Lucky I spotted this one...

I wrote the post below a few minutes ago and, luckily, before I posted it I realised I had made a grave error. I'm slightly surprised at myself that it took me about twenty minutes from the event actually happening, through me writing it down here, before I realised that I had made a grave error.

However rather than discarding it completely I'll turn it into a game of Spot The Grave Error. Play along at home

------------------

I was listening to some tunes on the way in to work this morning on my portable tune-playing device (PTPD). It played a couple of decent songs and then it chose Lambchop's Up With People for my delectation. This is generally a great song. However this morning, when it got to the end of the song all I could hear was "Come on Roger May" for some reason. Now that is not the true lyric and the song has nothing to do with ex-members of Queen. But I just heard it over and over again, sung by Kurt Wagner and a gospel choir. Come on Roger May, Come on Roger May, Come on Roger May etc etc.

That really wasn't an image I wanted in my head.

Lee and Herring

I went to see the legendary comedian Stewart Lee tonight. Whilst I've been to many music gigs on my own, I think this was the first comedy gig I've been to alone. It was a similar experience, just with more chairs. I think the main reason for me being alone tonight was very bad planning. Live and learn...

Stewart used to work with Richard Herring. As Lee and Herring, they sounded slightly like Lee and Perrin, the Worcester sauce firm. [I'm often amazed by the sheer coincidences that lead to comedy duos having names that go together so well. Cannon and Ball. Little and Large. Hilter and Slatin. The list is almost without beginning.]

I've had the pleasure of seeing both of them perform live this year, in the same venue at separate times. Prior to this year I had only had pre-recorded exposure to them. Lest you be confused, it was them that was pre-recorded rather than myself. Never once did I sit alone in my bedsit after nine o'clock with a tape recorder and a packet of Supernoodles. Never once did I record a tape of myself enjoying said noodles and then send it to them in the hope that it would give them the same enjoyment that I had myself received. They had not had any pre-recorded exposure to myself in that way. And anyone who says they did is a nasty liar.

Ahem.

All in all, I enjoyed them both. Stewart (I nearly called him "Lee" their, but that sounds far too pretentious and journalistic) seems a little annoyed with the problems he had with the religious nuts due to his association with Jerry Springer: The Opera, but other than that is still very funny. His set took in the London Bombings, the IRA, a drunken walk home with Jesus, the death of the Pope, and Joe Pasquale. I feel that my final comma in that sentence was technically incorrect but necessary to avoid confusion over who had died. Joe Pasquale is still alive. Jesus died some years back. It's tempting to suggest that this might be a better world should those have been reversed.

Richard (Herring) on the other hand talked about the death of the Pope, molesting the girlfriend of a reviewer with a trout (a large one) and yoghurt. Lots of yoghurt.

It's hard to choose a winner.

It's also (sometimes) hard to be a woman. But you shouldn't believe everything a song tells you. If you are a woman then why not tomorrow find it EASY to be a woman instead. Go on. It's the first Monday of the rest of your life. Go for it.

Could it be magic?

The clocks go back tonight meaning that I get an extra hour in bed. However, this isn't particularly convenient for me. I haven't done anything of note tonight and so don't really need more bed-time this week.

Bloody timekeepers, with their silly rules.

Next week would be much more useful. I'll be at a wedding reception and so will probably have a jar or two. Next week, I'd be very appreciative of an extra hour in bed. But I won't legally have one because the powers that be have deigned this week to be the one where it happens. They could have at least done some consultation with the people that will be affected (ie me).

So I think I might delay the addition of the extra hour for a week, just in my life. For the next 7 days, when everyone else is having seven o'clock, I'll be having eight of her majesty's clock. I think. This will have some advantages. The pubs will appear to stay open until midnight rather than eleven. I also won't have to get to work until ten o'clock. I think. I do tend to get confused by this whole thing.

This is clearly another fine plan of mine. And it will mean I get an extra hour in bed next Sunday morning (when it will do me most good) as I realign myself to the nation's main time syatem.

I'll have to be really careful with the train timetable though or I'll miss the wedding itself.

