Pride was loud.

I don't really know what to think of it yet - it's not that the whole thing was a let-down but it seemed completely insincere somehow. One thing that was interesting about the whole day was home many fags there appear to be in the city. Although I know people come here for Pride from all around the country, most of them must have been locals. Somehow there wasn't one cohesive event that pulled it all together - the rides, dildo stands and mushroom vendors left me somewhat cold - that and the incessant drinking that was going on all around. There was little pride being exhibited, but a lot of drunkenness. It appears that I'm supposed to be proud of the fact that gay boys know how to drink and can display this to the world. Personally I don't think this is a wonderful attribute, but more something that represents some deeper misconceptions and preconceptions about what being gay means.
That's Vinnie, a guy I met a while ago in a club via another friend who I'd also me via another friend. I went over to say hi after receiving a text asking me when I was going to say hello. This was five minutes after I'd gone over to his little group of friends and hung around for a few minutes saying hello. He and another friend were so busy screaming for a boyband who were onstage (5Boyz) that they clearly didn't register that I was there. I was there. I went back, they laughed, I smiled and then went back to my friends.  



Natalie was very brave and risked looking like a Steps revival group member, donned the sparkly hat, and had fun. She's here in the middle of the crowd, thronged by people and looking stunning as usual. On her left is the mom of one of my best friends from work, who'd come to support her son at Pride. There's nothing better, clearly she's the best. Insert loving cliche here.  

Off to it

Finally am able to get out of the house and off to the big event. Lets hope there's still something left to see. Whatever.

It's a day of preparation

For the people coming over later this evening. Which means that whilst everyone is cleaning, I clean and munch on the little pieces of cake I hide around the place. Cake and detergents don't really work all that well, but the fact that no-one else knows makes is fun! It's a game anyone can play.
Of course part of this eating cake palaver is a distraction from the fact that Pride is on today and I'm not there. I want to be there! Of course the fags will still be there tomorrow, so I'll have to create a gang and join in then!

The end of Friends

My sister, on her way to a "Friends" finale party. She's been doing a load of exams at the moment so she and all of her friends have been experiencing Exam Hell. She's done eight now with only nineteen left to go. That's so three years ago for me, it's scary. Still horrible. Hairbands are supposedly somewhat cool at the moment - well at least not so awful to not be allowed in cars anyway. Teenage fashion, what a blast. 

Abu Hamza extradited. Who wins: The Sun

What's far more interesting than the fact that the UK Tabloid press' main focus of terror hatred is being extradited is the scramble to be the first to announce the news and the tips that some papers may have been receiving. The Guardian today examines the way the tabloids are treating the arrest of the cleric, who is famous for ranting against the western world whilst oddly enough, also participating in it.

"The tabloids call him the "evil, hook-handed one-eyed cleric" and each fights to be seen as the paper campaigning the hardest to get him out of the country, but yesterday the Sun stole a march on its rivals when it revealed that Abu Hamza was to be arrested at 3am.

The paper's political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, had been given notice that police would conduct a pre-dawn raid on the cleric's home. He claimed his sources were based in Washington and that the extradition process had been under way in secret for weeks.

He wrote: "The arrest marks a spectacular victory for the Sun. MPs and moderate Muslims have praised our campaign to have the one-eyed hate preacher locked up or booted out of Britain." "

The Guardian's analysis
The Sun's splash

Skipping class for Kerry

"Two high school buddies from Olympia who joined the Thurston County veterans group to hear Kerry summed up the range of opinion. Isaac Silverman 'skipped math class' and got Kerry's autograph on a math assignment. He hopes to become a state delegate for Kerry."
Seattle PI: Kerry speaks in Seattle

Invoking Teddy Roosevelt's maxim that the US should "walk softly and carry a big stick", Senator Kerry reminded his audience of Roosevelt's less well-known conclusion: "If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble." Senator Kerry said: "That is precisely what this administration has done. It looked to force before exhausting diplomacy. It bullied when it should have persuaded. It has gone it alone when it should have assembled a team. It has hoped for the best when it should have prepared for the worst.

"In short, it has undermined the legacy of generations of American leadership -- and that is what we must restore."
The Australian: Bush has tarnished US image: Kerry

Blue in the face

How is it that Bluemountain cards are still a pain in the ass. Over the years they've been singled out as one of the most annoying sites on the net - creating pap trash product that crashes browsers and annoys you for its banality. One of my friends insists on sending me 'eCards' from them, meaning that every few weeks I have to go through the motions of waiting for it to load, look at the idiotic picture, and then try to scroll down to the bottom of their page before the browser crashes. It never makes any difference what PC I'm on, whether on IE or Mozilla or what. They're biggest pain the world has ever seen and they never get any better.
I don't begrudge her for sending them - I've never told her that they're rubbish and a pain to even look at, but that doesn't mean that I like them, just that I'm too timid to tell her they annoy me!
MSN Bluemountain

Off to sleep & The Boys

Been dragged all around town today after doing a marathon session at the gym. Exhausted, but have committed to going clubbing tonight so i'm off to sleep for a few hours beforehand. I'm just knackered.
Blah to it all.
Too many clothes, mirror image pairs of jeans, almost rude t-shirts and overpriced 'boutique' shops. It's all tat made in sweatshops really, just with really expensive window displays.

UPDATE: The night's over and it's time for the recovery stage. We were a group of eight in the club, every so often bumping into random other people someone would know. Whilst I decided not to join them in the bar they were at I wrote this:

I'm waiting outside the club. For once there's literally no queue, which is nice! I'm waiting for my friends to come out of a shitty bar that's trying to charge me to get in before I purchase their overpriced drinks, so I've decided to wait out here for the two minutes I'd actually be in there, and we can meet up at the club. Crap place anyway. So I stand here waiting. P

Although there was no line, the place wasn't dead, simply not quite as jammed as it normally is. Perhaps that was because Pride's this weekend and so people were saving themselves. Though one guy I know mentioned that a lot of his friends were doing that but said he was saving himself for pride too, but just wasn't going to stay in on a Thursday night!
The two guys were there also last night, desperately trying to avoid eye-contact most of the night, whilst watching me from a distance. It's infuriating - they so want to appear detatched and independent, but also are constantly trying to attract attention - coming over and dancing just feet away from me, standing around in clear view watching the dance floor but really focused right in my direction. If they were going to be obvious about it, that'd be fine, but their claims to be involved or 'too fucked up' get tired. Just as I was leaving the club this morning, I notice two guys making out by the door. I get my coat and walk past them, one sticks his leg out, knocking into my side and almost tripping me. As I look back to see what happened, he waves to me, signalling goodbye.
If he's going to be making out with a guy, he should do it full on rather than pretending to and secretely watching me in the background. That's just cheap.

Ducklings, well, geeselings really

I saw the ducklings making their way down the canal and had to have a shot of them. In the sunlight they were glowing like little light-bulbs, turning heads as they went. Of course in a few short months they'll be like their parents, ubiquitous and loud, but right now they're beautiful. I can't think of anything more perfect, when going along the canals, than some wildlife traffic to accompany us. 

Workers Uni

The name of the moblog was going to be Workers Unite, but for some reason the server cut off the end of the name so it became Worker's Uni. I think that's kind of interesting though because it makes look at it again thinking, "that can't be right!", and that'd be correct because it really isn't right. I've made the moblog in the hope that some of my friends will contribute to it as well, sending their random images they've taken to it, having a laugh with photos of snails meandering up their front paths or scenes of their girl/boyfriends messing around with icecream cones on the beach whilst on holiday.
Anyway, whether it works and is a success or whether I take it down because no-one's interested, I don't know. Either way, it'll be an experiment. Of course it's dependent on how many of them have cameraphones, but that's really not something I'm thinking about. I can't help that, I can only hope they use them.

