Egyptian Day

They would not listen,
they did not know how,
perhaps they'll listen now ..

Earlier today, I was standing in a room. Sometimes I do that. All of a sudden I felt my phone start to vibrate in my right front pocket. I reached into the pocket to answer it. The pocket isn't large, so it didn't take long to realize I had no phone on my person. 'Twas in my bag. I am randomly vibrating. Perhaps I should see a doctor.

This week I am a classroom assistant, in preparation for what will be expected of me in Germany come September. This means that I get to sit with small children of varying degrees of likability and prove to both them and myself that they're better at maths and science than I am. Not english though; any kid that tries to outdo me on that will be slaughtered. Not literally of course, but some form of verbal smackdown will be delivered.

Today however was exempt from lessons and teaching, because it was EGYPTIAN DAY. Yeah! So we did Egyptian themed stuff, which included me wearing a rubber turban and one of those middle eastern man-dress tunic things, which must have been nice for all the members of staff who'd never met me before. I'll put a picture up when I can be arsed. I was told I looked quite Egyptian indeed. I feel I looked more like a Sikh suicide bomber.

Back on track - today we made paper mache Egyptian mummies and clay 'tomb treasures' and sugar cube pyramids (children are easily amused, it seems) and little models of Ancient Egyptian water-carrying things called something like a Skidu or a Snafu or something like that. I can't remember. Oh and then we had pyramid biscuits and milk.

When the kids had gone and we'd finished clearing up all the crap they'd left lying around, I had the biggest blast from the past in a long time. Anyone remember the Magic Key books? Biff and Chip and Kipper and Floppy the dog? No? Well, I read them all again today. And it was awesome. And then I tried to log onto facebook on the classroom computer, and was met with the infamous "This site has been blocked. Please speak to an Administrator" that I thought I'd seen the back off when I left 6th form.

Oh, the nostalgia.

And finally, my thoughts go out to all those caught up in the bombings in Moscow today. These terrorists are scum.

The Midlands have exotic animals too

Travelling swallowing Dramamine,
Feeling spaced breathing out Listerine ..

I'm in Birmingham at the moment, for the first time ever. I'm feeling rather sedate, which is odd given that I'm here with the old housemates and Uni's all finished for Easter and whatnot, but hopefully I can recount recent events and happenings with an appropriate degree of enthusiasm. After a drive involving traffic jams, pick 'n' mix, road rage and stops at service stations because Dora needed another wee, we made it to Solihull, "the posh bit".

I've kipped in 2 houses and met a multitude of housemate relatives and can say with conviction that Birmingham is a safe place to visit. It doesn't seem to have the same plethora of weirdo's that I've encountered in the North, nor does it have the wondrous yet confusingly dangerous Tube system of the South.

This may be just me, but personal experience of the Tube has been less than peachy.

Our craving for fun today led us to a garden centre-y thing that sold interesting things like Coi carp and reptiles and other strange animals. Depressingly, having given a lot of thought to visiting exotic places and seeing the wildlife, the place that I first saw a real chameleon eat a live locust with its tongue was in a Birmingham garden centre. It didn't really detract from the experience, I just didn't expect to see it while standing with a brummy bloke in a polo shirt with a garden centre logo. I also didn't think the chameleon would appear from a glass box with "Not for sale, the manager's pet" daubed on it.

There were also some fuck-off spiders in tubs, which gave me more of a reaction of "oh shit" as opposed to "yay" like the over-enthusiastic kid who was also having a gander.

Young man, you're celebrating the presence of an 8 legged hairy thing that could kill you with a bite and would turn a lot of people in this room, myself included, into absolute wrecks. Save your enthusiasm for elsewhere. Go and look at the tropical fish section. Also, Kellie? If you're reading this mate, then this garden centre is a no-go for you. Oh, and that thing I said about big spiders in Bordeaux was a lie. I'm sorry.

Tea is being prepared now. My offers to help have been turned down on a basis that wasn't really explained to me, which I still don't really understand myelf. I wasn't even allowed to help chop the carrots for Christ's sake.

Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Vatican

Jambo!
Jambo bwana!
Habari gani?
Mzuri sana ..

A small number of tests undertaken recently have led me to believe that it's physically impossible to listen to that song and feel unhappy. It's a Kenyan song that they seem to enjoy, and it stirs up all the memories of June 2009 and makes me fuzzy inside.

