- Thu, 15:12: I'm going to start performing covers of rap tracks, but insert my own verses into each one. My stage name: Vanilla Eisegesis. :Drops mic:
Conversely, I suppose, maybe prehistoric people thought there was nothing hotter than someone playing giant stone jenga.
- Location:Work (tsk)
- Mood:Enquiring
- Music:'Where Do I Begin' - The Chemical Brothers
- Sun, 12:38: I took 2 drinks while deciding how best to tweet this: http://t.co/3oxLF2oy ... Dammit. That's 3 now.
- Wed, 20:08: *The Secret Rivals* Melodically shouty duets between the small keyboard lady & the lanky guitar man. Endearingly cheerful, rather Bis-esque.
- Wed, 20:16: *The Cellar Family* The rumbling bass, off-kilter guitar & unsettling singing felt like mere backing to awesomely complex, shifting drumming
- Wed, 20:40: *Deer Chicago* Warm blanket of guitar, plangent vocals, solid drums, sudden xylophone! Could be great with some hooks, simply pleasant as is
- Wed, 21:50: *Tiger Mendoza* Drum machine, bass samples, guitar & rotating vocalists. Basic, but something about them punches through my filters into joy
- Wed, 22:21: *Dallas Don't* Evocative lyrics melodically shouted over classic grunge guitars. Bleak but energetic, rather Pixies-y, very much my thing.
- Wed, 22:29: *Half Decent* Pretty dope beats (dubstep Rhianna FTW!) under adequate rapping. The relentless optimism alternates between winning & tiresome
- Wed, 22:40: So Oxford's Planet Hollywood has become a club with a roadworks theme? Did aliens scan the city & decide that must be our favourite thing?
- Wed, 23:43: I will round off the evening's reviews with a selection of unfair snap judgements of bands that I only saw for a few minutes.
- Wed, 23:45: *Tamara Parson-Baker* Promising murder ballads, but I wasn't in the mood. *Kill Murray* Boring indie rock. *Manacles of Acid* Generic house.
- Wed, 23:56: Here ends my Punt, the annual venue-crawl of Oxford's best unsigned bands. It was great, & thanks to my companions @cleanskies & @timscience
- Sat, 14:15: Customer: "I'm a sort of volunteer myself. I'm on several committees, so I have to listen to a lot of rambling..." I resist saying "Me too."
- Sat, 10:33: “@colsonwhitehead rt if you've finally perfected your human guise & can walk among them undetected”
- Tue, 07:03: Yesterday: Watched 'Iron Man'. Today: Performed robot maintenance whilst drinking beer & wearing goggles. Hollywood's pernicious influence.
- Sat, 15:47: At Oxfam, a lady was about to buy a bio of Florence Nightingale, but swapped it for 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo' at the last minute...
- Sat, 15:51: ... She said her new choice looked more exciting. "Than the inventor of pie charts?!" I replied, but somehow failed to change her mind back.
- Thu, 07:33: “@gideondefoe Fancy clubbing together to buy this place, then pretending to be Blake's 7 for the rest of the year? http://t.co/1ZE4L9MD”
- Tue, 06:56: @Olliefw Gonna start a band called Pin Tweaks, comprised solely of midi-synced VHS players sequencing samples from bootleg tapes of the show
Synposis: Joe Spork is a gentle man living a quiet life repairing clockwork devices until an unusual commission draws the attention of some extremely dangerous people. Being spoiler-averse I don't want to say much more about the plot, but the book contains old-school gangsters, steampunk monks, many conspiracies and secret societies, fighting elephants, an immortal villain, a manic pixie dream girl scientist trying to invent something to make everyone better, an incredibly bad-ass old lady (with flashbacks to her war career as a schoolgirl spy) and a clockwork threat to reality itself.
Review: As I mentioned earlier, I find it much harder to write about good books. Not only is it intimidating to write about good writing, but I also find harder to convey enthusiasm than contempt, and I worry more about spoiling aspects of the book for potential readers. Also, in this case, I don't have my copy because I've lent it one of the list of my friends who were as eager to read it as I was, so I might just going to cop out and say that I really liked it. It's about ordinary people (albeit with extraordinary pasts) facing the sort of shit that you'd normally need Doom Patrol to fix. It's larger than life, but it's consistent about it so the world feels cohesive and real. It also had some cool secret London stuff which read like Neil Gaiman was into pulp adventure instead of fairy tales.
Illustrative excerpt from Amazon review:
2 stars
Too whimsical for my taste, like a second rate Dickens
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Enthused
- Music:'It's All Over' - The Slew (in my head)
Reason for reading: Like yesterday's choice, this is another one from my wishlist. It's much clearer to me why I added this one though.
Synopsis: By 2044 we've predictably fucked the planet's ecosystem and economy, so everyone spends as much time as possible in OASIS: your standard-issue virtual reality environment in which you can guide your avatar through everything from school to work to games. Now, this may sound like a pretty optimistic dystopia, but it exists under a sword of Damocles because the founder of OASIS died and left control of the whole thing to anyone who can solve his riddles. He was a geek who grew up in 1980s, so an entire subculture has grown up around emulating his obsessions in the hope of winning his fortune, and of course an Evil Corporation is trying to do the same so it can destroy this one remaining bastion of freedom. Yes, it's a world in which teenagers (including our protagonist) learn The Breakfast Club off by heart and master Atari 2600 games because it's their only hope of escaping their awful lives.
Review: The problem with this book is that it doesn't seem to realise that adding the 80s to its futuristic dystopia makes it so much more horrifying. There could be a grim humour to a world where retro is the only hope for the future, but this isn't anything like as interesting as that. The quest is transparently and solely a clumsy mechanism for the author to write a world in which everyone still loves the same stuff as him, but with a better internet. This might be forgiveable if he was capable of conveying the joy he's clearly taking in the set-up, but the prose is leaden and the characterisation vestigial, reducing it to a tiresome checklist of games, music and films that feels as if someone tried to graft a plot onto I Love 1983. The most interesting thing about it is the cognitive dissonance generated by a book that reads like it's written for undemanding pre-teens but packed with references that only a 39-42 year old could love. (Out of curiosity, after writing that sentence I looked the author up on wikipedia. He was born in 1972. This was by no means an impressive guess.)
I find myself wondering if I'd've liked it more if it had been pandering to me rather than my hypothetical older brother. Perhaps I'm the absolute worst audience, old enough to be aware of everything it references without having been the right age to be shaped by it... Could you find-and-replace 'Joust' with 'Wolfenstein', 'Rush' with 'Queen' and 'Wargames' with 'Hackers', say, and create something that I would love? It might work, in that most of the references have no purpose except as cultural signifiers so the plot wouldn't be harmed in the slightest. However, even then I don't think the pleasure of nostalgic recognition would overcome the pain of the writing. It contains no subtlety whatsoever, being of the 'tell then show' school. For example:
It probably goes without saying that I had a massive cyber-crush on Art3mis.Why do we need that first paragraph (and it is an entire paragraph)? The bit about him saving her photos might be quite neat shorthand if it wasn't preceded by such a blunt announcement of what it means, and the bloody book's like that all the way through. There's no surprise, no wit, and no real challenge beyond the explicitly-artificial 80s necrophilia of the riddles. The setting is flimsy, the characters charmless, the ending utterly inevitable (oops, spoiler), and the path it follows is predictable in all but the frankly somewhat tiresome details.
She occasionally posted screenshots of her raven-haired avatar, and I sometimes (always) saved them to a folder on my hard drive.
The blurb: This has garnered a lot of quotes about how geeky and awesome it is, which I can only assume are from people more successfully pandered to than I. They leave me feeling a little left out but not misled or resentful... except for Will Lavender's: 'Here, finally, is this generation's Neuromancer'. Fuck off. It's the Neuromancer generation's Da Vinci Code.
Illustrative excerpt from Amazon review:
5 stars
Arthur Dent, Rush's "twenty-one twelve", Star Wars, War Games, Ferris Bueller, Galaga, Everquest, World of Warcraft, LOTR, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, the Rubik's cube - the references just keep coming; the appearance of Graham Chapman's Arthur, trotting along to Patsy's coconut shells (an African or a European swallow?) was the final, epic cherry on my cake.
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Vexed
- Music:'Faust Arp' - Radiohead
Reason for reading: I have a book-acquisition technique which has served me well: when an interesting-sounding book is mentioned in conversation or on-line I add it to my wishlist before I forget about it. This means that every birthday and Christmas I am greeted with a selection of books that look very much to my taste yet come as a surprise. This was one such, though I'm characteristically unaware of how I came across it in the first place. I can see why I might have liked the sound of it, though.Synopsis: Shane is a rootless, hapless young adult. He has bad habits and no real friends, but his real problem is his indifference towards everything including himself. In the course of the book he has regular sex with two different women (unsatisfactory for two different reasons), gets a shit temp job which he treats with even more contempt than it deserves, and has awkward conversations with his landlord and neighbour characterised by mutual incomprehension and distaste. There's a vestigial plot about him being a suspect in a murder of the most sympathetic character, but it's quickly and anti-climatically resolved.
Review: If the above synopsis evokes a book lacking in pleasure and point then it has done its job. Of course, given the title, one could convincingly argue that the author has done his job too. It certainly isn't badly written, has some nifty turns of phrase and did convincingly convey (indeed, induce) the protagonist's feeling of empty despair. It has a stab at making his indifference almost heroic, but in the end he can't even convince himself that it's anything other than a failing. Discussing books over dinner the other day I said that I don't like books that are about people being unpleasant to each other (not that I demand no unpleasantness, just that I don't want to read a book that's about it.) This book is about someone being unpleasant to himself, which is arguably worse.
I am therefore in danger of that cardinal sin of reviewing: criticising a book for not being what I wanted. My objection, therefore, applies more to the marketing than the book itself. The blurb and review quotes all present this as being a humour book, and it isn't; or if it is, my sense of humour differs fundamentally from that of the reviewers (and presumably of the author, unless he thought he was writing a cry for help but was too polite to correct his chuckling readers). It has some witty lines, but they're in service of a fundamentally grim book. It's not the first time I've been baffled by this approach to humour, so I concede that there must be a mindset that finds grotesque characters intrinsically hilarious, presumably because they exaggerate human foibles. BBC Radio 4 occasionally does comedies like this, where apparently the entirety of the fun is expected to arise from characters reacting unreasonably and inappropriately. They leave me in a sort of uncanny valley of characterisation, and profoundly glad that I don't recognise their depictions of humanity.
Illustrative excerpt from Amazon review:
*****
The main character is someone you feel a great connection with as he acts out all the different things that you wish you could do in your office job (feel asleep during work, cut people down with comments, not care about anything generally).
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Disappointed
- Music:Jo singing along to Mika upstairs
- My cat Charlie, for Tuesday morning's opportunity to stand on the drive of our house at 5 in the morning, naked, carrying a pint glass containing a confused mouse.
- The lovely
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tinyjo for last night's impromptu bedtime scavenger hunt for a straw hat, an owl, and something suitable for the queen of the gods to wear.
- Location:Work (tsk)
- Mood:Dazed
- Music:'Keep Me High' - Adaline (on repeat)
I've always liked the idea that being Better was an option, but it's taken me a long time to even begin to figure out techniques that might actually help me to get there. Years ago I went through a phase of making resolutions that (in retrospect) were bound to make me unhappy, either too vague or too strict for me to ever live up to. Perhaps understandably, I then went through a phase of not making them at all. Then I had an experimental period of making strict resolutions that lasted for January only, which was more manageable and helped me to figure out how to make more long-term change viable. Then, finally, last year, after all this thought and experimentation, I figured it out: I need goals that were specific, measurable, aspirational, realistic and time-specific. Yes, I had reinvented the SMART criteria. Here's hoping that the process of figuring this shit out was worthwhile, because otherwise I could have saved myself an awful lot of time just by reading a decent book about setting goals.
So, last January I set myself the ambitious task of writing morning pages every day, and succeeded. In May, I invented and adopted my Teepartial scheme, and have successfully kept that up as well. So apparently I do, in fact, have some capacity for self-directed self-improvement, though I have doubted this for most of my life. Having discovered this, I may have gone a little overboard with this year's resolutions. They are as follows:
- Continue writing morning pages
I had hoped that it would make me better at writing public stuff (e.g. blogging) without so much agonising and procrastinating, but this doesn't seem to have been the case. Nor does it seem to have noticeably improved my general willpower. Nevertheless, it's sometimes useful and sometimes fun, and it would be a shame to break my streak now... - Start reviewing morning pages at the end of each week
Last year I was basically treating morning pages as a write-only exercise. That's all very well, but I wonder if rereading the entries on a weekly basis might help me to spot patterns which could be encouraged or discouraged, and to see if there are any lessons to be learned, things left undone or similar. - Continue Teepartial
This seems to work really well for me. I've reduced my alcohol consumption by at least a third without having much impact on my lifestyle, and I feel much happier about my drinking habits in general. - Adopt 'Playtime'
This is basically to apply the principles of Teepartial to computer games, including phone games. I would often find myself spending an evening listlessly playing computer games that I didn't really enjoy much because I couldn't think of anything better to do, then feeling like I'd wasted my time. It took me a while to realise that this was very similar to my attitude towards drinking, so perhaps the same approach will work. - Read (and log) one book per week
I love reading, but I don't always remember that fact. I hope that this will combine nicely with cutting down on computer games and nudge me towards tackling my 'to read' pile. - Watch (and log) one film per month
I also love films, but watch very few these days. Partially it's becausetinyjo isn't a big fan of film, so we rarely go out to watch them together, and she watches a lot of TV when we're at home. However, I do have some lovely friends who are film fans, so I hope this will encourage me to join them in their cinema visits more often. Also, I know that tinyjo would be perfectly happy to cede the TV to me for an evening if I asked, so perhaps this will encourage me to do so. - Attend (and log) one gig per month
I like live music and Oxford's got loads of decent venues and bands, but sometimes I find it hard to track down promising-looking gigs and then summon up the will to head out into the cold and dark to attend them. Still, I don't feel like I need much of a push, so again this is a resolution that I'm hoping will serve as a reminder and encouragement to do stuff that I want to do anyway. - Blog once a week
Well, this was always the most ambitious and optimistic of my resolutions, but I'm a bit disappointed by how immediately I fell far behind my schedule. I know that I can write this much, as my successful NaBloPoMo attempts have more than demonstrated. I was hoping that a less punishing but still regular schedule might do the trick, but I never really managed to start the habit.
