Month: March 2005

I realised late last night what the answer to the 64 thousand dollar question is.

It can be easily summed up by a Radiohead lyric, and indeed a song (right till the end anyway).

Fitter
Happier
More productive

Last night, I saw Festen at the Lyric West End. It was an excellent production, the cast were all excellent. I can’t really say I enjoyed it and I don’t think you are suppose to enjoy it. I’m very curious to see the film it was based on. Some of it seemed really out of place. Bringing the sisters boyfriend into it felt like it was jammed in so there could be some levity allowed with the racist jokes. It didn’t add anything to the play, in fact I thought it took a whole lot away. There was a very subtle underplaying with by Patrick Robinson that he was the outsider watching what was going on and not knowing what to do but that didn’t actually lead anywhere. I do hope it wasn’t forced in for levity but I have my doubts. Well worth seeing, although most definitely not something for a date!

I finished Cryptonomicon last night. I had about 100 paged to go at 12.30 when I was going to get some sleep but I was enjoying it and I wanted to finish it. I’m disappointed and underwhealmed by the ending. It took so long to tie it all together as just being a treasure hunt. There was so much build-up throughout the first 700 pages and then so little payoff. I really liked some of the characters and I really liked some of the writing, in fact there was an excellent excellent 400 page novel sitting in there. I do have another couple of his books but I’m going to have to take a break and read a few more lighter pieces in, good thing I hit Borders late last night on the way home. Not that I really needed to, but I like getting new books.

The new Mars Volta album arrived this morning and it suffers from many of the same problems. If ever there was an argument against self-production, it’s this. Some really good bits dying to get out among what in some places degenerates into noise. I generally have headphones on in work and sometimes don’t even notice what I’m listening to, but this actively pulled me out and annoyed me a whole lot that I had to turn it off before even making it to the end. It may well just require a full sit down and listen but I don’t know if I can approach that again anytime soon. Not sold on first listen at all. I’m hoping it will work better live in a couple of weeks time.

Flickr, I upped to Pro and I’m actively putting lots of photos up there. Archives as far back as a trip to Japan in 2002 and I hope to put stuff up there on a more regular basis. Unsurprisingly, my username is davebushe. My sisters joined up and is uploading hundreds of snow festival and fire festival and other photos. Seems she has a backlog of thousands that she never got around to organisiing. My parents have signed up aswell, just to be able to see what we have to post. They get the family catagory from the both of us while we fall into each others friends and family catagories. Some photos

And now the pub. Then home for a quiet night.

Pool last night was fairly dire to say the least. A single win at 9 ball which was really only as the result of a very unlucky foul. A fun night tho with lots of beer.

This week has been strange. Two good lunches so far. Most days I play chess with Dave and it’s fun, I enjoy it. We are both getting better but we only play for fun. Fridays is nominally team lunch day but that is more often than not just a couple of us.

Yesterday I ended up in a Weatherspoons for lunch and it was surprisingly nice, really nice. They seem to have done their food up a good bit and I was very impressed. We only went there as it was away from the office and a nice change but I’ll be going back on a much more regular basis. Today was a followup to Friday where we went out for Pizza for a birthday lunch. It was good fun with really good company. So yay. Chess tomorrow and then there is another lunch on Thursday which it’s starting to look like I’ll actually be attending.

It’s still embaressing photos ahoy around here. Yet another camera from Saturday night has appeared and there are over 200, possibly closer to 300 photos form it. Most are shit but have much merit depicting some friends having a good time. Others are not so shit and are in fact really quite sweet. Then there are the who are those people we are with and the OMG WTF moments. Probably safe to say some of those won’t be making it up to flickr.

Interupted. More later.