Once More With Understanding

I'm idling watching the BAFTAs at the moment and apart from the awful amount of padding that seems to be going on in between the awards and a couple of remarkably odd frocks the biggest that has hit me is that the "talent" that has come on to read out the winners of the various categories seem to be having great difficulty with the autocue and apart from Cuba Gooding Jr they've all sounded very. wooden. and. disjointed. Of course this is how Sly Stallone normally acts.

I think I may have become a Peggle widow it's worse than WoW! ;-)

Doing Lunch Fenland Style

I met up with my mum for lunch yesterday and to look at tiles for my old flat so that we can get on and sell it. I've choosen my tiles but Kevin the Tile didn't ring like his boss said he would do today so I'm going to have to ring them on Monday. But anyhoo tile choosing didn't take too long as all the tiles had to do was fit in the centre of my mental Venn diagram in being cheap, not being too bogging and not emphasising any flaws in the kitchen walls.

We ended up going to Dunelm for lunch as it was close and time was short, they've got a little coffee shop and pannine place to the side, it was wasn't chocka but it was busy with women of a certain age taking their doddery mothers for a day out round the home furnishings and younger women round my age "doing lunch" It's not exactly Harvey Nicks but then again where is? The coffee was nice and the food not awful so it must be good enough to draw in the ladies of the near by business estate for lunch.

We then admired the artificial flower collection in the shop. Some of them were very good facsimiles of their flowers and some seemed to revel in their artificiality to great effect such as the over sized soft sage green poppies. Thing is I'm still 75% sure that artificial flowers are terribly naff, but there were some fab black rose buds with velvet petals my inner goth was going want now.

Vote Vote Vote

Instead of sitting slack jawed trying to work out how the hell the American Primary voting system works why don't you get yourself over to the Indy Awards website and vote for those Noir Music Mavens "Deathline" It's better to win that just be nominated - help Jennie and Kaoru fulfill that dream.

Thanks

Sweeney Todd

We went down for to London for the weekend, have a mooch and then see a show or have a good meal. We weren't lucky with seeing a show, mostly because the only show I was wanted to go to see was sold out and I didn't fancy any of the others so we decided to go to the cinema instead.

It wasn't cheap, mind you it never is on Leicester Square and in someways it is truly a tourist trap. But the Odeon was a very comfortable tourist trap and the view of the screen was fantastic. We went to see Sweeney Todd, the new Tim Burton film and it was very good, the acting was almost universally excellent, the set design was fabulous, and the singing was good to enough to get by with but the one thing that really let it down and would stop me from saying that it was a five star film was the music. Try as I might I can not remember one single tune from the whole of the film, I couldn't remember the tunes five minutes after leaving the cinema they were that unmemrable - I have heard it said of Steven Sondheim before that he writes clever sophisticated music for clever sophisticated musicals but not actually anything that you could hum or sing to someone to entertain them because the tunes slip out of the mind faster then last nights weather forecast.

Even while watching the film I was struck with the thought that it was a shame that Lionel Bart never got his hands on the story because we'd have had a few ditties even if they would not have been terribley clever and sophisticated.

Contentment

I suppose much like in Dramas, soap operas and TV movies of the week, blogs also suffer from when the main protagonist in this case me, is gently bimbling along in a fairly contented manner. Home life is good, we are getting used to being married, we are going down to London this weekend for a night out or a show depending what we can get and both agree on, but either way it should be fun. I wanna visit a gallery or two and Si will probably want to sigh over the Macs. Speaking of which I think I will need an Ipod touch at some point this year as my nano is getting a touch flaky battery wise, we shall see what happens anyways it's not my birthday til August. But really not that much excitement is happening at the moment, I have work things to sort out and we both have to sell property and buy a house but it's not something that is blog worthy at the moment.

Simon's our laptop is a bit poorly at the moment, the fan runs hot, rough and rowdily if you throw too many apps at it and the M is a bit sticky at the mo which is of a problem so hopefully are going to get the laptop to a fixer upper this weekend before anything else more costly can go wrong, so I will have Si's undivided attention this weekend!

Isn't This Possibly The Most Ghastly Thing You'll See All Year

Not all my friends have been trained in the ways of 'not forwarding every piece of shit that lands in their email box' And it's just about liveable most people don't have my email address! However sometimes some real horrors land in the in box

Like this to the left. It also came with a pile of steaming prose

"GUARDIAN ANGEL

Forward this message the same day you received it.
It may sound ridiculous, but it is right on time[.] We believe that something is about to happen. Angels exist, only sometimes they haven't got wings and we call them friends; you are one of them[.] Something wonderful is about to happen to you and your friends.
Tomorrow at 11:14 AM somebody will address you and tell you something you have been waiting to hear
Please do not break this chain. Send it to at least 7 of your friends."

Yeah right, you won't be surprised that I haven't chosen to forward it on, instead I've chosen to mock it's awfulness. It's a pile of cack designed to appeal to the woolly thinkers and the careless forwarders and that is the most crap/sinister picture of angels I've seen in a while it looks like its a screen grab from an early 1980's electropop video done by a neofascist band. It's just wrong.

Squeeeee

My bridesmaid, Anne, got engaged over Christmas to John which is a very cool and groovy thing as he's a great bloke and they make a good couple. Anyway now that they've firmed up the date they want for the wedding she's asked me to be a bridesmaid. I'm dead excited I've never been a bridesmaid before and I'm really looking forward to it! Anyway hopefully she won't put me through the torture of having to make any speeches. We were chatting on the phone about colours and styles of dresses this evening, Simon was sat on the couch, laughing at me mouthing the word "Brides(maid)-zilla."

Humph, I'm allowed to be excited sometimes. ;-p

Recovery Times

We went to a Burns Night Supper on Friday, I elected to drive as I didn't really want to risk having a huge hangover the next day and also, to be fair, it was my turn as Si has taken the driving duties the last few times we've been out.

We had an excellent evening and stuck to my plan of staying under the limit while Simon partook fully, he didn't get wasted but was still happily merry as I poured him into the car after the ceilegh. But oh the next day when we woke up he was a delicate and suffering Simon as the Highland Park took its revenge.

I do not mock, I have been there myself where it isn't so much the amount that you drink but rather the what, whisky and port can give very bad hangovers for not much drunk. Also as I slipped past my early thirties I have found that my powers of recovery have faded away, where once all it took was a cherry coke (full fat) and a cheese sandwich to put me almost right with the world, it now takes a whole weekend of care, attention and nothing too heavy on the stomach to put me back to sorts.

Fortunately Simon was coaxed back into the land of the not so suffering with mashed potatoes and baked beans for lunch and an afternoon nap. But its becoming increasingly clear that the days roistering and seeing the dawn come in with a glass of splishy splashy in our hands may be slowly slipping away from us.

Something Terribly Wrong

Simon is trying to do something terribly wrong and ugly with our new shiny, pristine, innocent and virginal computer.

He tried to upload XP to the Mac, it didn't work this time but he's twirling his dramatic mustaches like a Victorian villain saying "next time my pretty..... muwehahahaha"

Eight Random Things in 2007

I was tagged by Stephanie to do the eight things about myself meme, Now I can't think of eight things about me that I haven't already covered in my "about me page" so I've decided to do "eight random things that happened in 07 that I want to write about"

Favourite album of the year - has to be the foo fighters one Echos Silence, Patience and Grace. Which rather surprises me as I never thought that I would be a fan, but on the other hand I like Dinosaur Jnr and Nivarna and a lot of noisy post punk so why shouldn't I be. This album though is just pop tastic with memorable, hummable tunes and you can't say that about a lot of albums.

Disappointing tv series of the year - the latest Mighty Boosh intermittently funny but ultimately lazy, lacking in imagination, plots or decent songs. if they do a fourth series they fewer people in it, no inviting the whole of Hoxton, a plot to hang the joke on and ditch old characters, no cockney hitchers or bloody tony harrison, funny once, possibly funny twice really annoying after that.

Event of the year - Getting married natch, it was lovely and we are so lucky in our family and friends.

Film of the year - we don't go to that many films, Si and I have differing tastes and at teh end of a long day/week there is fairly little that really tempts me so it's not a huge field to choose from so I'm going for Hot Fuzz - v funny, if a little bit daft.

Christmas decoration of the year - courtesy of Homebase - what were they thinking?



Beach of the year - fuerteventura - golden sand, warm sea, turquoise seas the stuff of dreams and holiday programmes and apart from the promenading naturists the views were fantastic wherever you looked.



My new favourite website - Can I has cheezeburger


moar funny pictures

cats, bad grammer, and captions - genius!

And finally new taste sensation of the year, it's a has to be home made curries from first principles I have lost my fear of mixing spices together and we have been really enjoying the recipes on Route 79

I'm not going to spread on this meme but if you want to have a go please feel free to .

Does Benny Hill Cure Sadness?

I don't think Benny Hill was funny but there is a theory about that his theme tune when applied appropriately can stop you from feeling sad.  So Dan from All That Goes With It thought he would test out this idea using the film that many have said is the most tear jerking of all. 

Now I'm easily manipulated, I'll weep like a baby at a dog food commercial if they put in the right amount of pathos.  So I reckon I'm a pretty good test subject and I can safely say I sat there without even the start of a bottom lip tremble, in fact I may have sniggered once or twice.

Creeping Daylight

As I drove into work this morning at "far too early for this urban sloth"™ O'clock for the first time in months there was slight signs even as I started out that daylight would be coming in the near future. The lengthening of the day is now noticeable, this evening I left work in the twilight where last week it would have been dark.

I've been playing, a little, with Apple's spreadsheet software - it's called numbers and I think once I get my head round how it works it will rock all sorts of usefulness, right now I'm using it for that most housewifely of things, a planned menu cum shopping list cum recipe collection. I think I must have been reading too many prairie muffin blogs over the holidays - they are my guilty pleasure. Their version of Christianity normally has me gesturing at the monitor in disgust with the excuses they make for misogyny and bigotory and don't get me started on the young earth creationism. But they do tend to blog recipes a lot and explain how they plan their menus and that bit isn't completely bobbins. I do have to scale down the recipes though and I don't have to cater on the scale that a lot of these families do. I also buy a shit load more vodka too!

Joining The Fanboys?

We were in John Lewis's discussing the futile search for a DS Nintendo Lite and whether we liked any of the computer chairs they had for sale when the conversation drifted round to replacing my computer. It's only 2 and a half years old but it's running very short on memory because of all my photos and itunes and it will come to an end at some point. We talked over the various merits of a laptop over another desktop drifted towards the iMacs display, admired their clean lines and the specs, then found ourselves checking many gift vouchers we had on us from the wedding and whether we could afford the difference.

It turns out we could.



Still need a new computer chair though!