Every day....ish

Yeah, that lasted didn't it? But let's be honest here, a post every day from someone who leads as uninteresting a life as me is not going to be thrilling reading for you. Today I offer furtherinsight into the tangled ball of yarn that I use for a brain.

Essentially my brain and my stomach need to be kept separated. They are liek your best friend in school with whom you came up with more and more elaborate activities to occupy your time with. Strangely, 90% of these activities for me involved digging holes, rivers and sticks and any combination of those 3 things. Digging holes in rivers is as tough as it sounds.

Anyway, time consuming things to achieve basically the same end result.

I was watching the excellent but inexplicably cancelled Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip the other day. I decided that I wouldn't cook, I would make a sandwich. I mulled this over for half hour or so, before I decided I would make some kind of toastie snack. After a while I upped this craving to a nice burger. Yummy. More mulling - 'enough!' I thought and adjourned to the Budgens to buy burger makin's!

I arrived back in my kitchen with rump steak, wholemeal baguettes, mustard seeds and pepper. I proceded to make steak & onion baguettes. It was yummy, but seriously - if I'd just stuck with the cheese toastie, would the world have ended?!

mmmm....pie.....

I left work early today, mainly because I felt like it but the fairly flimsy excuse I used was that the canteen monkeys hadn't made it in in order to purvey over-priced crap. I was a hungry hippo and needed pie.

Luckily the shop next door increases in more awesomer almost daily. They now sell delicious steak pie made by (I imagine) a jolly farmer's wife in Oxfordshire. So I bought pie. Yummy.

Over the weekend, I got this off eBay:



Some people might think that 2 radios in such a small property is enough, these people are clearly idiots. Whilst I can hear the radio if it is on in the kitchen and I am in the front room, I can't hear it like it is in the same room. Because it isn't. See? Good. I'm glad I cleared that up. Was it not De La Soul that once propounded 'Three, that's the magic number'? Who am I to argue with such god's amongst men?

It also has an iPod dock and a CD player which is great, but to be honest I'm mainly into the DAB tuner.

It's ex-display and so was pretty cheap, so this makes me happy.

The rather optimistic delivery company sent me an email yesterday confidently proclaiming that the parcel would arrive today. I suspect that these people work somewhere windowless. Either that or they have special ski-vans.

Ski-vans would be cool.

what the hell just happened?

So after basking in the glory of the mighty Steelers, I went to sleep.

I was aware that it had been snowing, it just started after Hannah left. However.

I was supposed to be off all day but had informally agreed to come in mid-afternoon-ish to cover a few things off. As it was I got a few phone calls around noon saying that no one had been able to make it in to work and things were not going 100% according to plan.

I got myself together and left the flat, at which point my lgs up to my knees vanished. Apparently we had nearly 2 feet of snowfall overnight. Nice.

I didn't have my camera so couldn't get photos, but we've been promised more tonight so maybe I'll get you some then ;). Nowe I live a little over a mile from the office and it took the best part of an hour to get here on foot, my colleague took 5.5 hours to travel 22 miles. Welcome to Surrey, a county that is completely allergic to weather.

The Gallery (Superbowl Special)

Peter Jones (30). Wales.

Days off, Roast Awesome and Doughnuts

I took the day off everything on Friday and yesterday, including this. It's my resolution, I didn't bother you with the details and special clauses so nerr!

Anyway, so Friday was spent giving my flat a much needed clean, its not exactly perfect right now but it's approaching habitable.

I also located an awesome Butcher up in Bookham which made me happy. I couldn't get the mutton I wanted as he needs a day's notice so that it can defrost so he can cut it (not exactly popular as a meat). The fact that he had any impressed me though!

Anyway, I made do with some diced lamb. I also picked up a couple pounds of rolled pork loin for my first attempt at a roast dinner and some of the award winning sausages on offer. He told me, at length, about their sausage achievements, so I decided to buy some bacon too. Next, back home - finished cleaning and made a large quantity of lamb curry.

I've always had problems making my lamb curry not spicy. It's the fairly liberal application of garam masala rather than any chili content I think - I've tried it with little to no chilies pr chili powder in the past and it's still quite hot, and progressively so. Friday I experimented with the ingredients some, with very pleasing results. I won't bore you all, but essentially it involves plenty of good cumin and a few other things.

This was good for the visiting Hannah as she has chosen not to go with the asbestos-lined mouth approach to life.

Hannah arrived, we went for a couple drinks and then back to the flat for some yummy curry goodness!

Saturday arrived and with it I made some breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans and toast. I've taken to buying unsliced locally baked bread which is lovely in principle but a pain in the arse when slicing for a toaster. Anyway, sausages definitely deserved their award and everything else was outstanding too.

Next was a shopping trip, I needed some shelving units for my ever expanding DVD and book collection so ordered some stuff from Argos. We also needed Army of Darkness on DVD for completist reasons. After a trip to Epsom, we couldn't find a copy of this for under 20 pounds (should be about a fiver!). Instead I picked up Sweeney Todd (yet to watch), 30 days of Night (which Hannah assures me sucks arse) and two Charlie Brooker books - Dawn of the Dumb and Screen Burn.

Amongst the other things that afternoon, I picked up a variety of ciders, some carrots and broccoli and mild fear that roast dinner could go horribly wrong.

Finally, a trip to Tesco - where they sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Oh yes indeed. We only wanted a half dozen, but that worked out the same price as a dozen (give or take 50p!). Being the thrifty sort, I got the even dozen.

Back to the flat and it was champagne and DVDs! I had this stuff I got given at Christmas so we polished a bottle of it off, because we are classy that way. then I made the roast.

It went unfathomably well, I was so pleased. The crackling wasn't absolutely perfect, but for a first stab I think it was outstanding. Roast potatoes were yummy, and as I'd thrown a load of quartered onions in the roasting dish*, they were all yummy and charred. I removed the potatoes and the piggy and poured some nice vintage cider and chicken stock into the roasting dish. Stirred it all up with a fork, reduced it down and it was good to go. I will be doing that again, and again. I so miss roast dinners!

So today, I built one of the sets of shelves and am putting my previously 'stored' DVDs out, I may not need the other set right away but I'll wait and see once I've put my stuff out.


There! See? I don't have to rant all the time, but it's much less entertaining when I don't.

Seriously, it's been awesome just not even looking at work things for a couple of days, I feel like I've had a week off and I still have some Krispy Kreme doughnuts left, the Superbowl to come and the dilemma of whether to order Papa John's or eat some more curry....

Foiled again....

After discovering that out of the 8 people invited to the teleconference, only 1 had anything of substance to say and he is off on Friday, they are rescheduling.

Begs the question, what the fuck are the other people for?

I've decided to play a new game called 'Postponement'. Essentially it involves moving this teleconference forwards without it ever actually occurring. I've tried my hand at saying the information won't be available until some as yet undefined date in 'late February'. This should coincide nicely with a major delivery date, which opens up other avenues for the next round of the game.

I'm not being unduly cruel, I'm weening these poor addled addicts off their daily teleconference fix.

Seriously, if evolution were left to these people we'd all be sat in caves trying to work out if rocks are edible.

Ooops....

That last post was meant to be a few sentences leading into how my mood had improved as the day wore on, but ended up finishing my original rant.

Go on. Act surprised.

Anyway, I am in a not bad mood which is surprising given the week I've been having. America has produced yet another cool show called Supernatural which I've been watching on DVD this week. As with many US shows, there are no ugly people in it - except for bad guys and comedy relief, but it's still pretty awesome.

I'm waiting on The Wire to come down in price, even the ascerbic Charlie Brooker has called it the best TV show ever made. HBO in general seems to make awesome TV, comes from being subscription only I guess? I don't think they have to bow to the power of the advertisers in quite the same way as other stations which allows them a certain creative freedom. That and some awesome writing talent.

Anyway, I digress. Great TV from HBO.

I would suggest you stay away from comedies though. If you want some comedy from that side of the world I suggest you check out the Trailer Park Boys from Canada. Genius on an epic scale.

Having said that I've heard good things about The Office, despite Steve Carell going on to make some of the most painful, awful and just plain bad movies it's ever been my misfortune to become aware of. I did watch one of them, 'Generic Wacky Comedy XXVII' I think it wa called.

I have no idea where all this came from, I am pretty sure I wanted to talk about other things....

Who'da thunk it

So I started writing a post earlier today about this story. In particular the cowardly and reprehensible way that euphamism and couched language is used to describe a shameful period in history that was smeared in the most brutal, bloody and indiscriminate violence fuelled by hatred and greed. I'm not picking sides, other than the fact that I'm on the side that's against blowing up school busses in order to prove a point.

I also find it interesting how similar tactics are employed by the slick Israeli PR machine, who's entire argument for blowing up schools and hospitals appears to be 'Well, some people who look kind of the same did it first'. Again, not picking sides really - Hamas are a bunch of blood thirsty animals too, just like the Israeli government.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a realist. Humans like to kill eachother for a variety of reasons, it would just be refreshing to have situations like this labelled as they are - a fairly indiscriminate form of murder born of a frustration at an inability to get at the enemy you actually want to kill. It's proving a point at the expense of people and property deemed expendable. And if someone tells you there is anything discriminating about explosives, they are talking out of their arse.