That's actually quite a lot now I come to write it all down, and I also have a couple of semi-resolutions which I'm trying out to see if they work but that are too vague or odd for me to want to commit to them here. Still, now that I'm already a month and a half in, I can say that they all seem to be going well except the blogging, and at least I've finally made a start towards that now. Let's see how SMART this turns out to be...
- Location:At home, in the garden
- Mood:Resolved
- Music:'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' - Daft Punk (in my head)
I'll end with a quote from the often baffling, occasionally enlightening Nintendo Project:
I want to create art because it surrounds me. Not because it is inside of me.That has and had resonance for me, but again, I'm not sure what to do about it. Sleeping on it would probably be a good first step, though...
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Relieved
- Music:Hammering rain. Real rain too, not from a white noise generator...
tinyjo, as a member of the ATL and (hence) veteran of a previous strike, will be there with me to tell me what to wear and when to chant. Being new to this, I even had to ask my union rep what I should put on my 'out of office' reply. Am I obliged/allowed/encouraged to mention the strike, or should I just say I'm not in? I'm not even sure how 'out' I'm supposed to be about being in a union at all, and my experience with playing werewolf is that you really need to check the rules before saying anything. The upshot seems to be that it's up to you, though you're requested not to tell your manager in advance (to make it harder for them to mitigate your absence), though that's not really relevant in may case, as they'll cope without me for a day. Oh, and you have to fill a form afterwards asking for your pay to be docked - all very civilised. I wonder, will I return fired with revolutionary fervour, or damped by the suspicion that I am just paying both sides to bicker and grandstand? I guess we shall see...- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Revolutionary
- Music:'Fight The Power' - Public Enemy (obviously)
Also, I'm pretty sure that when Cassidy is miaouing in the kitchen, it's OK for me to complement her on her singing and, unsolicited, to present her with some food and a round of applause as a token of my appreciation, as long as it doesn't actually slow down the food-bowl-filling process. And finally, when I find a cat lying neatly with her legs tucked under her, I maintain that it is harmless to:
a) pretend that her legs have fallen off, possibly from too much scampering, and/or
b) become The Kitten Messiah and cause them to miraculously grow back by laying on of hands.
None of these habits are naughty, right?
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Defensive
- Music:'Electric Demons In Love' - Electric Six (in my head)
iruineverything and archie. I've written before about the ways in which we would pass the time despite lacking energy, money and happiness, by utilising the one resource we had in spades: lack of respect for ourselves or each other. That may not sound like a resource per se, but it was the thing that made it so easy to keep ourselves occupied. Today's game shares common elements with the ones I've mentioned previously: it's simple, it's pervasive, it's not really intended to do anything except make communication more difficult, and playing it can blight your life (slightly, but noticeably) forever. You have been warned.Not The Band
You will need: One or more players; little regard for yourself or others.Rules: Whenever you use the phrase "you too" or "you two", immediately disambiguate your usage by appending "(Not the band)", as if you spend so much time talking about U2 that it's a source of constant confusion. That's all. It's a sort of combination of weak joke and nervous tic, and becomes second nature surprisingly quickly.
Advanced game: Once you've established your habit of painstaking disambiguation, you can start looking confused when anyone else uses the phrase and doesn't clarify their meaning. Interrupt them, just to check that you've got things straight. They'll be puzzled at first, then annoyed (and, be warned, that is where they will remain). However, you can stop after the first few times and they'll still know that you're thinking it, at which point they're playing too, like it or not (not, obviously).
Scoring: As with all our games, it's played for its own sake. The idea is for this to become a life-ruining habit like The Game (which I just lost) rather than something you play for points. Still, I'll include some arbitrary scoring rules to give you an idea of how it's supposed to work.
- Lose a point every time you say "you too" without clarifying.
- Gain a point each time someone else makes this clarification to you.
- Gain an extra point if they do so unprompted.
- Gain 10 points if someone else starts playing, whether deliberately or out of habit.
Winning: No-one wins.
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:The opposite of nostalgic
- Music:An air conditioner/dishwasher mashup from my 'Relax and Sleep' white-noise app
tinyjo heard some pitiful squeaking. Following the noise upstairs we opened tinyjo's cupboard and Charlie, who has resolutely refused to grow beyond kittenhood, dashed out in a hail of heart-rending miaows. We gave her the apologetic fuss that she deserved; after all, the poor thing had been shut in all day (my fault, I hasten to add) but had been remarkably well-behaved during her confinement. Then tinyjo opened the door again and thirty seconds after her escape Charlie tried to dash back in. Under such circumstances, it's hard to feel terribly guilty...- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Baffled
- Music:'I Kissed A Girl' - Katy Perry (in my head (for some reason))
When I watch TV of my choice, therefore, it's mostly weird comedies. Luckily, there seem to be quite a lot, they're all available on channel download (and normally on DVD if I decide I like them) and I watch quite slowly, so I'm confident that I can mine this niche indefinitely. One of my current pleasures is Adventure Time. It's a series of whimsical short cartoon episodes about Jake the magical shape-changing dog and Finn the human boy. It feels a bit like Calvin and Hobbes finally built a machine to escape to another dimension with no parents and no responsibilities (or, I guess, like Calvin finally had that psychotic break). Finn's excitable and heroic, Jake's laid-back and a little more cynical, and they have relationship of simple, deep companionship. Together they rampage through a brightly-coloured world which feels like a child's daydream, full of constant surprises and obstacles with the structured surreality of a computer game. I have no idea if it's supposed to be aimed at people like me or at actual kids, but it provides me with moments of pure, uncomplicated pleasure on a pretty regular basis. What's not to like? The first episode is here, and it's great fun, but I've just been watching this one and it's one of my favourites: The Jiggler
And here's some sweet fan art that I found of that episode, with a bonus Gorillaz reference. Sweet:
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Algebraic!!
- Music:The Adventure Time theme music, in my head.
