See you in Hell...

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test



So now you all know where to fin me in the afterlife. }:-)

Well, now the excitement of christmas day has died away and I have made quite a fair bit of damage on the christmas food supply, even if I did discover in the process that my stomach doesn't quite seem to stretch like it's used to. I would say that I have New Years to look forward to, but I rarely do anything at New Years anyway, probably because I'm still too bloated from raiding the christmas chocolates. I suppose that I should probably learn something from that, but I forget exactly what it is. Apart from that, not a grat deal is happening to me right now; saw family for the past week which was cool, but nothing thw world would be interested in reading about.

Anyway, enough about me, and onto someone else entirely (you know who you are :-P ). She's someone I've known for what is now only just over 2 years, although I would swear that it seems much longer than that, and someone who has been a good friend throughout that time who has been around to listen when I have been going through some difficult times, and she still talks to me despite me whinging at her loads in the past. She has a sense of humour which is indeed humourous and good (muff), and she always seems to have some words of consul to give to friends, far better than I am able to give at any rate, and is an all round good friend and person, who I know is going through a spot of trouble right now (I have a talent for understating things, dont I?), and I wish I could offer better advice, bu all I can say is keep going and stick at things and I hope they work out for the best, which I'm sure they shall.

Heres to you. :-)

Christmas

Christmas passed relatively well, I feel, and I now sit here typing this after having stuffed my face with a selction of various cheeses. Mmmm.

I got a rather good haul in terms of presents this year, which include:

• A PSP and a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. The PSP is very nice indeed and if I was a computer then I would definately sleep with it.
• Animals by Pink Floyd. #Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away#. Brilliant album.
• An American Werewolf in London and Pirates of the Caribbean on DVD (But why is the rum gone?).
• Eric and Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett (woo Discworld).
• 2 tubes of glowsticks. :-D
• 3 Mugs, all of which are HUGE.
• Lots of different types of coffee. I can put those mugs to good use. :-)
• A very silly hat indeed. Matches my personality.
• And a Santa weeble. He wobbles but he doesn't fall down (well, most of the time anyway).

And on top of all that I have been merrily stuffing my face with chocolate. No alcohol, but I'm detoxing for a while so that when I return to Aberystwyth I can start my assault upon the pubs of the town with renewed vigour.

Merry Christmas to you too. ¬_¬

So I decide to check to my university e-mail this morning to see if there was anything important there. Turns out that the library thinks I'm overdue on a book, despite the fact that I returned everything I had out to them weeks ago. And now thanks to the fact that a) I don't have any of their contact details since I left it all in Aberystwyth and b) I have a hunch that no-one is actually there this close to christmas, the likely hood is that over the holiday I'm going to rack myself up a pretty little fine for something I don't even have, so I have sorting that out to look forward to when I get back, not to mention putting me in a bad mood now.

Note to self: Don't bother checking university e-mail anymore since it will invariably only be bad news.

A long overdue update

Last Wednesday I was once again priviledged enough to have the displeasure of enduring the train journey from TheMiddleOfNowhere to Hell, or more commonly reffered to as Aberystwyth to Hastings. The first train was crowded and stuffy, although stuffy is perhaps a bit of a misleading term - when I say stuffy, what I really mean is blistering heat and about enough oxygen that would ensure that a flea would have trouble breathing. And then South Eastern trains managed to demonstrate to everyone that they were not satisfied with merely having delays like most other train operaters when the 20:45 from Charing Cross failed to show up completely, giving us an oppurtunity to suffer a "meal" at Burger King, if indeed the burger shaped pieces of plastic they give you there can be classed as food at all. Eventually we arrived at Battle station, only to disembark from the train and be greeted with the unmistakable smell of the south east - a strange fusion between pollution and rising damp. I was allegedly, as my nose was ever keen to point out, home.

The day after I decided to brave Hastings whilst it was gripped by the seasonal related shopping panic that most townsexperience at around this time every year. This was in itself a very frightening and daunting prospect. Hastings isn't exactly what you would call a big place, but when you are used to Aberystwyth then it is quite a shock. Even more amusing was the fact that when I got off the bus, the first thing I saw was that of alarm bells coming from McDonalds with a group of chavs and a police car outside it. If you ever needed a picture to represent Hastings, then that would be it. Thankfully, the chrsitmas shopping this year peased without too many problems, which is good because it almost makes up for the fact that everything I have seems to be breaking at the moment. I blame the south east. After the shopping was out of the way, I then spent two days engaged in the enviable task of balancing on a a chair trying to shove drawing pins in the celing in an attempt to make the decorations stay up against their wishes, the end result being that our house is now covered in so many gold and silver shiny things that if a Magpie was to hypothetically come inside then it would most likely go into cardac arrest. Yesterday evening I went out to Wetherspoons. It was really good to see old friends again. What was less good, however, was the fact the the 'spoons here waters down their drinks. Cheap bastards.

Looks like I'm going to be busy over Christmas, mainly involving meeting of family, friends and of course several days that I have reserved purely for the purposes of eating. Well, if it stops me being bored then I can't really complain.

Until next time people, and remember to be extra vigilant of tax-evading fat blokes in red suits attempting to gain entry to your premises by chimneys so that they can unload (probably stolen) goods in your living room...

Today I finally completed the first 2 out of the 3 essays I have to write this semseter for university. Ordinarily, writing two essay wouldn't necessarily pose a particular problem, but owing to various, uh, unforeseen events that occured at the start of term I did not, in actual fact, start work on these essays until a week ago. The end result was me staying up until 5:30am this morning writing them, having a 5 hour nap, then starting work on them again before running down to get them in before the deadline. Literally just made it with minutes to spare. Am feeling rather pleased with myself, and the whole thing only took me 2 litres of coke and 3 tins of red bull. Although take my advice - the human body simply cannot take that many additives in one night, as I found out. ;-)

Just been sleeping since about 5pm, and am still feeling very tired. Only problem is I'm town between pub or bed for celebration. Hmm.

Not to rewrite History?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4429000.stm

US President George W Bush has said too much is at stake in Iraq for politicians to make "false charges" about the reasons for going to war.
Amid new questions in Congress about the intelligence used to justify the invasion, he said it was "irresponsible to rewrite history".

Mr Bush said he was open to criticism for his policies but it was "deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began".

So there you have it. According to Mr Bush, it is now "irresponsible" to rewrite History. I was foolishly under the impression that one of the features of History was the ability to challenge what has been said before - not everyone might not agree with what you say, but then no-one ever will when you deal with History. He who controls the present controls the past, indeed.

Under Bush's logic, however, my degree would be a hell of a lot more easier since I would only be required to regurtitate what I am told happened rather than developing my own conclusions.

Welsh again

Today I have learnt 3 very valuble lessons. Lesson 1: 8 hour train journeys are no fun. Lesson 2: 8 hour train journeys are no fun. Lesson 3: 8 hour train journeys are no fun.

So yeah, arrived back in Aber-bloody-ystwyth at around 7:45ish, left Battle at about midday so the journey was near enough to 8 hours. Although that being said, the connections were good without many delays. Virgin trains were as ribbush as ever, since half of the train was (empty) 1st class carriges and the other half was regular, but pretty much all reserved seating. Can't really complain though as we did manage to get seats. The train from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth progressed in the usual fashion - that is to say travelling at 30 MPH and stopping now and then to let trains pass because of the single track line, but it's all good. A very wise person built a pub onto the side of the station at Aberystwyth, which was our first port of call before braving the hill. Made it back to the flat to discover Celia's head in the freezer. Poor thing.

Was nice to see people back home again. Battle bonfire was cool - made even better by the fact that we could actually see stuff this year. Yay. Admitedly I did spend quite a bit of time at home but in my defence I was feeling a little meh. Christmas I'll make more effort to actually do stuff. :-p

I was meaning to write something more I think, but I'm beginning to feel very tired, and Sam is currently being drunk and shouting stuff down the corridoor, so whatever it was has escaped me for the time being. I think bed is in order, as I have a day in the library to look forward to tomorrow.

Good night.

Hands up, who forgot the clocks went back last night? I know I did...

It's getting dark ouside and it feels like 6pm. But thanks to the peculiarities of British time-keeping methods it is, in reality, 5pm.

Now we can all look forward to dark evenings and dark mornings. Yay. ¬_¬

And yes, I am still running on JMT...

If you wanna run cool...

...you got to run on heavy, heavy fuel.

On the subject of British prejudice and ignorance towards change and people from other cultures

This morning (or if you would rather, afternoon) I came across this in my e-mail inbox. Whilst I usually delete most forwards I receive since they are usually complete and utter bollocks in the extreme, I felt I had to speak out against the sheer ignorance and stupidity that is displayed in this rather pathetic piece of writing.

(Note: All quotations are indented, the rest are my comments).

Story in a National Newspaper

Will we still be the Country of choice and still be Gt Britain if we continue to make the changes forced on us by the people from other countries that came to live in Britain because it is the Country of Choice??????
Think about it . .


All I have to say is, when will they do something about MY RIGHTS? I celebrate Christmas, but because it isn't celebrated by everyone, we can no longer say Merry Christmas. Now it has to be Season's Greetings.
It's not a Christmas holiday, it's a Winter Break. Isn't it amazing how this winter break ALWAYS occurs over the Christmas holiday? We've gone so far the other way, bent over backwards to not offend anyone, that I am now being offended.
But it seems that no one has a problem with that.
This says it all!

This is an editorial written by a British citizen, published in a National newspaper He did quite a job; didn't he? Read on, please!

IMMIGRANTS,
NOT BRITS MUST ADAPT.
I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on the 7th of the 7th we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Brits. However, the disgust about the attacks had barely settled when the "politically correct " crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others.


I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Britain, Our population is almost entirely made up of descendants of immigrants. (The Danes, Romans ect.)
However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand. This idea of the Brits being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Britain's we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom.


We speak ENGLISH, not Indian, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become partof our society, learn the language!
"Land of Hope & Glory" is our motto. This is not some Christian, right wing, political slogan. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented.
It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools.
If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.

If the 'Union Jack' flag offends you, the cross offends you, or you don't like our QUEEN, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from.
This is OUR COUNTRY, our land, and our lifestyle. Our Laws give every citizen the right to express his opinion and we will allow you every opportunity to do so! But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about our flag, our lifestyle our government, or our way of life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great BRITISH freedom, THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.
It is Time for Gt. Britain to Speak up. If you agree -- pass this along; if you don't agree -- delete it!
anon..
AMEN

I think if we all keep passing this to our friends (and enemies) it will also, sooner or later get back to the complainers, lets all try, please.

Best regards,

Mick Wheeler

Ok, lets have a look at this shall we?

I celebrate Christmas, but because it isn't celebrated by everyone, we can no longer say Merry Christmas. Now it has to be Season's Greetings.
It's not a Christmas holiday, it's a Winter Break.

Yes, you do indeed celebrate Christmas, well spotted. In fact most people celebrate Christmas - even atheists do, despite it being a Christian holiday. People have been putting seasons greetings on cards for as long as I can remember, because as well as Christmas there is also that God awful affair of new-years, and it saves the card manufactures money to just print one slogan to cover every excuse that people may contrive to get drunk. In the same light, you get a Winter break because it takes place - funnily enough - in Winter, and usually for a period of time considerably longer than the Christmas period itself. If you want a Christmas break, then I'm sure your employer would be happy to oblige, but don't start complaining when you no longer get new-years of work to, since that doesn't come under the term of "Christmas holiday".

This is an editorial written by a British citizen...

WRONG! We are not citizens in this country, we are subjects since we ultimately fall under the rule of a monarch.

I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Britain, Our population is almost entirely made up of descendants of immigrants. (The Danes, Romans ect.)

The article begins so admirably. From reading that I could almost believe that this person has some ounce of intelligence. He realises that there is no such thing as a "true" British person - something that a lot of people have trouble with.

This idea of the Brits being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Britain's we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle.

Oh dear, after such a promising start it begins to fall down immediately, what a shame. Britain does not have a national identity of it's own, and neither does it have it's own language, society or lifestyle. In reality it's a great big mish-mash of Celt, Pict, Norse, Germanic, French, Norman, Angle, Saxon... the list goes on and on. At one point in our history we had a king who was German and couldn't even speak English - to counteract this he appointed a "Prime Minister" to deal with parliament for him, and the position stuck and became precedent.

We speak ENGLISH, not Indian, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, learn the language!

Yes, we may certainly speak "English", but English is a language only in name. It's an amalgamation of many other languages that got absorbed as people from other countries settled here. If you really want to carry on British tradition, then the best way to do so would be to absorb the languages of anyone settling in Britain now, since this is the way things have always happened around here. I for one would quite like some new words in our language since the ones we already have to play with are beginning to bore me.

"Land of Hope & Glory" is our motto. This is not some Christian, right wing, political slogan. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented.

Excuse me? Christian men and women founded this nation on Christian principles? Well that really is quite some feat considering the people that originally settled here were pagan. And since Christ hadn't actually been born at the time they were around, I think they had a pretty damn good reason for not being Christian too. And even when Christianity was introduced into this country, there was certainly nothing principled about it - when the Bible was translated into English, it was re-worded, re-phrased and had several omissions that were blamed on "translation". No, the reason they did this was because the church only wanted people to know what they told them, indeed for centuries (and to some extent even today) the church as an institution in this country existed and exists as a tool for the control of people. I've never known a more unchristian institution in all my life than the church.

If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.

That's a pretty big claim saying God is part of our culture. If God was part of our culture then we wouldn't be spending our time bombing the middle-east constantly now, would we?

If the 'Union Jack' flag offends you, the cross offends you, or you don't like our QUEEN, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from.

For starters the Union Jack is what is flown on British naval vessels. What you're thinking of is the Union Flag, which is the atrocity that flown everywhere on land. It IS offensive, at least to me it is, and presumably some others too. The Union Flag, being a montage of the flags of England, Scotland and Ireland, is a symbol of how the English marched into Wales, Scotland and Ireland, subjugated the people there, made them second class citizens and took away their rights and freedom. Tell me again that it isn't offensive.
I have nothing against the cross. It doesn't offend me and I wouldn't call myself a Christian. Out of the atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus etc. that I've spoken to, none of them ever once gave me anything to suggest that they were somehow offended by the cross. Perhaps if you conversed with people from other cultures and religions more often you might realise that they're just the same as you and I.
As for the Queen, well she seems like a nice enough lady, but what purpose does she - or any other monarch past or present - serve? The only things monarchs used to do in the past was tax the poor and then use that money to declare war on other countries. We have a Prime Minister to do this instead now, so the post of monarch is redundant.

Our Laws give every citizen the right to express his opinion and we will allow you every opportunity to do so!

Explain to me why a senior citizen (this is an ironic term if you remember that we all subjects anyway) was recently escorted (read: thrown out) out of a speech being given by a Labour MP, purely because he voiced his opinion by exclaiming "nonsense!". That's hardly freedom of expression if you ask me.

But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about our flag, our lifestyle our government, or our way of life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great BRITISH freedom, THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.

If you can't face upto change, then perhaps you should consider leaving this country yourself. Change is something that should be embraced rather than hiding from. This country has been consistantly changing ever since there have been people living here. If we had less people like you, I daresay we could make some changes - and maybe even improvements - to this country. If you decide to leave however (and here's to hoping that you will), then you better take advantage of this freedom pretty soon, since when the inevitable happens and the ID card scheme becomes reality, then you will need to have one of those to leave the country, which would mean it would be hardly fair to call it a "freedom" then.

It is Time for Gt. Britain to Speak up.

Consider me "spoken up" then.

Haven't got a clue why but this amused me.

I think all my friends are ignoring me. It seems none of them actually want to pay £60 at the very least for the displeasure of a 7-hour train journey to Aberywtwyth to come and see me. It seems like none of us ever go out as a group anymore, just because we are in different parts of the country, or in some of our cases aren't even in the same country anymore. It's all just an excuse for people to avoid me.

To symbolise my misery I have written a poem, entitled "Today, I am feeling rather Brian". I can't actually be bothered to copy it here, but if you imagine 20 different metaphors for me cutting open my wrists and then sodimizing a giraffe, you should get the general idea.

My love life is also crap. Or at least it probably would be if I had one. In fact I am so upset about this, I am going to go now and put some glockenspiels on spikes.

But hey, don't worry about me, I have a puke inducing bottle of Bordeaux and a jar of relish to keep me company through these long and lonely nights in the middle of nowhere.

Currently listening to: Genesis - Back In N.Y.C

As I cuddled the porcupine
He said I had none to blame, but me.
Held my heart, deep in hair,
Time to shave, shave it off, it off.
No time for romantic escape,
When your fluffy heart is ready for rape. No!
Off we go.

The "Great" War 1914-1918

Interesting how it came to be refered to as the "great" war...

