Note To Self

Subtle wit has no effect on those with no subtlety.

Jive Turkeys

Now, so you see, The Coffee Achievers is officially back, something I've been waiting for since... well... a long time. Check it out, although read from the first strip first. it makes much more sense, that way.

My Desktop

This background was taken from a comic called The Coffee Achievers. It's really only here because of one of those crappy 'post your desktop' threads on VGC, and I needed somewhere to put it. but bask in the glory of it. And snigger at my awful programs.

IMDB Is Great

This is an exceprt from the cast listing for The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006) (VG) on imdb.com:

50 Cent .... Epona
Reginald Fils-Aime .... The Man
Richard Simmons .... Tingle


That's bloody brilliant. Oh, and I ran the test for Nintendo WiFi Connection on my PC, and it works fine. So kaloo kalay. I might run it again when I get to Sheffield, though.

The Intarweb Is Broken

For some reason both Amazon and eBay aren't letting me view stuff, and it's annoying. Not that I particularly want to buy anything, you understand. It's merely window shopping. As it were.

Yes.

The Author Ventures Into Live XXX Chat

You'll have to expand the images.

The World Today

"It wasn't that they said how strong the bomb was, or the blast radius, or even the fact that people today were still suffering from the after-effect of fallout - nor even the fact that they said hospitals and schools were destroyed. These are words that you see bandied about in the press all the time, and as such we've become somewhat desensitised (which is a discussion for another time)."

I said that the other week, and - well, now is the time for that discussion. Except for the fact that I'm not the man to pilot it - so you all have a homework assignment for tonight. Go out and buy Michael Crichton's State Of Fear, and read it cover to cover - or alternatively, get it from the library or find a nice friend to purchase it for you, although it's not all that expensive. We'll reconvence soon to talk about phrases such as 'serious crisis'.

Inherent In The System

Apparently something in Blogger's coding is preventing images showing properly - this should fix itself in due course, I'm guessing.

Oh, and of course thare's another reference to canon that shaped my humour in the title this time, too.



EDIT: ...and it's fixed. Told you so.

Soft Self-Portrait (With A Rasher Of Bacon)

My scanner's buggered, so I took a quick photo of this sketch with my phone and touched it up very slightly. This is my current avatar, and also, I think, not a bad caricature.

Disclaimer: I in no way compare myself to Salvador Dalí, only pay homage to his influence on my sense of humour. Parsnips.

Other People's Lives

No, that's not a title of a show on Five, although it quite easily could be. No, I'm referring to the fact that I've been reading a lot of other people's blogs recently, and I'm getting a lot of insight into their lives - perhaps more than I'd foreseen or even feel comfortable with.

Nevertheless, it's itneresting and definitely gives you a lift when you see something you can relate to mentioned, especially when you realise this person has actually elected you to read their diary.

Although I suppose that only works if you came across a private blog at some point. It doesn't work for this one, I'm sure, as this was a journal created entirely so that all and sundry could read it. It's been available to all from the start, so to a certain extent my feelings are closed off and my points are expanded and given a touch of the old media spin. To find my inner thought, you have to first don a pair of Sony-brand hip-waders to work your way through the bullshit - with this other one I've found/been invited to read, it's pretty much all there on the surface.

It's quite intimidating, actually, to see that far into a person's soul.

I Amuse Myself So Much

There was one of those nu-evangelist blokes in town today, yelling about how Jesus would save us all, and that YOU MUST ALL REPENT YOUR SINS and all that.


So I stood up on a bench, and yelled roughly the following:

You should all convert to the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for he is the One True God, and all other religions are simply abherrations created by Him. No, we have no solid proof of His existence, but we have written texts dating from some time ago that give eyewitness accounts of His entity.
I myself have been touched by His Noodly Appendage, and you should all allow His Noodlyness into your lives too.


I think I stopped as soon as I began to draw a bigger crowd than the other guy and he began looking distinctly unholy.



Now, you see, the above post is what it would look like if I actually had any stones at all. Maybe when I move into a town where no-one knows me I'll be able to do shit like this.

