no bars left; the music's running on empty, singing on and on into asphyxiation, and i don't care, c
I had a sausage sandwich for breakfast this morning.
You do not know how happy this made me.
Sausage sandwiches are one of the pinnacles of modern culinary life. As we as a family not only rarely have sausages but also rarely have cooked breakfasts (unless my sister is being awesome) and I as an individual rarely have breakfast full stop, me having such a wonderful breakfast is really rather nice.
Of course, O intrepid readers, it was not half as nice as the events that lead to my eating that rather charred lozenge of dead cow flesh. Because, as you may by now have guessed, that event was another barbeque.
It was not quite as impromptu as the previous one, having been planned and organised over the previous week. On the other hand, the final guest list included two people who I didn't know were going to be coming until that day, one person whom I hadn't seen for a year, one whom I had only ever met once before, one who still claims that I owe her a return trip to Venice. It also involved me wielding the almost obscenely pointy, spiky and vicious-looking barbecue implements with my customary vengeance glee, Paul bouncing up and down on a giant purple ball; Paul being dragged along by his armpits, still bouncing on the giant purple bouncy ball in an effort to not fall down, and being shut outside (although the door wasn’t locked) and then continuing to bounce outside the window for a while until sisterkin took pity on him and let him in, whereupon Helen kicked the ball out from under him in one of the most amusing Paul-based stunts ever witnessed, which is really saying something; me offering people ‘rat-onna-stick’ and them actually accepting; two different types of salad; axes; comic incidents of all kinds; much teasing of Robbie (although far less than he received today); rescue operations; almost-awkward interpersonal politics; also, burgers, sausages, chicken and peppers.
It also involved me being locked out of my bedroom on the roof and then not being let back in for ten minutes. (I really should investigate the best way to climb down for future reference.)
All in all, it was the most enjoyable Bank-Holiday Mondays I’ve had in a very long time. What was also very nice (quite aside from having lots of lovely people and food at my house at the same time and seeing Dave and all that kind of stuff) was that lots of other people had a lovely time too; in fact, it may be that barbeques at my house become a weekly fixture of the summer. Which would really be kind of awesome.
---
Two cousin-related notices. The first is the most recent, which occurred today: I received a phone call from the cousin who is closest to me in age (Hadass, who I shall come up with a nickname for in due course) to tell me that she and Nadav (her elder brother -- although not her eldest brother, who is twenty-something, likes Guns ‘N’ Roses, does logistics and looks like a smaller, lighter, shinier Vin Deisel would if he were to grin all the time) had booked their flights and that they would be arriving on the ninth of July and going home on the nineteenth.
This is really kind of cool. It would, however, have been useful if my mother had informed us that this was going to happen in advance.
The other cousin-related notice involves the pirate cousin and his philosopher girlfriend. Or rather it doesn’t; it involves the pirate cousin and his philosopher fiancé. He proposed to her in Paris, on the way home, which is cool enough; but not only that, but so that she didn’t find the ring he got my grandmother to smuggle it home after she went to visit them, and she didn’t tell anyone.Supplying prohibited goods to my sister and I (chocolate), having the internet, international romantic espionage - my grandmother is awesomely cool.
But then, so is my new official-cousin-to-be. So there we go.
---
Audience participation time: what is the correct etiquette when using punctuation and parentheses? (Yes, I know that parentheses are a form of punctuation too, and that they’re really called brackets, but I wanted my alliteration.) Should the comma, semi-colon or colon (I’m ignoring dashes here, because usually one either uses paired dashes or brackets for those little parenthetical -- dashular? dashesian? dashing? -- remarks, not both) go immediately before the brackets open or immediately after they close?
---
Talking about grammar brings me nicely onto my next point: I have started a writing journal. All of my creative scribblings will eventually be put up there, barring only those which I consider unfit for public consumption on the grounds of quality or the stuff for my current project, which I will elaborate upon when that is up and running; I have no idea how regularly it will be updated, because currently I have no plan and I don’t write on a timetable comparable to any temporal thing except possibly the timetable corresponding to public transport. (Actually, the metaphor’s a good one; nothing appears when I want or need it to, and then three ideas come at once one on top of the other and I can only travel with one of them, and the times at which they do deign to appear tend to be very inconvenient ones. They also never seem to quite get off them in the place I expected to when I got on, and they always take more time to get there than I anticipated. However, they are not red, usually are not noisy, and tend not to involve strange men called Charlie telling my sister that she is a lovely, lovely girl, although I probably shouldn’t rule that possibility out.)
Now that I’ve got that unexpected and somewhat Copian aside out of my system, I should probably actually get round to telling you that the journal can be found at upstroke_glyphs. It’s not finished yet, because I’ve not yet actually managed to get round to doing anything less rudimentary than setting it up and posting, but feel free to take a gander, as long as you put it back where you found it afterwards. Or, in more conventional English, take a look.
