Everyday is like Sunday, everyday is silent and grey

I haven’t really consistently blogged for a good few weeks, I find that I tend to blog and be sarcastic when I’m happy and recently I’ve been drowning a little bit.  In the past this would have been because I hadn’t done anything for an eon, however this is not the case now.  In fact this very day I realised that all of my “ohmygodzihavesomuchtodo” was in fact self imposed and I’m actually quite on schedule so hear hear!

As of tomorrow I will have finished all of my Christmas shopping in terms of melting my debit card and shall be just sitting and waiting for it all to arrive.  I also 100% stuck to the budget that I set myself and am pretty proud as I have literally bought masses of cool stuff for quite a few people with this allotted amount of money.

Also I would literally love to know what happened in Central/East London yesterday in terms of the traffic melt down.  It took me over 40 minutes to get from Mile End station to Victoria Park.  Yes I know I should have got off and walk but I was paranoid that as soon as I got off the traffic jam would evaporate and then I’d feel like a twat.  As it turned out the bus was terminated at Victoria Park as the control centre had told the driver it would take him over 2 hours to get from Hackney to Highbury corner.  For anyone that doesn’t know, that is a 15-20 minute journey max.  Dire traffic times.

Anyway, as everyone was cursing and shuffling off of the bus I just let them pass as I’m never in a rush and was only 5 minutes walk from home.  Well, it turns out that someone left an ipod stuffed down the window side of one of the seats.  I picked it up and stood outside of the bus for a good few minutes to see if anyone came back as the ipod was on and playing a song so I was assuming that they would notice.  No one did.  I figured there would be a straight forward handing in procedure as obviously with my distaste of people I didn’t trust the driver.

After a bit of googling “TFL lost property” there is in fact no where to hand things in only forms to fill out in order to get your stuff back so I’m a bit stuck with my plan to be a good Samaritan at the moment.

I am not giving up in terms of handing it in but I must say I would be making a lot more effort if it was a newer ipod.  I could not live with the thought that say a week previously someone had spent £200+ in the Apple store on an ipod and then lost it.

As it stands though it is one of the old 2005 20GB U2 edition ipods and is worth less than £50.  I much prefer my 8GB nano.

The battery is still pretty good as those ipods never really had a good battery life to begin with – it’s been going for around 8 hours and still hasn’t died.

In terms of the music on it though, wow, just wow.  I would love to meet the owner.  

Joy Division, the Smiths, Morissey, the Beatles, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, the Clash, the Jam, MGMT, ting tings, Lily Allen, the Bravery, Girls Aloud, White Lies, Adele, Amy Winehouse, the Animals, Arcade Fire, Art Brut, Ash, Arctic monkeys, Athlete, babyshambles, Beach Boys, basement Jaxx, Beck, Biffy Clyro, Beirut, Bloc Part, BRMC, Blur, Calvin Harris, CSS, Madness, Chick Berry, Coldplay, the Coral, Cooper Temple Clause, The Cribs, the Cure, daft punk, David Bowie, David Grey, the Delays, Dexys midnight runners, Dire Straits, Dirty Pretty things, Dizzee Rascal, the Distillers,  Eagle eyed cherry, Eric Clapton, faithless, fat boy slim, fischerspooner, fleet foxes, flaming lips, franz ferdinand, garbage, gang of four, gnarls barkley, go! team, goldfrapp, gorillaz, graham coxon, happy mondays, hard fi, the hives, hot chip, hot hot heat, idlewild, iggy pop, inxs, interpol, jack johnson, james, jamiroquai, jeff buckley, jet, jimi hendrix, johnny cash, justice, kaiser chiefs, kasabian, keane, the killers, the kills, kings of leon, the kinks, KT tunstall, the la’s, the libertines, lightening seeds, long blondes, moloko, manic street preachers, massive attack, mercury rev, michael jackson, moby, modest mouse, mott the hoople, muse, nelly furtado, newton faulkner, nirvana, oasis, ocean colour scene, ok go, panic! at the disco, pigeon detectives, pink floyd, the pixies, placebo, primal scream, prodigy, pulp, queens on the stone age, r.e.m., radiohead, razorlight, red hot chili peppers, rolling stones, sea sick steve sex pistols, sheryl crowe, snow patrol……………….  And I can’t be arsed to type passed “S” but you get the idea……  And the above literally only amounts to about a third of what is there.

Right now:  ”cause tonight, and every night, you’re a super staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar.”  Tune.

So seriously, if this ipod belongs to you message me with it’s name, as in “***********’s ipod” and I’ll get it back to you!

