better than some geezer who buys a dog just so he has an excuse to take it for walks and hang around at the recreation ground looking for schoolgirls playing footie.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

2006-08-24T16:49:00.000Z

Funny, funny, guys . . . . .

I hate tofu. I hate it in all it's forms. And apparently it's supposed to be quite bad for you. Yup tofu is now bad for you. Official. But let's face it - what isn't? Actully I quite like miso soup.

I'm still not going to go ut and buy a fucking hummer though. All the same, as they're a lot cheaper than I'd assumed I could afford one should I wish to. So if I was a dick brained panty-wad this ad may well have worked. Unfortunately for the Hummer people all the DBPWs (Dick Brained Panty Wads) already own hummers and I fear it's going to take more than a 30 second slot on Geraldo to convert a tofu zealot into Dick fucking Cheney.

2006-08-24T16:19:00.000Z

Went to see Miami Vice last night . . . better late than never. Quite enjoyed it but very disappointed that there wasn't a scene where a cigarette boat takes off from a boat ramp over a causeway, is sprayed with automatic weapons fire (preferably from an M60 mounted on the back of a hot pink Subaru) and crashes into an 18-wheeler before exploding in a giant fireball with shrapnel flying in all directions and the camera doing a matrix style 180 to Gong Li jumping off the back of a pin-wheeling jet bike simply to kick Crockett in the nuts so hard his head turns inside out.

Now that's a scene I'd pay to see. That's the problem with these blockbusters - no imagination.

What do we think? White Goodman / Sonny Crockett - same dude?

I can't believe he kept that moustache on all the way through the movie. I thought it was some sort of comedy 'disguise' in the opening scenes . . . but no. WOW!

2006-08-23T13:15:00.000Z

So I got back from Edinburgh and somehow I survived yet again. Saw a whole bunch of shows some of which were excellent (Leveland) some which were pretty good (Richard Herring) and some of which were frankly a bit poy (Lucy porter). Interestingly my opinions are pretty much the reverse of most critics, but what can you say? They're wrong and I'm right, mostly because I am unaffected by the vagaries of fashion. Hence Lucy Porter is suddenly a 'big noise' and hence 'great' even though her show is in fact a bit shit. Oh well - it'll all even out in the end. Was good to see that although levelland has had pretty bad reviews it didn't seem to have dented their box office one iota. Still that's critics for you - they know nothing, and they know it.

This particular holiday, however, was especially enlivened by my friend The Fat Doctor getting drunker than you'd have thought it would be possible to be and still live. Even Andrew Maxwell spotted it. From his lofty position on stage he peered into the late night audience and pointing at the good Doctor intoned "That's the drunkest man I've ever seen". And he wasn't wrong. During the hour long battle it took to get the fucker home we were laughed at by cab drivers who thought it was hilarious we'd even flag them down with this monster on our hands, avoided by the police (you could see their 1000 yard stare coming on as soon as we got within range) and even abandoned by the Scottish street drunks. Yes. While The Fat Man was holding on to a bus stop like grim death (why? - who knows) and refusing to move some ancient alcoholic street bum wandered up, started chastising me for me gentle attempts to get our mutual friend home (slapping him round the head, kicking him in the shins and attempting to uncurl his fat sausage like fingers from the concrete pillars) and began to engage in some sort of drunk-to-drunk bonding. It took him about 45 seconds to realise that The Good Doctor was not in fact a jolly inebriate who'd had one too many but was in fact a dangerously intoxicated psychonaut who could quite possibly kill you without even noticing due to his massive porcine strength and complete loss of all social imperatives. So he left us to it. Bastard.

I don't have anything against The Good Doctor but I've yet again been forcibly reminded of the one rule many of us now live by. never ever go on holiday with the fucker. And if you should happen to be out with him and he ties one on, just run away and leave the muggers/plod/hypothermai to deal with the situation. Actually the last one isn't really much of a danger. The fucker could fall asleep at the South Pole and melt a whole down to the centre of the earth before the cold would get through his blubber layer.

