Mr Brightside

If you don't have this song by The Killers, get it. Now.



The morbid theme continues as I'm sad to say that Ricky Byrne lost his life in a car crash on his way home from work 2 days ago. His funeral will be held on Tuesday, if anyone wants to go. Deepest sympathies from all the Chessington ppl to his family.



Found a job at GE Capital as Collections Associate. It's calling up people who have arrears on their store cards. Clients include Burton and Topshop. The funny thing is that my Burton account was in arrears 2 months ago and I got a call from GE. How the tables turn. So far I have completed 16 hours, and the pay is £6.55 an hour, so not doing too badly. Unfortunately there is a 9am-4.30pm shift tomorrow. Worse luck for me, although Dan's mate is having a birthday Otley Run starting 3pm.



Apologies for not posting more frequently but life has been hectic. I have so many varying projects on my plate right now, so it's not always easy to find some time to update you all with the irrelevant minutiae of my life. Of course, there's the OAP home, which I have sacrificed for the 2 training weeks at GE since the hours clash, and then there's the music for my housemates Dan (video game) and Ben, (45-min documentary) the latter of whom asked me at 11.30 last night to score the 'Fun House' theme (think back to when you were 9 or 10) with a "Blackpool seaside edge." (verbatim)



Am also writing a 2-3 min piece for the 22-strong Leeds Uni Liturgical Choir, due Jan 2005. It's about halfway complete at the moment and is loosely based on Psalm 75.



Had two tutorials yesterday, one for Dissertation and one for Major Comp. Horribly, my dissertation tutor is also my Herrmann tutor. He is none other than the Head of School. However he seems quite impressed with my work, which is good, and positively amazed that I thought one of the songs on the Mulholland Drive OST was based on an old Roy Orbison song, which I could prove to him. He's quite involved in the maths side of music, so was quite easy to talk to him about inferential stats for my questionnaire. Am aware I'm writing in fuckwit Bridget-Jones stylee speak once more.



Anyway I better go write some more of my rock opera. I have about 6 1/2 mins out of 30-40 right now.

mirth

Ben Turner: "Sorry, I was just thinking about nuns' boobs."

--

Andrew: "I often take people from behind... which is a mistake."

--

Michael: "How do you know what piss tastes like?"

Ashley: "Because I've tried other peoples'."

--

Andrew "I'm going to have such fun on the toilet tomorrow!"

--



These excellent mirth-inducing quotes, and more besides, can be found by going here. It's the Gilbert & Sullivan society of KCL, where a guy I knew from my old school is currently absorbed with the intricacies of War Studies.

a-Muse-ing

A little grouchy today as I have been up since 9am obtaining tickets to see Muse at Earl's Court in December for Bob and I. Alternating between the phone and the internet, I eventually succeeded in loading the Gigs and Tours landing page and getting 2 tickets online for £30 each. Slightly on the pricey side but worth it - their last gig of the year. Tickets sold out for this date in 15 minutes flat. Good job by me :)

Also eagerly anticipating the F1 tomorrow. But I will say no more for fear of jinxing it. Anticipate a full lowdown tomorrow. Until then.

House party tonight!

final whistle

Urrrrrrgh. This word neatly sums up my mental state, having gotten in from Creation at 2 and hit the sack at 2.30, then having my alarm needlessly wake me up at 7.30 when it's orchestration today, not composition. Meaning I got up a little too early. Urrrrrgh. We had a choice of 9.30-10.15 or 10.15-11 today. I managed to get to the bus stop at 9.10 but the sodding bus didn't come till 9.30. So I surreptitiously went to the later class, on Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, forfeiting the earlier one. (on Takemitsu's Litany) Was a really good lecture, albeit a short one, on expressive use of registers and suchlike.



Creation was ... interesting. It was packed to bursting point, especially in the VIP room, and there wasn't really much room to do anything in Act 1. So we (me and Bob) wandered around for a bit, dissociating ourselves from the badminton club guys, and found a slightly more veritable proposition in Act 2; indie, rock, metal. I had my Muse shirt on, and of course the best thing was when they played Plug In Baby; some girl in a white top looked at me and smiled, and to be sure I would've gone over and followed up if I didn't already have plans with Fi. But I didn't, so I left it. About 12.30 the 'indie' room turned into some kind of crap funk parody of James Brown, which was truly dreadful. I think it would be less painful to have my testicles pierced. So we ventured back up to the 'foam party', which wasn't a party at all, but a huge jet squirting out bubble bath stuffs in the main Act 1 area. The jet had a small radius as well, so hardly anyone got bubbles. Slightly disappointing. Between 12.45-1.45ish, we just alternated between the two rooms. Managed to blag some cab home with another guy to make the fare cheaper.



On the way past Halo, Bob asked if I wanted to check it out sometime with him. For those not in the know, Halo is a recently opened club in a church. I might be wrong, but I think that's really blasphemous/sacrilegious. After all, do you want to be the guy who can boast: "Oh yer guv, I pulled this fox in a church"? You might as well talk about doing it doggy-doggy in the pews or vestibules. It should be closed and soon!

the Creation

Lectures were ok, particularly Herrmann. Managed to ask out a girl in Aesthetics as well - am seeing her Friday night. Result. Later on tonight is, of course, the badminton social. My hopes are set at a suitable level after the last social, (although there should be more ppl at this one) particularly since Creation is far too mainstream for my liking. It is, in effect, a place where you go clubbing if you don't know anywhere else. But it might be ... passable. I'd better go make some dinner, just finished my work for the night :)



Work progress:

Composition: Rock opera: 2/14 songs (5 mins/30 mins)

Herrmann: 1000/4000 words

Dissertation: 0/6000 words

Analysis: Stupid little table haven't even started yet

it's not the grandeur of your weathervane, but the size of your cock

Bored. 520 essay words has now become 940. This would cheer me up a little, except my tutor for this essay is also the same as my tutor for my dissertation. In short, I have to find 3,000 words in 9 days. Arse. Had a beautiful KFC last night with my winnings from the Portsmouth v Spurs match. Thoroughly boring piece of football, I might add, but who cares when you win some money.



I feel depressed today, and I don't know why. Perhaps it is because I overslept a little and have gone about today in a zombie-like state, performing such irregular feats as:



- Leaving the front door open without even knowing it

- Falling asleep in my only class today

- Brushing my teeth twice

- Attempting to make coffee with instant noodles



I feel these will validate my point somewhat.

OAPs

Demand has possessed me to paste an old post here, as apparently the link to March's page is down (I can't find anything wrong with March, though...)

--------

Evening: OAP home. Arrived 30 mins late due to taking someone to the train station. Not bothered about it, because I wasn't in the mood to play particularly well or come over as particularly artiste or inspiring. In fact today I don't give a flying fuck if the pensioners hated me playing. I'm just pissed at everything. The best thing about the OAP home tonight was tricking a pensioner into thinking it was 10.30pm when it was 7.30. She looked really worried, muttered something like, "oh dear, I'm up far too late, my bowel movements are going to be unsynchronised now" before rushing off ... presumably to go to sleep. It's sad. I never want to be an OAP in Britain, where the highlight of my day is either

1. counting the number of bowel movements I make in any given week,
2. feeling the adrenaline rush as you get a bigger trolley than normal while at Safeway's, or
3. realising the bus driver overchanged you and you didn't tell him

In fact just on the subject of buses OAPs are the biggest hypocrites ever. They're forever moaning about how the current generation has no respect for authority, no morals, blah blah etc., but hmmm??? I wonder who it is that's always stood up there at the front of the bus perched on his/her zimmer frame chatting away to the driver like a monkey on Prozac. Fuck's sake....

shuttling along

Badminton was all right. Started out with a 0-15 drubbing, then won 15-10, 17-15, before losing 8-15. Was all right, not brilliant - I started out quite well then lost it in the last half of the 3 hrs when I got tired. Think I was also gripping the racket too hard as I've done a chunk of my right thumb in. Pain.



Succeeded on Friday in getting 3 tickets for Joss Stone, who's playing at LUU on 7th Nov. Should be quite good. Lost £15 on fucking football bets yesterday cos Arsenal won 3-1 (not 2-0, 4-0, or 4-1) and Man City won 1-0 (not 1-1, 2-0, 2-1) so coupled with a new tank of fuel for the car and some new clothes, I'm rather poor at the moment. Darr.



Badminton ppl: Social on Weds 20th, 8pm - Library + Creation (free)

progress

Gone from 320 words of my essay to 520. It has to be 4,000. Slowly but surely... I will get there. That's about all I have achieved today, but it's better than nothing.



Also have some money on Man City v Chelsea and Arsenal v Villa for later.

natural high

Just woke up. Went out with Bob and Vicki last night to New Inn, then Majestyk later, as Vicki works there and put us on VIP for free. A huge DMX track had been installed in the centre of the dance floor, which was interesting ... good thing there were only a few hundred ppl there. Left Majestyk about 1.30 since Bob was getting increasingly tired and Vicki had gone off somewhere with some ppl from work. It was a cool dry night, so we thought we'd walk up City Square, past Creation, Leeds Met, Halo, and Parkinson Steps and onward toward Headingley.



We were almost approaching Bourbon/Creation (carrying a new addition to the traffic cone family, I might add) when we saw a girl, crouching in a shop window, crying her eyes out. Since nobody else bothered to stop and help, I sat down next to her and asked what the matter was. She said that she had been in Creation when some Pakistani bloke had knocked her drink out her hand, so she asked him to buy her another, so he hit her, then she hit him back - but the bouncer only saw her hitting him, so he dragged her roughly by the hair outside, and she couldn't even let her friends know what had happened, and she didn't know where she was. Then she just sank her head into my chest and completely lost it for a good half minute. We offered to walk her home since she was clearly scared and alone, and she agreed. Managed to make a few traffic cone jokes on the way to take her mind off it, and luckily, as fate would have it, on the walk back to her place, we happened upon a group of guys - one of whom, it transpired, was one of her flatmates. He seemed suspicious of us at first but she told him everything, at which point his expression changed completely, and they all shook hands with us.