Crappy Movies For One Pound

Okay so this is probably gonna fall flat on its arse, but I'm planning a new website thing called QuidFilm (working title).

Basically I buy a cheap DVD from work and lampoon it on the site. It's not exactly the hardest job in the world, although after a few reviews I guess the funny may be hard to come by.

Check it out when I start it up.

Just To Let You Know

Oh, and the Gigabeat will be bought on Friday morning. Probably along with a PS2 online adaptor.

Today's Exploits

I found something today that you all should know about - I don't have a link, so you'll have to take it as gospel from my mouth to yours, but it was a story about someone being fed a hormone that made them extremely fat.

I THINK it was a story about how it's OK to be larger than normal, but it just went TOO far.

Oh, wait, found the link in my History.
http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/dimtext/stories/dairy.html

I apologise if it's fat people porn. I stopped reading hlaf-way through just in case it WAS that.

Irregular Communication

I guess it's time, once again, for me to lay something down in this blogahizzy right here. Yes, I know I've said that before - it's previous reference don'cha know.

I seem to have a habit of leaving out things that are probably of the utmost importance in this blog, in lieu of a more personal approach - basically that I enjoy writing about myself more than anything else, but then again, this is a diary of sorts. i mean, I didn't even write anything about all those attacks in London in July, I don't think - at the time i was mroe concerned about holidays, or something. Hmm.

Anyway, the point is, now there's something which is both important, and concerns me - it could possibly be important because it concerns me, but that's only from my point of view, I guess.

So yeah. A-level results. I exceeded my offer for Sheffield Hallam by eighty points and got in like a knife through butter, more or less. Not only that, but due to the ingenious line 'taller than 6' - larger than normal size bed required' I've managed to wangle a room with not only an en-suite bathroom, but a Queen-sized bed.

Yes, that's right - I actually have a double bed for my first year at Uni. I rather think that's a lethal combination.

Grades were ABCD, which I'm rather pleased about, since they lined up so nicely on my results card. They're Media, English Language, General Studies and ICT respectively. With regards to that, I don't actually KNOW why I was worried about my grades. With an A last year in Media unless I bombed out I wasn't going to get lower than an A this year. That was 120 points in the bag. And again, unless I went freakazoid on the English I wasn't going to get lower than a C. That's 80 points. 200 points in total, getting me a place. And then I had a guaranteed E in ICT without doing ANY work, so that's forty on top of that even if I dropped a grade in either Media or English - funny how hindsight is 20/20, I guess.


So, onto more pressing matters, and by that I mean of course less important, but rather more entertaining.

I know a lot of people reading this blog - hell, probably all - work retail, or have at some point recently. This w -

Well, damn, I lost the post up to this bit, and I can't be bothered typing up the rest right now. I've got a list of reminders, so don't worry, you'll find out my amazing story about retail soon enough, but for now I'll leave you hanging. Well, just this one (true) gag.


An elderly guy came into work the other day, hobbled up to me with his stick, leaned into me so I could hear him better and said "Evening primrose oil?"
I said, "Mr. Templeton to you."

Rediscovery

I cleaned my room out today and got rid of everything I didn't need - basically all the school paper I've been hoarding for the last two years got shoved into the recycling box. While I was doing that, however, I came across quite a few little sketches that I've had lying about for a while, and I think I'm going to scan them all in and upload them so you can all see them - I'm quite proud of them, bizarrely.

I suppose after all this time doing rubbish, there's bound to be some good stuff in there somewhere, and it's only when you look back on it you can pick it out.

By far my favourite is the pirate girl I drew today, though:



You see, what I do is kind of reverse-engineer stuff I find on the Internet and preak it down to wireframe to try and improve my drawing. This one was stolen from a piece of fanart over at Sexy Losers.

On The Button

Okay, so I knocked together a quick shopping basket on Amazon, and it's £254. Not too bad, I don't think. That's only a couple of weeks' wages.

Yes, I'm very much a consumer whore.

Free Fall

The price of a Gigabeat is dropping like a stone on Amazon - according to this annoying popup that seems to have installed itself on my Dad's computer that turns out to have been quite useful, the price on Amazon is £219.99 and the DABS price is £225.

