2/25/2003

I love XFM conpetitions :  XFM is a london based radio station, broadcasting on the interweb. I listen to it at work.

I figure no-one must enter their competitions, or their prizes must be pants. I won a competition of theirs before. When I heard this morning that there were movie premiere tickets to be won, I entered. This was my second XFM competition entry. I entered this one twice. Both entries won. I now have four tickets to see a west end movie premiere. It makes up for not being able to stagger from one end of Sunday night Leicester Square to the other a few days ago, when self important bouncers were rudely staking out territory for so-called stars such as George Clooney to walk along on their way to the BAFTAs.
posted by Garreth at 11:40 AM

Things that are good this week :  1. Stealing The Getaway from a slumbering friend's house. The Getaway is a Playstation II game in which you get to drive around London and shoot people. The action is not as violent or as stylised as that in GTA Vics City, but the driving....oh the driving. It's fantabulous. Makes me want to go and steal cars. Police cars if possible.

The makers have obviously spent a great deal of time mapping roads and shop fronts in London, which means that the player is immersed in a realistic looking immitation of the frustrating traffic of the capital, with things leaping out to remind you that you are on Piccadilly on the way to Hyde Park - ooh look it's Tower Records. One-way systems, bollards, irritating raliings which prevent you veering left, and landmarks are all where they should be. I found myself driving between Bethnal Green and Frith Street last night. All of London's frustrating detail is reproduced, although as a getaway driver, one is less inclined to stick to the left hand side of the road / pavement / policewoman's foot when trying to make progress. And more likely to steal police cars, and hack down pedestrians.

I wrote a thesis once on the effects of videogames on their players. I can't really remember what it said, but my latest evidence is clear: I bought Vice City. I got banned from driving a company hire car because of speeding fines, bus lane fines, and excess damage to the car. Some damage was allegedly from me driving into walls. Other damage was allegedly caused by driving through car parks over obstacles that were designed to deter (if not totally prevent) people driving over them. The visual images presented in The Getaway are more realistic than those in Vice City. I thoroughly expect to be ram-raiding shops in stolen cars by the end of March.

2. Will Self's book - My Idea of Fun. A great book in which the central character has already discussed ripping off the head of a tramp and addressing himself to the corpse by page three. Thoroughly enjoyable and full of big words, like eidetic.

3. Happy hour at 9pm on a Sunday.
posted by Garreth at 8:07 AM

2/24/2003

Schoolgirls and Trolley-Dollies :  Some companies have an uptight culture. Some are more relaxed. But when you have meetings in a canteen at a relaxed client, and they play Tatu's chart-topping single, while heavily made up air-hostesses dance in the background, how are you supposed to concentrate on anything?
posted by Garreth at 12:20 PM

2/19/2003

VFM :  It's easy to get obsessed by Value For Money. Between sales, buying one and getting one free, and thinking that credit card companies are saving you money, it's easy to get confused.

Take polyphonic ring tones for example. Firstly, they're just an annoying way of letting everyone know that you haven't answered a phone. Secondly, they sound like your favourite chart hit murdered by Raw Sex on a third hand eighties Casio keyboard. So how come I just spent twenty minutes downloading crappy polyphonic ring tone midi files from PhunkyPhones? It's because I thought that you weren't supposed to be able to, but they'd slipped up and made everything available. I thought I was getting free crap. I thought I was getting VFM. If I spent twenty minutes at work actually working, or even in a fast food outlet working, I could earn enough money to buy them.

