December 30, 2002  

new years clean-up 29 december 2002

Ah, Christmas. We've had an extremely quiet Christmas this year - much lying around hibernating. Christmas day itself went rather nicely. Slept in, had a large brunch, went for a long walk by the river, came home, got the roast on, and opened presents. Fun. We did a roast leg of lamb for Christmas dinner, which made a number of our English friends gasp at our iconoclasm. Having learnt our lesson from last year, we didn't get into the champagne until after we'd got the roast in the oven (some of last year's drunken carving-knife action still gives me the willies when I recall it). This year, we stuffed the lamb with sage, rosemary and pancetta. Highly recommended. And we've about finished the leftovers.

Charlotte (sister) and her partner Ben got me a rather cool gift - a Petzl head-mounted torch (the Micro). It's one of those odd Christmas gifts that looks absolutely ridiculous but is actually astoundingly useful. Until you've strapped a torch onto your head, you don't appreciate how convenient it is. For example, emptying the compost bins at night (down the bottom of the garden). Going into the attic. That sort of thing. OK, you look like a bit of a nong, but the functionality is highly recommended.

Unfortunately, our Christmas tree isn't looking much up to things at the mo. We bought it in early December, and it started shedding needles about a week after we got it home. We're currently tiptoeing around the living room, as any time you tread heavily around it there's a veritable shower of needles. That's going to be a fun one to clean up.

Overall, the theme of the last week has been sloth. I've rediscovered my standard body clock, as was in full effect during my student days. Yes, I'm back on the 2am-10am sleeping pattern, which I actually rather enjoy. Unfortunately, due to the reduced sunlight hours ATM, this means that we tend to only have about four or five hours of daylight (once you've got showered, fed, oiled, etc.). Still, I'm feeling pretty damn well-rested.

And I could not leave this without recounting a conversation by one of my coworkers on Christmas Eve. We'd been in the pub for about three hours at this point, and were all quite far gone. One of my coworkers' partner was going to give him a lift home, so he rang her on his mobile to request said lift. I can only blame the tenor of the previous conversations, plus a fair degree of alcohol-fuelled bravado/stupidity for the exchange that followed:

Coworker: Hello? Stop sweeping the house, bitch, and come and pick me up! I'm in the pub!
I said come and pick me up!
Hello?
Oh. Um - is [partner] there?
Ah. Sorry mate, think I've got the wrong number.

It's just the way that he went from full-on bluster to whoops within the space of ten seconds that I liked. I should point out that this coworker is actually a very nice bloke who would not normally address his partner as "bitch", but I think we'd just had a discourse about gangsta rap and it may have been preying on him.

Site rearrangement - we've created a central photos page, which acts as a central link to all our separate photo pages. Lots of shots of me falling off things or standing in front of them. Link in the left-hand navbar now points to all photos page (including our wedding photos).

December 25, 2002  

a short seasonal interlude 24 december 2002

I'd just like to take a brief moment here to wish everyone a merry Christmas, but especially to Cat and to Blair. Cat, because of the recent sad death of Marmite. She was a good cat, she had a good run, and I'm sure she died happy. Still, it's always a bugger when a much-loved pet dies, and I know it can take a while to get over. Best of luck, mate.

And to Blair, on account of highly annoying employment difficulties, a brief burst of Christmas spirit:

We three kings of Orient are
One on a tractor, one in a car
One on a scooter, tooting a hooter
Following yonder star
Ooooohhhh
Star of wonder, star of light
Star of beauty, she'll be right
Star of glory, that's the story
Following yonder star!

Fred Dagg

And yeah, I wish we had some bleedin' pohutakawa and all.

December 24, 2002  

nice and toasty 23 december 2002

So, that Lord of the Rings, eh? Nice. Congratulations to all who were involved in it, especially the four or five of my mates who worked on the production (can't be sure of the exact number - those credits don't half scroll past quickly, don't they?). Good job kids, you're all bastards and we're hideously jealous. I work with billing software. Sigh.

As to the movie itself: very impressive. That Gollum fecker must have been pretty light on the catering cart, though - skinny little fecker he is. I wasn't 100% sure about the ents, though on reflection I quite liked them. The changes made from the book were largely pretty worthwhile, and a lot of the setpiece scenes were excellent. I was slightly annoyed by the multiple dwarf jokes, but that's about it. On the whole: as with the first, well worth seeing. And again, as with the first, nothing I can say is likely to make people jump either way - you've either decided to see it or you've decided to avoid it, and the best of luck to yez.

We spent about an hour yesterday converting Heather's blog over to Blogger. It's always the little format tweaks that are a pain in the arse, isn't it? Anyway, it should now work all automatically and beautifully etc.

