1:47PM - Bones
On Saturday I read The Lovely Bones. On Wednesday I will be taking it to the charity shop.
Current mood: 
cold
coldOn Saturday I read The Lovely Bones. On Wednesday I will be taking it to the charity shop.
cold( Not so much 'long' as 'has many carriage returns' )
calmAnother week slowly rumbles into a weekend. This is a good thing.
Hope you're going to make time to enjoy yourselves this weekend, dear light-hearted reader.
coldYesterday I got one of those notes from the Royal Mail bods: they had been unable to deliver a package. I raised my eyebrow (left, as I can't raise the right one)... I hadn't ordered anything from Amazon.
DIGRESSION ALERT: If I remember rightly, that was a line that Caz used in a very similar story to this one. It's funny how packages now have to come from Amazon.
However, I had been very drunk on Thursday, so anything could have happened. With a song in my heart and my passport in my coat pocket, I skipped on my merry way to the sorting office this morning. It didn't rain.
When I got there, the chap behind the counter took the note and swapped it for a relatively heavy Amazon (yes!) package. "Hmmm," I thought. "It's either a DVD box set, or a book." I opened it right then and there. My clumsy hands gave me a few more moments of anticipation. "It's definitely a book," I reasoned, when I saw the pages side-on. Finally opening the package, the joy revealed itself: The Writer's Tale The Final Chapter, by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook. A small bit of linkage here, but for the click averse amongst you, it's a collection of e-mails sent between the two authors, all about the making of Doctor Who. There may be some serious geekgasms when I read it, so I'll have to get some tissues in.
Now, going by my theory that one should give presents in private but thank for presents in public, I'd like to thank the wondrous Christine for her expenditure on little old me. Thank you so, so much. I'm going to love this. Love it.
Edit: The book! It sits on my ironing board.
dorkyI spent some of my time this afternoon playing Space Invaders. I'm not even joking.
DIGRESSION ALERT: I've noticed in my working life that being known as the joker of a group of people is detrimental when you have something genuinely serious to say. I need to work on ways round that, whilst still being able to joke around. Ideas?
Then I did some research. Space Invaders will be 32 years old this year, and it's still being used to entertain the masses. Is there truly anything new around in the world?
Yes, is the answer to that rhetorical question, as I have bought a carpet washer. More on this story later... when I've actually used it.
coldD'you know what winds me up? Celebrity couples getting a single "word" to describe their relationship. Like, "Bennifer" for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (and probably the same "word" for Affleck and Garner), or "Brangelina" (I'm sure you know who they are). How long is it before we get "Ruty" or "Kassell" for these people?
Then you start to think: what if Condoleezza Rice and Dominic Monaghan got together?
gigglyI was in Manchester on Saturday and spotted something which was like the end of an era. For those of you familiar with the city, the little HMV on Market Street has now closed. I felt my lower lip tremble.
DIGRESSION ALERT: Ready for the neat segue?
On that same shopping trip, I picked up a book called The Naked Jape.
DIGRESSION ALERT: Beautiful, wasn't it? I can feel my lower lip tremble as I type.
DIGRESSION ALERT ii: Too early for a callback? [Big Brother announcer voice]You decide![/Big Brother announcer voice]
It's all about humour, specifically jokes. It discusses the importance of humour in society, as well as delivering some fascinating facts, not least of which is that science (TM) has shown that laughing helps raise your pain threshold.
The best part, however, is that there's a joke at the bottom of each page. My favourite so far is as follows:
The world is a dangerous place; only yesterday I went into Boots and punched someone in the face.
Jeremy Limb
apatheticGood day, dear adjectival reader.
DIGRESSION ALERT: I try to fit a different adjective to you every time I describe you, dear wizardly reader. It gets hard after a while (fnar, fnar).
If you are a friend of mine on The Face Of Book, you may know that I am fond of wearing hats in my profile pictures. Last year I changed the picture every fifty days - this year, I plan to have a new hat picture on the 7th of every month. That makes... er...
*counts on fingers*
*grabs calculator*
*carries the one*
... twelve pictures I'll be needing. Actually, eleven, because today is the 7th and I've got my new hat picture. So, eleven new hats. And... I'm taking requests. Yes. I'm not saying I'll be able to fulfil them, though there are a couple of fancy dress shops nearby, but... yes. Requests.
RSVP!
Film Reviews
Sherlock Holmes: Yes.
contemplativeNew Lynx Twist - the fragrance that changes.
My first thought? "Yeah - eventually it goes back to being your rancid armpit".
It's cold.
busySo, 2010, eh? I hope it's grand for all of you. And by "grand", I mean "fucking brilliant".
I apologise, ladies and gentlemen, for my swearing, but I've just watched a little segment from Ed Byrne's website. If you click here, have working speakers or headphones attached to your computer and are not at work (unless you're in the headphones situation, in which case, you can fill your boots
DIGRESSION ALERT: I don't understand that expression. My boots are usually full already - of my feet.
), scroll down a bit to the heading "A little Christmas gift from Ed". After a little intro spiel, it gives onto a little window onto YouTube. If you click that, it plays all the swearing and cursing from his Different Class DVD. It's very childish, in many ways, but it is also very funny.
Bally out.
Caz's take (links to under the cut (I think), so beware of spoilers).
( Doctor Who episode 4.18/30.18 The End Of Time (Part Two) review )
This is amazing. I was about to make a post about Patrick Stewart getting knighted. I wanted to use a quote from the Futurama episode The Cyber House Rules, so I put it into Google, as you do these days, to get it as accurate as possible. The fifth or sixth result was this post of mine, using the quote I'd wanted to use this time! Not even my own ideas are original any more.
To borrow another Futurama quote, "I'm gonna go lie down".
ecstaticWhat is it about the sales that makes me want to holler "Fuck off out of my way!"?
cranky( Doctor Who episode 4.17/30.17 The End Of Time (Part One) review )
It's certainly gone cold, hasn't it? Yesterday, whilst teetering to the shops, I decided that what we need is hot water shoes. You'd have an ordinary shoe, right, and then around it there'd be a rubber container for you to put the hot water in. The advantages of this are two-fold: a, your feet stay warm, and 2, the ice under your feet should melt away. If there are any serious engineers out there, I'm waiting for your call.
In yesterday's Top Gear they showed the bit they'd done at Middlesbrough football club's stadium, mentioned by me here. I was going over the line "But Nottingham - you can't come!" in my mind whilst trying to get to sleep last night, and just as my mind got to the word "come", I heard my neighbour orgasm.
Well, to be fair, it might not have been an orgasm - she might have just been shown an exquisite piece of art, or gotten relief from a lower back pain problem. Whatever it was, though, she sounded happy.
blankYeah.
My DS (as in Nintendo DS, the finest handheld video gaming device since the Nintendo Game Boy) has been switching itself off during gameplay every so often for a few weeks now. The problem got much worse a week ago. I got in touch with Nintendo on Saturday, and I've just read a beautiful e-mail from their bods on what I have to do to send it to them to fix it. Nice.
Not so nice is the boiler. Now, the boiler in my bedroom (yes, my bedroom - there's not really anywhere better to put it, sadly) started making extra noises yesterday morning... and did not start to heat my house. I spent most of yesterday in front of the fire (completing New Super Mario Bros. Wii - I'm da best!). This would happen just as it's gone ruddy freezing. Curse you, cosmos! I've just rung a heating engineer who was recommended by a colleague, and I'm waiting for him to get back to me. Could be fun, especially as my boiler was discontinued in 1997... that's why my The Face Of Book status says I'm terrified it needs replacing.
Eek.
anxiousIt's been a funny week.
( Two stand-up comedians in four days?! - Rated 15 for language and mild pooing of self )
The stars aligned this weekend, as the football team Andy supports (Middlesbrough) played the football team I support (Nottingham Forest) for the first time in over ten years. We'd said we'd go, and go we did. I sat with the Middlesbrough fans, which meant I had to cheer when they scored a goal... after five minutes. The Forest keeper could only palm a fierce shot back out to one of their strikers, who knocked it past him. Bah.
At half-time, the three presenters of the BBC's Top Gear programme came on to the field to promote their roadshow, which happened to be taking place in Middlesbrough that weekend. They arrived wearing the shirts of Middlesbrough's local rivals, Newcastle United, but soon changed them after the booing. 3000 tickets (I think) were made available to fans of the home side (as Jeremy Clarkson himself said, "But Nottingham - you can't come!", which riled the Forest supporters considerably).
The Forest team stepped up a gear in the second half, and managed to equalise when Robert Earnshaw fired in a beautiful free-kick from just outside the area. I had to not cheer this time, and did a pretty good 'turn away in disgust' (honestly, I should make my living on the stage, darlings) whilst my brain jumped around like a balloonatic. That's my word, by the way... but you can use it if you like. Honours were even - which helped on the journey back!
Tomorrow I'm going to see Ed Byrne perform stand-up comedy in my home town. More on that story later.
gratefulApologies for the title, but I've already used Life On Mars, and, well... yeah.
( Doctor Who episode 4.16/30.16 The Waters Of Mars review )
excitedHelp settle something for me, team. Michael McIntyre: funny, or the complete opposite?
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