Henna

Have just finished henna-ing my hair. I've never done that before. To be sure, it was an experience, and much more positive than dying has ever been. I've only died my hair once and then it was basically dry and strawlike. I hate died hair which is why I was hesitant to Henna my hair, but I was only prepared to do highlights anyway and people had said that Henna doesn't dry out as much as most other dies. So that was good. I like the result that I have at the moment because with my dark brown hair it doesn't show up all that much - it's quite subtle. I may apply some more later this evening though, just to bring out the highlights a bit more.
I had fun though - feeling like one of those 70 year old women you see in beauty parlours with their hair in curlers. Of course I was perched on the side of my bath reading my book with only a pair of shorts on, but it's kind of similar. I'm sure they'd be wearing only shorts if they were at home!
Ewww - bad image.

Henna

Have just finished henna-ing my hair. I've never done that before. To be sure, it was an experience, and much more positive than dying has ever been. I've only died my hair once and then it was basically dry and strawlike. I hate died hair which is why I was hesitant to Henna my hair, but I was only prepared to do highlights anyway and people had said that Henna doesn't dry out as much as most other dies. So that was good. I like the result that I have at the moment because with my dark brown hair it doesn't show up all that much - it's quite subtle. I may apply some more later this evening though, just to bring out the highlights a bit more.
I had fun though - feeling like one of those 70 year old women you see in beauty parlours with their hair in curlers. Of course I was perched on the side of my bath reading my book with only a pair of shorts on, but it's kind of similar. I'm sure they'd be wearing only shorts if they were at home!
Ewww - bad image.

WTC - My Story by Jeff Jarvis

I've just been listening to him talk his way through his experience of the attacks - calm and slow and stirring in his clarity. He talks of arriving at the WTC lobby to find shoes covering the floor - shoes that people have jumped out of as they run to get away from the building. He doesn't know what they're doing until he gets outside and a policewoman screams "RUN" at the people emerging from underground. They run.

Jeff Jarvis

"hello"

I'm trying out Blogger's new picture hosting site. I'm not sure yet, but it looks ok so far, but of course, it is yet another application to load to do another individual task. It seems a shame to do it like this - via an independent company and an independent application - after Blogger has JUST been redesigned to make it all smooth and integrated. Funny timing, but still, let's see what this "hello" thing is all about. Click the little bobble by the side of the image to see for youself. 

Leaving them...

I can't decided whether it was a hard thing to do
Or simply another step on the road to greater things.

I didn't even mention that I'd left my job. I handed in my resignation weeks ago, and Friday was my last day. I don't know why I didn't. Perhaps because it felt like nothing, almost as though I was just taking days off sick, or perhaps because I don't want to talk about it because I don't really know what I think about it yet. Anyway, I'm gone, no longer of the working classes, now of the even-lower class: Students.
Scary
I'll post on this when I know what to think.

message from the past

So I'm just having a great day here, having met up with friends in town, I'm walking home and thinking about nothing. I'm feeling great, no pressure, just completely relaxed. Yeah.
Then, my phone beeps and I get the message:

XXXXXX (15:38): R u here 4 pride?

Which sends me into a spin. I don't know what to do. This is a guy I'd set behind me, someone I'd thought I'd missed. I stuck my head out only to get it smashed by in like a turtle being attacked by a hammer. He was so nice in not being interested, which was bad enough, but then he's friends with a lot of my new friends too, which doesn't make it fun. It makes it shit.
I liked him so much that I thought it was worth that hassle, so when he said that, I thought that I should still be friends. I like(d?) him, so what's the point in being unfriendly? But at the same time I didn't want to be too friendly because that way I would see the good things about him and want to be able to have them. Luckily, he wasn't too good at just being friends so I saw bad sides of him too. I liked that really, it makes it easier to not be disappointed. But everyone has faults, has their own things that go wrong with them, errors in their behaviour and callice in their eyes from time to time.

It's hard though, to focus on the negative when the positive is so bright and it's shining through the black card that you're holding up to your eyes which simply reads:

NO.

And of course, the whole thing is so much more complicated than this, there are other people involved people who don't like me because I once wanted them, people who like me but I don't like them, people who don't like me becuase I don't want them. I hate relationship politics. Office politics I can do - ultimately, you can walk away from it with a clean head, but with politics of your heart, the strings are always there tugging away at your emotions, making you miss love.

Tick the box

I love the 'Employment' boxes of forms when you're a student. It's always endless fun. Or when you're on some really technical website and the only options they give you are Tortion engineer or Shear specialist. Or something.

From another blog profile:

# Age: 17
# Gender: male
# Astrological Sign: Cancer
# Born in the Year of the: Tiger
# Industry: Chemicals
# Occupation: aromatic chemist

right....
I'm thinking that he's either not 17, or he's not an aromatic chemist. When you're a student you can have so much random fun just messing about it forms, choosing the most obscure jobs you can find.
"What field do you want to work in today Amy?"
When working, it feels more like cheating when you put the wrong information into forms, so I do it less, but if you're a student and they don't even have an option for Students, I just think of the site as very stupid. Ok, perhaps I'm not going to buy something from them this very moment. I'm not going to subscribe to the NYTimes today or anytime in the next year. But, if they get me to read it now, then perhaps I'll subscribe in two years time and then I might get my office to buy copies for employees in the chillout room or something. Think long-term people. Kids today know what they're interested in, so it's not only going to be professionals reading information on journalism (poynter.org take note) and not only do boring old farts read about chemical engineering (ICI).
Anyway, not that those companies DON'T allow you to say 'student', but so many like them don't it's hard to remember the last time someone DID.

have Pride

It's Pride here, and I'm not going to get out on Saturday night. That is a tragedy. I love having guests to stay, especially from the states, but this time it's just really bad timing. Someone's getting married and my parents are obliged to attend, leaving me to be the host for their American guests.
I love these guys of course, they're a lot of fun and their kids were my friends when we lived in Seattle, but just now I don't want them to be here that evening, I want them to be somewhere else. Of course they're really important people now so will be jetting around Europe all the rest of the time they're here, meaning this weekend will be high value time for them. That's great of course, but for the fact that it's high value time for me too, it's a crucial stage in every gay boy's life, their first Pride. I have loads of friends to go with, people who are wanting me to be there, to dance all silly and to have a laugh. I want to go, but unless I can swing it somehow, can't.

How about a takeaway? "Hey, we're supposedly famous for our wonderful Indian takeaways - try one out! See you at 4 o'clock tomorrow morning!"

Feedburner

It seems like a good idea, an xml/rss screening website that will take the feeds your server creates and modify them to make the readable to just about anyone. I like the idea, but can't be bothered. I suppose it only really matters if lots of people are having problems reading your blog on syndication, so it might be a thing for someone like Instapundit to consider, but for the rest of us, there's probably no point, especially when so many blogs have such a low reach.
Like mine!

Feedburner - "pre-alpha" edition

Biggest laugh I've had in ages

"100 thing you may or may not know about me":

#44 I neatly trim my armpit and pubic hair and hate when guys don't do the same.

#45 For Junior and Senior year I was the only guy on the girls gymnastics team. Their slogan on their sweatshirts were "We Love Richard." On mine is said "I'm Richard."

#46 I've had my heartbroken 4 times.

#47 I've had 3 boyfriends.

#48 I hate feeling like I'm "needy" or a burden to anyone.

This guy is hilarious, and I can identify with a load of the statements on there, though I'm not telling which ones especially. Plus, he seems to have his head screwed on right, with a laugh-at-yourself kind of attitude which is always fun. Props to that.

I had a dream.

