Duvet Day

Slept through my alarms this morning and decided that it was as good an excuse as any to take a sickie. In America they call it a Duvet Day (possibly).

In celelbration of this, I bring you some photos I've taken of the view from Stevious Towers:

Daytime



Night time

Nice.

Das Wochende

I'm not sure what the shitting bastard happened this weekend but I can assure you it was brilliant. Here is a monumentally lazy list of events in no order:

- Rugby-tacking a jacobite warrior in half.
- Almost drowning in snow.
- Climbing nearly 200 metres of styrofoam.
- Deep-vein-motherfucking-thrombosis.
- Mr Beast.
- Breaking into a minibus.
- Watching a polish man drop-kick a government troop in the chest.
- Pitching a tent by balancing the poles in snow.
- Using more petrol than the USA

Bring on the sleep.

Thursday Night Lights

Thursday nightis probably my favourite night of the week. I meet up with my climbing buddies in the pub, discuss the week that was and make plans for whatever the weekend has in store. Tonight was particularly good.

I rushed out of the door at about ten to eight to go and see Guy Robertson speaking about some of the climbing he's donme in Scotland and abroad. There's nothing quite like an enthusiastic climber beaming about the things thay've done, and Guy was certainly enthusiastic. And incredibly inspiring. I'd reccommmend going to see him if you ever get the opportunity.

Anyhoo, armed with buckets of Scottish Climbing Psyche® off I toddled to the pub for this weeks tales of one-arm pull ups over dodgy pegs and debates about arctic weather systems. Not only did I sort out some badass climbing fun for the weekend, but a total stranger, overhearing that I'd had no dinner, gave me a bag of crisps. And I spent most of the night talking to pretty girls too.

So now I've come home, full of the joys of human kindness to a steaming hot bowl of cock-a-leekie soup (it's nutristious, tasty AND hilariously named - result!), a spendid bit of Delrico Bandito, some Godspeed YBE! and the buzz of anticipation for the adventures of the next few days. Imagine Christmas Eve when you were eight and you get the idea.

So now it's off to catch some sleep before the mundanity of work where I will dream, as I always do at these times, of strapping myself to a bit of frosty rock in the name of fun. See you on the other side.

Fwour

I should really try to pretend to hate these things, but I started this blog because I love to talk about MEMEMEMEME so big thanks to Del for tagging me.

Four jobs I've had
Giant Dancing Gnome, The Metrocentre, Gateshead
Washing Powder Scientist, Procter & Gamble, Newcastle
Child Care Worker, Sunrise Mountain Childcare Centre, Connecticut, USA
Policy Assistant, Crofting Branch, The Scottish Executive, Edinburgh
(I could do about twenty of these, by the way)

Four movies I can watch over and over
High Fidelity - More or less for Stevie Wonder playing out over the credits
Fight Club - Similarly for the Pixies
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - I am in love with Clementine
Forrest Gump - Makes me blub like a baby

Four places I have lived
Birtley, County Durham
Washington, Tyne & Wear
Various bits of Bristol
Marchmont, Edinburgh (my favourite neighbourhood of any city I've ever been to)

Four TV shows I like to watch
Peep Show
The Simpsons (Obviously)
ER
120 Minutes on MTV2

Four foods that I like
Ice Cream
Olives
The Mighty Bacon & Cherry Tomato Sandwich
Roast things (meats, vegetables, whatever)

Four websites I visit daily
EUMC Chatpage
UK Climbing
Dilbert
Mountain Weather Information System

Four things I want to do before I die
About a squillion different climbing things.
Have someone tell me that they want to be with me for the rest of their life.
Find the thing I'm really good at.
See a total solar eclipse properly (ie, not some clouds going dark)

Four places I would rather be right now
Lofoten, Norway
The arms of a beautiful woman
A highland Bothy, watching the snow fall as I sit by the fire
A really good gig

Four people I'm tagging
Big Sis
Jimmy
Jazy Lames
Toby

Opposition

So it turns out that I didn't know how to ski. Finding that out whilst gently sliding down a snowy alpine vally is probably not too bad, but the discovery came to me whilst carreering down a busy dry-ski slope just outside of Edinburgh. Nothing too damaged apart from my ego. Oh, and my thumb.

So the rest of the evening passed, and I learned how to control the foot-planks a bit more. Lessons were learned. Although obviously not the right ones, as the next day I found - to my surprise - that I had gone climbing.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this wan't good for my thumb, and resulted in it ballooning up to quite a size and going 'Burple' (a cross between blue and purple according to Pimp My Ride). This has resulted in much hilarity this week. Basically, I can't hold a pen properly, or indeed use my right hand for much at all. Yes, even that is off the cards just now.

But if I have learned anything from al of this it's how lucky we humand are to have opposable thumbs. I bet camels have an awful time doing up a button fly, and I defy any walrus to open a bottle of Irn Bru. I would mock the inferior species, but I'm down to their level right now anyway. Have you ever seen a man trying to fix a punctured bike tyre with one hand? It's probably the least graceful thing you'll ever see this side of a manatee trying to tapdance.

