'Nazis??? Where have they come from...? I'm all lost again', Duchess - Mercury Fur

My head is spinning gently right this second. I've been up all night again making sure all the bits of a website I'm working on are correct and right so that it is ready for today. The website in question is www.voteforkris.co.uk, a site to promote the current Finance and Comms Officer of the Student Union into getting a second term. I know you may be thinking why on earth I'd be setting up a site completely randomly and out of the blue. Well, Kris Talikowski is the bloke who is trying to get Plymouth Uni's radio station up and running, and as it's best to try and keep the useful union officers in power, then we said we'd help by building a web site. And oh widgits, just as I said that I've realised I've missed something out. Back soon.

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, web site.

I am slowly learning more and more PHP (aka: web site programming language, rather than HTML which is just a way of getting internet browsers understanding what the hell you're babbling about) through no fault of my own, purely just fixing broken code and writing new stuff. It's weird that I know as much as I do, as I have made no real conscious effort to learn it. :P

Anyways, what have I been up to, apart from that? Oh, Chrissey came over for the weekend, mostly to see a play called 'Mercury Fur' (currently playing at the Drum Theatre, Plymouth) which has been bigged up left, right and centre round here. And well deserved it was too. Basically, it's set in the boroughs of London (which has, in a relatively short space of time become lawless and violent) the story of two brothers and their 'team' who set up parties for expensive clients wishing to live out their darkest fantasies. However, they soon realise that this party isn't so they can stay safe for another week, but a party to stay alive for another day.

I apologise if that description's very vague, but I don't want to give too much of the story away. But it's incredibly good (as long as you don't mind violence and swearing for the sake of art). I'm very surprised by how little they were charging for tickets (£6 for concessions and students; £10 for everyone else). I really want to see it again it was so good. Seriously, any 18-30 year old who isn't easily disturbed/offended should see this. It's a very youthy play I think, but it's damn good. Go see it. No, I don't care if you're in LA. Come over to Plymouth, United Kingdom, and see it (It finishes here on the 26th of February). Or, if you don't want to trek that far, then it's on at The Menier Chocolate Factory in London between the 1st and the 27th of March. I've given it 4 1/2 stars (it lost a small amount for a little too much racist-ish swearing for everyone to handle, in fact one person left about half way through),

Also, Chrissey & I went to see Ocean's Twelve (and no, I haven't seen either version of Ocean's Eleven). It was alright, I suppose. In my opinion it spent far too much time (about 10-15 minutes) at the start showing how Terry Benedict (played by Andy Garcia) turned up at everyone's residences to spoil their fun. I suppose, yes, it had to show how they spent the money, but to be honest, the majority of them could be summed up with just words. Far too long was spent going 'Wow, somebody cameoing' for my liking, and Chrissey (who *had* seen Ocean's Eleven) said it lacked the correlation of story that the first one had, and also several of the 11's expertise were not used at all, making them a little redundant (apart from just to provide a sequel). Apparently, I have just found out the reason for this. The script was originally destined to be a John Woo-fronted film called 'Honor Among Thieves'. When Warner Bros. decided they wanted a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, instead of writing a new story, simply got the writer to re-hash it into this film. That would explain the weak points then! I'll give the film 2 1/2 stars, sadly. This is purely because it's an average film with too many dire points for me to survive with.

Apart from that, I've had an average week. The TermiSoc Annual General Meeting is coming up. Ben is going for Tech Officer, standing down from Secretary. Skippy is applying to be Secretary. I think we'll make sure he runs all his paperwork through spellchecks and punctuation checkers first though, because (admittedly, I'll let him off because it's not his fault), he has a couple of internal issues. I think I'll feel more relaxed about him going for the position if he proves himself with the Radio station. Meanwhile, I'm feeling kind of depressed that Gem is wandering off (though hopefully, she'll be able to get a job at UPSU, or open up Codename:TenForward (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more). I wonder if she's serious about that? If so, I'd love to help, seeing as I want to open up businesses when I get the opportunity. Also, Dan is going for a year-long work-placement, which means that I'm going to be the only one left that is in the same position as last year. Also, I don't know who can replace Dan as he's the one that stopped us from squandering all our memberships on replacing all our servers :D

I hope that some members get interested. I'm worried that we'll be forced to hire someone random again, like Tempy *shudder*. Tempy, in case I have never mentioned it before, was the "ghoul" of the exec team, because he was appointed Secretary after "losing" the previous one due to some Computing Services issues. Oh wait, that was Skippy. Bugger. He's thought we'd forgotten about that. And we had. Hmm... This isn't good. I'm going to get many many quiet words I believe. *sigh* Oh well.

Anyway, Tempy never turned up. Ever. Even when he said he would turn up, he didn't. So, we fired him. But, of course, we never saw him and so therefore we couldn't tell him he'd been fired. Then the Tempy Mk. II appeared which has been much more reliable (Tempy Mk. II is a chair, by the way, which ever since the Fresher's Fair, has had Tempy's t-shirt hung on it. It became so regular that I think it/he may apply for a post next year on the exec. And I'll be suprised if it/he's less reliable than the real Tempy. :D

Anyway, I feel I've been typing for a donkey, and so I must go off and do stuff. Bye for now.

'I love you, but I'm scared of f*cking up...' The Research - I Love You But

I feel I've had a very long period of time since I've both written and completed a blog entry which actually made it onto the internet. At some point, I'll make an effort to wrap up the unfinished ones and increase the amount of 'stoof' that's 'ere.

Anyway, on with life. I've just had some very, very crazy days.

First, the trip to London, which you'll hear about here, or in a blog entry still to be posted. That was pretty nutty, partly due to the complete lack of sleep which gave everything that went wrong a hilarious new twist. Try going without sleep for a while and then attempt to do something incredibly dumb that only a person with extreme sleep deprivation would think of (for example, try and catch a train to London at 00:20 with no place to be once you get there).

Then, towards the end of January, we saw Oldboy at the Plymouth Arts Centre. I wasn't sure what to expect, and so was incredibly suprised and amazed by it's content. I must admit it was a fantastic film, and if you ever get the opportunity I reccommend you see it.

Next, I spent almost a week and a half with my darling Chrissey, which has never happened before (I mean, her or I spending that length of time with each other at our University locations). This was all down to her uni working on a semester basis with only enough exams to cover two days, giving her a spare week for her to come visit. Those were good days, and it was sad to see her leave (although, bizarrely enough, she's coming back this weekend :) )

During that period, I celebrated my birthday on the 4th by seeing a band called Warren Suicide(who signed a poster for me, thanks guys and gal!). They were, I concluded, a bit like Brian Molko (the lead singer of Placebo) singing on a Prodigy cover of a Depeche Mode track with Duke Erikson of Garbage playing in the background. And they were damn good. 'Butcher Boy' never sounded so good. Many thanks for that night, if you happen to trawl this out of Google. It's just a shame there were only the 4 of us who appeared to be enjoying it.

Saturday, my parents came over to wish me a happy birthday, go out for a meal, and give me a 21st birthday present: an iBook! I'm a happy bunny now!

Sunday, Chrissey goes home :( But go to the National Marine Aquarium with my parents, and the fish and sea-mammals distract me for a while. Spend the night playing with my computer.

Monday, don't wake up in time for important meeting with the optometrist (for those who don't know me, I annoyingly suffer from what can only best be described as a 'squint', a purely cosmetic problem which means that I never look like the direction I'm looking, which can be problematic when you're trying to hold a conversation, or order from a bar). Got annoyed with myself when the secretary said I couldn't have another one until mid-March, but a bit later got a call saying I could have it the next week. Phew! Saved me bacon!

Tuesday, saw House of Flying Daggers back to back with Garden State for a Termisoc Social. I know, you're thinking 'What an odd combination!'. Well, I recall from previous conversations people wanted to see Flying Daggers (although I'd already seen it), and so took them to see that, but also wanted to break the habit of seeing depressing movies and so I thought comedy would do the trick. Garden State was really, really good. I'm glad that as a society, we see plenty of quality films. One annoyance about the Plymouth Arts Centre is that one of their projectors runs too fast, and so for the advert reel and second-half of both movies the voices were a bit 'squeeky'. They don't listen though. I may have to warn them I'll stop bring the society there if they don't fix it, which means they lose about 8-10 customers a showing (or about 10% of the audience).

