Since my arrival in New Zealand I have been making use of a hire car to get around. It turns out that there is a category of hire car even lower than 'Economy'; this.
A majestic 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer sedan with 180000 kms on the clock. Like many cars here it is an automatic; which means instead of numbers there is a bunch of confusing letters on the gear lever. I reached into the glovebox and consulted the manual.
The manual was in Japanese. It also seemed to include a helpful section on how best to crash your majestic 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer sedan.
As much fun as the majestic 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer sedan was, I couldn't afford to have it on hire for the full three months that I'm here; but a car would still be essential for weekend hobbit-hunting. In theory, a cost effective solution would be to buy a second hand car and then sell it on again when its time to leave... Of course, this meant having to find a balance between the conflicting requirements of "must be cheap" and "must be cool". What I found was this 1990 Toyota Celica GT-R... it was advertised at $1350 (cheap-ish), and had pop-up headlights (cool for the eighties, so good enough for me). A test drive revealed that it was full of what some might refer to as "character" - covered in dents, a collapsing drivers seat, peeling paintwork, knackered front shocks, worn cv joints, a disintegrating steering wheel and possibly water in the oil too. Of course I bought it.
Less striking, more stricken.
In the end I forked out $1050 for it, which is about $1050 more than it's worth. It's a manual though, and surprisingly, everything on it seems to work - including the active suspension, which as far as I can tell is a button that does nothing more than make lights come on on the dashboard. But they are green lights, so they're probably telling me that everything's okay. The manual might be Japanese, I don't know - I'm too scared to open the glovebox in case I find a severed head in it. I have decided to call it DeathCar2000.
We moved into more permanent temporary accommodation this week. It's nowhere near as fabulous as the cottage, but it is also half the price of the cottage; and we could always spend the money saved on fairy lights, scatter cushions and a disco ball if we start getting fabulousness withdrawals. Aside from the lack of fabulousness, it's not too bad here; two double bedrooms, a living room with a pair of sofas, a crappy but usable kitchen and a similarly crappy but usable bathroom. It feels a bit like student accommodation; the furniture boxes have been ticked at the lowest possible cost to the landlord, and there's next to nothing in the way if knick knacks or anything to make it feel like a home. Nothing is particularly nice, but nothing is particularly dreadful either. And finally... I spotted this poster on the noticeboard outside the canteen at work.
I have literally no idea what it's all in aid of, but the sign-up list beneath it has around a dozen names on it.
And so I find myself, to a considerable extent, to be in New Zealand.
Myself and another colleague shall be here for three months as part of work placement in which I will get to poke at aeroplanes, which is a novel experience for most engineers involved in the design of aeroplanes. I had originally intended to go to Canada for my external placement; but the company I was to be seconded to quite selfishly decided to go bankrupt - so now I'm here instead. Despite being a work placement, work is profoundly unsupportive of the entire shenanigan and generally takes the view that it's all a bit of a free holiday. Which of course it is. However, it does mean that the support we get extends no further than a subsistence allowance (half of which will be paid after the placement is completed) and the advice that we should try to sort our accomodation out as soon as possible. Thanks, work. Sorting out accomodation has been tricky; partly because being on the other side of the planet is somewhat inconvenient when it comes to viewing properties, but mainly because a lot of the buildings here have either fallen over or mostly fallen over. Short term accomodation is hard to come by because so much of it is snapped up by people who having their houses repaired, or by the people that are repairing their houses. In spite of this, it looks like we might have stumbled upon somewhere that is not upside down or on fire, and if all goes to plan we should be moving in on Wednesday. In the meantime, we've been lurching between motels. Motel number one was perfectly acceptable. Not as luxurious as a Premier Inn, but also not as squalid as a multi-storey car park stairwell; finished in exquisitely functional shades of grey and brown, my room included a decent shower, a kitchenette thingy, a comfy bed and a TV with no porn channels. Motel number two isn't a motel at all; it's a fabulous B&B. Fabulous. In between checking in and out of temporary accommodation, I went to work. Day one at Sinister Foreign Workplace was much like day one anywhere - lots of meeting people with eminently forgettable names and faces, wrestling with nefarious admin systems to obtain access to the various computer gubbinz that will be needed, and mandatory pre-employment drugs tests. Disappointingly, the drugs test did not take the form of a Pespi Challenge style blind tasting; instead I had to pee into a cup for a nice lady who will send it away to see if it is possible to get high by smoking it. So, all good so far. Once things have settled down a bit I hope to do a bit more roaming about, seeing what there is to see and attempting to catch hobbits.
Still not been fired yet, so I guess it's going okay. Spent much of the last month away on training in such exotic locations as Toulouse and North Wales. Plans to spend the final quarter of the year on secondment to a maintenance, repair and overhaul outfit in Canada were scuppered when they selfishly went bankrupt. Now I'll have to go somewhere even more sinister and foreign.
Gigs
Many. Helmet toured to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their seminal Meantime record; they were excellent, but I was crap and spent much of the gig standing way at the back trying not to black out. This was just after the trip to Toulouse, so I'm going to assume the dastardly French poisoned me somehow.
Thankfully my iron constitution meant I was fully recovered in time for Meshuggah the following week. Support was provided by We Are Knuckle Dragger, who made a delightfully shambolic clattering noise; and Animals As Leaders, who were astonishing. Tough acts to follow; and of course Meshuggah absolutely killed it. And almost killed me as well, when I collided hard with some other guy and cut my head open... the next day I had to get three stitches and a tetanus shot.
A powerful show indeed. The following night we saw Pelican at the Cooler. It's been a while since I've seen these guys, and I'd forgotten just how massive they sound live. First support was Death Of Her Money, which was a very pleasant surprise; second support was Black Elephant, whose bluesy classic rock shtick seemed more than a little out of place between the vast swirling post-whatever majesty of the other two. They played well, I guess - just not my thing.
And then a couple of weeks ago we managed to catch Nedry playing the Croft, in all their dubsteppy bjork-esque indie electronica glory. Since we saw them last (supporting 65daysofstatic a couple of years ago) frontgal Ayu's vocals have got even stronger, while her dancing has stayed exactly the same - she still has all the rhythm and grace of a toddler that's had too many fizzy drinks. And she still dances better than me.
Mouses
Are both still alive, but Megatron is doing his best to rectify this situation by annihilating all that stand before him (ie. Barton). Conventional wisdom (or whatever passes for conventional wisdom on the internet) suggests that they should either be separated, or not separated. Thanks, internets.
Weddings
Matt (who has never traded in Nazi war memorabilia) and Laura have decided to merge for the kill. Good for them. Displaying an uncharacteristic lack of judgement, Matt has asked me to be his best man; now I have to work out the best way of working his failed career as a car thief into a speech that will surprise and delight his family and in-laws.
This week; family shenanigans, interspersed with experiential leadership training through the medium of mental and physical torment in the frozen north.
The latter took the form of a week long course in the Lake District. The Lake District looks a bit like this...
...except in my experience much more dramatic and much, much more bleak. I can only assume that the adverse weather conditions have been photoshopped out (you can tell because of pixels, or something). Or it was taken on 1 of the 145 days that it does not rain in the Lake District. Specifically, not at the end of November. How the hell should I know.
Point is, I spent the time getting to know myself and others much better by jumping off bridges with them, dangling off cliffs attached to ropes tied up by them, and huddling together in blind terror at the top of wobbly poles with them. There was also plenty of time for self reflection at the local pub, where the wild-eyed landlord with unruly hair would stay open as long as the amount of money being spent on booze significantly outweighed the cost of the collateral damage we incurred.
In spite of my deep seated inherent cynicism, it was a good week in which I learned a lot of things that I expect to be forgetting very soon.
Before all that was mum's birthday thing. This involved bimbling to London to see The 39 Steps (which was excellent), and to enjoy a poncy meal* (which was frankly a bit too poncy for me to really enjoy). How poncy? Poncy enough that as we were about to leave, Paul McCartney sat down at the table next to us with whoever he's married to nowadays. So now mum can tell everyone that she had a meal with Paul McCartney on her birthday.
After the whole Lake District outdoor activity death misery was the other family doohicky, a get together for a meal in lieu of grandma having to buy presents for anyone. Which is fair enough, since her failing eyesight, hearing, memory and just about everything else makes it more or less impossible for her to do... well, anything really. To underline her encroaching senility, she spent much of the day calling me by cousin (Simon)'s name. But that's okay, because she's been doing this for about twenty years now; and I like a good running gag.
At some point, I had a birthday too; wherein my splendid friends and a mischievous Pixie showered me with gifts including, but not limited too, an OCD chopping board, a pirate-shaped USB stick with Monkey Island 3 on it, toys and comic books, and some more GARY FUCKING NUMAN.
Thanks gang.
*I couldn't remember the name of the restaurant we went to, so typed "poncy italian restaurant london" into Google. The restaurant we went to, Bocca di Lupo, was the third result returned.
Induction week for my shiny new grown-up job was largely a test of endurance in the face of relentless PowerPoint, interspersed with the occasional site tour. These site tours largely involved being led from one large and impressive building to another equally large and impressive building by one of the previous years recruits; and on arrival at each building some other chap would attempt to explain what the heck was going on there. So we were not in the slightest bit perplexed when some fellow outside a particularly large and really very impressive building indicated that we should gather around and pay attention. Levels of perplexedness peaked sharply as soon as words started coming out of his mouth.
He: Can you see me?
We: er... yeah.
He: Do you believe I can travel through time?
We: um... what?
He: Have you heard of CERN? They made a particle travel faster than the speed of light this week. So now time travel is possible.
We: er...
He: Here, take this. (the guy hands a Chinese newspaper and a used cinema ticket to the person standing nearest to him). Read this; high tide is at three. I'll come for you then...