Caught a cab not long after since we actually couldn't be bothered to walk all the way into the village - got in at 2.30, hit the sack at 3.

these are the days

In the midst of preparing a presentation, simultaneously writing two essays, (4,000 and 6,000 words) remembering I had a tutorial with the Head of School, and reading my butt off, I managed to fit in time to chill out and watch some trashy TV with Dan. The sort of TV in which there only ever appear to be 3 types of adverts - the insurance kind, the compensation kind, and the "we-can-give-you-a-six-pack-in-three-weeks" kind.



Today's rant, then, is about compensation culture, a term so widely used that you'd think it would connote disparagement about the state of today's society. These adverts, with their 'no win no fee' promises, lure people into thinking, "Hm, John Smith tripped over and got 5 grand out of it, I wonder if I could try the same thing." The result is a dangerous cocktail of all kinds of people trying to do anything to make a quick buck, whilst simultaneously making "more dangerous" the most innocuous of pastimes. (cycling in the countryside, children playing with conkers) This is not, I would imagine, modern living, in the truest sense. It is living dictated by an appallingly quasi-totalitarian Government, which strangles the various freedoms of the public with ridiculous levels of bureaucracy. It is fallacious to argue that we are progressing as a race because we are outlawing innocent pursuits that have preoccupied the young and old alike for centuries. So we have a paradoxical situation in which we are informed by nanny-state Labour government that our children should "get more exercise", but with all the usual political fluff attached. Healthy, safe, responsible, mature, exercise. You can almost hear the Health Department slipping on their Pied Piper clothes. Repeat after me. Dangerous activities such as conker fights are bad for your health. The alternative is, of course, the couch-potato lifestyle which so many children adopt and turn into obese illiterate next-generation brats.



Nobody ever wins in Britain anymore.

ironies

Silence is deafening
Love hurts
The richer you are the poorer you are
The poorer you are the richer you are
Quiet is the new loud
Unfashionable is fashionable
Voluntary is obligatory
Total knowledge eludes all
Counsellors very often need counselling
Torture may be pleasurable
To be blind is to see
Rock superstars often cannot write good music
Fast food tastes good
If you really love someone, you'll set them free

quitter

Can't be fucked to go out. Just been down the pub and far too tired. Not to mention 9am start tomorrow.

SATB is BATS re-arranged.

This is the text that I am writing music to for my contribution towards the Liturgical Choir. Besides being valuable experience it's also something I could put on my CV, not to mention my other projects, all of which are now listed on my newly-launched (hopefully more professional-looking) website. The choir has slightly more female voices than male, hence SSAATB. Thankfully the requirement is that it only has to be 2-3 mins long. Thinking about going out tonight somewhere but I've just had a huge meal. Likelihood of getting wasted is getting slimmer, whereas the opposite is happening to my waistline.



Leeds Music Ppl: Anyone know where I can get a good recording of Brahms' Fourth Symphony? Pls drop me an email...

psalm 75

This is the text I'm setting music to for the Liturgical Choir.



1 To thee, O God, do we give thanks,

we do give thanks to thee;

Because thy wondrous works declare

thy great name near to be.



2 I purpose, when I shall receive

the congregation,

That I shall judgment uprightly

render to ev'ry one.



3 Dissolved is the land, with all

that in the same do dwell;

But I the pillars thereof do

bear up, and stablish well.



4 I to the foolish people said,

Do not deal foolishly;

And unto those that wicked are,

Lift not your horn on high.



5 Lift not your horn on high, nor speak

6 with stubborn neck. But know,

That not from east, nor west, nor south,

promotion doth flow.



7 But God is judge; he puts down one,

and sets another up.

8 For in the hand of God most high

of red wine is a cup:



'Tis full of mixture, he pours forth,

and makes the wicked all

Wring out the bitter dregs thereof;

yea, and they drink them shall.



9 But I for ever will declare,

I Jacob's God will praise.

10 All horns of lewd men I'll cut off;

but just men's horns will raise.



People really should give the Bible another chance.

a decent man dies and everyone wants a piece

Our once-proud nation really has come to something when people just cannot leave the poor Bigley family alone. I feel compelled to speak on the matter since I want to find out why people find it necessary to 'indulge' in one family's ultimate nightmare. The psychoanalysts had it right when they said that it's the indeterminacy, the not knowing, of what was happening to a captured loved one, that really screws you up. But the outcome is now clear for all to see, and people just can't leave the family alone to grieve privately.What really makes me bloody angry is people are always quick to jump to rash conclusions instead of deploying some sense of rationality in their thought processes. For instance:

Ken Bigley is dead. Therefore I must watch the video of him being beheaded and post messages of sympathy on forums around the world because that is what I aspire to - others seeing me as a genuine caring individual. If I do this then I feel I will make the world a better place. By sticking my nose into matters that don't concern me I am simultaneously satisfying my own curiosity and absolving my soul from guilt. Never mind the fact that his family probably want to be left well enough alone. Never mind the fact I'm sticking my nose in matters that don't fucking concern me. I'll just do what I want along with the rest of the trend-followers because I believe it's right to show grief in a proper way.

This is a mawkish, irrational, pathetic, (in the original sense of the word) fundamentally flawed argument in at least 6 places, and I don't have the energy to expend in order to list them here - you can probably see them for yourself.

If you care to cast your memory back, the exact same thing happened with the Soham murders of the two young girls. A horrific case, to be sure, but does it justify some families making a day trip to Soham in order to express their own flawed sympathies? What I think we are seeing, in sociological and anthropological terms, is a cultivating sense of fashionable grief, if you may excuse such an initially seemingly idiotic phrase. Consider: a case of national significance appears in the media. (which controls national thought anyway) The usual human emotive reaction, a primal one, is to sympathise internally. But what this national extrinsical outpouring of emotion illustrates is that in much the same way as it has become fashionable to go on pub crawls and fuck your liver over by the time you're 30, it has also become fashionable to jump on the National Bandwagon (Trademark) whenever anything of significant national interest occurs. In all honesty, I think 80% of the people expressing an opinion of the Soham murders didn't actually care a shit for the feelings of the murdered girls, their families, or anyone's feelings. They just did it to make themselves feel good and to try to project themselves further up society's own extremely-fucked-up hierarchy. And that is why fashionable grief is here to stay.

it's better in the matinee

Productive meeting with the composition group on Thurs morning. (well, one of them at least!) Only by good fortune did we bump into another of the girls in the group. Turns out we are worrying far too prematurely about the Stockhausen presentation as the tutorial was supposed to focus on the Webern orchestrations. The tutor said it would be ok for me to do a big-size rock opera and have it count as 2 small pieces. If I do about another 9-10 mins of film music then that's all my composition done for the year ... joy. He was attempting to impress upon me the importance of starting the opera with a libretto and making use of the father/daughter interplay which Verdi does so well. Not quite sure what he's going on about since that wasn't my scenario anyway. Sounds illegal at any rate.



Found out that one of the girls, Gemma, comes from down south too, and in fact lives in Surbiton, right next door (almost) to Kingston where I went to grammar school! What a small world.



Pleased to see from the Q awards on TV that Muse picked up the gong for Best Live Act, and so they should. They are brilliant :)



Will now try to sleep for a couple of hours before the Suzuka GP qualifying at 1am, followed by the race at 6.30am. They have had to postpone qualifying since Typhoon 22 wreaked havoc across Suzuka on Friday/Saturday. Quite difficult to keep track (no pun) of things since Japan is 8 hrs ahead. Money on Button, Sato, and Raikkonen. Fingers: crossed. Prediction: rain, zzz..... Outcome: zzz....

a serving of badminton

Exhausted after badminton earlier. It was great, a really good workout which I completely needed after the long summer break - I think the last time I played was in late July with my old man! Well, around the time of the entry 'Ronnie Scott's and Shuttlecocks', at any rate. Enthused that I can still seemingly smash hard and win points. Good stuff.



Bob and I hit The Eldon to watch Liverpool v Chelsea, but it was packed, so we went 3 doors down to The Pack Horse. A cheap roast lunch and a beer later, we were all set. Sadly I lost £20 on Man Utd v Middlesborough, but what are you gonna do.



I have to meet a few other ppl in my tutorial group for Major Comp. to discuss the content of our presentation, which has been decided for us by Mic - it's some piece called Kreuzspiel by Stockhausen. Sounds hardcore. Progress on the rock opera is slow primarily because I am attempting to race through this book in time to return it on the 5th. At present I am now on page 105. Or I could just flip it the middle finger and re-borrow it at a later date.



Feel unbelievably tired - not sure whether the badminton has knackered me or whether it's cos I didn't get up till 11. Therefore, am unsure if continuing to read the book will be worth it as I may gloss over the material. Just ate another largish meal - pasta (boiled to fluffiness!) & sauce - so I am well and truly feeling in a sleepy mood. (Or maybe it was swigging that 58p cider that did it ... )



Leeds music ppl: If anyone is reading this who knows how to download the Analysis prep (Beethoven's 5th, all mvmts.) from the Naxos website could u email me and let me know? Thanks



Nobody on the run, nobody on the beach. The sun goes down alone.

music in literature and contemporary poetry

Manically reading a set work today as I have to return it on the 5th, since someone else has placed a hold on it. The book is 480 pages long and I have presently advanced just 65. So I have 415 pages left to read in 3 days, or 128 a day, or 10 an hour every hour I'm awake. I suppose I could always re-borrow it, as it were, but if there's 40 ppl in the class and all of them want to read it, that's 40 one-week loans ... uh-oh.



Having upgraded my credit card, I am amusingly credit-card less, since the bank have suspended my old card, and the new one hasn't yet arrived. (was posted on the 28th) Am looking forward to the extremely low interest rate of 9.9% afforded to me, exactly half my previous card. Only minor niggle is 0.25% cashback instead of 0.5%, but I don't care.



This is a poem by Robert Pinsky called Ginza Samba.