Strange lights: Normally a sign of an alien presence

Apparently there's a thing going on at York Minster at the moment where they are shining lights on it to make it look pretty. I didn't notice it last night, but that's most likely because I didn't pass the Minster.

Maybe I'll be lucky enough to see it in the next few days. I could stand there and go "Oooohh".

I can't believe you fed that to a dwarf!

I'm thinking about trying an experiment tomorrow. Details of this may, or may not be posted here at some point. Scientific rigour: Hoy!

Where'd all the aliens go?

I'm a little bit tired out after being at the careers fair smiling at and talking to strangers all day. I was a little bit disappointed that nobody, taking a cue from my post on Monday, had dressed up in a Vorlon encounter suit for the occasion. Not one person. It's like nobody makes an effort to try and get a job these days. Does everyone have a f***ing job already? No? Then get your finger out and put on a decent alien costume (*).

Now, if I was looking for a graduate job, the first thing I'd do is thoroughly research my favourite prospective employer. I'd phone up each person at the company until I found the person who would be attending the fair:

Switchboard: Hello, how can I help you?
Me: Hello.
Switchboard: Hello.
Me: Please can you put me through to any employee whose surname starts AAAA
Switchboard: I'll just check that... Sorry, we don't have anyone whose name starts AAAA.
Me: What about AAA?
Switchboard: Sorry sir.
Me: What about AA?
Switchboard: Ah. We have a Mrs Aardman.
Me: I'd like to talk to her please.
Switchboard: Please hold.
[hold music - Greensleeves]
Mrs Aardman: Good morning. This is Mrs Aardman. How can I help?
Me: Are you attending the careers fair tomorrow?
Mrs Aardman: No.
Me: Please can you transfer me back to the switchboard?
[hold music - Rock Me Amadeus]
Switchboard: Hello, how can I help you?
Me: Hello. It's me again. Can I speak to the first person whose name begins with A please?
(and so on)

Now, this process might take a while, but that's ok, I'm thorough and I really want this job. Eventually I would find the correct person. I'd then stalk them for a while and use the internet to find out everything about them. Eventually I'd find that they (I) had a private blog where they'd mentioned that they were going to a careers fair and that they (I) would quite like a Vorlon to come along.

Now, as an useless unemployed, possibly unemployable freakazoid, I would wish to do everything possible to show my prospective/future employer how good and customer focused I was. And if this involved manufacturing a Vorlon encounter suit from scratch then by golly that's just what I'd do.

A little bit of time spent on a job application can work wonders.

The mere fact that this didn't happen shows me that nobody really really really wanted a job. They were just in it for the pens.

(* not like as in the alien from Alien. That would scare me too much)

It's all over. Again.

Darn it. Last week I thought I'd finished marking actuarial exams forever, but that turned out to be slightly premature. I've agreed to do one final mini batch (just nine scripts) as a favour. Hopefully it'll be a favour in return for money though, which is the best sort.

But after tonight (or maybe after tomorrow night) it really will be over. Yay!

Diverse Recruitment

I've been asked to go to a careers fair in London on Wednesday. It's the GRADES careers fair which "promotes graduate careers to all, irrespective of Gender, Religion, Age, Disability, Ethnicity or Sexuality" (see what they've done with the name there?). I'm clearly the ideal person to go due to me being a shining beacon of diversity in the UK workplace. Well, I'm male, atheist, young, able-bodied white and straight.

I don't even really wear glasses.

Mind you, I suppose statistically that I must be as diverse as everyone else. In fact it must be quite hard for any one person (even me) to be diverse on their own and so I can be as good at it as the rest if I try hard.

So I'm off to London to see the Queen.

If you happen to be an elderly one-legged African lesbian nun from Stoke then please come and see me and we can talk about whether you're right for a career as a graduate trainee actuary.

Actually, if all I recruit is a lesbian nun, then I don't think I'm trying hard enough. I want to recruit some actual proper aliens. A Vorlon would be cool. They have the cryptic communicational ability of a typical actuary.

[Me: Hello!
Vorlon: ...
Me: So you want to be an actuary then?
Vorlon: ...
Me: You don't want to be an actuary?
Vorlon: ...Yes...
Me: What do you want?
Vorlon: Never ask that question
Me: OK. How can I help you?
Vorlon: It is time.
Me: Right. Would you like a brochure?
Vorlon: ...
Me: Egads. I'd get more sense out of Yoda.
Vorlon: If you go to Dagobah, you will die.
Me: That's nice! Bye!]

Or maybe No. 5 from Short Circuit. He'd be cool, and probably isn't doing much these days.

And failing that I should at least be able to get loads of free pens.

A Milky Clock

I think there's an extent to which I mainly measure the passage of time by the use-by dates on the cartons of milk I throw away. Currently the 23rd October is next to be binned. After that it'll be the 29th October. Inevitably these will be thrown away, unopened, unused and unloved. I don't like milk. But each one gone marks another week that's expired.

Caribou!

When men get married, they typically have a stag night/weekend/party and invite all their male friends along to celebrate/commiserate the end of their life as a single. Similarly, when girls get married they typically have a hen night/weekend/party and invite all their female friends along to wear L-plates and fall over. These twin traditions leave something of a hole.

If for example you are a male friend of a female marriagee, you will tend to not get invited on either the stag-do (because you don't know or disapprove of the groom) or the hen-do (because you are a not a no-tail). You're missing out on a party through simple circumstances of gender. I think this may be illegal in some countries.

Likewise, female friends of male marriagees don't get invited on the stag-do (because they are girls) or on the hen-do (because they are either evil-enemy-ex-girlfriends or potential ex-evil-enemy-ex-girlfriends. Probably. I'm having to enter the female mind here, which is never easy. Where's the door? What's the alarm code? I'm never sure. Let's move on. Anyway...) and so they also lose out.

So it's all a bit rubbish really.

There is clearly a third party that needs to happen. What would happen is that all the groom's female friends go out with all the bride's male friends, possibly for up to 12 days, and they have a fun time and drink some beer, shoot some pool, sail some rivers and maybe even walk the dog a few times.

This would be good because:
a) Everyone would have a party
b) Everyone would know more people at the eventual wedding
c)

This party would need to choose an animal name too. Stag and Hen have already been taken, so I might suggest Caribou.

I'm undecided on whether the bride and groom should be allowed on the Caribou Party or not. They'd be useful on day one so that they could introduce everyone to everyone else. But after that maybe they'd just get in the way like a broken lorry on the A11.

Were such a party to take place, the following places should be avoided:
1. Lincoln. I hate Lincolnshire.
2. York. Too many Hen/Stags already. Caribous can do better.
3. Exeter. I'm not really sure where it is.
4. My friend John's house. It's quite small and the toilet has a dodgy flush.

See you there! Maybe!

Curly wurlys

Girls: They can be really annoying when for the first three days you know one they have curly hair. You assume that's how they are and you accept them at curly hair face value. Then, they suddenly have straight hair and make some wild assumption that you'll still recognise them. How's that ever going to work???

Fact: Photofits would be useless if you could change one part of the face and still have the same person. You change the nose. It's a different person. You change the ears. It's a different person. You change the hair. It's a different person.

If people want to go around straightening their curly hair then the least they can do is wear a sign or a badge pointing out this thing. "Hi, I'm still XXX even though my hair has not the curls it once had". Something like that.

And don't get me started on dye.

Only Gazelles Bound In The Dark

When I went to work this morning, it was dark. That's bent.

When I came home tonight, it was still dark. Bent, bent, bent.

Stupid darkness. Why can't people put it safely in jars for use in case of a war of light bombs?

Tomorrow's TV... today

Well, that was unexpected. I just heard the BBC have commissioned a Dr Who spin-off series called Torchwood, starring Captain Jack. It sounds like it'll be a bit darker and more adult. Maybe a bit like how Angel was compared to Buffy?

Other spin-offs I'd like to see soon:

Serenity: The Series. This'd be a TV series based on the movie Serenity. Ok, so I know this kind of already exists, but they should do it again and not cancel it.

Actuary Who. In which Dr Who regenerates as an actuary rather than a doctor. Y'all know this would be cool.

