Hammer of Now!

Chances

2011-05-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

Story on Radio 4 this morning about the Met. Office, who want, like, 10 million pounds for a new supercomputer to assist them with their long-term weather predictions.

It seems the best prediction they could come up with last year for the forthcoming winter was that there was a "70% chance that temperatures would be average or colder and a 60% chance that temperatures would be average or warmer."

I know that the humans have a poor intuitive grasp of probability, but surely this is lunacy? It's like they've taken the basic idea that there's a 50/50 chance of it being warmer or colder than average and then fucked with it the minimum amount they had to in order to make it sound idiotic.

Bom Dia

2011-05-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

Back from 3 weeks in Brazil, which was a long overdue holiday I now realize. Can't say my tan's as deep as I would have liked, but I certainly feel mentally rejuvenated (if physically exhausted). There are some pix on Flickr, which I'm sure you can find if want to, and when WAS the last time you emailed me? I can't even remember!

Obviously I've returned full of good intentions about how I'm going to up my game and do all those creative projects I've been dragging my heels on (plus a few new ones), and I was about to write a list on a piece of paper when I remembered that it's totally useless for me to do so since it will just get lost or end up crumpled in a dusty corner covered in pizza sauce. So I'm making my list here where I know I can find it:

* Comics
- Walworth Garden Farm woodcarving day
- Macktoids

* Screen printing
- watercolour up some new designs
- hand-drawn backgrounds for the cage layer
- book another studio session to complete caged
- buy screen(s)?

* Music
- new guitar and amp
- recording kit
- book Turps sesh

* Misc
- Finish terrarium (charcoal; collaborators?)
- investigate carving; tools, time, etc.
- Portugese: free classes? Ferny? comics? book?
- Crop Brazil photos for Flickr

* Boring
- return camera (lines on screen)
- return kindle (rattle)

Space Rocket

2011-01-06T05:54:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me if I had any resolutions for the new year and I replied that yes, I did, but that I couldn't tell him what they were without revealing how deeply flawed my character is at present (this is a fairly accurate description of my stance). To others I have sarcastically said that my resolution is to abandon all my ethical principles, since everyone seems to think they make me such a bad person (again, this is pretty much consistent with my plan, albeit viewed from a slightly different angle).

Now, I can't claim that I'm having much success with my plans, although I did touch a dog the other day and I am trying not to badmouth everyone behind their backs. If I do manage to moderate my fastidious behaviour I suspect that YOU, my valued blog reader, will be the beneficiary! How? Because I will be seething with pent-up anger and frustration which, concentrated through a lense of resentment might just become funny under the weight of its own pettiness when squirted - drunkenly - onto the internet.

FIRST OFF, although I am NOT drunk, I would like to express my annoyance at a little show called Stargazing Live. It appears in some schedules as Stargazing LIVE because it's obviously important that the casual channel surfer should not overlook the exciting as-it-happens nature of the show. I mean, which would you rather watch: The Sky at Night or The Sky TONIGHT?

Exactly.

This is my basic beef with the show - the utterly bizarre notion that watching other people look at things through a telescope will be a better televisual experience if it's done in real-time. The subjects of the show, stars and planets, have been around for literally BILLIONS of years and (the occasional supernova aside) will remain so long after you are dead. Surely all that the live aspect adds is the potential for cloud?

I did actually laugh uncomfortably when Prof. Cox felt he had to clarify that Dara was only joking about the apocalyptic end of the Mayan Calendar. Those crazy Atheists! They're all like "hey, science can be as much fun as religion WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF FACTUAL ACCURACY!"

Any requests?

2010-12-09T01:18:00.000-08:00

Here's an extract from some feedback I recently received:

I'm sick of checking out your blog to find nothing new has appearred since technicolour yawnfest which is indeed all its name promises

That's an actual quote. A backhanded compliment at best, I think you'll agree. Normally I like to have a cohesive strand of thought running through a blog post, or be motivated by strong feelings (usually anger or resentment) on a given subject. Why, any number of fascinating posts have gone unwritten simply because I was able to unburden myself of this bile on an actual living person, thus relieving the pressure.

I had a good old rant about the self-service checkouts in Whitechapel's Tesco Metro the other day, I'm sure I would have worked that up into a worthwhile piece. At the moment I'm musing on the recent Wikileaks drama, although the amount of good blogging being done on that topic makes it redundant for me to throw my hat into the ring (and then talk through it).

So what you're going to get instead it the first draft of a song that I started working on yesterday. It's a jaunty, discordant reel for children with the working title "Urban Questions" -

Where do you think the water goes
After it comes out from your clothes?
It helps to make the fungus grow:
MOULD
and
MIL
dew!

What do you think the tramp will do
After he gets some change from you?
He'll go and down a drink or two,
THAT'S
his
BIZ
ness!

What do you think the junkies eat
Healthy veg and quality meat?
Or shit they pick up off the street?
DON'T
use
NEE
dles!

Why do the rats proliferate
Despite the traps and poisoned bait?
Because of the speed at which they mate,
TRASH
and
GAR
bage!

And so forth. It's designed to introduce kids to the realities of 21st century living with a sense of resignation and FUN! Maybe stop them being such preachy little pricks as they approach adolescence...

What do you think? Care to contribute a verse?

Technicolor Yawnfest

2010-10-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard this term synaesthesia being bandied about on popular science programmes in the last couple of years - I have, and you'll be unsurprised to learn that it pisses me off.

It's not the phenomenon itself that annoys me, I've always been a bit synaesthetic myself, but the incongruously respectful tone in which it is discussed. I recently saw a description of someone "possessing" synaesthesia, as though it was a fucking superpower or something. All I'm looking for is some consistency here; if we're going to denigrate people for holding delusional (i.e. scientifically unproven) beliefs and associations, let's do so across the board, hmm?

Is it because synaesthesia seems comparatively explicable by means of neurology that it is accepted, even feted? It can be explained in terms of simple metaphors like crossed wires and affects nice people like painters and violinists. I would argue that like the proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder, the fact that synaesthesia is not negatively valued should be dismissed as scientifically irrelevant. Objections to beliefs in all sorts of things are based upon the simple fact that the belief in question is not true, I don't see why we should be any more indulgent of rogue qualia.

Anyway, I scored pretty low in the BBC synaesthesia test, and I'm certainly less aware of it than when I was a child (perhaps it requires constant reinforcement, eh?), but it suddenly occurred to me the other day that in my mind centuries seem to have chromatic associations. Because my synaesthetic experiences are kind of shit, I usually have duplicate colours in slightly different shades, or very pronounced associations for some things in a range and nothing for others. It's most embarrassing.

Here you can see the last millennium or so with the colours I assign each century. The 13th, 15th, 16th and 18th are all clear cut to me... the others less so, but I think this diagram is pretty representative.

As an astutely cruel and pedantic reader, I'm sure you've noticed what you think is a flaw in my table - that the ordinal numbers are always one ahead of the year-range they relate to (1900-1999 are within the 20th century), but you see, the synaesthetic connection is with the number, not the time period.

Which, now that I think about it, renders the whole point of this post obsolete.

:(

2010-10-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

Guys, I just got brought a double shot caramel cappuccino from evil coffee empire Starbucks, and it's FUCKING AMAZING.

Seriously, I'm having, like, a spiritual experience here.

Oh my god.

Seasons to be Cheerful (Part 1)

2010-09-22T01:49:00.000-07:00

As the orbit of the Earth proceeds and its axis tilts us (in the Northern Hemisphere) away from our sun's life-giving fire-bosom; as Summer dies like a hypothermic tramp in the doorway of a celestial branch of Argos and Winter seizes power like a third world dictator, we must seek out positive things to cheer us and fortify us in the months to come.

I'm setting the bar low here, admittedly, but it's come to my attention that the severity of my herpes labialis attacks appear to be on the wane. Used to be that I would wake up with huge blisters which had come to fruition during the course of the night, and there was nothing to be done but apply zovirax and hope they'd fuck off in a week or so. Now, for the second time in recent memory, I've had a very small and inconspicuous pustule which has begun to disappear almost as soon as it arrived. I'm still putting on aciclovir cream, obviously, but one or two applications seems to do the trick.

Do you think, perhaps, that the invulnerability I've always dreamed of is finally kicking in? That soon I will become disease-proof, immune to physical hard, and stop ageing? We can only hope and pray that this is the case. I expect you to pray.

On a less optimistic note, while I was looking at the cold sore page on wikipedia I noticed this section which states:

"Herpes simplex virus type 1 DNA is localized within the beta-amyloid plaques that characterize Alzheimer's disease. It suggests that this virus is a major cause of the plaques and hence probably a significant aetiological factor in Alzheimer's disease."

ZOMG! That's not good. But it does tie in with recent reports that in 2010 dementia related conditions are speculated to cost 1% of GDP.... FOR THE WHOLE WORLD! Yes, 1% of THE WORLD'S GDP.

Mental.

UPDATE: According to the University of Wisconsin (an unimpeachable source, I'm sure) "the frequency and severity of [cold sore] outbreaks generally decreases over time". So there's a chance that my superhumanity will have to wait for a lightning strike or nuclear reactor accident after all.

:-(

No Pun Available

2010-09-16T04:11:00.000-07:00

I have to get back on the blog-horse as the phrase goes, and that means more comics at Jungathon as well as more prose on here. For various reasons I believe I will have the time and energy for both going forwards - my flat's redecoration should be finished when I get home tonight, and all that lovely creative Qi will be sloshing around freely, provided we keep the door to the toilet shut. Autumn's well on it's way, which means evenings spent inside attempting to depict the frustrations and miseries of the day while binging on inexpensive malts. And so forth.

It's early afternoon and already today I've been trapped in the stairwell of an empty building, invited to a fun evening event and eavesdropped on some minor celebrities on the Circle Line. In other news, I'm attempting to quit smoking and improve my lifestyle generally (serious this time), I'm hoping to get an Xbox soon to play some Halo:Reach, and I'm sick of my job. Reading Hawksmoor, which has been recommended to me many times over the years, and am enjoying it so far (although it's pace seems plodding having just read this) and it seems a little on the slim side. Hey ho.

So that's you, all caught up with my life (except for the interesting, meaningful parts, obviously).

Um. Laters.

"The clutter! The clutter!" (Heart of Markness)

2010-09-14T02:15:00.000-07:00

Now, I don't know too much about Feng Shui, but it seems to me an intrinsically sensible idea that a space be optimised to best suit the purpose for which it is designed. Broadly speaking, bags and shoes should not be dropped in hall because a hall is for walking through, and objects in your way make walking difficult or dangerous.

So far so uncontroversial, right? We don't need to postulate a universal energy called Qi to agree on that. Putting down the toilet lid is a bit trickier to explain - I don't really want to get into arguments about the science of flying germs - my bathroom and sink are in a different room to my toilet, which is literally just a W.C. In cases like this, I don't mind having an ontologically questionable substance floating around if it gives me an easy way to explain why I do things. In this example, we would say that the toilet lid is lowered to prevent the household's positive energy disappearing down the pan. Much easier than debating the pros and cons of aerosol effects with someone as uninformed on the subject as I am.

Of course, in reality this is a moot point as our toilet has no lid. No problem though, because now we just keep the door shut to prevent the Qi falling down the shitter. I don't have to bother with the real reason, that a through-draught makes the door creak like a bastard unless it's fully shut.

Anyway, I'm rambling. You can attribute it to bad Qi, or just to all the crap lying around everywhere and the floors being half-done, by my point is that I'm depressed because my flat is in disarray while it's being redecorated.

I could have said that on Twitter, but then you would just have been all like "who cares?", and you'd have been right. And with that thought, dear reader, I leave you to ponder whether the last couple of minutes of your life have been well-spent.

2010-04-29T01:05:00.000-07:00

Young Blood

2009-09-20T03:53:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday morning with a moderate hangover and watched kids' cartoons for a couple of hours; an innocent pleasure I used to do regularly, but which I've not indulged in for a good few years. It was the normal crappy fare one expects these days (with the exception of Spongebob Squarepants, which is a cut above, despite my frequent frustration at the logical inconsistencies created by its underwater setting - probably best if I don't get started on THAT), but what did shock and apall me was a series of advertisements in the commercial breaks.

As I've become more critical of television and consumerism I've become used to observing the cultural and gender stereotypes created/reinforced by toy adverts, and I'll admit that the sort of po-faced criticism that might be levelled at them by feminists is totally valid. The adverts for this toy brand, however, provoked a fresh sense of WTF. It's for a range called H.M Armed Forces, and it comprises a variety of products from action figures to camoflage costumes, toy weaponry and even night vision goggles. It wouldn't have been quite such an eye-opener if the boys (and of course they were exclusively boys) in the ads hadn't been so young. These kids couldn't have been more than 5 or 6, and here they were putting black stripes under their eyes and simulating military operations with accurate scale model guns and kit.

