Waffle cake creator and lover of all things purple

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West Sussex, United Kingdom

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Fat Tuesday on a Monday - Previews

I truly have no idea where to start with this. I was completely blown away by the performances of both comedians last night, that I’m struggling to find a way to structure my thoughts.

Kevin Eldon. How the hell can you sum that man up in a few measly words?
I will start by saying he is definitely a face of comedy rather than a brand name. A surprising number of (sub par) people will not necessarily recognise him by name, but show them a photograph of the chap and they will be able list a whole ream of Kevin's comedy gold appearances.

Most notable, to me at least, is his collaborations with Bill Bailey, both in live performance and in shows such as Black Books. The two of them play off each other like a beam of light reflected off a watch face, teasing the audience with their brilliance much like you can tease an over excited kitten with a blob of sunshine.

I arrived a little early to Fat Tuesday’s Monday Special. On my rather tedious journey, I had decided to personally name the evening "Morbidly Obese Monday", but then realised it sounded more like a government funded awareness campaign or Gok Wan’s new TV series than an amusing play the original title of the evening, so decided to keep my new made up name for the evening a secret. Wise move on my part.

Arriving early to an event quite often happens to me when travelling over 50 miles to see a bucket load of funnies. Luckily, Rosie and Tiernan are lovely and let me sit upstairs to stay out of trouble. Kevin arrived soon after, laden with a bag of mystery and a guitar. Whilst he set up, he let slip that this was his very first preview of his very first solo show. He seemed genuinely nervous about sharing his newly written show-child with a room, soon to be filled with 60 paid up audience members, all ravenous for quality entertainment. Reflecting back, the reality of performing untested works in front of people who've paid to see it must be terrifying.
Tiernan reassured Kevin that the Fat Tuesday crowd of attendees are well versed in the way of “The Preview” and that on the whole, we are all good eggs.

The mob of giggle starved individuals started to take to their seats, eagerly awaiting their gargantuan feast of comical genius. I hadn’t been this excited about a show for months. I try not to get too full of bubbly anticipation, just in case my expectations of awesome and wonderment end up being greeted by the stale, desiccated pangs of disappointment, but I just couldn’t help it. Kevin Eldon! I have wanted to see this guy strut his funky stuff for years and now I get to be a part of the “First Preview” experience. I sat there, trying to reposition my expectations to an achievable level, before anxiously awaiting kevin to bring the magic.

I am not going to talk about the show for fear of spoilers but WOW can that man BRING IT! His nerves seemed to melt into nothingness and the multitalented man of many voices, delivered a practically seamless show of highly intelligent and witty spheres of utter genius. We were hit with musical interludes, intellectual musings, terrifyingly accurate impressions; it was an honour to behold, and one which you should all seek out. Go! Go now!

The second preview of the evening was performed by the loveliest of ladies, Tara Flynn.

Tara is a miniature whirlwind of Irish charm and beauty. She has melted many a chocolate lover’s heart as the voice of the Caramel Bunny in Ireland, recorded sketches for Stewart Lee’s comedy vehicle and more recently entertained students / housewives / layabouts with her rather saucy character performance on the daytime soap opera Doctors.

I have seen Tara perform a number of times at the London Comedy Improv, but this is the first time I'd seen her perform her own show, and more surprisingly, the first time I'd ever seen her sing.

For her new show “Big Noise”, she has returned to her original comedy roots and written an abundance of quality songs, each with a clever and insightful twist of humour. Tara seemed a little bit nervous, which may have led to the occasional stumble over links, but the quality of her song performance was outstanding. As soon as the musical introduction started, you could feel her passion for the song devour the whole room. Throughout the show, Tara demonstrated her envious ability to adopt and dominate a range of different musical styles ranging from 80’s throwback to varying parodies of modern day musical embarrassments. The songs were accompanied by a wave of satirical dance routines which were theatrically performed with all the vigour and gusto of someone who is truly in love with what they do. It’s incredibly refreshing to see a comedian/musician who graces the stage with such fervour for their art. The room was incredibly hot, which started to affect tara’s voice slightly towards the end, but I can honestly say I have not heard a live performance with such a rich and luxurious vocal tone for quite some time.

If you like songs by the likes of Bill Bailey, you will love Tara’s show. Please go and see it when you visit the Fringe festival this year.

I really love seeing the Edinburgh previews. They are a delight to witness as you get to see things evolve and grow whilst feeling like an important part of it.

The Fat Tuesday team are playing host to a number of previews on the run up to August. Do check out their website for further details.

Sunday, 6 June 2010

Rage against the Washing Machine

So instead of being in London rocking out with friends and seeing one
of the most noteworthy bands of the 1990's sticking it to the man, I'm sat inside feeing very sorry for myself.

The highlight of my day so far has been my trip to the laundrettes where I got to watch my washing wizz around in a blurry circle, not too dissimilar to how my head is currently feeling.
The soak and soap part of the wash is now over which would ordinarily lead directly into the "lug the sodden clothes into the next available clothes oven". Only it appeared that every single Worthingite decided to leave their clothes to simmer gently on a medium heat for the next hour. I was now stuck in a room, which I'm convinced reaches temperatures akin to the suns surface, with a heaped pile of what should now be wearable clothing but is instead a sea of damp man made threads, just praying that someone decides to come and claim their toasty undies sooner than they originally anticipated.

Then, as if an ethereal force had heard my whiney self important plea, an elderly gentleman slowly pottered over to his designated heat circle to examine his tea towels. I got rather excited about this. This could be the big break my clothes and I had been waiting for! I picked up the dripping basket containing my rather sorry looking fabric based skin coverings, ensuring I positioned myself in a prime pouncing position to claim this dryer as my own. The gentleman started to remove his holiday collection of cotton based dish driers when he suddenly paused. Pausing mid removal of items is never a good sign. Something was wrong! His towels were clearly not meeting with his expectations! This granddad had realised he was going to have to make the clearly impossible decision over which of these square sheets had not met the required temperature.

I would like to point out at this juncture, that tea towels are in a state of dampness the vast majority of the time. Unless you're middle class enough to have a machine which cleans your pots for you, or the nearest thing you come to class is insisting your guests eat their take away over the lid of a pizza box, you will know that however few your dishes are, when you come to dry them, your towel will be wetter than an English summer. Surely then, knowing that most humans have this scientific knowledge of the humble tea towel, please explain to me why this man decided to ponder for the next 10 minutes over which items he would return to the rotating jaws of the drying monster and then proceed to only put the dryer on for a further 3 minutes? I do not understand!

I was left feeling bereft of an opportunity to finally dry my belongings. The crumbly old man had taunted with the possibility of toasty dryness, and then made a fool of me as I was left to stand there with the mountain of my things which were still stuck in a state of clothing limbo. I can only imagine this is how the educational runts they picked for contestants on the Million Pound Drop show felt. I was almost expecting Davina to come into the laundrette, ready to point out the bleeding obvious but in a way that is supposed to appear comforting.

While the clock refused to tick, another gentleman arrived to check on his dryers. Yes. DRYERS PLURAL! The cheeky little cretin had taken up 2 of these heat spinners when it was abundantly clear that a queue of soggy sock laden people had started to form. Well ok, so he had set his stuff off before I got there, and the queue really only consisted of me, but I was certainly hacked off enough to generate the disgruntled atmosphere of an over crowded post office.

Time passed slower than a kidney stone and almost as painfully, until the first gentleman had finally managed to neatly fold every single one of his precious chuffing dish rags and place them into his rather twee looking wicker basket.

At last! I finally managed to put my clothes in to cook for 40 minutes!

By now the heat of the room as well as the situation had made me feel even worse than I did before. I was so sick in fact, that I found myself thumbing through the most monstrous of shiny sheet publications “pick me up”. This diabolical excuse for a magazine, known for its callous sensationalism of torturous heartache from people who aren’t usually bright enough to realise that bleeding their private lives in this format will only benefit the publishers, tends to make me very angry indeed. This pile of papery turd adds insult to injury by highlighting the most emotive sentences in the story, just in case the reader finds the rest of the English language too tiresome. Grrr! I didn’t manage to hold out for very long before concluding that I would rather gouge out my own liver with a paper clip than continue reading. Ironically, that will probably feature in next week’s double spread.

It was a further 30 minutes before I could reclaim my clothes from their ordeal and leave the laundrette of nightmares. I truly despise the experience every single time I’m there, but when you are poorly and instead of rocking it to the max you’ve found yourself in a room that time forgot, my deep routed hatred of the whole laundrette social narrative multiplies 10 fold.

I can not believe I have just managed to spew about 2 A4 sides worth of words about my afternoon in a laundrette. If you stayed until the end, good for you :o)

Tuesday, 1 June 2010

Fringe preview: Kent Valentine / Fablemonger

Previewing his 5th solo show “Fablemonger”, Kent Valentine arrived at the Albion Hotel in Brighton to take part in the £5 Fringe. Kent is an Australian comedian who is renowned for his ability to immerse the audience in autobiographical narrative. As his own protagonist, he takes a handful of memorable moments from his past and weaves a tapestry of pithy prose.

Having no previous awareness of this particular comedian, I had no preconceptions of how this show would develop. As he took to the front, he appeared to be shrouded in self depreciation which made his entrance a little underwhelming. This filled me with the sort of unease you might experience when watching an entrant walk uncomfortably into an audition.

I was completely and utterly wrong.

From the moment Kent addressed the audience, his personality spilled out and engulfed the attention of the audience for the entire duration of his show. Although it may appear that Kent travels fairly light in terms of material quantity, the quality and level of detail he injects into each story makes “Fablemonger” truly compelling.