I know for a fact that Amazon's used to be £229.99, and they bumped it down to £224.99 because of DABS being £225 due to their 'seen this priced cheaper somewhere anywhere else?' facility. I'm going to go and check if DABS has a similar thing, and then try to initiate a price war... wish me luck.

The Great Beard-Off

http://www.vgchat.com/showthread.php?t=7462

Yeah, I know it's kinda stolen from Siân's NEA people, but I'm not that fussed, to be honest - I did a bit of research, and it's been going on since the dawn of civilisation:



And so on. So yeah. Not a lot of interest at the moment, but if anyone who reads this wants to join in, they're welcome to. I'll be posting photo montages on here every week or so to track the progress of - well, everyone. Enjoy!

Freakiest Thing Evar

I went to sleep at about three last night and was woken up at about half past by the fucking computer in the other room.

It logs itself off. TWICE. As loud as a Sherman tank and twice as brown-pants scary, when you've only just woken up. It then starts to PRINT SOMETHING, all of its own accord.

No, seriously. I'm not making this shit up.


I went into the computer room this morning, and I'll be damned, but sitting on the printer was a map of the place my parents are visiting right this very moment.

I have ghosts in my house, and worse - they use this PC.

A Couple Of Things

I've been meaning to post a couple of things for a while now, and here they are - first of all, the lesser in importance.

What divides a novel and a book? I ask this because, having recently read High Fidelity, I read in the cover that Fever Pitch was his first book, and after High Fidelity he was working on his second novel (presumably About A Boy). High Fidelity was described as 'a brilliant first novel'.
Why is Fever Pitch not a novel? That confuses me, and it should confuse you too.


Okay. On to more pressing matters. Yesterday (that's Saturday) was September the 8th, the 60-year anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I know this because the Quaker meeting were doing a vigil in the middle of the street and I stopped to talk to them about it, and they were and personable as ever, even though none of them recognised me properly.
They gave me a little leaflet - I stuck it on the wall at work, actually, because it affected me rather strongly.

It wasn't that they said how strong the bomb was, or the blast radius, or even the fact that people today were still suffering from the after-effect of fallout - nor even the fact that they said hospitals and schools were destroyed. These are words that you see bandied about in the press all the time, and as such we've become somewhat desensitised (which is a discussion for another time). No, none of these statements rattled me particularly - at least, not compared to the following line.

People were vaporised.

Just like that. Vaporised. One minute, walking to work, next, a wail overhead, a screech of falling metal, and then - nothing. Not even a bang to register in your ears before they dissolve into nothingness.

As much as it's been said by much better writers than me - the people who run the world are horrible, horrible people.

Learning Can Be Fun

Twins
I found this after a quick Google, prompted by a conversation with Siân. Quite educational.

As Predicted

Well basically Dan's party was a decent night out, no more, no less - don't think I mentioned I was even going to go, but I assure you, I did - and as usual, much happened when everyone got slightly drunk.

I won't bore you with the details (mainly because I feel like being an arse and witholding them), but it was interesting to say the least. A lot of stuff Happened. With a capital H.

It's odd that whenever I get drunk when Ben's nearby, I want to hurt him, and even more odd that I don't actually think anything of it either at the time or afterwards. I think my tipsy demeanour of being slightly more angry at - well, everything - and his elevated basic Ben-ness when he's drunk - well, they just don't match too well.

Oh and Heidi, you can buy me a couple of drinks next time we're out, you thieving git.

Advanced Technologication

No, that's not a real word. Anyway, I just thought I'd post this, from Snafu:

"We also pirated cable accidentially. We were trying to hook up the internet and we ended up not only fixing the internet but getting free cable."


I have no idea how that works, but it's the shiznit.

A Little Light Reading

This is something I only just uncovered on a blog/online newspaper called The Zimbabwean, and I thought that it'd be worth a heads-up.