I take conspiracy theories with a big pinch of salt, but it's hard not to see this as a long-term recruitment drive to fill out the ranks in a decade's time. Can this be right? Anyone who knows me will testify that I'm far from your typical liberal hand-wringer, but this isn't about how War Is Bad or any fluffy crap like that, it's about individual rights and social engineering. I can't believe that our interfering nanny state would allow such venal advertising on TV. Obviously it has the official stamp of approval. Would Andy McNab be allowed to endorse a range of similar toys? You could have a wee plastic car battery that the boys could attach to each others' nipples or earlobes for simulated torture sessions. NERF batons for beating confessions out of the "terrorists". A foaming "cyanide" pill in case you couldn't resist the "interrogation" any longer.

Worst of all, some of the ads were blatantly American productions - they hadn't even bothered to dub over the dialogue in UK accents. My God, can't we even produce our own, home-grown methods of indoctrinating British children to pursue dangerous, underpaid roles promoting our interests abroad?

Carrion Blogging

2009-09-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

All I hear, all the time is "Why don't you blog any more? When are you going to update your blog? I can't maintain an erection because you don't blog! I was so busy waiting for you to post a blog that I forgot to feed my baby and it died!" and so, reluctantly, I have resolved to try and scrape together some garbage for you filthy vultures to scavenge through.

Actually, I am sure that I had a fantastic idea for a post the other night while shit-faced, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was. Whatever the content I had in mind, it was topical, clever, and extremely funny - of that you can be sure. Truth is, I've simply felt disinclined to vomit forth my online offerings over the last year for various reasons. The eight or so months I was back in Glasgow were the most uneventful of my life, so unless you're fascinated by the cut and thrust of online Left 4 Dead sessions, or the details of Raynaud's disease, there really wasn't much to talk about.

Well now I'm back in London, the only place in the UK that isn't totally shit, and have secured a job which I am quite enjoying. When I get a permanent place to live sorted out and get back into drawing I plan to document the quirks of my wacky colleagues in a comic strip. Of course, I always plan to do that, but I have a title for this one: "The Bastards".

Alright, that's enough for now, as you were....

Cradle of Ignorance

2009-05-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

More geography, Africa this time.

And I thought Europe was tough.

Last in Location

2009-05-13T05:33:00.000-07:00

There's this job I'm going for, and because it involves satellite communications they expect me to know about world geography. Uh-oh.

So I've been doing some online quizzes to try and learn where's where, and man, I am ignorant! I've started out with Europe, since beyond the big EU countries I haven't got a clue - that whole region between Germany and Russia is just a mess of places ending "ia".

Anyhoo, I played this quiz a bunch of times, and I think I've really learned a thing or two. I'm not advertising this page, it's just the best of the geography tests I found after 5 minutes googling. Have a bash yourself if you've got some time to kill, and drop me a line if you know of any other good geography quizzes I can use to hone my knowledge.

Stopgap Measure

2009-05-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

Any guesses? No cheating!

And here's that shop I promised, while I remember.

CHARGE!

2009-04-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

I need to carry my camera at all times. I keep missing good shots. Fortunately, this is a fixture near Finsbury Park tube.

Soon I will post a picture of a shop called "ffuk".

Very Superstitious

2009-04-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

"When you believe in things that you don't understand," Stevie Wonder opined in song, "Then you suffer, Superstition ain't the way". Sensible advice, I'm sure you'll agree, and not dissimilar in form to the sort of wisdom contained in the Tao Teh Ching. Of course, I'm sure that the gross materialists among you will draw no distinction between superstition and ancient eastern spiritual texts, but that's your problem, not mine.

I'm interested in non-rational ways of thinking, as you may have gleaned from previous posts (or stoned conversations we've been involved in). I can understand the desire to act from a foundation of knowledge (we'll assume for argument's sake that this is an unproblematic concept) rather than speculation or unfounded acausal assumptions. But this preference is surely based on a practical need for consistency of results - in other words, you shouldn't rely on superstition because it is unreliable, and may not function to your benefit. Fair enough, but ought we disregard occasions when it does function to your benefit?

"The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation", said Roger Scruton, and although I wouldn't want to ally myself with all of his proclamations, I rather agree with this one. Anyway, what the fuck am I wittering on about? Well, I got up bright and early for a job interview this morning, and as I left Steve's flat in Finsbury Park a black cat crossed my path. I'm pretty tuned in to everyday auguries like this, though I don't - you'll be pleased to know - make important decisions based upon them.

I was struck by the purity of this encounter. It wasn't a black and white cat, or just mostly black, it was jet black all over. It didn't cross behind me or walk near me, it appeared out of nowhere, walked right in front of me and went on its way. So in terms of the conditions of the old wives' tale, there was no wriggle room - this was as definitive an encounter as could be wished. But was it an omen of good or bad luck? Opinions vary on this, but I have always understood it to be a positive omen. Here was my chance to test the Jungian connection. Would I embarrass myself horribly in front of a prospective employer? Would I sail through the interview with aplomb?

The data set is not complete, but I'll keep you informed on my findings...

Through the Pie Hole

2009-04-27T11:51:00.001-07:00

Reading at the Royal Acadamy before meeting up with my latest gracious host on Friday. The book is Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Dr Kary Mullis - highly recommended!

What the...? What kind of reprobate would have such a scandalous substance in his - or her - house? Tch.

Ah, now that's a bit more classy. Not a bad little collection of whiskies. My host is obviously an individual of taste and distinction. A Whisky Apocalypse candidate if ever I met one.

Oh yeah! It's the big pork pie I've been dreaming of for so long. Why can't you get these things in Glasgow?

Hither and Yon

2009-04-25T03:29:00.000-07:00

I have a few more photos but I can't upload them at the moment because I'm on a MacBook Pro, and I don't know how they work. The camera would probably install its own drivers, but that's a bit of a liberty to take with someone else's machine...

I'm staying up around Holloway Road for a couple of nights with uberhost Maddog (who's off learning to ride a motorbike at the moment). Despite all my lovely London chums' willingness to put me up, it's still quite difficult to sort out the logistics of couchsurfing. I had to leave my rucksack, guitar and laptop in Clapham yesterday 'cause otherwise I'd have had to humpf them around in the blazing sun and central London for 10 hours (God am I glad I didn't try to do that!) AND I wouldn't have been able to hop on the tube to catch up with Hannah before she caught her train back to Manchester.

Now, however, I have to try to collect my stuff before tomorrow afternoon and transport it back up to my next crashpad which, annoyingly, is only about 10 minutes from where I am at the moment. And that will rely on Richie being in at an appropriate moment. I guess the plan will be to pop down there tomorrow morning, grab the stuff, back up to Holloway Road, dump it, go and see Fahrenheit 451 at the Barbican with Maddog, then back up here to collect my gear and meet Stutzy at Finsbury Park. Phew. And I also have to find some time to bone up on VoIP protocols in preparation for my interview next week and get some more job applications off.

It's all go.

Before and Aftersun

2009-04-23T05:32:00.000-07:00

I forget how I'm supposed to be distributing my scant content between blogs now. As it's getting the least love at the moment, I'll go with Hammer of Now for this entry. If I ever manage to document my adventures in a comic-y form I'll post them in "the other place".

So, just to get you up to speed, I'm back in London which is getting a lot of this:

I spent yesterday listening to the radio and snoozing on Clapham Common:

And now I look like this:

This photo doesn't do justice to the disparity of colour between the left and right hand sides of my face like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Ouch!

Pyrrhic Defeat

2009-04-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

For those of you who fill the slender sliver of the Venn diagram where "People living in London" and "People who read my blog regularly" overlap, I have some exciting news: I'm gearing up to a prodigal return! That's right folks - out of the frying pan into the fire, out of the fire into the boiling acid, out of the boiling acid into the heart of a nuclear fusion reactor. It's so crazy, it might just work!

Truth is, everyone who's anyone knows that the Capital's urban sprawl fitted me like a Durex gossamer, and it's high time I stopped fucking about and got back to the action (if you'll forgive my mangled metaphors). Not that my stay in Glasgow has been unpleasant in any way, shape or form - it was a social and emotional necessity - but I feel like a twig caught in an eddy of life's big game of Poohsticks here. Time, like asparagus, passes without imparting any value to my system.

So I'll be scouting out potential crash-pads in case I'm faced with sleeping rough - have your excuses ready!

Passive Aggressive Much?

2009-03-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

For quite a few years now it's been de rigeur to complain about the commercialisation of every holiday that comes around. One way to prevent big business from co-opting our folk traditions is to continually create new ones, thereby circumventing the cycle of corporate merchandising. For example, today was "Doorslamfest", deriving from the annual German event Knalltürnacht.

Knalltürnacht celebrations begin at midnight when you stumble in drunk, allowing the front door of your domicile to close behind you at whatever speed gravity deems appropriate. Proceeding in the same spirit, all the internal doors of your house should be closed with excessive force in order to scare off the malevolent kobolds which seek to induce peaceful repose in your family or neighbours.

After the initial door-slamming ceremony, there is a quiet period (during which celebrants get as much sleep as their personal circumstances allow), followed by a further orgy of percussive portal pressure. This should be as disruptive and extended as possible, eschewing everyday aids such as doorstops and snib-locks, which are strictly verboten for the duration of the festivities. Small periods of peace should be cultivated in order to lull the unwary into a false sense of security before forcefully resuming the noisemaking for maximum disquiet.

It should be bourne in mind that aim of Knalltürnacht is not to produce noise actively, but merely to allow, through omission, as much of a din as one might carelessly create. It is the opposite of Hitzeabfalltag (Heat waste day), a winter holiday during which, by contrast, doors are left open with similar disregard for the practical effects of doing so.

Microhard

2009-03-05T05:59:00.000-08:00

Alright, I know it's boring to hear someone moaning about Microsoft, but I don't indulge in it very often and this is a special case.

Can anyone explain to me why Messenger, and application I use every single day should suddenly disappear from my desktop, shortcuts bar and program list?! Why should Media Player (slow, glitchy, grinding piece of crap that it is), have all the information on an album when I'm playing it, but rip it as "Unknown" when I got to put it on my MP3 player?

Sometimes I feel like I'm going mad trying to use this shit. I have no way of verifying, for example, that the application for adding or removing programs was really entitled "Add or Remove Software" as I suspect. After a long search the other day I eventually found it under the name "Programs and Features". I'm sure it wasn't called that before. I've never had problems finding it before. Do MS updates arbitrarily change shit like this while I'm not looking?!

It's the same feeling as I get in the corporate work environment - can it really be happening as the result of incompetence, stupidity, or oversight? It seems just too perfectly wrong, somehow, to have happened by mere chance. Is there a conspiracy of calculating evil-doers fucking with us? Maybe there are actual demonic forces at work.

I'll be wearing a tin-foil hat before you know it...

Oh. Blog. Right.

2009-02-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

Whoah. What happened to my blogging instincts?! Time was I really enjoyed hacking out some nonsense on here. I didn't even do my annual Valentine's Day update this year. For shame!

I think not being inebriated a lot of the time has seriously reduced my will to blog of late. As I made my way to the inaugural meeting of the Whisky Apocalypse drinking/gaming club yesterday I realised than no alcohol had passed my lips since the previous Sunday! Worra shocker!

Last weekend's outing to Dr Sketchy's Anti Art School was comparatively well attended, with my sister and two of my John-friends along for the craic. Despite getting there to late for a good viewing spot or drawing boards, a good time was had by all. Maybe I'll post some of my less pathetic drawing efforts from the day on Jungathon. We all found it a bit of a struggle to do any decent sketches, to be honest. I maintain that the ladies they put on stage are all a bit too lovely to be much fun to draw. How about a few plus-size models, Dr? Slender nymphs are all very well, but I need shapes to get a handle on, dammit!

The other reason I'm posting now after such a long break is that our Xbox has finally red-ringed (gone bye-bye). UPS aren't picking it up until Monday, so I still have a couple of weeks of no online zombie blasting before it comes back (hopefully) fixed.

*Sigh*

Razzafrazzin' real life, make your own entertainment, grumble, moan. I thought I was going to get lots of art done, but whaddaya know? I haven't! Maybe it's God's way of telling me to pull my finger out and get a job? Actually, I need to do that if I want to afford the new club's Malt of the Month to sip during Left 4 Dead when the 360 comes back.

Apart from burlesque, whisky and unsatisfactory videogame experiences, all I've been doing is injecting LOST season 4 into my eyeballs like a junkie and hoping my brain doesn't haemorrhage. Lord, it's good. Battlestar Galactica is OK, but at best it's like watered down methadone compared to a pure fix of the real deal. Roll on season 5, LOVEFiLM, I'm gonna need it real soon...

Thumb Nail Update

2009-01-31T14:14:00.000-08:00

I didn't know what to to about my half-off nail. If I left it exposed it would inevitably become snagged on something and torn off, to my great discomfort. On the other hand, it was untenable to keep it bandaged or plastered up long enough to grow out. So I have found a piece of plastic of a suitable consistency which I have affixed over the divide with superglue and filed into shape.

It seems to have worked superbly, and I'm well chuffed. I feel like the bionic man.

The Way it Works

2009-01-29T05:09:00.000-08:00

If you're the sort of interesting person who ignores the traditional sanctions on politics and religion as topics of conversation (and I know you are), then you probably speak with some frequency on the subject of belief. Or rather, not the subject of belief but the objects of belief. Allow me to clarify that smart-arse distincton...