2006-08-16T13:32:00.000Z

I'm very fond of the Orange, Carrot & Lemon variety of these Qu4ttro Satgioni drinks. The only thing is it tastes almost indistinguishable from the orang squash we used to get at my Grandad's circa 1978, so £1.80 / 500ml bottle does seem to be pusing it a bit . . .

2006-08-03T17:35:00.000Z

I can't get Chinese Disco by Shonen Knife out of my head. I've forgotten how much I love these guys.

And if I have to suffer it, so do you :-

cornwall sunset

2006-07-26T22:33:00.000Z

cornwall sunset

Was in cornwall a couple of weeks ago. Pissed it down and camping. And gotta stop taking pics of sunsets - so cheesy.

2006-07-25T16:43:00.000Z

last night I dreamt that I was a woman. Quite a weird dream, but it got weirder. In my dream my consciousness was split in between two different women - one who was attempting to seduce *another* woman, and one who wasn't. Altogether very strange. In the end the non seducer was shocked by the actions of the other and I woke up just when things were getting interesting. Tchuh

I think though that one of the things I liked about it the most (apart from being fairly sexy) was that in the dream I was not only 2 beautiful women I was also clearly quite rich and had one of those lovely crisp white linen and beige wood bedrooms. Well at least half of me did. One of me was upstairs putting the moves on and the other of me was down in the kitchen making a cup of cocoa.

Interesting that, in the dream world at least, consciousness doesn't seem to have any difficulty being split into different parts. Actually I've noticed this a lot - in the dream state we're able to operate quite happily with different modes of consciousness, though this seems to fade within 30 seconds or a minute of waking up. Sometime the memory of that altered consciousness does linger on though as in the above example.

I suppose its not actually that odd when you think about it. We do contrary things all the time after all, for example making sure we deliberately get found out for our misdeeds or being unable to make up our minds about something or believing two self evidently contradictory things at the same time. I guess it sort of indicates that our brains aren't organized like some sort of centralised command with the id sitting at the top of the tree dishing out the orders, but more like a de-centralised commune where different parts contribute different bits which combine to create our 'consciousness'. Or something like that.

It was cool being a lesbian for a bit though.

2006-07-17T11:59:00.000Z

This stinks. I mean seriously - how are we expected to take anything seriously when policemen shoot an entirely innocent man 7 times in the head and we're told that no one involved made a mistake worthy of prosecution? Health & Safety violations - what an insult. I mean how stupid do they think we are. Let me say it again : They shot an entirely innocent and unresisting member of the public seven times at point blank range and thats OK.

So what can we learn from this? Pretty much what we knew already : Plod can get away with murder. Literally.

2006-05-31T16:41:00.000Z

Well I certainly haven't been doing much on the blog front lately, and that's because I've been busy. And mostly not as pissed off as normal. As I've said before a happy blogger is a dull blogger, though of course there are exceptions.

But anyway I just can't resist blowing my own trumpet for a minute. The reason for this sudden break in radio silence is that a) events are conspiring to piss me off today and b) Pan won a BAFTA! OK, I didn't win it all by myself, just as part of a team, and yes I know it's just an award, but still. IN YOUR FACE, non award winners.

And here's the piccy :-

BTW this is at the lunch we had to celebrate and I'm completely pissed, not to mention in need of a haircut, but frankly, who cares! Just for the record we won it for the Creative Interaction or some such for the openeartharchive, for which yours truly was the IA . . .

2005-11-18T00:29:00.000Z

I know no-one cares except me, but I just clocked my internet connection at 244 kbs. I dunno where this stands in a global sense, but it's pretty damn good for UK cable.

And that gives me a happy.

2005-10-31T22:23:00.000Z

So I went to the wedding. And despite all my dire predictions I actually enjoyed myself. Don't think I embarrassed myself, though I did accidentally give my Dad a vision from hell - c 9am appearing at the door of my room wearing only a pair of pants, last night's shirt and a tie knotted somewhere around my shoulder, hair by Crazy Meg of Bedlam, Hell.

