Magneto is gay

So I bought a new bike on the Friday afternoon; and by Monday morning it was stolen. At two and a half days, that still only makes it my second shortest period of bicycle ownership.

Sigh.

The sense of impotent blinding rage abated somewhat on the Thursday when we went to see the very excellent Reginald D Hunter; and abated further still when a guy in my office offered me the use of his mountain bike, which he had bought a year ago and used three times since. The rage returned the next day when I found out that his bike weighs more than the moon, and is actually slightly worse than the aids bike (which was also stolen); but was then almost obliterated entirely when I went to see the Melvins that same night. And then the rage came crashing back a few days ago when the chain on the shite bike broke at the top of my road and left itself in a neat line on the road behind me; and I realised that I was going to have to buy a new chain for a bike that I don't own because EVERY BIKE I'VE OWNED IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS HAS BEEN STOLEN.

I have resolved to keep listening to the Melvins until everything feels better.

complicated futility

Ben is getting pretty fucking sick of buying new bicycles for total strangers.

bei einnahme sofort arzt aufsuchen

So we found a new place to live.

It is not in Westbury-on-Trym, where the three leading causes of death are 1. boredom, 2. old age and 3. nothing else; and it is a three bedroom house, which hopefully means there shall be no wrangling with tin-pot dictators in flat committees that prohibit all movement, conversation and roller-discos after 7pm because it's a bit noisy and people are trying to die of boredom and old age in peace.

We don't get to move until mid-August; and almost didn't get to move at all, thanks to the credit check agency that vets potential tenants on behalf of our future letting agency. Because I don't start grown-up work until September, there was some question as to whether I would be good for the rent; and the offer letter from my future employer (for which I have studied for five years, completed an essay-style application form, participated in online written, numerical and logical reasoning tests, and attended a two-day assessment centre evaluating my abilities as an individual and a team member) was "only a conditional offer, and anyone can get one of those."

I forget how hard I laughed at this.

Fortunately it is possible to work around their bullshit system, by simply owning up to being a penniless chump and making Dom and the Pixie pay all the rent instead. Awesome.

The whole debacle only lasted for an afternoon, but was somewhat slightly stressful all the same; and so some form of cathartic recreational activity was called for. This was conveniently served up a few days later in the form of a track day at Castle Combe, run by the splendid folks at BHP. Matt, Laura and I took the track slag out for its first outing since we added lightness by, erm, ripping out all the innards and throwing them away. It was an open pitlane, which meant that there was a good mix of exotica, oddities and track hacks in attendance.

We've always found the other folks at these events to be a friendly bunch, and this particular day was no exception. Everyone displayed a remarkable tolerance for our ceaseless questions about their cars, the other guys with BMWs (ours was one of five E36s in attendance) were eager to share their ideas on various performance upgrades, and we even had one old boy offer us a few passenger laps in his Lotus 7-alike. What a tip-top geezer.

There were only a few slight hiccups, the first being a rear wheel that attempted to detach itself from the rest of the car whilst I was tearing around. It probably would have hung on for a few more laps, but I'd promised the Pixie that I wouldn't die and so pulled in to reattach the wheelnuts. The second problem was the brakes, which we worked so hard that the new pads which we had fitted five days ago were reduced to little more than powder by the end of the day.

All of which made for a somewhat cautious drive home. Still, we had an amazing day, met some nice people, and can now legitimately claim to have driven the wheels off of our car.

we've got another clog in the torso chute

Still very much mired in coursework. But it's infinitely better than being struck by earthquakes, tidal waves and nuclear meltdowns; so I'm keeping some sort of perspective about it.

Found the time to attend a couple of electronic music recitals in the past few weeks. First up was yoav at the good ship Thekla. A curious proposition, in as far as the band consists of one guy (yoav), an acoustic guitar, and so many loop stations and effects pedals that he had at his feet more computing power than was used to send the first dog into space (probably). The resultant folktronica made for quite pleasant listening, even if every song had to be started with a bizarre sequence of slapping, tapping, strumming and occasionally murmuring into the guitar as he set up his pick 'n' mix selection of noises. The only real fault with yoav was that he wasn't Electric Wizard.

Later that week I went to see Electric Wizard. Not straight away, of course; first there was the obligatory support act to endure. I wasn't feeling especially enthused by the prospect of seeing a Norwegian band called Devil - the whole thing had more than a whiff of corpse paint and burning churches. My hopes were lifted slightly when I noticed that they were selling cassettes at the merch table; and then dashed completely when they took to the stage and revealed themselves to be little more than a Scandinavian pub metal band with a vocabulary gleaned entirely from Black Sabbath records. Ludicrous black metal would have been preferable, as it turns out.

Thankfully they were reduced to little more than a bad memory by Electric Wizard's first bowel-loosening riff. Electric Wizard play doom metal; like normal metal, only slower, thicker and heavier. Take the doomiest thing you can think of, drown it in the centre of a planet made of tar, and then hurl that planet into the centre of the sun. In slow motion. Hooked up to Orange amplifiers. They sound kind of like that, and smell a bit like weed.

I have also been out and about meeting new people. Like on Wednesday, I met some guy when he reversed his Chelsea tractor into the front of my car when we were queuing at some traffic lights.

I hardly laughed at all, actually. Still, it's infinitely better than being struck by earthquakes, tidal waves and nuclear meltdowns; so I'm keeping some sort of perspective about it.

The rage was further nullified by a housewarming shenanigan hosted by the most talkative and confident of the Pixie's chums, which left me far too hungover the following day to concentrate on schoolwork; so I indulged in some toy soldier based procrastination instead.

These guys are my new Chaos team for Blood Bowl, a spiffing boardgame based around the faintly ridiculous concept of American football in the world of Warhammer. Matt has always been firmly opposed to such rampant diversity, but Dom and I are determined to try to change his mind anyway. Our efforts will almost certainly yield results; but those results are likely to include a lot of shouting at dice, and each other, and everyone hating Blood Bowl.

because crime never takes a holiday, kids

My bicycle has been giving me some trouble of late. The chain would occasionally skip off the back gears and get wedged between the frame and cassette; this problem was solved with the careful application of a chunk of metal and some cable ties. I fixed a wobbly pedal crank with chopped up bits of beercan, replaced a pedal with knackered bearings by scavenging a replacement from another abandoned bike, and hadn't quite got around to looking at the front gears which were so worn that the chain would slip every 10 revolutions or so.

It has been suggested that what I really need is a new bicycle; but I've always maintained that it makes more sense to wait until this one gets stolen, and then get a new one.

Well guess what I found when I went to cycle in to school this morning?

That's right; a bike. But - crucially - not my bike. My bike is silver and red. The bike it seems to have been replaced with is (forgive me if this gets a bit technical) a Rusty Blue Piece of Shit with Non Functioning Brakes.

On the plus side, I do now appear to have become the owner of a bike so shitty that even a bike thief doesn't want it. Although I can't shake the feeling that I might catch some kind of virulent disease from it...

coursework coursework coursework

I'M TAKING THE HYDRAPLANE TO BELLINGHAM

life-work-school-procrastination balance

So what's happening is this.

I finished my fuel-saving aerodynamics research/playing minesweeper job a couple of weeks ago. The boss was very happy with the work that I did, primarily because he doesn't know how much time I spent playing minesweeper. He's going to go over the stuff I did and present it to the university, with a view to conjuring up some kind of engineering get-rich-quick scheme. If he's successful, and if the funding is available, I'm straight back in there with some kind of part-time job; which would be cool, because his various motorsport contacts make him a very useful guy to know... but for now at least, it's done, and I no longer have fevered dreams about gleaming white DAF XFs.

Mmmm... articulated...

Pretty much as soon as that ended, school started. Now, I always knew that the final year of an MEng would be hard work; but there's knowing, and there's KNOWING. And now I fucking KNOW how much work I have to do this year, and it's more than a little overwhelming and, frankly, terrifying. Almost ninety percent of the mark this year comes from coursework, and to get it all done to a decent standard I will need more time.

So I've decided to try to drop one of the two days a week that I spend slaving away at The Big Gay Department Store; and if they don't go for that, I guess I'll be dropping both days. I don't really want to quit outright, as I need money for shiny things (and food, I suppose); but at the same time, I need to be able to find some sort of balance between attempting to master engineering, being a slightly camp sales assistant, and indulging in other social activities. Like checking out painfully contemporary jazz and drinking fancy beer on a boat, for example.

Which, by an astonishing coincidence, is exactly what happened on Friday when Sam invited us to The Grain Barge to check out his workmate's band. The band in question was Eyebrow, a thoroughly decent modern jazz two-piece consisting of drums, trumpet and a lot of reverb. They were cool.

The second band were called Busnoys, and they sounded like this.

Possibly the band that the phrase "Spiralling vibraphone wankery" was made for. But the important thing is, Eyebrow were cool and the beer was fancy.

k-epsilon is the industry standard two-equation turbulence model

There has been drinking and Tapas.

There have been heroically manly exploits in the field of car poking.

There has been an oddly confessional road trip with a manager from the Big Gay Department Store, delivering what later transpires to be completely the wrong thing to a customer.

There has been brightness.

But mostly, there has been a bastarding fuck of a computational fluid dynamics assignment, which up until the hand-in date (today) has utterly consumed me somewhat. Even sleep offered no respite; each morning my alarm would go off and awaken me from a dream in which I was resolving the pressure drop of a continuous fully turbulent flow through a rough walled pipe of known dimensions... and I would hit the snooze button, so I could fall back to sleep and carry on writing the report.

Thankfully, this CFD beast has now been slain - after days of wrestling with incomprehensible theory and even more incomprehensible software, I resolved to just blag the rest of it and hand the fucker in. So I am now free to dedicate myself to working on the other two neglected projects, and preparing for three exams on subjects that make no sense.

ben's irrational hate list #97

That jerk from the T-Mobile adverts.

Apparently his name is Josh. Here he is with noises coming out of his terrible flapping mouth.

The latest advert poses some question like "What would you do with an unlimited text SIM card?"

I've given it some thought, and I reckon I would sharpen the edge of it to a keen blade, and use it to slash at Josh's eyes.

In summary, Ben has had a wonderful Christmas and is now feeling unaccountably antisocial.

no blog post for you

I'm busy with schoolwork and shit.

So no blog post for you.

Apart from this one.

So now I'm a liar, as well as a disorganised jerk.

WWHRD?

Working part time at The Big Gay Department Store is, on the whole, fine. I turn up, do the requisite amount of making-small-talk-with-co-workers and giving-a-shit-about-the-business, and then get to work like shopkeeping is all I was born to do.

And I'm good at it, too. I often have customers remark on how nice it is to be served by such a happy fellow, and how very cheerful I am. I generally smile back and reassure them that I'm crying on the inside madam, would you like the receipt in your bag? That's great, enjoy the rest of your day.

Working full time at The Big Gay Department Store is, on the whole, torturous. I can just about manage to pretend to like my co-workers one day every week, but five days on the trot is a bit more of a strain. Especially when they sit next to me and try to enter into conversation during breaks, or - dig this - force tuna curry onto me. Apparently I missed someone's birthday at the beginning of the month, this woman I hardly ever speak to other than to say hello and exchange meaningless pleasantries; and so to make up for the fact that I wasn't there when she brought in cake and what-not, she decided on Saturday to leave me a portion of tuna curry and a biscuit in one of the pigeon holes behind reception. Unfortunately - or fortunately, I haven't yet decided which - I forgot all about it up until yesterday, and so for all I know, it's still sat there... ew.

And then there's the customers. Empty fucking drones, bimbling about ticking life boxes and consuming to be happy and drown out the sheer pointlessness of all their endeavour.

Intolerable.

But then I get the chance to work some extra hours, and I think to myself... What would Rollins do?


He'd take the work. Fuck it, it's not that bad really. I think I may just be indulging in our national pastime of grumbling. Besides, if I wasn't at The Big Gay Department Store focusing all my energy into repressing the urge to be thoroughly unpleasant to every other person I met, I'd just be sat around the flat, wondering what the fuck I should be doing.

ben's nightmares

• I'm standing in the corner of a field with a load of people I don't know. The field is bounded by a crumbling stone wall, punctuated with simple wooden gates. It's summer; the grass is green, the sun is out, and WWII German fighter bombers are circling overhead. We are sheltered from view beneath the trees, but we need to get to the other side of the field; so we sprint desperately to the opposite corner whilst the German aircraft drop bombs which erupt into billowing clouds of deadly yellowish smoke. Those of us that make it to the other side then have to run back again. And so on.
• I'm at some sort of adventure holiday camp at the top of a snowy mountain. I'm supposed to be going to do some climbing or something with one of the instructors, but when we step outside men with balaclavas and submachine guns appear. The instructor steps in front of me when they open fire, but the bullets go through her and into me. We're each left with four gunshot wounds to the gut, and I have the bullets stuck in me. I'm not too panicked, because I remember from Reservoir Dogs that it takes a long time to die from a gut wound. After about ten minutes there's still no ambulance, so one of the other guys from the camp drives us down the mountain in his car. It's a flimsy black hatchback; a bit like an old 80's Fiat Panda, but more crappy. The seats have all been replaced with those flappy plastic chairs that you sometimes get at bus stops. On the way to the hospital, the driver stops off at a remote pub. He collects a fruit machine, but it won't fit in the car. I'm wondering why we aren't getting to a doctor.
• There's a shopping mall. It's in the middle of a rolling green landscape, and is shaped like a UFO; a gleaming white lozenge on stilts, with tiny windows and a set of escalators leading up into its belly. Inside, it is more reminiscent of The Wellington Centre in Aldershot. There is lots of beige vinyl. At the far end of the mall is a little toy shop. It sells loads of the old Warhammer 40,000 figures from the early nineties. I'm buying Harlequins. With power fists.
• I'm in my parent's house. It's nighttime. I'm looking out of their bedroom window, but the view is different to how I remember; instead of trees and houses and gardens, there's nothing but a devastated cityscape. Fires burn in the shells of ruined buildings. Overhead, a fleet of zeppelins with swastikas on their rudders are divebombing the city.
• I'm in a ye olde lecture theatre. I've just finished giving a lecture to a bunch of college kids. They seem dismissive. As everyone leaves, I take off my shoes so I can change into my boots; but one of them is missing. Someone's stolen it. I decide to put my shoes back on. Someone's stolen one of them too.
• I'm in a motorway service station, but it doesn't look anything like a motorway service station. Other people I know are there. The atmosphere is awkward. They sell mice in the service station. All the cages of mice are piled on top of one another. One of the mice escapes. The motorway service station also has a dance floor; it is governed by a single bouncer who is slim, wears a black suit and has a little beard. He leads me out through a long corridor, and tells me that I'm drunk and can't come in.