Kent manages to paint an emotional masterpiece of awkward, poignant and sometimes even explosive situations. We were taken on a journey through childhood foolishness, as well as more recent situations involving computer games, the creation of child and trying to pick the correct baby transportation apparatus. The dryly delivered descriptive commentary of these personal memories seems to open a window into the glorious yet rather insane logic of this witty man. He has developed the fine art of prolonging suspense until you physically try and hide yourself from the inevitable crescendo to the magnificently unbelievable finale of each story.

I felt Kent’s Fablemonger show was very well structured and beautifully delivered. I heartily recommend adding it to your list of shows to see at the Fringe this year.

http://www.kentvalentine.com/index.html

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Tiernan Douieb – Work in progress Edinburgh preview show

Tiernan's Fringe 2010 show “Littlest things” focuses on a few moments in his life where individuals surpass all assumed expectations, by expressing an act of unexpected kindness.
This show delivers a refreshing breeze of positivity into a form of entertainment which is so often used as a soap box to complain about life.

Furnished with a large cheeky grin, Tiernan took himself to the front of the curtain cladded little room at the Albion Hotel which has currently been commandeered by the £5 Fringe Team.

He began his fledgling show by explaining that it was still a work in progress and although the structure is sound, some of the links may be a bit flakey.
It soon became clear that he had been overly cautious with his warning, as Tiernan’s confidently solid performance was warmly recognized by an array of giggling attendees. Tiernan’s clean and almost childlike style of situation humour managed to tease a chuckle out of every age group present.

The backbone of the hour focused on delightfully sweet, anecdotal natter about 4 main influences. These main stories were then skillfully punctuated with sneaky page-break interludes. Snippets of amusing and sometimes silly happenings would build up to a crescendo of cleverly constructed puns.
The show was well paced and engaging which kept the audience completely on side. Tiernan is a well seasoned MC and makes audience interaction appear completely effortless as he quick fires a torrent of amusing retorts to the crowd led content section of the show.

There was the odd moment where the crib sheet was needed and the occasional link which would benefit from a touch of fine tuning but given this was the first preview after a rewrite, Tiernan made for a very enjoyable hour of comedic entertainment.

For more information about up coming shows, please visit his website: www.tiernandouieb.co.uk

Thursday, 6 May 2010

Review: Fat Tuesday- headliner Tim key

I have been thinking about how to write this review. I have read so many verbose, textually stunning pieces of literary art, depicting an evening as if it were the last sunset they would ever see. Beautiful as they are, I've decided I would just opt for telling you what it was like.

"Fat Tuesday", not to be confused with any of those other thyroid deficient week days, is a comedy night founded, run and usually MC’ed by one of lonely planet's London landmarks, Tiernan Douieb.

The night has been running for over 5 years and draws in both new and well established acts, not to mention a packed audience. Starwars day was no exception. All tickets had sold out and there was even a point during the evening, when a war nearly broke out over seating arrangements. The war was eventually extinguished by a lovely gentleman who graciously gave up his seat so a couple could sit together. Living fricking legend, that fella.

Greeted on this occasion by a delightful mini cup cake, we took our seats amongst a plethora of mismatched furniture, neatly placed in tightly packed rows.

Tiernan opened the evening with the classic “who are you? What do you do?" warm up. He struck gold with a man on the third row who turned out to be a scientist called Dr Steinenburgh (Ok, I forgot his actual name but it sounded like an evil genius) who has an army of robots who cut people up, and which occasionally play the drums.

After we had been well and truly warmed with laughter, and the body heat of about 50+ people crammed into a rather intimate venue, the first act of the evening, James Acaster came to the stage.

Instantly proving his keen eye and ability to improvise, James started his act by reuniting two friends, stuck at the entrance of the gig, with a gentleman sat at the front. James had noticed that this man had recognized his friends during the warm up and thusly started to point and text them. Having selected his “mark”, James continued probe the man for information which rolled seamlessly into his personable routine.

The audience immediately warmed to James, as he shared his stories of social awkwardness and great days out. He kept us enthralled as he crept around the stage, physically reenacting some of the more cringe worthy moments of his past. James has a very real and genuine outlook to his performance which makes him exceedingly likable.

The second of the night came the most notorious “sorry, madam. This one’s broken. Can you hear that?” man from the Crunchy Nut adverts, Matt Green. I spent the whole evening (in between enjoying myself immensely) trying to work out where I had seen him before. I was so relieved when I finally it worked out, which was instantaneously followed by sense of deep sadness. My life has seemingly shifted to agonizingly trying to place people I have seen in breakfast cereal advertisements.

Matt is a dry witted comedian who confidently delivered his preview show with an incredibly calm persona. His polished performance encapsulated the audience as he described his frustration at the “volcanic ash advisory centre”in Kent, the embarrassing turmoil which can occur following a bed full of rose petals and he concluded his set by sharing a ridiculously funny tale involving a blissfully unaware gentleman, a bin and a rat. He is previewing his Fringe show in Brighton this month.

Tiernan punctuated the acts by producing his Real or Made Up Band Name quiz,featuring such awesome names as:
“Elephantitus”
“Tubelord”
“Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs”
“Oooh Danone”

I really want there to be a band called Oooh Danone. I think they would be actively good. (Sorry :-p)

The last act of the first half was Rude Tube front man Alex Zane. I had been chatting with him for a little while prior to the show, thinking “he looks very much like that dude off that You Tube clip show”, but decided I was mistaken because firstly, he was talking to me, and secondly he seemed unusually nervous.

His nerves followed him on to the stage, but despite his occasionally erratic delivery, he created some lovely material. His set focused heavily on movies, which meant a couple of jokes were inaccessible to people unfamiliar with a particular movie reference, but there were many notable moments of awesome such as the amazing imagery of mind wrestling food stuffs with drawn on faces. It is clear that Alex’s show is still a work in progress, but once it has been finely honed, it will be an interesting show to see at the fringe this year.

After a wee break, in both the colloquial and literal sense of the word, the second part of the night was due to start.

Tiernan opened the second half by previewing some of his new material. Now, as Tiernan had been MCing all evening, my memory has managed to muddle itself up (the fact I had had 2 pints by this stage is merely coincidental), but I will attempt to review it just the same.

Tiernan, predominately known for his delightful use of word play and endearingly unique view on the world, has once again kept his material topical by focusing on current political events. Citing his amusing take on the current debate, he made the audience chuckle by comparing the last week’s political debate with family feud. Although the content of his material may be slightly “hazey” to me, the audience definitely enjoyed his ramblings. It will be interesting to see how his topical material evolves passed May 6th. Tiernan is previewing his solo show at Brighton Fringe on the 6th / 7th May.

Nat Luurtsema was the only female act of the evening. I worry when a female comedian takes to the stage as so many of them focus their material solely on the female stereotypical themes. It upsets me to see comedians talk of nothing cake, weight, periods and boyfriends. Luckily Nat hadn’t fallen completely into this trap. She made reference to make up, breasts and feminism, but these topics were usually interspersed with a dark punch line. The act was slightly slow in pace, with a couple of pauses which seemed to linger slightly, but she definitely won the hearts of those who attended.

The second to last act of the night was a magical number by Peter Firman.
Peter took to the spot light with carrier bag and a smile. As a sworn in member of the magic circle, he has vowed to keep the methods of his art a secret. For this reason, his disappearing party ring trick still tortures me with untold mystery. Peter's pun filled one liners recieved a fondly meant, and most likely expected, groan from the audience which lead into his final trick involving his carrier bag of cooking ingredients.

The finale of this star studded evening featured the renowned poet Tim key. This literary genius has made televisual appearances, reading his disjointed nuggets of creative gold, on Charlie Brooker's BBC4 show "screenwipe", as well as co hosting "We need answers" with Mark Watson and Alex Horne.
After what can only be loosely described as "smartening up" by including a tie about his person, Tim commenced his act by reading out his poetic masterpieces and surreptitiously punctuating the poem with underlying narrative. He also went on to give the audience advice on becoming a successful poet and told us tales of personal experience.
Tim's dead pan and broody delivery of his poet character, seemed to melt the audience who were hanging on his every action, including a teeth clenching few moments where his actions involved performing a difficult party trick.

All in all, Fat Tuesday has been the best comedy show I've experienced in London so far this year. I have never had the pleasure seeing of so many brilliant acts for such a steal of a ticket price. Do check out the Fat Tuesday line up here = http://www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/fattuesday-listings.htm
and make sure you order your tickets in advance to avoid disappointment

Saturday, 17 April 2010

Bloggidy boo!


It's Saturday afternoon and I'm still lying in bed wondering what to do for the day. Sadly, my pondering has left me with very little of today left to um... do.

I have been listening to 6 music today as the Irish grumpmister michael legge had somehow pleaded his way into the still luke warm seat of Richard herring, who is finishing his hitler moustashe tour.

For those of you that haven't listened to the precious little podcast, michael is rather colourful in his handling of the english language. Yes *English* language, suck it up Irish/scotish/Canadian imitators, we got the language first. This led to most precious little podos being hooked on the 3 hour show, awaiting the inevitable moment where a naughty word slipped out. To our mild disappointment, Michael and andrew both did splendidly. I was quite surprised at the level of broadcasting chemistry between the pair of them. I was left pondering how they would explain their broadcasting infidelity to their respective broadcasting partners.
.....
James holding a defensive stance, his back to michael looking over his shoulder, holding back the tears "why didn't you come to the precious little recording michael?" Michael fumbling with his fingers, before mumbling "i had something on in London." in a voice only loud enough for James (and maybe leprecauns) to hear. "something on michael? You mean like being *on* the radio with another host?!" James would say while storming over to the laptop and blaring out the iplayer version.
.....

