Please leave a monkey after the sausage

It's not fair I say, that Al is at ATP getting to watch Lydia Lunch, Weird War and Antony and the Johnsons whilst I am in the library booking thirty minutes on the internet (never enough time by any man's standards) and scribbling notes over my dissertation, and trying to read Dune. Know where I would rather be. But still, can't complain too much I s'pose. For Christmas is coming and I started shopping ages ago and have now almost finished getting prezzies for everyone, this is the most organised I have ever been and I think it's going to pay off. No last minute rush on the 24th for me. I'm just going to sit back and relax with a glass of mulled wine, if we're allowed it that is; Alex is dead set against the idea in case we boil all the alcohol off during the mulling process. Ever heard of "the Christmas spirit"?

Blog from the Shire

Have been here for a couple of weeks now and the initial charm is beginning to wear off.
Have taken to long walks in the countryside in an attempt to combat my lethargy and yesterday I got chased by a dog and nearly run over by two tractors and a cattle lorry- having spent so much time away from home I had forgotton about the lack of paths on these narrow roads and was forced into a muddy ditch several times on my quiet ramble, thus getting several nettle stings and very muddy. Note to self: wear wellies NOT ballet pumps when out walking in future.
It's good weather here, sunny if a little cold but the nights are freezing and I'm finding it hard to sleep (missing Alex a bit). Had a great idea this morning as I was lying in bed, I began thinking that maybe a small ticking clock inside a novelty hot water bottle cover could effectively simulate a human heartbeat? Of course, my boyfriend isn't particulary furry or shaped like a small bear for that matter but it's well worth a try.

Films I have seen this week: When Harry Met Sally, Reality Bites

Why I'll miss Swampea

Now that I'm about to go back to the family home indefinitely I've realised that after four years it's kind of scary to finally be leaving uni and to have to start job hunting.
Right now I can think of least five things I'm going to miss about Swansea:-

1)My hairdresser at uni
She is punk rock and used to have a mohawk, although she currently sports a funky beehive hairdo and bright red lippy. Her laissez faire attitude towards hairdressing amuses me; eg. she smokes whilst washing my hair.

2)Living with Alex
Phone calls are stupid and expensive and living together is much nicer.

3)The sea
Swimming in the sea then sunbathing on the beach after work this summer was wonderful, of course it's a bit too cold to do this in the winter months. When it's cold I love to watch the molten lead waves crashing against the sea wall and to look out to flaming lights and smoke of industrial Port Talbot. Its a dystopian paradise, this 'ugly, beautiful' place.

4)Bars/Clubs
Feel like I've just discovered the new Jailhouse in the shape of the Inferno in Uplands and now sadly I may never get to play on the circular pool table. Sniff sniff...

5)Wales (?)
It's just over the border.We're neighbours.

Shortpacked!

This comic about a bunch of kids who work in a toy store is great.
Here's one of my favourites...

http://www.shortpacked.com/

Keeping regular

Looks like Little Miss Blog-a-lot has become Little Miss Blog-not-a-lot. Back in the Ford, you see, lack of internet action. I'm holding out for some Rick Mayall/Trigger from Only Fools sightings in the organic veg section of Morrisons. I've already bought some cheap Stollen even though Christmas is so far away tis ridiculous.

Noting terribly exciting has happened of late with the exception of a quick visit to Cardiff for ANL gig which was mighty fun and I was jumping around like a crazy bean towards the end of the night. Plus I got a coupla free stickers from the gig (which is always nice) and the chance to stay in a comfy purple bed surrounded by My Little Ponies and fluffy cushions.

The Neighbours reunion episode I have so been looking forward to was a mite bit disappointing yesterday, but I was delighted to see that Sarah has ditched the tatooed lip liner in favour of A REALLY FAT HEAD. Who would have thought it?
Also Billy had clearly only been given about five minutes to learn his lines - he's obviously capable of acting as he's quite good in House. Anyway, I need to get back to work so that's it for now. xxx

Get Well Soon

Really enjoyed watching Get Well Soon last night, think my affection for Jeffrey Tambor (of Larry Sanders and Arrested Development fame) probably helped because I had no idea he was going to be in it and he was brilliant as Bobby's agent. Actually I bid on this initially because it stars Vincent Gallo (surprise surprise!) who was great as a jaded talk show host and I expected Courteney Cox to be a bit lame, whereas in actual fact she was pretty funny. This movie is seriously insane with some really strange plot twists involving mental patients kidnapping Mathew Broderick's dog...don't ask me why. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293176/

Separated at Birth? James Dean and Bolty.

Here's Phil pictured opposite his style icon and looking suave as hell.
Spot the difference.

The new and improved library

Yeah, right. For only £300,000 we can spend six months moving the main entrance about six feet to the left of the old one for NO APPARENT REASON. Oh no, I forgot it's well worth it now that students have "easier access" ie they don't have to walk around a corner on the way in and the entrance is "more welcoming" according to the Director of Library and Information Services. That's all wonderful but who knows why the library was shut for the majority of the summer making it pretty impossible to get much work done. Oh and I admit to being a naturally lazy person but was testing the fire alarms and the tannoy system every five minutes entirely necessary during opening hours? Probably not. Air conditioning in the Postgrad area would be nice as it's sweltering all the time.
On a happier note, that Courteney Cox DVD arrived this morning.

The morning after

Oh God. How rough do I feel this morning following a heavy night out at JCs and then Diva's with James-Dean-lookey-likey, the Boltmeister. Still managed to get up at 9.30 though and grabbed a "brunchie wrap" which is essentially the basic rudiments of a full English breakfast encased in puff pastry. Mmm...lovely. I could have done with a strong black coffee too - there are some days when tea just doesn't cut it.

Having major problems posting some photos of Coco and Es chatting with a policeman at a fete in Cardiff.These ladies seem to have a habit of attracting (or is that harrassing?) policemen.

Pizza Came Home.

Alex's pizzas turned out very well yesterday and were duly drenched in soured cream and sweet chilli sauce by everyone who ate them.

Harvest for the world!

Thought I'd left this album in a
cocktail bar yesterday afternoon
but it turned out to be hiding beneath a pile of clothes in the bedroom.
Everbody in the world should own this album because its so beautiful and has all the classics - Heart of Gold, The Needle and the Damage Done and Alabama. Interestingly this was also the bestselling album of the year when it was released in 1972, and was purchased for a mere snip at £2.99 (approximately the price of a relatively obscure Courtney Cox dvd - see below) from HMV. Wow, something from HMV that isn't ridiculously overpriced now that is a turn up for the books.

Pizza Go Home!

As exciting as watching pizza dough rise under a table lamp is, I decided that perhaps my time would be better spent doing other things such as blogging and bidding on Ebay for obscure rom-coms starring Courtney Cox(£3.20 - I won and I still can't believe there were 7 other bidders on this dvd).
The ebay song is proving disturbingly accurate: http://www.imagestorepro.com/ebay_song.html
Thanks for that one Phil.

As you can gather, we are currently in the process of creating some wonderful home-made pizza, and I am definitely a Fiorentina person, being a big fan of cheese, eggs and spinach basically predisposes me to favour this one but I can also appreciate a good old fashioned Margherita which is after all, an all time classic. However, NOTHING will ever rival the sumptous delights of Prague pizzeria 'Pizza Go Home' which is open 24 hrs a day and there was one literally within two minutes walk from the youth hostel in which we were staying in Praha 2. Aside from the authoritarian title of the place there was also a cute cartoon pizza with little legs speedily running away from the pizza place for customers who didn't get the message "You got your pizza, and it's really late at night so GO HOME!" We must have gone there every day, maybe even sometimes twice in one day, it really was that good.
www.pizzagohome.cz/
Run away, run away!

A load of balls.

Finally got the knack of this Pro-Evolution Soccer thingy and I'm now at least able to pose some kind of challenge towards such mighty teams as Iran and er... South Korea (and that's only if I'm playing as Italy, France or Brazil). Allowing for my footballing handicap has made things slightly more interesting as I'm no longer getting a constant ass whupping. That kind of kinky shit is now reserved until after the game.

