New York

accompanied by the emotive sounds of Brand New, with Soca Amaretto Lime:



ameriland

Farewells and Care bears

I lied about the care bears. Sorry. I got told to do it.

Today was most excellent, during the day I think I did all manner of blogging and such intriguing mining prospects. In the evening I waddled to Guildford to meet a whole gang of fools. Meeting Alex at the station we wandered around aimlessly until after a slight prodding via Alex's telecommunications device we found our planned meeting point of a Lloyds bar and got some drinks in. Soon to arrive was James, Giles, and Henry, followed soon by all the girls in a most excitable manner (Claire, Katie, KT, Louise and Paiyel). We were jovial and drank merrily for a few hours, before KT, Katie and Paiyel had to go to bed as they are flying out at 6am to Rio de Janerio! Most excellent, goodbyes were said and we all trooped home.

Hopefully Claire will send me the cool photos she took and I can flirt with your vision.

Contradictory to popular belief, Jack Kerouac is not emo

I just got hypnotised by the tube. The gentle rocking as my eyes locked focus on another reality, misty in the glass. I sometimes think I should throw off the shackles of computing and become a full blown writer in some form, as I'm sure you're bored of being told. As someone once wrote, "for what is life but a constant struggle to minimalise regrets." Perhaps things are only regrets if something bad happens first. Also, what doubles the confusion is that a choice we take to reduce our total regrets, for instance

"I have to bungee jump or I will regret it later"

never takes into account what you might have done if you chose not to be so adventurous. I suspect I'm starting to realise why people say "have no regrets", which although a contradictory impossibility for the human condition, is a nice, dreamy ideal. Perhaps mankind's biggest strength is our combined weaknesses. As you may have guessed, I just finished the Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac, finally. And although as a book in its entirety, it is far too viscous to wade through elegantly, it has it's moments. I perhaps like the last two lines best:

"And I go home having lost her love.
And write this book."

I also randomly wrote another quote down which would suggest I should share it with you:

"still making no impression on my eager impressionable ready-to-create construct destroy and die brain"

well I liked it anyway. There's a button next to me labelled "smoke curtain release", and it's daring me to push it in quiet whispers....

eels links up inside ya,

finding an entrance where they can
boring though your mind, through your tummy, through your anus..

Which reminded me of this interesting photoset on Flickr, of objects stuck in the asphalt of Brooklyn. Speaking of things being where they shouldn't be, check out this news article about a family that managed to build an illegal castle, hidden from view by a haystack..... For once the headline matched the article, however, more interesting headlines can be generated via the London Evening Standard Headline Generator, constructed from photos of the real headline boards outside newsagents. Once example: "Killer Breast will haunt Brown". Talking of killing, and epic battles, the mightiest fight ever to be recorded by the humble human was that between a Puppy and a surprisingly adept autonomous robot. If only Gordon Freeman, or perhaps his hilarious retarded brother could have come to the rescue:



The above video, is shockingly hilarious, and I nearly cacked my pants watching it. Anyway, moving swiftly on, if u like seeing slow motion skateboarders blown up, check this vid out as well. I suspect that's a bit of a link overload for now. More later you crazy crazy cats.

Blogging is my life

Or so it would appear, as you should check out these posts I just made from the past... not that I was in the past, because time travel and all that jazz isn't available to a blogger on my budget. Donate kids donate.

1. Exotic Reunions
2. Saturday's Child Is a Master In Applied AI
3. Argh Hangover Not Good
4. Exeter City of Viewty

Obviously most of you probably fail to read far down my blog, so when I post many many posts they go wasted *sobs into his cornflakes*. I'm only kidding.... I don't eat cereal enough to warrant owning any. Talking of blogs, I have been in search of a name for my new Travel blog, as you should all be aware, what follows is Rex's attempt:

Rexy: your blog should be - tomexploresthepacificrim
Tommeh: or TomsRimmingExperience?
Rexy: tomrimmingthepacific?

I shall now leave you with a some Weepies lyrics, as I just obtained their latest album "Say I Am You" which is amazing:

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying
No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine
No, no, no, no, no, nothing else will do
I've gotta have you, I've gotta have you - The Weepies - Gotta Have You

When drinking, don't drive. Don't even putt.

Haw Haw Haw. Wasn't that a funny. That I stole. Blatantly. From the Internet. Aren't I great. Take that generic deity of unspecified religion.

As you may have guessed from either that witty pun or the below SloMo video of us golfing - we went golfing. Pre-ball-to-club-sport, we got a harty breakfast in the Harvey, where they burnt my toast to a cinder, so I didn't eat it out of silent protest. Plus I wanted bread but Rex in all his ultimate evil didn't ask for it. We then met young Ruffle puff up at the Driving rage, where we "got our eye in" or in our terms, hit golf balls randomly all over the shop, at our own eyes, and at various pipes. Needless to say we had to get on with the 9 hole course we were doing, as from our previous experiences we needed all the time we could steal from the sun, before its nightly slumber. We spiced the day up by playing for money, 50p a hole don't you know. We're big spenders.

Personally, after an initial 2 holes of total disaster, my skill luck improved drastically, and I even got a Birdie on one hole. Ruff had far more skill than any of us, Danu had the crazy lunatic eyes, Rex had the persistence of a wallaby, and I had vast amounts of insane swirly luck. As from the pointlessly enclosed score card, we can see I won excellently, with 56, only 23 above par..... I also won the most money, £10, so that was £5.50 profit, excellent show. Although dan came third, the way our crazy money scoring system worked, he got the least money, and so lost £3.50 overall. Needless to say, after completion, and my celebratory jig, we went to the Harvey once more to have a nice huge roast dinner, before bidding farewell to each other in an emotional parting of ways.
There now exists, on these wandering, aimless tubes, a photo of me with Altaïr thanks to Sir Dan of Icelandic fame. Unfortunately, on this page is also my lack lustre attempt at taking a photo of the aforementioned Scandinavian one and Jade Raymond. My skills of focusing are similar to my skills of reversing time, and pro-actively achieving. Luckily, somehow Dan manages still to look cooler than I do in my photo, and her smile is far superior to the now hindsight ridden lackluste effort in my photo. Curse you Dan for inspiring her incredible smile. *shakes fist in jealous fury*

SloMo: Golf

Beer in my face? Yes Please

Rex stormed round my house early, and we invaded London to meet young Danu. From there we filled up our souls with subway, then began on our livers with beer from a pub with the word Molly in it... Then we hit the Shakespeare for more drink, and the decided it was time to make our way to the sexy sexy Rileys. Where we met Shing, and started to shoot some pool with a highly expensive round of double JD and coke. Yum. We were mildly tipsy at this point, much to Colin's disgust when he turned up ready for some sexy sexy pool action. More jd and then a poor excuse for a beer later, we went off to find some food for our craving stomachs and so failed to get to the Basketball match we were tempted to go see. Colin went off to meet some crazy Canterbury people and we fucked shit up in KFC for a bit. It wasn't fantastic food, but it sufficed.
Shing then went off to do her crazy work, and we carried on drinking down varying pubs, mainly the Duke of York, then the crazy spoons, then the Camel. Though everyone was starting to lag even though Camel was quite perky and around 11pm we traversed to the station to head back. I got an excellent steak and guiness pasty that stank out the train, but we still got offered Marks and Sparks jaffa style cakes by a random dude. Rex and I finally made it back to mine, and rex proceeded to become sea sick by the air bed he was on. Excellent.

Whispy and care free

A fragile part of me really wants other people to blog, so I have interesting prose to dwell over, but another part of me doesn't, cos it feels like a competition, and them stealing a tiny part of what makes me, me. Luckily, I don't feel "at competition with" Dan's blog, as his oozes style, and his writing far outclasses anything I could spurt anyway.

Do you think my blog lacks mesmerising colour? Photos? Jazziness? Should I have post-hardcore steampunk emotive music playing? If you answered yes to that last question, you can fuck right off and go back to your epileptic inducing myspace buddies. Anyway, I know words can be tiresome sometimes, as can the same photos of various London landmarks under different lighting conditions, but there's only so many decent photos I take, and stealing is just tacky.

I know that I have an extensive amount of crazy to catch up on, but I have vague notes, so it's fine, and the past few days I've done little except grind to a peaceful halt. I've sorted some more holiday/travelling related ideas, and discovered that Vancouver in 5 days is really pushing it. I've managed to choose a bus/tour operator in New Zealand (Magic), and am pondering cancelling my Oz Experience because if I take the Greyhound, not only will it be much cheaper but I can meet Claire and Louise easier. However, it costs like 75 quid to cancel, or at least I don't get that back out of the total I paid. That's what you get when you deal with hippies.

The Weepies kids, great band, especially their album Happiness. Go forth and check them out.

Under closer inspection I realised it was a funky ball of tits from outer space.

or at least a confuzzling mass of confusion and torture. I have a problem. I need a new blog for my trip around the world. But to create this I need a short and snappy name for the title, like "ameriland" but obviously something world related.

Therefore loyal reader, I turn to you in my time of dire need. Suggest me a title for this new blog of excellence and foreign literacy. And no, PoopyPantsMcCool is not a satisfactory title. Neither is a smart ass variation of such a theme. *Glares* Do your creative work and away with thee.

Posts before this are still to be done...

Exeter, a city of Viewty

Even with a hangover, I went into town at 10.30, as my mum had already stormed in and I felt bad. I had a horrendously hungover conversation with crazy orange dude, who was also hungover, and pestering me about round-the-world travels. After preventing vomit occurring, I eventually chose a sexy cool fun, more on that later. I then utilised tescos BLT buying facilities, as well as a juice, and managed to keep them down in the pits of my poisoned stomach. I then met mother down by the Quay, watching some quite interesting free video about the history of Exeter. We then wandered along the river, cross over a bouncy bridge and then walked back along. I then showed her the delights of a wetherspoon Sunday Lunch, as well as a rhubarb, Bramley apple and ginger crumble. Very very nice, but I was extremely stuffed. We wandered around a bit and looked in a few shops ourselves.

In the evening I met up with young Stu again, and we grabbed a drink in the Firehouse before attacking the Vue to watch Alien Vs Predator: Requiem. It was most average, perhaps under par. We should have seen Sweeny Todd. Error.

Right, now the important information, I got an LG Viewty. *waits for shocked gasps* Yes, I know, an iphone rip off. Except it has modern features, i.e. it supports 3G, and has a 5 megapixel camera! The video is even 640x480, and can film at 120fps, which is most excellent. Most of the menus, texting etc are controlled by the touch screen just with your fingers. Text can be entered either via the normal number pad, a qwerty keyboard or with the help of an eyeliner style stylus, handwriting. The qwerty keyboard is by far the easiest and most efficient to use, even with my fat fat thumbs. Other features include an Organiser, Pdf reading capabilities, Divx playing, mp3 player, radio, Java, web browser, texting, phone calling and a clock. Oh and I have a fish on the front that follows my finger, it's very cute.

ARGH HANGOVER. Not good.

Well yes, that was a successful night and had a frickin' awesome time. Met the homeys down the Impy at 7, I got there a bit early, grabbing a table in my excitement, leading to Jacq having to save me from possible table nabbers. Soon Carlos, Ed and Laura arrived, and we drank jovially together. Stu, Kath, Dan, Zena and Robbie arrived a bit later, and we continued with consuming our lovely poison. Cutting a short story short, Laura, Ed, Robbie and I got quite plastered, though possibly me less so than them. Stu and Kath had to leave early, Robbie randomly started chatting to some crazy Scottish people at the bar, and continued our vague ramblings. At 1am the Imp shut, and Dan, Ed and I decided to continue the drinking extravaganza at the Angel, which Dan assured me was open. And it was.We drank more there, at a table with some weird dude on, I think he was weird anyway, Ed tried to jovially make me do a Phd, and I'm sure we had interesting conversations about drummers and guitarists. At 2am The Angel shut as well, and we all staggered off home, well mainly me and Ed. Most excellent.
All photos violently stolen from Carlos.

Saturday's child is a master in Applied Artificial Intelligence

Today I have mostly been graduating, which involved getting up early to be seated by 9.30am in the "Great Hall", but not after first having my mug shot being taken. The humourous section of this story is that, not only did I have stupidly long hair which doubled the hilarity of wearing a mortar board but my photographer was at a rather disadvantage. With surprising pre-planning I had my photo taken before hand, so the photo place was mostly empty, and hence there were 8 photographers available. I found it strange, then, that someone of my tall stature was assigned to a guy who was near dwarf (is that politically correct?) size. Not only could he not reach my mortar board to adjust it, but he had to fetch a tiny little box/step/stall because when he adjusted the camera for my height, he couldn't reach the button. Obviously it was mightily hard to keep a straight face, but it was all worth it, for a professionally created photo of me looking like a spaktard.

Afterwards I chilled with the crazy AI people, before entering the hall, and fucking shit up with Fluela. Unfortunately, Stu ruined the entire day for everyone but disrespecting the right honourable chancellor by not taking his hat off before approaching her. In a sane world, instant execution would have been a suitable punishment, luckily I have the incident here on (the worst quality) embedded video (ever):

After the ceremony I went to the Long Lounge, home of the crazy Tom and Dan "morning after the all nighter before" lunches, with my mommy, and we got some food. I think I got a greek salad. However, during the ordering of food, young Stu the constant hat wearer rang me to inform me of Ed and Richard's arrival. So I ran back down and was like "sup honkys". And although I never saw them on stage, apparently they were all there in their sensual (at least Richard's) robes. After lunch, I drove back home to shower and change out of my sexy get up and wandered into town to chat with a man made of Orange. The new Princesshey is pretty sexy, though just succeeds in increasing the already over-branded high streets branded shops.

Exotic Reunions...

Drove down the ever twisting A303 to the gleeful town of Exeter and promptly swanned in looking dope as hell. Shafts of heavenly light illuminating the city, my heart fluttered for the city I once loved. Then I realised I still do dammit. After checking into a moderately nice hotel, at least by my standards, and parking in some form of wasteland I went to obtain my graduation gowns and then met young Stu, and saw his pretty office. He has sensual big widescreens, his own phone, and even a sofa. So we grabbed his gown, and then I stabbed him in Ritazza with a coffee and pizza, yummy yummy for my tummy, except the meat feast seemed to lack to feast part. Plus Gigi, Gina G, Gigolo, or whatever the coffee woman's name was didn't recognise my chiselled features. Curses.

Cruised back to Stu's hizzle, picked up young Kath from station, and then chilled momentarily with a John Smith's and the snooker. We then met young Carlos for a quick pint in the Vic before departing our separate ways and I crashed out ready for graduation in the morning.

