The Latest Addiction

Grow Cube. You get 10 items, and a big cube of earth. By putting the items on in the correct order, the cube gets to evolve into a beautiful working earthly system. Sounds simple enough.

Dream on! These little buggers are demanding, and you gotta get it right! There are 3600000 different combinations. Clearly you don't have to try all of them, you realise pretty quick that putting the ball in first is a BAD idea, and that certain items need other items before them to work. Reece and I had a race, Reece won - after about an hour, and I finished 5 minutes after. It's crazy fun :) Plus the little people are REALLY cute. If anyone wants the answer, you are cheats, but I have it written down somewhere.

TCTC

Just read some bad news, not soul-destroying, but bad. Didz (bass player) has decided to leave The Cooper Temple Clause. Not sure where the descision has come from, I wasn't expecting it to be fair. Still, the band will carry on, I Quote:

Didz: "...but my mind is set and so i go. but if i thought that my leaving would kill the coopers then i would never have considered leaving at all."

Still can't wait for the new album - and I wonder who will get to be the lucky bass player introduced to the band?

"A brother has left the family home, but has not left the family."

History!?

Who'd'a thought it, I've just been reading an encyclopaedia of history, and finding all about history-like things I REALLY should have learnt a LONG time ago - perhaps stuff we did in history lessons - I hated history. Didn't even do it for GCSE, which is perhaps why my knowledge is hazy (to be generous).

Tom can be heard while sat in living room occasionally exclaiming, "so that's what Fascism was!", or "I knew I recognised the name Franz Ferdinand from somewhere".

Dear oh dear - me thinks tomorrow may be a time to make a trip to the library!

Little (and some very big) Freshers!!!

Had the pleasure of going up to Oxford Circus yesterday to entertain some new Cambridge students, due to start their Freshers' week in October. I met up with Vicky and Ella, which was excellent - it's been too long. They were both well, and Vicky showed me photos of her recent trip to eastern europe - what a time they had!

So, we went to a big posh building in London for 2 hours, and milled around drinking free wine and putting Freshers at their ease (and perhaps scaring them a little too... what an oxymoron). Post meeting we lead a big group of them to Lloyds Bar, though unfortunately we didn't exactly know the way. Luckily we made it in the end, and the people in the bar were very nice, and roped off a whole little area for us to carry on the party.

Overall it was a great night :) It was a good chance to reminisce about the last year gone past (can't believe it's only a year since I was in their shoes), was great to see Vicky and Ella, and gave us a great feeling of pride for being so "wise" :) hehe.

Tom
xxx

Just seen two of the most annoying adverts ever.

NS&I adverts - Alan Sugar telling us all how great his no risk saving things are, and how he's giving his fee to Great Ormond Street. For God's sake! I really hate that guy.

Battersea Dog's Home - I'm going to use the word anthropomorphism. I think that describes everything that is crap about this advert. Plus the super-sad-give-us-your-money piano music. AAARGH

Naked Hippies????

As you may have noticed, I have a counter on my blog. This can tell me where people have come from when they find my site (only if they click a link - using a bookmark or typing it in won't tell me anything), and, I found this:



Apparently, someone searching for "Naked Hippies", on MSN search, found my blog, as a result of Rob's escapades and the Hippies and Ravers Bop. How disturbing!

AAAAND! Just to prove that I wasn't the one searching for Naked Hippies, here's the entry in my counter-thingie (it says no thumbnail, but you can still click on it). I use google anyway.



p.s. ooh! Just found 2 more searches that people used too - Clare May Ball Photos, and Batman Quotes. WOW!

The State of the World Today by Me

The State of the World Today



My sketch tells the entire story of the state of the world today, and I guess it needs some explanation to reveal its true deep-seated meaning.