Danelectro 'Cool Cat'

My long awaited and pretty pretty pedal arrived through the post this morning. Just need to buy an 18v adapter and then I can give this baby a whirl. Yippee!

Farewell Davide.

Thanks for the pictures and I hope you have a wonderful time in Breston Super Mare!

Ciao for now xxx

Warts and all

Anyone who has ever spent even the smallest amount of time with me will realise what an incredible hypochondriac I am; in the space of a little under two weeks I have been totally convinced of having been afflicted with various potentially life threatening illnesses such as cancer, deep vein thrombosis and heart disease. Serious. I have also developed an inexplicable fear of dogs.
And now skin diseases. The problem lies with the man who served me in a music store in Bristol whose hand was really warty. It was so extreme that it reminded me of this illustration I saw in a comic book a couple of days ago in which a female heroine is attacked by a psycho bitch who makes bubbles pop out of her skin and float away. It was a really disturbing image and this guy's hand reminded me of it because it was totally covered with just these semi-formed flesh bubbles. I also did feel kind of sorry for him I might add, and I didn't want to treat him like a leper or anything. Only now I have a red dot on my hand that I am sure was not there yesterday...
Not to worry as the pharmacist seems to think you can only catch them through blood or pus. Yuck, and phew.

A little afternoon delight at the banana stand...

Another very funny episode of Arrested Development at the end of another relatively uneventful day in which I struggled to think of something interesting and original to write about Frankenstein but wound up spending too much time on the internet and playing around with my Zoom 505 which is such a great pedal that the whole afternoon just flew by.

I also checked out Kevin Smith's online diary and www.viewaskew.com in the hope of finding some Clerks 2 info but this was pretty fruitless (although the site is fairly interesting and I may add it to my links section on this blog at some point). There is a new section on the site - www.moviesaskew.com where you can watch and vote on shorts submitted by amateur filmmakers, earlier I watched Lost in Transportation: a romantic tale about a desperate luggage handler whose work goes largely unappreciated until he befriends a small town beauty queen. Quite pointless but mildly entertaining nonetheless.

The Goat Major

Pictures from Gallo's London gig

London, Moving House etc.

OK, so we have actually moved into Phil and Cath's lush house in Uplands complete with several hundred bin bags of washing and various boxes of folders stuffed with utterly pointless notes. We also have a flashing police light and cuddly Pikachu which I won in a raffle a couple of days ago.

The London trip was a lot of fun and the Gallo gig was great because the tracks from the album sounded amazing with a band backing them and Theresa, the heavily pregnant female vocalist/drummer also had a really beautiful voice. The only downer was waiting two hours for the band to arrive only to go on to play a 10 song set which literally only lasted about an hour.
Somehow it didn't seem to matter at the time, which is possibly because I managed to elbow a barrage of Japanese girls out of the way to get an autograph from Vincent who had a sexy modern Elvis thing going on complete with powder blue and white leather jacket and shiny white cowboy boots.

When we left Koko - a very beautiful and red converted theatre in which by London standards, drinks aren't actually all that expensive - we headed for a bar in Camden and I bonded with a weird American girl (Kelly I think) over a fetish for liquorice rizzlas. She had a strange fringe and an even stranger voice, also she moved kind of bizarrely but I was wasted by this point and keen to talk to any weirdo - except Pete Docherty who was sat on the table opposite looking like the jerk he is and trying to blag free drinks from any kid desperate enough to talk to him (and believe me there were quite a few). The night was quite fun until Alex's mate Jof decided to tell Kelly's sister she looked like a mentally challenged fish and then things took a turn for the worse. Well actually nothing really happened apart from a few feeble displays of male testosterone and boredom setting in before bedtime.

Next day I met a sweet girl who lives with Tom and freelances for a Polish newspaper in London, spent a tenner on a leather jacket from the Stables market, and went record shopping. In Select-A-Disk I was looking at Beach Boys CDs when this guy came up to me and offered me a job as a creative writing assistant editor for Bloomsbury. It was very strange.

A new boy has moved into our old Mumbles house -
His name is David, he is Italian and likes Iron Maiden, Savatage and numerous other cheesy old school metal bands. He plays guitar in a band called 'Blazing Steel'. Check out www.nightcloud.net which is his bass player/singer's other band. They're huge in Italy.

Vincent Gallo.

I seriously cannot wait for this and have been listening to When on repeat and checking out
articles on http://www.galloappreciation.com/ (BB Gun Magazine one is particularly good) and band stuff on www.drowninginbrown.com. This site is really interesting because you can look around Gallo's home music studio and check out his recording equpiment, instruments and vintage hi-fi stuff. Cool, eh?


Still holding out for the discovery of an elusive recording from the band Gray whose founding members included Vincent Gallo and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Although they played several gigs at the Mudd Club in the late 70s/early 80s apparently no recordings were ever made.
I'm also dying to hear evidence of Gallo's brief foray into hip-hop as half of Prince Vince and DJ High Priest. That really must have been something.

Biscotti or the Bomb

Whilst shopping in town for biscotti ingredients there was a bomb scare in the Quadrant and rumours of a second 'bomb' behind Wilkinsons. The police took the precaution of sectioning off this area and stopped buses from running from the Quadrant thereby creating havoc in Swansea city centre as people rushed around in a panic desperately attempting to flag down the Number 2 to Newton from the middle of the Kingsway. Eventually they resumed normal service having realised that the whole fiasco was just a false alarm.
This reminded me of a similar incident in Hereford city centre a few years ago when a suspcious looking device was found on the train station platform and was subsequently blown up by the army; it turned out to be a homemade guitar pedal which was a Cathedral School pupil's GCSE technology project.
Better safe than sorry.

Now for the biscotti which turned out brilliantly and I'm really not much of a baker.
This recipe was nicked from An American Mama in Berlin although I used Green and Blacks Organic Dark chocolate and stuck with the pine nuts.
http://www.berlinmama.blogspot.com/

Anything Goes Biscotti
1 egg
100 g powdered sugar
vanilla (use your best judgement here - I think a teaspoon or two would do)
50 g chopped almonds, toasted (hazelnuts, walnuts, your husband's nuts...they all work fine here)
50 g good dark chocolate (get fancy here, guys - lindt, imported real American chocolate chips, etc.)
50 g pinenuts (this is where you can get creative, and frankly i would recommend that as opposed to pinenuts, which just sound downright nasty. so get funky! use studentenfutter - i think that is trail mix in english even though it sounds like it should be hamster pellets, or some museli, raisins, whatever)
125 g flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder


Method:

1. Shape batter into a loaf formation in the bottom of a greased baking tray (don't freak out if there doesn't seem to be much moisture as the egg is really all you need to bind the ingredients).
2. Bake 25 mins at 200C or gas mark 6
3. Cut into slices and bake for 10-15 mins longer.
4. Sit back and relax, maybe watch an episode of Seinfeld whilst the biscotti cools and hardens.

Enjoy - this biscotti is the bomb!

Porn Star Names

Everyone knows how to do this anyway but I just realised that I worked mine out wrong, thinking Polly the fairground goldfish with fin rot was my first pet and forgetting all about the tri-colour guinea pig I had when I was six which changes things somewhat.

You take the name of your first pet and add your mother's maiden name to it ...

LUCKY BISHOP is born.

Al's is unbelievably good:

RUMPY HUNT !!!!

Hot Hot Hot

Still haven't managed to get any work done due to a combination of pure laziness and the fact that the library is always so damn hot.
It's like a sauna in here.
Also the Postgraduate section is even worse despite the big fan in there which only seems to circulate the warm air.
Really beginning to miss having a TV since the licence expired and it got hauled away. Only have Seinfeld and Family Guy to keep me amused and I can feel the brain cells rapidly dying off as a consequence.

