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.

crowdsurfing is strictly prohibited

I had a dream the other night that I went to a zoo. Instead of being kept in cages and enclosures, each animal was contained within a wicker effigy of itself; and the animals could all speak, but only in the manner of their keepers. So all of the goats were trapped inside wicker goats, and had Polish accents.

I've checked this out with the Pixie; it definitely means I'm gay, apparently.

Meanwhile, in real life, manly stuff has been happening. A couple of weekends ago, we went to watch a game of live action subbuteo; AFC Wimbledon vs Bristol Rovers.

Despite this kind of being our home town, we were there to cheer (very quietly, as we managed to end up at the home end surrounded by Rovers fans) for AFC. And here's why.

Ten years ago, first division Wimbledon FC decided to up sticks and move 56 miles north to Milton Keynes - home to grid road systems and concrete cows. This was (quite understandably) unpopular with their fans; supporting Wimbledon was already a lot like being trapped in an abusive relationship, and having to make a round trip of over a hundred miles to watch a home game was taking the piss. So they decided to start their own club, holding open trials on Wimbledon Common for anyone that fancied trying out. A team of players was selected, and AFC Wimbledon went on to get spanked 4-0 in their first game.

AFC Wimbledon eventually finished third in their opening season in the lowest division of English football, and had a higher average attendance at their home games than Wimbledon FC (by this time referred to by fans as "The Franchise") who were still playing games 7 leagues above AFC.

Since then AFC have been promoted five times in the last nine years, hold the record for the longest unbeaten run in all senior English football, and are presently just one league below the old Wimbledon team (now the Milton Keynes Dons). They also lost 1-0 in the cold and rain-soaked match we went to see; but it was still a fun day, and we're looking forward to doing it again next year.

We had more fun a few days later, when we took the track slag out for a day of trying-not-to-crash around Castle Combe. We soon discovered that it was just a couple of weeks before the start of the racing season, and that the vast majority of track days up and down the country had been booked out by "proper" racers trying to get their machines fine-tuned; which meant that a) there were a lot of very cool modern and classic race-spec cars in attendance, and b) we spent most of our time trying to avoid them on the track.

We're continuing to tweak the slag after each run; since I drove it last the brakes have been modestly uprated, and the old steering wheel with its boring airbag has been replaced with a spiffy little steering wheel with a neat yellow stripe.

So now the car stops a bit better, and has more yellow stripes on it. Next on the list is tweaked suspension, to stop the car from wallowing about in the corners like a fifteen year old Bavarian executive coupe; and a few cosmetic issues, to stop us from looking like a bunch of chumps that don't really know what we're doing.

We made a start on this at the weekend; the now superfluous studs and brackets that the rear seats connected to were angle-grindered to oblivion, and made a start on removing the big black patches of tar-like sound deadening material with the aid of a Dan Dare style heat gun and a scrapey thing.

The heat ray was merciless.

rioja

Of course, it hasn't all been cocking about with toy soldiers. Although it has mostly been cocking about with toy soldiers.

There was also some cocking about with the track slag, which at the last check had a few issues with brakes. The scale of the problem became apparent when we removed the old pads.

For the uninitiated, the shiny bits show where the pad itself has worn away completely and the metal backing plate - which provides almost no stopping power but is very good at ruining brake discs - has ground itself away on the brake disc. As might be expected, the discs themselves were also a bit of a state.

I sure pity the sucker that had to drive that home from the track. (thanks Laura...)

So, new pads and discs all round. We decided after the last jolly that uprating the brakes was probably a smart idea anyway, and so after a day of excessive hammer usage we now have bigger discs and fancy red brake pads. These will make the car go faster, because they are red, and everyone knows that red 'uns go faster.

There was also a lot of cocking about with graduation ceremonies. Because graduating was less interesting to me than essential car maintenance, I took fewer photos. In fact I took only one photograph the whole day, of the bread boat captained by a grapey pirate that Dr Sister constructed using only bits of her ploughman's lunch.

So you'll have to invent pictures in your head using the power of mental thinking to accompany the following bullet point summary of the day.

• Apoplectic scheduling anxiety in the morning, despite going through everything the night before using a D20 to determine how punctual/sober/clothed people would be. Miscellaneous toy soldiers were used to represent all the important people, with coasters used to represent key locations and pieces of shortbread used to represent pudding.
• The Pixie looked delightful in her summery dress.
• I shook some old geezers hand, and now I'm qualified to do stuff.
• Lunch, beer, etc.
• We went to the aquarium. There were lots of fish, but no oversized pencils in the gift shop.
• Big Chinese dinner, beer, etc.

Essentially, the day started stressfully; but got immediately and immeasurably better once the ceremony was done and complimentary booze and cakes was made available .

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.

And so that is, pretty much, it.

Assuming of course that I haven't utterly fucked up one, some or all of the exams/bits of coursework that have yet to have marks published. Which I probably haven't, but optimism was never one of my most defining characteristics.

In the meantime, my days are now largely filled with cups of tea, miscellaneous toy soldier tinkering and playing games of Blood Bowl against an artificial intelligence that only lives up to 50% of its job title.

And now: bullet points. You love 'em as much as I do. Don't even try to pretend otherwise.

• Gigs 'n' that: went to rather a lot of very splendid electronic music recitals whilst I should have been too busy with other more important things. Amongst others I saw Keelhaul, Knut, Zonderhoof, And So I Watch You From Afar, Shapes, earthtone9 and Humanfly. All of which were awesome, even if at the ASIWYFA gig I got kicked in the jaw so hard that I couldn't eat properly for two days.
• Moved house. The mice and I are now lurking about in the Nerd Tower with the Pixie and Dom. Which is great, except that this particular bit of Bristol (Westbury-on-Trym) is like one gigantic assisted living community. I am literally too loud for this place; so as soon as we can find somewhere else that we can all agree on, I shall be moving again. This may take some time.
• Much to the surprise of everyone - not least the mechanics who tested it - the track slag passed its MOT, needing only a replacement pump for the windscreen washers. Coolest advisory ever: "Interior stripped out, no rear seats or seat belts fitted." Like we might not have noticed... Looking forward to another full year of near-death motoring.

• We finally won the pub quiz again last night. For over a year the Luncheon Club has been dedicated to the destruction of noble gases (apart from a single week, in which we attempted to make reparations with noble gases). Now we can pick something even more inexplicable/pretentious/nerdy to destroy.
• Finished painting my Chaos Blood Bowl team in between endless/pointless finite element analysis simulations of suspension wishbones. I'd always wished that Matt liked Blood Bowl as much as I do; and now my wish has come true. I hate Blood Bowl. My Chaos team has so far proven itself to be awful at every aspect of the game, and is firmly planted at the bottom of our league table behind teams run by war criminals, sex pests and Victorian moustache wax connoisseurs. Friday games nights are now characterised by despairing sighs, the urge to drink heavily, and frequent use of the phrase BLOOD BOWL IS CUNT. Despite this, I still secretly love Blood Bowl; and I'm quite happy with how my new toys look.

• Got turned on to an epic dubstep re-working of Jeff Wayne's musical based on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. AWESOME.

lobster shanty

This has turned out to be a summer of big dumb action movies.

It started out with Predators; which in the grand tradition of sequels, was nowhere near as good as the first one. It ticked most of the alien laser death romp boxes, but was a tad too predictable; and crucially, it didn't feature a chaingun-toting Jesse "The Body" Ventura. To be fair, this is a flaw shared by many films.

Next up was The A-Team. My only real expectation of this film was that it should be so ludicrously over the top, it would make Die Hard look like a documentary about modern policing and hostage negotiation. On this front at least, it did not disappoint. A great way to get hammered is to play a drinking game whereby you watch The A-Team, and every time something stupid and/or impossible happens, you take a drink. By the time they're flying the tank, you'll be paralytic. In fact, the only major failings (apart from the aforementioned lack of Jesse Ventura) was the absence of the white and red Corvette, and the fact that when Face managed to rustle up a speedboat halfway through the film, he didn't impregnate anyone in the process.

The Pixie and I rounded off our summer of big dumb action movies last week, when we went to see The Expendables. Slightly reminiscent of eighties classic Commando, this film was set in some kind of fantasy universe where men were real men, women were real women, and absolutely everything else was exploding. Like, all the time. It was so ludicrously over the top that it made The A-Team look like a documentary about military corruption and international crime networks.

Meanwhile...

The Renault World Series rolled into Silverstone a couple of weeks ago, and since it was free we (Matt, Laura, Dom, The Pixie and I) decided to bimble along. The day featured the same selection of races, static car displays and bacon sandwiches as last year...

...but sadly lacked the glorious sunshine of the previous year. It also lacked a chaingun-toting Jesse "The Body" Ventura; but he wasn't there last year either, so this was less of a disappointment. Ultimately, it was a fun - if just a little chilly - day out that got us thinking about our vile track slag again.

It's probably fair to say that the track slag has been somewhat neglected of late. The last time we took it out (a quick spin around some local roads to make sure that the wheels still go round), we noticed that the handbrake warning light was staying on... Matt and I decided to get to the bottom of the problem.

We started by eliminating all of the most complicated, unlikely and time-consuming possibilities first; a process that involved removing wheels, sucking air through teeth and shouting at wheel hubs. Then we noticed that the switch for the handbrake light was slightly bent out.

Bastard switch.

Still, we got to finish stripping out some of the superfluous bits of electrical system and gaffer-taped up the rest.

With next to no interior, the slag is now noisy, raw and unsophisticated, and feels like a proper deathtrap.

This pleases me.