thingies

Look at this

It makes me think of the idea that there are things that just want to be made, and people have been trying to realise them with the technology they have available, like the helicopter.

It's strange how coincidences like this appear from time to time, although it's not as weird as a group of film makers in America inventing a name (Napoleon Dynamite) that, unkown to them, had been used as a pseudonym by elvis costello on a couple of really obscure tracks in the late 70's.

anyway, I'm off to canterbury tomorrow morning so I'll not be posting on this for a while, unless I can be bothered to go up to the library and fight off the freshers for a space in front of a computer.

-Ben

Pleasing

I was looking at a computer catalogue today (it fell out of a newspaper and I couldn't find anything else to read*) and I was marveling at how cheap computers are getting now, my dad explained the reasons for it but I can't remember what exactly they were, something about 'the hardware ceiling' and the arrival of cheap, imported cakes. However on the net I have found a much better looking alternative to the grey boxes.

I'll get one, one day, and it can go with the elaborately carved speaker cabinets I'll have for my bass amp** in my evil lair. Alas though, these are just idle dreams, I really need to get an evil internship or something if I'm ever going to make it as evil genius and I just don't have the time.

-Ben


*After I'd read the paper obviously, I don't just throw that away and keep the dropouts.

**Also elaborately carved. With a mini fridge in it.

erk

I think that soon there will only be one Uber corporation left in America

clicky

Marrows

I was reading this article today and thinking how I've had to learn so much American pop culture and language over the years in order to understand films and TV. I suppose it's because Americans have all the money,* but you never hear of things being changed for UK release because the American wording wouldn't make sense to us. I think here they assume that we'll just guess at what it means and leave it in. American publishers and film distributors seem to have a staggeringly low opinion of the American public; things like The Madness of King George III being renamed just 'Madness of King George' because they thought people would wonder why they hadn't heard of the first two episodes**. They seem perfectly willing to release a film like Memento or LA Confidential, confident that people will be able to keep up with their twisty turny narratives, but they don't trust the same people to be able to figure out that this is a squash preferring, bafflingly, to call it a melon.

It's especially baffling seeing as it's a very English film, and you can't grow melons here. But hey, we are a small nation film revenue wise, although if they were only interested in the big markets then they'd do well to shoot their films in Hindi as well and put in elaborate musical numbers.

-Ben

*When it comes to film making and distribution, I don't want to get into the broader argument again.

**There are much better examples than this but I can't be bothered to find any, sorry.

Summer

I think that with the fact that Eddie has gone back to Plymouth, my imminent return to UKC and the bloody awful weather, the summer can be said to be officially over now.

I've been wondering what exactly I've done this summer, how does it compare to other summers?

As for how it compares to other summers I really couldn't say, it's hard to give a Fun-rating.

it's not been a huge amount of fun for fairly obvious reasons, well, obvious to the only person who reads this and that's good enough for me to not bother to explain what I mean.

sorry, bit of a fatman emo moment.

I've been lurking with the same group of friends that I've been kicking around with since I was 16 and, on the whole, I'd be happy to spend another couple of years hanging around with them. They are still froody and even those that seem to have spent their time at uni exaggerating their existing foibles are still entertaining enough.

I didn't go to the reading festival this year, which is a shame, but I did see the queens of the stone age, which ruled (although I still owe pat big time for those tickets). Bizarrely I appear to have managed to pick up a few reading-isms this year despite not actually going, yay for getting drunk with festie veterans.

I've had no great personal revelation, no James Joyce style epiphany has struck me and made everything clearer. I doubt one ever will, I think that in reality people have to spend their time permanently slightly confused and unsure; never getting that great moment of clarity that they'd like, it certainly seems to be how things are going with me. No emotional music has played at any point, the soundtrack to this summer has mostly been leaning more towards the heavy side of things, and always upbeat, occasionally dangerously so.

I went to the cottage and that was ace, but it wasn't the 5 day depravity and badminton binge that it used to be. What it has become though was also fun, although not the same sort of fun as perhaps the newcomers had been led to expect.

I've put on quite a bit of weight, which is a bad thing, however I've managed to grow a beard that is visible to the naked eye, which is a good thing (at least I think so)... Perhaps the beard is contributing to the weight gain... I think I've got uglier but my self image has got prettier so I'm not afraid of mirrors anymore.

I've not really got any better on the bass, and the condition of my instrument is decreasing worryingly; I've done well to hold it together for so long. I think with the help of some people who know more than me I'll be able to keep the old gal going at least until next summer. But I can now play the guitar to a reasonable extent, well, I can play chords and have advanced song wise from the usual pop punk stuff.

The fact that Eddie barely seems to play geetar anymore is quite distressing though, I hope he's not going to give up on it all and become a square.

Seems pretty unlikely though.

I've not gone mad and beaten anyone up, although I did come fairly close to braining john at the cottage. But I do still swear at SUVs and off roaders in cities though, so I've not reached zen style inner peace yet. Just today in fact I was waiting outside Issie's school and marveling at the fact that the fat women (they always are)in huge off roaders always put 'child on board' signs in their back windows. Presumably afraid of their child getting injured when they run over one of those notoriously solid-and-dangerous-to-vehicles small children while driving around the narrow streets outside the school in their amoured personnel carriers.

meh. I digress, although I suppose you can't digress if you didn't actually have anything to say in the first place.

I think I've run out of things to say now. Well that's not exactly true, it's more a case of me getting bored with writing and needing to try and comfort issie who is all upset about the whole no-Eddie thingy. I'm not very good at comforting, I'll probably just provoke her into attacking me, that always cheers her up.

-Ben

I Have Returned

It's strange trying to describe a week of your life in a reasonably small number of words. The cottage was fun, it always is; but, as with every trip to the cottage, it's hard to put into words why or how. I've had a great time this last week, but pinning down specific incidents is hard, it's like whole week of 'you'd have to be there' I could tell stories but they'd lack the humour and the excitement that they had at the time.

Take, for example, the language of the cottage; generally at the cottage we devolop our own strange slang, it's generally various phrases used by the group that get taken up by everyone. They are funny to us and using them again becomes a kind of in-joke, reminding us of the time we spent getting drunk miles from anyone. This year's key phrases were:

"in the Face!" - based on Colin's belief that everything sounds more painful if followed by the phrase 'in the face!' (for example 'you have cancer... in the face!').

"sexy" this was used as an adjective to describe just about everything from food to women to a good game of frisbee.

"shut up... You're a twat, aaaah, you're shit" shouted in unison when someone said something that was a bit thick, or just if people were bored, getting drunk and shouting it at foxes was a good example.

There were others but I think that is sufficient to show you that in order to understand the cottage it helps if you are there. Obviously that isn't really possible for most people I know. This means that generally cottage anecdotes fall pretty flat.

I'm sure I'll tell stories but putting them here seems like recording it somehow, which is rather against the spirit of things, what happens at the cottage isn't really for the recording. I'm sure it wouldn't be half as fun if people thought that their actions would become public knowledge.

naked chef, hornet fighting, sausage surprise... They shall all stay within the group, only to be revealed in the occasional drunken anecdote.

Now I've got to try and fight off the post-cottage downer

-Ben