I missed you!

Right! Hello! Yes! I've been offline the past two days because my laptop charger snapped, somehow, plunging me back into another dark age. Gav found me bashing rocks on other rocks and grunting.

His parents were down today, which was brilliant - I get on really well with them, they're absolutely lovely, and we had a good time. Gav cooked for them for the first time in years, which went down very well indeed.

SO YES THAT HAS BEEN MY LIFE NOW FOR THE INTERESTING THINGS

I cannot recommend with enough enthusiasm my latest discovery, School of Comedy. It's the only genuinely hilarious comedy sketch show I've ever seen, and I was ready to hate it from my first impression because they're - well - they're children. But give it a chance. I love it.

Smiths, Geeks and Furniture

Back home on the Isle of Wight, I knew a girl, D. Smith. Her mother's maiden name was Smith, and it amused me greatly that her parents could have hyphenated their surnames into Smith-Smith when they got married.

D got engaged to a young man by the name of T Smith, thus opening up the possibility of a Smith-Smith-Smith union... an opportunity passed up by D, but not by her brother, J. J married miss C Smith, so they could have been Mr J and Mrs C Smith-Smith-Smith. However, in the interest of minimising paperwork and avoiding ridicule, they all stuck as Smith. What a waste.

Back when I was doing my Theology course, the 2 hours of travel on a Monday morning left me with a lot of time to think. My friends and I once spent a happy hour working out who I'd have to marry and divorce in order to get the name Anna Rose-Smith-Smith-Rose. I will most likely never get that name, and this saddens me.

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I've recently been reading a lot by Wil Wheaton. Here's a sample of his style, as he recounts his take as an adult watching himself in Star Trek as a teenager.

Riker looks around the bridge, sees all the commissioned officers he has available to him, does a quick scan of the ship's manifest to see who's on duty . . . and decides to send Wesley Freakin' Crusher to "discreetly" sneak a peek at Data. Worf says, "Uh, excuse me, Commander, but since I'm kind of in the security department and all, and I'm a big old Klingon, shouldn't maybe I go check this out?"

Riker replies, "I'm not going to lie to you, Worf: we all know that if there's anything funky going on down there, you're just going to get your ass kicked. So I'm sending the Boy Wonder and his giant brain instead."

Wesley jumps up from his console and shouts, "Wheee! I'm in Starfleet!" as he skips to the turbolift.

Read more of his memories on the set of The Next Generation here, I thoroughly recommend it!

My recent journeys through his blog have convinced me that he's a remarkably intelligent, humble man with a keen sense of humour, so I've bought his book 'Just a Geek'. Expect a review on that soon, I'm certainly enjoying it so far!

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Today's interesting thing is WebUrbanist. I've been browsing for a bit being amazed at bookshelves - sounds dull, I know, but I'm very impressed with the originality and ingenuity of the designs. This one, for example, is built into a staircase:


There's plenty more on convertible furniture and recycled art, if you're into that sort of thing.

PS. I see from the poll that you guys are ALL ABOUT the button-clicking, so expect more polls whenever I can think of something!

Found On Flickr 1

Gloucester Cathedral [ corridor ], originally uploaded by shexbeer.

An absolutely breathtaking photo.

I'm appreciated!

A big thanks to Mr. Truth for sharing four true things about me with the world! I thoroughly recommend his blog, go check it out, if only to learn why I wail for an hour a week.

In which I revisit my original method of titling posts

You know what, never mind! Sorry! The other layout was far too rough; I shouldn't have changed it until I'd reduced the eyesore factor a bit. It looks like I'll be leaving it like this unless someone comes up with something better.

On a related note, the comment form is now beneath the comments, where God intended it. Thanks Blogger for that one!

Sorry for the slight lull in activity lately; I've been unwell, which impacts my creativity (along with transforming me into a whiny 7-year-old).

/EDIT: Also, there's a poll to the left.

My God, it's full of stars!

I'm really only trying this layout on for size. Let's call it a seasonal thing. I know it's not great, and suggestions would be welcomed, but I just needed to play around with it for a bit to see what else I could do...

My coding skills are (clearly!) still very limited.

The problem is, the old rainbow design was pretty much perfect from a design and simplicity point of view, but it sent out a very clear first impression that I wasn't entirely happy with.

So... I don't know how long it will stay like this... but yes, feedback is always much appreciated!

Thanks as always for stopping by - I promise to try to be interesting soon x x

Oh PS interesting thing of the day, courtesy of Tiff: TeeFury t-shirts. Each design is only available to order for one day, so they're very very limited edition! Very cheap, even when you factor in overseas shipping and economic disaster.

The spooky season

I never celebrate Halloween, to be honest. I mean, whether you believe it's a celebration of evil or a pointless consumer holiday, there's really not much point.

That being said, I have been saving up something delightfully creepy to share with you lovelies.

A couple of years back I discovered an animator called Adam Phillips. I sincerely recommend you check out his website, there's some gorgeous animations on there... my favourite of which is Taken. Watch it with the lights off!

Reassuring thoughts on the economy

I know it's all doom and gloom at the moment, but I'd like to bring a little ray of financial optimism into your life.