The kind of thing you want to announce in Martin Luther King style but think it'll sound silly. I had a dream and that's momentous because I actually remembered it. I don't normally remember dreams - I'm too tired, or I wake up too quickly or I'm just too dumb or something. I always want to remember my dreams but never really can, which is a shame because I'm sure they'd be great. I think mostly it's because I wake up so damn quickly and therefore everything just drops out of my head like a stone. And I'm ready for the day.
Anyway, there wasn't a lot to the dream, but because it was there at all, it was an event. Basically I open the door to our house and some insurance guy comes up to me, covered in black smoke and grit, saying that our neighbour's house has burned down. I look across the street and yes, it is burning down jus tthen. And there's smoke in the air and I don't know why we hadn't noticed it before because there's laundry in the back garden that needs to be protected from the smoke. I don't know why we didn't notice it, but our neighbour's house is burning down.
And that's it. I think I came up with that little story because I'd been reading out Household Insurance policy (fun eh!) to find out what's covered, and so the idea of insurance and damage and stuff was still in my head. I think that's why the house was burning down. Either that or I hate them.

Six Feet Under billboard

LA's commuters have a new mega-sized billboard to gawp at. Whilst these mammoth ads normally advertise the most recent SUV or phone company, California's new ad depicts almost reality-tv style scene. Apparently, the guy putting up the billboard for the show, where all the lead actors are at the top and the show title is lower down surrounded by white space, has fallen from his scaffolding and has left a long line of red paint down the front of the billboard.
As a comment on the site reads:

Since the show is set in a funeral home, a character dies in the beginning of each episode (usually in a gruesome accident, although sometimes not). Their obituary appears on a white screen (as seen on the sign) before the opening credits are shown. So Mike Henderson was painting the sign, and...

Six Feet Under poster

Chernobyl Ghost Town fraud

A small tragedy has befallen me here. A site which I loved the idea of and the enthusiasm behind has now been revealed as being false. A while ago I posted (or at least I think I did) about a woman who'd been making motorcycle trips into the now deserted town of Chernobyl. It turns out she wasn't, and was really simply misleading people with head shots of herself with a helmet on. The story is still cool, if only from a human nature point of view.

"I have ridden all my life and over the years I have owned several different motorbikes. I ended my search for a perfect bike with a big kawasaki ninja, that boasts a mature 147 horse power, some serious bark, is fast as a bullet and comfortable for a long trips. I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads.

The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes.

In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again........ a few centuries from now."

Ghost Town - Introduction
Debunking it

I love my ISP!

"At blueyonder we're committed to being the best and as part of this commitment we have upgraded our blueyonder broadband services.
There's no extra charge for this - it's absolutely FREE which means you can enjoy 50% faster broadband for your existing monthly charge."

Where before they had tired links to third party scumbag internet sites, they now have high quality content, where previously I had spam I now have an empty inbox and when I used to wait for downloads they now zip onto my computer as fast as a little buzzing bee!
My wonderous ISP just gets better and has now increased my speed 50% for free! Yah! 750kbps is more than enough for me, and I'm giving props to them! Of course BBC content still features highly, but with free digital camera image hosting for up to 200MB, film trailers and generally just clear links, they've never been better! Congrats to them, and to me for loving them so darn much!

50% faster
broadband entertainment

Panther, Tiger, Lynx?

"CUPERTINO, California— May 4, 2004— Apple® today announced that Steve Jobs will kick off its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote on Monday, June 28, 2004, beginning at 10:00 a.m. at San Francisco’s Moscone West. This year's keynote will include a preview of “Tiger,” the next major release of Mac® OS X."

Everyone's saying how Apple is going to release a new version of the OS this year. That sounds good in theory, but to me it's just going to be annoying. Apple, famous for being an education led organisation where much of their sales comes from the students and academia, will experience a huge surge in orders for the 2004-5 college year. They want to release an OS this year but clearly aren't going to get it out in time for those of us buying their products this summer to benefit. Unless they give out free updates/upgrades to the OS for those who'd purchased a new PC is say the previous six months before release of the software, I will be mightly pissed off.
I'm thinking, why would I want to spend almost £2000 - over three thousand dollars - on a new computer if it's going to be deliberately outdated perhaps only a few weeks later. I'm hoping that Steve Jobs, at the June WWDC, tells those present that he's preparing a move like this - a move to compensate followers. I'd hate to get pissed with them right after buying from them.

By the way, what's with the whole nature thing? Intel does rivers (Cupertino etc) whilst Apple does big cats? At least with Microsoft they make up some useless rubbish to codename their stuff and then give it another less goofy title when it goes on sale. The progression of big cat names is simply odd.

Apple Announces Year of the Tiger

Web traffic

Some servers on the net seem to be suffering for some reason. From about 9am UK time today when I first noticed the problem to the present time, some American servers such as Akamai's service seem to be going extremely slowly. The problem doesn't appear to be spreading to the UK but I don't know, it just seems odd. Am I right in thinking that Amazon's sites are served up by Akamai, I know a lot of Yahoo's are, and their sites have just recently been slowing down...
As an example, try the DrudgeReport site, where he often links to images on other's servers - right now several of the images on the site aren't loading, and it's definitely not my network which is freaking out!

Oops. It seems they're back online now. I don't know what happened there as no-one's reporting the problem, but Akamai certainly had something going on there, I don't know how many others as well. Also, it seemed to only be images - the actual HTML of the sites was loading up pretty good. But anyway, 2:30 and they're back online. Strange.

The product of random surfing

WAMU: The Diane Rehm Show

For more than 20 years, The Diane Rehm Show has offered listeners thoughtful and lively conversations on an array of topics with many of the most distinguished people of our times. Each week, more than 1.4 million listeners across the country tune in to the program.

An estimated 28% of U.S. voters will cast their ballots on electronic voting machines next November, but questions about security remain. A panel discusses the on-going concerns.
Black Box Voting on the Diane Rehm Show


I was just going through a million tedious links and connections upon which I found out about this woman, who I thought was a really old grande dame of American broadcasting (something like Alistair Cooke or the like) but it turns out is not, she just has a voice disorder, spasmodic dysphonia. Anyway, she's cool and has, just over the last week, been interviewing some really interesting people like Hans Blix and David Attenborough. If only the BBC did syndication.

Hong Kong chic...

Or just Hong Kong cheap? My dad returned from the island today laden with goods, the vast majority of which were legal, and thankfully, very cheap. So rather than going out and purchasing a load of CDs myself, he's done the hard work for me. Now the Rasmus, Alanis, Jamelia (for the pop queen in me), Mrs Furtado and The Chilis are all stocked up and ready for my CD changer. The only dodgy thing was the DVD collection he brought back, where movies like American Beauty are a fraction of the European RRP. UK Retail= £19.99. Mainland China copy~£1.00
I like those numbers. Also, insanely beautiful garments like ties, shawls and so forth that are hand woven and take months to create. I feel bad for the people making them - once they're gone that's a months work walking out of your shop, never to be seen again. Though of course it means there's money on the table. Anyway, most of all it's just good to have him back, being like dads are - familiar and ever present. You only notice when they're gone.
It's late. Sleep well all!

Dating Myself

"I was walking down the street [by which I mean the only street in illustrious downtown Oberlin the other day when I ran into a friend of mine. And MAN, was she looking extremely fine. Now, I don’t mean to say that she doesn’t look good ordinarily, but that day she was looking amazing — like, trying-hard amazing. I told her she looked totally hot, and rather than saying some liberal-arts-student-can’t-take-a-compliment-this-
shirt-only-cost-me-two-dollars-at-goodwill shit like I was expecting her to, she said:


“ Thanks, I’m dating myself for a week.”


