i am sparticus: Words

They Don't Scare Me Now

Helloooo everybody. Today I'm mostly happy, as Helen's here and everythings great!. Actually she's sitting right here now watching what I'm writing. So anyway as well as Helen being around, my aunt and uncle and toddler cousins are down, who are the most amusing cousins around. They do silly things and are very ticklish and are scared of the big dragon in Shrek. Hahaha they amuse me. Also when they are watching movies on tv it's more entertaining to watch their facial expressions than it is to watch the movie as they stare at it so intently that you wonder why it doesn't explode under the sheer pressure of the stare. It's Ace.
Oh and happy new year all!

HERETIC

I just finished watching Spinal Tap, and it's not all that, well I didn't think so. In more exciting news I just spent 10 minutes trying to remember my e-mail password so I could check my e-mail on my dads computer. Turns out I have no e-mail. Boh.
But yes, we went to the pub for the quiz today, and I thoroughly embarressed myself by writing Princess Anne on our answer sheet instead of Princess Margaret, and by yelling out "HERETIC" far too loudly when the annoucer dude annouced Rowan Williams as one of the answers. Rhy's theory is that I'm jealous i'm not the future arch bishop of canterbury. I have a feeling he may be right.

I'm living up here where the air's thin

Woohoo, I'm back in Swansea again. After trekking off to see various relations on boxing day (I probably should have mentioned that before I left) I'm now back home, although now I'm with a lovely dandy minidisc. Sweet.
Heleno's down this monday, so everyone back this end of the country (the best part of the country) can now meet her. Joy!
I'm so off to record minidiscs now. Yeah!

True Love

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that who ever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

I must say thank you Sparky for your wonderful Christmas story. It's so well written, and its so important to remember the REAL reason for the season! GREAT!
Well tell me everyone… how did your Christmas day go? I had a wonderful day… First our cat woke my parents up at 5am, then my brother woke me up at 6am to open presents! AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! So we all gathered in the sitting room and began the barbaric ritual of ripping the paper off beautifully wrapped presents and rejoicing or laughing at what we found inside! Then we slowly found some breakfast and 'played' with our gifts before heading off to Church. The service was great - only 30mins! But no, that wasn't the best bit, it was that all the kids bring one of their present and then the minister (Victor Laidlaw) and trainee minister took time during the service to look at each kid's toy! Church was full too, with people of all ages, and even the little tiny babies (who are usually kept quiet in the creche) were there, gargling and baby-talking away through everything. It was so lovely and it just felt like one big family - which is what it's supposed to be really! So ya, that was greatly enjoyable!
Then somehow when we left church we managed to leave my brother behind… ha ha! Poor kid!
The rest of the day we spent eating leftovers from the night before and eating and eating and nibbling and watching funny programs like 'Robby the Reindeer' and 'Chicken Run' - both top quality animations!!
Later I went over to a Rach's house and we played 'Globe Trotter' which is like twister but with a map of the world. It was so much fun and a great way to work off some of that super rich Christmas cake. I won most times too which was even better!
So that was my day pretty much. A really relaxed, informal day which is the way it should be!
But it was all over way too quickly and now its boxing day and I need to do college work before I leave for Darlington on Sat (and then SWANSEA on Monday, yippeee!!) and don't return to Edinburgh till the 6th - my first day of college… tee hee!
Hope you all had a crazy, fun, memorable Christmas day!

