Well – all I can think of is that I’ve started trying to see more live music.  But – August was a terrible month to begin – and the only things I managed to see were: Don McGlashan (small venue, but perfect really); The Herbaliser (didn’t know what to expect – but really good show, and amazing venue); The Black Seeds (yet again – but always good, had a few drinks with Barnaby before the show again – so can claim to be one of those “I’m-with-the-band” dicks); and the Wu-Tang Clan (terrible show – but had to do it).  Actually, once I started listing those out – there were more than it feels like.  Some of those must have been in July, and maybe even before the previous post – as I’m sure I haven’t seen anything for weeks.

But – I’m thinking the next update I write will probably consist of a series of reviews.  For I’ve got lined up:

• Tonight – dinner at The Ivy, followed by Oliver – with Lynette Ward & Her Man
• Tomorrow – Secret Cinema (look it up on YouTube – the clues I’ve got thus far are that we have to dress as Bedouin – and something about rebellion/uprising.  I’m thinking Dune?) – with Justin, Marty, & the cool kids
• 8th – Modest Mouse – with Ben, and hopefully 2 others – otherwise I am once again selling tickets at a huge loss to dirty scalpers
• And then there’s nothing booked until October – and actually, looking at my spreadsheet (yes – I have a spreadsheet) of upcoming gigs, not much interesting happening until October.  What is it with August/September & live music?  Too many festivals – preventing real gigs?

Anyway – that’s all that’s been happening.  Possibility of some travelling soon, but also possibility of work being very demanding, and taking itself far too seriously for my own good.  Publishing “whitepapers” and what-not – including research at a data centre in Farncombe, a much longer commute than normal.  The timing of everything at the moment is terrible.  One project I’ve got on my plate, they keep giving me false-starts – so I cancel any plans making plans of travelling to cater for it, then it gets postponed at the last moment.  Not cool.  And another one which may start at any time – and I definitely want to be available for the start, as it’s a project I want to do.  And yeah, now this whole writing a whitepaper thing – which is rather a priority for the company, and which may mean any request for a week or two off might be prioritised fairly low.  But – we’ll see how we go.

Friday afternoon, I start some processes at work.  Then go to leaving drinks for a workmate.  Get home rather late – check on my work, do some more work – and fall asleep on the couch.  Wake up a few hours later – check on work, do some more work, and try to watch the rugby on my other laptop.  Fall asleep again.  Wake up again, catch most of the second half of the rugby – while continuing to work.  And decide that rather than trying to fit in a flight to Amsterdam around my work – I should probably instead try to fit my work around a flight to Amsterdam.  So – book a flight (last one on the flight), and continue working.  Then – when I’ve essentially finished most of my work – I let the project manager know that I’ll be unavailable for an hour – even by phone, as I’ll be on the underground.  And I head towards Heathrow.  Forgetting, of course, that the Northern Line is nearly always down for maintenance recently.  But – I manage to get to Heathrow – and then logon to work again.  Check on a few things – and everything’s looking good.   Call the project manager, and discuss how everything’s looking good – pretty much done.  Oh – and I’ll be unavailable again for the next hour.  And – get on a plane.

Arrive in Amsterdam – predisposed to dislike the dutch.  I’ve always had a thing about them – related to the genetic engineering of carrots.  Ethnic vegetable cleansing.  Not cool.  And it’s an entire country which by rights should be underwater!  It’s not a nation – it’s a lake!  What up with that?  But – almost immediately I find it rather difficult to dislike anybody.  Friendly, smiling, helpful.  And it just doesn’t stop.  I nearly start to dislike them for destroying my prejudices.  But – anyway, we head to the hotel.  The nice man tells me there is only one super-deluxe room for special ‘Platinum’ club members like myself – but it is just the one king-size bed.  Justin & I agree that the standard room with 2 doubles would be fine, thank you.  We get vouchers for free drinks at the bar.  Check in with work again – and everything’s still looking good.  Nothing for me to do at the moment – but there probably will be either later tonight, or early tomorrow morning.  So – that’s the cue for Justin & I to head to the bar.  Drink a few delicious dutch beers – and then head into town to try and find some food and delicious dutch beer.  We find delicious dutch beer, and drink it while discussing how much prettier the girls are in Europe compared to England.  Because they most definitely are.

And then a taxi back to the hotel, where I do a quick check for work-related emails.  Nothing – so time to sleep.  First proper sleep in a rather long time.  Wake up in the morning – and just manage to catch breakfast.  And then head towards town in order to sit in a cafe, drinking delicious dutch beer and watching pretty girls on bicycles.  But – I get a phone call.  So – I head back to the hotel, where a quick check confirms that the issue has nothing to do with me.  Then – I head back out, and catch up with Justin.  And we walk onwards, discussing how much prettier the girls are in Europe compared to England.  And we reach Museum Square.  This is where the dutch people have set up several giant screens in order to allow people to watch football.  Dutch people are renowned for being frugal – and therefore none of them buy television sets, instead waiting for people to set up giant screens in public places where they can watch the ‘moving pictures’ for free.  We sit around for a while, until Justin catches up with his friends in Amsterdam.  They are apparently at a different park/square.  So we start walking towards them.  And I get another phone call from work.  Which went something like “Hi Micheal, are you at home?”  “No – I wouldn’t say that.”  “Oh – are you quite far away from home?”  “Ummm… yeah.  I’m in Amsterdam.”  “…”  “…”  “Have you got some time off?”  “No – I’m working.  Just from Amsterdam.”  “Oh.  … Okay.  Well, we’ve got some serious issues – and we’ll probably need to rollback the whole weekend’s work”  “…  Okay.”  “Okay.  Well – somebody will get hold of you later when we need you to do your stuff.”  “Okay.”

And then Justin & I kept walking.  Me inwardly cursing the timing of this ‘issue’.  But – we kept walking, until Justin went to consult his map again.  Muttering about the street signs being wrong.  I consulted my map, and asked where we were going.  And looked at the street signs.  And pointed at my map – and asked “So – we’re here right?”  And Justin suddenly realised that the street signs weren’t actually wrong – it was just that we had been walking in the wrong direction for the last 15 minutes or so.  But – no problem, we just started walking in the right direction.  Kept walking, until Justin called his friend to arrange a rendezvous point.  Which was 5 minutes walk behind us.  We’d walked right past the people we’d come to meet.  But – again, easily resolved – and we met up with Nicole and Peet (sp?) at the pancake carousel.  We then walked to find some bar – where we stood outside the bar and drank our very very warm and not so delicious dutch beers which we’d been walking around with for an hour or so – and discussed how much prettier the girls are in Europe when compared to those in England.  They really are.

And then – walked back to the pancake carousel to pick up the magnum of champagne which Peet had stashed in the fridge there.  Pick that up – and then walk to Museum Square – where Justin & I had been originally.   By this point, there are a lot more people than there were earlier.  It was a sea of 180,000 orange clothing, flags, football-themed novelty headwear, etc etc.  Oh – and those godawful little trumpets which make that horrible noise.  So – just the kind of environment I love.  We fight our way to the top of a little hill to the side – and wait for the silly little game to start.  Justin keeps telling me to “get into it” – and jump and chant and sing, or whatever.  Which of course just reinforced my steely calm impassive demeanour.  Although – I was kinda impressed at watching such a huge mass of humanity gathered together just to take advantage of free television.  It really was kinda cool.

Anyway – everybody watched the game, and a couple of hours later, there was 180,000 sad little orange faces.  Which surprised me, because I’d missed the goal – owing to the fact that I wasn’t really fussed about the game – so nominated myself as the guy to fight through the crowd to buy beers every so often.  And then I was impressed by how fast 180,000 people stormed out of the square back to their windmill houses.  And we found a bar – where the dutchies drank their sorrows away, and I just drank.  And then back to the hotel – where I suddenly realised I hadn’t heard from work – so checked my email.  I think the next 20 minutes or so was of me sitting in the darkness at my laptop, muttering obscenities.  But – the upside was that it seemed people had figured out they could do everything required without my intervention – and the weekend’s work was essentially complete.

But – of course – when I next woke up, it was Monday.  I had already warned the manager that I would probably be working remotely on Monday (his assumption was due to the workload over the weekend).  So – I got up, logged on – and trawled through the emails again – confirming there was nothing urgent for me to do, and I hadn’t missed anything when I’d read them blurry-eyed the previous night.  Forgetting that reading them blurry-eyed in the morning probably isn’t the best ‘double-check’ – but better than none.  And then realised that I probably needed a ticket to fly back to London.  Managed to book the last ticket on the same flight as Justin back to London – and then Justin headed out to find some breakfast while I continued to do work-type stuff.  Fixed a couple of problems, arranged for another one to be fixed first thing the next day – and generally did all the stuff I would normally do on a Monday morning at work.

And then – it was time to return to dirty London.  So – taxi to the airport, and a delicious dutch beer at the airport while playing backgammon and discussing how much prettier the girls are in Europe than England.  And how they all ride bicycles.  Pretty girls on bikes.  It is the first thing I now think of when somebody mentions Amsterdam.  The racial crimes against carrots having been consigned to the past.

And back to London, where Chook & Chris ask me how the drugs and red-light district were.  At which I point out I’m not an English stag-party – and that I went to Amsterdam for the museums.  Which is kinda true.  I think the closest I saw to drugs was detecting a rather distinct smell as I walked past one bar; and the closest to the red light district I saw was a shop window which sold orange football-themed paraphenalia – including a BBQ apron with plastic breasts attached.  And for the rest of the evening I mumble about pretty girls on bicycles, over and over again.

And for the rest of the week – reminisce on how much pretty the girls are in Europe than England.

Last weekend – we had a BBQ on the Sunday, during which at some point most people disappeared inside to watch some football game.  While Caitlin & I took the much more sensible approach of sitting in the sun – and pretty much following the game by counting the screams of despair vs delight.  It was quite easily done.  I also took this oppurtunity to meet our upstairs neighbours – who were also having a BBQ.  There was a general air of antagonism building between our flat and theirs over time – and I think I have mostly sorted that out.  Except Chook, who refused to come out and meet them.  But – for the most part, hopefully tension has been relieved.  And our friends won’t look at us with scorn when “we” complain about our neighbours – with “our” justification being exactly the same behaviour which we exhibit ourselves.

And – this weekend just been, another sunny weekend.  So – Saturday, headed to Fulham for an afternoon of croquet.  And Jess & I made the final of the tournament.  Very good at croquet are we.  In fact, we only lost the final because we were being rushed for time by Gary – the croquet-man.  But – other than being cheated out of the trophy – it was a good day over-all.  I was on-call, and only had to go full-on-nerd once, pulling out the laptop at the picnic table during post-tournament drinks.  And then – a lazy Sunday.  Spent all day in the hammock, reading.  And finally – I might have something approaching a tan.  Which should last about 1.5 weeks.

Nothing else going on.  Feeling some severe need to do something bigger – ie: other than work and weekend events.  ie: travel.  I need to travel.  I’m pretty sure I’ve left it too late to do the Trans-Mongolian, North Korea, Trans-Siberian trip I was hoping for this year.  I think last time I talked to an agent about it, and asked at what point I needed to get serious about booking stuff – she’d intimated that the deadline would be pretty soon – and that was a month or two ago.  Might have to check on that.

So – instead, I’ve taken an extra step towards getting a motorbike license.  Not a very big step – but a step.  Just getting details on a training course, etc.  But if I start doing something on that, at least I’ll have something to do – with the possibility of some road-trips serving as a light at the end of a tunnel.  And a much nicer way of getting about London.  Which will also serve as blocking the booze, which has got to be a good thing.

Speaking of the booze – on the underground returning from croquet on Saturday, it wasn’t even particularly late – but I was suddenly struck by all the people in stupors.  I suddenly thought of Brave New World – and “soma”.  And then wondered why I’d never drawn that blindingly obvious parallel before.  Similar ‘drugs’ often occur in utopian/dystopian stories – but I’d always just thought the authors shared this premise to help the story.  It really was only on Saturday night that I saw alcohol as a present-day soma.  And that the drugs in all these books weren’t inventions of the author’s mind – but rather just a metaphor, or future equivalent, for the good old booze.  It nearly scared me into sobriety.  But then I got home, and had myself a nice calming relaxing glass of wine, and forgot all my cares and worries for a little while.

Anyway – my new month’s resolutions for July will be to do more reading, and to never drink alone.  See if I can reverse this vicious spiral into stupidity I seem to have of drinking too much, killing brain cells, making a bad decision – such as drinking again, becoming more stupid, making it easier to make the bad decision, etc etc.  I mean – who the hell decides to tentatively have a glass of wine to see if “the hair of the dog” will make them feel better – and then suddenly realise that there’s 3 empty bottles, and work tomorrow?  A certifiable idiot – that’s who.  No more.

In other news – went to “Yorkshire’s best and most original independent music festival” Rough Beats this weekend.  Left the organisation of it extremely late – due to dozens of unknown variables.  One of which was – when would Chook&Chris be able to leave work, would Chook be taking the van, and would I be able to leave work early on Friday – or not go to work Friday at all.  The answer to all of these would be “no”.  Chook&Chris wimped out of the entire weekend.  I had a meeting Friday afternoon which I had to attend.  And everything just combined to make things as difficult as possible.  Although – the upside was that my options were so restricted, I didn’t have to make any decisions.  Only one option – rent a car, drive up all by my lonesome.  So – that’s what I did.  Didn’t take a tent because I didn’t want to lug it into work, and then to the rental car place.  So – turned up in North Yorkshire at about 10:30 pm – rather tired – with a backpack containing my laptop, a hammock, and some minimal clothing.  I turned down the road to the festival – and as I topped the hill to see the carpark – I was rather shocked.  The number of cars had probably doubled since the last time I went.  They’d actually run out of space – and had to open another field, which was arrived at over a very dodgy farm bridge.  As I parked up and get ready to walk up the hill – I overheard the security radio telling people to “not let anybody else in”.  I started worrying that the whole thing had gotten out of hand, or something.  But – walked up to the gate – told the nice lady that “no – I don’t have a ticket – but my name should be on the list”.  And crossed my fingers that my name really was on the list.  It was – scrawled by hand right at the bottom of the printed list.  Just below Katie’s.  So – I walked in, found the bar (and Katie behind it) – and had a few drinks.

After a little while, I tried to follow Katie’s directions to find her tent – so I could get rid of my stuff.  Opened a tent – saw a box of cans of Strongbow.  Thought I might be in the wrong tent.  Returned to the bar, and confirmed with Katie that I had indeed nearly given somebody a very nasty/nice surprise.  I guess it cancels out the previous weekend.  As soon as Katie got a chance for a break from being barmaid – we moved Katie’s tent from the general campsite into Kevin’n'Maggie’s lawn.  (Dom’s parents.  Full props to them for hosting nearly a thousand people for a weekend.  A warning to my parents – I’ve started getting ideas.  Anybody willing to host a music festival?)  And then – back to the bar, until closing time.  After which we tried to crash.  But were kept awake by drunken singing, drumming – and the bloody portaloo doors slamming shut every 10 seconds.

And after a couple of hours sleep – it was time to go to work.  I got up, into the house – and sat down with my laptop to do a few server migrations.  Just the right frame of mind to be doing it too.  Eventually finished, or mostly – then wandered out to hang my hammock, and lie outside – listening to live music and reading a book.  Sometimes – just sometimes – life is good.  Katie joined me for a while – and then it was time to play barstaff for a while.  As soon as I left the hammock – there was a rush of people trying to grab it.  I figured I might as well leave it out – I think there’d be a riot if I tried to convince people it was private property.

So off we wandered to the bar – and proceeded to spend the next 7 hours or so absolutely decimating the stocks of booze.  Everytime Kevin popped in we were inundated with drunkards – and I think he thought we were shit at the job.  But then he’d leave, and it would settle back into a busy but manageable stream.  Until after a few hours when Kevin/Dom checked the truck – and suddenly realised that we’d sold nearly everything.  And I really had – I hadn’t drunk any of it.  Well… very very little.  It was actually such a steady stream of customers and restocking that I think I only had time to drink about 1 pint over the course of the first 3 or 4 hours.  And after that – it was just hectic.  Started running out of beer, then rum, then whiskey, then coke, then tonic water, etc etc.  I think we eventually closed around 2am – and just started packing what we had left away as quickly as possible, before the drunks realised what we were doing.  Bloody drunks.  I then proceeded to have a few drinks with a few people back at the house.  A decent whisky, some blue cheese, and then some beers.

I then snuck out to see if I could reclaim my hammock.  There seemed to be about 4 people in it – being swung vigorously.  I decided to try again later.  Later – I found it deserted – and tried to untie it.  Very difficult – wet rope, pulled very tight by holding about double what it was designed for – and dug into the tree.  As I was struggling, some people wandered across – and accused me of stealing the hammock.  They apparently had plans to sleep in it that night.  I’d already untied one end – so said sorry – and continued.  They seemed to think it was festival property – and I was actually stealing it – but wandered off more concerned about the fact they wouldn’t be able to sleep in it that night.  I eventually got it off the tree, and crawled off to the tent, where I collapsed without too much trouble.

And then it was Sunday.  Hung the hammock back up.  Drank some Bloody Marys.  Read some books.  Listened to some music.  And got a little drunk.  Bloody drunks.  Went to listen to some chap – and sat down for it.  Tried to stand at the end – and collapsed.  I must have looked like a complete drunken fool.  But honestly – my entire left leg had gone to sleep.  Could have been quite nasty actually – with the chance of rolling an ankle or something.  So – sat there making a large point of rubbing my leg – and not appearing drunk – before trying again.  And eventually – the last band left the stage.  And it was time for the celebration to begin.  Which it did.  But most people were complete exhausted after three days of setting up bands, organising sewage trucks, etc.  I believe my night ended with realising I was absolutely smashed – going back to the house – finding it locked, with nobody else awake that might have a key – so staggering off to the hammock.  Slept there until I woke up in the pouring rain.  Staggered about again – into one of the main stages – and found some big cloth bags to make a bed out of.

Woke a few hours later – and realised I pretty much had to get straight into the car.  Gave one chap a ride back to London – and his chatter probably aided a lot in my not falling asleep.  But – I got back safely.  And returned to Balham where I could infuriate Chook&Chris by giving away as little information as possible about what they had missed.  And my wearing a Rough Beats 2010 T-shirt.  And then back to work on Tuesday.  When I remembered it was the day scheduled for one of the most critical and highly visible pieces of work.  And so I did that.  I think – I have a vague memory of doing that yesterday anyway – and nobody has complained, so all good.

Anyway – many thanks to Dom, Mike, Tony.  Kevin’n'Maggie especially.  And I fully recommend Rough Beats to anybody looking for a music festival.

This weekend was a bank holiday weekend.  I don’t know the reason for the holiday.  Nobody in England seems to know either.  It’s just “a bank holiday”.  Which makes it hard for me to know when a holiday is.  In New Zealand – I know the date of ANZAC Day, Labour Day, Queen’s Birthday, etc.  But here – no idea.

Anyway – this weekend started off with a bit of drama.  I don’t really know how to explain what happened – other than Rashomon style:

Narrative 1

A man (let’s call him Chook), and his flatmate (let’s say… Chris) – go out for a quiet drink on Friday evening.  It’s just going to be a quiet one, as they have a big night planned for Saturday.  They come home around lunchtime on Saturday.  The first thing they notice is Chook’s jacket lying outside on the doorstep.  Strange, they think.  Our drunkard flatmate must have had a big night, and maybe had some friends over.  No matter – the jacket is safe, and they’re pretty sure there will be an amusing drunken story behind it.  This theory gathers momentum when Chook notices that somebody must have slept in his bed last night – but he isn’t too worried because it’s been remade nice and tidy.

Chook runs into his drunkard flatmate in the hallway an hour or so later.  “What did you get up to last night then, eh?“  His flatmate replies with a deadpan “What do you mean?“  Chook grins, as his flatmate is known for understatement.  “Big night then, was it?“  His flatmate once again responds – “What the hell are you on about – I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Narrative 2

A man (let’s call him Kruse) – finishes work on Friday evening.  Decides to meet up with some workmates for a quiet drink.  It’s just going to be a quiet one, because he’d had a horror week of on-call from Wednesday-Wednesday, followed by a night of red red wine & champagne on Wednesday night.  Kruse was tired and looking forward to a long weekend of nothing much at all.  He managed to stay later than originally planned – but still got home at a respectable hour – 9 or 10pm.  He then had a small snack, one or two more drinks – and retired relatively early.  Around 5:30 am, however, he was awoken by a loud crashing noise.  “Oh well…” – he thought – “my drunkard flatmates are home.“  He drifted back to sleep.

Kruse then woke up in the morning, and decided that the perfect breakfast on a Saturday morning during “seafood month” – would be Eggs Royale-Florentine.  To be honest, this is a perfect breakfast for every weekend morning – regardless of what month it is.  The salmon in this delicious dish was just an (unnecessary) extra justification.  So – Kruse went for a wander to the nearest store – and purchased the necessary ingredients (luckily grabbing some english breakfast muffins just prior to one customer carrying several baskets piled full of bread products buying the remaining stock).  Returning home – he noticed the door didn’t unlock/open as smoothly as usual – and there seemed to be some damage to the frame.  He wasn’t sure if this had been like that previously – but resolved to look into it further at a later time, and perhaps try to fix it.  As he walked past the open doorway of the bedroom belonging to one of his drunkard flatmates – he noticed somebody sleeping in the bed.  The ‘somebody’ didn’t appear to be his drunkard flatmate.  But – he could only see one half of the bed – and didn’t want to look too closely for obvious reasons, so passed by quickly – and busied himself in the kitchen – closing the door so as to not disturb the sleep of drunkards who return home in the wee hours of the morning.

An hour or so passed – during the preparation and consumption of a spectacular breakfast.  Later, while back in his room, he heard one or more voices, somebody laughed – and then the door opened/closed.  And an hour or so later – he ran into his drunkard flatmate Chook in the hallway.  Chook immediately pointed at him and asked “What did you get up to last night then, eh?“  Kruse, rather confused considering the circumstances, asked “What do you mean?“  Chook continued the strange line of questioning:  “Big night then, was it?“  Very confused by now – Kruse wants to know what he’s on about – “What the hell are you on about – I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Enough of that…

To be honest, I’ve never actually read Rashomon – although I’ve been meaning to for a long time.  I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot cleverer than my clumsy attempt above.  And – I’m certainly not clever enough to write the punchline in both narratives without making the second one obsolete.  In fact – even from the above, I’m sure some of you have got a vague idea of what comes next – despite the bizarre truth of it.

After Chook had accosted me about my supposed degenerate and crazy behaviour – and I convinced him I didn’t know what the hell he was on about – we started getting trickles of information out of each other.

Chook: What’s my jacket doing outside?

Kruse: I don’t know – you probably left it out there when you got home pissed this morning.

Chook: Who did you have around here last night?

Kruse: Nobody – who did YOU have over here last night?

Chook: Nobody – we stayed at Tom’s last night.

<pieces of the puzzle come together in Kruse’s mind>

Kruse: Well – I saw somebody in your bed this morning.  And I think the door’s been kicked in.

<we look at the door.  Yep – it’s been kicked in.>

So – the above is about all we know currently.  At about 5:30 am (I think) – somebody came to our front door, kicked it in, came inside, closed the door behind them, entered Chooks room, took things off his bed, climbed in, and fell asleep.  They then woke up – made the bed, put the things back on top of his bed, put one of his jackets on – and left the house, before presumably realising it wasn’t their jacket – taking it off, leaving it on the doorstep – and disappearing.

Epilogue

Of course – at this point, we were pretty much in shock.  Throughout this – I was either sleeping, or being quiet so as to not disturb our guest.  Chook/Chris had just the previous day taken delivery of a few powertools, lying in the hallway – the theft of which which would have been substantial.  We still don’t really know what to make of it.  Some of my favourite points are:

• the leaving of the jacket on the doorstep (it’s a jacket which is considered to be of some value in this country – for some reason – yet the person seems to have stopped after leaving the house, taken it off, and left it);
• the fact that I tiptoed around the house for an hour or two in order to not wake anybody up;
• and that it happened to be the day after quite a lot of tools were delivered – sitting in the hallway, right next to the front door.

We would, of course, quite like an explanation for all of this.  Mostly because it has just freaked us right the hell out.  I think I recovered from the whole thing in an hour or two – after thinking over all the possibilities, and the fact there seems to be little to no chance of getting any more information.  But poor Chris was still freaking out about it quite some time later.  I doubt it was one of our friends looking for a place to crash, and getting desperate enough to force their way in.  But if it was – please, please let us know.  Just so we can put the matter to rest.  I managed to soothe Chris by watching Shutter Island with him.  That created another, more gripping, mystery/confusion in his mind.  Good movie by the way – great movie.  Fully recommend it after a not-quite-burglary/not-quite-home-invasion.

Which reminds me – what do I describe the event as?  A no-frills breaking-and-entering?  Somebody who read the name of the crime – and figured they needed some street-cred, but didn’t want to actually steal anything from anybody.  “I’ll just break-in, and enter – and that’s about it.  But, wow – am I bushed after that break-in.  I’ll just have a quick kip.“  A non-burglary?  Being Goldilocks-ed?  Non-violent home invasion?  Theft of hostelry services?  Kip-and-run?

And any thoughts on our chances of convincing the landlord of the above story?  Will he believe that somebody broke into our house, slept in a bed, and left the next day without stealing any of the handy tools or jackets?  Or will he think that a member of this house of drunkards lost their keys and kicked in the door?

• Summer seems to have arrived in Ingerlund.  Hooray.
• Give money to my sister.  I will match every dollar you donate, if you let me know.  And – you’re not really giving money to my sister – but you’re giving money to the Kids.  And you know that these kids will be more likely to want to work in medicine when they grow up, to cure cancer and stuff – so you’re really donating to the kids, AND to cure all sorts of stuff.  It’s like donating to every charity at once.  It’s a bargain.

In case you missed “evan smith”‘s rebuttal to my informative & educational expose on snakes - here you go:

• ok heres the deal snakes all of this that you just spent on writting was a watse of your time as well as my time for reading it. Second thing snakes are not things that go around killing things all the time. Their just doing what they suppose to do in order to survive.Trust me on this one. i own two of them and they dont try to eat me or my mother or my father.I bet you know almost any thing about them.the thing is that they only eat onc a month not every day they only eat what they need for that one time.Oh all of that stuff about making them extinct yea no here loke at it this way what if there was a being that didnt like us hu. that wanted us extinct that sounds nice hu?Oh and how long where they on earth be fore we even lerned how to even walke on two legs and then because of your little fear of these animals it give you the god given wright to kill all of them off no it doesnt so there you go Oh one more thing I LOVE SNAKES so there you go get over it panzy

As you may notice – I decided not to edit the piece – as I honestly would have no idea where to begin.

At first – I thought “evan smith” was a certain person I know trying to wind me up.  Although I figured I was being quite generous in granting this person the possession of the imagination it would require to create the above.

So – before we get to dissecting his counter-view on snakes – let’s examine what we know about “evan smith” the person.

1. “evan smith” calls himself “evan smith”
2. yet “evan smith” has an email address named not “evan smith”, but rather after an anime/manga character
3. “evan smith” utilises an Internet Provider based in Alabama – which is one of the so-called ‘United States of America’
4. “evan smith” uses “myspace.com” as his URL
5. “evan smith” likes snakes

So – what conclusions can we come to?  Now – I’m torn between being honest here, or being kind.  I mean – it is kinda like kicking a puppy, isn’t it?  But – I think we can all be fairly safe that “evan” isn’t going to read this.  So – my next fear is the amount of other people I’m going to offend.  I’ll tell you what everybody – before you get offended – here’s my official response to “evan” – which you can take to be directed at yourself also:

“Very sorry evan – that I disparaged snakes, which obviously mean a lot to you.  Please accept my apology – and believe me when I say that anything I write here under the tag of ‘Rants’ should not, I repeat NOT, be taken seriously.  I will use unfair stereotypes, generalisations, exaggeration – and sometimes outright lies – in order to support whatever nonsense I am spouting.  Except when it comes to snakes.  Snakes are nasty.”

Right – back to figuring out what makes “evan smith” tick…

Okay – he’s from Alabama.  I did a quick search for famous people from Alabama – to see what kind of people this area produces.  The list was dominated by two definitions: “NASCAR driver”, and “white supermacist and co-conspirator in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing”.  Next, I try to narrow it to musicians – as I like to propogate a very simple (and very simplistic) theory that one can judge states by their main musical export  eg: New Zealand = Crowded House.  Australia = Akka Dakka.  Anyway – Alabama… Wikipedia lists two subcategories under “Musican groups from Alabama” – these are “Alabama Heavy Metal musical groups” and “Alabama rock music groups”.  I’ve found all I need to know about Alabama, I think.  I mean when Neil Young sang about her, I hear old Neil put her down.

Oh – sorry – one more thing I felt necessary to research about Alabama.  After re-reading evan’s written piece – I felt a sudden urge to do a quick check on education in Alabama.  An interesting fact: I found that Mississippi has the lowest high school graduation rate in the ‘United States of America’.  But back to Alabama.  Well… Alabama can be proud to have a higher rate of high school graduation than Mississippi.

So – at this point, we know there is a 25% chance that evan has not, and never will, graduate high school (based solely on state-wide statistics, ignoring other evidence such as his style of prose).  But in case he’s still hoping (fingers crossed buddy) – here’s a few pointers:

• That first scramble of words until the first full-top… I don’t know what that is, and I’m not sure how to help with that bit sorry.
• “writting” & “watse” are not words – I think you meant “writing” & “waste” – perhaps simple typographical errors?  Fair enough.
• This one is for everybody – please don’t use “Their” when you mean “They’re”, or vice versa.  It may seem like punctuation/spelling prudery – and sure, it may be.  But – it IS wrong.  Which means that if somebody knows the correct meaning of punctuation/spelling – an initial reading just makes no sense.  Take note:  “Their” is a possessive adjective.  Or – in Alabama english, it is used when “They” own something.  So – one might say “The Irish hired a crazy Scotsman named Patrick to get rid of all the snakes, because the vicious little serpentine bastards were eating all their babies”.  Or – to make it easier – just remember the correct meaning of “They’re”.  This is the easiest one to remember – because it’s actually two words, both of which I’m sure you know.  “They” & “are”.  The apostrophe has been used to replace the “a” so that us lazy folks can amalgamate the two words into one syllable.  Okay?  “they’re” = “they are”.  Easy.  “I hate snakes because they are cold-blooded killers” = “I think we should eradicate all snakes becauase they’re obsolete in the modern ecosystem”  I will leave it to you to figure out what “there” means.  But here’s a hint – it’s spelt like “here” – but with another letter.
• Time out:  sorry about that little outburst.  But the whole their/they’re/there thing really does get to me.  I honestly have to re-read any sentence with errors in it a couple of times – because I’m just assuming it will be written in English.  My own punctuation/spelling is not perfect – I accept that, and I’m sure some of you will be able to put together a dozen or so mistakes from this post.  Go on then, jerk.  But at least I try.  I do the English.
  
• The word “i” should always be capitalised.  That means it will be big and tall, like so: “I”.  You’re big and tall, aren’t you evan?  Then make your “I” big and tall and strong.  Also – it just rubs salt into the wound when it’s also the first word of the sentence.  You know that the first word of a sentence should be capitalised, don’t you evan?  Did you think that if there are two rules both saying that a word should be capitalised – then they cancel each other out?  They don’t, evan – they don’t.
• Speaking of which, evan, why don’t you capitalise your name?  You should, you know – it makes one seem like a real person.  Are you a fan of ee cummings, perhaps?  Something makes me think not so.  Anyway – those stories about him legally changing his name to remove the capitalisation are all lies.  He just signed some poems withough capitalisation – perhaps because he was lazy, perhaps out of humility when he’d realise it was shit.  Anyway – he was a yankee.  You don’t want to imitate a dirty yankee, do you Evan?  You’re a good solid southern dust-kickin’ boy, ain’t ya Evan?
• “I bet you know almost any thing about them.” – I’m going to interpret this as poetry Evan.  I think your intention is clear, and it is portrayed in a most lyrical manner.  I bet you know almost any thing about them.  Beautiful.
• Okay – your closing statement, or series of statements.  “Oh all of that stuff about making them extinct yea no here loke at it this way what if there was a being that didnt like us hu. that wanted us extinct that sounds nice hu?Oh and how long where they on earth be fore we even lerned how to even walke on two legs and then because of your little fear of these animals it give you the god given wright to kill all of them off no it doesnt so there you go Oh one more thing I LOVE SNAKES so there you go get over it panzy“.  Once again – poetry.  But I would like a little more structure here Evan.  I’m not sure when to pause for breath.  Or is that the point?  Regardless – get rid of the “w” from “wright”.  Remove the space from “be fore”.  Strip the “e” from “walke”.  Maybe add an “h” to “yea” – but maybe that’s a dialect thing.  No biggie.  I assume “loke” is supposed to be “look”.  I don’t know what “hu.” is – or if the full-stop is in the right place.  That bit really does confuse me quite a bit.  I think I’ve decided it’s supposed to be “huh?” – considering the context of both this and the subsequent appearance.  Finally, try spelling “lerned” as “learnt”.  I know – all very pedantic – but seriously, it helps Evan.  It helps.
• I didn’t want to split up the last piece – so included it all above, but I think I can safely say that the following can be logically seperated for the purpose of discussion: “Oh one more thing I LOVE SNAKES so there you go get over it panzy“  Yes, well.  Firstly Evan – please be careful.  Snakes are not capable of emotion.  They do NOT love you back.  They may pretend to.  Oh – they will pretend to love you.  But then one night – you, your mother, your father – everybody – will be found lying dead in your caravan/trailer – one little snake mouthful taken from you – to keep your little snake fed for a month while it makes it’s getaway.  I’m telling this to you as a friend Evan.  Despite, or perhaps because, of you calling me a panzy.  Is this a very clever joke Evan?  Have you surplaced the central hinge of the word “pansy” with the initials of my homeland – creating the word “paNZy”?  Very good Evan, very clever.

So – pedantry over.  It’s for Evan’s own good.  He needs to know these things, to become not just another Alabama statistic.

And Evan – what up with anime/manga?  That stuff will rot your brain.  The Japanese are crazy Evan – absolutely batshit insane.  Don’t trust them.  Remember Pearl Harbour Evan?  The Japanese were responsible for that.  Oh yes – without the Japanese, Ben Affleck might have faded into obscurity, and we’d never have to have seen his smug fat face ever again.  But no – that’s not the case, is it Admiral Yamamoto?  Sorry Evan – Affleck works me up as bad as poor punctuation.  Anyway – manga.  It’s sick.  It will undermine your good fine true christian american beliefs.  How can you believe that God the father of Jeebers personally spoke to George W. and told him to invade Iraq – when your mind is full of teenage girl ninja warriors being seduced by metallic tentacled monsters?  Oh no – Evan, the Fox News syndicate would not approve at all.  Violence Jack is not a good role model.  Whoever is on Pop Idol/X-Factor – there’s a role model.  And you’ve got the same taste in anime/manga characters as Richard Gere.  That’s not cool, Evan.  Namine, Haruno Sakura – gay.  And – please, would anybody call themselves Roy Mustang unless they were over-compensating for something?  (Sorry Evan – I’m making all that up.  I don’t know anything about those characters – they may be fully bad-ass MFs.  Except Roy Mustang – that’s definitely covering for distinct lack of testosterone.)

• If anybody’s got any words of encouragement for Evan – I can pass them on.  Urge him to give high school another go?  Wish him condolences on the upcoming murder of his family by his beloved pets?  Or just put in an order for some moonshine?  You just know he’s got the good stuff.  Whatever y’all feel.
• Snakes still suck.  An unnecessary evil.  The bad guys in ‘Arry Potter – what’s their emblem & favourite animal and what-not?  Snake.  The criminal in The Simpsons – what’s his name?  Snake.  What’s the one thing Junior Jones is afraid of?  Snakes.  Bad guy in Karate Kid III?  Snake.  Villain in Powerpuff Girls?  Snake.  Villain in pretty much every single B-grade movie?  Snake.
• Further rebuttal eagerly anticipated.

Well – my next bit of writing was going to be in response to the well-educated chap who took offence at my little discussion of snakes.  But – that will have to wait.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure this out – but I finally did about 2 minutes ago…

My little sister is trying to raise some cash.  And the cash isn’t for a car, or a holiday, or any of that – but for an even better cause.  But before the money – she herself is donating a helluva lot of hair.  Sounds odd, yeah?  But when you read about it – it is pretty damned awesome.  See, my sister has got this ridiculous amount of hair – down to her knees.  So – she’s gonna chop it all off – and donate the hair to some group who use it to make wigs for people who need them.  But not rich old men who wear hairpieces – rather people who have serious conditions resulting in hairloss.  I get the impression that the emphasis is on children too – which is pretty sweet.

So – my sister is making a pretty big sacrifice – you gotta think that chopping off 9 years worth of hair growth is a pretty big thing.  So – the least we can do is donate  a little money, yeah?  That’s what she figured too – so she’s got a website set up where you can do just that.  So – this place Freedom Wigs get’s her hair, and we can all sponsor her to do this – and that money goes to Cure Kids.  I’m always a little sceptical of charities – especially ones based on religion – but both of these sound cool.  So do it.  Give money to my little sister.

Here’s a nice little website to do it at.  And, once again, I can’t believe I didn’t think of doing this sooner.  Apologies to all the children for my getting dumber as I get older.

And as an additional incentive – I will match any donations made due to reading this.  So – try to bankrupt me… I dare ya.

Okay – I think it’s fairly well known that I hate snakes.  And yes – I think you could say I am scared of them.  And the fear quite likely goes some way towards creating that hate.  But – and this is important – it is NOT an irrational fear, and certainly should not be abnormal amongst other rational humans – nay – beings.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say snakes are evil, per se.  Well… maybe I would.  Because if there is such a thing as ‘evil’ – then the whole spirituality thing comes into play, innit?  So – if I was to subscribe to the ideals of ‘good’ & ‘evil’ – then I would point out that the main ‘baddie’ in the first ever (and still overall) bestselling novel – The Bible™ – was a snake.  In fact – the core and genesis of all evil – representing itself on earth as a snake.  So – did the devil choose to portray himself as a snake, because that’s what tickled his fancy (you know his type – listens to heavy metal down in his cave, probably got a tattoo of a skull with a  snake coming out an eye socket on his bicep hidden by that even more stylish red cape) – OR, did he have no choice in the matter – a snake merely being the natural form attributed to him when he appeared in the Garden?  Either way – not good evidence for presenting snakes as benevolent beings we should have any trust for.

But – laying all aside the mythology – down to pseudo-science.  Researching the scientific term for the phobia of snakes – I came across the following:

“Care must also be taken to differentiate people who do not like snakes or fear them for their venom or the inherent danger involved. A ophidiophobic would not only fear them when in live contact but also dreads to think about them or even see them on TV or in pictures.”

This quote had no citations to back this up.  Because it is nonsense.  It is not irrational to dread thinking about them, or seeing them in TV or pictures.  Try thinking of one now!  Slithering, sneaking, sneaking up on you with malice in it’s gleaming nasty eyes so it can bite you with it’s vicious little teeth – maybe poisonous, maybe not – I don’t care, it’s not cool.  And seeing them on TV or in pictures just reminds one that these monsters are actually real.  For really real real.

Immediately following the above – was the following:

“Recent studies conducted have theorised that humans may have an innate reaction to snakes, which was vital for the survival of humankind as it allowed such dangerous threats to be identified immediately”

This  DID have a citation (from the hallowed National Geographic no less) – and makes a helluva lot more sense.  “innate reaction to snakes”, “vital for the survival of humankind”, “dangerous threats” – the National Geographic don’t just take pretty photographs – they know their shit.

Scientific studies people – pointing out that even the not-so-smart cavemen knew enough to be scared of snakes.  Are you dumber than a caveman?  Christ – they didn’t even know how to hang bead curtains at the mouths of their caves.  But – they DID know enough to know that snakes are ‘dangerous threats’.  And – they weren’t selfish.   Sure – Peking Man could have pretended he wasn’t afraid of snakes – and gone to show off in front of that hot Woman X teasing a viper or something – hoping to get back to her place (got one of them new ‘Fire’ you know), but he didn’t.  No – instead, he settled for someone a little dowdier, not so high maintenance.  And he stayed alive – “for the survival of humankind”.  Thinking of the children.  Thanks, Peking Man (sorry – xie xie, Beijing Man).

Snakes are not cool.  They’ve got no legs!  Look at Heather Mills.  She’s got one leg, and she is at a ridiculous level of psychosis, nastiness, and just not-cool.  So, via extrapolation – you’ve got to imagine ‘no-legs’ takes things to yet another level.  A level where the venom isn’t just crazy paranoid rambling – but actual poisonous kill-you-dead venom.  A level where the nastiness isn’t just spewing out bile in crazy television interviews – but sneaking around in the grass, up drainpipes, under beds, in rubbish, kitchen cupboards – and then striking out with nasty sharp fangs.  I would say – A level where the greed isn’t just “I’ve got more money than anybody could spend – but let’s go for more, and some reputation maybe” – but more “there’s a big piece of meat a thousand times my size – let’s kill it and take one bite out of it”.  Except, it can’t be greed.  A snake knows perfectly well it can’t eat me  (Well – an anoconda could at a stretch) – it’s trying to kill me for fun.  Nasty, nasty piece of work.

Snakes are cold-blooded.  You know where else the term ‘cold-blooded’ pops up?  “Cold-blooded killer”.  That’s not a coinicidence.  Snakes are killers, by their very nature.  We already know they’ll kill you even knowing they can’t eat you.  It’s just what they do.  And I don’t think it’s too bigoted to say – I don’t like that.  I don’t like things that just want to kill me – for no reason other than wanting to kill me.  I’m alright.  In fact, some people would rate me above average [citations needed].  But snakes want to kill me!  It just isn’t right.

Now – the whole cold-blooded thing – you might take the logical extension of this, and state “well, by that logic – all reptiles & fishies and what-not are killers”.  Well – yes, you’re right.  Sort of.  They all WANT to be killers.  Only some have the capability.  Take the Tuatara.  I love them – and would become an illegal international endangered species trader in a second if I could find one to purchase.  BUT – I would have no illusions.  If one of those suckers developed venom, or opposable thumbs and tool-making capabilities – I would be murdered within the day.  Just look at all the things in the world that can kill you.  Mammals – plenty of big strong things that can kill you if you endanger their young, or if they’re just hungry.  Reptiles, fish, insects, archnids – heaps and heaps of little things, big things, medium-sized things – that can kill you in various strange, painful, masochistic fashion. Piranha.  Candiru.  Spiders.  Insects.  Electric eels.  Stingrays.  SNAKES.  Not one of these could you stand up against in a fair bout of fisticuffs.  A tiger, lion, bear or elephant – I would give myself a chance of survival with a bit of the old rough-and-tumble, and a fair fight.  But – if that blood is cold, you got no chance – because you’re fighting a dirty little cheat, who probably killed you before you saw it.

So – what are we to do about it?  We can’t just get rid of all the snakes, can we?  YES – we can.  There are estimates that between 35-150 much cooler species become extinct every day.  So – a few species of snake in such a wildly varying estimate range would be alright, wouldn’t it?  Oh yes, oh yes – we can’t just go making things extinct willy-nilly – we don’t know the impact on the ecosystem, right?  Yep – agree wholeheartedly.  However – we know what snakes brought to the ecosystem.  They kill things.  The little ones kill mice, and the bigger ones kill anything they see.  Well – will that be sorely missed?  We’ve invented mousetraps, right?  We’ve invented right-wing pickup-truck driving hunters.  I think we’ve got the whole killing thing covered.  Snakes are obsolete.

And that is what I think about snakes.

By Micheal Kruse Age: 33

The only other news is that we have a Katie staying with us.  So – conversations have become much more tangential, and our normal dynamic of “the last person to enter the room gets solid abuse by the other two” has changed, ever so slightly.

And now it’s time for my customary “and that’s about all I’ve been doing – working, nothing, working, nothing” line.

And with that in mind, I’ve been thinking of changing the format of this whole thing for quite some time.  I believe in my very first post – I alluded to the inevitability that this would devolve into a blow-by-blow account of my mundane life – despite best efforts to the contrary.  Well – I finally have a functioning portable personal laptop (fully nerded out with Linux) – and therefore should be able to and inclined to spend some time working online (trying to adapt to non-Windows).  Therefore, I will make an effort to write more stuff which is either “twitter-style”, ie: short sharp and potentially witty – and longer ‘essay’ pieces, most likely complaining about something.  One which has been simmering for a long long time is Snakes.  I have several things I’d like to say about Snakes.  So – I assume you are now waiting with baited breath.  Sucker.

So – after sitting at a table covered in delicious yum-cha for nearly an hour – I started feeling pretty smug.  A couple of people had said the whole happybirthday thing – but I managed to keep it quiet from everybody else.  Or so I had thought.  And then cards are pulled out.  And, it seems, the only people that weren’t actually aware were my own flatmates.  I really had thought I’d gotten away with it.  Not happy.  But – oh well…  It was a good day anyway.

(And thanks to everybody who attended, everybody who tried to attend but couldn’t, everybody from overseas who sent me messages, phone-calls, etc.  I think I have finally learnt my lesson – I can’t escape.)

Yum-cha in Chinatown – followed by a couple of quiet beers in a nearby pub.  The pub, however, was a dutch-themed pub – and therefore no beers that I was really too keen to drink.  So, champagne it was.  And, next thing we all know – it’s some ridiculous hour of the morning, and a few of us are in a taxi back to Balham – for a few more hours of drinking wine, beer, whiskey – and listening to music.  And discovering we have new neighbours upstairs.  Who probably have a very bad impression of us – after their first night being rather loud.  Not sure how many weekends of not-so-rowdy behaviour it will take for them to forgive us, and perhaps start to realise that this isn’t a particularly regular occurence – just very very bad luck on their part to move in on that particular weekend.

Anyway – that’s about all that’s happened since I’ve returned from NZ.  Have upped the squash-playing up to twice a week – but still a long long way off from giving Chook a serious challenge.  Have noticed my bank account shrinking – mostly due to the trip to NZ, and a sudden influx of bills.  That should turn around soon – as I’ve cut down my wine-drinking bill significantly.  (Well – the amount of wine has been cut severely – but the quality has probably gone up).  Anyway – looking at the costs of this trip I want to do at the end of the year, I should probably start caring about money a bit more, and trying to be ‘sensible’.  (ie: not drink champagne because I don’t feel like Amstel).

Oh – and it’s April very soon.  April’s New Month resolution – in honour of Spring (which I’ve heard should arrive soon) -  I will be eating lamb.  I’m a little worried about breakfasts – but have some ideas.