Oh hello there,

Yesterday, after the excellent gig, drinks and sleep, I got up early, at 7am, and drove home sexy style. By sexy style I mean I traversed the short distance in a reasonable time period, and was not to required to beat anyone senseless with any form of severed limb due to that person's irrational rain-induced behaviour. After faffing and the such like, caught the train up to London to meet up with Erika at Liverpool St Station, which is most pretty I add, even though I fail at inanimate object photography. I collected Erika's bang so she could rock out at the free Radiohead gig, and she didn't have to lug it all to Northern Ireland. Afterwards I frolicked with shing, slept and in the morning went to the vietnam embassy, which was surprisingly easy to utilise, and all fun. With the spare time I had, I went to St Pancras station to check out what all the chat was about. Turns out it wasn't that fantastic but I took some photos to save people the hassle of going there. At 1 I met up with young Maddie and we did the Ritazza thing. Then we did the Costa thing. Then we walked around london, westminster, downing street, et trafagler square. Twas most awesome to see her again, and fill myself with large amounts of caffeine. Even if it did rain upon our flowing locks luckily it turns out she's very likely going to move down amongst us southerners, woo!

Group Sechs

Wetter than my soul

Today is extremely moist. It's horrendous, and to make matters worse the mean nurse stabbed me full of Hep B, Rabies and Japanese Euchieplghlaksdjhsaettious and then force fed me cholera. It tasted like fuzz. I returned home triumphantly full of disease, after I was monitored for 30 minutes in case my heart stopped and my brain swelled of course. I didn't, obviously I'm immortal.

I then set out on the 55 minute journey to brighton. Which took 5 hours, cos of the hippy roads being flooded by the gypsy rain, and then pikey fools, crashing their frickin' lorries into more fools. Eventually I arrived in brighton damn damn late, and me and dan dan icelandic dan rushed to the gig, where we just arrived in time for Hundred Reasons. Exceptionally good! I have the proof in the photographic form:

The day I become organised

Except not in the morning as I failed to do much except browse through some travel brochures, making Shing's house my own. Excellent. Moving swiftly on, I strolled into Sta Travel to meet young Sam (of Sta Travel fame), and we got round to booking everything I wanted to do including:

Flights:

February 7th: London Heathrow to Vancouver
February 12th: Vancouver to Los Angeles
Los Angeles to Nadi, Fiji
February 26th: Nadi, Fiji to Auckland, NZ
March 23rd: Christchurch, NZ to Melbourne, OZ
April 30th: Cairns, OZ to Brisbane, OZ
Brisbane to Singapore
Overland: Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Japan
August 7th: Tokyo Narita, Japan to London Heathrow

Also I got an OZ Experience coach device up from Melbourne to Cairns, which should be awesome. As well as that, I got a total trip device from Bangkok (Thailand) through Cambodia to Vietnam. Some very interesting places including the temples/tombs where Tomb Raider was filmed, as well as getting to stay with a local family. Whoop.

I then met Shing for some Ritazza in the bottom and went home quite chuffed, until rex destroyed my soul for buying a trip, but I'm down with it for now, tis the only one I going on, and save the hassle of cambodia.

Londondinian

After taking Erika to a slightly disappointing roast dinner as our usual place was out of Roast Beef?! we marched on to Canary Wharf, which as mentioned before I totally love. We walked around outside in the crazy wind for a while then went underground and to Starbucks to chill and chat. Spent a while there comparing countries and explaining all manner of English things, specifically the BBC, but I think we just succeeded in confusing Erika.

Rex then needed to scoot off, so we bid farewell and I took Erika, somehow, to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge without getting lost. Bonus points! Apparently I haven't seen the Tower of London properly before, whoa it's awesome and Tower Bridge is very very English, just how I like it. We wandered along the river, past the HMS belfast, and through to the London Dungeon, Southwark cathedral and then across London Bridge towards Bank. *continues to list places* Then we saw the Bank of England, walked along cheapside, to St Pauls, and wandered back along the river to Charing Cross where we grabbed some yummy Subway.

Afterwards it was sleepy time.

Sleep

Alcohol face party yes yes.

To follow up our day of English show-and-tell we found a very English Pub near Leicester square, or just behind it at least. Beer was had, mainly by me, and possibly young rex, and Erika become rather tipsy after a smirnoff ice and a shot of vodka. We stormed into the Yates, but decided the best bet for everyone was food, so unfortunately we went to Maccy D's, we destroyed my soul somewhat. Horrible stuff, and I ended up eating two burgers via some odd swapping with Erika. Onwards we strove, and unable to get into Yates again, we moved to the Spoons next door, where we drank some more.

Next stop was the Lloyds bar that we've gone to a few times but I can't remember it's exact name, but I quite like it. Randomly Erika started talking to various english people, and somehow found some peeps who knew Beth and James and were from orpington. It's a small world. One guy there reckoned he knew me from somewhere, but he was obviously crazed as I've never seen him and he doesn't go to Orpington as her and his mates "cause trouble" when they drink. After obviously thinking he was really cool and rock hard *rolls eyes* we bid them farewell and returned to our table for more drinkie poos, where Jon joined us in the poisoning of our souls.

Something occurred and we transferred the evening to Mean Fiddler, which had a pretty dope band on followed by the general music of alternative stuff. Erika was affectionate to all of the British race, especially Jon, I got lost trying to find the toilets, and at some point I remember us jumping with some random dude along to some music. Can't remember the music at all.

