More like... WANK Holiday Monday

You all know me, when I get an idea in my head and decide I'm going to do something, I get right up and... um... occassionally mention over the next few months that I may go and do that thing I talked about. One of those very things I've been thinking about doing over the past few months is checking out the Tanning Salon at the end of my street.

Right now I am hearing the sinister cacophony of a dozen raising eyebrows, but here me out okay, its for the experience. I mean, it is an activity that is widely enjoyed by a significant portion of the population, so maybe there's something in it. I know there are health risks involved in excessive use, but I'm probably not going to want to/definitely can't afford to use sunbeds excessively, and then again, everything potentially cool has health risks attached - AYE! I IS TALKIN' ABOUT THE CRACK!

But then, I got there just now, and because its Bank Holiday Monday, it was closed! And then I was slightly annoyed... I had to bathe and put on a shirt to go there! And all f'r n'thin'!

And that's why I'm annoyed at Bank Holiday Monday, because this is the last chance I'm going to have to go there for the rest of the week, 'cos I'm going down South tomorrow.

And that brings me to the next topic: I am going down South tomorrow. So don't be all wanderin' aboot thinkin' t' thisennes, 'ay-up! where's ar-Tom?' COS I ALREADY TOLD YOU, I'M DOWN SOUTH!

::Blog accomplished, transmission out::

Isn't it always the way?

As soon as one commits to doing something daily, one suddenly decides not to do that thing. By that thing, I mean this blog, but here I am! FORCING OUT AN ENTRY!

First things first, I'd like to thank Cassy for a wonderful night on Monday. I was meant to be dressed as Michael J. Fox from Teen Wolf, but I'm not so sure if it worked. Anyway, it was fun.

Also on Monday, I did end up seeing Eagle vs Shark, and it was goodness. A really sweet and funny film. It caused smiles all around.

Probably also some other stuff happened, but right now, I'm bored out of my skull, so... I'll love you and leave you for later. Maybe tomorrow night? If you're good.

(Not) Eagle vs Shark

A note in advance: I'm squinting while writing this. I ate the rest of my Gumbo for dinner, but thought it would be nicer with some more chilli peppers, so I chopped them up and got their oils and stuff all over my hands, and then later, when it became time for eye-rubbings... well, you get the picture, and its a picture of stingy-ness!

So today, I woke up, and thought, 'yay, today is the day I go and see smash hit New Zealand romantic comedy!' I was going to see it yesterday, but then Cassy told me to see it with her today, then it turned out she couldn't come, so, I uh, guess that she's just a big tease. Indeed, loads of other things also happened to me and those around me during the course of the day, some of those things involved me ending up not actually going to see that film. Instead I chilled out with Cassy, Paula and Sarah, and followed them around while they went shopping - I was even in a bra shop for like a few seconds *GIGGLES UNCONTROLLABLY*. I bought a basketball for part of a fancy dress costume, (I'm dressing as Michael J. Fox from Teen Wolf), and, best of all, I kept the receipt, so I can exchange it back for money after the night! Huzzah for cheapness.

It was a shame about Eagle vs Shark though. But Paula said that she'd like to see it on Monday, which is cool, I'll see it with her, Paula's cool, seein' a film with Paula would be cool, INDEED, all kinds of things are cool. Um, so like, if anyone here hasn't heard of this film I insist of rattling on about, I'm gunna try and see if I can embed the Youtube video of the trailer:

Gumbo

Today, I made, (with Meg's help), a gumbo!

Gumbo is a Cajun dish, derived from a West African recipe and consisting of a simple basic sauce, thick broth and the so-called 'Holy Trinity' of vegetables: peppers, onion and celery. It was very tasteful. Its archetypical 'soul food', i.e. food developed by the substantial slave population in Colonial America.

And so, I'm quite proud of myself for making this meal - especially the part of me that is a die-hard Dixiephile. The Southern USA is so much better than the North, the North is just so obsessed with how great it is, while the South just trundles along, and never claims to be anything more than it really is.

In closing, the word 'Cajun' is a pidginisation of the French 'Acadien', an individual from the French Colony of Acadia. MY POINT BEING, Acadia is a really great name for a colony, its so whimsical-sounding, I mean, the only geographical location that comes close to meeting that level of whimsy is Narnia, and we all know what Narnia (Turkish Delight) is like!

Vodka

Vodka has a special place in our generation. We embrace it to a degree that would embarress your average Slav. I don't really know why this is, it may be something to do with the fact that we are the first post-Cold War generation - for us, vodka is something that can be drunk freely without people suspecting that you are a Double Agent, collecting secrets from John Bull and sendin' them right back to the Kremlin!! Ahem, sorry, Cold War rhetoric makes me quite moist.

But even that doesn't completely explain the phenemenon, because (and I may be being controversial when I say this, but...) vodka just isn't very nice! Indeed, a hint about the nature of vodka comes from the word's etymology, it derivates from the Slavic roots 'voda', meaning water, and the suffix, '-ka', which, (more-or-less), means '-ish'. So vodka is a waterish drink, which really goes quite a way to demonstrate how plain and unimaginative it is. I mean, it does do the job, i.e. get you rat-arsed, but it doesn't deliver any nice taste along the way, and well, drinking for the taste rather than for the effect is what separates us from the animals! Those filthy, godless animals...


However, I don't mean to disparrage all vodkas, there is a great deal of niceness out there is vodkadom, BUT, that's not what everyone drinks. The most common vodka in this country is Smirnoff... which is French, so I don't get the kinda pseudo-post-Soviet-Kitsch-kinda appeal that people get from drinking it, and in any case, its shit. There is some good stuff, particularly the Polish stuff.

In any case, and this is a trick I learnt from working at the douchey Olde John O'Gaunt in Lancaster: KEEP YOUR VODKA IN THE FREEZER! It keeps it in a very viscous state, and makes it taste tres yummy, some of the water freezes into little bits of crystalised ice, but it will always stay in a liquid state (due to the alcohol content). So, my advice to you, always drink your vodka from the freezer, (if you're going to drink it at all), and you'll never want to go back to the room-temperature stuff.

PS. The housing guy didn't ring back today, (grr+eep=grreep!!!).

Happy Birthday India

Today is India's birthday, (well, it is over here still, in the GMT-zone - in India, its tomorrow, and people are getting on with their lives).

I'm a little bit Indian. I'm not exactly sure how Indian exactly, because when your family is part of the lower echelons of the Anglo civil service of the Emparh, intermarrying with the locals is something you try to downplay. But I am a little bit Indian, I've seen olde, (like, really olde), family pictures with huge turban'd Punjabis standing in the background, (people who my grandma would begrudgingly concede were her grandparents/uncles/whatevers).

So, India has a bit of a place in my heart. I do still have relatives living there, so I guess I have some kind of link... I'm not one of these geneologically-inclined people, hell, I'm not even inclined to enjoy the company of my living relatives, I really need to be nagged quite a lot to ring any kind of "grand"-"parent" or anything. But yeah, other people know them, so there we are.

INDEED! Ahem... sorry. Indeed, its often been a little dreamlet of mine to move in with my long lost relatives in India, and chillax in a little corner of anachronistic Anglo-Indian Raj. I may even retire in India, (I have ethical issues with retiring in a nation with such a demographic skew towards the elderly).

But the whole thing is, that without the events of 1947, I just would not have been born. The whole 'Quit India' kafuffle, my grandma wouldn't have moved back to Blighty, never would have met my granddad, so, I wouldn't be there. So, um, thanks Gandhi!

In other news: my accomodation for next year is looking more sorted out than ever! So when I get moved in there, I'll wire up my scanner and I'll start treating you guys with the occassional doodle. But that's not until October, so holdeth not thy breatheseses.

Goodbye! And namaste!

The Ballad of Trolley Brown

Gather round bitches and bastards and hear ye a tale:
A tale of misery that's sure to make your frown,
Gather round and hear the Ballad of Trolley Brown.

Okay, I was planning on rhyming all the way through this blog, but that's difficult, so HERE COME'S DA PROSE: So there I was, I was on my way home after a day of not-insignificant drinking, I got off the train at Solihull and decided to walk the 20ish minute walk home. Those familiar with the walk to my house will know there's like a little gimmel-like thing, all over-grown and pitch-black and rustly and (probably) haunted.

Okay, and this is where my weird emotions come in, while walking through there I discovered an abandoned Tesco's shopping trolley. With my drunken craziness I anthropomorphicised this trolley, and suddenly got really worried for it - it was all alone in this scary environment, miles away from the nearest Tesco's. Who knows how it could have got there!? Or what could have been planned for it!? Maybe some malcontent had abducted it and was planning on dumping it in the canal!?

So I took it home.

I rolled it along for the last five minutes of my journey home and parked it in my dining room. At that point it just occured to me that my dad may find its sudden appearance a bit weird. So I got out and the post-its and intended to write an explanation, "IT FOLLOWED ME HOME" read my scrawled note.

The next morning my dad burst into my room bein' all like, 'wah wah wah, I don't want for there to be trolley!' And, unfortunately, in my half-asleep, hung-over state, I could really defend its presence.

And so, as I woke up yesterday morning, I found the trolley had been taken away.

I had a lot of dreams for that trolley, I was planning on taking it up to Uni, and living a full and bountiful (and trolleyful) life with it. But nope, all that was gone.

... *mumble grumble*

Entry Two: The Blog Has Landed

Here it is, entry the second.

I'm going to take this oppurtunity to give you a sneak peak behind the sceneaks.. So don't freak.

One of the most difficult decisions one has to make when publishing anything on the Interwebs
is what case regime one is going to use: ALL CAPS is one alternative, but that can seem a bit aggressive and, frankly, n00bish - not to mention that it kinda takes the impact away from any occassional all caps phrase that you may want to SHOUT. So ALL CAPS is out. Similar to ALL CAPS is CrAzY cAsE, cRaZy CaSe is perhaps the most retarded case regime of them all, and is used primarily by eleven year old girls - I ain't no preteen girl, so that one is out too. Which leaves us with the two favourites: all lower case and Standard. I am a fan of all lower case, its a regime I enjoy writing in, its cute, its friendly, its down to earth, its huggable-wuvable-giveitacuddleable. However, all lower case isn't always appropriate, for instance, let's imagine I wanted to spread some kind of serious point, (as I occassionally do), you wouldn't take me seriously at all if I didn't bother to capitalise.

And so here I am, using the standard English-language casing system. I just thought I'd let you know all the thoughts that were going through my head when I chose to decide upon that.. choice, and so you know that I was thinking about y'all, and not just instinctually going for what I should have instinctually gone for anyway.

Anyway, I need to go put some clothes on, bye everyone! Oh, and kudos for anyone who got that the blog title was a reference to Futurama.

Is this what you want? Is this what you want!?

Well, here it is. My triumphant return to the blogodrome! People have been asking me to get myself one of these things for a while, so here it is.

So allow me to introduce myself, my name is Tom, I am 5'10" and have a moustache. I am boring and whiney and am filled with many boring and whiney opinions.

Here is a picture of me with a girl on my shoulders: