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Living It Up
Not being much of a traveller, my experience of hotels has been slim to the point of non-existence. In fact, last year during the @media conference was the first time I'd even stayed in a hotel, which was unfortunate as it was a God-forsaken Holiday Inn Express or some such, with the bare minimum of walls and ceilings and only dry bread available for breakfast. This year I was again attending @media, but this time --- fuck it, I thought, I was going posh.
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Café con Lechery
It's that time of year again when I start using up my annual leave allowance, which is almost always spent lounging around in Oxford parks and cafés because I lack imagination, money, and sufficient gumption to get out and do something less boring instead. This year, my first five days of leave coincided with the wettest May since 1983. →
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The Decemberists
My feelings on The Decemberists have changed over time. I used to associate them with the sort of American teenage hipster crowd, all drinking skinny milky lattés in Starbucks and nibbling at giant muffins and enthusing over MySpace and wearing stripy socks and owning iBooks. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that I've grown to really like the band, so much so that I went to see them at the Zodiac last night.
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Hello Mojo II
Although it may be a little too early to call, I'm willing to bet that the song that will have annoyed me the most during 2006 will be Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. It's not a bad song, by no means, but Christ, it's everywhere, and infuriatingly catchy. So, I won't be mentioning it here, of that you can be sure.
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Hello Mojo
Once upon a time, I had an idea for a music website, which had to be put on hold due to the sudden arrival of some employment, annoyingly. That website is still in a state of non-existance, to the extent that I've even now lost the domain name, so until that Lottery win comes along, an occasional collection of music snippets will appear roughly here.
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The Long Dark
As mentioned previously, I hate winter. This was something I felt worth expanding upon, as it's about now that winter really gets into the swing of things even though everyone feels it ought to have ended on December 26th. Let's be blunt; this time of year is just rubbish. →
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Pratchett Plays it Safe
There was a time when I was such a Pratchett fan that I even went to a Discworld Convention; after his last few books, it seems those times are past. The current Discworld novel, Thud!, was the first one I failed to finish, and I actually returned it to the shop to get a refund. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. →
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Shopping for Blood
So it's Winter, and that's annoying. I don't much like Winter; it's cold, bleak, everyone's miserable because it's Christmas and everyone is spending money they don't have on stockpiling food they don't need for that horrific period where the shops are shut for nearly whole two days. I like to stay in during the Winter, far from the maddening crowds, but I was forced out on Saturday because I had to go shopping. For gloves.
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Autumnal
It can sometimes be hard to pinpoint the precise moment when an English summer turns to autumn, but this year I think it happened during the middle of last week when Covent Garden released their 'Soup of the Month' and it was lentil, bacon and oak-smoked garlic. Only weeks earlier, it had been 'pea and lettuce'. Ever had lettuce soup? Imagine a bowl of green water, but a water that comes without the complex, abundant flavours that water has and you wouldn't be far off the mark.
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Mercury Prize, 2005
What I like most about the Mercury Prize is that there's something there for everyone. The 2005 nominees were Antony and the Johnsons, Bloc Party, Coldplay, The Go! Team, Hard-Fi, Kaiser Chiefs, KT Tunstall, The Magic Numbers, Maximo Park, MIA, Polar Bear and Seth Lakeman. If this was the beginning of somebody's first ever record collection I'd say it was a pretty respectable beginning, though I'd have to take them aside at one point to explain to them --- perhaps with diagrams --- exactly why they should have stopped liking Coldplay after their second album.
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Ebay and Sleep
There comes a point where the human brain is so worn out and tired that previously-illogical acts suddenly take on a new clarity and seem utterly normal.
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Swanning Around
Given the way things have been going these last few weeks, I decided it was time to take a break and use up some of my holiday allowance. This means I will be spending the next 11 days swanning around Oxford, drinking lots of coffee from trendy cafés and generally being a bit of a git.
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Involuntary Noises
The last few weeks has been a voyage of discovery for me, with the discoveries being 'what sounds the human body involuntarily makes during times of unexpected crisis, frustration or disappointment'. Join me, if you will, as I take you through them one by one.
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The Mao of Harry Potter
This weekend was nice in that it didn't exist. It crept up on me as I suspected that it was the weekend of the 23rd, so I was fairly pleased when I discovered that a weekend of the 16th even existed. It was a free weekend, one that I hadn't planned or budgeted for. →
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The Powerbook
As mentioned, I now have a Powerbook. This is the first time I've used a Mac for an extended period, so does it live up the hype? →
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Justification
Justification is an art. When you're short of funds, though not so short that buying something is entirely unlikely, you need to be able to justify it to yourself. You can't just spend money on things that you just fancy having; you need to convince yourself, and, perhaps more importantly, you need to be able to convince others, and that's always the hard part. →
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A Musical Baton
Jeremy and Colly passed me a musical baton.
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Residents of Oxford
While I've grown quite fond of Oxford's Famous Oxford in quite a short space of time, I feel it's time that I made a couple of things clear, as there seems to be a bit of confusion here and there.
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Life Changing
The National Lottery used to be fairly straightforward; you'd choose six numbers, then depending on how many numbers you got, you won a cash prize. Or, to be more accurate, you won bugger all, and somebody else won upwards of £10,000,000.
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The Gym, Revisited
Regular readers will recall that after a good six years of abusing my body with burgers, biscuits and a general lack of movement, I joined a gym. My subsequent departure from The University put a stop to that, but now, six months on, I've started again. →
