fairygodmotherlicker

Between then and now.

Eduardo Monteaz - either failed to kill us all, or (more likely) didn't bother trying.  Also didn't reveal his true identity, leaving us all to endure a thoroughly pleasant evening of eating, drinking and talking bollocks.  The bastard.

Track slag - we fitted more red bits to make it go faster.

We haven't had an opportunity to see how much faster the new springs and anti-roll bars actually make it go; but the lower ride height does make it easier to access disintegrating bits of engine, so it's still some sort of progress.

Mouses - due to Megatron's increasingly more psychotic tendancies, he and Barton went through a trial seperation.  This was followed by a very brief trial reunion, followed by a permanent separation.  Stupid mouses.

Gigs 'n' that - many.  Harvey Milk, Trash Talk, Bastions, Kylesa, Eyehategod, Baroness, Karma To Burn and countless support acts.  It's been a tinitus filled couple of months.

Toy soldiers - more orkses happened.  My stormboyz were so cripplingly bad at the doubles tournament that I decided to paint a few more.

Kommandos cost almost twice as much as normal boyz without being very much better, so they're a must.

A few extra nobz give me more options when it comes to deciding what to waste my points on.

And a trukk should allow my warboss and his drinking buddies to get almost twice as far across the board before they get exploded to pieces.

Next on the list of things to do; lootaz.

And that's about it.

Oh, except for the fact that I'm living in New Zealand for the next three months.

gnome mercy

Has been while, so bullet points.

• Work

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.

no human would stack books like this

Bought new mice. For a bit of a change, we went for boys; three of the wee blighters.

Barton...

...Megatron...

...and Dave.

Boy mice are different to girl mice. Partly because they are a little bit smellier and more quarrelsome, but mainly because of their tiny mouse junk.

Sadly, little Dave only lasted a few days. Perhaps because of his predilection for jumping off of tall things, perhaps because he liked to wee in his own food bowl. Who knows.

Meanwhile, in toy soldier land...

A few months ago the RoboJew phoned me to see if I wanted to go to the 40k doubles tournament with him. I figured I'd probably be quite busy with work and things, and wouldn't have time to get an army together; but because I happened to be in the pub at the time (and was subsequently highly suggestible) I agreed in a noisy and obnoxious manner. Now I have six weeks left to turn out a bunch of new Orks.

Here's the first lot; Zzap Gunz.

The standard models are a bit dull, so I cobbled these together out of scraps from the bitz box.

No-one will be expecting Zzap Gunz, because they're rubbish. To make sure that the grot crew don't run away before they have the opportunity to show just how rubbish they can be, they will be accompanied by a burly Ork.

Since these toys are entirely composed of spare parts I had kicking around, I didn't have to buy any of them. But if did have to buy toys, I would have gone straight to Target Gaming where a legion of Aryan superhumans would have cheerfully helped to support my crippling toy soldier addiction.

...and then we went to mauschwitz

Oh well.

Either side of getting the mice taken care of were gigs, mighty gigs. The first was YOB. Support came from Dark Castle, who were nice and doomy but somehow lacking something; and then Kongh, who sported some powerful Viking face hair and played a set that sounded like a musical timeline of the first ten years of Electric Wizard (this was, broadly speaking, a good thing).

And then of course, YOB themselves. On record, these doom metal titans sound like they are smashing their guitars together to create the sound of the universe exploding very noisily and in slow motion. Live, they were much the same; except louder, and with more tattoos and hair. Thanks to the hypnotic nature of their psychedelic rumblings (or possibly all the Red Stripe), I don't remember much of what happened; but I'm pretty sure that it was awesome.

And yet somehow still not as awesome as Enablers the following night. The gig took place at the Cube Microplex in Stokes Croft, a curious little tumbledown independent cinema run by beatniks in non-ironic cardigans who found the business of mixing drinks somewhat challenging. Support came courtesy of Beginnings and Finglebone, who were each perfectly lovely in a guitar noodling wall of delay sort of a way. They were rendered completely irrelevant the moment that Enablers took to the stage, and all conscious thought was obliterated by gravel-throated reflection and loathing, swirling tendrils of post-doom guitar, and the creeping realisation that my gin and tonic had been made with lemonade.

Not the gig we went to, but...

Just super.

Shame the mice had to die.

ipso fatso

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.

1. Eatin'.
2. Poopin'.
3. 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.

Sort of.

gigs and zoos and mice and deadly deadly robots

All of these things.

Went to the second worst live music venue in Bristol to see The Black Keys with the Pixie last week. Only one support band, The Features; who sounded like The Kings of Leon might if they had pursued a different kind of MOR mediocrity. Nothing against the Kings, it's just that I prefer the older stuff.

Which is also true of The Black Keys, though because I'm not exactly a lifelong fan I feel like even more of a prick for saying it. Fortunately they didn't rely too much on newer material, and topped and tailed their set with hefty chunks of thick freaky scuzzy foot-stomping drum 'n' blues rock goodness. Splendid.

The next day we went to Bristol Zoo, since I've lived here for eight years without ever seeing it and it kind of seemed like the right time to finally do it. The first animal we saw was a wild rat attempting to drag an empty Ben & Jerry's tub into the undergrowth by the lion cage. After that we saw locusts fornicating, a bunch of lizards, and monkeys doing wicked monkey stuff.

We also purchased two shiny new mice. They are small, and scared of everything. The shortlist of potential names included Scorponok, Behemoth, Miss Alissa and Jenny Truant; but I eventually settled on Tetsuo...

...and Kaneda.

Because they are fun names to shriek at tiny mice.

Meanwhile, in the world of toy soldiers...

Things have ground to a halt somewhat on the orky front, whilst I agonise over which shade of green to use for their flesh. I have not been idle, however; I have been painting toys for a different game entirely...

This is a Slayer Helljack for Warmachine. Warmachine is a game set in a universe where technology and magic and heroes and blah blah blah.

The important thing is, my army will be filled with deadly robots and exploding steam powered zombies.

BLAMMO.

Mata Hari: August 2007 - July 2010

I probably shouldn't have fed you so many chocolate coins last Christmas.

mouse eats cheeseball in a week that otherwise passed by without incident

OMNOMNOMNOM

Alternative title: I'm busy with schoolwork. Come back in, I dunno, like, June or something.

Fatty Mouse: August 2007 - June 2009

You were always my fattest mouse.

Set phasers to suck

Customer: I got this for Christmas, and I don't really want it. Is it possible to get a refund?
Me: Certainly madam, no problem; there's is just a bit of paperwork to fill out. Because it wouldn't be fun without paperwork, would it?
Customer: Er... I suppose not...
Me: So, if you could just write your name at the top of this receipt, and sign at the bottom...
Customer: My name? What do you mean?
Me: Your name. That's who you are, madam. Write it just there, next to where it says "Customer Name"...

This is pretty much what life at the Big Gay Department Store has been like for the past few weeks. Also giving me the rage have been:

• The woman who tried to get a refund for an empty box, having forgotten to put the contents back into it before she left the house.
• The woman who tried to get a refund on items that she bought in an entirely different store.
• The couple who changed their minds four times when trying to decide where they wanted their new £1000 TV to be delivered to, each time requiring the whole transaction to processed again.
• The people who just stand in the middle of the escalators (our lives are short, and my lunch break even shorter; and I resent losing precious moments of each having t stare at a fat arse getting slowly fatter it's owner is TO LAZY TO CLIMB SOME FUCKING STAIRS).
• The jerk in the office that keeps putting me down on the rota for childrenswear.
• Newly married couples who want to refund EVERYTHING that was bought for them from their wedding list (I feel like saying to them that since they don't even seem able to agree on what kitchenware they want, their marriage is clearly going to fail very soon; and that when they each remarry, perhaps they should JUST ASK FOR FUCKING VOUCHERS).
• Me, every time I catch myself saying "PIN number" instead of just "PIN". Aargh!

Rant over. For now, at least.

