rachel woke up on saturday and said 'i can't speak to you today'.
she'd had a dream that i wouldn't give her my last rolo. this tied in with a conversation we'd had the night before about a friend of hers who'd tried to use the whole 'last rolo' thing to get with someone, to no avail. i once again espoused my theory that 'the last rolo is no more important than any other one; you've just et a whole pack of rolos, why should you want the last one too?'.
but in the dream i'd et the whole pack, and not saved her one. and then i'd been really 'logical' about it all and said how it was just branding anyway, &c.
then she said 'i bet you'd save it for pansy'.
and i couldn't reply to that.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
the formula rides again
what's the difference between a tube for extracting urine from a tall mammals...
and some tough sticky-back plastic used for repairing small bottles of wine?
one's a giraffe cathetar, the other's carafe gaffa-tape!
by ruth and grilly.
and some tough sticky-back plastic used for repairing small bottles of wine?
one's a giraffe cathetar, the other's carafe gaffa-tape!
by ruth and grilly.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
did you hear
did you hear about the belfast politician who had a secret agenda?
he had an ulsteria motive.
he had an ulsteria motive.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
so it was a strange weekend - i didn't spend a penny. that's not as quality as it might sound - it was achieved by staying in all weekend, and given i'd bought a week's travel card so it was a little under used. i played lots of thief 2x and even more resident evil 4, which was good in the village but the castle chapter was a bit gash. it was basically a completely different game. and the 'survival action' genre that they claim to have created was somewhat annoying - basically amounts to shooting hundreds of zombified villagers in the head. and you go into a massive castle and it goes rubbish.
om nom nom nom dot com is my new favourite website ever.
off to green man on thursday - looking forward to pitching up my tent in the dark, in the rain, alone, for the second year running, ftw.
coming soon: grilly deconstructs plot structures..!
om nom nom nom dot com is my new favourite website ever.
off to green man on thursday - looking forward to pitching up my tent in the dark, in the rain, alone, for the second year running, ftw.
coming soon: grilly deconstructs plot structures..!
Saturday, August 11, 2007
what did i do?
so after the party, much of what has happened is a blur. adrian's mum came to stay, in . tuesday was the girls' e.p. launch, out at the bull and gate, which was underattended but with a surprising number of women - ms. martineau, rachel, michelle. kettle was there. but the bull and gate, a nice venue, mocks all bands who underattend with it's massive focused stage. the support band were a bit boring until the last couple of songs, since they felt like playing their 'quiter songs' - the snow patrol-y ones - somewhat inexplicably. capo-core.
i'm sure there was nice stuff later in that week. thursday morning i bumped into dom from school at clapham common station, and since then, i've nearly seen him elsewhere twice, except that it wasn't him, just an hyper-responsive memory gland. later rachel met me after work, we bought sandwich matter and fed the crows and pigeons. we found that crows are a lot more wary of people than pigeons, and are much cooler. rachel made a path of breadcrumbs leading up to us to see how close they animals would come (see, she is a scientist); the crows were much more cautious and obviously more mentally active, you could see from their sideways approach and willingess to actually stand still that they had more going on.
last friday i was desperate to go out to a rock/metal club. instead there was an evening in london fields with a girlfriend that i'd inadvertently hurt. we et pizza on the grass, then went to the dove. the others carried themselves to the dolphin, and rachel and i went home to sort out our issues such that they were. money, jealousy, porn, the fact that i was trying to arrange an evening out without her, and commitment were discussed, and we came out on top; i think we can put it down to 2 month anxiety. saturday was spent in some way; fooling around the flat until we went down to broadway market for coffee and pastries. we were joined by others (this is all quite hard to remember) and eventually i went to do my 5 o'clock shift at cafe pogo. it was really quiet - only 2 pounds of tips each - but i got to listen to a bbc radio dramatisation of solaris and have a meal of those disturbingly realistic vegan fish fingers. stuff that like really makes me want to vegan; stuff like feta makes it so difficult. having failed to get people out to ROCK again, and being too tired for it anyway, i rejoined rachel at alison's birthday at some swanky gastro pub (on the menu today: lettuce and cucumber soup, £5.50. beans and duck egg, £5). we drew pictures and lost my notebook. rachel was shicker, and kept kvetching about her regret at ordering a coral sofa, worried sick it was actually pink. we went back to alison's for a bit, then home. plans for moving to berlin were discussed, as they always are, it seems.
