Sunday, January 28, 2007

I dream of Eugene









Oh God! The Pied Piper is ridiculously sexy and also unbelievably friendly - he even blew on my hands to keep me warm when my coat got stolen, and I think I fell in love with him at that precise moment. Wow. Some of that gypsy magic has seeped into me through the pores of my hands because I'm hearing Rat-a-tat-tat and da da da da da in the people's footsteps, the ticking of the clock and the blinking of an eye. It's amazing - Life after Hutz will never be the same.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Someone Likes Yoghurt! Part deux


Got to see Gareth and Emily this weekend as we went to Cardiff for Richard Herring's DVD recording of 'Someone Likes Y0ghurt'. He was hilarious, even though this was the second time around for me, as I saw him perform the exact same material about a year and a half ago at Divas. Pope jokes: they'll always be funny.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Ich bin Ein Berliner

Isn't it amazing how a morsel of good news can turn you entire life around and make the world seem like a better place?

I passed my CELTA interview the day before yesterday and am heading off to Berlin in less than a month and I'm so excited, I can't wait. Loads of reading and organising to do first but it's the happiest I've felt in months (despite the incessant nagging and bitching which has recently become part and parcel of my home life, but let's not go there). The sky looks brighter, career prospects appear more promising, and even the people around me seem a mite bit friendlier. Obviously it's all to do with personal attitude but I just feel the timing for a move is purrfect and flat hunting is incredibly excited as it seems you can get quite a lot for your money over there. Big on Ikea storage compartments and wooden floors, a nice little two bedroom place would appear to set you back less than 600 Euros a month, which sounds pretty good to me.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Most depressing day of the year: It's official!

According to the man on the radio.
Not for me though as it's my birthday tomorrow.
Although come to think of it today has been fairly depressing, but not really any more so
than yesterday.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Swinging like a hammer

Last Thursday's news in the Swindon Advertiser notes an incident in which a Year 11
boy was left unconscious after having been struck several times by a hammer on the
school tennis courts.
http://www.adver.co.uk/display.var.1118267.0.schoolboy_attacked_with hammer.php

As horible as this is, it reminded me of a newspaper headline Phil alerted me to a few months back while we were staying in Swansea: "Baby 'swung like hammer'" . Having never heard the term used in this way it seemed like quite a bizarre analogy to make, and was a departure from Swansea Evening Post's prediliction for "probing" news stories which are regular headline news, possibly a nod to the city's large homosexual community. I'm well aware that "probing" is sexual innuendo, as opposed to specifically homo or hetero; however, the term seems so synonymous in the popular consciousness with "anal" as say "pert" or "baps" - words which could just as easily refer to noses or bread (but usually don't), that I feel justified in mentioning it here.

Anyway, this got me wondering about other possible uses of the term "Swinging hammer".
The results?


  • The rest were pretty boring, and actually about tools which were "swung like hammers" apart from one hammer website in which the hammer was "swung like an axe", presumably to avoid using the word too much, and thereby having the article result in tedium .http://www.diydata.com/tool/hammer/hammers.php

  • "Hang gliders and hammers… two items not normally related in the same breath…!"

I also found a charming story about "Old Pedro", a Mexican trailer park resident and silly know-it-all "Walter the gringo" who goes hang gliding over Mt. Whitney. Some nice pictures, and lots of hammer swinging, because apparently Walter was meant to remove his counterweight hammer from the hangar prior to his flight, but being the arrogant young upstart that he is, he forgets about the a common flyers’ "warning decal which read REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT" because, TREATING EVERYTHING AS A JOKE, Walter figures this warning "more as comical than necessary". Oh, the fool. The story is called "Hammer bound for Hell" , which is a great title and it's worth reading for that reason alone. http://www.learntoflytrikes.com/story_HammerBoundForHell.htm

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Yo Sushi!


Pretty good for a first attempt, eh?

Friday, January 05, 2007

The Sonic Marble Run












Above: The Sonic Marble Run at the Grant Bradley Gallery.

Usually I'm pretty sceptical of sound art, but Oliver Jon Pigott has done something amazing with this. Using metal tubing, wires, CDs and pipes, speakers distort the sound of rolling marbles which splinker, plonk, and clang their way through this gigantic version of the 'Mousetrap' game. I met a woman who had taken her toddler here the other day and couldn't resist coming back on her own for a second go.

Happiness
These last couple of days have been fantastic! Yesterday, for example: after weeks of fruitless searching, I finally found the guitar of my dreams in Dan's tiny guitar shop, which is tucked away in a tiny street, just down the road from Zero Degrees. It's a really beautiful acoustic guitar and is quite reasonably priced too. Now I just have to wait until Monday to pick it up so that Dan can give it a make-over by rubbing his "magic sparkly spunk juice" over it. Can't wait.

I now have a Spanish guardian angel who always seems to be looking at websites on tango classes or wandering the streets of Bedmo whenever good fortune strikes. I stared at his back for evidence of strapped down wings today but his jacket was too puffy to tell for sure. Still... I have my suspicions.

Eviction imminent

We were served with what those in the biz commonly refer to as a NOSP (Notice of Seeking Possession, cheers Marches) yesterday. This was kind of exciting I felt. Two months to get out. It's good in a way because it should kick us all into gear a bit and force us to make a decision about what to do with the rest of our lives. Either that, or we're homeless. I think it's because everything in the house keeps breaking; lights, shower, boiler and the landlord would rather sell up than invest any money fixing the place. Oh, well, it was short but sweet...

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Happy New Year!

2007 Already, whoo hoo!

We went to a New Year's Eve party at fingerless hoodlum Andy Skellam's luxurious penthouse apartment in Clifton Village and drank copious amounts of whiskey and beer (but strangely no champagne). It was a fairly small, exclusive gathering consisting of housemates James and Marietti, fello hairy Buddah Dan, and a couple of other people I didn't really know, but they seemed very nice.
We played charades using only one word or the power of mime to guess the celebrity in the top hat, which exposed my sheer ignorance of any figure in the public eye. The best example of this would be my description of Boris Becker as "That Tory guy with the hair" to the bemusement and amusement of the entire party. Same first name though, so pretty close I thought.
After much dancing and singing we shouted at Andy's neighbours who actually pay a lot of money to rent houses around that area, perhaps under the misconception that it's a nice area and that drunken twentysomethings won't be leaning out of the windows screaming "Happy New Year/Andy's got gonorrhea!" at them. Ha! The fools.
At the end of the evening Alex broke the zip on my boot which was a real problem because our house is about an hour from Andy's, my drunken logic led me to believe that cutting across the zip with a pair of kitchen scissors would in some way help me to re-thread the zipper. Thank God Dan dissuaded me from this course of action and Andy had to bind my boot up with some string like a young Chinese girl for the long walk home. I was amazed that it lasted the journey. That's why NOT to buy cheap ass Primark footwear!

Beautiful songs by The Fingerless Hoodlum:-
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=99931195