Praise fortuitous circumstance! The sun's come back! After god knows how long of having snow, rain, and that half-arsed mix of the two that didn't really know what it wanted to be, there is now sun again. Not even misleading sun, even. Like the one that appears and makes it look nice and warm when it is in fact still really bastard cold. This means that the often-considered-but never-used idea of thermal underwear can be sent back to the drawing board. The reason for the idea of thermals was that regular pants just don't cut it. The cold spell we've just had had a crafty habit of sneaking right up your leg and grabbing at your balls. Jack Frost is a fucking pervert.

We had a good debate a short while ago about which people in my house would be the best Pope. We concurred ultimately that none of us are cut out for the job, as none of us have unhealthy attractions to choir boys and the whole 'sex before marriage is a mortal sin' aspect hasn't really worked out so far. Oh yeah, and the whole atheism thing. But, I'd still like one of them pope-mobiles. Who cares anyway? I mean, the Pope? Pure comedy gold. I'd like to shake the hand of the caveman who came up with that one.

I have the approval of the Elders.

They tried to make me go to rehab,
I said no, no, no ..

Yes, another (brief) update! Two entries in as many hours, you cry? No-one can live at that speed!

It seems the British Council, who I like to imagine as a group of people sitting round a very big round table wearing a variety of ludicrous outfits and monocles, all smoking, have approved my application to be a language assistant in Germany, come September.

"Fuck me!" I cried to the world, "I have achieved something!"

Whether or not it goes ahead is unknown, but if all alse fails, I'm at least guaranteed a place on a waiting list. So go me.

Droooool.

We only said good-bye with words,
I died a hundred times,
You go back to her
And I go back to black ..

Oh man, I'm tired now. It was our presentation at 9am this morning, the one we've been pushing back for the best part of 4 weeks that we only started a couple of days ago. I'd kill for a nap right now. But then I'd probably feel all guilty for killing someone for something as simple as a nap, and it would probably stop me sleeping. Plus I'm not sure killing anyone would ever result in getting a nap. You couldn't kill someone and get sleep. Well, you could kill someone and then go to sleep, but you wouldn't sleep comfortably. You could get an iPod from killing someone, but not sleep. You could get a bed and a pillow from the person you just killed as well I guess but the actual act of sleep would not be gotten from killing anyone. Am I making myself clear?

So yeah, don't kill someone and try to get a nap from them. Just take their iPod and phone.

Just in-keeping with the steady stream of internet crap that so often makes my day, have any of you seen an advert on facebook, its in there with the Mafia Wars adverts and stuff. I think they're for some kind of law firm. I forget, I've only seen it once. It has a picture of a baby on it and it says, "We fight for kids with brain damage." The baby in the picture is this little black kid with drool coming out of its mouth. Anyone else seen it? I assume drool is the first symptom of brain damage. That and googly eyes.

Anyhoo, the other day it appeared for the first time on my profile and I just happened to glance at it very quickly, not really taking it in, and thought it said "We fight kids with brain damage". I got a big chuckle out of that one. I'm still suppressing the disturbing image of a bunch of lawyers laying into a brain damaged child and beating the drool out of him.

As an endnote and a barely disguised bit of advertising/suggestion, I've just rediscovered the filmic gems that are 28 Days/28 Weeks Later. Especially the 2nd one, as I haven't seen that one as much. Watch them both. Very good material for potential drinking games before a night out. Drink every time you think to yourself 'Wow, this is one of the best pieces of cinema ever made'. Contrastingly, you could watch Snakes on a Plane and drink each time you wonder 'Why the fuck did they ever make this?'. On both counts, you'll be pissed in under 10 minutes.

Desert elephants

Where do we go, nobody knows,
I've gotta say I'm on my way down,
God give me style and give me grace,
God put a smile upon my face ..

I was at home again this weekend, having worked mothers day. It seemed a fairyly uneventful shift, which is strange for such a busy occasion, but that might have been because I was so god-damned tired. I forget how many hours I'd been awake for, but it was certainly well over 24. I was probably just nodding off a lot and missing important things, but I was split into the tips so I managed to do something right.

Hmmm. I thought I had more to say in this entry. I'll reach for things.

One of the weirder things about being really tired and sleeping at home after weeks in Leeds was the dreams I had. Probably because I'm over there so often, being in a different bed, even at home, feels kinda weird. You know when you sleep in a room or a bed other than your usual one, when you wake up without provocation, look around, wonder where the hell you are and hope to God your pants are still on? Yeah, it was like that.

In the first dream I was moving to Saudi Arabia, for reasons unknown, and was asking a travel agent what to do about a group of elephants in the desert. Y'know, desert elephants? The second, very nerve-racking one I recall, saw me in the aftermath of breaking one of the faces on Mt. Rushmore, and me being very worried about it. I've been striving all day to remember how I did it and which president it was, to no avail.

I also got another cracking spam email today, definitely up there in the top 10, alongside the blood clots and erectile dysfunction ones. This one was some corrupt online personals site, and the email contained what I assume was an example profile, which was a girl with a photo of her in a wedding dress. The description was "Don't be fooled by the dress! I just think I look good in that photo. (The marriage was a disaster!)"

So you have no better photos than of one from your failed wedding day? How about one of you at your gynaecologist's? Maybe one of you being given an ASBO? One of you at the park with your 11 year old daughter? A publicity photo from the Jeremy Kyle show - "I'm Not Your Baby's Father; Paternity Tests Revealed" perhaps?

I'll stop there.

I passed through Huddersfield today on my journey back to Leeds. There were people near the station handing out leaflets - "Stop the Suffering: Save Haiti." They're having some kind of meeting apparently; in the girls own words "It's going to be historic." Maybe so, and I'm all about preventing earthquakes, but I'm trying to get to Leeds! Don't kill my buzz, hippie! A woman near me however mentioned that the meeting sounded quite an interesting idea, but her boyfriend commented that he didn't want to save the Haitians on a Monday afternoon. The girl and I both agreed; mondays are the beginnings of busy weeks.

I'll save the world at the weekend.

I am a celebrity by association now.

Secrets of the universe, the mysteries of life,
And the things that don't make sense
All come clear
'Cause music takes me up ..

Friday turned out to be a pretty epic one in the end. I made it to my 9am without a hangover or a grumpy face, which is always an achievement, and at 3 I had my speaking exam! It was actually far better than I could have hoped for, especially as the examiner is pretty much a legend within her own right. It was also a pretty good article that we had 15 minutes to study at the beginning, something about Mongolian children being mistreated and overworked in gold mines. Fun.

That was followed by Fruity at the union, a night out you either love or hate, much like marmite, except without the yeast and brown stickiness. And tonight was a special night - 2 of the cast of Skins were present! Yeah! You know, Skins - that shameless parody of life that thinks it encapsulates exactly what all 16 and 17 year olds do on a daily basis. I still watch it from time to time though, but wouldn't go as far as to actively seek out recognition from the cast, would I?

Ahhh, I'm such a hypocrite. Remember my entry about herd mentality?

Their arrival on stage found me pushing and flailing for the front, amid a mass of other pissed up students. "Look!", we cried "They are from the telly! They deserve our mindlessness!". So our 600 strong crowd battled forth and flung our hands, bits of paper, Fruity tickets, bus tickets, even, god help us, cigarette packets towards these two poor girls and then felt all chuffed when we got stuff signed or had a seconds worth of hand holding.

I lay claim to all of those things, which in my eyes makes me pretty much A-list. My fruity ticket has 2 signatures, one of which I admittedly can't read very well, and I qualified for 3 seconds worth of hand holding. I wish I could say that this was only the first time this has happened, but it was a blatant repeat of the same thing last year. I hadn't even seen Skins then for christs sake.

Ode to Guy.

Went down the hill,
The other day
My soul got happy
And stayed all day ..

The 'D' key on my laptop is absolutely buggered. I don't quite know how it got to this stage. After several failed attempts at reconnecting the key itself and glueing the little nipple thing that sits underneath it, I'm now having to shift the nipple about as and when I need to type. If I try and type normally and miss the nipple by a millimetre or so, it pings out of it's little socket and I have to go and hunt for it and spend 5 minutes putting it back where it used to be. It makes essays and gaming oh so stressful. Please forgive any typos that come about as a result of the lack of 'd'.

BUT - this entry is not to be confined to the subject of problems with my nipples. After hunting around for subject matter, my housemate, mentioned in the previous blog, came out with a suggestion that can only hint at his overwhelming modesty: "Write about me. And don't hold back." So here we go. An ode to Guy.

The snap of a cold beer can heralds your approach,
With all the conviction of a martyr about to face the lions
You sip from your can,
Rub a hand through a ginger beard and push back your big gay fringe.

***********
With a faint tugging of wires and the click of plastic,
the PS3 controller is removed,
removed from the ragtag pile of god only knows what that litters your floor.
If I had but a hosepipe and bleach I would attempt to intervene.

***********
Amid an Aladdins cave of dirty utensils, plates and empty cans,
You move to the bed, pinnacle of Guy-gaming.
A king of a shit-tip, holding only the tools of your trade,
Sat astride a throne of spunky bedsheets.

