Mister Hugh's World of Randomness

hi all,

If you think you can take it, check out the following link:

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2667017?htv=12&htv=12

It's Mr. T (of A-team fame) doing (or perhaps the word should be perpetrating) a rap. It's called "Respect your Mother". It's actually about respecting your dear old Mum. Yes, really.

Sample quote:

'Take care of your Mother, you only get one'

Great stuff!

Also worth checking out on the same site(if you haven't already exceeded your quota for cringing today) is William Shatner's take on 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'. No words of mine can describe it. You must see it for yourself.

Enjoy!

hi,

The other day I happened to be sitting in Picadilly gardens in manchester, enjoyng the afternoon sun (which happens all too rarely), when my sixth sense, which is finely tuned for picking up any faint signs of surreal or silly behaviour, started screaming at me.

I turned round to see perhaps ten or fifteen men dressed in white overalls and builders' hats, in a line, one behind the other, following a woman who seemed totally oblivious to the 'tail' she had suddenly acquired.

She eventually noticed the reaction she was causing to the general public and turned round in confusion to see what was going on. The blokes in white (hereafter known as BiWs) then did a fairly creditable impression of her being surprised, enhanced by the fat that there were fifteen of them doing it in unison.

The silly antics then continued in a similar way with the BiWs targeting many other unsuspecting people. After a while I noticed that they weren't simply builders who'd got bored and decided to do somerhing a little different for the afternoon, but were carrying little briefcases advertising Discovery Channel. I was a little disappointed by this, but the guys were clearly enjoying themselves as well as simply doing their job. It's a shame I didn't happen to have my digital camera on me at the time, so I can't show you what hey looked like, but it was pretty good.

After a while I decided to fight fire with fire and follow them. I managed to do this unnoticed for a couple of minutes, and even got a handful of people to join on behind me. My ultimate aim was to get someone who the BiWs were following to start following me at the same time, which would cause the whole line to circle around aimlessly, at which point I could swiftly escpae and watch the carnage I'd created. Suffice to say it didn't quite work, although a lot of fun was had by all in any case.

So in summary, even though it was an advertising gimmick, I was impressed by the BiWs spirit of fun, which brightened up everyone's day. Does it mean i'll watch the Discovery Channel? Probably not.

Hi all,

I'd like to introduce you to a new concept that I have invented, hopefully (though not very probably) before anyone else. It's called Meta-photography, and basically involves the following;

- finding a touristy area where people are taking photos

- sneaking up behind randomly chosen target from among aforementioned tourists

- taking extremely close-up photos of them taking photos

- getting away with the above unnoticed

- and last but not least, publishing the resultant meta-photos, hopefully to critical acclaim and public adoration (well, a man can dream, can't he?)

It's great fun. I highly recommend you try it sometime. I thought up the idea while I was doing a few hours of sightseeing in Paris, on my way back from Technival (see earlier post). But i'm sure it would work anywhere.

These are my first three meta-photos (and just possibly the first three in human history as well)



A Photo of someone taking a photo





Another photo of someone taking a photo





You'd think i'd be bored of this by now, but no!

hi,

I'd like to share with you a very pleasant little story about a giant frying pan. Are you sitting comfortably?

Well, why not?

I don't care, I'll begin anyway.

(Sorry)

Anyway, this happened when me and ben were heading back from Technival (see previous post). At this point in time our nerves were very slighly rattled after hitching a lift with a guy who we very quickly discovered was a crack addict. We'd reached a very picturesque town called Sezanne, from where we were planning to catch the coach back towards Paris. Wandering along the street towards the station, we came upon this:


Now that's what I call a frying pan!

To be honest, it was quite hard to miss. Anyway in a spirit of curiousity, we asked the people in the nearby house what it was all about (in our best Frenglish, of course). It turns out that the couple had used it to cook a massive omelette for the entire town as part of a wine festival the previous week.

As well as seriously dedicated amateur caterers, the couple were really nice and ended up giving us a lift to the station, and then to a nearby campsite in which we spent an amazingly relaxing afternoon and night, and in fact the whole thing turned out rather fantastically. So that was good.

So my lesson for the day is this; if you ever see a giant frying pan in the street, go and talk to its owners. They're likely to be nice people.

hi guys,

A couple of weeks ago me and ben went on a bit of a mission. Technival; which is the biggest techno festival in europe, was happening in france and we felt that it would be remiss of us not to go. The reason it was a bit of an adventure was that we had only the vaguest idea of where is was going to be or how to get there, or even whether it would be closed down by the french police at the last moment.

Considering all that, we got there pretty easily, though not without:

- encountering old men with excess chocolate,

- wandering around Paris with our rucksacks looking for a hostel in the middle of the night (in the nightclub district judging by everyone else we met),

- contradictary french train timetables,

- bomb scares,

- busloads of trustafarians,

- and the oldest suncream known to man.

The festival itself was amazing; an old military airbase with two runways about a mile long each. The entire lengths of both runways were lined with sound systems on both sides. I'm (not particularly reliably) informed that there were about 180,000 people there on the Saturday night; this seems believeable considering the continuous flow of cars into the site for hours.

Suffice to say that ben and myself did our duty as mentalists, and had a good time chilling out in the daytimes as well. I say chilling out - in fact we nearly roasted ourselves as there was some freakishly hot weather over the weekend.

It was very relaxing, despite the following:

- the random junkies (some of whom decided to borrow our cutlery to cook up heroin on)

- the numerous gendarmes dressed in riot gear, who seemed to enjoy playing with their new toy; a big shiny police helicopter which was usually flying at about head height over our tent

- the relentless attentions of a horde of (supposedly rare) poisonous caterpillars who apparently inhabited the site (it being a nature reserve when not hosting massive raves), but whose favoured habitat seemed to be our arms and legs


And of course, we had a good time dancing away like maniacs, often fully costumed-up (in my case with the fast-becoming-ubiquitous Lion costume). In the process we met a lot of interesting individuals, many of them french and all of them somewhat hot and sweaty like us. Here are some of them:


Shouting girl! - this girl liked to wander up next to a speaker and shout at it continuously for several minutes, before running away. Takes all sorts I suppose...



The most French-looking bloke in the World



Umm - what?





Ben's got the mother-fuckin old skool flavour. He's a raver, watch your behaviour (this quote was written by him. It's not my fault)



'I saw a Lion hugging Santa Claus...'



A Harlequin being savaged by a Lion, of course



More from the Technival trip to follow soon...

hi all,

In case anyone is still bothering to read this blog, sorry about the lack of new posts for a while. It's not, as some might have suspected, because I died. In fact i've just got a bit embroiled in my book. Every time I turn on my PC, I seem to feel the need to write more. Unfortunately, progress didn't seem to speed up significantly as a result; i've spent most of my time tinkering with details like the perfectionist I am, and not enough time writing new material.

But finally I seem to have more-or-less reached the stage where I can send the first section of my novel out for people to sample. BTW, if anyone's interested in reviewing it for me who I haven't already asked, then drop me an email.

Anyway, having temporarily cured my obsessional/perfectionist streak, I again have some time for things other than the novel. So i'm back online and ready to start posting again. Watch this space!