Folk are very prone to discussing their beliefs, especially when the topic of discussion is Religion vs. Science, but they seldom examine what exactly is meant by this term "belief". It's presumed to be one of those self-evident, irreducible things - that what you hold to be true presents itself immediately and irrefutably to your conscious mind, like the experience of pleasure or pain. I don't think this is the case. I may not be the most worldly individual, but I've lived long enough to have experienced the shock of discovering that my self-knowledge was utterly, almost comically, inaccurate.

In response to these traumatic times, I've come to realise that it's better to examine my behaviour and make inferences about my beliefs based on that, rather than trying to make my actions conform to a set of principles I'd like to think I hold (but probably don't). All of which long-winded havering leads to the following axiom: If I consistently act as though X is true, then I believe X. A propensity to say "I believe X", or even to think "I believe X" is not sufficient to make it so.

It is for this reason that I consider much chattering on the subject of religious belief (or religious non-belief) to be totally meaningless - what actions in everyday life can be taken as evidence that a person believes in the tripartite nature of God, or that Abraham was instructed to sacrifice Isaac rather than Ishmael? Herein lies the distinction I draw between belief (justified objectively) and faith (justified subjectively). Maybe I'll go into that some other time, if anyone's interested.

"What the fuck is all this about?" I hear you sigh - well, yesterday I was talking to Kearney about safety while we decorated his brother's flat:

"... yeah, whenever I'm cutting something in the kitchen at my parents' place, my dad hovers around nervously and tells me to be careful as the knife is so sharp. It pisses me off - I know how to use a knife!"

Mere hours later I nearly took the top of my thumb off with a Global chopping knife while dicing some garlic. It went through half my nail and a good few millimetres of flesh before my instincts halted the slicing motion. The angle of the cut is such that had my reactions been dulled by drink or fatigue I'd have hit bone and lost a decent chunk of digit. I never cut myself with knives, scalpels, broken glass - nothing. I'm careful. I found myself thinking, seriously, that I shouldn't make comments that "tempt fate" in the future.

If I do guard my tongue against making such claims in the future, I'll have to admit to myself and others that I am guilty of a cardinal sin against rationality - the sin of being superstitious.

Note keywords: "regular" and "events"

2009-01-29T04:56:00.000-08:00

"A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog." - Wikipedia

In order to blog, one must have something to log, so when literally nothing is happening it becomes very difficult to fabricate content. Jungathon material is being collected into a shoddy pamphlet, eagerly awaited by no-one, and I simply haven't found anything to manufacture a sustained rant about on H.o.N.

I'm going to try a couple of posts and see how they work out...

The Wire

2009-01-21T03:40:00.001-08:00

This is of my most prized possessions: a piece of vintage flex resembling the claw of a surreal mechanical bird. My shaky photography cannot do it justice. Remind me the next time you visit, and I might (might) let you hold it. That I saw fit to pluck this spectacular specimen of detritus from the gutter demonstrates my intelligence, good taste, and spiritual superiority. Probably.

WTF

2009-01-20T11:11:00.000-08:00

Zombie Nosh

2009-01-05T13:03:00.000-08:00

Some of you people have commented on my lack of blogging antics recently, so this is my attempt to get back into the swing of it. The truth is that what with the sub-zero temperatures we've been having in Glasgow recently, and the various distractions of Christmas and Hogmanay, I've been suffering from a melancholic lethargy. This has prevented me from doing anything other than playing Left 4 Dead and trying to stimulate the blood flow to my extremities.

Well, let's see if we can't get the ball rolling again in anticipation of 2009 being the best fucking year ever, global economic collapse and Zionist aggression notwithstanding.

As my blog muscles have become atrophied through disuse I won't over extend myself at this time, but here are a couple of photos of tasty treats served by John and Ruth when they were kind enough to have me over at New Year:

Home made sausage rolls fresh from the oven prior to being chopped down to size - mmmmm! One of them had something else in it, mozzarella and salami, perhaps? John? Anyway, they were top nosh!

Gory gingerbread zombies cooked up by Ruth in honour of us guys' addiction to a certain online videogame. In addition to being cleverly conceived, they tasted great - I turned the tables on the undead horde by chomping several of these over the course of the evening (and I don't normally go in much for sweet stuff).

OK, I'll try to up my game in the weblog stakes and maybe even try to get some Jungathon posts up, too...

ALRIGHT? HAPPY NOW?!?

Fitting Fight

2008-11-26T07:46:00.000-08:00

My abandonment of smoking has not been quite as complete as I was hoping it would be when I started last week. I think I was on my fifth day before I got pished and crashed a couple of cigarettes off folk. Then I went another couple of days before getting pished and buying a 10 deck. A similar thing happened a few days after that. There's a pattern emerging.

So here I am on my latest day 3 without nicotine, and I think I'm doing pretty well. I've also been getting back into the running after a letting it slide for a good few weeks. Or months. I dunno, time's been kind of strange lately. I'm trying to keep to my schedule of running every other day, and this afternoon was my third such session. Previously I had had to drop to a walk halfway around my normal 3k circuit, which was a pathetic drop in performance. I put it down to poor lifestyle and natural deterioration, but now I'm thinking it was my fuelling strategy. Last night I ate a couple of enormous plates of pasta and today I felt like I was back on track.

I'm still amazed to discover myself forgoing tobacco for days, doing press-ups, running and using phrases like "carb loading". It may be wanky bullshit, but with any luck it'll mean I don't die of heart disease or cancer in 20 years. And I'm hoping it'll give my creative energy levels a boost. If I can keep up the routine through the winter I should be fit to do a 10k run in the spring. Badminton with the Bad Man tomorrow, not followed by dozens of pints of guinness - I can't afford it.

My God, I'm like some sort of superman...

Outburst

2008-11-18T03:35:00.000-08:00

You're probably not going to care about this, 'cause it's about comics, but it just occurred to me and I want to squeeze it out while it's fresh.

We've got all these people talking about how cartoons and comics are shit these days, are badly drawn, badly animated, don't understand the medium, etc etc. We also have people complaining about how dumbed down comics are, about how The Dandy is now just puerile gross-out humour, for example. Because kids have so many forms of entertainment competing for their time, it is said, in order to maintain any kind of circulation at all, they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

But the thing is, there are loads of good cartoonists out there, doing webcomics and small press things, all aimed at a tiny niche market of adults who like "childish" media like comics. These comics aren't suitable for children, it is assumed, because the content is too adult, there are transgressive jokes, sexual references and so on. So we have this bizarre situation where what's offered to kids is just like what discriminating adults read, but with the craftsmanship, humour and import removed - while the comic artists the adults like languish in poverty and obscurity.

It's madness! And all because of this notion people have about "childhood innocence". Someone I admire (I can't remember who), made a comment about the phrase "innocent child" - that it was a complete fiction; that there never was and never could be such a creature. When people talk of "preserving the innocence of children", what that means to me is keeping them as stupid as possible for as long as possible. I'm still trying to unlearn shit my parents taught me when I was young.

So where is the line to be drawn? Why is it acceptable to produce for children crudely drawn comics about farting or bogies, but not other bodily functions? Why are adults allowed to enjoy childish jokes while children are only provided with bad jokes? Einstein asked "Why do we lock a man up if he has the mind of a child, while children are allowed to run free in the streets?".

OK, that's about it. This isn't very well reasoned or written, I just wanted to get the gist of it down. Maybe I'll do more in-depth comparisons later...

Wait, what?

2008-11-17T14:56:00.000-08:00

I kept checking in here, and I was thinking "man, this blog hasn't been updated in ages", and then I remembered it's my blog, and if I don't update it, no-one will. Although, now that I think about it, maybe I should get Kearney to do blogs here. I've been trying to bully him into blogging for a long time since I always enjoy his little band pieces on MySpace or whatever, and he wants to "do writing" or something, but apparently he just doesn't have time. Yeah, we'll see about that.

So I'm just here to say hello and string you along for a while longer. The irony is that the more I'm out living my life, the less inclined I am to tell you about it. I need to cherry pick witty observations from my normal flow of consciousness. Except all the funny things I think and say are terribly offensive or insulting. All the interesting things that happen to me are far too interesting to relate on an open forum like this. It's always extremes, isn't it? Brain-numbingly uneventful to mind-shatteringly unexpected in the blink of an eye. I need to have more mediocre experiences.

Well, what I wanted to say was, I think it's in really bad taste that every recession news story is accompanied by stock footage of banknotes streaming through machines in thick wads. If there was a food shortage, would they show huge piles steaming hot meat and veg? A drought, lakes of crystal clear water?

They probably would, wouldn't they?

Greasy Baps

2008-11-06T03:46:00.001-08:00

So, was there some kind of big sports event or something in America recently? Everyone's been getting excited about something or other. Well, whatever, I heard a pop-vox thing and this guy said:

"I remember when a black man couldn't eat at a MacDonald's restaurant."

and then he said:

"Now I have friends and clients who own MacDonalds franchises!"

And I think that really does say something about how far we've come. I've been thinking recently, with all this economic upset, I'm quite up for a global socialist revolution. The only problem is my values. You know how you can have a really rich people who still consider themselves "working class", 'cause they're self-made men? I'm the opposite of that - I have managed to get rid of all my material wealth without abandoning my middle-class hangups.

So I'm primed for a revolt, being dissatisfied and having nothing much to lose, I just need to shed my elitism and good taste. I realised this when I was ranting to Kearney about my global revolution "idea"...

"Yeah," I said, "I'm up for that - overthrow the Capitalist death culture and fat-cat corporations, eradicate usuary and redistribute the wealth, get the proletariat to seize the reigns of power..."

I paused.

"Well, maybe not the proletariat, but someone who'll be able to sort things out in a sensible, ethical way."

Maybe I'm not cut out for a populist coup after all. But I'd still like for a blacks of the next generation to say "my grandfather couldn't eat at a MacDonalds restaurant. Now the MacDonalds corporation and the culture that supported it have been eradicated by ethical consumers and radically different, non-exploitative business models!"

I don't really know how I got onto this right-on Utopianism. Why I really logged on was that I heard another guy on Radio 4 ask a lady:

"Do you know what Henry James called the impressionists?"

I just wish people would feed me straight lines like this. It's too perfect.

NintenD'Oh

2008-11-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr Vardar, thank you for your email.

Once linking the Wii to the club account it does need to be left for 24 hours before the link works, then you should be able to login without that error code showing.

Kind regards,

Your Nintendo Team

In the interests of fairness, I thought I'd better put this up and admit that I was able to get my Wii points when I tried again. My accounts had been linked beforehand, so it should've worked in the first place, but hey-ho, these things happen, I guess.

So anyway, if you're one of the unfortunate folk to be brought here by googling "wii points err-0300" and have seen my drunken letter of complaint, well, this is a cautionary tale for you.

I'm Watching You

2008-11-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

Ha, I had another go at this Google Analytics thing, and managed to figure out where to put the HTML to get it "goin' awwwn". Now I'll be able to swither absurdly between feeling depressed about how unpopular I am and the desperate fear that I'm over-exposed. Sweet!

Worryingly, it tells me all kinds of stuff about my "traffic": How many people have visited (1), where they are in the world (UK), what their BROWSER is (Chrome) and how long they spent on the site (10-15 seconds). Now I know that I'll be pumping up the average time visitors spent on other people's blogs, since I tend to lurk around checking out the archives for days at a time.

Suckas!

Nintendon't

2008-11-01T11:55:00.001-07:00

Dear Nintendo (or relevant outsourced customer service proxy),

I have received the error message ERR-0300 when trying to redeem my Club Nintendo stars against 500 Wii points. I have unlinked and re-linked my Club Nintendo and Wii Shop accounts, but despite being advised by the shop channel that the accounts are linked, I am unable to complete this transaction.

This is the latest in a succession of unsatisfactory experiences I have had with the Club Nintendo website. As a long time Nintendo (ahem) "fanboy", it is saddening that my consumer loyalty should be threatened by the underwhelming advantages offered by Club Nintendo. It seems to me that in return for spending hundreds of pounds on hardware and software, and the information provided by my jumping through market research hoops each time I wish to register a product, I am rewarded with the option of purchasing countless articles of promotional tat, most of which are unavailable. Stars I had collected over the years were recently deleted for some reason (correct me if I'm wrong), and when I finally find some constructive way to recoup the time and effort I've put into my Club account, I am unable to do so.

Please advise how I can obtain the Wii points to which I am entitled by long and frustrating association with the Club Nintendo Website.

I am otherwise impressed with Nintendo's commitment to quality video game entertainment, and will watch with interest whether it can maintain these standards while pursuing the mainstream customers it has recently been so successful in accruing.

Yours Sincerely,

Mr B. Vardar

Toucan Play at that Game

2008-10-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

Just a quick response to Chris's latest blog entry over at El Rancho de la Visorbearer, or whatever it's called in the heathen tongue to which he aspires. I thought I'd repost it here since nobody reads his mental bletherings and so my hilarious comment might not garner the kudos it deserves.