***********
And lo! The game has begun! The glazed look that you so often wear, like that of a lost dog, is replaced in an instant with a fevered expression! Thumbs flying over the controls, you concentrate. The promise of unlimited beer could not break this frenzied, beer fuelled deliberation.

***********

But it is not enough! The game prevails over your fervent skill, and your voice hits an octave usually reserved for whales!
Men, women and children dive for cover as the controller flies overhead and the feral howl continues! The people of Haiti run for cover for fear of aftershock.

***********

Amid a profound sense of calm in the wake of a mass panic, you pause.
A moments thought, in which the ginger beard is again slowly, reservedly caressed, calms you. And slowly, reservedly,
you knock upon the door of a nearby co-inhabitant.
(what else is there to do in such a situation?)
Slowly, reservedly, you regain your lost-dog composure, and ask ..

"Shall we go to Sainsbury's?"

***********

"What's an Ode?"

I don't write a lot of poetry. Hopefully my grasp of the English language has remained sufficient as to give you a small snapshot into the daily life of a basement in Headingley.

Purple

I fell into a burning ring of fire,
I went down, down, down and the flames went higher ,
And It burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire ..
The ring of fire ..

Friday is coming, which heralds a fuck-off onslaught of German. Not only is it grammar in the morning, followed by 'lets learn stuff about Germany .. in German!', after that I have the joyous event of my muendliche Pruefung. That's 'oral exam' to you and me. Me being all crafty and whatnot, I've very cunningly whored a load of stuff from my GCSE speaking exam. My subject to talk about is thus the Hitler Youth, and how they were influenced and things. In my quest for knowledge, I came across a website that looked very handy indeed. Foolproof to the point of the website being www.hitlercontrol.com. Not a great deal of leeway either way, is there?

It has some good stuff about youth and control and lots of other things that have helped me. But then, at the end, there's a really wonderful section that I didn't expect to find. There's certainly no indication of such a section at any point previous in the site. This is under the heading 'conclusion' and it's pure gold:

Many of the personal characteristics and methods of Adolph Hitler will probably one day be also shared by the coming Antichrist. Hitler tried and failed to become the Antichrist. Soon, this "Beast" with the number "666" will succeed where Hitler once tried but ultimately failed. (Many think that the Antichrist's "666" number will mean that his first, middle, and last name will each have six letters to them.) The day of the unveling of the Antichrist and his Great Whore is coming very soon. Will you ready for the next "Hitler"?

Jesus is not like Hitler. Jesus can give you freedom - freedom from sin and freedom from tyrannical control by any deranged "Hitler"-like man. Jesus will save you from your sin and give you a place in Heaven when you die. Trust Jesus, and he will save you from God's judgment for your sin. Trust Jesus, and may God bless you as you do it.

Wow. I'll be honest, I wasn't ready for that. I'm glad that the many branches of the church have the good decency to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that "Jesus is not like Hitler". Cheers, Christianity. I'd been in a constant state of denial about the similarities between that bearded miracle maker who died for our sins and the little guy with the moustache who enjoyed a bit of the old mass murder on a weekend. Ta for clearing that one up for us.

As I write this, I'm beginning to think that the antichrist has just been unveiled in the form of my housemate next door. It seems the anti-christ is losing at Modern Warfare 2; something within his deep, beasty self has just hurled his controller at the wall and called the game 'a cheating cunt'.

Avatars, ageists, and bad parenting.

Yes, that line forms on the right, babe,
Now that Macky's back in town ..

I'll start today's entry with this terrifying insight into modern America. I'm all for the idea of being at one with nature, but this seems to be a bad joke, as well as giving a good film a bad name. Dang.




There's a strange association it seems with being in your 20's and somehow nearing the end of your life. This was the notion I got from 3 guys at a cashpoint in Headingley.

1st Guy: "Dude, did you know James is 23?"

2nd Guy: "I know man, 23? Crazy."

3rd Guy: "Fuck off. 23? That's insane!"

1st Guy: Yeah, fucking mad eh?"

2nd Guy: "Shit .."

This made me sad. Go back and replace '23' with something like 'terminally ill'. This would ironically have made me feel much better about the kind of reaction that being 23 should have provoked. Hell, it's only 4 years away for me. 3, even 2 for a lot of my friends.

I was also pleasantly surprised to learn today that angry people live in Headingley too! The first one occurred by the stadium, me having just gotten off the bus. Crossing the road in the opposite direction to me was a lady on the phone, pushing a baby in a puschchair, accompanied by her other small child. As we approached and crossed paths, I managed to catch some of their conversation.

"Muuuuuuuum! Muuuuuuuuum! I - (something unintelligible ..)"

"Shut the fuck up!"

"But Muuuuuum! Muuuuuuum! - (more unintelligible things)

"God, shut the fuck up!"

"Muuuuuuuuum! - (more unintelligible stuff, not shutting the fuck up at any rate)"

"I'm on the phone, shut up! (into phone) Jeez, this kid won't shut up! But anyway .."



Awwwww.

It's when I come across stuff like this that I'm reminded that there are good parents left in the world. For every Josef Fritzl father, there is a mother engaging her young son in conversation. Just beautiful.

Counter-strike

Go tell that lonesome liar,
Go tell that midnight rider,
Tell the gamblin', ramblin' backslider
Tell them God Almighty gonna cut 'em down ..

My views counter has finally made an appearance, after months of not being there at all! There she is, see? On the right, at the top, just like Hitler was. I don't know why it's only just chosen to make itself known, but its racked up the correct amount of views according to the internal counter, so huzzah.

I've also just found this video again on my laptop and have to share it. It's fucking brill. Eat your heart out, North Korea.

I'd really like some water

ég er kominn aftur
inn í þig
það er svo gott að vera (hér)

en stoppa stutt við ..

Its 20 past 5, which means its officially been the end of February and the start of March for 5 hours and 20 minutes. It also means, for those of you not lucky enough to ever have heard them, that SIGUR ROS is this morning's 'what I'm listening to'. Google them, spotify them, find them on iTunes - anyone with a penchant for haunting, ethereal icelandic falsetto with a healthy smattering of pure beauty shouldn't come away disappointed. The particular track is 'Svefn-G-Englar', from the album 'Ágætis byrjun'. Damn, it's bizarrely beautiful.

I'm bored and have no intention of sleeping anytime soon, and have thus been drawn to the infinite portal of wonder and terror that is The Internet. For reasons unbeknownst even to myself, I've been trying to find the music that plays on the Disney World adverts; it's difficult to describe. It plays over all the kind of panning CG shots of the disney castle in the clouds, its a mixture of old school disney soundtrack, something like Beauty and the Beast perhaps, with a hint of Lord of the Rings. Don't ask me why, I just crave hearing it again.

Any ideas?

BUT - my incessant searching for answers has brought me to the first step toward what I've been brought up to believe are the gates of hell - disneyworld itself. I like to imagine it's like the richer sections of Benidorm, except Winnie the Pooh and Tigger hug you more often. My attention is drawn predominantly to a feature advertised on several websites - the infallible abyss that manifests itself in the sickeningly retarded sounded 'Bibbidi Bobbodi Boutique'. The what?

Satan's palace, seen from the outside.

From what I gather, it's this horrific salon in the big castle where from a minimum of $50 and up to $150, your child can take a break from consuming sugar, starch and fat and be lacquered with cheap hairspray, glitter, makeup and a poundstore tiara by some underpaid Floridian grandma and her hordes of sweet talking minions. Your little princess of the underworld can then frolick through the park in all her sweaty, synthetic sweetness until about 2pm, when she'll probably look more like she will during her first year of university - sweaty, with smushed up eye makeup and removing her clothes.

Run for the hills.

This is all that the internet has to offer tonight; certainly all that I can be arsed to provide some kind of running commentary on. The final item of noteworthy mention: the reason why I stick to BBC news. Below is a screenshot from the Google news homepage - I'm aware that google are the worst culprits for blurring the lines between news and entertainment, but this is pushing it a bit far. Made me laugh though. Keep entertaining, Israel!

Look at the first story under the 'entertainment' section on the left. Open in a new tab if you need a better view.

Peace and love, yo.

Sorry sir. We're sold out of that.

That's why, darling, it's incredible,
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too ..

I was at work again this weekend! My goodness, there are some grumpy fuckers in the world.

"Waiter, do you not think that this customer service is unacceptable?"

"Let's put it into context shall we sir? 250,000 people were recently killed in an earthquake in Haiti, another one has just struck in Chile killing another 800 people, a woman and her baby daughter have been found murdered and some more soldiers were recently killed in Helmand Province. In contrast, you can't have the fish and chips for your main course, and frankly it's the last thing in the world I give a shit about. Would you like to see the wine list?"

I didn't say that, but I can realistically visualise myself getting my P45 in this way.

"Oh, and sir? Don't ever call me 'waiter' again."

I've actually got nothing interesting to write about this evening, so here is a cute picture of two polar bears who are probably about to have sex.