Meanwhile, grown-up work has been slightly less farcical than usual (although we did have to endure an hour of mandatory health and safety training in which the floor was identified as a Fall Prevention System). I even got suckered into doing some vaguely important stuff at a two-day "Kaizen" meeting earlier this week. At first I was only there as the CAD bitch, to make layout changes on demand; but the guy that was supposed to represent Plant Engineering was off sick. The second choice person wasn't available, and nor were the third, fourth or fifth choices; even the Polish guy who changes the handtowels in the toilets was busy. So that meant it came down to me to point out such technical details as "you'll probably need some lights in that room, or something".

In other news, Fatty Mouse is unwell. Behold.

Those who find the above image too harrowing may prefer the artist's impression provided below, courtesy of The Boy.

It seems that something is causing irritation to little Blob-ra's wee snout, and so she has scratched it raw. Or maybe she is attempting to emulate Rudolph the Reindeer, so as to get into the festive spirit. Perhaps I shall make her some tiny antlers.

And finally, my former housemate Ruth became an ex-former housemate when she moved back into the Exeter Mafia Headquarters just before Christmas. Turns out that her boyfriend Sam that she had moved in with was perfect in every way, apart from being a clinically depressed Jehova's Witness forced to choose between his girl and his family. He chose... unwisely.

"Oh dear Ruth, that's a bit rubbish. How are you feeling about all that?"
"I'm a husk."
"High five!"

Tiny Cakes

Another week, another extended farce in preparation for some important guy's big visit. Only this time, instead of trying to find inventive places to hide stuff, we're trying to think of cunning places we can hide ourselves. If he can't find us, he can't demote us.

Though to be honest, as a placement student I don't think I can be demoted anyway. I'm so low down the pecking order that I have to salute the vending machines in the canteen.

And yet I still seem to have been somehow instrumental in the complete reorganisation of an entire department. At the start of the week, there was still quite a bit left to do, and some folk were getting a bit twitchy. On Monday morning, I found myself in a meeting with ML (Engineering Manager, always smiling like a politician, ghastly American accent that seems to come out through his nose) and JH (Process Owner, tall and ginger with a crippling stammer, answers to ML).

ML: What do you need to get this area finished?
ME: Errr...
ML: Don't tell me now. Go around with JH, make a list of what you need - not what you think I'll get you, but what you need - to get this area finished. Get that list to me and I'll make it happen.
ME: Ummm....

And so I went around with JH, and together we made a pretty complete list of everything that we needed. JH took the list and gave it to ML; ML gave the list to my boss; and and my boss gave it to me, thus completing the cycle of incompetence.

Sometimes I start to think that I quite it like it here; but I think that might just be Stockholm Syndrome.

Meanwhile, I seem to have lost another housemate this week; a girl called Ruth, who rented the other room in the Exeter house up until yesterday. Marco didn't tell me much about her before I moved in, other than to say that we would probably get along, because she is thirty also.

I don't quite follow his logic; perhaps he thought we would hang out together and talk about cool thirty year-old stuff. In actual fact, we mostly talk about what a jerk Marco is (Ruth doesn't have any living room privileges either); if we talk at all. Her boyfriend Sam is over most nights, so they are usually hidden away in her room discussing domestic policy making processes, or whatever it is that young couples do nowadays.

But one night a while back, Sam wasn't about; and in the absence of anything better to do, we sat around in the kitchen exchanging mouse stories...

A few years ago, Ruth was living in a student house with a bit of a mouse infestation. This would usually only manifest itself in the sudden and mysterious appearance of little nibbled holes in the bottom of cereal packets, coupled with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the cereal itself; but as time went on, the little critters got more inventive, and started knocking boxes over in order to spill their delicious contents. It all went wrong for them when they tipped over a bottle of ice-cream topping syrup. Sure enough, a pool of sticky sweet deliciousness formed in the base of the cupboard, and sure enough, the mice did gorge themselves upon it. Unfortunately, being small and feeble little creatures, they couldn't then free themselves from the Yummy Pink Tarpit of Death; and so they all drowned in it. When Ruth opened the cupboard the next day the syrup had all set; and so the tarpit (along with it's cargo of little furry corpses) had to be chiseled off of the bottom of the cupboard with a ruler...

Silly mouses.

And finally... my family bimbled down this weekend for eats and drinks and birthday merriment. My sister made cakes happen. Behold!



Many cakes were decorated with the shattered corpses of jelly babies; some crushed beneath jelly bean rockslides, some cleft in twain with deadly chocolate buttons.

Legend.

Week 1599: Good or Shit?

Shit:

• There was so little work for me to do this week that on Thursday, my greatest challenge involved photocopying and stapling.
• I have suddenly and inexplicably started to be bombarded with spam, offering genuine replica R.O.L.E.X. watches and cheap viagra.
• I left it too late to buy a ticket for the Warhammer Grand Tournament heats, and the whole thing is now sold out.
  
• I am frequently so tired in the evenings that I cannot stay awake long enough to get drunk.
• Reuben are on an indefinite hiatus.
• It turns out that our tenancy agreement runs until May 2009, not December 2008 like I thought... so no Utopian House of Good Clean Fun in Exeter for me and Charlie Cat.
• Urge to kill rising.

Good:

• I have mice.

Rated G

On Thursday, Matt left the relative safety of his White Supremacist Command Bunker and came round here so that we try our hand at casting miniatures.

I feel compelled at this stage to point out that this was not some sneaky attempt to save money on the cost of buying toy soldiers; nor was it a zany get-rich-quick scheme. No, as you might expect it’s far geekier than that. I decided that for a particular type of creature in my army, rather than use the standard model I would ‘convert’ my own, using parts of a current model, the majority of an older out-of-production model, and a bit of scratch-built putty sculpting goodness. The problem with this is that I need four of these beasts, and getting hold of that old out-of-production model (a Chaos Dwarf Great Taurus, if you must know) is both tricky and expensive – you have to wait until one turns up on eBay, and then be prepared to pay between £25 and £40 for it.

Whereas 1kg of mouldmaking RTV-101 silicone rubber only costs £20…

The mould itself was fairly easy to make. The complicated/exciting/hazardous bit would be the actual casting process, which is obviously why Matt was so keen to have some involvement. The initial plan was to use the uber gas barbecue that Dozer liberated from The Pub to heat our white metal in an aluminium watering can that was conveniently lying about. The watering can seemed like a sound move because it had a nice long spout, which would make the pouring of molten metal into the mould a bit easier.

We hit our first snag when the spout of our can fell off, it having been merely soldered on. Oops. Not to worry, we had a back up plan.

It is commonly understood that most problems can be solved with the careful application of a hammer; in this instance we used it to mash the edge of an old milk pan into a slightly more precise poury bit. Needless to say, by this point we were both quite intoxicated by the heady rush of barbecuing and metalwork, and were feeling quite exceptionally manly… but then it started to rain, so we had to retreat indoors before we had a chance to take our tops off and start doing weights.

The metal we used for the casting came entirely out of my bitz box – a kind of scrap yard of old toy soldiers, spare parts and offcuts. Matt insisted on checking through it all and removing the most choice bits of eBay fodder before it got melted. A tablespoon was used to skim the slag off the top of the liquid metal. I don’t expect this to be of interest to anyone; but I am a puerile engineering geek, and it pleases me to be able to use the word ‘slag’ so appropriately. I’m sure that dog breeders experience the same joy with the word ‘bitch’. The twats.

The mould was contained in an old soup tin, and the whole thing was then heated in the oven so as to prevent the metal from immediately solidifying on contact. It seemed as though all our efforts were in vain, though, when the mold started to brim over a bit sooner than we expected. We figured that a lump of metal had set in the mould and stopped the rest of it from filling, and dumped the whole thing into a sink full of cold water to let it cool off.

Because the mould had expanded slightly in the oven, we had to cut the tin away with clippers. Which is when we noticed that the channel cut into the bottom of the mould to allow air to escape had filled with metal… had it worked after all? We held our breath in collective anticipation.

With the tin cut away, all that remained was to carefully pry away half the mould, and see if our new toy had all of its fingers and toes, so to speak…

Huzzah! We had successfully played God, sinned against toy soldiers, infringed on copyright and made our own Dragon Ogre Bull Centaur Thing. Here is a poor photo of the final outcome, pictured alongside the original model (left), both in the shadow of the potently inspirational liquid that fuels all such manly DIY exploits.

All the green bits of the original were sculpted from scratch; the other colourful bits are just from where I was too lazy to strip the paint off of the various components that were used to construct this monstrosity. It still doesn’t really give a good idea of what the finished models will look like; arms, heads and additional bits of armour from more readily available sources will be added to finish them off. Perhaps I will put up photos of them when they’re done…

In other news:

• I went to see Red Sparowes with The Boy and Zak earlier this week. They were amazing. Report to follow.
• Charlie Cat came back to visit for a couple of days. We had an impromptu tea party in the front garden in her honour. She continues to rock, despite the photographic evidence of her wearing a tea cosy on her head which might suggest otherwise.

• Dozer’s motorbike got stolen, and subsequently recovered a few days later by Joe and myself from an alleyway less than 100 yards from our house.
• I caught Mouse eating a fly the other day. Urgh.

Of mice and meh

It was once explained to me (by a fellow called Dan, at once the best and worst staff member I ever had working for me) that everybody zips their anorak up for something. It might not always be something that is generally considered to be anorak-worthy (ie. geeky), but everyone has something that they are passionate, maybe even fanatical about.

Turns out that I zip my anorak up for quite a few things. The toy soldier thing is an obvious one; but then there’s also Formula One, and all the different bands that I listen to. And then there are systems.

You know, like having set ways of doing stuff; rules, routines, that sort of thing.

Maybe it’s not really an anorak zipping thing. Thinking about it, it probably has more in common with some of my OCD habits, like having to have the sun visor down whenever I’m driving (even at night), or feeling distinctly uneasy when eating with a knife and fork that don’t match.

The point is, I like to have rules and order. When I started this shitty blog thing, I made myself just one rule, and that was to always have a fresh post up by the following Monday.

I set this rule for a number of reasons. The first was to make sure that I did actually bother to update with some degree of regularity, since I am a seasoned procrastinator; and without a self-imposed deadline, chances are that I really would end up performing the Willard Foxton Manoeuvre. At the same time, I didn’t want to be forcing myself to write a post every day, as I seldom have very much to write about. Endless tales of how I sat around the house watching TV and painting toy soldiers in my underpants do not a good blog make.

The downside of only posting once per week is that some of the emotional content is lost. Looking back at the week just gone allows for a more measured and logical assessment. For example; on Monday, I felt okay; but on Tuesday, I was really angry with The Boy for some reason; and then on Tuesday and Wednesday I felt desperately unhappy. My memory is poor enough that the precise reasons for any of this are something of a mystery. Right now, all I know is that I am feeling quite drunk (unlike two days ago, when I first started writing all this gibberish…)

And herein lies the problem. For me, each post should be a single snapshot in time; not necessarily a tedious recollection of ‘what I done this week’, but an account of how I actually feel about stuff.

Meh. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being a bit emo about it all.

However. The rule has now been changed. I shall now have a MINIMUM of one post up by the following Monday. In the apparent absence of anyone else that I can speak to about all the various shit in my life that I find to be quite bothersome, I shall hope to find the process of blurting it out all across the intraweb somehow cathartic.

In the meantime… here’s what I done this week.

On Monday, I went up to The Inn On The Green with Sam, Charlie, Dozer and The Boy. After asking my housemates if they would be at all opposed to the idea of me keeping a couple of mice, I embarked on a tale of an Eyehategod gig that I went to some seven years ago, where I saw some guy trying to crowd surf knock himself out on the lighting rig in that splendidly low-ceilinged venue. And so animated was my storytelling, that I managed to headbutt my own pint glass in the process.

No, I did not spill anything, and no, the glass did not break; but I may have just added to my fearsome collection of drink induced scars.

Naturally, the next morning I swore that I would never drink again, and then invested in a mouse cage, some mouse food, some mouse-oriented stimuli, and a couple of mice.

They are both females; the one on the left is called Mata Hari, named after a Dutch exotic dancer whose lust for uniformed men eventually led to her execution in 1917 for suspicion of being a French double agent. The one on the right is called Mouse, because she is a mouse.

And then on Friday, I went out with Mr Dozer and got horribly drunk.