Try Injecting Your Cat With Heroin

All is Vanity

2007-06-11T18:03:00.000+01:00

I would add to this thing, only I have neither reason nor inclination. Also I find the very concept quite suspect, as I've said before. Rest assured that all you're missing is the usual staleness.

Oh, actually, I do have an announcement. My friend Daniel Talbot and I are The Wrong Treatment, and we make horrible sounds for partially comedic and entirely self-indulgent purposes. We've assembled two releases: a festive EP and an album which, whilst theoretically not bound to any season, has a greater number of Christmas-themed tracks than would statistically be expected. Both are available from Archive.org, and I present them to you now:

Christmas: The Definitive Collection
We're So Sorry

Yes, it is meant to sound like that. Now fuck off so I can get back to whatever it is I've been doing all this time.

WEBSITE

2006-12-19T01:25:00.000Z

Stevenf of Spamusement has created a new website: Somniphobia. It’s an anonymous forum. I don’t think you’re going to get any in-depth discussions there, but it might be good for a bit of weirdness.

This blog is still dead, by the way. This post is merely an illusion. Stop imagining things you fucking lunatic.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

2006-10-12T16:46:00.000+01:00

TRAUBSTER SMELLS OF SEX WITH OTHER MEN.

This place is quite, quite dead

2006-07-07T00:11:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I don’t think I’m keeping this whole blogging thing up very well. Don’t expect any sort of revival. I was just reminded that this thing existed, so I decided a token pointless post would be as much fun as a bowl of rice with no rice or bowl in it. I will, however, note that I made a compilation of songs rather unhumorously titled ‘Mixtapir’ which can be found here. Try not to shit yourself out of excitement.

Intelligent Dance Music

2006-02-15T17:50:00.000Z

I don’t want to talk to you about music. What I want to talk to you about is the name of a genre of music. There is something incredibly arrogant about the title ‘intelligent dance music’. That something is, of course, that it implies that other dance music is somehow intellectually lacking. This may or may not be the case, but I hardly think it’s the place of one subgenre to make implicit relativistic statements about qualities other genres or subgenres other than that which is directly related to the music. Dance music isn’t something I have a huge amount of interest in, and what I do like would probably be almost exclusively classified as ‘IDM’, but it’s nonsense to declare a type of music as superior in its very name. I would imagine that most genres are named by those with a keen interest, and these people are predisposed to thinking the genre in question superior to those in which they find less appeal. If this became a trend we’d end up with subgenres called things like ‘better than that other genre’, ‘great’ and ‘auralgasm’.

I also hate how absolutely everyone thinks their taste in music is eclectic.
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I’m grumpy and I want the world to know about it

2005-12-19T18:34:00.000Z

Why do teenage girls on buses around here insist on singing in that slightly irritating warbly female vocalist in a rap-or-garage-or-whatever track fashion, made all the more irritating by the fact that they’re either quite average and think that they’re good or really bad and produce sounds that offend my ears profoundly? The first time I encountered it I assumed it was some over-excited girls encouraged by inebriation and mutual endorsement, but I’ve encountered it on several occasions now, and have come to the conclusion that it’s acceptable behaviour in one of the numerous groups people seem intent on dividing themselves into.

Everything you do is a massive mistake

2005-11-18T21:57:00.000Z

. . . and so is everything you fail to do.

Finally I understand

2005-11-06T21:43:00.000Z

The majority of our culture is specifically designed to annoy me.

Hey, Internet!

2005-11-05T12:28:00.000Z

It’s ‘a lot’. Two words.

Blogging my hatred

2005-10-29T16:18:00.000+01:00

Here’s another one: I hate how everybody’s afraid to use the word ‘anagram’ for fear of some illiterate fool not understanding what they’re on about. ‘Mix up the letters’ is such an ugly phrase.

I spent the last few days making something

2005-10-27T22:04:00.000+01:00

I felt like setting myself a project the other day, so I decided to try to write a program for constructing random sentences according to a context-free grammar. I was inspired by those nearly-grammatical-but-not-quite-meaningful spam subject lines you sometimes get; whilst they tend to use a core phrase with some random words added in to confound spam filters, it reminded me of the sorts of phrases context-free grammars (which I first encountered when reading Logic by Wilfrid Hodges) sometimes generated. Being an algorithmic and iterative process, it seemed to be quite well-suited to being processed by a computer. I was most experienced in Java, so at first I worked with that. To start off with, I didn’t want to complicate things by introducing external files (plain text or databases), so I hard-coded the CFG. This was obviously not an ideal solution, but due to the object-oriented nature of my approach, it was the most simple. I got things working to a reasonable degree, with only a little jiggery-pokery in order to balance the probabilities a bit. However, despite portability being one of the fundamental concepts behind Java, it’s not the sort of thing that most people want to mess around with. I quickly knocked up an applet front-end, but I could only get it working locally – as soon as I tried to upload it, it came up with nothing at all. I also tried compiling it to a Windows .exe, but for some reason this refused to run on anyone else’s computers. In light of all of this, and because I really felt that it was time I learnt it, I decided to try again using PHP. I downloaded UniServer, which was a lot more co-operative than previous PHP software I’d tried, and took a quick look at a basic PHP tutorial. Things were largely familiar, so I didn’t really have a problem picking it up. The most alien things were regular expressions, which I had encountered before, but which I found to be a bit fiddly. I think it’s the compactness of them – which, indeed, is one of their greatest strengths – that put me off.

I decided that since I was starting things afresh, I might as well start using an external file for storing the CFG. It actually turned out not to be too difficult after all; I found PHP’s string-handling capabilities to be very impressive and quite helpful for what I was doing (I don’t know whether PHP is actually better at handling strings, or whether it’s simply the online documentation – which I like very much – that made things easier). My main problem was constructing a mechanism to prevent the recursion from repeating indefinitely – one of the advantages of my Java implementation was that I could determine how the program should react to excessive depth on a class-by-class basis (with a class for each symbol). I knew what I wanted to do pretty early on, but numerous small errors on my part led to several hours of misery. But it’s been over for a few days now, so I think I can safely report my success.

Anyway, I’ve been talking at length about the creation process, which wasn’t very interesting, so I’ll cut to the proverbial chase and provide the links: the first version simply provides a random sentence each time, whilst the second allows you to alter the rule set used by the program. My intention is that people get so obsessed with fiddling with this pointless toy that humanity’s productivity is reduced to roughly zero. Why this should be my goal, I haven’t yet decided. I just like it. Any contributions anybody wants to make will be considered for incorporation, but so far most people haven’t bothered messing with the mechanics behind the thing.

I started writing this three days ago, then got distracted and decided I’d finish it another day. When I came back to it, I couldn’t really work out what was left to say. I can’t be bothered to read it properly, so it might not make much sense. This troubles me, but not enough to actually do anything about it.
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Oh my god

2005-10-09T17:18:00.000+01:00

I sincerely hope this gets cheap enough soon. I want it quite, quite badly. I don’t particularly like those technology-tracking blogs (let’s face it: I don’t actually like any blogs), but I felt a strong and profound urge to say something about this.

My flat’s TV at university actually once achieved a luminance that must have been approaching the Brightside’s 4000 cd/m² over a small area (it was almost painful to look at), but that was entirely in error, and quite worryingly so, too. It was like all the light from the screen had been funnelled into a single thin line. If by any chance you’re reading this, Alex, imagine that kind of brightness power spread over the whole screen. Yet it still retains the capability to have completely black portions. Fucking amazing. Not that I expect you to care; merely to understand how impressive this is.

Pigeon pornography

2005-10-09T15:45:00.000+01:00

Today I saw two pigeons having sex next to a sleeping duck who had a broken wing and was standing on one leg. What have you done with your day, bigshot?

Everyday conversation is a deeply unpleasant experience

2005-10-02T21:19:00.000+01:00

I don’t mind it so much when people answer a question with another question. What I do mind is when they answer a question with the same question.

‘Hi, how are you?’
‘How are you?’
‘I want to carve out your insides and fill the remaining husk with pulped newspapers.’

Observe as I fritter bandwidth away

2005-09-12T00:19:00.000+01:00

Do you ever feel like no-one else in the world can properly close a box of cereal?

We’re all awful, including myself

2005-09-08T16:12:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know I’m a fucking hypocrite.

Other news: I wish people would stop taking an interest in my life. I think the next time someone asks me what it’s like to have finished university I’ll shout in their face and walk off. Jesus. I know they’re just trying to be nice, but I’d rather they didn’t. It’s not like anything other than itself. Finishing university is like having finished university. That’s it. No great fucking insight into my inner being. I just don’t attend a particular educational establishment any more. Now stop talking to me, I’d rather go mine-clearing with my feet than converse with you. Good day.

Two Not Very Important Thoughts

2005-08-26T22:53:00.000+01:00

I think I need an Internet alias with a word like ‘ultimate’ or ‘master’ or ‘killa’ in it. People won’t know I’m great, otherwise. Or maybe I need to put ‘princess’ or ‘gurl’ or ‘cutie’ or ‘sweety’ or something in it, so that the boys know they want to have sex with me.

The Sonic series went very wrong at some stage in 1995. Or maybe that’s when I became too old for it.

I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly

2005-08-15T19:22:00.000+01:00

A while ago Alex challenged me to try the popular American peanut and jelly sandwich, but without translating the jelly portion (in other words, using what the Americans know as Jell-O rather than what what is otherwise known as jam). A while later I bought some jelly. Still later I actually got around to preparing the aforementioned jelly, and yesterday I went through with the challenge. Alex, being a gentleman of some description, decided to join me in my culinary adventure. What follows is a photographic documentation of the proceedings.

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Something else I dislike

2005-08-14T18:11:00.000+01:00

Websites designed to look like a particular operating system. If I wanted things to look like a particular operating system, I’d get that particular operating system, or at least attempt to set mine up to look like it. I know that I express particular preferences occasionally, but I hope that I never go so far as to seem as though I’m saying ‘Look at how cool I am – I use cool software! Cool cool cool!’

Wankers.

Mogwai marathon

2005-08-13T01:37:00.000+01:00

I decided that today I would listen to all the Mogwai music on my computer, excluding the live recordings I downloaded from archive.org. All ten hours, eleven minutes and four seconds of it. I am beginning to regret this decision. It’s getting late and for once I’m feeling tired, but I still have one studio album, one live album and a few oddities downloaded from the Mogwai website to go. Since I’ve gotten this far, I’m determined to stick with this until the end, but it is annoying me a little. I should have started earlier and not disappeared to eat and watch television for an hour or two. School boy error. I may a fool, but at least I’m a determined one.

It’s been worryingly hot these past few days. I thought we were through the worst of it. I had been able to leave my window closed for days at a time, but now it seems I shall have to endure the racket the builders are making once more. Damn the summer. With its dying breath it lunges forth and slaps me in the face once more before finally succumbing. Enough with the death throes – expire already!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a depressive kind of person on the whole. I just find winter to be so much more convenient.

Another morsel

2005-08-11T23:08:00.000+01:00

Now you can see the intimate details of what I’ve been listening to. Soon enough you’ll be getting a live video feed from inside my underwear. Fortunately it’s not very light down there, so you’re unlikely to see much. Still, it’s a simulataneously repugnant and delicious prospect. Repugnant because it would quite clearly be an awful thing, but delicious because it’s an amusing idea.

You can view some of said details in the list of the last four songs I’ve listened to at the top of the page, or, for some more in-depth data, click the aforementioned list to visit my page at Last.fm. I haven’t listened to much since I downloaded it, and what I have been listening to has been at random, so so far it’s not particularly representative of my general listening habits, but give it time and you’ll know me like the back of your skull. Jesus, what a blogger I’m turning into. I’m beginning to abhor myself.

In other news, it would appear that absolutely nobody has visited this place yet. I installed a tracking device, and as far as I can work out it hasn’t registered any visits since I set it to ignore me. Two people left comments telling me not to move from the old place, but it seems they weren’t willing to even look at the replacement. The bastards.