Anyway.

This week has been interesting. It started with my friends wedding on saturday, which left me fearing for my health after we all decided to eat part of the plastic table decorations.

Tuesday I went to see the recording of Russell howard's good news which was fab. They has the French spiderman as the special guest. He was brilliant. I watched the broadcasted version on thursday, and they actually cut out the best parts of the interview which included a story of him getting a boner while seeing a nudey woman in a building he was scaling, and how he continually gets arrested.

Most excitingly of all, I was introduced to the wonders of an oyster card! How the fricking hell have I not had one of these before? I felt like some kind of VIP flashing my access card when I could hop through the barriers while others needed to fiddle about with peasent paper passes. Muhahaha I'm now queen of the underground.

Friday I had an internal interview which consisted of a role play presentation where I had to present our internally configured management system as a customer relationship management tool. This was quite a feat as the only reason we don't sell it is because it isn't currently marketable. The other tricky thing about this situation is the fact that we are predominately a recruitment software house which meant I had to do a lot of research. Now the idea of "selling" something is new to me. I'm really a techical person rather than sales, but luckily this worked in my favour when I had to answer development questions which were thrown my way. I still haven't fully decided which route I want to take my career in. Do I want to move into management or into technical? The role I am being interviewed for is SME Account Manager (which I already do as I manage 40 accounts on top of my other workload). Taking this job would mean I would have management in my title, but would mean I would be leaving the techical configuration side behind. Tricky

I should hear back next week if they want to have an informal face to face interview with me.


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Monday, 12 April 2010

Mafia Banks

I was shocked to discover that Natwest is a Mafia bank that is getting in the way of my funds being transered. Thank the lord for Rev. Pastor James:

From: REV.PASTOR JAMES [info@rev.com]
Subject: THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR FUND(REV.JAMES)

Greetings,

I am Rev. Pastor James Smith. a computer scientist working with central bank of Nigeria. I just started work with C.B.N. and I came across your file which was marked X and your released disk painted RED, I took time to study it and found out that you have paid VIRTUALLY all fees and but the fund was not released to you.

The most annoying thing is that they won't tell you the truth that on no account will they ever release the fund to you, instead they allow you spend money unnecessarily, I do not intend to work here all the days of my life, I can release this fund to you if you can certify me of my security.

I needed to do this because you need to know the statues of your Funds and cause for the delay, Please this is like a Mafia setting in Nigeria, you may not understand it because you are not a Nigerian. The only thing needed to release this fund is the Anti drug/terrorist clearance certificate which will be tendered to any of your nominated bank and the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE (IRS) for clearance of the transferred amount in your account.

Once the Anti drug /terrorist clearance certificate is obtained funds will immediately reflect in your bank within 10 Minutes, the certificate is all that is needed to complete this transaction.

Note that the actual funds are valued at $15.5 MILLION USD and the president made a compensation fund release for all unpaid beneficiary valued at $10 million usd.

Listed below are the mafias and banks behind the non release of your funds that I managed to sneak out for your kind perusal.

1)DR ROGERS ADEWALE
2) Senator David Mark
3) Chief Joseph Sanusi
4) Dr. R. Rasheed
5) Barrister Awele Ugorji
6) Mr. Roland Ngwa
7) Barrister Ucheuzo Williams
8) Mr. Ernest Chukwudi Obi
9) Dr. Patrick Aziza
Deputy Governor - Policy / Board Member
10) Mr. Tunde Lemon
Deputy Governor - Financial Sector Surveillance / Board Member
11) Mrs. W. D. A. Mshelia
Deputy Governor - Corporate Services / Board Members
12) Mrs. Okonjo Iweala
13) Mrs. Rita Ekwesili
14) Barr Jacob Onyema
15) Dr. Godwin Oboh: Director Union Bank Of Nigeria.
16) Mr. John Collins: Global Diplomat Director.
17) Foreign fund diplomatic courier
18) Barr. Becky Owens
19) Rev. Steven Jones
20) Bank of Africa
21) Mrs. Debbie Hargrove
22) Mr. Michael Wagner
23) Barr. Isa Farid
24) Dr. Raymond Faye< /i>
25) Ibraheem Fashola
26) Dr. Leslie Fawaz
27) Mercy Fajaroo
28) Walter K. Falana
29) Azeez Fatou
30) Ibrahim Fabumi
31) Daniel Faras
32) Michael Faras
33) Minassa Fernandez
34) Viresh Fernando
35) Deacon Diende Fernandez
36) Ben Felix
37) Dr. Ige Femi
38) Chen Hsiu Fei
39) Gloria Festus
40) Lopez Fernando
41) Aloye Fidelis
42) Augusto Fish
43) Dr. Raymond Fingesi
44) Dr. Martin Fibu
45) Joseph Finn
46) Ogom Fidelis
47) Jennifer H. Fiedler
48) Dr. Jimmy Fowler
49) Robert Fortin
50) Dr. Sharon Forrest
51) Prince Michael Fofano
52) Sarah Fofano
53) Tony Foster
54) Dr. Koman Fofar
55) Samuel Fona
56) Grace Fona
57) Funmi Folorunso
58) Mike Franklin
59) Egbo Francois
60) George Freeman
61) Senator Jude Fred
62) Paul Frank
63) Dr. Francis Fregere
64) Walter Freer < /font>
65) Olu-Segun Fredrick
66) Justice Philip Francis
67) Raul Franco
68) Desmond Fred
69) Madu Frank
70) Rita Frank
71) Godwin Frank
72) Dr. J. Frances
73) Frank Francis
74) Derrick Frans
75) Kingsley Fred
76) Dr. Carlos Frederico
77) Dr Ola Funmilowo
78) Alan Fumbi
79) Vincent Fuso
80) Dr. John Fugar
81) William Funsho
82) Michael Funsho
83) Shahla Ghasemi
84) Ali-Reza Ghasemi
85) Martins Gambari
86) Jim Gallo
87) Paulo Gato
88) Ben Gafhar
89) Byron Gate
90) Arthur Gai
91) Shinder Gangar
92) Lopez Garvin
93) Abdul Gafah
94) Dr. Rufus Gaba
95) Alhaji Garba
96) Dr. Frank Gani
97) Brigadier Williams Gal
98) Egonna Duru Gal
99) Lucky Garbi
100)Sadique Gadaffi
101) Federick Ike Ganziri
102) Dr. Dennis Gavey
103) Jose Sanchez Garcia
104) Ahmed Gana
105) Jose A. Garcia
106) Major Archie Gates
107) Bavolleni Gallilo
108) Musa Galadima
109) Shehu Galadima
110) Barr. Imam Galadima
111) Barr. Jerry Galadima
112) Mustapha Gambo
113) Dr. Isah Gambo
114) Usman Gambo
115) Engr. Isaac Garuba
116) Alhani Azeez Garuba
117) Engr. Sule Garuba
118) Idris Garuba
119) Mustapha Garuba
120) ADB Bank Ouagadougou Burkina Faso
121) FSA UK
122) NATWEST BANK
123) ECO Bank
124) Credit Bank
125) Barr Greg Thompson
126) Mr Bello
127)Jones Williams
128)Scott Daniel
129)Thomas Brown
130)Bisi carlson
130)Jeff Peter
Do get in touch with me to with this email address( rev.pastor.jamessmith@live.com) and my direct phone +2348083010470 conclude this final transaction immediately, and also send to me your convenient tel/fax numbers for easy communications.

Regards,
Rev. Pastor James smith.

Thursday, 8 April 2010

The end of mr wrestler...

(Warning: written on iPhone so typos will be present!)

I'm sorry I haven't updated this blog for a little while. I have been struggling to make the time to just sit down and write about what I have been doing, because I have been too busy doing it.

I have now got 2 regular readers who have both requested a blog update about mr wrestler guy (One of these readers is my friend who was there at the time my date dilemma kicked off anyway!)

It didn't do well with mr tall wrestler guy. Please sit tight as I try and remember what happened
*wiggly lines of hazey memories*

It was a Saturday night and I arranged to go out for a beverage session with my friends. After discussing this outing with Mr Tall-yPants through the medium of text, I, somewhat foolishly, decided to invite him along. I told him that I would meet him at the bar at 9 and that I would text him once I had left my friends house, following a small amount of pre-drink drinks. He like always, text back instantly, suggesting that he come along to my friend’s house. Having rejected his rather rude offer to invade my friend's abode, I suggested he may wish to bring some mates with him to the pub as it was going to be all girls. This suggestion was met with the instantaneous prickly retort "I thought you wanted to see me not my mates!". Goodness gracious! All I was trying to do was make him feel a little more comfortable because none of my male friends could make it and he would be swimming in a sea of flange.
After managing to explain myself, he said his friends had gone to Brighton but wanted me to confirm I still wanted him to come.

Much vodka and girly hair faff happened before we booted up and head off. I had forgotten to text him to say we'd set off, but as we turned the corner, we noticed he was already waiting outside the bar. He hadn't even sat inside, just lingered awkwardly to one side of the entrance.

The girls and I ordered a pitcher of cocktail and he sat down next to me in a rather predatory manner. He proceeded to rudely steal me away from the group discussion, by directing all his conversation *at* me instead of to the whole group. This was made worse on two fronts. The first being the fact that this conversation consisted of him telling me he had bought new bed sheets, tidied his room as well boasting about the numerous colours of work shirts he possesses. I mean really. Listen up boys... The fact you tidied your room will not be an impressive enough fact for us lady folks to want to jump on your fleshy pogo stick. Also, the array of colours in your wardrobe does not interest me, why the hell would it? The second fact about this conversation which caused me untold torment was the fact that this was not the first time he had told me about his shirts. This wasn't even the second time he told me about his shirts. This was meeting number 3 and I was enduring the tedium of shirt colour for third time. This was strike one. I need someone who has something interesting to say. Anyone who can repeat the same diabolical clothes story more than once within only 3 times of meeting me, really isn't going to be worthy of any sort of commitment.

