I got bored...

...so I made a new blog documenting my new found love of spam. I'll probably forget about it in two days time, but what can you do?

http://spamismapsbackwards.blogspot.com/

What is Roland Rivron for?

I turned on my television earlier this evening to find some Saturday evening guff on (I think it was called Last Choir Standing or something) and standing next to the formerly lovely Myleene Klass (I went off her when I saw her "interviewing" Boris Johnson when pretending to be Judy Finnigan the other day. I almost felt sorry for him with her vapid questioning on policy) was Roland Rivron. It's not that I dislike him. That would be easy. It's just that I can't quite work out why he's on television. He's certainly not bad at presenting. And people must like him, because you don't get a Saturday night primetime slot if nobody likes you (unless you're Piers Morgan). But he's just instantly forgettable. He's instantly recognisable but nothing he's done has been in any way memorable. There's a vague memory of him being a team captain on an awful music version of A Question of Sport presented by Jamie Theakston, but that's only because I was somehow reminded of it the other day.

I do wish that there was some kind of punchline to this, but there isn't.


I'm alone for the first time in a week. It's... weird. Just like everything really. Some things are amazing. Some are terrifying.

Much has happened. And I have no energy to put any of it into words.

Rain is falling on you but you have the wherewithall
To pull on a raincoat, shielding you from all this cold

Reading lineup

Well, I finished Bit of a Blur by Alex James the other day and it was rather fantastic. His writing style takes a bit of getting used to. I mean no offence to him, but his sentences are fairly childlike in structure, often having paragraphs of "I did this. Then I did that." No doubt like my own occasional writing can be, I suppose.

But it's very interesting (unlike my own). If you're expecting an exposé of who did what to whom during the 1990s or what was the real reason behind various public events then you'll no doubt be disappointed, but it's certainly a fascinating insight into his life. He tells you what he wants to tell you and no more, but in a captivating way.

I need to finish reading Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell which I half read a few months ago and never got round to finishing. The same with The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart although I'll probably start that again because it's been so long since I started reading it.

After that, who knows?

Yes, I do realise I have just written about 200 words for no other reason than a rather awful joke that no doubt nobody will notice. But it's better than a 1500 word ramble about how shit things are isn't it?

"Then we meet as satellites that are grounded by the weight of the Earth"

An update to fill up part of the day.

I need to go to Sainsbury's. I have no bread and I'm running out of juice. And I need a walk. And a paper. It's Monday, and hopefully Charlie Brooker will be back. I don't want to check the website because if he's not then my motivation levels might sink below the threshold of actually wanting to go out.

Yesterday was fun. I went to the Imperial War Museum with Charleh (the 30 minute film about crimes against humanity is particularly thought provoking), then we wandered around lots. Then found Green Park (they have deck chairs!) and sat in the shade for a bit before she had to go.

Last week nothing much happened. Monday we went to the Natural History Museum, then watched V For Vendetta and more Coupling at my house.

Stuff that's happening? I'm seeing a couple of TV programme recordings this week in London (Edinburgh And Beyond for Paramount Comedy, I believe. I probably should know, but I just saw Russell Howard's face and clicked on it) which I'm hoping will be fun. Then I'm going to a barbecue on Saturday. Then next week is Radiohead and my barbecue.

I'll no doubt make a post in a couple of days reiterating much of that simply to fill up time, but what can you do? This is probably the most boring thing I've ever written. And that's even taking into account my GCSE geography project.

It's highly annoying that when I have nothing to do my attention span drops massively.

Now I'm going to write a shopping list.

In contrast to the previous epic...

Robert Kubica won! In the Formula 1 race in Canada yesterday. He's had it coming for a long time. He's consistent, and fast. Consistency is the key. This is his first victory this season, but he's been consistently good.

I was joking with Mikey before about it and he said I should have put some money on Kubica to win. I really should have done! But still.

Sweden to win Euro 2008!

Anyway, yeah. That's it for the moment.

"Moments follow one another without belonging"

I've been trying to write something about the past week for... well, a week. Alright, I admit it. I've been wanting to use this title ever since it became stuck in my head the other day. There are worse reasons for writing blog posts though, I'm sure.