In other news as of January the first 2010 I shall no longer be eating meat!  I am turning my distaste of people (generally) into a productive force.  I will no longer be eating the things in this life that I actually love very much, i.e. animals.  Simple really.  This will also be coupled with giving up dairy eventually (with in a few months) so basically being Vegan.  If anything 99% of animals used in the dairy industry are treated as badly as those used for meat and in their case for a much more prolonged period until they stop producing acceptable milk.

This may seem like a drastic step/change but in all truth I am a bit of a cheat.  I’m not a big meat eater.  I never have been.  Ever.  I tend to only eat meat when I eat out. Also by sheer fluke it turns out that most of what I eat is also Vegan friendly, even down to the cereal bars, baked goods, crisps, marizpan bars (nomz) etc that I buy.  That is a sheer coincidence and so really not a lot will be changing for me.

And fear not Nandos is still very much going to be on the cards as outside of the obvious (chicken) there are plenty of other suitable things to eat!  Yey Nandos!

I’m not tryna say that everybody wants to go

I went to Brighton for a day at the seaside on Sunday, damn was the weather rough.  As soon as I turned the corner onto the coast road I was pushed back by the wind and literally felt bruised by the rain.  The sea was crazy rough with the highest waves that I have ever seen in the UK.  In fact higher waves than I saw in California this summer.  Pretty intense.

Here’s a taster, obviously other cooler pictures will feature in an obligatory facebook album that shall appear at a later date.

Stand by for a real blog entry tomorrow.

A WIN in the FAIL

This is one of a multitude of reasons why I don’t read the Daily Mail.  I found this “sick foul mouthed tirade” bloody hilarious and pretty much spot on social commentary:

Ben Elton:

Then, when playing a word association game, he was given the phrase ‘the Queen’.

He replied: ‘She’s an ordinary woman. She’s a sad little old lady who lives in state sponsored accommodation, her husband is a mad old bigot who wishes it was still the war, three out of four of her kids’ marriages have failed – that’s very common.’

About her children, he added: ‘The eldest one is a disillusioned ex-hippy, the middle one a bit of a yob.’

He then made a gay reference to Prince Edward, before adding: ‘That’s a bog-standard British family in all its rainbow glory.

‘If she had a black one and a disabled one, she’d have the full deck. She represents Britain more than any head of state represents their country.’

Brilliant!  Anyone who disagrees should pull the stick out of their arse.

With few exceptions it is in fact most pages of the Daily Fail that are foul mouthed tirades.  Also, their spelling and grammar seems to be getting hideously worse.  Not that the general readership would notice.

LJ

The corn is the word of God

I log onto the BBC news website today only to see that a Folk singer has been killed by Coyotes, a 112 year old Somalian man has married a 17 year old girl and an editorial about why fat people are abused.  What is the world coming to!?

There have been a number of lolz in the last few days firstly in a tutorial the other day I was distracted by someone who had attempted to make themselves look like Cleopatra with black eye liner.  Though this in itself is not overly interesting what captivated my attention was the fact that it was 2mm thick on one eye and 5mm+ thick on the other.  Resulting in a kind of retard chic.  But this is not it!  I was so distracted lolling at this that I had failed to notice a black celtic knot style HEART tattoo smack bang in between her boobs (low cut top.)  I think I actually broke an attempt at curbing laughter type smile.

Next was an American guy giving a presentation who despite normally speaking in a 100% American accent decided to speak in a stereotypical American-speaking-English-English London type accent.  I don’t know if it was the stress of public speaking that made thing’s go a bit haywire but it only seemed to happen at the beginning of sentences and would gradually fade back to American at the end of the sentence….  Most amusing.  Especially as he always seemed to pronounce “Quran” as “corn.”  I actually giggled.  ”As was revealed in the corn…”  ”The corn states that….”  ”For Muslims the corn is the highest authority…”  ”The corn is the word of God.”

Without my net book for internet fun that 2 hour class would honestly kill me through boredom.

Also I today saw one of the temps that Royal Mail has hired during the postal strikes.  Gormless isn’t even the word.  At 10.30 he still had a full bag of mail and was walking around in circles in the street.  After doing this for a good five minutes he just got on the next bus that went by and was gone.  Riiiiiight.  Productive.

Troubled days

I have had the day from absolute HELL.  As is always the case in times like these, bullet points are needed.

• I had a maximum of 3 hours sleep, I had no reason why I couldn’t sleep and just laid there for hours.
• The bus broke down a few stops after I got on.
• No buses came that would get me closer to my destination for at least 20 minutes.
• I had to run far just to get a bus that goes sort of in the right direction.
• After leaving really early I get to University with just enough time to have breakfast.
• The aforementioned has gone up in price.
• After 35 minutes of lecture my net book hibernates when it still has 20% battery.
• Obviously having a computer I have no paper and have to take notes in my diary.
• All self service oyster top up machines in Russell Square tube are broken
• There’s only one kiosk open and it’s half term…
• My Blackberry gets an error and every time it’s rebooted it just gets the error again and again.
• 3 hours trying to re-install the Blackberry OS fail.
• I am forced to speak to a retard at Vodafone, who, as the description may hint at – is no use.
• Just everything.