Flashy cunt. With just a bit of imagination and some commercial imaging software, however, those of us who have decided NOT to abandon God and dear old Blighty need not suffer any privation on the avian friend front. Observe:

Stick that in your tubulação and smoke it, traitor.

Banned Desinee

2008-10-31T06:43:00.001-07:00

Now that I have these two blogs going on, I don't know how to divide up things I want to post sometimes. Should it go on Jungathon because it concerns my drawing activities or Hammer of Now! because I'm typing it out in prose? I have opted for the latter interpretation, since I think Jungathon should be pretty much all visual, and I simply cannot be arsed drawing out the contents of this post in a craptacular scrawl just on point of principle!

Anyhoo, I've emailed the writer of Serengeti Street to say that I won't be completing the project - at least, not in the form we originally conceived. We started the whole thing without too much of a plan in mind, just to post it weekly on the Logos Comics website and see if it went anywhere. I think things got thrown for a loop by Blank Slate saying they'd be interested in putting it out as a book when enough material was there. Now, they wanted to do about 65 pages, but putting 2 of ours on every 1 of theirs. This means 130 pages, and given that I just sent off the art for page 39, I'd still be committed to 2 pages a week for the next 10 months! The amount of time required to make the art look decent is just too great(you can see the patchy quality in the ones we've posted so far).

I wouldn't mind if the end result was something I'm proud of, but it's not a comic I think I would read myself, and that's not a good sign. All the feedback has been that it looks OK, but is boring and meaningless; an assessment I pretty much agree with. I could just see myself knocking my pan in doing something I don't enjoy for the better part of a year, and then being told that the publisher was no longer interested. Hell, even if they did still want to put it out, I don't know if I'd be happy to see it in print. Blank Slate have some nice stuff out there and have even more nice stuff in the works (take a look at their blog, if you want to compare and contrast), I'd hate to be the weakest part of the line up.

I don't think the writer's very happy about my decision - he's not expressed his feelings in any detail, 'cause I think he's in the huff with me! Anyway, I've suggested that we keep doing it, but cut back to once a week and that we "jump the shark" in terms of the storyline, forget about getting it published and just have some fun with it. If we can get some cheap laffs each week, I think we'll be better off than we are now.

SO, what would YOU like to see happening to the cast of Serengeti Street? I'm taking all suggestions. Also, please send me a few lines if you've got any ideas what I could try my hand at next, comic strip-wise. I think Blank Slate have got a nice aesthetic going on, and I'd love to be able to pitch something else at them for future consideration.

Customer Service

2008-10-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr Vardar

Thank you for contacting us with regard to our Top Down Tomato Ketchup. We are sorry to learn that our product did not meet our normal high standards.

May we assure you that we take the greatest care to ensure that our products are always of the quality you would expect from us. We take our responsibilities to our consumers very seriously indeed and you may be assured that your complaint will be referred to the factory of origin for investigation.

We are sorry you have had this experience with our product and hope you will accept the enclosed voucher in accordance with our money back guarantee.

We hope that your confidence in our products will soon be restored and that you will continue to enjoy them in future.

Yours sincerley [sic]

Paul Turner
Consumer Contact Co-ordinator

We Are Not Amused

2008-10-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Heinz,

I am writing to complain about your 400ml "squeezy" ketchup container. I had assumed that this plastic vessel would circumvent the notorious flaw of the traditional glass decanter evinced in the popular rhyme: "Shake-shake-shake the ketchup bottle, first none comes, and then a lottle"!

To my chagrin, I have learned that this is not the case. In fact, it would appear (to this consumer) that, if anything, the even distribution of sauce is less achievable with the current design than any previous model.

The condiment in question is not dispensed until a certain threshold of pressure is breached, at which point it exits the bottle like a bloody laser beam - the results of which have been deleterious to my subsequent enjoyment of many a bacon sandwich.

I believe that the cause of this unhappy phenomenon is the sphincter-like aperture regulating the flow of sauce from the nozzle. While I appreciate the efficacy of this component in preventing residue build-up, I cannot help but regard it as something of a Pyrrhic victory, all things considered.

Please note that I am otherwise quite satisfied with the quality of Heinz products and choose them over other leading brands in almost every instance (my recent preference for Branson Baked Beans being cost-led and not indicative of qualitative superiority).

I hope that you find this feedback valuable in assessing the priorities of your customer base, and I look forward to your response.

Yours Faithfully,

Mr B. Vardar

The Medium is the Message

2008-10-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

I was speedwalking down to the west end because I was late for badminton with Marshall, but, having remembered - for once - to bring my camera out with me, I took a few seconds to snap a seasonal shot of what is probably my favourite view in Glasgow. This stretch of the Kelvin has had an almost mystical allure for me ever since I first visited there on a blazing hot Summer afternoon in my childhood. It manages to be fairytale pretty in almost any weather, and, if any store can be put in such notions, I'd bet that there are some ley-lines intersecting right around here, peeps.

So after a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon of exercise, Guinness and delicious, unexpected bivalves, I was waiting at the bus stop where I was confronted by the following advertisement:

As a social awareness campaign, I feel that this image is, to say the least, unfit for purpose. Firstly, as a member of the demographic at whom this this ad is aimed, I must say that I resent the implication that I need to be reminded not to commit sex crimes. As a staunch and lifelong non-rapist, I find the very suggestion offensive. Imagine attending a theatrical performance and being told, as you entered, that shitting in the aisles is not permitted. It's not really appropriate, is it? Secondly, as inconceivable as it is that a veiled suggestion of nipple would drive me to violent non-consensual sex, I think, if anything, I'm infinitesimally more likely to commit the said atrocity after seeing this than I was before. The power of suggestion is such that that the operative negation term barely registers, and the core message appears as "Invitation to Rape".

Observe that the accompanying photograph of the girl is shorn of its head, a feature which would surely be regarded as dehumanising were it to be used in another context. Substitute the American Apparel logo in the bottom right-hand corner, and I think we'd be looking at some pretty blatant objectification here, don't you?

Is this sort of thing really going to lessen the intent of potential rapists? Is a single woman at a bus stop at night in Maryhill really going to feel or be safer for the presence of this poster? What would we consider to be the subtext of a placard showing... well, something like this:

Also, that domain name is a nightmare, so I'll help you out by hyperlinking to it. In my opinion, this well-intentioned endeavour is hopelessly bland and ineffectual at best and may actually undermine its own efforts at worst, but feel free to let me know if you've got something sensible to say on the topic.

(You know, this post was supposed to be about my new theory that body modification is a cultural manifestation of the urge to self-harm, but I guess I went off topic. What the hell is happening to this blog?!)

Lipschtick

2008-10-21T13:01:00.001-07:00

I've just been watching Gok Wan's Miss Naked Beauty programme, and I have to say, I fully endorse it. I have certain reservations about certain aspects of feminism, but I am fully on board with this whole "ditch the makeup and stop shaving" school of thought.

Every woman featured in this tv show, without exception, looked vastly better having scraped off the slap and pulled those fucking bits of metal out their faces. Some of them were in tears, unable to look at themselves in the mirror without their cosmetics. I was shocked and appalled.

It's lunacy, I tellsya.

Pizza Nonsense

2008-10-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

"Hi, I'd like to place an order for delivery please"

"Can I have your telephone number and address, please?"

(Mobile number and address given)

"Thanks, and what would you like?"

"A large pizza with sausage, sweet chilli and red onion, please."

"Sweet chilli?"

"Yes, not the jalepenos, the red ones."

"I don't think we do sweet chilli."

"You do, I get them every time."

"Let me just check." (Beep Beep!)

...

"Is it the dried chilli you want?"

"I dunno, is the dried chilli red?"

"I think it might be the roquito sweet chilli you want."

"Yes, fine, good."

"So it was sausage, roquito chillis and - what was the last one?"

"Red onion."

"I don't think we do red peppers."

"Red ONION."

(pause)

"I don't think we do red onion any more."

"You don't do red onion?! I'll have normal onion then."

(pause)

"We don't do onion any more."

"That's INSANE. You're Dominos Pizza!"

"Hold on, I'll check." (Beep Beep!)

...

"Hi, I'll need to take your order again - what was the telephone number?"

"You know what, I'm obviously not going to get what I want from you here, so never mind. Thanks anyway."

This is a shortened, less absurd version of the conversation I've just had. I'm going to try ordering it online instead - though God knows, they don't deserve my custom now.

Dust to Dust

2008-10-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I had to admit to myself that the Spring and Summer colds I had been experiencing since I was a teenager were actually the result of mild hayfever. Today I reluctantly acknowledge a further allergenic weakness - dust.

My chi has been severely fucked over the last couple of months by sleeping in what (in my absence) had become a large storage cupboard, and today I finally made a start on improving the feng shui of my environment. Despite being distracted by the sudden need to rebuild my old desktop pc:

I made good headway. There's a lot of junk piled up in the hall and living room, but my drawing desk is set up again, and I'm making good headway with the remaining shit. It quickly became apparent, though, that my previous suspicions of having a dust allergy were well-founded, as my hands and face began to itch, red splotches appeared, my throat swelled shut and I was racked by sneezing fits and a nose like an open tap. I couldn't even find Kearney's antihistamines to alleviate the symptoms. I still feel pretty rough, but am taking the edge off with beer and cocodamol.

Well, I've achieved more today than I have I have in several weeks, so hopefully by the time I'm done the results will justify the temporary physical discomfort.

I also found the transfer cable for my digital camera (which comes from 2003 and now resembles something you'd get free with a Happy Meal), so I can finally indulge in some visual aids to my online existence... if fucking Facebook stops dicking around and lets me upload them.

Can you see the blotchy redness? It's there, I promise.

Poll Position

2008-10-01T05:27:00.000-07:00

Howdy y'all! If you're here to participate in my famous blog poll, I'm afraid you've missed your chance. I know, it seems harsh, but we have to have a cut off point for these things, I'm sure you understand.

Anyway, the results were very disappointing, indicating a total readership of four, only half of which were sexy female stalkers. I thought I'd start with this honour based system, but it looks like I'm going to have to get Google analytics involved after all. The stalkers will become the stalked!

In other news, I have no other news. You can have a look at my new comic blog here, but I'll warn you in advance that it's not very good. I might have a cup of tea later and write a proper entry here, but I suppose I had better get cracking on the new page of Serengeti Street, since it's due tonight and I missed my last deadline...

Boozy Doings

2008-09-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

Dude, I've been uncharacteristically active and sociable over the past few days. I know, like, WTF, right?

On Sunday my sister and I attended Dr Sketchy's Anti-art School at The Arches. For those of you who don't bother following helpful hyperlinks, Dr Sketchy's is an event where burlesque dancers pose for short life-drawing sessions while jazz-flavoured songs are sung and beer and pizza are consumed. It was most agreeable. I'd post my drawings (some of which I'm actually pleased with), except they are too big to scan, so I need someone to photograph them for me.

Through his sordid music scene "connections", Kearney had also managed to get me on the guest list for Adem at The Captain's Rest in the evening, so I wandered along on my todd and enjoyed some affable pop and folk music. Having kept up a steady intake of alcohol since half three in the afternoon, I probably should have gone to bed after this, but I unwisely stayed up until stupid o'clock guzzling stiff martinis and discussing contemporary culture with an antibiotically inebriated Colin instead. Yesterday my badminton game with Claire fell through due to court confusion and we had drinks outside Cottiers instead.

By this point lack of sleep and excessive drink abuse had caused me to become slightly frayed around the edges, and I was beginning to suffer from a sort of delirious mania. My second pint of Guinness calmed my jittery nerves and gave me the strength to continue home where a sort of dinner event was taking place, but that was all I could physically manage. The inevitable crash occurred, and I spent an unpleasant night sneezing and squirting stuff from the holes in my face. Today I've just been recovering and dreading the work I'll need to do to get the next page of Serengeti Street finished.

Ah well, it was probably worth it.

Split hairs, not sides!

2008-09-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

I received an anonymous comment on my last post:

"what kid of rule are you talking about?"

I'm not in the habit of responding to unknown questioners from the ether, and have no way of contacting this individual directly, but I have a few minutes, so I'll reply here on the offchance that my mysterious interrogator checks back...

The rules I'm talking about are the rules that serve a useful function in making language work as a communication tool. They come in different flavours and serve different functions, depending on the medium in which the language is operating (punctation, for example, applies only in writing while grammar is necessary for effective communication in both the written and spoken word), and vary in importance.

Your query, anonymous, obeys most of the rules I'm talking about, but not all of them. The words are placed in a syntactically meaningful order and you used the correct linking verb ("are" rather than "is" or "am"). The use of a question mark at the end alerts me that the sentence is in the interrogative mode. As a native English speaker, I find all of this helpful in making sense of your contribution. Convention dictates that the first letter of sentences be capitalised, but in this instance the lack of a capital letter is trivial. The use of "kid" is potentially detrimental to my understanding of the question, but the context allows me to infer that a typographical error has been made and that "kind" was the word intended.

