Yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon
Drink cider from a lemon!
She likes her hair to look real orange... she uses tangerines
Follow me, don't follow me I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush
Tangerine, Tangerine, Tangerine, Tangerine
So today, on this gorgeous bank holiday, I'm sitting in the office doing work. Pesky coursework needs doing and doing now. Fortunately, no-one else is in, so it means that I've taken over the boss' office. Currently I'm running my laptop through his flatscreen and Kid A is playing very very loudly out of the speakers. All is as right with the world as possible.
It's that time of year again everyone! YEAH! Woo! Coming soon... A Big Brother Blog... YEAH! WOO! Sign up now! It starts Monday evening! YEAH! WOO! Only four days after the actual tv show! YEAH! Woo!
There's a new poll up over on the sidebar do-hicky. I re-did all the code so it runs off mysql and has a funky control panel style thing so I can fiddle with stuff easier, and store all the old results for posterity. However, because of all this and because it's only been running on my local server it's very beta. Expect breakages and the so forth. Still it'll be a learning experience.
As you all know, the new Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11 is out soon (although no-one knows when because of various publishers). Now Michael Moore is probably best known for repeating the same 'Bush sucks' argument over and over again in amusing yet predictable ways. With this in mind, I present...
Print this out and take it with you to the cinema. Points are as below.
More suggestions welcome please. First written up on the kinesis message board.
I'm not sure if I'm a modernist or a post-post-modernist, either way, I'm currently hating post-modernity. Every piece of course work so far I've done has come back with red pen in the margin reading 'this is just your opinion' 'their are other views on this' 'you should look at this from other angles' 'remember other views are equally valuable'. I'm all for backing up arguments and looking at things from a different perspective but it's getting to the point I can't say something like 'assuming bludgeoning people to death in the front of their children is wrong' without getting margins full of 'this is just in your opinion, remember other people may think bludgeoning is a good thing'. To steal an expression off Nick Hornby, "y'know the album, 'The Holy Bible' by the Manic Street Preachers? It's a whole lot better than 'This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours'."
Because churches are supposed to be for building up those who do believe.
I got my haircut yesterday. Turns out I'm going grey. I'm 20.
Eponymous Asks:
"Why does American chocolate taste like Cheese? Hersheys Milk chocolate in particular?"
This is by far the trickiest question I have recieved so far and it took many hours of sitting in the pub drinking Fosters with my good associate Martin Montgomery (Almost B.A. Ox Brookes) to discover the truth.
Now as we all know America is 'The Fattest Nation In The World'™. This is due to a variety of different social and economic reasons, one of which is the sheer amount of fat found in their food. Obviously consuming vast amounts of fat has a very detrimental affect on health, but a little known fact is that it also have a very detrimental affect on taste. You see, thick layers of fat build up all over the tongue and the back of the throat, coating the taste buds and rendering everything nigh on tasteless. The delicate tastes of British or other European chocolates just can't penetrate the mighty layer of fat. In fact, no chocolate on earth can penetrate that mighty layer of fat.
For a few years the people of American suffered; they ate chocolate without tasting it, and cried themselves to sleep every night. Fortunately, with the discovery of the secondary tastebuds a solution was found. The hither to unknown tastebuds found in the back of the throat were set off only by certain cheesy like chemicals, a sensation that would have tasted awful if it wasn't for the thick layer of fat covering the tastebuds.
This chocolate was rushed out into the shops and for those who eat too much fat it was heaven. However for the rest of us, with our fragile un-protected secondary tastebuds, it just made us want to gag.
I walk into Jessops today to get some old photos developed. I hand over my film and the woman behind the counter takes my details (for the purpose of getting my film developed and returned you understand). Asking what size I want, I reply 'oh, just the standard size'. She then says 'do you mean small?'
'umm possibly? you know, the regular size prints.'
'you can get them in small, standard or a variety of larger sizes.'
'I just want the normal size you know, like the standard photo size.'
'Our standard size is larger than the standard size, I think you mean our small size.'
'So the traditional standard size is your small size?'
'Yes.'
'Oh. I see.'
'So what size would you like your prints?'
'The small one?'
'So that's the traditional standard size one then?'
'Erm... You haven't got an example I can point at?'
In response to this query, for one website I'd want to put 200+ authors on the system. This would be for college and because of child protection (I'm on a youthwork course) the site would require a login (using the movable type database for names as passwords). The purpose of it would be to share coursework and youthwork journals.
As well as this, I'm plannning to setup a blog about Eastenders (which I will get done some time this year, honest). That'd probably cap off at around 10 authors or so.
Sorry for those regularly reading this who are confused, but chances to feedback are not to be missed
This year I started wearing shorts on Sunday the 16th of May. Last year it was the 7th of June. This is the third consecutive year that shorts wearing has occured earlier. If you weren't concerned about global warming before then don't be now. This is great! It's becoming like the mediterranean over here. Everyone buy fridges expensive petrol consuming cars and throw them away set fire to them! Lets get with that carbon monoxide dioxide pollution!
Updates made due to the fact that I'm an ignorant fool
Keeping with the Nick Hornby theme, something that always vaguely bugged me about "High Fidelity " was when Barry asks for the 'top five side one, track ones ever'. Rob then proceeds to list "Thunder Road"; Bruce Springsteen, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"; Nirvana, "Let's Get It On"; Marvin Gaye, "Airbag"; Radiohead. Now the problem is this, does Barry mean 'top five side one, track ones ever in the context of starting off an album' or 'top five side one, track ones ever in the context of stand alone singles'?
Now I'm not usually this pedantic, but the two different questions would get completely different results. For example, my 'top five side one, track ones ever in the context of starting off an album' would be:You see, these songs are all good as they are, but only great because they set the album off perfectly. 'Kill The Last Romantic' is the perfect example, as on its own it's just an nice minute long piece of music, however in the context of opening a great chiasmatic1 piece of music, it's immense. But it's not a great stand alone single. Those would be:
Which if released as singles, should all go straight to number one.
You may think that it's rather sad to quibble over minor details like that, but these things are important!
1: Chiasmatic: Adj. 'describing a literary structure that can be seen as x-shaped. Kind of like the words have a symmetry'
A short update. The suggestions poll will be closing on monday, with possibly a new one starting later this week once I finish re-writing the script for it.
Buy the new The Streets album, it's well good.
Buy the new Gomez album on monday, it will be well good.
So MovableType have released a new version of their blogging software and I'm sure it's fantastic. However, it is going to cost some cash to get anything more than a basic version (My website currently runs off four different blogs, the free basic version only allows you to have three. A website I was planning would have had 200+ authors, the basic version only lets you have 1).
Understandably there is a big uproar, with people going, "OI!" and "I'm going to change software!" (which makes you wonder why the feel they have to upgrade and not just stay with the present version).
I'm not to bothered, however, it is my understanding that my cousin Matthew was on the Beta and thus may have discount codes he wants to share. :D
Dear vandals of the future,
Please, when given such a perfect opportunity for vandalism as the road sign for "bateman street", think carefully about which letters will be the funniest to rub out. Remember, once painted out it is very hard to undo any mistakes.
I have this theory. I think that the book "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" is not written by the ascribed author, Mark Haddon. This is not because I don't think Mark Haddon is capable of writing this book, but rather because I think someone else wrote it. More specifically I think that Nick Hornby (he of High Fidelity/About A Boy/Fever Pitch fame) wrote it (Warning, Spoilers).
My thinking on why he used a pen name is that as Nick Hornby cites having to cope with the difficulties of an autistic child as one of the reasons for his marriage break up, to write a book about a marriage break up primarily because of an autistic child would make everyone try and guess how much of the story was true. As the wife runs off with another man and the husband tells the child that his mum is dead, it's not really a story you want people holding up to your life and saying "I wonder if this is all really true and he did tell his son his mum was dead".
The only thing standing in the way of my theory is the fact that Mark Haddon is already an existing author. However, if Nick Hornby genuinely wanted to keep his identity a secret, then making up an author isn't going to work. People will get suspicious and want to meet them and so on. By asking an existing author if they can use their name, all those problems are solved.
I had a post all lined up for when Ipswich would defeat Cardiff today at football. However, it was a draw. Still, the important thing is this. Cardiff didn't win. Disappointingly Cardiff didn't lose. But they didn't win. This is what matters in the game of football. Oh, and Ipswich are in the play-offs, but that is not as important as Cardiff not winning.
Tomorrow, posts on 'what lager to buy' and 'top five places to urinate in public on a Friday night'
Alasdair Asks:
"What exactly is, an 'ecumenical matter?' "
First, I'd like to apologise for Alasdair's poor grammar. He's been finishing off his dissertation lately and understandably his mind has been on other things. So, with grammar corrected...
"What exactly is 'ecumenical matter'?"
Well, as you probably all know from basic science classes, there are three commonly known phases of matter; Solid, Liquid and Gas. On top of this, there are three other lesser known phases of matter; plasmas, Bose-Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates (the last two have only been created in laboratory settings). There are possibly two other semi-phases, the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic phases of magnetic materials. I say 'possibly two other semi-phases' because I haven't a clue if they are real phases or not, so lets just ignore them and pretend they don't exist.
Phases of matter are defined by their chemical composition and physical properties. So liquids all share roughly the same physical and chemical properties; they all have an unchanging volume but a changing shape. Plasma's likewise all share the same properties; they all have a changing volume, a changing shape and they are all ionized.
Ecumenical Matter is a hypothetical state of matter, theoretically it should exist, however it's yet to be proved. The fundamental properties are this:
Ecumenical matter is frequently derided by more right wing scientists, who claim it to be entirely fictional and that by even thinking of it true phases of matter are being watered down. Liberal scientists frequently talk about it as the holy grail, and claim that ecumenical matter might be super matter, that includes all other sorts of matter as well.
Anyway, I hope that has helped clear matters up somewhat. If you have any further queries I suggest you contact somewhere cleverer than me. As always, new poll on monday.
So me and my work colleague Ben have got into a bit of a competition lately; masculine one-up-manship if you will. You see, the other day, I came back from town with a bootlegged radiohead gig from 1996. He borrowed it later and explained how while it was good, he had a series of live recordings from 1997, just when OK Computer was about to come out. I then of course explained that I had last year's Glastonbury headlining gig on Minidisc. Today, he took it up a level, by actually bringing in a live Radiohead CD. 70 minutes and 14 seconds of pure live bootlegged Radiohead. Oh yeah.
Thirty six days! That's how long it's going to take for the doctor's practice up the road from me to get me an appointment to transfer to their clinic. When I explained that my previous doctor was in Rotherham, the woman taking my details audibly sighed. Now, I'm not wanting to say that the NHS occasionally lives up to its reputation for being awful... Well, actually I am. And I haven't even mentioned that four other local practices wouldn't even take on any new patients.
Finally, after living here for almost six months, I've got the internet at home! Celebration time!
I got climbing gear last friday. I cannot state how absolutely gorgeous it all is. Neither my harness or my shoes match, and my attempt to buy Carabiners and belaying devices of the same colour was met with raised eyebrows from the guy behind the counter. But that's not point. It all just looks gorgeous because it's so well designed. You know that every single stitch exists for a purpose and somehow, that makes it attractive.
Whenever I go to gigs I feel the necessity to review the actual gig as some sort of musical service to my readers. However, the most interesting things to write about when going to gigs are rarely the actually gigs themselves. So figuring that if you want a review of a band's performance, you can go read the NME (That would probably better read 'if you want a review of what the band were wearing, and how cool they looked, you can go read the NME). The The Zutons were good, let's leave it at that.
They played in the Colchester Arts Centre, situated in the heart of Colchester, Essex. I would hereby like to say that everything you have ever heard about Essex women ever is true. While waiting for the train home, this conversation actually happened (for full effect, read out loud with thick essex blonde accent).
Woman 1: 'scuse me, you gotta cigarette mister?
Me: I don't smoke, sorry.
Woman 2: Oooh get him! Go ask him Charleen (names changed to make more humourous), he's fit!
Woman 1 (Charleen): Oh yeah! Maybe he'll help me carry my bags to the taxi!
Woman 2: Charleen! Aahahahaahaha!
No really.
I also counted ten people wearing Converse All Star Shoes, which has to be a new gig record for me. Rock and indeed roll.
Special thanks to the nice person who sold me his spare ticket, to the Zutons lead singer for yelling stuff from the top of a church at us who arrived really early, to the lady in the pub who pointed out where the arts centre was and to the person next to me who read over my shoulder every single text message I sent that night.
This is a website by Mark Walley. If you want to find out more or get in touch, that'd be nice.
Getting around this website can be a tad confusing. If you're looking to explore the better stuff of what I've written then this navigation should help you. If you're after a specific post then searching or looking through the archives chronologically may help.
This site tries its best to be accessible for everyone. Atom, and RSS feeds are available. All content licensed through a creative commons licence. I may have stolen ideas off you when you weren't looking, but it was almost certainly an accident. As with all claims of originality and ownership Psalm 24 v1 applies.