Weekend Update
Now Playing: Mudhoney - Under a Billion Suns
Topic: Stephen Says
I splurged today and bought the above CD and Ministry's new album, Rio Grande Blood. I tell ya, there's nothing like a right wing administration in the White House to produce some kick ass hard-core. It's like I'm 16 and listening to Land or Rape and Money for the 1st time all over again.

(Plus I got a copy of American Psycho on DVD for 4 pounds as a result of my purchase.)

So, I finally saw Black Hawk Down the movie and can say Thank God I saw this on T.V. and didn't waste vaulable money on that piece of american jinoistic crap. A movie that was made totally out of context of the book that makes the loss of African life incidental to the wounding of a White Man and has an even greater patriotic bullshit monologue at the end than at the end of Saving Private Ryan, propaganda that makes the U.N. (and Pakistan appear to almost deliberately encourage the loss of American life and Argh, I can't go on.

The most revolting part: Where all the Pakistani soldiers come out of the mist dressed as waiters and serve the Brave Americans cold water.

The second (actually tied with the) most revolting part: That all the Somalis just fell down and died as opposed to the Americans who got all shot up and wounded horribly and needed surgery and suffered terrible scars. The fact that they omit the parts of the book dealing with the Somali doctors trying futiliously trying to save their people's lives from American hostility was completely ignored by the movie is inescusable...

...as is the omission of the Somali's using women and children as human shields.

Ugh, I hated the fucking movie. Especially the fabrication of A Bad Guy in the form of the man who kidnaps Mike Durant and is then blown up later on. It doesn't even serve a purpose other than a point in the film for dumb jocks to pump their fists and shout "Hoo-ah!"

And speaking of Pakistan, the other week I played my 1st (pseudo) game of cricket and have actually grown to appreciate the game a whole hell of a lot. I'm finding this recent controversy fascinating and I suppose it isn't even getting covered in North America, so oh well...

Oh, and speaking of American Psycho, I just finished Bret Easton Ellis' newest (Lunar Park) and actually reccomend it to all. It starts off as a very funny farce of married suburban life (Think: The corrections) and turns into a nasty little ghost story about a man trying to reconcile the effct that his father has had on the way he lives his like. It's also NOT how you think it is and is actually accessable and interesting. I'm into Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita now (See, Jen - I said I'd read it and I will).

And finally, 5 pictures Roman statues in Bath:

The day in Bath was fabulous. The spa was actually very interesting and I learned a lot which was weird because I'm typically scornful or paranoid of touristy things like it. The walk arond town to the Royal Crescent was the kind of walk that you imagine Ye Olde England is if you've never been here before and The Porter is, I think, the very best pub I've ever been to. I would honestly travel to Bath again just to eat (and drink) there again. Elisabeth's reaction to "They sell Summer Lightning!" was priceless. As was their wholely vegetarian & vegan menu and I can only assume that the live music they have playing daily is equally amazing.

So yay to Bath. It looks like Brighton may be the next spot on our tour of England itinary.

Of course, that'll come after a little stop off in Paris on our way to Rome.

Oh Jesus, is this the same website that started out complaining about how we could arely afford food?

Maybe it isn't so bad to be Yuppie Scum after all...

+++++
(...*sigh* and Angelfire doesn't seem to want to post this entry at all...)
(C'mon! Post! Post! Post!)
(POOOOOOOOSSSST!)
(Oh, I give up. I've got better things to do with my life...)

Oh my Cyberdog!
Now Playing: Brain candy soundtrack
Topic: Stephen Says
Well, now that mom has received her order, I've got to admit that I love Cyberdog. Where else can you receive order confirmation e-mails like:

"Your order has received clearance. It is currently receiving the personal attention of a member of our trading station crew. Once processed, it will be scheduled for the earliest possible ignition time, when it will be blasted into orbit with your details as its destination."

and...

"Your order has been successfully launched into orbit today, using the Post Office. To track your order, go to www.royalmail.com, click on 'track & trace', and type in the tracking number(s) listed below.
"Alternatively, just relax and monitor your postbox carefully, as our cyber-speedy delivery often surprises earthlings."

heh.

