Month: May 2003

Last night was a quiet night down the pub. Nothing too heavy at all and ended nicely with some good pizza. Slept well and for about 12 hours which I like, a lot.

Going to go and watch 24 now and then go out and do some shopping.

Man I love weekends.

Right some things. As it is kinda quiet in here I thought I would do a little typing.
Springsteen is coming up on Tuesday night and I’m getting pretty excited by it. Listening to some life stuff from the 70’s and 80’s and it’s all good. So hopefully it will be a good night.

As I mentioned, today was pay-day. One of the first things I did this morning was pay off about a thousand pounds worth of bills and let me tell you, this was a good thing. Tomorrow there shall be comics and some new clothes. It’s been a while since I went out and got some clothes and I think it is about time. More than likely start in Alders at Clapham Junction and then see where I end up.

Last night was a lot of fun. I was very tired but just not in the mood for going home. Luckily enough there were a couple of others who wanted to do something so pool it was. We got to the pub to find a few people from work there already and did the usual nodding and hellos and promptly fucked off to the back of the pub to play pool. It was not good, I lost the first 5 games. A couple of them really badly. Then as the aiming juice kicked in, I entered the zone. The next 5 games were mine and they were mine well. I was just playing really well and making every shot I tried. I like it when that happens, I like it a lot.

Anyway at this stage a couple of the lads who had been working late arrived and we played some doubles for a while. At this stage we were getting quite merry and moved to the table and chatted for a while. It was all good. Called it a night as we were thrown out of the pub and hit McDonalds for a quick meal before a bus home to collapse into bed.

So it was a good night, the hangover this morning was not good but all in all it was good. I have to note that while I like the taste of Coca-Cola, it doesn’t taste right unless there is some Jack Daniel’s in it.

As for tonight, well as was agreed on here earlier, today is Friday, it is pay-day and it’s the start of the long weekend. This can only mean one thing. Although I do not intend to be hungover tomorrow and I have actually had some food today. This bodes well.

The interwebnet is slow this afternoon, really really slow. It’s annoying me. I’m trying to get to sites and it’s just going nowhere. Just like the afternoon unfortunately.

Gah.

Last night turned into quite a night.

Headed around to the Firkin to play some pool but it was packed. So we went to the Kensington instead. This was fairly empty and we played for the next 3 hours. It was good fun. There was lots of drinking and then we joined some folks and chatted for the rest of the night.

Donnie Darko is out to buy on DVD. I think this shall be a significant part of my weekend.

Loads of theories still flying around about The Matrix: Reloaded and it was of course discussed at some length last night. Looks like I shall be seeing it again on Sunday evening. I think that works for me. I’m quite looking forward to it.

Bjork tomorrow night in Hammersmith, looks to be the first night of a tour so could be good. Hopefully culling a lot from the recent Greatest hits

I stayed up way too late last night reading stuff about The Matrix: Reloaded online. Today I am very tired. The general plan for tonight is to go home and watch the 24 season two finale and do very little else. Tomorrow is payday and this is a good thing. I hope to pick up some comics over the weekend and I shall be getting some bills paid off. These are both good things.

Other than that today has been quiet and slow. There isn’t much going on here. We aren’t going to be gearing up for the next project for a couple of weeks and the downtime is well starting to get me down. I’m reading a lot of docs to prepare for it but there is only so much I can take.

Looks like there will be some pool playing tonight and then home to watch 24 and stuff.

*sigh* dano publishing issues.

This post was going to start a couple of lines down but I feel it worth noting in bold and all caps THERE IS A FUCKING SPOON.

Right I don’t really know where to start so I’m just going to jump right in. Bear with me, this could be quite long and ramble and perhaps directionless. In fact it will veer in different directions many times, lets just see where it goes.

I was on a training course yesterday. It was a change management one day workshop. Everyone in the company had to go on it to look at ways of dealing with the changes the company has gone through over the past couple of years.

I picked yesterday to go primarily to give myself a three day week in work this week. I wasn’t expecting much, hoped to get off the course early and it would be a boring and quiet day spent not in work (the important part). Well, I was wrong, it wasn’t boring at all. In fact it was quite interesting and helpful I think. It certainly had me thinking about some things and that is by all means a good thing.

One thing is point of view. I don’t know if I have talked about this before (I think I have) but I have spoken to a friend about it anyway. I find it very hard to look at things from a point of view other than my own. This is even worse when I’m worried about something or angry about something. Some times everything seems so very clear and in those situations I really don’t understand how anyone can see it another way. When something can be seen only in black or white and someone goes for green, well it just does not compute. So it can often lead to some pushing as the phrase as been used. It’s often hard not to push something when your right. I’m not going to say convinced your right because I’m going to be a little arrogant here (first time for everything right?).

Anyway that’s that.

I have the feeling someone is trying to play me. I’ve been suspicious about something for a couple of weeks and there was a leading message left for me today followed by quite a leading conversation. I thought about it when I first began to suspect and decided that I actually I don’t give a fuck. Anyway that was just a little aside.