A monosyllabic European called Sax

Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted

Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating

Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone

Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting

Infinitely upward through an upturned

Swollen golden bell rimmed

Like a gloxinia flowering

In Sax's Belgian imagination



And in the unfathomable matrix

Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven

Humming into the cells of the body

Or cupped in the resonating grail

Of memory changed and exchanged

As in the trading of brasses,

Pearls and ivory, calicos and slaves,

Laborers and girls, two



Cousins in a royal family

Of Niger known as the Birds or Hawks.

In Christendom one cousin's child

Becomes a "favorite negro" ennobled

By decree of the Czar and founds

A great family, a line of generals,

Dandies and courtiers including the poet

Pushkin, killed in a duel concerning

His wife's honor, while the other cousin sails



In the belly of a slaveship to the port

Of Baltimore where she is raped

And dies in childbirth, but the infant

Will marry a Seminole and in the next

Chorus of time their child fathers

A great Hawk or Bird, with many followers

Among them this great-grandchild of the Jewish

Manager of a Pushkin estate, blowing



His American breath out into the wiggly

Tune uncurling its triplets and sixteenths--the Ginza

Samba of breath and brass, the reed

Vibrating as a valve, the aether, the unimaginable

Wires and circuits of an ingenious box

Here in my room in this house built

A hundred years ago while I was elsewhere:



It is like falling in love, the atavistic

Imperative of some one

Voice or face--the skill, the copper filament,

The golden bellful of notes twirling through

Their invisible element from

Rio to Tokyo and back again gathering

Speed in the variations as they tunnel

The twin haunted labyrinths of stirrup

And anvil echoing here in the hearkening

Instrument of my skull.

hair today, gone tomorrow

Need a haircut as I am in considerable danger of transforming into a Yeti. I think the last time I had one was around my birthday! I made Ben sick yesterday by showing him a piece of A4, on which was three short pieces for cello and piano by Webern. Short is an understatement. The shortest one is 9 bars long! My task is to arrange the 3 short pieces for solo cello and 7 or 8 others in a contemporary ensemble. And this is the truly sickening bit - it's worth 6.7 credits. (1/6 of my major, 40 creds.)



Who cares any more? Who restrains?

You know that I don't love you, but I never did,

I don't want you, and I never will.

Cockpit? Crappit!

Forgot, in all the excitement of the first days back here, to let you know how Tues night went. Two words: it sucked. It was much busier than normal, which we can attribute to naive Freshers trying out new clubs and so forth, but there was no excuse for the pants selection of music. Where was AFI, NFG, RBF, Less Than Jake, Av Lav, Lit, The Atari's, and others?! Nowhere to be seen. Instead the DJs appeared to be content with maximising ticket sales by playing stuff they thought everyone would like, at the risk of alienating their usual crowd. Stuff like Blur and Pulp, singing about how everyone is common and the same. Even the metal room seemed to have gone commercialised (Korn, Limp B.) instead of playing their usual Rancid, NOFX, Finch, etc. The only plus of the night was the usual cheap entry fee and cheap drinks. Something to nullify the tedium and aural pain with.



Comedy was provided earlier when we went to Drydock about 9. Being "£1 a pint" night there was of course a massive queue outside, (maybe 40-50 ppl?) so we tried to steal a march on them by going around the back and climbing up there. Of course, one of the staff drying glasses saw us, who in turn alerted a bouncer, who ordered me and Dan down. Bob managed to climb over before the bouncer caught him, but not before losing one of his shoes in a seemingly-impossible-to-retrieve location. Bob was thrown out about half an hour later when he ordered something at the bar and asked the bar girl if she could get his shoe. What a wally ;)

wired

Got a parking ticket today as I woke up late, so rushed to lectures in the car, parking with my front wheels on the diagonal stripes at a pedestrian crossing. At least it's only £30 - tickets back home are £40. Small consolation. The bastards.



Lecture was very interesting, on the subject of Bernard Herrmann and his early work in radio and melodrams. Everyone says how Herrmann's main influences are the 20th century English traditionalists (Vaughan Williams, Walton, Delius) but I think there's a bit of Wagner and Ravel in there too, judging by the sequences and half diminished chords chucked in for good measure...



Badminton social later. Think I will be indulging in whisky shots for my cold, somehow.

Muse :- Unintended

You could be my unintended choice to live my life extended,

You could be the one I'll always love.

You could be the one who listens to my deepest inquisitions,

You could be the one I'll always love.



I'll be there as soon as I can,

But I'm busy mending broken

Pieces of the life I had before.



First there was the one who challenged

All my dreams and all my balance,

She could never be as good as you,

You could be my unintended choice to live my life extended,

You should be the one I'll always love.



I'll be there as soon as I can,

But I'm busy mending broken

Pieces of the life I had before.



I'll be there as soon as I can,

But I'm busy mending broken

Pieces of the life I had before,

Before you.

self-arousal in the cold

Coming down with a cold I think - stupid Northern weather. Attempts to find a job have been in vain as vacancies are mostly full time and require hours on all weekdays. O2 said to call back towards the end of the week though, so fingers crossed. I won't have the Net in my room for another 2-3 days either since the 54Mbps USB2 network adapter I bought online is out of stock :( But it will be worth it, oh yes. Make no mistake.



Rushed around this morning like a blue-arsed fly since my alarm didn't bother going off, which meant I aroused myself (in the non-masturbatory sense) at 9.20am for a 9.30 meeting. Unsurprisingly, I was late.



Amusing incident the other day when I was cooking spaghetti bolognese and couldn't open a tin of plum peeled tomatoes with the aid of the tin opener. So I handed both to Bob, who couldn't do it either. Eventually I more or less tore the tin to shreds in my desperation. I think either a new tin opener is called for, or some tin-opening skills taught to me. The other thing about living up North is that the water takes longer than a sloth to scratch its arse to heat up. Never mind.



Another recent plus is that I won £1 (yes, £1!!) on the Shanghai GP. Bob bet £20 and only got £11 back, so he was £9 down. But he's obviously a bit of a gambler as he told me to put his "winnings" back on Everton beating Portsmouth at 10-3. The git won almost £50. Since I can only refund winnings onto my credit card I can't actually give him any cash. This means I'm spectacularly short on cash at the moment.



Greatly looking forward to tomorrow - Drydock and first Cockpit of the year! :)

endgames

Stupid Barrichello and Ferrari.

betting on the Chinese F1 GP makes my wallet go Chink

The GP starts 07:00 Sun. (programme starts 06:00) I put £2.50 e/w on Montoya (25-1) (a bad choice in hindsight as he's qualified in 14th) and £5 e/w on Button (6-1) which is reasonable since he will start in 3rd place.

Upset of the day: Michael Schumacher spinning off in qualifying and starting EIGHTEENTH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (you know who you are Adam!)

Strategy: Barrichello looked light on fuel. Raikkonen will probably be heavier on fuel as McLaren traditionally play a more conservative strategy. So Raikkonen should have the measure of Barrichello into turn 1, and hold him up, even though Barrichello is lighter on fuel. This will allow the first three to break away from the rest of the pack, and Button will be ready to strike if any of the first two guys make any mistakes! Watch this space ;)

duality

Been down the local pub The New Inn. We (me and Bob) stopped off at a nearby house party in a student house on the way home which seemed to be full of fresh-faced .... freshers. And 2nd years. Bob knew a few ppl from his course, which is just as well, otherwise we would have become the "weird older guys". Spent half an hour kicking a football around aimlessly at the party before deciding on a massive shit, hence the walk/run home.



Spent the next few hours in my room chilling out to music whilst Bob messed around with my keyboards. He got a call from his mate at about 1am asking if we wanted to come out to a house party on Burton Crescent, 3 minutes walk away. Score. Except when we got there it was empty, as the party had come and gone. (Do I have some curse?!) Oh well. Walked home dejectedly and stayed up watching CD UK for a bit, then hit the sack.

don't diss me

May have irritated my tutor by admitting I wanted to change my dissertation topic. Can't be helped. First badminton of the year is next Sunday at 11.30-2.30. Should be a good workout. Bet you I don't last half that time!!!

student status: EL-RE

Haven't finished registering yet as I completed an OMR form and joined a 3-hr queue, to be informed that it might be quicker to come back tomorrow at 9am. It didn't take long to make a choice. My student status at present is EL-RE (dunno about the first half, and 'registered'.) My loan should be in my account on Weds, according to the LEA desk in the sports hall.



The joys of food shopping beckon later this afternoon. If I time it right I should be able to go just after the little school runts come out and just before the brainless office suits emerge.



So that's good. Running out of hard drive space as Cubase SX continues to chew it up, (10 Gb) whilst the ever-growing mountain of MP3s (12 Gb) isn't helping matters. I have shoved a second 160 Gb hard drive in a 5.25" bay to try help out the original 120 Gb drive (of which there's about 50 Gb free now) but it's only a matter of time before that will be consumed too. I have no 5.25" bays free now, so the only solution is a USB drive. Fortunately there is a 250 Gb USB hard drive available online from Maxtor for £150, taking the total hard drive capacity of my computer to 530 Gb, slightly over half a Terrabyte. I will also be adding 512 Mb DDR RAM in the near future to take it to 1.5 Gb.

a Shore thing

Just got in from the Albert Hall, where we had box seats to see Howard Shore conduct his Lord of the Rings Symphony. Was quite good, except the string writing was a tad repetitive in places, and the choral parts could have done with a little more variation. We also had the misfortune to be seated next to possibly the loudest whistler in the entire world. Good job I still had a fresh bottle of beer at the end of the performance. It helped numb the painful ringing in my ears. I considered going up to him and letting him know it wasn't exactly a goddamn football match, it was a civilised concert, but I thought better of it. Too laid back to get involved, that's me.



I would write more but I have to be up at 5am to load the car, have a coffee and drive to Leeds. I must unpack and register for the year by 12.30! Until the next time then.

making tracks

Finished making a new demo CD. The track list was:



1 Piano Sonata 1st Mvmt 8:22

2 Piano Sonata 2nd Mvmt 13:45

3 Marina 5:09

4 Lament 4:58

5 Eveningsong 4:46

6 Oriental Autumn 8:27

7 Garden of Mystery 4:40

8 Countryside Evening 4:00

9 Broken (Part I) 4:25

10 Mulholland Drive 2:17

11 Someone to Love 5:11

12 Winter River 4:15

13 Hints of Romance 7:32

14 The Scotsman 1:42

Total 79:30



All tracks written/performed/arranged by yours truly, except track 10 written by Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch. Track 2 contains a portion of a motif from Chopin Prelude op. 28 no. 15

finished. over. at last.

Completed the piano sonata this afternoon. It only has 2 movements but I don't care. I re-recorded the 2nd mvmt, which came out approx. 10 seconds longer than the first white draft.



I bought Muse's 'new' single today (since it's already on their Absolution album) and the accompanying DVD. With the 10% off card, both together were only £4.50, so I also got Green Day's American Idiot and Messaien's Eclairs sur l'au-Dela (Rattle/Berliner Philharmoniker) which I suspect was recorded at the prom I attended and dashed out as quickly as possible. The Messaien was £15, 3 times more than the other 3 singles put together. Oh well.



Upcoming plans:

Weds night: we have tickets to see Howard Shore conducting some of his orchestral suites at the Albert Hall, including music from Lord of the Rings. Then straight to bed when I get in the front door and out at 6am the morning after.

Thurs morning: Depart 6am, arrive in Leeds maybe 10-11am. Registration documents issued from 10.30-12.30.

Thurs afternoon: pre-semester tutorial at 12.45. Last year my feedback in Composition was falsely encouraging, and I complained to my tutor about that, who admitted that he was unhappy with the process and would be changing it for this year as he's been newly crowned Head of Composition. (I was led to believe that I got around 65 in yr 2 sem 1 when I really got 58. Only by good fortune did I get 64 in sem 2 to average above 60 for Comp. overall) So he has agreed to meet me pre-semester to talk about areas for improvement in the hope I do not sue the Music School for misleading information. As if I would ... do I look like one of those ppl who would sue for anything under the sun?!

Fri - Sun: fuck knows

Mon: first lecture of the year, unfortunately on dissertation, worse luck

radiohead :- let down

Transport, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, taking off and landing, the emptiest of feelings, disappointed people, clinging on to bottles, when it comes it's so, so, disappointed, let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground. Let down and hanging around.

Shell smashed, juices flowing, wings twitch, legs are going, don't get sentimental, it always ends up drivel. One day, I'm gonna grow wings, a chemical reaction, hysterical and useless, hysterical and let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground. Let down and hanging around. Let down, Let down, Let down.

You know, you know where you are with, you know where you are with, floor collapsing, falling, bouncing back and one day, I'm gonna grow wings, a chemical reaction, [You know where you are,] hysterical and useless [you know where you are,] hysterical and [you know where you are,] let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground. Let down and hanging around.

freer. fitter. happier. more productive.

Today I have been gathering ideas together for the second movement of my piano sonata, having completed a few drafts of the first movement. Freer. I have just finished recording a tentative first copy of the second movement, which highlights just what revisions I need to make. More productive. It will need trimming down possibly. At the moment the 2nd mvmt. is a little over 13.5 mins long. (The 1st mvmt. was 8.5) But I suppose this might be allowed for a graciously slow middle movement. Happier. The real test of my skills will be the 3rd final mvmt. which is typically played at prodigiously fast pace with matching virtuosic trills and figures liberally scattered somewhere in the mix. Fitter. Stylistically, it sounds very Beethovenian (is that even a word?) with a few touches from our impressionist pals Debussy and Ravel.



I am tired after slogging hard all day on this, and I have eaten well in town tonight. (Read: Went for a Chinese with my dad, sis, and her friend.) Time for bed, or a little reading perhaps. The book I am reading right now is so beautiful it hurts. It's called A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry, surely India's finest living novelist.



Ring road supermarket at weekends. Exercising more frequently at the gym. Still kisses with saliva. Still cries at a good film. A careful driver. Like a pig in a cage on antibiotics.

monkey wrenches, pig's bladders, PCC

I'm all ready to die after picking up my car from its full 48,000 mile service and being landed with a bill for £365, £1 for every day of the year. While I was waiting for my credit card to be processed, I heard a mechanic around the back in conversation with what I assume was a pretty young lady, since he said, "your eyes are like spanners - every time I look into them, my nuts tighten." Conveniently the conversation became more muffled and distant after this, but I don't suppose it's too hard to figure out her (if indeed it was a her) reaction. As a neat counterpoint to this amusing incident I decided to blast out Foo Fighter's Monkey Wrench on the way home, even if it is a song written for girls about girls. I arrived home before the song was over.



Reclaiming my testicles in the lounge, I flicked on telly to the usual boring weekday crap. I had thought Sky Sports might offer some interesting diversion, but no, it was the usual 22 overpaid idiots kicking a pig's bladder around for 90 minutes in the name of entertainment. The really sad thing is how often these supposed professionals miss the mark - in an average match an average team will average 8 or 9 shots on target. That's one every 10 minutes. Also, I've never understood why players (especially midfield ones) pass the ball backwards, even when they are losing (or on the verge of losing) the match. My sister, for instance, is Crystal Palace's biggest fan, but their defence is mostly non-existent and their keeper laughable. They will have to do much better to remain in the Premiership, and rightly so.



I have also grown accustomed to various sexual innuendos in and around the wonderful Leeds Uni School of Music. It's a wonder anyone gets any work done when the air is filled with "Is my fingering correct?", "I've broken my G string, can I borrow yours?", and "I'm not sure I'm tonguing this part correctly, can you teach me the proper way?" It is exactly as though the Music School were filled with 13 year old children instead of mature adults. Then I wonder why I care so much about it, instead of joining in the (childish) fun. The way to live life isn't to whinge about every single fucking thing under the sun, but to seize the moment. Carpe diem, no less.



On a separate note I would like to complain about people who complain, if that makes sense. I really do wish they would get lives, instead of watching TV all day and finding something to telephone the PCC about, such as "it's disgraceful that this actress was completely flaunting her breasts at the Oscars." Really? If it was showing off your assets I'd have to say it was more Golden Globes than Oscars, but that's by the by.

strap on and get ready for take off

No, you filthily minded plebs, I'm not talking about strap-ons. I am talking about my 20th birthday present from my old man, which was a driving day out at Thruxton, down the M3. I got to drive 3 laps in an MG ZS 180, 4 in a Merc SLK 350, 4 more in a Ferrari F360 Modena, and 6 in a single-seater Formula Renault :)



One of the guests was this really old man, who made a point of walking up and down the pit lane proclaiming loudly that "I am the best driver here," with his instructor in tow nodding along to concur. I doubt if he was as good as he said he was, so it's possible he bribed the instructor to make him look good in front of all of us.



Best of all was overtaking two F360s on one of my 6 laps in the Renault, and then on the immediate lap having blue flags waved for me and not because of me. Truly the best. As if that wasn't enough, we ordered a 2-DVD set of me driving the Ferrari, along with brief notes on each of the cars I drove, circuit history, and brief pit-lane interview after the cars were driven. ("Fuuuuuuuuuuuck")



Brief problems with the cars:

MG: Gearbox a mess. Hard to find biting point in clutch.

Merc: Throttle was either 'on' (100%) or 'off'. (0%) Crap German styling and uncomfortable seats. Truly a car for girls who don't understand cars.

Ferrari: Gearbox problems like the MG. What is up with those metal fingers in the gearbox?! Otherwise a very smooth car to drive. I particularly liked how you could go around tight corners in 4th gear with the engine idling away.

Formula Renault: Gearbox wasn't sprung, so had initial problems selecting 3rd & 4th gears. Suspension was about half that on my car as well, so feedback from the track was very ... amplified, shall we say.



After 6 laps in the single seater it was time for a fast driven lap by one of the instructors, whom I might add if I was marking him would have failed spectacularly on account of all the cones he knocked over. But then again he might have done that on purpose. It was telling when we whooshed past the marshals after the end of the first sector and he shouted, "do some work, morons".



One of the highlights of the day was in the single-seater briefing, in which I had my arse felt up by a hillbilly for 10 minutes, which he attempted to justify by way of: "We have to make sure that you are sitting comfortably before we let you loose." Oh my.

calamity zone

Disastrous (yet funny) day today. Earlier I made lunch for myself and managed to spill the salt shaker all over the table. The effect was not unlike that of year 7 at Tiffin, in which I had the privilege of watching Nick Baumer rummage his hands through his hair and depositing the entire contents of the Andes before my very eyes.



Turned on digital TV a few moments later to find myself accosted by a ridiculous programme about the Queen's Royal Guards, with a close analysis on the side of "why I love fuzzy helmets". I rapidly attempted to switch over to Challenge TV, where the mediocrity of the programmes such as Noel's House Party invariably cheers me up, but alas, no Crinkly Bottom today. Perhaps it's just as well.



I then logged on to MSN, as I am so prone to doing of late, and engaged with an acquaintance on the subject of music which, in short, ran along the lines of "they don't make them as good as they used to." Below is a short transcript of the conversation. It is a testament to the painfully funny comedy that conversation can invoke.



Me: "You remember that song on There's Something About Mary? There was a song on it by a little known band called The Foundations. What was it called?"

Phil: "Oh yeah, I remember the one. Fill Me Up Buttercup."

Me: "Ok, it's not a porno movie, Phil."

Phil: "Oh yeah." (Those 2 words are basically all Phil ever says.)

After a good half hour on Kazaa, it transpires the song is, in fact, called Build Me Up Buttercup.



Reverberating recollections of Twister from the house party are also floating around inside my warped mind somewhere, involving various deviant sexual positions which I shall not disclose here for fear of corrupting any innocent blog-readers.