So little understanding of the issues
By Georgina Godwin

LONDON - Plastic awareness wristbands are the new charity ribbons. Where once people sported red ribbons for AIDS or pink for breast cancer, now a whole industry has grown up around different coloured plastic bands which are worn as much as a fashion statement as anything else.
This craze is sweeping across Britain and America. Undoubtedly the trendiest band to wear is the white “Make Poverty History” accessory. But hang on, how do you distinguish that, at first glance, from the white “Emphysema and Lung Cancer” wrist band or the white “Star Wars Jedi Knight” band? And if you wear the Emphysema band should you wear the Blue “Anti Smoking” band too or might that be confused with the blue “Beat Bullying” or even the blue and white “Tsunami Relief” band. So many dilemmas, so many wardrobe crises, so little understanding of the real issues.

When political issues become a fashion statement, and collectors are as likely to wear the green “Kiss me, I’m Irish” band as the black and white “Stand up Speak Up” anti racism band, how committed are the wearers to the causes they profess to espouse?

Slogan politics, headlined by pop stars, has to be better than nothing I suppose, but is it going to change the world? G8 comes ever closer, and Bono and his chums (all wearing their wristbands) are doing the media circuit with a vengeance talking about debt relief and making poverty history in Africa.

The premier British news analysis programme, Newsnight, carried an excellent interview with Labour MP Kate Hoey last week. She had just returned from Zimbabwe and was describing the devastation she saw. The next guest was Bono. Questioned on Zimbabwe the U2 front man looked uncomfortable. He was asked if Mbeki should be prevented from attending G8 because of his inaction over Zimbabwe.

Bono said what was happening in Zimbabwe was “very sad, very upsetting” and that he believed Thabo was working behind the scenes to sort it out or words to that effect. He continued, saying that Mbeki’s presence was necessary because “we need a deal for Africa”. And then came the point… “You can’t diminish what is happening in Zimbabwe, but you have to remember Africa is not just one country. It’s 50 countries”. Well, 54 actually Bono, but hey, when we can be so easily dismissed, who is counting?

It would appear from the outside that the Zanu (PF) regime is stronger than ever, and the latest round of abuse has served to crush the people very effectively. Other African nations have endorsed the election results; South Africa refuses to speak out. The West has imposed targeted sanctions and withdrawn aid.

Theoretically, the foreign bank accounts of our corrupt leaders have been closed, and as far as Britain, the EU, America and some of the Commonwealth are concerned, Zimbabwe is a pariah state. So what? Mugabe is still in power. People are still suffering.

He has used the very regulations put in place to protect citizens, against his people. All those international treaties – respect sovereignty, non aggression, human rights etc…

For this brutal man is also clever, and has used the rules to subjugate the people. The rules were made at a different time, when it was thought that leaders would always try and do the best for their people. After the horror of the Second World War, it was presumed that evil on that scale would not, could not, rise again. But it has.

So, what does he want? Blood? He has had plenty of that. Money? He has that too. Mugabe has reached the point where he simply does not care what anyone thinks of him. Or has he? I believe it is respect, particularly from the West that he craves. Maybe, like a playground bully, if we just tell him he has won, he’ll stop?

Will he let people eat and stop destroying homes, businesses, lives if we say he was right all along?

Of one thing I am certain; no wristband is going to make a difference, unless it is on Mugabe’s arm, is made of metal and comes with a key.

Overcoming Your Fears

And this post is fairly self-explanatory. There's a moth on the monitor, and I find that I'm not that fussed, to be honest. Hurrah for me.

Although I still don't like it going near my face.

Structurally Sound

This is just a question fired off into the realms of the intarweb - I wonder, do you actually know what it feels like to ask a girl out? Judging from what I know of the readership of this petty thing I like to call a blog, I think not, unfortunately, and so you'll have to take everything I say from here on out as a fairly concrete account, not having experience to contrast it to - and it also puts an inordinate amount of pressure on me as an orator to get it right.
Well, here goes.

I realise how much this post contrasts in relation to the previous; if I'd have known things were going to end up this way I would of course not have posted one or the other. However, much as I like the fact that I can say what I want in this type of medium without too much fear of misinterpretation or reprisal (I see myself as much too good of a writer to give the wrong impression, however arrogant that may be of me), I'd also like to know that everything I've said stays said, in much the same way as a conversation - that way I can look back over the posts and see my exact emotions, rather than a haphazard cut-and-paste job with only half a pair of scissors.