She said it like it was the most normal thing ever. I mean, people date themselves all the time, right? No, but maybe we all should. I pumped her for more details and the more she told me, the more I liked the idea. She said she was just going to try to impress herself all the time, and take extra-special care of herself. Sexual innuendos non-withstanding, couldn’t we all stand to treat ourselves a little bit better? "

I'm loving this idea which comes from the new (to me anyway) eZine called Junk published by a load of students of Oberlin College. They're annoyed, as they write, by the prevalence of hot nude shots of women in popular magazines and the lack of the same shots of men. So they set up a magazine to counter that. Anway, on dating yourself, I think it's the kind of thing you kind of want to be doing all the time but can't really be bothered to make the effort. I suppose it's all about the effort - do you care enough to make the difference when it's only you that will really notice or at least know that there's something unusualto look out for.
Junk via gay Fleshbot

Quotation?

So I’m now getting to my attempts at editing this template. I’ve been trying for a while but to be honest, I’m just rubbish at this kind of thing. Do you see my new quote mark up on the top left? I’m liking that, I think it’s kind of cute in its own way. The CSS stuff is a lot more difficult though – I think I’ll steer clear of that for a while, let my head warm up to it.

Pluggin'

-So I've been out of it for a few days. Well, actually I've simply not been connected to anyone who's not on a phone, which makes international communication rather expensive, so I simply haven't been communicating internationally.
My sister was home the other day, up from the Great Smoke of London, visiting us and going to a job interview, which thankfully she did really well in and got the job. That was all well and good. However, she's not the most computer literate person in the world, and became very confused when she found Mozilla loading on her screen rather than IE when trying to use the net. For some reason, her reaction was to disconnect all the cables on the modem and try again. When that didn't work, she shoved them back in and left.
Of course the cables were all wrong and so we were out of the loop until I realised that this may have happened. See the each lead had been plugged in, so on first glance it appeared that everything was fine, however only when I really looked into it did I notice that the whole thing was bound not to work - a USB cable and an ethernet port just don't fit together.
Anyway, she's back in London doing her thing, and we're now safe from the toddler-like effect of my twenty year old sister. Great!

Finally!

I'm back!!!!

Bus etiquette and smelly tramps

What's the correct form for changing seats on a bus or train? So frequently I see passengers who're sitting uncomfortably next to another member of the public, squirming and shifting from side to side, then relentingly giving in to their inner urge and moving to another seat. Whether they're just trying to get a better view out a window or whether they dislike the smelly, unwashed looking character next to them is not clear. However, there's never really any need for explanation, they simply move to their newly selected seat, furtively glancing from side to side as they go, as though inviting other passengers to challenge them. It's not normally those who're obvious freaks that are subject to this motion slur, but those who appear only slighly abnormal or weird, the kind of person you don't actively dislike, but merely feel uncomfortable being near.
I avoid the whole problem by not sitting anywhere when there's little room on my chosen method of transport if I haven't sized up the potential nose tormentors. There's one thing to be said about the Great British Public' - that much hailed institution - and that is that the vast majority of them simply smell bad! Hideous is an understatement, a level of sewer revival not experienced anywhere but in another supposedly wonderous tradition, the public library. These are of course rarely used by real members of the public, but mainly by bums and homeless people who need somewhere warm and enclosed to spend their days, providing the ideal opportunity to spread germs as widely as possible.
This may sound like a rant, but it's not meant to be one, but the public get so damn annoying, every so often you just want to be able to only deal with rich, well behaved, polite and clean people. The middle classes are normally at least three of those, so let's all hail the middle classes!

PNR? What's that

In checking a flight booking I've got, I noticed a number on my ticket - a PNR number. Very odd, and also very Orwell's 1984 esque - this site explains how the tracking of your activities works:

"If you are a regular customer or have a corporate or frequent flyer account with an airline or travel agency, your account information is typically stored in a "profile" in the CRS/GDS that is automatically associated with, and often copied into, each PNR created for you. That profile might include all the credit cards you regularly use (even if you aren't using them for this purchase); alternate addresses, phone numbers, and emergency contacts; names and other information on your family members or business associates who sometimes travel with you (even if they aren't on this trip); notes about your tastes and preferences ("prefers king bed", "prefers room on low floor in hotels", "always request halal meal", "won't fly on the Jewish sabbath", "uses wheelchair, can control bowels and bladder"; "prefers not to fly Delta Airlines"); personal notes intended for the internal use of the travel agency ("difficult customer -- always changing his mind"); department and project billing and approval codes for corporate travel; all your frequent flyer numbers (even ones you aren't using on this trip) and a wide variety of other information."

PNR Explanation

Damaged head

I was getting on my bus to work yesterday and couldn't quite decide how I would manage to manipulate my bad to sit down. My bag is one of these large should side things that can get it one's way awfully if loaded enough and in the wrong position. It was both yesterday. So I'm struggling around, get the whole thing completely wrong, and manage to whack my head against a massive metal pole next to the seat, stunning myself for a second. Of course no-one on the bus bats an eyelid.
I brushed it off at the time, but as I was showering last night following my exhausting running session, I find a massive bruise on the side of my head, which is still tender today. Thank god I was distracted with work yesterday otherwise I'd have been worrying about it constantly. Not enjoyable to discover, that!

I lie, surrounded by darkness in the night and can hear owls hooting out through my opened bedroom window. On the verge of sleeping, my musical accompaniment noise of their calls. One is a high pitched "wa-waah" whilst the other is more a low single baritone note, souding out "Woooo" every few moments.
There is no noise for two minutes, during which time you think they must have flown off somewhere to hunt for food elsewhere, but then hear hear the familiar sounds floating above the still trees which still radiate heat from the sun's assault.
I don't know where the owls live or exactly where they find their prey, but they return night after night to make my sleeping hours all the more peaceful.

He rocks and sways to a private beat, tapping an oversized shoe along to the rhythm in his head. As he stands there, sheltered from the sun by an immense awning flying high above, his afro of hair buffeted by a breeze sweeping the platform.
Looking up to watch the passing vehicle he sees a girl in an upper window and clicks his fingers to her, attracting her attention. She acknowledges him and he blows her a kiss through the air. For although they are each surrounded by others, the pair indulge in a private moment, oblivious to the activity going on around them.
As her bus draws away from where he stands he lowers his eyes, eyelashes feeling the air rush past, then glances back at her for one last moment. Then she's gone, out of sight and he turns to his friend and laughs. She remains on the bus, driving away...

Find the note...

After hunting around for almost half an hour to find the notes that I'd been taking on my phone, I realise that Outlook and Palm Desktop are competing and won't let me use both now. But at least now I know that when I save a new contact it'll be in outlook rather than another random application that I'll have to keep track of. Which is helpful! Yah to integration!

Drained and enthusiastic

I feel a lack of enthusiasm for everything at the moment. The summer sun is draining me, although I'm enjoying it. The problem with summer is that it can be so light late into the evening that you're drawn into a false sense of security of thinking that it still makes sense to do things, when you should really be acknowledging that you're shattered and need to sleep!

I'm going to be leaving my job at the end of the week, in preparation for a beautifully long break where I'll first do nothing at home, read and go running, then I'll go on vacation and visit a million and one old friends, and then I'll come home and do some really interesting but very short term work with various companies. And so I feel like I'm storing up my enthusiasm for that rather than caring about what's going on now. I was cooking for my mother and sister last night whilst my dad's in Hong Kong and realised that I really didn't care what I was doing. I was chopping some Aubergine (Eggplant) ready for a pasta sauce, and suddenly realised how dead on my feet I was and just had to go and sit on the table. Sometimes you know how your legs just die from under you and you can't really keep it up. That was me.

