The tale of Fish-hook

Some things happen when you least expect them. Standing on Slough High Street today with numerous bags at my feet, contemplating how to tackle a Millets bag crisis when I looked up and came eye-to-nutbag with a man about 10 feet away from me, pacing up the street. The gentleman in question was causing quite a stir as he walked up the paved shopping area, not doubt largely down to his outfit, which can only be described as fisherman-meets-hooker.

It consisted of fishnet stockings of which one was held up by a garter belt, the other around his ankle, black mesh hot pants with meat and two veg on full display and a black and pink corset completed the outfit peaking out from beneath the relatively normal looking loose jacket.

It truly was a sight to behold, so thank you, you strange, strange man, who I shall dub Fish-hook. You made my day, in a really odd way.

Calm after the Monday

Mondays always seem worse than they actually are but for those of you who had a bad Monday, I bring something to relieve the stress. Surfing youtube yesterday, I found this video. It made me happy, so now I share it's soothing effects with you:


A Postcard From Brighton

Now there's just Tuesday to get through.

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POSTSCRIPT: By sheer weirdness, student appears to have updated itself. I'm not entirely sure how as I have no recollection of editting or posting anything new. Weird.

Somebody, hire me!

Urgh, the depressing reality of once again starting the job hunt is hanging over me like a dark cloud, ready to piss it down at any moment. It's just so bloody daunting, writing endless cover letters, trying to keep the pleading tone out of the text and tweaking your CV relentlessly.

I think back to my first job, working in a video store and it all seemed so easy. It was one of the first places I dropped in my virtually blank CV and lo, behold, interview!

On the day of the interview, I remember feeling somewhat nihilistic, having failed my driving test about two hours before and I think my then potential bosses quite liked the fact that not only was I black mooded but my favourite film was Clerks.

Whilst the pay was appalling, the job made it totally worth it, as did the people I worked with there. Many hours were spent sitting on the counter, watching movies and eating chinese takeout from a few shops down. The people at Blockbuster down the street never got that and boy, did they hate us for it.

The ultimate nature battle

Following my earlier tirade, I thought it only fair to counteract it with some nonsense.



Snake eats alligator, alligator gets his own back. Its like WWF but with deadly reptiles instead of fat men in lycra. A 13 foot burmese python tried to eat a 6 foot alligator but unfortunately for the snake, the alligator was alive and kicking at the time and tried to make a break for freedom via the snake's stomach wall.

Read the full story here

Red Ken strikes again

Those who know me will probably know that there are few times that I will use the word cunt to describe someone or something and that the ugly word only leaves my lips in extreme situations. Those who know that will probably also be aware of my hatred for the man currently in charge of our glorious capital, one Ken Livingstone. I am now about to link those two facts together in one sentence, a sentence that has long been bandied around in the quiet of my mind but now longs to escape.

Ken Livingstone is a cunt.

But I'm sure you already knew that. Having spent £600,000 of tax payers' money on airfare alone for his Cuban holiday failed 'business' trip, trying to score cheap oil for London from Venezuela, this morning it emerged that he's already blown £1,000,000 on consultations for the West London Tram, which in grand tradition, he plans to ignore completely.

There is a reason that most of West London voted Tory. That reason is that we don't want a bloody tram. It's not a case of 'scare mongering' as Red Ken claims, simply put, we. Don't. Want. It. Apart from the fact that it would involve digging up half of West London, would divert traffic down otherwise quiet residential streets and only run at 6mph (meaning most people could walk quicker). Like we need another form of public transport for the local yobs to graff all over.

Red Ken, of course, claims that it would cut congestion (where have we heard that before?!) and allow for a more harmonious Uxbridge road. I doubt it. You're not going to get people out of their cars and onto trams, matey.

I think I should probably end this tirade now, lest I get over enthusiastic in my dark thoughts towards this buffoon of a man because we all know I could be here all day, criticising his ridiculous plans.

This is one west Londoner who isn't impressed.

The curse of Yahoo! strikes

Sometimes, I wish had more disposable income to just chuck around, buying endless storage on my own domain. You may've noticed that all but a few of the images have suddenly decided to up sticks and instead display a blank canvas with that annoying little square and cross in the corner. Maybe I screwed up my code was my first thought but I checked it, no faults there. And then I checked my geocities, where I generally upload all of the images I post on here. And everything appears to have disappeared. Panic. Clickclickclick, phew it's back.

Just those bastards trying to scare me. I click on a file and am told it's unavailable. Network problem? No. Apparently, I have committed the heinous web crime of exceeding my data transfer limit and therefore, I have been sent to the equivalent of the naughty step in cyber space.

I don't know how long this lasts for, I'm hoping that they'll be back up by tomorrow although god only knows with these tyrannical bastards.

My camera is quite shit, really.

So, I'm not very good at keeping up with this whole blogging thing these days, am I? I loll around for a few days, get a sudden burst of guilt that I'm letting my brain degenerate into mush and hop back onto the keyboard. As we all know, I'll stick to it for a week or two then suffer an attack of laziness one evening, that if not taken care of immediately, can lead to anything up to a month of me not-being-arsed.

Last week's absence was triggered by Tuesday's outing to see Incubus at the Astoria. Then, on Wednesday, I was still too tired. By Thursday, all aspiring blog topics had been rendered relatively obselete and so the cycle continued.

However, today is Sunday (you probably already knew that) and I really have no excuse. Unfortunately, Tuesday's a long time ago and as such, most of the initial rush of seeing one of my favourite bands has somewhat worn off. For me, coming out of a gig is like waking from a dream. There is something surreal about being crammed into a sweaty auditorium with 2000 other people, most of them probably slightly pissed. Once the overpoweringly loud music starts up, the fans start singing along and the bright colourful stage lights have all but blinded you, there's only the obligatory kick to the head to be administered by the bloke crowd surfing over you. Then, that's it. The darkness and the drink soon lull you into a shared waking dream and you barely notice the fat man drenched in other people's sweat from the mosh pit pressing past you.

Anyway, enough of me rambling, here are some pictures. My digital camera is slowly starting to give up the ghost and is worryingly starting to be out stripped by some camera phones on the market. I have since inherited a slightly better one, stress on the slightly.


my camera flash clearly considers peoples' arms more interesting than Brandon Boyd. I beg to differ, although I'm not so sure about his new hair cut.


I didn't notice the random pair of crowd surfing legs in the bottom right hand side of this picture until I uploaded it. It's not technically a good picture, none of these are but the legs make me giggle, so ha.


Brandon's back tattoo, blurry and again, awful picture but squint and leer, ladies.

And thus ends the Incubus adventure in pictures. I would post more of them but they're all mainly lots of the backs of peoples' heads since I'm short and my zoom's shit. I did get a few good video clips but I'd probably receive a nasty letter ordering me to take them down and I don't have the inclination to deal with lawyers as well as all of the crap real life throws at me already.

Another listless day

So much for my resolve to actually make something of this blog. I have all these wild notions that I'll post every day, I do it for a week and then my resolve wanders off, hand in hand with the ideas portion of my frontal lobe. Well, Tuesday I couldn't really, as I was busy watching Incubus at the Astoria (which was great, pictures coming later this evening or whenever I succeed in pulling my finger out).

And of course, once one is derailed, it's very easy to stay that way. Owing to the lack of anything substantial to do at work, I've once again returned, with hopes of alleviating at least some of the boredom that seems to spiral its way through my days but even blogging seems somewhat uninteresting when I'm not full of fury over something or other.

The one potentially-exciting-but-not-really thing that happened to me today was seeing who I thought was George Michael walking down Kensington High Street. The dude looked exactly like him but as it was only 11am and rich people don't need to get up that early, there's every chance it wasn't him and just someone who wants desperately to look like him.

Enough time wasting, time to do something productive, like read Heat magazine.

Tales of the unexpected

There are some things in life that take you completely by surprise and none more so than coming face to face with a would be burglar*.

Saturday night, we come home around 2am and go through to the kitchen. As I deliberated on what to use as filling, I noticed that the security light had come on at the side of the house. Expecting to see a cat or maybe an urban fox making their way along our pathway, I was rather more surprised by the startled eyes of what I imagine was a potential burglar, sulking his way round and scanning for ways in. Unfortunately for him and very fortunately for us, I am naturally a curious city creature and country style animals - such as foxes - still intrigue me. So, naturally when the security light popped on, I went running to the doors. It's a strange experience to lock eyes with someone who you quickly come to realise wants to steal from you.

The burglar theory was further confirmed by the way he turned and sprinted back from whence he came, scrambling across our neighbours' bikeshed and out onto the street to disappear into the night. Police were called and I must applaud them for arriving reasonably quickly. Slight Diversion - unlike the incident with my car, when it took them a good 6 hours to show, although it was their equivalent of CSI and hence, terribly dramatic. End Diversion.

Funnily enough, our teenage next door neighbour initially thought the scumbag was one of my friends, seeing as he wasn't really dressed as one would expect (ie all in black) but rather, one of the those in the back from Blazin' Squad. I also thought the guy could be a friend of our neighbours' sneaking in for a laugh. Until he ran and jumped the shed.

And whilst that son of a bitch still roams the streets, I at least take comfort in the fact that I didn't give him the opportunity to burgle us. So, HA! Mr Burglar Man, HA!

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* - Actually there are much more surprising things. Not all of them great. Today, it took me four hours to get to work, when it should've taken me twenty minutes. A hideous accident somewhere had shut pretty much the entire motorway down. The joys of Monday.

(Yeay.)

Occasionally, good things - like champagne and canapes - happen. Once in a blue moon, they happen at work. In the middle of the day. (Yeay.) Kinda makes the other slog worth it.

Soul swelling

Another day, another chase across London, loading up on goodies as I went. Trekking along Bayswater Road on foot today, I had what one can only describe as a soul swelling moment. As I stopped to examine a bus stop map to see if I could get where I was going any faster with my trusty Oyster, I turned around and my eyes scanned across Hyde Park - the square with the fountains and all of the greenery, slowly turning to an autumn palette, the sun high in the clear sky. God, I'm whipping out cliches left, right and centre, but it was just beautiful. Unfortunately, being only equipped with my camera-phone and challenged by all of the white vans, taxis and buses that race up and down the street, the above picture is the only one that came out without a motor vehicle obstructing the view. Hence, no pictures of the fountain or long stretches of green. Instead, one has an orange-leaved tree.

A semi-exciting thing happened to me on the way back. Driving back through Holland Park, I was sat in front of a yellow box junction at some traffic lights when I looked up from studying my nails and Ian Brown was looking at me as he crossed in front of my car. It took me about two or three seconds to click who he was and by the time I'd considered getting out my phone, he'd disappeared across and up the road.

Oh well. Just know I'm watching you Ian, and next time I'll be ready.

More camera phone fun

So, since it appears that I am no longer capable of being witty nor intelligent, I have sunk to the lows of picture posts of things that keep me going on my never ending trips around town for work. [Wow, long sentence]

Standing outside the food entrance to Marks and Spencer today, I looked to my right and saw something that I'd never noticed before, a mural on a building on Noel Street:



I'm surprised I've never noticed it before today but I guess shopping for business rather than pleasure does that to a girl. Incidentally, I also saw the same floating cherry picker as I drove up Shaftsbury Avenue as I left Soho. Later in the day, across town in Hackney, I was off on another thankless mission when this advert caught my eye:

Is it still parking if your wheels don't touch the ground?

These days, it doesn't take much to amuse me and so when I saw this cherry picker outside a theatre as I walked up Shaftsbury Avenue on another work related mission, I couldn't help but take a picture:



I also saw the most stereotypical prostitute I've ever seen today, lurking in a doorway in Soho, dressed in leopard print, heels, lots of cheap gold jewellery and carrying some serious excess body weight. Since I guessed that in a fight, she'd easily win, I didn't take a picture as there was a likely chance that she might thump me or worse.

So instead, enjoy the view of the Astoria from the stage, minus the small town boys:

Catch me (up) if you can

It's been a busy few days in ant-land, missioning it back and forward between the studio and Soho to pick up bits and pieces. On one trip in on Thursday I saw the Make me a Supermodel girls and boys lurking on St Martin's Lane after they'd finished a shoot. I got some very snooty looks from one or two as I piled out of a black cab right in front of them, with a cavalcade of bags tumbling after me. On the same stretch of road, I also saw Jonathan Ross' wife, Jane (?) who was talking into a mobile phone while swinging her pinky/red hair around.

Come the weekend, I finally had time to breathe and go shopping, although admittedly it was only Primark. I spent an hour trawling for a size 8-10 sequin dress and was about to give up when I finally came across one. And Anti rejoiced. Although, I have nowhere to wear it to at the moment, sadly. So for the moment, it will have to hang in my crammed wardrobe.

Although, the real excitement lay in the evening's activities, namely going to the Astoria to see Enter Shikari, PenknifeLovelife, semi-colon open bracket and some other random band who I didn't actually see. And in case you're interested, Penknife have a new single out on Small Town Records. Yes, that's a blatant plug but that's the Small Town boys in the picture above, standing on the stage at the Astoria - something everyone got a little excited about... Okay, maybe just me.

Right. I think we're all up to date. A boring, navel gazing blog it may have been but these days, I always feel as if I'm seriously lacking in either time or brain capacity to discuss anything vaguely important such as Saddam Hussein's guilty verdict, the American mid-term elections, the global warming crisis or the fact that Neighbours STILL doesn't have an omnibus.

Now, I bet you're all eagerly awaiting the next installment of Anti-powered drivel that I'm bound to serve up.

Gators and sheep and rats, oh my!

As our halloween passed fairly quietly this year with no random eggings, yobs in masks or trick or treaters in general, I have decided to bore entertain you with animal to human ratios instead.

I bet you didn't know that there is a human to alligator ratio of 9:1 in the state of Florida. That's a lot of gators. As a result, the state is considering whether to remove them from an endangered species list and allow people to deal with nuisance alligators themselves. Call me crazy but in my eyes, scared-human-plus-gun-plus-big-gator can only add up to carnage in one form or another. However, I'm not entirely opposed to a big of gator hunting.

Many years ago, we used to take our holidays in Florida, staying with friends of my parents whose house backed onto a very large man made lake filled with the snaggly toothed beasts. Although the properties that surrounded the lake all had large black guard rails, once in a while there would be reports of a neighbour waking up after a storm to discover their friendly neighbourhood terror swimming in their pool. I remember the novelty factor of driving along the road and coming across alligator road kill. My mother briefly mused about whether it would make a nice little clutch bag before we drove on. But I digress, back to animal quantities.

Florida may have one gator for every human but New Zealand has 16 sheep for every human. And while that may seem outrageous at first, trust me, I've never seen so many sheep in my life as I did in New Zealand. We even created our own car game of beep the sheep as we passed endless fields full of them in our tinny old car and they certainly added a distinct charm to the rolling landscapes.

And then finally, there's London, where there are no outstanding animal ratio related facts, bar that you're never more than ten metres from a rat. Given that there are approximately ten million people (give or take) in London, that's an awful lot of rats.