Unknown to me, someone with botched laser-eye surgery lives in my road; I bumped into him today whilst I was out on a walk. And yes, I saw him coming, before you ask. And yes, he was wearing an eye patch. Perhaps it was rather telling that he was muttering "I hate Boots" fairly loudly.



Weird man: "I hate Boots. I hate Boots. I hate Boots. I hate Boots."

Me: "Excuse me... what?"

Weird man: "I hate Boots."

Me: "Why?"

Weird man: "Botched my laser eye surgery."

Me: "That's ... really not good. Did you sue them?"

Weird man: "I'm in the middle of it."

Me: "Right, right ... what's the worst thing about botched surgery?"

Weird man: "Is that a joke? Are you trying to be funny? Cos if you are..."

Me: (hurriedly) "No, no, not being funny. Just inquiring politely."

Weird man: "The worst thing (looks thoughtful) ... the worst thing was coming home and seeing a bloody beautiful woman where my wife was. And now I have to go back and undo the surgery."

tensors

The other day, someone asked me what a tensor is, after mistakenly believing that it was something to do with your mouth. The following article is from Mathworld.



An nth-rank tensor in m-dimensional space is a mathematical object that has n indices and m^n components and obeys certain transformation rules. Each index of a tensor ranges over the number of dimensions of space. However, the dimension of the space is largely irrelevant in most tensor equations (with the notable exception of the contracted Kronecker delta). Tensors are generalizations of scalars (that have no indices), vectors (that have exactly index), and matrices (that have exactly two indices) to an arbitrary number of indices.

Tensors provide a natural and concise mathematical framework for formulating and solving problems in areas of physics such as elasticity, fluid mechanics, and general relativity.



The notation for a tensor is similar to that of a matrix except that a tensor may have an arbitrary number of indices. In addition, a tensor with rank r + s may be of mixed type (r, s), consisting of r so-called "contravariant" (upper) indices and s "covariant" (lower) indices. Note that the positions of the slots in which contravariant and covariant indices are placed are significant.



While the distinction between covariant and contravariant indices must be made for general tensors, the two are equivalent for tensors in three-dimensional Euclidean space, and such tensors are known as Cartesian tensors.



Objects that transform like zeroth-rank tensors are called scalars, those that transform like first-rank tensors are called vectors, and those that transform like second-rank tensors are called matrices. In tensor notation, a vector v would be written v(i), where i = 1, ..., m, and matrix is a tensor of type , which would be written a(i)^j in tensor notation.



Tensors may be operated on by other tensors (such as metric tensors, the permutation tensor, or the Kronecker delta) or by tensor operators (such as the covariant or semicolon derivatives). The manipulation of tensor indices to produce identities or to simplify expressions is known as index gymnastics, which includes index lowering and index raising as special cases. These can be achieved through multiplication by a so-called metric tensor. Tensor notation can provide a very concise way of writing vector and more general identities.

on the subject of why time is variable

It is hard to realise that the electron was only discovered a little over 100 years ago in 1897. That it was not expected is illustrated by a remark made by J J Thomson, the discoverer of the electron. He said: "I was told long afterwards by a distinguished physicist who had been present at my lecture that he thought I had been pulling their leg."



The neutron was not discovered until 1932 so it is against this background that we trace the beginnings of quantum theory back to 1859. In 1859 Gustav Kirchhoff proved a theorem about blackbody radiation. A blackbody is an object that absorbs all the energy that falls upon it and, because it reflects no light, it would appear black to an observer. A blackbody is also a perfect emitter and Kirchhoff proved that the energy emitted E depends only on the temperature T and the frequency v of the emitted energy, i.e. E = J(T,v). He challenged physicists to find the function J.



In 1879 Josef Stefan proposed, on experimental grounds, that the total energy emitted by a hot body was proportional to the fourth power of the temperature. In the generality stated by Stefan this is false. The same conclusion was reached in 1884 by Ludwig Boltzmann for blackbody radiation, this time from theoretical considerations using thermodynamics and Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. The result, now known as the Stefan-Boltzmann law, does not fully answer Kirchhoff's challenge since it does not answer the question for specific wavelengths.



In 1896 Wilhelm Wien proposed a solution to the Kirchhoff challenge. However although his solution matches experimental observations closely for small values of the wavelength, it was shown to break down in the far infrared by Rubens and Kurlbaum. Kirchhoff, who had been at Heidelberg, moved to Berlin. Boltzmann was offered his chair in Heidelberg but turned it down. The chair was then offered to Hertz who also declined the offer, so it was offered again, this time to Planck and he accepted.



Rubens visited Planck in October 1900 and explained his results to him. Within a few hours of Rubens leaving Planck's house Planck had guessed the correct formula for Kirchhoff's J function. This guess fitted experimental evidence at all wavelengths very well but Planck was not satisfied with this and tried to give a theoretical derivation of the formula. To do this he made the unprecedented step of assuming that the total energy is made up of indistinguishable energy elements - quanta of energy. He wrote:-

Experience will prove whether this hypothesis is realised in nature.



Planck himself gave credit to Boltzmann for his statistical method but Planck's approach was fundamentally different. However theory had now deviated from experiment and was based on a hypothesis with no experimental basis. Planck won the 1918 Nobel Prize for Physics for this work.



In 1901 Ricci and Levi-Civita published Absolute Differential Calculus. It had been Christoffel's discovery of 'covariant differentiation' in 1869 which let Ricci extend the theory of tensor analysis to Riemannian space of n dimensions. The Ricci and Levi-Civita definitions were thought to give the most general formulation of a tensor. This work was not done with quantum theory in mind but, as so often happens, the mathematics necessary to embody a physical theory had appeared at precisely the right moment.



In 1905 Einstein examined the photoelectric effect. The photoelectric effect is the release of electrons from certain metals or semiconductors by the action of light. The electromagnetic theory of light gives results at odds with experimental evidence. Einstein proposed a quantum theory of light to solve the difficulty and then he realised that Planck's theory made implicit use of the light quantum hypothesis. By 1906 Einstein had correctly guessed that energy changes occur in a quantum material oscillator in changes in jumps which are multiples of v where is Planck's reduced constant and v is the frequency. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1922, for this work on the photoelectric effect.



In 1913 Niels Bohr wrote a revolutionary paper on the hydrogen atom. He discovered the major laws of the spectral lines. This work earned Bohr the 1914 Nobel Prize for Physics. Arthur Compton derived relativistic kinematics for the scattering of a photon (a light quantum) off an electron at rest in 1923. However there were concepts in the new quantum theory which gave major worries to many leading physicists. Einstein, in particular, worried about the element of 'chance' which had entered physics. In fact Rutherford had introduced spontaneous effect when discussing radio-active decay in 1900. In 1924 Einstein wrote:-

There are therefore now two theories of light, both indispensable, and - as one must admit today despite twenty years of tremendous effort on the part of theoretical physicists - without any logical connection.



In the same year, 1924, Bohr, Kramers and Slater made important theoretical proposals regarding the interaction of light and matter which rejected the photon. Although the proposals were the wrong way forward they stimulated important experimental work. Bohr addressed certain paradoxes in his work:

(i) How can energy be conserved when some energy changes are continuous and some are discontinuous, i.e. change by quantum amounts?

(ii) How does the electron know when to emit radiation?

Einstein had been puzzled by paradox (ii) and Pauli quickly told Bohr that he did not believe his theory. Further experimental work soon ended any resistance to belief in the electron. Other ways had to be found to resolve the paradoxes.



Up to this stage quantum theory was set up in Euclidean space and used Cartesian tensors of linear and angular momentum. However quantum theory was about to enter a new era. The year 1924 saw the publication of another fundamental paper. It was written by Satyendra Nath Bose and rejected by a referee for publication. Bose then sent the manuscript to Einstein who immediately saw the importance of Bose's work and arranged for its publication. Bose proposed different states for the photon. He also proposed that there is no conservation of the number of photons. Instead of statistical independence of particles, Bose put particles into cells and talked about statistical independence of cells. Time has shown that Bose was right on all these points.



Work was going on at almost the same time as Bose's which was also of fundamental importance. The doctoral thesis of Louis de Broglie was presented which extended the particle-wave duality for light to all particles, in particular to electrons. Schrödinger in 1926 published a paper giving his equation for the hydrogen atom and heralded the birth of wave mechanics. Schrödinger introduced operators associated with each dynamical variable.



The year 1926 saw the complete solution of the derivation of Planck's law after 26 years. It was solved by Dirac. Also in 1926 Born abandoned the causality of traditional physics. Speaking of collisions Born wrote:-

One does not get an answer to the question, What is the state after collision? but only to the question, How probable is a given effect of the collision? From the standpoint of our quantum mechanics, there is no quantity which causally fixes the effect of a collision in an individual event.



Heisenberg wrote his first paper on quantum mechanics in 1925 and 2 years later stated his uncertainty principle. It states that the process of measuring the position x of a particle disturbs the particle's momentum p, so that Dx Dp = h/2p where Dx is the uncertainty of the position and Dp is the uncertainty of the momentum. Here h is Planck's constant and is usually called the 'reduced Planck's constant'. Heisenberg states that the nonvalidity of rigorous causality is necessary and not just consistently possible. Heisenberg's work used matrix methods made possible by the work of Cayley on matrices 50 years earlier. In fact 'rival' matrix mechanics deriving from Heisenberg's work and wave mechanics resulting from Schrödinger's work now entered the arena. These were not properly shown to be equivalent until the necessary mathematics was developed by Riesz about 25 years later.



Also in 1927 Bohr stated that space-time coordinates and causality are complementary. Pauli realised that spin, one of the states proposed by Bose, corresponded to a new kind of tensor, one not covered by the Ricci and Levi-Civita work of 1901. However the mathematics of this had been anticipated by Eli Cartan who introduced a 'spinor' as part of a much more general investigation in 1913.



Dirac, in 1928, gave the first solution of the problem of expressing quantum theory in a form which was invariant under the Lorentz group of transformations of special relativity. He expressed d'Alembert's wave equation in terms of operator algebra.



The uncertainty principle was not accepted by everyone. Its most outspoken opponent was Einstein. He devised a challenge to Niels Bohr which he made at a conference which they both attended in 1930. Einstein suggested a box filled with radiation with a clock fitted in one side. The clock is designed to open a shutter and allow one photon to escape. Weigh the box again some time later and the photon energy and its time of escape can both be measured with arbitrary accuracy. Of course this is not meant to be an actual experiment, only a 'thought experiment'.



Niels Bohr is reported to have spent an unhappy evening, and Einstein a happy one, after this challenge by Einstein to the uncertainty principle. However Niels Bohr had the final triumph, for the next day he had the solution. The mass is measured by hanging a compensation weight under the box. This is turn imparts a momentum to the box and there is an error in measuring the position. Time, according to relativity, is not absolute and the error in the position of the box translates into an error in measuring the time.



Although Einstein was never happy with the uncertainty principle, he was forced, rather grudgingly, to accept it after Bohr's explanation.

house party: post-mortem

My head feels as though I have spent the last 12 hours on a fairground Waltzer ride instead of in my bed. The turnout was ridiculously low (18 instead of 39) since most of those who said they would show up didn't. Liam and Little Dan were the first to arrive by virtue of mistaking the party starting time for 8pm instead of 9pm. The punch was generally enthusiastically received. For reasons I have not yet discovered, one girl later felt the need to spike the punch with a hefty dose of Ouzo. The punch remained untouched from that point on...



The same girl challenged me to a drinking contest involving pints of the aforementioned punch. We were supposed to down 3 pints each, but it was ridiculously strong so I managed just over one, and she managed one also before forfeiting and rushing to the toilet, then proceeded to knock over the glass bowl of pot pourri on the floor. Nobody picked up on this until a few hours later when my mate went to take a slash and trod on a particularly sharp piece of the stuff. This would explain the vertical line up the left bathroom wall.



Some people will immediately point to the turnout and start casting their accusing fingers horizontally at me, but to be honest, everyone had a great time, and most admitted it was nicer to have fewer ppl than be crushed with more. Kudos must go, in particular, to Liam, for showing us his wrestling moves all evening long, before indulging in rather too much Ouzo, flopping belly down on my sofa and passing out, and to John, for some excellent metal music a la Muse and System of a Down.



Turnout was enhanced around 12.45am when my sister arrived home with a few of her friends in tow, one of whom was spectacularly drunk. In fact this was the catalyst for the evening's spectacle centering around her and Daryl, a guy from Rides. Unbeknown to the poor girl, Daryl was and still is seeing someone. The difference is that he wasn't drunk and she was. At least three different people secretly vowed to me to have very strong words with him/beat him up/castrate him. Interesting.



Entertainments were provided in the form of Twister, watching John dance to RnB, Liam's aforementioned wrestling moves, the quickly-spread knowledge that one 21 year old girl (who shall remain nameless) could not make it to the party because she had been grounded, me finishing off a punch bowl then turning it upside down on my head and imitating E.T., and watching Daryl jump up from the ground floor kitchen door to the first floor lounge door.



If you are wondering why we were playing RnB, then the long and short of it is that my sister hijacked the hifi. (We reclaimed it back later.) She will undoubtedly say that she and her friends "made the party", but that's crap because

1. There were only 4 of them and 14 of us

2. They arrived after everyone else



People started crashing about 3.30am, until the idiots from next door (who had all gone away in a caravan somewhere, leaving only an inebriated uncle behind) decided to ring home at 5.30am. When the uncle unsurprisingly did not pick up the phone, they thought it would be a good idea to call again and wake us all up. Tossers. I was awoken a little before this, however, by the sounds of much prodding and thudding going on inside my lounge. When I spoke to Ricky much later (7.45am) he said one of the cats had found its way into the lounge and was annoying everyone, so Kate forced the guys to kick the cat out of the house. (not literally) I have managed to accrue all of 4 hours sleep, from 3.30 to 5.30 and then from 5.30 to 7.30 (tosser neighbour decides to start drilling ... at this hour on a Sunday morning I am seriously thinking about serving noise pollution notices on him, but then I think that might be a tad hypocritical after last night) and 7.30 to 10. Everyone who remained (my sister and two of her friends, the third having left to go to work, and Liam and myself) cleaned up the house a bit before my dad arrived home to sort out the TV in time for the F1 Monza GP.



All in all a good evening's fun. The people who didn't bother showing up don't know what they missed.

euphemistically speaking

During english language lessons in school, we should all realise that pronouns take the form 'an' if the noun it pertains to starts with a vowel, and 'a' if the noun it pertains to starts with a consonant. Examples:-

1. A cat

2. An elephant



Why then do we refer to "a euphemism" and not "an euphemism"? The only explanation I can think of is the double vowel of euphemism cancelling each other out. But that never stopped other words an iota, did it?

the real atrocity is generalised mourning for something that shouldn't be mourned

If one bears in mind the date, some of you may have wondered if world events had passed before my very eyes without me taking notice. Of late it has become a hackneyed fashion to comment on the so-called American atrocities pertaining to 9/11 with whichever degree of righteousness the author professes to exhibit. This impels me to consider the actual circumstances, which can be tricky since (1) I'm not resident in the US, (2) my grasp of American politics in Washington is limited, (3) I have no real claim to have a truer view or version of events than most, if not all, other people.



Bearing this in mind it is clear to me that Bush has not been truthful with his citizens the entire time. Some may say this is rather an understatement, but I'm damned if my journal in cyberspace is going to become mired in finger-pointing and handbag-throwing. It is also clear that the major Western powers faced an ultimatum of whether to use force or not in Iraq. On one hand, if they stood by and did nothing, then those dictators they aimed to eliminate would still be where they were. On the other hand, if they intervened, it might very well make things worse, and sadly, this is what appears to have become par for the course.



You see, citizens of any given country aren't usually terribly satisfied when another country or union of countries attempts to impose legislation and bureaucracy directly upon them. Meddling in international affairs (attempted citizen's arrest of Mugabe, capture of Hussein) is as liable to exacerbate dissent, let alone quell it. For how hated is the EU within Great Britain? It is basically the same situation where a despised external force is attempting to enforce its idea of "good" or "true" without proper consultation of those who really matter - the people.



Returning to why Bush has been economical with the truth, it is common knowledge that the US has been, all along, bankrolling these terrorist organisations. So how egg-on-yer-face would it look if this was revealed to the American public? After all, a nation complicit in the funding of terrorist programs can hardly dare to criticise them. Bush would be out the White House faster than the time it would take Blair to announce 10 new NHS targets. Speaking of Blair, the Anglo-American 'axis of power' has been well documented of late. I wonder if publicly supporting a man with whom there is much more than meets the eye is really the right way to go for Blair. However, I do suppose it is of no consequence. Most living, breathing people in Great Britain know that Blair is One Great Liar, and nothing he says can be trusted. Unless it's a tax rise. The problem with domestic policy is that things can go badly very, very quickly (teen pregnancies, school dropout rates, university crisis) but take an absolute age to solve. (national railways, NHS)



It should also be noted that Iraq has particular commercial strengths in oil and other associated chemicals. Was the war waged in Iraq because the two Western leaders really wanted to oust an evil dictator and save hundreds of thousands from his brutal regime, or was it because of their own selfish impulses to hoard valuable commodities? I doubt we will ever know the truth, but it is probably a combination of the two. Certainly these two situations aren't mutually exclusive. It is also hugely convenient for the West that the dictator whom Washington had set the metaphorical sights on also had such commodities in plentiful supply.



I find it hard to sympathise with general public feeling about "the crisis that befell America" when it is clear to me that they themselves have had a hand (at least) in their own downfall. I find it hideous that people choose to publicly display their emotions in the hope that it will propel themselves higher up the opinions of those they know, as was the case with the Soham murders. I find it disturbing that ill-informed Englishmen and other citizens of this country feel the need in themselves to exacerbate racial tensions amongst Muslim communities, when Islam teaches specifically that violence in the form of terrorism is prohibited. What so many commentators have failed to point out (and it is a great shame, because they should know better) is that the terrorists are hiding behind a smokescreen, if you will, of religion. The terrorists know that it is controversial to talk about religion in today's Britain because if you are not careful with your words, you will be labelled a racist.



As long as common sense eludes the vast majorities of the general public and the latest headlines are sought instead of honest, true intelligence, then the terrorists have won. An honest debate is required now on this subject so that the thousands who died three years ago didn't do so in vain.

as pleased as punch

"If only she were as good looking as punch" (Blackadder IV, Ep. 1)



Today is punch-making day. The recipe is one I procured off my uncle, a sometime barman, and now we're all ready to go, after I've bought various fruits today. The recipe for 8 litres of punch is:



Mugful of demerera sugar

1.5l (2 bottles) white wine

0.5l Bianco Martini extra dry

0.375l Moscow Vodka

1l R White's lemonade

4.5l fruit juices

Sliced fresh fruits

12 ice cubes



In short, over 2l of pure alcohol in an 8l mixing bowl. Something tells me there might be a lot of wasted ppl come Saturday night. I've revised the rules of 52 in the meantime, surely the best uni drinking game ever.



57.5 hours to go.

Einstein admits he "knew nothing"

From Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond, Arnold J. Pomerans, trans. (New York: Harper, 1971), p. 63.

Heisenberg: "We cannot observe electron orbits inside the atom...Now, since a good theory must be based on directly observable magnitudes, I thought it more fitting to restrict myself to these, treating them, as it were, as representatives of the electron orbits."

"But you don't seriously believe," Einstein protested, "that none but observable magnitudes must go into a physical theory?"

"Isn't that precisely what you have done with relativity?" I asked in some surprise...

"Possibly I did use this kind of reasoning," Einstein admitted, "but it is nonsense all the same....In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe."

Even geniuses cock up sometimes. This endorses everything I will achieve for the rest of my life ;)

what happens when you confuse genealogy with gynaecology

Being concerned of late with the genealogical aspects of my family, I thought it might be an idea to head to my local library to peruse microfiches and old newspapers with the ambition of finding out more about my lineage. I still haven't got everything clearly sorted in my mind; some of the more technical taxonometrical distinctions still elude me, for example. Anyway, one is tempted to surrender all effort when surrounded by the ignorance of the general public. A conversation with a suspiciously pikette-looking girl at the next table over went something like this: (and perhaps in retrospect I should have known better than to start a conversation with someone proudly bearing 5 carat worthless pieces-of-shit earrings the size of a small African country)



Girl: "What ya up ta then?"

Me: "I'm tracing my family's genealogy."

Girl: "That's farking disgusting! Fink I'm gonna be sick or sumthing!"

A look of incomprehension registers on my face for about half a minute. Eventually I manage to say something.

Me: "Wh .. what?"

Girl: "D'u know that shit is illegal, innit?"

Backpedalling sufficiently to realise the probable mistake she's made, I try to explain. After all who can blame her? She clearly hasn't been in school because she's been down the local A & E popping out a fucking disgusting sprog called Armani or Peaches every year.

Me: "I think you're confusing genealogy with gynaecology. The former is the study of your family tree, the latter is the study of ... erm ... feminine ... hygiene ... yes, hygiene."

"Former?" "Latter?" Why the fuck couldn't I have said "first" or "second"? I might as well be talking to a brick wall.

Girl: "I still don't trusts ya, know what I mean? Neway (her mobile phone rings loudly) I must go. Kid to feed and all this!"



I think I need to lie down. Now.

possession, possessor, possessed.

Today I would like to rant about why the modern world is so unbelievably superficial. Why we prize digital TV with 5 million channels, PlayStations, and electronic gadgets over things that really matter, like spending time with family, doing exercise, and so on. It's not so much a case of 'the things we own end up owning us' (Fight Club mantra) but more an unwillingness to detach ourselves from the excesses of the materialistic world. People should find it lamentable that a general pervasive lack of sagacity has spread throughout this once-proud nation. Sagacious or not, I find myself longing for an escape from the quotidian mundanity of urban life, seeking consequent refuge in more imperturbable rustic surroundings. Perhaps I am digressing.



In the ongoing debate about 'do violent video games make psychopathic children' or the similarly posed question, 'do violent films make James Bulger killers', I would like to say, simply, that it's a crock of shit. First of all, everyone, in particular civil libertarian-types (whom I loathe completely) will, at the slightest provocation, let you know that freedom and free will are of paramount importance in a developed society. (Ironically, this is the Western world's biggest problem: no discipline and control.) Viewing Child's Play 3 does not automatically turn you into, say, Ian Brady. Second of all, how a child interprets a violent film is mainly down to the upbringing it has received up until that particular point. Suppose that child's parents are advocates of hitting people because they can't get their own way, or using violence to get what they want. The child will have seen his/her parents react as they are wont to do and conclude that this is the 'normal' way to get a result. In that sense, the violent film has a painfully insignificant effect on the child because he/she has already been conditioned to believe that social violence is acceptable. Finally, if we are all led to believe that free will really is of the greatest importance, then people should also be accountable for their actions. In short, you can't cut the cake both ways. In legal terms, a 10-year-old is still capable of exhibiting a mens rea. (guilty conscience or knowledge that an act is wrong and illegal) Why then are they tried and sentenced as if they were of infantile cerebral development?



I have found a solution around the stupid broken hi-fi. (see entry of 3rd Sept) I will use my CD walkman and plug it into the DC supply, then use the line out cord to lead into the hi-fi and out through the speakers, thus bypassing the CD changer. The speakers aren't the problem, and it worked in theory and practice, as evidenced last night. It also goes plenty loud enough, 100W each i think. Good save.



Proms later this evening, the last of which I have tickets for. The programme is Debussy, La Mer, and Messaien, Eclairs sur l'au-dela, concerning glimpses of the world after death. So, a relaxing evening's viewing then.

Eisenberg's theory

Salutations dear reader. I have been contemplating Eisenberg's theory today. I do not know why. It is a theory involving histograms and frequency density graphs. So, let's begin. Stick your arm out straight in front of you. Move it anti-clockwise at a smooth fixed speed, as far as practicable. The point of the theory is to find out the exact length of time your arm was at a point P, which is a fixed straight line perpendicular to you, a fixed rigid body. dx (the small value of time for which your arm was at that particular point P) tends to 0, therefore the frequency densities on the histogram are tending to 1/0 ... ergo, your arm never really moved at all. Except maybe in a Donnie Darko-style parallel universe.



--



beauty and brains a gallant female doth make,

but one on its own shalt a human so break.

sunrise

A little poem from me.

Sunrise and the dew drips clean,

New sensations shall impart,

Knowledge from forefathers glean,

Shared by those of human heart,

Beauty's virtue, pure and true,

Nature's ever-present clue,

Betwixt the fountain, crystalline,

Starscapes, deserts, twigs, and twine,

Lunar orbit once complete,

Heatwaves earn a brief respite,

All is meek, all is mild,

Humankind now reconciled,

Doth the sunlight she endures,

I'll regret not being yours

litterbug, Jitterbug, punch

"Please do not feed the squirrels as they have their own nuts to enjoy."



This was the sight that greeted me as I walked past the park today. The world has gone completely loony, I fear. Attempting instead to inculcate a sense of sanity into myself, I arrived home and perused the local paper, where two local residents were busy complaining about why the council hadn't bothered sweeping residential roads in 40 years. I hope they won't take it as remiss of me if I remind them that the issue is why the litter is there in the first place, and that is because idiot people are too lazy to locate the nearest bin to drop their shit in, so they would rather leave their mess on the street for someone else to slip on/tread in/kick elsewhere. What it basically boils down to is idle parents not teaching their kids good citizenship, and that's where most of society's problems lie. The Government may very well set all the targets and objectives it likes, but no amount of nannying from Whitehall will ever alter the fact that parents are the ones who can most drastically affect their kids' behaviour.



I turned to the thought of my impending dissertation and tried to set out some first ideas, seeing as I probably won't do much work in the first few weeks of Leeds, and before long I will be struggling once more. My dissertation is, broadly, gender constructs in the motion picture soundtrack of Mulholland Drive. As we (all living, breathing men) should all know there is a very infamous lesbian scene in that film. I bet £10 I get assigned to Rachel Cowgill for my dissertation, if for no other reason than that she's the most blatant dyke ever. The first track on the soundtrack is Jitterbug, a quaint track which sets the scene yet basically gives the first 2/3 of the film away.



With thoughts of jittering dykes still ever-present in my mind, I set off on the humdrum weekly food shop. Spent £30 on alcohol for the impending house party, but it was worth it. I got 6 bottles of cheapish white wine, a huge 1.5 litre bottle of Martini and several litres of fruit juice to make a sizeable amount of punch. This is in addition to the 1 ltr of 4x distilled imported Gordon's, 1 ltr Bailey's, 1 litre Smirnoff Red, 1 ltr Curacao, 1 ltr plum brandy, 1.6 ltr Ouzo, 1.3 ltr Bombay Sapphire, 0.25 ltr Hamond's, and some dodgy looking whisky. If that sounds a lot, it isn't, when you think there's 30 odd peeps coming. In any event I'm not rich enough to bankroll everyone's booze so everyone's been asked nicely to bring a small amount of drink themselves.



Arrived home to find my cat writhing around in pretend agony in the hallway. It's not the first time I've seen her do this ... maybe she's developing a feline case of Munchausen's syndrome. Who knows. Also I need to borrow someone's hi-fi for the party as mine has decided to pack in with under 2 weeks to go. Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more.



Listening to: Jean Michel Jarre: The Concerts In China

Michael Moore: easily swayed righteous liar

Forget Fahrenheit 9/11. Read this instead.

http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2102723

omnino victis

C. Marii quidem militibus iam omnino victis, haud multum afuit quin Sulla Romam intraret. qui, simulac ad urbem pervenisset, patres conscriptos ad templum Bellonae arcessivit. quo autem ad lonquendum surgente, clamores sex milium quondam inimicorum qui in circo trucidabantur audiri poterant. quibus clamoribus neglectis, ille aequo animo negavit senatores eis quae extra templum gerentur sollicitandos esse. tum vero illi intellegebant, altero tyranno expulso, alterum iam praeesse. si enim huic resistere conati essent, eundem fatum inimicis eius passi essent. tandem Metellus senator Sullam rogare ausus est quando hanc caedem perpetuam conficere in animo haberet. "te non rogamus," inquit, "ut ignoscas illis quos interficere constitueris. dic modo nobis eos quibus parcere vis."

va va voom. vroom vroom. crash.

Watched MOTD on BBC2 last night when Arsenal endearingly pissed 4-1 on Norwich. And I don't even like football. What the fuck is happening to me? Henry in the post-match interview was hilarious. Just the way he speaks is sufficient to crack me up. Anyway earlier on, the Belgian GP was even better than the Hungarian one, but that was hardly going to be a difficult thing to achieve, given the Hungary race had all the life of a 90 year old homosexual witch in a coma. I suspect that I might also profess a small preference for Belgium because I won £65 on Kimi. That'll teach the bookies. Sometimes they have no idea about F1. Although it was a waste putting £5 each way on Coulthard (stupid, stupid, stupid) and only £2.50 each way on Raikkonen. (started 10th, won the race) Remind me to never ever put money on Coulthard (started 4th, finished 9th) again. I wonder what I should gamble on when the F1 season ends in October. Now that the Olympics are also over, it seems football (yuck) and horse racing are the only options. I know squat about both...



Unsuccessful attempts to get a temp job continue. It puzzles me why O2 should want to interview me for over 2 hrs for a job that isn't even 20 hrs a week ... and why HSBC should want temp associates in Leeds "who can work 2 years minimum". Perhaps the world has gone insane and 'temps' are actually widely considered 'permanent'.



Aside from starting Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, I have been mooching around the house listening to Brendel playing the most famous Beethoven piano sonatas. I must confess I don't actually admire Brendel's style much. He seems to have a very ill-considered sense of time and metre. But since it's the only recording I have of these masterworks I suppose it will have to do.



Listening to: Beethoven 'Tempest', 'Waldstein', 'Appassionata', 'Pathetique', 'Moonlight' Sonatas (Brendel)

the fields of Staffordshire and the fields of South Africa

Sorry it's been a fair while since I posted. Life's been busy. (What a lie) Anyway I went to V on Sunday in Staffordshire, which was amazing! Not quite sure what Big Brovaz were doing at a rock festival. Another thing that struck me was how many old ppl there were at V. So much for rock standing for the music of the under-represented and rebel. Or perhaps that was the irony? Ubiquitous air of geriatricism aside, V was great. Even if I did have to stand around and wait over 9 hours for my idols Muse to come on! But it was worth it. I gave a thumbs up to Matt Bellamy who grinned at me idiotically and returned it. And the set was great. And I've started constructing sentences. Like an idiot. Excuse me.



Latterly been attempting to shore up a job in time for the start of uni, which isn't far away now. This year looks set to be great. It will also involve shredding my balls to - well, shreds - to get that First.



The subject of my rant today is "President" Mugabe. This has developed into a classic case of 'reverse apartheid' (discrimination against whites) on the basis of Mugabe's beliefs that when the EU invaded, (especially the UK) subduing Rhodesia in the process, farmland was illegally seized from black farmers and given to white ones. As I understand it he (or rather, the population acting on behalf of him) is killing white farmers and 'retrieving' the land for black farmers. My first problem is that the race of any given farmer does not, and should not, have any correlation with the productivity of a particular farm. My second problem is that when Europe invaded South Africa, they killed small numbers of Rhodesian farmers. This appears to be the basis of Mugabe's hatred towards the white farmers, so forming a seemingly unshakable view that he/his population is/are justified in killing the minorities. In my eyes, this makes him as bad as Hitler. Problem 3: not stopping the violence is tantamount to endorsing it. If he doesn't continue the slaughter he will be overthrown anyway, and Mugabe-rent-a-clone will appear to further the legacy. Politicians seem to forget that human life is one of the most precious commodities in the world. I have no idea how anyone would solve this problem, and I don't claim to be an authority on the matter. Ideas, ppl?



Listening to: Hootie and the Blowfish: "Cracked Rear View"

shuttlecocks and Ronnie Scott's

Afternoon, just come back from playing my old man at badminton at the nearby leisure centre. Whipped him in three straight games, but then he is old. We are going to Ronnie Scott's in London later to see Monty Alexander play, but we will have to make do with standing room only. Dvorak's Requiem and Mass in D (op. 86/89) is playing on my hi-fi. It is astonishingly beautiful.



I can't think of anything to rant about today. For all that is wrong with the world, it is, as new-age outfit Explosions in the Sky would say, "not a cold dead place." Perhaps I am mellowing out, or perhaps I am developing worrying pushover tendencies? Who knows.

absolution

I have had Muse's monumental (ho ho) CD in my car for at least a month now and I never tire of hearing any of it. Sonically expansive and frighteningly huge in scope, they have been compared to, in no real order, Queen, The Darkness, and Radiohead; the former two for their 'bombast' and pomp-rock attributes, the latter for the ecstatic/wailing vocals used. I'm getting a little tired, frankly, of people who think 'bombast' is a bad thing. But then again I don't suppose they were one of the 450,000 people at Queen's Rio de Janeiro gig, way back when. My point is, Queen proved that there's a huge, huge market for entertaining, OTT rock, and Muse have merely taken this aspect into the 21st century. As for The Darkness, well you tell me which band is stuck in the 80s? And finally Radiohead, ah, Radiohead. 3 crucial differences between Muse and the boys from Oxford.

1. Muse produce an audio palette that is at least as wide-ranging in scope as Radiohead, if not more so, and have 3 band members instead of 5.
2. Muse definitely have a 'sound', even if it is a sound that some don't like. Radiohead dabble in so many genres that it would be like doing the Times crossword when drunk to pin down what their 'sound' is.
3. Most importantly of all, Muse don't make me want to slit my throat with a bread knife every time I hear them!

So there you have it, this is the future of rock. Also, it's not all glory for Muse - the piano work of Matt Bellamy gets over-rated some of the time. People think that technically he is a 'genius' and 'has skills that a performance major would blush over' but to be honest all he's really playing is arpeggios on a synth. Listen to any keyboard-intro-based track, e.g. New Born, Bliss, Space Dementia, Stockholm Syndrome, etc. The only real moment in Absolution when he gets to digress from this sort of filler material, albeit hugely entertaining filler material, is on 'Butterflies and Hurricanes', where he's plonking down chords so violent that it sounds as though he's trying to dig to Australia. Again, these violent chords aren't terribly difficult to execute as they are basically 3 long bars of G minor and A major chords, with the odd diminished 7th thrown in for good measure, before Matt's vocals come back at 4:01 in D minor. My argument is that Matt is a good keyboardist, then, just not a brilliant one.

End of review, lol.

Today I am going food shopping (joy) then starting some sketches for my major in Composition next year, which is my last in Leeds. How time flies... oh well.

Oriental autumns and Indian summers

Good morning :) I am feeling pleased today, very pleased actually as I have finished the piece I was working on for the last few days, titled Oriental Autumn: An Alternative Motion Picture Soundtrack to 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. Bit of a mouthful so I reckon I'll just leave it at Oriental Autumn. What do you think?



The weather is good for once. I know lots of people who have complained about the amount of rain and generally shite weather we have gotten so far, but things seem to be taking a turn for the better. Hopefully it will stay like this long into October so we can have a bit of an Indian summer.



Before you ask, yes, the pic in my profile is me, and no, I don't dress like that usually. It's quite an old pic actually, I was on my way to the end of sixth-form Leaver's Ball, dressed as Bond, albeit sans an exotic girl hanging on my arm. Oh well, can't have everything. Notice the Wilko bag in the corner, thus providing a neat counterpoint between high art and low art.



In my experience the supermodel-look type girls usually have incommensurate brains to go with it. I'm not saying that this automatically means you need to find a girl who looks as though she's been hit by the back of a Ford Transit to find a partner with an IQ higher than her tit size, but you usually have to compromise.



I have no idea what to do with myself today. I could start some sketches for a new piece but the heat is soporific. Random thought: here is a great way to break up with a girl; tell her that "our relationship is like a disjunctive syllogism." By the time the hackneyed, cliched look of confusion and incomprehension registers on her face, you can hang up. By the time she's actually worked out what that means, you can be safely away in the next country.



What shall I rant about today? Ok ok, here is something. Along an A road linking my town to the next, the local council recently put a bollard in at a residential T junction. Not just before the junction, not right after it, but actually on the apex, meaning anyone who wanted to turn into the road has to do a much more extreme manoeuvre. So when the council observes that the pesky bollard is, in fact, causing people more work, it decides to re-locate said bollard 5 metres down the road, at a cost to the taxpayer of £100,000. It beggars belief. Can't they think of something better to spend our money with?

a response to animal extremists, an unusual fire, and pimps

As one might cleverly deduce from the title, so-called 'animal lovers' are the subject of my slowly-burning hatred today. As if it wasn't enough trying to do something pro-active in your miserable shitty life by campaigning on behalf of animals who are below us in the food chain, you have to compound this by claiming that we should outlaw scientific research. Well it's your own fucking fault if you die of arthritis age 77 because scientists haven't developed a cure as they can't do any lab tests. I wish people would think before they spout so much shit.

On a lighter note, I was in a mood of much hilarity earlier today when I eyewitnessed what has to be the stupidest, most incompetent asinine prat in the history of the world attempt to casually drop a letter in the postbox at the top of my road, only for her to drop her fag into the 'box as well, thus managing to set off a not inconsiderable fire. Well, I know what most people would do in that situation, and that's to get the hell out of there then dial 999, but what does she do? She plants herself firmly at the top of my Most Idiotic People Ever list by trying to put the fire out, but only succeeded in catching her hair on fire instead. So this is why DV camcorders were put on earth ... besides filming your girlfriend, of course. The idiot lady in question was saved, (or rather, her hair was) however, courtesy of a quick-thinking resident and a bucket of water that looked as though a dozen cows had gotten diarrhoea and decided to empty their bowels simultaneously in the same bucket. A rather apt metaphor. I actually think today is the hardest I have ever laughed in my whole goddamn life.

This mood was sustained in the pub when I overheard a drunk old lady screech out: "I had two Pimps (Pimms) earlier". I briefly considered asking her whether she had indulged in both Pimps simultaneously before deciding that I didn't actually want to know the answer.

dumpweed

Have dumped Siobhan, for reasons I will not disclose here. Suffice it to say I think it will be better if we went our separate ways. (Before anyone inquires about Clare I would like to establish that we never dated, and were just friends.)

intermediary assignments

Again, a while since I last put anything new here ... sorry for that. In between the last time I posted and now I have managed to get fired from Chessington, (long story) work 2 intermediary temp jobs the temp agency found me, (the second of which was a great job driving luxury Lexus cars around all day...) and have 2 job interviews, one at Sainsbury's Selsdon and the other, rather strangely, one at Chessington for a Retail Team Leader position. It seems I am finally starting to earn a little better money - but I might just say fuck it and continue at Lexus as they want staff all through summer. And frankly, getting paid to drive Lexus's around all day is a dream job. Lexus said I should make sure I get paid per hour through the temp agency and not get salaried, otherwise if I end up doing 60 hour weeks then I'm fucked. So Sainsbury's would give me £6.70 an hour, Lexus £7, and Chessington £5.85 + 15p. Things are definitely starting to look up.

I've started seeing Siobhan, this girl from Rides area 3 at Chessington. We've been out a few times, may be going away on holiday with her this autumn, but who knows.