Think about it like this: If the economy got into a terrible state, and we were all suddenly very poor, and prices went up, nobody would be able to buy anything. Nobody would be able to buy anything from Tesco, or from Rupert Murdoch, or from Microsoft. This is a classic case of the goose that lays the golden egg shitting itself to death, and you can bet that these huge GloboHyperMegaCorps with billions of dollars at their disposal don't want that to happen. It is in their best interests that things stay basically ok, and they've got the leverage to make sure that happens.

I do research for these posts, you know. I even looked up Forbes' list of the top 2000 companies, but it was boring.

So to summarise: Very rich and powerful companies want you to be able to buy what you need to live, and also plenty of stuff you don't need. We also want to be able to buy this stuff. Happily ever after.

Change of subject. I was thinking earlier...
Chocolate in winter doesn't melt as quickly. Somehow this gives it an entirely different feel. I'd go so far as to say that it seems to have far fewer calories than the heavy, sweet, sticky-as-sin summer chocolate. Not as nice though, especially when your face is so cold that you can't taste it properly and the momentary look of mild disappointment gets frozen onto your face and you spend the rest of the day looking slightly despondent until you find a radiator to hug.

Election warz!: update

I've been trying to get informed on the debate (no wait, actually information was just being poured into my head until I gave up fighting it), and while I do get confused over which party are the terrorists and which one are the communists (or are the blue guys both of those?), I am getting a bit of a picture of their supporters.

I think the whole debate has been best summed up by a fanatical McCain supporter (feel free to check out her blog, Sarah's Army, to get a feel for what kind of intellectual level she's fighting on) who wrote: "McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else."

Go Obama, says I.

On an unrelated note... my weekend has been pretty awesome! On Friday I stayed up till 7am watching Avatar with the guys. It was properly amazing, the basic concept of the programme is as follows: there's these four tribes: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water; and some of the people in these tribes can control their element, and they're called Benders. It follows one kid who's a bender of all four elements, and is thus the Avatar. Good for him!

The rest of the weekend was basically spent with my Gavin (he's recently written a great blog post about fair trade and our responsibility to the rest of the world - heavy stuff, but so relevant and important right now. And always.)

Anyway, I've got uni in the morning and this whole clock-going-forward shenanigans has completely thrown me off (doesn't it always! At least it was the good one) - although I'm still a bit jetlagged from Friday night / Saturday morning.

Anyways, go ahead and check out Sarah's Army; if you can make it through three posts without mentally quoting Team America: World Police, you're a better man than I.

Programmes I used to love

... and I still do, to be fair.

I'm not going to go with the obvious thing, which would be to dive through YouTube unearthing clips from 1980s children television (amazing though that would be); instead I'm going to address the programmes that had an impact on me in my teenage years.

First of all, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I am not ashamed of this. I think it was absolute quality, with enough 'normal teenage stuff' to make it relatable. For example, there was a wonderful episode in which students started disappearing, fading into invisibility, and all it took to bring them back from oblivion was some eye contact or a quick conversation. It was a wonderful metaphor; directly relevant without being overbearingly obvious.

My favourite episode would either be Hush, or the musical episode (which was truly amazing if you loved the show as much as I did / do). Hush hardly had any dialogue, which many people would argue was an improvement (these people would be wrong and silly. Silly wrong people). The sheer horror levels of that episode were at an all-time high, and The Gentlemen were unforgettably creepy.

The Gentlemen

Also, eyecandy is always a winner. The series was around for long enough - six years, apparently - for my interests to phase from Xander to Spike. Even to Giles on some days. And Willow on others (no homo). Never Angel though, the big broody stump of emo that he was. He was all sad and pathetic and in love with Buffy, which held far less appeal than Spike's wannabe-rocker mojo. Of course they eventually cut Spike's balls off in an attempt to redeem him, and he turned all sad and pathetic and fell in love with Buffy. I mean dammit people.

Another programme that influenced me was Star Trek: The Next Generation, shuttup, it's awesome. And here's why. The spirit of adventure - of scientific discovery in space, and of pure indulgent fantasy in the holodeck - really caught my imagination. If I'd been any older I'm sure my imagination would have been elsewhere, no doubt musing on the contents of that secsi uniform (muscle padding, apparently. *Noise of disappointment*). So it's just as well TNG got me while I was young and innocent; I was too young to find Wesley Crusher irritating, so I just harboured confused daydreams of making friends with him and, I don't know, discussing dilithium crystals.

Wesley attractive?
Now you kinda see it...

And now you really, really don't.

You SO don't.

It's sad but true: if I watch something enough, I start to fantasize about having conversations with the characters. That's not insanity, it's imagination, and anyone who disagrees can take it up with Frank the 6-foot rabbit, can't they Frank.

YES

Also, I'd like to cast an obvious yellow vote for the Simpsons. I'm pretty sure the Simpsons affected everyone in some way. They informed American and British humour for over a decade until South Park took the reins. I still hold a tremendous affection for the characters, although not to the point where I'd willingly watch them in anything for quite a while.

He likes doughnuts LOLLLLLL

So, yes. Those are my three nominees for "Programmes I used to love." Feel free to share your special memories in the comment box. You too, Rich, don't be shy!

OH by the way, Dan, Stephen Fry, the ACTUAL Stephen Fry, is following me on Twitter. I Shit You Not. Admittedly he's got as many internet friends as MySpace Tom, but this IN NO WAY (slightly) cheapens how awesome this is.