Afterwards I attempted to get meat and chips, which failed as they gave me strange kebab and chips, and it made us miss our bus *shakes fist*. We then all crash landed at Shing's for the night, and Erika fell asleep with her backpack still on!

Extremely fun evening, check out the photos fools.

Saturday's London Mangle Mash

Met miss Erika slightly later than I was meant to due to forgetting the tube gets proper slashed up at weekends due to repair works. Our first plan of action was to find a memory card selling merchant for her camera, so naturally we tubed to Oxford Street. After wandering around slightly aimlessly, and grabbing some Maccy D's to compare it with America (and who surprisingly banned photos inside), we found that Boots was a shock supplier of such memory units. Afterwards we wandered around some, through Hyde Park, Green Park, to the Palace of Buckingham, St James' Park, and onward through horse guards and onto Westminster. My lack of knowledge about everything was quite blatant, even to the stage I talked to a police with an mp5 sub-machine style gun to ask what Horse Guards was *headdesk*. We chilled outside Buckingham palace for a while, and realised how small it actually is.

Westminster was once again amazing, and the weather was pretty for once. I always love Big Ben (St James' Tower/House of Parliament), possibly my favourite landmark, mainly because of the sheer lunacy of it being right next to the road, the river, the eye, the abbey and Tesco. And it's just beautiful. We strode across the river, via the help of Westminster bridge, and past the London Eye which was shut, and past crazy street performers back across the river along the golden jubilee bridge. Trafalgar square then popped up, and we marvelled at the lions (that aren't real) and watched crazy Russian people setting up some form of event, before walking past people giving out free hugs. Yay! Next Leicester square, which is less cool when it's not night time with loads of people and a fun fair in the middle. We then marched onwards to Covent Garden to meet the disastrous duo Rex and Shing, where we watched a guy climb a ladder with no support and juggle knives rather precariously.

Holy high cpu load batman

Today I have mostly been collecting young Erika from Heathrow, her plane was slightly late, luckily the power of the internet once more provided all the information necessary for one to live. We met up, and took the tube to her hostel in bayswater, which is a nice neighbourhood, on the north side of Hyde Park. Interestingly not only had the hostel failed to reserve her a room properly but it was full of hammered Europeans. Good times. Luckily they had a slightly more expensive room available, and a new Hostel can be found tomorrow. Unfortunately, due to our poor excuse for a late running underground, I had to leave around midnight to get back to Shing's in time for sexy time, spanky time, me not having to walk back across London due to my London bus-related ignorance.

Well hello

It would appear I'm not really sure what I've done this week, apart from let a nurse stab me twice on Tuesday, with vicious intent. And with Hepatitis B and Rabies. Man she was a cold hearted bitch, I fear these might turn into a recurrent theme. No matter, I also walked into Sta Travel and was like "Hey guy, stop hacking up my trip, here watch my smooth flows" and within no time at all I had a draft itinerary. Though I did crash their system with my aura. I need to sort out the details now, and Visas, which could be an issue. As I'm lazy as fudgetingle.

Has anyone written a secret blog/journal/diary of events that occurred to me before this blog really exploded into existence? because I sometimes cry, just a little emo tear, that I didn't start it sooner. Especially as my brain was slightly frazzled in the first year due to my excessive behaviour towards fascist dictatorships. If anyone has any memories at all, before, say, January 2005, please submit them to me on whatever medium you find to be the most erogenous. Except no more submissions of pork.

Tomorrow I'm meeting Erika, in the foolish assumption that I will be of some help in London. *laughs manically* this should be interesting.

French Crimp

mmmm frenchie french french,
sitting on a bench bench,
wonderous eyes in the sky highs,
what you gonna do, what you gonna do,
Eiffel tower, frenchie power!
garlic breath, stinking up Elizabeth,
monarchs in the night time,
very very frightening,
across the channel, pass the manual,
tele broke, tele broke, french suit made bespoke,
frenchie french french,
sitting on a bench bench.

A Public Service Announcement: Just A Reminder

A surprising number of people appear to have forgotten, or not realised what I am doing this year. I'm taking a gap year travelling kids.

Travelling.

I'm not job hunting. I don't have a job. I am bum. End of Story.

I'm going around the world on the 7th February, put it in your diaries. There will be a new travel blog. I'm not starting a job. I'm not moving into a house till August. Which is when I come back.

Thank you.

Cult Shows You Must Have Watched Before You See Tomorrow:

The Mighty Boosh

Spaced

Flight Of The Conchords

Green Wing

IT Crowd

Sunday's Funday

So with cunning and guile, we decided to screw looking for a housing location and just have a fun day in London. We started off having great food in a pub near Victoria, where Rex and I had some lovely Roast Beef and various roast dinner accessories. We then walked along Buckingham Palace road, where we were walking along doing the "manamana" song, when Vic Reeves was walking the opposite direction. His eyes were all like "come on then, I challenge you to say something" so we didn't, as he could've been packing heat. Into a box made from some thermal material that prevents, or at least delays the escape of such heat so it can be sold to the growing market in heat, possibly cold places, Lapland and the such like. (Reality Note: This was actually Vic Reeves, and not some crazy pseudo-psychedelic trip). We marvelled at Buckingham Palace, and the mp5 the police dude was carrying behind the gates, who I reckoned I could rush and slash before he could do anything with that thing. Moving on through St James' Park, where we admired a water fall type sculpture for the Canadians who died in the war for us, and then onward through Hyde park to see the pretty cool Winter Wonderland. Where I was too full from lunch to eat any German Sausage, which made me a little sad.

After frolicking there, we made our way to speakers corner and Marble Arch. Seriously, speaker people are insane, and scary. Especially old guy standing on a crate, on his own, silent. Eerie. We marched down Oxford Street, playing in various shops, until our desire for Nero flooded our brains and with my sharp wit, found a place on Regent Street, where I'd been before. We got some comfy seats and sat there for a decent period of time basking in our lifestyle. Onward towards Leicester square in attempt to find half price theatre tickets. But it was Sunday you fools! and therefore all shows were shut, we shed an emo tear for a bit, but moved on the covent garden.

Where there was a guitarist who was very good, so we sat and enjoyed him for a while, until his set was over and we were stuck with what to do. Shing whipped out her wap, and found a random place called Smollenskys that promised live jazz that night. Once we found it on the strand, it seemed far to swanky for us ragamuffins (read Tom the ragamuffin) but we ventured in anyway, and they were jolly nice. We got a nice sofa seat quite close to the piano, and although no one was on yet, we got a drink and relaxed. At about 7.30 it got a bit busier and the singer(large black woman), piano player and bass dude came out, and began. Turned out they were extremely excellent, her voice was effortlessly amazing, and they all looked like they were having a good time. We were hungry at this point so ordered food, which wasn't that much surprisingly. I had some yummy penne pasta with bacon and chicken. I think.
Once they finished, we got crazy cocktails, mine (Cooler Shaker) being infused with pomegranate and kiwi fruit, much to my initial confusion, then delight. After paying for Rex as we were semi celebrating his birthday, we walked back along the Thames and past various sexy sexy London landmarks, that were totally deserted as it was a Sunday. We then met Pete, Asim, and Jon in The Camel, and had a drink there before they closed. Varying conversations on large penis urinising occurred much to Shing's mental anguish. On returning to Shing's, some strange serious of events, reminiscent of a Mighty Boosh episode, which we happened to be watching, resulting in Jon, Asim and Me to drink vast quantities of export strength gin. Reminding me of varying times where I took 15 year olds on in drinking contests with gin. Not only this, but at some point Shing wanted to down a drink with me, even though hers was water I agreed, unfortunately in her wilyness she had knocked over my gin and tonic and replaced it with straight gin. After some throat burning I came through relatively unscathed and not actually realising what she'd done until she explained. She then concocted various horrendous mixes of Ameretto and hazelnut liquor to make me drink, which I did mainly due to Asim's flattering me as he thought I was some form of "Van Wilder character". Then he realised I did computer science (what he did), and was surprised. More mighty boosh was watched then, retirement, where I perfected the voice of Eeyore, my sleeping buddy, and then insomnia was my friend once more.

Stereotypical London:
The detail in this post is brought to you by Shing's incredible memory. Did you know this is my 900th post? Cos I do. Take that Jesus.

Live Fast, Die Ugly

After my exploit with the sleep fairy, I woke up at some silly time and met young Ruffle for our journey to London. Meeting Rex at the station, we invaded Shing's abode and set off on a house-location hunting extravaganza. First stop was West Ham, which we wandered through towards Stratford. Then up to Leyton and Leytonstone, which wasn't that nice. After returning to Stratford Centre, we realised it was most excellent with a spoons, goose and yates. Not that we're basing our decision just on public houses or anything.... Needless to say we went to the Goose for a beverage and cheap cheap lunch (Lasagne for 2.99!). After this we wandered to the station and grabbed the DLR to Canary Wharf, which is frickin' awesome! I'm sure I took some photos but it appears my phone is lying to me. They have a nice waterfall garden area which is most pretty, working there could be dope. Underneath are some awesome coffee places, restaurants and the such like. So, obviously, we went to caffe Nero, and fucked shit up. And by fucking shit up, I mean getting some coffee, apart from obviously ruffle, as he explodes on contact with caffeine.

After this we trundled back to Shing's, and she made dinner while Rex and I downloaded the internet that was related to houses in areas we like. Most areas we can't afford :(. Various people came over, most who I'd met before, and I like. Shing made AWESOME salmon, and potatoes and veg, very nice, followed by an incredible cheese cake. She's far too excellent at all these sort of things, though I was disappointed the salmon wasn't cooked in the dishwasher. We had a few beers and chilled with people, and watched some crazy half lesbian orgy between shing, izzy and Viv. Most excellent, then my hair got attention, luckily was deflected by viv's hair. Good times.

We then slept, I transferred my insomnia to Shing. But still had it. So we both lost out. Rex on the other hand mocked us both by sleeping. So we got naked and then shanked him in his sleep, but to no avail. One part of that may be a lie!