One thing that's funny is all the people at my work asking me whether I'm looking forward to leaving. I can't really decide, but in a way I don't think I will. I'll relish not having to do menial duties for people far less competent than myself, but I'll really miss the people. Some of them are just so crazy there that I'll certainly keep thinking about them. There's Wendy who always comes in half an hour late then criticises you, but laughs at the same time; Richie who has little tiffs with his girlfriend, also working at the store, in front of everyone around which makes you feel like you really know them; Laura who never stops sucking her fingers even though there's nothing on them, she just has her fingers in her mouth the whole time; Jaz the heterosexual gay boy who has the most camp distressed jeans combinations I've ever witnessed and shirts left halfway open so all the women can see his chest hair.

They're all characters, and I'll be so horrible not being able to laugh with them every day. That's what I'll miss, not the lack of money or the distraction from daily life that working brings, but the people. I suppose that's how it's really supposed to be.

The one thing I'm really liking at the moment is flowers, especially blooming flowers. The other day I was walking past a market seller who was trying get rid of his last lilies for the day, selling them cheap, so I picked up two bunches. Now they're flowering indoors to accompany all the stunning blooms outside at the moment. I think I'll post a few more photos over the next few days, of some flowers. I love the macro shots of blooms that I'm getting at the moment, whatever the flower is, the images just look so alive!<

Email me for my new number

To save myself about a million pounds, I have a new phone number, so if you have my old number send me an email and I'll pass on my new number. I'd rather keep in touch than stay out of the loop!
Meanwhile, the Orange shop still haven't got hold of my old SIM card that they lost so that's another £20 down the drain. Either they're too dim to realise they'd not returned my original SIM to me, or they knew I had money on it and so retained it in order to keep if for themselves! Either way, it's not good.
But email me if you need the new number

Silly stuff

Got my new phone yesterday!
How much fun is that!
This is my first little photo, which I took on the way to work this morning, messing around to use up some time. Of course it doesn't really feel like MY phone yet, but it will eventually, or else!
I'm enjoying playing around with it, the Treo 600. It's now my little toy!
We're all off to Cambridge this evening to visit some friends who are guest lecturing there for a few weeks. How posh. Punting tomorrow!
Later!
p

IRISH DIGITAL CLOCK

"Every now and again there comes a graphic so good the fresh concept blows you away.
The University of Dublin science students have finally finished the digital clock they have been working on for 4 years."

This came through on an email from a friend. It's definitely not by some students in Dublin, but from a web design company called MONO*crafts, based in Japan. They've been around for a while and have been noticed by many major outfits, including the now defunct UK-based magazine Cre@te Online. Clearly the Dublin claim is a myth, but this flash clock is an amazing showpiece. The time shown on the clock is continually written down by pencil with a different window for each digital readout number of the time, meaning that the seconds are continually being re-written whilst the minutes and hours remain the same most of the time but also periodically change.

MONO*crafts is a net-based studio maintainted by Yugo Nakamura Located in Tokyo Japan.
we are much interested in exploring new expression under this networked situation
and we are creating web-site / net-application with new concept of interactivity.
our concept & techiniques are expressed in every part of this site. Feel & enjoy them...

Go to this site to see the results: www.yugop.com

My feet are killing me

Well it's actually more my legs, which are dying from all the muscle being ripped apart and then trying desperately to grow back together. Every time I walk down some stairs (or in fact, move at all) I let out a little yelp of pain on each step.

"Oww, Oww, Oww, Oww, Oww, Oww, Oww, Oww, Oww."

And that's when you're going down fast. The slower you move, the more you notice the pain and so want to move even slower to stop it hurting so much! Of course this doesn't work at all, it just drags out the discomfort more, making a rather stupid thing to do, even if it is what you naturally try to do. This all resulted from my little kick to get back into being a fit and healthy human being. This was demonstrated by spending a long day at work, dealing with a minor British celebrity ('Jordan' - see photo) and then having the audacity to think that doing exercise would actually be a good idea. How wrong I was. It was a 6km run, then a half hour swim at the gym in the middle, then another 6km back to where I started. A cicular route; circular torture.

You know you're working on a CV

When you include in a messenger conversation:

"That's an old copy, I can update it with new shit waffle"

Which is what a CV really is isn't it. A whole load of procrastination, but it's what we gotta do!

Brilliant light

Today has been the most amazing day because the sun has been out again and the air has been moving, sweeping away all the muggy air that's accumulated over the last few days from this massive city I'm in. When it's nice, the city sweeps along - people waft around like they own the place but without the grey look that normally accompanies the concrete surrounding them. Now everyone's smiling and at least attempting to have a great time. With the sun of course has come the flowering of all the multitude of plants in our garden, showing off their full charm, the many clematis showing this best of all.

"One swallow does not make a summer."

-- Aristotle

One of my friends, in a reather sanctimonious moment, quoted this to me, but I don't really care too much. Any birds are perfect to me! We've actually had loads of birds twittering around the house and gardens. We try and not use anything with loads of chemicals in, meaning our grass lawn is probably the safest place for birds to feast in the whole area being that before we came to the property the garden was left for dead really - the previous owners being completely disinterested. I wake up in the horribly early 6th hour of the day to the sound of finches and blackbirds singing to each other through the trees. Of course in the evenings we have to content with the dreaded pigeons, but that's some small price to pay for everything else that's beautiful at the moment!

Having morals is a pain

This week there's a magazine for sale which includes in the whole 'experience', a bar of supposedly high-end chocolate. Today a new edition this mag went on sale, meaning the chocolate covered one was to be sent back. It seems that to some of my colleagues this meant there was now free chocolate all around, and they began digging into the piles of the magazine set to be sent back. I thought this was somewhat suspect, partly because it clearly violates my company's very clear regulations on not accepting 'freebies' but also because to do this they'd be effectively claiming to the distributors that some unscrupulous member of the public removed the bars affixed to the cover and stole them, leaving us with just the magazine.
This appeared to worry no-one. I feigned disinterest, declining offers of the bars, but I was so hungry! I hate it when morals actually need some sort of restraint rather than just a particular point of view that would really matter neither way to anyone but yourself, as most morals are. Of course that's the real test of your own moral code - when there's something actually involved that you want, but can't have because you don't believe it's right. But I really wanted it!

So I went to a coffee shop a few minutes later and ate a huge brownie, which made me feel so much better!

Theyrule!

"In corporate America, who's the power networker and who's being left behind, only overseeing 'institutions'? Theyrule has been updated with the most recent filings of 2004 SEC data, meaning we can now peek at who's going to be chummy a the next Boeing meeting.

theyrule.net

First run of the year

Well, really it was the first outdoor run of the year. Up until now its either been too cold, wet or unwise to run. Unwise would be when I'm either too run-down from exhaustion or from various colds and coughs that attack me, mainly because I'm run down from exhaustion...
Anyway, I did my normal 10k in roughly 47 minutes, so it wasn't too bad for a first go. I'm going to try to cut that down by over ten minutes. I want to be running 10km in 35 minutes by the end of four weeks. That's if I'm good and do all the training that I say in my head I 'should' do, but it's after a long day at work that I decide 'hey, I can't be bothered now, it'd be better to go home and sleep earlier'.
I'm feeling the ache now from the lack of practice though, my lower arms and hamstrings especially. Also, as I was using a new pair of shoes, I've got blisters. The blisters aren't too bad, but if I carry on tomorrow as I'm hoping to, they'll get a lot worse before they get any better. Joy.
Hope everyone likes reading about running, it's what I'm going to be obsessed with for the next few weeks. Suffer in silence!

