Stuff

I was listening to The Adam and Joe Show on XFM which I burnt for myself off of YouKayNova.com and it got me all homesick again. They were talking about telly and countdown and the new series of ‘look around you’ and there were adverts that were vaguely amusing and they played proper pop songs and stuff I hadn’t heard before but wanted to know more about and had irreverent conversations about things that don’t matter and the prices were all in quid and and and and. anyroad i’m missing Somerset’s green and pleasant charms. {{popup kingstonarialview.jpg kingstonarialview 390×267}}Here’s an aerial view of me village about 5100 miles from here…
& had a tough day at work… to top it all off.
moan, moan, moan. Here’s a fun link to reward you for reading all that rubbish. Guess the dictator or sit-com character. It took about 20 questions to work out I was Daisy from Spaced then 15 to divine that I was Generalisimo Francisco Franco. The days simply fly by…

I’d have put mindless action films a little higher, but otherwise, pretty accurate. I liked the ‘questions’ on this one, have a ganders.
Read More “‘Sadistic Humour’, Apparently”

Swedish disaster site.

In the post below, there’s a link to the Face Transformer. I feel like an evil soothsayer has just told me the date I’m going to die on, all I did was click on the “older adult” option. I dare you to try it and not start thinking about about your skin care routine. I hesitate to post this link.

I’m thinking of phoning…

More HERE… Happy weekend
Off to Oakland soon to catch up with Meg, Matt, Monica, and the non-alliterative Daniel soonish. And not before time, neither.
b3ta.com‘s weekly round-up of internet nonsense included a link to this Face Transformer– you upload a picture of your face and then tell it to morph it into ape, child, drunk, or (below) boss-eyed-beardy-manga-man among others.
. Email me any good transformations and we can have a guess-the-nerd competition.

I got a call last night at around 8:30 from Scarborough Research who were keen to know all about my radio listening habits and newspaper reading. They probably couldn’t have found a less representative person to ask, especially since in the last week to and from work i’ve been listening to cds of The Mighty Boosh rather than the usual NPR and BBC. Anyroad, they’re going to send me more questionnaires to fill in about TV and internet use and let’s see if I can’t influence American broadcasting for the better. Somehow I’m going to try and get Angel back on, have repeats of Just Shoot Me just when i get home- 5:50, The Daily Show scheduled at 10pm. I’m going to say I change channels whenever I have pharmaceuticals advertised at me too. Ah, the power I shall wield… If anyone else has any suggestions, let me know, hit the “0 comments” link below- Cheers, gwyn

‘I don’t like Monday 24 January’

Here’s photos from this morning’s expedition with the dog. You may wish to skip the black-and-white-birds-on-telegraph-wire ones, I got carried away again. Nice to know this ind of landscape is all within walking distance of the house.

Sita’s area of research for her PhD is the commodification of identity or the identity of commodification or some such, it all goes over my head really, anyroad, basically she’s studying tequila and its image. So this limited edition bottle we picked up yesterday from Shopper’s Corner should be worth a paragraph or two.
More DVDs arrived yesterday- Spaced Collector’s Edition and Nick Frost’s Danger 50,000 Volts. Great to watch Spaced again, but not as good as watching them round bethan’n’ali’s. Maybe it was the company, maybe the jaffa cakes, maybe the stella artois, or maybe all three. ‘Adam and Joe Go Tokyo’ was grand, they’re looking old though. Found some of their songs from the Adam and Joe Show here. My favourites’re the Robert DeNiro calypso, it’s been going round my head since I heard it again and the Bob Hoskins ‘How’s yer father, have a banana, etc.’ one. Enjoy!
I’ve been looking around some Massachusetts blogs and it’s been snowing there. i miss the cold weather and the attendant cancellations of classes, work, travel, etc. A ski trip to Tahoe is in the initial planning stags though, and they had 25 feet of white stuff in the last storm.

Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes and such, much, much obliged, big up to the pan-global massive, my peeps meg, matt, bethan, ali, mum, dad, nanny, grandma, tanya, juicy, bert, stu, anne, annelise, amy, stu’s parents+ others. 30’s treating me okay so far. I just got b’n’ali’s pressie, a DVD of Marion & Geoff series 2, and watched an episode last night, and it looks like quality entertainment. Also listened to the first CD of ‘The Mighty Boosh’ which is an education in itself.

Anyroad, felt I ought to blog. I can’t really carry on with the narrative about the weekend from the last entry (below), but I can tell you that Sita’s netball team lost but she was a star in the game especially considering she hadn’t played since she was 15 or so. “Go Monarchs!” as i couldn’t quite bring myself to shout on monday. I would have felt weird taking photos of the all girl teams so here’s a couple of photos of moody santa cruz mountain snaps. and another.

I was starting to feel guilty watching so many Strongbad cartoonswithout sharing the joy. Thanks to Annelise for the post in her blog ‘and if you are feeling down, there’s always Strongbad’… never a truer word blogged. Never fails to cheer me up.

In other news, if you’ve been following the ‘hello Swedes’ plotline in the blog. I’ve finally found out who it was since they put a pin in my Guestmap. Apparently Austria sub-contracts their ISPing to Sweden. Hello Mike, if you’re reading. Good to know that’s two people from Kingston St. Mary who blog. We should set up a web ring. Blogging Link Up Readers or summat.

If you’re a regular and haven’t shoved a pin in the Guestmap yet, please, pretty please, have a go. I can offer up Gmail account invites for the next 5 brave pioneers. (& let me know if you’re interested, Michael)

Let’s start with Friday. I got home from work around 5ish and Sita and I took Mr. Atticus to the beach where he was correctly identified as part schipperke by a stranger. This happens with alarming regularity, many denizens of Santa Cruz appear to have an encyclopedic knowledge of dog breeds. My in-built dog reference guide has bulldog and poodle with a big gap in between. anyroad, after much leaping around and photography we headed home, put Atticus out to pasture and brought Klem and Lulu in for a hop around the furniture… Then we went out for a sophisticated romantic dinner at Pearl Alley Bistro with fine wine and rare meats, dessert and an espresso, all bankrolled by my folks as birthday treat. We went to Well Within and on the way out saw a friend from Scotts’ Valley High, where I used to work, we spent 15 minutes in the street catching up on the goings on of the last few months, and agreed we’d meet up for a beer in the near future. We said our goodbyes and then, as one, turned around and said let’s have them now. Lo it came to pass and we spent the rest of the evening getting through pitchers of Newcastle Brown in the Poet and Patriot pseudo-Irish pub and talking nonsense. Result. or ‘Epic’ as some readers of this blog may say… got home settled Mr.A into his deluxe doggy bed and hit the hay… cue saturday morning. – TO BE CONTINUED- Have to go and watch sita play netball with girls from ucsc at the local elementary school.

Sun streams in throught the window, coffee gets brewed, breakfast is slowly knocked together and a nice long phone call from me mum’n’dad arrives… after that i saddle up the Nissam Altima, get me mobile, radio and camera together and I headed off into the Santa Cruz mountains for to explore the sights and sounds. I timed it just right to hear Car Talk, This American Life and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell me on NPR. And when they ran out I had a few episodes fo the ‘The 99p Show’ burnt onto CDs. Went all along route 9, stopping at the summit for an hour’s walk or so with well pretty views, then moseyed on to Saratoga for a coffee, a muffin and to pick up a copy of The Wave and then onto town…

Haven’t even had me coffee yet but i wanted to share this home-made e-card from bert(1 meg PDF). He’s a designer, you know, and has a heart of fluffy gold. Hope Carter USM and Fatboy Slim don’t sue.
Bert features in the gallery of London pix from last Summer (short hair, Hugh-Laurie-a-like) if you’re new to all this…
more later

I’ve been having a great weekend, not blogging is usually a good sign… just made proper chips, with oil and potatoes and salt and vinegar. and peas and lasagne and baked beans and a pint of dry blackthorn cider. living like croesus… Anyroad, according to a 10-question meme:

Took loads of photos as the sun set yesterday. Click on the picture to see the gallery.

I’ve nearly got all the things I had to do today more or less under control and to celebrate, I added another couple of reviews. Here’s one all about Louis DeBernieres’s’s’s’s’ tiny little book, Red Dog, and here’s another for Black Books. There’s a nice unifying theme in the last three reviews…. red dogs, black books, dogs in the night time… maybe not.
You can also click on the links on the ‘consumed’ section to the right, of course.

I’m thinking of putting a tagline by the reviews, something like ‘Making other people’s efforts all about me since 2004’. Suggestions?.. In fact, I remember reviewing The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett as a last minute, ‘Arse, I need more coursework to submit for my GCSE English Language’ thing aged 16, so maybe since 1991… keep checking by.

ridiculously busy at work right now. reports, planning, training, supervision and budgets. it’s up to you to guess how much fun it all is.

At least 30 people came to our party last night and at one stage dancing broke out. The empty bottles won’t fit in our huge recycling wheelie bin. And even Atticus behaved himself. T’was grand. There’s a few photos which I’ll get on here soon of peeps. Anyroad, thanks to everyone who came. It more than made up for our uneventful new year’s eve.

Cheers for the e-mails, Mark & Annelise. Off to play scrabble now will write soon…