Apart from that, I’ve started transferring my old blog entries over. I did a little less than half a few days ago, and since then haven’t gotten around to making any further progress. Moving the comments is a bit of a pain, but less so now that I’ve found a way to be able to edit them: previously I had to delete any I had made an error in, and any after it in order to maintain the correct order; also, I had to eppend the original posting date of the message within the text itself, which I no longer have to do now that I can set the in-built time and date myself. Not that you care, but, as I once said on my very first website all those years ago (I paraphrase), ‘I don’t have any readers, ergo you don’t exist, ergo it doesn’t matter what you think, or, as the case may be, completely fail to think due to your marked lack of any brain to do the thinking with.’

I bid you good day.
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Photo fun

2005-08-09T22:17:00.000+01:00

James says:
I really want to wee, but I also really want to hear this album to its conclusion.
James says:
Only 7:30 left!
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Why can't you just urinate yourself?
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Who's going to care?
James says:
No-one's in...
James says:
That said, these are the trousers I like to wear all the time for months without washing.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Are you going to let a bit or a lot of urine stop you?
James says:
Probably not. I don't know. I might get my penis out and piss on the floor.
James says:
I'll be moving out of here soon, anyway.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
That's a perfect exscuse to make some enemies
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Like, just before you leave, post a picture of you holding a ray gun.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
With the caption "Never forget me"
James says:
Hahaha. An actual ray gun? I don't have one. Or is that your pet name for my penis?
Maximo Nazi Park says:
No, badly impose one on a picture of you in paint or something
James says:
Haha. Excellent.
James says:
Would I be pointing it at them?
Maximo Nazi Park says:
No no. Just holding it in an authorative manner. Like Hitler might have.
James says:
Oh right.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I'm in the mood to gun you up now.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I will.
Maximo Nazi Park sends:

James says:
I'm doing one. It will be better.
James says:
"Ian is good"?
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I am good
James says:
Oh ... right.
James says:
Big!
James says:
Potato becomes ray gun.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Don't they always?
James says:
Yes. They don't.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I've imrpoved it.
Maximo Nazi Park sends:

James says:
Did something very tall do a long shit on me?
James says:
And did I slit my wrists only to find I have oil for blood?
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Haha, yes. More or less.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I just liked the idea that your blood came out as a black substance
James says:
More or less? What are the details?
James says:
Hahaha.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I also put on the spots you clearly photoshopped out

[. . .]

James sends:

James says:
I fixed it.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Hahahaha!
Maximo Nazi Park says:
That's fantastic. The hair and the expression are very Hitler-esque
James says:
Yes. I'm quite good at having a Hitlery side-parting.
James says:
I might actually print this out big and craply and stick it inside my wardrobe or something (I doubt they'll check in there before the next people move in. They didn't get the beermat someone left on top of it last year).
Maximo Nazi Park says:
That would be really great. It's a shame you'd never see their reaction but yeah
James says:
Haha. I could set up hidden cameras ... no I couldn't.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Yes! Yes you could! Stop limiting your extreme creepyness!
James says:
But it may well be illegal!
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Look at that picture
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Does that look like a man who cares if something is illegal or not?
James sends:

Maximo Nazi Park says:
Yes, that is nicely creepy
Maximo Nazi Park says:
But the other one was just scary.
James says:
Yes. I like them both. I like the latter for its absolutely terrible framing.
James says:
I admittedly balanced it out a bit with the massive text (which seems nicely mental), but still. It was like that because I put my camera on a high shelf.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I'm making a decision right now
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I'm buying my digital camera next Thursday.
James says:
Leave your current husband for the man of your dreams?
James says:
Ooh. So you can be creepy too?
James says:
I like the 'I used to live here' in the second picture. It seems a bit stalkery.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I'm annoyed because ever since I've thought about having one, I've constantly had ideas or seen things I wanted to photograph and I'm getting desperate and Thursday will give me time to collect rewards.
James says:
Hahaha, yes.
James says:
Because it has to be on automatic, all my self-portraits are really out-of-focus, but I think that helps with the creepy/scary pictures.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Yes it does
Maximo Nazi Park says:
I showed someone the 'our glorious leader' one and they said-
Maximo Nazi Park says:
"You can imagine that picture in thew Newspapers after he went on a killing spree."
Maximo Nazi Park says:
It's not very amusing but at least you know it's working!
James says:
HAHAHA!
James says:
Yeah.
James says:
That's actually a nice coincidence.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
"i bet he commits murder within 10 years."
James sends:

James says:
This one looks like the type of picture someone would take before (or possibly after) going on a mad killing spree, then killing himself (obviously that would happen after the photo-taking).
Maximo Nazi Park says:
Yes. It does look strangely eerie
James says:
Note the file name.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
The out of focus does it
James says:
Yes. And it's a bit blurry because it was quite zoomed in.
James says:
And it's dark because I couldn't get the right combination of exposure and flash.
Maximo Nazi Park says:
See, I've got a suit and I want to put it on, then wet my hair right back over my head and I look really scary
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A short musing

2005-08-09T10:48:00.000+01:00

If you were married to your penis, would that make you a wife-beater?

Well, that was a thoroughly unpleasant experience

2005-08-08T01:04:00.000+01:00

I have nodded off once or twice since my previous entry, but on the whole I’m surprised with how well I’ve done. Except that ‘well’ probably isn’t the best word. One of the few benefits of putting myself through this is that I should get to bed at a reasonable time, meaning I will force myself into a pattern of normality for a few days at least. It kind of negates the point if I’m still arsing around by the following midnight. Not that midnight is especially late, but I may need quite a lot of sleep after this.

I fell to sleep watching a programme about Hiroshima, which I was actually finding pretty traumatic. I think this unsettled me, because I woke up again a short while later with it on my mind, and wandered through to the living room before fully regaining consciousness, which in this instance was to the sound of Alex telling me that I was being weirder than usual. I should probably ask him what the hell it was I was talking about at some point, but at the time I didn’t really have the necessary strength or mental grasp of the situation to investigate things further. I think I was saying something about explosions. When I returned to my room I discovered that Aliens was on, which I decided to watch despite its failings, as I’d gone to the trouble of watching the original last week (or whenever it was shown). The sequel is definitely the inferior of the two, but I don’t exactly hate it, and it had been a while. So when it finishes (the finale is rapidly approaching) I will hopefully finally get around to going to bed properly and getting a good ten-or-so hours’ sleep. I need it. I’m feeling quite rotten at the moment. Not so much tired, just . . . uncomfortable.

Yeah, Aliens’ special effects extravaganza is impressive enough, but it completely misses what made the original interesting: the relatively naturalistic and gritty style (if I’m not mistaken, there’s no music except in the opening and closing titles), and the sense of increasing isolation (what with being stranded on a spacecraft with rapidly diminishing company, save of course for the alien itself). Not that I believe that sequels should be carbon copies of the originals ( anything but); merely that in this case the sequel is, if anything, something of a step backwards. All this said, it does seem to have contributed a lot to popular culture in the way of inspiration – in the last ten minutes alone I noticed a couple of moments which were almost definitely the sole point of reference for two of the scenes in an otherwise quite dissimilar pair (even the media are different: one is a film, whereas the other is a computer game). It’s evidently found its way into the collective consciousness, perhaps even more so than Alien (I would say that only the chest-burster scene from that is really well-known), and for this it can be commended.

I’ve often wondered why I have any interest at all in the Alien series. They’re hardly my usual viewing, and I wouldn’t say that I’m a particular fan of any of them. I suppose I hit the nail on the head in the previous paragraph: it’s the variety between the episodes. It is, to my knowledge, quite unusual to have a series of such disparate components. What ultimately ties the films together is not their director, nor is it their style – it’s the core characters alone. This might not sound so notable – surely continuing the story was what sequels are always about – but the franchise nature of this series is, to my knowledge, quite unusual. Perhaps it’s just an exhibition of greed, but since I haven’t paid a penny for any of my viewings, that needn’t worry me. I find it interesting to see how different people try to make the world their own in much the same way that I find the idea of remixing quite intriguing, despite the fact that remixes actually tend to be fairly unimaginative and pointless (I’m much more interested in those that aren’t, mind). I think I like the idea of collaborative creativity. The combined efforts of artists (I use the term in a loose sense) have a tendency of attracting my attention, be it music, film, literature, or whatever.

That’s enough meaningless introspection for the time being, I think. The film finished some time ago, and I have no intention of watching highlights of the Ashes coverage. So until next time, remember not to eat what you find in ashtrays.
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A new beginning. . .

2005-08-07T10:41:00.000+01:00

. . .As opposed to an old one. Because that would make so much sense. Anyway, yes. This is a new blog. I had an old one (it wasn’t old at the time, mind), which wasn’t particularly good (not that I expect this one to be), but it was manky and set up mainly out of curiosity. If it would come to be used to any great degree, it would only make sense to move it to a more hospitable environment. Bizarre, then, that I bothered to do so despite having come to neglect the aforementioned blog. Even more bizarre that I bothered to do so at a point well past said blog’s (admittedly rather feeble) peak. Still, perhaps some shiny new surroundings will inspire me to prolifacy. ‘Prolifacy’ is a marvelous word, quite unlike ‘prolificness’, which seems distinctly inelegant. Beyond reinvigorating my drive to write, I’m vaguely hoping the move will bring about a change of direction, although I’m somewhat pessimistic about this – my writing style is largely a stream of consciousness which, whilst hopefully less of an assault on the eyes than the verbal mess that populates a distressing portion of the Internet’s blogs (indeed, the standard of personal websites on the whole is deplorable. This is in no way an original or interesting observation, but it is a fairly effective diversionary tactic), is ultimately entirely dependent on what’s going through my head at the time. Expect a few lazy little posts reporting very little, none of which is of note, interspersed with the occasional unreasonably massive rant. If you’re lucky, you might even get one or two little oddities – my previous blog had a very short (284-word) story. If I get bored enough (which is quite possible, considering the fact that our television is currently broken) I may go to the effort of transferring all my old blog entries here. In the meantime, here is a link to the shithole.

Once again I’ve ruined my sleeping pattern. Like the past few days, I was actually feeling fairly tired at a reasonable hour (02.00 or 03.00), but I got distracted and didn’t get around to going to bed until the sun was well and truly up. I found getting to sleep entirely impossible, so I’ve decided to go for it and see how far I get. I won’t make it to the evening, but it’ll probably be a more sensible time than otherwise. Anyway, I got out of bed and decided to set up a blog to pass the time. Which is how this particular moment came about. I bet you’re thrilled to be able to trace the history of the words you’re reading in such detail. Positively fascinating.

On the subject of sleep (a subject I may dwell on a little too much in these things), I’ve made some strange observations of the conditions which effect sleep. For example, I seem more disposed to nod off when lying on the sofa in the living room, despite it being hard and too short to properly fit my legs on. The only explanation I can think of is equally peculiar: the television sends me to sleep. I find that even when in bed, leaving the telly on makes me much more likely to drift off than either silence or the radio. I find its superiority over the latter to be particularly confusing – it makes sense that I might need noise to help me to sleep, but why should a device designed solely for making noise be inferior at the task in comparison to a machine for which, if anything, sound plays second fiddle to vision. Perhaps I like the dull and shifting glow of a television set, or perhaps it’s to do with the aforementioned inferiority of sound in that medium – the material on radio might demand particular attention, which would impede slumber, whereas the sound on a TV, when divorced from the associated images, becomes meaningless noise. Still, it seems counter-intuitive.

I suppose that’s it for now. I may add something more once I’ve finished setting things up, but I’d really rather nobody developed any expectations. Not that there are any readers to do so yet. Whether there ever will be is far from certain. For now, though: over and out.
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2005-08-07T10:40:00.000+01:00

[All posts below this point are from my old blog on MSN Spaces.]

I really hate this kind of crap

2005-08-01T19:05:00.000+01:00

For fuck’s sake. It’s pathetic and nausiating. Grow a personality – obsession with clever branding will never be a satisfactory substitute.

On a more positive note, other than annoying me, that article also reassured me somewhat. I may be unhealthily dependent on technological devices, but at least I haven’t yet developed a strong and irrational emotional attachment to any of them.

I am sacrificing my privacy one morsel at a time

2005-07-27T15:47:00.000+01:00

It’s a good thing hardly anyone reads this, then, isn’t it?

I have uploaded a list of some CDs (and a couple of proper actual records) that I own. I have removed the complete ‘what was I thinking?’ purchases, but left in some others which, whilst a little suspect, are not embarassing enough to warrant forsaking. Make of it what you will. I realise MSN Spaces has an in-built feature for listing music, but I also realise that this is utter toss, and I would not wish to wrestle with it even if my testicles were on the line. Well no, that’s a lie. It’s not that bad. But it is pretty bad.

We have a magic dishwasher and/or dishwasher tablet

2005-07-20T22:36:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, upon opening the dishwasher, my flatmate Alex discovered that the tablet we’d used was still intact. Bizarrely, the dishes were still perfectly clean. Attached are two images: a dishwasher full of clean dishes, and a tablet that is, other than some slight weathering, the same as it was when I removed it from the packaging. That’s strange. I hope it happens again, though. Also note that the filth below the dishwasher does not fall under the jurisdiction of the dishwasher tablet, and as such should not be taken to detract from its supernatural powers in any sense.

Something I forgot to mention

2005-07-19T15:13:00.000+01:00

As a graduation present from my mum I got a pocketwatch. That’s unbelievably cool. Now I just need a bowler hat, and, when I’m seriously rich, a tweed suit. Then none shall stand before me; my rule shall be absolute. Cower, peons, for it is only a matter of time.

Ooh, someone searching for ‘cocaine is good’ found this blog! Hurrah! The fact that they almost certainly will have left immediately doesn’t detract from the pleasure I derive from this knowledge. A quick check confirms that I come right after the top entry (The Good Drugs Guide) on Google.

[The above obviously refers to my MSN Spaces blog.]

A discovery

2005-07-15T22:39:00.000+01:00

Whilst searching for my only pair of smartish shoes (as opposed to my other pair of shoes, which have year-old mud on them) I found my Mogwai music box. This pleased me greatly. Once more I can enjoy Tracy in all its twinkly plinkiness.

I’ve hardly been spending any time at all in my bedroom recently, other than to sleep. This has resulted in it sinking into an even direr state than usual, and an even more marked absence of interest in my blog (by me, that is – I am fully aware that outside interest is so near to nothing as to make no odds); if it wasn’t for the fact that I feel the need to check my emails every now and then, I might not have turned the computer on for weeks. Then again, my only other means of listening to music is my walkman thingy, which is hardly the same, and which also is only used when I’m going out for some reason, said reasons being few and far between. Since the prospect of surrendering my entire musical input to the television and other media is a downright distressing one, it may be best that I spend half an hour or so at the PC every once in a while, if only for the sake of my taste and sanity.

A little worrying

2005-07-12T02:00:00.000+01:00

I can’t remember what I was going to put in that aborted entry. Not to worry. I’m sure it was inane to the point of criminality. I just thought I’d post my current feelings. I recently turned 21 (as I’m sure you could have gathered), and I suddenly got the feeling that I’d made a significant dent into my twenties (one tenth, to be precise) without having done an awful lot. I’m not generally one to focus too much on getting things done, but it really does feel like my youth is sneaking past me. I’ll be old before I know what’s going on, and still an aimless fool.

Wank

2005-07-01T16:51:00.000+01:00

I wrote an entry, but when I submitted it I was informed that MSN Spaces was at that moment being updated, and that I’d have to try again later. It’s understandable that at that moment my text should not be committed to storage at their end, but I feel that it should at least be reproduced within my own browser for the purpose of saving me from writing it again. How can Microsoft fail to take such an obvious and annoying thing into account? I can only conclude that they hate us. Either that or they’re stupid.

Fuck you, whoever’s fault this is. It’s a good thing it wasn’t a long entry. I might even attempt to reproduce it at some later juncture, once I feel less annoyed.

What? Stock market? Footsy?

2005-06-26T03:48:00.000+01:00

OK, I’ve been instructed to sign up to this site, so visit my page and by lots of shares, or whatever it is you’re meant to do. Make me win, make me win! I might even check back to see what’s going on one day.

(Basically, this will be objective proof of how unpopular I am.)

[The above refers to my old blog’s BlogShares account, and all links should point accordingly. This place also has a BlogShares account, the button for which should appear in the sidebar on the right.]

Hey you! Help me!

2005-06-26T00:12:00.000+01:00

OK, I’ve been asking all my friends this, and nobody has provided any sensible suggestions. If there’s anyone reading this, perhaps you would be so kind as to give me some ideas. It’s my 21st birthday soon, and my sister doesn’t know what to get me. She wants me to tell her if I want something, because she wants it to be something I really want. I don’t really mind it not being a surprise, so that’s not a problem. The thing is that it’s a bit of a landmark birthday, so I think she wants to get me something memorable, rather than just your usual CD/DVD/game/book. I’m at a bit of a loss, really. I can’t think of anything I really want at the moment. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a new PC, but that’s way too expensive, and not exactly very sentimental (something that will necessarily become outdated might not be a good idea). Anyway, she has a job, so it’s not like she’s only got a pittance to spend on me, but I would be no means expect her to break the bank. To be honest I don’t know exactly how much she intends to spend, but I wouldn’t presume that it’s an awful lot. So anyway, if anyone could use their telepathy to work out what I’d really like, I’d be eternally grateful. Well, perhaps not eternally. Definitely protractedly, though. Thanks.

An insignificance

2005-06-25T19:48:00.000+01:00

I will listen to more whole albums. Picking out particular songs is killing music for me. I must be less impatient. I am always surprised at how much I enjoy listening to some album I’d long since given up on (the case in point being Biffy Clyro’s The Vertigo of Bliss).

It’s been fucking hot this past week or two. There have been a couple of instances of pleasant breezes moderating things somewhat, but on the whole it’s been nigh-on intolerable. It didn’t make my flatmates’ participation in a 5-a-side football tournament particularly comfortable, but the early stages where a knockout, and due to a combination of poor refereeing and poor playing, they were immediately knocked out, so they didn’t have to endure the aforementioned discomfort for much more than ten minutes. I personally was not involved in anything other than screaming like a girl when the ball came towards me during pre-game practice and providing some of the worst sports commentary ever committed to home video (a substantial portion of which consisted of discussing the finer points of camcorder operation with the camerawoman. Even so, the heat was thoroughly tiring, so I can only imagine how the team who had rather foolishly dressed in all black (some with long sleeves) must have been feeling. Anyway, the oppressive torridity continues, and apparently is likely to do so for some time yet. Dammit. If I wanted to suffer continual assaults from the sun I would go on a holiday to some hot beachy place. I have not taken a holiday to some hot beachy place; indeed, I have an express intention not to do so at any point in the foreseeable future, a fact which may lead the more astute of you to infer (correctly) that I do not wish to be in a hot place. Some people like holidays in Spain. I personally am fine with the moderate coldness of the British Isles. Sometimes things can get a bit too cold, I’ll grant you that, but on the whole it’s pretty temperate, with a leaning towards mild coldness. If it’s a bit nippy, I have no problem with putting a jumper on. If it’s really cold, I might even put a second T-shirt or pair of socks on. But in cases of extreme heat there’s only so naked I can get, especially if I want to retain what little hold on social convention I have. This probably reflects the fundamental misery of my personality, but I can hardly help that, can I? I say fuck the sun. It has a job to do, but sometimes it goes too far. There’s light and warmth, then there’s blinding glow and searing heat. Stop showing off and grow up.

All this said, I am in no way a goth. God no. I may be a bit pretentious, but I’m not that bad.

Lancaster University’s student magazine, SCAN, is really really terrible. Not only is it rife with typos, some in places as obvious as segment headings (the tattered copy on our living room’s floor has a ‘sexua;l health’ section); it is also littered with poor grammar (even including the odd incomplete sentence), and the content is generally of an altogether mediocre standard. Admittedly the reader letters include a large number of such blunders, but they are by no means the exclusive perpetrators. I suspect that I may have been able to produce at least a linguistically superior publication at GCSE age, and I was in the stupid-people-group for English (albeit more for my inability with the literature side of things than language). Whether the subject (as opposed to the style) would be any better is something I have less confidence in. A cursory glance at this blog raises doubts. Nevertheless, at least I can manage one of the two, and I won’t be putting anything about working for newspapers on my CV. Alex and I reckon that the editor might even get paid, and since the job of the editor is, as I understand it, more or less to edit away the imperfections, such shoddy output is a pretty damning indicator of her competence. I don’t necessarily expect a professional quality newspaper to be produced by students, but as we grow ever closer to becoming professionals, I would hope that our output gets nearer and nearer to such a level of quality. The fact that it doesn’t distresses me somewhat. I find it hard to believe that there’s nobody working for SCAN with a better grasp of the language than myself (presumably many of them are English students who should be massively ahead of me in the field – an entire A-level and most of a degree, to be precise) willing to lend those less capable a hand on that front. I mean, I don’t expect everyone to be an expert in all fields. There are plenty of things I’m woefully incapable at. I can barely locate five countries on a map, and there’s no foreign language I could conduct even the most basic of affairs in. I’d just like to think that someone could spare a moment to check all the apostrophes and suchlike. Even flicking through the thing gives a distinct feeling that it has been churned out with absolutely minimal attention to detail.

Other news: New why? EP and Odd Nosdam album! Hurrah!

Well, this turned out to be a much longer entry than I had anticipated. Hardly the insignificance I’d planned. I hope you’re feeling satisfied.

Oh yes, I got a 2:1. Only one person on my course got a First: Richard Floyd. I don’t know the man, but he has a fantastic name. I neglected to retrieve my exact grade and my second term coursework. I’ll have to do that at some later juncture.
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Boo

2005-06-21T12:02:00.000+01:00

I got the Arcade Fire album. It turns out that the singer only really sounds like the Silver Mount Zion guy in the track ‘Power Out’. In the rest he sounds more like the singer from Medium 21. I also finally got . . .And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead’s Source Tags and Codes. The track ‘Baudelaire’ rather bizarrely sounds like it could have been by Supergrass.

I haven’t died. I just can’t be bothered blogging right now. Don’t expect anything soon. Possibly ever. But maybe, if you’re lucky. . .

My education has concluded

2005-06-03T20:57:00.000+01:00

I took the final exam of my university career earlier. It went similarly to usual. I did particularly poorly on the last question I chose, so at the bottom of the last page I wrote, ‘This is the last essay I’ll ever write. It’s not very good.’ Maybe I’ll be bothered to do something good soon.

DISCLAIMER: This is not the proper update I promised

2005-05-31T19:31:00.000+01:00

. . .And neither is it at all good. But here it is anyway:

One time, shortly after I’d stopped believing in god, but before I’d mustered enough courage to stop serving at my local church (which I only ever started doing because I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘no, I don’t want to throw away all my Sunday mornings doing something other than sleeping’), it was somewhat hot. Shortly before leaving for church I’d realised I was wearing a T-shirt which would probably offend certain religious types, so I quickly put on a jumper. This was a mistake. Throughout the service I felt increasingly ill until eventually, whilst arsing around with a candle, I suddenly lost my vision. It couldn’t really be described as blackness; more a giant blind spot which had grown to consume my entire field of vision. I actually suspected that I was dying. I wasn’t really scared, but a little disappointed. Anyway, I was meant to be walking behind some ponce, but not being able to see that he’d started walking, I stayed where I was. People evidently cottoned on that something wasn’t quite right, and I was taken outside. After some time my vision returned. Since then I’ve occasionally suffered a very brief recurrence of this, particularly in hot weather and when standing up suddenly. I will not be able to see anything for a few seconds and will feel a little dizzy.

I’m not sure if this is common. If so, this must all be very dull. On the off-chance that it isn’t, I shall continue. Today it’s been very sunny. I find excessive sunniness quite annoying, especially when the sunlight that gets around the edges of the blind falls on my computer’s monitor, for obvious reasons. This was happening when it suddenly went overcast. I was initially pleased, but then I realised I could barely see anything, and had a strange sort of pressure feeling in my head. A similar ailment to that above.

And there is one more manifestation: A year or so ago, when I was staring at my glorious face in the mirror, it suddenly got darker outside, and whilst it would be expected that parts of my face would fall into greater shadow, this seemed to occur to a degree greater than might be expected. Through some experimentation, I found that if I stared at one point and relaxed my eyes (isn’t that what you’re meant to do with those 3D picture things I could never get the hang of?), other parts of my face would gradually fall into a flat grey shadow, until only the part I was focusing on was still visible. It’s quite hard to reach quite that degree because the eyes have a natural tendency to flit around the place, but when actually done properly the effect is quite strange. To be looking at my own face but to have it disappear into shadow is more than a little unsettling. The same thing could probably be done with anything else you might be looking at, but I happened to discover it whilst gazing vainly at myself, and I found the ensuing effect quite profound, somehow. I’m almost certain it has to do with the relatively small area of concentrated cones in the centre of the eye, which are what allow the detection of colour, as opposed to the higher density of movement-detecting rods around the outside of the eye (which is why you see movement from the ’corner’ of your eye) – I remember doing a test in a textbook where there was a cross shape formed by letters and you were instructed to focus your eyes on the centre letter and see how far outwards you could read. The best I could manage were the letters immediately adjacent, if that. The point of the experiment was to demonstrate how much your eyes move and how much your brain fills in itself. This is the same effect, but in this context it was completely unexpected, and as such came as such a surprise. I wonder if it has anything to do with the other things mentioned above. Anyway, give it a go. I dare you.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this entry is. It wasn’t to patronise those of us with a GCSE Biology education. I’m sorry for blabbering inexpertly about facts that you already know. I know that there will be plenty of people out there who don’t know these things, though, and it is my mission to enlighten these morons. No wait, it isn’t. It’s my mission to insult them. With this in mind, may I inform those of you which did not already know the above that they are complete imbeciles who should probably not be allowed into the same communities as the rest of us. Thanks!

Really, what the fuck am I talking about? Jesus. . .
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I feel tucking ferrible

2005-05-31T12:27:00.000+01:00

I accidentally stayed up until past four this morning (that was not part of my sleep-fixing plan), and was woken a few minutes ago by the builders again. That’s actually probably enough hours of sleep (eight), but for some reason I have a massive headache. I might take a paracetemol or two if it doesn’t go away soon. I’m always a bit reluctant to take those things, though.

Expect a proper update later. That’s not to say there’ll be one, though.

At last, something of substance!

2005-05-30T16:39:00.000+01:00

Actually, you’d better be the judge of that. Reviews of this entry should be written on the back of a stamp (simply ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ will do), which you must stick on the forehead of the next person you see asleep. Do it or die. So anyway, hopefully this should turn out to be a large volume of text with a low density of content.

So anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, my sleeping habits are shocking. It’s a good thing that I could get away with minimal attendance at university, because I quite frankly wasn’t awake for most of it. Things have been getting particularly bad recently. A few days ago I tried sticking it out until the evening, but failed miserably – I passed out on the sofa sometime around noon while my friends watched Formula 1, only waking up long enough to get to bed, safe from any eyebrow-shaving schemes they might have been formulating. This was really an apalling performance, considering I’d only woken at five the previous afternoon, which I can only put down to the exhausting sunlight and the unreasonable boringness of the day in general. I had actually gotten a bit of sleep before then – I’d attempted to go to sleep at about four in the morning, but was rudely awoken about five minutes later by excessive head and light, the latter being barely obstructed by my blind at all; even less with the window open, as it had to be due to the intolerable heat (living in the roof, the blind is attached to the window, which opens upwards, meaning that if the window is open, I am necessarily exposed to the outside world and whatever it has to throw at me). This was shortly followed by the builders, who seem to work exclusively in the early morning. Within the hour I’d decided that sleep was an outrageous prospect, and that by the time I’d be exhausted enough to sleep through such conditions it’d be late enough that sleeping would no longer be a good idea. This is why I attempted to stay awake.

Anyway, I awoke at about nine that evening, and decided that things were really getting out of hand. I arsed around for the night, then decided that I needed to do some shopping, and that I ought to do it before I got too tired. I often intend on going shopping only to realise that the shops have closed, especially on a Sunday, which is what it was (I haven’t mentioned the actual day on which most things happened because, to be honest, I’m not sure what they were. It’s very easily to get disorientated when the days aren’t separated by sleep). On this particular occasion, I was actually there too early. We were let into the shop, but apparently they couldn’t actually sell us anything until eleven because of Sunday trading laws. I finished my shopping at about a quater to, so I went to stand at one of the checkouts. After a few minutes the shelves I happened to be looking at appeared to be drifting backwards and forwards, or perhaps lengthening and shortening in an unnervingly organic manner, not entirely dissimilar to breathing. Things appeared to be getting to me. This was a bit strange, because I’d been awake for less than fourteen hours, which people do all the time. I imagine erraticism played some part in it, but it was still a bit weird. Anyway, they finally allowed us to give them their money (which was at five minutes to eleven, the goddamn law-breakers), and I made my way back to the flat. Things were relatively boring for a while, until I decided that I needed to make myself some food. I was in a bit of a strange predicament: to me it was evening, but it was decidedly daytime outside. It just seemed wrong to be having a proper meal. I can quite happily have cereal when I wake up in the evening (or at any time of day and any time between my waking and going back to sleep), but there was something telling me that to eat a proper cooked meal at this hour would be weird. A lot of people have a proper meal for lunch, but it still seemed strange for me. Anyway, I decided that, despite my reservations, I was going to go for it. I went to the kitchen, and everything suddenly seemed smaller than it should be, or perhaps slightly further away. It’s a strange sensation which I’ve had before. It’s quite subtle, and I’m not sure exactly what’s behind it, but things like this intrigue me and I have to say that I quite enjoy the experience of the real world not seeming quite right somehow.

I found three turkey escalopes in the fridge which were on the verge of going out of date. Eating these, I decided, would not only be pleasant; it would be downright necessary, in the name of efficiency. I also had an almost-finished back of chips in the freezer which were just taking up room. It was not until I put this into the oven that I realised that three escalopes alone is a stupid amount. But they were in the oven now, so I might as well give it a go. I did manage to finish it, although it was a struggle. Ted, whose pizza my food had shared the oven with, barely managed to get half way through his dinner, which consisted exclusively of the aforementioned pizza. I may be a pig, but that man is a little girl (no offence to the little girls with perfectly healthy appetites out there).

Not a lot happened for the next few hours. I had been hoping to get a couple of hours’ sleep and then be up again for the evening, so that I’d be tired enough to get to sleep at a proper time like one or two, but in the end I got waylaid doing largely pointless things and talking to largely pointless people (HA!), and by the time I actually resolved to get some sleep it was too late, and if I had, waking up a couple of hours later would either have been a downright painful occasion, or simply would not have occurred at all. I was extremely tired by then, and fully expected to pass out at any minute. I did actually drift off a few times whilst working through some terrible online test, but it was only few a few moments at a time, and I was eventually snapped out of it by some music suddenly starting (hurrah for secret tracks!). For the next couple of hours, I felt surprisingly alert. Eventually, however, I started to get tired again, and at about midnight I decided to finally go to bed. I had been awake for something like twenty-seven hours. I’ve been awake for the best part of two days in the past, but such cases have always involved some sort of nap part-way through. I’m sure a lot of people have pulled off a lot more impressive feats, too, but I was still quite pleased with myself. And the important thing was that, at nine this morning, I woke up. Granted, this was because I’d forgotten to close the blind and light had filled my room, and granted, I eventually fell back to sleep for two more hours, but before I did I felt strangely serene. It was partly tiredness, and partly the fact that, whilst it was bright, it wasn’t burningly so (something which I find unpleasant), making the bare walls of my room vaguely aesthetic, which of course is quite unusual. And there was the sense of victory. But mainly tiredness. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be back into my old habits in time for my final exam on Friday, and when I properly woke up at eleven I felt quite rotten, but it was nice while it lasted. I have to say that the first half of the day is massively overrated, though. Absolutely fuck all happens. It’s pointless.

I had a couple of other topics lined up for discussion in this entry, but however proud I may feel of a nice big long entry, they seem to put people off a little, and it would make much more sense for me to string these out, thereby keeping me in the most recently updated list and ‘hopefully’ attracting some more of you plebeians to this most hallowed shrine to my brilliance.
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Another great email

2005-05-28T03:16:00.000+01:00

This one’s from Sweetie A. Disinherited. Exactly how porn could be ‘stupid’ and why it’d be something you’d want to advertise is beyond me, and I don’t think I want to know what is meant by ‘baseball bat ass’.

The best email ever

2005-05-27T23:33:00.000+01:00

I just checked my old email address for the first time in weeks, and I discovered the greatest email I’ve ever received. The content of the email is pretty good, but just look at who it’s from! Forgo V. Eagle. That has to be the best name I’ve heard this year. Forgo V. Eagle. That’s just fantastic. Seriously. I want to be Forgo V. Eagle.

As I said, this email address is now largely defunct, so please feel free to spam it. It’d be a waste of time, but if you’re the type of person who wants to abuse someone via email, I’d rather you spent your time on something harmless like this.

Bloody hell

2005-05-27T22:41:00.000+01:00

Last night I realised that I hadn't left the flat since Monday. I'm looking pale. I'm also pretty sure that most of my waking hours have been after sunset. I've decided I'm going to spend the next few days sorting out my sleeping patterns a bit, and I might even go outside for a reason other than shopping. JESUS CHRIST, that's OUTRAGEOUS! Yeah, I'm cool. Also, yesterday I ate nothing but chocolate bars and bread.

In other news, the new series of Big Brother starts tonight. It would be horribly unoriginal of me to rant about that, but unless inspiration strikes me, I might have to for the simple purpose of padding this bloody place out a bit. Even then, I don't really have much to say. It's vacuous programming. It's well and truly eschewed whatever genuine appeal it might have had by now (I seem to remember it made claims of being some sort of psychological experiment, but strangely it always seemed to just be megaratings-seeking television to me). It will be hugely successful and I will despair about it as if it's about principles and not just my personal dislike of the programme. It seems to epitomise all that's wrong with the celebrity thing. These people enter this often degrading competition at least partially in order to get on television (I believe there may be prize money involved too, but I'm not sure about that). I'm sure they all realise that they're bound to wind up earning more money from vapid interviews with detestable publications than they will from whatever winnings they may or may not walk away with. Afterwards they're all over the media as though they did something important. Then again, a lot of the people all over the media never did anything important. But I suppose that's my point. Why is it when some knobs sit around in a house for a few weeks we suddenly care what it's like for them to be pregnant or leave their partner or battle with cancer or whatever? Why would we even want to watch them sleeping or having inane conversations anyway? I mean, a lot of the conversations I have with my flatmates are pretty pointless, but seriously, in a fight they'd beat the absolute shit AND piss and probably tears and blood and maybe even earwax out of the conversations these people have. Fucking hell.

Speaking of fucking hell, that was the original title of this entry, but apparently there's restrictions on that. Anyway, my entry titles rarely ever seem to be at all descriptive. Is that a problem? FUCK OFF.

So anyway, Big Brother. Is it not somewhat ominous that the whole concept is named after a device used by a totalitarian regime in a work of dystopian fiction? I suppose you could say similar about Room 101, which I have enjoyed on more than one occasion, but it's hardly the same thing. Room 101 is not real, and is all done in the name of humour. Nothing is actually banished. In Big Brother, though, we are actually watching people. They're not doing much, but it still comes across as a little warped to me. I admit that I watch a lot more stuff happening on TV than actually happens in my own life. But at least that's what I'm doing, rather than watching NOTHING happen on TV. Is it really that exciting to spy? Maybe it is. Maybe I'd get hooked if I gave it a chance. I'd rather not, though.

So, that was a pretty aimless rant. It really did lack a unified focus, didn't it? Oh well. It's some text, and that's what matters. Volume is what's important. Who cares about actual content? To be honest, I'm quite sorry I even acknoweldged the fucking thing. It'll annoy me for months to come, though. Can't they just give it its own channel? Or at least put it on Five. Fucking hell, though. It pisses me off that they can make such a big deal about it. Jesus. What? Oh, I started ranting again. Damn.

My right middle finger hurts. This makes typing slightly painful. I'm alright, though. Don't worry about me. Bastards.

Well I'm sorry that I haven't had much of interest to say recently. Maybe it'd be a bit easier if people weren't demanding to be mentioned. God damn you, mention-demanding people! You're ruining it for everyone!

By the way, I've had about two hundred hits since the name-change. Not a huge amount, but a little more than I was getting before, especially considering the fact that I haven't been updating much. We'll have to wait a bit to see how things pan out.

Oh dear, it sounds like my flatmates are watching it. I'm greatly disappointed.
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