An analogy I'd never imagined could have existed

At orchestra on Saturdays, we're forced to endure 45 minutes of music theory, where we learn about key signatures, timing, scales (minor, major) and crap like that. Why? I guess it's supposed to make people better musicians. Me, I just wanna play. Whilst this sounds painful and boring, it's not nearly as bad as The Magic's class, where he has to endure patronising git conductor forcing them to read out load from a book like they are in primary school and who a few weeks ago, threw a pen at him for texting in class. The Magic is in his 30s. How you can throw a pen at a man in his 30s for texting in a music class I'll never understand.

Anyway, in our class, we have lots of really posh, annoying git's, who say things like "Oh the minor 7th! I can always recognise the minor 7th, because it's the beginning notes from Tristan and Isole" (which has me thinking "Tristan and his ol'? Tristan and his ol' what? Dog? Wig?)".

This culminated into the most random analogy that a middle aged, white haired, posh, tory loving, poor people hating woman came out with this week:

Old Bat: "Oh I do try to write in the trebble clef, but I find it awfully hard"
Teacher: "Well, why not just write in alto clef then?"
Old Bat: "Oh I couldn't do that, that's just would not be acceptable! It would be like being an immigrant to this country, and not learning how to speak English"


Holy fuck. My eyebrow could not have gotten any higher as I looked at the floor in front of her with sheer disbelief mixed with a good dash of repulsion. That people like this actually exist amazes me.

Your Friday Moment of Zen: Howzaat!

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't really like cricket. However, 2 days ago The Ashes first test started at the Gabba, and us Aussies are doing our best to crush those bloody pommy bastards! 602-9 declared! I only have a vague idea what that means, but I know that it's great, especially compared to Englands score of 53-3. Get IN!

If you don't know what The Ashes are, a good explanation is here. Basically in 1882 following a match at The Oval, Australia beat England in England for the first time, and some paper published a satirical obituary saying that English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. Since then, biennially, Australia and England play five 5 day test cricket series (25 days of bloody cricket), to decide which country will win a tiny, tiny, tiny urn with the ashes of the stumps from the original 1882 cricket game.

The last series, England actually won The Ashes for the first time since 1989 (or something ridiculous), so this time round us Aussies are gonna take it back.

So today's moment of zen (well zen if you're an Aussie, not so zen like for those poms out there) is a picture of yesterday's game when some English batsman got caught out, to end a dismal day for England.

Ah. Nothing like a bit of competition. It's M a r v e l l o u s. Bloody marrr--velous.

RCA Secret 2006

This weekend, the Royal Academy of Arts will be showing their annual RCA Secret, which gives us punters a chance to buy one of 2500 individually created postcards. All postcards are on sale at £35 each, but the real kicker is that the postcard's artist is unknown to anyone until the card is actually purchased, and as some very famous artists contribute, including "Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Paula Rego, David Bailey, Christo, fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, musicians Graham Coxon and John Squire", as well as new budding artists from the RCA, you could own your very own very cool original piece for very little dosh. However, you can only buy up to 4 cards, and can only buy them this weekend. No cards can be reserved or puchased before hand, so it's a first come first served basis, which seems pretty fair.

You can have a look at all the postcards on sale here, and they go on sale from 8am-8pm Saturday the 25th, and 10am-4pm Sunday 26th. If you'd like to purchase one, you have to register with them by today (via email) or in person, before Saturday.

I'm planning on going, so hopefully I'll be able to pick up at least one of the pieces I like!

Take a look at treacleDown for a great write up, or the rca secret blog for more info.

Your Friday Moment of Zen: We've got nothing to declare

In honour of the worlds greatest spy being reincarnated and rebooted today, I thought I'd put up one of my favorite Bond moments from The Living Daylights. It is this film that started my obsession for learning the cello.

I'm quite excited about the new Bond film, Casino Royale, despite that fact that 2 years ago, just before they announced Daniel Craig as the new 007, I betted a couple of quid on Betfair (they have a market for everything), on who the next Bond would be. Did I win? Of course I bloody didn't. It's ME after all.

Anyway, I digress. Your Friday Moment of Zen: the KGB chase scene in The Living Daylights. Timothy Dalton's first bond film. I absolutely adore this movie. It's got Timmy Dalton, fantastic cello case riding chase scene, great theme by A-Ha, but because without it, I'd never have known anything about the mujahideen.

Enjoy!

Musical self flagellation

Last night the Flatmate and I went through a sort of "dance down memory lane" by meandering through his iTunes playlists, listening to loads of old,

cheesy, cheesy songs. We sang, giggled, relived high school moments of embarrassment with songs like "More Than Words" by Extreme, pretended to ice skate around his bedroom to our favorite mormon song (Beach Boys' "God Only Knows"), and threw some seriously bad shapes to "Dancing Queen", and "Ice Ice Baby". He ended up giving me loads of crap music (cause I kept shrieking "OH MY GOD! I love this song!!"). Unfortunately, in the cold light of day, now that I'm listening to this rubbish, I'm actually sitting at my desk, red faced with embarrassment, yet unable to switch it off.

All I can say is THANK GOD for the telephone, which has stopped me listening to Boyz II Men's "Down on Bended Knee" (oh yes, it's cheesy, R&B goodness baby). This is such a hark back to days of teenage angst, really bad fringes, logarithm, flannel shirts (hey I thought I looked cool), and sitting in my room, staring at pictures of Dean Cain, with this song on repeat for literally hours. I listened to some awful crap when I was young. Though, who do I think I'm kidding, I listen to some awful crap now!

Oh god no! It's "Motownphilly". OH NO.. If you know my number, for god's sake CALL ME! SAVE ME! Why am I listening to this? Why have I just started to play Down on Bended Knee again? Why? Why?

"Can someone tell me how to get things back to the way they used to be.
Oh god give me a reason, I'm down on bended knee.
I'll never walk again, until you come back to meeeeeee.
I'm down on bended knees".

The Big Three

I'm in the long and drawn out process of buying a house (well, I say "house", it's more 50's ex-council estate flat). I've done all my paper work (for once) and I'm just waiting for the vendor to sign all his stuff and send them back to his solicitors. This seems to be taking forever, as according to my good-for-nothing estate agent, it's not that my vendor has changed his mind, or the house he's trying to buy has problems, it's just that he hasn't been bothered to send back the surveys because he's just "plain lazy".

This lack of movement however has not stopped me from going out and browsing (read gawking) for The Big Three: Washer, Cooker, Fridge/Freezer. So I went to my new house last week for only the 3rd time ever (how wierd, I've spent more time in a cheap pair of jeans, trying to decide if it makes my arse look big before I buy them, than in the house that's going to cost me more money than god) so I could measure the spaces for The Big Three.

In my head, everything is always, well, a bit on the crazy side. In my head, I'd managed to make my new flat seem tiny and dark, with no welcoming or redeaming feature, where I have to always be on my guard in case zombies (or thieves) break through the ground floor windows and get me in the middle of the night. However, when I walked through the front door, I remembered exactly why I loved it.
1) It's just so pretty inside.
2) It's got a fantastic kitchen, which is about 3 times the size of the current 3ft x 2 ft pathetic excuse of a kitchen I cook our meals in.
3) It's got 2 (yup, you read right: two) shower heads in the bath! Water wasting decadence.

Since I've been renting from the first day I moved to Britain (i.e. the last 5 years), I've never had to buy any major kitchen appliances, such as ones to keep food from rotting.
So now that I'm browsing for The Big Three, I've managed convince myself that I am in desperate need of:

* The extra large, 6 burner, gas stove/cooker, with wok attachment, seperate gas grill, seperate fan forced oven, with possibly even a longer 3rd oven on the side
* The extra large double door American style fridge freezer, with water cooler and ice machine attached, which is plugged into the central plumbing. Essential for constant cold water, plus crushed ice, which every girl needs for the essential cocktail making and ice bucket chilling for the soon to be established "Champagne Thursdays".
* Extra large washer with tumble dryer, for fluffy, fluffy towels.

And because I feel some small glimmer of guilt for having such extravagant appliances, they all need to have lowest energy ratings around, thus thrusting their prices into the upper echalons of the spending stratosphere.

Where I'm supposed to get the ready cash for these little beauties I haven't quite worked out yet... I'm thinking about possibly selling non-essential organs on the black market... (who the fuck needs two kidneys anyway?). Besides, what's cash to me these days when I am soon to have a crippling mortgage but little bits of paper that drift in and out of my life like snow?

Shocking the old biddies with dogs

The Flatmate and I discovered a documentary called "The Aristocrats" last night, which we had to keep flicking to and from, because I honestly don't think we could have watched it in one go. Made in 2005, it's a documentary about the infamous longstanding dirty joke told amongst comedians, where the premise and punchline are the same, but it's the joke's midsection which the teller reworks to be anything they want, as long as it's completely improvised, is how this is used as a mental stretching exercises. The language and situations described are as foul and nasty as the dirtiest joke you've ever heard, but the shock value is only half the joke. The other half is how cleverly the comic can mix an mix the scatological material with the ultimate perversions. Blood, vomit, incest, bestiality, group sex, necrophilia, etc. are all blended together into a 'shock' joke as extreme as the teller can make it.

The joke involves a person pitching an act to a talent agent. Typically the first line is, "A man walks into a talent agent's office." The man then describes the act. From this point, up to (but not including) the punchline, the teller of the joke is expected to ad-lib the most shocking act they can possibly imagine.