Melinda and Melinda

I actually saw this film a couple of weeks ago in the Taliesen Arts Centre, I had read a few fairly negative reviews which claimed the film was mediocre proof that Woody Allen was no longer capable to produce a witty screenplay with snappy dialogue in a similar vein to Crimes and Misdemeanors or Bananas.
This criticism is perhaps justified to an extent but Melinda and Melinda was always doomed to seem second rate because Woody isn't actually in the film, Will Ferrell is however fairly convincing as a surrogate Woody/Chevvy Chase type. I read on IMDb that Winona was originally cast for the title role and Robert Downey Jnr. was offered a part too (as Sveigny's husband, the profligate school teacher?) but they were both too expensive anyway.
The protagonist's life story is played in two different scenarios. Melinda is
either a 'tragic' paranoid, neurotic wino or 'comic' ie. a bubbly, romantic and vapid ditz.
Neither version of Melinda is particularly sympathetic but 'comic' Melinda is marginally less irritating than the former and has much better hair. Radha probably does well with the script but the characters overlap a bit too much for the film's central tenet of a divided personality to be fully convincing. This may be intentional as the film's underlying message seems to be that lfe is either comic or tragic depending
upon individual interpretation of life events.
The glass is either half full or half empty.
Sveigny basically carried the movie in her role as a wronged housewife and Park Avenue princess. I do have a soft spot for her anyway because she's so interesting to watch
and is also the only woman to make me want to bleach my hair and dress solely in varying shades of pastel and beige.

Petnapping and its terrible consequences.

During my lunch break I overheard this story on radio four and it really made me laugh, this makes me a very bad person.

The radio broadcast was about the recent surge in petnapping (by this I mean people stealing other people's pets, to sell, vivisect, etc.) the program was pretty boring but I was midway through a cheese and onion toastie so I decided to listen to it anyway. This incredibly annoying upper class, Kensington lady was droning on about her Staffordshire Bull Terrier being stolen from her back garden. The wrought iron fence being 5 ft high, this was the only explanation as to why the horrible creature was missing - there's no way its stumpy legs could have propelled it that high into the air. The devastated woman spoke about her vain efforts to find her beloved pet, putting up posters, phoning the local vets, she even set up a website for Pippy.
The website and posters were partially successful as the dog owner received lots and lots of phone calls from people claiming to have found her dog, however all leads (pun not intended) turned out to be false. Then one day, a new post arrived on Pippy's website which the lady eagerly opened only to discover, to her horror that the new lead to Pippy's whereabouts was actually a picture of the dog. Someone had doctored the poster of Pippy,he now had a pair of bloodied devil horns sticking out from either side of his head and Nicole Kidman's face!!

Genius.

News and Views

Such a lot has happened since my last post it's difficult to know where to start. Here's a brief outline of the weekend's events...

Whilst working in the shop selling flip flops, sun tan lotion and beach balls to hordes of American, Spanish and Italian tourists I heard on the news about the London bombings which resulted in frantic phone calls to London based friends over my lunch hour; they were all ok.
Of course, the bombings meant that Mega-Bus wasn't running properly and in addition to this we were warned on the news not to travel in or out of London until the situation had calmed down. This scuppered our plans to meet up with Aussie Scott and to attempt to drink in all the places on the London Monopoly board (presumably Scott's plan didn't include the 'Jail' destination) on Saturday as a lot of the pubs were located in the affected areas.

As an alternative we bought train tickets to Bristol but a by some bizarre twist of fate ended up at an International food festival at Cardiff Milennium Centre where we ran into our old Uni housemate, Jon, who was selling cheese (his parents are cheese farmers). I had a great time eating overpriced veggie burgers and drinking German lager whilst laughing heartily at drunken office workers attempting to dance with a group of kids to a soul band specialising in Otis reading covers. It was so much fun that we went back again the next day and somehow I managed to spend £150 in two days - with only a pair of Mexican earrings to show for it - and they only cost a fiver?!?
We did also manage to make it to Chapter Arts Centre for a yummy curried chicken and mange-tout stir fry. I'm on that fusion cooking vibe.



Above: Alex enjoying the German lager at Cardiff's International Food Festival.

See-Food

This seafood in the market always looks pretty tasty...

The Tour

Not that I'm particularly interested or excited by watching sweaty men cycling but it seems it is that time of year again and my boyfriend is glued to Sky Sport in the hope that Lance Armstrong will win again - this is after all the last race he is competing in.

Last year we went to Paris with his family for the last leg of the Tour which was a gruelling experience for all involved for various reasons. It wasn't entirely horrific however because we found a bar serving over 500 different varieties of beer from all over the globe - you could literally drink your way around the world if you had the stomach for it! We didn't get there until after two in the morning and the bar closed at four but we gave it a good shot anyway.

I finally went to a little Vegetarian sweet shop in the Upalnds today which specialises in traditional Indian sweets. Surprisingly filling but quite tasty even though the different flavours are quite similar and always involve carrots and almonds in some way. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Drunken Ramblings

Fairly wasted due to a little too much cider and wine but satisfied with vegetarian shepherds or 'gardeners' pie(not cottage pie as had been previously assumed).
Unsure why my photos are not showing but it's pretty annoying.
Dab is up for grabs. Dab sucks ass.

Recent Events

Just to rectify that, I actually did get the job in the end. Clearly the woman knows a good employee when she sees one.

Yay! More CDs to listen to. This time courtesy of Mumbles' resident Visual Jockey/Sight and Sound enthusiast Mr Robin Price (pictured below looking rather suave and 'arty')....





Just to prove Robin's artistic credentials lie beyond a predisposal towards pretentious accessories, the guy is also responsible for a several pieces of graffiti and the rather striking picture below.

The Tranny and the Working Girl (or not...)

After a weekend in Swindon, I returned to sunny Swansea only to be harassed for donations by the charming transvestite from the Cancer Research shop who was dressed as a naughty nurse. I actually didn't have any change (no, really) which was a shame because his outfit was pretty snazzy and anyone who willingly wears stockings and suspenders in this weather derserves a medal, or a few coppers at least.

Had an interview at Concorde Discounts this morning. They actually interview people for working in a pound store?! The woman who worked there seemed sweet (apart from the annoying croaking frog ringtone she had on her mobile) but her faced dropped and her tone became increasingly belligerent upon her realisation that I was still at uni. So no job then.
Rejection from Concorde Discounts? Things CANNOT get any worse.

Star Wars Galore!

Phil's impressive Star Wars collection.

More photo's at Phil's

Phil and Kath sip tea in front of the TV, apparently unconcerned by the presence of a gun toting Stormtrooper...

Phil on drums

Mixed Pix

Mumbles by night.

Koyaanisqatsi (1983)

Last night I watched an incredibly beautiful film, Koyaanisqatsi which is a Hopi word meaning "life out of balance" or "a life that calls for another way of living". The film consists of a series of landscapes which contrast awe-inspiring sweeping panoramics of vast green hills, clouds and oceans with the bustle of urban cityscapes. In the second half of the film huge skyscrapers tower over the city, cars zoom past and bright neon lights flicker on and off. The buzz,whirr and speed of industrialisation and urbanisation is also reflected by a change of pace in the Phillip Glass soundtrack - this section is by far the most intense bit of the film.
The soundtrack is actually a constant, haunting, apocalyptic chant in the Hopi dialect which fits perfectly with the visual images shown,
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster. Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky. A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

www.imdb.com/title/tt0085809/#comment

The Michael Jackson Trial

Yay! Jacko was finally allowed to go back to his home in Never Never Land where the press and the law will no longer hound him relentlessly like a pack of blood-hungry wolves. Leave the poor man in peace.
Here's what the press said...

Michael Jackson cleared of all charges Tuesday, June 14, 2005--
>Web posted at: 6/14/2005 3:18:30Source ::: Reuters
Michael Jackson arrives at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse to listen to the veredict in his trial.
SANTA MARIA, California: A jury yesterday cleared pop star Michael Jackson of child sex abuse and other charges that could have seen him jailed for more than 18 years at the end of a sensational 14 week trial.

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com


A pretty weird guy. Case dismissed.

To love and to loaf

Well this is exciting, the first post on my new blog!
Housesitting tonight for a friend and looking at this
morning's post - a couple of punk fanzines (Negative Reaction
and Head Wound) and a CD by The Vendetta.