So, yes. Girls. They're rather an obscure beast to us male of the species, and for some reason seem to be fundamentally different as to almost be another species. I think it was Nick Hornby in High Fidelity (a book I've only just recently read, and found rather too insightful) that first explained why this was in such simple terms - I'm not going to copy out the entire passage, or book even, in this space, but his explanation was basically that from birth to death, women are the controlling factor in a man's psyche - we are introduced to breasts at a very young age, and want more when they develop in our peers - 'it is as if breast were once our rightful property, and we want them back,' he says so expertly - and the fact that men seem to hate foreplay, mainly because when that was all we wanted in our teenage years we were denied it by a young girl's idealistic abstinence, and it became exhausting, and when we grow older there remains some shred of immovable thought that says it is a waste of time, even though we know that it's now allowed and even encouraged.
I suppose it's bizarre to talk about sex so brazenly when all I'm supposed to be skimming over is the act of actually asking someone out, but it's important to know the stimulus that gains the response.

I suppose it's that control that women have over our lives that brings the 'problem' of initiating any relationship - except of course, I have to stop there. Is not all the worrying before asking someone out, again, controlled by the woman, and hence initiated, essentially, by her? All the worrying beforehand, the little games you play to see if she likes you, and of course hers to see if you like her - and ultimately, it comes to the fact that in essence all men in this stage are very submissive, despite what they may be like the rest of the time. You ask her - and it comes down to two polar opposites - yes, or no.

But wait, no, rewind that just slightly, and pause - just there where the man leans over almost imperceptibly.
"Listen, uh, are you free on Friday night?"
It's not perhaps the bast way to do it, but there is a flash of recognition in her eyes and you realise that all the suspicion you had before you actually went ahead and took the plunge was correct - you mentally kick yourself for not having done it sooner, in fact.
She mumbles much the same, and even though you know you've made some sort of contact there's still a distance - or rather, a distance has now been created. You've gone from being friends, perhaps fairly close, to suddenly this whole new area of where you could, possibly, end up in a darkened room making the beast with two backs. And it creates this gap between you, not necessarily widening one that was there before, maybe even closing it, but a separate one altogether that you would love to close together.

This, of course, runs through your head in a split second. And then, you get embarrassed. You know you shouldn't be, but there it is anyway, the blood rising to your face and filling it somewhat bizarrely like a cup with water - from the bottom up. It's done, the worst part's over - in fact, it was much easier than you thought - and you've reached a common ground, built a foundation. And you realise that the connection is there - she's thinking the same thing, she's reddening too.

No matter how many times a person does this, I don't think it gets any easier, or harder, or even different, to accomplish. It's not even hard, really, it's just breaking that barrier between 'I want to ask her out' and planning how you'll do it, even - and actually doing it. And once it's done, you plan, and make arrangements, and change them, and try your utmost to make the other person like you, even though you know they probably - almost certanly - already do. So you jabber on about anything, everything, people you know at work, school, what the weather's like (theweather!), the Braille on dustbins and one-legged pigeons - anything to dance around the fact that you like her and she likes you.

I think there's a lot to be said in that first few moments. Most people judge how a relationship is leading from a first date, but that is superfluous - the date isn't the part where you find out if you like someone or whether they're compatible, it's that moment where you ask her if she'd like to spend some time alone with you and she says yes. That's the start, the first brick in the wall, and it gives such confidence.


Those of you who've skimmed to the bottom of this mass of text will just want to hear this part, and those who haven't will, I'm sure, be anxious to know what's coming next.

So, yes. I've taken a day off work so that I can, perhaps, put another brick in this wall I've started to build today. I've no doubt it will be a very short wall, owing to just a month of building, but I'm sure the wall we build will be fun, nonetheless.

Before I drift off into a huge lake of metaphor (with rivers of over-extension running off it, dear God), or even become bed-wettingly emo, I think I'll ring off - not a bad outcome at all for the first girl I asked out in person, I think.