Now, I probably sound like a prick right now - that's partly because I am one and partly because we are separated by the internet and you cannot see my friendly smile and twinkling eye. In my defense, let me explain that I am not quite as snobbish as I may currently appear. Everybody makes mistakes. There is a threshold of tolerance that we all need for errors originating from sweaty finger slips or sticky keyboards (eew, get your mind out the gutter!). On the internet, we have always to remember that we may not be communicating with individuals for whom English is a first language, or who lack the benefit of a state education. That's not what I'm talking about.

Nor am I talking about adhering to arcane definitions ("decimate" orginating from a 10% tax), or slavishly following antiquated grammatical rules (avoiding split infinitives). I'm talking about ignorance and carelessness and, more importantly, the mindset that such sloppiness is "no big deal"! Does it matter that someone misuses a word or omits some punctuation? Maybe not to the person committing the error, but I believe that the onus is on him to make himself understood. If you don't take the time to ensure your utterances are easily intelligible by conforming to "the rules" then you force your audience to do your work for you.

That's just not cricket, my friend, and there is a point at which even a compassionate listener will cease to make allowances for unapologetic abuse of language and simply dismiss it as idiocy.

Every Little Help's

2008-09-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

As you are probably aware, I'm a shocking pedant. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, word meaning, syntax... If I've never corrected you on at least one of these you're either as anally retentive as me or we've never met. It doesn't matter that we've just been introduced (I recently alerted someone to the difference between "font" and "typeface" within minutes of meeting her) or that I make such faux pas mysel - I suffer from a compulsion to point out linguistic errors wherever I find them.

Some of you can empathise with this - you do the same thing and understand that it is God's work: a knowledge-sharing habit which will help us all to communicate better. If you had something stuck in your teeth, you'd want someone to tell you about it, right? It's the same thing! But believe it or not, there are people out there who don't much care about these details - as long as you "know what they mean". These people are missing the point. What they fail to grasp is that misusing language is rude and makes them sound retarded.

Of course there are degrees of sloppiness and I do not hold with the didacticism of which some English language proponents are guilty. Tesco changing its "10 items or less" signs to read "Up to 10 items" in response to a suggestion by the Plain English Campaign seems a little unnecessary. While it drives me to distraction when people call Tesco "Tesco's", I've never given any thought to how messages at Tesco are expressed*. "Or less"... "or fewer"... "up to", they all work fine as far as I'm concerned. I'd be much more likely to complain about the combination of numerals and letters.

For me there are several factors to consider when assessing whether to transgress a rule of English. Is the new formulation useful? The same girl I mentioned earlier angrily defended her use of the term "favourited" before I could explain that I thought it a good and natural neologism. Is it ambiguous? There's the classic imply/infer confusion, and misuse of the "literally" in this category. Is the change aesthetically pleasing? Why would anyone want to pronounce Quixote as "kwik-sote" instead of "key-ho-tay"? When Colin and I discussed this, we both agreed that "aggravation" denotes the worsening of a pre-existing condition, and that this meaning should be defended. This word serves a niche function which needs to be preserved.

Of course, what really winds me up is that the so-called "evolution of language" is just that - a blind struggle for survival unguided by a higher intelligence. The phrase is intended to imply complexification, improvement, progress, but the theory of evolution only posits a tendency towards fitness for a particular environment, not towards what we might regard as qualitative improvement. Language might just get double plus ungood if we don't guard it jealously.

Sorry, that got a bit deep there! All I mean is that I'm fine with individuals making a reasoned decision to stick to or abandon a rule of language, but careless misuse or ignorance of language is vexing. While I think there are worthier causes than aisle signs in supermarkets, I'm glad there's still some care being taken over the way in which such information is presented.

*Now that's some good wordplay - admit it!

I need to get out more...

2008-09-08T06:05:00.000-07:00

Somehow I have become a TV watcher again. I'd like to say it was against my better judgement, but judgement didn't come into it - it just sort of happened. What's the worst thing about television? For me it's a toss-up between the programmes and the advertisements, and it's the latter that concerns me today.

Have you noticed the avalanche of adverts for price comparison sites lately? It's ridiculous. I can only assume it's another credit crunch related phenomenon, as we all scramble around trying to save a few quid so we can still buy booze, weed or pornography (I assume one of those vices covers you). And then there are the companies which go out of their way to say that this or that offer will not appear on the price comparison sites, which I think is just plain rude and obstructive. I tell you, if I was looking for a better deal on my car insurance Admiral could get to fuck for that little tactic. I'd rather give my custom to that site with the gurning moron in his cartoon paper world than reward their exclusive bullshit. I think what the world needs now is a price comparison site comparison site to help identify the best price comparison site around.

There's also a plethora of aftershave and perfume commercials around right now... what's that all about? Christmas is the traditional time for people to waste money on these stinking concotions, so I don't know what the deal is showing ads in early September. Not that I particulary object to Reese Witherspoon, Kelly Brook, Eva Mendes and Kiera Knightly on my screen, you understand, and some of the aftershave ads are weirdly funny, I'm just confused. Kearney thinks we're entering the Xmas run-up already, but it can't be that. This level of scent advertisement is not sustainable for the next four months, surely?

Ok, now to rant about a couple of ads that are totally doing my head in at the moment:

Munch Bunch. Remember the Munch Bunch? They were cartoon fruits (no, not that kind of fruit, behave) who advertised fruit-flavoured yoghurt, and it all made sense. Now, apparently, this zany gang has been dumped in favour of a weird rubbery cow which looks like Mooby from the Kevin Smith films, but with little prepubescent nubbin teats (eew!):

Now, this piece of probiotic propaganda claims that a portion of Munch Bunch yoghurt contains as much calcium as a glass of milk - as if that's any kind of kind of inducement to buy it. Why not just give your kids milk? It's cheaper, uses less packaging and isn't produced by (alleged) third world exploiters Nestle. What really makes my blood boil, however, is that Nestle defines a "portion" of Munch Bunch as TWO POTS! How the fuck does that make sense?! Grrr.

Staying on the milk theme, I also despise the latest "glass-and-a-half production" from Dairy Milk. It pissed me off when it was that Phil Collins songs, and this incarnation pisses me off as well. Why in God's name would a drummer ply his trade in a gorilla costume? It's totally impractical. Grrr again.

Thus endeth the rant.

Mindless Blethering

2008-09-06T05:21:00.000-07:00

Oh my dearest God - nearly a whole month and no update to the blog?! Why, you must have been going spare, love. I can't imagine the strength of will it took not to get in touch and complain in the strongest terms that I hadn't delivered your fix of half-arsed narcissism and weak attempted humour.

Well don't worry, because I'm here now, and everything's going to be just fine.

What have I been up to of late? I've been sinking into a quagmire of indolence and poor lifestyle choices, of course! My excercise routine has suffered, and the last time I went out I couldn't even make two miles without having to stop and walk. Sad. On the other hand, the press up regime is starting to deliver a slight but perceptible definition to my pectorals and, as we all know, this is far more important than actually being healthy. Watch out ladies, my burgeoning torso muscles will soon have you frothing at the bunghole!

There was Craig and Jana's wedding, of course - a marvellous day I keep meaning to write and thank them for inviting me to. Definately the most mirth-filled ceremony this year, and unexpectedly emotional (if that floats your boat - it does mine!). Other social doings have included badminton with friends and friends of friends, which sounds a bit "what ho!" (and it was), and several nights out with Kearney sampling the Glasgow music scene. I'd like to elaborate on these evenings further, as the abundance of booze and attractive women make them perfect fodder for my neurotic musing, but sadly I am bound by discretion to keep my fat mouth shut for fear of repercussions. I'm as disappointed as you are.

I got into trouble with the co-creator of Serengeti Street last week, because my hectic recreational schedule caused me to miss my deadline for the new page - oops! The backlog of pages I drew before leaving Manchester has run out, and now I'm expected to produce all-new art... yikes! Not only that, but the strip is now twice-weekly, on Monday and Thursday, which rather ups the ante. In order to appease my writer, I have put some real effort into the new pages and there's a significant change of artistic direction from Monday coming. I'm pretty pleased with the results, but fear that I have set the bar too high for a bi-weekly webcomic, as it's all a bit labour intensive.

Still, one has to suffer for one's art, I suppose. Check out the new page here on Monday, and let me know what you think of the "new look" Serengeti Street.

I'll try and find more blogworthy material to put on here in forthcoming weeks, which will probably mean being less happy, as all good writing comes from conflict and adversity, but I'll do it for YOU - my favourite reader!

Copacetic

2008-08-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Alright, I had a pretty good day today. I didn't win the lottery, or sleep with Alexa Chung or anything, but I had this sort of "mundane pleasure accumulator" thing going on which has built into a solid circadian cycle.

Here's an account of the main events, and then I might make a graph or something to help you visualise how they relate in terms of coolness.

1) Woke up. This is never a good way to begin, but it's the best we have, damn it, until those ivory tower eggheads stop poo-pooing God and turn their attention to more important matters. I woke up hungover on my sister's couch, and waking up hungover on someone's couch is a couple of notches more disorientating than a regular return to conciousness (no offense Clara!)

2) Realised my hangover wasn't as bad as I might have expected/deserved after drinking about 462% more alcohol than I had intended to. Read the collected LLoyd LLewellyn by Daniel Clowes and dug it.

3) Received a fry-up courtesy of my sister ate it while watching Hot Hits Non Stop. I hate it when the hits stop!

4) Caught a bus into town and swung by The Universal for a hair of the dog. I wanted a Bloody Mary, but when I asked the barmaid how she felt about making me one she was visibly unthrilled. Seldom does a bar have the full contingent of ingredients required for a textbook Bloody Mary, so I give some leeway on what I expect, but one thing I know is that the most important factor is LOVE. If your heart's not in the task then the drink will be tainted by the bitter, metallic taste of resentment, so I did us both a favour and ordered a G&T instead. It was good.

5) I read some more of All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Copeland as I sipped my drink. I finished up and strolled to the bus stop just as a number 40 rolled up. Score!

6) Got home, had a banana and some tea, and headed out for a seven mile run. New personal best, baby! Drank an ice-cold chocolate fudge-flavoured milkshake. OMFG, you have to try that stuff. It's a Simpsons-branded variety of Frijj and probably not that healthy, but in the name of the wee man, it's the closest thing to ambrosia our mass-producing consumerist death culture provides.

7) Watched You've Got Mail on channel 5. This was a low point. On a bad day, like if you had the flu and the T.V. schedule was particularly barren, this could well be the highlight, but as part of the current line up, this seems decidedly sub-average. Moving swiftly on...

8) Saw in the listings that Romero's Day of the Dead was on BBC 2!

9) Remembered that the T.V. doesn't get BBC 2.

10) Permanently fixed the T.V. so that it does get BBC 2!

11) Had a hot bath and read Scott Pligrim - awesome!

Now I'm blogging it up Vardar-style and waiting for for the movie, and there you have it.

Nothing life-changing, nothing extreme, but it was, as they say All Good. On current form I can look forward to a good night's sleep and maybe - just maybe - a saucy dream about Alexa Chung...

ROCK ON!

Blame Blam

2008-08-07T14:16:00.001-07:00

As we sipped our sloe gin and pomegranate juices, the Scottish News gave Kearney cause to go off on one about this credit crunch thing. Everything's about the credit crunch, he raved, people enlist the phrase to explain anything that's wrong with their finances while barely understanding what it means. In that respect, I suggested, it was like the 1990s when any weather fluctutation or oceanographic occurrence was attributed to El Niño.

This afternoon I found myself watching the channel 5 matinee movie - some bland comedy drama about a father's three adult daughters all moving home at the same time - and I was subjected to one of those charity adverts during the break. You know the ones, targeted at the sort of elderly and/or feeble-minded people who watch bland comedy dramas on channel 5 in the afternoon, and aiming to raise money for, not humans, but dogs. Well, technically it was the World Society for the Protection of Animals, but it was mostly dogs they showed in the commericial. Presumably their campaigns are regionalised and they don't show the same ones in, oh, China for example.

Apparently the mistreatment they try to prevent is so cruel that they can't even show us it, for which I was thankful, but I'm afraid their alternative footage of wet poodles and a lame donkey accompanied by R.E.M's "Everybody Hurts" was far from enough to melt my frozen heart. Who are the WSPA anyway, I've never heard of them. Why should I give them money rather than the WWF or RSPCA? "Don't just turn away" the advertisement pleaded, "give just £3 a month or whatever you can...". Sorry, I snorted, don't you know there's a credit crunch on? I can't afford to be giving away money when we're in the jaws of a credit crunch you know.

So you see, we need to turn these things to our advantage. Next time a homeless man asks you for money, mutter "credit crunch" and blame the forthcoming recession for your lack of Christian charity. I'm thinking of having it put on a T-shirt.

Epicurious

2008-08-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

Sloe gin and pomegranate juice, touted by Kearney as being "so good" should, in theory, have been the highlight of my week. You've probably noticed, as you've gotten older, that novel experiences are increasingly hard to come by. At least, novel experiences that you are comfortable participating in - there are always things like base jumping, fetish clubs and intravenous drugs to explore, but I'm saving them for when I'm properly jaded. In the meantime I have a few things "in reserve" to enliven me when things get drab: greyhound racing, Japan, these new-style 3D films they show at the IMAX - and what about those berries that make stout taste like chocolate after you've eaten them? There's something to look forward to. You don't want to rush into anything, you know, you have to stretch these things out over the rest of your life. If you've never tasted marmite, you've really got something to look forward to.