(Slavish praise, as ever, is always appreciated, as are gifts, job offers, titles, knighthoods, fan mail, government grants, research fellowships, CIA investigations, marriage proposals and wheelbarrows full of high-denomination cash, used notes or gold bars for preference. Constructive criticism is even better.)
---
Someone, it seems, has broken Warwick University. This makes me sad.
---
On Friday night, Helen and I went to see my friend Mike (wit, genius, possible reincarnation of Oscar Wilde and owner of quite possibly the largest ego since the one that was carved in three mile high letters -- which actually works whichever way round you read it; awesome -- on a big chalk mound somewhere and is only comprehendible as such if you are either several thousand feet up in the air or have been doing far too much acid) play with his band at The Hat Factory in Luton. We weren’t mugged, knifed, cudgelled or beaten to death with blow-dryers, and I didn’t manage to kill us on the way there, and they were actually rather good - they sound a bit like Razorlight with a little bit of Franz Ferdinand thrown in but a lot younger and not quite as good. I was suitably impressed. The band that played the set after theirs, though, was magnificently awesome, and both of us declared that if they had been selling their album I would have had to buy a copy on the spot. They’re playing a gig somewhere in St Albans sometime in the summer, which I will probably attend, because they are that good. My father may end up going too, because I played him some of their songs via the Hellpit That Is Myspace and he really rather liked them too.
(Mike’s band’s page is here; the really rather awesome band can be found over here, and I would recommend that you listen to Dance With Feeling. Of Mike’s stuff, Yellow Houses is pretty good too.)
---
On the subject of music, I would like to point you all to this rather fascinating story. Those of you who read officialgaiman will probably have seen it already; those who haven’t should take a look, and then should add the RSS feed, because he is awesome.
---
I am currently listening to lots of Bloc Party, courtesy of wanderlight. Hunting for Witches especially is rather fantastic.
---
Current things to do, after revising and essays and suchlike: polish shoes, write more for the project, update upstroke_glyphs, e-mail certain Word documents, sort out new icons. Also, devise some sort of system by which my bedroom will remain tidy for more than thirty minutes at a time, add more postcards, buy new curtains, sort out unis and a job, get my phone fixed, go to the bank, make that thing for the project, make that phone call for the project, sort out those tickets to those things and stop being so allusive.
(I had a Robbie conversation with Todd today at lunchtime that ran a little like the end of that paragraph. But that’s another story…)
---
I just watched the clock on my computer click over from 23:59 to 00:00. I like those liminal spaces.
You do not know how happy this made me.
Sausage sandwiches are one of the pinnacles of modern culinary life. As we as a family not only rarely have sausages but also rarely have cooked breakfasts (unless my sister is being awesome) and I as an individual rarely have breakfast full stop, me having such a wonderful breakfast is really rather nice.
Of course, O intrepid readers, it was not half as nice as the events that lead to my eating that rather charred lozenge of dead cow flesh. Because, as you may by now have guessed, that event was another barbeque.
It was not quite as impromptu as the previous one, having been planned and organised over the previous week. On the other hand, the final guest list included two people who I didn't know were going to be coming until that day, one person whom I hadn't seen for a year, one whom I had only ever met once before, one who still claims that I owe her a return trip to Venice. It also involved me wielding the almost obscenely pointy, spiky and vicious-looking barbecue implements with my customary vengeance glee, Paul bouncing up and down on a giant purple ball; Paul being dragged along by his armpits, still bouncing on the giant purple bouncy ball in an effort to not fall down, and being shut outside (although the door wasn’t locked) and then continuing to bounce outside the window for a while until sisterkin took pity on him and let him in, whereupon Helen kicked the ball out from under him in one of the most amusing Paul-based stunts ever witnessed, which is really saying something; me offering people ‘rat-onna-stick’ and them actually accepting; two different types of salad; axes; comic incidents of all kinds; much teasing of Robbie (although far less than he received today); rescue operations; almost-awkward interpersonal politics; also, burgers, sausages, chicken and peppers.
It also involved me being locked out of my bedroom on the roof and then not being let back in for ten minutes. (I really should investigate the best way to climb down for future reference.)
All in all, it was the most enjoyable Bank-Holiday Mondays I’ve had in a very long time. What was also very nice (quite aside from having lots of lovely people and food at my house at the same time and seeing Dave and all that kind of stuff) was that lots of other people had a lovely time too; in fact, it may be that barbeques at my house become a weekly fixture of the summer. Which would really be kind of awesome.
---
Two cousin-related notices. The first is the most recent, which occurred today: I received a phone call from the cousin who is closest to me in age (Hadass, who I shall come up with a nickname for in due course) to tell me that she and Nadav (her elder brother -- although not her eldest brother, who is twenty-something, likes Guns ‘N’ Roses, does logistics and looks like a smaller, lighter, shinier Vin Deisel would if he were to grin all the time) had booked their flights and that they would be arriving on the ninth of July and going home on the nineteenth.
This is really kind of cool. It would, however, have been useful if my mother had informed us that this was going to happen in advance.
The other cousin-related notice involves the pirate cousin and his philosopher girlfriend. Or rather it doesn’t; it involves the pirate cousin and his philosopher fiancé. He proposed to her in Paris, on the way home, which is cool enough; but not only that, but so that she didn’t find the ring he got my grandmother to smuggle it home after she went to visit them, and she didn’t tell anyone.Supplying prohibited goods to my sister and I (chocolate), having the internet, international romantic espionage - my grandmother is awesomely cool.
But then, so is my new official-cousin-to-be. So there we go.
---
Audience participation time: what is the correct etiquette when using punctuation and parentheses? (Yes, I know that parentheses are a form of punctuation too, and that they’re really called brackets, but I wanted my alliteration.) Should the comma, semi-colon or colon (I’m ignoring dashes here, because usually one either uses paired dashes or brackets for those little parenthetical -- dashular? dashesian? dashing? -- remarks, not both) go immediately before the brackets open or immediately after they close?
---
Talking about grammar brings me nicely onto my next point: I have started a writing journal. All of my creative scribblings will eventually be put up there, barring only those which I consider unfit for public consumption on the grounds of quality or the stuff for my current project, which I will elaborate upon when that is up and running; I have no idea how regularly it will be updated, because currently I have no plan and I don’t write on a timetable comparable to any temporal thing except possibly the timetable corresponding to public transport. (Actually, the metaphor’s a good one; nothing appears when I want or need it to, and then three ideas come at once one on top of the other and I can only travel with one of them, and the times at which they do deign to appear tend to be very inconvenient ones. They also never seem to quite get off them in the place I expected to when I got on, and they always take more time to get there than I anticipated. However, they are not red, usually are not noisy, and tend not to involve strange men called Charlie telling my sister that she is a lovely, lovely girl, although I probably shouldn’t rule that possibility out.)
Now that I’ve got that unexpected and somewhat Copian aside out of my system, I should probably actually get round to telling you that the journal can be found at upstroke_glyphs. It’s not finished yet, because I’ve not yet actually managed to get round to doing anything less rudimentary than setting it up and posting, but feel free to take a gander, as long as you put it back where you found it afterwards. Or, in more conventional English, take a look.
(Slavish praise, as ever, is always appreciated, as are gifts, job offers, titles, knighthoods, fan mail, government grants, research fellowships, CIA investigations, marriage proposals and wheelbarrows full of high-denomination cash, used notes or gold bars for preference. Constructive criticism is even better.)
---
Someone, it seems, has broken Warwick University. This makes me sad.
---
On Friday night, Helen and I went to see my friend Mike (wit, genius, possible reincarnation of Oscar Wilde and owner of quite possibly the largest ego since the one that was carved in three mile high letters -- which actually works whichever way round you read it; awesome -- on a big chalk mound somewhere and is only comprehendible as such if you are either several thousand feet up in the air or have been doing far too much acid) play with his band at The Hat Factory in Luton. We weren’t mugged, knifed, cudgelled or beaten to death with blow-dryers, and I didn’t manage to kill us on the way there, and they were actually rather good - they sound a bit like Razorlight with a little bit of Franz Ferdinand thrown in but a lot younger and not quite as good. I was suitably impressed. The band that played the set after theirs, though, was magnificently awesome, and both of us declared that if they had been selling their album I would have had to buy a copy on the spot. They’re playing a gig somewhere in St Albans sometime in the summer, which I will probably attend, because they are that good. My father may end up going too, because I played him some of their songs via the Hellpit That Is Myspace and he really rather liked them too.
(Mike’s band’s page is here; the really rather awesome band can be found over here, and I would recommend that you listen to Dance With Feeling. Of Mike’s stuff, Yellow Houses is pretty good too.)
---
On the subject of music, I would like to point you all to this rather fascinating story. Those of you who read officialgaiman will probably have seen it already; those who haven’t should take a look, and then should add the RSS feed, because he is awesome.
---
I am currently listening to lots of Bloc Party, courtesy of wanderlight. Hunting for Witches especially is rather fantastic.
---
Current things to do, after revising and essays and suchlike: polish shoes, write more for the project, update upstroke_glyphs, e-mail certain Word documents, sort out new icons. Also, devise some sort of system by which my bedroom will remain tidy for more than thirty minutes at a time, add more postcards, buy new curtains, sort out unis and a job, get my phone fixed, go to the bank, make that thing for the project, make that phone call for the project, sort out those tickets to those things and stop being so allusive.
(I had a Robbie conversation with Todd today at lunchtime that ran a little like the end of that paragraph. But that’s another story…)
---
I just watched the clock on my computer click over from 23:59 to 00:00. I like those liminal spaces.