HQ
The Burning Salad Nerve Centre
Oct 7, 2003 at 23:24 Filed Under: Blog Comment
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This week, this is going to be a photo-journal. Here is Monday’s entry.
Cat Mugs
Oct 6, 2003 at 23:03 Filed Under: Blog Comment
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I just nearly had a heart attack. I just looked at the weblog and it seems that in the early hours of the morning while fiddling around I broke it. It was all blue and white crap style. I took me ages to get it like this. But I got it back. Cost me $5 though.
Oct 6, 2003 at 16:31 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Ah, Youth
Today I went to the allegedly annual Scout Fair jumble sale thing in Partick. There was a very long queue, lots of scouts and a lot of crap for sale at fairly relevant prices. I did, however, manage to get some excellent things… A Commodore Amiga CD 32 – scouts price £3, market value £30-40… A Spectrum ZX 81 (boxed) – scouts price £1.50, market value £30-40… A ZX Spectrum printer – £1.50, market value £50. Ha! Those foolish youngsters need to try harder to earn their badges for Capitalism. Having said that, I did get sort of caught up in a buying frenzy. There were more old computers than you could shake a stick at, and coupled with the scouts’ abstract pricing system, my powers of judgement became clouded. I got a BBC micro for a fiver, put it in a black bag and lugged it around for about ten minutes before remembering that despite being the definitive system to play Ian Bell and David Braben’s classic work of genius ‘Elite’ on, a BBC micro weighs about the same as a tent full of scouts. So in the end I left it, safe in the knowledge that I could afford to be decadent.
What I didn’t manage to find was anything as good as this… (I found it in a box the other day).
It reminded me of when I was young. My best pal’s dad owned a toy shop and so he always had a steady supply of loads of stuff. Which obviously gave us the opportunity to wreck it all with impunity. And one fateful day we got our hands on a Doozer. The Doozers were the little green chaps from Fraggle Rock. If I remember correctly, the Fraggles would go above ground, steal radishes from the big hairy things’ vegetable patch, come back down into Fraggle Rock and give the radishes to the Doozers who would then proceed to construct particularly elaborate buildings for themselves using the radishes as raw materials. The Fraggles would then take it upon themselves to eat the Doozers’ houses. It seemed they couldn’t digest the radish in it’s raw state and the poor, unwitting Doozers were exploited for their ability to somehow distil vegetable matter. Kids, (particularly scouts), there’s probably a message in there somewhere.
Anyway, me and Keith had a Doozer. Like the rest of its kind, it was about eight inches tall, slightly chubby with a gormless expression and dressed in construction gear with a hard-hat. It was made of that funny spongy material that meant you could bend it into various poses. And what did we do with the Doozer? We didn’t bend it into any sexual positions and we didn’t snap its arms and legs off. We did however strip it naked to see if it had a willy. (Which, of course, it didn’t – and as far as we could tell at seven years old, he wasn’t a she). Then we laughed at how stupid it looked for a while. Then we pried off its hat which was glued on and laughed even more when we realised that Doozers were bald. Then we got a biro and wrote ‘Duncan Goodhugh’ across its chest and laughed until we cried.
I heard and narrowly missed seeing a dog getting run over the other day. A man walked past me in a fairly bored fashion half-shouting at nothing apparent. Not unusual for Glasgow. Then I walked past him and he shouted ‘Hey! Gonnae catch that mate’! Then a dog ran past me which I made no attempt to catch because I was carrying things and I didn’t like the man’s tone of voice. As I walked along I noticed the dog (one of those crap dogs that are about the size of a big rat) had stopped to piss on something. So I tried to get it but it ran away and when the man came looking I pointed to it running away along the pavement and he just sauntered after it. I crossed the road to use the bank machine and heard a big long animal noise that sounded like it came from one of those crap rat-sized dogs. And it had, because I looked around the corner and saw the man walking up the middle of the road, holding his dog (not very triumphantly I might add), swearing at an unstopped car. The dog wasn’t squashed though. At least not on the outside.
I turned round to use the bank machine only to find that someone had decided to throw their curry and noodles at it. I wonder why people sometimes throw meals at bank machines. Surely they they too need to get money out before they can get some fried rice to throw at the bank machine.
I painted the living room white the other day and I’m going to sort out all of my stuff starting tomorrow. I think next week I’m going to do one entry a day with a photo.
Oct 4, 2003 at 23:55 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Jail Break
I’m back home and it’s already Thursday. Everything went okay down south in the the Cent Kountryside. It was very warm for this time of year by Glasgow standards and so I got the chance to top up my tan. Re-meeting Trish’s parents was a fairly painless affair. I had only ever met them once before for a grand total of about two hours so I was ready for the Spanish inquisition. But it was more of a Dutch inquisition. Because Trish’s parents are Dutch. Pa De Vries’ opening gambit was ‘Hi’…blah blah…’You look like you’ve just got out of jail’. In the face of such an assumption I had only two options. Either tell an elaborate story about selling cigarettes and getting dodgy tattoos etc. (not actually that far from the truth), or simply announce the fact that I, in fact, had not been residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure in the recent past. I opted for the latter on the basis that it is the truth and amazingly it paid off. Moreover, Pa De Vries retracted his wild claim and actually said ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that blah blah’… And I said ‘It’s okay, my mum would have said the same thing’, (which is true) and the situation was diffused. Then we got on well. I was plied with fine wine and steak and even played croquet on the lawn. Politely losing of course.
We made it into London and didn’t see as much as we hoped on account of the heat and the actual size of the the place. I did get time time to meet Toby Z (iegler) who I met at East. We chatted over coffee while his son tried to eat poisonous berries from a nearby shrub. And then we went to see David Blaine the evil magician. He is, of course, currently suspended in a plastic box beside (not above) the Thames. And the trick? He will not go out, have any human contact, eat or drink for forty days and forty nights. Well, we’ve all done it. Except he’s invited people to watch. Wow. He was just sitting there in his pants, fidgeting a bit, probably hungry and bored. Seemed like a standard hangover to me. I watched him for a full five minutes. Occasionally he would look around at the amassed throng of idiots and wave a bit, so I waited until he looked in my direction, gave him the fingers and left. It felt like my duty.
When I got home the flat was not burnt down or otherwise worn in on account of the death threat that I gave Rob before I left. Impressive. I think I might actually up his rent (massively) in order to pay his (minimum) wages as a janitor. There’s an idea.
Tonight I went round to Toby Webster’s place to sort out his computer. Sue Tompkins was baby-sitting Honey and I was slightly too late for chicken nuggets but I did get to see a bit of Stuart Little. A mouse in a washing machine and a talking cat. Now that’s cinema. Then I got the computer fixed up. I’m pretty sure that the www in http://www stands for World Wide Webster.
Then I went to the pub for Steve Sutcliffe’s birthday. I asked him what he wanted to drink (he looked like this had already happened a few times) and he said Nice one, a pint of lager. I said It’s your birthday, what about a nice whisky or something. And he said Oh, whisky makes me go mental and I said Okay then, I’ll get you a whisky as long as you go nuts. And he said Okay then, Highland Park. The bastard guzzled the drink and didn’t even make the slightest attempt to wreck a single thing. Maybe next year.
The bus journey home took place in the company of Alex Frost and Alan Michael and was made all the more enjoyable by their presence. Frosty shat in the gutter while Alan Michael single handedly wrecked the bus stop.
On my travels I made it to my old flat to pick up mail and I was delighted to find that the former Nut residence is now home to a couple of pasty looking neo goth types with mohawks, piercings, bad attitudes and a drum kit. And probably chemistry degrees. They gave me a huge pile of mail that they had saved up and I said thanks and told them the flat was haunted.
I’ve smoked six cigarettes in the time it’s taken me to write this and I have to go and open up the rest of that mail. I only opened up the interesting looking packages which turned out to be rubbish in disguise. And I’ve also got to go for a dyslexia test for the dole tomorrow. It makes them feel better about helping people back to work and explains why I’ve been trying to cash my giros at the ticket office in Central Station for the past year.
Sep 25, 2003 at 2:00 Filed Under: Blog Comment
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Here I am in Stansted airport. I’m down in the big smoke to see Patricia and politely tell her parents not to worry that I’m stealing her back to Glasgow. Getting here was an adventure because when I got to Glasgow airport they wouldn’t let me on the plane because I didn’t have any photo-id so I had to go home to get my passport (the only photo-id I have) which I couldn’t find. I sweated and shouted for about half an hour while tearing my room apart. (‘My room’ counts as everything I own in cardboard boxes with a new experimental filing system that I have since forgotten on account of it’s radical nature). But against all odds it turned up and I went back to the airport and got them to let me on another flight.
Got to go now to maximise my airport time. Trish is on her way and I haven’t played a single videogame.
Sep 18, 2003 at 17:05 Filed Under: Blog Comment
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I’m well again! I don’t know what it was but if I was a quack I would say that it was definitely Cholera. So I missed the opening of the Members’ Show at the gallery. Boo.
Things that have happened etc…
I saw two uber-goths in Cash Converters waiting impatiently for the man to find them a copy of A Nightmare On Elm Street.
I was on the bus and it was full apart from the seat next to me. I felt, and probably looked, calm and sane and I was even reading a sensible book . But there was a man who decided to stand anyway. Maybe he was afraid of The Javascript Programmer’s Reference.
I saw an old man readying himself for a busking session. He was one of those sort of half-tramps who look as much like a grandpa as a jakey. He was putting down a bright red baseball cap and cheerily announcing to two slightly interested middle-aged women that he was about to sing and do a dance. I didn’t have time to watch.
Anyway, got to go now because Charlie just came round for a spot of fishing. Sega Bass Fishing with an analogue rod controller. Simulated fishing from the comfort of your own living room. Life Is Sweet.
Sep 16, 2003 at 19:29 Filed Under: Blog Comment
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I am very ill.
Sep 14, 2003 at 10:09 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Phoney
I went out shopping yesterday with my mum and got lots of things for the flat including a nice blue phone. When I got home I plugged it in and decided to test it. So I got on my mobile and dialled my new phone number. It started ringing and then I realised that my nice new blue phone wasn’t actually ringing. Then it stopped and a man said ‘Hello?’. So I said something along the lines of… ‘I’ve just phoned my new phone number and you’ve answered but my phone didn’t actually ring and you don’t seem to be anywhere in my flat. What’s going on?’.
And he said ‘Ah, Mr. Wright…’
?
whatthefuck
‘You see, our phone numbers have got mixed up. I told ntl.’
So I said ‘So I’ve got you’re phone number then?’
So he said ‘No, my number just rings out now.’
So I said ‘How did this happen? When will it get fixed? What’s my phone number?’
So he said ‘I don’t know what happened, my phone number just stopped working one day so I phoned ntl and they said that they’d given me your phone number by accident but they’re going to fix it soon and you’re phone number won’t change, but it will start going to your flat.’
So I said ‘Okay, bye.’