Tuesday, April 19, 2005
end of the new
hi all,
Thought i'd introduce you to an up-and-coming band, 50% of which consists of some old friends of mine. They're called End of the New, or EOTN for short.
Their website is:
http://www.endofthenew.com
According to their literature, they would be best described as "Art-school noise meets heavy, doomed soundscapes, punctuated by post-garage outbursts. EOTN write brittle melodic songs which build into full-on fuzz assaults, set against a dark travelogue of snowscapes, grinding aircraft engines and paranoid isolation."
Having been to see them myself, though I didn't experience any 'fuzz assaults' that I noticed (which sound a bit disturbing anyway), I did think they were pretty damn good, and i'm reliably informed that they keep getting better.
I have to say as well that i'm impressed at what they've set out to do, and what they've achieved. Having dropped everything to pursue my dream job of being a writer (without any confidence of success) it's good to see my friends take a shot at their own dream, and get somewhere with it as well.
Thought i'd introduce you to an up-and-coming band, 50% of which consists of some old friends of mine. They're called End of the New, or EOTN for short.
Their website is:
http://www.endofthenew.com
According to their literature, they would be best described as "Art-school noise meets heavy, doomed soundscapes, punctuated by post-garage outbursts. EOTN write brittle melodic songs which build into full-on fuzz assaults, set against a dark travelogue of snowscapes, grinding aircraft engines and paranoid isolation."
Having been to see them myself, though I didn't experience any 'fuzz assaults' that I noticed (which sound a bit disturbing anyway), I did think they were pretty damn good, and i'm reliably informed that they keep getting better.
I have to say as well that i'm impressed at what they've set out to do, and what they've achieved. Having dropped everything to pursue my dream job of being a writer (without any confidence of success) it's good to see my friends take a shot at their own dream, and get somewhere with it as well.
Monday, April 18, 2005
second random life-task - mass pillow fight
hi all,
Having successfully completed my previous randomly-chosen Thing to Do, inventing a new cocktail (see posts "101 things to do" 12th April 2005, and "Mister Hugh's cocktail corner" 15th April), I decided it was time to generate a new one.
Plugging in my ultra-sophisticated random-number generator (and incidentally wiping out half the electric supply in the city for a while), I came up with number 66. Looking this up, with some trepidation, in the book (101 things to do before you Die), I discovered that I was now required to 'Be part of a flash mob'.
Now this isn't quite as indecent as it sounds, necessarily. According to the book, a flash mob is "a seemingly-coincidental convergence of people who participate in a bizarre activity, then disappear". Sounds good.
Unfortunatey, I could sit around waiting for ever until someone happened to invite me to join one of these. So the only reasonable options for me are either to give up on this task (which obviously I simply will not do) or organise my own.
So i've decided to organise a mass pillow-fight somewhere in Manchester city centre, involving as many people as I can persuade to take part. Basically everyone will converge at a certain time, appearing to be just doing their own thing, until the start of the pillow-fight. Then a (hopefully) huge crowd of people will bash the hell out of each other with soft furnishings for a minute or two, before vanishing at a second signal. It should provide a nicely surreal experience for the people of Manchester.
If by any chance you're up for joining in, then please feel free to contact me by email. It won't happen for a little while, as it might take some organising, but hopefully will be worth the wait.
Having successfully completed my previous randomly-chosen Thing to Do, inventing a new cocktail (see posts "101 things to do" 12th April 2005, and "Mister Hugh's cocktail corner" 15th April), I decided it was time to generate a new one.
Plugging in my ultra-sophisticated random-number generator (and incidentally wiping out half the electric supply in the city for a while), I came up with number 66. Looking this up, with some trepidation, in the book (101 things to do before you Die), I discovered that I was now required to 'Be part of a flash mob'.
Now this isn't quite as indecent as it sounds, necessarily. According to the book, a flash mob is "a seemingly-coincidental convergence of people who participate in a bizarre activity, then disappear". Sounds good.
Unfortunatey, I could sit around waiting for ever until someone happened to invite me to join one of these. So the only reasonable options for me are either to give up on this task (which obviously I simply will not do) or organise my own.
So i've decided to organise a mass pillow-fight somewhere in Manchester city centre, involving as many people as I can persuade to take part. Basically everyone will converge at a certain time, appearing to be just doing their own thing, until the start of the pillow-fight. Then a (hopefully) huge crowd of people will bash the hell out of each other with soft furnishings for a minute or two, before vanishing at a second signal. It should provide a nicely surreal experience for the people of Manchester.
If by any chance you're up for joining in, then please feel free to contact me by email. It won't happen for a little while, as it might take some organising, but hopefully will be worth the wait.
hanami time
Following on from my previous post, yesterday I decided to celebrate hanami properly by actually sitting under a cheery tree, however briefly. I persuaded a couple of flatmates to join me, including Madoka, which was good as she, being japanese, knew what the whole thing was about.
Although the weather wasn't great, and the ground under the trees a little more soggy than it should have been ideally, we had a good time. Sometimes it's just good to get out into the open air of the real world for a while, after spending most of my time in a fairly stuffy room trying to invent imaginary ones (being a writer and all).
Below is the photographic proof of us correctly celebrating hanami. Please ignore the looks of abject terror in the first photo; it seems to happen a lot when i'm aiming the camera for some reason...
They're not as scared as they look!
See, we enjoyed it really
Although the weather wasn't great, and the ground under the trees a little more soggy than it should have been ideally, we had a good time. Sometimes it's just good to get out into the open air of the real world for a while, after spending most of my time in a fairly stuffy room trying to invent imaginary ones (being a writer and all).
Below is the photographic proof of us correctly celebrating hanami. Please ignore the looks of abject terror in the first photo; it seems to happen a lot when i'm aiming the camera for some reason...
They're not as scared as they look!
See, we enjoyed it really
Saturday, April 16, 2005
hanami/haiku evening
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a hanami and haiku evening with some friends of mine. Hanami is the Japanese festival of viewing the cherry blossoms, when they first appear in the springtime, and is celebrated by lots of people in Japan. Traditionally people go out and sit under a cherry tree, and eat lunch or maybe drink a little sake (rice wine).
It's also celebrated, as it happens, by my friends. Their road has lots of cherry trees and this inspired them some years back to start the tradition of writing some haiku (japanese poetry) to celebrate hanami. This year I was invited to join them and i'm very glad I did. After the haikus we continued the japanese theme with excellent sushi and warm sake. According to hanami traditions we should have eaten under the cherry trees, but this being Manchester the weather was against us.
Below are some of the haikus we came up with. Most of them were inspired by what we could see and feel while sat out on the front porch looking out at the cherry trees in the street:
Pink blossoms reach down,
Green Willow reaches up shoots,
Entwines dark branches.
The Manchester spring sky,
Is no longer so sooty,
But still pink on grey.
Grey cold evening,
Trees ablaze with pink blossoms,
Warms heart, but not hands.
A pair of magpies,
House hunting in cherry trees;
Let’s hope they’re lucky.
One earlier one by Suzanne was a particularly imaginative take on a similar scene:
Landlord to tenant:
Looking at blotchy grey sky,
‘That needs repainting’
Giordano got off to a good start by composing a haiku before the evening even began. In fact he wrote it on the bus, inspired by the coincidence of passing the cherry trees along Wilmslow road about a minute after first hearing about the hanami evening. It was written in Italian originally:
Per Wilmslow Road,
I ciliegi,
Poco dopo Mark ne parle.
Which translates roughly as:
Along Wilmslow Road,
The cherry trees;
Soon after Mark talks about them.
I must admit, not having had the practice that the others had, I found it tricky at first. Somewhat paradoxically, I managed to break my writers block by writing about it:
Writer writes slowly,
Stifling his own words with fear;
Self as enemy.
It has to be said, it was a cold evening:
Cold creeps into toes,
Anticipation of warmth,
Is good to savour.
But a very warm occasion in the other sense:
A taste of good wine,
A feeling of warm friendship,
Peace and happiness.
It's also celebrated, as it happens, by my friends. Their road has lots of cherry trees and this inspired them some years back to start the tradition of writing some haiku (japanese poetry) to celebrate hanami. This year I was invited to join them and i'm very glad I did. After the haikus we continued the japanese theme with excellent sushi and warm sake. According to hanami traditions we should have eaten under the cherry trees, but this being Manchester the weather was against us.
Below are some of the haikus we came up with. Most of them were inspired by what we could see and feel while sat out on the front porch looking out at the cherry trees in the street:
Pink blossoms reach down,
Green Willow reaches up shoots,
Entwines dark branches.
The Manchester spring sky,
Is no longer so sooty,
But still pink on grey.
Grey cold evening,
Trees ablaze with pink blossoms,
Warms heart, but not hands.
A pair of magpies,
House hunting in cherry trees;
Let’s hope they’re lucky.
One earlier one by Suzanne was a particularly imaginative take on a similar scene:
Landlord to tenant:
Looking at blotchy grey sky,
‘That needs repainting’
Giordano got off to a good start by composing a haiku before the evening even began. In fact he wrote it on the bus, inspired by the coincidence of passing the cherry trees along Wilmslow road about a minute after first hearing about the hanami evening. It was written in Italian originally:
Per Wilmslow Road,
I ciliegi,
Poco dopo Mark ne parle.
Which translates roughly as:
Along Wilmslow Road,
The cherry trees;
Soon after Mark talks about them.
I must admit, not having had the practice that the others had, I found it tricky at first. Somewhat paradoxically, I managed to break my writers block by writing about it:
Writer writes slowly,
Stifling his own words with fear;
Self as enemy.
It has to be said, it was a cold evening:
Cold creeps into toes,
Anticipation of warmth,
Is good to savour.
But a very warm occasion in the other sense:
A taste of good wine,
A feeling of warm friendship,
Peace and happiness.
Friday, April 15, 2005
mister hugh's cocktail corner
hi,
Well, just like I promised, I did a little experimentation with cocktails on thursday night. Both the process and the results were interesting in many ways.
Continuing on the random theme, I decided to get several other people to each select one of the ingredients for me to work with. To make it more interesting, none of them knew what any of the other ingredients were when they chose theirs. So, thanks to Peggie, Madoka, Ben, Esme, and Stu, here were the ingredients I had to work with:
Raspberries,
Vanilla Ice Cream,
Champagne
Gin,
Blue Curacao (though I couldn't get it and had to settle for Blue Bols),
Noticing a distinct red and blue colour scheme with these ingredients, I decided to draw inspiration from my alter-ego (Spiderman - see the very first post in this blog), to create a two-tone, layered drink, with the raspberries pureed along with the ice-cream on top.
My success was mixed at first, as some of these photos may indicate.
Urrrgh!
Spiderman 3 emerges
Nice - but not red and blue
Eventually, though, I think I succeeded in creating a pretty good drink which had a pleasant and distinctive appearance, quite a good taste and a reasonable alcohol balance. Because of the inevitable failures on the messy road to success, the cocktail is called 'Spiderman 4'.
The Final Result - Spiderman 4
I will decline to publish the details of Spidermans 1, 2 and 3 - I think it's best for all concerned. The champagne was soon identified as a prime culprit for foamy disaster, and thus rejected. Also, I ran out of raspberries as certain people decided that the raspberry puree was quite edible on it's own, and ate it all. So I had to replace it with cranberry juice, and make the ice-cream layer the blue one, which worked better anyway in the end as the raspberry puree had been too pink for the Spiderman theme.
Without further ado, here's the recipe:
----------------------------------------------------------
SPIDERMAN 4
You will need:
1 measure London Dry Gin
1/4 pint of Cranberry Juice
2 measures Blue Bols
3 scoops Vanilla Ice-Cream
Mix the Cranberry Juice and Gin and pour into a highball glass.
Then mix the Ice-Cream (which should be just soft enough to scoop easily, but not melted) with the Blue Bols in a blender.
Slowly and carefully pour the ice-cream mixture into the glass, being sure that the two layers do not mix (this is tricky; tilting the glass will help).
You could add a raspberry for decoration (if your flatmates haven't scoffed them all).
Then serve, but before drinking see warnings below!
----------------------------------------------------------
Before drinking, make sure you have medical assitance on standby, and/or a well-drafted will. I make no guarantees as to the possible short or long term effects of such a wantonly constructed drink.
The only specific warning I will give is not to be fooled by the apparent sludginess of the top layer of the drink, and therefore tip it too fast while drinking; this may result in a hideous splattering of red and blue foam all over your face, hair and clothes, as well as the sofa. The person who was kind enough to discover this for me will remain nameless for the sake of dignity (but if she's reading this, she'd better make sure she's nice to me as I could change my mind about this at any time, and i've still got the photo ;-) . Also, thanks for the best laugh of the week).
Well, just like I promised, I did a little experimentation with cocktails on thursday night. Both the process and the results were interesting in many ways.
Continuing on the random theme, I decided to get several other people to each select one of the ingredients for me to work with. To make it more interesting, none of them knew what any of the other ingredients were when they chose theirs. So, thanks to Peggie, Madoka, Ben, Esme, and Stu, here were the ingredients I had to work with:
Raspberries,
Vanilla Ice Cream,
Champagne
Gin,
Blue Curacao (though I couldn't get it and had to settle for Blue Bols),
Noticing a distinct red and blue colour scheme with these ingredients, I decided to draw inspiration from my alter-ego (Spiderman - see the very first post in this blog), to create a two-tone, layered drink, with the raspberries pureed along with the ice-cream on top.
My success was mixed at first, as some of these photos may indicate.
Urrrgh!
Spiderman 3 emerges
Nice - but not red and blue
Eventually, though, I think I succeeded in creating a pretty good drink which had a pleasant and distinctive appearance, quite a good taste and a reasonable alcohol balance. Because of the inevitable failures on the messy road to success, the cocktail is called 'Spiderman 4'.
The Final Result - Spiderman 4
I will decline to publish the details of Spidermans 1, 2 and 3 - I think it's best for all concerned. The champagne was soon identified as a prime culprit for foamy disaster, and thus rejected. Also, I ran out of raspberries as certain people decided that the raspberry puree was quite edible on it's own, and ate it all. So I had to replace it with cranberry juice, and make the ice-cream layer the blue one, which worked better anyway in the end as the raspberry puree had been too pink for the Spiderman theme.
Without further ado, here's the recipe:
----------------------------------------------------------
SPIDERMAN 4
You will need:
1 measure London Dry Gin
1/4 pint of Cranberry Juice
2 measures Blue Bols
3 scoops Vanilla Ice-Cream
Mix the Cranberry Juice and Gin and pour into a highball glass.
Then mix the Ice-Cream (which should be just soft enough to scoop easily, but not melted) with the Blue Bols in a blender.
Slowly and carefully pour the ice-cream mixture into the glass, being sure that the two layers do not mix (this is tricky; tilting the glass will help).
You could add a raspberry for decoration (if your flatmates haven't scoffed them all).
Then serve, but before drinking see warnings below!
----------------------------------------------------------
Before drinking, make sure you have medical assitance on standby, and/or a well-drafted will. I make no guarantees as to the possible short or long term effects of such a wantonly constructed drink.
The only specific warning I will give is not to be fooled by the apparent sludginess of the top layer of the drink, and therefore tip it too fast while drinking; this may result in a hideous splattering of red and blue foam all over your face, hair and clothes, as well as the sofa. The person who was kind enough to discover this for me will remain nameless for the sake of dignity (but if she's reading this, she'd better make sure she's nice to me as I could change my mind about this at any time, and i've still got the photo ;-) . Also, thanks for the best laugh of the week).
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
101 things to do...
hi all,
So I got a mysterious present the other day.
The only reason it was mysterious was that I got it in the so-called 'secret santa' thing that we did as a house. If you've not heard of it the idea is that everyone buys one other person (chosen at random) a present, so that everyone ends up getting a present, but they don't know who it's from, and have to guess. Much enjoyment is meant to result from this for some reason. Anyway the 'secret santa' concept was OK, but the name turned out to be a bit optimistic; given that we finally got round to exchanging presents (anonymously of course) last week, the 'santa' description was a bit past it's sell-by date, and everyone had more or less worked out who had bought what for everyone else, thus negating the 'secret' part as well.
My present turned out to be a book called '101 things to do before you Die' - fairly self-explanatory, you have a list of tasks which you can tick off when you've done them, and then presumably just as you're in the throes of death, you can pass the time by calculating your final score. I'd heard of it before (it was a lot more popular than the sequel, '2 things to do after you die', for a variety of reasons).
Anyway the first turned out to be 'Write a bestseller' which seemed curiously relevant to me at the moment (not that I think i'll succeed but there you go). This sparked my interest, and I decided to combine it with the lessons of another book i've enjoyed recently, 'The Dice Man' (which explores what happens if you use dice to determine your behaviour and personailty - highly recommended read btw).
So (on a defiantly irregular basis, probably when i'm bored), I plan to randomly choose a number between 1 and 101, and attempt to complete that task in the near future (rerolling if i've already done it). Those attempts, successful or otherwise, that result in an interesting story might get written up in this here blog.
Randomly generating a number right now, i've come up with 34 which requires me to 'Design my own Cocktail'. Seems too easy really. Still, it's a good one to get me started. I'll see what I can come up with over the next few days, and if it's any good i'll give you the recipe, and describe any interesting effects of drinking it that I notice. Wish me luck!
So I got a mysterious present the other day.
The only reason it was mysterious was that I got it in the so-called 'secret santa' thing that we did as a house. If you've not heard of it the idea is that everyone buys one other person (chosen at random) a present, so that everyone ends up getting a present, but they don't know who it's from, and have to guess. Much enjoyment is meant to result from this for some reason. Anyway the 'secret santa' concept was OK, but the name turned out to be a bit optimistic; given that we finally got round to exchanging presents (anonymously of course) last week, the 'santa' description was a bit past it's sell-by date, and everyone had more or less worked out who had bought what for everyone else, thus negating the 'secret' part as well.
My present turned out to be a book called '101 things to do before you Die' - fairly self-explanatory, you have a list of tasks which you can tick off when you've done them, and then presumably just as you're in the throes of death, you can pass the time by calculating your final score. I'd heard of it before (it was a lot more popular than the sequel, '2 things to do after you die', for a variety of reasons).
Anyway the first turned out to be 'Write a bestseller' which seemed curiously relevant to me at the moment (not that I think i'll succeed but there you go). This sparked my interest, and I decided to combine it with the lessons of another book i've enjoyed recently, 'The Dice Man' (which explores what happens if you use dice to determine your behaviour and personailty - highly recommended read btw).
So (on a defiantly irregular basis, probably when i'm bored), I plan to randomly choose a number between 1 and 101, and attempt to complete that task in the near future (rerolling if i've already done it). Those attempts, successful or otherwise, that result in an interesting story might get written up in this here blog.
Randomly generating a number right now, i've come up with 34 which requires me to 'Design my own Cocktail'. Seems too easy really. Still, it's a good one to get me started. I'll see what I can come up with over the next few days, and if it's any good i'll give you the recipe, and describe any interesting effects of drinking it that I notice. Wish me luck!
Friday, April 08, 2005
House Party!
Well, it's taken me almost a week to get round to writing about it, but we had another fairly excellent house party last saturday. It was the usual fancy dress malarky, so I was honour-bound to drag out the old Lion costume I still had lying around...
Chillin' Lion
I didn't feel too lonely in my sartorial exploits though, as the party was well-stocked with strangely-dressed characters. As far as I could tell most of them had done so deliberately.
A random selection:
Scary Green Dude
Ed the Pirate
In case you're wondering that pink thing in Ed's hand is a flamingo (as parrots were hard to come by apparently), although from this angle it might look like something else...
Chillin' Lion
I didn't feel too lonely in my sartorial exploits though, as the party was well-stocked with strangely-dressed characters. As far as I could tell most of them had done so deliberately.
A random selection:
Scary Green Dude
Ed the Pirate
In case you're wondering that pink thing in Ed's hand is a flamingo (as parrots were hard to come by apparently), although from this angle it might look like something else...