Twas on Christmas day

A long long time ago (well actually before time existed) in a galaxy (but not because no galaxys existed) God existed. And He created the world and everything, and it was great. He made a couple of humans too, and they where great as well, for a while. Then of course they (being humans and wasting their ability to choose between right and wrong) did exactly the one thing that God told them not to do. Their lack of perfection meant they couldn't be in a close relationship anymore. Actually it meant a bit more than that. By going against God these two humans had deliberately stepped away from God and everything good, and taken the rest of history with them.
So with the world going down the drain because of humanities failings, God showed humanity that at least He knew what He was doing.
So He sent an angel to visit an un-married virgin (for society at the time virgin and un-married where synonymous) teenage girl, telling her that she was pregnant and that the baby would be God's son and the saviour of the world. Needless to say her future husband wasn't best pleased and neither where any of the neighbours. So he thought, "hey I'm a decent bloke, I'm not having all these people saying I knocked her up" so he was going to break it off. Luckily for him (because how much of a blow would that be if you found that the woman you where going to marry ended up fathering the saviour of the world) an angel turned up and set him straight, and he decides to go ahead with the marriage. Mary went off to visit her relative who was also pregnant with another baby. When she gets back it turns out that Joseph (for that's her husbands name) has to go off to bethlehem for some arcane Roman scheme to make more money by taking a census. So off they go, mary heavily pregant as she is (thankfully they've got a donkey). They finally get to Bethlehem, but they ain't got anywhere to stay, so they wandered around a bit and eventually found a stable that they could stay in. So mary gave birth that night in the midst of all the animals, and after wiping off the blood and gooeyness wrapped up little baby Jesus (that's his name by the way, the baby) and put him in a manger (that's a feeding trough to you and me).
Now as this was the most important event in the whole world up to this point, the angels where pretty happy. One of these angels appears before so low class bottom of the shepheding ladder shepherds and tells them the good news. Needless to say they are terrified, but when thousands of angels appeared giving praise and thanks they thought it was worth investigating. So they went off and found Jesus,and where pretty impressed, so went off telling eveyone else about little baby Jesus. Mary was just ever so slightly amazed by the fact that these angels where rejoicing and praising God over the birth of her son.
Anyway sometime passed, and they stayed in Bethlehem for a bit, and Jesus had a birthday or two, and then some wise men turned up. They'd seen a star in the east and had come to see what it was all about. They where wisemen, and knew that this star meant the birth of a king, so when they asked at the palace and couldn't find out anything they where most perplexed. Fortunately some of the Jewish scholars knew that the saviour of the world would come from Bethlehem, so they sent the wisemen off that way. They wisemen eventually found Jesus and where generally awe struck. They bowed down and gave gifts to him, Gold for a king, incense for a priest, and myrrh for a death. That done they where about to head home via the palace to tell the king that they'd found the saviour, but an angel told them to skip the palace and go home another way. Herod (for that was the kings name) found out they'd scarped without telling him which child was going to rule, so he got a bit annoyed, actually he got mightly, furiously angry. He wanted to stay as king, and didn't want some little jewish baby to become the future king, the best way of stopping this he reasoned was to kill the baby. Not knowing which baby it was, he thought that the best way of doing this was to kill all the boys of 2 years and younger who lived in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas. Luckily for Jesus an angel warned Joseph to run away to Egypt. So he took his family and left, while Herod butchered all the children.
And that's christmas. Obviously it doesn't end there, it sort of ends when Jesus goes on to fix all the problems with the world, it really ends when the world does. I'll get to how of that some other time. But for now you'll just have to believe me that he did.
Merry Christmas everyone

Will Santa just bring you coal this Christmas?

So sorry that I haven't written in so long… how ever long its been…? You work it out, you're the ones with the brains! (oh, i got 76% on that national test 2002 thing last night! The average for my age being 59% or something!)
Anyway, I've been struck down by this terrible cold that everyone seems to be getting. That and working lots to cover shifts for people who get to go away home for Christmas, has all together made my days so crazy and tiring! So I've never had the energy to think of anything to talk about… well, not that I do now either but I thought I'd just say HELLO anyway!
Oh the eve of Christmas already! Wow, and the tree is decorated and looking beautiful with so many colourfully wrapped presents (for the cat to attack!) under it. All is calm and peaceful… its great! I can't wait till tomorrow!
We just had our main Christmas meal tonight, with various relatives from around the country, coz it makes it easier for mum tomorrow not having to worry about the turkey burning while we're at church! Also it means we won't feel stuffed, sick and bloated all of tomorrow when we're trying to enjoy our presents! Altogether is a pretty good plan! Apparently something that the Italians do as well… smart people those Italians!
Well I hope you all sleep well tonight! But remember boys and girls, don't wait up or Santa won't bring your pressies! (You may unfortunately find that someone else does instead!) And enjoy your present-opening and turkey-munching festivities tomorrow! No doubt I'll update you later in the day to tell you all about what Santa brought me for Christmas!! Wehey!