Buffy Chosen. So that’s it, Buffy is over. It ended with a bit of a whimper and no real bang. Sure there were some nice touches, the tongue comments in particular, the Scoobies off to battle, the D&D was great and the scene with Xander and Andrew right at the end was just perfect. Spike dying on the other hand was pointless. We already know he’ll be resurrected and back for Angel next year so that really means it was a waste. The show had it’s high point years ago. The second and third seasons were the best. There were some great moments in the others but nothing really overall. It’s a shame, it deserved more.

And now the nerdgasm.
Tonight I saw The Matrix: Reloaded. Sitting there at the end I was disappointed. I don’t quite know why. The set pieces were fantastic. Neo taking on the Agent Smiths just rocked and rocked hard. I was sitting there wanting it to end as it started to go on but at the same time wanting it to just keep going and going and going. The free way scene was excellent. Some dodgy cgi in many places but lots of fun and some great cgi in others.

Merovingian was interesting to say the least and I thought followed nicely along from The Oracle and lead very well into The Architect. I have to say I loved this. The entire movie/world was turned on it’s head in a matter of moments and we went with the hardcore(ish) sci-fi concepts. Sitting here now and reading the posts on boards I’ve been ignoring for days, looking back I fucking love the movie and I need to see it again.

I am in fact over-whealmed by what I saw on screen and I’m not longer sure my understanding was correct.

I love the concept of “The One” being perpetrated by the Machines to do some house cleaning every now and again. I love the concept of the prior Matrix’s and the prior Zion’s. I fuckin love the concept that Neo is only the latest in a line of “The One”. I need to see this movie again, quite badly. In fact I laughed when I came out about the American audiences who claimed not to understand the movie and had to have transcripts of conversations to read. Well, I want to have a read of one of them. I think I’m going to have fun playing with some of the thoughts on the ending of it. As for the last 10 seconds before the credits I have just one thing to say about that: you motherfucking c**ts.

For the record, in my world Neo would have walked out the other door and the third movie would have been a remake of the first movie and Neo would have taken the blue pill.

random order of thoughts
– Persephone and the lipstick. What was all that about?
– Could The Architect be a “The One”?
– The Oracle…um ???
– The “real world” is the illusion
– Matrix within a Matrix?
– What was a program and what was not a program?
– OK, here is a thought. The third movie ends with Neo reprograming the Matrix, thus leaving himself as The Architect.
– Engineering Level, what was all that about?
– THERE IS A FUCKING SPOON.
– 314 = pi = a circle?

More on everything later, I kinda got side-tracked and moved onto other things.

ohhh
1602 preview.

Right. I am back in London blogging from my couch. All in all a damn good weekend. The gigs were awesome. Saturday I was really tired, I’d had about 5 hours sleep the night before and it was a really long day. So I don’t think I enjoyed the gig that night as much as I should have. The support was, well I want to say shite but I won’t. It wasn’t my kind of music at all so I won’t comment. 45 minutes of it however really killed a lot of the mood.

It’s worth noting that every single person there booked tickets through a Radiohead email in a matter of hours. So there was no-one there who was not a Radiohead fan. Well, I did see one grandmother escorting her young grandson but you know what I mean. The gasps of surprise from ever single person who walked in the door as to how small the venue was. It was tiny. I was lucky on both nights, I was standing really close the stage and had great views. The build-up was phenomenal. Everyone was there to see this, the excitement was building. Support came on and killed a little of this but then at around 8:45 the Radiohead lads come on stage and go straight into There There. Man those drums just rocked. As soon as they started the crowd just moved and didn’t stop. Two nights, two long sets, two different long sets, two great gigs.

There Glastonbury set should be the highlight of the year and I think those Point tickets will have to be mine.

Hail To The Thief which I always enjoyed has grown on me so much over the past couple of days. I’ve been listening to it all day and I’m loving it lots. Especially the tracks which I wasn’t so hot on. In particular Myxamatosis is a great tune.

Other than that, the weekend was good. I had dinner with my family on Sunday night and other than that just chilled a little. Weather wasn’t great, lots and lots of heavy rain so I didn’t get to walk around as much as I had hoped but ah well.

Noticed this last time I was home but it was worse this time. Sleeping in a single bed is a little uncomfortable after sleeping in a double for so long. It was a tad alarming to wake up Sunday morning inches away from waking up painfully on the floor.

Having had some time to think over the weekend, I’m going to be London based for another while. As much as I dislike the city itself, I don’t really and I just need to get over it. So there.

Buffy finale is downloading and should be ready for my viewing tomorrow night. That would be a good thing

Interesting piece in the NYT entitled Dating a Blogger.

Saturday night was the first night of the small tour and there hadn’t been any touring in a while, so looking back it was just a warmup.

Sunday blew it’s fucking socks off. Quite a different set list from Saturday night and highlights were No Surprises, Street Spirit and Paranoid Android moving straight into Idioteque.

So again we got about 23 new songs, 10 new songs (not all the same as last night) and 13 old songs.

The Europe tour later in the year sold out in hours except Dublin. I am so very tempted to book tickets for the Point two nights running.

Oh and spotted in attendence, leading a standing ovation none other than U2’s Adam Clayton and The Edge.