And I'd like to say a great big thank you to Mil Millington for his column on Christmas presents. Mainly because it's nice to know that other people than me have fallen into the "it's a useful present, and you said you needed one..." trap. Today's clue, kids: no matter how often your partner says "I really need a laundry basket", and no matter how cool the laundry basket in question is, don't buy them a laundry basket. My new homeopathic treatment regime means that the physical scars may heal eventually, but overall I'd recommend avoiding the experience entirely. I've learned my lesson, and now I make a point of only buying people presents that are extravagantly useless. Garden statuary, say. Neon signs. Poetry . Items that might come in handy around the place - duvet inners, bookshelves, power tools - I eschew. A hard lesson, but an important one.

Besides, the expression on someone's face when they unwrap what turns out to be a 2' sandstone sculpture of an elephant is priceless.

Fortunately (for them), those who are likely to be getting Christmas presents from me are mostly living a fair bit away. Far enough away that I have to post the presents. This means that my impish sense of humour is carefully steered away from items such 1kg glass paperweights, 20kg sculptures, tyre irons, etc, and towards slightly less annoying presents. I'm sure you'll all be glad to hear that I've decided against last year's threat to buy multiple copies of The History of House Music (though it is indeed stonking and an essential addition to any well-equipped bookshelf).

We've got a goldfish staying with us over the Christmas period. He's called Flash and he's a well personable little geezer. I'm not 100% sure if he's an oranda or a fantail, but he's pretty lively and he's got whacking great tail fins. It's actually really cheering having a goldfish around the place. He really seems to take an interest in what's happening around him. I'll occasionally find him staring intently at me, opening and closing his mouth in an intellectual way. It's nice to have an acolyte. And he makes short work of his fish food, let me tell you.

This hardcore ghetto gangsta image takes a lot of practice
I'm not black like Barry White, no I'm white like Frank Black is
So if man is five and the devil is six then that must make me seven
This honky's gone to heaven.

The Bloodhound Gang

Witty pack of buggers, the Bloodhound Gang. Sharp, yet infantile lyrics. Some top tunes.

December 17, 2002  

stranded in the light 16 december 2002

Survived the Christmas party, thank you nicely. We ended up leaving at around midnight - a disgustingly early time and obvious evidence of our incipient senility. Except that we went on to another party at a mate's place and kept drinking. I didn't even make a fool of myself at the company party, unless you count my dancing (which I don't). Result all around, really. You do feel slightly odd turning up at a standard drunken free-for-all wearing a dinner jacket, but since I was fairly blarnied at that point I think I managed to carry it off.

Doing his absolute best to strip all the joy and beauty from the Harry Potter novels, Jakob Nielsen has this little piece explaining how items in the Harry Potter world are models for next-generation technology.

It's funny how a song can put you in mind of someone. Not remind you - it's easy to hear a song that you used to listen to, say, when you were flatting with someone, and be reminded of them. Rather, to put you in mind of someone - hear a song and just think of someone for no particular reason. I realised the other day that the song Hot Room by Linda Lamb, which was released in 2001, put me in mind of an ex from many years ago. It's an odd sensation. Good tune though - rather reminiscent of Marianne Faithful, but don't let that put you off.

think i'm in love
  - probably just hungry.

Spiritualized

Quick kids, what distinguishes a sitcom from a soap opera? Answer: the sitcom never changes the status quo - no matter what happens during the episode, the situation at the end of the show is the same as the one at the start. Wouldn't want to upset that carefully designed humourous formula! Soap operas, on the other hand, exist solely in order to keep changing the status quo. Sitcoms are dependable and conservative; soap operas make sweeping changes on a regular basis.

As with all generalisations, the above is false. But it's an interesting analytical tool, eh?

For my sins, I started re-reading Lord of the Rings over the weekend. I couldn't help it - I just got so overexcited from watching the trailers for the Two Towers. Only a few more days, now.

Within the last three months, two of the pubs close to my work have been revamped. Both are owned by the same brewery chain (Greene King), both were fairly low-key local pubs. The sort of place where a lot of the patrons know each other, but there was enough foot traffic that you weren't looked at strangely if you weren't a regular. Comfortable, slightly down at heel, slightly dark, carpet a bit worn. And now they've both been refurbished, and they've both become hideous All Bar One clones. They've taken perfectly good local pubs and turned them into annoying yuppy bars. It puts my teeth on edge, it really does. I don't like paying three quid for a pint solely so I can sit on uncomfortable but tres chic furniture, in a brightly-lit room with lots of white walls. Give me the snug at the Fort St George any bloody day (well, during winter). Feh. I don't go into a pub to be seen by a mob of bleedin' style poseurs, I go there to have a pint with me mates.

December 14, 2002  

foolishness ho 13 december 2002

Office Christmas party tonight. Have vowed not to get as drunk as I did last year. Let's just say that I'm still getting hassled after last year's performance - I was OK right up until I decided to try and channel Robbie Williams. Better luck tonight, eh?

