We went to London.

( Text! Images! Possibly even sounds! INSIDE )

In other news, I watched Memento.

Good film.

So one again I ignored the demons of homework and went down the city with a bunch of girls and two non-girls and henner and also my darling girlfriend. (this entry is taking ages to write) We went to see Howl's Moving Castle (Le Château Ambulant as it is in France) at Cinema City @ The Playhouse, the latest masterpiece from our old friend Hayao Miyazaki. Lovely stuff, although the ending was a bit silly ("Oh hello! I used to be a scarecrow, but I was a dashing Prince all along! Now let me go home and stop the war. Did someone just say "deus ex machina?") and it's not quite Spirited Away, but it has a basic goodness about it.

Then we had Chinese, which was nice, and angsted for a while. Which was also nice, in its own way.

So unlike some lazy fucks, (kidding I love you alls) I went with Scott/Seb/Josh/Robin and Dr Frye to man a checkpoint for the little ones on Hellesdon High's sponsored walk. Very uneventful. Got there in Dr Frye's cavernous 1970s-vintage Land Rover, watched hapless maths teachers erect tent, then sat around for a while. Occasionally we would throw a spinny ball thing around, go out on walks to hunt down children, wave at passing lorry drivers, continually make references to World War II and Vietnam movies (there was a point where I could have SWORN Seb was about to be hit by a sudden mortar and an MG42 across the field would open up and shred me to bits and suddenly a platoon of PzKpfw VI-E Tiger Is would suddenly roll out from the forests and begin firing), re-erect signs (I have used the word erect twice thrice so far), and also I spent a lot of the time watching Spider-Man 2 on Scott's PSP. Which is actually a rather engaging experience.

So, uh, fun.

I'm amazed that out of the thousands of people I've ever met, not one has had a T-shirt saying "I'm a misanthropist. It's nothing personal."

Anyway, went to Cash Generator today to try and return a faulty PlayStation controller I'd bought (The X button didn't work, and a PSX controller without an X button is barely a controller at all.)

"Hi, I'd, er, like to return something..." said I.

"What?" exclaimed the angry man at the desk as if he'd been asked for a stoat.

"I'd like to... return... this..." I said, trying to remove the controller from the plastic bag without anything falling out.

He stormed over to the cabinet, opened it, and slammed a different, blue controller on the counter.

"Try that," he said as if he'd been asked for a lightly grilled stoat in a bun with French fries.

...twas weird.

Bought hairdryer. Felt strange, unhealthy feeling of desire when I saw a middle-aged woman in Game carrying the £229.99 Mega Pack PSP box. The PSP, not the woman.

I was bored, so I met up with some gurlz in the city. Though before that I went to the library and got me an illustrated history of the NHL, a guide to the rules of american football, and Rogue Trooper: Future War. And bought me that Weezer t-shirt - very nice. Now the legions of hot half-Japanese Weezer girls out there will know who to mob. Also I almost did something I'd regret. I was walking past Schuh (I'm trying to think of a way to hilariously misspell that, but there isn't one) and thought - yes I shall buy myself some Converses. I walked in the shop, realised they were overpriced at £34 and more importantly that I would be buying into a brand that tries to think it's cool and anti-brand but is really just a brand and emo kids are fooling themselves if they think wearing Converse makes them individual (or something) and walked out.

Then I hung about with (variously, at different times) Hana and Chloe and Danni and Ismo and Frankie and sorta-cool blonde dude and annoying gay goth dude. Talked to a Big Issue seller.

Happy burthday dear Nicola! I mean Nikki.

So I'm back from Sheffield. Old Sheff. The Steel City. The Big S.

( Obligatory holiday photos yawnorama )

Some marketing company wants to pay me £90 for watching me play computer games. No foolin'. I also need two friends who will get paid £30. I'm not sure if I want some guy staring at me as I grind away at World of Warcraft.

Must buy:
Fahrenheit - a rather brilliant and yet curiously un-game-like game. It's like an old-style point and click adventure, except... it's not. THe demo's kinda boring, but the full game has sex in. PCZ love it, and I'm inclined to trust them.

Might I suggest that you check out and/or download Facade, the first-person embarrasing situation 'em-up? It's an interesting idea, but ultimately doesn't work very well because it's full of bugs and they don't seem to actually listen to what you type.

Might I suggest you be baffled by this Coca Cola/World of Warcraft advert (thanks oooch)?

Results soon, yay.

Note to self: get DeviantArt account. Become famous pixel artist. Control world.

Awesome pixellated city thing
Also awesome pixellated apartments

Went to city, bought contact lens stuff, PS2-USB convertor, sterring wheel works nicely, even if I am crap at driving.

I hope Audioscrobbler doesn't do a SongMeanings and disappear for half a year.

( FILES FROM THE <s>CRYPT</s> HARD DRIVE )

festival news: updates a whole month earlier than el uno jigglioso!

Got here yesterday in time to see Hayseed Dixie perform a banjoised version of Ace of Spades. Which was nice. Fumbled around for a bit, got to campsite, set up tent, funness.

Anyway, bands:
Kathryn Tickell Band: rather excellent folksy old-timeness. were good.

Unusual Suspects: giant folk/jazz orchestra thing... should have been good, were occasionally, but got boring in the middle.

