January 2006 Archives
I'm chewing cinnamon gum to get rid of the smell of burnt flesh. I had a mole 'n' bump removed this morning and now I look like a boxer, with a tiny band aid stuck under my right eye brow.
And that's the closest I'll ever get to plastic surgery.
My scars usually turn dark instead of pale like white folk's, so maybe I won't end up prettier.P
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(NBC cancels West Wing)
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Podcast from Davos. Sounds like Victor Borge introduces him.
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Sineadr's performance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, on demand live stream
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Nudge Nudge. Wink wink.
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Sensitive obituary of actor Chris Penn, who died on Tuesday.
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Firefox blogging extension
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How a pilot doesn't get made by Fox. Fascinating behind the scenes of telly from a screenwriter
There's a Nick Cave song called 'Scum' which is about NME journalist Mat Snow (whom he was sharing a flat with at the time) because he wrote a bad review.
If I were a songwriter, I'd write a song like that. I'd probably call it 'Cunt'.
Especially for (name deleted).
This particular member of of the press asked a friend about his companion: 'So, is she your fuck-date then?'
While she's standing there.
Classy.
The first item I've ever put up on eBay was grabbed up in no time, but already it's become the ordeal I feared auctioning off my stuff would be. I offered ordinary P&P options but the buyer contacted me to ask if I could courier them the item. I was going to say NO but didn't want to be dismissive the first time around, so I said I'd investigate.
I found the Fedex site impossible to negotiate, but finally figured out I'd have to apply for a 'personal' account first. That would take too much time, so I tried TNT who seemed to offer shipping without too much hassle. But when I rang them this morning to verify things were as simple as they seemed, I was told that because I wasn't a business, they could not give me an account and would not pick up the item. Instead I would have to use the service they offer through the post office.
The post office I can NEVER go to because it only opens during office hours.
I find things like not being able to use every day services available to businesses deeply frustrating. It did nothing to improve the mood I've landed in since my return from the U.K.
I'd felt gloomy since Monday morning, but it was the cashier at Duivendrecht station who triggered my festering wrath. On Monday evening 11.15pm she refused to give me change from a tenner and made me buy a sausage roll so I would have the coins to pay for a subway ticket.
Bitch. I cursed this stupid country and its refusal to accept credit cards in vending machines (or anywhere else for that matter) to hell and back. And then the 54 line broke down and I had to get back on a train anyway. And walk more stairs with my gammy knee, because all the escalators had broken down too.
But anyway, selling stuff on eBay... I had to refund the buyer their shipping money and placate them with apologies. They begged me to go to the post office, would even pay for my petrol. I don't have a car, but anyway, there's no post office anywhere near where I work. More apologies and grovelling. I hate this. I hate negotiating with sellers in the first place, but it's worse the other way around as I'm expected to make the buyer happy. I find this endless negotiating with strangers incredibly taxing. Bloody does my head in. Now the buyer's unhappy, and I'm drowning in guilt and I wish I had said NO in the first place. I'm considering sending him the item free and be done with it.
To make matters worse, TGP post have failed to deliver the lovely Revue 400 se camera I bought from a seller in Austria. I'll have to go to the post office (when? WHEN? WHEN FOR FUCK SAKE???) to fill in a form. I've done this before and always get the same standard 'sorry we can't find it' answer a few weeks later. There really is no point.
My deep sympathies go out to those who do this for a living.
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Replaces nedstat and has more features.
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Bye bye, West Wing. It was never the same without Sorkin.
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RSI exercises
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My old friend Stefano needs $2000 to get his green card. He's selling prints of 6 photographs to raise the money.
The weekend seemed short, but that's probably because it was packed full of goodness even if it started with the nasty: on Friday evening, I found my virginal self subjected to a brutal rogering by Celebrity Big Brother.
A moment of silence, please. ... Thank you.
My initial reaction to George Galloway pretending to lick milk from Rula Lenska's hands was a firm 'my eyes, my eyes!'. Now, of course, I'm fascinated and want to see the drama unfold. But I can't quite bring myself to downloading this tripe. Mr Hg will have to provide daily updates.
Emotional
Saturday morning we were off to Ramsgate, birthplace of Tracey Emin, on the isle of Thanet (well, peninsula), East Kent. A seaside resort that manages to avoid the usual tackiness and instead presents a mostly unscathed, tidy waterfront. We arrived just in time to see the ferry leave port for Ostend and after some exploring tried the day's catch in batter.
Back in the city we headed for the Barbican to see Breakfast on Pluto. I had succumbed to watching a DVD screener of it a week ago, but it was good to see it on a relatively large screen and take in other people's response at the same time. I think we all agreed we would have cut a few scenes a little tighter, Stephen Rea's wishy washy part in particular. Where on earth was he heading with that character?
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On 4AD. Also coming, Stephen Kijak´s Walker documentary on Walker
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St Patrick's Day is going to be really busy this year.
There should be some kind of filter when you are searching Technorati to weed out all the OMG!! WTF!! livejournal posts from your results. When I want to read people's thoughts on Brokeback Mountain I'd like to find more articles like Tom's and not have to weed through the acres of 'OMG Jake and Heath!!! D sex wuz hawt' or 'I'm like, so depressed right now, the movie made me think of my ex-boyfriend.'-type posts.
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Animated film about the late Pope
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.. in which they talk about The Virgin Prunes and Gavin Friday
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Noise reduction action for Photoshop
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(download avi)
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Dutch Flickr clone
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Somehow connected to Flannery's Mounted Head, by Cathal Coughlan.
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Dutch media collective weblog
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Need this to do repairs on my new rangefinders
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Harold Pinter bio on Dutch tv-show NOVA's website says 'Pinteresque' stands for 'histrionic language and double entendres'. It does? ... Yes. ... It's the opposite. ... The opposite. Yes. ... It is.
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I'm a bit of an Eeyore
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Give it to Seymour Hoffman, he deserves one for his entire career.
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Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf exhibits in New York
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James Morrison is in it? And Mark Shepherd! Oh crap, now I'm hooked. (Have never watched 24 before.)
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Awesome navigation
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Wow. That one's bugged me for ages.
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Interesting site of recent commenter.
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Honest, beautiful memories of a star
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'A look into the bizarre world of yesterday's LPs: The lunatic cover art, the uncategorizable lost genres, and the wildest artists.' (another blog by Max Sperber.)
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Compact rangefinder from around 1980. Cheap brand with super lens.
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Porter and I take pictures of the same doorway, from different sides and different decades.
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Picked this one up for 22.50
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Picked this one up for 41.00. Yes, you could say I've become a collector of 70's compact 35mm rangefinders . Now all I need is a bigger house.
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Had never heard of this, so had to buy a bottle (at local supermarket).
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First epi not bad
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Supremely camp image of Dutch singer Corry Konings
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'With Hamachi you can organize two or more computers with an Internet connection into their own virtual network for direct secure communication. '
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When did Adam Clayton start to sound like a musician?
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Oh. my. god.
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Considering going to see them live
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'breaking out of the box'
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I'm travelling to the UK to see this film two weeks from now... but a little preview won't harm me.
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A band whose name I can never remember. 'You know, British, 80s, used to hang out with Michael Stipe'... but nobody remembers that. Pick a card, any card... WRONG.
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a.k.a. Australian Questioning Intonation
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I don't recognise any of those names. Yikes.
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(I'm coding this weekend, can you tell?)
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Rounded corners, dotted underlines, etc
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Linking this for the list of weblogs (scroll down), to add to my blogroll
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So it would be nice if last.fm provided your top tracks and top artists per year... that would make making your 'best of' list really easy. In fact, they should add specific functionality for end of year lists.
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Dutch public broadcasting podcast portal. Mostly existing radio shows. Also features radio streams, web radio and a newsletter. Choose 'wereldomroep' in the 'omroep' drop down menu for English language shows
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Joe Clark points out a number of badly redesigned sites
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Martijn van der Griendt's photo site for the ADHD generation
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Time to nominate Whedonesque.
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Frenchman covers songs badly, on purpose.
'Big love'. That's how he puts it these days. Big. Or 'huge', sometimes. I can't surpress a giggle when it's that.
Love. It comes in so many different flavours, not all as wonderful as you'd hope. I love him, but I'm not 'in love'. He loves me, but he doesn't 'love me too'. We're mismatched every way.
We've spent a year not talking, just declaring our big love to and fro. Brief and hurried spurts of affection, accentuated with a kiss: X marks the spot. Oft at the oddest hours and in the darndest place. And always worlds apart.
I wonder what makes him think of me in these moments and how strange it really is that in a way, this way, I'm with him all the time. But then he is and has been with me too. Not so strange after all. Unreal.
Surely we've reached the limit of our declarations. God knows how it all will end.
Or maybe there's no end. Maybe we'll go on and on and on. Like the sun and the moon. And the stars that we are.
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May have linked this one before. Look, some people want babies. I want a dog.
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To investigate.
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On our site, natch.
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Found surfing the 'celebrity' tag
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From the film Cool Hand Luke
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(i/v from earlier this year) Just saw Wlll Young's Switch it on video - the Top Gun interpretation - for the first time. Heh. I'm not a fan, but I like his attitude.
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I've started using these features a lot more recently.