Strike 2 story.

This happened when he broached the subject of our mutual acquaintance that he works / slept with. As you know, I already knew about this situation but I hadn't mentioned it to either mr wrestler or my friend. After boring me senseless with his shirts, he unsubtlely moved on to the topic of facebook friends. He admitted to checking though who I knew and wanted to know how I knew ****** I explained that she is best friends with one of the ladies who had been sat with us the whole evening. Hot tip number 2. If you've made the effort to tidy your room in hope of scoring, do not proceed to belittle and insult the friend of your potential sex pot. I had to actually stop him mid vitriolic spew to explain that he was talking about a friend of ours.

Strike 3

I left to visit the room of little girls for a bit of an escape. One of my friends joined me a little while later to say that he had commenced an interrogation as soon as I has left. Does she like me? Why doesn't she text me? What has she said about me? Hot tip number 3. Never say things about the woman you hope to snuggle, to her friends. They are "her" friends and will tell her! Idiot!

....and you're out!

Thankfully the night had drawn to a close but unfortunately the twonk wanted to walk me home. He continued to hound me to confirm my feelings for him, which I skirted around because he is bigger than me and I didn't fancy being on the rough end of his aggression. I tried to make my excuses to get in my flat, when he pulled out this little doozy. " I don't really like walking back on my own at night" really? Really? He must have been clasping at the very last sex starved straw to think I would have invited him in after that. I don't think he was necessarily geared up for me offering to walk him along the "scariest" parts as I walk that way all the time and wouldn't find it in the least bit intimidating to walk back alone having dropped him off.

Coward

I decided enough was enough so I sorted this out once and for all. I very bravely text him to inform him that he weirded me out and he is too much hard work. I then prepared myself to valiantly face my decision, by turning my phone off.

So there you have it. The end of mr wrestler. It really is a wonder why I'm single isn't it....



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Friday, 19 March 2010

Second test drive....

Hiya!

I have been completely and utterly shattered this week so I’m sorry for the delay in updating.

I guess my main update today will need to cover the second “test drive” with mr wrestler dude. Now I am already aware that I make a rather splendid girlfriend, but unfortunately I tend to act like a wild horse during a “breaking” session on a date. In an attempt to swerve the awkward interview style dating procedure, I suggested that our second date should be at a pub quiz.

*checks phone to see if she has any relevant textual material to fill this section*

Ah yes, I remember now.

This gentleman seems rather insecure. This isn’t usually so much of an issue, except that this particular gentleman is also 6ft 5 and is an ex wrestler. I am starting to believe that these two parts of his personality might be at war. He tried to call me on Sunday. When I was unable to answer, he called again, straight after he hung up from the first call attempt. When it became clear that I was not available (for the second time in 2 minutes), he sent me a text to tell me that he had tried to call. All of these seems a little overly keen for my liking, like a dog that has forgotten what having a bone is all about. We arranged the date, and after a few messages from him asking if he could turn up to mine early and whether or not I was looking forward to seeing him (and replies from me basically trying to make it known that there is absolutely no rush needed in us getting to know each other), we settled on going to a pub quiz.

Now apart from the fact I love quizzes, the true, underhand, self serving reason for suggesting a pub quiz, was because it gives me a clear idea of how intelligent people are.

He met me from my flat (the location of which my mother still cant believe that I told him) and we started our walk to the pub. He presented me with a malteaser bunny which I once mentioned was one of my favourite chocolates, which I thought was sweet. (Unintentional bad pun there)

The quiz was interesting. It turns out that this chap is actually quite clever. The authenticity of this claim is unclear, but apparently he did an IQ test when he was 12 and was given a year’s free membership to mensa. Does this make me a bad person that I was quite turned on by that? (Not the 12 year’s old part, you filthy pervert!) I just love smart people. What I found tricky about the evening was the fact that every time the new chappy spoke to someone in the pub, he would come across as quite aggressive. I worried for the life of the quiz master at one point, when wrestler boy realised that our marks had been calculated incorrectly.

He walked me home again at the end of the night and we concluded things with a second date pash on the lips. I said I had to head off to bed as I was tired. In fact each time I said something rather subtle about wanting to go to sleep, he would mutter something that I guess is supposed to be seductive in some way. In the end, I had to physically break through a moment of passion by pushing him a side saying something along the lines of “you need to leave and go home now; I’m going in there, alone, to sleep”.

I have had a further few texts from this gentleman since. Some of them are very “do you like me *twist the back foot for effect*” though which is a bit teenage emo for my liking and is not a trait that I particularly fancy.

I am in a bit of a moral quandary as my head is telling me that he is going to be too much trouble, but the other half of me is going “did you not see that he is 6ft 5?!” “he has been a member of mensa don’t you know” I’m confused.

It’s late so I’m going to leave it there for now.

Tuesday, 16 March 2010

Here goes. A dose of hard hitting real

This will not be a particularly funny entry. In fact I am expecting it to be fairly self serving and pitying.

I don't expect you to trawl through my brain farts, but I would like to thank you in advance if you decide to stick with it. Any advice would be welcome.

I had promised myself that I would use this new blog as a way of improving my writing skills. I occasionally make myself giggle at some unusual ideas or thoughts that I have on every day subjects and I figured writing a blog would be a good way to try and express these. I hope with time, determination and a lot of constructive criticism from others, I can make it into something that makes other people smile too.

Today's blog is not going to be a light hearted look at the mundane. Today, I am struggling to remember how to be that usual smiley, outrageous person.

Some time ago, before I up sticks and moved my life to the south coast, I suffered with an incy wincey bit of depression. This word still creates a bitter taste in my mouth. There is a huge amount of stigma attached to being branded depressed, and even I hold my own prejudice about the condition. I am a very competitive person and I usually succeed at what ever I put my mind to. Reaching a stage in my life where I hated the fact that I was still alive in the morning and knowing that I had another day to live made me feel weak and pathetic.

Even now, 2 years on, I still struggle to deal with the fact that I wasn't strong enough to cope with the every day.

I did have a lot on my plate at the time which I'm sure added to the overwhelming inability to cope. My first real relationship was breaking down, my job and office politics had become completely unbearable, I had money worries and I was lacking something to work towards.

I would have tremours at night, I couldn't sleep, I felt increasingly paranoid and worthless, I had (and still do to some extent) a very unhealthy relationship with food. I would walk down the street and assume that anyone I heard giggling was making fun of me.

Remembering all these emotions and confusion is hard. I know that I don’t want to be that person again. I refused to take any sort of drug to battle this, but I did end up being referred for CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) They help you identify what is triggering the shift in mood and work out how to rationalise and correct the way you feel about it. It was hard to face up to, but I worked very hard to ensure that I wasn’t beaten by my own self.

I applied for a new job which ended up being 7 hours away from Lancaster, I was successful and moved my whole life to the other end of the country where I didn’t know a single person. This set me a new challenge and a way to rebuild myself, and it still remains the best thing I have ever done.

The reason I am writing about this is because I have noticed a few of traits I fought against, creeping back.

I am at an increased level of stress at the moment. I am currently doing the workload of 3 people and not paid nearly enough for the privilege, I live in a studio flat which is smaller than your average size hamster cage, I'm approaching 30 and I feel like I am decades behind my peers who are married, have a house, children and careers.

I worry that I am using twitter as a form of escapism to draw focus away from the issues that I need to face. I have noticed that I crave to be accepted by people in online communities, rather than being excited by how accepted I am in my real life world. I have noticed that if someone is pissed off at something, I instantly assume that I am the root cause, even if that person doesn’t even really know me.

These things worry me. Don't get me wrong, the people I have met / speak to via twitter or forums are awesome and I love the fact that we share similar passions which my friends here don't completely understand. I just don’t want to fall into the trap of forgetting how reality works.

I'm just feeling a bit scared that I will forget how to cope again.

Hopefully strong independent women status will resume shortly.


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Sunday, 14 March 2010

Mothering Sunday

Today is mother’s day. The day where hallmark count their card driven share increase, Sunday school children cut up egg boxes painted yellow, stick them on a bit of card to pretend it’s a daffodil filled with eternal love and where the poor women that have squeezed a rather big thing, out of a much smaller thing, get to put their feet up.

I had remembered that this particular day was looming last week. I even managed to contribute to hallmark’s grossing revenue. Unfortunately, I promptly forgot about it soon afterwards and the card is still in my flat somewhere in one of those pink and white stripy bags that absolutely all greeting cards tend to be wrapped in after purchase.

My mother and I fell out last week because I had forgotten to send my Grandmother a birthday card. Apparently I will regret it when they are dead as I will wish I had been a lot less self centred and cared more about them. I hadn’t realised that folded pieces of card with someone else’s awful rhyming prose embossed on the front was the measure of how much someone cares, but apparently this is a well documented fact that I have somehow managed to overlook.

I was aware that after having this delightful telephone conversation with my mother, which I believe ended in her rather maturely putting the phone down on me, the fact that I had forgotten to post her card, was not going to go unnoticed.

My family are very religious and in wave of extreme cunning, I decided to wrap up the news that I went to church this morning in a little verbal bow, and gift it to my mother, over the telephone. I had hoped that news that I hadn’t been struck by ethereal lightning on entry to the church would disguise the fact that I hadn’t posted her card yet. This did actually work for about 5 minutes, until I accidentally let it slip that the reason I visited the house of God this morning was because my friend was having her marriage bans read. For those that are wondering if this is some sort of wedding protest poetry session, marriage bans are where the vicar of a church reads out the names of people due to be married and gives the congregation time to pipe up if they know why these marriages should not take place from a “legal” or “just cause” perspective.

