Month: August 2003

Not much to report at the moment.
Went out last night to play some pool and play pool I did. Started off pretty evenly and then went up and down for a little while but it a complete victory in the end, 12 – 9 to me. It was good fun. Got home late and slept well.

Soundtrack is U2’s vastly under-rated Pop all brought on by wanting to listen to Do you feel Loved by a website yesterday. Still enjoying the fuck out of Swamp Thing and I really don’t want to finish them. I am looking forward to the new material a lot and enjoying the old stuff more than ever. Andy Diggle is doing a Swamp Thing mini next year(?) and I’m hoping for that to be good.

There isn’t really all that much going on to be honest.

Awesome

Right so then Ted where are we?

It’s Wednesday morning and all is quiet. Just had a team meeting and things are ticking along. Still waiting on some information but in a much better state than yesterday.

More Queen stuff going on, listening to some now and enjoying it lots. Hit the pub for a little while last night for a couple of cokes and some games of pool. It was good fun. Then home to do some reading, more on that in a mo. The Shield wasn’t great. There were some nice moments but the ending was obvious from the very start and didn’t really mean very much. Still could be good for the rest of the season.

Reading these days is some classic Alan Moore Saga of the Swamp Thing. I picked up the sixth and final book in the series when it came out last week and so I’ve started at the start again to work my way through. It’s good stuff and I’m enjoying it a hell of a lot more than the first time around.

It’s cooled down quite a bit, still no sign of the thunder and lightining we were promised but no temperatures higher than 25. A little nicer then.

I want to go and see Pirates of the Caribbean this week. It looks like lots of fun and I have heard many good things about it. So perhaps tonight or tomorrow night or something to do at the weekend. We shall see.

I was reading an Uncut special about Bruce Springsteen last night. Someone left in the kitchen in work a while ago and I figured I would give it a read. It was basically a large group of people putting together the 40 best Springsteen songs. It was good reading and good tracks all. I have very little Springsteen, I should go out and pick up some more at some stage. Anyway it led me to really want to listen to some more Springsteen. It’s all tied together to the fact that the soundtrack of my weekend in the park was Born In the USA. I was looking for my copy of his greatest hits but I can’t seem to find it despite knowing that I saw it very recently anyway I have it on the musical joy that is my Mac and so it’s playing for me nice and quite nicely too.

Last night I watched Queen: Live from Wembly Stadium, Trev lent me the DVD and it was wonderful. A little strange watching in places, knowing that Freddie is long dead but really great stuff through and through. They really were a great band and they put on a really great performance, I’d love to have seem them live in the flesh myself. Just a bit before my time unfortunately.

Works allright at the mo, I’m having a little trouble getting access to files that I need and I’m about to escalate the fuck out of it but overall things are running smoothly. Jumped in on some stuff yesterday fairly suddenly and it went pretty well and indeed is still going pretty well. My weekly report (shudder) today wasn’t bad at all.

And yes, watch all that come back to bite me.

Internet at home seems to be slipping away and there is only so much stuff I can do at work, so no idea what’s going to happen there. 🙁

Went out last night, headed down to Rileys and played some 9 ball. It was good fun but too hot and I wasn’t really in the mood for it. Still managed to win by a damn nice margin.

If there is one way to brighten up my life straight away, it’s very simple. Give me some good music and give it to me loud. In work just over an hour and dealt with all the overnight stuff and the usual morning stuff and then turned to my mac to fire up iTunes. It loads up and in the bottom right two little words draw my attention: Achtung Baby. A quick click on and Until the end of the World is coming at me and it’s just perfect. The mood is immediately lightened and I feel better.

Also booked a small holiday this morning. Got Ryanair’s usual mailing and they have return flights to Dublin for £0.50 for going Thursday to Tuesday. One quick booking and holiday form later I’m off to Dublin for a Thursday till Tuesday at the end of September for £27.64 including all tax. Nice. Looking forward to that. It also gets my parents off my back. My sister gets back from Tokyo in a couple of days so they have dropped the odd hint that I should make myself available for a few days. But I’m already looking forward to it alot.

Fucking naplam? The US used fucking naplam and then lied about it?
US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq

Good morning.

I had a fun weekend. A lot of it was spent outside in the park. Yesterday was the hottest day in the UK since recording keeping began in the 1800’s. As all the tabloids were anxious to run as their main headline this morning, it was the first time 100 degree’s fahrenheit was recorded. That’s just under 38 degree’s celsius. It was at times too hot but I had some good reading done in the park yesterday with a break in-between to go into a dark room to watch a movie.

I’m getting ahead of myself tho. Saturday was Trev’s birthday and we had no joy on the boat front so we were off to the park for knacker drinking. At least that was the plan. We got there to find it was too hot to do anything but sit around in a pub with a cold drink. Trev has developed a taste for Pimms lately so we had a ‘terribly gay’ afternoon sitting around drinking jugs of Pimms and lemonade. It was good. Later on when it had cooled down a little we sat down in some shade in the park and had a bit to eat followed by a kick around of a football. It was good fun but still too hot so we went on a bit of a pub crawl along Clapham high street. No, funnily enough we skipped the 2 Brewers and finished off in the Railway which was very nice indeed.

So it was a good day in all, good weather, good beer and good company. Really fucking hot with about 85% humidity did sap it a little but we managed to keep it together and finish off around midnight.