So anyway, I'm keeping the good stuff ring-fenced for the moment, and returning to things I haven't done for a long time. The running's coming along fine, thank you very much - my normal circuit is about 9K, and I'm loving it. Yesterday we went to the sport centre and played badminton (or a bastardised version of it), which was one of the few sports I enjoyed at school. It was great - we didn't get laughed at by kids or anything. I know I'm a sweater from my runs, but I hadn't expected to be even more saturated after an hour of comparatively sedate quasi-badminton. It's a bit embarassing, really. I tried to make myself feel better about it by thinking of the sweat as "win lubricant". I lost by four games to two.

With my healthy new diet I've been getting into some of these "superfoods" to see what all the fuss is about. Blueberries and pomegranate in yoghurt I have had recently, but not pomegranate juice. Gin I am obviously familiar with but sloe gin I don't think I've had before. Surely this combination would be enough to tickle my novelty bone and provide that frisson I was looking for? THIS DRINK would give me the intangible feeling of being truly alive that all men seek! It would confound my senses by refusing to fall into a pre-established category of experience - like the first time I heard "Hey Ya!" by OutKast. Why, it would be such a raw, zen-like experience that I'd probably want to write a haiku about it!

Yeah, I had totally overhyped it in my mind. Pleasant enough, but far too sweet for my tastes.

World Wide Pleb

2008-08-01T05:08:00.000-07:00

Broadband is go! Contrary to all my previous experience as a consumer, O2 have managed to set me up with a wireless router and connection just as their frequent SMS updates predicted. Amazing. So I'm back online and here if you want to talk - it won't be exactly like speaking to the Samaritans, since they specialise in non-judgemental listening and I specialise in sarcastic kicks up the arse, but it's horses for courses really.

I'm ashamed to admit that I missed teh interwebs terribly while I was incommunicado. Just like the mobile 'phone, I have come to expect and depend upon the internet, although I had to wonder just how pressing my need for it was when my first acts upon reconnection were looking up a definition of the term "frottage" and requesting the friendship of a loaf of bread on Facebook (I'm not even joking).

Obviously the next step was to get the videogame consoles hooked up. The Wii presented no problems whatsoever, with its clear interface and simple connection procedure, but the 360 (surprise surprise) was a nightmare of menus, ethernet cables and entering address information via its nasty non-querty push-button dashboard. And I don't even know what I'm supposed to do now that it's connected. I was obliged to take a month's gold membership as a free trial, but I have no intention of buying more peripherals just so I can be virtually bullied by children in some death simulation. Suggestions welcome.

That's it for the moment, peeps. There are many plans in the pipeline for my stint in Glasgow, but they must remain top secret for now, because it's all too exciting and you'd probably shit your pants.

Crazytalk - July's Bulletin

2008-07-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

Believing, as I do, that skepticism (in the true sense of the word) is the correct philosophy to apply to most aspects of life, it doesn't sit easily with me that I am often tempted into magical thinking. I have to be careful to regard seemingly significant correspondences with an appropriate degree of dispassion, and apply as scientific an attitude as possible to whatever anecdotal evidence I have to hand.

Sometimes this is easy, interesting and fun - like when I was having mental dreams one full moon, and I came into work and asked Danni if she was having mental dreams (testing the astrological connection as her birthday is so close to mine), and she was and got all freaked out! This, like a lot of my vague correlations, will no doubt be explained away by materialist spoilsports, but every so often there's a clumping of common experiences amongst members of my peer group which seems to defy the vagaries of mere statistical distribution and selective filtering of perception.

Lately, it seems, there's been a common theme of crisi-tunity among a good proportion of my closest friends, and I'm wondering if there's some spurious pseudo-mystical shorthand explanation I can hang it on - anybody have any ideas about that?

Not that I'm advocating you all join my cult and come with me to the Mountain of Vardari to dance and sing, get naked and await the coming of Lord Kronsabu...

Or AM I...?

Radio City

2008-07-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

First day of unemployment since April - W00T! I must admit that I had a nice long lie-in, which I felt a bit guilty about, but since the weather has been absolutely appalling today, it's probably for the best. There's been a lot of thunder about in the past few days, and some torrential rain. The downpours are interspersed with sunny interludes, as God tries to trick me into going shopping or for a run, before tipping it down again and soaking me - IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK, YOU BASTARD!

Actually, it's grey at the moment, but looks stable, so I'll go for my run in 15 minutes or so, once my banana's digested and my tea is drunk. It makes me laugh now to think about the pathetic little 'round-the-block laps I did when I started running. I was so pleased to be able to make a full circuit without stopping, then two... At the moment I'm adding these little laps on at the END of my proper run, just to push things out a bit each time. Next milestone is to keep going for an hour solid - right now I'm up to about 45 minutes.

Strangely, the running has had the side-effect of turning me on to a new radio station - Manchester 106.1 fm RRRRRRRRRRRRROCK Radio! Now normally, as you know, I'm a staunch Radio 4 listener, but I'm getting into this other station as the dark yang to PM's edifying yin. It's like having tea with the vicar before heading home for some dirty sex with a flying V!

YEAH!

2008-07-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

I'll no' buy the caged bird's wings

2008-07-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, that's possibly the most contrived wordplay I've ever squeezed from my think-sphincter.

I'm planning on going for a run after The Simpsons, and I'm a little too hungry to get by just on a banana, so I thought I'd pick up something a shade more substantial to digest beforehand. Eggs! I thought, some protein - with a liberal helping of my favourite chilli sauce, a couple of eggs on toast will be just the dab. Ony problem is that all three of the shops I went into on the way home only had eggs that looked suspiciously un-free range. Closer examination revealed that I was correct - after decyphering the bizarre little classification system, (placed there, I assume, for the sole purpose of obfuscating the origins of the avian ovarian omelette ovals) I found that the birds used to produce them were "caged". In case you hadn't guessed, that's like, the worst one on the list!

Now, while I'm not sentimental about such things, Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall's recent attempts to improve chicken lives hasn't left me untouched by the plight of these stupid creatures. And apart from that, the quality of these eggs is going to be poor - any bets I can't even crack the bastards without the yolks breaking.

Well anyway, I don't buy chickens myself, so I have a clear conscience in that department, and I promise that in future I will do more to avoid purchasing the eggs of maltreated fowl.

That post sort of petered out. Hmmm. No time to rescue it, I have to make my eggs of evil in the 3 minutes before my daily half hour of TV.

Open, sez me!

2008-06-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

The gorgeous Robyn has also now advised me that she was hurt to not be able to read my blog - reminding me that I hadn't reset the fucking thing so that anyone could see it. D'Oh!

Well, here you are, access to one and all, for what it's worth. By way of explanation, I've had a somewhat turbulent few weeks, as those "in the know" (ie, all of you) are no doubt aware. While blogging is a fun means of self-expression, there are times of instability when you don't necessarily want the world to know what's on your mind and those foolish, hateful emotions threaten to overcome the modicum of good sense that the great Lion Spirit of the Universe has seen fit to insill in you. For this reason, I took the eminently sensible precaution of shielding any potentially deleterious babblings from you all, thus avoiding embarrassment, regret and self-recrimintation at a later date - Hurrah!

It's definitely my craziest year since 2000, peeps, and things are still a little up in the air at the moment. Am I going to stay in Manchester? Am I going to go back to Glasgow? London presents certain practical challenges, but I'm sorely tempted to return to the metropolis...

In what may seem an act of madness, I have informed my work that I will not be staying on, and this week will be my last there. Jesus J Vishnu, I cannot wait - being completely stressed for 9 hours a day while trying to help a load of businesses sort out problems with their God Damned mobile 'phones is just no way to spend your life. I'm looking for something not screen-related, possibly with some light physical labour and plenty of talking to the public. I need my time and energy to work on comics and/or being happy.

And with that, let the bidding war for my presence in Manchester, Glasgow or London... BEGIN!!!

Hammer Horror

2008-06-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I got two people whining to me that they couldn't see the blog for the last two weeks - I would've appreciated a little more outrage, but c'est la vie. Thanks for your support anyway, guys.

Not much in the way of witty banter to throw your way at the moment, I'm afraid. I just got back in from a weekend trip to Glasgow, after which I'm feeling a little deflated. It was great to hang out with family and various chums, but I was rushed off my feet trying to fit in all the folk I wanted to see, and I still didn't manage it. Ah well, I'll be trying to get up more regularly from now on, so hopefully I can correct this at a later date. Shit, I need to get to London soon, as well - between Glasgow and the capital, I'll be using all my holidays for the coming year just making breathless short-stay trips to opposite ends of the country!

Anyway, lest you get the impression that my hometown has had a depressing effect on me - not so. I think it's just the pummelling my new-found healthy lifestyle took while I was up there. Four nights at home and my non-drinking resolution has taken a major hit. What could I do with Munro or Bell or my sister and parents if alcohol wasn't involved? Fuck all, that's what. I did manage to stick to my running schedule, getting out and about on Saturday in the Bearsden 'hood, and I've been out this evening, so that's on track (if you'll pardon the pun).

Here's hoping I'll have an interesting week full of anecdote fodder for your delectation... maybe I'll get fired tomorrow? Or hit by a bus? There's everything to play for, people!

Flex!

2008-05-31T16:45:00.000-07:00

OK, so my HTML and image hosting woes continue - I can't get a full page to display on this narrow fucking blog column, and I can't get a decent fucking thumbnail from Imageshack.

Just click here to see my latsest dashed-off cartoon diary fragment, you bastards.

Fitball Pitfall

2008-05-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

Typical. You wait months to meet another Glaswegian in Manchester and then a hundred thousand come along at once. I only learned about this thing last night, and I have to admit, it's taken me somewhat by surprise. I rather underestimated the scale of the event, as, I think, have the Greater Manchester constabluary. Here's me - in a spectacularly ill-judged green tie - trying to get home through town without anyone hearing my accent 'cause I'm fucking terrified that, if asked, my latent tourette's syndrome will kick in and I'll say "get it up ye, y'hun cunt, I'm a Celtic man". It's like some kind of biblical plague has descended on Manchester, devouring the conents of chip shops and off-licenses with no heed for the local population.

Actually, the atmosphere has been pretty good so far. With the scale of it, there's less trouble than you'd think. Of course, I've heard a few renditions of the Billy Boys issuing forth from coaches, and apparently others have, too. "'Up to our necks in feinian blood'", I heard a regular at my local say, "disgusting seniment". True, I felt like saying, but to be fair, they're only up to their knees in feinian blood. Don't exaggerate, you fucking English twat. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.

Even where I am in Salford, all the pubs were stowed out with Rangers fans carrying slabs of lager on their shoulders. I was worried that my offie would be sold out, but I got a couple of brews and a wee bifta, so I'm set. My local miraculously managed to discourage the fans with the following sign:

Which was either going to work perfectly, or get the place burnt to the ground. Fortunately, it was the former. I had a couple of pints of Sledgehammer Stout (8%), which I intend to include in my forthcoming ale review soundbites. Stay tuned.

Raiders of the Lost Art

2008-04-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

I would have some workspaff for you for today, except that when I came into work this morning I discovered that all my stuff had been thrown in the bin. Notes, blank A4 pads, handouts, all trashed. I managed to rescue most of the things I needed but the spaff was gone.

Stolen, probably.

For those who are interested, here are the titles I can remember:

Pin Up Thing
Butlertron 3000 (now with human teeth and revolt mechanism)
Maximum Disquiet
"This is your new cell mate"
Octopus Knife Thrower
Squidboxer

Oh, and the Serengeti Street Weekly update is in its second week of being posted on time - Page 5. Actually, I've finished page 6 as well, and I'm much better pleased with the drawings for that, but it looks like you'll have to wait another week to it :(

Bombard Mr Editor of Logos Comics with popular demands to increase the output frequency.

THAT IS ALL!!!!

Hammer of No

2008-04-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

I took this today - kudos if you can guess the context!

To boldly Spaff where no man has Spaffed before

2008-04-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a treat for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fans and freudian analysts alike. Served up steaming hot from my subconcious to your internets, my latest worktime opus...

Wot i dun in training

2008-04-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

Some workspaff for you.

And page 4 of Serengeti Street is up, too, for all YOU fucking care, you feedback-shy CUNTS.

It's your Booty to be Dutiful

2008-04-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

So I'm no longer unemployed, which is a real weight off my responsible protestant shoulders. The dress code is pretty strict - suit and tie Monday to Thursday, but I don't mind that too much... it gives me the excuse I need to start suiting up on a regular basis, and removes the need to try to put together a coordinated outfit from the few clean items I have to hand on any given day.

It's the most frustrating part of a job, the start. Sitting about watching people do their thing, not being able to chip in, feeling like an idiot, but hey! it's gotta be done. Actually, I think I'm going to rock the place when I start getting my head around the systems - on my first day I had to fight the urge to take over a call from the girl I was "shadowing". Long 'phone silences, uncertain manner, quiet monotone voice, lack of personality - she was a "how NOT to" of customer service in my humble opinion, AND she didn't seem to know the difference between an 087 prefix and a 078 prefix, which is just ridiculous.

