Stuff happening in my life
I attended the first lesson of an NCFE in Indian cookery last night. My culinary skills are a little rusty. For example, I had trouble remembering how best to slice a tomato. This is probably because I’ve never sliced a tomato in my life.
Meat. That’s a new one too. I don’t even eat meat. I learned that Chicken flesh is actually *flesh*. Pink and bloody. That’s certainly more than 6 degrees separation from your McNugget.
I have two pairs of the same black trainers. One pair is newer than the other and I wear them for work. To distinguish them apart in the morning sleep haze, I threaded white laces into the scruffy pair. This worked well.
Today I am sat at my desk at work wearing one new trainer and one scruffy trainer with a white lace. I only noticed on my walk accross the car park. I wonder if anyone will notice.
To celebrate the 70th birthday of Elvis today I mostly swanned about in my pajamas and watched Bubba Ho-Tep. Actually I was blissfully unaware of the King of Womanising’s birthday and it was just a co-incidence that I watched a film depicting an aged Presley fighting a redneck mummy.
In a relatedly bizzarre co-incidence, Louisa came up with an article showing what Mr. P. might have looked like if he’d lived on. Bruce Campbell had a better take on it in my opinion.
People who think that Elvis faked his own death to get out of the public eye obviously have no idea what kind of person it takes to be a rock and roll celebrity (or anything other egotistical attention-seeking psychopath). Now I’m not saying he didn’t do it to avoid paying taxes though.
My VW Corrado came back from the garage shortly before Christmas. The exhaust and immobilizer are now working perfectly. All I have to do now is fix up the electric sunroof, perhaps replace the heating controls, and touch up some paintwork and it’ll be ready to sell.
It will be kinda sad to give it up though. It still looks and sounds great; but ’tis just a car, I won’t really miss it.
My Seat Leon Cupra company car replacement for it is actually faster. Even though the Corrado is a 2.9l and the Seat is 1.8l, the Corrado is 190bhp and the Seat is 270bhp! I’ve never driven anything so fast; it’s pretty stupid really. I’ll get a nice sensible slow diesel next time. Next time.
I met up with my old school friend Neil Moss last week. Shame he hasn’t fattened up as much as me over the years.
If any of my science teachers at school had anything like the enthusiasm or insight of Bill Bryson, I’d probably be working for a pharmaceuticals company by now (thank goodness). In a Short History of Nearly Everything he explains how we think the universe, the earth and humans became the way they are. Just as interestingly he tells us the process we went through to find it. For example, he tells us of the first evidence of hereditary traits, which particular monk made the experiment, the various scientists that ignored it for decades and the particular guy who tried to pass it off as his own work after the monk had died.
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The singer out of Slip Knot went to Rome to see the Pope, and the Pope said to his aide:
Who the fucking hell are Slip Knot?
Who the fucking hell are Slip Knot, in relation to me getting out of bed?
If you grew up in England, I urge you to buy a half man half biscuit cd today. They are on the independent label Probe Plus so you can do it without selling your soul to the evil music industry.
I am now back in the UK after spending a few days in Venice hiding from family with my girlie. I’ll get photos up soon. I seem to have some kind of ear infection that makes me feel like I’m still aboard the Venician floating bus stops. It’s making me sick.
I also came to work today only to find it’s some kind of bank holiday. Although I do not work for a bank, my colleagues have decided not to come in. I’ll be going home early and claiming an extra day’s holiday. (I did wonder why the roads were so quiet this morning.
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Great Chinese film about some badass assassins. Some amazing martial arts sequences but well balanced with a great story. Stunningly beautiful scene composition, impressive sound engineering and generally great direction make this film unmissable. Even better than House of Flying Daggers.
It seems you can’t buy a UK or US region disc yet because Miramax have purposefully prevented releasing it (they scared it would outsell their Kill Bill rubbish?) but you can pick it up on import.
Dell seem not as stupid as I had first hoped. I ordered four VGA projectors for £20 each on Sunday from their website. I received a confirmation later that day but as of an hour ago my order has disappeared from their tracking web site. I ignored the clauses in their terms and conditions that suggested they were able to change civil and criminal law on a whim in the hope they’d process the order automatically before noticing. I guess ten million other people also placed an order, immediately arousing their suspicion circuits.
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Two anime films back to back. First of all, Katsuhiro �tomo’s Steamboy. Truly impressive artwork, amazing sound engineering, utterly poop story. I enjoyed the film but a second or third viewing would only be to check out the visuals. Set in Manchester and London in the steam powered 19th century, young Ray Steam has to help his father and grandfather do some crazy shit protecting their high pressure steamball invention. It’s insanely surreal to see an army of steam powered soldier-robots and flying steam powered attack kites fighting against a Japanese-speaking British army led by Robert Stephenson in the centre of 19th century London. Really, it is, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
What this film lacks in plot, is almost perfectly balanced with lovely things to look at. Almost. Apparently I’m one of very few people outside of Japan to see this film. Don’t I feel so goddam elite.
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About Baghdad is a video collage of interviews and scenes from the streets of Baghdad shorted after the 2003 war (after? is it over?). Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi writer and poet who fleed to the US during Saddam’s regime, revisits his home and talks to other Iraqi people about their views. This was really interesting. What wasn’t suprising was that a majority of the views of Iraqi people are very different from how the mainstream press report them. They are of course very happy that Saddam is gone, and largely thankful to America for this but they basically feel that they need to be running things themselves now, and if this doesn’t happen soon there will be rebellion. Remember these are interviews from a year ago. Also remember all the violence going on currently and how it’s portrayed as a small number of “insurgents” who are going against the wishes of the real Iraqi people.
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Now I’ve seen two more films. First up was Vera Drake. Vera is a “working-class” 1950s abortionist. She performs the “operations” because she genuinely believes the girls need help, and charges no money for doing it. Eventually she gets caught and prosecuted under the ‘Offences Against the Person Act of 1861’.
Directed by Mike Leigh and with Imelda Staunton as Vera the film is absolutely wonderful. It primarily tells Vera’s story, but comments on many other things, including the story of an upper-class girl who pays for a professional operation and everything goes fine and dandy. Being rich rocks eh? Also, Reg and Ethel were the cutest couple I’ve ever seen, heh.
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