Sunday was just sitting in the park and reading and then nipped over the bridge to Fulham road for a preview of American Pie: The Wedding which was good fun. I laughed a lot. Like the first two movies it has one moment in it which had the audience clapping and cheering but for the rest it was laughter all the way. A fun summer movie.

Last night I watched The Iron Giant for the first time which was a fun movie. Nicely animated with some good robot moments, “soooooperman” ranking right up there.

Friday night is a topic for later…maybe 😉

So it’s about 20 past 6 and I’m walking out the front door. Behind me, Patrick and his boss, Paul are walking out the back door. Paul sees me and aks if I fancy a swift half. I get home to bed at 15 minutes past 1 in the AM.

Moral of the story, there is no such thing as a swift half.

It was an interesting night at the least, with lots to think about

Lastnight didn’t happen. Things kinda fell apart at the end of the day and everyone went off their own separate ways. I wasn’t in the best mood so I went home to drop some stuff off and then went to sit in the park andread for a while. It was good. I finished off Iain Banks A Song of Stone leaving me at two books in two days and not sure what to be reading next. I’ll dig something out tonight I guess.

Got back from the park just before 10, in time to flick on Channel 4and catch the start of the third season of Teachers.Not as good as the last season, lots of the sarcasm missing but it was still funny.

My sister sent me some DVD’s a few days ago, last night I watched Grave of the Fireflies from Studio Ghibli. It’s a pretty harrowing movie, even more so now that I see it’s based on a true story. Wonderful animation and voicing, the little girl was so very believable.

It’s still too damn hot here. The AC is quite nice and I do have to admit I’m looking forward to leaving the office at lunchtime for a bit but it’s still too damn hot.

One of the message boards I used to visit years ago started off as a sci-fi board for a couple of shows. I’ve not hung out there in years. I drop in every now and again, at least I did until recently. It’s not a nice place anymore. It’s more cliqued than it ever was (and that’s saying alot) and it’s gone pretty much all the way to the old christian right. Not good, not good at all. So of course clashes with the young liberals are only natural, partly why I avoid the place now, there is just so much stupidity floating around it makes me want to scream and it’s just a waste of time to even try and post back at them.

Anyway, some resource conflicts in work at the moment, I’m not sure what I should actually be working on and it is making my life fun. Still it’s slowly sorting itself out.

I’m missing blogging from home a lot. There is a lot more stuff I’d be putting down here if I had the time to actually sit down and tpye it and wander around the net doing stuff while dropping in things every now and again. Today’s soundtrack is Ryan Adam’s Gold.

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Fish

too hot!

I went to see Buffalo Soldiers last night. It wasn’t bad at all. It’s a shame it got delayed for so long and is now categorised as an indie. Having three trailers before hand for foreign movies was funny. Anyway I enjoyed the movie, it made me laugh. This is a good thing. Great cast, Ed Harris was excellent as was Joaquin Phoenix and Anna Paquin was cute as ever.

I got home around 11:30 and only realised this morning that I missed The Shield so I’m a little annoyed about that. On Monday night I started Shutter Island; the new Dennis Lehane novel. It started off slow but built up really well. I was completely hooked by the time I read a few more pages on the bus going into town last night. So much so that when I got home I stayed up reading till I was finished. Best ending of a book that I’ve read in a long time. Within a few pages everyone you care about in the book changes and changes well. Great ending, absolutely satisfying. Great author.

Just received this email:

> Subject: Emergency…
> Date: 06/08/2003, 10:49
> From: Richard
> To: lots of people
>
> The Great British Beer Festival is on. Now. In Olympia. A mere 2 mins
> walk away.
>
> Anyone fancy a pint, or twenty, tonight?
>
>
> —
> Richard

Guess that’s the plan for tonight then. Some German white beer would go down a treat
, or maybe even some cider.

I was thinking last night about something. I find it very hard to explain why I like something. There was a(nother) thread on a board I visit about your favourite novels, list them and explain why. The listing part I can do but I can’t often tell you why. I often just fall back on something like “I really enjoyed it”, a phrase you have seen here many times I’m sure. Anyway, it’s just one of those things I guess.

Interesting lines of thought last night, touching back on a topic from a few days ago. I don’t even know how to approach it, I’m actually thinking that I don’t want to at all but it was strangely circular. I think I’ll just stand by my words last night: “No, I don’t give a fuck and you shouldn’t either”.

Hafssol by Sigur Ros is an unusual track. It begins with the bass guitarist strumming his guitar with a drum stick. The lead guitarist plays his electric guitar with a bow string as usual and then sings in Icelandic while the string quartet pluck their, well their strings. Pretentious? Perhaps stunningly beautiful, no question. It builds and builds and builds leading to a climax which is seems to be the entire intent of the song. The vocals are some of their very best and then they end and the music just goes up and up and up. A single
I’ve just got their Glastonbury set downloaded. It’s in RM unfortunatly and the only track encoded in high quality is Hafssol, but my god is it high quality. It’s sound and video and it’s just stunning. It’s really well done fade in and overs of the band members playing away. It’s an entire 20mb. I think I shall inflict this on various people. It’s so worth hearing nevermind watching the beauty. The rest are really bad and not worth it 🙁

It appears to be possible there is a boat in my near future. One of the lads on my team has his birthday on Saturday and the plan seems to be to hire a boat and go crusing for the day. Stopping off where ever we like before ending up in town for a night out.