The Leaves are turning over

I feel so doped up it's unbelievable. My ability to think is severly limited by the fact that all this panadol and pencillin I'm taking has reduced my brain to a pink foggy substance vaguely reminescent of umm pink fog. Interesting fact did you know that in a cubic mile of fog there is only 2 litres of water?
Right I'm going to sleep now so I have enough energy to watch the 3 hours and 30 mins that is the extended fellowship of the ring.
Oh and stoobs if you read this, ummm yeah txt me or something

Have yourself a merry little christmas

I think I have tonsilitis...
you see this here

That's my mouth that is, well not really it's someone elses I found on the NHS website, but it's similar enough.
Blargh

oh christmas tree oh christmas tree... petty you aren't the reason for the season!

For all those of you who didn't realise it, I thought I'd remind you that today is the SHORTEST DAY of the year!! Yippee! That means they get longer from now on! Bring on the long summer days! (Except I'd like to see some snow first of course, none of this half hearted snowflakes-that-melt-when-they-land malarkey! Or super heavy FREEZING frost that fools people into thinking it snowed last night coz everything looks like its covered in snow. BOoo).
Anyhow, enough about the weather. Yesterday I did something really festive (for the very first time this month!). My friend Rach and I went and helped our lovely friend Kat buy a real CHRISTMAS TREE! And a Christmas Tree STAND (a word that a surprising number of people who work in DIY type stores don't seem to understand!) Then we took it for a ride in the car (on top of Rach) and up some stairs, into its new home. Eventually after much arguing between the stand, the tree trunk and a big knife, we got it standing (well, propped up in the corner really)! Hooray! Then came the beautiful fairy lights and some rather hilarious decorations (including a few pine cones, a bear in a wagon and a very VERY tacky Santa which we had to remove in the end coz Kat couldn't stand it!). Once we'd finished all our enthusiastic decorating, and placed the angel (a) on the tip-top of the tree, we switched off all the lights (I) in the room, and put the fairy (*) lights on and stood back… wow! It was truly gorgeous! Well done team!
I so wish I had a digital camera *hint hint* coz then you'd all be able to see our fine handiwork! Anyone want to sell or lend me one?

Top Five Things I'll Do When I'm King

• Marry and Behead lots of women, when questioned about it, scream "DID HENRY THE VIII SEPERATE FROM THE CATHOLIC CHURCH FOR NOTHING??"
• Step down as head of the church, proclaiming that to occupy the position is a theological heresy. Denouce the pope and rowan williams as heretics for the same reason (don't worry Rowan it's okay, no-one goes to hell right?).
• Invite George Bush over for tea, and while he's there, kidnap him and replace him with a robot. Run the robot under windows so that no-one gets too suspicous ("his" new found intelligence would seem a bit suspect if it wasn't for the fact he kept on crashing)
• Give Tony Blair a big slap round the head
• You'll be first against the wall and your opinions will be of no consequence

Version 9.weezer

woohoo! today I did so little apart from wake up, look at plane time tables for flights, and finish off iamsparticus.co.uk v9.2. Yes it's the third skin for this site (confusingly called version 9.2 because the having the christmas one as 2 would just confuse people) and it's vaguely weezer related. It's not excessively wonderful, but show it some love anyway merely because it's polite.
Anyway you can get there by going to Here and get back to the christmas layout here or the purple one here.
Just so you know.
Oh and this new one does odd highlighter effects to various boldings, underlinings, Italics and hyperlinks.

