Moving On

There haven't been many posts these past few days because we've been packing and cleaning. We're moving out of our flat in a day or so, and we've been working against the clock to get everything out in time.

Normal service will resume as soon as things settle down a bit.

Wax Off

Mr Miyagi is dead. Did you know he was nominated for an Oscar for that role? Blimey. Haven't seen that film in years.

Thank You Very Much For Being Our Postman

As Americans sit down to celebrate the anniversary of Jesus and his pirate army liberating Turkey from the English, I thought I'd give you, my lovely readers, a gift of my own.

Look! I have a proper website! Go and have a look, enjoy it, and tell me which bits don't work, as I'm sure there are many.

And in the tradition of this most hallowed day, thanks to Liam for hosting the site.

TARDIS

It turns out that our tiny little one-bedroom flat has a great deal of hidden space. At least that's my assumption, as we seem to have far more stuff than we could plausibly have enough room for.

Yet another reason to take up an ascetic existence, I suppose. Alternatively, someone could buy me a Bag of Holding for Christmas.

Healing Factor

Thanks for your support everyone, it went very easily. Apparently the rotten monstrosities that were my wisdom teeth popped out without much trouble at all, so I shouldn't have much pain or any swelling. So that's good news, but I still fear the gangrenous encroachment of dry socket.

This bizarre stereotype Yanquis have about British dentistry really rubs me the wrong way normally, but after today, I'm starting to see their point; the knobend dentist I had in Blighty put fillings in them without even telling me that they were wisdom teeth, so the first time I even knew I had them was when my dentist here told me they needed to come out. Bastards.

Under The Knife

I'm having my wisdom teeth out a bit later on today. Given that normal dentistry fills me with fear, this operation terrifies me beyond human comprehension.

Well, that was uncomfortable...

While I may seem confident and outgoing to you, dear reader(s), I'm actually full of fears and uncertainties, usually concerning the smallest and silliest things.

Last night, we went out to celebrate a friend's birthday. It was a fun night; I met lots of new lovely people and surprised myself with my resistance to alcohol, even after more than a year without so much as a shandy. Anyway, said friend, specifically requested that I wear a comedic Guinness/drinking shirt I'd received for my birthday this year. And that's when the worry set in. Because the shirt has the name and address of the pub it was bought at emblazoned in big yellow letters (on black, of course) on the back. Meg told me again and again that I was being silly, and that no one would mind me walking into a bar with the name of another bar on my back, and she may have been right, but I worried nonetheless.

We later moved on to a real down-to-earth Irish bar, in which a little angry expat stood up on stage and started reciting a furious poem about the Easter Uprising of 1916. So I'm standing in a bar, wearing a shirt from another bar, squirming while a wizened gentleman on stage calls me a "tyrant" and an "oppressor". I know he's not talking specifically about me, no one there knows I'm English, and I think some of his complaints are legitimate, so I know I have no real reason to be uncomfortable, but I still am, because of all those little fears and uncertainties.

Musicians take the stage, and strike up some exciting fast-paced guitar music, and the room is getting hotter and stuffier all the time as people are wailing and spinning as they only ever seem to do in Irish pubs.

It's at this point, as the two fellows on stage are singing about spilling the blood of the English and how wonderful the IRA are, that I consider taking off my shirt, because it's just very hot in there.

It's okay; I have a t-shirt on underneath, something I just grabbed out of the cupboard, just a plain white t-shirt.

Except it's not plain. It's the England shirt my Mum sent me last Christmas. With the St George's cross across the chest and "England" in big red letters.

Bugger...

The Harrowing

I'm dangerously at risk of turning this into a comics blog, which is not my intention, so I'll scale back on that soon, but I thought this might be the easiest way to get this little tidbit out there.

Seven Soldiers is comics writer extraordinaire Grant Morrison's latest high-concept project; a series of unrelated, yet intimately connected, miniseries telling the story of seven heroes (who never meet) facing the evil Sheeda in order to save the world.

Last week brought the first issue of the sixth miniseries, The Bulleteer. Lots has been said online about the art, but upon reading the issue, I noticed something I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere:


And this from Klarion the Witchboy #4, from a couple of weeks ago:


This "harrowing" has been mentioned a number of times during the various miniseries, and the project as a whole has obviously been constructed with great care so that every image and word means something.

So the Bulleteer's real name, as revealed here, can't just be a coincidence, surely?

European Filth Merchants Go Amerika!

It seems that French funsters Jean David Morvan and Philippe Buchet are going to be doing a Wolverine comic for Marvel. It has the potential to be a lovely piece of work, but we'll see whether mysterious black bars will pop up to cover Wolverine's hairy nipples.

Now That's What I Call Computer Music

In an excessive exercise in minimalist blogging, I'm going to base an entire post around that little bit other people put at the end of their blog posts.

Röyksopp's Only This Moment is lovely, although I think I'm only enjoying it so much because of the funky C64-style main melody, but then I'm a sucker for that stuff; Beck's Bad Cartridge has a wonderful mix that sounds like it's ripped straight from the old Commie's SID chip.

And the Blue Man Group are apparently proper musicians as well as being a weird performance artist group. Their Piano Smasher is a murky little tune which sounds a lot like Orbital in places, and is perfectly fitting for the end credits of a video game, which is fortunate, because it was used at the end of the latest R-Type.

So there you go; that's what I'm listening to right now. Proper postings soon, including news about my upcoming death under anaesthetic, most likely.