One disadvantage of not using Livejournal anymore is that I can't write über elitist filtered friends only group posts so that only people not directly involved can read what I have to say. Having said that, I only ever did it once on my Livejournal. And I doubt I'd go to all the effort of making a friends group now. But that's not the point. I'm not sure what the point is, but that's certainly not it.

Fuck. That sounds like things are bad doesn't it? No. The complete opposite. Things are very good. The past ten days or so have been absolutely fantastic. Sunday the 25th I went to Cardiff to see Emma. Came back Monday evening in the rain. Wednesday was the Maxïmo Park gig. I arrived at the venue at 1pm to meet Dana who had come over from Germany. When faced with six hours of queueing (I hate that word. Especially when the spell checker isn't working, because I lose track of what vowels should be where), what better thing to do than to crack open the vodka and coke? It was fantastic fun. Meeting new people, seeing old people, being given free fire from XFM, finding my new favourite person in the entire world, seeing some great bands, realising how fantastic Maxïmo Park are, nearly missing my last tube home, realising I should find out when my last tubes home are.

Thursday daytime was spent mostly sleeping (and collecting the Monopoly board that I ordered for the next night's fun), and then meeting James and Olli who were dumping stuff off at my house before a number of tube challenges. That evening there were plans for a Random 15 challenge. This particular challenge involved fifteen stations being secretly picked from the proverbial hat (computers have made hats all but irrelevant. It's quite unfortunate), the first one being announced in advance (because we all need to know where to meet up), the remainder being revealed when the clocks start and then we set off to visit them all in any order. The route had to be planned against the clock, which is different to most other of the challenges.

We were battling against some quite big problems on the network that night (not to mention hunger!) so we ended up abandoning half way through and going to McDonalds (although not before taking photos of us by the TARDIS that was there) then meeting everyone at the pub just before throwing out time. Very few groups finished, and we were all hoping that we were using up all our bad luck before the main challenge the next day.

The main challenge was the annual zone 1 challenge that myself, James and Matt did for the first time last year. This year Olli came along with us and Matt went with another guy. After meeting outside Oxford Circus at midday, King's Cross was drawn as this year's starting station so we made our way there furiously planning a route (well, James was. He'd planned it all without me noticing!) for a 1pm start.

Compared to last year we didn't have many problems at all. Certainly nothing like a ten minute wait at Liverpool Street anyway. Towards the end we had some minor problems (a lack of Hammersmith & City trains at Aldgate East) but we managed to fix them with our brilliant logic skills. A lack of ideal trains at the last minute meant we were one minute slower than last year, but I think I probably enjoyed this year more. Last year was good because it was the unknown, but we paced ourselves far better this year so we weren't so utterly exhausted after the first run.

We didn't stay for very long at the pub afterwards (just enough time to enjoy the nicest bottle of cider I've had for a long time) then we went to meet Charleh at Leicester Square, meet up with Laura then head back to mine for the inaugural Blood Red Shoes forum Monopoly tournament ® (for once, not a cover story for anything). After severely cocking up the journey back to Uxbridge (entirely my fault, which I'm very sorry about) we went to buy food and alcohol. Arriving at my house both were consumed for a few hours and we discussed Life, The Universe and Everything (well, Charleh and I did) then I took her back to the station because she had work the next day and when I returned (twenty minutes early) the battle commenced. As expected, I was first to become bankrupt. I think Olli won in the end, but I can't be sure. It was fun anyway, and that's what matters.

Olli had to leave earlier on Saturday so I took him to the station, then James, Laura and I had another Brie and Bacon sandwich from the café in Uxbridge station and Laura got another chocolate cookie sundae thing after we'd bought one the previous night and left it in my fridge. I bid them farewell and returned to tidy up.

Yesterday I was having some windows replaced which meant that I had to be up at 7:30am. Normally that would be fine but annoyingly Tuesday night marked the finale of the Primary season leading up to the US election. The result has been inevitable (yet close) for a few months now, but I'd have liked to have stayed up to watch the final speeches. Especially as Hillary Clinton was still apparently introduced as "The next president of the United States". Despite Obama having passed the all important mark of 50% of deligates.

Still, I woke up to let the window people in and went back to sleep for another hour. I met Charleh at about midday and we spent the afternoon mostly watching Coupling (which she, scandalously, had never seen before) then we went off to North Greenwich to meet James, Katy, Phil and his friend where we saw Avril Lavigne.

Despite being much more of a "pop" concert than last time I saw her (last time I saw her it was her, two guitarists, a bass player and a drummer wheras this time she had eight dancers, choreographed dance moves and huge screens), it was still brilliant fun. There were a number of "what the hell?" moments, particularly when everyone went off stage whilst the video played a montage of her promo videos whilst Avril's cover of a Joan Jett track played over the PA, but it was still great fun.


Apologies for how long this is. I'll give a lolipop to any who has read it all.

Oh, and I do wish there was some deliberate irony in me starting an entry saying "I don't like writing long blog posts describing what I've done with people who read said blog" and then following it up with a thousand words of doing exactly that. But it's not. That's just what came out of my fingers. And I really hate editing myself.

How idiotic can people be?

So, today is the final day before the drinking of alcohol is banned on the London Underground network. I've posted my thoughts on this elsewhere, and it's pretty much a textbook definition of gesture politics. It's going to be popular with the simple minded, but there's not a huge amount to object to over it. And I must say that I've always been surprised that it's not been banned before now.

It's obvious that (in these days of social networking, especially in London) people would end up doing something to celebrate the last day/protest about the introduction of the ban, and it's good that it was expected and plans were made for it by TFL and BT police.

However, if you're someone who disapproves who is attempting to show their dislike for the new rules then what would be the absolute worst thing to do? Yes, you guessed it. Have hundreds of pissed, excitable people descending on one station causing its closure on a Saturday evening. By doing that you're showing the ban to be a fantastically good idea. If you wanted to show the flaws in the plan then organise hundreds of people to be on the trains having a quiet drink not causing any problems whatsoever. That would make people realise how flawed the plan is. Not this. All this will do is make normally rational people think that, perhaps, the ban might be a good idea.

"Spring is such a painfully deceptive time"

It's cold. I've not really done anything for ages. It's kind of nice. I think.

Next week is going to be busy anyway. I'm going to Cardiff on Sunday and coming back Monday, Maxïmo Park on Wednesday which should be... interesting?, Random 15 tube challenge on Thursday night then my second Zone 1 on Friday. Then I need to job hunt. Well, whore myself out to anyone who will give me any money for five weeks.

Wouldn't it be nice if life and people were just a little bit less complicated? I'm not miserable or anything, just slightly frustrated. I'm going for a walk.

iLiKECOFFEE

I must say, National Express are doing good things with the East Coast mainline. Extending the free wifi out to standard class was a good idea.

I should say I'm on the train now. Sadly not a repainted one, but still. The free first class tickets mean that I've been drinking vast amounts of coffee (well, if I'm being offered it then it'd be rude of me to decline!) and taking advantage of the food vouchers that I've got. I wanted a sandwich and the vouchers are for £5 worth (they don't give change), so the woman kept giving me more things to make it up to exactly £5. I've still got a triple chocolate muffin left!

Anyway, I pretty much only made this post to show that picture and abuse the free wifi.

R Kelly

Just copied and pasted from a post on the Blood Red Shoes forum, but I thought it was worthy of being on my blog. Whenever I make a post with an ounce of substance I might cross post it to here. Even if it's just so I can keep an archive of interesting things that I write.


Of course nobody likes to be distracted from music by an artist's "extra curricular activities", but when someone's music is this awful and when they're as monumental a prick as R Kelly is, you can't really help it.

So if anyone wants to follow the (**ahem** alleged) paedophile's hopeful descent into prison where he belongs, the Chicago Sun-Times are liveblogging his time in court!

At the moment they're still selecting (but mostly throwing out) potential jurors but it's still fun. One was thrown out for stating his belief that R Kelly was to blame for the September 11th attacks, another who believes that the onset of puberty is nature's way of saying you can be fucked by any rapper who's out there, and one who thrown out after being convicted of pissing in an alleyway. Still, it's better than pissing on a fourteen year old isn't it?