Now I will point out, at this stage, that I am a Christian. This will probably surprise some of you as I’m not exactly text book. I certainly do not subscribe to the ludicrous Intelligent Design theory and there is a lot about organised religion that I do not agree with, but I do believe in God. The reason I wanted to clarify that I do believe in God and have Christian beliefs is because the next part of my blog may come across as a bit insulting.

I did not really get along with this flavour of church. Everyone is over 65, most of the women there look as if they would eat the face of a small child if they were given the opportunity, and it all seemed slightly pretentious.

The sermon started off talking about people’s shoes being an expression of who you are. He then followed this up with about 10 minutes of the inner workings of the trinny and suzanna show. This leapt, seams fully on show, into how parenthood is like clothing as it is an expression of what is within you. He did a call back to the shoes saying that we can’t see God’s shoes, but we can see his footprints in our lives. Even now I can’t work out for the life of me, how this disjointed rambling linked to either of the readings.

It was a communion service, and with any high Anglican church there was a little vicar dance at the front with the wafers and the cup, which I think would actually work very well on youtube, if it was speeded up and put to techno music. I am confirmed which means I’m entitled to partake in the cleansing of the body and soul through communion. Again, I have no objection to this, I think symbolism of what you believe in is important; however I got the most dirty look of the lady with the wine cup when I went to hold it for myself to take a swig. I spoke to my friend afterwards, as she as confirmed in this church, and apparently the etiquette is to just lightly touch the bottom of the chalice in order to tip it daintily into your face hole. I had obviously caused some hideous faux pas where I mistakenly thought I was a grown up enough to hold my own drinks. Looks like I’m back to the two handled plastic beakers and spill resistant lids then…

There was a moment at the very start of the service which nearly had me in tears. The vicar talked about some cake that would be available to after the service. After there was little response to this very exciting news, he requested that the microphone was turned up and he repeated his nugget of Sunday morning cake joy notice again. There was a ripple of muffled “woooooo’s” from the ladies in front which I thought was rather nice and good spirited. However, one old, gnarled looking hag had obviously decided that these ladies were having far too much fun in a religious environment, so turned round to the ladies and spat “they did that last year you know”. She would definitely have chewed on your child’s face if she had the chance. Miserable cow.

Anyway, that is my Sunday morning.

How has yours been?

Saturday, 13 March 2010

Post date waffle

He wasn't an axe wielding murderer, or at least he wasn't this afternoon, and I still live to tell the tale.

Safe to say my worries were completely unwarranted and rather unfair. He seems perfectly capable of holding a conversation which holds my attention and he seems reasonably interesting. I think he suffers from being stuck in a rut at work and he is currently lacking in a way to express himself since giving up wrestling, but I think he might have potential.

As a question to people who have tried this dating thing before, was I out of order to plan to meet other people this evening? He seemed a little pit out that I had to leave. I'm hoping this was just because he was enjoying my witty conversation rather than the fact he was hoping to score.

He walked me home and we had a rather long pash outside my flat. Someone who lives in my flat came out for a fag and saw us having a bit of a kiss. This didn't really bother me until the chappy said he thought that was his work colleague standing in the doorway. That was a bit uncomfortable and embarrasing!

He wants to meet up again and I think I will give him another test drive. I find it very hard to let down my defences so I guess we'll just have to see how persistant he is to break through my wall of crazy. I just hope he doesn't attempt to do that with an axe on a date further down the line.

I got a missed call from my mother while I was out "just calling as I haven't heard from you in a while and hoping you haven't been chopped up into little bits somewhere" I thought she was being rather optimistic expecting a reply if I had been. I called her up and explained that I had been on a date. We talked a little about it, as my mother is aware of the difficulty I have with these situations, and I explained that it went rather well. When I told her that we had a bit of a kiss outside my flat, she shrieked "you took him back to your flat?!". "outside it" I calmy tried to explain. "well, I hope he isn't a crazy stalker then" she replied.

Thanks mum. Unsurprisingly, I also hope that he isn't a sanity challenged personal obsessive too.

Parents eh, always have the best advice.




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Pre date nerves and craziness

It appears that I have reached the big time. I have an actual living human being who reads by blog. *Waves* Hello! This post is dedicated to you and all you care for.

I was requested to update my dating progress via the medium of public writing, and with no thought for the fact that it wouldn’t be too hard for the individuals concerned to locate my waffle and with an over eagerness to please my fan (hello again), I have decided to write a pre and post date updates.

**Just realised the chappy has text me so taking two minutes to reply. I’ll be right back, but in the mean time why not have a cup of tea, go for a wee, sit on the settee, plant a tree or anything else that would rhyme with eeeee**

***Interval music****
Ice cream?

*******************

/Speaker/ Please can we welcome back to the blog…… Vicky

Hello, sorry about that. This is what makes me feel somewhat apprehensive. This chap seems very keen on me. I know I know, I have already been told by my friends that if he was distant and disinterested, I would probably be concerned he was meeting me to pass time rather than because he wants to wallow in my awesome.

I worry when people are very keen though. I’m concerned that I might be meeting with a man who has never even within a 10 meter radius of a woman, and just wants to know what one smells like. I’m really not interested in “completing” anyone. Why do people say that? I don’t want someone who is only half a person. I want a fully complete man to start with.

This particular gentleman has text me a LOT. He has also wanted to call me a couple of times and I’ve had to explain that I’m not always contactable, because I do /other/ things than waiting longfully by my telephone praying for it to ring.

Something that he said to me on MSN also worried me. “You are really clever” and “this is the most intellectual conversation I have had for ages”. Now I am going to let you into a little secret. I am an unapologetic intellectual snob. I need to be surrounded by people who can challenge the way I think and my views on things. I earn for the debate with people who can hold their own view and articulate them creatively. Now, the particular conversation we were having I didn’t deem to be particularly challenging. Don’t get me wrong, it was interesting and I was enjoying talking to him, but I am just a little apprehensive that he isn’t going to be able to stimulate me intellectually.

Now you have a little window into my world of crazy. I am something of a self saboteur.

I wonder if it is because the prospect of starting a new relationship threatens my independence. Realistically, I know that this doesn’t have to be the case. I’ve been in long term relationships before and I work well in that environment. I just know that I worked hard to rebuild my life after things changed 2 years ago.

Anyway, I really should go and get ready.

Friday, 12 March 2010

#TYSIC Update

(Ten Year Self Improvement Challenge)

Note: Sorry, this is a long one. I do not blame you if you decide reading all of this would damage your life in some way, but if you do read it all, thank you kindly. Feel free to comment with any advise or tip you have

I have set out my goals, and now it is time to provide the update on my progress. I’ve decided that they should probably be split into long and short term action points.

Short term – Top Priority

Learn to drive
Improve my career
De-clutter
Do regular exercise (code name #operationsexpot)
Learn not to over think things

Mid Term – Medium Priority
a appris une langue
Lose weight
Maintain regular blog
Be creative
Make people laugh
Meet a nice gentleman

Long term
Buy a car
Go travelling
Buy a house
Get married
Start a family
Set up my own company

Learn to drive
I had a driving lesson on Sunday. I seem to have a mental block when it comes to driving. I’m rather lucky in the sense that if I put my mind to something, I will achieve it. Sadly, it seems that my mind is actually what is getting in the way. I second guess my judgement, which inevitably leads to making a mistake. I am finding this utterly infuriating! I just want to be able to do it. I have no idea why I am finding it so hard. My next lesson is a week Friday.

Improve my career
I actually quite like my job. I love the people and I enjoy working in IT, but I am horrifically over worked, and I know that my skill set is worth more than I am currently being paid. I need to see what sorts of jobs are available. The trouble is, I still don’t really know what I want to be when I’m all growed up. I have a few Cloud 9 jobs I would love such as graphic designer, entertainment critic, comedian, managing director of my own firm, Chloe O’brian’s direct line manger at CTU, but no real “calling” to a particular field.

De-clutter
Fail. I need to work on this

#operationsexpot

I have done reasonably well this week. I went to a class called Body Pump on Monday, which is basically lifting heavy things, repeatedly, to music, for about an hour. I went to the gym for 30 mins on Wednesday, immediately followed by a class aimed to kill you through lactic acid poisioning through your legs, bums and tums. I hurt. But as some masochistic sad case once said, pain is beauty.

Thinking about how to stop over thinking things
I have only been made aware of this being a real issue for me, fairly recently. It affects my driving, my working relationships, my friendships, my relationships and just my overall judgement of a situation. I also have no idea how to work on this issue. Suggestions would be greatly received.

Learn a language

I have a learn Nepali CD that I used for my trek last year, but I don’t know how useful this language would be to me. I have a couple of ideas. I could continue with my French learning. I got a B at GCSE so that might help (Even though that was 10 years ago it’s self) Or I could maybe start to learn Japanese. This is mainly because it is a stunningly beautiful language and I love the fact that they have 3 alphabets. Anyone got any suggestions for other languages I should learn? Maybe I should learn a programming language. That would help with some of my other tasks.

Lose weight.

This is an on going battle for me. At my heaviest, I weight about 18 and a half stone. That was about 2.5 years ago and I am still ashamed that I let it get to that stage. I weighed myself this morning and I currently weigh 16.3. I would be ecstatic if I could get out of the teens. My main problem is binge eating. I do this when I am overly happy, excited or content, or if I am feeling miserable, frustrated or tired. That doesn’t leave me with a lot of time in between to eat healthily. I think that refusing to binge eat may need to be added on to my list of goals

Maintain a regular blog

Well, I am getting there. I have had a couple of quiet lulls where I was either too tired, or too grumpy to write something worth reading, but I seem to be back on the ball. I wrote a little guide to online dating this week, which was mainly written to allow me to air my frustrations, but I have received quite a few lovely responses from people about it which has made me happy. I still have a bucket load of comedy reviews to write up for it, but I have been a little bit lazy.

Be creative.
I have set myself a little challenge to attempt to do a doodle a week. This started with the #preciouslittle robin ince’s view on the war on terror, followed up by my keith lemon doodle. This week I am attempting to doodle Michael legge and james hingley although I’m not too impressed with my current attempt. Still, the more I do, the better I will become.
(michael legge doodle = here)

Make people laugh

There is something about making people laugh that I find completely addictive. I just love making people smile. This week I did it by accident. I wrote a blog entry about some online dating horror emails and sent it to a few of my friends that could relate to it, and they were in absolute stitches. I was really taken a back and completely honoured that they enjoyed it so much. I hadn’t really even attempted to make it funny, I had just been annoyed at the situation and wrote down my thoughts. I think I am going to focus on some writing and see if I can really hone my ability to make people smile.

Meet a nice gentleman
Well, on the topic of online dating, I have booked a date with an ex wrestler on Saturday. He is 6ft 5 and works in civil service and seems rather interesting. I am a little bit nervous though (and this is where my overthinking issue comes in) because he seems very keen.

The long term goals are not really applicable at the moment.

There. Update complete.

Thursday, 11 March 2010

Ten Year Self Improvement Challenge

Ok. So thanks to Mark Watson and many other delightful twitter peoples, I have decided to take part in the Ten Year Self Improvement Challenge. The basic premise is to decide where/what/who you want to be in 10 years time, and set goals about how to get there.

*queue swibbly lines and twinkley sound effects as we zoom ahead to March 2020.*

So here I am, now 36 years old writing my final #TYSIC update. I’m so pleased I put effort into making me a better me. I am healthier, happier and generally living life to the full. Here is the list of things I worked towards to get to where I am today.

I learnt to drive
I got a better job
Bought a car
I met my husband
We went travelling
Bought a house
Got married
Decided to start a family
Set up my own company working from home
a appris une langue
Did regular exercise
Lost enough weight to not have to wear “plus” or “XL” clothing
Learnt not to over think things
De-cluttered and learnt to be a little more organised
Maintained a regular blog
Regularly made an effort to be creative
Always tried to make people laugh

*Swibbly lines and twinkles reappear*

I know, I know. This is somewhat idealistic. I think there are definitely some workable goals in there though.

I will post a weekly update about my progress towards these points and hopefully (slowly im sure) I will be able to tick off some of these goals as I achieve them.

I would love to hear your suggestions on ways to achieve these and your support in my seemingly futile task would be greatly appreciated.

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

Online Dating Tips with Vicky Harsehole

I have decided to let you in to a little secret.  For some reason, known only to the cosmos (and some select individuals) I am what is occasionally termed "on the market" (which is very different to being on the game, unless you are a stock broker in which case being on the market is a game in itself of sorts).  Anyway, having held this title for number of months, I decided to venture into the dangerous and unpredictable world of online dating.

I have decided to share some message writing tips with you, based on some god awful replies I have received.

Should you wish to receive a response to an email message you send to a woman on these dating sites, please do not start an email with either of the following:

"I want to cum on your corset" 
- My corset was expensive and is dry clean only. You want to cum on a corset, get your own bleeding corset

"I know you aren't in to this sort of thing, but reading your profile has left me with a semi"
- Firstly, you don't know me at all. Second of all, if my profile gives you a semi, you certainly couldn't handle the real thing honey.

If you are a teenager looking for a more experienced lady to play with, please do not send the following:

"Im interested if you let me take you to your bedroom and lick you out for hours:P" 
 - Come on sweetie, the emoticon is completely redundant due to the implied actions within the original text.  Also
, most men of our own age still need guidance in this area.  Women over 25 do not want to start from scratch.

Always clean your keyboard:

how r u ? hoooooooop be coming gooood frinds xx
 - I don't know if this is supposed to be some clever use of the letter o to connote a lengthy orgasm, or if you have a "sticky" keyboard, but either way it isn't big and it isn't clever.  I also have no idea what a frind is, but I don't wish to become a goooooood one.

Poor grammer and/or lazy spelling are a big turn offs:

hey ur fit and l love ur eyes

 - Look, would it really kill you to write this properly? "Hey. You're attractive and I love your eyes"  Now as you can probably see from my corrections, I have cheekily assumed that you decided to use the word "fit" in an attempt to describe my beauty rather than my physical fitness level, as I haven't even mentioned my body pump class in my profile.

hello my name is and this is what about me i like to play sports all year round and my goal is joining the marines and i like all different kind of music and i like to watch sports on t.v and i like watching nascar and i like scary movies and comdie andi like to cuddle up after once i get to know you and iam kool guy to hang out with and i playing pool and go bowling and i like to work and i am very laid back guy and i get alone with everyone and im affectionate when the time is right i wannna get to know someone first befor i start dating them and go to see a movie and go out eat and if you Interested pls leave a message

 - Where do I begin with this monstrosity? What strikes me instantly about this block of text is that the only full stop used in this entire collection of monosyllabic nonsense, is between the letters T and V.  For future emails, job applications, or police statements, please note that “and I” is not a valid replacement for the humble full stop.  I am also painfully aware of the severe lack of capital letters throughout this email. Much like the full top issues, you have only managed to use 1 capital letter, which appears to be right in the middle of a “sentence” (or, given that full stops have not been utilised on this occasion, phrases of text in which a breath must be taken to continue living.  See! Lack of grammar can actually kill people.)
The final deal breakers for me are the words “comdie” and “kool”.  It is not possible for me to explain just how much these mutilated words offend me, so I shall not try.

This is as far as I have managed to get from horrific email responses from this week but I am half tempted to turn this into a regular blog spot as some of the responses i receive are hillarious.

Saturday, 6 March 2010

Bedroom ninja

Hello! I'm back!

After a mini break away from the waffle cake, I have returned bright eyed and bushy tailed with so much I want to talk about.

Today I'm blogging from my bathroom, with only a towel and bog roll for company, praying nobody notices I'm here. This is not how I pictured my Saturday morning.

I figured I'd have a nice lay in, followed by a spot of sping cleaning ( belongings excavation is slightly more accurate). Maybe listen to 6 music while I still have the chance, you know Saturday morning type things.

But no. I'm stuck in the bathroom, cowering at every footstep. Why, I hear you cry with untold anticipation? Well I'm glad you asked, otherwise I would have feared this story has become tedius.

The reason I'm hiding out naked in my bathroom is because of virgin media. (insert generic "baddie" sound effect here)

I received a text message yesterday saying that an engineer would be coming to my property tomorrow and to text a certain number if this was inconvinent. As far as I can see, all my virgin equipment works the way I require it to, therefore having an engineer turn up at my house to tell me that it works is not only inconvinent, but rather patronising. I text the number shown to say that I had not been told about any need for an engineer to visit, and that Saturday wasn't very convinent.

I remembered I had been sent a letter from virgin which I innocently assumed would solve the mystery. Sadly, on opening the letter, it appeared thar they just wanted to enquire into my current mobile provider.

I then hit a level of paranoia that can only be reached by watching the real hustle followed by 24 and a bucket load of coffee.

"What if the number I text was set up by scamsters to hijack my phone, or to work out if I'm in tomorrow"

This panic lasted for about 3 minutes before I fell asleep and I forgot all about it. Forgotten at least until I was awoken by my door buzzer at 8.30...

This was the point the bedroom ninja deception started. I live in a ground floor studio flat and my curtains do not quite close. First point of weakness. Should the engineer peer through the window, there is a chance I could be spotted. I instantly shot into the corner of the room that i could not be seen, my heart bounding.

Then my phone started to buzz. I left it, expecting the engineer to leave a message and get the hint. "look engineer man, I've only had about 10 hours sleep in 3 days! My virgin tech works, leave me be in my filth pit"

No such luck... My phone and door buzzer went again, almost simultaniously, and I continued to hold my statue like pose in the corner of the room. Unfortunately it was at this point I realised I was desperate for the toilet.

I realised I had to hold it in as if I moved from this spot, the whole operation would be blown. I heard the front door open. One of my own flat minions had been taken in by the evil engineer. He brought the engineer inside and to my internal door. I was trapped. They hand knocked on my door. I thought it was all over. I was about to hand myself in, when the flat minion had a crisis of concience. "doesn't look like she is in. She might be staying at her boyfriends" After wiping a lonely tear from my eye, I realised the minion has saved me from the ridicule sharing my nakedness and hovel with 2 strangers.

A wave of relief started to flow through me, until I heard *bleep bleep bleep* outside my window. In hindsight i think it was an device to detect my phone line, but I had convinced myself the engineer had brought a vicky detector electonic device and was using it outside my window. This level of stress was doing nothing positive for my bladder needs. I thought he might be checking to see if any of my virgin products were in use. I even turned my phone wifi off just incase.

I had to take the risk. I crawled along the floor, grabbed a towel and quietly opened my door. I had suspicions that the minion in my flat may sell me out if he heard my door go, so I was as stealthy an overweight tired nude can be. I sneaked into the bathroom, where this story started.

I heard my home phone start to ring. I was aware that the engineer was leaving a message but I was unable to decipher it through the bathroom wall.

10 mins later when I plucked up the courage to sneek back into my flat, I creeped over to my answer phone, turned the volume to as quiet as possible to see what taunting jibes he left me.

Apparently he was leaving me a courtesey call to say that the fault with my phone line has been resolved. Could he not have just tried calling it in the first place?



- Posted using BlogPress from my iWaffle

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

Precious little chortling today

I have been unusually emotionally charged the last couple of days. There are varying environmental and biological reasons for this, but I have been surprised by my overly passionate reactions to things.

If you read my last blog entry, you will know that I have been quite moved by the loss of the 38 year old comic Jason Wood. I tried to find some further information about it today, so I went to the main source of comedy information, Chortle. I followed the news link to the Forum to see if there had been some further developments. I was horrified beyond belief when I read that some waste of carbon had written a homophobic slur, trivialising the tragedy. I was completely gobsmacked! How can anyone think that is an ok thing to do!

I emailed chortle to make them aware of the comment but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. I am annoyed at myself for this bit, but I wanted instant action taken towards this disgustingly disrespectful post so I sent the link to Emma Kennedy. This seemed a good idea at the time as I know she has tried to rally online stand points before, but in retrospect it was completely inappropriate. Emma was very sweet and made some extremely valid points about the spineless twerp doing it for attention. Other tweeters were also pretty awesome in helping me see the rational side of this. These sorts of people crave the attention and that my anger towards this action was in actual fact, playing into his sick, little hands. When that finally sunk in, I felt so guilty about sending that link to Emma. I had no right to do that. I thought I was doing the right thing, but in actual fact I was doing this cretin a favour by spreading the crap fest for him.

Luckily, within 30 mins of my email to Chortle, I received a response from Steve Bennett to say that it had been removed. I was very impressed with how quickly they sorted it out.

I listened to the precious little podcast with my newly found podophiles this evening. I was surprisingly gutted I missed the first listening party for the new episode, but luckily there were two other members of the ring who joined me for precious little +1.

Tara Flynn, who has appeared in shows such as Stewart Lee’s comedy vehicle (she has an IMDB page and everything) was “mentioned” in Precious Little quite a few times. Apparently a conversation between James and Michael led to a little pun “the twin taras”. Unsurprisingly, this gag eventually ended in the gutter somewhere next to Pete Docherty, and like most discussions between two boys, it got on to the topic of oral sexual stimulation.

Tara posted a message to say that she was mildly flattered to be compared with an ex-landmark. I pondered my own name for a little while, and realised that being compared with the twin towers is much more acceptable than being compared with the captain in peter pan or a whore, taunts which are readily available to young children at school (or intoxicated adults who are trying to be witty) when you have a surname like mine.
(Incidentally, if you have been clever enough to work out my last name, it really isn’t worth trying to steal my identity, my credit rating isn’t particularly amazing)
Her reply was poignantly reflective as she noted that there are no longer twin towers, but there will always be whores. Power to the street walkers I say. For one day they will inherit the earth…when their pimp gets capped and the only assets he had where the deeds to the planet, gambled away by Simon Cowell in 2023
(I can tell I’m tired, I am waffling even more than usual)

Ooo ooo I forgot to tell you. Yesterday, I won something. I haven’t won something since the Arts / Music / Drama award at school. (Yes, my name is on a plaque in a dusty cupboard in a northern secondary school somewhere, and no I won’t sign your breasts or adopt your first born. Unless they will do the washing up? No? oh ok officer…. you know I was only kidding about that child labour stuff right?)
It appears I have put my A* GCSE Art to good use, as a stupid little 3 panel stick man drawing I did at work, landed me a free CD.

I am going to leave you with this image as it really cheered me up today.

For other genius from this talented lady, please go here.

http://lornalilyscupholders.tumblr.com/

Sunday, 21 February 2010

Sad times indeed

Feeling quite low today.

Death is a very odd thing. I felt next to nothing when my great uncle passed away a few months ago. He was very ill and he had longed to be released from his frail cage for a while. Last night I found out that comedian Jason Wood had died and even now I am feeling at a loss. I wasn’t even fortunate enough to have met him. I had to stop checking my phone yesterday as I saw the slow trickle of grief touch so many of the people I follow. I was very surprised that I felt so moved by it all. Each real time shift in mood from jovial Olympic gags to the cutting pain of people realising they have lost a friend and colleague, really got to me.

There hasn’t been any news as to what happened yet. Chortle say there is due to be a statement released on Monday. I think the main reason I feel so sensitive towards this story is that Jason Wood was only 38. That is nothing. That is just over 10 years older than me, only a couple of years older than some of my closest friends and many years younger than my parents.

My thoughts go out to all those who have been affected by this sudden and shocking news.

I have been trying to cheer myself up with comedy podcasts and radio shows. This morning I was lucky enough to have my tweet to Dave Gorman, regarding my ritual of collecting £1 coins with crosses on, read out on Absolute radio. This made up for the minor disappointment of not having my jingle played on the Collins and Herring show for the second week in a row. I did have a heck of a lot of fun making them so I honestly don’t *really* mind if they aren’t usable. I think it was just after having one of them aired last week, the success of audio air time made me crave the ability to revel in the glory one last time. I guess I will just have to take my 3 minutes of minor excitement and just remember the sweet sweet times of being better than Lady Gaga.

Yesterday I was initiated into some rather bizarre online cult of podophiles. PODophiles. As in Podcastlovers. This appears to be a group of similar interweb and comedy addicts who have joined their mutual love of these two things to create an online listening club. This basically entails everyone pressing play at the same time and #tagging their thoughts about what is currently happening on the Podcast.

I joined in with a fresh look at the original episode of Precious Little. This was a podcast that slipped me by so I thought starting at the beginning seemed like a wise idea. I had a surprisingly good time reading all the real time comments on a show that I was listening to at the same time as other people online. I think this listening party works rather well.

Amusing twitterverse gag topic of the day:

Which supermarket would you make love to and why?

I chose M+S because it’s not just a 3 way… It’s a Marks and Spenser’s 3 way.

Other amusing entries were as follows:

@MimFox if I was dyslexic and kinky I'd go for M&S :-)
@SuaveRepublique Happy shopper! The name says it all, the dirty bitch.


I think I shall leave my waffle cake there for today as I have some very exciting laundry to do

Saturday, 20 February 2010

Winter Women Win Waffle

Whoops. I missed a day of waffle cake.
To be honest I don’t think there was a huge amount of vitally important information I needed to anonymously share, but even so, I am a bit annoyed with myself.

I am determined to have something to look back on in a few years time and I don’t think that twitter really counts.

I watched the Olympics last night.

It appears I tuned in to the precise time (thanks to the collection of like minded internet night owls who were already conversing about it) to see the first winter Olympics Gold medal Britain has won in longer than I have been alive.

What event did we win it for I hear you ask? Skiing? Ice skating? Snow boarding?
No. This event is delightfully named “Skeleton”. I didn’t even know that shuttling yourself head first, down an ice slope at logic defying speeds whist gripping a tea tray and hoping your brains don’t fall out your nose when you stop, is an Olympic standard sporting event. I am convinced that the origin of this sport will be related to a mountain rescue stretcher incident some years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I am proud that our nation has managed to win something and I am sure there is a hell of a lot of hard work and training that goes in to this, I am just bemused by its global acknowledgement as a sport. I have never heard a little girl want to grow up to be Skeleton…erm… pilot would you call them? Or see childhood sketches of fairies pelting themselves head first down a tube. Well, I never had a brother so I might have missed out on the fairy torture doodles, but you know what I mean. Where would I even go to learn how to do this? How do you train for it? The commentator was talking about a heroine that one of the entrants has who convinced her to get into this sport. I am fairly convinced he misheard her….

I have been having a very girly girl few days. As mentioned in my last blog entry, I ended up eating half a tub of chocolate spread out the jar. The reason I used to convince myself that this wasn’t gross was the fact I had just had a hair cut I didn’t like very much. The girl logic also made a reappearance yesterday, as I was getting ready for a RECESSION SESSION on the town with my friend. During the preparation, I redid my hair style 3 times ( because to be honest, I’m still not loving the cut) and I tried on 3 different pairs of shoes before deciding on the ones I knew I would end up wearing. Any woman reading this will relate when I tell you that I even cracked out the pair of shoes every girl owns which are stunning but never worn because they are too high and hurt too much. This was when I knew I was having a “girly” day. These shoes only come out the cupboard about once ever 6 months and it is either because I have lost weight and I want to see if the lesser pull of gravity has made these shoes any easier to walk in, or if I’m trying to reach an emotional high though the sexiness of gorgeous footwear. I even had to go back home during the night out to check I had turned my straighteners off.
Anyone who knows me will testify that these girly actions are very unusual for me to be experiencing. It worries me.

Thursday, 18 February 2010

Matinee entries are the future.

Please, someone, anyone out there tell me I am not the only one to have consumed a good percentage of a jar of chocolate spread, with a spoon, in one sitting.

I feel completely sick, both physically and emotionally after this rather surprising act of gluttony. My insides feel as if I have abruptly violated them in some truly barbaric ritual, and my head is so cheesed off with me for giving in to the hormonal craving when I had been so good the rest of the day, that it is whipping my soul with a guilt stick.

Grrrr

I am struggling to settle my thoughts in a way that can be easily translated into a written narrative. I have battled with a baffling number of emotions today and none of them seem to wish to stay with me for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Even my emotions can’t stand my company or for more than half an episode of the Simpsons in one sitting.

Work was a bit tricky today after I had to raise an unpopular observation to my line manager. I just hope he trusts me enough for this to be acted on rather than filed in the recycling bin.

I am beginning to think I should write these things during my lunch break. My brain has already curled up under the duvet, half a sleep and just awaiting the rest of the body to catch up with her.

Peace out now dudettes and dudes.

RATM and other sleepy babble

I am very tired today. My brain has been on overdrive for too many nights in a row and it is weeping for a peaceful night’s rest.

Due to the sheer awesome of my friend Chloe, I have received my confirmation email for the Rage Against The Machine gig which they promised to host if they got to Christmas number one in 2009. I have a feeling that this show will be something I will want to tell the grand children about. I was very proud to play my small part in taking back our Christmas number 1 and I very much look forward the reward in June.

On a complete tangent, I do wonder what my generation of personfolk will tell our grandchildren. The majority of brits my age will not dealt with the horror of war on their door step. We were never rationed or exported to other countries for our safety. We didn’t have the same leaps in evolutional technology that shook innovation to its very core. We haven’t won the world cup in half a century. We haven’t even one Eurovision for many years. At what point does the free and liberal thinkers of the today, become the terrified, racist, technophopes of yesteryear?

Are we going to be the nation of terrestrial TV loving, cassette tape horders whose only memory of the “naughties” is when the nation pulled together to song block the X factor from hitting Christmas number one? How depressing would that be?!

Work, the largest life sucking entity of my carbon cycle (barring twitter of course) happened today which was not unforeseen but still slightly inconvenient. It turns out one member of my team also found today’s weekday slot of his 9-5.30 Monday to Friday desk job, just too awkward to schedule around his computer gaming addition. He called work in at 9am this morning with the cheek to say that he is taking the day as holiday. He doesn’t half push his luck that boy.

There was some heated diologue between myself and someone on the other end of the telephonic device today which I could have done without. I may have exasperatedly replied with “I understand your concern but while I am on the phone to you, I am unable to chase up the work you are requesting” I don’t think this particularly helped to diffuse the situation but it did mean the gentleman in question said he would go so I could investigate further and call him back.

My friends and I were watching the new Jason Manford DVD, which if you haven’t seen it all ready, I would highly recommend. His dragon’s den and parenting tips are brilliant.

I also did some other things, but my eyes are beginning to feel extremely heavy in my eyesockets, and the words I am writing do not seem to make any sense, so I am calling an end to this session.

We will reconvene and business shall commence as normal tomorrow

Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Ya rly?

test

Jellyfox and doug stanhope

Hello!

Thank you for tuning in for episode 3 of this is vikz life.

Due to the current popularity of the winter Olympics, I have decided to watch 20minutes before "We need answers" starts. I think there is some kind of perverse pleasure in knowing that any mistakes made resulting in blood loss will be gloriously mounted on a pure white canvass. This uniquely macabre feature isn't really part of any other sporting competition, which is why I think it is so popular. Brits just love any programming where there is a chance of people causing some kind of damage to themselves. Why else do people watch the grand prix, embarrassing bodies or Jeremy Kyle?

I think that these sports are well aware of their sofa loving viewers. Why else would the figure skating commentator make a jovial comment about the 'inward forward death spiral' DEATH SPIRAL?! That sounds like some sort of battleship fighting manoeuvre in star trek not the name of a beautiful dance move poetically delivered on ice.

I have just realised that my ranting has brought me half of the way though another amazing episode of 'we need answers'. I worry about the British public and the very random questions that they text in.

I don't have many work related stories today. I am finding it quite difficult to fully immerse myself in my workload at the moment. I think that can be the dilemma of having an unachievable amount of work to complete. It's hard to know where to start.

When I'm not worrying about my perilously long list of things I need to do, I have taken to asking random questions to my work colleagues.

Today's random question was "if you had to create an animal, what would it be and why?"

With no more than a second on the clock, my friend came up with the urban jellyfox. This is a creature that came about though incestuous activity of foxes and/or jelly fish that can often be found rummaging in bins. Its natural predators are the urban badger, which is known to decapitate the head of the jellyfox and place it on sticks to warn off other animals, sharks with knees and of course, crows. We discussed the breeding hobbits and the usual habitats of these creatures which had me in stitches for ages.

We decided to create visual interpretations of these creatures:

My colleagues drawing:








My attempt which you will see in a moment, was not quite as good. In fact, we concluded it was a different species known only as the testi-face dog fish








Oh dear! As you can probably tell, the testi-face dog fish has one main weakness which is the sensitivity of its nasal area.

Anywho!....

I'm watching TV now and I feel compelled to say that I have no idea what gives an alcoholic like Doug Stanhope the right to ruin newswipe. I hope jack cafferty is reading this, he'd care about it.

Here endeth the third instalment.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iWaffle


Monday, 15 February 2010

Castle Cuts

Firstly I would like to apologise to the 3 members of the public that read my last post, for the absolutely abysmal torture of the English language. I read through it again this morning and realised that extreme tiredness had interfered with my ability to structure coherent sentences.

I had a somewhat unproductive day at work today. I was praised for generating a well written specification for alterations to ASP pages, which was nice given that my knowledge of ASP is flimsy at best.

I am utterly convinced that one of my colleagues should host her own chat show programme. She isn’t backwards in coming forwards about asking rather personal and invasive questions and she always has to say something about pretty much everything, even if her input doesn’t always make a hell of a lot of sense. I’m pretty sure they are the 2 main qualities you need in a chat show host, that and the ability to remember which camera to look at, anyway.

I spent my afternoon discussing, with another colleague, the #cheesefilms tag I noticed on twitter. The idea is to take a movie title and convert it into something cheese themed. I came up with:

Pride and Primula
Brieing John Milkovich
The Kraft
Shallow Hal-loumi
Three men and a little baby bell

My colleague also didn’t disappoint, having shared this little beauty:

Village of the eDamned

After I got home, I noticed that the Collins and Herring 6 Music podcast had been uploaded. There had been a bit of tension over the use of a banned word that Richard made reference to twice in the live show, and whether or not this section would remain in the podcast.

Strangely enough, the BBC cut the section containing the banned word. Although there is a real sense of “political correctness gone mad” when a slang word used to describe a paedophile is deemed to be extremely more offensive than the word paedophile it’s self, you can’t really blame the editing team for sticking to the rules. Although I think that the “Man” probably holds a stronger heir of censorship over the UK’s broadcasting than I would like to admit, if you know that you are working for / on behalf of an organisation that upholds these censorships, it is your duty to abide by them.

I do feel for comedians on national broadcasting though. So much content which is applauded and sought after for a live set, is completely unworkable under the censorships of the media. I decided that I would create another little jingle for the podcast version of Collins and Herring 6Music show, called Collins and Herring Castle Cuts. (can be heard here http://twaud.io/2SL if you are that way inclined) I very much doubt they will use it, but the idea made me smile.

The castle cut wasn’t all that bad though, as I discovered that one of my other awful jingles made it through the edit. (about 22 minutes in)
You can download the podcast here: http://tinyurl.com/y9vy37t 
Or just the snippit including my jingle is here: http://twaud.io/2TX

In other comedy news, Tim Minchin, Stephen Grant, Ed Byrne, Dylan Moran and Stuart Lee are all up for nomination for Chortle awards. Go and vote now using the following link http://www.chortle.co.uk/about/2010/01/31/10433/vote_in_the_2010_chortle_awards

Think I will leave it there for this evening.

Waffle out.

iWaffle technology

Wow! Who would have thought there would be an application for the iPhone that would allow users to blog on the move.

I thought I would try it out, given that it is free and all.

First thoughts on the matter is that typing using virtual keys that are only an atom and a half in size, is not as convinent as I had hoped it would be.

My second and third thoughts consisted of blog content and cheese in that order.

To be quite honest I don't think I have any more thoughts on the matter of iPhone blogger apps other than it's price tag was reasonable.

After that rather tedius start to my second addition to the bloggosphere, I thought I would move on to the blog entry content.

I have reached the bridge of dread between the weekend and the imfamous triple M day - Monday Morning Mania. Except for my leaky door frame which I discovered has been dripping perliously close to my head, I have had a fun, relaxing weekend. I know that if I go to sleep now, my conciousness will be slapped into subission by the triple M theory. However if I try to prolong this chilled evening by effectively telling the tiredness to "do one", I am not going to be able to carry out my usually exemplorary skills sets ", due to exhaustion.

This weekend highlights:

My diary wars jingle was aired on 6 music by Andrew Collins and Richard Herring.

Richard agreed with me that it was pretty terrible, but the lovely Andrew complimented me greatly by saying it was better than lady gaga. I was very excited to have my first attempt at audio mastery played on one of my favourite shows, although I don't think they chose the best one of the 5 subissions I had created. :-)

Went to see ponyo at the cinema

For those of you who haven't heard about this film, this is a Japanese Animation by the same studios that brought us spirited away and howls moving castle. If i'm not mistaken, It is the only feature length movie studio to still hand draw their work. I thought it was beautiful. I adore seeing an animation that you can sense the love and passion that went into the imagery. The ticket man amused me by explaining the film as "totally wacked out" I prefered his description to his colleague who said that the film was "cute" and has a good set of " morals". *facetohandinteraction*

Finished watching 24 season 5



I won't say too much in case you haven't seen it yet, however I will say I think jack bauer gets a tough time of it.
My friends and I have been meeting up regularly to go through the seasons but I think we have become a bit desensitised to it all. We have been deconstructing how the pc noices and a lot of the photo doctoring would not work like that. Today for instance, we discussed the fact that flashing lights are completely unessasary on a portable device used to wipe something, however it was used as a plot device to visually explain to the viewer than the device will interfere with data.

Other things have happened which I could blog about but I have become acutely aware that still being awake at this time means I accidentally chose to prelong the Sunday experience.

Sweet dreams.

(ooo looks like this application allows image upload too. Nice)