rubbish blog idea #6

Oh man, the fitness blog. Admit it, we've all thought about it; making a promise to yourself to get into shape and share your journey with the blogosphere.

My objective is to lose my excess flab and get "fit" - ergo, get to the point where i can run for a bus and recover in under 2 hours. The blogs would have been DAILY and you would've got little titbits about my adventures "with the road", as well as up-to-the-minute stats about distance and timing.

The tagline at the top would read "To get the most out of the road you have to love her, but you also have to hate her", or something equally awful, and there'd be a picture of my well-worn trainers.

Trouble is, I'm crap. I did monday and tuesday mornings (5am!!!) and then my legs wouldn't work for wednesday and thursday, then i went to bed too late and couldn't get up on friday either. Then it was the weekend; there's no way i'm getting up at 5am on a weekend and there's no way I'm going jogging in the hours when people might see me.

Also, I look like a bellend. I haven't got a tracksuit top so i wear a jumper, and cause my hair is bad before showering I wear a beany hat - i basically look like an extreme sports janitor.

Tell you what, I'll try again this week and if i make it to three days in a row i'll have a rethink.

kill yr icons

Icons - we've all seen them. Elvis is one. James Dean is one. Che Guevara is one. However, the icon on my mind at the moment stands a mere 16 pixels tall.

- yo!

Pretty enigmatic huh? She exudes cool, non? If she had a cigarette in her mouth I'd be on the phone to Rick Moranis straight away.

Err, no, it's a tiny picture, I made it in about 20 seconds by taking an image and resizing it to 16x16 pixels. Genius. Then i left it under my pillow and the favicon fairy did the rest.

According to favicon.com, a website dedicated to these tiny marvels,

"The Favicon allows the webmaster to further promote their site, and to create a more customized appearance within a visitor's browser. Often, the Favicon reflects the look and feel of the web site or the organization's logo."

which i greet with the same skepticism that i showed towards frames between 2002 and 2005. The best bit is that favicon.com decided that the symbol to best sum up their website was an ugly red 'F' - pretty inspired especially considering how they charge $75 minimum to design one for you!

As always, my flippancy is a thin veil to hide the fact I'll soon be spending whole nights, zoomed in at 2000%, trying to decide between two shades of marl.

indie 4 life!

Okay, this is the first piece of nonsense plucked from the REAMS of nonsense contained in bedroom A.

A list of potential replacement band names for my 6th form band, Camp David. It needs to be seen to be believed.

Although I'm not completely sure who the culprit is, I have a very strong hunch.

x x

budgie monitoring

1. Bands

a) News

i) 2 finished songs and ideas are coming thick and fast
ii) 1 upcoming gig, and lots of good intentions, but no songs as yet
iii) might be jeapordised by lack of a practice space
iv) have a video up on youtube
v) have a one-off gig and a slew of preporatory practices

These numerals may or may not correspond to the numbered bands from previous posts.

2. Weekend Activities

a) Friday

i) Chavved it up big style with Mrs Tom; that is to say we went to 'TK Maxx' to buy running shoes.
ii) Donned our jeans and new trainers and went to Wetherspoon's for 300 pints
iii) Not really
iv) Went to a swanky restaurant run by a MANIAC; they promised so so much but in the end only delivered chicken

b) Lincoln

i) Saturday
ii) That's wrong isn't it?
iii) Has a castle
iv) ...and a cathedral
v) ...and a steep hill called Steep Hill
vi) Had my second ever Ostrichburger; it was tastier than my first

c) Saturday eve

i) We tried unsuccessfully to get my housemate to come and see Juno with us
ii) Simon agreed to come and see Juno with us
iii) The three of us saw Juno

d) I recommend it if you liked Napolean Dynamite, Garden State, or any other film with an indie or antifolk soundtrack

4. I'm going to stop now

z) before this gets any more

mcmlxxxiii) out of hand

3. xx

rubbish blog idea #5

One of my compulsive habits is to listen to an album/watch a film/read a book and then immediately visit wikipedia to read about it (this is especially hard with books because there is always the temptation to read the wiki page, whilst midway through the book, and ruin the ending).

Anyway, I am often faced with a paragraph detailing 'discrepancies between book and film' - sometimes with BULLET POINTS - and this was my basis for an idea so rubbish that it was not even limited to a blog basis.

Basically I was going to focus on the discrepancies and then use these as a basis for hilarious vignettes, song lyrics and maybe even a story. Still with me? It's like going to an art exhibition and staring at the spaces between the paintings.*

I psyched myself up and headed over to wikipedia to find some material; I have to say, it was pretty disappointing. If I were to follow through with this idea, it would be full of really dull plot devices like "he was called Smith, not Smithe" and "rather than living in New York, and merely visiting Ireland, they in fact lived in Ireland".

There is precisely one synopsis for a book or film based on these inaccuracies:

"A compulsive liar volunteers a wealth of information, which is later found to be false"

It's got SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER written all over it.

x x

*note to self: idea for a photo blog...

a beginner's guide to 'Till-Building'

I used to wonder how many customers I served on an average Saturday, so one morning I kept a tally over an hour in the morning, which I planned to rack up and multiply by 9 or whatever. When I returned after lunch, my manager called me into her office; she was holding the tally in her hand and said "what does this look like to you Tom?"

Sensing that she wouldn't appreciate the lolz, I kept quiet, and she went on to ask if I was till-building.

Now, a quick google search shows that the modern world is largely ignorant of the existence of till-building; as was I, and as, most likely, are you. I would go as far as to say that the practice existed solely within the mind of my boss.

The basic premise of till-building, she explained, is that you take money for certain items without scanning them; instead, you keep track of your takings with a tally (much like mine, I suppose) and then transfer the relevant amount to your back pocket.

I protested my innocence by pointing out that if this were the case I wouldn't have been so careless as to leave evidence sellotaped to my till while i went for lunch. I wasn't actually annoyed about the accusation, more that I try to steal such a small amount of money in such a stupid way - I subsequently devoted many hours daydreaming about the best ways to steal substantial sums of money without being caught.

My boss had a go at me for keeping a tally of customers and sent me back to my till.

you're both Ivan?

To my right, my housemate is taking his nightly shower; to my left, Vin Diesel is saving the world; directly in front of me is a growing number of really boring words.

I spent the weekend going through the bedroom in my parent's house - I'll post the funniest things here when they're scanned in.

I then came back to find the Breslau EP had arrived:



This is the work of no-fi nomad Heartbeeps and is a heartfelt ode to provinces, gulags, post-Communist Europe and the uncertainty of mid-20's life.

THEN, i discovered, quite by accident, that Foxface have released an album. Foxface is the current project of Michael and John from Peeps into Fairyland and if you enjoy(ed) Idlewild then you should definitely check out both bands.

Just to finish off, this (xXx) is one of the worst films I've ever seen; I think they'd have been better off going the whole hog and just making a real-life McBain movie.