In the background you will clearly see a huge A-frame - this represents whatever great power it is that holds the world together, yet, it is adorned with small black spots - it is not well! Why? Well, look to the top right of the picture and you will see a hooded man - he represents pikeys - yet look! His left hand reaches behind him towards the sun - this represents his hope that one-day he will break free from his stabbing lifestyle (see his right hand). Below this man is a fish - he represents the anger all piscine-types have towards over-fishing in our atlantic seas, yet still, the smiling face of fishers looks down upon him laughing... laughing I tell you. Toward the centre of the A frame is a brush, hopefully brushing away the cobwebs of rubbishness. Arrows point to it to make you notice it, cos you'd probably miss it otherwise. The top left of the picture depicts one of those McDonalds Happy-meal toy dog things. I drew it wobbly because I'm not Lovin' It. Not at all. The bottom of the screen shows some pointy things. They look cool. The letters pcd are written upside down on the pointy things; representing how much I would like to turn upside down both the terrible disease Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia and the terrible band, Pussycat Dolls. There are swirly things underneath the A-frame represent Freud's Oedipus complex. Look at me, I'm so clever. The eye to the left of the screen overlooks all this intelligence and sighs in the way that only a mouth/vocal-chord-less eye can.


Comments should be entitled "An essay comparing and contrasting the use of imagery in 'The State of the World Today' and 'History in a Doodle'"

Tongue in cheek "History In A Doodle?"?...

... i fear not. Anyway -

4th blog of the day! Wow! Anyway, if you look to the top of my blog, the black bit, you'll see a button saying "next blog". I'm not sure if it always leads to the same one, but I just clicked it and it led me here.

I'm entertained, the whole of history is captured in one beautiful doodle, and I have been inspired to draw - stay tuned for the result!

Tom
xxx

p.s. You may have noticed the disappearance of the Make Poverty History campaign banner. This is because it is a load of crap, and they sent me spam.

Shopping.

This weekend we have shopped, most importantly for me, with very little of my own money. I now have some exciting things to take to uni with me, namely a new plate, a ring-binder and a washing-hanging-ring-thing with lots of pegs.

We also have a new car, a pretty silver 2002 Astra, so there will (hopefully) be no more great train lugging fests to get through! Sadly though, what with me being a 19year old male, I am not trusted to drive a car (apparently people on Big Brother (as an example of the dregs of society) are safer drivers) and so the insurance company will charge me through the roof to insure me. Batties.

I also have 65p shaving cream! Woo! 6 times cheaper than gillette, and not 6 times worse... maybe 2 times worse, and therefore worth it :) It really does look pikey :) God bless Wilkinsons.

Listening to: Manic Street Preachers... A soul in pain has no spirit to regain. To repel ghosts..

My Face! My (beautiful) Face! [Update]

Just to let you all now that my face is now healed, and apart from a little red patch on my forehead I am looking back to normal.

And I've put a pic up on the old post - here:

Over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders

My sister has just embarrassed me (well, perhaps more entertained me) by referring to bras as 'over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders'. Apparently it's from a book she read - dear oh dear, what are they teaching kids nowadays. The books were these:













We should campaign to have them outlawed! OUTLAWED I SAY!

New Layout

I got bored of the old one, so here's a brand spanking, shiny (if simplistic) new one. I've changed the colours from the default white as that was REALLY dull!

Vetsci Discoveries

I'm sat watching the cricket (Steven Harmison is kicking arse! He's 20* and England are 373-9 (dammit... 373 all out now)) and I've been looking through the BBC news website, following on from finding that picture of Banksy's.

Apparently, some PhD student in Melbourne has discovered a way of identifying a dog's blood type - could be useful, particularly in saving old Dave the Greyhound giving blood to some dogs with a different blood type, or maybe getting him some companions! But, there's never going to be a country-wide canine blood bank whatever happens, that would just not be plausible (or sensible), so, it could be of limited use, unless every practice keeps donor dogs ready and waiting to be cannibalised, which may be seen as wrong, though perhaps the lives of however many dogs may be saved is worth more than the continued discomfort of one dog?

I've also just been reminded of the sueing (is that how you spell it) of a vet who administered cortico-steroids to a show-horse without warning the owner of the slight chance of them causing laminitis that I heard about from Alex's family... she won £350,000 apparently. I guess this proves that you really do have to cover every single angle that you can to protect yourself, and stick it all in writing... or, don't work with expensive horses!

Banksy - Great Name, Great Paintings.

I was watching the BBC news last night, and saw an article about the graffiti recently put on the palestine side of the west-bank wall. This artist has been painting satirical images of window-like holes in the wall showing a beautiful mountain view. The grass is always greener I guess. This is the picture I liked best:


Picture courtesy of BBC.

But they quoted an email he sent to the BBC in which he wrote "The role of graffiti has always been to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I just took this literally and drew a load of giant armchairs." That just tickled me. From what it seems, his other stuff is a load of rubbish - just the odd stunts, but I really like these West-wall paintings!

It's 0940 and time for sleep, dum de dum de dum.

0940, I've been up for 40 minutes... It's the summer holidays and I've got nothing planned for today apart from watching the last Ashes Test. Why so early I hear you cry? Well, my neighbours, have decided to have an extension built over their patio, which is conveniently next to and below the wall my bed is next to. Pneumatic drills at 8.40am are not fun; I stuck it out for 20 minutes, but then it all became too much. But oh well, it'll make the day seem longer.

GO ENGLAND! Let's hope you do a better job than the bloody football team.

Festivals, Faces and Brighton!

It's been a while since I posted again - sorry about that, I've been distracted by a number of things and not actually got round to putting down any of that stuff that's been going on. Now my sister is back at school so I'm home-alone again, so I have a chance to post without feeling neglectful. So, since my last post about cows, the above things have gone on (see post title), So all the posts below are backdated...

Au Brighton je me ne pas suis reste a la maison!

Today, My sister and I decided to take a say trip down to Brighton - we'd done it last year, so why not go again. We arrived in superquick time, leaving the house at 9.30am and being in Brigton just before 11. We wandered down to the promenade by the sea and spotted a cycle hire shop, and, on the spur of the moment hired a tandem! I asked the guy how likely we were to kill ourselves and he replied "not likely", though I'm sure he took one look at my face and wondered if he'd ever see his bike-for-two ever again. Fortunately we didn't crash... we wobbled, and I paniced whenever we went past someone coming in the opposite direction, but we survived! Hopefully I'll have some photos up - I forgot my digital camera so we had to buy a disposable so I'll have to wait for it to get developed.

And so we discovered just what a talking point a Tandem is - an old woman from south Wales came up to us and said "you don't see Tandems very much nowadays!", after which she continued for 10 minutes to tell us about her grand-daughter who lived in Hong-Kong for 2 years... each of the things she told us had the smallest relation to the tandem, so it all tied together, but her 10 minutes was 70ps worth of tandem time gone - still, we were polite young children and listened "interestedly" - I was more entertained by her husband who just stood there and mumbled a nod every now and then.

We also got fish and chips and ate them by the sea - classic seaside fare of course. We had an icecream, wandered about the pier and imagined what it would be like to go on one of the rollercoasters. Then we played crazy golf and came home!

My Face! My (beautiful) Face!

It was all going so well. It was Sean's 19th birthday, and the night had gone well. McKrusties was full for once, had danced and chatted and perhaps drunk; and somehow on the way home I managed to stumble and fall on my face. There was alot of blood, people looked very concerned, but somehow I wasn't concussed. Luke walked me to the end of Latchmere Road to make sure I had all my senses about me, cheers mate!

The day after my face was BIG and bloodied, my nose was twice its normal size and my top lip was well swollen. The day after that, I had two black eyes. Hooray :(

Still, hopefully all will have healed by the time I have anything big to do!

A Picture: