I'm back from my brother's wedding, before I mention the day I think I need to say congratulations to Andrew & Julie, not that they'll be reading this as they're in Paris at the moment.

Top day out, the ceremony itself was at Leeds Town Hall so no boring hymns to sit through instead we had Julie walking down the aisle to the sound of Les Fleur by Minnie Riperton, and the ceremony being finished off with the Match of the Day theme tune.

The football theme continued very much in force at the reception. The music was stopped to allow the the classified results to be played over the PA, there was table football to entertain everyone, the tables didn't have numbers - they were named after famous Manchester United and Leicester City players, and we had red and yellow cards with whistles for name cards. These came in very useful during the after speech quiz! Top day, of course it does put the pressure on yours truly - I now have a younger brother and sister who are both married...

Anyway, if you want to see some pictures they are over here.

My little brother is getting married this weekend, if you happen to be near a computer around about 3:15pm on Saturday you can watch it if you hunt around on this website for a webcam link. Probably going to be more entertaining than my excuse of a webcam.

If George Best only has hours to live, would it be inappropriate to run some sort of sweepstakes on whether he'll get past teatime?

And here's possibly the most subtle piece of comedy I've ever seen on the internet: The NWYH Stock Image Library. It's taking the piss, isn't it?

Spent Monday in this office underneath The Mall, with a bunch of monitors for company.


That was a barrel of laughs.

Today I was in an office sitting next to some bloke who somehow managed to snore whilst still awake. I was torn equally between mild fascination and coming up with some new and entertaining swear words...

I mean, how do you snore while awake?

How! Damn it!

Mr Padgett, as requested: The greatest pool game ever...


And here's some pictures of various people wearing inappropriate glasses.

Haven't done much for most of this weekend, watched an awful lot of sport, pretended I was a Dark Lord of the Sith, drank a lot of beer and smoked too much.

Other than that I've been a been a bit domestic today, I'm getting into cooking - I think when you're a vegetarian there comes a point where you realise you have to get past the staple pasta sauces and fake meat to try something a bit more interesting

So I've been trying a couple of recipes from my new cookbook: Green beans braised with tomatoes and garlic, and Green beans with butternut squash, tofu and a maple syrup glaze. It's Yes I know those both probably sound a bit dull to any carnivores reading this, but they're both quite nice - honestly. And the book is quite fun to read, sample quote: "Lift the pan to within inches of the heat, hovering above it, like a psychic with healing hands". Sort of thing that makes me chortle...

In a slightly twisted way I like this time of year, the way it gets dark early, the cold nights - matches my cold black heart very well. Bah!

I've been in a bad mood today, first reason is work - spent the best part of the last couple of days trying to solve a Sharepoint Portal Server issue, if anyone is doing a search for a problem involving not being able to crawl the portal and getting error code 0x80041205 0x80041209 in the search log feel free to post a solution in the comments. Seriously.

Off on a tangent, just had a look at the search keywords that are used to get to my site, for some reason the top two results are master chief and heroin addict. Really don't get those, but the search keywords that have appeared at number 13 in my stats have got me curious: juxtapositional eugenics? Wow! I have no idea what that means... Oh, hold on - it was referring to the first episode of the second season of Lost that I mentioned on this site... Bit disappointed now, thought I was starting to sound intelligent.

Anyway, back to moaning about why I've been in a bad mood. Reason number 2: Chris Bastard Moyles. I had the misfortune of turning on the radio in my car on the way back from the Dentists and listening to that fat cunt (Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle) bragging about how he had got a free XBox360. Bastard! And then hearing his cretinous posse of mental throwbacks discussing videogames with all the intellectual grace of an episode of that old TV show Kids say the funniest things (or what ever it was called) really set me up for the day. Yes, I know I'm probably taking it too seriously, but some of us gamers would like to be occasionally treated with a modicum of intelligence. See! Some of us use words like 'modicum'.

And finally: cigarettes...

I'm reduced to hoping that fictional superheroes are going to save me from the evil weed.

Photo's from Berlin have been uploaded, so without further delay let me present Berlin 2005 - Die Britischen Jungen auswärts!

And now I'm back...

That was a pretty full weekend, suprisingly cultured in places, included plenty of architecture appreciation, and a gallery and museum visit. Of course there was also plenty of alcohol involved which led to one or two strange moments, including drinking beer decorated with weird German sausages in a shopping centre and an odd Goth club.

I've got lot's of pictures to post but I've left my phone cable at work so they'll have to wait I'm afraid.

On my way to Berlin for three days. Memory loss expected...

Notes from Phil's del.icio.us links...

Futureme.org could be interesting, it allows you to send emails to yourself in the future. I'm being a bit cowardly about it and only sending nagging emails to myself to stop smoking and to stop being lazy and get some... well, you know - some. I could be horribly wrong though and I'll just end up recieving spam from my past self.

Speaking of the future, it is said that as a civilisation we are only four missed meals away from complete anarchy (five if you're optimistic, three if you're impatient like me). Well when society does eventually crumble and we are all living in some sort of post apocalyptic Beyond Thunderdome dustbowl, I for one will be riding one of these bad boys around:


We'll try to ignore my lack of interest in motorbikes for a second. More pictures here.

And finally, even though it went round the email circuits not so long ago, some fainting goats. Almost as funny as the video of the tasered bull that did the rounds many moons ago. Yeah, I know it's a bit sick, but as a reasonably hardcore vegetarian who thinks fishing is a bit suspect, karmatically speaking I'm way ahead of you - so there!

Another week of ignoring my website flies by. I guess I should try to write something or other.

So what have I been doing? Well buying CD's as usual, got some mild shoegazing, hippy shit and a bit of modern classical music for you to read about and listen to. It's getting to that time of year which sucks if your a music fan: Christmas, give it a couple of weeks and the only new CDs will be sell-out best-of compilations.

I've also been reading again, pretty sure this one isn't going to do any favours to my reputation of being a miserable so and so.


Go Ask Ogre by Jolene Siana is a collection of letters written by a teenage girl to the lead singer of Skinny Puppy Kevin Ogilvie aka Ogre, sort of like a modern goth version of The Diary of Anne Frank if you will - but without the Nazis. She's a funny girl at times, but also very troubled growing up with an abusive mother and prone to cutting herself, however she keeps herself together just about by constantly writing letters to Ogre. It seems a very one sided correspondence, but years later Ogre gives all the letters back and here we end up with this book. Interesting, if occasionally depressing reading.

Can't think of much else, got a few pictures from Nikki's last day, none from the evening though - I'm getting lazy in my old age.

Off to watch cartoons now...

mild shoegazing, hippy shit and a bit of modern classical music...

Slowdive - Catch The Breeze
Slowdive are another one of those bands, like My Bloody Valentine or The Cranes that during the nineties I missed due to being too narrow minded and too wrapped up in my metal. Thankfully now I'm older and wiser I'm able to appreciate this sort of music. Anyway, Slowdive were known at the time for being at the forefront of the shoegazing scene - basically think standard indie music, but drenched in reverb and compression - it was all about the drone really and creating music that was dreamlike and almost ambient at times but with a traditional rock setup. This collection has tracks from all three of there albums and a few EPs so gives a fair impression of the bands career. I'm a bit fonder of the earlier stuff so here's a tracks from the first disc.

MP3: Albatross

Angels of Light & Akron/Family - Akron/Family & Angels of Light
A slightly strange split EP in that one of the bands appears on all the tracks, in this case it's Akron/Family who also act as Michael Gira's Angels of Light nowadays. So, let's concentrate on them. The songs here are obviously recorded in a fairly live environment, so unlike there previous album they have a much rockier feel, it's a mad collection of songs full of freedom and joy, not giving a care in the world to current trends and fashions. When backing Mr Gira they take a more measured approach, there's an almost respectful air to proceedings. The Angels of Light songs on the disc aren't far removed from the previous 'Other People' album, a couple of cover versions are thrown in, one of Bob Dylan's I pity the poor immigrant and an old Swans song Mother/Father, although that one doesn't really add anything to the original. A good album, although I think that Akron/Family steal the show here, so here's one of there tunes.

MP3: Raising The Sparks

DJ Olive Vs JP Dessy - Scories
A difficult one for you here, a collaboration between DJ Olive (whose CD's I've always found annoyingly difficult to find - he was in a band called 'We' who released a fantastic album called 'the square root of negative one'), cellist JP Dessy and the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. A very minimal and almost ambient example of modern composition, some of it works very well (first track especially IMHO), some of the other shorter tracks where there is obviously some improvistation going on between DJ Olive and one of the more traditional musicians I'm not sure about. Still, it's different.

MP3: Walking Slowly