So I did some thinking following yesterday's Wah! I can't see pulp post.
Thoughts included "I never do anything spontaneous that I want to", "I've never seen anyone I like live", "shoulda woulda coulda are the last words of a fool".
Upshot is, I've been on that there interwebs and observed pulp are also doing the wireless festival for a mere £55 a ticket. Tis in that there London. In happier times I may have asked teh Misty if she wants a day out. But those days are gone gone gone (woh ooo).
I don't want to go on my own, and thus have done potentially a very silly thing. Idiot Girl, my favourite (& only) sister, what are you doing next July?
Result: I have booked two tickets. A day out with IG. Must add masochism to my list of mental problems.
News reaches these parts that pulp are to reform. Woo?
When I was at uni their cd 'different class' was more like a constant background noise. Everywhere you went some student would be playing it. Goes and checks the photo archive....
This be a typical one room student place. In this case, it was Digger's (The girl with the excellent colour coordination skills).
Observe: a) Jarvis Cocker poster. b) Assorted student types. c) Presence of half finished pints in the daytime.
I can hear common people in my head...
Er, where was I? Oh yes, pulp reforms. And it is announced they will be playing the Isle of Wight festival. No , I am not going. For assorted reasons. Bit beyond my powers to go there on my own. Bit beyond my wallet @ £150 a ticket, plus a large chunk of cash to get there, food etc.
Over the years I've been given several different names. True "oi you" may have featured heavily.
In my uni years I was "the Bettster", due to a sudden fashion of adding "ster" to people's names. (Craigster, Paulster etc. But strangely Biff was given Biffatolah Khomeini for a period).
In recent years I have reinvented myself as C'riz. It's short (less typing), sounds vaguely like my real name, and has a geek connection that I like. It's being my own alternate spelling of C'rizz (pronounced as "Keh-riz") from the big finish eighth doctor audio plays.
I was informed by the tutor on the stained glass course that the person that runs the only glass shoppe in town a) gives students a hard time and b) stupid nicknames. As he has the only glass shoppe it's inevitable you will go there at some point. I have been twice now, and this week the tutor announced I have a new name. I am "the man who buys everything".
I'm not sure if this is because I have purchased all the basic tools & supplies you need to do the job, or because I purchased 4 kilos of assorted broken glass pieces. Prolly the latter.
But I know my limitations, so why not learn how to do it (aka get it wrong) on the cheapest glass you can get hold of? Having watched Sue basically smash a £6 sheet of glass into small bits by way of not listening to what she's told I'm glad to do it my way. It would hurt to ruin good glass to me.
I've also got a cunning plan, that will make the glass man think I'm totally barking. I noticed as well as the scrap glass, there was a big pile of very small (under 2 inches square) pieces of glass. I'm assuming this is also for sale at similar price to the bigger broken bits. Broken glass sells at £2.50 per kilo. I have observed there is someone selling small broken bits on evilbay successfully at £10 per kilo. The capitalist in me says 4 X mark up = my glass is free from profits on selling his really small pieces. This time next year Rodney.....
This bit: I'm a space-bound rocketship and your heart's the moon And I'm aimin' right at you Right at you 250, 000 miles and a clear night in June And I'm so lost without you
without you without you
Of course rockets have several possible uses. Exploration. The furthering of man's scientific knowledge. Or blowing things up. The Ronny Raygun solution.
Methinks next stained glass project has to be a rocket. It's like a message, or something.
Something is happening with the house that Idiot Girl has (provisionally) sold for a huge loss.
Ma Ma went there today to find all the heating has been turned on full. As Idiot Girl is paying for the gas this is not a good thing. Engage Ma Ma wanting taking to the estate agents to retrieve all keys.
Followed by the possibility that someone has acquired a copy of the key. (Estate agents deny it was them). Ma Ma wants the alarm turning on. (Thinking they may have a key, but don't have the alarm code).
Ok... drove her to the house. I'll put the alarm on shall I? Actually no, pass me a gun so I can shoot myself in the head.
Ma Ma starts telling me a really long sequence of numbers you must enter to activate the alarm. Er Ma Ma, it says here on the alarm, "To activate press the full set button".
Ma Ma then goes into a long and rather boring story that Idiot Girl has a dog (true), and the alarm has been reprogrammed so you can deactivate some of the sensors so it won't detect the dog and so you must enter this long sequence to set the mode so it won't detect the dog.
Er... Ma Ma.... The dog is in Idiot Girl's other house... it doesn't live here... there are no dogs at all... ergo you don't have to turn off the sensors that would detect a dog, as you don't have one present to detect.
Ma Ma becomes angry and tells the long dog story again. I explain the absence of dog. Again.
Rinse and repeat a few times.
The alarm is now set, so invisible dogs won't trigger it. I got bored of hitting my head on the wall.
5th of November, 1605. One Guy Fawkes is captured avec large quantities of gunpowder, planned for the opening of parliament, destruction thereof.
The failed plot is celebrated to this day, by the common man showing how he can blow shit up in the comfort of his own yard. Your humble narrator also suggests it likely that at some point it went from celebrating failure to wishful thinking of someone doing it right this time and getting rid of the bloody government.
Of course the house of C'riz had to take part in this ritual. Locally it is traditional to go out and buy some bloody huge industrial grade explosive devices, ignore the label that says spectators must be at least 100 yards away, and set them off 10 foot from your house.
C'riz does not follow this tradition. Instead we buy the ones with the bad engrish labels that technically are safe to use in a small garden. Of course being cheap does not always mean cheerful.
This years highlights where the rockets. Whoosh! Up shoots the rocket. Boo, it didn't go bang! Rocket is overcome by the effects of gravity and comes earthwards.... until it's 10 foot up and it then goes boom! Hmmm, this is not how things are supposed to work. It could also be described as bloody dangerous. Lateral thinking is engaged, and the launcher tube realigned. They now follow a beautiful parabolic arc, over the fence and explode in next doors garden. The fence shields us from the blast, and we get our own back for the week of demolition next door has undertaken.
After decimating their garden we moved onto more peaceful chinese lanterns. Light the wick, wait and then watch as the paper balloon gracefully floats into the night sky. Bliss.
Lets do another one! Lights lantern, up it goes. We comment on how high they go, really high. Look it must be windy up there as our lantern is rocking fairly violently. Oh dear, the lantern appears to have had a hole burnt in the side. It's coming back down! It's coming back down really fast. That lantern (*cough*, whoever it belongs to) appears to be a flaming ball of fiery death.
The gift of fire is bestowed approx 300 yards away. Fortunately nothing appears to catch fire following 'splashdown', but it was an interesting experiment in ye olde worlde siege weapons.
We now await retribution from persons living nearby.
After the triumphant visit to the glass shoppe, this weekend I decided to set up things in my studio (Sounds better than cleared a bit of space in the garage non?)
Ahead, groove factor five! Soldering iron plugged in, and work commences on my project. This bit goes well, I don't start any fires or injure myself. I feel good.
I know, lets try cutting some of that funky glass I got from the scrap pile. Pick up cutter, drop cutter on floor, feel the horror as the cutter smashes into two pieces. I feel bad.
Engage sad face. £28 of cutting tool that has cut, er nothing whatsoever is now a broken piece of plastic that is bleeding oil on the floor. The worst part isn't the loss of the money. It's I can't go back and buy another one as they will want to know what happened to the one I bought last week?
So I went to the glass supplies place with the other students. We are told if possible get a catalogue 'cos it's full of useful stuff. Of course I also know places are loathe to give them away as they are expensive to print.
So we looked at the glass. Then we went outside to look at the broken pieces which are a lot cheaper, as, well, they're broken. As I'm picking up pieces I get a sharp one that cuts my finger painfully. Ouch!
Manly, I try and ignore it as if I think about it I will faint. We go back inside, and the other students are done. Spend £7 & £14. No free catalogues for them! But I want tools. So I pick up a catalogue, flick to the tool page and ask have you got one of those?
Tools are supplied and I give the man £60. I go to put the catalogue back, and he says no mate, you can keep it. Yay! I must have used all my powers of charm!
Er, no. It's only when I get home and am flicking thru my prize I realise there are bloody fingerprints all over the cover. Ooops. So that's my hot tip of the day, add your dna and people won't want it back...
Hot date today with (count 'em) two ladies. Well, that was the 'ha ha' description....
Reality is I'm off to the stained glass supply place with the two ladies from the course so I can hide behind them, as the glass place has a reputation for not actually wanting to sell you things. Safety in numbers and all that.
Confidence is low. Repeat confidence is low. But who knows, it may be fun, and I suspect I will spend mucho money, and gain glassy things.
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In other news, a friend's facebook thing has a link to a test. A test for "find out how autistic like you are". Maybe I shouldn't have taken it.
Average result is 16 out of 50. Above 32 is quite likely you are at least a soupcon fruitloop.
I got 35. Go me! At least now you know what to get me for xmas, 10 rolls of rubber wallpaper will do nicely.
The Idiot Girl easy way. A brief and concise guide to cash loss that anyone can follow no matter how stupid.
Step 1) Buy a house you don't like. It's a good idea to get one that nobody in their right mind will ever want to buy for the later stages of this plan. Cost: £68,500
Step 2) Spend £4000 of other people's money on the house that you don't like. Move in. Wait 2 weeks. Declare you hate it and are moving out.
Step 3) Attempt to sell the thing. Fail miserably because you can't find a bigger idiot than yourself to buy it.
step 4) Keep dropping the price until eventually somebody does buy it. For £50,500.
Voila! Ignoring the costs of moving in/out, solicitors, interest and all the other stuff you've just managed to lose >£22,000 in 23 months.
But wait! You could also look at that you put £20,000 of your own money in to buy it, £4,000 in changes, and still owe the bank £15,000 after you've sold it. £39,000 loss sounds a lot more impressive, non?
At this point, you may be wondering why I care? It's to do with the slight problem of the £15,000 left owing. Given she doesn't have a handful of magic beans left, I know where the £15 K is coming from. Ma Ma will be paying it, like Ma Ma paid the £4k of alterations.
No, I'm not bothered that technically I would eventually inherit half of that, and I can't if idiot girl has already spent it. I'm bothered that idiot girl's me me me attitude has put a quite sizeable dent in Ma Ma's life savings. We all make mistakes now and then, but some of us have the backbone to live with those mistakes and not expect other people to bail them out all the time.
As Mr. S.. Duck observes, it's the only language curs understand.
I am rather annoyed. As you may know the day job is selling stuff on ebay. I sold 2 x rubber ducks to a git, who then left neutral feedback "packaging damaged". I know this is impossible, as they are packaged to the point where they pass my own rigerous test program of throwing the box out of an upstairs window.
But then today I find he's also left 4 x 1 star for everything. Including dispatch time. 1 out of 5 for an item posted the same bloody day. Light bulb goes on, it's obviously some twonk out to cause me to lose my top rated seller rating. The other clue is he's bought 7 things off assorted sellers, and all 7 have damaged packaging. Mr unlucky or what?
So phone ebay, who tell me they're not going to do anything, as they can't see anything remotely dodgy, and it's not in any way connected with the £50 a month discount I will (potentially) lose.... Another one for the letter box treatment I think.
AND RELAX.
On the plus side I went to stained glass class, and my latest project is coming on nicely. It may even get finished next week. Woo yay me! I can also feel a level of clever as in 5 weeks I'm the only one not to cut myself yet.
It's very surprising how much I'm enjoying it, and even more how I can do it considering I'm a left handed fool. I'm miles ahead of Sue who's special skill appears to be randomly breaking things.
As we've become a surveillance society, I thought it's time I got in on the act. To do my bit in spying on my fellow citizens I have added a video camera to my car windscreen.
In theory it would also be rather useful if some twonk manages to drive into me as well, assuming the windscreen doesn't fall out and the device gets lost.
I've had it for a week now, and have got my first moron captured. Plz to observe below:
Said 'gent' is failing to spot the bends, big truck about to squash him etc 'cos not only is he using a mobile phone at 70 mph, he's using it by texting. (As spotted by my passenger when I finally got round him).
Later I nearly got to play squash the corsa when she suddenly slowed to 40 mph for no apparent reason. Again on overtaking it became clear, she was eating lunch from a box on the passenger seat.
What is it with people today? I am only glad that I drive a large 4x4 where they get to be my crumple zone.
Women are from Venus. Idiot Girl is from Ceti Alpha V* methinks.
Background: Boy meets girl. Alcohol is involved, and they pledge undying lurve. Idiot girl marries Twonko for the rest of time.
Except... fast forwards to almost two years ago, and Idiot Girl is not happy. The root of the problem is they are both selfish people who are only interested in themselves, and all they ever had in common was a love of getting totally wasted. And they don't do that any more. Idiot Girl wants OUT.
Twonko buys Idiot Girl out of his life, and she goes off, buys new houses(s), does other random stupid things, and we come to now.
Idiot Girl finds out that Twonko now has a new woman in his life. And she's totally devastated by this. Full on crying / no sleeping / drunkeness / destroy things.
This is the point where not being a) a woman, or b) insane I am failing to understand exactly what the problem is. Idiot Girl wanted OUT! Idiot Girl got what she wanted... Twonko is the inhabitant of Dumpsville, population you.
So, er, why is she remotely unhappy? Did she expect him to spend the rest of his life tying to "win her back"? I'm honest failing to understand how when she's got exactly what she wanted, what the problem is?
Answers on a postcard.
*2 geek points if you can name another Ceti Alpha V ex-resident?
It's like that 500 miles song, but 300 miles shorter. And a bit less Scottish.
So today I went to the model engineering exhibition. Which normally results in me spending a few hundred quid on tools, engineering purposes for. As I buy things that are a) half the time a real bargain (£50 taps for £2), or b) may be useful one day (a selection of neoprene rubber).
But today was different. In the region of bugger all engineering things. I only spent £50 ish on drills & glue. I feel a change coming over me, as the thing that sparked excitement was this:
This, in case you are wondering, is "twizzle wire". It has nothing at all to do with engineering. But it's pretty, non? And it will work brilliantly with the thing I'm currently working on in stained glass.
Who knows, next it could be medieval underwater basket weaving.
Ok, I will. I have returned from a night at big scary cinema in the big scary city. Made extra scary by the fact that I'd failed to take into account that it's Wednesday. It's very busy, and people are waving mobile phones about. I then realise they're claiming two tickets for the price of one with orange. Oh dear.
I eventually make it to the front of the queue. The nice man asks what film would I like to see? Back to the future SVP. And how many tickets do I want? Er, one?
He gives me a pitying look that says a) you're on a crap phone network, or b) you don't have friends. Actually it's c) All of the above.
Ok, challenge uno over. Next: a drink. I would like to purchase a small diet coke plz.... £3.00 she says, while simultaneously handing me a container that has at least a litre of caffeine overload in it. Good job I didn't ask for large.
I make my way to the cinema. As expected (I've never been here before) it's the modern multiplex small room thing. It's moderately full. I pick an empty spot over towards the right somewhere half way back.
I then make an observation. Right in the middle of the prime seating bit there is a girl on her own. Really on her own, she has the entire row. This is very odd. I can only come up with the reasons that a) crazy loners are scary to normal people or b) she is attractive, and people don't want to get too close in case her thug of a boyfriend is going to turn up at any minute and be a pita.
It continues to fill up, and people arrive around me. I must admit this is a cause of anxiety, especially when one of them manages to pour beer everywhere. But I don't run screaming into the night, so this has to be a good thing.
Film starts. 88 miles per hour! Great Scott! My name is Darth Vader! Earth angel.... etc. Film ends.
If you do get a chance to go see this at the cinema, tis worth it. It looks gorgeous. N yes, yet another version be coming to dvd and bluray near you...
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Not sure if I managed the prove you are awesome bit. But it went better than I expected, and I didn't need to cheat at any point. I so need to add a friend to the mix though. Friends wanted, apply to the gimp in the corner.
And I'm all excited, as I have a secret weapon that will make everyone say 'That C'riz is awesome, and we are jealous of his cleverness and big head".
We be going to make something from a pattern today. I've made my own, and due to being a) nerd b) left handed fool, c) having the technology I drew it on my computer and then cut it out on sticky backed vinyl on my er, vinyl cutter machine.
So while the normal people are cutting out bits of cardboard and glueing them on I can just peel and stick my vinyl. Great plan!
Great plan that doesn't quite work. As in there's me and the teacher there (who tells me that's how pros do it), but no other students to impress with my big head.
It is rather worrying actually, as there are three students total. The other two are friends, Sue and Marilyn. Sue be on holiday this week, so it would appear Marilyn hasn't turned up 'cos of this. Next week the reverse is true. Oh well, I get to be two weeks in front of them then.
It was still fun as I got to make things, and didn't get glass stuck in my fingers once. No photo as it's nowhere near finished yet. Yay!
Hmmmm. Join the website, and you can then pay people to be friends with you. Sounds awful. But at the same time is attractive when you're a gimp like me who has spare money and a lack of (real life) friends. Meet new people, do exciting new things.
Of course I won't join it, as it would be too dangerous. In a way I imagine it's like drugs or prostitution, I can see that if I got involved it could easily spiral out of control and ruin my life. Friends that want to do whatever you would like, when you like, where you like. It's big and scary when you're used to "friends" that want their pc fixed and then you don't hear from for weeks until next time you're useful.
Lazy blogging time. Yet another one I've not heard for ages, but appeared on the radio. Wednesday night is 80's night, and they play some classic stuff.
I bring to you: Soft Cell - Say hello, wave goodbye.
I never knew you, you never knew me... say hello, wave goodbye. Electric spine tingling stuff. Unless you're a jellyfish.
Or a close approximation. I went to the stained glass course. And it was almost fun!
First the nice lady told us this is a stick of lead solder, and all about how it may not do you a lot of good, but it prolly won't kill you if wear gloves when handling and be careful. Pffft! thinks I. I care not a jot about a mere bit of potential lead poisoning. I'm exposed to so many toxic things on a daily basis that I'm sure to be dead by 60. So who cares if it becomes 59 instead?
I then proceeded to do the lead melting and tinning my copper foil thing. I had a slight advantage over the other students, as in my day job burning the hell out of my fingers is a common occurrence. So while they're going ow! and dropping things I just ignore the pain and carefully put my stuff down.
Next task is to stick the component parts together. Which I do, but my parts don't actually look that good. Should have taken more care in the drawing part of the game earlier.
But I've made something. Me! Me, who doesn't do craft things due to being flid handed. Yay! I'm almost pleased.
