Category Archives: Personal

Media & Marketing, Miscellany, Personal, Television

The one with the tribute

(or, the one where Armand avails himself of the ire of every female reader of the inter-web through an act of extremely childish and superficial and purposeless misogyny, poorly masked as aestheticism)

Friends came to a close. It saddened me, despite how average I thought the series had become by the 10th season. I have limited hopes for the spin-off, Joey, but I do hope it surprises me pleasantly.

Inspired, though, by a wonderful and silly anecdote from one of its episodes, and by a game I was encouraged into playing at a particularly embarrassing party for me, I have a compiled a list of my top 5 actresses.

So; not in any particular order, and selected for a plethora of, often random, and only slightly superficial criteria, here they are:

Kate Beckinsale
Sarah Chalke
Jennifer Connelly
Kirsten Dunst
Jennifer Aniston

I should point out at this point that their IMDB photos don’t do them the greatest justice, but they are nonetheless all very beautiful.

[Listening to: Already There – Goo Goo Dolls – Superstar Car Wash (02:46)]
Personal, Technology, Work

Where’s my brain, again?

So, near complete silence for two weeks? Ya-huh? That’s what gainful employment does to you, I guess. Yup, I am now a full member of society, I have colleagues (who are all very nice), a job I enjoy and the world of pain that getting up at 7.15 every day gets you. But its going well, and its funner than an evening with Michael Eisner, as they say.

That’s not to say that my mind has been idle; the reason for the emptiness of the blog has entirely been due to exhaustion and not at all to do with an under-active mind. In fact, the new people, the new stimuli, are great for my grey matter. Don’t expect genius from this blog, though; in fact, lower your expectations as far as you can, and prepare for a veritable onslaught of blog-entries.

[Listening to: We Are the Normal – Goo Goo Dolls – Superstar Car Wash (03:39)]
Music, Personal

Ain’t talking about riffs

I’ve always had trouble describing my musical taste to people. It always comes out as ‘eclectic’, but now, with this list, Total Guitar Magazine has hit the nail on the head of one of the most important things for me: wicked guitar riffs.

Of their top 20 tracks, I’ve got 17 on CD somewhere. That’s some major riff action.

[Listening to: Whole Lotta Love – James Taylor Quartet – Greatest Acid Jazz Hits (04:36)]
Current affairs, Media & Marketing, Personal

The girl all the bad guys want

Writing and therefore thinking, once again, on altruism – and trying to understand more fully some of the things that supposedly tie in to my world view.

I believe, in a nutshell, that humanity is predisposed to altruistic motivations (and therefore altruistic behaviour, on occasion when akrásia fails). And I believe there’s an evolutionary basis to this (and all other) morality.

What, then, is my view in light of the obvious and evident acts of torture and brutality that’s been going on, by the supposed good guys?

I guess, and this is something that Michael Madsen (Mr Blonde of Reservoir Dogs fame) says when talking about how to best play the bad guy: the bad guy never believes he’s the bad guy. Although this is not the most original thought there’s been, I think nothing could be more true than for the ‘crusaders’ in Iraq – watching their friends die in what they’ve been told is a war on evil, a war on terror.

The travesty, of course, is that no-one is quite speaking in terms of these acts of atrocity as acts of terror, acts of evil. They are atrocities, but somehow one accepts atrocities in war and we remain entrenched in the rut. I think someone needs to through the hyperbole back into Bush’s face and then we’ll see how grey his black and white universe is.

[Listening to: One Last Shot – Klaus Badelt – Pirates of the Caribbean OST (04:46)]
Miscellany, Personal

Weird dreams #4

I really need to lay off the all-cheese pizzas before bed. Oh, no, that was in the dream too…

This time, I was at a job interview, had received an offer, and the MD of the company came up to me afterward and said “there’s been a problem,” and listed all the bad things I’ve ever done since I was twelve, which he had mapped out in a small brown bound notebook. These include, apparently, being surly to customers at Marks & Spencer where I once sold suits (something that’s never happened, honest).

There were also an inexplicable number of people from my old school working for that particular firm, so perhaps it was really a nightmare…

Some of this actually made sense in view of the kind of day I’ve been having recently…

[Listening to: In the Garage – Weezer – Weezer (03:56)]
Media & Marketing, Miscellany, Personal, Television

Weird dreams #3

I know there’s been a slightly overload of techie/geeky posts lately, so here’s one that’s just plain eccentric. I’ve had odd dreams before, but last night’s was a two-parter, full on Captain Weird of dreams (well, three parts, but part three was too disturbing to be spoken of. Ever. Again.)

Part the first: I was a kind of Radar O’Reilly/Captain Piers hybrid figure from M*A*S*H, and the 4077th had been substantially disbanded as everyone’s tours of duty had come to an end. Only BJ, me and (oddly enough) Colonel Henry Blake remained. So I helped them get home, somehow, by persuading Icore that the 4077th was useless when not a team, and that team had gone. They were happy to go home, and grateful to me for my manipulative scheming.

Part the second: My brother decided to have a party themed on Imperial Russia (don’t ask me how that works, I’m not quite sure, but it involved caviar and vodka – and funny hats) – and I was meant to be leaving the house but couldn’t quite manage it. The flat was much bigger than the one we actually live in, but structurally similar, and during my failure to leave, I kept wandering past a section that had been modelled like a McDonald’s and inhabited entirely by Koreans eating cheeseburgers.

It’s possible that my latter dream was a subconscious commentary on the state of globalisation, the death of ideology and the resurrection of the bizarre themed party, and the former simply my desire to be the hero acting out. Then again, its possible that I just like to dance the dream of the surreal.

[Listening to: The Remedy – Jason Mraz – Waiting For My Rocket To Come (04:17)]
Miscellany, Personal

On the interpretation of dreams

Last night, I had the strangest dream (apologies to Art & Paul). I stole a Bentley from a guy called Olly, drove it off a cliff, helped Olly recover it and then stole it again.

(a) I don’t like or aspire to Bentley-ownership (no, really: I aspire towards Mercedes ownership, that’s my poncey dream-car – specifically a 1993 SL320, in black)
(b) I don’t know or have any particular angst towards anyone called Olly
(c) The Bentley was manual transmission. I don’t think Bentley do that.

It was weird. It was very Bonnie-and-Clyde (without a Bonnie, sadly), and very high adrenaline. Weird.

[Listening to: In the Jailhouse Now – Soggy Bottom Boys – O Brother, Where Art Thou? (03:36)]
Miscellany, Personal, Technology

Ahead of time

Damnit, I’m still being a techie. I remembered reading about Stuff Magazine detailing a list of the top ten gadgets for 2004, and being pleased that I had a number of them. I reckon that I’m approximately 80% geek according to this. Here’s the list: how do you scale up?

# Bluetooth Mobile (Nokia 6600)
# MP3 Jukebox (Apple iPod)
# Plasma Screen (Pioneer PDP-434HDE)
# Home Cinema (Pioneer NS-DV990)
# Personal Video Recorder (Sky+ for BSkyB)
# Digital Camera (Pentax Optio S4)
# Games Console (Microsoft Xbox)
# Wi-fi Laptop (Sony Vaio)
# Wireless Network (Netgear)
# Watch (Seiko Arctura Kinetic)

Approximations allowed in scoring (i.e. SPV e200 instead of 6600 as a bluetooth mobile, Creative Jukebox in place of iPod etc.,)

[Listening to: Seven Years – Norah Jones – Come Away With Me (02:25)]
Miscellany, Personal

8 days a week

Although it’s been a 4-day week, I’ve crammed in enough activity for substantially more than that, and am feeling very, very ready for the weekend. Which is good, because there are parties to be had.

Today is Chris’ birthday, so be sure to leave him lots of messages on his blog, and if you’re an attractive woman, make him unsolicited offers. It’ll provide much intrigue and excitement. Don’t pretend to be a woman, though, that’s just not funny.

[Listening to: Barbossa is Hungry – Klaus Badelt – Pirates of the Caribbean OST (04:06)]
Film, Media & Marketing, Personal

I hate jet-lag

It’s been nearly a week and I’m still waking up too early. Of course, this morning it was at least partly caused by some monkey (silly monkey, look at the silly monkey) trying to fax our house phone at 06.32, and, of course, BT “do not have the caller’s number”.

Two films to talk about briefly; both of which I dozed off in, and therefore comments will be insubstantial. The first, an American movie (apparently for a change) – Ocean’s Eleven (the remake). This was re-watched the other night following a late supper with Kate, because we both felt the need for a silly film. Of course, I’d seen it before, but still deeply enjoyed the excellent performances from Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Friends’ Elliot Gould, and the deeply amusing Bernie Mac (who reminds me of the excellent and improbably named Cedric the Entertainer). It was great for the second time, even if I did doze off a couple of times, but was disappointed to find out that the sequel, due out next year, is going to be called Ocean’s Tweleve. Come on, guys, some imagination!

The second is the beautiful but VERY weird and very Japanese Spirited Away, which, unsurprisingly I watched with Matt and James. Like Princess Mononoke, its a fantastical Japanese anime film, but not really comparable in any other way. It dealt with extremely odd concepts of reality, good and evil, and had some of the weirdest protagonists I’d ever seen. The heroine, a little girl called Chihiro, struggles through a kind of twisted dystopic ‘Wonderland’, assisted and sometimes antagonised by a talking frog (nothing Disney about him), a dragon vaguely reminiscent of Atreyu (or was it Valkor) from the Never Ending Story, and a monochrome monolith called ‘No Face’ in an effort to rescue her parents, who have been turned into pigs. I’m going to watch the end of that film again to catch what I missed out on through my inadvertant naps – definitely intriguing.

I also finished reading Jennifer Government and Hey Nostradamus, mentioned in earlier posts. Spectacular books, both, one for its comic simplicity and the latter for being a profound and moving examination of faith in the face of hardship. I’m not a religious man, but have come from that background and was very impressed with Douglas Coupland’s careful narrative, telling an excellent story as well as dealing with issues of struggling with faith and dealing with personal disaster.

Oh, and a link to a “hot internet nerd” – a 20-year old girl from somewhere in the US who’s made a name for herself largely by being a girl and promoting herself as an ordinary individual. Unlike some of the weirdos on the internet, I didn’t surf to her site by typing “hot internet nerd” into google (no, really), but rather through a link in someone’s blog that I was reading. Honest. Anyway, I thought her blog was reasonably amusing for those with a spare minute.

Busy week this week. Posting frequency to resume at the weekend. Hope you’ve all had an egg-filled Easter and are ready to rumble. By the way, you might want to steer clear of Primrose Hill for a few days – those durned kids with their egg-and-spoon races have left fragments of boiled eggs all over the place. It’s going to smell like the 3rd circle of hell in a few days…

[Listening to: Try – Nelly Furtado – Folklore (04:40)]