Fourth anniversary of arrival in the UK. I'm now officially allowed to remain here due to being married to Heather, as opposed to an amusing quirk of birth over which I had no control (Aberdonian grandparent). Yes, it's now four years since I had the following conversation with an immigration official at Heathrow:

Immigration Official: Do you have any means of support while you're in the UK?
Me: Er... I've got a credit card.
Immigration Official: How long do you intend to stay?
Me: Couple of years. [awkward pause] I'm planning to get a job.

And they still let me in. On the security of a New Zealand credit card, credit limit at the time NZ$1000 (about £300). That would last you about three days in London. If you were lucky. Ah, it all seems so long ago now.

December 12, 2002  

sanitised for your protection 11 december 2002

The changing face of aspiration. It's no longer enough to merely want to do something, you've got to aspire to it. Aspiring is the new black. Cosmo, Cleo and More are now "aspirational magazines". We have a motivational poster on the office wall that exhorts us to "Aspire to always improving performance." And the other morning, I heard one of the government's drug czars on the radio, saying that his office was "no longer aspiring to cut the number of hard drug users by 50% by 2008" as this was an unrealistic target. Aspiration is now. Aspire ho. Not aspiring? You'll never get ahead.

This feeds nicely into the aspirational/vicarious dichotomy. So much of our media is dedicated to providing us images of beautiful things: beautiful food, beautiful houses, beautiful people, beautiful lifestyles. But are we really aspiring to those things? Do we really think that we can cook like that, look like that, live like that?

Really? Or are we just living vicariously, watching other people have the beauty that we want for ourselves and contenting ourselves with the thought that, well, there are definitely some people who live like that, and you never know, one day it might be us. We end up paying for other people to live the lives we want, in the hope that this makes it more likely that we can join in. An aspiration should be something that you've got chance of achieving. Instead, the sections of our media that claim to be dealing with this are presenting us with an increasingly unattainable vision of how we should be living. You aren't intended to get all psyched up and try and get that lifestyle for yourself, you're just intended to sit and stare, appreciating the wonderful job being done of living the good life for you.

TV cooking programs are supposedly showing you how to cook a set of particular dishes. Of course, the recipes pass off the screen too quickly to actually use - if you want the recipe, you buy the book. No, the TV show is just there to provide you with a series of loving pictorials of food. Lying spread out on a plate, glistening slightly, oozing a bit of juice. Lovely.

I guess I'm just getting slightly jaded at the increasing blurring of lines between cooking programs and pornography.

Or holiday programs, showing you a vision of life in the sun that your drunken weekend in Mallorca will in no way resemble.

Or lifestyle magazines, showcasing the shiny gadgets that you can't afford, lovingly fetishising the latest foibles of the urban beautiful people.

It's the language of unreal sex and desire. Food porn, travel porn, lifestyle porn, porn porn. It's everywhere. Airbrushed and thrust, taut and glistening, into your face. Ad agencies spritz the product with water to get that lovely shimmer that convinces you that their gel is fresher. Does it work? Who knows. People will pay to witness an unreal experience - when did the fact that most positions used in a pornographic movie are terribly uncomfortable ever affect sales?

It's a nice simple formula: sometimes, you can sell people just the experience of wanting something.

Not that any of this is new. It's always been a feature of the media, from movie star magazines in the '30s, to stories about the royals in the Illustrated London News in the 1800s. Still.

I've got to start getting to bed earlier: I'm not normally this grumpy.

A moment of quiet contemplation. These are the songs that have made me grin like a loon each time I've heard 'em this year:

• Felix da Housecat (feat Ms Kittin) - Harlot
• FC Kahuna - Glitterball
• Fischerspooner - Emerge
• Amorphous Androgynous - her tongue is like a jellyfish
• Blackalicious feat Dilated Peoples - Passion

And on a similar note, I'd like to give a big recommendation to the Soulwax 2 many djs project [Amazon]. Very, very nice stuff. A classic madman DJ mix album. Anyone who can mix Basement Jaxx over Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Dolly Parton over Royskopp, Salt n Pepa over The Stooges, and make it work - lovely. Extra bonus marks for throwing in The Velvet Underground, Peaches, The Breeders, New Order - everything the DJs like, from the 70s to last week. Lovely. The stated idea was a kind of Grandmaster Flash cut-up session in the great Boom Selection style, and it worked pretty damn well. One of the rockingest CDs I've heard for quite a while. I loaned it to the token Indie pop/IDM geek around the office and he'd bought a copy within 22 hours. Not bleedingly boom selection - a lot of this is just good tunes well mixed, rather, and what bootlegging there is is done with an ear for what works (rather than the quite common tactic of just putting glaringly odd things together to see what happens). Not bad.

So one of my workmates is doing a sponsored swim for the Samaritans. Heather fancies a go as well, so I ring the number listed on the sponsorship form as "Ring this number for more forms".

Samaritan [very calming voice]: Samaritans, how can I help you?
Me: Hi, I'm after a sponsorship form for this fundraising swim for the Samaritans in January.
Samaritan: ...I'm not sure I can help you with that.
Me: Oh, right - this is the number on the form for the Friends of the Samaritans, it's listed as what you ring to get additional forms.
Samaritan: Hang on... I'll ask my colleague. [Pause, rustling papers] ...and you're feeling OK yourself, then?
Me: Yup, box of fluffies.
Samaritan: Ah, here's the form - I'll post one out.

I just liked the reflexive way that he made sure that I wasn't suicidal or anything. Nice one.

December 10, 2002  

none of them received a hero's welcome 9 december 2002

So our office lost 19 people on Friday, as mentioned in my last (rather stressed) entry. Including not only a couple of friends, but also the only other person working on several of my projects. Yes, we're going for the full-on redundancy experience: those left behind get to do two people's work. Lovely.

And someone even left a box of Celebrations in the office kitchen. Little tactless, I thought.

Went to see The Quiet American last night. Michael Caine is definitely in contention for an Oscar, I'd say. Excellent film. Crisp performances, excellent direction, good story. Can't comment on its worth as an adapatation, but as a film per se I'd recommend it. Both Caine and Brendan Fraser are well worth the price of admission. Apparantly Miramax sat on this one for the better part of 18 months, due to the film's critical stance of US foreign policy (and suggestion that the US sponsored terrorism in Vietnam in the 50s). Well worth seeing.

Bugger me, there's a page on Googlism for me.

Heather found a rather good article about SUVs off Arts & Letters Daily the other day.

December 07, 2002  

you didn't have blenders 6 december 2002

So it's time for that great IT company tradition: the pre-Christmas round of layoffs. Due to rather shonky market conditions, my company is losing about 10% of its global workforce. Lovely. Credit where it's due: they announced the redundancies yesterday, and people are being told today if they're going. Sometime today. And we don't know when. Great.

[Later] Well, I'm still employed, though some of my friends aren't. Nasty all around.

December 04, 2002  

in a brown envelope 3 december 2002

It's funny the things that make you happy.

We bought an oven on Sunday. That sounds slightly more involved than it really is - we bought a combination microwave/convection oven (with a grill!). Our life seems to include a large amount of time during which we do without common amenities (television, car, oven, duvet...) that most people take for granted, without apparant ill effect. Then we get the item in question and realise that it's actually great to have one. We slept under army blankets for six months after moving into our house, because we were a bit stony and it was summer. Then we got a duvet and life was suddenly a lot better. We lived without a TV for most of my student career - we read books, had intelligent conversations, and spent a lot of time drunk, actually. Then we got a TV and discovered that there's actually some quite good stuff on out there - and the wide world of video is a good thing. The exception to this is the car, which we survived so well without that when we actually got one we never used it and ended up spending huge amounts of cash for something that we used once a week to buy groceries. Six months later we gave it a Viking funeral.

So now we've got a real oven. We bought it Sunday afternoon; Sunday evening, we cooked a beef roast, because we're such conformist traditionalists. And my word, it's good. It's the usual revelation in such cases: my word but it's actually rather nice to have one of these. I can now, for instance, cook lasagna again. Stews. A little home baking. Who knows where the evening may lead?

So: much hearty winter food is in the offing.

And we'll need it. The weather's been utterly shite for the last fortnight. Swingeing cold, bloody wet and with bursts of intermittant mist. The mist's the real bugger: it makes cycling extremely dangerous, as it collects on your glasses and renders them opaque. When it's raining the drops of water pool together and run down your glasses, making it a bit harder to see. When it's misty, the water just speckles your glasses and obstinately refuses to run down, cutting your vision by about 10m. It's a real problem.

Feh. I'm in a foul mood today due to a mild cold. And a few other things, but a mild cold is all I'll cop to.

After my recent comments about Amorphous Androgynous/FSOL's the isness, I was interested to learn that one of the tracks has been used in an Orange (mobile phone network) ad here in the UK. Chris had a listen to the album and then claimed to like "that one off the phone ad", I googled for it, and I discovered that go tell it to the trees egghead was indeed used to further Orange's global network domination. Odd stuff.

Due to various fuck-ups from Barclays, my direct debit to our joint account didn't go out this month. They were quite apologetic when I pointed it out, but it ended up meaning that I had to carry £800 in cash for about 400m down the street. It's only in your hands for five minutes, but bugger me if it doesn't feel wierd wandering down the street with that much cash ($2500 NZD) in your pocket. Still, the mortgage isn't going to bounce, so that's the main thing.

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