(x) is for Stetler

Hey, ok, will this work better? If we use little icons can you tell the difference more easily?
Oh, got some super exciting news... wehey!
Let me explain where it all began...
At college, our course was given the opportunity to enter a competition for the National Business Calendar Awards. So I merrily thought up a silly design, actually I got pretty stressed coz our tutor is a strangely stress-inducing-artsy-fartsy-designer-turned-teacher-person who could never really grasp the idea of a magnetic calendar, until the day I submitted it! So basically my calendar involves placing little number and letter magnets onto a grid, to build each calendar month. This can be done up on your fridge where its easy to see as fridges seem to be a pretty central part of everyone's lives! Also included as part of my calendar design are these little 'picture' magnets like for birthday, CHRISTMAS, shopping, party, etc. etc…all the good things in life! These you can add to appropriate days in the month!
Anyway, I just realised that as part of the competition I can't tell you any more… grrr…. And I was so looking forward to telling you my super SUPER exciting news…
Oh well, I'll just change the subject. I'm going to London in January, and I've found a flight for £40 how wicked! Also, I can't wait for the January sales… SHOPPING! Yay! And buying lovely new SMART clothes for special occasions.
(enough clues yet?)

NOTE
for all you regulars… I am now STETLER! Just coz we thought that would work better and be a little more unusual!

Is laughter the best medicine?

Bbrrrr, woke up this morning to an incredible sight… as I looked out the kitchen window to the garden all I could see was topped with WHITE stuff!! YIPPEEE! :D No, its not snow yet :( but just super heavy frost! Wehey… bring on the snow! Its so beautiful though, with all the rooftops, and hedge tops, and fence tops, and bin tops covered in white… quite Christmasy really! Actually, last night as I got home everything was covered in little sparkly ice-crystals. It was truly magical!
Anyway, I was gonna tell you some things that made me laugh yesterday …
A: running/slipping along ice-covered pavements to catch the bus (which I missed in the end-not unusual!)
B: a couple walking down the street holding hands, but wearing a pair of BRIGHT orange mittens between them, on their spare hands!
C: a man struggling to cross the road quickly in town with way too many HUGE shopping bags (haven't seen such big bags EVER before… mind you I did come from the back of beyond I s'pose!)
D: catching a bus to college, then getting exactly the same one away from college - same driver (with blue sunglasses?!), same seat, same crisp packet tucked beside the seat! Spooky!
Arggh, their not very funny now I write them but they were funny at the time… as these things always are!

Trumping the Jesus Sandals

Oh a mass of updates lately, but this one has to be done.
Eat this Dan and Sandi, this is so much cooler than Jesus Loves You Sandals...
Meet...

Huggy Jesus!

Oh come to us abide with us

Today I faced a terrible dillemma, on the one hand I could listen to this suprise radiohead annoucement/video/music/whatever on radiohead.com and hopefully it'll be new music, or possibly old music, or christmas music, or any music really. OR I could listen to John Peel where he'd be having the most excellent belle and sebastian doing christmas stuff, which you just know is going to be the most christmassy stuff you'll ever hear (their version of "O come O come emmanuel" is perhaps the most gorgeous christmassy record ever outside of low).
So this dilemma was plaguing me, but luckily for me, Bekah was online for hours, and I didn't realise that Belle and Sebastian where on till Helen said "Oh was this what you were waiting for?" and it was. So I heard them do lots of x-massy stuff, and it's all been good, but no "O come O come emmanuel" yet. 3 songs left I reckon so hopes are still high. Mmm
I did look a bit at that radiohead stuff, but it seems to just be radiohead being random, which while great and wonderful doesn't compare to belle and sebastian singing christmas carols at christmas.
Oh and something should be done to rectify the difficulty in differentiating between me and helen posting sometime tonight.
Update
They played oh come oh come emmanuel and it was brilliant, and they played the 12 days of christmas and whenever some said "a partridge in a pair tree" then someone else yelled out "ah-haa!!" and whats-his-name the singer (stuart?) couldn't stop laughing. Oh and I made it slightly easier to tell us apart by the colour of the titles, may change it somemore though, will ask heleno about it
Oh and I think that I'll tell you all the christmas story sometime seeing as you're all so ignorant :P

music rules our lives?

So ya, last night......
yay yay yay IDLEWILD yay!!
it was GRRREEEEEEAAAAAT...
Got there super early (with my friend Rach!), so stood around for ages - doors opened early though so we didn't have to stand out in the freeeezzzing cold (-2degrees even!) But as we went in security was super high and I got searched but Rach didn't! Was it something I was wearing? Anyway, after looking through part of my bag, the woman demanded the chewing-gum in my pocket . Fair enough, but then she told me that coz it was an open pack I could have put anything in it and so she had to keep it… Grrr, I could have had drugs or a knife in my boots for crying out laud… oh well, maybe she had bad breath!
Then, this crazy barman (after checking my ID!!!even more gggrrrrs) started nattering that weren't we a bit old for Idlewild at the age of 20, and then how he (who was obviously older than us) had been to see them just a year ago and thought they were great… hmm? Whatever!
So, back to the music… first the silly Starspangles came on. Hmm, not great at all. We figured their music didn't quite fit their image and the lead singer just looked like death warmed up. Besides, their name is WAY too patriotic, its right out of their national anthem for crying out laud!
The Walkmen on the other hand were way better... (am I just repeating what Mark said a few weeks ago?) Liked their stuff lots, and the crowd were a lot more lively by this time which helped! Was quite disappointed though coz the lead singer didn’t do a 'merry jig' as he did for the Sheffield crowd apparently! Where in the States/Canada are they from?
THEN.... after a super long long wait (I'm real impatient) and trying to wiggle our way as far forward as possible, IDLEWILD finally came on!!
Yay yay *lots of screaming & mighty applause*
It was a brilliant gig, as you all know… (won't bother going into great detail as Mark has already). They loved being home (yay for Scotland) too which made them even happier and altogether totally fantastic! It was all over way too quickly though :)
So as we left we nicked a couple posters and found random friends who had stickers so that made it a little better!
Wot did you think Steph?

moodily moodle

I've been to my 4th carol service in the space of a week today, and by tomorrow I'll have been to 5. But there we go, it's good fun and very festive. Helen's off at idlewild tonight making me muchos jealous of her rockness, actually {steph}'s off to idlewild as well tonight, maybe they'll meet. Anyway on the subject of Helen, I've fiddled the site somewhat so it's more ours and less mine, although I imagine ickle tiny bits of it will still read like it's mine till I can be bothered to alter every little detail.
Oh yes that's a point, I don't think I officially annouced it ever, but me dearest Helen is now fellow contribitour to my site our site, so it'll rock more, and probably be updated more. Ah it'll just generally be better.

and to get these irritating things outta my head
Random questions I've been asking lately
How old do the kids have to be before you can stop dodging the "is father christmas real?" question. Only these year 6 kids talked about him a lot, but I didn't know whether they where joking or not.
What is the thing tomorrow on Radiohead.com?
Everyone does know that the wisemen didn't arrive till Jesus was about 2 right? Right?? Oh nevermind

LISTEN TO ME! I'M ON THE STEREO!

Woohoo I was just on the radio!! Not in a jo whiley style way, but still. Go lamacq for reading out my e-mail. He's a dude, really he is. It was about how garage music is so passe, and that NME has not paid any attention to how great everything else is right now. Which is odd because I also said how much the star spangles sucked, shortly afterwards this man wrote on my site in my
idlewild review thing that the star spangles rock. It's an odd coincidence really. A bit too odd for my liking. Me thinks this Vinnie guy (the guy who wrote on my website) somehow got my e-mail to lamacq (which had this addie in as all my e-mails do) and found it and wrote it. Or something.
Whatever

St+Thomas+C+of+E+School

I've started to write this post 4 times now! 4 times! So far I've been interrupted by having to go to the pub for lunch once and by kids coming in and interrupting 3 times. Pesky kids, what do they think this is? A school??
Except of course it is a school, St. Thomas Church of England school no less. I'm fixing stupid pesky printer things, (a very cool colour laser printer on a network anyone?) and sound things (which is my excuse to test out the headphones with xfm) and probably web things too.
Hooray for schools, of course back in my primary school we had acorns with blips. We got an old PC once and I broke it, just think, an old ex-bt computer and I ran some stupid program (it was the only .exe file on the machine, the fools who gave it to us hadn't wiped the drive) and caused it to mess up permantly.
Ah well Kids parties become
oh and Helen's blogging here now in a shanklin's pony stylee. I'm sure I've written that once already.

Oh and in the pub at lunch time we discussed busting grandmas for having videos of kids dressed up and dancing around. Evil kids-play watching grandmothers

oh jaz oh jaz oh jaz

in memory of a great weekend I have to tell everyone a silly story, about a silly dog called Jaz. No doubt you've all heared about Jaz lots and her silly dumb-brainless-dogness! Ha ha. She's even more annoying in real life!
Anyway, yes, it was Sunday and Bekah & I got back from Church to make lunch, as good girls do. So when the lovely roast lamb (yummmmm!) was all ready and sizzling, Nigel carved it all up and put it on a plate in the heated-trolley thing in the dining room. (those things are so clever!) (Another detail I must add is that this trolley has a door that opens from the top, with hinges at the bottom) So we were all happily working away in the kitchen when we heard a muffled 'gobble gobble slobber gobble' sound comming from the dining room.... yes, you guessed it, the DUMBEST dog on the planet even managed to sniff out the lamb and open the trolley... how she did it we really don't know! But Mark figures that her brain must have fallen out at some point when she was younger and wasn't put back in the right order so now she is only clever when food is involved. Or is that the same for most dogs?
Well, i hope you enjoyed my story it was quite hillarious at the time! Better get back to duotone-ing on photoshop!

O come O come

argh, it's almost 1 in the morning, I need to get up early tomorrow, and I've spent 2 hours making a midi file of "o come o come emmanuel" so I can have a christmassy ring tone. It sounds ace (check it out yay) but it's not very ringtoney. Go check out grace) instead it's a lot better as a ringtone.
That aside I feel so shattered. I'm off to bed.
And yes I know the snow breaks. It's to umm, show you all how fleeting and temporary snow is. yada

Particle nonsense

Raar, today's the final day of Helen's sojourn here in fair (well, really wet and gloomy) Kilnhurst, so I is muchos sad. But we've had fun. Yesterday was the most exciting thing of multiple parties with crazy games. And general christmasness. Oh and carol singing! We where giving out leaflets with this girl emma and when we offered them to people we said Merry Christmas. Most said thank you and took them but some said "No thanks", so it was all "Merry Christmas" "No Thanks". Mwahahaha SCROOOOGGGEEE
Anyway this morning it was church and the kids nativity/play style thing, and it was ace. 2 shepards, 2 sheep and an angel where all ill and at home. Of course as our church is great it all went fine anyway, but was none the less amusing. Which is probably best.
Now I'm going to stop blabbing on about Christmas stuff, probably. Only 9 days till christmas!! rock and roll

stetlerness

hey hey! woo this is exciting!
Today I'm in Kilnhurst, it cold, dark and wintery but not yet snowing... grrr. I WANT SNOW! Pray for snow ok? White Christmases in Edinburgh are just the greatest!
raa raaa, can't think of anything to write... brain block and all that!
Well, bye, it was lovely chatting

Carol-singing-tastic

Today, quickly before some kids carol service I had to run back over to the vicarage to get these sheets photocopied. On arriving at said vicarage there was a very suspicious lack of Jack. Perturbed by this I went to track him down, and found he'd gone into the vicars bedroom! More so, he'd been sick all over the bed.
Greatly worried by this, I finished photocopying, ran back to the church, and told the vicar. Needless to say he wasn't best pleased. I would have taken a photo of his expression but I thought it would be rude. Fortunately his expression is now permenantly engraved on my memory, so I could draw a picture of it.

ooh I'm going to see Helen in 7 hours and 10 mins!! yay!

request-a-mundo

Right, I need some help everybody think of some forfeits for a game of pass the parcel. Bearing in mind that these are going to be 14 year old kids.

Oh and {steph} does the reindeer section album with "you are my joy" on it sound as christmassy as "You are my joy" does?

Side note: I love my new phone! I just downloaded the christmassy jingle off shanklinspony and now I'm using it as a ring tone. hehe

Grey Parrot?

Well that was the bizzarest phone call ever...
(t)"ring ring"
Me: Hello St. Thomas Vicarage
Him: Hi is the reverend Williamson there?
Me: Umm there's no Reverend Williamson here, The vicar here is Nigel Elliott, and unfortunately he's out for the rest of the day
Him: Oh, okay, well maybe you can help me, I'm a reporter with local paper and I'm looking into the story about this African Grey Parrot that got stuck up a tree in the vicarage
Me: I'm sorry?
Him: Apparently a grey parrot got stuck up a tree in your church vicarage on sunday and the fire brigade had to come get it out?
Me: Ummm I think you've got the wrong church
Him: hmmm what church are you again
Me: St. Thomas Kilnhurst
Him: Oh, that's definately what this guy said, you sure you haven't had a parrot stuck up your tree?
Me: Yes nigh on certain
Him: Oh well sorry about that... bye
Me: Umm okay, byee
(t) beeeeeeep
Oddly odd

My Head Really Hurts

Argh I've had the worst headache all day, and have spent most of all day in bed trying to get over it and get over the fact I feel constantly cold. Bah I'm not sure if it's the house that's freezing or me. Probably both. So yes, today I've been in bed since 12:00 and I'm cold. And I've had an inordinate amount of people ring up or come to the door today as well. Bah what's wrong with everyone? Don't they know I'm ill. Also today I had an excellent thought, so posted it to myself via sms-email and it's gotten lost somewhere on the way. All I can remember of that is the very last bit saying something like "get this working properly over christmas.
Speaking of which, it's a Christmas party over the weekend (Well 2 actually) and I've got to do the games on one. I may start a new proper games bit for my website in that case. Also amazing-joyousness my wonderful lovely girlfriend Helen is down over the weekend which is needless to say, most excellente. I don't think I mention her enough. So I will.
HOORAY FOR HELEN!!
oh and finally {martingrech} is touring again.This is most excellent news, and he's playing the leadmill on a saturday. Fab. Wonder if I get any funky stickers to give out (stuff the guestlist, giving stuff out free to people is far far far more fun than just going in free).
Here endeth the blog

Mary Pregnant? No way!

Today I got to see the local school's kids play. It was quite amusing but here's a question...
When was the last time you saw a nativity play when Mary actually looked pregnant? The only person that looked pregnant in this play was Santa.

Oh and in other news, in this month's total guitar (I got it because it has a tab for grace okay?) they talk about papa roach sounding like iron maiden. I TOLD YOU SO.

bored bored bored bored

Today apart from going to church, I HAVE DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!! So I have nothing interesting to write about. Oh apart from the fact that it's been pitch black since 15:00. I really want to go to bed now.
*yawn*

you think your obscurity can keep you in purity?

Still on a high after idlewild. Plus I did most of my christmas shopping yesterday, heaven knows how I'm going to get all this stuff home. :S
speaking of which I've got to order my train tickets
Oh and if the christmas snow messes up. SUE ME. It's all the javascript and stuff being funny. Just change it back to good old purpley (here in case you can't be bothered to look below)
Right that's all for today, I'm all blogged out

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Ohh it's snowing!! if you don't know what I mean click here If you do know what I mean, the feel free to be like scrouge and get rid of it here
HoHoHo

The Star Spangles/The Walkmen/Idlewild

Last night I saw idlewild and some support bands. I was also offered a £1,250 pound speaker for £300 quid out of the back of a van, but that's not the most exciting part of this story so I'll skip over it.
I also Queued for ages in the cold and got some free stuff and people only spoke to me 10 minutes before we went in. But that's still not the most exciting part of the story
The Star Spangles
Looked like the strokes but scruffier and not as "oh aren't they gorgeous" they played some nice catchy songs, and some not so nice ones. Left without warning but left okay memories. Quite obviously not the most exciting moment
The Walkmen
Had nice accents, played guitars and odd synthersisers, where generally pleasing and I would have bought something if I had money, they hadn't sold out of singles, and hadn't have to have caught the tran. Left with lots of profuse thanks. Still not the most exciting part
Idlewild
Came on to much furore and clapping, Roddy is quite skinny isn't he? Very very very very very very good (this'll be the most exciting part of the story). Played these songs in something like this order...
little discourage
you held the world
i am what i am not
something off 100 broken windows
something off hope is important
modern way of letting go
Wooden Ideas
I never wanted
When I argue
American English
Actually it's darkness
Live in a hiding place
Stay the same
Encore
Film for the Future
Remote Part/Scottish Fiction

That's got most of the songs but I think the order is quite wrong. But they where amazing. My voice gave out about halfway through and Roddy was all smiling at us because we where down the front screaming. And someone kept on shouting out "SATAN POLAROID" in the gaps between songs. So I took it upon myself to yell out "FIREWORKS" in between the songs. It was quite amusing
Gap in between song
Me: Fireworks!
Song
gap in between song
Me: FIREWORKS!!
Song
gap in between song
Me: FIREWORKS!!!
Roddy: No I'm nae up to it (he's scottish remember)
Me: GO ON
Roddy: No I'm really not up to it
Rod: Shall we?
Roddy: Nah I can nae do it
Song
It was pure brilliance! And I've forgotten how cool Rod's tattoo is (mmm rebel alliance) and how good all their songs are. Rock on!
Best track though has to have been "you held" because it's soo good live. Although "when I argue" was awesome, and I'm sure he tried to confuse us by randomly singing different parts of "when I argue I see shapes" forcing us to just yell out "Shapes" at random intervals.
Oh and {steph} will be pleased to know he rolled around on the floor at the end.
And I've got something super special to upload later
Later
This is the later thing I mentioned

As previously seen in the hands of Colin Newton, drummer with idlewild and Colin Greenwood look-a-like (till Idlewild Colin grew his hair)
mmmmm rock and roll

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Mark wrote this at 15:53, Fri, 06/12/02, Link
Filed in Music
It is tagged by with these tags: thestarspangles idlewild walkmen fireworks gig speakers crime roddy setlist

ouch part II

wow this is becoming like a regular feature
today I stretched and really really badly pulled a muscle in my neck. Owh it really hurts.
Oh and I'm writing a bible study on Acts 2:5-14 and Acts 10:1-23 (this is more to check that this is working rather than to inform you of anything deep and meaningful)

Spoons aside

Right, spoon related moments out of the way (well {bee} enjoyed it) it's time to write something vaguely more interesting...
Goto if you will, my churches lovely website St Thomas Church, Kilnhurst.
Listen to the awe inspiring midi music
Watch the lovely animated .gifs
See the default publisher background
Come back in a short while and see it completely revolutionised!
So today I've mostly been reading this article and having fun with Dreamweaver MX. That and planning youth group meetings.
Argh my eyes hurt

Oh and did I mention Idlewild in 52 hours and 10 minutes? ROCK

ouch

I just hit myself on the head with a teaspoon
this is as good as it gets for weblog posts these days

I'm just a s Sk8r boi

Right, today is a very special day, because today I am lying ill in bed, although not too ill, but not well enough to spend all day rushing round in schools. Eurgh my throat feels icky and I have a craving for a club chicken sandwich, which is always a sure sign I'm feeling ill.
However lying in bed has allowed me to listen to the radio and I've noticed something most perculiar about that Avril Lavigne song...
(oh and in case you don't know the song is about michael from {kinesis}, *note this maybe completely false*)

1. It's got a very iron maiden/steve harris bassline, but only in the chorus (8) "I'm just a skater boy" bit, it's actually very reminiscent of the "run to the hills" bassline, except it ascends rather than descends, or visa-versa


2. It's stolen the really high pitchshifter note, with the brief pause before it from Zyklon B (a kinesis b-side). Y'know when toward the end, right before the key change and last chorus it goes wweeeeeee really high then sort of drops? well that exact same guitar noodling is in Zyklon B