Friday, went out for curry. Accidentally forgot to invite Chris, and Skip wanted to go and collect for RAG, the charitable side of the Student Union. Oh well. Went up to the Mutley Spice, feeling totally underdressed, huge bag in tow, and ready to be currylised. After stuffing ourselves, we wandered to the Voodoo Lounge, had a solitary drink, and then headed off to Riley's to play some pool. About 1:30, wandered home and fell asleep in a heap.

Now, Saturday was the oddest of them all. Woke up a bit late, so got to do less than planned, but had time to get ready for the Anti-Valentine's Ball at the Student Union. Dress code: Black or bondage. I voted Gothic. So, after wandering into The Attic to get laughed at by 'shoppers' (due to me wearing a big cream fleece, trendy Jeans and trendy trainers), I had a wander, couldn't find anything of quality, and so ended up buying a 'Death to The Pixies' t-shirt and some black hair colour. (I find it a little bizarre that I've bought a Pixies t-shirt about 16 years since I started listening to them, and especially 14 years after they 'broke up'). Skip called me over to be 'made up', and so I adhered to the call. I got Gothed up to the nines with velvet tunic, white face paint, eye-liner in the style of Alex de Large from A Clockwork Orange, and black lipstick.

So, heading off to Uni after a pit-stop at a Chip Shop (oh, their faces!), we ended up in the SU. Needless to say we got off to a bad start. Maybe it was partly because we appeared to be the only people to carry out this simple instruction (though two bondaged figures did appear later on), or maybe because the first location we sat in was the chart and cheese night. Think about it, five wraith-like characters huddled in the corner of a room playing r'n'b and hip-hop. You see what I mean?

Anyway, we did find the correct room in the end (although problems with other people's attire were still noticable). So, after a short time, on came the bands:

1.) 3 Spirit - A band comprised of people who have a tendancy to make loud, bangy noises in my house on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They played quite well, with Will sounding like a young Adam Duritz. The only issue is they still sound like they need a bit more practice, with Tom a little floundering. Possibly investing in a metronome may help his timing a little. Oh, and also not having intros that are a different speed to the tune. It just sounds wrong.

2.) Eleven Lives Left - The kind of band you think you have heard on the radio many many times. A mix of heavy rock, Stereophonic-esque pop and The Who. Good stuff, absolutely nothing to fault, apart from the distinct lack of roadies selling stuff at the back. Hmph!

3.) The Nacho Eating Poncho Monsters - The kind of band to get a load of drunken students whipped up into a frenzy. Top stuff.

But here's where even the setlist goes awry. Because, rather than a band to tip the now raring-to-go students into a full blown mash-up, we get:

4.) The Research - A band hailing from Wakefield, and recently plonked onto At Large Records (associates with EMI), they mix the bittersweet electro-pop of Granddaddy and Fonda 500 with heavy beats etc. taken straight from a punkesque environment. In other words, they are undefinable and damn good! Tracks like 'I Love You, But' and 'She's Not Leaving' are fine tracks and I'm suprised if they don't get snapped up and air-played. The issue, however, is with the support for them. The other bands built up the wrong mood for this sort of music, so it left the poor drunken students disillusioned and confused, and also caused it to look like they were getting a poor reception. Damn you UPSU! Russell, Georgia and Sarah, keep up the good work. I know you will.

To cap the story off, Gem won the competition for best dressed, and so got a discount for either a piercing or a tatoo! Doesn't seem like her style, but you shouldn't let it go to waste, so vote piercing! :)

Last night, finally got around to watching 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. Crazily weird film that. Very good, but crazily weird. I don't know whether to be scared that we could live in an Orwellian society or glad that this is the closest we're probably going to get. The line of the film which got me (which almost became the title of this post) was, of course, "If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever." I do now, however, get all the in-jokes of Brazil. :D

Oh, and now, now I am wasting time trying not to think about an upcoming essay I have to write where the document I read on the subject sent my head reeling and caused me to do all this typing. Oh dear. And now it's lunchtime. I have to go buy some tickets and get a bag for my laptop, so for now, I bid you farewell.




And yes, I *will* put up those missing posts.