However, I had intended to write about another, less damaging publication that I read under similar circumstances: The Fortean Times, named for Charles Fort. This was, and remains, a long-running collection of oddities of all sorts - cryptozoology, psychic powers, alternate history and pseudo-science - all presented in a tone somewhere between dryly ironic scepticism and open-minded acceptance. It was pleasingly mind-broadening, expecting and encouraging the reader to make their own assessment of the merits of each article. For many years I requested a subscription for my birthday, and sought out books covering the subjects that I found most interesting. Going further, in the early 90s I attended a couple of the Unconventions. They were the first conventions that I'd ever been to, indeed the first that I'd ever heard of, and they were an experience that I doubt I could ever recapture. The programme, like the magazine, was wide-ranging: intense people lecturing in painstaking detail about their particular obsession (UFO propulsion mechanisms, perhaps, or the true history of the colonisation of America), interspersed with fringe scientists, pop psychologists and performance artists with little indication of which to expect in any given talk.
However, the most fascinating area was the merchandising hall. It's probably just as well that I didn't have enough money to buy the lucid dreaming machines or the bizarre sculptures, though I did covet them. Instead I gravitated towards the tables awash with zines, read as many as possible, and bought the few that I wanted to read again. Some still resurface from time to time, in a box of paperwork or tucked into in a sheaf of comics, and I normally still endorse the tastes of my past self. These were the days before in the internet (as far as I was concerned, anyway) but they exemplified the things I still seek out today: quirky subjects, good writing, and/or unsettling art. Three very different ones stick in my mind, and I have since managed to track down websites for each. I doubt I could really convey (nor really understand) how they affected me at the time, so I will present them little further introduction:
Schwa - an unsettling comic parody of conspiracy theory and normality, unexpectedly resurfacing on Facebook after many years dormant.
The Journal Of Inconspicuous Design - a zine dedicated to overthinking overlooked aspects of commercial design.
Shark Fear, Shark Awareness - apparently taking the attitude that the only way out of a phobia is through.
This may explain a lot...
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Rebaffled
- Music:'National Anthem' - Radionhead (in my head0
In many ways this is a positive outcome. Sure, I was just tooling around, but this is all indicative of a regained ability to focus on tasks (and even better, to enjoy doing so). Maybe it's the SAD lamp, maybe it's another factor, but it's certainly a relief. I guess this evening has taught me something about my mood after all... Anyway, I spent too long making the damn graph not to share it with you, though I concede that I haven't given it the most promising build-up:
( Here be scribbles )
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:>0
- Music:'Sparkly Vampires' - The Rifftones (in my head)
I realise that I think of it in a similar way to my pension (which is ironic, given that pensions are the current bone of contention for all public sector unions), in that it's something that I pay for without believing its promises, but I still I deem it, on balance, to be better than the alternative. Damn, I genuinely can't tell whether that's being cynical or optimistic, about either option. I may have over-thought this, Perhaps going to the pub will help...
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Confused
- Music:'Flawless' - Shad (in my head)
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Retro
- Music:Tinyjo is talking about 'Spooks'
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allcapsanimals). As the subtitle promises, it's just what it sounds like: photo of animal(s), short text vignette, Caps Lock always on. It's patchy, but has a pretty good hit rate, and even when the text isn't great you're still looking at a nice photo of (for example) a bear, a bug, some birds, or a cat riding a pony. And because it's tumblr it's got a nifty visual archive page that you can trawl through at your leisure. Look:
ARE YOU OLDER THAN JESUS?
No.
ARE YOU OLDER THAN PLASTIC?
Yes.
DID YOU INVENT PLASTIC?
No.
WILL YOU THROW THE RINGS FROM PLASTIC SODA BOTTLES AT ME SO I CAN PLAY WITH THEM?
Yes.
I LOVE YOU.
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Blurry
- Music:Nothing but whirring
Poll #1796329 All Tomorrow's Parties
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9
Are you up for going this year?
View Answers
| Yes! |
   2 (22.2%) |
| Maybe! |
| 1 (11.1%) |
| Would if I could! |
| 4 (44.4%) |
| No! |
| 0 (0.0%) |
| It's complicated! |
| 2 (22.2%) |
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Speculative
- Music:'Every Coin' - Spring Offensive (in my head)
You see, while the original morning pages concept suggested that you write long-hand, I've been typing mine on my phone instead. Not only is this quicker, easier, more comfortable and more convenient than writing with a pen like some sort of animal, but it means that I can then analyse the results, and there are few things I like more than recreational data analysis. However, it's late, so for now I'll just present a wordle of the results:
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Accomplished
- Music:'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay' - Otis Reading (in my head)
- There was a week during which a glance at my calendar would leave me mumbling "This is fucked up, fucked up". Which film was I scheduled to see?
A: The film was the Oscar-winning bonkers ballerina body-horror Black Swan, and the song was the excellent 'Black Swan' by Thom Yorke. Congratulations tobrixtonbrood and offensive_mango. - I can't say the name of one of Oxford's cinemas without following it with "Yeah, you know me." What's the acronym by which that cinema is known?
A: It's the Ultimate Picture Palace, aka the UPP. The track in question is in fact 'OPP' by Naughty By Nature. Points to Oxfordiansconcourse, jinty and tortipede. Half points to the out-of-date brixtonbrood (it's not the Penultimate Picture Palace any more) and to offensive_mango for getting the song. - After taking my coat for repairs, I spent the rest of the day singing about "a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it". What needed fixing?
A: It was a button, though it was not, in fact, 'The Hardest Button To Button' as the White Stripes quote might have led you to expect. Well doneconcourse, brixtonbrood and offensive_mango. - Currently the financial news often leaves me singing "It was a clear black night, a clear white moon, Warren G was on the streets trying to consume..." What is being proposed for the banking industry?
A: Regulation, though probably not of the glock-mediated variety that Warren G and Nate Dogg advocate.brixtonbrood was the only person gangsta enough to guess that one. - I was talking about fruit with archie in the kitchen at work, when I unnerved him by singing "I want to kiss you but I want it too much (too much)..." What sort of berries were under discussion?
A: Boison! (Boison running through my veins...) The line's from 'Poison' by Alice Cooper, as guessed byconcourse and brixtonbrood. - I spent an evening alternating between "Don't want to be on my own again tonight" and "If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it". What disease had poor tinyjo been diagnosed with?
A: She was a shingle girl/lady, depending on whether I was singing her 'Single Girl' by Lush or 'Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)' by Beyoncé.brixtonbrood got that one. - When I search the shelves at Oxfam for books for tinyjo I occasionally find myself singing "Shake it like a Polaroid picture." Which author I am seeking?
A: Georgette Heyer or, as Outkast pronounce her, 'Hey Ya'.brixtonbrood guessed correctly, jinty and offensive_mango were halfway there... - News reports about former President of Serbia Milan Milutinovic would leave me singing about "watching the tide roll in", and occasionally essaying ill-advised whistling solos. Where was he sitting at the time?
A: He was sittin' in the dock of The Hague, on trial for war-crimes.jinty gets half a point, brixtonbrood gets one, but offensive_mango gets two for correcting my lyrics (the tide should be rolling away), and tortipede also gets a bonus for extending my punnery rather wonderfully. - Whose fault is it that:
a)... I develop a stutter when suggesting that we eat something "more sub-sub-sub-substantial"?
A: R.E.M.'s, for using that line in 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite'. A point toconcourse, there.
b)... when talking aboutbadastronaut I always call her "Deb-or-ah (Deb-or-ah)"?
A: Pulp, for 'Disco 2000'. One forbrixtonbrood.
c)... when I hear Martin Luther King mentioned I unfortunately think: "'Love is the only weapon'? Shit! Bullshit! Martin Luther King died with love!"
A: Alabama 3, for sampling that line from a Jim Jones rant in 'Mao Tse Tung Said'. Gotten byjinty and tortipede, though surely the most obscure of the three songs in this section. - When playing the excellent card game Dominion, it appears to be a house rule that you can't play one of the cards without introducing it thus: "This is not the greatest song in the world." What is that card called?
A: It is a Tribute (you've got to believe me...), as sung by Tenacious D and recognised bybrixtonbrood. - When playing the excellent board game Pandemic, one draws cards from a deck containing major cities from throughout the world.
a) Which one always prompts me to say "If you didn't you wouldn't be in here"?
A: That's when "I know you've got Seoul". It's from a track by Bobby Byrd, apparently, though I know it from sampling by James Brown and Eric B & Rakim. Another point forbrixtonbrood.
b) Which one always makes me mutter "Vanishing point, vanishing point, vanishing point"?
A: No-one guessed Karachi, and I'm not surprised. Only in my head does it sound sufficiently like 'Kowalski' by Primal Scream. - Sometimes, on my cycle to work, I find myself singing Ice T's 'Gotta Lotta Love'. The noise of what automatically-scheduled event has inspired this song?
A: OK, we're into the impossible ones here. It took me ages to work this one out myself, but eventually I figured that it's because of the opening lines: 'Woke up the other morning, heard a Roomba'. Well, OK, it's rumour in the original. - What did we find on our bikes one morning which left me singing "Hurry down the chimney tonight"?
A: Another impossible one. Sadly we had found neither the deed to a platinum mine, nor all the fellas that I haven't kissed (though they were good guessesoffensive_mango), but spider babies. Fortunately, unlike 'Santa Baby', they did not hurry down our chimney... - When I have teleconferences in Mandarin, I tend to be distracted by one of two ear-worms: "Wu buck wild with the trigger!" or "I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want." Can you explain?
A: No, you can't, and no wonder. You'd need to know that Chinese people (or at least, the ones I work with) tend to repeat the words for 'that' or 'this' where we might use 'ummm' to fill sentences, that they're pronounced 'nà ge' and 'zhè ge' respectively, and hence put me in mind of 'Shame On A Nà ge' by Wu Tang Clan, or the Spice Girls really, really, really wanting to zhè ge zhè ge in 'Wannabe'.
Bonus vid - hilarious, extremely well done, and terribly unsafe for work unless you've got your headphones in:
I'm very impressed that someone managed to get all but the final, completely ridiculous ones, so well done all, especially
brixtonbrood for getting the most. I've enjoyed myself, so I guess I'll revisit this in another three years once the backlog's built up again...- Location:Work (tsk)
- Music:'Hey Ya' - Outkast
- Relax and Sleep (freemium). I'm really not good at doing two different language-processing tasks at once. I can handle multiple simultaneous conversations, but I'm nearly unable to read or write when there's talking going on. This even extends to TV or radio programs playing elsewhere in the house, so this app is perfect: a white noise generator to stop my brain from fixating on chatter. It was loads of different white-noise options: 'dishwasher running', heavy rain' or 'soft beach' for example, and you can even combine them (with individual volume controls) to get perfect coverage. It also has some other 'relaxing' sounds, though frankly I find the 'acoustic guitar' plinking to be almost instantly irritating, 'monk chanting' makes me nervous about what it might be invoking, and 'wolves' to be distinctly odd choice. Also, I'm disappointed that combining the monks and the wolves doesn't give you screams...
- Dropsync (freemium). You know how great Dropbox is, right? It's an automagically syncing directory of stuff shared across all your computers, so you never have to remember to back things up or shove vital stuff onto a USB stick to take home, and it allows you to share files or folders with specified people or with everyone. Awesome. (If you aren't using it already, you can sign up via this link and we both get extra space...) Imagine my joy when I found that there was a Dropbox app for Android, allowing me to keep all those files automatically synced to my phone as well; then imagine my disappointment when I found out that said app is rubbish and doesn't actually do that; and then imagine my joy again when tinyjo found Dropsync, an app that does what the official Dropbox one should do. Even the Dropsync developers seem puzzled that such a thing is necessary but, but apparently it is, so kudos to them for supplying it.
- ES File Explorer (free). It's really nice to be able to see all your files in their actual linux-y directories, and this does that, and allows you to manipulate them very much as you'd expect. Not very exciting, but a dead useful tool.
- Touch Calendar (a bargain at £1.45). I've been using this for long enough that I can't even remember exactly how it improves on the built-in calendar. When my sister-in-law was round she heard me complain, gave a quick demo of this, and tinyjo and I both bought it instantly. I know it's got much better widgets, many more customisation options, and you don't have to keep switching between views to see what's going on; and it even uses your current calendar settings so you don't have to bugger about setting up a new app.
- Shush! (free). This is just a really simple, neat idea: whenever you switch your phone to vibrate or silent, it pops up asking if you want to switch it back after a selected length of time. No longer will you suddenly realise you've been missing calls since yesterday's cinema trip.
- Androminium (free). If you already know and love the card game Dominion, all you need to know is that this is single player Dominion against two adequate AI players using the original cards, plus Intrigue and Seaside. If not, you should probably play the real version first because this doesn't come with any instructions. It's basic but quick and terribly addictive. I'm just glad it doesn't track how much time I've spent playing it...
- RPlayer (freemium). As I mentioned yesterday, I like listening to internet radio, and this plays it without any fuss. I only use it at home so I don't know how reliable or expensive it would be if you're using your mobile data connection, but it's great for keeping me in Canadiana as I wander round the house.
The only problem now is that I keep running out of batteries, because there's something I want my phone to be doing at all times. Still, does anyone else have any recommendations?
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Foolish
- Music:'I'll Bee Dat' - ODB (in my head)
I used to like Pandora until they shut it down for UK listeners, but I've yet to persevere with any other internet radio things. They always seem to require too much effort to train and/or be very good at serving up songs that are like songs you already enjoy except not as good. What I want is music that is new to me, has the potential to both please and surprise, is not accompanied by any bullshit like adverts or people and, ideally, will make me cooler. I doubt these are unusual requirements, so I thought I'd share some tune-vectors that I have discovered while soliciting any others that the LiveJournal cognoscenti can suggest.
