After eight years it's time for a break.

Saturday, April 27, 2002

Meetings fucking rock my nuts!

You betcha.
[via plasticbag.org]

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Friday, April 26, 2002

Via Meg: someone's been stealing my job, dammit!
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Ow. My fucking head.

Have a review while I recover.

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Reading this review of Shockheaded Peter just makes me more eager to see it again. Soon enough - Russ is heading to these fine shores soon, so some rockin' and finger-cuttin' is in order, methinks.
[via kookymojo]
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Thursday, April 25, 2002

Interesting, yet weird and slightly ick: this woman has been posing as Henry Rollins amongst others, in order to fleece net users of cash. And she's been damn successful!
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Two things:

1. Man cannot live on peanut butter alone.
2. I fucking hate night-buses.

That is all.

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See, normally I hate Elmo. But this time, he's appeared before Congress. Which does rock. Hard. And not in a ticklish way.
[via barbelith underground]
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Ever wondered how the Australian film classification process works? Here's how! Sigh.
[via virulent memes]
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Wednesday, April 24, 2002

Jose Bustani gets the arse. Again, an unsurprising turn of events, but a fucking frightening one. Monbiot gave more background here, previously, if you're interested.
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So: Blake's been charged and is most likely to get the death penalty if found guilty. Eep. Unsurprising, but eep, nontheless.
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Interesting action-hero moment: the new Indiana Jones flick is set to be scripted by Tom Stoppard. Does this mean we're going to see existentialist discussions between Indy and Short Round? Here's hoping so. An East/West philosophical examination through an action hero and his sidekick would be good. Maybe. Provided there was occasional blowing-up of shit, I could handle it. Of course, I s'pose that taken too far, it could end up being My Dinner With Indy. Which, admittedly, would still rock with fists of steel, but would probably lack Nazis. Maybe a discontented waiter could stand in for the Reich? Maybe?

Christ, I obviously haven't eaten enough.

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Tuesday, April 23, 2002

And now, in the "not surprising at all" side of things; I have no money. None. Nada. Zip.

Kill me.

And sell my organs for profit.

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Thanks to one of the coolest threads ever, I give you some scientific research: Pirates vs Ninjas and Pirates and Ninjas Tested in a Variety of Everyday Situations. The results speak for themselves, y'know.

Arr.

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"Cuntfuck"? It appears Noel has a New Word. About time, too - fookin' must be getting a bit old...
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I can't actually get DSR to work at the moment, so I have to share what could well be the coolest referrer ever - right here, right now.

Whoever it is that just surfed on in here looking for a dodgy bloke riding a pheasant, I salute you. You fucking rule.

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Behold - tremble before the face of EVIL!
[via barbelith underground]
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Monday, April 22, 2002

Another weekend, another post about a weekend.

Not a lot happened, unsurprisingly. Two flatmates were away (one in Ireland, I think, and one at All Tomorrow's Parties - the lucky bastard! (Speaking of which, ATP 2003 is set to be organised by Autechre - if I'm still here, you just try and stop me going.) So, a quiet time. Friday night saw a pub excursion with some local Barbelithers, the outcome of which was the following:

1. The Jolly Butcher is not good on a Friday night.
2. The Rochester Castle is an old blokes' pub, but is mightily cheap.
3. Fish and chips late-night can be bad.
4. Any statement is improved by adding "...Prison-style!" to the end of it.

Well, not just that - it was a great night of relaxing, talking and drinking - much fun, and a nice way to ease into the weekend.

Saturday: not much. Reading, a bit of wandering to bookshops where cheap copies of Finnegans Wake and The Faerie Queene were had, and then some fantastic food (obtained, surprisingly, from the soul-destroying house-of-crud that is Safeway, where they've got a fridge unit that emits a whine that's at such a frequency that it'll remove any will to live that you might have, reducing you to a withered heap by the cheapo booze aisle) was made, rounding off the evening. Somewhere along the lines of the day, agreement to pub-quiz participation on Tuesday night was agreed; hopefully it'll be The Quiz I'm Searching For That'll Replace Those Fabulous Thursday Night Excursions From My University History. I can but hope.

Sunday was spent moseying into town - work, no less - while C went to a birthday picnic, before hooking up again and heading off to Camden Town to see The Royal Tenenbaums. Which would've been good, had it been on; disappointed, we wandered stores (snagging Spain's newie for less than half the release price), had a slurpalicious meal at New Cultural Revolution and consumed beer at the Spread Eagle, where I tried in vain to ascertain whether it really was a brunette, incognito Courtney Love sitting at the next table. If I'd've known, I could've found out more about this, I s'pose. Ah well. A nice, relaxed day, though - all apart from the largely-unsuccessful work part of it, I guess.

So, once more, not a lot (in terms of activity, at least) was done. Quelle surprise. What I have spent a lot of the past weekend doing is reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Which, as I'm sure everyone already knows, is absolutely brilliant. I was a bit dubious about starting the books, but they're far and away the best "kids'" book I've ever read. Armoured bears, dysfunctional families, daemons, witches, nihilism, angels, existentialism, Blake, Milton, kabbalah, alternate universes, quantum physics, Victoriana, DeChirico-esque landscapes, growing-up... it's got it all. I flicked through the first volume last week, then practically inhaled the second book on Sunday. Now, I'm about a third of the way through the final volume, The Amber Spyglass, and am loving it; it's one of those books that you really do have to remind yourself that it is written for children, primarily - there's been some moments that have been "nooo! You can't do that!" for me; and I'm certainly bigger and uglier than the books' intended readership. Yeeks.

There's an OK article on Pullman here, an interview (with spoilers, so be careful) here, and an Observer article (again, with spoilers) on the way the books have gone against the Bible Belt's beliefs here. But better than that, just go out and read the damn things. I heartily endorse 'em - which, admittedly, doesn't count for much - but I'm pretty certain that if you check 'em out, you'll be really, really impressed. This writing rocks, in a most enviably steel-fisted way.

And now, back to work. Bah.

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If your history's a bit duff, it might be worth checking out this. It's the Guardian's history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Pretty pictures and all, but it does give you a bit of insight into why what's happening there now is happening. I really need to know more about what's actually going on in the world; well, more about what brings particular things to pass, anyway. I'm reasonably up on current affairs, but find myself looking at the news (most of the time) with a "wuh?" expression. I'm not in the 91% of "UK youth" who couldn't tell you that Israel's the occupying force in the current fracas, but sometimes I feel only a little more cluey than that.
[via uren.dagen.nachten]
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Read this review. Then, go out and buy the CD. You won't regret it.

You could also read this review while you're there, too.

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Layne Staley is dead. Apparently, so dead that he'd started to decompose, necessitating tests to ascertain ID. Yeesh.

I wonder if he had all his fingers...
[via barbelith underground]

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