the next day we hung out forever in victoria park with dips 'n' shit. feeding the animals again; we discovered squirrels like ritz crackers more than crisp breads, but may like nuts even more than those.
monday, blah. on tuesday, rachel and i made awesome bolognese (featuring awesome brown tvp [adds 'tvp' to dictionary, certain it will come up again]), in our last meeting before her holiday. this food was still very good two days later for lunch on toast.
hmm. it's nearly four oclock and i actually just wondered what it looks like outside today. a very nice day, is the verdict.
wednesday, i met up with uncle niel for the best curry ever. dan said it might be MSG. this would be a shame. anyway, from pakora to masala dosa and beyond to saag paneer, it was fucking delicious. pricey with it, but my offer of splitting the bill was turned down.
then thursday, dan and i went to see tales of earthsea, or since it was in japanese, i may refer to it as gedo senki. i just like the sound of the words. i've been looking forward to this for ages. the film is a combination of the farthest shore and tehanu (which i've not read, and knowing more about it would have helped), perhaps with other elements from the tales of earthsea stories that i haven't read. where the film immediately goes wrong in my opinion is it's under-representation of the sea. the film really only has three locations: tenar's farm, the city, and cob's castle, all on one island. the earthsea books really are perfect for japanese adaptation, being really quite zen in themselves; in the farthest shore, ged barely casts a single spell. the film consists large sequences of people just staring, or slowly walking down endless roads. which is what i hoped. we see the archmage (the importance of which is never made clear) ged spend a lot of time ploughing fields and so forth. which is great. but the film tries to cram too much in, and ends up missing the point i felt; this could have been a star wars, in it's own way.
ursula le guin's comments say everything i was going to say about it basically. from a ghibli point of view, i wasn't really impressed with goro miyazaki's first film. it was long without being epic; it felt confused, messy, and poorly structured, even for ghibli films, which so often follow a looser plot structure than the formulaic western b-m-e (not that i'm saying that's a bad thing... usually). some parts were charming, but not often. and what's the point of just mentioning stuff like the wizard school on roke in passing as if we're all meant to know about it? go there! show us what it looks like! it's a place with people and towers and stuff. i think this film may have been done somewhat on the cheap.
i just replaced the xkcd internet map on my backdrop with earthsea.
i just have to quote this too:
last night was ruth's birthday in a pub. after work, i went and sat on clapham common, having only just realised how big it is, facing the sun over the pond and feeding the geese. then i spent two hours on buses reading dune. the pub, the palm tree was in the middle of a park in mile end, with a strange cyberpunk wasteland feel to it; anywhere with big lit up buildings in the distance and construction closer in the dark feels like that. there was live, un-mic'd jazz and genuine middle-aged pub folk that i've not seen for ages. there was cake. then i came home and played thief 'til three.
i just found out zabrinski are splitting up after their last gig in september.
so now, it's the weekend, nearly seven, and i've no plans and phone to be contacted upon. i'm just chilling out doing nothing. it's nice. i'll get on and do some programming tomorrow i think.
xx
i'm sure there was nice stuff later in that week. thursday morning i bumped into dom from school at clapham common station, and since then, i've nearly seen him elsewhere twice, except that it wasn't him, just an hyper-responsive memory gland. later rachel met me after work, we bought sandwich matter and fed the crows and pigeons. we found that crows are a lot more wary of people than pigeons, and are much cooler. rachel made a path of breadcrumbs leading up to us to see how close they animals would come (see, she is a scientist); the crows were much more cautious and obviously more mentally active, you could see from their sideways approach and willingess to actually stand still that they had more going on.
last friday i was desperate to go out to a rock/metal club. instead there was an evening in london fields with a girlfriend that i'd inadvertently hurt. we et pizza on the grass, then went to the dove. the others carried themselves to the dolphin, and rachel and i went home to sort out our issues such that they were. money, jealousy, porn, the fact that i was trying to arrange an evening out without her, and commitment were discussed, and we came out on top; i think we can put it down to 2 month anxiety. saturday was spent in some way; fooling around the flat until we went down to broadway market for coffee and pastries. we were joined by others (this is all quite hard to remember) and eventually i went to do my 5 o'clock shift at cafe pogo. it was really quiet - only 2 pounds of tips each - but i got to listen to a bbc radio dramatisation of solaris and have a meal of those disturbingly realistic vegan fish fingers. stuff that like really makes me want to vegan; stuff like feta makes it so difficult. having failed to get people out to ROCK again, and being too tired for it anyway, i rejoined rachel at alison's birthday at some swanky gastro pub (on the menu today: lettuce and cucumber soup, £5.50. beans and duck egg, £5). we drew pictures and lost my notebook. rachel was shicker, and kept kvetching about her regret at ordering a coral sofa, worried sick it was actually pink. we went back to alison's for a bit, then home. plans for moving to berlin were discussed, as they always are, it seems.
the next day we hung out forever in victoria park with dips 'n' shit. feeding the animals again; we discovered squirrels like ritz crackers more than crisp breads, but may like nuts even more than those.
monday, blah. on tuesday, rachel and i made awesome bolognese (featuring awesome brown tvp [adds 'tvp' to dictionary, certain it will come up again]), in our last meeting before her holiday. this food was still very good two days later for lunch on toast.
hmm. it's nearly four oclock and i actually just wondered what it looks like outside today. a very nice day, is the verdict.
wednesday, i met up with uncle niel for the best curry ever. dan said it might be MSG. this would be a shame. anyway, from pakora to masala dosa and beyond to saag paneer, it was fucking delicious. pricey with it, but my offer of splitting the bill was turned down.
then thursday, dan and i went to see tales of earthsea, or since it was in japanese, i may refer to it as gedo senki. i just like the sound of the words. i've been looking forward to this for ages. the film is a combination of the farthest shore and tehanu (which i've not read, and knowing more about it would have helped), perhaps with other elements from the tales of earthsea stories that i haven't read. where the film immediately goes wrong in my opinion is it's under-representation of the sea. the film really only has three locations: tenar's farm, the city, and cob's castle, all on one island. the earthsea books really are perfect for japanese adaptation, being really quite zen in themselves; in the farthest shore, ged barely casts a single spell. the film consists large sequences of people just staring, or slowly walking down endless roads. which is what i hoped. we see the archmage (the importance of which is never made clear) ged spend a lot of time ploughing fields and so forth. which is great. but the film tries to cram too much in, and ends up missing the point i felt; this could have been a star wars, in it's own way.
ursula le guin's comments say everything i was going to say about it basically. from a ghibli point of view, i wasn't really impressed with goro miyazaki's first film. it was long without being epic; it felt confused, messy, and poorly structured, even for ghibli films, which so often follow a looser plot structure than the formulaic western b-m-e (not that i'm saying that's a bad thing... usually). some parts were charming, but not often. and what's the point of just mentioning stuff like the wizard school on roke in passing as if we're all meant to know about it? go there! show us what it looks like! it's a place with people and towers and stuff. i think this film may have been done somewhat on the cheap.
i just replaced the xkcd internet map on my backdrop with earthsea.
i just have to quote this too:
American novelist Kurt Vonnegut satirized Campbell's views on the monomyth as being excessively complicated by offering his interpretation, called the "In The Hole" theory; loosely defined as "The hero gets into trouble. The hero gets out of trouble."[citation needed]
last night was ruth's birthday in a pub. after work, i went and sat on clapham common, having only just realised how big it is, facing the sun over the pond and feeding the geese. then i spent two hours on buses reading dune. the pub, the palm tree was in the middle of a park in mile end, with a strange cyberpunk wasteland feel to it; anywhere with big lit up buildings in the distance and construction closer in the dark feels like that. there was live, un-mic'd jazz and genuine middle-aged pub folk that i've not seen for ages. there was cake. then i came home and played thief 'til three.
i just found out zabrinski are splitting up after their last gig in september.
so now, it's the weekend, nearly seven, and i've no plans and phone to be contacted upon. i'm just chilling out doing nothing. it's nice. i'll get on and do some programming tomorrow i think.
xx
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
le labyrinth en crystal
so what does one say about one's own house party? i suppose one runs through the process itself as best one can: the planning; the setting up; the party; the aftermath.
as you probably know, the whole thing was based on the crystal maze. the living room was medival - hay and candlelight; ed's room was futuristic - electronic things and lasers; adrian's was industrial - no longer in use; the kitchen was oceanic - it looks like a ship; my room was the aztec zone, as signified by a plant. that was really as far as my effort went. the toilet was easily the best, the crystal dome, with gold and silver ribbons hanging from the ceiling, angular lighting, and three remixes of 'le labyrinth en crystal' looping continuously through the pa.
luke arrived first, soon followed by dan, and before long enough people were here to warrant kicking the party off. party hard! i bashed on a load of electro and stuff to start with, or mainly electro. i can't remember now. simian mobile disco was on at some point, as was stuff that people complained about. no one really danced, except andy and i to valerie. eventually there were lots of people - not enough to fill everywhere all at once, but the constant following traffic was nice in someways.
memorable moments include an angsty sapphic girl being informed that straight sex was just 'quite nice', the live set from dude where's my car featuring alexis on sax, andy asking to be punched, and for once, literally, the freeform jamming with ian, naomi penny sweet on violin, i, kat brown singing, becoming more and more beautiful until bertie started doing his hitler impression again, naomi fixing my violin and making it sound good, whence we went and jammed on 'byker hill', revelations, narcolepsy, and absinthe. i was showing chris (my first actual fan) how it should be done, with caramlised sugar &c, but he continued to drink it neat, until he threw up upon the couch, as was the fashion of the time.
ian fell asleep on my bed and was immobile, leading to an uncomfortable three in a bed situation. he left at three in the morning to 'go to his own bed'. if only he'd done that seven hours ago. upon rising, there was a breakfast mission to kilburn, ending up in a cafe bar restuarant place that we ended up in last time luke was staying over and a greasy spoon was required. i had the mushroom wellington again, tasty as it is. people aim for fry up and land on sunday roast. interesting. they said they were closed too, but luke berated them until they said they'd feed us. i'm glad i wasn't there for that bit.
as you probably know, the whole thing was based on the crystal maze. the living room was medival - hay and candlelight; ed's room was futuristic - electronic things and lasers; adrian's was industrial - no longer in use; the kitchen was oceanic - it looks like a ship; my room was the aztec zone, as signified by a plant. that was really as far as my effort went. the toilet was easily the best, the crystal dome, with gold and silver ribbons hanging from the ceiling, angular lighting, and three remixes of 'le labyrinth en crystal' looping continuously through the pa.
luke arrived first, soon followed by dan, and before long enough people were here to warrant kicking the party off. party hard! i bashed on a load of electro and stuff to start with, or mainly electro. i can't remember now. simian mobile disco was on at some point, as was stuff that people complained about. no one really danced, except andy and i to valerie. eventually there were lots of people - not enough to fill everywhere all at once, but the constant following traffic was nice in someways.
memorable moments include an angsty sapphic girl being informed that straight sex was just 'quite nice', the live set from dude where's my car featuring alexis on sax, andy asking to be punched, and for once, literally, the freeform jamming with ian, naomi penny sweet on violin, i, kat brown singing, becoming more and more beautiful until bertie started doing his hitler impression again, naomi fixing my violin and making it sound good, whence we went and jammed on 'byker hill', revelations, narcolepsy, and absinthe. i was showing chris (my first actual fan) how it should be done, with caramlised sugar &c, but he continued to drink it neat, until he threw up upon the couch, as was the fashion of the time.
