straight to hell

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.

ben's nightmares

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

Fatty Mouse: August 2007 - June 2009

You were always my fattest mouse.

the slow and the ponderous

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.

still here

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, and sounded 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.