Granted - great does not neccisarily mean good - it could instead simply mean large or big, or some-such.

But then why not call it the large war? The big war? The collosal war? The extensive war? But no, for some reason it became refered to in History as "great", a word that has quite strong conotations of being good, beneficial... even desirable.

So would someone please explain to me why it is called the "great" war? Since I fail to see how anyone could describe war as being good, beneficial or desirable...

Cymru

I have now arrived in Wales. Yes, I am fully aware that this post is more than a week old. I would also like to ask you all to kindly please ignore the previous post - I was drunk and suffering from a bout of rather severe depression one night, and I was ranting and babling about things which are probably best not spilt onto these pages.

We departed from Hastings at around midnight on the 24th. Leaving home was probably the hardest part for me. Watching all of my possesions being loaded into the car, and having to sit by and watch as my room was stripped bare with only a few things left was tough. The room was no longer mine, but having only been at that house for two years kind of lessened the sensation of leaving home. I felt as if I had "left" home when we moved out of our old house and went to Pett - I never enjoyed living there, for reasons quite beyond me since the village is quite pretty, but I digress. After checking, double checking, tripple checking, re-checking, and having a last quick check that I had packed absolutely everything we finally managed to depart from Pett at around midnight on the 24th. And even after searching the house from top to bottom to make sure I had everything, for the first half of the journey I still couldn't get rid of that horrible feeling that you have left something importnat behind. Thankfully this later turned out to be completely unfounded when I discovered that I had in fact bought perhaps a little too much stuff. Driving through Pett at midnight was a rather eerie experience - the place was pitch dark and there was mist everywhere which gave the place an almost ethereal feel. Driving along the route to my old school - the route that I was so used to and knew of by heart from the past two years also bought back quite a bit of nostaligia - and once again I was reminded that I was not to return to the place that I had been studying for the past 7 years. Luckily, as soon as we got out of the Hastings area, and as the roads became unrecognisable all of this left me, and was instead replaced by a mixture of excitement and anticipation at what lay in store for me upon arrival in Wales. Leaving home had been the hardest part, but the journey seemed to take my mind of things, and I had resolved myself to the fact that I was on my way, and there was now going back.

The journey turned out to be rather uneventful in the end. We got lost only once, and even this was nothing spectacular. As we crossed over the Severn and into Wales I began to feel a little apprehensive again, but this was short lived. After what seemed like an age on roads that went up and down hills constantly, we finally arrived in Aber-bloody-ystwyth at around 7.30 in the morning, with an hour and a half to spare before the univeristy opened. If I had of been feeling a little better I would have walked about and explored, but not having had any sleep that night, and being sustained by only one cup of rather crap tasting coffee, I decided to stay in the relative warmth and comfort of the car. It had been almost a year ago since I was last in Aberystwyth - last October I came here for a weekened to visit the univeristy's open day, and it was then that I fell in love with the place (well I loved it already, it just confirmed my views). It felt strange sitting in the car in the seafront, watching the street-sweepers at work and people out for their morning jog - watching the small town wake-up. It occured to me that thousands of students would be descending upon this place today, and the town wouldn't know what had hit it by the end of it. In a way it made me feel almost guilty for coming here and contributing to the disruption of this nice quiet town. After spending an hour or so in the car, and making the best use of the time by eating bagels and spilling hula-hoops all over the floor of the car (shh, I don't think anyone noticed this) we made our way upto the university. What happened from then on is all a bit of a blur to be honest. I was woefully sleep deprived, and couple with all my pent-up nervous energy, the whole experience was rather surreal to say the least. I remember driving into the main entrance and muttering, "I need to goto Cwrt Mawr. I think." to some nearby people that looked knowledgeble. Thankfully they were, and they pointed us in the right direction. After a bit of confusion and wandering around aimlessly being lost, the next thing I recall is being thrust a skip of paper with my address on it, a map of the accomodation and a small brown evelope containing what felt to be something metallic and key shaped. I finally found my way to my flat, aided by someone who didn't really seem to know where they were going, or even how to read a map, but this was a source of amusement for me, and since I didn't know the place any better myself, I cared little. After finding my room, and subsequently being very relieved that it was in fact quite spacious and rather nice the next thing I know I am standing in Morisons, propping myself up with a shopping trolley and trying to find food. Given that I had not slept, and coupled with horrible goodbye I was going to have to go through looming over me, it is needless to say that I failed miserabaly in this task - I shoved a few things in the trolley and we made our way back to the university - which is when the gridlock struck. Even though it seemed like the traffic jams would last forever, all too soon I was back at the univeristy, and after a brief call to the TV Licensing people, I was standing outside in the car park. The goodbye was an odd one. I watched my parents drive off, and it felt as if I had lost something. I retreated back to my room, and stood looking at the mess of boxes, and trying to busy myself with something before things really hit me. Thankfully, just minutes later I ran into friends, and all feelings of homesickness left, or at the very least were subdued.

The past week has also been an interesting experience, and if I get bored again then maybe I'll write about that too, but I think I have gone for long enough now. I realise that much of the above is probably of very little interest to anyone, save perhaps for myself who will no doubt read it in a years time and chuckle to myself. For now though, I shall depart since I have one of them "lecture" things tomorrow. Whatever that is.

Goodnight.

Upon reflection, and in particular reflection that is indeed most reflective and thought about quite extensively, it would seem that I have - after quite a while of pondering and thinking and considering this question - come to th conclsusion that in relaity life is, in actuality and as a matter of fact a funny old thing.

My room is stripped bare, all I have in here now is a laptop and a router

So, in 2 hours time I will be leaving to go to university. Yes that's right - I'm leaving at midnight, which is pretty much neccesary since I was the one who choose to goto university so far away, and on a good, straight, flat out, no stops run we might make the journey in about 7 hours. Of course, you then have to take into account other road users (the only purpose of which are to get in your way and slow you down), getting lost (which will invariably happen at least once - it's the unwriteen law of the road) and of course not to mention numerous stop-offs at motorway services for strong cups of coffee in a bid to keep the driver awake long enough to get us to our destination. So with all that taken into consideration, I'll be lucky if I get to Aberystwyth at about 9am, which is rather conveniently when the unversity opens.

If I said that I am feeling a little nervous right now, then that would be a great big lie. I am in fact bloody petrified, and I have never ever felt like this in my whole life, ever. Thankfully, one way or another, and whether it is good or bad, all this waiting around will finally be over within the next 24 hours, and I predect that I'll either be in a dark and smoke filled pub somewhere, or, and this is more likely, I'll be in my room playing my PS2 and generally being miserable that it will be another 2 days at least before I will have internet access.

Anyway, I am off now to generally mope about and be all nervous and all that jazz. See you all later.

Warning: Long winded muesings and bouts of nostalgia that aren't really all that interesting and don't make much sense ahead

In a weeks time I shall be departing from the unpleasant, and certainly not very fair land of Hastings, and will be traveling to, taking up residence in and starting university at Aberystwyth. And yes - as the more astute of you may have observed from the under-use of vowels in that word - that is in Wales. People say that leaving home is a big thing, and can be stressful at times, and in a shocking twist of events, people are actually right. For once. Lets just hope that they can give a repeat performance when they say that "everything will be fine" and "university is great". Not that I need people to tell me that, however.

I've been saying "goodbye" to people recently, which feels like an odd thing to do. Some of my friends I've known since Year 7, and the fact that we are all departing of to university leads me to ask the question "just when did we all grow up, anyhow?". School, 6th form and all that sometimes still feels as if it was only yesterday and leaves one with a sense of fright at how fast the time has passed. Although it is with a rather surreal quality that whilst is seems like only yesterday, at the same time it feels somehow so far away now, especially considering how much has changed over the years, most notably these past two years in 6th form. Since starting there 2 years ago today (give or take a week or two or three) I have moved house once, had three girlfriends and my hair is now longer. I'm still scared by that old common room though. Some things will never change. I fear that I am now starting to ramble on about such things too much now, so I shall stop looking at the past, leave it where it belongs (over there on the shelf next to the air freshener) and look to the future instead...

...but I'm not going to do that, because if I look to the future then it fills my head with terrible, nightmarish visions that include the words "forms", "packing" and "traveling", which is pretty much a collection of all my phobias barring needles and Margaret Thatcher.

On that note I think it will be best if I do not look to the past, future or anywhere else, in a literal or philosophical sense, and instead I shall have a glass of wine and go do that thing where you lie on your back and stare at the ceiling until morning comes and you have no idea of where you've just been or what you've been doing. Sleeping, I think they call it.

Good night.

I am such a rebel

Yesterday when I was out shopping, I went and payed at the "10 items or less" till, when I had 11 items.

I really am such a rebel.

Ha!

So, all the schools will be starting again within the next couple of weeks. And I can't help but smile when I think that for the first time in ever, I won't be joining everyone and instead will be going to uni at the end of Septemeber. I know that it is very cruel of me to laugh at those who still have to goto school, but I figure that having had to go through 5 years of secondary school, then 2 years of 6th form myself, I have at least earned that right. :-p

Walking across the sitting room, I turn the television off...

I haven't updated this for a while, because I can never think of anything to say. And I still can't think of anything to say, so here is some of my poetry for you. I hope you all like it. I call it "Purple", and it is an exploration of my inner self.


Ever wondered why nothing rhymes with purple?
Only made up words such as shlurple,
and shlurple is as real a word as wurple,
is which is just as bad as turple,
but not quite as awful as lurple,
which is only marginally better than hurple.
O, why does nothing rhyme with purple?

I thank you.

thats right!

According to ye olde news (well, it is really all that old actually), police were apparently called out to rescue a cuddly toy that had fallen out of a car window and got stuck in the middle of a motorway.

Some people may say that this is a waste of out tax money. Personally I say it was a bloody good thing. (Because I would say something like that). \o/

Been a while, eh?

Considering that I have a button on my Firefox toolbar that links me to this place, it really is quite suprising how many times I foret about it. Or do I? Perhaps I decided to go for ages without an update to keep you all in suspense, or even worse, to trick you into thinking that this place had become a graveyard, and then when you least expect it WHAM! I hit you with an update. I could do that you know. And you would be none the wiser. Lets just say that if anyone (by some miracle is) reading this blog, then I strongly suggest that you tell everyone about this places greatness, otherwise I could very well mess with your head again. ¬_¬

So what has been happening recently? Well, to be truthful, not a great deal. Well, nothing that would form the basis of any intresting to write here anyway. However, today I did find out where I will be livign when I go to University in September, which is good. I like having places to live. It makes living so much easier, and, well, liveable really.

I would make this post a little more worthwhile by adding something more interesting to it, but I am currently feeling like the poop.

Went to a party last night. It was good, even if the last hour or so is a little hazy, owing to my absolute stubborness, "I'm NOT going to waste this, so will therefore drink it anyway despite the consequences". Suffice to say, I woke up this morning feeling terrible.

I hate you Mr. S Jack.

Which piece of cutlery is the stabbbing one?

Just got back from my prom, and after tonight I can conclude that it wasnt as bad as I thought it was going to be. The prosect of having to dress up and go somewhere posh didnt appeal all that much to me, so was feeling a little apprehensive earlier this evening. However after getting over the initial bouts of confusion regarding what items of cutlery are used for what (what one is the stabbing knife again?), I forgot my origianl apprehensions about it, and had a really good time.

In conclusion, prom = good.

Oh, and there were lots of pictures taken too. They're not getting posted on here though. :-p

18? Mature? Yeah, you'll be lucky...

Well today has been a very good day indeed. I turned 18, spent a good portion of the day fiddling about and tinkering with my new lappy (which is very sexy I might add). Didn't get upto a whole lot, went out for a meal in the evening, but all in all a nice relaxing day. Managed to get some stuff of my chest too, which is always a good thing. :-)

Am absolutely knackered though now, especially considering I only got about 6 hours of sleep last night. I attribute this to the fact that Harry Potter was keeping me up (plus I couldn't sleep). No rest for me though, got my prom tomorrow, and then another party on Saturday. All good fun though, and at least I can't complain of boredom now.

Took the car driving for the first time without L plates (which I cut up as soon as I passed) today. Is quite a nice feeling knowing that everyone else on the road doesnt hold you with quite so much contempt.

Mmm, I think I'm discovering Genesis. First time I heard them today, but some of their stuff isn't bad. Been wanting a new band to listen to for a while now!

Well I cant think of anymore to say. If the spelling here is crap, then I blame it on the fact that I'm still gettinbg used to typing with a laptop keyboard.

Goodnight. :-)

Well it looks as if this is going to turn into another of those sleepless nights. I've always found it quite infuriating that the only time my brain seems to want to start thinking about things is when I am trying to get to sleep. I'm conviced it does it just to annoy me. Silly brain. What thoughts have been keeping me awake? Well thats confidential information, I'm afraid. Dont know why you're looking at me like that, I do keep some secrets from the interweb, you know.

Anyway, happier news. Today I passed my driving test. Was the 4th time I've taken it, so as I say, its about bloody time I passed too! I'm pretty pleased with this, even if I'm not going to be getting a car now since I'm going to University sooner than expected.

I have finally given into the dark side and have started reading Harry Potter. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later really, despite all the stuff that I originally said about it. I am indeed most shocked by these books, for Ms Rowling is nothing but pure filth! Honestly, I really dont want to know what the three of them were getting upto in that toilet cubicle!

I'd best go do something more usefull than waffle on here for ages. I've got a story that I'm trying to write, and failing quite miserably I might add. I need some sort of plot hook. Maybe if I inroduced lasers into it somehow....

Tomorrow I have the last of my A2 exams. It is UK and US comparitive politics, for those who are interested. I haven't prepared much for it, which is just the way I like it since I always do better when I don't do any revision. Plus, an unconditional offer at University helps too. :-)

Tomorrow also marks the last time I'll be going to the place where my 6th form is. The 6th form is actually part of a school too, so I have in reality been studying at the same place since I started year 7 there in 1998. On one hand it seems as if the past 7 years have passed quickly, but then conversly I feel as if I don't know what its like having a life of not being there. I'm not sure what my feelings are on the matter of leaving - the past two years in 6th form have been excellent, I've made some good friends and have had a good time there for the most part. However the 5 years that preceeded 6th form were, naturally, quite rubbish, although there are some memories from the place that will stick with me forever. Just as soon as I remember what those memories are, of course.

It will be odd leaving there, but I doubt very much that I'll get much time to ponder this as I shall be starting university in September - am going to Aberystwyth which the more astute of you may have noticed is in Wales, and seems to be pretty much in the middle of nowhere, which is why I love the place. It's nice and small, which is how I like my towns. I'm strangely confident about starting, but there is a small invoice inside me somewhere that is saying to me that I should be absolutely petrified by now. It's a good thing I have chosen to completely ignore this voice. Starting universty will most likely be a traumatic affiar, but I fully intend it to be a good one.

My 18th birthday is looming next week. I intend to celebrate this as per my style, by remaining steadfastly sober throughout the whole thing. I would say how pointless it is in conforming to things, but then I would in fact be conforming to those who say it is useless to conform, so I'll stop now before I go cross-eyed.

I've forgotten what my original point in this post was, and it appears to have devolved into a stream of quite uninteresting drivel. However, fear not, for I intend to treat all of my loyal readers with some far more interesting posts this summer - namely some of my works of fiction that I plan on posting. Personally I would suggest running away right about now.

Goodnight.

What do I taste like?

Greetings readers of blogs!

Now I know you all lead very busy lives, but I bet at some point you have all wondered what I tatse like? Well you no longer have to loose sleep pondering this fact, for I found a website that could tell me exactly what flavour I was, via a series of complex scientific testings. And the results:

I am sweet, like Sugar. I am all sweetness and light; fluffy bunnies and dancing fairies; happiness and joy. Too much of me will make you sick. What Flavour Are You?

What can I say? ^_^

Picture your self on a train in a station, with tangerine trees, and marmalade skies...

...is how a well known song by the well known band The Beatles goes. Now I started to ponder the situation that is presented to us in the above line the other day. I decided that marmalade skies would indeed be a benefical addition to our lives, just so long as there was an adequate supply of toast shrubberies. If at this point you do no understand what I am talking about, or think I am insane, then you are most likely the type of person who would ask, "So what is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds all about anyway?"

Ok, ok, I'll shut up now and post some semi-intelligent stuff about my life.

I've decided I want to go to Uni this year instead of a defered entry, which is what I currently have. The reasons I want this are many fold, foremost amongst them are a desire to move away from the putrid piss-stain of a town that is Hastings. The prospect of cheap bar prices at Aberystwyth has not swayed my decision in anyway. However, I will be greatly saddened to be leaving behind all the lovely wonderful people I know that live where I am now. I may just have to steal them all and keep them in my cupboard at Uni, in order to ease the pain of leaving them. *Note to self: Buy large cupboard, steal people.*
Of course, this all depends on whether or not there are any places available this year...