Anyway, I ask not for your sympathy, but merely post this as a message for you all - look after your thumbs, kids. You might miss them when they're gone.

Musical thoughts...

I've finally got round to doing some of the mix CDs I've been threatening to do, which has given me some thinking time whilst my feeble computer wheezes away at the concept of encoding the odd MP3. I have come to the following conclusions:

Arctic Monkeys: Poor sods. Their singles are brilliant, and their album's a quality peice of work - any band would be rightly proud of capturing a generation so well. Is it the dawning of a new era of rock music? I hope not, because the peurile, ficticious 'scenes' that sprout up around any decent success story are all precisely 95.3% shite and are a pox on all that is good about music (except britpop, which was 99.7% shite). It'll mean that their next album is a load of bumwater and 400 utterly useless identikit troupes of automatons will pile through the CD:UK doors and into our eyes and ears like Sarin nerve gas. To be honest, the monkeys aren't even that great either. Just very, very good. Still it does mean that Domino Records will have another million-selling artist on their roster and be able to afford to bankroll more spectacular music from more challenging artists.

"Cheese" Music: When someone says "I just like listening to cheese" it makes me want to sellotape them to the floor and inject them with insulin until they pass out. Have I got a problem with "cheese" music per se? No. The average pop music club will play approximately 60% music that I like, actually. but to describe something as cheesy is basically saying it's predictable, soulless guff with no merit. Like Bon Jovi for example. But any good pop music that makes it into such nightclubs gets dubbed as cheese too, which is criminal. A good pop record (say, S Club's 'Don't Stop Moving' for example) is a thing of unrivalled beauty and should not be tarred in the same pap way as Chesney Hawkes. Maybe I just lack the requisite self-conscious irony to appreciate shite music.


Why Hip-Hop Sucks in '06: It's the money.

Goodnight fair folk.

Pants on Fire

So I did say that I would be more frequent with blogging. I am a big fat liar.

This week, I have mostly been mourning the lack of Scottish Winter. And whining about my lack of MP3 player.

WHERE IS MY MP3 PLAYER?

Where is it?

*sob*

Inn(u)it

Chillin with my igloo homeboys

Good things today...

As promised, more blog. Things that have been good today:

I found a new way to work today which is not only 5 minutes quicker (on a half hour cycle ride) but also has amazing views of this incredible city. Bit windy though.

Winning an argument with one of the customers at work and then laughing behind his back because it was about his prescription for Viagra.

Sneaklily downloaded Mogwai choons. You can use some of them to remove stubborn limescale too.

A quiet pint in the pub. Which is only 5 minutes walk away. Not half an hour like in my old flat.

Sky TV. I might be throwing my money at that Murdoch chap, but in return he constantly dribbles the Simpsons into my eyes. I win.

Hello Peasants

Firstly, happy new year to one and all. I hope that you all enjoyed the ACTUAL festive season as much as me (thanks to big sis for some superb xmas fun).

The big news is that I no longer dwell in a flat with no furniture/carpets/rent and have now moved into a rather nice wee flat with a view of Edinburgh Castle. Oh and the internet. In my room. I can now fire blog-crap right into your eyes form the comfort of my own house, and feel I may well do so. Consider yourself warned.

I also have a brand new job which is just as pointless as the last one, but slightly better paid.

That is all for now.

Bah

In a righteous echo of Delrico Bandito I declare this post a massive kick in the nuts for christmas. Take that, you filthy, seething festival of all that is ugly in our society.

There are so many reasons to hate Christmas, and it's all been bubbling under in a river of agony which I shall now spew forth like so much projectile vomiting.

Firstly, lets address the sheer money draining, soul dissolving commericality of it all. Every time I fucking blink I seem to be under some sort of pressure to spend money in the name of festive spirit. It's not the presents for friends and family, that I don't mind. It's all the other shite, like a party every 30 fucking seconds to celebrate the son of a god I don't believe in. And Secret Santa. I've only been in my current temp job for a week nad I'm already expected to buy a present for someone who I've barely met, which is pressure indeed. Especially since whenever my brain addresses the issue, the evil part of my brain can't help but think 'Two foot long dildo'.

Then there's the abandonment of any sense of decency. As well as all of the proles spending the money that would be better spent on some vegetables for their rickets-ridden offspring on enough lights to burn out an entire city's retinas, it seems that every drooling moron in the street thinks it's appropriate to cover themselves in tinsel and santa hats. Like they're desperate to show the world how much fun they're having by living every day of december like a pantomime. It's also this time of year that you could walk down princes street naked, covered in a thick film of sewage yelling 'I have SARS' and people will still violate your personal space in the interest of getting into BHS more quickly to buy some chocolate penises for their ugly spouse.

Christmas music. It's like someone's firing diahorrea directly into my ear canals everywhere I go. You can hear the performers scraping a smile onto their face as they groan their way through yet another forced celebration of mankind's loveliness, knowing that within minutes they'll be mainlining donkey valium to numb themselves from the horror of it all. Last year's 'Band Aid' effort, whilst no doubt for a good cause is a particular case in point. Do they know it's Christmas? Well, what with Sudan being largely Muslim, I certainly doubt they give a flying fuck. And anything involving Bono should be erased from the memory of our species.

That's enough for now. Enjoy your mince pies.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I'm still deaf two days after the gig.

I kept getting hit in the face with broken guitar strings.

I'm pretty sure my internal organs were temporarily re-arranged by the noise.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Mogwai gigs are so brilliant.

Clank and Dangle

I bet you're feeling smug, sat there in your centrally-heated room in front of your computer. Maybe later you might watch some TV. Or just vegetate on the sofa. I bet you're thinking about how last weekend was great because you did some cool shopping or went drinking with your friends.

Well FUCK YOU smuggo, because last weekend, I got up at 5am on Saturday, walked for ages and then spent hours and hours feeling utterly freezing cold. At one point I got hot-aches in my hands so bad that I wanted to puke my skeleton out with pain. I lost count of the number of times I thought I was about to plummet to my doom that day.

Yeah. Who's jealous now?

Oh.

Ill Communication

Well, it's that time of year again when all the infectious beings on the planet instantaneously attempt to nest in my respiratory system. Yes, I'm being melodramatic. I'm a man with a cold.

Thing is, by the nature of where I'm living (a reminder: Like Paper St in Fight Club) I'm not exactly best positioned to recover from any bugs and whatnot so I've still been going to wrok and giving everybody else my plagues. But it's less draughty there so nuts to everybody else.

Anyway, what with every gland in my body competing for the title of 'most swollen and painful' I had a thought. Maybe there should be an animated film about a madcap inventor and his dog who shrink themselves down and have a zany yet educational adventure through the human endocrine system.

It could be called A Gland Day Out.

Hey! It's the Sun!

OK, so it's sunny and cold today, which is happy weather for Stevious.

On top of that, I get my new clipper leashes for my ice-axes tomorrow (for those who know not what I'm on about it's a bit like getting a TFT monitor for your computer - not strictly necessary but sooo much nicer to use).

Yipee, hurrah, grin grin grin etc.

Having said which I do still want to find the scoundrel who's thieving my food at work, nail them to a large plank of wood and launch them into a pit of burning tar.

Autumn blues

Right, this whole wet and cold thing is starting to piss me off so I make no excuses for the negative content of this post. In no particular order I wish to complain about these things:

Bread Thief! Whoever keeps stealing my bread at work is a cunt of the highest order. If you want free bread go to the fucking salvation army.

Music at climbing walls. It's not the 1980s. Nor is it some redneck trailer aprk in the states. Or a youth club. So please stop playing Iron Maiden to me. It's not funny and ironic and it doesn't inspire me to climb. It makes me want to brick the stereo.

The people who live upstairs. Please put on another CD, as I grow somewhat weary of Oasis' worst hits. And yelling at the television is something that gurgling toddlers and elderly hermits do. Furthermore, WHY THE FUCK DOES ONE OF YOU KEEP HUMMING JINGLE FUCKING BELLS LOUDLT AT 8 IN THE MORNING? Bunch of retards.

Internet cafes. Porn mags are cheaper and you have the benefit that you can wank over them to your hearts content. Looking at porn in an internet cafe is demeaning for all concerned, and totally pointless.

That'll do for now. I feel better already. Bring on the winter.

Rock and Roll

Due to my incredibly hectic RawknRoll lifestyle I ain't been posting much of late.

 

Actually, I've just been out enjoying myself, and there's only so many 'I went climbing today, I really like limestone/sandstone/whatever' posts you can read before trying to delete the whole internet out of boredom.

 

So in the fine tradition of the lazy blogger, here'a a couple of lists.

 

Things that piss me off:

 

 - IT support who know less than me

 - Motorists who clearly shouldn't be allowed pencils, let alone automobiles

 - People who, upon donning a pair of slippers, drag their feet around as if affected by some sort of palsy

 - Lazy coach drivers

 - The common cold

 - Cumbrian weather

 - Northumberland grading

 - The piece of crap computer I bought

 

Things that make me smile:

 

 - Steep grassy slopes

 - Properly inflated tyres on my bike

 - The mountain of sweeties at work

 - Blue sky

 - Mum, Sigur Ros and Explosions in the Sky

 - Snow in the cairngorms

 - Fruit

 - Saunas

It's true...

...I saw it with my own eyes.

This mini-bus full of women pulled up next to a portaloo and every single one of them piled into the one cubicle.  At the same time.

When they left they all had immaculate hair & make-up.

'Owzat!

In all the fuss over some grasshoppers winning some ash or some other such nonsesne, it appears true sporting brilliance goes almost totally un-noticed:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4235210.stm

As a matter of public record:

As usual, life spirals along without any notable incident.

Those of you with eyes may like to feast them on the new photographs on my fotopic site.