ian fell asleep on my bed and was immobile, leading to an uncomfortable three in a bed situation. he left at three in the morning to 'go to his own bed'. if only he'd done that seven hours ago. upon rising, there was a breakfast mission to kilburn, ending up in a cafe bar restuarant place that we ended up in last time luke was staying over and a greasy spoon was required. i had the mushroom wellington again, tasty as it is. people aim for fry up and land on sunday roast. interesting. they said they were closed too, but luke berated them until they said they'd feed us. i'm glad i wasn't there for that bit.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
once again, it's sunday and i'm the only one online. it would be nice to be out somewhere but i really felt the need to be stimulated tonight. i wanted to be doing music or completing personality tests - i don't know why, but those were my hankerings. so now i'm sat here, downloading the fan-made thief expansion 'shadows of the metal age' - corny title, intriguing premise - and thinking i'll tell you about the last two weeks.
crikey i'm knackered. currently listening to samples of the 'tidelands' soundtrack off amazon.com - the theme is so hypnotic and magical.
is it a good idea to go straight edge two weeks before going to a music festival? can one enjoy the green man without the constant running of beautiful cold lager? i suppose that's part of the problem - time and again i've maintained i'll only drink bitter as it's actually nice, only to fail utterly. so why not just give the stuff up entirely?
so two fridays ago we had the return of the penny sweets. i ducked home, made a tshirt and some food, and dashed out. photos will come again as always, but i can't be bothered to make my phone work with this pc. don't even ask me to bore you about my firefox settings.
thief2x is 37% downloaded. i am now listening to bartok string quartets.
so the penny sweets. lovely to have them back. instantly so much more professional than the other acts. there was an oasisy duo who'd come down from scotland with a full on girlfriend who forced herself upon our conversation and told us she 'loved 'new' music', but wasn't really willing to listen to us ask her if she liked 'old' music as well, and what was so new about some people playing pop songs on guitars in a pub anyway? but never mind. the sweets were fighting the sound a bit - feedback and reverb issues didn't help them too much. having listened some more to the expanded 'lumina blue' cd, the tracks at the end with real drums and bass have really endeared themselves to me more than the synthetic tracks at the begining. it would be nice when they're rocking a bit more, allowing for more variety in the set..
47%.
the night after was the house party and i don't really have much to say about it now. most photos are hidden in various people's facebook accounts, so make friends with kat brown and adrian martineau. i should give a full report, maybe i just can't be bothered now and should wait 'til later.
so moving on to this weekend instead.. no, i don't want to talk about that either.
crikey i'm knackered. currently listening to samples of the 'tidelands' soundtrack off amazon.com - the theme is so hypnotic and magical.
is it a good idea to go straight edge two weeks before going to a music festival? can one enjoy the green man without the constant running of beautiful cold lager? i suppose that's part of the problem - time and again i've maintained i'll only drink bitter as it's actually nice, only to fail utterly. so why not just give the stuff up entirely?
so two fridays ago we had the return of the penny sweets. i ducked home, made a tshirt and some food, and dashed out. photos will come again as always, but i can't be bothered to make my phone work with this pc. don't even ask me to bore you about my firefox settings.
thief2x is 37% downloaded. i am now listening to bartok string quartets.
so the penny sweets. lovely to have them back. instantly so much more professional than the other acts. there was an oasisy duo who'd come down from scotland with a full on girlfriend who forced herself upon our conversation and told us she 'loved 'new' music', but wasn't really willing to listen to us ask her if she liked 'old' music as well, and what was so new about some people playing pop songs on guitars in a pub anyway? but never mind. the sweets were fighting the sound a bit - feedback and reverb issues didn't help them too much. having listened some more to the expanded 'lumina blue' cd, the tracks at the end with real drums and bass have really endeared themselves to me more than the synthetic tracks at the begining. it would be nice when they're rocking a bit more, allowing for more variety in the set..
47%.
the night after was the house party and i don't really have much to say about it now. most photos are hidden in various people's facebook accounts, so make friends with kat brown and adrian martineau. i should give a full report, maybe i just can't be bothered now and should wait 'til later.
so moving on to this weekend instead.. no, i don't want to talk about that either.
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