KT Tunstall: it was about five minutes before she came on, and I expected my dad would want to see this up-and-coming wossname sensation. Then I realised he'd never heard of her. I had to explain it all on the way to the stage. well, admittedly, I'd only seen the advert, and didn't really know any songs, but she was extremely good. Might get the album.

Mavis Staples: never heard of them, but soulful blues/gospel stuff rocked. Plus there's a vicar on guitar, who was great. And the whole backing band was great.

And finally... the Proclaimers. For some reason... they were kinda boring. After everything else that'd been on that night, a bunch of people with guitars and drums just weren't that interesting to me. The drunk Scotsmen liked it though.

Keep seeing people with cool t-shirts. Saw a guy with a Weezer "If it's too loud, turn it down." t-shirt, and nodded at him/scared him.

Thinking of spending a lot of money on an acoustic guitar, which would be fun if irresponsible.

Went into town today, found a cool records stall in the market, bought Nick Cave's latest (double) album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, and the Best Of. Maybe kinda overkill, but you can never have enough Cave.

in the internet cafe thingy now, which is gravy. And on the posh campsite. Christy Moore's on tonight, he's Irish.

I'm playing WoW at the moment. Sorry.

I've been down the city again, kinda boring. Got there before anyone else, so I wandered around, bought some soup, went to Kulture Shock, saw a hot girl, regretted not saying hi randomly, bought some Pocky. The rest of the day was random sitting and talking, although oooch and I discovered that Steve (I think it was him, a friend of a friend we stand around with occasionally) was a fellow Warcrafter. Never would have guessed.

Decided I needed a new image. Suddenly pondered buying some of them enormous industrial goth boots, which would strike fear into the hearts of small children.

Anyhow, off to Cambridge for the Folk Festival, hoho. Back Monday. Hanw.

So been down the city, random milling about, drinking plenty of fluids, spending more than I planned to. No less than three girls commented on my eyes being "amazing", although two of them aren't single and one of them thinks I'm a pervert (well she used to at least). Saw Wedding Crashers, it wasn't riotously amusing, though it did have the odd hilarious moment. Just another formulatic romzomcom.

Then we walked home, a first for me. Need to play Earthbound.

Also I got myself 3GB of webspace free from FileFarmer, check it out there might be some left. Now there's just the matter of what to do with it. Hey, if you ever want anything hosted, ask me.

Forgot to mention: asked about the job. They'll phone me.

LIVE AND LET DIE! Dang! DANG!

Finally saw the end of War of the Worlds, Ster Century were happy to give me a free ticket so good for them. It's an alright ending, it's hard when you have to deal with such an infamous anticlimax but at least they threw in a few explosions to keep us happy.

Then I wandered randomly around, picked up Series 1 of Look Around You in HMV ("Bless you ants. Blants."), bought a Big Issue (I heard a Big Issue salesman had been murdered so I felt guilty for always passing them), got Transmetropolitan: lonely city (bless you warren_ellis. Blorren.) from the library with a forward by none other than Patrick Stewart:

"I think, however, that I can safely say this: I know this City, I have read The Word, I have listened to these politicians, I have smelt the stink of greed, I have thrown stuff at the TV, I have wondered what future there is for Truth and Beauty. I have wanted to go and live on the top of a Yorkshire moor."

Possibly some other stuff happened but that's about it.

Ack well I am off to Nottingham tomorrow to see R.E.M. on Wednesday which should be fun cus they are good. I've seen their Perfect Square DVD which is them live in Germany and that looked cool. Also I'm hoping to go ice skating at the National Ice Centre, home of the Nottingham Panthers. I should go play NHL 2005 some more in readiness.

Also I'm catching up on the last two years of Libertinesness, silly me.

See ye

erm

Thursday.

Comment if anything important happens, like my house falls down or Shaun gets pregnant.

Hey so today:

Went to Hunstanton with my pa, cus, like we're always going to the North Norfolk coast or whatever, but we hardly ever go West and I wanted to see the Wash. Well, the Wash is pretty cool. It looks huge on maps but titchy in real life, as if you could just wade across it to get to Lincolnshire or whatever it is on the other side.

Unfortunately Hunstanton is no good. It tries hard to be like Cromer, but fails and becomes like a less fun version of Great Yarmouth.

So we went up to the next town over and my dad suddenly swerved off the road to go to what he called "the best pub in the world", the Lifeboat Inn or something. Unfortunately we arrived to find it full of Londoners with names like Tom and Patricia and high cheekbones, and the place had changed since my dad knew it. He told me about the history, showed me a hole in the bench where they used to throw coins in some weird game (the hole had since been covered up with a cushion, natch), told me about how the fishermen would come in straight off the boats with buckets of crabs, and how Winston Churchill would sit in the corner smoking a cigar every Saturday night. (I made the last one up.)

Anyhow, drove around a bit more and ended up in the lovely Wells-Next-The-Sea, which was actually nice. Whereas Hunstanton is full of half-dead zombie old people and chavs and the Lifeboat Inn was full of vibrant bronzed London accountants, Wells is just full of ordinary, nice peoples. And there's a street of pleasantly old fashioned shops.

So anyhow, here's to stuff.