Brideshead Vs Gatsby

Hello, Sheila here. This is my first blog post. At 14 I created a rather tragic website with the aid of my technologically advanced brother which featured pages titled ‘My friends’ and ‘My holidays’. I’m hoping to move away from the delightfully egocentric world-vision of youth, into the wonderfully self-centred observations of my early-twenties.

Firstly I hope everyone’s having a happy start to the summer time.

Was at a Brideshead themed party the night before last. Actually Brideshead Vs The Great Gatsby, so you could pick your nation. It was such a gorgeous day, and as the sun didn’t seem to set till about 8, we stood on the lawn drinking pimms for hours, surrounded by velvet smoking-jacketed men, young boys carrying old bears, beplumed girls wearing pleated dresses. The only hint of reality operating was given by heels slipping into soft ground.

Yesterday, got back to London. Budge and I headed up to the park and fell asleep in the sun. Actually I fell asleep, he read 100 pages of his small shiny-covered fat fantasy book. I took Ali Smith’s The Accidental with me. It’s taking me ages to read it. Stuck in someone else’s stream of consciousness is something which seems to take me a little while to get used to.

Another hot day today, hope everyone’s having a lovely day, maybe drinking bloody marys with ben harper singing in the background and culture in their laps.

Guest blogger on division6

Now that this blog is all shiny and sophisticated, it seems right that it stays current even when I’m on holiday, which I’ll be from Wednesday. So I’d like to introduce you to the person who’ll keep you entertained for the next couple of weeks…

SHILABILAGILA

Sheila, for those of you that don’t know, is my sister. Some would say she’s much more interesting than me (most people), others would say she’s annoying (me). Sheila’s on the prowl for a career in the literary world, so expect (non-slanderous) posts about literary agents, publishers, authors, drinks parties, shopping (erm, ok) and pimms.

Sheila may overlap on a couple of posts so that I can make sure she’s got the hang of WordPress before I head off… you’ll know its her and not me because, um, it’ll probably be a little less geeky, but crucially: it’ll say ‘posted by Sheila’ at the end of each post. So watch out for that – and welcome, ShilaBilaGila, to division6. Remember, metaphysically speaking, there is no division6…

Admin day

Despite the glorious sunshine outside, I have a load of cruddy admin-type things, so will be online quite a bit. Looking at my bulging personal and work inboxes, I’m realising quite how many people I owe emails.

Whilst it seems I’m emotionally capable of sustaining a lot of friends, I think I’m only logistically capable of managing about 5. So apologies – will hopefully get back to you all soon!

RSS woes

Apologies to those of you who’ve had issues with my RSS feed for the last few days. I broke it with the upgraded theme and only just noticed (something to do with feedburner redirects, tedious, technical and otherwise uninteresting)… but all fixed now – subscribe away here.

Procrastination is the root of all daytime television viewing

Have had to bring home some work this weekend (argh!), due in part to looming deadlines and the fact that I go on holiday next week and have quite a bit to mop up. So, what happens? The weather turns nice, after a week of rain, cold and misery – and I lose all ability to knuckle down, and spent half the morning watching cooking programmes on television.

MAN. I need to reclaim my Saturday and soak up some sunshine… as you can see from my new masthead photo, my tan is fading somewhat ;)

R/Micky = Ace Rimmer

Ok, so am quite tired and aware the blog posts are getting less structured, but wanted to get this thought down before it faded into meaninglessness in my notebook. Ricky (or is it Mickey) from the new Dr Who is the equivalent of Rimmer/Ace Rimmer from Red Dwarf, don’t you think? At least if you’ve seen the Cybermen episodes… A moment of redemption for a lifetime of mediocrity. That’s the stuff.

More thought through post on the greatness of the new Dr Who series to come (with the possible exception of the Cybermen episodes, although the jury’s out on that one); when I’m feeling less knackered.

Crikey, some geeky posts tonight. Gaming and Dr Who. Tomorrow I will post about women and sport and, erm, BEER, to prove my manliness. Oh yeah…

Gaming update: Evil Dead – Regeneration and Marvel Nemesis

Having decided against the next gen consoles for a little while (at least until the Nintendo WII comes out, which might be the console to wean me of my Sony/MS dependence), and really, really being bored of wasting my life on Civ4, was looking for a new way to, erm, waste my life. And on browsing Amazon’s bargain basement, decided to pick up a couple of games that I knew were just going to be a useless waste of money at full price… but might prove entertaining with a twofer 15 quid deal.

Both are obviously based on film / comic franchises that I love. Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series (of which I’ve seen 1 and 3: Army of Darkness) is fully entertaining, and there’s something about Bruce Campbell’s ridiculous machismo that is hugely entertaining – and proves to be in the ludicrous cutscenes of the game. It’s like Duke Nukem meets… well, Evil Dead. Very, very funny – simple, addictive, button mashing game play, decent graphics and a plotline worth sawing your arm off for. So far, anyway – I’m only about 20 minutes in. Have a feeling its going to get repetitive quick, but for now…

And Marvel’s newest beat-em-up, after a long line of really, really awful games, is actually relatively entertaining. It, like MK: Shaolin Monks, turns the game into something more of a platform game and gives a nice bit of variety between characters. Of course, there’s no two-player cooperative mode (d’oh! – although haven’t tried on Xbox Live yet), and the combos seem limited, it is very true to Marvel so far and quite fun as a consequence.

In short, great diversions for a small investment. This pleases me.

The greatest film ever?

If Sam Raimi Directed this film, and cast Bruce Campbell, could we have…

Evil Dead Snakes on a Plane?

Awesome.

Sorry, this post may or may not be an indirect consequence of a conversation with Tom and Chris, but who can say. Either way, EDSOAP could be a great sequel.

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!

Sorry. Just booked a holiday. *So* relieved it is hard to express. Amazing how much stress that sort of thing generates; its meant to be enjoyable. What I really need is unlimited funds and a concierge service…

Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.