That's what she said

To make this awake time productive I have my laptop here on my bed, hoping my incessant typing isn't too loud for mum, and trying to catch up totally with my Ameriland blog. I found a 3 disc floor fillers album on this pc, and am currently listening to Black Box - Ride On Time (Massive Mix).... possibly.

Dammit, now I really wanna go clubbing. Kavos anyone? Man that was an incredible holiday. It was legend-... wait for it... and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is DAIRY! Barney rules. I'm starting to get annoyed with my hair tonight, and I'm starting to doubt this so called "plan" for staying up, as now I'm quite tired, at 6am. I just noticed the awesome scar on my ankle where rex stone cold stunned me on the rocks of feutaventura. Damn his ice cold heart.

If you hadn't guessed

I'm gonna do an all nighter, so I'm actually tired at say 9/10pm tomorrow night and can get a decent night's sleep where I wake up at 8.30am joyful and happy. Ready to look for potential house locations with the crew. And eat dishwasher salmon. Don't ask.

I fear I've neglected to tell you of some interesting occurrences in my life, mainly because none have happened, though Susie, my sat nav, did manage to drain my car of all it's life force. Which is why, yesterday, when I tried to start her, her my car not her my sat nav, she spluttered and failed to awaken in all her 1.6 litre glory. After a jump start, I had to leave her running for 30 min on the drive, and as this is Orpington I had to sit in there, luckily it gave me time to read more of the Subterraneans, which is quite a mind cluster fuck. I then drove for 30 minutes and returned triumphant, with a car that would again turn on.

Recently I've been playing far too much Rainbow 6 with Adam across the marvelous xbox live shazam, and we have killed many a terrorising foe. Luckily, Ad went back to work today, so I concentrated on more pressing tasks, such as trying to add photos to my ameriland blog. Jesus titty fucking stratocaster it takes a long time to do. I have to first sort out the best photos for the particular day, then resize, then find which blog posts to associate with them, wait for them to upload, mess around with the shoddy layout, which probably looks different on each computer and then fix all the spelling mistakes my firefox picks up. *grumbles*

Had a jolly nice conversation with Rex today about my traveling plans, and it's put my mind somewhat at rest about my time constraints and where I want to go. Now I just need Andy fucking C of Sta Travel victoria to get off his ass and communicate with me. But you probably don't care as this post has no pretty pictures or moving images. Pah, you fickle minded baboons, who shall be your Saviour when the day of reckoning comes? aye? aye? that's right. Craig David. Then you'll be sorry, he'll be all over your boing with reckless abandonment.

Well staying sane over the next 18 hours doesn't look likely. Good show.

If like me, you're up at 4:21am

And happen to look at a Gmail account you forgot you had, that has been filled to brim with emails from monster.co.uk, porninyoureye.com, and various other suspicious websites, and you may have a similar version of OCD that means you hate having even one unread email in your inbox, then you'll want some form of l337 way to mark them all as unread. Unfortunately, as they fall off the edge of the page of gmail you can't just select unread emails.

My first stop was to the Gmail api to write some form of batch hacking program. This, I decided, was over-kill, and decided instead to use filters. Therefore, kids, here is my step by step guide to marking all your Gmail email's as read:

1. Next to the Search The Web button at the top there is a link called Create a filter. Click it in the face.
2. In the From text box type "@" without the quotes (or you can use "*").
3. Click the Next Step button, then once the next screen shows, all your emails will be displayed below, or at least the first 20. It should say something like 1-20 of hundreds.
   
4. Tick the check box marked Mark as read.
5. Tick the check box marked Also apply to # conversations below.
6. Click the Create Filter button.
7. Now all of your emails have been marked as read.
   
8. IMPORTANT: Now simple click delete next to the filter you have just created, it will most probably be at the bottom of your filters list, otherwise all your new emails will automatically be marked as read and your face will melt.

It's pretty simple, but what the poop. Take it or leave it or sell it to the highest bidder.

As if you didn't have enough to worry about

what with your bionic leg playing up, the tangos up your foxtrot and your lack of culture. We now find us on another precipice of uncertainty, but this time, with something intangible and out of our mortal control. So sing Hallelujah brothers, for it appears that perhaps time itself could very well be slowing down. And so with which one day, our very fabric of existence shall be frozen with furious nothing, and benignment. But worry not! For the scientists have spoken! Hark, here their call, for perhaps two dimensions of time could explain our apparent loss of time, or perhaps this is a mangled product of media deintellification.

No worry, for the church of Far2Narf is here for all of you! Less you run cowering from these demons, or trailers for horror movies about teenage girls that have vaginas with teeth. What better way to slowly spend the infinite time of no time, than watching the best 19 movies of 2007 that this website suspects you haven't seen, though very well may have, but really should have seen.

My room has an awkward split personality of a past memory I didn't quite exist in. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan still look down from my walls, but sporadically placed print-outs and mini-posters of various bands are littered around. Yet these bands have rarely been my favourites, Dave Baksh and Deryck Whilbley of Sum 41 stand awkwardly next to Jimmy Page as coaxes his guitar into a glorious melody. Tupac Shakur and G-Unit remind us to "live by the gun, die by the gun" and "beg for mercy" respectively, while a beaming Alyson Hannigan sits next to the Nirvana family tree underneath. Above and opposite are more bands like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Pantera, Marilyn Manson, and Gun's & Roses who although once quenched my thirst for heavy metal and amazing guitar work, have never meant as much to me as Brand New or Death Cab For Cutie. On another wall there is a 2006 Arena calender, permanently frozen on Fearne "November" Cotton, while underneath the infamous number plate of Doc Brown's Delorean sites proudly amongst a sloo of gig tickets. To its left a large poster of a monk is seen engulfed in flames, the revolutionary image associated with Rage Against The Machine, while in contrast "nu metal" band linkin' park sit quietly, and vertically underneath. My Arsenal mirror is fallen and slumped, partially obscuring Nirvana, while above we're inspirationally told that "No birds soars too high if he soars on his own wings". finally, above my window are a few strangely arranged newspaper cuttings about ferrari's from 1995. Needless to say this tiny room, that doesn't feel like home, is packed full of junk, books I have no time to read, sad guitars I have no room to play, and nik naks kept in case they once meant something to someone.

I hate this room.
It's not me.
I can't sleep

It's too small to rearrange and apart from my books, clothes and guitar, it holds nothing I care about.

It's 3.30 again.

Test

Guess What!

Javascript is awesome!

*oh hai*

I miss this book

My original coffee book. My doodle book. My blue rhino book. It has excellent width and a surprisingly resolute stance on anti-social behaviour. I'm currently awake at 3.45 am trying to tidy my room to make me sleepy. In the process I've found many cool things like my procrastinator, powerball, alarm clock radio, this book, my sandals and the bubonic plague.

Curse every comatosed minute that robs me time without you...

2007

I think the worse thing you can realise at the end of the year, is if when talking to people, or if you are about to summerise it in general, you talk about what other people have done or achieved ("my sister graduated and my father won the naked flute wrestling kent edition") rather than be able to say firmly how you made 2007 your year. This year, I've:

• Got a distinction in an Applied Artificial Intelligence masters.
  
• Been on far too many holidays.
• Proved I can travel alone, across a foreign country.
• Rediscovered my love for books.
• Annihilated large parts of my life with a resurgence in my game addiction.
• Accepting my inner geek and met Jade Raymond with young Dan of icelandic fame.
  

The real question, however, is how I'm gonna make 2008 my year, and feel like I deserve to have existed in it. I really need to improve myself in some intellectual manner. Learn new skills. Etc. Obviously my large travel trip will help, perhaps ignite some foreign linguistic spark, though I never really enjoyed French or German. I have to stop being complacent in my past achievements to justify the laziness of the present, but also feel less harassed by constant badgering about what I'm going to do.

Looking at my 2007 resolutions I can categorically confirm I failed just about all of them, though I do think I'm enjoying life, when I'm not worrying I'm wasting it. But I'm still fatigued, my heart hates, I did ALL my work at the last minute (tho it worked?), I gave up on Project365, I procrastinated lots, I'm useless at the guitar, my room is a bomb site, and I ate far too much junk.

This year's resolutions? I'm not sure I'll make any specific ones, as it will just lead to a post similar to this next year where I bemoan my lack of motivation, laziness and general stupid hair. Though it might spur me on to do more stuff, so I'll just freestyle some out and see what happens:

• Read more (classic) books.
• Reduce my gaming.
• Seek productivity in my every day life.
• Keep healthy.
• Increase my knowledge, whether it be computer based, language based or whatever.
• Move out and get a damn job.
  

Girls

News Years Tom-Foolery

Apparently the eclectically wisened tortoise of time, drove the rampant motorised vehicle of destiny through the rusting gates of 2007, to reach the effervescent highway of debauchery, and exited at the newly constructed through road of 2008. To celebrate such an occasion we ate vast quantities of dead birds and consumed larger quantities of a liquid partially consisting of a substance that is poisonous to humans. Good show.

After a quick gaming session of Rainbow 6 with young Adam, via the wonders of xbox live, I met the fools round raffle's house to then go on to the Harvester in petts wood, where we luckily got 2 four tables right next to each other. So we had a guys and a girls table, and mocked their foolishness on many occasion. Food was good, beer was better, and was good fun.

We returned to Rachel's abode where drinking was had via the use of the game articulate, which was good fun, if my team was some what dense:

Tom: "It's the fear of small enclosed spaces"
Rex and Shing: "agoraphobia!",
Tom & Everyone else: *head desk*

Though we still came second, which was impressive as Rachel as near super-human powers for the game, even when she had Trev on her team. More drinking then ensued, and midnight came around very quickly, we watched big ben do it's stuff, checked out the fireworks outside, laughed at ruffle in his excellent mexican costume and then people began to get tired. A few more drinks and tidying up and we got to bed by about 2.30, which was impressive, though my eyes were hurting quite a bit. Good night, very enjoyable.