No hang on. They're five dollars each. Maybe it is cheaper to download them (even though they are abhorent renditions of MC Hammer songs), I am getting VFM. Back to page 23 of 35. Abba's SOS. Bet that sounds great.
posted by Garreth at 1:52 PM

Snack of the day: :  First place: The Smarties Bar made by the baby killers-. It's very much like shoving half a tube of Smarties down your gullet, and then sprinkling Smarties on your tongue. Which is how I always eat tubes of Smarties.
Second place: Minstrels. A solid favourite on any day, but today's plastic pack of crispy coated goodness had three M&Ms in it. Hurrah for quality control and contamination with Galaxy, or Masterfoods UK, Slough. I wouldn't have minded but they weren't peanut M&Ms so I could sue based on a mythical peanut allergy.
posted by Garreth at 12:39 PM

2/17/2003

"London Lesbians Lifted My Barnet" :  claims Ron Malibu of Shepherds Bush, London. "I really loved that hat - it had special memories for me," continued Ron. The hat in question had an emblem denoting Tottingham Hotspurs Football Club. It was callously removed from Ron in a predominantly female homosexual night-club in London's fashionable west end on Valentine's day morning. "I don't really like football, but I got the hat when I was cold at the only English football game I've ever been to," wept a distraught Ron.

Police are appealing to anyone who can identify any of the people in the following photos to come forward if they have seen a blue beanie hat on their heads.
posted by Garreth at 3:27 AM

Quotes of the week: :  "Ron, you spell my name wrong. In my country, 'Selsa' means masturbation. Call me John, it's less risky." - Selso

"Go and have a cup of coffee, and come back in half an hour." - bouncer at G.A.Y on Thursday night
"Why can't we come in now?" - Ramon
"It's his eyes." - bouncer at G.A.Y gesturing at Ron

"F*ck me, not Iraq." - Anti-war protester banner

"Which side are you marching for?" - Mr. Malibu senior on discovering Ron was going to a march about an impending war

"Do you have to go? Why don't you stay and tidy your room?" - Raz's mother on hearing her 31 year old son was going to a march about an impending war

"Pint of beer. Any beer." - Selso before his kickboxing exam

"Does he change his underpants?" - Mrs. Malibu senior on hearing her son was sharing a flat with a french man

"That's got to be worth fifty pence." - understanding boyfriend of girl who had just kissed Ron after Ron had asked her for fifty pence

"Sleep with bearded folk." - Anti-war protester banner

posted by Garreth at 3:17 AM

2/13/2003

Rubber bricks dipped in blood :  London anti-war demonstration top tips:

• Apparently the war on Iraq may cost the UK 5 billion GBP. That's about 2500 quid for each grown up in the UK. Introduce the congestion charge a few days early - tax the demo to fund the bombs
• Go to the demo. Do not try to meet all of your friends. Operate in independent three person cells, buried in tunnels under Downing Street. Use call signs in text messages to ensure the movement is still progressing - (Gawain, I mean HERMIT04)
• Turn up to the demo in a Michel Barrymore face mask to avoid detection - (anon)
• Carry buckets of blood to dip your bricks in to make better t.v. viewing when they are launched at coppers - (errr... me)
• Shout "Gas!" to try to ensure massive panic in the supermassive crowded demonstration - (Raz)
• Release mostly harmless visible gas in the supermassive crowd and fall about clutching your throat and choking to incite panic - (anon)
• Trash a McDonalds just because you can get away with it - (Hamburglar)
• Self immolation in front of Downing Street - (anon)
• Organise a mass jumping up and down session to kick off earthquakes and drive California into the sea - (Boo)
• Link arms and try to break the world record for joined up electric boogaloo - (Jeff)
• Start a chant demanding a proper war, not some half arsed American blitzkreig - (Johnny Vegas)

2/12/2003

Flat for sale :  1894 flat, 54 careful owners, partial service history. One door, air bags. Good runner, excellent condition genuine reason for sale.
posted by Garreth at 6:41 AM

2/11/2003

Carpet Exorcism :  As Japan would say:

Just when I think I'm winning
When I've broken every door
The ghosts of my life
Blow wilder then before

Experts claim that smells remind you of things - that the sense of smell is the most important for mammals. This is easily verified in the modern home with its wall-to-wall carpets. Try this simple exercise:

1. Rent Rug-Doctor carpet shampooing apparatus or equivalent
2. Apply to carpet in your home
3. Smell foul black gloopy liquid that issues from your pile
4. See if it reminds you of anything