Pinky and the Dr Evil. Pinky and the Brainy was a cool cartoon. Dr Evil is very funny. Let them take over the world together, what could possibly go wrong?

Lost: Clothes. In which Kate from Lost has lost all her clothes.

This is the last time...

You don't always know when you do something for the last time. And in particular you don't always make an effort to remember the last time you will do a particular something. For example, you may not remember the last time you kiss somebody before they callously dump you to run off with a sailor (It was just like any other day...). Or you may not remember whether or not you turned off the gas on the evening you went out and your house blew up. If you have no reason to do so, one occurrence of a regular event is just like another and there's no reason to pay particular attention. Perhaps that's why she ran off with the sailor...

Anyway. I don't remember the last time I watched Neighbours. When I was a nipper (ie at school/university) I used to watch the Australian soap every day. Looking back I have no idea why I thought this was a good idea but I can't deny my past. I think I fancied Bronwyn. That was probably why. But then I entered the World of Workcraft and my free time dwindled away, I wasn't home in time to watch it any more and gradually like rusks and PE lessons it left my life. But do I remember the last time I saw it? No.

Well, actually I do. Because I have just watched it just now for what I totally intend to be the last time in my life ever ever ever (*). It was a special twentieth anniversary edition. Twenty years of soapy crap. What happened was a girl comes back to make a documentary about Ramsey Street and its inhabitants. And lots of old people come back or get filmed. I recognised some of them. Some of them I recognised but couldn't quite work out who they were supposed to be. Others I had no idea.

Thoughts on some of them:
Phillip Martin: Every time he came on screen I thought he was Tony Soprano. This was very confusing.
Paul Robinson: He looks the same as ever except for having done a Heather Mills.
Phillip Martin's daughter who isn't Hannah: She has really dumb eyebrows now.
Joe Mangle: I think he has cushion stuffed up his front. I saw the actor who plays him perform live once in Norwich - he's quite an accomplished stand-up.
Lucy Robinson: Really quite cute.
Harold Bishop: No change at all. He's the living embodiment of "Constant".
Others: Older and fatter, mainly. But that's enough of this.

So I've wasted twenty five minutes of my life watching it. There seemed to be some vague real plots going on as well but I found it hard to care. Anyone who watches this stuff on a regular basis is clearly a mentalist.

I certainly have no intention of watching it again. Even if I had the motivation and energy to get myself home from work by 5:37 every day I still wouldn't watch it because it's just rubbish!

Lucy really was hot though.

(* Unless I'm wrong)

End of the exams

Quite excitingly, I've just finished exam marking for what I intend to be the last time ever, ever. Or at least until I find myself bored in a few years time.

I just need to make sure I really practice saying that "NO" thing for when the Institute phones me up looking for markers for the Spring exams.

Spring seems a long time away. But it, like love (according to The Pet Shop Boys), will come quickly and bring with it all the usual stuff. The stuff of Spring. I don't know what that is. I probably shouldn't be writing. I have a headache and my (creative) juices are spent, absent.

Until tomorrow...

Some Meat

This weekend, I've mostly been eating meat. I like meat.

Here's Saturday meat:



And here's Sunday meat:



Meat.

Sing me a song

Now, I know that not everyone will agree with me here, but I think that if a night ends with a sing-song, then it's been a good night.

"How many roads must a man walk down..."...

Someone get me a tissue

I'm always faintly annoyed at they way I let myself be emotionally manipulated by television programmes. Buffy used to make me cry on a regular basis. The ep of Lost I've just watched (s2e4) got me the same way. Pathetic.

Absolutely pathetic :-)

Three, yes three (!) crap posts, In One!

Today was the first ever John Peel Day. I was supposed to have been going to a gig tonight (Pure Reason Revolution: A fantastic Pr0g rock band) but it was postponed until December due to illness. Illness of a band member rather than of myself. I'm fine. I have got over my recent mild cold. In substitute, I intend to listen to a Hefner album later, over a glass of red wine. It's what he would have wanted.

In other news, here's a church that's now a bar:


I was very well behaved this afternoon. I know that it's important to eat my greens. I had a packet of Walkers Salt & Vinegar Crisps, a Mint Aero and a Packet Of Polos. Afterwards I felt mighty fine.

Comfort in 'Coasters

I've been to Alton Towers today. I went on lots of rides. Wahey and indeed, Wooh.

As I've got older I think I've started to rate rides and rollercoasters in a different way to how I used to when I was a youngster. Previously, it was all about speed, acceleration and Pure Thrills. The more adrenaline the better the ride.

Now what I'm mostly looking for in a ride is a comfortable seat. Don't care so much what the seat then actually does - upside down, inside out, fast and slow, slow and fast - as long as the seat I'm sitting on feels comfortable then I can be fairly sure I'll be happy. Specifically, what I want is a soft bit to actually sit on and a soft back and head rest to lean on. Ergonomic moulding is fine as long as it's not designed to fit physical freaks. And enough legroom to prevent me feeling I'll get cramp from having to sit in a strange position.

What I'm unable to do here is list the most comfortable rides because they all blend into one another after a bit and I find it hard to remember which chair was on which rollercoaster. But I think Nemesis is pretty comfy whilst The Flume Unplugged By Imperial Leather is not so comfy. It also has perhaps the worst name of any ride, ever.

I think I'd probably have as much fun in a sofa salesroom as a theme park. Especially if they provided me with a nice hot cup of tea.

Again: Nobody Ever Tells Me Anything

So why did nobody tell me easyworld had split up?? A year ago?

You Gats!

This news was tempered by me finding that Dav from easyworld has a new solo album out. He's calling himself David now though. But that's cool. Whatever.

It's raining.

A pathetic attempt to garner sympathy

I have a mild cold at the moment. I blame my parents. Virtually the first thing they said yesterday when they arrived was that they both had colds. Excellent, cheers guys, thanks for sharing that with me. I know that realistically it's unlikely that I'd see them in the afternoon, catch something from them and then be all snuffly the very next day, but still, that's surely what parents are for. Someone to blame when you're ill. They should have had DNA that mixed to give me a better immune system.

Actually, I don't get ill that often so maybe they did alright for me after all.

I didn't have any proper tissues in work so I was stuck using whatever bits of tissue-like paper I could find. Mostly this was the pile of napkins I've built up on my desk from various sandwich shops around York. I've realised that these really could be softer. Say I go to Pret a Manger and I pay Two Pounds Fifty for a sandwich. For that money surely I've got to expect a decently soft napkin. One that will not only clean mayonnaise from my keyboard but will also wipe my nose without me going Ow. It's not too much to ask is it?

Accepted, they are still preferable to the toilet tissue from the toilets, but they're not exactly Kleenex. Well tomorrow I think I'm going to dig out a pack of tissues that I took rafting in the summer. They should still be ok (possibly a little squished) as long as I can find them.

This is thrilling, isn't it?

I'd intended to go out to see a band tonight. They'd travelled all the way from Iceland to play here in York. But since I've got a cold (and I'm going to see bands tomorrow and Thursday), I've decided to stay in. I hope they won't be too disappointed that I'm not there. Sorry Leaves!

Sunday. Gahhh!

My Mother had called me earlier in the week to say that her and Father were thinking of coming over at the weekend to see me, and drop off some of the piles of old stuff that's been congealing in my old bedroom for the past 10 years or so. She said that she'd email later in the week to confirm that they were coming and on what day etc. Since as of this morning I had ha no such email, I had made the (rash) assumption that they had decided not to come over after all. I would hence be able to look forward to a dull day of marking, reading and generally sitting around on my arse.

But then, just after midday I got a call saying that they were on their way and not only that, they would be at my flat in about ten minutes time. Ten minutes! That's not a lot of warning. First thing I had to get rid of all the whores I had a around for a party last night. And then finally get rid of that body that's been in my bath since "The Incident I Haven't Spoken About". Finally after a quick run around with the vacuum cleaner and a splash and dash washing up session I was ready to accept parental visitors.

Since my upstairs neighbours (who have two cars) were parked in my parking space, I advised my parents to park in theirs, a space which is next to mine. Whilst I realise that two wrongs don't make a right, I also realise "Hah, see how you like it". It was quite amusing when one of said neighbours returned half an hour later and I could see the look of frustration on his face as he realised his space had been taken. I'm not sure if he realised exactly what lesson he was supposed to have learnt there, but maybe he did.

I haven't met my upstairs neighbours - they only moved in last weekend. They have two very near identical crappy white cars. Like twin cars. As far as I know, they're just a couple of guys sharing a flat, but there's something wrong with them both having the same car. It wouldn't be quite so bad if they were a couple but I don't think they are. (Couples can get away with matching clothes, even if they do still look ridiculous. I think this applies to cars as well.)

Anyway, I took the parents into town for lunch. We went to Caesars for pizzas which were pretty decent though Mother complained about the lack of an apostrophe in the restaurant's name. It's lucky I hadn't take her to a pub featuring some of York's more inventive spelling and grammar.

I also discovered today that instant coffee does in fact go off if you leave it long enough. I think I have had my current jar for around 2 years - it would have been bought before my year of No Coffee in 2004. When I opened it today, there was a kind of fine fungus covering much of the coffee. Rather than brush this off and pretend it was ok, on the basis that boiling water kills everything, I threw the whole jar away and made proper coffee with beans and a grinder. Although to be honest, they tasted a little tasteless too and I suspect they may also need replacing.

So parents come and parents go. It's lucky they hadn't decided to come yesterday - they'd have found me hiding in bed nursing a bally awful hangover. I'm glad that went away.

Memory Lapse

I keep forgetting brilliant posts that I was going to write. This would have been one of them. Sorry.

Bleeding Hands

There are a lot of jobs where it would be really awkward to suddenly have an attack of the stigmata. Pastry Chef for example. Nobody wants a bloody vol-au-vent. Or Shark Feeder. The shark would sense the blood and have your whole hand off.

However, I reckon an actuary would get away with it. It wouldn't really matter if a little bit of blood dropped on the keyboard whilst a computer model was being built to describe the inner workings of a pension plan. I regularly get all sorts of sandwich filling and drink inside my keyboard and it continues to work fine.

Even if it started in a meeting you could get away with it. You could just claim that you'd accidentally stabbed yourself with a pencil. It happens. Or you could just come right out and say "It's ok, I have the stigmata. Ooops, here it comes again, ha ha" and just make a joke of it. It'd be fine.

I don't actually have the stigmata myself. But it's nice to realise that should such a condition afflict me in the future then it won't be the end of my career.

Now leprosy, that could be a problem.

Childhood Tales (1)

I went out for a quicky after work this evening and through circumstances too daft to relate here I ended up admitting something that I don't think I've ever told anyone else before. So I thought I'd share:

Only one time did I ever fake an illness at school to get out of class. It was geography. I was somewhere in the age range of 13 to 14. I can derive this retrospectively because I never studied the subject at any other age. Except for 11 to 12, but I was far too well behaved then to have even considered a fake illness.

On the day in question I realised that I had forgotten to do my homework. I was probably have supposed to have drawn diagrams about how desert people farm or about how the wind affects eskimos or some such thing. I hadn't done it. I hadn't done it and I panicked. I didn't know what to do. I just wasn't the sort of kid who hadn't done their homework. That wasn't me.

So I pretented to be ill. I went to the nursey's place and made up some crap. I forget what, but I had to spend the next hour or so lying on the sick bed pretending to feel bad and not burst out laughing because I'd successfully bucked the system and skived geography. But god, was it boring. This was pre the Gameboy era (I think). I just had to lie there.

Eventually I "got better" and was able to leave. And I think that was the end of it. I felt bad and always made especial effort to not forget to do my homework again. Espcecially for geography. Although I dropped the subject at the earliest opportunity.

So I'd just like to take this opportunity to apologise to my geography teacher, Mrs Bayliss, and say that despite that lapse in my academic life, I'm ok, not a drug addict, everything's ok.

Glad I've got that off my chest. I feel clean now.

A Maths Haiku

18+30
-2*3*2
=36

A joke: because Mondays are rubbish

Funniest joke I heard at the weekend:

Q: What's pink, red and silver and bumps into things a lot?
A: A baby with forks in its eyes.

I think I'd find that funny even if I had a baby. Possibly not if it had forks in its eyes, but since in my limited experience babies don't have forks in their eyes then that's not likely to ever be a problem.

I think if you do actually come across such a baby then the best thing to do is run away really fast and deny all knowledge of the incident and the forks. For God's sake don't touch the forks - you're likely to hurt the baby and you'll also get incriminating fingerprints all over it. Leave helping the baby to the experts. If you leave your sticky fingerprints on it then the police will find you. And then arrest you and take away all your fun things. Then your girlfriend will leave you and tell the press how bad you are/were. Then you'll get some leprosy from being in a rotten prison and you won't be happy. So just run away.

I truly hope that there isn't a story in the papers tomorrow about a baby with such an injury becuase this post could start to look quite suspicious (and possibly also bad taste).

So if you are an evil person with forks and a baby, please leave it a few days before combining the two. I don't want to get in trouble.

Better ways to self destruct

Given my current very minor involvement in the music industry, I find it interesting to see how bands are getting music out to the public when they either can't get or don't want major label involvement.

Jake Shillingford, ex of My Life Story for example, asks fans to donate money via his webpage in order to fund his recording projects, and then is able to return this capital once the album has sold a minimum number of copies. My Life Story were a great band btw. She prefers the night to daaaayyyyy.

Meanwhile, Harvey Danger (who recorded the absolutely fantastic Flagpole Sitta some years back) have just made their new album available totally free for download either direct from their website or via Bit Torrent (links also on the website). I downloaded it this morning and am listening now. It's good. Sounds, strangely, a little like Shed Seven. I mean that in a good way... I like Shed Seven.

And of course you can follow the route taken by FDH (and other bands in the past - The Delgados being a good example) and just set up your own actual record label. At least that way if your label drops you know it means you must be really shit.

Anyway, the main point of this post was: Go and download the Harvey Danger album. It's good. And it feels bad to do it, even though it's not. Like stealing matches from bars even when they're free. I like doing that.

Only last night I found myself lost...

London. Been there again. It's still big and smelly.

I wish they'd sort out Kings Cross tube station. They've been doing it up for what seems like years now. The ticket machines are still outside on the street, nowhere near the actual turnstiles. Obviously though I only realised this once I got to the turnstiles and so I then had to retrace my steps and look a bit lost.

The tube more generally seemed to be having a bad weekend. The Central Line was shut, there were no Circle/Met/Hammersmith line trains running through Kings Cross. I had to go a slightly circuitous route to get to Wapping. At least I got to go on the Jubilee Line which is cool because the stations are all made of shiny metal and it feels like you're in a space station.

I was down in London for Dan's 30th birthday. Ha ha, he's really old now. Not like me, the spring chicken. No. He's old and decrepit and it's a surprise that he can still walk under his own steam and that his teeth stay in at night.

Here's Dinner:



We managed to get the bill to a whopping (or possibly Wapping) £1300. Though that was between 30 people rather than £1300 each. I'm not sure that even London has many places where you can spend a grand on a meal. Wine, possibly, but not food. I will however have to have a small complaint about the pre-meal drinks - £6.50 for a single glass of a cocktail is extortionate! For that price I want at least half a bottle of spirits served by a nymph. I didn't get that though. Disappointing, to say the least.

There's a good view over the river from Dan's flat though. If I'd been sensible enough to take my real camera rather than just my phone, I would have taken a better photo than this one:



The glowy place is Canary Wharf. We went there for lunch today and it reminded me of Rome quite a lot. Not so much the architecture but the way that there are long lines of restaurants with loads of outside seating and parasols. I had spaghetti and meatballs and didn't spill any of it on me like normal!

It's not the end of the world

Today I'm going to London. Hence at some point soon I am going to have to actually make an effort to get dressed and leave the flat. I think I'd get funny looks if I were to just go out in my dressing gown. Arthur Dent got away with it, but then the world had ended. I don't think that's likely to happen today.

But you never know!

Go Away

Ok, so on a scale of 1 to 10, how pissed off am I this evening?

Lots.

I'll be alright tomorrow though, I expect.