Yesterday we had a "motivational" training session called FISH! (you may have heard of this), where we were shown a video of American fishmongers being all wacky and loving their jobs, and were then asked how we could implement the same kind of working environment. I wasn't anywhere near as scathing about this as I could have been - I'm just in the door after all - but I made some skeptical comments when invited to. Did we have any criticisms of the film? A fun working environment and high energy levels are not things you can "implement", I said. What might prevent us from achieving working practices similar to those in the video? Being British, I said. I think my comments were taken in the spirit in which they were intended.

I mean, come on. I know my last company had some major problems, but there was a golden age, you know. I was a member of TEAM HAPPY BEAUTIFUL, for fuck's sake. We didn't need teambuilding exercises and inspriational seminars. We were Team HB because we were the SHIT - end of story!

[Edit - Danni, I was trying to find a photo of the old team for here, and I don't have anything. This makes me sad, please help! Oh, but I did find a photo of you from your new job - where's your neck?!]

Diary

2008-04-14T14:52:00.001-07:00

Spaff

2008-04-14T14:01:00.001-07:00

Spaff

2008-04-10T08:59:00.001-07:00

O, hai!

I know there are some people out there who like to see my Spaff (which is the name I give to the miscellaneous doodles I produce), so here's a page I spaffed last night.

I'm not finding my brushpen as universally useful as I used to, and have been unable to get ahold of my preferred Rotring Xonox markers. I bought a couple of similar disposable markers and was rather pleased with the lines I got.

Faftrotsky is a character idea I've been kicking around for a while - no idea what to do with it. Basically it's just a reference to the Fortean abbreviation "falls from the sky"; inexplicable showers of out-of-place objects, often frogs or fish.

Other than that it's a bit stream of conciousness. Click on the image for a larger view. Sorry it's not ruder.

Boring Update

2008-04-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I should continue squeezing pearls from my blog-hole for you swinish ingrates, but I suppose it's been a while...

Currently listening to a fascinating Radio 4 programme about herpes - chances are you'll have it by the time you're 30, you know, 'though if you're lucky (like me) you'll only have to suffer blisters around your mouth and not on your cock or fanny.

I had a very promising interview ealier today. Hopefully I won't be among the hordes of the unemployed much longer. The company even seems to have a decent idea what it's doing in terms of growth and investment in its employees (though don't they all seem that way at first?). I'm confident I'll be back for stage 2 of the interview process early next week - please wish me good luck in the comment section below.

For London members of my inner cadre, please be aware that I am hoping to visit the capital for the weekend of 3rd May, as there is a certain musical event I wish to attend (I think you know what I'm talking about). Hope to see all you bastards there - if not, we'll need to arrange something, eh? Please offer me the use of your spare room and/or sofa in the comment section below.

Welp, not much to add to that for the moment. Episode 3 of Serengeti Street is now up, and more should be coming soon. Please register your wild enthusiasm for my artwork in the comment section below.

Toodles.

Fly me to Buffoon

2008-03-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this story.

I'm just listening to the details on Radio 4's PM, and I must admit to schadenfreude when hearing of BA's woes. I can't help gloating over the total predictability of this high profile fiasco and the utter incompetence of the people whose job it was to make sure the opening of terminal 5 went smoothly.

But then while I was getting the link for this post, my eye was caught by another T5 news story from yesterday. I hope you share my discomfiture at the thought that the corporate equivalent of Norman Wisdom could soon be taking your fingerprints.

"BAA said the data was encrypted straight away and destroyed
within 24 hours, in line with the [data protection] act."

Oh, well that's OK then, consider me totally reassured.

Anyhoo, I didn't come on here to blog about Heathrow, did I? No, I came on to plug episode 2 of "Serengeti Street". The artwork rocks, if I do say so myself...

The Estrogen Weekend

2008-03-24T05:52:00.000-07:00

So, apart from picking up my pens again (see previous post), what have I been up to recently? Well, last night Lady Muck and I went up to the Northern Quarter for drinks with some chums who were celebrating a birthday.

They had a significant lead on us, and I was treated to a detailed story of bikini-line trimming misadventure before I'd finished my first pint - ace! At chucking out time we got to see a proper bit of good old fashioned Manchester street violence.

A couple of harridans were going at it outside a club - always a captivating spectacle, I'm sure you'll agree! I watched with interest, knowing from previous experiences in Glasgow that it is absolutely futile, and not a little hazardous, to attempt to intervene when the ladies give it laldy.

Suddenly, things had escalated and two "gentlemen" were rolling about in the road pummeling each other with serious intent. I'm not talking about these namby-pamby bitchfights you see with little slaps and pushes, these guys were going at it. Having downed his opponent, the victor went back to administer a couple of vicious kicks to the head - it was hardcore!

I assume that the emergency services turned up at some point, but we didn't stick around. The dude wasn't moving, so he could be dead now, for all I know. Brutal. It was a bit like watching one of Trevor MacDonald's alarmist tabloid programmes, probably called "Booze Brittania" or something.

The gang came back to the square for some wine and light guitar action and the night would have ended on a high, had my gorgeous companion not seen fit to persist with a line of questioning regarding the cleanliness of my trousers which culminated in a mutual huff.

Ah well, the moon is full and Christ is risen - it's a strange time all round, Easter.

Serenghetti Street

2008-03-24T02:18:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to do some drawing - hurrah! It's for a chum of mine who wants to do an animal soap opera, for some reason.

I spent yesterday afternoon doing some character sketches - which was stupid 'cause I could've just ripped off Fritz the Cat - before beasting (ha!) into page 1. You can see the result here at Logos Comics, and I'll let you know when it gets updated. We're going for a page a week at the moment, which is easily achievable, but if it comes together as smoothly as this page I can see myself wanting to step that up to twice or thrice a week.

Watch out Eastenders!

Lend and Spend to Amend the End

2008-03-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Following on from my incredible "Horse Keyboard" concept (inspired by Mr Editor of Logos Comics - check it out!), I have recently considered the idea of a handlebar mounted bicycle keyboard. Any competent multitasker should be capable of cycling "no hands" whilst operating an alphanumerical input device, non?

Also, lest anyone regard my entrepenurial spirit of invention as a purely selfish means of accruing wealth and fame, check out this innovation mofos: The Moulderdown^TM

This revolutionary notion allows contemporary eco-concious citizens to reduce their fuel bills, reuse organic waste and increase their living space in a single stroke. Recycle your compost heap or wormery! give your duvet to a homeless! by mulching your banana skins and teabags in a Moulderdown, you can save the planet while you sleep! The heat byproduct of rotting garbage will keep you toasty-warm on those chilly winter nights and by spring - Hey Presto! up to a tonne of high grade mulch is ready for the garden or state-owned allotments.

You see, it's through fantastic consumer product ideas that I'm doing MY bit to save the planet. What the fuck are YOU doing?

Virtual Tumbleweeds

2008-03-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post - partly because nothing much has stimulated my droll gland recently and partly because I've not had one single piece of feedback since I started the damn thing. Oh, I know you're out there, you fuckers, and I've had numerous confirmations via other media that you're reading this shit, but nobody has seen fit to check in on the Hammer page itself.

At least on MySpace I could see the number of "times viewed" clocking up (even if it was random perverts from the web cruising for details to help them with identity theft) - I feel like I'm pissing in the wind here! >:( @ all of yous.

Thus endeth the rant (for now). At the moment I'm in a rather nice little pub in York drinking a local dark ale named Wonky Donkey, having tagged along with Platypussy who's attending an energy-efficiency workshop here with some housing developers. I've been traipsing around town since 10:30 in the pissing rain and wind looking for a bar or coffee shop with Wi-Fi and have a couple more hours to go before she's finished. I'm racking my brain to think of some recent news absurdity to riff on in my usual hilariously irreverent style, but nothing's coming to mind.

(Checks BBC News feed)OK, let's give this a go...

The phenomenon of time dilation, whereby a subject's frame of temporal reference slows in relation to the rest of the universe, has three primary causes:

1) Proximity to an enormous gravitational force, such as a black hole.

2) Extreme velocities, especially noticeable as a subject approaches the speed of light

3) Exposure to BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine a half-hour programme that seems at least twice that duration.

Even still, I can't quite find it in my heart to mock the death of Foggy Dewhurst.

"Girl dies in 'freakish' accident" story looked promising, but contrary to all indications it's not in the least bit funny. "Man faces laundering charges"? "Maternity unit closed to mothers"? "Huge rebuild of asbestos hospital"? Nay, nay and thrice nay!

I think we're just going to have to face the fact that I have nothing much of interest to impart to you today, sweeties. Why don't you confound my cynical expectations and tell me what I should have written about?

Here's a picture of me as one of the undead, created by my brother-in-law Scott Miller. I think you'll agree it's mighty fine! Cyberhands up who'd pay a couple of quid to have themselves zombiefied?

Dotsam and Netsam

2008-03-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

One of the great ways I've found to waste my life in this topsy-turvy 21st Century world is a little internet application called StumbleUpon. You connect yourself to folk with the same sorts of interests and the random internet garbage is filtered for you before being piped to your screen.

It can be frustrating when all you get are lame stick figure webcomics and LOLcats, but now and again you come across an image or page that tickles your whajamacallits.

I stuck this:

on my stumble blog this afternoon, and since I went to all the bother of editing a jpeg in paint, I thought I'd repost the whole kit and caboodle here for your viewing pleasure.

This clarinet gun will be an invaluable reference for my forthcoming graphic novel - Acker Bilk: Steampunk Vigilante

Yawn of the Dead

2008-03-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I bet there are a lot of negative reviews of George A. Romero's latest movie out there, and that a lot of them have the same trite title I've plumped for. Puns I considered and rejected were:

Gay of the Dead (homophobic)
Shite of the Living Dead (tenuous)
Bland of the Dead (innaccurate)

Georgie-boy's new effort somehow manages to belabour his "satirical" point in an overblown and ham-fisted manner while leaving me none the wiser about what he's getting at (something about YouTube and camera phones,I think). The script would be hard enough to stomach even if the acting wasn't deplorable, and even moments of unintentional humour were few and far between.

I was hoping that Diary of the Dead would be a return to form after the lacklustre Land of the Dead, but sadly it was not to be. The similarly titled British indie flick The Zombie Diaries is far superior even though it is a bit amateurish, and the camcorder conceit of DotD suffers by comparison to Cloverfield's realistic approach, motion-sickness notwithstanding.

Poor show, Romero - FAIL.

Computer says "No"

2008-03-05T10:32:00.000-08:00

Hi-di-hi, campers! You'll be pleased to learn that after much hullaballoo and gnashing of teeth I have finally fathomed The Secret of the Inaccessible Wireless Connection. I don't want to say too much about that as it's the subject of my forthcoming mystery novel, but come a little closer dear hearts, and I'll relate to you my latest adventure in the realms of consumer electronics retail...

It was a dark and stormy night... at least, it was in my heart - outside it was a crisp and sunny day - but let's stick to my emotional reality for now, shall we?

Having overcome my creative block I was trying to assemble my crudely scrawled crayola drawings into some sort of comic-like product on the computer. It quickly became apparent, however, that the 2nd hand laptop and fauxtoshop product (see what I did there?) I was using were not up to the job, so I girded my loins and decided to invest in some new hardware.

After plodding about for hours in the wilds of Manchester and braving Old Trafford on match day, I finally reached PC World, where I was exposed to the sort of dismal customer service experience I've become accustomed to in such outlets. There I was, circling the laptops like a confused but hungry vulture for a good twenty minutes before realising that no staff member was going to assist me of their own volition. Eventually I managed to make someone aware that I wished to spend hundreds of pounds on one of their products, only to be informed that it was out of stock...

"Do you know when it will be back in stock?"

"We get new deliveries every day"

"So you'll have more in tomorrow?"

"Not necessarily. We get new units every day, but we don't know what they'll be."

"Ah-huh."

"Hold on while I check..."

"OK" (twiddles thumbs while she looks at a screen)

(Pointing) "See, the Preston branch has 16 of them and the Bangor branch has 44"

"Yes, but that doesn't do me much good, does it? We're in Manchester."

"No."

"Goodbye."

And so I dragged my blistered tootsies back to the tram stop with murder in my heart. That wasn't even the end of my ordeal, friends, but I'll spare you the monotonous details of how my day continued in this vein at the dreaded Currys Digital store at the Arndale centre. In the end I did manage to get my grubby mitts on a machine with the specs I required, and even managed to overcome the trauma of installing Vista compatible drivers for my peripherals, but that's a story for another day.

PG: Contains mild geological violence

2008-02-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

Every so often there occurs in the UK some event of astronomical interest - you know the sort of thing; aurora borealis, comets, meteor showers and so forth. Why, only last week I was informed by the media that we were to experience a lunar eclipse which would, they said, turn the full moon blood red.