For step four, my own personal memories where vivid and diverse - booze, fags, spilt wine, old house-mates, twiglets, sewage, vomit, burning hair, and all of the other constituents of a good party could be whiffed. And, I'm a mammal.
posted by Garreth at 6:13 AM

2/10/2003

Tips for the traveller to London :  Top tip - avoid buying jelly babies from tube station sweetie machines. The packets are small, and the jelly babies are from some pygmy tribe, and hence smaller than usual. On second thoughts, just avoid the tube altogether.
posted by Garreth at 3:41 AM

Life immitating rant :  Egads. There really are diet patches, like a giving-up-fags-patch. "No ephedrine". I wasn't serious when I suggested there were.
posted by Garreth at 3:24 AM

2/06/2003

Definition: White In :  Opposite of black out. When you regain consciousness while you're body is still doing something after a hard drinking session. Examples include finding yourself wandering by a dual carriageway at 5am, orf finding yourself snogging someone with no idea how you got onto intimate terms with them.

Hypothesis: Very much like your body's own version of Douglas Adams' peril sensitive sunglasses. Something that switches off your conscious mind while your body keeps doing things. Ideally would stop you getting into too much trouble. Depends who you're snogging though I guess.
posted by Garreth at 11:39 AM

Best email of the day from colleague drinking skittle vodka last night :  After waking up in my own sick I decided to work from home today.

I'll never drink another skittle vodka thing for as long as I live!

-----Original Message-----
From: Garreth Woods
Sent: 06 February 2003 14:43
To: Marshall Schoenthal; Jonathan Gray; Jahirul Islam; King Cheung
Subject: Slave trade

It's almost 3pm and I still can't see Jahirul or Jon. Did someone sell them as sex slaves to some wealthy russian businesswoman or something after I left last night?
posted by Garreth at 9:05 AM

10,000 GBP in ten minutes :  That's as much money as Michael Jackson earns (almost). And all this guy has to do is turn up with a marker pen
posted by Garreth at 4:58 AM

Someone said that life is pain :  Some bloke lived in a barrel.
Someone said that life is pain.
Eighty quid for a bottle of unbranded vodka - that's pain. I'm glad I left 'early' to pass out without picking up the bill.
posted by Garreth at 4:01 AM

2/05/2003

You can’t get squatter than a squat-squat-squatter – Part I :  The morning arrived with a spin and a blur, and before thoughts of proceeding home in an orderly mid morning fashion had fully formulated, others roused in the household in which Ron had gained consciousness. The previous evening’s half-baked notion that clogging arteries with a Full English (breakfast that is – not a gram of smack) was followed through in a drunken stupor.

Sausages came and went, as they are wont to do. The ragged notion that walking from Angel to Camden along the canal was a spiffing thing to do, suddenly sprang into Ron’s head. After a few false starts and the collection of an Irishman with no sense of direction, which naturally entailed a pint at a local hostelry as he wended his way to where they were waiting, the quartet set off.

Due to the last of the light ebbing away towards the US before the journey was fully realised, the gang of four elected to stop at only other pub for a drink, to speed their Camden bound progress. They rightly felt that the night closing in on them while they were alongside the general nocturnal inhabitants of the area might pose a variety of risks to their personal well-beings.

Luckily, the Mac Bar came to their rescue on the outskirts of Camden before they could wind up in too much trouble. The worst injury was when one of Ron’s favourite fingers spontaneously burst into blood tears, for no apparent reason, as most drink-related wounds are wont to do.

Time passed, as did cocktail waitresses, as did cocktails. Before long, Ron had to depart, for an evening of tapas was required in order to celebrate the birthday of the only buddhist solicitor that he knew in the area. Not a solicitor for mendacious buddhists – no that solicitor would perhaps be a very poor one – but a solicitor who was a buddhist. As luck would have it, said buddhist solicitor was dating the manager of the tapas bar and upstairs salsa club, as these people are wont to do.

Ron arrived an hour before the rest of the party, and realising that he was perhaps too drunk to sit down and communicate with anybody for any period of time, he bought pints of cider to sober him up. Needless to say, this was not totally successful, but as his sister had always told him when he had forgotten to buy her even paltry birthday presents, it was the thought that counted. The evening bestowed a fantastic number of plates of food on the guests, to help wash down the gallons of champagne, and before long, thoughts turned to salsa, and the thoughts turned to knee wobbling steps.

Ron found himself hypnotised by salsa, in which two left feet were a positive boon. This was the case when dancing with an El Salvadorian man who knew both how to lead and be led, and wanted to switch between the two. As the dancing progressed, it became clear that switching between traditionally male and female roles on the dance-floor was not the only place that he envisaged this action with Ron.

As the salsa club was closing, another birthday attendee named Mash, who appeared to have stolen David Bellamy’s beard for the evening, suggested a squat party. With little encouragement, Ron, Mash and Zoe set off to push back the boundaries of salsa and squatting…

posted by Garreth at 6:12 AM

Is ice hockey a sport? :  Well, this reporter sure feels that it’s more of a hotdog and beer extravaganza, which people turn up to while they wait for a fight to happen. “Blood on the ice!”, plead the crowd when the simmering clear-sided saucepan of stubble and helmets boils into a frothing fracas. And under such circumstances, rather like a boxing match, the referee does nothing to restrain the combatants as they throw fist after fist into the snout of their opponent. Not unless one of them falls over. So in my mind, the Nottingham Panthers’ fist chucking supremo won the sport of London Knight bashing, in a game I witnessed last Friday. The Panther got my vote simply by punching him in the face until the Knight couldn’t support his own weight. But that’s where his true style showed through. The pugilistic Panther didn’t let the knackered Knight slump to the ice, a broken and fractured pulp unable to stand on his own two skates. No. That would have prompted the referee and linespeople to swarm in and end the beating. No. The Panther held up the Knight by the neck with one hand, so that he could punch him some more with the other.

Despite the official score of puck based goals being in favour of the London Knights last Friday, it was clear to me that the Panthers had won the fight, much to the chagrin of the London team’s supporters. So perhaps ice hockey is in fact two sports. The author was born in Nottingham.

posted by Garreth at 6:10 AM

2/04/2003

Southpaw nothing, I'll drop 'im in three :  You know those bricks you have to rescue from the bottom of the swimming pool at school? If you don't like war, but like policemen, consider using rubberised bricks in the upcoming anti-war demos. It wouldn't be a demonstration if there weren't bricks lobbed at coppers, or so I was told by a man in a pub the other day.
posted by Garreth at 1:35 PM

Snow and the art of cycling - part I :  Southpaw had served him well. Many an unsuspecting errant car wing-mirror had fallen to a vicious uppercut from the cyclist. In severe traffic situations, many motors had received worse - a stamp to the near-side wing, a banana up the exhaust pipe. The cyclist now even wore body armour when he pedalled.

But his familiar cycling stance had to change. As his legs thumped out a regular rhythm urging his icicle bicycle towards the ice stadium, large flakes of snow began to tumble from the sky. Flakes flew into his eyes, reducing the limited visibility from a few metres to zero, as he blinked away the icy intrusion between the lids. There was nothing for it. The cyclist raised his armoured gauntlet to shield his eyes.

The road was heavily iced, like a Marks and Spencers luxury Christmas cake. Car combat was likely to end in tarmac marzipan for our cycling hero, but he fought on through the snowstorm, to the ice stadium - the accident blackspot that was the roundabout below the Hammersmith flyover. His leg twitched with the memory of previous fights, as he steered into the middle lane, and accelerated hard towards the Fulham Palace Road exit....
posted by Garreth at 1:29 PM

Old dog, new tricks :  Top tip - Jack Daniels and lemonade tastes like Refreshers, which is nice. I didn't know that until Sunday. Also, stay away from melon flavoured spirits if at all possible, they don't taste like any sweet at all.
posted by Garreth at 7:03 AM