The first was 'tenovertwelve', a CD compilation exchange run by
cleanskies, which exposed me not only to tunes selected by a variety of interesting people, but also forced me to dig into the neglected recesses of my own collection to find that perfect track.The second is a more generalisable discovery: foreign radio. You see, many broadcast radio stations are available via the internet, most transmit for 24 hours a day, but few feel the need to be populist at 2am so they tend to play more obscure tunes with little interruption. This fits my criteria perfectly, because it's always 2am somewhere. Thus these days my morning lie-in is accompanied by late-night Canadian radio (CBC Radio 3, to be precise) playing on our bedside internet radio. I am profoundly grateful to the lovely
aveleh for suggesting this in the first place, because it's perfect for me. They play an appealingly diverse selection of tunes, interrupted only by the occasional plug for other shows (and even those are often adorably Canadian), and their website is great, with hundreds of thousands of songs available for free streaming so I can further explore any bands that appealed to me. Also: now I can say that I only listen to obscure Canadiana, making me indier than thou.Do you remain unconvinced? Well, perhaps this compilation will convince you (while also neatly tying together the two suggestions in this post):
- Location:The garden room
- Music:'Cover Your Tracks' - Young Empires
I'd do this again, but these were gathered over several years so it might be a while before I build up enough...in 2008, and then three years later make good on my promise.
So, just as before, I will present lyrical questions in approximate order of difficulty (from 'hard' to 'impossible'), screen the comments so you can answer individually, and will post the answers in a few days' time. Google may help identify the song, but it's not cheating much because that may be only the first step towards the answer...
- There was a week during which a glance at my calendar would leave me mumbling "This is fucked up, fucked up". Which film was I scheduled to see?
- I can't say the name of one of Oxford's cinemas without following it with "Yeah, you know me." What's the acronym by which that cinema is known?
- After taking my coat for repairs, I spent the rest of the day singing about "a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it". What needed fixing?
- Currently the financial news often leaves me singing "It was a clear black night, a clear white moon, Warren G was on the streets trying to consume..." What is being proposed for the banking industry?
- I was talking about fruit with archie in the kitchen at work, when I unnerved him by singing "I want to kiss you but I want it too much (too much)..." What sort of berries were under discussion?
- I spent an evening alternating between "Don't want to be on my own again tonight" and "If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it". What disease had poor tinyjo been diagnosed with?
- When I search the shelves at Oxfam for books for tinyjo I occasionally find myself singing "Shake it like a Polaroid picture." Which author I am seeking?
- News reports about former President of Serbia Milan Milutinovic would leave me singing about "watching the tide roll in", and occasionally essaying ill-advised whistling solos. Where was he sitting at the time?
- Whose fault is it that:
a)... I develop a stutter when suggesting that we eat something "more sub-sub-sub-substantial"?
b)... when talking aboutbadastronaut I always call her "Deb-or-ah (Deb-or-ah)"?
c)... when I hear Martin Luther King mentioned I unfortunately think: "'Love is the only weapon'? Shit! Bullshit! Martin Luther King died with love!" - When playing the excellent card game Dominion, it appears to be a house rule that you can't play one of the cards without introducing it thus: "This is not the greatest song in the world." What is that card called?
- When playing the excellent board game Pandemic, one draws cards from a deck containing major cities from throughout the world.
a) Which one always prompts me to say "If you didn't you wouldn't be in here"?
b) Which one always makes me mutter "Vanishing point, vanishing point, vanishing point"? - Sometimes, on my cycle to work, I find myself singing Ice T's 'Gotta Lotta Love'. The noise of what automatically-scheduled event has inspired this song?
- What did we find on our bikes one morning which left me singing "Hurry down the chimney tonight"?
- When I have teleconferences in Mandarin, I tend to be distracted by one of two ear-worms: "Wu buck wild with the trigger!" or "I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want." Can you explain?
ETA: Answers have now been posted here.
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Amused
- Music:[Spoilers]
Rather than rambling any more I'll link you to a few favourites:
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
The Atheist Apocalypse
If The News Media Was A Person
( And here's a particularly neat one, under the cut to spare your friend's page )
Oh, and I should warn you that they all have alt-text comments if you hover over them.
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:I hate Sundays
- Music:The white noise generator on my phone
*****
Doctor Who - The End Of Time
I don't watch much TV. For some reason I'm not very good at it. I think it's the non-interactive nature that's the problem, because I can spend all day and night playing a computer game or reading a book, but start to get twitchy after an hour's TV. It's a shame, because I know there's a lot of stuff out there that I would enjoy (and indeed do enjoy when it happens to be on), but I just can't summon up focus to actually watch it. Luckily, my peer group have eclectic taste, so having missed any given program is no bar to conversation, because there are always other people in the same boat. And once you factor in PVRs, downloads and DVD boxed sets, it's very rare for there to be a programme that everyone's watching at the same time, no matter how compelling.However, Doctor Who is about as close as we get, and what with this one being the last of the season (or specials, or whatever) and the Doctor scheduled to die and all, I could be fairly confident that there'd be a discussion about it and didn't want to feel left out. When I was an impressionable teenager, peer-group pressure never got me into anything worse than drinking Coke and roleplaying, but now, as an adult, I was going to do something that I didn't feel comfortable with just to keep in with my friends.
Well, all right, it wasn't just that. For me, the recent episodes of Doctor Who have what I have come to think of as the Voyager Effect. I'd never been very into any of the flavours of Star Trek, but during my listless days immediately post-university I did go out of my way to catch episodes of Voyager. While I found the other series boring and hokey, Voyager was different: it was consistently compellingly awful. I had much more fun groaning at the terrible 'Irish theme pub in spaaaace' holodeck episodes, or the one where they went too faster than light and evolved into newts, than I ever did watching any of the blandly competent alien-bothering of the other ones. I'm sure they had their terrible moments too (and I'm willing to believe they even had good bits), but I actually found it more pleasing to watch something reliably bad. And though I've heard spirited attempts to deny this, the last few Doctor Whos have been reliably bad. So, in summary, I watched something I expected to hate just so I could trash it in conversation later. I am given to understand that most reality TV is popular for the same reasons.
So that's why
tinyjo and I sat down on Christmas Day at her parent's house to watch it. It was a oddly nostalgic feeling; as it had been a long time since I'd watched TV with grown-ups and found myself terribly embarrassed by it. As a teenager, it was the fault of unexpected sex-scenes or risqué jokes, but this time it was just the fact that we had actually asked to watch something so incoherent and mawkish. I found myself worrying that tinyjo's (very non-judgemental) parents would think that this was the sort of thing that we liked or, perhaps worse, that this is what science fiction is like.My lovely grandmother was always pleased that I read so much, but always a little bit disappointed that it was pretty much all SF. I think she hoped that it was a phase I'd grow out of, then start reading proper books. I tried to explain that it was a genre at least as capable of being mind-expanding and thought-provoking as any other, but she never seemed convinced. In fact, I'm pretty sure she didn't really have much of an idea of what science fiction really was, just a vague impression that it was full of bad writing, slim characterisation and arbitrary rules. Recent Doctor Who feels like an inexplicable attempt to prove her right. SF fans who are pleased just because it's a big budget mainstream science fiction show are as wrong as people who are glad that teenagers are reading Twilight because at least it means they're reading. In both cases, I think the wrong lessons are being taught, and I profoundly hope that no-one takes these things as representative. Doctor Who is a bad ambassador.
I realise that I've spent all this time writing about my response instead of the programme itself, but I'm pretty sure that's a legitimate school of reviewing. On the other hand, I feel that I should probably make at least a cursory attempt to explain why I though it was terrible; after all, there were enough good reasons. A key problem, shared with the previous episodes in this series, is that it felt far too long, or, perhaps equivalently, that the plot felt far too sparse. There was a horrible moment when we were breathing sighs of relief that it was ending, then a quick press of the pause button revealed that there were still twenty minutes to go. We both groaned in despair. Entertainment should not have this effect. This is not even so bad it's good, it's just a painful waste of time.
Maybe the problem was that there wasn't really much of a plot at all. Instead a situation was (gracelessly) established, then we alternated between derivative action, limp comedy and ghastly character development until the Doctor sorted it out. I'm inclined to blame the magical nature of the plots. For instance, we have a device that's turned every human into copies of The Master (unless they were in a special box) and hence(?) a planet is materialising from some[where/when] outside time and space to just above the earth. I've read a fair few Doctor Who books, seen odds and sods of previous seasons, and (as I've explained) even discussed the lot from time to time, but I had absolutely sense of why any of this was happening, or what could possibly stop it. In fact, I was in much the same position as the Doctor himself, in that we both assumed that solution would present itself if he ran around a lot until he found himself in the right time and place, put everything back to normal, then died. Sure enough he did, and not nearly fast enough and I was still none the wiser.
I can but hope this either discourages my friends from watching any more and I can allow it to drop back off my radar, or that the new writers manage to turn things round. Sadly, neither seems likely.
*****
I still stand by all of the above, though I am pleased to note that, in retrospect, that final line was pessimistic. The Matt Smith episodes have been vastly more enjoyable, and occasionally actually good, and thus my resentment of my friends' tastes has much abated. In time, I may even come to forgive them.
- Location:The garden room
- Music:'Tenuousness' - Andrew Bird (in my head)
pop_sens_rss). It's a simple concept: a guy has a collection of incredibly lurid American paperbacks from 40s, 50s and 60s, and every few days he posts a front and back cover along with a little witty commentary. It's a neat concept well executed, and full of fascinating insights into what counted as seedy in the olden days. Gambling! Tranvestites! Wife-swapping! Lesbian sisters! The Kinsey Report! The covers themselves lurch between titillating and baffling, and the blurb normally between bad and god-awful (seriously, check out the wife-swapping one above if you haven't already...)This is one of my favourites, for reasons which I trust are obvious:
Warning: all the books are for sale. Luckily you have to contact the guy directly to make any purchases, because a 'one-click' option would be deadly.
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Ready for the weekend
- Music:'Setting Sail, Coming Home (End Theme)' - Darren Korb
The first is Whatever made you think it was your data anyway? by Steven Poole. I've been reading his work for ages, and love his dry, cynical and insightful style. The stand out line from this piece is “If you’re not paying for something, you’re not a customer; you’re the product being sold”, which is characteristically brutally accurate. If you too enjoy his style, I also heartily recommend his book Unspeak, which looks at the tactical use of euphemism in politics and the media, and is fantastic. I have a copy that I'll happily lend to interested Oxford people.
The second essay is also rather marvellously named: The Social Graph is Neither by Maciej Ceglowski. It's addressing a similar problem from a different perspective: asking what it means to make your relationships public, and what makes for a good social network. I wasn't aware of this guy until someone linked me to him today, but (amongst the technical stuff about his site) he's also written some other interesting stuff about social networking: the influence of fandom in this case, for example.
- Location:Work (tsk)
- Mood:Fairly chirpy
- Music:'Setting Sail, Coming Home (End Theme)' - Darren Korb
The problem with working in medical statistics is that you become all too well aware of any flaws in your habits. I see colleague after colleague presenting results from all around the world that show incidence of various diseases increasing with tobacco intake, for example, but that's not too bad because I don't smoke or hang out with (regular) smokers. More unsettling are the ones for alcohol consumption. I had gotten into the habit of having a largish glass of wine with dinner every night, and that would often lead to another one afterwards. I'd rarely end up drunk, but would very rarely have a night off and was certainly exceeding the recommended limits, leaving me at the high end of a number of graphs of unpleasant conditions. I'd tried various ways to cut down: giving up entirely (which I found possible, but unsatisfactory), not drinking at home (which was a shame when
tinyjo cooked something special), stopping at one drink (tricky), and so forth. None of them had been very successful, or rather, none had felt very sustainable. However, I've been using my current technique for about six months now and it seems to be working remarkably well, so I thought it might be of interest.It was, I think, inspired by an article I read somewhere about gamification. I decided to try coming up with a system which was easy to administer yet flexible, and would cut down on my casual drinking while leaving me free to enjoy social drinks. I call the result 'Teepartial', and it works for me. The goal is to only to drink every other night (on average), and the rules are:
- My score started at 0
- It goes down by one on a day when I drink
- It goes up by one on a day when I don't drink
- It mustn't go below -3
- It stays the same on a day when I drink exactly one drink (which I'm defining loosely as a pint or a largish glass of wine. Less than 2.5 units, say.)
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Weary
- Music:The 'Bastion' soundtrack, in my head
or this:
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Tired
- Music:'Blue Song' - Mint Royale (in my head)
And:
And here are a few others that I've bookmarked, with suggested targets:
- Recommended for tinyjo
- Recommended for sea_bright
- Recommended for bluedevi
- Recommended for timscience
- Recommended for archie
- Recommended for mr_snips
If you like it, there's an LJ feed here:
smbc_comic.Oh, and you know that feeling when you're ploughing happily through the archives of a newly-discovered comic and then suddenly realise that you've been missing a whole other extra joke in (for example) the mouse-over text? If so, you'll thank me for mentioning that there's always a bonus panel if you hover over the red dot at the bottom left of each comic (and note that this doesn't appear on the feed).
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Pretty OK
- Music:'El Manana' - Gorillaz (in my head)
Their priorities are excellent:
- Week 1: saying 'Hello, I am English'
- Week 2: enough family vocabulary to fashion crude insults ('Is that your mother?')
- Week 3: 'I have two small kittens'
This gives me an excuse to link to Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard. I recommend it not solely to ensure that you are appropriately impressed with my feat, but because it is both scholarly and hilarious, and (to the best of my extremely limited expertise) absolutely true. A couple of choice quotations:
One could say that Chinese is phonetic in the way that sex is aerobic: technically so, but in practical use not the most salient thing about it.
Here's a secret that sinologists won't tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place.
And that reminds me to link to the linguistics blog that was almost certainly where I found that link in the first place: Language Log. The contributors are all professional academic linguists, and the tone veers wildly between discussing relevant web-comic episodes, tetchy rebukes to inaccurate grammar pedants, and technical academic musing. It may not surprise you to learn, however, that my favorite bits are probably where they drop mad science on ill-founded claims. Also, this sort of thing:
- Location:The garden room
- Mood:Much improved
- Music:A cat who feels underfed
tinyjo's school had a bonfire on Friday, for which, of course, they needed fuel. They had some battered old wooden chairs, but they needed to be broken up before they were suitable firewood. I assume that, having agreed this, they ranked all the teachers and their partners in terms of furniture-wrecking potential, and I won. One might suggest that, if so, this was more a tribute to tinyjo's high opinion of me rather than any more objective assessment, but I'll accept that. The result was that four chairs appeared in our back garden, destined for devastation at my hands.Never one to shirk my girlfriend-given duties, when I got back from work on Thursday I gathered hand-axe and saw, and headed out onto the patio in the twilight to perform some helpful destruction. To ensure that I cut a suitably dramatic figure, I stripped to waist before getting to work. The chairs were a perfect challenge: tough but not invulnerable, and their childish size made me feel like a rampaging giant as I methodically reduced them to flinders. I would thoroughly recommend this method for raising one's mood, and were I more business-minded I would be buying old school furniture and selling it on as a mood-enhancing therapy, perhaps packaged with a pop-psychology book. 'Smash Yourself Happy' perhaps?
- Location:At home, in bed
- Mood:Perking up, winding down
- Music:'This Sceptred Isle'
Tagged: If it's the Underground sort, it can. rough, angry, honey velvet a new fabric that'll bring you to your knees, rough velvet if you please Velvet short answer: no
Her commentary (and especially her tags) are hilarious and unashamedly reference-dense, and the intersection of grammar pedantry (underpinned by an obvious love of English) and feminism gives me great pleasure.
In other news, in an attempt to snap myself out of my current mental slump I have resorted to extreme measures: shooting myself in the face with electromagnetic radiation specifically designed to emulate the output of a massive fusion reactor from space. (i.e. I bought an SAD lamp.) I have no idea whether it's going to be of any use, but I did feel slightly less sluggish today, so I can but hope... Also, I've just realised that these two paragraphs are tied neatly together with a theme of sunlight, though I'm afraid my lamp causes me neither to sparkle nor catch fire.
- Location:At home on the sofa
- Music:The lovely Victoria Coren in 'Only Connect'
The reason for this dedication is that Fred takes this personally: he's an American evangelical Christian and clearly appalled by the series' grotesque misrepresentation of Christianity and enormous popularity. The result is a sincere yet witty series of posts addressing theology, morality, sex, politics, writing style and the human condition; prompted by the conspicuous absence of all of these in the original books. I'd recommend starting from the beginning: Left Behind Index I: Posts 1-50.
- Location:Work (tsk)
- Mood:Weary
- Music:'Rappers We Crush' - Kompressor (feat. MC Frontalot)
It's the sort of program that you might dream, or that Charlie Brooker might invent: Napoleon's horse and Wellington's horses exchange love letters. It stars Steven Fry, and hot gay horse-on-horse action, and I really can't decide whether it's any good or not. But I am glad that it exists. I like surprises.
- Location:Work (tsk)
- Mood:Befuddled
- Music:'The Police' - Goodluck Assembly
I have no idea whether I'll actually manage to keep this up, but I did once before, to my continuing surprise, so you never know. Luckily (for you, certainly) I have a topic in mind other than my current problems, albeit inspired by them. After all, what else requires next to no focus or planning ability to enjoy and can be experienced from your desk at work? That's right, it's most of the internet! I spend too much time trawling it at the best of times (and this is certainly not that), and so doing, I have filtered many delicious morsels out of its murky depths. I thought it would be nice to share them with you, like a cross between a baleen whale and a mother bird. And if that metaphor hasn't put you off entirely, here is the first such offering:
We Are Become Pals is a short, illustrated story about two friends, and I thought it was rather charming. It's written by the guy who writes A Softer World and drawn by the (NSFW) lady who draws Chester 5000, so really that's three recommendations in one...
- Location:At work (tsk)
- Mood:Dissipated
- Music:'Heart Shaped Tron' - Fissunix
- ... had assumed you'd missed the Oxford Beer Festival, until you found out that it's actually this weekend.
- ... are busy on Friday (when it's always a bit over-crowded and under-stocked anyway) so are thinking of going on Thursday (i.e. tomorrow) instead.
- ... will be there from about 6.
- Location:Work (tsk)
- Mood:Anticipatory
- Music:'Glass Eye' - Drawn Ship
- Wed, 23:46: Just gave a talk on surviving the zombie apocalypse to OUSFG. High turnout & great participation, but I don't rate their survival chances...
- Wed, 23:49: Shopping list: food, water, bike, radio, flashlight, helmet, goggles, gloves, crowbar, can-opener, machete, punt pole, gaffer tape, condoms.
- Wed, 23:53: The ideal team: biochemist, kendo expert, supermarket cashier, medieval re-enactor, bard, vegetarian, art student, examiner, hippo-milker.
truecatachresis and squigglyruth's wedding, and what better way to celebrate it than by reading my best man's speech for the occasion? Hopefully they have in fact found a better way, but I thought I'd post this anyway...( That speech in full )
- Location:Home
- Thu, 19:35: Looking through my open files to find the one named 'ingenious_plan.sql'. It begins with a comment: 'Check this is ingenious before running'
- Thu, 20:20: To test a time function, I feed it data chosen to provide a known answer. This backfires by surprising me with the fact that I'm nearly 34.
- Sun, 14:15: *Mat Gibson* Sounded like halfway-decent folkish rock played far too slow. Music to slump to; luckily, that was our plan all along... #truck
- Sun, 14:36:
*Mitchell Museum* This is much more like it: shambolicly cheerful indie rock tunes from a band who're enjoying themselves(!) Good fun #truck - Sun, 14:37: *Michele Stodart* Pleasant-sounding but deeply uninteresting guitar & singing. Apparently from the Magic Numbers. All too plausible. #truck
- Sun, 15:53:
*Maybeshewill* All-encompassing layered walls of busy guitar, underpinned with solid drums & enlivened by occasional vocal samples. #truck - Sun, 18:24: *Little Fish* Powered through (musical) organ failure with charisma, a borrowed harmonica & an awesome raw bluesy singing voice. Ace. #truck
- Sun, 21:51:
*Richard Herring* Sexual gestures, bitter teenaged poetry & a warning about combining exponentiation & romantic gestures. I approve. #truck - Sun, 22:20: *The Go! Team* A bold, cheerfully bouncy & surprisingly successful attempt to get the lugubrious Truck crowd to move about a bit. #truck
- Sun, 22:28: *Dreaming Spires* A fine Truck tradition: the organisers' band ease your departure with indie-shmindie that's earnest & deeply dull. #truck
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- oxfordslacker
- Drifting in and out of consciousness
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