A Brief History Of Symes

Odd how O2 became incompetent in the last two months I'm with them. They now owe me £27. Cnuts.
I'm almost glad I am leaving them.

• 21:03 ITV using No Cars Go in background of football coverage = brilliant. Shame Liverpool are so excruciating. #
• 21:24 HOW THE FUCK IS DIRK KUYT GETTING A FULL 90 MINUTES ON THE RIGHT OF MIDFIELD? #
• 22:37 Well of *course* he's the one to score after that. This is how these things work. #

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By all culinary/folk saying logic, Shepherd's Delight should be butterscotch pudding on top of a delicous layer of lamb mince.

Apropos voiceofsauron's interesting set of sensible policies for a happier Britain, here is my manifesto:

1. Regional school exam boards to be scrapped for devaluing GCSEs and A-levels. A single independent body should be empowered to set exams to a consistent standard, or possibly make a more radical move like adopting the International Baccalaureate.

2. The level of government funding for a degree should vary widely depending on the research rating of the university, the industrial applicability of the subject and an extensive system of scholarships: the government should pay a full fee plus a grant for a gifted student doing a BSc at a top university, down to no funding at all for a BA at a minor university. An inter-university committee to be put in place to avoid funding pseudo-scientific subjects like homeopathy. The aim of getting 50% of the population to go to university to be scrapped and funding overall diverted to point 7.

3. £500 "compensation" to be offered for all women who have an abortion as discussed. Some commenters suggest certain women would see this as an earning opportunity - I can't believe it would be more than an extreme minority, and it's hardly going to be a lucrative career.

4. VAT reform to introduce a higher 20%+ rate for genuinely luxury goods, and introduce lower rates for "luxury" food items and essentials like tampons.

5. 50% income tax for earnings over £100,000.

6. The maximum allowed annual compensation for a company director to be tied to the annual wage of his lowest-earning employee (a panel of economists to determine the formula).

7. All firms above 100 employees to receive a small annual per-employee training fund to be spent on further education courses of the employee's choosing, carried out in work time. Universities will create suitable 1-week or 1-hour-a-day learning options to meet demand.

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This collaborative screenwriting community will accomplish an entire film script--each scene by a different writer--over the course of one year. It's destined to be crazy. Along the way, a slew of smaller challenges will be offered.

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So Big Ideas last night - first off, lots of thanks to martylog and nudejournal for turning up to provide moral support. It went well, I think. A big turnout - for which I can claim no credit whatsoever - and a diverse one. More women turned up than to previous sessions, a good spread of ages, and backgrounds too. I spent the post-event drinks having a v. interesting chat with Brenda (of Kenyan background), Nikki (of Nigerian background) and Peter (of Chinese background). I did my talk without boring everyone to death, only some of the "jokes" fell flat, lots of people had questions and contributions, and there was only one needlessly aggressive nutter, who left after he realised no one was interested in his ravings.

I was extremely nervous about doing it, and at one point a few weeks ago, had considered pulling out altogether. I've taught and done presentations before, but I've rarely talked to so many strangers about such a potentially contentious subject, and was relieved at how good-spirited everyone was. If you're interested in future Big Ideas sessions, there's a mailing list you can access by clicking the link above.

Now, I have something else to invite you to. My old friend Bob Kingham has organised some more of his London tours based on the work of Peter Ackroyd (this time his Thames book). The first is this Saturday:

"A walking tour from Westminster to Rotherhithe, taking in 10 pubs' worth of real ale and 170 million years of riverine history. Meet at 2 pm at St. Stephen's Tavern, 10 Bridge Street, London."

It's a mixture of Bob doing readings from the Ackroyd book - and he is a spectacular storyteller - and pints. What could be finer? Please let me know if you want to come, and I'll tell Bob to give him an idea of numbers. Don't worry if you think you won't know anyone - it's not just me and a bunch of my mates, previous tours have been made up of lots of fun and interesting people.

Finally, music news. I just can't stop listening to the Goldfrapp CD, Seventh Tree. I don't usually do hippy-dippy, but this is delicious. Also, perfectlyvague was right on the money again, this time about the new Guillemots CD. When I first heard it, I thought "Dude, WTF" or something, but now can't stop listening to it. It's ace.

It's been pointed out to me that because all women voters are Hillary supporters, and all Hillary supporters are women, it therefore follows that criticising the 20% Hillary-Dems-for-forced-pregnancy minority is exactly the same as calling for all women to be disenfranchised.

I'd just like to clarify that despite the unassailable logic of that argument, that is not my position. I think the only person who should be stopped from voting is this guy:

Businesswoman Sheila Johnson, who is the owner of the Washington Mystics basketball team and an African-American, was imploring the crowd not to let voters get distracted by Obama's mixed race heritage or his unusual name when a man wearing a "Hillary" button called out from the crowd.

"Hussein! Hussein!" yelled the man, a reference to Obama's middle name. Many in the crowd leapt to their feet, shaking noisy tambourines at him and drowning him out.

The man, Igor Zhivotovksy from New York City, said later he is a strong Clinton backer who thinks she was cheated out of the nomination — and he doesn't like Obama.

"We just finished getting rid of a guy named Hussein in Iraq and why are we trying to elect someone with the same name?" said Zhivotovsky. "Everybody thinks if you're against Obama you're racist."

The Hillary Moment - WSJ.com

21% of Hillary supporters are so committed to feminism that, now Obama is set to be nominated, they're going to vote for McCain! The anti-abortion-rights, white male candidate! I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a vagina.

We know that people vote on their fee-rings and not the issues, but this is tragic. First wire-tapping amnesty, then refusing to impeach Bush, now this. Why is the Democratic party always so stupid?

I lost count a bit

I saw The Orphanage on Friday.
It's by the same man as Pan's Labyrinth and your new Hell Boy. If you've seen the former you'll know the film ends with terror and heartbreak. The Orphanage ends the same way. It's a very good film but you feel emotionally wrecked by the end of it.

I finally saw the end of Day Watch last night. It was good but confusing because I didn't watch it all at once. I can't attempt to watch it a third time from the start or I will go mad!

Daniel, Blockbusters does not have Wristcutters, so I can't see that.
Eagle Vs Shark is next.

Blackwells are currently doing a 3 for 2 offer on Pevsner guides, so I went and got some today. They didn't have the North London one, instead I got the guides for the City, Westminster and Manchester and south-east Lancashire. Mmm, tasty books.

Right, technical questions:

1. When I have earphones plugged into my laptop, it doesn't cut the sound from the speakers, although the earphones do work. I'm sure it used to cut the speakers, and I hope it did or I've annoyed lots of people on trains this year. Is this likely to be a hardware or operating system issue? And if it's OS, well, does anyone know why it might have started doing this in Ubuntu 7.10?

2. I have an amp that I got from hoshuteki that has my CD player, my record player and my computer plugged into it. The computer seems to be sending output to it at a much lower level than the other bits. Might this have anything to do with the input on the amp I chose for the computer? I chose to use the CBL/SAT one as there isn't one that says "Computer". Or do computers just send a quiter signal, and I'll have to mess with the volume every time I change the input?

Watching barges go through a canal lock is surprisingly satisfying. It may just be a lift for boats but it's a lift for boats made out of water! Sometimes two barges go through at the same time! Sometimes they bang off the sides! And sometimes a dog might peep out of a cabin.

I could watch barges go through a lock forever for about half an hour, but I live and work far away from the nearest one. I need to design and build some sort of desktop canal lock executive toy, but Office Angels don't stock navvies, apparently.

How can I satisfy my canal lock craving, without flooding our stairs?

Oh, I just thought of this:

( What does a canal spread on its toast? )

So, yes, apologies for being one of those annoying people sending their Twitter feeds to their LJ in lieu of actual content - but since I discovered a decent Windows Mobile client for it (i.e. not having to pay for texts) I've decided to start using it again, and it is a useful way of doing those pointless little posts without having to constantly log into LJ.

My special gold travelcard expires in exactly a week's time. As we won't be staying in Brighton for longer than a few months now (and that reminds me - I have news to impart about future residency-based decisions, but that can wait for now), I'll just be buying monthly cards from now on. Which aren't gold. And so don't make me feel special. While I've never voiced it out loud, obviously, having a gold card does make you feel somehow better than other, non-annual-subscription passengers. "Yeah, right, like the guy with the three thousand seven hundred pound ticket is going to stand up. COME ON!"

Ooh, but one bit of news I can impart... I have a job interview tomorrow morning. I don't really want to say much more about it just yet (although if I say it doesn't involve leaving my current company, that kind of spoils it a bit) until there's actual news - once the outcome's known one way or the other, I'll spill the beans a bit more. Suffice to say, it's quite an exciting opportunity.

The bank holiday weekend got off to an excellent start with a half-day from work, so I spent Friday afternoon in the pub in the company of Ian (before he had to disappear back to work) and Cappsy (before he had to disappear back to Yorkshire), supping pints and munching cheeseburgers in a Holland Park pub. This was followed by a drive (Rachel driving, for those of you wondering about those pints - I shouldn't feel guilty, though, as I can't drive sober either) up to Liverpool for a pleasant and relaxing weekend. Didn't manage to make it out to see anyone, but we kind of wanted a quiet one anyway, which is what we got. Kind of strange being there with one cat missing, but we made sure to make an extra fuss of the remaining three (especially Daphne's twin sister, Josephine, who's started clinging to my parents and the other cats like glue). One surprising highlight of the weekend, incidentally, was seeing the excellent In Bruges - hadn't been expecting a huge amount from it (at least, not until Julian mentioned how good it was), particularly as it's that dreaded thing, a "British gangster movie" (even down to Ralph Fiennes' admittedly hilariously brilliant villain being called Harry and being a direct take-off of Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast). But it's sharp, funny, deliciously dark and extremely well-cast. While it's not in the same league overall, tone-wise the thing it reminded me of the most was actually Fargo. We've also finally got round to starting to watch The Wire, having been conveniently lent the first series boxset by my parents. Will report back on how I get on with it (only done the first ep so far). Got back here yesterday after a lengthy trip down but one which involved wine on the train, and late night pizza and Simpsons when we finally got home. Bliss.

Other recent pop culture enjoyances, meanwhile, have been going back over the entirety of Arrested Development (now firmly ensconced as one of my favourite sitcoms of all - and I think the end of "The Ocean Walker", the "No, Michael, that's not my trick..." bit, is up there in my personal pantheon of greatest TV moments), catching up with the equally brilliant fourth and fifth Jasper Fforde Thursday Next books, enjoying The Damned Utd so much that I immediately had to go and follow it up with Provided You Don't Kiss Me, and starting both The Buddha of Surburbia (following Kureishi's excellent Latitude talk and the realisation that I'd never read owt of his) and The End of Mr Y (recommended to me as along similar metafictional lines to Fforde and various other things I enjoy, not to mention a little project I'm writing myself at the moment). And on the music front, the latest discovery is The Thermals. guntrip introduced them to me at Latitude by playing the wonderful No Culture Icons, but I've subsequently got hold of their third album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine a sort of American Idiot-esque concept album about religious satire that's surprisingly great. Oh, and the new of Montreal has just leaked, but as ever with of Montreal, I don't know what the hell to make of it just yet.

And that's about me done, although I'm sure there were other things I meant to get down over the last couple of weeks. Ah well, not to worry.

• 10:44 I can't even enjoy a bank holiday weekend without coming back to all kinds of computer woes, can I? Sigh. #
• 19:58 Interview for excitingness at 10am tomorrow! Nyarg! #

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So, flamingkitties, your LiveJournal reveals...

You are... 7% unique (blame, for example, your interest in unusually surreal dreams) and 6% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy writing). When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is conventional.

Your overall weirdness is: 47

(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 86% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

OMG I think I might actually cream myself!

For some reason I slept quite badly throughout the Bank Holiday weekend, and this morning I'm really bloody tired.

Here (via here)

I did. I went to Edinburgh. It was great, and I only got absolutely p1ss wet through once, when I came out of one show and had to go to the far side of the city centre to get to another one. The show I'd just come out of though was Stewart Lee's show Scrambled Egg (He said egg!) which was the most I laughed at anything at all while I was there. Other excellent things I saw were both Daniel Kitson's shows, Pappy's Fun Club, a show with Simon Munnery playing Queen Elizabeth I and oter people I go and see when they're on in London all year round too.

Away from comedy, I climbed up a hill yesterday:




and I went to a football match on Saturday afternoon at Hearts. I was a St. Mirren fan for the day though, as I'd have had to queue up for ages to buy a ticket for the home end, and there was no queue at all for the away end. I got quite excited and was a bit disappointed when St. Mirren missed a sitter to equalise in the dying seconds.

I have to go back to work tomorrow. Hooray!(lie)