[Sarcasm mode = On]
Soon I shall be enjoying sitting my A2 exams. What a wonderfully delightful time it shall be. I am sure I will enjoy it muchly, and when it is over I will cry because I will not have any more super mazingly fun exams to do anymore.
[Sarcasm mode = Off]

Summer is just around the corner! Woo, yay, hoopla and other associated exclamations of joy. I am looking forward greatly to summer. It is a happy time where I get to do as little as possible, and sustain myself with nothing but ice lollys. \o/

I am running out of things to say now, so I am sure you will be pleased to discover I will shut up now. Until next time that is.

See you soon, o' faithful of blog readers.

I hate lightning now.

Ok, when I said I wanted something interesting to happen to me, this wasn't quite what I had in mind. Still, it will teach me to keep my big mouth firmly shut in future.

This morning we had some pretty bad weather, and lightning either struck our house or at least very close to it. Close enough to do damage to my computers. So far I've discovered that half of the ports on my router have got fried, along with the phone extension into my room where my computers are kept, an ethernet cable and also the netowrk card on my Windows box. The phone has also been damanged and now emits a beeping noise every couple of seconds, and I haven't even checked whether the network adapter on my PS2 has been affected or not. At the moment I have my Linux box set up in the sitting room next to the phone socket so that I can use the 'net stil. Good thing I have the house to myself this weekend then. Take heed - when lightning is around, unplug phone equipment as it can get buggered very easily.

Can't be bothered to write about anything else at the moment, nothing much of note. Got another driving test on Tuesday, and I've decided that I am going to try and go to University this year instead of taking a gap year. Which means I need to phone Aberystwyth at some point and see if this is doable and if they have any places going spare for this year. Plus there are exams looming, so if anything I can't complain I'll be bored over the next couple of weeks. Roll on summer...

I never really know what to put for a title you know but shhh its a secret...

Right then, need to update this thing. Even if there is nothing to write about. *Note to self: do something interesting soon, so I can write about it later on the internet.*

What has been happening lately then? Well, erm 6th finished so w00t for that. All thats standing between me and summer now is a 15 day long exam period, and before that starts I get to revise, or at the very least seriously contemplate revising. I am rather good at contemplating things. Just a shame that actually doing them is a different matter. :-
Since I am far too lazy to structure things in any coherent manner, here is a nice oredered list of completely unrealted things that have either happened to me lately, or I have been pondering:

1) Just because half of my MSN list listens to them reguarly, it does not make Greenday a good band. :-p

2) I discovered what is perhaps the single most annoying thing in the world ever the other day, which is discovering you are not in a possesion of a corkscrew, and yep you've guessed it, all the wine you got is all bloody well corked. At least I managed to sort this out today. ^_^

3) There is no number 3. Move along please.

4) I have become addicted to playing Timesplitters: Future Perfect online. I know what I'm going to be doing this summer instead of sleeping. If anyone reads this, owns this games and has an interwebbed PS2, then my handle is MevilWeevil1. Yes, its a crap name, but that is inconsequential when I am in your base killing your doods.

5) I better shut the window now before any moths get in. Nasty little buggers.

6) Frank Zappa - Can't stop listening to his stuff. This man is a bloody genius, and I must have more of his albums. More I tell you, MORE!

And that is about the extent of what has been happening lately. I'd love to stay longer and tell you more, but the truth is there really isn't any more to say.

Until next time o' reader of blogs. I always hate saying goodbye, so I think I'll just say hello instead. Hello. :-)

Good evening...

It has been bought to my attention that I am an owner of a blog. This blog in fact. Quite a nice blog if I may say so myself. My little blogy-woggy. Nice blog. Good blog. However, I have been, shall we say somewhat unkind to my blog of late. I have ignored it, I have brushed it aside and left it to be forgotten. How sad. All alone, with no little blog friends to play with. Well I say this ends tonight. Around about...... now in fact.

So what have I been upto in my life recently I hear you ask? Well, no I'm not actually hearing you ask this, but I'm just saying it as a figure of speech. Well it would be very difficult for me to update this without mentioning that I went to see The Revenge of the Sith on Thursday. In order to emphasise how excited I was about this, I have decided to type the following all in capitals, and without proper usage of my spacebar:

OH MY GOD I WENT TO SEE STAR WARS EPISODE 3 ON THURSDAY AND IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER BECAUSE THERE WERE LIGHTSABERS AND SPACESHIPS AND EXPLOSIONS AND STUFF AND IT WAS REALLY COOL BECAUSE IT WAS SUCH A REALLY GOOD FILM AND IT HAD ANAKIN SKYWALKER WHO SHALL HENCEFORTH BE KNOWN AS MOODY EVIL

So hopefully I have now succesfully conveyed to you what I thought of the film. However I feel a great sadness come over me, as I will never again be able to watch a Star Wars film for the first time. I feel as if apart of me has changed. Wait, no I still feel the same as before, but still :'(

There is little else I can include in a post which has such greatness in it. I am going to go now; no doubt my dreams will be filled with the fact that I am going to see the film again tomorrow. And possibly Sunday too.

But fow now though - goodnight.

May the 4th be with you...

Went to see The Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy today. Been a fan of the books ever since I read them, which is a little over a year ago now. There were some entirely new additions to the film, but then every different version of the guide (TV, radio, book, game) have been different, so the film may as well follow tradition. I just hope they make films for the rest all of the books in the trilogy. All five of them.

Next film on my list is Star Wars episode III, out later this month. And in regards to the title of this update, today is Star Wars day. So go do something Star Wars related, you've got 59 minutes left accordign to the clock on this computer. Personally, I wouldn't trust it though, especially considering it syncrhronises itself with the Windows time server.

With tomorrow comes General Election day. I won't be voting due to being 2 months too young, yet I can still tell anyone reading this to vote Liberal Democrat. Why? Put simply, they're the best of a bad bunch, which isn't saying much since all the 3 main parties are more or less one and the same. However, it's far too late to start ranitng about politics, so I'll leave that for another day.

My hands are starting to feel numb now. Actually, so are my feet and legs. In fact pretty much everything feels numb. I have no idea why. Thankfully for you this means I'll be shutting up around about now and going to bed.

#Hey thats far out, so you heard him too?#

I was watching TV earlier on, and there was some program where they throw some people into a kitchen with so called celebrity chefs, and then filmn them being shouted at. Yet another in the saga of reality television that is invariably as boring as shite, and has about the same intellectual content of a pair of sandals. It was after I had endured 15 whole minutes of some self-important food critic moaning that his mushrooms weren't to his liking that I came to the conclusion that it was quite possibly the most pretentious load of bollocks that I have ever had the displeasure to set eyes upon. Well, there are probably worse things, but it was certainly the worst thing I ever had to watch today. Let this be a lesson as to what can happen if you loose the telly remote - you will be forced into watching such rubbush as this.

Anyway, I think thats enough of my daily cynicism. Mayday is approaching, and I am having inexplicable urges to purchase a bike, get absolutley pissed and then dance about a bit. Possibly or possibly not featuring maypoles and drunken morris dancers. Meh, now can you see how screwed my brain has become after years of hard-line caffeine abuse?

The morning started as most morning usually do - slowly, and most of the time spent with me making the violent re-entry back into consciousness. After stumbling out of the shower, some random piece of paper on my desk managed to catch and hold my attention for at least a full 5 minutes. Eventually, and satisfied that my A-Level English coursework was in a state that could finally be submitted I saw the green sheet next to it. Yesterdays driving test report. Failed, for a second time. This was quickly disreagarded however, and my biggest regret of the morning was hte fact that the time I had spent looking at my coursework meant that I would not have time to drink any coffee. Therefore, it was in a rather fould mood that I eventually managed to slump into the car and end up at 6th form.

I approached the common room door cautiously. It was early in the morning, and I was praying that I wouldnt have to put up with some of the more chav like Year 12's. Thankfully this did not happen, but I saw something attached to the door that had not been there Wednesday. A letter, a seemingly incouculous one, but bearing the distinct picture of out local Labour MP. His smug grin peered out at me, in a "All your base are belong to me" kind of grin. I read it; more lies about Labours success and urging those of us that are old enough to vote Labour in the coming election, which further rubbed in the fact that on May 5th I will only be 2 months short of being 18. They have supposedly invested money in our schools, depsite the fact that I have not seen any evidence of this. He was also giving backing to the Labour candidate in our mock election. I vowed to deface some more Labour posters later on that day. It was then that I had the pleasure of sitting in the common room, caffeine deprived and being forced to sit in the overbearing shadow of the absoloutley massive billboard they have installed in there, which is currently advertising some mobile phone company or some such rubbish.

The rest of the day was rather mediocre - installing an overpowering sense of it being Friday. To my feigned suprise, it was Friday after all. After 6th form had ended I drove my parents car home, smiling to myself about the prospect of a 3 day weekend in which I will have absoloutley no coursework to do. The evening was spent playin San Andreas and adding the Hoary backport repositories to my apt-get sources.list in Ubuntu, and apt-get installing Gaim 1.2.1 in order to test it out, and feeling rather smug at the fact that I can get upto date software now. The vast majority of people can feel free to ignore that last sentance, unless of course they use Linux.

At this point I feel it suitable to give anyone who had read about my day in such minute detail a big shiny medal.

Farewell reader, until next time.

Bleurgh!

The rubbers on the end of pencils do not taste nice. Don't try to eat them. That is all.

It just works...

I keep underestimating just how good Linux actually is. Being of a doubtful nature, and always expecting the worst, I thought that getting Linux to recognize my digital camera would be a somewhat tricky task. I searched high and low on the internet for how I might achieve this. I tried special apps for the job, but they did not support my particualr camera. It was whilst I wass looking at the ins and outs of how to mount external devices other than floppy and cd-rom drives that I noticed something. On my desktop was an icon I had never seen before, and underneath it was written the word "removable". Upon opening this I discovered, to my joy that Linux had reognised my camera, and mounted it ready for me to copy the photos onto my hard drive. On windows I had to go through a lengthy installation procedure with drivers and what-not for me to be able to do that! And they say Linux is more difficult than Windows? I won't hear anything of the sort.

Next all I have to do is to make sure my scanner and printer works under Linux, and then I will have no reason not to change to it permanantly.

Long Time No Post

Not much to say really. Sometimes I wonder why I bother having a blog, it's not as if anything particuarly amazing happens to me anyway.

So what have I been upto? I've rediscovered Monty Python addiciton, I've been amazed that I've had the same set of strings on my guitar for a year now, I completed Timesplitters 3, I b0rked my Linux box by trying to put Ubuntu on it for a third time. I can't be bothered to re-install Mandrake because it so absoloute shit. I want to put Gentoo on, but I'm only half way through the installation guide, and I don't have a lot of time on my hands to mess around with compiling stuff at the moment, so I'm running on a Live distro atm, Damn Small Linux. It's Debian/Knoppix based, rather handy, Google for it. Perhaps once coursework is out of the way I might spend some time compiling Gentoo. 6th form starts again on Monday, I have mixed feeling abou it. In the end I think I', looking forward to going back, holidays can get boring after a while. Noted the other day that its 3 months until I'm 18. I intend to remain sober throughout the whole thing, just to spite people. :-p

Still havent re-taken my driving test. Will be at the end of this month I think. Perhaps then I'll finally get my liscence and will be able to drive places and do stuff.

In geek news, MSN 7 was finally moved out of BETA. They fixed the large amount of resources it took up, but have added even more crap to it. The only thing I like about it is the "what I'm listening to feature". It means I can see what everyone is listening to, and feel all smug inside because my music taste is superior to theirs. Sadly, this feature is not enough to get me to dotch Trillian. In fact I don't anything can manage that, with the possible esception of Gaim which is nice becasue its Open Source. And as we all know Open Source is always the best. :-p

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy should be out on the 29th apparently. Looking forward to seeing this. I love the books, and since Douglas Adams wrote the film it should be good and not some piss poor adaptation. My only concern is it will go the same way as The Lord Of The Rings. I liked those films, don't get me wrong, but it was somewhat frustrarting for me because all of a sudden LOTR had became popular and cool. People were watching the films without reading the books. Everywhere you went people were talking about it. LOTR was no longer somthing you discussed in darkened rooms with other nerds and tried to show off how much elvish you knew. Still, as I said the films were enjoyable so I guess its a small price to pay. :-p

Well, I don't really have much else to say. If by some chance you are reading this, then be sure to stay tuned for future updates. Who knows what fun will be contained in those? Not me, thats for sure.

Farewell.

¬_¬

I hate the British weather. I don't just not like it, I despise it. I had my driving test again today. Everything was going well until half way through when it got stopped due to the fog making it too dificult to see anything.

As I said, I hate the British weather.

\o/ Linux \o/

Recently I have been playing around with Linux. I had an old PC that wasn't being used (Pentium 3, 196Mb RAM, 6GB HDD and the almighty Voodoo 2 *cough*), so nothing too special, but it's been running Mandrake 10.0 nicely since before Christmas now.

Went into town earlier today to pick up some stuff, got Timesplitters: Future Perfect (which I have yet to play), and a network card for my Linux box. Yep, I'm posting this from my Linux computer! The installation itself was painfully easy. It was literally a case of opening up the comp, putting the card in, closing it up and turning it on. Linux detected it straight away, asked me a few questions and loaded the appropriate modules. Then all i did was log into my user account, fire up Mozilla, and I was browsing the interweb! Never has the front page of Google lookes so sweet than from Linux. I've now picked up Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2, and the latest release of Gaim, both of which were very easy to install using the GUI. I will tell any of you now, if someone tells you that Linux is complicated - do not listen to them. It is in fact frightfully simple, once you get to grip with the basics.

As fun as all this is however, it still doesn't change the fact that I'm bloody starving. I'm going now to scare me up some pizza.

:-D

New blog...

..of sorts.

It's called In A Broken Dream, and can be found by clicking here. The idea is that since we're meant to have dreams every night, I thought I'd write down what happens. For the record, I'm not turning into a new age hippy, but I thought it woulf be an interesting little thing to fill the time, if only for my sake. It's more of an experiment than anything else, so if I get bored of it I may very well axe it.

I've been recovering from my cold, and enjoying the holidays thus far. Haven't really been doing much, but this is fine by me! I'd be perfectly happy to laze about for 2 weeks. :-)

The weather really has gotten a lot nicer recently. I always used to prefer the cold of winter, but I'm quite looking forward to summer this year. Quite enjoyed summer last year too. Ack, I'm turning into a sun lover. :-P

Woo, changed the template again, because I decided I liked this one better after all.

Not much to say here really, came down with the flu on Monday so was off yesterday, and am again today. It doesn't seem to be lasting very long though, so with any luck I won't be ill throughout the easter holdiay's, which start today, so i think that is fully deserving of a \o/.

I got all the repsonses from my University choices back from UCAS the other day. My applications were succesful to everywhere but Edinburgh (damned Scots ¬_¬), but that doesn't really matter since I'm now going to Aberystwyth as I have unconditional offer there. :-D

Until next time...

I R teh failz0rz :-\

Just got back from driving test, and if you have already read the title of this post then you would know the result. If you haven't read the title then I suggest that a) You go back and read it to find out what happened and b) Get some glasses because you are quite clearly blind, I mean it's written in big letters.

The most infuriating thing is I failed by 1 minor. You're allowed to get 15 before you fail; I got 16. Now if I'm going to fail, I want to fail it properly, by a decent margin, say 20 errors or something, none of this "ohhh so close" rubbish.

So yeah, just rebooked another one, 4 weeks until I can try again. I was hoping I'd be driving by Easter, but with any luck I'll be driving just after Easter. The advantage of having the test then is that I will be able to drink coffee again. Perhaps I'll be more alert. \o/

Anyhoo, I've been thinking about what sort of car I'll be wanting when I do finally pass. And I've decided I'd quite like something like this:



For those of you who don't know, that's the car you get in the rather nifty game called Grim Fandango, the car itself is rather fetchingly entitled "The Bonewagon", and has a top sped of very very fast. I tried searching for a better picture but that was the best I could find. And I'll be damned if I'm reinstalling the game just for a screenshot. ¬_¬

Apart from my test today has been rather non-existent. Yesterday I networked together some computers, with assistance of course, which was pretty cool. Well cool if you're a geek. Which I think I have strong leanings towards.

Anyhoo, I have nothing of any relevance to say now so I think I'll go eat some chocolate. \o/

Edit: Arse, I broke the formatting with my picture. Fixed now.

Woo and a yay and another woo with some more yay. Did I mention woo and yay?

Well, there's been a lot happening recently, but I haven't gotten round to updating so you can read about it all at once.

