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.

*Ow*

So Del just tagged me on some crazy blog thing (if you ask me a bit too violently. I bruise easily) so I must list 5 songs that I'm diggin' at the mo. They be these:

1. Amerie - One Thing
2. Herbaliser - Something Wiked This Way Comes
3. Mogwai - 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong
4. DJ Nite - Franzie Wonder
5. Gorillaz - Dirty Harry

And, according to the law, I thus tag the following folks:

My Sis, Ali
Lazy James
Nicky
Idiot
and, er, Jimmy the Dog

University of Life

Here are a few lessons I have learned over the past few days:

- Boots 'Roast Vegetable and Hummous' salad appears to contain
neither of its title ingredients. This is presumably some sort of
joke directed at the poor herbivore health-food types who are too weak
and malnourished to complain.

- Flirting outrageously with girls at military events will be at best
ineffective and atoworst potentially hazardous.

- One should not drink more than one could lift.

- Photographs from the Congo tend to focus more on the
violence/poverty of the area - I am yet to see documentary evidence of
Um Bongo consumption. I feel lied to.

- You can Still get Wham! bars. But probably shouldn't.

- If one is facing a long and arduous walk home, the burden of a 17"
CRT monitor does nothing to improve the journey.

I hope these brief insights are helpful.

Bike Rage

The Edinburgh Festival brings people in their millions to this
relatively small city during August, and it's certainly noticeable.

Last night, cycling through a busy part of town I was surrounded by
hundreds of human livestock, herding endlessly through the streets
stopping only to wipe the drool from their chins and seemingly too
enraptured by some Jeremy in a jester hat trying to get them to go and
see his pathetic university play about what it's like to be a suicide
bomber to bother looking when crossing the road. They were in my way,
basically and I wanted every last one of them to instantly contract
rabies and die frothing atthe mouth, their spines snapped under the
force of their own convulsions.

I was secretly quite enjoying hating these people. I don't really
have anything against tourists at all (in fact, I quite like the fact
that people travel just to come and see this city), but I do rather
enjoy swearing in my head. In fact I just thought of several very
rude words and nobody heard me do it. I'm dead subversive, I am.

Just as I was really getting into a good brain-rant, I noticed that I
had a plastic bag caught in my bike wheel. Great, I thought.
Something else I can hate the interlopers for.

The bag was properly stuck, giving me ample time to revel in my
internal bile-spouting as I wrestled it from around my spokes. Some
useless gawping moron was to blame for this, littering MY city with
THEIR crap.

Then, a hand appeared out of the blue instantly releasing the bag from
the wheel for me and depositing it neatly in a nearby bin. As I
uttered my thanks to this stranger, he replied in some foreign tongue,
instantly replacing my anger a sense of gratitude and the realisation
that no matter where you are, even in a crowd of gawping buffoons,
theere are nice considerate people. The bastards.

Cwithpth

An idle thought. Here is a list of potential crisp flavours unlikely
to grace your newsagent:

- Roast owl
- Oat 'n' Dust
- Cumulo Nimbus
- Gary Lineker's Manly Discharge
- Anthrax 'n' Vinegar
- Morse Code
- Aborted Foetus

Feel free to suggest your own. The winner gets 1 full hoover bag.

Am I exited?

OF COURSE I AM

Four Tet and Explosions in the Sky on the same bill? In Edinburgh?

Apparently so

Hooray for that.

I R Damien Hirst

Hooray for me. I have acquired a shiny new mouse at work, with a
scrolly-wheel and everything.

"So what?", I hear you say.

Well, if you look at 'stevious says' sideways and scroll up and down
REALLY FAST it goes all wobbly. Like art and that. Proper.

This effect is compounded if you mash your head against the underside
of your desk whilst plugging a mouse in, though.

Avert your eyes

My cunning and hilarious joke in the post below hasn't worked (I don't
usually talk in HTML like that). So if you could just pretend it's
not there until I get to a proper computer and fix it that would be
grand.

Troublegum

I had a listen to some Therapy? this week. I loved them when I was
15. All those shouty songs about being a total loner and wanting to
stab people to death. Perfect for a teenager who thinks that growing
your hair long and dressing like a bin-man marks you out as an
individual, as opposed to just a knob. They nearly won the Mercury
Music Prize, but lost out to M People in the end. I think they're
stil touring.

On a similar note, I had my first physiotherapy session this week (See
how I did that? Classy. Smoother than a bag
of gravel;, and more subtle than Abi
Titmuss).

I never thought it would be the case, but physiotherapy is fun! To
correct for my kneecaps bing in the wrong place and my feet being
funny-shaped I have to do the following exercises:

The Slow Policeman: This involves standing with my feet pointing
forwards (actually quite difficult for me) and bending my knees with
my back straight and holding it. Kind of like doing that 'ello ello
ello' thing that policemen don't ever do, but in slow motion.

Toe push-ups: Feet flat on floor, curl middle of foot up whilst
pushing down on toes. Apparently doesn't count if I use rock-boots
for this.

The Flamingo: Pretty much as you'd expect - standing about on one
leg. I like doing this whilst on the phone at work.

OK, so the exercises are actually pretty dull, but I only have to do
them for a week and then I move on to more advanced ones. Here's
hoping that in a few weeks time I'll have to do spinning handstands
whilst juggling a medicine ball with my feet. Who knows? Maybe after
all of this my knees will be slightly less knobbly, thus reducing my
chances of winning a free bottle of Asti Spumanti at Butlins.

Look!

More pictures on my fotopic site .

Peek-a-boo

Hidden tracks. What exactly is the point?

I imagine that the intention is to make the listener feel special, and
maybe create a sense of anticipation. Like I'm delving into the
unknown to touch upon a special creation that nobody else will
experience, because they don't have what it takes to be a proper fan
and wait seven-and-a-half minutes to hear this mind-blowingly
inventive compostion.

In reality, though, I just fast forward the blank bit to find some
2-minute bum gasp written by the drummer. Or in the case of Ash's
1977, the sound of someone violently emptying their stomach in public.
In some cases, I'll forget that the album's still running and
promptly fill my breeks when the unexpected racket starts up.

In the odd rare case that the track is any good, just put it on the
album properly. Nobody's fooled that putting a good song somewhere
awkward makes for a better listening experience. If they do then they
probably shouldn't be allowed a stereo in case they try and breed with
it or something.

Otherwise, just put the bloody song on a b-side, or your website or a
large pyre. Or give it to someone wank like Embrace to put on their
album, thus preventing me from having to listen to it at all.