I’m actually really really starting to get sick of modern technology.  Of facebook of MSN and of getting emails where ever I am.  I just don’t care anymore.

I’m all busted up, broken bones and nasty cuts

Green Day at the London o2.  I can’t lie, I wasn’t particularly excited seeing as their newest album “21st Century Breakdown” is well… not particularly good.  It has its moments but that’s about it.  BUT as I’ve seen them live before I should never really have doubted that it was going to be a good show.  They played for 3 hours straight, from 8pm until 11 and it was an energetic show not just them standing around.

As the picture to the right shows there were plenty of tattoo related disasters, little kids trying to be big kids, tu tu’s, luminous articles of clothing purchased in Camden and middle aged parents wearing Green Day t shirts whilst escorting their kids…

In terms of the format it was the same essentially as 2005’s tour, they got kids up to be a “band” etc.  But I did get touching distance from Billie Joe as he ran down the side of the crowd so pretty good on that score!  He also pulled a full moonie.  Again, nice one.

They sang all of the favourites and in a semi acknowledgement that the new album isn’t so strong they only played 4 songs from it if that.  All of the people that screamed when asked it they were old skool fans didn’t know the words to most songs pre American idiot and were left blank by the Operation Ivey cover and also the I fought the law/ rock the Casbah/ Teenage kicks/ satisfaction medley.  Not being born is not an excuse.  I wasn’t born for those four songs.

My crappy compact died and came back alive numerous times and for some reason (this started whilst camping during the summer) the zoom sticks, as in the actual button/dial type thing.  Answers on a post card.

Nick Griffin you Buffoon…

I am of the belief that people like Nick Griffin and those who have opinions that are similar to his should be given a platform to speak.  Why?  Because if they are allowed to speak in public then they will show themselves for the racist pigs that they are and this in turn leads to them making themselves look like complete and utter cunts.  This method is particularly effective because it is them and them alone who make themselves look ridiculous and so they cannot accuse anyone else of a conspiracy against them.

I was somewhat annoyed by the small minded people that protested against his appearance on BBC Question time.  When will you people realise that publicly dis-inviting him to Question Time would have given the exact publicity he craved.  That he is oppressed by the Government that he must fight in a courageous battle to be recognised for his “legitimate” views.  The quality of the BBC has arguably been going rapidly down hill in recent years but fair play to the person who stood firm and kept Griffin on the Question Time panel.

What’s more, it is fair to say and no doubt anyone that watched tonights Question Time will agree with me, he made himself look like a complete buffoon.  Constantly playing with papers, laughing and generally acting like a child who is way out of his league.  All of the other panelists were superb even if at times Jack Straw was kissing a bit too much please vote for me ass.  I was especially impressed by Bonnie Greer, how marvellous it must be to exude intelligence in the way that she does.

Nick Griffin, get back in your box because you have well and truly been owned.

They pick me up when I’m feeling blue

Well I was going to start with a more photo diary type format but my little crappy drag around everywhere camera is on the other side of the room so I’ve shelved that idea until next time.  Yes, I know, I’m a sloth.

I’ve used being ill as an excuse to eat loads of shit, namely milk ways, aeros, crunchies and milky buttons.  The fact I only had the aforementioned in snack sized packets only meant that I ate more small portions as opposed to fewer larger ones.  I’m getting a lot better now, I just seemed to snap out of things all of a sudden so I also have to ease up with the calorific low energy treats.  Though I’m sure the fact that I’m now moving outside of my bed will generally help matters.

I’m very much in a creative lull at the moment which I need to snap out of because I want to send off my application to Goldsmiths after reading week and need a 20 photograph “interacting with the urban environment” based portfolio to do this.  I’m still confused about how the reference works, they only want one and ask for it to be written, it’s part of the application form yet has a tick box asking if it’s ok to make it available to the applicant so I guess it doesn’t automatically get sent with the application form…

Back to the portfolio question, I think that they are quite open (in fact it appears that they are very open) when it comes to the type of photography that you can submit as long as it fits the brief.  I figured I would attempt to kick start my imagination and go to a more deprived/ less sanitised part of London as a bit of deprivation always makes a good picture.  I’m not going to name the places I was thinking of going for fear of a “I live there and it’s well nice” kind of comment.  (Barking/Dagenham direction essentially, where the District line goes scary.)

Also over the weekend (which for me is 4 days – don’t hate the player ya’ll) I want to take one of those “what’s in your bag” pictures.  I love looking at those with the exception of when the person who has taken the photo has blatantly staged it to show off all of their things by “X” designer or includes a zillion items of expensive technology that you just really DO NOT carry around everywhere.

Let’s not ask why it’s not right

I’m sick.  It’s not going away.  I’ve been popping slightly more than the recommended dosage of extra strength paracetomol since Thursday evening and nothing is going on other than stomach cramps from apparently too much paracetomol.  FAIL.  If anything life is getting depressingly worse so I’m having to go to the doctor.  My tonsils are huge, I have a constant headache and my sinuses?  Just don’t go there.  My snot is rather green.

I hate going to the Doctor.  They’re always so holier than thou and seem to relish stating the very, very obvious.  Rarely do I not have a predetermined agenda when going to the doctor and it usually runs along the lines of; I need a prescription and they are simply the means of achieving this rather simple goal.

I collected the bike that I’ve been going on about tonight.  As the London transport Nazis won’t allow bikes on buses (but will allow just about everything else) I had to ride it from the person I bought it from’s (nice) house back to my(not so nice) abode.  Fine.  Only 1.6miles.  But.  I’m kinda sick.  It started to rain.  So it ended up as a bit of trek and I nearly went over the handle bars on wet cobbles after owning the bike for all of about 1 minute 30 seconds.  It is awesome though and a lot bigger than in the picture which is good, no more knees smashing my chin.  (it’s 24″ wheels as opposed to 20″.)

^^ 2004 S E Bikes Floval Flyer.  Essentially a BMX cruiser.  Here’s to many happy miles around the B roads of London, or at least to Maccie D’s and back.  Thank you investment dividend for this new present.  In your face credit crunch.

This is a quite tragic and materialistic thing to say but I’m really not bonding at all with my new camera, almost to the point that I don’t really like it.  I don’t know why but I’m just not taking to it as a “thing.”  I really loved my D60 and actually miss it.  Upgrading was the right thing to do, I know that and I saved easily £150 but I dunno, I’m not feeling the love right now.  I’m sure it’ll come eventually but for the moment I would really like my actual D60 back.

Normally attempting to initiate outrage in my blog posts by making wide sweeping loltastic statements cheers me up but I’m just not in the mood right now.  What I will say is that I wasn’t particularly shocked by this episode of Panorama.  My honest opinion is that the behaviour shown towards the undercover reports was disgusting.  In fact it was beyond disgusting, I can’t even think of an appropriate word to describe the abuse that was directed at them.  Yet is it surprising that this kind of thing goes on?  No.  Not at all.  There’s no point various mori polls and other such bodies of information telling the general public that everything is going swimmingly in society.  It isn’t.  Just ask the reporters in the video and the people that find themselves in those kind of situations on a daily basis.  The sooner we as a society face these issues they can be dealt with.  However at the moment there’s the elephant in the room that everyone is pretty much happy to ignore.  How big does the aforementioned need to get… seriously?

I found that one of the worst parts were the children.  OK big joke I don’t like kids, but more seriously the behaviour of a certain 11 would have made Oswald Moseley, Nick Griffin et al look like a regular decent guys.  11 year olds don’t have strong opinions about anything, they just don’t, they’re 11.  The parents however.  Now that’s a scary mental image.

So what’s the answer?  I have no idea.  I can’t help but think that MI5/6 wastes its time trying to pop off people abroad that are deemed “undesirable” when really time and resources would be better spent making sure that these racist, ill educated, not even good enough for glue, thugs have accidents.  You know, “accidents” – like when rats chew through both brake cables.  -  And no, killing them off wouldn’t be reducing ourselves to their level, it would be a public service, much like what Bin men do.  (Ha, see I always manage a lol statement of some description…)

Moving on.  I know that I’ll get a fair amount of stick for this but I can’t help but like Metro Station.  They are essentially an American Busted, though I think a lot better.  Anyway, OK – they aren’t that original, the lyrics aren’t that good but you know what!?   They are fun to listen to.  Sometimes things just exist because.  One of my favourite memories of the summer just gone is bombing down country lanes on Cornwall singing/screaming to “Shake it” with one of my best friends.  I will say though, and it’s not a secret that I am a La Roux fan but when I read today that Elly Jackson had lost her voice for a few days my first thought was – what voice!? And that’s coming from a fan..

Looking forward to Nandos tomorrow with two brilliant people for company!  I’ve been going on numerous pointless excursions of late just to get outside and maybe feel a little bit better for it but it’s nice to be going out for a good reason.  Also for NANDOS and gossip!