Our story starts approximately exactly 3 days ago. The location - London, the event - an all day A-Level politics revision conference, method of transport - South Eastern Trains. I'll be brutally honest, it wasn't terribly exciting. It was about as exciting as a terribly un-exciting thing doing something monumentally not very exciting, whilst not very exciting people watched and said not very exciting things about their not very exciting performance. However, it was well worth it which is what counts. Lunch was fun also, where I partook in one of my favorite hobbies - the consumption of edible foodstuffs.

Yesterday, things got more fun. MUN had come around again, which is really odd considering it still feels like last year's MUN was only last month. I can only conclude that Time has decided to speed itself up, but for what motive I am currently unaware. This year I was representing India; I had originally wanted Japan but sadly this wasn't to be. The whole day was pretty fun, admittedly a little boring in parts but this was soon alieved by the passing of humorous notes, in particular the notes passed to non-existent countries. Now at this point, anyone who is not familiar with MUN will be looking (well not literally, at least I hope not anyway) at me with a rather quizzical look, possibly with their left eyebrow raised as if they were saying to me "Like, omfg wtf??". Well I shall attempt to clear up any confusion. Or not, as the case may be. MUN stands for "Model United Nations", and what we do is sit around all day and discuss stuff and generally don't really do all that much in particular. Exactly like the real UN, you see? Anyway as I said it was all jolly good fun, especially the disco. I even danced sober for the like the first time in ever (well the first time since that last time anyway). My only regret is that I didn't start going to these things earlier, since I won't be able to do anymore after this year. Ah well.

Today I got some very good news. News so good that it makes all other so-called good news look like not very good news at all. Back in February I sat some scholarship exams for Aberystwyth, and today I got the result in the post. Didn't get a scholarship, but I did get a Merit award! More importantly this means I now have an unconditional offer. To put it mildly, I am rather pleased, and have decided that in celebration I shall tilt my chair and look rather pleased with myself. Then maybe go out and get drunk in celebration.

Still to come is my driving test on Monday. I'll let you know how it went when it happens.

#Everyone loves, half-arsed blog posts, 'cause the tricks that they do are... erm, well not terribly clever at all really#

Yes, once again it's a post consisting of nothing more than the result I got from one of those internet survey things, you know the ones that go "what kitchen utensil best represents your life?". Today it was "what family guy character are you?" though. Shame really, because I've always wondered about kitchen utensils, but alas I guess we shall never find out. Until someone makes a quiz for them of course. There probabaly is one somewhere, come to think of it. Anyway, on with the pictures.


Which Family Guy character are you?

Shame really, I wanted to be the dog. In fact I don't even know who the hell this one is, it's been ages since I've seen Family Guy.

Snow = Day Off \o/

This morning I woke up, or rather was rudely startled by the sound of my alarm clock which sounds not quite unlike a pair of rusted cheese-graters being scraped together, right beside my ear. However, as I made the painful transition from sleeping to not-sleeping, something became painfully obvious; it was far too early in the morning for any sane person to have to get up and do such morning like activities as showering and breakfasting, but due to the diabolical state of our education system that insists that the day must begin at 9.00pm, I had little option but to drag myself out of the warm comfort of bed and attempt to re-adjust myself to consciousness. But however painfully obvious this fact was, it was not the most significant thing that happened. This was to occur approximately 3 seconds later when upon drawing my curtains in a vain effort to make the room more light in order to enable me to navigate my way to the door safely without tripping over something, I discovered that overnight some idiot thought it would be terribly funny to break into our garden, the surrounding gardens, and most of the south-east and dump a load of snow over everything. The realistation that the roads had not been gritted, and that I had no desire to risk life and limp for a half day of 6th form resulted in the conclusion of, "sod this for a game of soldiers, I'm staying in today" (Note: I did not actualy say this myself, it was in reality a friend of mine, but I decided to steal his statement). It turns out that the school had been closed anyway, except for the poor unfortunate souls that are currently trapped within the period of much unpleasantness more commonly known as GCSE's. I feel sorry for any who were forced into school on such a day as today, or at least I did feel sorry until I realized that I was once made to go through a similar thing, which of course gives me the ability to laugh.

I suppose that my current state of being trapped indoors is parabola a good thing, as I currently have quite a bit of reading to do for my History coursework. And by a bit I mean a lot, just take a look at the size of these bloody books. There's another one in the post arriving today too.



Also, since I am currently in the mood for taking pictures of absolutely everything, coupled with the fact that snow is so rare in this country (can't remember it being like this for at least 4 or so years), I decided to take a couple of shots of the view currently outside my room. Clicky here to peruse the photographic wonders.

Blimey, after having said all that the sky is starting to brighten and the ice is starting to melt. The only thing you can be certain of with the British weather is that it will never do anything that is in anyway even remotely predictable.

Well now that was a terribly Britsh post of me, seeing as it revovlved around nothing more than the weather. Since I feel I have spoke for long enough, and to continue would be risking the loss of concentration in any readerhsip I may get then I'm afraid you will have to wait untill next time to hear about all the other things that are currently happening right now. So tune in next time for another thrilling episode of Gary's blog where you will discover the mysteries of time, space, and why there is always a teaspoon left in the bottom of the washing-up bowl.*

*May not be true

Adopt-a-Fetus

The internet really does have some strange stuff on it, take this for example. A place where you can adopt a fetus. Slightly beyond me what the thrill is exactly, but I thought I'd get myself one anyway. So here he is:

I adopted a cute lil' death fetus from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!

Cute little bugger isn't he?

Edit: I also used by basic photoshop knowledge to make myself a weebl fetus. Wooyay.

Overheard on RuneScape...

Person: What does your robe do?
Monk Person: It says that I feel closer to God. Does that mean I'm going to die?

Made me laugh, so I thought I'd put it up here. I overheard it while I was doing a spot of mining.

If you don't know what RuneScape is, it's basically a Massivly Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), that is all browser based, so no downloads, and is free. Sure there are some idiots on there, but if you can work past that it's a half-decent game. Linky if you're interested. Look me up on there, character name is Ithilinen, I usually hang around on World 15.

Sneaky second post

Just thought I'd post this link right here. Have fun.

Valentines Day

So I look at the date today and I think, "Oh God, it's that time of year again". Valentines day, or as the businesses would probably like to call it, "all your money are belong to us" day. Exactly why this day exists has always intrigued me. Now, I can see the logic in wanting to do special things with that special person, but why reserve a particular day for it? There's 363(4) other days in the year, so why this one? So I thought I'd look into a bit more.

Typically, it's origins are rather boring. The name comes from a St. Valentines, who allegedly arranged illegal marriages, as some big and important person had declared marriage illegal because they found that single men made better fighters. There was also something about secret love letters and prisons, but that was about as interesting as it got. On February 15, there used to be some old Roman holiday, which was actually quite cool. It involved dipping torn up bits of wolf in their own blood, then running around and painting every women you could find with said blood-stained wolf bit. The funny thing is, the women enjoyed this. From this I conclude that ancient Roman women were actually all goths, and thus liked that sort of thing. However, the Christian church, always keen to ruin other peoples fun, decided that the painting of women with wolf blood wasn't really all that Christian, so they decided to replace the Roman tradition with what we now know as valentines day. Well, that's the general gist of it anyway, and I may have combined several theories together because I like the sound of them, so I wouldn't be too surprised if the above is a fabricated load of waffle.

Now that's all well and good, but I still don't really understand what the modern valentines day is all about. The purchasing of cards with really cheesy messages on, that have been produced by some bloke in a back room of some factory who gets paid to write cheesy messages to put on greetings cards. Just because you can buy a card with a message that was written by a complete strangers isn't really much of an indication of your own true feelings doesn't really prove a whole lot in my opinion. I guess what it all boils down to is my dislike of the way that nice holidays are becoming increasingly over commercialised, such as Christmas, Easter, and all the other ones that I can't think of right now. Valentines day is going down the same route, pretty soon it will be meaningless and filled to the brim with cheap plastic stuff. Which is rather quite sad, as the concept of valentines day itself is quite a nice one. I have nothing against the concept, just the way businesses try to sell it to us. And, of course, there's no resentment in the fact that I'm currently single :P

Well I apologise for the length of that; I do have a nasty habbit of going on and on (and on and on) sometimes. If anyone has subtracted a case of chronic boredom as a result of reading this, and needs someting to ease their pain, then might I suggest clicking here for some Team Laser Explosion action. Lastly, I hope everyone has had a good day. I know I have, I had pie and waffles for dinner, which rocked mightily. Until next time, drive safely and remember that if you should come face to face with a rabid emu, then the best advice I can give is to run as fast as you can in the opposite direction, screaming as loudly as possible. Goodnight folks.

Lent

It's that time of year again, where people intentionally sacrifice something that they enjoy in order to prove that they are somehow better then everyone else. Or at least that's the case with me. Now usually I don't go in for the whole lent thing, as I would much rather watch everyone else suffer and still be able to enjoy my luxuries. This year is different however, as I have been dragged kicking and screaming (only, minus the actual kicking and screaming) into the whole ordeal. Why? Because its worth it to watch other people suffer. ]:-)

So what small luxury am I to go without for the next month? Chocolate? Crisps? Cheese? No, it has been decided that for the next month my life must be entirely devoid of coffee. For me, this is the equivalent of being asked to give up oxygen for lent. Actually, no for my caffeine is important than oxygen. But for some unknown reason, possibly indicating an latent case of masochism, I have willingly decided to give up coffee. For a whole month. I had been doing fine for the past couple of days, but today it would seem that the last of the caffeine has finally worked its way out of my system, and blood has started flowing through my veins again for the first time in months. As a result, I can hardly keep awake anymore, I've got a headache almost constantly, and it's becoming increasingly more and more difficult to concentrate on anything. I keep wanting a coffee, but I know I can't, not for a long time. Already I can foresee that the next month is going to be not nice, and haven't even been coffee- free for a week yet.

There is only one word which I genuinely feel can sum this up, and that is "arses".

Ch-ch-Changes

Just gonna have to be a different man,
Time may change me,
But I can't trace time.

New template, as I got bored of the last one. And this one looks a lot more shiney. Don't start thinking that just because there's a new template that there's going to be anything worthwile reading here. ¬_¬

Edit: Changed the template again. Got fed up of the last one being too big for my resolution (I'm still running in 800x600). Also, this one is on the whole more blue, which can only be a good thing. Perhaps one day when I'm really bored I'll have a crack at making my own template.

\o/

Today begins half-term, which means I have a week where I can do absoloutely bugger all. Although this is what I usually do, the difference is that now I can do it without any feelings of guilt.

Today I finished the last of the scholarship exams for Aberystwyth. If I'm really lucky then I'll get my course paid for me. Wooyay.

I have also (rather foolishly) decided to accept the challenge of giving up coffee for lent. This is not going to be good, but at least I haven't started hallucinating yet.

Caffiene Laced Beer \o/

Clicky.

I hate beer. Yet I feel that with the addition of caffeine it could be vastly improved. The again, with the addition of caffeine I feel that most things can be improved. Although there are some thigns that will never get better, no matter how much caffeine you pump into them; including such things as Michael Howard, Modern Music and magerine. (OMH they all start with "m", go me ^_^).

*Shudder*

Downloaded MSN Messenger 7 (beta) last night. And the only way to sum it up is: yurgh.

Firstly, they've tried to make it look nicer and more friendly. What has really happened is that they've added more crap to it. There are now even more of those "tabs" on the left hand side of the contact list, and although you can now change the order in which they appear, there is no longer an option to disable them. Who actually uses the tabs? They're annoying, pointless and just take up space. At the bottom of the contact list there is a search bar. Handy you may think, but it uses MSN search which couldn't find a needle in a haystack. I'd much rather stick with google. Again, this search bar cannot be removed, thus taking up more space.

The conversation windows are also different now. The text input box takes up half the window, which is just unnecesary imo, as I only ever need it to be 2-lines tall. Your display picture is now displayed at the same size as the person you're talking to, but it can be shrunk, or hidden like in previous versions. Next to the boxes for smilies and backgrounds you now get 3 others. 1 lets you send "winks", larger, flash-based emoticons that also have sound emebedded in them. Whilst these may look pretty, I certainly find them annoying. By default they play back automatically, something which I was quick to disable, mainly due to the fact that in previous BETA releases the "wink" code has been open to exploit. You can also send a "nudge", which plays a sound and shakes both the person your speaking to and you conversation window briefly. While this may have a practical use, say someone hasn't responded to you for a while, it can become quite annoying when it is used over and over. I'd go as far as to say this is the single most infuriating thing about this new version of messenger. Lastly, you are given an option to download "packs", which can contain things such as winks, emoticons or backgrounds. From what I gathered, they are not free. At the bottom of the window is a small line of text informing you that you can download these, essentially another advert in addition to the main one displayed at the bottom of the contact list.

There are some nice new features though. It certainly does look a lot prettier, and for newer users I guess it will be simpler to use. You can now choose to set your status before you login, for example you could set yourself so that you appear as offline everytime you log-on. Your current display picture is now shown at the top of the contact list, alongside your display name, and whenevver somone signs in it will show you theor display picture as well as their screen name. However, the good points are few and far between, and are vatsly outnumberd by the bad. Also, consider the fact that it currently consumes a whopping 30Mb of RAM; which just goes to show that the new features are just bloat-ware.

For my money, the best IM client is still Trillian 3.0. This does everything MSN 7 can do, except winks/nudges (which I had turned off anyway). Okay, it may not have the same smileys (it has better ones, and lots of them), and you can't have things such as backgrounds, but I hardly use them anyway. It also lets me connect to MSN/AIM/YIM/ICQ/JABBER/IRC all at once, which is incredibly useful.

And thus, this concludes exactly how bored I am right now.

...and if you look to your left you will see me

Decided to actually get the pictures of my camera and upload some, so I stuck one in my profile. Don't worry, you can always click the x in the corner of your screen to make the ugliness go away.

Today was mostly spent playing San Andreas for 6 hours solid, with a few breaks for eating. Yesterday was spent soing the same. I know that you really wanted to hear all about it.

I'm really bored so I'm going to go and stare at the wall for a bit, and then if I'm feeling really adventurous I might go spin around on my chair for a bit.

Something tells me I need to get out more.

*Yawn*

Back from protrest. Am tired. I wa son local news for like OMG the millionth time (it seems that the local news really will film anything, and quite often they do). Rather boring in total, just standing around shouting a lot and making up witty slogans. As a piece of political irony it seemed that someone had left a no right-turn sign dumped on the road at Whitehall, whather this was a subtle hint for our current shambles of a government I am not sure.

Journey was boring. 7 coaches in total. I sat and listened to music, stared out of the window and played with ballons for most of it. Same on the way back except by this time I had also figured out how to play about with the seat controls, so I did that. I know, sounds so exciting doesn't it. My favourite paret of the journey was about 3/4 of the way down the A21. That strech of road never fails to inspire me.

All in all a rather average day and a rather mediocre blog-post at best. I am very tired and it's the last day of winter-een-mas, so if I manage to pry myself away from the 'net then I may play San Andreas for a bit. I anticipate the highlights of this evening to involve brushing my teeth and going to bed. I tell you, my life is non-stop action.

Farewell, friends.

This is an update

Really. Really it is, honest. Actually I'll be frank (or Geroge, or Howard or whoever else you bloody well want me to be), it's not really that much of an update. But I figured that rather than leving this lying around with nothing in it, I may as well leave a blog lying around with tons of OMFG CRAP in it. So I shall be putting yet more midless drivel into this thing.

Tomorrow I am going to London, to do some protesting or marching or lunching or something like that. Quite likely all at the same time. I was going to take my camera to take pretty pictures that I could then post here. But I figured a) I cannot be arsed to carry a camera around and b) You all know what London bloody well looks like, and some generic picture of the london eye that anyone could have taken a picture of really isn't all that inspiring.

Untill tomorrow, my completely non-existent blog readers that don't exist in any way shape or form ¬_¬

Tsunami Donation Links

Saw these in a thread on the weebls forums, thought I may as well post them here in case anybody bothers reading.

http://www.dec.org.uk/ - UK charity coodinating donations
http://www.worldvision.org.uk/wayst...ion/default.asp - Worldvision UK donation form
http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html - American red cross

international sites:
http://www.oxfam.org/eng/programs_emer_asia.htm - Oxfam international gateway
http://www.wvi.org/wvi/donation/donation.htm - WorldVision International gateway
https://secure.ga3.org/01/helpasia?...p_asia_overview - Save the children international donation page
http://www.supportunicef.org/site/p...1LdP0G&b=276341 - UNICEF international donation page

Happy New Year!

It's new year's eve (at least it was about half an hour ago), and this is a picture of me biting the head of a rubber chicken. Note: I am completely sober. \o/