Don't work for big companies

But if you do, for God's sake don't make yourself useful. There is a 4:1 WhatTheFuckDoYouEvenDo:PeopleWithRealJobs ratio in most large organisations, the more you fall into the PeopleWithRealJobs category, the more the WhatTheFuckDoYouEvenDo category will rope you into meetings and teleconferences to do one of 3 things:

1) Pretend to know what they are talking about, ask banal questions aitr 'concerns'. All of these things will be preceded by the phrase 'What concerns me...'

2) Repeat what was said at the last productivity black-hole

3) Arrange the next productivity blackhole

Seriously, there are a bunch of people here who's sole purpose seems to be to arrange and attend teleconferences. I've been working on some things here for about 6-8 months and now I am talking to these people who are clearly completely out of their depth.

I've arranged the next raft of teleconferences for Friday.

In other news, I have the day off on Friday.

Nothing good comes from change

I tried a non rant last night. Blogger broke and I couldn't publish anything. May that be a lesson to you all!

The Obama effect...

So I was watching 'This Week' on BBC 1 last night, for reasons best know to myself. They started off with the usual 'we're all going to be eating our own knee caps' economy stories. This always amuses me - Michael Portaloo, Dianne Abbott and Andrew Neil - all privately educated and people of great personal wealth trying to convince us all about how worried they are at our approaching doom. Desparately trying to act like they wouldn't be riding down peasants for sport given the opportunity.

Anyway, I digress. After the disingenuous fear mongering came the Obama section..... actually as a side point..... have you noticed how there is only ever 2 pieces of news at any given time? It's nice of the national media to tell us what's important, all of that thinking for myself after objective reporting was making my brain sweat.

Sorry, that's the enws, this is a politics show called 'This Week' so I think we can fairly say that the Obama inauguration should rank fairly highly. So what do they do to talk about this point? They do what every news/opinion/ 2 bit broadcaster int he world did. They got a black guy to tell us how he feels.

The said guy in question is Kwame Kwei-Armah, a particularly talented playwright and half decent actor. I confess, I wasn't expecting much and he did talk utter gibberish for much of the time. I think perhaps he had soemthing when he was discussing role models, but I don't actually know. Unfortunately he focussed most of his attention on how we could follow America's example and elect a Priminister from a similar background to Barack (as he started referring to the leader of the free world). This of course is utter garbage.

Don't get me wrong, it's entirely feasible, one would hope entirely likely that we will one day soon elect a not white person into the office of Priminister. What will not happen is someone of Barack Obama's background getting to that, or any other illustrious position (such as London Mayor which was Kwame's 'first step' suggestion). Why? Because this is Britain and the game we play is Party Politics.

In order to get elected as Priminister, you have to rise in the Party, and this is not done on merit. This is based on who you are, who you know and where you went to school. There are any number of difficulties and vagaries of traversing these ridiculous ropes, and ultimately the guy that comes out the end of the process is a subtle variation on the last one.

So, a privately educated, well spoken, privately wealthy and well connected non-white person could get assimilated into the laservative party and get elected Priminister, but he'll be the same as the white guy he just replaced. It's a crying shame but it's true.

That, non-rant tomorrow I promise!

Discounted Hades Ski specials...

So I've been asked to do a non-ranty post about some stand-ups that I like. 'Livvy threw down the gauntlet, or in her case some lacey glove or other.

In order for us to have the best shot at getting a post that is enjoyable to read, I think we should wait for that one until Saturday - after I've eaten sufficent levels of piggy and have caught up on the sleep I've been missing this week.

So let's do that shall we?

I'm staying at a hotel in Russell Square tonight, I wish I was goingt o get there in time for dinner, I need to make these people pay for what is happening to my poor fragile and incresingly squooshy brains!

Death is no obstacle to a nice orderly queue

Because we'd rather die than make a scene

My public has spoken

I'[m not allowed to blog about the NFL any more. This seems a wise objection to me, I have clearly been struggling for material.

I've only had one entry for the Gallery people, come on draw me something in MsPaint you lazy sacks! I'll be uploading at the end of the week and it would be nice to have a Tony Hart tribute.

I raised the question of juice combinations last week. You know how you mix paint and get different shades of different coulours? But the more colours you add, the more it just starts to turn brown?

That's like fruit juice, 2 or 3 you can get myriad flavours. Once you hit 5, you are essentially getting 'Juice flavour', no matter which 5 you've chosen. Seriously, try it.

Superbowl Sunday - see that Kurt? SUNDAY

So as it happens, the mighty mighty Steelers put the evil, baby-eating Baltimore Ravens back in their box and are on their way to Tampa for the Superbowl.

This creates a problem. They play the Arizona Tardinals a team that hasn't won since 1947, in fact I think this may be their first appearance in the playoffs since then. Anyway. They suck. A bizarre run of form coupled with opponents who apparently forgot that they were required to play has put this bunch of arsebiscuit in the Superbowl. This means it could be a massively humiliating defeat for my mighty Steelers.

I really don't like the Tards. I dislike their coach, and I really don't like their QB. I don't object to people believing in God, I don't object too much to Christians, the proper ones are generally quite nice. Even people who accept awards who thank God only make me vomit in my mouth a little bit these days. People I really can't stand are the people who ram it down your throat at every available opportunity.

Step up Kurt Warner, the Tardinals QB. Now all the commentary teams tell you what a great guy Kurt is and how he's been through a lot and is still a really good guy. I can only assume that 'Good Guy' in this context means 'Believes in a Christian God'. Every single game he has to thank Jesus in a variety of different and ever more verbose ways. Like Jesus watches Fox. But even as he is vomitting forth his homoerotic plattitudes to this illusory father figure, he is basically calling everyone else int he world a wanker. Seriously, look at it with me here. Remove the sentences that look like this from every winning post match interview:

"I know I say it all the time but I gotta thank my Lord Jesus Christ, he got me through this"

"Jesus helped me win today"

"Did I mention I believe in Jesus?@

Now look at the content:

"No one believed in me, I'm gonna prove them wrong"

"People always overlook me but with Jesus' help I'll keep going"

Balls like that.

OK. Firstly, if Jesus is helping you that's fucking cheating. At best it's an illegal formation, at worst a performance enhancing deity.

Secondly, quit whining. You got voted league MVP twice and also got a Superbowl MVP award, who exactly is overlooking you you fucking nutjob?

Kurt is very keen to tell anyone who will listen what a fervent Christian he is.
Don't get me wrong, I don't care that he's a Christian so much that....... No wait... that was the end of the sentence. I don't care that he is a Christian - so STOP FUCKING BANGING ON ABOUT IT!

But while you do go on about it, at length, whether anyone one wants you to or not - Answer me this Kurt, what's the deal with the whole working on a Sunday thing? You strike me as the kind of chap who is dumb enough to take the Bible literally, you do know that wearing clothes of two different weaves is a stoning offence right?

OK, maybe I should leave the guy alone and so long as he has the good grace to lose, I will :)

The Gallery

In honour of the legendary Tony Hart who sadly died today, please send in your artwork (Mspaint only please) for feature in this post. I will start you off tomorrow night when I get access to my Windows pc and the only art package that matters :D

I'm serious here people, I need your pictures - mail them to me at the usual address and I will feature you here :D

In the meantime:







And lets not forget the mighty Morph!

Ben Goldacre

A science writer who knows something about science, who'd have thunk it?

If you read nothing else that I recommend, check out Bad Science. I've just ordered his book of the same name. This shouldn't be confused with Dawkins clones and the like, its not about debunking religion or any deities. This is all about the misrepresentation of science in the media. Its also about tackling things like detox diets and..... well you get the idea. I'll give a full review once I'm done with it ;)

Nearly there....

I know I keep banging on about work, I'm really very sorry - as the year moves on I'll have more things to talk about I promise! This year I'm coming out from the wilderness.

In the mean time. I've been responsible for a fairly lengthy piece of work that's been going on for the best part of 6 months and Monday sees the last, most visible bit of it go live. I have paranoia, it could all go horribly wrong.

I hate it when you can't tinker anymore.

So obviously I will be in work ridiculously early to ensure everything is going well, that nothing is going wrong and that should anything occur I will be there to save the day......well.......not as such. Fact is its the AFC championship tomorrow and the Steelers is the late game which means I'll be up until the wee hours shouting at the TV.

Or homeworking as it's otherwise known.

It's still Friday somewhere.....

So this still counts.

Rob boosted me and I've been in the pub. So far no additional travel plans.

The Dallas Mystery Unfolds

OK, so after my inebriation of last Friday I have pieced together why I seemed to have agreed to go to Dallas. It's all very simple.

Stu announced he would be spending upwards of 6 weeks there this year as a result of work. It was at this point I think mentioned I wasn't going abroad this year.

He then chose to reveal that when he travels to Dallas for work, he gets given a suite and if I wanted I could go out and occupy the spare room for the duration of my visit. Not much of a mystery I'm afraid, I was kind of hoping I'd bumped into a rich heiress and we were having some kind of assignation.

Apparently there is a bar that has a gazillion beers on tap and if you have one of each in a single sitting, you win some kind of prize....

Calling Number 6......

The star of one of the best, weirdest and directionless TV shows of all time has sadly died.

The Prisoner is one of my favourite shows of all time, but seriously - what the fuck was with that blob?!

How to prioritsie your email...

I've been quite busy lately at work, and I receive lots and lots of email on a daily basis. Obviously this requires some kind of system, so I thought I would share my keys to effiency with you.

First priority is to deal with anything that has been picked up from my gmail account. A cynic would say that having my email at work also pick up my personal mail is just a way of making dealing with personal mail look like work. Not so, I am doing important things for the world economy. For example, this allows me to respond to important emails from friends who may want to know vital information like what time I intend going to the pub. We can then coordinate our economic impetus contributions so that the cash injections we provide aren't spread ineffectually over long periods of time, rather they are delivered in one concentrated hit.

This email redirection also means that I can be kept apprised of the latest special offers from various retailers. Once again this could prompt towards when best to aid either the local, national or global economies with my important purchases.

In between my vital work in international finance comes my day job, which has a much higher volume of email associated with it. This means I have to be ruthless in my efficiency when dealin with work emails. Here a re a few hints and tips:

1) When Part of a group email - Often I am involved in emails between multiple recipients. The unwary can be caught out here. Here's what you do, you keep half an eye on the emails flying about the place that someone has seen fit to cc you on. There is no need to read anything at this stage. Even if it looks like something that is directly related to what you are doing, its usually a good idea to let them run out of steam a bit before you join in. Once these reponses stop, it usually means that the latest one contains a question for you or someone else playing the same game. Read as much of the string of garbage as you need to in order to get the salient details and the basics of the wild misjudgements, bad decisions and outright bollox. Respond with your pearls of wisdom and move away from your desk to make coffee. Repeat.

2) The email uzi- Some people are very odd. They may have 40 questions for you and choose to send them in 40 spearate emails. each response to each email will likely result in 40 more questions sent immediately by the email uzi. Respond to one email every morning until they learn how to use a telephone or write multiple sentences.

3) The Repeater - AKA The Belch. This is the guy who emails you the same question rephrased every 45 minutes. I use copy 'n' paste, you may have another method.

4) Questions from the Client - See 3), sign off with Kind Regards instead of Regards.

There are more but there is opportunity for me to leave on time today and you're probably getting bored by now. w00t!

This is harder than I thought....

Yeah, I am still going to keep up the posting every day but this next week or so might see one or two placeholders like this one, sorry!

Still to come:

Sainsbury's contains the death knell of the human race
The Dallas mystery unfolds
Is there such a thing as a nasty tasting combination of fruit juices?

Sunday

ahem.....


LET'S GO STEELERS! LET'S GO!

That is all.

Saturday

Covered this in the previous post really, lunch, pappa john's. playoffs. w00t!

Friday...

My awesome plan of staying late at work on Friday in order to avoid going in at the weekend hit something of a hiccup.

The hiccup in question was my old flatmate Stu, he returned to town yesterday so I elected to leave work before 7 and meet for a quiet pint and a catch up and to do a few hours on Sunday instead.

So I arranged to meet Stu for a quiet pint. We had a quiet pint. Then we were hungry so we adjourned to the best of the strangely numerous Italian restaurants in Leatherhead. We thenproceeded to polish of 2 bottles of particularly palatable Chianti (yeah like I know wine!). There was also food involved at some stage (meat balls if memory serves). After which we went for a few less quiet drinks - considerable quantities of gin.

Usually after such an evening I would be eating a farmyard for breakfast but I had arrangements to meet some people for lunch and wanted to have room for the plate fulls of goodness available at Caesar's. This time I was meeting Dave, my last flatmate and his girlfriend Gemma, along with Nick and Kara. I had a rib-eye if anyone is interested

Lunch done with I went shopping for food to supply me for the evening's playoffs. Usually I shop when I am starving (in case you hadn't noticed yet, I'm an idiot) but this time, full of steak and chips I found I was quite light on junk food when I left which, as you can imagine, was quit disappointing.

Nevermind, pappa john's supplied me with a crack-laced pizza for the evening's work ahead and I watched both hiome teams get knocked out of the running. A successful evening.

I did, however, fail to clean my flat.

Oh. And I think sometime during the gin course I agreed to go to Dallas. I remember the conversation starting with 'I'm not going abroad this year' and ending with checking flight prices, other than that it's a complete mystery to me.

...Or maybe tomorrow

Tune in next week folks! Rather than just list the things I've done, or rather not done I am just going to kick back and watch the rest of the playoffs, pray the Steelers offence turns up to the game and resume service tomorrow.

Don't worry my people

Full postings tomorrow, suffice to say that things haven't gone to plan but no real deviations to ruin my weekend. I am eating pizza and watching the Baltimore Ravens forgetting the fact they have the number 2 defence in the NFL. Fucksticks.

Reach for the stars, even if you can't touch your toes.

It occurs to me that the culmination of all of my plans this weekend, the overall goal is simply this:

'Be fatter than I was on Friday'

As quests go, I'll grant it lacks some of the heroic lustre of some of the Greek legends but then Hercules spent his time extinctifying mythological beasts and cleaning out stables with rivers whilst annihilating neighbouring towns.

All I'm saying is that with a few Krispy Kreme's he may have not been such an unfathomable shit and we'd have a few Nemean lions and Stymphalian birds about the place.

Living for the weekend......

Ok so my plans aren't grand, essentially they involve not being in work. OK they entirely involve not being in work.

The plan this weekend is to go for lunch with friends on Saturday, buy lots of groceries, clean and watch all 4 NFL playoff games.

Gotta start somewhere.

Tomorrow. Well. That's going to be less relaxing.

We meet at last........

I've blogged before about how I find it difficult to rouse myself to get interested in furniture, instead I have a tendency to buy toys and gadgets - much to the discomfort and chagrin of unfortunate visitors to my flat.

Thanks to a link I saw on theprojectivist's blog, I have finally met my match at www.suck.uk.com:



Called 'The Villain Chair', this is awesomeness in furniture format. I'd have to have a house for it to work properly, and I would need 2 of them. One for my command centre (front room) and one for the hallway right by the front door.

Every morning I would open the door, spin around slowly in the chair and say 'I've been expecting you' to the postman.

So 2 Villain Chairs. A bargain at £9,0000

Cultural Eye-Gouge - 'AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!'

Haikus are easy to write
what's the fuss about?
I'm going for a curry

Doctor Who????!

OK I know I'm old, but seriously. They've got a 12 year old with the same haircut as the guy from Flock of Seagulls as the new Doctor. Fucktards.

WARNING: Don't confuse the sleepy Matt!

So I've had to come into work this morning at, hmmmm let me see...... oh yes - STUPID O'FUCKING CLOCK!

*breathe*

For reasons I won't go into we have to turn things off sometimes to do things to the system and we have to do that outside working hours. When we do this, part of my job is to come in and do various things when its brought back up*. Fine. It's a necessary evil sometimes. This time made more evil by the fact that I forgot and stayed up watching the NFL playoffs last night. Then listened to some podcasts. Yeah, no one is cleverer than me.

I left the flat at a little before IT'S STILL FUCKING DARK FOR FUCK'S SAKE! and stood outside, looked around. Frowned. Went back into my flat, retrieved my phone, went backoutside. Stood. Frowned. Everything was all white and the snow was still falling, this was very unexpected.

Don't get me wrong, it's January, it's Britain. There's always that chance of snow. But on the other hand, it's January, it's Britain and for the last fortnight I haven't had every single person I've spoken to say 'They've promised snow' or 'They reckon it's going to snow'. No word of the identity of the shadowy and mysterious 'They' who, apparently, have the power to deliver snow on a whim**. There are of course people who are more confident in their own weather divination abilities and choose not to rely on the sage predictions of 'They', these are the people who will offer 'I reckon it's going to snow', 'It could snow this year' (Oh we thankyou for that precise and dire warning Nostra-fucking-damus) and my personal favourite 'It's too cold to snow'. Too fucking cold?! Are you a mentalist?! What the hell is going on at the Poles, baby penguin dandruff?!

So I was unprepared, any change in weather of this nature in this country is preceded by your average Brit becoming uncommonly interested in the weather, devoting large portions of otherwise completely avoidable conversation to the subject. It would be OK if these people sought eachother out but no, they choose to share their arcane weather knowledge with innocent and evidently uninterested people. Seriously, leve me the fuck alone - I have a window and access to the internet, I'm not going to rely on you for my weather predictions. These are the same people who talk in road numbers and take an unhealthy interest in your travel plans.

Cock: You're going back to Wales this weekend then?
Me: Yup
Cock: Which way are you going?
Me: I thought I'd head towards Wales
Cock: haha! I mean are you going via the M40 and taking the A48986 whogivesafuckbypass next to shitsville, or the A64309 whogivesatoss route? Course you could always take the B23617! Hahahaha!
Me: Don't make me hit you.

We live in a country that is the size of a peanut, leave me the fuck alone.

Anyway I digress. I am now in work and my body is going to think that it's lunchtime at 9am. As you can tell, I am keeping up my usual chipper and optimistic outlook.

*Not nearly as bad as the people who have had to be here since 11pm last night doing actual work as opposed the bullshit I'm here for.
**Which begs the question why they don't deliver some in September, you'd think they'd get bored delivering around the same time every year and would want to introduce a bit of variety. Would fuck those tossers who walk around shirtless, drinking Kestrel Super Strength up good and proper.

Oooops!

Almost missed a day, can't have that ;)

Been at work, lost the feeling in my face thanks to super duper chili and now watching the Vikings vs The Eagles.

There, told you some would be short

Double Take away

So I just got back from the office and decided that I am going to order take away. I used to order online from my local curry house then just go collect but sadly they have taken their website down and now I have to talk to real people (pah!).

Luckily I have one of their menus, so proceeded to start my traditional curry ordering ceremony. This involves looking at the take away menu/website for 20 minutes before ordering the same thing I always order, or some slight variation thereof. Anyway, I was perusing this menu when under 'Surrey Specials' I noticed this dish:

'Slay The Dragon-Mysore Delicately'.

If only the description lived up to the awesome name but as far as I can determine it's little more than pineapple glazed chicken which sounds more like an accident than a yummy dish.

Saturday Night, it's the night for...

Sitting in the office apparently. Ho-hum!

On the plus side this should become more of a rarity this year and I'm not actually that bothered, I'm getting paid to do even less than usual and I only live a 5 minute drive from the office. Also it means that I got to abandon the cleaning at the 'My flat is no longer a biohazard' stage.

Piss. I just remembered that I forgot to defrost mince for chili makings later! pah!

Hey, what is it with supermarket mince? It lasts about 40 seconds before turning all manky and brown. Seriously, there are no butchers where I live, the closest being about 3 miles away. Unfortunately the town where this magical shop is also has streets about 4" wide and no parking unless you have the royal fucking seal branded on your forehead. I like walking places, but finding the time and the inclination to walk for about an hour to arrive at a shop run by 'Mr Surly & Son, Family Butchers - "Take your mince and fuck off"' doesn't fill me with glee.

Next week I have Saturday off so will have another mooch but those people look at you like you've got a swastika tattooed on your head when you go in their shop.

I know I'm a bad man for buying supermarket meats but it's what I have access to where I live so it's what I have to live with.

I have a cold, so tomorrow I will make a 'Chili of Uber Doom-laden facemeltingness'. I will essentially be foregoing my usual consideration for flavour and going for the 'Oh MY GOD it's so hot I can see through time' approach to culinary perfection. It's what I like to call a 'Number 1 Chili'. This describes the number of dimensions you can ascribe to its flavour, the number of thoughts that remain in your head after eating it ("AIIEEEEEEEE!") and the number of layers of skin remaining on your tongue.

I normally like spicy food but not stupidly spicy, virtually no flavour food but when I have a cold I prefer the discomfort of eating magma to the annoying and unreachable tickles and scrapes such a pathetic illness delivers.

OK, now it’s apparently time for me to do my stuff here at the home of indentured servitude - maybe more later ;)

Working at procrastination is procrastination too...

I've promised to blog every day, this of course requires me to have something to blog about. This is day 2 and I'm blogging about how I've promised to blog every day and how difficult it will be to find something to blog about every day.

You see my point? I've been leading a fairly dull and uninteresting existence, particularly recently. I rarely see my friends or family and am something of a slovenly hermit right now. I know what you're thinking: 'How are you still single?!'.

So rather than just writing a blog post entitled 'Tuesday' and writing 'It's Tuesday' as the entry, I will be doing things and writing about them. I did do things last year, some of them awesome, but I didn't really write about them and the whole awesomeness of some of the events was sadly overshadowed by a filthy 4th quarter.

So, in addition to my normal rants I'll promise to write about things that I have done, in a manner which rather arrogantly assumes anyone is at all interested.

Obviosuly, I'll plug the gaps in between these breathtaking adventures with poorly articulated rants.

Thank fuck that's over

Right that's 2008 out of the way. I think I'll play 2009 differently, I had some great times in 2008 but it was overshadowed by a variety of things that have left me generally regretting taking part.

You know things aren't going well when the only thing you can think to talk about in a social situation is work. Well balls to that.

Roll on 2009, less gadgetry, more doing stuff and more ranting. w00t!

Hi. My Name's Matt and I'm a buyingcrapIdonotneedoholic.

It comes as a shock I know, but it's true.

Since I've been working a bit more than usual and 'invested' in a few new hobbies, I've managed to tone down my gadget buying considerably. Right now I am fighting a genuine compulsion to buy a new TV.

It's true that the one I have is flawed - it has no SCART connections, no HDMI connection and randomly turns itself off in the summer. Also the bit of it that makes things HD also makes everything green so I can't use that bit of it.

However. It still works, and the fact is the only HD thing I have is the XBox and I really don't play games that often anymore so buying a new TV is a bit retarded. This is the conversation I have with myself pretty much daily at the moment, and it will be ahrder as the price of a decent replacement comes tumbling down in January.

My one possible saving grace to my complete lack of consumer willpower is my considerable ability to create unworkable plans. This year it is to be more frugal, buy less crap, so that maybe; just maybe I'll be able to get my own place in 2010.

So, the book is open. Lets be honest, I'll crumble on January the 1st.

Christmas, The Joy of books, SWAG! and the Ninja Lurgy

So I left Surrey at 3:30am Christmas morning. I called my brother up at 6:30am(ish) from a Motorway services. This was primarily a malicious move on my part, I decided if I was lugging his pressie all the way from Surrey at stupid O'clock in the morning then he would suffer too.

Granted the car did the majority of the lugging, I just find detail gets in the way of vengeance.

I arrived, picked up my Pob-like older brother* and went to the parents house. Gifts were distrubuted, my mum had good Swag this year for once which was awesome. Though it did mean that my role as 'computer repair guy' was immediately doubled as she is now the proud owner of a laptop with Vista (*spit!*) on it and a digital camera.

I should clarify 'Computer Repair Guy'. My primary role is to go home, shout at my dad, remove all the shit he's spent the last few months installing on his computer and telling him never to install anything ever again. My dad's hobby is collecting malicious programs. He is banned from my mum's computer.

I drank lots on Christmas day, really far more than is good for me. And yes, Jo, I did when pressed (by pressed I mean 'looked at') did spout bile and venom about the travesty of THAT cover version. Most people agreed with me but I think only because my passion verges on zealotry in things like this and they were likely quite scared.

Sadly, Pedr did not attend the traditional Christmas booze up and fall-over, arranging instead to meet up on Boxing Day. Unfortunately on Boxing Day I was suffering a mysterious illness that required me to lounge around reading and listening to the radio whilst eating constantly and I was not in a state to go to the pub. This was probably a good thing, Boxing day is always a bad day to go out in Ruthin, it's like a bad tempered version of Christmas Eve.

So we rearranged for the Saturday but sadly I was still feeling under the weather as concealed beneath my mysterious definitely-not-a-hangover illness was the Christmas Ninja Lurgy.

The CNL is something I get whenever I go home for Christmas, it's not usually particularly harsh, just persistent. One of those illnesses that mean you are well enought o go to work, but anything social is off the cards as you know the moment you engage in revelry you will be struck down the next day in a mercialess assault of snot, coughing, sneezing and general blechiness. I had to drive on Sunday so couldn't really risk it.

On the plus side, Mike made a face melting chili and I was able to watch such awesome movies as 'Slugs!', 'Monster!', 'Pursuit!' and other one word, exlamation marked works of cinematice detritus. I also watched the genuinely enjoyable (not in a 'this is so bad' kind of way) 'Undead' - an Australian movie about aliens and zombies. Throw in some robots with lasers coming out of their eyes and you have a perfect movie.

I mentioned reading, I spent pretty much 2 out of the 3 days I was home just reading. I've not finished a book in over 6 months for one reason or another, I managed to finish 2 over Christmas and it was extremely gratifying to just sit around reading, probablt the most relaxation I've had in a very long while.

Finally, cool swag from awesome people.

I love Swag.



*Not just in looks, he also has an inability to form an intelligible sentemce. This does not stop him from tring of course, relentlessly and without pause 24 hours a day.

OK....Christmas

I'm really very sorry about the previous post, I needed to vent that. I'd managed to avoid that partioular cover until today and it was so awful it released some of the rage.

I don't have a huge Christmas this year, driving back tomorrow and back here on Saturday or Sunday. None of that matters, I am going home - there will be booze, there will be foods, there will be family and there will be friends. I also travel bearing gifts, so hopefully I'll be spreading a little joy too. Some are for me that I am being good about and not unwrapping before tomorrow.

Most importantly, there will be piggies in blankets. Some people seem to think the big Turkey thingy is the centre piece. These people are clearly idiots, the turkey is there in order to have something large to put the piggies in blankets around. And the roast potatoes, essentially it's there for structure. So, now you know.

Another couple hours and I finish work and am out the door, I'll be wrapping, cleaning & packing. Then a fairly early night with a plan to set off around 4am. This plan will certainly fail, but you have to aim high people! Live the dream!

People make the party, and my people rule. 2 days is plenty.

Hellelujah

I don't object to cover versions of songs, even awesome songs. I want that understood right away.

However (yeah, you didn't see THAT coming!). BAD cover versions are just painful. It's like when Wil Smith stars in remake of a classic movie, or a wildly inaccurate movie version of classic literature. It's essentially pissing on genius. It's the difference between eating at a nice restaurant and stuffing a shit burger down your gullet so you can start playing with the free toy.

OK, the point:

Leonard Cohen is a genius. He makes you want to slash your wrists whilst necking a bottle of pills and hurling yourself off a bridge into oncoming traffic. That's a powerful guy.



Jeff Buckley's intensely awesome cover version.

Clicky (embedding is disabled on this track for some reason)

Seriously, I may get lynched for saying it but I think Buckley's version is just astounding and prefer it to the Cohen original.

Then there is this:



Which is essentially an exercise in demonstrating vocal range.

Now it's true I have a natural bias against anything vomited forth into the world by Simon Cowell, I think he is an evil and insipid shit who's sole purpose is to destroy art in all its forms. But that's not what I object to the most, it's the way that she sings the song. It's utterly without feeling or any attempt at understanding the lyrics, the entire track is sung in a 'Look at how well I can sing! Look! Look! Look at me! Look!' kind of way. You know, all R'n'B since 1988.

Compare that with the way it's sung by Jeff Buckley. I mean. You tell me, which is the shit-burger that may just satisfy for 5 minutes and which is the amazing meal and restaurant you are going to go back to time and again?

Honestly, I've not been this angry about a song since Busted covered Teenage Kicks by the Undertones.

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

There's a bit of a backlash against people like me, who despise reality TV with every fibre of their being - ESPECIALLY popularity/beauty contests like the X-Factor. Apparently I am a snob. The idea of sticking my head in raw sewage fills me with revulsion, not doing that doesn't make me a snob. Watching shows like this illicit a similar feeling, so I'm not sure where the snobbery comes in when I refuse to watch. If someone sticks their head in raw sewage and then asks me what my favourite used sanitary towel in the raw sewage is, on the immediate assumption that I too enjoy sticking my head in raw sewage, then I am going to voice an opinion on the subject. If then, raw sewage is poured liberally into 80% of the country's food, again on the assumption that raw sewage is where all the kewl kidz are at, then my ire will be raised even further. Hence this overdue posting.

Never let it be said that I under stretch a metaphor.

Also, I watch some right old crap. Seriously, I watch some awful things. My biggest viewing vice will be B-Movies and the like, especially horror, monster or Kung-Fu flicks. Some are so bad they are good, some make you feel someone has mugged you and stolen 2 hours of your life. But I love them all from the amazing Evil Dead I&II right down to 'Frogs!'*. Oh. And Troll II. Everyone should see Troll II. A movie so bad, it's working title was 'Goblins' but in an effort to increase ticket sales they called it Troll II in order to imply it was a sequel to a moderately more successful movie.

Anyway, I digress. I watch some right old crap, but the crap I watch is actively sought out and isn't the only thing on network TV before 9pm.


/rant.

EDIT:I totally forgot the silver lining! Leonard Cohen needs the money, so at least all those bleating sheep that bought this piece of crap have given their money to a worthy cause, as have all the more discerning people who bought the Jeff Buckley version in retaliation! /EDIT



*in which there are no frog related deaths, or indeed frogs. they do manage a gecko related death, a moss related death, a tree related death (evil tree, but no tree rape as in the Evil Dead) and an implied turtle related death. I can only assume the sheer horror of a deadly killer turtle was deemed too gruesome and disturbing for the unsuspecting audience.

Resolutions

I don't believe in New Year’s resolutions, I think they are silly, arbitrary and invariably unachievable and pointless.

Resolutions FOR the New Year made on the 23rd of December are an infinitely more sensible idea. Especially when those resolutions are fuelled by 3 months of massive amounts of overtime, sleep patterns that are inversely proportional to said overtime and whilst one's mind is cheerfully unravelling.

So that's the approach I've taken, I suggest you all follow my fine example - unless of course you are not morons with an inability to say no to any piece of work that looks remotely interesting. If that's the case, the less effective but more traditional resolution my suit you better.

Anyway, resolutions. Prepare yourselves, there's at least one on this list you are not going to like. I put it first to get it over with, think of it as ripping off a plaster (that's band-aid to you silly Americans with your cute little language).

1) Daily Blogging - it occurs to me that I am not blogging much and when I do it's dull, uninteresting and, as a general rule, ill tempered. A lesser man would take this as a sign that he is dull, uninteresting and, as a general rule, ill tempered. Obviously I discarded this possibility as pure nonsense.

Even in the unlikely event that this is the case, my natural contempt for my fellow man must surely dictate that I increase my output and not decrease it? So from January 1st I am going to make concerted efforts to blog daily. They will doubtless start off as lengthy as this one, but most days should be little more than a paragraph musing about how they make Kinder Eggs

2) Use my Annual leave differently - OK, the last 2 years I've had some awesome holidays, which has been great. Couple years ago I spent 2 weeks in Pittsburgh, which confuses many - especially as I didn't do huge amounts whilst I was there, but that suited me down to the ground. I got to see an old friend, do some interesting mooching on my own and spend other days vegging out eating sandwiches. It was fucking great. Same year I spent a few days in Italy with some close friends, also awesome.

This year I spent a lot of time and money with the Canada trip for Nick's wedding, which had some real highlights (not least of which was the wedding!). But other than that, I don't know what I did with my time.

Next year I am going to keep UK based, I want to take shorter breaks and make sure they really are actual breaks or make sure I am going to do something. I've already secured my Glastonbury ticket, I'll be going to Download and maybe Rebellion UK, Hammerfest and some of the gentler festivals. I also want to make sure that I see enough of my friends and family So I am going to be doing much more long weekends and less of the full week off kind of holidays. Some times of course I just want to eat chips and watch DVDs.

3) Keep looking - I've stopped looking for new things to do this year. I took a few new interests, both of which have suffered as a result of my current workload, which is slightly disappointing but not irredeemable. I also stopped looking for new jobs etc. which is always a mistake for me because I get comfortable, then I get bored. I was bored this time last eyar and I was looking, I now have interesting things going on so I stopped. Really what I should be doing is looking for the next thing to do because what I am doing now will stop being interesting in April. Probably sooner.

This isn't about definitely moving job or company or country, it's just about reminding myself that I can, because I really am not the sharpest tool in the box.

4) Read more JOlivia! - I haven't kept up to date with the happeningses in the lives of the two people whose blogs I have read since the day I started blogging and I feel like a cad (yeah that's right Hannah, I'm sticking with the 17th century). Also I haven't read Famulus' blog in ages.

It's not for me, these poor souls are missing my valuable insights and observations into their humdrum lives and they deserve better.

So that's the shortlist.

So there you go, prepare for the flood!

Charty Democracy

So I was awoken by my alarm this morning at some ludicrously early hour, I always ignore my alarm but it's good to have a routine.

Ok. Yes. I am one of those freaks who like to be woken up massively in advance of when he has to be woken up just to have the satisfaction of knowing I don't need to be awake for ages and can go back to sleep. And yes on a normal day and for reasons best know to itself, my brain wakes up about 2 minutes before that alarm goes off no matter when I set it for.

After the first false alarm alarm, at 7:30am the radio kicks in. It's far enough away for me to have to actually move about in order to get to it, so usually I leave it on and gradually wake up enough to be in what I like to call the 'post-asleep, pre-11am/4 cups of coffee' state. I'm working on something snappier, but I am the literal sort so it’s not easy.

Anyway, I kind of went past the bit where I could do a seamless segway into the point of this post. The radio comes on at 7:30am just as 6Music News starts. Today, once they'd got past all the unimportant stuff to do with terrorist attacks in Mumbai and Thai airports and suchlike, they moved onto the important business of the Billboard charts. Apparently the Killer album beat Guns 'N' Roses Chinese Democracy to the number 1 spot. Apparently pundits had expected it the other way around, some bollox about in hard times people listen to hard music.

Fairly certain there wasn't too much thrash jazz about in during the Wall Street crash, but I am assuming that by allowing them to make these kinds of studies, we are keeping these idiots and their highly flammable beards, corduroys and pony tails away from naked flames. Not so much for their own safety but for the sake of preventing substantial property damage.

Anyway, I digress (again). A more likely indicator that Axl 'I'm taking my football home' Rose's latest endeavour would enjoy chart success is the fact that both AC/DC and Metallica's latest offerings both debuted at number one.

Now, here's the thing... Oh shut up! You knew there was going to be a thing; it's your own fault for reading this far!

The thing. Metallica, biggest metal band of the last however many years. Newest offering? Awe-some. Seriously awesome. After some of the shit they have produced over the last 15 years, I can't tell you how good this album is if metal/hard rock is your thang. They also had the benefit of having their last album be utterly without redemption, a truly awful piece of crap that had no idea what it was or where it was going. Which, rather than losing them sales this time around, led to a 'Well, it's going to be better than St.Anger - even if they just somehow manage to make some kind of audible syphilis infection, it'll be better than St.Anger' feeling around this release. Couple that with the gap between albums and tours, the more awesomeness of Death Magnetic, the general return to form and the fact that they have a monumentally huge fan base - this was never not going to be number one in a LOT of countries.

AC/DC. Not buying the new AC/DC album at some point (I have a few copies on order) if you're a rock/metal fan is not an option. Angus Young is God. I don't give a toss that all their albums sound the same after Back in Black. I refer you to Angus Young and rest my case. Also see 'Army of loyal fans'. Number one in a LOT of countries. But for a different reason, this isn't a 'return to form'. It's AC/DC, they are awesome and they rock. They've always rocked; even when it wasn't fashionable to rock (hang your heads in shame Metallica! You may have rocked at gigs, but your albums? They did not rock.). This is a loyalty 'Fuck you, I'm 103 years old and AC/DC are getting to number 1 because immortality wins every time bitch!'

OK, maybe not. Maybe they are just both really good albums, metal and hard rock seems to be back in fashion without the necessity of sub-categories like Emo (rebranded Goths with better make-up) or Nu-Metal (E-chords and the rap/melody combo). It'll stop being in fashion again fairly soon I am sure, but it won't stop being awesome and populated with some of the world's most talented musicians.

Chinese Democracy. I have a few problems with this offering:

1) Fifteen years in the making! - Bullshit. 15 years of Axl Rose in and out of rehab, hiring and firing musicians like some kind of demented genius but without the genius part. They probably knocked this thing out in 6 months all told.

2) Bandwagon jumping - You really get the impression they wanted to get this out around the time of the other two releases, I'm sorry but G'N'R, sorry, Axl Rose stopped being relevant about a decade or so ago.

3) Appetite For Destruction - The band, in whatever its form, has never written anything that comes close to the awesomeness of this first album. Use your Illusion was cool, great pair of albums but not a speck on AFD. The Spaghetti Incident was laughable...and this, well. See below

4) Was it worth the wait? - No. Fucking. Way. I heard some of the tracks on My Space. They are not BAD tracks, but there's nothing new here. This album basically sank Geffen Records as an independent entity, and saw the walk-outs of numerous music execs, producers, musicians, tea ladies, basically anyone who had any contact with Axl Rose. Fine if it was a symphony of metal or crescendo of hard-rock the likes of which the world has never seen before. But this REALLY isn't. This leads me on to point 5....

5) You're not AC/DC - AC/DC make the music they make because that's what makes them happy, and hard-core AC/DC fans don't like change. Or nurses (they keep stealing their clothes). But mainly, they don't like change. They WANT to keep making the same song, and their fans WANT to keep hearing the same song. Guns N' Roses were a pioneering band once - original, talented and volatile. Now?

6) You're not even Guns N' Roses - You're just Axl Rose working, essentially, with session musicians who fucking hate you. The rest of your crew are off doing their own thing over in Velvet Revolver and have been for years, in fact they have 2 albums. They are looking for a new lead singer right now, but don't be waiting by the phone.

So. Not a bad album from what I've heard of it and I will end up owning it as the first track is certainly pretty good. What it isn’t is 15 years and the livelihoods of those left in the wake of Axl Rose's ego.

Portents of Doom

I have to go to North London on Friday for what is cheerily described as a Disaster Recovery Test.

This involves me going to a new office up there that has been recently built and is described as a shining example of something or other. The whole point is to prove that I can continue to perform the exercise in futility that is my job from an alternate location should Leatherhead fall to the aliens, as predicted by H.G.Wells.

There's no nice way of putting this, if alien death machines did land and wipe out this part of Surrey, the reaction of the rest of the country would be something akin to 'How much is your fucking shoe-box flat worth now dickhead?!'. We're a pleasant people.

Anyway, I digress. Leatherhead - a rubblesome, smouldering heap. Me, off to North London to continue my important and vital work. Presumably, whatever disaster/terrorist assault/alien invasion/stampede has struck Leatherhead has avoided the city of 7.5 million people that is about 20 miles up the road.

The office in question is being built, and apparently quite combustible. I'm told it's caught fire 'a few times' during the building phase, as with other cost-saving initiatives my genius employers taking the idea of hotdesking to a whole new high. Fuck-off, everyone needs a pun every now and then if only to be reminded how painful they are.

Talking of hotdesking, I don't have a hotdesk, I have a permanent desk. I've just been told that I now have to book the use of my own desk, or some other dithering fuckwit (ie, a dithering fuckwit who is not me) can come and use my desk. This, apparently, is to encourage me to record when I am not here so that some other dithering fuckwit can use my desk and mess up all my mess.

I have decided to see what happens if I do not follow this new genius policy, I suspect it will go something like this:

ME: Hi. You're sat at my desk
DFW: I booked this desk; you'll have to go somewhere else
Me: Uh-huh. It's my desk though, if I could do my work from anywhere I'd be at home in my pyjamas eating toast.
DFW: I'm afraid I booked this desk; you'll have to make other arrangements
Me: If you can work from anywhere, which apparently you can - including a desk that is evidently mine, it has my name on it and everything!- then why aren't you at home in your pyjamas eating toast?!
DFW: I have work to do!
Me: And I have toast to eat, but let me just take your email address so I can refer all questions to you OK?
DFW: What?!
Me: Well I assume you will be adopting my role for the day? Don't worry, I'm good with faces I'll go ahead and set up an Out of Office reply and go eat toast, have a good day!

I'm not sure of the logic. I'm essentially going to have an excuse to go home.

You see how good I am at taking the negative and turning it into the positive? That's right; I am the optimistic King of turning the frown upside down.

....
...

Though if you think about it that would just look a bit weird. 'Mate! What the fuck is going on with your forehead! You look like a failed Klingon!'

Anyway, I am going to do more work now.

Desparately seeking separation......

In celebration of the fact that the Labour Party and the Conservative have a policy difference for the fist time since around 2000, all political parties and the press are having a field day with stories about the new economic stuff that the guvmint is going to do.

Now, a few of the outlets and politicians are focussing on the actual content of these policies - analysing the immediate and long term impact. These people are idiots and have no idea how to run either a news story or a political party.

No, the REAL story is in the stuff that was rejected and isn't going to happen. Yup, that's right - everyone is complaining about the rise in VAT that isn't happening. They are telling us how terrible such a rise is and how we are all going to be eating gravel as a result of this thing that isn't actually happening.

The Tories, in a magnificent display of hyperbole have claimed it is a huge tax bombshell, targetted at every family in the country! This immediately made me feel better, it's usually families and their bawling, vomitting, shitting offspring that benefit from my hard-earned dollahs, it's about time they were targetted by a 1000 megatax thermonuclear bomb! (You can use that Dave).

So to recap, in the absence of anything worhtwhile to talk about it's all John Sergeant and a tax rise that isn't actually happening. Way to go Britain, you rock!

Personally I think Labour and Conservative should just stop all of this fightin' and a feudin' and just get together - white middle class millionaires should stick together afterall. They should join into one party, instead of red and blue, how about a nice Royal Purple colour?

They'll need a new logo...... How about Big Ben? (Not St. Stephen's tower, but the thing that is actually Big Ben that makes the noise inside St Stephen's tower). And this would be the end of political in-fighting as there would only be one party, so really the partty to end all parties. The End party. And they'll need a nickname....... purple, big ben, the end. How about the Big Purple Bell-ends?

That's coming along nicely....

I'm going to the pub after work (whenver that happens to be). In order to counteract this possible boost to my social life, I've been forced to use a powerful Pariah-ising tool - The Nerd-o-Geek Puntabulous joke.

I've been waiting on something all day from a colleague who has been swearing at varying degrees of voracity throughout the day. We just noticed he made what can be described as a 'schoolboy error'. Or, as I put it in my incredibly funny email (which travelled a few hundred miles to go about 6 feet):

if (operator==monkey)
{
phail;
}

No one is cooler than me.

The Lord Giveth........

I don't ask for much out of life really. Food, booze, toys, gadgets, awesome friends, the formation of a joint Platypi/Badger defence league - the usual simple things.

Amongst my simple desires is a complete Godzilla movie collection on DVD - the Japanese 'AAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! GOJIRAAAAAAA!' originals of course. I think we can all agree that this is a simple, right-minded thing for me to want and indeed is really something that is essential to being complete as a human being. Which probably expalins why it is so difficult to get hold of, along with the fact that it doesn't actually exist.

Or so I thought.

Because Life and the Universe are spite-filled bitches, they wafted this in front of my nose earlier. Yeah, that's a Godzilla head - I don't fucking care, look at all that DVD goodness! Out of print - what kind of sadist produces the awesomest collection of more awesomer the world has ever seen and then makes it a 'Limited Edition'?! And not like a Hollywood 'Limited Edition' where 'Limited' means 'Limited to the number of copies we can produce until all the resources of the planet Earth are consumed or until we make Limited Edition II:This time it's personal'. This was an actual limited edition that they stopped making!

It's official, no one has it harder than me. Don't bother trying to find anyone, there's no point. I've thought of appealing to the distributors sense of dignity or humanity, but we all know that people like that have no souls and can only just be considered human because of so-called 'Genetic evidence'. Pfft!

So, come on my peoples - help me out. Help me track down a complete Gojira!! box set so that I can finally finish of that Social Death Spiral I've been working so hard at.

He had a Dream

Well Jo, 'Liv. You did it, you destroyed the American Dream, I hope you're proud of yourselves.

In 2000 the Republican party proved that just because you lose a Presidential election, that doesn't mean you can't be president of the United States of America. In 2008 Rudy sought to keep that dream of hope alive, to prove that promise of legalised election fraud could still hold true today.

I have no doubt that it was your commnets on thsi blog that finally crushed the stout spirit of this great american and joinrudy2008.com, was taken down.

Now you'll just have to live with your democratically elected leader. See where THAT gets you!

It's not over!

Thanks to The Bugle for pointing this out to mere mortals!

Owing to sheer guts and determination and the American 'Can Do' spirit, you can still donate to the Rudy Giuliani 2008 Presidential campaign!

Never give up! Never Surrender!

Ruuu-dy! Ruuu-dy! Ruuu-dy!

Pathetic

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7710034.stm

First rule of British politics: In the absence of something of substance to say, try to associate yourself with someone who has.

Pick a colour, any colour

Like most alive people, I depsised the Bush administration with an unholy passion but despite his best efforts, there are still lots of alive people left in the world.

I'm not going to talk much about the US elections, other than to say what a joy it was to see two competing candidates. I agree with my friend Hannah - there were two sides, two sets of opinions, two personalities. You could see where they differed and where they agreed. One made the mistake of listening to strategists and abandoned his strengths and went on a pandering/attack campaign. That was a shame, he should have stuck with who he actually is.

But there were differences, and a massive turn out. 11 months is a bit of a piss take for a democratic process but you gotta love that whole separation of power thing they have going on.

All we get to do is pick a colour and wait for the next set of generic public school boys to take over without anything approachign a mandate.

Demographics

Politicians used to leave me alone back in the day, that was when I was a low income non-voting pleb who didn't understand the wider world or politics. Of course the only thing that was actually true was that I was on a low income, but facts rarely matter in politics and neither do the people.

The only people that matter are those that vote, 75% of which would rather put their own eyes out with a shitty stick than change the way they've voted all their lives, even if their party of choice has changed their main campaign promises to include legislation protecting puppy drowning and child slavery.

That leaves a good 25%, many of whome will be influenced by their rag of choice. You also have to take into account those people who will vote to keep someone out rather than voting with their conscience (I actually did this brainless and fucked up thing once, to my eternal shame). There are people in the world who will vote their conscience, but unfortunately many of those people aren't allowed to vote because they are not 18, and the rest won't matter because we don't actually operate anything resembling a democracy here.

So, unsurprisingly I've gone off topic. I'm now in an income bracket that means politicians now care about my vote, and its fucking annoying. Try explaining to people why you opposed the 10p tax balls up when you are one of the prime beneficiaries. I'm the guy they aim these things at because demographically speaking I am likely to vote, and generally speaking people are selfish fucktwits so i am likely to vote for what benefits me directly which is a sick view of the world.

And sadly it works, any movement that taxes people like me more, or God forbid! One of the many middle-higher income couples that happen to have spawned , then you'll pretty much lose. Because the people who get fucked over the most are the people least likely to vote and that's the way governments like it. And now I definitely know I am become the enemy because I am talking shit about something I barely understand and will do little to nothing about. Middle class, is there anything more evil?

Red or Blue, in this decade can someone please tell me the difference?

Satan's Layby

So I'm in Milton Keynes for the next 2 days. I'm being punished for something, probably something I said. The problem is I say so very many inappropriate or off colour things that to narrow the field down to a specific thing that the universe is punishing me for would be an exercise in futility.

Milton Keynes is a good example of why town planners in this country need to be stopped at all costs. They are the mid-level management of evil genius. Macciavelli's brain damaged cousins. Moriati's accountant. You get the idea.

I think it was originally designed as somewhere to train people in what to expect in the event of the emergence of a post apocalyptic dystopia. It's the city equivilent to soylent green. It's completely inavigable because everywhere looks like everywhere else.

There is a nice chinese restaurant here though. See how I am ever the burning ray of optimistic summer sunshine?

That's another New Orleans Saints....

.....First Down!

So Pedr was down this weekend. We drank, we ate, I bought a coat and a yellow music stand. All was well with the world. We also started an inappropriately named NFL franchise on Madden 09 on my Xbox 360.

2 grown men laughing like school children because the first game of the 09 season was the Rimjobs at the Browns.

All of this highbrow activity was a mere preamble to the main event, which was the San Diego Chargers (booooooooooooooooooooooooo!) @ New Orleans Saints (WHO DAT!). Only not really, it was the New Orleans Saints home game but at the awesome-o Wembley Stadium, the awesome-est stadium in the world (It's a fact, no need to look it up).

I won't bang on about the game itself - which was a massive improvement on last year's and was amazing to watch - you can check out espn for that. They did throw a tailgate party this year and the Lt. Governor of Louisiana was knocking around the place apparently, as were the Louisiana tourist board.

There were give aways, NFL Experience things going on and live music. Which was mainly jazz, which is fine because it was what I term 'good jazz'. Not the musical in-joke, clever, smug and awful sounding 'experimental' (for experimental, read discordant) crap that is more interested in mutually assured musical masturbation than in entertaining anyone beyond their own little clique. I'm glad we have made the distinction, now we can move on.

Wait. I should clarify, in case there are musical types out there (Rob I'm talking to you) - I mean good in a the pure 'Good Vs Evil' sense. The Devil was clearly the superior fiddle player to Johnny but he still sounded like shit because he spent all his time trying to be clever instead of trying to sound good.

So, the jazz. Lots of brass too, which was bent towards further jazziness. The rain did not deter the enthusiastic folks whose job it was to bring a little piece of Louisiana to a car park outside a stadium in Wembley. I'm sure the irony was not lost on them.

Of course, jazz isn't really my kind of thing - even good jazz (see definitions above). It suited the setting, anywhere else and I would have been ready to stab someone in the eye with a clarinet reed after the first half hour. The whole thing though was a really good idea. nearly 20,000 attended the tailgate, it generated a really cool pre-match atmosphere and certainly made my mind up about who I would be cheering for. After we'd decided to be Saints for the day (a bigger deal for Pedr as he is a 49ers fan), we proceeded to bully Nick to do the same. Undeterred by the weather, the Louisianartians and the NFL(I think that's what people from Lousiana are called.....) put on a great day that even made this curmudgeon marginally less scowly.

Highlights? For me it was standing in a queue. There is nothing more fundamentally British than queuing. We are born to it.
There were these guys wandering about with beer dispensers, Pedr and I joined a queue for one of these selfless slakers of thirst. After a few minutes it became apparent to Pedr that there was no one at the end of the queue, the beer man had gone off somewhere. We were standing in a queue that had nothing at the end of it, it was the single most British thing I've ever done and unless I am able to subjugate other countries at will, or take up casual racism, it's the most British thing I ever WILL do!

It genuinely filled my heart with unparalleled joy. Our queuing powers had temporarily evolved. No longer did we form queues to get something, we now formed queues and waited for a good/service to arrive at the front of it. And so it was, the man returned replete with fresh beer.

The second thing was the flags. Everyone got a 'Be a Saint' flag in the stadium. Essentially this meant it was possible for there to be no actual Saints fans. None of these flags indicated allegiance to the Saints, they merely encouraged it in others.

Downside? Another British thing. Local radio DJs. The NFL comes to town, very American. Louisiana come to town, bringing their amazing food (more on which later), music, dance and atmosphere with them. We had to do 1 little thing, just one - get a decent guy on the stage. Seriously how hard can it be to find someone who wasn't made in a vat with the rest of these countless and pointless pricks?! Here's a clue whoever made that decision - get someone who fucking knows something about the game, or the teams, or anyting at all. This should preclude all DJs. Just let the NFL send their guy OK?!

For those outside the country, over here it's tradition whenever there is an outside event to use a Radio DJ for announcements. No one knows why it's a tradition, but slavery was a tradition until someone noticed that it was inhumane. I'm not saying that Local Radio DJs as events presenters/announcers are as bad as slavery...... that's for you to decide.

Praise the Lord

Sometimes I really wish I had an imaginary friend like those Judaeo-Christian religious people,then I could use the phrase 'God hates me' when things aren't going well.

Please provide suggestions in the comments section that's as punchily whiny as this exclamation of woe.

People you may know....

Like most of the Interwebbed world, I am Facebook's little revenue generating bitch. I've forgone the obvious whining about facebook post for far too long. It's time to face the fact that my complaints enfold with a tedious and predictable inevitability.

If I was in therapy, it would be called 'embracing who you are'...

...
...

Of course if I was in therapy the rest of my interaction with the therapist would be called 'Assault with a deadly pencil shapener'.

Anyway, I digress. Facebook.

This is not a complaint about the new layout, it's a complaint about people who complain about the new layout. Even lamer than these people are the people who set up groups for people to join so that they can all whine like little bitches with skinned knees together about how much they don't like the new layout. The peak of lameness, in this particular sub-category of troll-like lobotomy experiment, is those who set up groups with a target of n Million people to join, and if they do Mr Facebook Man has said he will trash the new facebook!'.

Really.

The guy who is raking in untold gabazillions of dollahs as a result of the additional ad revenue sat down and thought 'I know, I'll tell a fat kid with a serious skin complaint and questionable personal hygeine who lives in San Antonio in his parents basement that if he, with his untold popularity, can gather together 10,000,000 people into an imaginary gang, I will forego the advancement of my evil plan'.

So. There's those people. And to those people I have a message (cos they totally want to hear what I have to say). Here's my message, ready?

Leave. Seriously, leave Facebook. If you hate it that much, fuck off. Do you know what your little online clubs do? They make more money for facebook, that's right dumbass - more pages = more revenue, also it provides Mr 'I'm throwing my head back and laughing like a Viking' Facebook Man's targetted ad system even more data on his hapless revenue drones (that's us by the way, in case you are still struggling with the concept).

They don't care OK? I've hated the fucking thing since they allowed you scum to bombard me with crapplication invites every bastard second of every bastard day, but I am still there all the bastard time like the weak willed addict I am. If you leave, I will respect you as you will have the courage of your convictions, if you stay - just roll over and accept that you are nothing but a money counter.

/rant.

So. Targetted ads. Why is facebook periodically trying to encourage me to get breast implants? Can they double as ear-muffs?


...And finally...

People you may know..... I think Mr Evil Facebook Man has gone a bit loopy here. the logic behind this particular feature appears to be 'Does anyone on you friends list have a relative or have any contact whatsoever that matches anything in youtr profile'.

Yes. I do know that person' mum. Would I go for a pint with them? Probably not. leave me alone.

Yes. I do know that person went to the same Uni as me, he was a nob then and now he's a nob with a job. Congratulations ut I'd still rather use crushed glass as eyewash than have him associated with me in anyway.

You wouldn't think it, but I actually enjoy writing this stuff, it's quite cathartic (hey! have you been talking to therepists!).

English (UK)

This is just a note to software designers. English (UK). That is just fucking English. I will accept it as a valid option when you start putting Espanol(Espana) and Francais(France). There should be 2 options:

English
English(Wrong).

*stir, bait*

Cereal Killer

I'm trying to start eating breakfast at the moment but I can't go around eating a pig every morning, which is pretty much what I do when I roll out of bed at the weekends and cook a farmyard slaughter on toast.

So. Breakfast cereal. As a general rule, I only eat Shredded Wheat when it comes to breakfast cereal. First of all, it's yummy. Second of all, when it succumbs to the the fundamental flaw that affects all breakfast cereal, it's yumminess doesn't diminish.

Which brings us to the fundamental flaw of all breakfast cereal. Milk.

The love affair between breakfast cereal and milk is beautiful but sadly shortlived, ending in mushy, inedible goo. Cornflakes are really quite nice, but by the time you've sat down, they've collapsed like a fat man on a paper unicycle and have all the appeal of brain fever. I've recently decided that I like Rice Crispies, this was appropo of nothing, it just popped into my head and I obeyed. So now I like them. Unfortunately they succumb to the squoodge-making lacteal embrace even quicker than cornflakes, which makes for some extremely quick, not very pretty, cereal consumption.

Surely someone should be inventing some kind of edible, tasteless, imperceptible cereal laminate? Fucking scientists pissing about with the fundamentals of the universe when they could be laminating my breakfast and making things hover! Unless of course they intend to make giant doughnuts once they are done, in which case I am willing to forgive them.


Being the positive, burning ray of summer sunshine that I am, I will look on the bright side. I generally roll out of bed around 15 minutes before I need to leave the house for work, so having to consume a bowl of Rice Crispies in the 30 seconds it takes for soggification to begin is probably helping me in some perverse, none indigestion related way.

PS Anyone who suggests any kind of chocolate flavoured cereal should be in any way associated with breakfast, kindly join the 'Gene Cleansing' line. You are wrong on every level and you are beyond redemption. That goes for you sick, perverted Nutella deviants too.

Talent is for losers

I am pleased to report that my guitar playing has advanced from '12 thumbed monkey with Parkinson's' all the way up to the border between 'Please God make it stop!' and 'Appalling mediocrity'. This is a mere step below 'Oasis'. Go me.

In more positive news, my ability to tinker with guitars is improving by degrees. Unsurprisingly my innate geek ability to play with screw drivers, wire cutters and sockets vastly outstrips my musical talent.

The Balance of the Universe - [ADDENDUM]

Sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad. Often they are combined. Like giant Toblerone. It's chocolate but when you eat it, it attempts to pierce the roof of your mouth and stab you in the brain.

US Electoral campaign. Democrats: giving the appearance of the things that are admirable about America. Sarah Palin: Representing a worryingly large number of people who see Deliverence as a guide to life.

I have a personal example of course, otherwise this wouldn't be a proper whinge would it?

Using my amazing powers of sitting around on my own browsing the interweb, I managed to locate the entire run of the West Wing for a mere 50 of your English pounds. Being a geek, I immediately thought 'w00t'. That's the good part. The bad part? They don't have it in stock. I know - you're shocked. A lesser man would fall to the flaw cluthing at his chest screaming 'WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!'. I'm made of sterner stuff than that.

Still, 7 seasons of awesomeness will keep me occupied for a few more weeks!

[ADDENDUM] Huh, how about that - the universe actually helping to illustrate my point. Firstly, you should know that like a lot of companies, mine is going through some changes - but we were well ahead of the game in that they started well before Cap'n Crunch introduced a new, exciting, economic turmoil flavour.

So they are doing away with the structure and punting a bunmch of us about into other places, whilst remainign where we are. Confused? you should be.

Anyway, we were supposed to move to one new division and we are being punted to something called 'Outsourcing Services'. We were asked if we had any concerns. I mistakenly assumed they meant it and I proceeded to ask lots of questions and make my views known. I think I mangaged to convey the geenral feeling that OS are a bunch of fucking monkeys who's sole purpose is to make life for people with actual jobs as difficult as possible. In addition, I'd rather lick the fiery arse of a napalmed Guy than transition to that division.

On the plus side, as a result my Project Manager (the OS denizen who informed us of this glorious news) seems to be implying that I won't be on this project anyway after April. This isn't a massive plus on first look, but it does look like he is going to foist a bunch of actually useful training my way in order to further empower my glittery illusion of competence. Huzzah! Also, one of the courses is called PRINCE II. It all depends if that is like The Godfather II, or more like Troll II. Time will tell!

'Tis the Season to be Ranty

Over the years I've acclimatised to stores selling Christmas paraphanalia as soon as Easter is over. OK, in most cases this is an exaggeration but I certainly saw Advent calendars and the like for sale in September.

More worryingly people were bloody well buying them.

Anyway, you live with it and simply content yourself with rolling your eyes in a superior, holier than though (holier cos I know that Christmas is in fucking December!) way.

I can even live with the adverts for Christmas gifts before we've even had the opportunity to carry out the traditional burning of the effigy of a revolutionary papist idolator.

However, this concept of shopping for Christmasin the middle of summer appears to have invaded my family's psyche. My brother sent me a text at the beginning of September declaring how he ahd bought the family's Christmas presents, including mine. Smug fucker.

Then my mum calls me and starts asking what I want for Christmas, she wants to get me 'something useful' and she won't take no for an answer. In fact she has issues with me buying dad presents and goes positively mental if I suggest I am going to spend anything on her. Stupid woman. Or is she? It could be a cunning ploy to illicit more and more thoughtful gifts until she has everything her big heart desires. Devious cow.

Anyway, talk of Christmas anytime before December always confuses me and I block it out as insanity. However, as I've mentioned, she is an insistent woman and not slightly built. So I provided her with a list of options - not something I am accustomed to doing as it's basically telling someone to buy you something which is distasteful. I've tried to keep it reasonable in the vain hope that she sticks to a budget.

So, dear santa. Please give me one of the following:

1) A thing that plugs into my radio in the car that gives me DAB
2) An espresso machine so I can annoy colleagues by drinking coffee that actually tastes of coffee
3) A DVD boxset of the origianl Godzilla movies. AIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
4) Super Powers.


I am well aware of the irony in this post.

Answers on a Postcard.....

I haven't seen anyone not associcated with work in some way for over 6 weeks, and before that I have no idea. I'm going insane. I need to get out of Surrey this weekend but not so far that I can't get back inside a couple hours if I need to. Friends inside that radius are all busy or have better things to occupy their time than keeping me away from sharp objects.

Answers on a postcard (and by postcard I mean comments section :D) please, I am about to go axe-happy on a trout farm.


Save the Booleader, Save the Trout.

Science fails again.

All I'm saying is that Paul Newman dies adn Ben Afflek and and Sean William Scott get to live on and shit onto cinema screens. Where's the justice?

Surely there must be some kind of way of turning the life sucking machine of the skexies towards a purer, more noble purpose?

I'm not suggesting that you join those two sentences up to come to the conclusion that Ben Afflek and Sean William Scott should have their life force sucked out of them and fed into infinitely more worthwhile and talented people. All I'm saying is that if ALL of you have reached that conclusion by reading the aforementioned sentences, who's to say it is wrong?

Best laid plans....

I won't finish the well known phrase as I doubt there is much planning in the life of a mouse, don't believe the lies perpetuated by Hanna Barbera or MGM.

Anyway, I thought I had a free day or two this weekend so i was going to take a trip home or to see friends - hadn't quite decided what yet, maybe to drop off some overdue presents. Pootling about, with the possibility of a final destination.

Apparently this was entirely too much planning for the world to cope with and now I am not going because I may or may not be needed at work.

I'm actually not that put out, it's just mildly annoying but may at least give me some more time to develop a plan to turn clowns into some kind of Squow operated weaponry. Almost certainly employing hover technology.

See how I weave?