Rubbish email posting

Ok, so it seems that whilst Blogger successfully posts to the site via email, it won't include the html text that one includes. I say this because, whilst the blogger site must have been taking a MASSIVE server load last night with all the people trying out new designs, my posts we simply not loading up. They weren't huge or anything, but they just weren't loading. So I decided, at something approaching midnight, to just send the post via email in the vain hope that this would work. It did, in a way, but of course it also means that you can (or could, since I'm about to fix it) see all the code in it's eternal glory.
Hope you enjoyed that, and I hope it never happens again. I just couldn't be bothered to wait around for another half-hour to see whether it worked, I was just too tired.

UPDATE:
It seems that the email device converts whatever you send in to an html form of file and then posts that. So whatever you post it basically quotes right back at you. I'm assuming the only way to get around this is to put a load of / tags in to top the silliness. On a related note, blogger also appears to have a problem with edited posts. When one edits a post, the original post is left still whilst the corrected version is added on top. And don't even get me started on the stupid 'publishing' whirly image they have which goes around in a circle, reloads the page a million times and then in the end doesn't even do what you wanted.

Look what I found!

When pulling books off our shelves because they weren't selling today, I found a couple of gems which made me think "I've GOT to buy this" mostly to stop them going back to wherever they go and facing the possibility of mulching. My favourite (amongst a few rather dry books like 'Varieties of Capitalism") is

"Dream Merchants & HowBoys

Mavericks, Nutters and the Road to Business Success"

by Barry J Gibbons. Gibbons, being the former CEO of Burger King in the early nineties, could have adopted the usual deadly dull style of business writing, but doesn't. He is a joker as well as an educator, making the reader really want to find out what the people described in chapters within really did so well to become the subject of our attention.

"How do I explain and/or justify the downsides of these people? The times that they failed after or before they struck their pots of gold? The times where their attitude and/or thinking and/or behaviour epitomized something we'd rather not stick on the front of our fridges thank you very much? The answer is: I don't. I put the spotlight on them for a specific time and performance - and there is more than enough for us to learn from those high light reels. For example, Steve Case is included for his time and performance in taking AOL from its genesis to 30 million members - and the fact that he went vaguely doolally afterwards and all but disappeared up his own fundamental orifice with Time Warner is of no interest to us. We have the luxury of being able to be picky. We don't want biography; we want stuff we can use. We don't want now, we want THEN."

It's a superb book, hilariously funny on every page, making you giggle and laugh out loud to your mild embarrassment, and the amusement of all around you. Even if you don't like the idea of the book, the potted successes of some of the world's richest people, pick it up next time you're in a bookstore and look inside; it's very good.

Blogger's all new

So blogger has changed. I know, you know, we all know. I've taken advantage of their little upgrade to avail myself of a new template. I liked my old template because it had all the right stuff in it; metadata, customisations and so forth, but it just wasn't graphical enough. It didn't make me gasp with enthusiasm. This new one is ok, of course there are the little images which look like something you find on supposedly 'cool' jeans at the moment; meaningless text and graphics that show themselves in your prepheral vision but do little to really change the style of what you're looking at. I'll get rid of them.
However, what's a real pain is the code. I'm useless at coding HTML or CSS so it's a struggle. Basically, the page is too narrow. And supposedly there's a new thing in CSS called Sliding Doors that allows pages to expand for increasing the size of text. That's fine with me, but I want a wider page, as it stands my writing looks like a newspaper column, a bad tabloid one.

link

Mobileburn is the best

And it always seems to have the most in-depth reviews. I'm going to go buy the Handspring Treo 600 either today or in a couple days, in preparation for this summer's escapades in the states. The phone I have now hardly works in the UK let alone anywhere else!
Can't wait to play with it!

Oh no, but though they've said it's a great phone, they've also said the screen is rubbish and should be a much better quality for the price. I hate being ripped off. I was going to buy a Sony T610 until a read the terrible review of that on Mobileburn. The bad thing is that all the people who now have that phone (millions it seems) concur with the comments on the site, meaning that the Treo review is probably pretty accurate. I might buy it anyway, I just want a new phone!
link

I can hardly bring myself to say it,

But BoingBoing is great today. They get the best shit, like this one:
On Scott Evan's site today he's showing us all (!) a tour of his neighbourhood. This is interesting because he's in a nice, old style area with small houses made of asbestos cladding and light thin walls. The houses must have been put up soon after world war two. Trees and stuff are all around, but what's also becoming more prevalent are MASSIVE houses. It appears that developers are buying up plots with tiny low value houses on them to put huge hulks of identikit houses on the sites, ratcheting up the value of the properties, but also making anonymous, soulless neighbourhoods.

Day one=little houses shaded by trees.

Day two=trees shaded by castle of a McMansion.

link

I walked up to a guy yesterday

I recognised him from various clubs.
So I said, "Hi, how're you doing"
He did the usual "yeah good" kinda thing that everyone tends to do, whether they're actually elated, about to die, seriously depressed or really, just ok.
Then I said, "But you probably don't know who I am anyway". I don't think of myself as a very high profile person, so why would he, someone that anyone who's really been out for a while on 'the scene' in my city, know me despite me 'knowing' him.
To which he replied, "No, I know you, you're 'hot boy'."


ummmmmmm! hot boy! ok.... I could get used to being known as that!

We'd 'made up' already

But just talking is such a nice thing to do. People should just talk more often, no going out and being silly, dancing, coffees or movies. They're all just distractions from having a laugh by thinking outloud to one-another and playing on each other's stupidity. If you can laugh at yourself then you're by far the better person for it, in my opinion, so make up with a friend you've missed for a while by having a chat. And remember to eat humble pie that evening too, because it makes life so much more fun.

Keep nuclear waste on the surface, or buried underground? Hard choice?

It appears to be difficult for the Senate, where Republican South Carolina senator Lindsay Graham is proposing amending the law to allow the Energy Department to store radioactive waste in underground tanks rather than removing it from the area or initial radioactive activity to a secure storage facility:

Whoever wrote the provision, all sides agree it would have profound effects on future cleanup at the Energy Department's highly contaminated weapons plants. An aide to Graham said his measure would accelerate cleanup by removing ambiguity about which waste needs to be removed. The Energy Department has argued that it should be allowed to leave some residual waste in the tanks because the cost of removing it would far outweigh the benefits. Cement would be added to the sludge to stabilize it and prevent it from leeching into water tables. At Hanford, that could leave more than 35 million gallons of highly radioactive sludge and salt cake in the ground.
The Hanford nuclear weapons complex is among the most contaminated places on Earth, with large amounts of radioactive, chemical and mixed waste that were by-products of 50 years of nuclear weapons production. Cleanup costs are estimated at more than $50 billion.

What I question is the financial argument, though I disagree with holding waste on the surface also. Nuclear power was meant to be clean and cheap, whilst bombs were never going to pollute the atmosphere because they'd be a deterrent more than anything. Now, the only people nuclear is going to be a deterrent to is those wishing to visit former natural beauty spots, now transformed into waste dumps and sludge containers, not terrorists or cold war governments. You start out down the nuclear road and you have to accept that later on, there will be consequences, so deal with them and do it safely!

link - The Seattle PI

Quote from some other random site:

Monday, February 02, 2004:
"It was my mom who showed me the way. She threw an entire lawn mower away piece by piece. Me, I just fobbed my old one off on the crazy neighbor."

THE AMERICAN UNDERSHIRT

I was worried at first

That I may have given myself some sort of compound fracture in my leg. At work this morning, after carrying out the standard fake 'I'm awake and fine' thing first thing to show that I wasn't in fact dead or completely out of it still, my leg began to ache. Just when I was actually putting pressure on it, ie standing or squatting etc, but that was worrying enough. One would hope that simply standing doesn't make you scared of having seriously damaged a leg, but it seems that's possible. Anyway, I think I did it whilst dancing, which is a pretty dumb way to break a leg. Not even funny either. It's that whole stamping your legs down in time to the music, or the line-dancing esque rotations of the whole body at once to face 90 degrees from where you were a few seconds ago. I'm sure if I hadn't gorged myself on alcohol this wouldn't be a problem, though one is supposed to be less susceptible to damaging oneself when drunk (though I wasn't drunk) because your body is less toned and so you're less likely to fight back against the pain/unusual position of bodily parts and so actually unintentionally hurt yourself less. If that makes any sense.
Anyway, a friend and I were dancing to the cheesy pop music like the crazy kids we are, and I had a great time. Of course, it now being 11:30 PM, I've worked two full days and, whilst recovering from a cold have had only three hours sleep in 48 hours. I don't think this is a really great idea, but it's what one has to do to become a crazy party animal. Or so I'm told by the gods of queendom, my colleagues. After all, they should know, being the biggest queens on the block.

Jerusalem Post's Copy Editor comments posted online

"Due to a technical error, the following article was published online Monday night with copy editors' comments not meant for publication. The staff of the Jerusalem Post Internet Edition would like to apologize to Mr. Gutman and to his readers."

"The Holocaust accompanied the establishment of the state; this is what is written in the Prophets and the Torah." SO WHAT? THIS IS SUCH A NON-SEQUITUR.
[...]
This was the message hammered home to the elders in the community, including 76 year-old Ya'acov Frieman, and WHY MENTION SOMEONE, OR SOMETHING, FOR NO REASON?!

link

Gawker mocks Media Matters for having money

But MM actually posts some interesting and well researched stuff, like a record of some of the comments Rush Limbaugh has made on his 'newly respectable' talkshow, rather than the obvious and widespread gossip spread by Gawker.

Some of these babes, I'm telling you, like the sexual harassment crowd. They're out there protesting what they actually wish would happen to them sometimes. [4/26/04]

Some funny comments from the femi-Nazis at the pro-abortion rally in Washington yesterday. Not many. It didn't take long for us to put together our montage, but we'll let you hear it when we come back. [4/26/04]

The purpose -- Al Gore wants this channel to create a liberal version of the FOX News channel. We've already got CNN. We got CNN Headline News. We've got, for all intents and purposes, PMS-NBC. [4/5/04]

OPEC announced a cancellation of its 10 percent cutback in production so -- and there's some little strife going on in Venezuela with that wacko, Cesar Chavez, down there. Hugo. Hugo, Cesar -- whatever. A Chavez is a Chavez. We've always had problems with them. So the bottom line is that I don't think supplies are going to be interrupted. [3/26/04]

He's [Kerry] been a senator with no name on legislation, his own name not on legislation. I mean, he's been there, but he's basically a skirt-chaser, folks. He's a gigolo. He has not been somebody that a lot of people have taken seriously. [3/16/04]

link

Katie Couric blasts own interview - 'people not interested'

Larry King-CNN Transcript with Katie Couric about her Jason Blair interview:

LARRY KING, HOST: "She [Couric] will have the first extended interview with ex "New York Times" reporter Jason Blair. It will air tomorrow night on "Dateline NBC." She will then do a live interview Monday morning on the "Today Show.""

COURIC: "I think that people are interested in how he was able to pull this off on the greatest newspaper, I think, in this country. And I think any time someone commits these kinds of transgressions, it's interesting to find out a little bit more about their character, or lack thereof. What motivated them?

...I'm not sure the book will sell. I'm not sure how many people are going to be interested in Jason Blair's story."

link

Howard Stern & Oprah complaints scandal

BoingBoing has a link today about a Smoking Gun revelation. Following the FCC lambasting Stern and slamming him with record fines, he encouraged listeners to his show to complain to the FCC about an episode of the talk-show queen's show where Oprah discussed various 'sex acts'. The FCC got quite a few complaints, in fact over 1600. Which are genuine is more difficult to establish. Is this:


"you stupid ass hitler wanna be. lets see you fine oprah for her show she did talking about anal sex and blow jobs! You piece of garbage for the religious right.just wait till the election you and your bone head jerk offs will be history"


link

Consumer Products

Safety Commission Warns Parents About Toy Batmobile
    Agency says toy “advocates a homosexual lifestyle.”

http://www.ironictimes.com

Clumsy clumsy

Mobile network Cell C in South Africa offers 'medical rescue and advice'.
Learn some of the details, and how you might get into a situation where you'd need this in their ad:
Watch it

Called in sick again today

I'm ok sitting around at home, blowing my nose every ten seconds and letting out a roaring cough that wakes the dead, but I'm not so sure about rushing around pretending to feel professional. I don't think I'd be able to handle getting out of the house and not feeling hot again, not feeling like I'm about to faint. It's much more safe to stay and read about kissing freaks on Salon.
Though when I did call in about an hour and a half ago, I got the ultimate worst person to pick up the phone. On of my bosses is genuinely a really nice guy, and doesn't mean anything, but whenever you tell him any bad news (ie the fact that you're ill and not going to be in) he makes you feel guilty. Not that he says anything of course, but I can't help feeling like I've done something wrong by being ill, like there's even a chance that I might just be putting it on.
Of course it's much safer for me t ostay away another day than spread the cold I've got to the whole team, laying waste to everyone around me. But I still feel bad about not going in, it doesn't feel like being a 'team player', but that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Of course you could say that I'm being safe by not working, so others can continue to work, but that would be an uncharitable way of looking at it. Plus, I'm not even sure whether I'm being paid for the days off I've had (ie sick pay). Not that it matters, but I know certain people would grumble if they didn't get what was 'morally' right for them to have.
//Winge

The Art of Kissing

Once an English professor at Boston College, Michael Christian has devoted his life to teaching college students the science of spit-swapping. "It has taken over my life," he says.
It is one hour to showtime, the lips have not arrived, and Michael Christian is starting to pace. "We need couples!" he keeps saying, his voice getting ever more insistent, almost threatening. What he really needs is a group of college students willing to kiss each other onstage -- or rather, willing to demonstrate 30 different kisses with perfect strangers in an hour-long comedic performance.
A few minutes pass in the cafeteria, and the group has found a volunteer. Amanda James, one of the students that brought Christian here, called her friend Hector and talked him into it. She wasn't one of the girls initially in the show, but she's decided to take one for the team, so to speak.

"Have you ever kissed Hector before?" I ask her.

"No!" she says, clearly already nervous about it.

"Do you want to kiss him?"

"No!"

Salon.com article

I am a poser Geek.

In the Geek Rankings I only managed to scrape 3.35%. They expect too much of geeks:
"I have... programmed a calculator in math class" People do that!?

Rubbish!
The Geek Test
via Agatha

Most inventive duct-tape suit. Cool or Loser?

"Randel Metzinger prides himself on being different.

Randel Metzinger wears a pink duct tape suit that he made for his school prom.
"Even at school, I try not to have myself classified as anything,'' Randel said. "That just makes me stand out of the crowd and be my own person.''
Randel certainly stood out of the crowd at the Pine Forest High School prom. It's hard not to stand out when you're wearing a hot pink suit emblazoned with black flames at the sleeves and cuffs.
It also helps if that suit happens to be made of duct tape."
You'd have thought he'd have cut the suit up a bit first - it's not he most flattering cut you've ever seen. Interesting though... I think the phrase 'prides himself' is rather symbolic here - it would be some Pride event that he'd have to visit to look normal whilst wearing that oufit.
link

Drug party garners no drugs

Because no-one turned up. Too stoned. Anyway, this was only interesting because it's just around the corner from my house. We're all such losers around here - couldn't even be bothered to go take drugs. But it probably made the local nightly news 'Midlands Today' or more aptly titled 'Crime Tonight'. Scaremongering forever to make the whole city look even worse than it really is, not that this is hard to do anyway...
"A "cannabis festival" failed to draw in the crowds in Birmingham, with only one person bothering to turn up. A BBC reporter who went to the park at about 1300 BST found just one person had attended. He had travelled from Chester to find he was alone.
A mobile phone belonging to one of the organisers, who said they hoped to promote the "recreational and spiritual use" of cannabis, remained unanswered on Saturday."
BBC Story

Liquid that turns into armor is undergoing Army tests

"BALTIMORE — Army scientists are working on a liquid body armor for clothing that stays flexible during normal use but can harden to stop a projectile when hit suddenly.

Researchers hope the liquid could be used in sleeves and pants, areas not protected by ballistic vests because they must stay flexible.
The liquid, hard particles suspended in a fluid, is soaked into layers of Kevlar, which holds it in place. Scientists recently had an archer shoot arrows at it to see how well the liquid boosted the strength of a Kevlar vest. "
Seattle Times

OMG - Rmember how I, like mentioned Eating Out b4? like.....

I know I did, because it's like the hottest sounding movie. Anyway, I was just telling a 'friend' of mine about it and how I SO want to see it (totally!), and blah - as I'm looking up the homepage of the film, up comes another telling me it's going to be in my city! As long as my friends don't get too up themselves, I'll try and get a whole load of people to come along! It'll be like pride only even more gay!
Yah!
God that sounds so faggy!
LLGFF - Eating Out

I love The Stranger. It's zany like no-one else

"While Evangelicals prepared for four hours of speechmaking today, liberal clergy were defiantly performing gay marriages in cities across the country this week, and other gay rights supporters were organizing vigils to protest the Safeco rally. An alternative newspaper in Seattle, The Stranger, has paid for a plane to fly over the stadium, streaming a banner behind that says, "The Stranger says: Get out of our ballpark, bigots." "

Seattle pi article: Christians opposing gay marriage to rally. 35,000 people from across state expected at Safeco Field

The fact that I love The Stranger, the whacked out, sex obsessed, liberal craziness that it is, is really a by-line to the fact that it's sad residents of Seattle are staging a rally like this. Though of course Seattle is far less 'tolerant' than many extrapolate from its lefty image, there seems to be more consensus and less extremism in the city than many other cities across the US. I love the fact that Seattle is seen as a liberal place, as a green and ecological place, and as a friendly place. It is in fact less of all these thing than as portrayed, but the image is something people try to live up to, something to which one can aspire. If it is seen to be acceptable to protest against people's rights in this way by the mainstream public of Seattle, something will be lost. Seattle is a divided city with the three tangents pulling against each other constantly. First there are the suburbans - those living on the outskirts of the city centre who are like anyone all around the country, getting on with their lives and being normal citizens by doing the Wal-Mart thing, watching the blockbusters and paying their car insurance. Then you have the more liberal, hippy city family types which Seattle has a surprisingly large number of, living in places like Ballard and Queen Anne Hill. They vote Gore and go to the Pacific Consumer Co-Op where overpriced by 'fair-trade' products are flogged to the wealthy well meaning. Lastly, you have the old and new money. They live across the waters of Lake Washington in Bellevue, Redmond and areas of Shoreline. They are removed from the petty goings on of the ordinary citizen, able to escape the headache whenever they please to an weekend house on one of the islands surrounding Seattle, or even further afield. There's lots of fragmentation within the city as a whole, leaving bands of wealth running through the city according to zip code, the inescapable truth of house prices.

But what keeps Seattle together, what keeps people coming back, and what makes people love the place is that whilst few acknowledge the problems, they're plastered over by a little craziness in each and every citizen. Though many may snort and laugh at some of the things the people of Seattle do, they don't condemn and don't mock. This is what is at threat, an acceptance that people are different and that people can mix and share a place to live despite this. Condemning gay marriage by residents garners no good-will, but only spreads unrest and reluctance to participate.

Eating it up

I got a new bank card through the mail the other day. It was a 'Chip and Pin' or chipnpin as I like to call it. Oh so revolutionary, we're leading the way in Britain with technology that has been all over the rest of the world for years now. No more signatures at tills, you put in your pin number. Gosh! Well, since I got the card, having lost my previous one over two months beforehand, I decided to take some money out of my account. Writing checks to myself to get cash was becoming astonishingly annoying to have to do, so I had given in and called my bank, the wonderful Lloyds, to tell them about my card. I think I'd lost the card somewhere in my house, I don't know where. I know when because it was right after I came back from York Manchester. Yes that was a while ago, and yes I should have cancelled the card earlier, but I was hoping to find it, and didn't want to be a pain, to have to put my card details into every site I order from afresh and so on. But there you go, I did it.
Anyway, I went to an ATM and found, when I got there, that there was a card popping out of the ATM, which was weird. That's not really supposed to happen, so I walked into the bank and handed the card over to them. They were rather non-plussed, as though
"oh yeah, that happened did it, well... thanks."
Nice enthusiastic and responsible reaction from someone supposedly safeguarding your money. uhhhhh>? No. Bad service, lacklustre attitude, hence I don't bank with them.

So I'm in my bank later, trying to sort this who thing out, and I go around the system. I queue at one place then another and then finally some guy walks up to me and asks if he can help me. His name was Barry. That's a very English name, it's not very suave but it's very approachable and friendly, which is what he was. Well, he was probably not suave because he was at work, at a bank. But he was very gay, which was no bad thing. Let's just say that he didn't ask any of the other people waiting to be served whether they wanted help. Subtle. He gave me his 'direct line'. I put that in brackets not because I doubt that the line is direct, but because I'm assuming he didn't really give it to me just in case I had any more questions about my card.
One of my friends had accompanied me on this little escapade to the bank and she reported that as I left his office, he lent on the doorframe and watched me walk away... How sweet.

G Star catwalk show

On their website, the 'hip' jeans themed company hosts a video of one of their catwalk shows. Along with the usual mock performance art staging, guys with gas masks and balaclavas running about, there is some interesting use of a moving walkway - a treadmill like surface as one finds in airports around the world. They use this moving catwalk to great effect, mock sprinting up and down it, often accompanied with set pieces like old 30's style lamps. Check it out.

The video doesn't really do their style justice. What makes G-Star unique is that they're now just about the only company that is bringing real tailoring to the jeans market. As Levi move ever further away from a cropped style towards an outmoded slouch look which is continually losing interest in the company, G-Star move in the opposite direction. They use odd shaped cuts of fabric that don't fold well to make them easy to store, but are shaped anthropomorphically - as the body is actually shaped. As you see in these jeans which I've got a pair of myself, the cloth had odd lines to it, cutting across the leg. When the clothes are hung up, the look like someone is already wearing them, so they're already shaped like a body rather than having to attempt to reshape when worn in order to accommodate the human form.
Can you tell I'm a massive fan? I don't know whether their 'Concept Elwood' range has been a hit, but it should sell damn well, especially the darker dense blue styles. Of course I'll never know, but I think they're amazing.

Travel Bag

Handcrafter Motor Gilet

Motor Jacket

Belt Detail

Outdoor Campaign

UPDATE: Well, Jeremy has alerted me to the great John Galliano catwalk show for Fall/Winter 04/05. Stunningly creative, far more so than G-Star, with the most amazing mix soundtrack to accompany the tour around fantasy land that you're led on throughout the show. Of course he does have a much larger budget to play with so I'll give them both credit. Nice stuff. I don't see G-Star doing couture in that way for quite a while yet!
http://www.johngalliano.com