My wife the spaz
Now Playing: Of Montreal - Satanic Panic in the Attic
Topic: Stephen Says
E's spazzing out with excitement because we're off to Italy next month for about 24 hours. Eurostar to Paris, Paris train overnight to Rome. Vice versa the next day. JC please, please, please get in touch with us ASAP so we can figure out if it's even worthwhile getting a hotel room.

Totally Bizarre
Topic: Stephen Says
I'm working from home on my day off today so that I can catch up on paperwork. 10 years ago, if someone had said I'd be living in England siting at a pink table filling out staff appraisals, I'd have laughed at them.

Paranoid? Moi?
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: Fabriclive: The herbaliser
Topic: Stephen Says
This whole terror alert at Heathrow doesn't rub me right. Like the last terror raid that accomplished nothing but shooting a Muslim man in the arm and the raid before that where the police blew the brains of a Brazilian man all over the tube, something just isn't right.

With thousands of American troops moving into Baghbad as a last ditch attempt to stop the country from falling irreparibly (If it isn't already) into chaos and Israel out-doing Lebanon in terms of massive human rights violations and the whole of the Middle East about to boil over and with Blair & Bush trying to take a vacation as their governments rebel against them, what does the West need?

A healthy dose of paranoia and fear-mongering, that's what. And another bogus terror alert (The biggest yet [!!!]) should scare all those middle of the roaders into believing that the mess that the Neo-Cons and their hench-men have made of the world is actually worth it.

Remind everyone of 9/11, scare, scare, scare and take the heat off of Lebanon, Iraq, the recall of Parlament and Leiberman's loss in Conneticut.

Anyway, I hope I'm just being cynical. But if I'm wrong, well, that's just as scary but in a different way...

PS - It's been a long day.

EDIT:
And I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Oh, and apologies for all the typos. I wanted to just chug out my thoughts.

Cambridge the 3rd
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Nomeansno - The day everything became isolated & destroyed
Topic: Stephen Says
Things have been hectic over the last few days. My sleep in at work was generally disturbed, not in the least by the fluorescent light in the kitchen coming down at 3 o’clock in the morning and having to tidy the mess up.

I suppose that I thought Cambridge was going to be similar to Oxford but instead it turned out to be Royal Holloway’s bigger and more pretentious brother. I suppose the fact that it came into existence as a place for graduates of Eton to go for further education says something about the closed nature of the town and the general pomposity and feelings of self aggrandizement that goes along with being in the town and a part of the ‘scene’.

(On a side note, Elisabeth wondered out loud the other day how our experience with Royal Holloway & Englefield Green has shaped our feelings about living in Britain. Whether or not we would have this anti-elitist attitude if we had spent our first year in Birmingham, Cardiff or south London and not been exposed to the asinine belief of upper-class academic elitists…)

Like Egham, Cambridge is a university town and exists to cater to the thousands of students that live there for nine months of every year (Unlike Egham, it’s also a horrendous tourist trap the other 3 months of the year) so, unlike Oxford, which has the feeling of being lived in by real people (As opposed to students & tourists), Cambridge caters to the whims of people with more money than sense – no nice pubs, no sense of the town other than ‘look at me, I’m HISTORIC!’

(On another side note, Elisabeth and I were also musing on whether or not establishments with reputations as Bastions of High Education [note the capitals] are really all they’re cut out to be. Or whether the fact that they’re able to actually impart some knowledge upon the student body of spoilt rich kids who are only there because their parents could afford to send them makes them such Bastions.)

So that’s it for Cambridge. The 3 things that will stand out in my mind from the day are:

1)Feeling generally aggravated & annoyed almost as soon as we arrived when I realized that instead of it being a fun day out, we were going to be surrounded by tourists doing annoying touristy things as well as tourist trade people trying to rip everyone off.

2)Getting one of the angriest punters on the river as our escort. He was a theatre student who deliberately rammed other boats and capped his tour off by saying “lets knock people into the water” and then rammed more boats harder.

3)Stopping to take a picture of the front of the Scott of the Antarctic museum and having some nice man tell us how to sneak around to the front of the museum to see the statue of a naked boy whose body was based on that of Scott’s son. And then noticing his wife had a beard.

So that’s it for blog entry 501. Elisabeth got the honour of posting our 500th entry yesterday.

Cambridge in pictures
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Stephen Says
Just got back from the day in Cambridge. Can't say I liked the town but more on that later when I've had some sleep.

Some of the gargoyles, grotesques & statues of Cambridge to keep you company into the night:

And me being stupid on a phone booth:

G'night!

Stuff, stuff, stuff
Now Playing: Elisabeth upstairs on the piano
Topic: Stephen Says
Stepen and Elisabeth are now debt-free. In a bizarre stroke of maturity, we eschewed Pride in Brighton with some of my co-workers (And the standard apocalyptic drinking session that would inevitably ensue) in favour of paying off my student loan, investing a couple of thousand pounds(!) in ISA's (the UK equivilent of RRSP's) and going out for a coffee & bagel where an old lady beat Elisabeth with her cane for not getting out of her way (Evidently, it was preferable in this ladys mind to beat a stranger with a stick then deign to ask them politely to get out of her way, please.)

Anyway, after realizing that our mission to be more productive & travel Britain & Europe more was in danger of falling apart and that we would spend another weekend in Woking, we hastily made plans to take off for Cambridge tomorrow to go punting on the Cam. How terribly posh, don't you think?

And then we went to the pub to read the paper where I've officially been turned off by The Guardian and its smug faux-liberal new Labour bourgeois smarmyness. I imagine The Independent on Sunday will re-new my faith in the UK press tomorrow.

Although, are you allowed to go punting on the Cam with anything more liberal than the Telegraph tucked under your arm? I don't want to be chased through Kings College by a bunch of easily offened toffs...

Forever Changes
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Love - Forever Changer
Topic: Stephen Says
Yes, we're listening to one of the greatest albums of all time to celebrate the passing of Arthur Lee who died today. C'mon everyone, feel the Love.

It's been a hell of a 48 hours and thank God this weekend has arrived and I've got 2 days off. Sadly, Brighton's pretty much off the cards and I tried to get us tickets to see Patrick Swayze do Guys & Dolls but that was sold out so now I'm left with some nice ros-eh and a (probably) weekend out to, um, er... Bristol? We'll see at any rate - I've got plans.
Really.
I think.

Maybe.

Random, general update with some pictures
Mood:  lazy
Topic: Stephen Says
Ok, ok, I haven't had anything to say in a while. I've been tired, it's been hot, there's nothing going on. We're off to Brighton this weekend for Pride so that should offer a wee bit of excitement.

The Independent on Sunday had a special feature on Brighton Beach this Sunday where they wrote, in the typical elitist we're the best, British way that Brighton Beach gets trashed every night with broken bottles, cans, drunks & drug addicts, people get robbed, into fights and have alot of random sex. And the next day it gets cleaned up so people can do it all again. Isn't that great?!

Where as in another country, the article would have focused on, I don't know, the fact that people care so little for their local environment that they trash it every single night.

Anyway, should be interesting.

I don't know, I have a nasty suspicion that I've adjusted to living in England as I don't have any prtty gripes about all the random stupidities that I witness on a daily basis. Maybe I'll start carrying a journal. With nothing to bitch about, there's nothing to blog about.

I know it's a bit late, but this muddy picture shows what I came home to on Thursday as a result of our Wednesday night out:

At least I'm not the only one who's getting too ld to party...
(That said, E's making a point to do a hell of a lot more than me and seems to be seeing an awful lot of theatre & music in London so go figure...)

The following is a pointless pic to post. Not all of you may know about our super-awesome calander that features animals made out of food. Well, last night I tried my hand at it. This is a bunny rabbit made out of tofu bruger. Yum!: