Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Incredible is perhaps an overstatement. It was, however, mostly trouble free. I left the house, went into town and bought the new FHM to read on the train (oh, how optimistic I was in those carefree days of youth…) and some edibles, and also the Zwan single, because it was only £2. The train was a bit late, but that was no problem compared to the seating. I wondered, as I crouched in the doorway adjacent to the disabled loos with 8 other similarly bemused travellers, what the hell I’d do if I was trying to actually get to Edinburgh (where the train was headed), and not just going 2 stops down the line.

Needless to say, my magazine went unread and my edibles went unedibised. The announcers provided some relief - apparantly Trains have ‘retail managers’ now. It surely can’t be long until they have full on board telemarketers as well. The real humour came in the form of the driver announcing that “there are no hot drinks available in coach (or something) class, but if you take your ticket to the shop the drinks dispensor will be waiting there to ‘dispense-ya’” I swear he laughed at himself after the terrible pun.

Anyway, Pad picked me up and took me back home where I had a depressingly small amount of mail waiting. I’m just doing this update before I enjoy the luxuries of food that I haven’t paid for and then maybe see if I can’t organise what I’m doing tomorrow.

A small thing I should consider for the future, is that when I leave my computer somewhere I should make an effort to remember what the hell my own password and login details are for this blog, because I just spent a stupidly large amount of time trying to break into my own software…

Today Ian, George, Karis (god knows I probably spelt that wrong) and I attended the first comedy night at the Bullingdon Arms. Compering was the strangely-named and moderately funny “Silky”, who introduced each comedian and threw in some of his own jokes now and again.

The first guy, whose name I’ll no doubt never remember again, was energetic and foul-mouthed, but political. He played songs on his guitar insulting celebrities and politicians alike, and I really did enjoy him. Ah. His name was Steve Gribbin.

Next came some local guy named Joshua something-or-other. Part of the comedy night’s aims include allowing someone to try out the spotlight free, but unpaid, and test their routine out. By the time Joshua was making jokes about how he was the first Jewish gangsta rap artist and making fun of the previous act I knew it was all over for him. There were some laughs, it must be said, and I was occasionally amused, but it was honestly one of the most uncomfortable scenes I’ve witnessed as the guy just died onstage. He took it in his stride however, and it could’ve been much worse. I believe he served his primary function - to make the headlining act seem amazing by comparison.

Tonight’s headliner was Norman Lovett. You may remember Norm from a small cult hit from the last decade or two named “Red Dwarf”. It was truly an honour and a joy to see Norm up on stage. Though he was shorter than I expected. He did a segment on slugs, which delighted me to hear. Clearly I’m not alone in my obsession. After the thing ended, George got his ticket signed. for £6, it was a pretty good night, and I’d certainly go again if there were comedians there I wanted to see.

When I got home, Nikki informed me of the great news - Sam Bateman is back in Leamington. Amazing, really, considering it wasn’t 2 weeks ago that I had a stab at finding out what he was up to by searching online. When I go home this weekend, Me, Josh, Sam (Barton) and Paul are planning to convene with him. Though he doesn’t know this yet ;-)

Hopefully, I have finished my IS coursework now. I have to have a go at the AI stuff next before heading back home for the weekend on Friday. I’ve been doing a bit more tweaking with my page and again, if you go to http://www.jrhunt.co.uk/wip/ you’ll see again what the site will look like eventually. The design is pretty similar to what it is now, all the good stuff is beneath the surface where only geeks care to look. Cascading Style Sheets and XHTML are my new best friends. It’s even all done in notepad!

I find it disturbing, actually, that anyone could make a website without knowing this kind of stuff - in fact, I’m seriously inclined to offer out my services to companies in order to create compliant CSS and XHTML for them ;-) There’s really no excuse for a barrage of nested tables and ham-fisted spacing when you’re using XHTML.

Imagine the disgust I felt when going into the kitchen, turning on the light and finding, in the centre of the room, the fattest, evilest looking slug I’ve seen for a decade. I swear to god, as I knelt in for a closer examination it reared up at me like some kind of wild animal waiting to pounce. I didn’t even know slugs could do that! But there it was, waving 4 tendril things at me as if to mock my very existance. Taunting me. I swear it was laughing at me, proving somehow that while I may have vanquished many a slug, more will come and each with newer and deadlier abilities ready to reveal. Today they’re extending some kind of extra biomass and rearing off the floor, tomorrow they’re sucking out my brains through an acid burnt hole in my face!

Clearly, the slugs are back with a vengeance of some flavour - and this time, it’s personal.

Ah. I am complete again. At the very least, what was the most debilitating cold I’ve had this year has finally degenerated into little more than a cough and I am ready to resume life. Unfortunately, this involves doing IS coursework. We’ve had it since about October, but in true Uni fashion it’s being left until the last moment. Thankfully, I am doing “Class Diagrams”, something I understand, if not enjoy.

strangely, this will be my last piece of coursework for a good week or two now. I have a programming assignment due in at the end of Week 7 (it’s Week 6 now) and…and I just checked and found out I’ve got Natural Computation stuff due in on the 3rd. Bugger. In an astoundingly bad display of timing I’ve arranged to go home this weekend as well. Oh well. I’ll have time to complete it this week, I’m sure. In fact, given my understanding of what it’s going to involve, I’d better damn well start it soonish.

So - the week’s goals stand at: Fix Nikki’s Mum’s PC, Finish IS and Natural Computation Coursework, Rip and convert “Young Person’s Guide to Becoming a Rock Star” to PC. Perhaps buy blank CDs and Ink Cartridges. Put a couple of comics I’m done with up on eBay and perhaps while I’m home, find a few more comics I’m done with. A fine set of things to achieve for any week, I’m sure it would be agreed.

Incidentally, I bought 3 Colours Red tickets the other day, only to now discover King Adora are playing the same venue two days before 3CR. Which, incidentally, is the day after Memorabilia 2003 at the Birmingham NEC. So my weekend of the 5th April goes like this:

Sat 5th: King Adora at Leicester Charlotte
Sun 6th: Memorabilia at Birmingham NEC
Mon 7th: 3 Colours Red at Leicester Charlotte

Not that I’m complaining, but I’ll be wincing when the petrol bill comes in. Erm. Not like it’s an invoice or anything.

I finished re-reading my Thunderbolts collection though, which is a good thing. in honour of the title’s unwarranted demise I went back to the start and read all 75 issues and all the specials, it amounts to about 90 comics. In many ways, it’s pretty upsetting that there won’t be any more issues, it’s one of those things that’s been constant throughout the last 6 years of my life and it’s strange to find it suddenly gone.

Still, it ended on a high note, and I’m quite proud to have kept with the book from start to finish - though, I say finish, the title will continue, just with a new writer, artist and concept…I’m reminded of a line from buffy that I can’t quite recall but it’s something like “My boyfriend is gone and the demon that wears his face is killing my friends.” That’s kind of how it feels to have this new comic with the same title and numbering take over, though, er, without the death.

Bleh. I have the worst cold I’ve had since the last one. I notice it’s a symptom of being at Uni that I’m suddenly struck down by a virus at least once a term, where before I was lucky if I could scam 3 days off school a year from illness. Given this, I’ve spent the last 3 days mostly in bed - though, for a change, not by choice. Nikki has also fallen down with some kind of illness so for the past couple of days the noise inside has mostly consisted of sniffing, coughing and sneezing.

Luckily, I don’t have too much coursework to do right now, so I suspect the little work I do won’t be impaired.

Well, let’s see then. Tomorrow’s plan involves going to the comic shop to see if Man-Machine Interface #2 is out, going to Tescos to buy, at least, Butter (Well, the unique blend of vegetable oils that is Clover, actually), some Shampoo, and some Cooking Foil. I’m not too worried about buying Food because as it is I can’t actually taste anything, which makes consuming food more closely resemble the horrifyingly biological process that it actually is. I ate, but I did not savour the flavour (don’t hurt me) and it seemed kind of pointless for that. Also, i’ll be picking up Nikki’s prescription.

Which brings me onto the interesting point for the update - When ill, I have universally declined to take painkillers or medication except when it is entirely necessary for probably about the last 12 years of my life. Initially, it was an aversion to swallowing tablets but these days it’s more about the same reason I don’t take drugs or drink alcohol - I dislike the idea of external chemical agents acting to alter my perception. Caffiene is my one vice. I think that if I can get better naturally then there’s no point knocking back pills to achieve the same results. Feel free, anyone, to point out any errors of logic I may have made with this.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ve been a bit lax with the updates recently but that’s mainly due to illness, so perhaps tomorrow I’ll be doing a higher quality entry that will entrall everyone as never before.

Spot the deliberate mistake:

- From NME article -
Rising US rapper 50 Cent recently brought the release of his new album, ‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin”, forward to combat bootlegging. The piracy did not effect sales. The Eminem protégé blitzed the US charts last week selling almost 900,000 copies during the first few days of release.
- - - - - - - - - - -

Did you see it? I’m damn sure piracy didn’t effect sales! You’d expect a mass advertising campaign or word of mouth to effect sales. Piracy selling records indeed. In other news, it seems that piracy of the 50 Cent album did not AFFECT sales either.

Yesterday, we went to see Feeder at the SU. Serafin were a very painful support band, and my opinion of them as being not very good has solidifed. Nikki got me the first Simon Schama book for valentines day which I’ve been after for a while, so that’s good. I’m still waiting for 2 sets of comics to arrive now. In fact, one is off an eBay person so I’ll be getting on top of that once I finish this entry.

Annoyingly, my eBay auctions for Daria and Angel episodes were pulled, but it’s a free listings day on the 19th so I’ll take the opportunity to scam the hell out of some people, being as I am, in dire need of monies.

At this point, I’m almost moved to write about positive discrimination. Rather than subject anyone to a full length essay, I’ll put it simply: Si was refused his room in the room ballot at Oxford last year because a blind person wanted it and they get first preference. Now - I am aware they have been dealt an arguably crapper hand by life, but does this mean they should get a better room!? It’s not like they can even see it…

Similarly, in the news it’s being reported that black students aren’t getting as many first-class degrees at Cambridge as other ethnic groups. This, apparantly, means there’s a problem with something the University is doing. Now, without being racist, is it not worth entertaining the idea that there’s a certain lifestyle or belief structure associated with black people which means they don’t get as many good degrees? Indian people are doing best for First class degrees at Cambridge, so are we to believe therefore that people of Indian ethnic origin are therefore favoured by the Uni in the same way that other ethnic groups aren’t?

Dangerous views, I’m sure. It’s interesting how support networks exist for minorities but not for the supposed majority. Our SU has a Women’s Officer, for instance, but until recently the idea of a Men’s Officer was never mentioned. Indeed, the Women’s Safety Bus has only within the year become a “Safety Bus” for all genders. Mike once said to me “The white man is the nigger of the world” and sometimes I find it really hard to disagree…

Haha!

One dark brown slug in the corner of the back\left walls.

I knew I wasn’t going slowly insane. More so.

So. A day ago I downloaded a load of Zwan tracks, hoping to sample the album. About 4 or 5 tracks in, I realised that bar the single, “Honestly”, every song consisted of about the same 2 or 3 lines repeated for 3-4 minutes. Now - either Billy Corgan and his mates needed an album REALLY fast, or I’ve been severely duped by someone with a sample of each track and a wave editor. Looping the same section for a long enough time managed to fool me for a couple of tracks, but by god, it won’t fool me forever! My suspisions are compounded by the fact that no track has an actual beginning or end, they just fade in and out respectively…

You’ve won this time, internet, but I’ll have the last laugh! Somehow.

Also, earlier, I saw Daredevil. I hadn’t expected it to be worth seeing, but to my surprise it was actually very good. Huge amounts of comic fanboy moments, including Stan Lee and Kevin Smith cameos, a list of “hitmen” actually being Daredevil comic writers, (Miller, Mack, Bendis) and the appearance of Daily Bugle reporters, though now I think about it I don’t think they were actually stated as working for the Bugle. Probably Spider-Man copyright or something. Other great moments include the Bullseye\Elektra fight, and indeed, Bullseye himself.

You can see loads of the more recent Daredevil stories influencing this screenplay, of course. Along with Frank Miller’s “Man Without Fear” origin and Elektra story, you get a healthy dose of Smith’s run (including the Guardian Devil line near the end) and the playground scene made me think of David Mack’s run. Bullseye and the Kingpin were really great to watch. The only problem I have with this film is that it crammed years of story into a short space - obviously in the comic the daredevil\elektra\bullseye relationship is much more developed. Besides that, I commend it for avoiding arguably the biggest problem with Spider-Man and X-Men, that is, trying too hard to start a franchise. The film is of course left slightly open, but you don’t get the feeling that you just watched half of the story.

So yeah, utter fanboy heaven, really. I’m glad I went and (like it needs to be said ;-) I’ll be getting the DVD when it comes out.