A new update, long overdue.

Hey folks. It seems that pretty much every post here begins with me apologising for not posting sooner. Let’s not break the habit of a lifetime, thus I begin: sorry for a lack of updates. Life’s good, job good, no driving licence yet, still single, little to report other than general goodness. That’s the checking-in part over with.

I had my first edit with a client and it was terrifying. After preparing and making sure I knew what I was doing and was ready for action, I sat down and forgot everything. There was an hour of sweating and profuse apology before I got up to speed and kluged something together with success. A moral victory.

I do read your comments and your blogs/journals (delete as appropriate), I just don’t always reply or make my presence known. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that I often don’t comment. Chalk it up to me being strange. My heart’s in the right place, I’m just a bit quiet on the interwebs at times.

A MONTH IN FILM
Goods: No Country for Old Men, Juno, Rambo (although purely in the guilty pleasure sense; it’s a terrible film), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Bads: Can’t think of anything right now. I generally find out if something’s worth watching before I do. This could be a way of shooting myself in the foot and I’m missing out on things I might love, but the way I see it is that life’s way too short to spend it watching White Chicks.

I can hear opera. It’s really quite pleasant.

Hey everybody. How’s it hanging? I’ve been pretty quiet on here recently so I just thought I’d drop by and say hello.

Business: I’m enjoying my job, learning some things and making myself useful. I’m fairly certain they’re going to renew my contract once my three-month trial period expires at the end of March.

Pleasure: I’m pretty happy. I haven’t been out a huge amount recently, being a bit low on the ol’ finances, but work’s keeping my mind active and I’ve had a couple of social engagements to keep me sane.

I had a mock driving test on Saturday and it went okay–only five minors over the whole thing. That performance didn’t quite manage to cancel out the six majors. I officially failed six times. Catalogue of indignities:

• Slamming into a kerb when pulling over to the side of a road. Never done that before, my distance perception’s usually pretty good. FAIL.
• Going over to the wrong side of a road when turning right. Never done that before either, don’t know what happened there. FAIL.
• Almost clipping a stationary car when turning that right. FAIL.
• Attempting to go the wrong way down a one-way street (that particular road catches a lot of people out, apparently). My instructor used the dual-controls to stop me on that one. FAIL.
• Pulling out of a road with an approaching car too close. Once in the panic after a stall, the other in the panic following that one-way street debacle. FAIL. FAIL.

It was frustrating, to say the least. We started from the test centre to simulate the full experience, and the annoying thing is that the drive to the centre was the best bit of driving I’ve ever done. The second my instructor said “your test starts here”, I started sweating and my driving went rapidly downhill. Pressure is not something I do well with. I’d never make it as a City Banker (not to mention my sub-normal mathematics skills). The second my test ended I stopped sweating and my driving became good again. Ah well, at least I know what terror to expect.

This seems like as good a time as any to welcome in a new year. 2007 was a mixed bag really, a collection of lows and highs, with the former seeming to outweigh the latter. But hey, this isn’t a review of the year, I’m already sick of those, this entry is to look forward. 2008 is going to be my year. I’ll admit, I said that about 2007 too, but this time around there’s something concrete to support that hypothesis–I start my new job tomorrow, and along with the general feeling of mounting terror that accompanies anything as significant a lifestyle change as a new career, there’s a feeling of positivity, a feeling of this being the first step to a greater tomorrow. Assuming I don’t mess up, and there’s no reason why I should or are likely to, 2009’s first post is going to be even better.

I’m not going to make resolutions this year. Resolutions are made to be broken. I’ll just make vague goals to be set and achieved as I go on.

Some vague goals to be aimed for:

1) Exercise more — Okay, this one’s not so vague. I’ve all ready lifted some weights and done some crunches this morning and feel all the better for it. I would have started yesterday on the 1st, but my hangover was so crushing that any form of exertion may have ended me.
2) It’s all about self-confidence — A goal that will come from hard work. You can’t just say to yourself “be more confident” because we hooman beans just don’t work that way, but a general shedding of various neuroses is something I want to aim for. My new job will definitely help in this respect.
3) Personal relationships — I’m not going to force this one, but (2) is closely related. Who knows what will happen?
4) Learn. Read. Try. Do.

I hope your year’ll be good too. Peace.

Music
My favourite albums of the year then why not </zoidberg>. I’m not saying they’re the best, just my soundtrack to 2007.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
– My favourite album this year. Clever lyrics, complex instrumentation, all awesome. The best live show I’ve ever seen too.
Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden, I Miss Everyone
– My favourite band releases another gem of a record, and arguably their best yet. Play loud.
65daysofstatic - The Destruction of Small Ideas
– More awesomeness from one of the most innovative bands in the UK. I’m still not sure about the lo-fi production on this–I think it would have benefited from a little more polish but still, it’s great. Play louder (it sounds better).
Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
– Their most accessible album to date. Great lyrics.
Baroness - Red Album
– Melodic metal with a Southern Rock inflection.
Between the Buried and Me - Colors
– Progressive, brutal, unique, great.
Chuck Ragan - Feast or Famine
– A massive voice and a great collection of folksy punk to sing along with.
Devil Sold His Soul - A Fragile Hope
– HUGE. Equal parts heaviness and beauty.
Dinosaur Jr - Beyond
– I LOVE GUITAR SOLOS. It’s like the early nineties (a great time for rock) all over again, with a 2000s sheen.
Machine Head - The Blackening
– I was very surprised by this record. Machine Head had never been a band I could just sit and listen to until this one. It’s far more progressive than any of their previous albums, very tight and very loud.

Patton Oswalt - Werewolves and Lollipops (Stand-Up Comedy Album)
– Absolutely hilarious. My favourite stand-up working today.

Envy - Abyssal (EP)
– A improvement over their disappointing previous album Insomniac Doze, this is Envy back in fine form.
These Hands Could Separate the Sky - S/T (EP)
– Pure awesomeness.

TV
Lots of great TV this year, and nearly all of them US comedy imports. I like to laugh.

Flight of the Conchords
– Tenacious D from New Zealand minus the rock star ego (although I still love the D). Works for me.
Heroes
– Addictive.
The IT Crowd
– The second series a vast improvement on the first and frequently hilarious.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
– Anarchic and very funny.
Metalocalypse
– A perfect combination of idiocy and death metal. It’s hard to imagine it failing.
The Sarah Silverman Program
– A pretty lady and incredibly offensive humour. Two of my very favourite things. Hoowah.

Film
Not the greatest year for cinema, however. I missed an awful lot at the cinema, so the first part of next year will be spent catching up.

Ratatouille
– Pixar’s latest and quite possibly, best. They can do no wrong, and Brad Bird is a genius.
Futurama: Bender’s Big Score
– OH YES, YES, AND THRICE YES.
Transformers
– Haha, only joking. It was wank.
Stardust
– The Noughties answer to the Princess Bride? No, that film is impossible to beat, but this does a damn fine job.
The Simpsons Movie
– Disappointing, but The Simpsons is still the greatest, so stop whining.

Books

Books are timeless so I don’t tend to buy books that are brand new releases. I can’t think of many brand new ones I read this year other than the hugely enjoyable final Harry Potter.

Games

Bioshock
– Stunning, absolutely stunning. Wish it had a multiplayer though.
Mass Effect
– I’ve only just started it but the sheer scope of it has me gripped.
Call of Duty 4
– I’m half way through the campaign and two of the missions are two of my favourite gaming things ever (the opener on the ship, and the AC-130 thing).
The Orange Box
– Portal has the greatest script of any game ever, and Half Life 2: Episode 2 didn’t disappoint one jot. Roll on the final chapter.
Halo 3
– Disappointing single player, although it was mainly a victim of its own hype. The multiplayer is awesome though.
Guitar Hero III
– So very, very hard, but a whole lot of fun.

Welp, there we are, a brief summation of some things I enjoyed this year. Next year will be a good one–new job, new adventures. Hooray!

That, my friends, is an epic fail.

Hey friends. I’m feeling pretty awesome today. Hungover too, but mostly awesome. It might have something to do with the fact that I’ve just been offered a job as a runner in a Soho post production house, and that’s most definitely a good thing. It’ll take a little while for it to sink in, but at the moment everything’s great. Phase one of the “Start Living the Dream” plan can be officially ticked. Ticked hard. I start January, and I can’t wait.

Other stuff:
Saw The Arcade Fire on Saturday, and that’s straight to the top of the list of best gigs I’ve ever seen. I cannot describe how great it was.
Saw Biffy Clyro yesterday, who were great, but not as great as the Fire.

NaNoWriMo’s officially dead to me. It was fun whilst it lasted but I’m just not cut out for writing fifty thousand words in a month. I managed eighteen thousand, but it stopped being fun when I spent half the time fretting over the fact that I wasn’t going to finish in time. It wasn’t a total waste of time though: I feel more creative (always good) and proud of writing as much as I did–eighteen thousand words of trashy fiction is something to be proud of, I think.

The driving’s coming along well. I’m not ready for my test yet as I’ll probably need at least ten more lessons (although that’s subject to change, up or down) but it’s really fun. I am the king of bay parking and reversing around corners. Bow to me.

Peace.

Filler post:

There’s a man I see occasionally in town. Let me name him Count Awesomesauce. I first saw him in the summer, when he was wearing the following awesome combo:

- An old Arsenal away shirt with the Dreamcast sponsorship logo
- A tatty grey cardigan
- Black shorts with nifty red thread around the seams, pulled up WAY too high, somewhere just below the nipples (and no, that really isn’t an exaggeration) so that the cuffs were about mid-thigh
- Grey socks
- Purple strapped sandals
- Matted grey hair, Captain Birdseye beard

If that wasn’t good enough, I saw him again this evening on my way home from work. However, now it’s mid-autumn, the nights are drawing in, the air cold and he needs a suitable outfit for the season. Today he was wearing the EXACT same outfit, except swap the grey socks for black stockings. Seriously. The man has style.

Tomorrow is the start of NaNoWriMo. I don’t have a chance, but I’m gonna give it a go because it’s not like I’m doing anything else of note.

Thanks dad:

A man goes to the doctor:
“Doctor, I have a hereditary disease”
“Oh, yes and what’s that?”
“Diarrhoea.”
“That’s not hereditary!”
“Oh, yes it is. It in my genes (jeans)!”