In this documentary, about 100 comedians reminisce, analyze, deconstruct and deliver their own versions of the world's dirties joke. Each story is different, some of which are absolutely hilarious, some made us cringe, and some forced us wrestle for the remote to try and change the channel as soon as possible before the last vestiges of decency got sucked out of our bodies. Watching Carrie Fisher explain how her "mother was the queen of golden showers" was particularly disturbing, especially if you've ever watched "Singing in the Rain".

At our usual morning coffee break in Benugo, I was trying to explain this film to K and P from work, when I noticed this middle aged, extremely middle class, Daily Mail reading posh woman standing next to us, unconvincingly trying to look like she was wasn't eavesdropping on our conversation. Normally trying to freak out middle aged women is not something I do, but this old bat just got on my nerves so I started graphically explaining some of the film. To her credit she stuck around for the incest, group sex, defecation parts, but it was when I said "You know dog-fucking and arse fisting seem to be a very popular topic amongst these people", that she finally gave up, looked at me with a shocked "you working class, dirty, common slut" look in her eye, and ran for her life out the Benugos. She especially didn't seem to appreciate it when she looked back at me in the window and I beamed her a big old smile and a wave.

Ah, who says that TV is a bad influence?

Never, ever, yawn

A few months ago I started to learn the cello through the East London Late Starters Orchestra. For the last 2 months, I've been forced to see something that I've tried to avoid for years: an early Saturday morning.

Yesterday, we were rehersing the pieces we're doing for our December concert. And since, as a complete beginner, and a 3rd cello (i.e. we mighty 3rd cellos play only 4 different notes, with great gaping rests in the music, where we sit there. Playing nothing). As the conductor was busying himslef hassling the 1st and 2nd orchestra members... I started to look around the room, watching people, being bored, and since I was pretty tired from a stressful week, and lets face it, still hung over from my Friday night, I, shock horror, yawned.

Big fucking mistake.

All the way in the back, me, not making a single peep, and only yawning for fucks sake, managed to get the full wrath of the most arsey, rude, and horrid conductor I've ever met. His head swivelled round, ad stopping mid tirade at the viola section said to me in the most sarcastic tone: "I'm sorry, but am I keeping you awake? Am I boring you?". oh fuck.. I wanted to say "Well yes. You wrote this music, and we have 3 notes. For the whole piece. You are rubbish." But instead, I just hung my head in the shame I'd not felt since being told off in primary school, and kept all future yawns stifled.

Bollocks.

Damned Jen

Damn it damn it damn it.

There is nothing as bad as betting on something, and watching your bet lose. The only thing worse is watching something, writing up your tips for a betting website, not posting it, and then watching that 8/1 tip start to COME IN.

Bugger.

If you're watching "Make me a supermodel" then, Calvstar.co.uk's Pin Girl says "BACK JEN TO WIN".

Come on Jen. Win the fucker. Beat the rest of these skinny arsed bitch whores. Especially Mariane, who when asked her opinion about size zero models in an interview said "well it makes it easier for the designers if all the models are the same size. Oh, and everyone knows that clothes look better on thin people than big people".

So I say back Jen. You know why? Because she's not a bitch, she's not skinny, and she's not thick as two planks.

Gawd Damn

I've not written much in the last week because work has been riding my arse like you wouldn't believe. And no, that is not euphemism for something dirty. For the last week (well, last year really) I've been the go-to bitch for one of our clients. A client, I might add, who've got lots of people working in their IT & business team, all of whom are paid fucking shit loads of cash, none of which can go to help them buy a fucking clue.

So I will again endeavour to post with a frequency that I need to do to help me get through my day. And also because if I don't vent here, I will definitely get fired. Highlighted particularly well I thought after yesterday's little "discussion" with my boss, where at one stage I didn't let him get a word, and I managed to get him so pissed off that he stormed out of the office. Again. You know, I'm quite convinced it's my only talent.

Another Betting Disaster on Four Legs

Yesterday was the Melbourne Cup. The horse race of the Australian calander, which "stops a nation", literally. On the first Tuesday of every November, 23 or so horses race a Flemington Raceway in Melbourne, and everyone puts a bet on. Sweeps from offices to primary schools accross the country are conducted, televisions put in prominent areas, people stop working, and, if you're in Victoria, you get a public holiday. This is a big race.

And this was yet another fine example of how me and betting do not mix. At all. Much like the World Cup disasters here and here.

The multiple bets I had were: "Maybe Better" to win, "On A Jeune" and "Tawqueet" (the favorite in Australia) to place. Did these horses win? Of course they bloody didn't. The two Japanese horses, Delta Blue and Pop Rock (both of which I was contemplating on betting on, but since I'd already spunked £10 decided that I didn't just want to throw more money at the situation) came first and second. And third? Of course. The only horse I didn't put money down to be placed, Maybe Better, came third.

I bloody suck at betting. Close my betfair account please.

You're Friday Moment of Zen: Rivers in Botswana

This coming sunday the BBC will be showing new episodes of Planet Earth which has the most amazing footage of animals, insects and landscape you'll ever see.

This picture of the Okavango Delta in Botswana is really beautiful, so I thought I'd share as a real zen like moment. This picture comes from the collection of wallpaper they've got, which includes penguins, polar bears, vistas of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

If you get a chance to watch Planet Earth (especially on a high definition projector at Magic's house), I'd recommend it, as it is an amazing documentary series. If not, catch a load of their clips here.

Enjoy.

Rant. Level: Extreme. It's like being in high school

Rant Warning: This is a pretty angry rant. Won't do you much good if you're offended by the word fuck.
End of public announcement

Fucking fucking fuck.

I started to blog as a way to vent, and I've been wanting to do this for ages, so here it goes.

I'm so sick of all the bloody paraphernalia that goes with blogging. It's (I was going to say "ironic" but NO Alanis, meeting the man of your dreams, then meeting his beautiful wife is not IRONIC, it's just dumb fucking luck). Anyway, it's pathetic I suppose that I'm bitching about blogging on a blog, but there you go. I am pathetic.

It's seems that when I started this blog a few months ago, it was just about the blog. And all the blogs I stumbled across themselves where just about "the blog". Now though it's all about the listings, and the voting, and whose got links to who and who is best "blogging buddies" with whom, and whose blog is "blog of the day" on one of the billion sites that exist now so they can make revenue on advertisement OR make money on auctioning that title. You can't open a blog these days without the 50 odd links to "link sites" or "Vote for me!" icons, or blog rolls, or other fucking crap like that.

I only visit a handful of sites, and few of them are personal ones. The thing is, a couple of months ago, I managed to get linked by a few people, none of who I knew, but I thought "fantastic! someone's reading my crap! someone likes me!". I know that the way to keep "buddies" is to then visit their sites and leave copious amounts of comments. The problem is that I'm just not a comment kind of girl. I like to read a blog, have a laugh at what they've said, then leave. If I really like what they've said I'll leave a note. And because I do most of this (ssshh) in the office, I don't have masses and masses of time it seems you need to do the comments and the chatting and the network, blah blah blah. And this works completely against my favour, because now I'm finding that the people who used to link me have removed me. Cast me aside, and thrown me out, like I'm some sort of insane, rich aunt who used to be good to know because they'd buy you ponies and houses, but now they've lost all their money and their marbles have well and truly gone, so they get ignored and tossed out on the street. For some reason, these people whom I don't even know, have made me feel like shit. Which is SHIT, because, for fucks sake it's a fucking href on a fucking BLOG.

So I'm pissed off. I am really pissed off. I wish I had the time to sit there at night, read all my "buddies" daily posts, leave a message. But I can't. And that's not the sort of attitude that will make you popular in the blogging world is it? No Siree Bob.

The annoying thing is that I like getting comments, I like being read. And because I'm essentially lazy, this has definitely bit me in the arse. Is anyone else out there pissed off about this? The thing is, if I get down the root of the problem, I'm angry with myself for being this upset about something that is such a none event, because my pathetic low self esteem is in desperate need of the approval of people I don't even know. "Can you like me again? oh can you? I'm a bit chubby, and a geek, but pretty, pretty please, if you get to know me, I'm sure you'll like me. " It's just like being in high school again, when you're trying to hang out with a group (who I might add, weren't even the cool group at school), but you end up having one of them tell you they'll race you back to the playground only if you go the long way, and when you get there they're pointing and laughing at you and then they scatter as far away as possible, leaving you there like a sado billy-no-mates. And then you end up crying your eyes out in meditation class, desperately hoping they can't hear you, but knowing they can because they're giggling. And yes, I know that's exactly what it feels like because Emily and her friends in year 7 did that very thing to me. Bunch of bitchy catholic school girls.

Wow. What a rant. I started this blog so I could stop having to pander to all the people in my real life and bottle all these crappy feelings of worthlessness inside until they explode out of every pore like some sort of disgusting disease. So fuck it I'm gonna start doing that again.

And yet, I still know that I'll keep trying to do stupid things like remembering to add "blogroll" to this site. Why? Because I am fucking, fucking pathetic. And there's always room for me to be angry at myself for that.

Guy Fawks

Christ alive I'm pissed off. However I will keep it in and keep it together as I am at work, and because if I start I won't be able to stop and I want to be able to give this my full attention. Plus I've been so fucking busy at work to do a proper post in ages. (Parental Warning: Look away if you're offended by bad language (though that's too fucking late by this stage)): fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and fuck.

If you're planning on going to a bonfire or fireworks for Guy Fawks night this weekend, I found (despite this being on Capital Radio) this cool site to help you find one.