Yesterday I had the WORST HANGOVER OF ALL TIME. Still, if you will stay up till 6am drinking single malt what can you expect . . . ack. Seriously thought I was going to die last night, and am still feeling a bit ack.

Never again.

Beautiful venue tho, albeit in the middle of nowhere. Literally.

2005-10-27T20:45:00.000Z

So I finally got caught up on series one of Veronica Mars which you can only get on Region 1 at the moment.

Some things I'll never understand. You have the best show that's appeared in years and does the BBC pick it up - No. How about C4. Nope. Sky, even? Keep guessing. No Veronica Mars was consigned to Living. Now Living actually has some good shows. OK, it has Veronica Mars and The L Word, but those are both pretty much cream of the crop US wise at the moment, so all power to them, but it's still a shame. Put it this way, while most people who have cable will have Living it's not exactly the kind of channel people rush to programme into their favourites list. In fact I have more reach standing on my roof frisbeeing cardboard head shots of Percy Daggs III off it than Living do.

But what can you do.

Anyhoo, I LUrve Veronica Mars - sure didn't see that series finale coming. Naturally due to the retarded nature of things around here this is still only available in Region 1 but trust me - it's worth it. In fact it's worth buying a multi region DVD player (should you be in the 0.001% of people wo haven't done this already) just to watch this programme.

In fact I'm kinda wondering what is going on with the PTB and their purchasing policies. As far as I can see they majors in this market (BBC & C4) and the minors (ITV & Five) seem to be following a policy of only purchasing what's *popular* rather than making a subjective decision based on their own opinions and buying what's good. So we end up with Lost, 24 (again) and Gray's Anatomy (which is actually wuote good) whilst V.Mars, The L Word and Dead Again (before it got cancelled anyway) are sentenced to the televisual equivalent of Paperboys 11.

Which kinda seems like missing a trick. Nobody knows why some shows just take off and some don't. Look at Dawson's - a non stop fiesta of nausea indusing shite and it was the most popular thing ever. Now given that as a rule 'buzz' does not travel particularly well from one country to another it seems odd to take a shit show which for some unaccountable reason has 'buzz' and spend a fortune recreating it for the UK market, when you could buy a much cheaper show, promote it properly and it'll create it's own buzz. That way people get to watch good shows which cost the networks over here less instead of expensive horse manure.

I just don't understand. And if that's the last time I write that sentence I'll be surprised.

2005-10-27T12:44:00.000Z

So my doom draws ever closer. What can I say . . . in Serbian there's a word that's used when your relatives force you to eat too much because it's an insult to refuse food. It tanslates as 'Food Terror' It's a pity there isn't a word for Wedding Terror. Ho hum.

Anyway, just cooked a lunch that is so incredibly hot the leftovers are making my eyes water from 4 feet away :-

1 x bunch spring onions
3 x garlic cloves
1 x juice of a lime
1 x golf ball sized piece of fresh HOT ginger, finely chopped
2 x handful prawns
1 x Scotch Bonnet chile

My God . . . .

Anyway, you certainly wouldn't want to eat that lot and then perform an act of great intimacy. Scorchio.

2005-10-21T13:18:00.000Z

I'm so depressed I can hardly even summon the energy to blog. Not only did I get turned down for a job after and hour and 40 minute interview, they even had the gall to write this :-

Thank you very much for coming in to meet the team here at XXX. As much as
we enjoyed meeting you and thought that you are a capable candidate with
good experience in Taxonomy, we did feel that your strength lies in a more
hands on role and as such we did not feel that you were quite right for our
Taxonomy Manager position which requires a mix of hands on and
managerial/strategic skills.

I suppose they're entitled to their view but I'd be more willing to accept it if they'd actually asked me anything managerial/strategic. 100 minutes of detailed technical questions to which of course I knew more answers than they'd ever even heard of. Cunts. And as for that line 'good experience in Taxonomy' I've forgotten more about taxonomy than those twats will ever know. Actually I don't know why I blanked out their name. Feel free to send them something offensive here.

As you can see I don't take rejection well. And speaking of which - it's not just me, I have scientifically proved this by having recently been rejected on a truly Olympian scale.

That's it I am officially going to die alone and be eaten by Alsations. You can only keep kidding yourself that everything's going to work out in the end for so long before you just have to accept that it's most likely not going to. And even worse than that I'm going to my cousin's wedding next week. That may not sound terrible, but it is. First up, I HATE weddings. The whole cheesy queasy repetitive obnoxious bullshit makes me sick to my stomach, and here's one where I won't even know anyone. Except my fucking family. Holy Christ.

Maybe I'm being too cynical. Perhaps I'll meet the love of my life.

Yeah. Like that's going to happen

2005-10-17T16:22:00.000Z

I'm looking forward to the Tory party election. Let's face it, the only candidate about whom Labour will be even slightly concerned is Ken Clarke, and it looks like he's for the chop.

It looks, incredibly, like the Tories are going to lurch even further to the right, which is good in making them even more unelectable, but bad in that then allows Labour to do even more of it's crazy shit . . .

Fucking funny anyway . . . someone once said that the Labour Party 1983 manifesto was the longest suicide note in history . . . now look whos talking. We're 8 years into the New Labour revolution, and what are the Tories doing - electing DD.

This is the equivalent of Labour electing, ooh, er, Derek Hatton as leader in 1987.

Morons, your bus is leaving ;-)

2005-10-14T00:16:00.000Z

Opera

It's been a busy couple of weeks - I've been carbo loading on culture. Weds week went off to the ENO to see The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, and this after going to The Garden to see La Funcella Del West week before. Anyway, it was a hideous train wreck (Bitter Tears that is). Which is a shame because the story is pretty good, but who can take 3 hours of monotone stacatto sung speech and a jingly jangly 'modern' score that at no point showed the slightest sign of actually breaking into a song.

Dinner

Been eating a lot of big grown up dinners lately - went to Fino on Saturday. This place has picked up some bad reviews but I really couldn't fault it. Excellent service, beautiful space, great food, tasty vino, but at £25 quid a bottle you expect something quite palatable. For me the high points were the lamb, the clams, the fillet of beef and the pigs cheeks, which were spectacular. Honourable mentions also to the octopus, the bruscetta and the salted chiles. There was some other stuff I didn't bother eating as well : omelette, salad, that sort of thing and the squid was a bit overcooked but you can't win em all. Overall : excellent.

Last night went to meet Hari for a quick one at the god awful Fire Station, as Waterloo is the most convenient for both of us. After a quick pint standing on a major thoroughfare in the pissing rain which was vaguely reminiscent of a low rent Mega City 1 she suggested we repair round the corner to this little Eastern European place she knows. So we pitch up at bloody Baltic and get stuck into another serious gastronomic and alcoholic experience. Had some fantastic smoked eel with bacon and then some sort of mystery meat claiming to be veal sweetbreads. Don't know what it really was but wasn't much like a gland with the taste and consistency of chicken crossed with blancmange, that's for sure. Couple of beers each, bottle of decent plonk, couple extra glasses, couple of cocktails, espressos, extra fags and it's suddenly £120 of your earth currency units. Still, money well spent, though next time might pick my main course a bit more carefully. Hari was looking particularly charming in her new lace up fuck-me boots, sort of like a cross between a slightly world weary Katy Holmes and HBC in Fight Club. Only hopefully not germinating Tom Cruise's demon seed.

And what's all that about? What's wrong with the woman. It's beyond all sense isn't it? I'm not sure who she should be going out with, YT excluded, but I know she could do a fuck of a lot better than fucking Maverick. Jeeezuz.

Creek

In a bizarre form of self flagellation and in the hope of coming to some understanding about all this I watched Dawson's Creek season one, and what the world already knows was only too clearly demonstrated. Pacey & Joey : funny and cool. Jen : highly slapable, but you'd probably still go there. Dawson : fugly munter who should be terminated with totally unnecessary excessively bloody force immediately. There is no way on this earth that two 'hotties' (ugh) like Jen & Joey would hurl themselves at this self absorbed idiot who has, to quote, got an e.t. doll on his desk. I can only assume that the original writer was in some way trying to re-invent his own adolescence, the way it played out in his head not reality, where girls really do want to go out with sensitive withdrawn wimps instead of muscle bound, hard drinking, dope smoking idiots. Idiots with cars.

Also an award for the silliest diaolgue of all time : episode twelve (The Beauty Contest)

Jen : Why is it that every time I pay you a compliment you act like I'm hitting on you?
Joey : I dunno. It just feels weird I guess. I mean, I know I'm not pretty.

Ahuh.

I realise I'm about 10 years too late to be getting into a strop about Dawson's creek, but, hey, so what. And even though it drives me crazy it really shows up junk like The O.C. for the rather shoddy fare it really is. Still . . . .

2005-10-11T18:22:00.000Z

I've been watching Hex lately and I've really been enjoying it. OK, it's very derivative, mostly of Buffy but that's not a big problem. Hex is set in an English boarding school and is about the usual girl (Cassie : the ever lovely Christina Cole ) who comes into mysterious poweres etc etc, and despite being as fit as you like is generally derided as a nutcase outcast :

The usual selection of oddballs are here in fairly predictable proportions, but because this is England and meant for an English audiance we can actually say it like it is, so for example everyone drinks, everyone smokes, and everyone has sex, be they good, bad or teacher, which is a lot closer to reality than yer average tv prog. Plus in Roxanne and Leon we have a traditional pair of Queen Bitch and Nasty Rich Kid Psycho who are genuinely mean, vile and threatening :-

This is a fairly standard line from Leon after a spot of opportunistic sexual assault :-

"You want to be careful Cassie. If you don't get a good oiling soon, you'll rust shut."

The only problem is that they only made 6 episodes in the first season, and 6 in the second! I mean what the fuck is the point of that! How can you have a season with only 6 episodes. I dunno. Fawlty Towers only had 6 episodes per season, but that was a) A work of comic genius (yawn) and b) The 1970s rather than an enjoyable but totally derivative piece of teen horror fluff.

And it didn't have any totally gratuitous shower and lesbian scenes.

Trust me, you really don't want these two picking you out of the crowd.

2005-10-04T12:07:00.000Z

Fucking Bollocking Ball Bag Gym. Fucker.

I don't know why I even bother going. I mean it makes no difference anyway. All I'm doing is shedding £55 a month and not the good pounds either.

Lunch today : a quite revolting salad of my own concoction : Cous cous, tomatoes, celery, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, pigeon breasts. Sounds good, but trust me, it didn't really work. And I had a Vanilla Coke - diet naturally, but still inherently EVIL.

American Socialists

I was just thinking about why American's keep electing Republicans even though it's so patently not in their own best interests, and realised that Gramsci had his finger on the button 100 years ago. This from Wiki explaining Cultural Hegemony :-

Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture. In other words, the perspective of the ruling class had been absorbed by the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture had indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. Instead of working towards a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs (according to Marxists), workers in "advanced" societies were listening to the rhetoric of nationalist leaders, seeking consumer opportunities and middle-class status, embracing an individualist ethos of success through competition, and/or accepting the guidance of bourgeois religious leaders.

And that pretty much hits the nail on the head as far as I can see. So where does that get us? Absolutely nowhere unfortunately. Let's face it, you can probably be arrested for reading Gramsci in the Red States these days. And that's not a joke. It could come under the heading of 'programme related activity' (bad thoughts). After all, if hanging around by the side of a road looking a bit hairy can get you unlimited detention in Guantanamo Bay who knows what reading a book by a revolutionary socialist (and an Italian to boot) would get you? Death by public stoning perhaps?

Of course it doesn't help that many recent immigrants to the USA only have decadent and corrupt governments to compare the US experience with and so are only too happy to vote for the party that says it's going to leave them alone the most. Of course the way US politics is going at the moment there'll soon be little real difference between Congress and The Democratic Republic of South Backscratcher.

Don't believe me - read up on just where elected representatives are getting their bribes from these days.

2005-10-03T16:15:00.000Z

Gymocological Anomoly

There are 58 machines in the cardio room at my gym. Only 4 of them are steppers. Today there were 6 people in the room - 3 women on respectively a cycle and two treadmills, and 3 blokes, all of us lined up like ducks in a row on the steppers.

Fortunately that's where the similarity ended. One was about 185 years old and looked like he was about to keel over at any moment, one was a sort of beardy goth metellar type and of course then there was the Noble Panster.

61 storeys and every last one climded listening to C&W : Alisson Krauss, Dolly, The Dixie Chicks, Brad Paisley . . . is there no end to my crimes.

2005-10-03T08:45:00.000Z

Now that everything is cleaned up my desk seems strangely empty. Because I'm used to being so hemmed in and now I've tidied everything away and moved what's left around I can't touch type properly. You get used to the visual location of the screen and the gubbins around it to know where to place your fingers. When all that changes it takes, well, about as long as it took to type this paragraph to get used to the new set up.

I've been having some sort of Autumn spring clean over the last couple of weeks and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The books, CDs, DVDs, games, pictures and hardware were easy, all the fluffy stuff less so. Everything I don't wear anymore is now safely boxed away to be taken to the charity shop at some point, and everything else is either racked (shirts, jackets, waistcoats, trousers and suits), placed in drawers (socks, underwear) or sitting in clean/non clean piles (t-shirts, jeans, shorts, towels, linen, jumpers).

But don't get me started on ties, belts, gloves, hats, scarves, sock suspenders, spats and combinations. Not to mention knick-knacks, momentos, gee-gaws, souvenirs, tat, rubbish and bibelots. Alright , I made some of those up, but the problem really is what to do with all the miscellaneous stuff. A big pile of towels, 24 books on architecture and 200 CDs : no problem. A pair of wooly mittens, a jar of loose screws and a badge saying "Radio B92 NAD BEOGRADAM" : what the fuck am I meant to do with that??

Life really does reflect taxonomy in this wayl. The gross bulk of stuff is straightforward enough to categorise, but it's all to easy to end up with a huge file / box, just marked 'miscellaneous' if you're not careful.

2005-09-29T10:27:00.000Z

fuck it i going to drink nore. i deserve it

2005-09-29T10:22:00.000Z

wow! bizarre. 10 hours after and the hand still isn't reallu working. I can tyoe again, and certainly hold conversations on the phone, but I'm still fucked.

I can feek ahooting and cramping pains running up my arm, It's not normal.

is 11 too early to go to the bottle shop?

2005-09-29T08:21:00.000Z

ugh

2005-09-29T03:14:00.000Z

i have no ideq about what that post of a few moenets a gowas. about the special bloke, but yezs it seemd eal like he was really there. it's all disappearing now, baoutlie 9HOPERFULLY TE PATRALUYTSIS)

shit

2005-09-29T03:08:00.000Z

the wo furthest fingers away on my left hand will not lift upa nuy more

npt goof,

wat thse fuck did i do.

get occasional feelins of blood ciculation in forearm but that's abt it
PROGREAA

lwft fiddle finger will now lift off of flT PLANEW AGIN

left forearm now feeling very . . active

can i drink moer noe>

2005-09-29T02:35:00.000Z

t's t`ksn me twwenty minutes to write this pozt. i woke up amd myu lwft hnnd has gone aw`ay. but his worst thing is that i've lost my best friend,

seroiudlyy. when ii woke up i yough thertrs waws a bloke ftawlking to me aboutbnhings like in that fiolm. it soiundszsa funny but it;s bot rdeally.

it m`wkes it fuxking hafed to type `aanyway

i `reaally have overdone it

im 3very scared