Needless to say, this spectacle was obscured from me by the thick blanket of cloud that habitually lies across the skies of our sceptred isle on such occasions. It's almost as though God - or whatever celestial board of classification He has put in charge of these phenomena - judges British sensibilities too delicate to be exposed to gaudy displays of natural splendor and slaps the divine equivalent of a black bar over them so we don't get too excited. I bet the Swedes and Dutch get the full hardcore experience in technicolor with gratuitous close-ups and surround sound.

Anyway, I am pleased to announce that the Lord's censorious hand did not prevent me from experiencing the earthquake that occurred in the early hours of this morning. I had just finished enjoying a classic documentary on the history of comic books (such is my life), and was settling down to a spot of BBC world service when the entire building seemed to lurch to the side and rumble a bit. I'd love to be able to conclude with a cheeky anecdote like I was having a ham shank at the time and thought I'd spaffed my kidneys out, but in point of fact I just assumed that the epileptic guy upstairs was having particularly violent seizure and had fallen into his wardrobe.

Full Frontal Blasphemy

2008-02-24T06:44:00.000-08:00

"I want a cat. When we move in together we can get a cat."

"I think, if we were going to move in together, it would have to be on the condition that we get a houseboat."

"Yeah, OK... But that's not really compatible with cat ownership."

"Of course it is - you can have dogs on a houseboat!"

"Dogs, yes, but a cat is territorial. It won't like being moved from place to place."

"Well... we can give it a lobotomy."

Latest Inventions

2008-02-19T04:49:00.000-08:00

Wind turbine/helicopter hybrid
Balaclava bag
Helium filled umbrella balloon
Reversible shoes
Mushroom-shaped wine corks
Horse keyboard

Hearts and farts

2008-02-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

St Valentine's Day! A lot has changed since last year's blog entry on this topic (back at the the old MySpace ranch), when I was compelled to vent bile at Northern Line users bringing their stupid bouquets on the tube. Who's sexually inactive and stuck at Oval NOW, bitches?!

The 14th of Feb snuck up on me somewhat this year - if you don't watch TV you tend to miss the weeks of tell-tale advertising that precede it. Fortunately my main squeeze is not much one for trumped-up commercial holidays, so a restaurant booking was not required (phew!). My buddy the Kearnmeister (who was in the vicinity yesterday squeezing a few afternoon beverages in between bouts of in-law insanity) recommended a burrito place in town which I'm quite keen to check out. So, as it transpires, I'll be prevented from pursuing my whims by the crowds of couples who will no doubt be crammed into every eatery in town on this romantic holiday - bah!

I think what I shall do is get some chips and guacamole, tortillas and a few cans of refried beans and take them across the road to my woman's gaffe for a cheap, cheerful, gas-inducing repast.

You load 16 tons, and whaddaya get?

2008-02-12T07:18:00.000-08:00

Another day dawns and still I can't quite get motivated to pursue gainful employment. Obviously I'm rationalising like crazy to mitigate the feelings of guilt and anxiety created by this indolence, and I'm just about keeping "the fear" at bay - for now! Having a roof over my head and enough cash to get by for the forseeable future helps, but I'm hoping boredom will act as the goad necessary to facilitate my re-integration into productive (i.e. taxpaying) society.

Part of my touble is that I have enough stuff to procrastinate with. Although my lack of internet connectivity at home is (on one level) a rage-inducing barrier, it does provide a seemingly unachievable goal in favour of which my job hunting can be endlessly deferred. I've just spent a good few hours conferring with knowledgable ex-colleagues over MSN, taking notes of technical details and shuttling back and forth across the square to try shit out in my Network Settings - to no avail. The other thing "preventing" me from doing the needful vis-a-vis job applications is the necessity to invest in this activity both financially and psychologically; I need a haircut and a new suit (expenses which will, ironically, seem less and less affordable as my savings dwindle) and to generally get into the frame of mind in which I'm capable of doing telephone interviews on the hoof and spouting the appropriate crap about my previous position. That means not being drunk during work hours, which is a big committment for me.

Man, I used to be so big on the whole Protestant work ethic/free market economy thing, and now I'm getting all hippyish about life. I can barely get all the nothing done that I want to in a day without selling eight or nine hours of it to "the man" so I can afford to live. Maybe I should just cut to the chase and be like this guy:

Since it's increasingly likely that it's going to be my eventual lifestyle in any case.

Sunny day, sweepin' the clouds away...

2008-02-11T03:17:00.000-08:00

I had some toast and some tea (which tasted like fish for some reason - a chemical reaction with the Marmite) and sat a-doodling for a while. I was drawing a series of what I imagined Chinese dragons' faces looked like, and I wasn't even particularly ashamed of the results. If only I had my scanner set up I could show you. But there's no point setting up my scanner, is there, because I can't get my bloody laptop online. There's the flat's wireless router, good signal strength, good speed, but for some reason I cannot get an IP address assigned to it. I've been through everything I can think of, and I'm getting nowhere.

This is especially annoying since I want the internet up to apply for jobs in IT and data networking. It 's just God's way of rubbing my face in my own ineptitude. Anyway, I suppose I could get my scanner set up, re-install the drivers, upload pictures to my computer, download them to a flashdrive and then upload them elsewhere before putting them on a web hosting service and fucking about with HTML to get them up here on my blog, but I doubt it's worth the effort.

After drawing cat-headed monsters for a while, I decided to make the effort to txt Hannah and find out what was happening. Turned out she and a friend were already up at the Town Hall enjoying the festivities! One short power walk later I was there, buying overpriced paper toys and making jokes about Beijing's atrocious history of human rights violations. I must say, my dragons are considerably better than most of the ones I saw yesterday, which tended to look like this:

Not at all what I had in mind. It's like something off of Sesame Street! The day held many more twists and turns - pints, Sunday roast, social faux pas and a late night film fight...

Hey, who wants to be in my new band - Late Night Film Fight?

Making a Me out of Monkey

2008-02-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

You know when you stay up really late watching The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy back-to-back? And then you have a long, involved dream about a malicious music teacher detuning your guitar and hiding your graphics tablet under his bed in an effort to discredit you? We’ve all been there. The worst thing, though, is when you wake up unreasonably early and unaccountably angry at some obscure piece of linguistic stupidity you’ve never noticed before – that‘s the icing on the fucking cake.

“Direct descendent”. What’s that little redundancy in aid of, then? What could it mean to be an INDIRECT descendent? The only thing I can think of is if Alexander the Great was your great-great-great-etc uncle rather than grandfather, or if you were some sort of non-ginger great stepchild of Queen Elizabeth I – in neither case, of course, are you really a descendent at all. It’s similar to my objection to an archaeologist’s use on the radio of the term “ancestor” for a million-year-old monkey boy whose skull has recently been discovered to have holes in it characteristic of dismemberment by a large predatory bird. That kid’s not my ancestor! Maybe there’s a golden eagle out there which can claim to be a “direct descendent” of his killer, but I’m satisfied that the hairy little hominid is a low hanging branch on my family tree.

At any rate, this is hardly an auspicious start to my day. I suspect that my current frustration is an expression of disappointment that yesterday’s Cheshire charity shop crawl yielded nothing more than a couple of L. Ron Hubbard paperbacks combined with the beginnings of a sort of homesickness for London. I have been mentally preparing myself for the latter, but I guess it still has to be endured.

The Chinese are celebrating the start of the year of the rat today (is it just me, or does it ALWAYS seem to be the year of the rat at Chinese New Year?), so I may wander into town in the hope that there’ll be a big dancing dragon to distract me from my relocation woes.

Erratum

2008-02-08T06:52:00.000-08:00

I should correct the misapprehension that you may be under that I am now living in Manchester. I know, I know, I have led you to believe that this was the case, and to tell you the truth I've been a bit confused about the situation myself.

The truth is that I am actually in Salford, which is not the same thing AT ALL, apparently. Folks around these parts tend to get a bit agitated if you confuse the two. Now, I have done some research into this matter - there is a book of local history beside the toilet which I regularly consult - and I think that at least some of the resentment comes from the fact that Manchester began as a suburb of Salford. Over a period of about fifteen years in the mid nineteenth century Manchester made a big effort and superceded its origins, obtaining its city charter in 1853, and has never looked back.

People up here are pretty obsessive about where they're from and where they live in a way that Glaswegians and Londoners just aren't. They argue about it, write songs about it, have big posters of the city on their walls and books of local history next to their toilets. They're INTO it. They fucking love their local pub. They sit in the local pub and talk about what a great pub it is.

It is a great pub - I'll tell you about it sometime.

Northern Femi-sphere

2008-02-07T04:13:00.000-08:00

Wow, is it time for my bi-yearly post already?

Seriously though, I really need to get back into the blog habit. Everyone keeps asking in shrill, desperate tones "We don't have enough bloggers! Your country NEEDS you (to blog)! How will we win the War on Terror if Mitchell doesn't blog for victory?!"

That sort of thing - you know. So having looked over my old myspace entries (and laughed my ARSE off!) I decided I had better get back on the horse. You'd think I'd be perfectly placed to entertain with tales of my recent transition to Manchester. I'll do my best, my dears.

Hannah and I set off from London at about nine o'clock on Sunday morning, and after a few white knuckle moments like driving up a one-way road in Clapham and doing a U-turn in the middle of a 6-way junction, we were off. The rest of the journey was pleasant and uneventful, except for one incident just outside Birmingham. Looking down the opposing dual carriageway, Hannah said "What's all that smoke?". Seconds later we found out, as a small blue hatchback went barrelling past at about 90 mph with an enormous plume of smoke emitting from its rear. The entire back half of the vehicle was pouring fumes, it was like something out of a Tank Girl strip... or that Cheech and Chong movie where their dope van catches fire on the freeway.

Anyway, it was ace - I hope nobody died.

Having arrived in Manchester and unpacked and so forth, we met up with some folk in the pub. WOMENfolk. Now, I have no problem hanging out with my distaff counterparts as I hope you know, but I was totally outnumbered all evening (being the sole male) and rather found myself struggling by the early hours. The random group shrieking, the discussion of menstrual issues, the countless false "goodbye"s as we inched towards the door before being sucked back into another conversation.... brrr! Lovely ladies, all, but I shall be trying to avoid such oestrogen-soaked circumstances in the future.

Pancake Day was a far better mix - there were artists of both genders, some loud Australians and a couple of maths geeks in the corner arguing over the merits of base 6 versus base 5 or 10 numerical systems. Had I known there was a competition to see how many pancakes each guest could eat the evening may have turned out very different, but as it was I had spoilt my day-long fast with a couple of double cheeseburgers on the way over, and managed to consume a paltry five crepes. My total was dwarfed by the eventual winner who put away ELEVEN, after being goaded "Don't draw with a girl!" and "Finish on a prime number!". Impressive.

Stay tuned for more of my wacky adventures "Oop North"

I'll drink to your health

2007-10-12T02:47:00.000-07:00

Wow, is it time for my monthly update already?

I just read an article about kidney donorship that made me distinctly uncomfortable. I'm absolutely terrified that I'll be asked one day to donate a kidney to a friend or (worse) family member (worse because the obligation would be greater while my enthusiam would not).

I asked around my colleagues at work, and it appears that everyone but me would unhesitatingly submit to procedures such as this if family or friends required it. Even notoriously excrutiating processes like bone marrow transplant would be undertaken with abandon, it seems.

Are they just ignorant of the potential dangers, discomforts and implications for their future lifestyles? Perhaps they're just the self-righteous, lying bastards I've always suspected they were... but maybe their interpretation is correct: that I'm a bad, bad person.

It occurs to me that as with donor cards, the most important step may be to let my parents, peers and siblings know my intentions up front, you know, to avoid embarrassing encounters in the future. Maybe send out a card saying "Please don't ask for a kidney, as refusal often offends!".

Given that a culture of binge drinking will most likely be the cause of kindney failure in anyone I know, it seems highly unfair that if they've used theirs up partying they are then entitled to claim one of mine! My strategy is clear - I have to pip them at the post by continuing my heroic alcohol intake and making sure that if anyone's asking for a kidney handout, it's me.

1 - Mine
2 - Mine
3 - Mine
4 - Mine
5a - Mine
5b - Mine
6 - Mine
7 - Mine
8 - Mine
etc.

Awkward Introduction

2007-09-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

2...
1,2...

Hello? Goodness me, it works!

Now that MySpace has ceased to be an appropriate repository for my assembled musings, I thought I might try having a blog somewhere else, somewhere anonymous where my friends can't find me and I can expose their dirty little secrets with impunity. The truth is that I am a frequent reader of Mr. Biffo's page hereabouts and I occasionally leave comments which (for all I know) come across like a drunken eavesdropper suddenly imposing himself on a conversation in a pub. I thought perhaps to redress the balance by "putting myself out there" a bit so that for the unwitting recipients of my random opinions there's the option of reciprocal voyeurism on offer, should they choose to pursue it.

I'll try to get some good posts up before I deign to tell anyone of my sordid pastime. I'm hoping that at some point in the not-too-distant some facility will become available to download my social networking pages, emails, IM chats and other dotsam to a chip that can be planted in my headstone (or head) if I die, and that archaeologists and aliens will be able to pore over my banal life and laugh at my puerile humour.

Ciao f'now, bitches!