...at which point our actual guide proclaimed that we didn't really have time for all this, and led us on to the next large and impressive building.
That was a few weeks ago; since then things have settled down and become somewhat slightly more normal. It's not awful.
Meanwhile...
Mouses are generally noted for their talents in three distinct fields.
Eatin'.
Poopin'.
Gettin' cancer.
My mouses, having spent the last year excelling at the first two, recently decided to have a crack at the third. Tetsuo has a pretty lumpy ginger armpit; but Kaneda is very nearly more tumour than mouse, so she wins.
Had a splendid Christmas with family 'n' that, during which we taught the Pixie how to play/cheat at such games as Sorry (ludo for bastards) and Uno (snap for bastards).
Whilst there I pilfered my sister's old bicycle, so I could harvest it for parts in an attempt to make the rusty blue aids bike functional; but in the end all it needed was some new brake pads, cables, derailleur, pedal, gear levers, mudguard, saddle and rear wheel. I suppose I could have just used my sister's old bicycle, but... well... it's a bit girly.
It also needs some new brake pads, cables, derailleur, pedal, gear levers, mudguard, saddle and rear wheel. No bother, I now have a mostly functioning rusty blue aids bike that I keep safely locked up with a £3.29 Tesco Value bicycle lock that would take even the most determined thief several minutes to gnaw through.
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Made and wore this mask for Matt and Laura's new year's eve masquerade cocktail apocalypse.
Subsequent issues with peripheral vision and depth perception ensured I spent much of the evening trying (and on many occasions failing) to dock Long Island ice teas with my face, with almost - but not quite - hilarious consequences.
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I started the new year fretting about exams and coursework, but after a few weeks that gave way to fretting about assessment centres. The good old fashioned interview is apparently no longer deemed stressful enough by many big employers, and so I got to endure a day and a half of group exercises, drive & motivation essay writing, business scenario presentations, written exams, technical and competency interviews, attempting to undermine the confidence of other candidates by the unusual method of being very nice to all of them, and panicking about whether the cling film covering the plate of biscuits is part of the assessment.
Thankfully, it looks like I never have to do any of that crap again - I successfully blundered my way through it all, and have been offered a place on the graduate scheme starting in September. All I have to do is graduate... I figure it's probably best not to actually name the company I'll be working for; suffice to say that if you happen to be flying somewhere and the wings drop off, it will almost certainly have nothing to do with me.
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Went to see the very splendid Mogwai last weekend. Although saying that, the gig itself was mildly disappointing... It wasn't bad, by any stretch of the imagination, it just wasn't quite the all consuming and life-affirming wash of despairing euphoria that I expected. It didn't help that the venue was The o2 Academy, which somehow manages to combine the muddy sound and impersonal nature of a large venue with all the claustrophobia and poor views of a small venue. Here was our view for the majority of the gig.
The muddy sound wasn't much of a problem, partly because Mogwai are old hands at getting their levels right, but mainly because the crowd consisted of a lot of rude bastards that would chatter loudly through the quiet bits. Occasionally the crowd would shift, and our view would be improved slightly.
All this, plus they charge £3.90 for a pint of medium strength domestic lager beer. Jerks. Every time I see a band at the Academy I swear that I'll never go back again...
No, a far better venue is the far more modestly sized Croft, where we found ourselves two weeks earlier watching frenetic Brummie post-hardcore oiks Shapes. And they were bloody brilliant, as were Hymns and Idles... in fact the whole evening was great, it played out like a mini festival with six bands playing across two rooms and a wicked DJ in the front bar. The Boy turned up halfway through to show off some of her new grapple/throw techniques, and the evening was rounded off nicely standing on chairs and shouting along to Edwin Starr records.
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And finally, some top notch tinkering with the replacement of my rear brake pads. The extent to which I got my money's worth out of the old set of pads is illustrated below.
Plenty of life left in 'em. Thanks to the Pixie for cups of tea, Rich for some quality bodging, Matt for turning up with three types of lubricant, and Laura for doing most of the actual work.
And so on Friday last week, my work placement quietly came to an end. I bought doughnuts and tiny cakes for the office, handed in my badge and gun (clocking card and mobile), shook a few hands and that was it. I think I shall miss it; it's been an interesting way to waste a year on the slow trudge to expiry.
Mostly I shall miss the ludicrousness of the health and safety culture, which in my final week saw the installation of small flashing orange beacons on all furnaces. These are supposed to activate every time the furnace door is opened, to alert operators whenever hot metal was being handled. This is despite the fact that:
By "hot" metal, I mean molten metal - filled moulds come out of the furnace at temperatures exceeding 1000°C, and radiate an intense heat that can be felt from many metres away.
They also glow bright - and I mean BRIGHT - white/orange. Can't easily miss 'em.
The only people at risk of injury should molten metal be spilled are the guys that are handling it; and they know that molten metal is being handled, because they are handling it. So a little beacon to warn them that molten metal is being handled is a tad redundant in this respect.
When they handle molten metal, they use A FUCKING FORKLIFT TRUCK WITH A FLASHING ORANGE BEACON ON THE ROOF AND A CONSTANTLY BLEEPING SOUNDER TO WARN OPERATORS THAT THEY MIGHT GET RUN OVER IF THEY DON'T WATCH WHAT THEY'RE DOING
But the internal health and safety audit still determined that sufficient precautions were not being taken, and that the presence of a big ol' fork truck with flashing lights, carrying a four foot tall brightly glowing mould that will burn off your eyebrows at ten paces, surrounded by a bunch of guys in funny silver heat protecting overalls, was not enough of an indication that there might be some hot metal kicking about. Better stick up a flashing light, that should get everyone's attention.
I shall also miss playing boardgames in a kitchen bigger than my living room with my amusingly Catholic housemate Ruth. Of course, we've promised to keep in touch and visit and stuff; but this probably won't happen, because I'm rubbish and she's still not allowed to be friends with other boys - despite being in the "off" part of her on-again/off-again relationship with the insanely paranoid and jealous Sam. Sigh.
On the plus side, I no longer have to spend hours driving to and from Exeter each week, I now have full living room privileges, and I get to spend more time in my own home with my not-even-remotely Catholic flatmate Charlie Cat.
The new school year doesn't start until the last week in September; so I'm filling the time between now and then by working as many extra hours as possible at The Big Gay Department Store. It's helping to remind me why I wanted to get out of retail in the first place. To do the job well does require some skill, and frankly I'm bloody brilliant at it; but forty hours a week of pretending to give a freshly minted fuck about other people and their dreary existence is a bit much. So I'm attempting to break up the tedious monotony of constant consumption by subtly(ish) working rudeness into my flawless salesman's patter. Already this week I have managed "I've never seen so many knobs", "Would you like me to wrap your dangly what-nots in tissue?", and "Ah... Balls."
Good times.
Meanwhile, the Beastmans have been absent from this shitty blog for too long now; so here's a Giant.
By my reckoning, Giants are the worst thing you could possibly take in a Beastmans Team. On paper, they're full of destructive potential; my head fills with images of my foes fleeing in terror from this great striding behemoth, bellowing with rage and crushing the enemy underfoot as arrows bounce off his steely hide...
...whereas in practice, the Giant will usually swing his club ineffectually shortly before falling over in his attempt to run away from a bunch of peasants armed with sharp sticks and colourful language.
Went to see Kylesa at The Croft a few weeks back. Thanks to me being a bimbly moron, we got there a bit late and only caught the last half of opening act Big Naturals, now performing as a bass 'n' drums thunderous psycha-sludge-doom duo. A very hungover Taint took to the stage next, they're always great. A colossal two-drummer barrage opened up Kylesa's set, which was nothing but noisey sludgey doom from start to finish. Nice.
Meanwhile, grown-up work continues to be tediously dull. I'm not sure if I ever had a job description, but my day now mostly consists of wasting time on the internets. Having now read through the whole of the spEak You're bRanes archive, I've taken to trawling through Wikipedia. On Friday I learned about common rail diesel engines, the Portuguese man o' war, the history of Black Flag and the 80's DC punk and hardcore scene, the American invasion of Panama in 1989, and various stealth aircraft and other American warplanes. I also found out about the Leonard vs. Pepsico case of 1999, which all started because of this advert for the "Pepsi Points" promotion.
Obviously it was meant as a joke, but that wasn't going to stop John Leonard. He'd already collected 15 points, and Pepsi allowed extra points to be purchased for ten cents apiece. So he sent away a cheque for $700,008.50 (which included a $10 shipping and handling fee). Naturally, when Pepsi refused to send an AV-8 Harrier II jump jet to Leonard, he sued.
Thankfully he lost, the court decreeing that "no reasonable person could have believed that the company seriously intended to convey a jet worth roughly $23 million for under a million dollars." According to Wiki, "Leonard claimed that a federal judge was incapable of deciding on the matter, and that instead the decision had to be made by a jury consisting of members of "the Pepsi generation," to whom the advertisement would allegedly constitute an offer."
What a dick.
And now for some toy soldiers. Until I painted Count Drakon Von Carstein, I spent months being a slave to my Chaos Marauders.
So I now have a total of fifty seven of these useless bastards, which as it turns out is about fifty seven more than I would ever consider including in an army. Sigh.
So I've been taking a bit of a break from the square bases, and gone back to my beloved Orkses.
I started my Bad Moonz a few years back, when Orks were shit. But now the rules have changed, and they've become as dead killy as they ought to be. Except for Grotz - they're still shit.
Went to see the ever awesome 65daysofstatic last week at The Thekla. The Boy and I arrived a bit late, and so missed the first half of support band Let's Talk Tactics' set; though we did get to hear it blaring out from the bowels of the good ship Thekla as we queued. That was enough to convince us that we didn't need to see the second half of their set, and that our time would be better spent getting drunk on the top deck.
65daysofstatic were great, though. They tend to get categorized as a post-rock band, largely due to the clean guitar sound, absence of vocals, and melodies that are equal parts intricate and soaring; but where they triumph is in taking the drawn out and slow build up of post-rock, and replace it all with pounding pounding techno music. Or, failing that, just more guitars. Behold!
Suffice to say, a good time was had by all - apart from the girl whose nose got broken by some towering thug who really loved 65days, and managed to inflict his love on everyone within a two metre radius by the most physical means possible. Jerk.
The next day I went to Silverstone with like-minded nerds, to watch cars go round and round and round and round as part of the World Series by Renault. We got to watch a variety of single seater and road car races, got deafened by a couple of Renault F1 demonstrations, marveled at the fact that so many French cars and drivers got around the track without breaking down/going on strike, were astonished by the fact that 1992 F1 world champion Nigel "Isle of Man Iron Man" Mansell could still fit into a car, and got to wander down the pit lane taking pictures of cars in various states of undress.
Mmmm... engineering porn...
Some of the cars even looked good with their clothes on.
But most of the photos I took ended up being of an empty patch of tarmac, with the blurred rear quarter of a racing car disappearing off the left hand side.
So, downtime's been mostly pretty fine. And work time?
Urgh.
I've only got four weeks left at grown-up work, and I've pretty much checked out already. Over the past month or so I've been slowly eking out my lunch break, starting it a little bit earlier, finishing a little bit later... I'm now at the point where my lunch break takes up about half the day, with the remaining half made up of various impromptu tea breaks. I spent almost all of Friday last week reading through the spEak You're bRanes archive, where a pleasing selection of the most alarmist/right-wing/me fail English that's unpossible/ill-informed comments from the "Have Your Say" section of the BBC website are ridiculed by venomously sarcastic individuals, who similarly seem to think that their opinion matters (though I'm sure that the irony is not wasted on them). It is now my most favouritest thing in the world.
Meanwhile, I found what may now rank amongst my least favouritest things in the world (along with spiders, country music, and the taste of earwax) in the staff dining room at the Big Gay Department Store the week before last.
For those of you not gangsta enough to decipher the above title, it's called "The Street Bible". It reads like a bible that's been re-interpreted and re-written by a forty year old with a tenuous grasp on urban culture, in a vain attempt to make it appeal to young people. Because that's exactly what it is. If I may read from Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1: First off, nothing. No light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God starts it all off and WHAP! Stuff everywhere! -Genesis 1:1
Jeeping fuck. After a while, God speaks to Moses and explains that he's his main man, but he can't come into heaven 'cos of what he done, but he's still his main man, and he needs to go out onto the mountain and lay the Big 10 down for his people.
I don't mind religion, I really don't. It's not for me, but if that's what you're into then go for it. But The Street Bible? Seriously?! Isn't it a bit... well... patronising?
Also, I think it misses the point somewhat. If the objective really is to make the Bible more appealing to youth culture, then just changing the language isn't enough. I think there are far more fundamental problems to be overcome.
The main one being that it's a book, and books aren't cool. It's got to be either a Hollywood Blockbuster, or a first person shooter. Possibly both.
Assuming that we go for a movie (we can always sell the game rights later as part of a massive merchandising deal), we can then set about dealing with the other problems with the Bible. These being, broadly speaking, everything else about it. It's a bit too old-fashioned, kids these days aren't going to want to identify with a bearded sandal-wearing hippy... the whole thing needs sexing up a bit.
So, Vin Diesel will play Jesus. He trundles into Bethlehem in a beat-up old Honda Civic Coupe, and no-one takes him seriously until tha Wise Krew (Chuck D, Xzibit and Antonio Fargas) roll up and bestow him with gifts of alloy wheels, body kit and undercar neon. He then hooks up with Moses (who will be played by Megan Fox, thus providing the all important love interest), and they go on to a series of adventures where they fight crime, preach love, heal lepers with their fists and blow shit up, all through the medium of extreme sports and street racing. The whole thing should run like a series of nu-metal music videos stitched together with some superfluous dialogue.
In the end, the fascist baddies that hate freedom have nail Vin Diesel to a cross because he's just too extreme. He'll stay there baking in the desert sun just long enough for a lingering shot of steam rising from his rippling torso, before snapping the cross over his spine like it was twig. He reveals that he is in fact from outer space, incinerates all the baddies with blinding shafts of white light coming from his eyes and mouth, grabs Moses and beams back to his home planet.
That's kind of the bare bones of it, anyway. It kind of feels right, but I can't help but think that it should have Adam Sandler in it somehow.
Okay, so if I’m honest the lack of posting here is as much to do with laziness as a lack of internets. That said, last weekend I couldn’t have found the time to string words together, as I was too busy either doing stuff, or being sleepy and grumpy. Usually as a result of doing stuff. Which is good, as it all helps drown out thoughts of burnt toast. On Friday night, we returned to the now legendary(ish) Combustion Club to enjoy a rum-fueled evening of Victoriana and circus freaks in celebration of Laura’s birthday. It was a less grand affair than the Carne Ville shenanigans that it played host to a little over a month ago, but we all got dressed up and had a splendid time nonetheless. There were flaming hula hoops, some guy who got pretty naked on a tightrope, and a big band version of the Dangermouse theme tune. Powerful.
Recovery the next day was aided by the ingestion of dried leaves in boiling water and fried stuff in bread, before I headed off to Castle Combe racing circuit with Laura and Matt, who does not collect 20th century German war memorabilia. We watched a whole host of classic and not-so-classic machines whizzing about, bimbled around the paddock area poking cars, and started getting ideas. More on this later…
I continued my overt stalking of Laura and Matt the following day by going karting with them. We were joined by Sam, Hollis (The Boy’s boy) and the irrepressible Dom, and took part in some kind of 150 lap endurance debacle. I got paired up with Sam who, despite his… erm… robust stature, proved to be quite competent behind the wheel of a kart. He drives a kart like he drives his car; with horrifying disregard for everyone else around him, making the task of getting past him tricky at best, death-defying at worst. We came in second, behind Dom and Hollis but ahead of Laura and Matt, who spent most of their time either collecting tyres or doing doughnuts around tiny circular tracks that only they could see.
In the evening Charlie and I played at being grown-ups by inviting everyone around for dinner. We had a table and chairs and wine and everything, and it was almost convincing; apart from the fact that we didn’t have enough wine glasses (I had to drink from a tankard instead), and we had to use books for placemats. And then we all wandered off towards the pub, and picked something else to dedicate our luncheon club to the destruction of, having smashed the Quintessons the previous week (they didn’t put up much of a fight).
So, a busy weekend. And the rest of the week? That… that wasn’t so busy. Grown-up work seems to have switched its core activities from investment casting, to digging big holes into which they can pour huge sums of money. As such, there’s no new projects being started, and therefore very little for me to be doing; forcing me to seek out other distractions. Such as me and Matt’s devious plans…
We want to race a car in the Castle Combe Saloon Car Championship. It’s still very much a twinkle in our collective eye, but we have started to give serious consideration to a number of the more important aspects of such a venture, like what our team should be called and what colour our car should be. Oh, and I suppose what sort of car, too.
The championship is divided into four classes of racing, so you don’t necessarily have to go for something fast and furious; you can go for something (relatively) cheap and crap instead. This idea appeals to us. Class D (the cheapest and crappest of the cheap and crap classes) seems to be mostly headed up by a lot of little French cars. This is because whilst most manufacturers have developed newer, cleaner and more frugal engines, and pack their cars with lots of safety features (making them quite heavy), the French still make archaic death traps. But neither of us are much into French cars, and would rather run something a bit different. So I’ve mostly been wasting time at work going through the online Parkers car guide, working out power to weight ratios in my head. I even started to draw up a spreadsheet so that we could more easily compare our different options; but I gave up after half an hour when I realized that because I’m such an obsessive completist, I was going to spend a ludicrous amount of time compiling data for rubbish Korean cars with names like brands of laxative that we had no intention of ever driving.
It’s become a mild obsession, and just like in Fight Club when Ed Norton starts to look at everyone he encounters with a view to how good they might be in a brawl, I can no longer walk past a parked car without checking to see what engine it’s got and trying to predict how quick it might go around a track if it weren’t weighed down with such needless impedimenta as, say, seats.
Meanwhile, I finished painting this sucker.
Count Drakon Von Carstein; wealthy playboy aristocrat governor of Sylvania. Likes: Mindless subservience, billowing cloaks, blood of virgins. Dislikes: Sunlight, Bretonnian cuisine, torch-waving peasants.
Note: Since we are somewhat slightly bereft of internets at the moment, this post was composed at home and then saved to a memory stick so I could bring it in to grown-up work and use their internets, without wasting too much of my "valuable" work time typing out crap. As such, some of the information below is already out of date. Also, this post doesn't at all convey the apoplectic rage that currently consumes me, the cause of which I just can't be bothered to go into right now. Perhaps I shall write about it in the coming weeks; or perhaps I will have settled down a bit by then.
And so a few weeks ago, we moved house… big thanks to legendary man-with-van Kev, who gave up a day of work to lug all of our heavy crap in and out of his fine van, and up and down (but mostly up) our fine new stairs; to Sam, who gave up a day of sitting around in his underpants looking at pictures of hats on the internet to lug all of our slightly less heavy crap in and out of his perfectly adequate Volvo, and up and down (but mostly up) our fine new stairs; and to Charlie Cat, who found us an awesome place to live. Thank you Charlie.
After having spent the best part of a week compressing our entire lives into cardboard boxes and then an entire day moving it from a big place into a slightly smaller place, we weren’t massively enthused by the prospect of unpacking and sorting everything out. So we left our new home looking like this…
…and went to the pub instead, which is conveniently located next door. It’s quite nice there; they keep chickens, and have a wooden fort for us to play in.
Still, Charlie and I can be quite industrious when we want to be, and it didn’t take long for us to get everything ship-shape. Just in time for me to bugger off back to Exeter. Joy.
In other news…
The Boy and I went to see bands at semi-respectable bar/live music venue The Croft. Tractor played trudging grind noise, and had a special pedal that made the guitar emit white noise at spleen ripping volumes; Alabaster Suns were good but ultimately quite forgettable; and Taint were as good as ever, and seemingly unfazed by the drunken suit-wearing middle aged colossus that climbed onto the stage to take extreme close-up photos of them, and then climbed off stage to take up-skirt photos of one of the girls in the crowd. What a class act. I assumed that he was some sort of wedding reception fugitive that had gotten drunk and lost at some point in the evening, and stumbled into The Croft by accident; but it turns out that he is some kind of unfeasibly wealthy online poker big shot, that just happens to really like Taint. And young women’s knickers.
The RoboJEW and I went to see bands at crusty pub/breeding ground for virulent disease The Junction. Eaststrikewest were surprisingly good, andsounded like a post rock band with Buckley-esque vocals. And So I Watch You From Afar were staggeringly good, and deserve far more attention than they seem to be getting at the moment. And Maybeshewill were the band that followed ASIWYFA, and so were completely eclipsed by them.
Our Luncheon Club Dedicated To The Destruction Of Nihilism stormed home to victory at the pub quiz a few weeks back. Having successfully seen off Bolshevism (twice) and Nihilism, we are now turning our attention to The Quintessons, the terrible five-faced levitating mechanical judges from Transformers The Movie that feed the innocent to transforming robot sharks. This means, amongst other things, that every week Matt and I have to explain to someone else what Quintessons are.
At grown-up work, someone almost got killed/turned into glowing blue naked superhuman when they were locked inside the vacuum chamber of one of the furnaces. Fortunately someone heard the frenzied screams for help, and released the guy before the chamber was pumped down and his eyeballs boiled into vapour along with the rest of him. Health and Safety think this was a near miss brought about by the lack of adequate checks and procedures, and are pushing for the installation of more flashing lights and wailing klaxons and buckets of lasers. Plant Engineering (ie. us) think that the root cause was a bunch of dicks cocking about, and someone should be strung up for it. Apart from this, there’s been a whole bunch of nothing happening, which is bad because a) although I have a minor design project for lifting equipment on the go, it’s difficult to drag it out over two weeks; and b) it’s giving me lots of time to think. And thinking is bad right now.
On the toy soldier front, I’ve finally finished painting the Marauders for my Chaos army (I’ve got 57 of these useless fuckers now), and am rewarding myself with something a bit different; a Vampire Count for my old Undeads team.
At the time of writing, Count Drakon Von Carstein is about half painted. He’s looking pretty cool so far; expect pictures when he’s fully done. Oh, and don’t think I’m done with the Beastmans – there’s more of those goat-legged jerks on their way too.
I miss my kitty cat.
And that’s pretty much it for now. Postings will continue to be erratic until some guy turns up to make internets happen in our new flat; deal with it.
Let's get a couple of things straight from the off.
ATP: The Fans Strike Back II was not as good as last year's Nightmare Before Christmas.
It was still freakin' awesome.
Half of the line-up was chosen by the good people at All Tomorrow's Parties; the other half was voted for by "the fans". Everyone that bought a ticket could vote for any ten bands they liked, and each fortnight the bands in 1st, 2nd, 25th, 50th, 75th and 100th place in the chart were approached by ATP to see if they were up for it. The voting threw up an interesting mix of popular beat combos, from Slayer to Elbow. Of course, not everyone wanted/was able to perform at ATP... but the final line-up was a fine mix of indie-folk-Americana, and good bands.
Friday
Grouper had the unenviable task of being the first act on the first day. Her gently warbling whale-playing-guitar-through-a-delay-pedal made quite pleasant background music, but was otherwise unengaging. And kind of fuzzy.
HEALTH were the complete antithesis to this, and spent a full hour assaulting and offending our senses with a chaotic onslaught of guitar, synth, screams and tribal drumming. There was a lot of leaping about and hitting stuff with other stuff, and a spazzy light show to boot. I thought they were cool; The Boy started to black out a bit.
M83 turned out to be an insipid wash of French ambient shoegaze electronica. Meh. On the other stage, Andrew WK was playing a solo acoustic set; so we went back to our chalet to watch Gardener's World.
It didn't seem right to go to a festival where Devo were playing, and then not see Devo; so we went to see Devo. Who were quite surprisingly brilliant... albeit getting a little too chubby to fit comfortably into their yellow jumpsuits...
Antipop Consortium might have been good, but I nodded off for a fair chunk of their set before we wandered off to catch the end of Jesu. I don't know where to begin categorising their music. Doomgaze? Colossal riffs played in slow motion through amps turned up to 11. Awesome.
And yet not quite as awesome as Electric Wizard, who reduced everyone to ash with tar-thick doom riffs. Awesome +10.
Saturday
Lords should change their name to Eagles Of Death Zeppelin. They smashed out a whole bunch of groovy dancin' rock, and were actually quite fantastic despite a) it being quite early Saturday morning (well, quarter-to-three in the afternoon, but it's all relative innit), and b) my view of the band being somewhat slightly completely obscured by the tallest man in the world with the biggest hair in the world.
Qui are a band fronted by The Jesus Lizard's David Yow, so are pretty much a vehicle for his jibbering lunatic rambling. But a good vehicle, with some neat bluesy licks here and there.
Harvey Milk played some nice and sludgey grunge 'n' roll, not dissimilar to the Melvins at their most accessible.
Errors played "post-rock electro" that sounded to me a bit like 65daysofstatic, but without the guitars. I seem to remember liking them at the time, but I struggle now to remember exactly what they sounded like. Possibly because of booze.
But probably because the next band we saw was The Jesus Lizard, and the sight of a half-naked David Yow swimming across the crowd towards me made me void my brain completely. And my bowels. On record, The Jesus Lizard's awkwardly twangy incoherence has always seemed to me a bit... well... awkward, twangy and incoherent. But live and up close, with all the sweat and the spit and the bruises, it made perfectly horrible sense.
And finally Sleep, who spent 90 minutes ploughing through the entirety of their stoner rock masterpiece "Holy Mountain", with a few extras thrown in here and there. It was a damn long set at the end of a damn long day, but they were still cool, and I stumbled back to the chalet with ears ringing and a head full of pleasant fuzz. And a bag of chips.
Sunday
We decided to take advantage of the fact that ATP take over Butlins' cinema, and went to watch Withnail & I. Despite the film's renown as a cult classic, I'd never actually seen it before. I quite enjoyed it. I think my favourite bit was when the film got stuck and caught fire, owing to the fact that the projection equipment was so old that the original blueprints were deciphered from paintings found in caves on the remote south-facing coast of Gibraltar.
Then, after a few hours spent lounging about drinking cider in the sun (and a swift round of mini-golf), we decided to see some bands. Grails played some pleasant, psychedelic, but ultimately a tad forgettable, post-rock. Good, but not great.
Future Of The Leftwere great. The Welsh three-piece blasted out a set of punchy three minute rock numbers, pausing only to throw sweets into the crowd and to take the piss out of a few unfortunates ("Your hoody makes you look like a child's version of Hellraiser, only without the promise of rape"). A good time was had by all.
The Mae Shi threw a parachute into the crowd a few songs into their set. Kids love parachutes. It quickly got spread out over the top of us, and when the singer guy leaned in under the front of it and sang at us it was like we had our own personal little festival tent. The only problem was that no-one seemed to know what to do after that, and it quickly got very warm and smelled a lot like feet. The other only problem was that The Mae Shi were, frankly, a bit bollocks. The kids seemed to love it though, so maybe it's just me being a miserable old git.
After that, there was just time to witness a smidgen of The Jesus Lizard's second set of the weekend before This Will Destroy You took to the stage in Reds and... well... destroyed us. The words "epic" and "post-rock" get thrown about quite a lot when describing this sort of band, and seldom is it unjustified. But you haven't heard truly epic post-rock until you've heard these guys. You can chuck "gut-wrenching" in there too. Words simply don't do them justice.
Absolutely.
Fucking.
Incredible.
And then, tediously, it was back to real life. For at least a couple of days, I kept having weird dreams that I was missing a load of cool bands...
Grown-up Work has found a solution to the problem of there not being enough spaces in the car park. They're making 130 of us redundant. This might include me, since I am far and away the most expendable thing in the office (even the water cooler is more useful than me), but probably won't. Chances are I'll get to finish my placement, and they just won't bother getting another student in to replace me. It's not all doom and gloom, though; on Wednesday, some company that's tending for our stores contract turned up for some sort of open day. They took over the training room with a load of display stands and tables covered with various tools and components, and so me and Old Man Braddon (who may also be getting redundantified) went along to see what free stuff we could blag. Pretty much all of the good food had gone, but there were still some fine biscuits to be had. Plus of course, all the other promotional junk... we trawled about, feigning a vague interest in what was on display and answering the occasional question about what our "functionality" was. It was all worth it in the end; we came out with a pretty good haul. I got a mug, a pad of paper, two bearing catalogues, three retractable ball point pens bearing bold corporate logos, a stress ball, a keyring, some fancy mints, and a fistful of jammy dodgers.
