Lager Lager Lager

Hello and welcome to two thousand and six anno domini.

I'm having difficulty typing around the piles of cans and bottles on my desk. Not only was it a good mate's birthday, but also the first New Year's I was over 18, so I've spent two days drinking. This blog will be ridiculously inarticulate and rather boring I predict, because of the alcohol. Look, it's making less sense every sentence. Anyway, the state of my life is as follows: uni is funky fresh and generally good, I have a new computering device, and I have a lot of games consoles. Christmas simply paid for them all a bit. I'm endeavouring to be a trendy fellow laden with technology to wow and amaze random passers-by, and so far it's going as planned. I own my first pair of jeans, and have a total of seven handheld games consoles, plus an MP3 player and PDA. Hang on, it might be eight consoles. Does the Pocketstation count? I don't know. Anyway, yes, consoles galore, I can even play Xbox system link games against myself, that's how much crap I now own.

Running out of things to say already. I need some good inspiration for a blog entry that will return to the glory of the olden days. Oh well. There's talk yet again of another Ninjaz reunion, but how much content will be produced remains to be seen. We now have at least two guitarists, two or three vocalists, no drummer and no bassist. Just like every other band of adolescents eh?

Okay, I'm tired and full of a curdling mix of Red Square and Carling, so I'll try and reach the post button before I pass out on my keyboa

edit.

Cripes, just noticed, this thing is well over a year old now with virtually no content, and the last Ninjaz release was half a year ago! We'll have to sort that out.

ps. that naff game Juiced I mentioned in an early article? The full version came out recently, I 'acquired' it to test, and it's the same. The only difference is that it's stuffed with bloated menu videos, stripped of them it can fit on a CD. Worthless game.

Oh damn, suddenly inspired for tons of new blog entries. Meh, postponing them, I've spent enough hours trapped by the riddle of the Mazda Capella for tonight.

Schizophrenia in relation to the automobile.

Sorry, this one won't be very interesting for those of you out for a laugh.

Recently, a lot of Japanese car manufacturers have launched alternate names for themselves in foreign markets (I say recently, in the last 15 years). For example, Toyota have Lexus (big Toyotas sold to posh people) and Scion (little Toyotas sold to posers). None of these are innovative however. In the 80s and 90s, Mazda pulled such a stunt, except they didn't keep themselves to three names, oh no. They came up with all manner of insane rebrandings, including the hilariously confusing idea of selling the same car under three or four badges in the same market. Not only that, but a large number of these cars had rebodied siblings, often in the same brand, and most had totally different names overseas.

This brings us to the example of the Mazda Capella. Wikipedia revealed these inane links:

The Mazda Capella (aka Mazda 626 and Mazda Montrose) was upsized onto the same platform as the Xedos 6 (aka Eunos 500, Mazda Lantis and nearly the Amati 300). The Mazda Cronos (aka Mazda 626) took its place. There was also a rebodied Cronos named the Efini MS-6 (aka Autozam Clef). The Capella's new platform was also used for the new Mazda Lantis (aka Mazda 323F, plus sold in Eunos and Efini dealers, but now a totally different size to the Xedos 6 aka Mazda Lantis). Also, the Capella had a sister car named the Mazda Persona (aka Eunos 300) which was replaced by the Efini MS-8. Now just to be confusing, the Cronos was replaced by the Capella (aka 626). While the Cronos was originally a Capella (and the Capella evolved into a new model), the Capella became a rebodied Cronos, and this is before the 626 name is considered! Anyway, the whole lot were replaced by the Mazda Atenza (aka Mazda6) (which is mechanically very similar to the Ford Mondeo...). This is before we get into the Mazda Luce (whose coupe was the Mazda Cosmo aka Eunos Cosmo), sold with piston engines as the 929, which was replaced by the Mazda Sentia, aka Efini MS-9. This fit above the Capella and the larger Mazda Millenia (aka Xedos 9 or Eunos 800 or nearly an Amati too).

I'm not done yet. The smaller model to the Capella was the Mazda Familia (aka 323, except when the Lantis was, and once Mazda GLC), which had a coupe derivative titled the Mazda MX3 (aka Mazda Precidia, Eunos Presso, Autozam AZ-3, Eunos 30X or even Mazda AZ-3) and over the years became aka Mazda Astina (also a name for the 323F aka Lantis), Mazda Etude, Eunos 100, or Mazda Protege, and now replaced by the Mazda Axela (aka Mazda3).


This is just Mazda. There's only about 4 distinct models in there, but god knows how many actual rebrandings there were. If you want to get more confusing, often totally different marques 'borrow' a car to fill a gap in their range. Mazda also did this, one example is the Autozam AZ-Offroad (aka Suzuki Jimny). Australia's market (the bastard offspring of America's muscle saloons and Japan's economy cars with a good pinch of Supras and Corsas muddying the water) is notorious for it too. The previously mentioned Mazda Familia had some nasty ones, through its life it was also the Ford Laser, Ford Meteor, Mercury Tracer, Ford Topic, Sao Penzo, Ford Activa and Ford Lynx, as well as sharing mechanicals withe Ford Escort, which was a totally different car to the European car named the Ford Escort. The Australian versions of world marques also didn't always stick to one other marque to borrow from, leading to such convoluted nonsense as this:

So, the Ford Corsair was a rebadged Nissan Pintara which was a renamed Nissan Bluebird which was the European version of the Nissan Stanza, which used to be a Datsun, but the Pintara was formerly a Nissan Skyline which shared mechanicals with the Holden Commodore, a big rival of the Ford Falcon, which was the larger brother of the Corsair, which replaced the Ford Telstar, which was a reshaped Mazda Capella (not that bugger again), also known as the 626, which later shared its platform with the Mazda MX6, which was rebodied as the Ford Probe, but the Probe wasn't related to the Telstar or Corsair at all.


Nowadays it's a bit nicer. Marques share platforms more and more, but have the common courtesy to totally rebody their cars. Nobody would suspect that the Mazda2 was a Ford Fiesta, the 3 was a Focus which in turn was a Volvo S40, and the 6 was a Mondeo, now in turn being spun off to Mercurys and even other Fords. VW-Audi Group is a champion at this, it has approximately five platforms, from which the entire ranges of VW, Audi, Skoda, SEAT and Bentley are constructed. In fact, one of those platforms is shared with Porsche too, and not yet used outside of VW, making it even more impressive.

So the moral of the story: if you're going to sell the same car under different names, at least be nice enough to give it a different look (the VW Golf / Audi TT / Skoda Octavia / SEAT Leon is an excellent example), and for god's sake don't make up names simply to flog more rebadged hatchbacks. It's a good job Mazda lost a lot of money on their hugely complex multi-brand strategy, else you'd be sitting at home right now trying to decide between a Capella, Cronos, 300, 626, MS-6, Clef, 500, 300 (not the same 300 as the other 300) or god knows how many more, and pondering if there was any larger difference than the brochures.

A mildy humourous anecdotal rant update will probably follow soonish, as usual.

Accidents & Compliments

Today was Friday.

Technically it's now very early on Saturday, but shut up, that doesn't fit in a nice flow of prose.

I woke up at... no. The start was going to bed at some time around 2am due to a lack of tiredness. Awoken at some time near four with hunger, a small snack satisfied my primal need, and I was asleep by five.

I woke up at eight, battering my infernal alarm clock into a deathly silence. I knew the bell would toll another morn, but for now it was dormant (okay, it beeps, but a beeper doesn't fucking toll does it? Come on, I try to make this rubbish interesting, and it's just pick, pick pick. Go get some poeticness. Not a word? Get fu... anyway, tale). I did the normal morning ablutions, and prepared to catch the bus. Yes, the bus. I am reduced to such primitive transport as the uni, unlike the college and schools, is not within walking distance, rather it languishes or even skulks in the city several miles asunder of my home. Just as I was about to leave, my watch died. Hurriedly I grabbed the closest pocket-sized timepiece I could find. The one advantage of the Sega Dreamcast is the gimmicky-at-first-glance memory cards, featuring a small LCD screen. When not used for Soul Calibur savegames (although it still stores them), it has a handy little clock, with two-frame bounding puppies. This got stuffed in my already crowded pocket, and I caught the bus.

I mentioned before my height. This again becomes a factor on this area's positively Lilliputian public transport. The buses are worst. It is physically impossible from me to sit facing foward in a seat without the removal of the anterior row or seriously fractured femurs. Thus, I adopted a curious sideways position, with my knees pointing diagonally left over the adjacent seat, and my body twisted forward so I can look out of the windows and actually use some of the seat back. Today however, the patron saint of public transport (Shittius Plebbius is probably his name) decided that this heaten crime would not be allowed to pass unpunished. Halfway through the ludicrously long 45-minute journey (car takes roughly 15 including parking, but would cost way way more), some old dear on the way up to town to get her state pension and her humble shopping decided to ignore the hugely vacant seat across the aisle and try to cram into the seat my lower body was occupying. Now, I doubt anybody other than male OAPs really wish to have their legs rubbing against an old lady's for a full twenty minutes, so I was forced to attempt to jam my legs into the space that wasn't there between the rows. Over the rest of the journey as my tendons twanged and my patellas gained a permanent imprint of an angled Arriva-logoed seat back, this dear old pet transformed in my mind into a stupid old bag who was taking up any vestige of luxury the big tractor-powered metal box offered. When I could finally leave my seat at the bus stop, I felt as free as Willy the killer whale as he leapt the pier and unfortunately failed to crush that stupid little kid going 'lol free willy lol yay'. Anyway, I walked with a slight limp for the next half an hour.

I'd gotten to uni early, to register with the Student Union, for discounts and what have you. After a brief mildly embarrassing episode in which I totally walked the wrong way for a while, I arrived at the building housing the Union. Registration was overly complicated and utterly daft, involving online registration which played no part in any other steps yet was compulsory, then you were instructed to hand-write you details onto a card template and provide a passport photo. I assumed that these details and photo would be fed into a computer, and some peripheral would form and eject a lovely identity card. No. Some lackey simply taped the lot to a rectangle of card and handed it back, after charging a whole British pound for the service. She wasn't a bad looking lackey however, or unfriendly, and unlike Bob I actually pay attention to girls a year or so older than myself, and... whatever, back to story, I'm going slower than I hoped, no time to be bogged down. So, this high-tech and laser-fast process took a whole 20 minutes or so, and I was needing to hurry to get to the first induction session. To cut a long story short, I got slightly lost again, and ended up going the wrong way around the largish building I had to be in, and coming to the correct corridor last, even though it's right next to the entrance. Arriving slightly late to the room, I joined a simple session of the tutors explaining stuff about the course, discussion of a few games, and a bit of chatter, spawning the phrase 'seduce my bot'. The other students and tutors seem a decent lot, probably will be a good laugh. I might as well pause to mention my course, it's a BSc Honours in Computer Games Software Engineering. Basically, I get to play games, talk about them then make them. Oh yeah. The strange thing about the course is that out of the huge crowd of Computing-related students, there was actually a couple of, *gasp*, girls. Even more shockingly, there's one on my course. It's like 'zomg gurl on teh intarweb', but like, more zomg. The jury's still out, though there's favourable noises. D;

Anyway, this only took 40 minutes of the scheduled hour, so I wandered around town for a while. I returned for the computer introduction, which covered the very basics, which everyone knew, so after 35 minutes the class disbanded. It was barely 11:40, and the next activity, an optional game of Wolfenstein against some of the 2nd-years, wasn't until 1pm. I headed off into the main street for a while, and had a good long walk, eventually getting a sandwich. May I note that through the earlier wanderings and part of this, it was raining. Anyway, I found somewhere mildly dry to eat (a foot-long meatball sub is difficult to eat on the go) and, well, ate. By then it was still only 12, so I set off back to uni to register at the library. It was nice and simple, I just walked in, gave my details and they made a card (a proper one, not like the Union's budget shite). Ah, but wait. This is an educational establishment. Thus, it took a hundred and four minutes of sitting in a chair waiting, then a minute of sitting in another chair waiting for the card to be made. Long queue isn't the word for it. Well, it is. Although it's two words. By the time I escaped that boredom pit of hell, it seems the Wolfenstein game had finished, or I couldn't find the bloody thing, so I fucked off down the pub.

Homeslice and Laddo were already there for the normal Friday stuff, and there were games of pool and drinks and pool and drinks and jukebox playing and drinks. The Gurl wasn't coming because she was ill. Eventually, she turned up. Me and the Laddo rocked out to the Beasties' classic Fight For Your Right (it was now getting on towards 10pm and I was full of beer and vodka and two shots at a time), then it all fell into the shitter and got shitted, or maybe shitty, or generally not good. The Gurl and the Laddo had themselves a nice tiff despite not being married or even in any sort of relationship. Homeslice, the champion that he is, tried to moderate. He ended up frustrated by their continual bickering, and eventually popped off to get a burger. Now that I've typed all the uni stuff, which was going to be short, I can't be bothered elaborating on the argument, so I won't. Eventually it seemed just arguing for the sake of it, and I was also getting sick. After they separated for a while, they both individually calmed down a bit, and they headed to a club with Homeslice. By now it was about 11pm, and I was fucking knackered. I came home, slumped into this chair with a cold quiche and started typing. It's now just on the tip of 2am, so it's taken me a fair while to write all of this lark, all three parts.

For now, I shall sleep soon. I ache, from the bus and the walking and the drinking and all that. My throat is sore from the rapping and the loud singing and laughing and all that. I think 8am until 2am on three hours of sleep is a pretty nicely long day, especially with all the crap I've been doing. For now, it's time to settle into a uni life, luckily my days start at 10am and I don't have many lectures this term. Time to relax, probably build a new PC as this one is being a bellend, then whatever. Pondering the future is for suckaz.

Moments Pass By, Oh So Slowly

(Part 2 of 3)

So. That mini adventure was a good fortnight or so ago. The weeks slid by one by one before and after it, with the only real discernable events being the revelation of my A-level results. They weren't quite what I hoped for, and the university I had applied to told me there was 'no way' I was getting on the course. Shit. I decided, after a week of deliberation, that my only real option was to return to college for another whole year and see if I could improve and move up to a degree the next year instead.

Applications were sent, meetings were had, and eventually I was getting ready to start. Suddenly a letter landed on the doormat (well, as sudden as letters do, it probably came at about half seven, but it was only noticed at nine or so, and it had taken about 48 hours to get here, but that's not the point, okay). Upon opening it, I discovered inside a selection of leaflets and letters explaining when and where the uni year started. Fearing some kind of sick joke by a demented secretary whose only secret pleasure was the taunting of rejected and dejected students with teaser letters to rub in their visage the prospect of what they could have become, only to snatch it away and leave them to another year of college drudgery, or in fact make the student themselves crush their own dreams with the knowledge they were a failure, which is probably worse, I sent an enquiry to the uni itself. It seems the secretary must have been locked in the stationary cupboard that day, it seems that the fickle admissions board had changed its collective mind, and I was actually going to uni after all. The college got told to fuck off, and I prepared for a proper year.

Enrolment came and went, just this last Monday. Almost the first person I bumped into was someone I knew previously who I hoped would be there, which was nice, and it seems a fair few acquaintances were doing courses there. The enrolment itself was just an enrolment, nothing special or interesting. I prepared to return on Friday for a brief introduction before acquiring the required cards and returning home. But wait, I hear you gasp! Surely Fridays are for drunken larks with your cohorts! Yes, they are. Hey, I was only going to be sitting in a classroom for a couple of hours in the morning, right?

Stranger In A Foreign Land

(Part 1 of 3, I decided I want three seperate titles for three roughly linked events. Sue me (not really, I'm just a poor student)).

I wandered through the unknown terrain, staring at the alien constructions. Strangely-dressed creatures flowed around me, ignorant of what I was or what I was doing. Maybe they didn't care, maybe they were too wrapped up in the private business of their own existence to care, but as I roamed they let me intermingle with them despite my outsider status. I was not one of them, they were not like me, but neither party cared. I knew that once I was almost one of them, so recent yet so distant in the murks of the past, and I knew that I would eventually return to them, but right then and right there, I wasn't one of them, and I only had one aim in mind.

Well, this reads like so much bollocks unless I actually give the story from the start, so it goes a little something like this.

Fridays. My sabbath. No work, just a day sitting in the pub with mates. However, this Friday was planned to be a little different. Instead of a leisurely drinking session in a licensed public house, we were to trek to the wilderness that is the towns south of the river, and spend the evening at the house of a friend consuming cheap cans of beer. The usual drinking crew (me best mate, who I'll refer to as Homeslice for no reason other than we were talking about the word, and canny lad and lassie, who I can't be arsed to think up silly nicknames for). We all took the local Metro train service to Gurl's house (okay, there's a decent nickname), got some drink from the off-license, et cetera. We walked all the way to her place, got drunk, had a fair laugh with her family, then eventually were left at two AM to sleep on the floor/sofas. Of course, we first watched the most intellectually stimulating DVD movie ever, a feature-length episode of My Little Pony. Eventually, just as the story became interesting and the drama was building to a peak, the DVD crapped out so we decided to sleep.

Now, I'm around six feet and six inches tall. These sofas were two-seaters. I was not comfortable. I could settle down, but not quite sleep. Thus, I lay about until seven of the morning, at which point Homeslice stirred, I had a brief conversation and decided to make an attempt at getting to sleep... in my own bed. I left. Now, I'd never been in this area in my life, and the journey here was an whole sleepless night and too many pints ago. I struck out in what I hoped was the right direction. As I wandered, I met this strange breed: businessmen and other people who... get up early. Dressed in smart suits or uniforms, they colonised the streets like some form of absurd ant. Through them I travelled, dressed like a student the previous day, now ruffled after a night on cushions and an evening of alcoholic malarkey, with old-school acid basslines pulsing through my headphones to keep me awake and aware. They had slept a normal night, sober and clean, woken up and dressed tidily, and were now on their way to a nice averagely normal day at work. I was experiencing the worst of both drunkenness, sobriety and hangovers, and my sole aim was to get back across the world to my soft warm bed and sleep the mid-morning away in blissful idleness.

I got home in the end, and had a good kip. I was ill for about a week, but wshether it was related I'm sceptical. It obviously didn't help my mood trudging to and from the Metro at these strange hours, but the contrast between the lifestyles was almost comic, and I realised that one day I will have settled down to a sensible lifestyle with a general hum of base contentedness, which makes all these stupid events and odd stories so much more worthwhile.

Three months? Okay.

Trends.

It seems the world revolves around them nowadays. If you don't conform to the latest fashion style, acting style or even lifestyle, you're not 'cool', although that word probably isn't 'cool' any more by some trend or other's standards. It seems all of popular society must assign themselves to some trend or other like magnetised sheep around an iron shepherd. Although, even though religions are almost trends, I won't link the shepherd to Jesus' birth, because that sort of intellectual social commentary is not something I can be bothered with after so many drinks. And no, I'm not trying to be 'cool' by composing drunken blog entries, I'm just bored enough to be drunk, and bored enough to type randomly.

Anyway. Trends seem to link in with another element of modern common culture, commercialism. Obviously, companies cash in on trends any way they can, even spawning them themselves. Thus, the vast webs of products you must own to fit in intermingles with the slang, the actions and the clothing you must wear, itself another commercial product. The advent of television and now the internet means that the average person is absolutely drenched in the douche of trendy advertising ejaculated daily by these media. Trends now creep subconsciously into the minds of even the most 'uncool' people, it's like dumping a collection of boxes underwater, even the sealed Tupperware will leak under the pressure eventually. Shit that was a bad analogy. Whatever, as I was rambling, trends permeate every part of popular culture, you must conform to one or another. You also must fight against other cultures that may be more profitable that yours, it's like the fucking Crusades all over again. If you're a chav (definition: suicide blonde tracksuit-wearing label-flashing bling-exposing estate-living crap-listening slut) you must attack and destroy anybody who has allied themselves with the goth trend (definition: deathly white black-dyed trenchcoat-wearing scar-flashing crap-listening slut), or at least shout 'gay hippy' at them as they pass listening to Papa Roach at a thousand decibels. Even if you're not going as far as being one of these highly stereotyped thugs, there's plenty for you. You can buy one of those iPod thingies and an iMac whatsit, so that you can boast to your Audi-driving acquaintances at the local wine bar that you have all the latest high-tech gadgetry even though you secretly don't know what the Gerry Adams an iMac actually does or why you own one other than as a trendy paperweight for your living room because your designer coffee table is just so July love. You can splash Holley NOS stickers down the side of your one-litre Punto and buy an exhaust tip larger than the boosters on the Space Shuttle Discovery, or even better four, to pimp your ride with all the other wankers in shitboxes with gay 'performance' addons. Volume does not equal power shithead.

This rant was originally going to have more of a specific point about trends, but I've forgotten it and I frankly can't be arsed to care what it was. Maybe I'm getting dangerously close to the angsty-teen-posting-their-woes-with-the-world-on-the-internet trend, but I try not to. Basically, don't be a magnetised sheep, make up your own mind on what you want to do. If what you want to do is blindly follow a trend, well why are you even reading this? Go download DJ Crazy Frog from those multi-millionaire bastards who spam the world with their badly-made adverts for badly-made stolen ringtones and join that trend, then I can feel no remorse if you die falling off the back of a train while stupidly trying to fare-dodge by clinging on and also attract the chav bints sitting nursing a Benson in the back carriage.

I personally avoid trends, I deliberately wear awfully unfashionable clothing, listen to no mainstream music (and actively scorn it and any who profess to like it, even though it's pap equivalent to that tasteless formless goop you feed a weaning baby with, just like the tasteless masses are force-fed with this mush on the radio and television), and I try not to be a poser or in any way 'cool'. Hell, I refuse to take any of these morons seriously, I laugh at chavs and their inbred insensible innuendos, goths and they're 'omg im so harcoare' approach to absolutely everything and insistence that they're depressed while living in a posh uptown house with a BMW, ricers with their crappy hatchback rollin' on seventeens (I shall be making a hall of shame specially for them and their aluminium-winged Del Sols soon) and even the completely vapid 'popular' 'personalities' who are 'cool' for owning this, that or the even more ludicrous other. I buy things that I think are good, I don't give a stuff if some fashion guru in 'gay Paris' thinks I look like I've just stumbled out of an 80s timewarp into a third-world nylon sweatshop, at least I don't look like that guru. I'm spending my time being conspicuously single, but the only person who seems to have cared was a ratty little lass who I wouldn't touch with a bargepole. And no, I'm not going to 'do a Morton', I actually have standards.

More entries later covering the long non-posting spree, but for now I need to sober up. I bet I'll look at this later and think 'shit, what the hell was I going on about, and look at that awful grammar'. Oh well, what the hell.

I can't end on a bad rhyme, so, yeah.

Always too fucking slow.







Normal service will resume shortly.

General Update Of Newslessness #279

As a brief antidote to the previous article, I may as well mention I've registered http://www.pez2k.net for myself, which will probably end up containing at least a redirect to this blog or some other miscellaneous rubbish. My current activities include completing MGS3 again and again, and getting bored of GT4. I have two weeks off college, so many deliberately sleepless nights are ensuing. I float in an empty world of half-awakeness, blurring between sleep and life, with minor stimuli such as the odd day out or game storylines, but just a general slush of ineventfulness devoid of responsibility or cares. It's bliss in a way.



Although not as good a way as I can think of.

The Internet Is Dead, And So Are You.

Ever trawled through your old 'net favourites list? One theme always prevails, that of decay, death and deprival. Websites that no longer update, that just were left indefinitely by their owners, forums with the last post dated nearly a year ago, where you refrain from logging in to avoid disturbing the dust, and so on and so forth. A huge portion of the internet is essentially dead. Life and activity flourish for short periods of time when a site has interest and can attract visitors, but as its purpose expires or other new interests drain the attention it was once given, it slows, stalls, and thoughts of it gradually cease to exist. However, due to the ever-living immortality of computers, the site itself cannot die and be truly forgotten, it is condemned to an eternal life of inactivity and staleness. Coming upon such a site brings such an odd feeling, a place once thriving now lays empty and unloved, but unlike traditional reality would have us believe, there is no collapse and ruin, rather an eerie moment frozen in time, as perfectly preserved as the day it was abandoned. Of course, everything dies eventually, even in the digital dreamworld, as old and obsolete machinery is unceremoniously severed from the community and replaced by superior new equipment, but equipment that lacks the forgotten heritage of the pages on the elder server. Maybe this is a fitting release for these stores of thoughts left behind in the flow of time, not even deleted but just cut off from all access to the outside world. Thoughts is what they are, do not forget that this whole universe online is created entirely by individual minds expressing themselves, whether it be in art, text or other. Thoughts are forgotten, but these live on in eternal solitude. Dead forums, blogs or even plain old pages contain casual expressions of opinion, many of them yours or mine, beliefs that may no longer be held or thoughts you wish weren't shared, but it cannot be altered, it remains a solid untouchable history of what you were, an archive of some part, some form, some character of yourself expressed briefly on that screen, or another's emotion borne out in bits and bytes. Some past part of yourself is there, not you any more, but lost and drowning in the river of the past, to be fossilized in the mud and remain everpresent and unknown, for ever and ever and ever and ever and...

Eternally.

Lord Sainsbury & Biggles Visit The Mausoleum

Well hi, I'm bored. Been up to nothing recently. Anyone thought of a rant subject for me yet? Oh, one thing, we managed to super ninja stealth our way back into the studio and get the 2nd version of Trogdor, which is currently being mixed, plus a namechange to 'Clockwork Ninjaz'. I also recorded my own special take on the Trogdor vocals, to be used on a remix version.

I started playing Counter-Strike: Source, which is basically CS but pretty, with the addition of physics to play with and super-easy headshots. It's not particularly great, but something to do. I've also taken a look at some cheapish cars I could possibly buy whenever I get round to learning to drive, but the insurance is killer. For a 1988 Toyota Carina with cloth seats, carbs and a market value of three hundred pounds sterling (but also a nice base for a 400bhp twincharged 4A monster), the insurance is... £2300. Total bullshit. I'd hate to think what it is for the butterfly-doored Toyota Sera, mainly because although not much quicker than the Carina, it's an import so the insurance is astronomical. Shame, a good one is about 2 grand, and swapping out the anaemic 1.5 for a boosted 4E and all the gear for 200bhp (double stock) costs about that again, or less, and can be fitted in a day.

Sitting around waiting to turn 18 so I can spend money on drink. Also waiting for Gran Turismo 4 to play, seeing as that's the least delayed of all the games that America's had for months. I'm so incredibly bored. This update is devoid of humour as I am nearing the point of brain death from boredom. I'm only typing this cos it's half 1 in the morning and there's nowt on the telly, I'm too awake to go to bed, and everyone else is asleep so I can't play any games. Plus I'm sick to death of the games I have anyway. Still can't rip any of me vinyl, I realised I need a new sound card too, so I'm preparing to fork out for that. These sentences are about a minute or two apart as I struggle to come up with anything worth typing. The last update was a Tiga music video by the way.

Meh.