Babble

What a week. While it may seem that I have fallen back into my former sporadic blogging habit once more, I hope that's not the case. My first week back, albeit as a lackey, has been exhausting owing to its busy nature. On top of that, I chose Monday to break in some new shoes and have as a result spent most of this week hobbling around with a pained expression on my face, which I'm sure could only be endearing to my new bosses.

My week may've been busy but it has mainly been a smattering of the mundanities of life - taxes, computers breaking and a makeup crisis - and as exciting as such topics are, I can't help but feel that nobody's really interested.

Back when I'm more awake and generally, coherent.

Disco friends

I may have the hangover from hell but at least I'll know that I spent my last weekend of freedom having a good time. Hope you've all had a good weekend.

Unemployment Day 19

I had hoped to use my 100th post for something slightly more worthy than ranting but needs must. A few days ago, getting ready to go and meet some friends for drinks, I decided to slap on some Touche Eclat under my eyes as I was looking a bit sleep deprived. I had a little burning under my eyes as I put it on but ignored it and chalked it up to some dry skin.

Wednesday morning I wake up and the skin under my eyes is a bit sore. Again, shrug it off and blame it on the ensuing hangover. By yesterday, the skin had swollen and gone a little red, so before I went to bed I whacked some super moisturiser on the skin under my eyes and thought nothing more of it, convinced the problem would heal itself.

This morning, I woke up and it looks like someone's punched me. Granted, the area surrounding my eye isn't purple, green or yellow but it's a very angry, very swollen red, particularly under my right eye. Great. I have two parties to go to this weekend and will either have to resort to wearing sunglasses indoors at night (and looking like an idiot) or show my hideous elephantine eye in all it's glory (and look like something you see on awfulplasticsurgery.com). I will spare those of you with weak stomaches the photographic evidence, I'd hate to be responsible for anyone losing their lunch.

Bad Touche Eclat, bad!

Unemployment Day 18

Unemployed life is fairly unexciting, so today's entertainment comes courtesy of some camera-phone pictures that I meant to post a while ago and never got round to uploading to a computer, until yesterday.

A little background to the pictures: I was on a quick chocolate dash at the end of lunch one day when I happened upon this wire car 'parked' on Albemarle Street in town. It was part of an installation by an artist (whose name currently escapes me) in the Paul Smith store. There were wire motorbikes (as seen in the corner of the profile photo) and the such inside the store and I don't know if the wire car was waiting to be moved inside or somewhat but it looked kinda cool sitting by the curb outside:

Unemployment Day 17

So, the other night, wandering around the supermarket, we came across this:



What exactly is steaklet? And more worryingly, what kind of meat is it comprised of? I'm betting its not going to be actual beef, not at 99p.

It just doesn't bear thinking about.

Unemployment Day 15

And the mind numbing boredom continues. I feel rather like Hugh Grant's character in About a Boy, dividing my time into slots and creating vastly insignificant activities in order to fill said time slots. Today's activities have so far been as follows:

1 - sleep
2 - daytime television (watched in bed)
3 - cup of tea
4 - more daytime television viewing
5 - shower (during lunchtime news)
6 - Neighbours
7 - panicking and in need of something to do, I dug out all of the video clips from the LFW shows I got to go to and began to edit them into a mini video. Below are the results (well, one of them thus far):



This is the Biba autumn/winter show for 2007/8 that I went to back in February. Unfortunately, the sound on my clips was awful and juddery, so I added 'Joe Le Taxi' from As Heard on Radio Soulwax pt 2 but I do remember the soundtrack being really good.

Now to fill time slot 8, lunch.

Unemployment Day 12

In a very short space of time, I have managed to undo all of my good habits and revert to a student-like existence. I am up to speed on Neighbours (more or less), I have browsed every high street shop and obsessively cleaned on several occasions. My knowledge of daytime tv is once again on an academic level and instinctively, I have developed a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache, as if I had an essay due.

Luckily, there are no essays left and after a brief note-to-self-and-stomache moment, I can return to sleep until noon and resume my covert love affair with Phillip Schofield. Unluckily, TV can only keep me interested for so long and I eventually venture out, seemingly hemorrhaging money as I walk. As you can imagine, I'm now having to limit my outings for fear of blowing through all my money as fast as a hurricane.

The wilful countdown to employment begins.

A little bit more of Unemployment day 6 (as told on day 9)

One of the downsides of free time is the eventual boredom that creeps up. I have now taken to spacing out activities in order to make the days pass. Today, I cleaned, tomorrow I'm going on a hunt for shoes for a friend at Primark and then Friday will be assigned to taking the dogs to the groomer's. Oh, what a fun packed life I lead. In amongst the random surfing today, I uploaded another bit of video from Saturday:



If you have any suggestions as to what I could do in London that's fun and doesn't involve spending lots of money, I'd love to hear them. Soon, I'll be reduced to organising my sock draw and noone needs that kind of obsessive compulsive level of order in their lives.

Unemployment Day 8

Grr, I just wrote a post, only for blogger to go and mysteriously lose it. Take two. As you may've noticed, adulescent is no longer dark and gloomy. In my boredom last night and through most of today, I have been trying to remember how to code a blog layout and whilst it may look like I've done jack-all, rest assured, I've been beavering away. I decided it was about time to finally move away from the black background and into the light for spring.

My one problem though is that my coding ability has somewhat slipped in recent years and I'm not up to date on my xhtml. So if there's anyone out there who could explain to me how I can replace the bloody title box with a graphic, please PLEASE let me know.

Unemployment Night 6 (as told on Day 7), Part ii

As promised, the EA Sports chant video from last night:

Unemployment Night 6 (as told on Day 7)

So, as I mentioned in my earlier post, last night we went to see Yourcodenameis:milo and Enter Shikari at the Hammersmith Palais. It was all a bit last minute as to whether we'd actually go or not but it all came true sometime around 5:30pm and we got some speed and socks on and off we trundled.

First up were Yourcodenameis:milo, who in all honesty I personally preferred. Don't get me wrong, Enter Shikari do a good stage show but in terms of taste, Milo are definitely more my thing. It always takes me a while to get into the swing of things with my new camera and unfortunately, these were the first and only photos I got of them.




During their set, a very large and sweaty death pit opened up, full of 14 year old boys with their shirts off and glowsticks everywhere trying to beat the hell out of each other - all in the name of Monday morning at school when everyone asks why they have a black eye and they can smoothly say This thing? Oh, from the death pit on Saturday night. Security started shining torches on them as they counted down to the charge, meaning that it caught everyone's attention just in time for the mass collision of limbs in the middle, kindly spotlighted by the men in neon coats for our gory enjoyment, a nice prelude to the main act.

As I've mentioned before, Enter Shikari is not straight off something that I would listen to when I'm dossing around. Clearly my taste varied from the 13-16 year olds that made up the majority of the crowd (and made me feel very old) but I'll give them this; they do a brilliant stage show. I must also award them kudos for picking up on the fact that everyone likes stuff that glows in the dark, particularly if they're a 15 year old stoner. No doubt they have made a small fortune from their flashy ring things that they used to sell (do they still sell these?) and that the crowds love. From the side balcony, where I moved to for the main show, the crowd was a mass of flashing dots of light and millions of tiny flashing ring lights.

Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling and start the show and tell. [click images for bigger versions]
















At the aftershow later, I was shoving my lollipop in my drink and accidentally let go:



Thankfully, the lollipop was eventually recovered and eaten.

Also at the aftershow, we were talking to the bassist from Milo when I happened to notice someone wandering in with sunglasses perched on his head in the very smoky and dark venue. Being me, I couldn't help but remark about it, something along the lines of "Who's the dude wearing sunglasses? Indoors? At night?" to which my male companions smirked and informed me that the gent whose style I'd called into question was Rou, Enter Shikari's lead singer. Whoops. Naturally, my male companions decided that this was funny enough to warrant dragging Rou over and repeating what I had said. I sincerely hope he saw the funny side.

You can't take me anywhere these days, I just can't be trusted.

Finally, two clips from the show itself, I will in due course also find and post the 'EA sports' chant clip from last night.





Now, back to my regular Sunday activities of loafing, reading the papers and eating. I have to make the most of it as I found out that my planned two month sabbatical has now been shortened to a mere three weeks until I'm back in the cupboard, so that's not much freedom left. Not at all.

Unemployment, Day 5, Part iii (In pictures)

Day five has proven to be a somewhat extended activity on this blog but it's only taken me two days to post pictures, which is pretty good for me. I would've posted these last night but we ended up getting going to see Your Code Name is Milo and Enter Shikari at Hammersmith Palais at the last minute. So, I'll post those photos and videos a bit later.

In the meantime, here's some more photos from Day 5, apologies for the multiple sizes, my computer has gone mad and will no longer listen to code or reason:

Unemployment, Day 5, Part ii

After my blog earlier, I finally broke free of the constraints of house work and ran off to absorb some culture at the Tate Modern with one of my friends. After much faffing, confusion, delay and compulsive buying of food, I finally located my buddy for the day and we went off, got a little stoned and finally, made our way to the gallery, ready for a sensory implosion.

One of the things that lured me to the Tate Modern the most is Carsten Höller slide installation in the Turbine Hall. Unfortunately, we were ill prepared for the sheer number of slide enthusiasts and didn't get to go on them but that's what next week's for. Instead, we picked Levels 3 and 4 as our exhibits for the day. What I love about the Tate Modern is its constant burbling. Unlike most galleries, people walk around, chatting freely and only in the darkened exhibits does the noise subside and a reverential hush descend. The Rothko display was a prime example; while most of level 3 hums with a constant buzz of people, when you enter the Rothko room, the lights are dimmed and people tend to sit, taking in the vast canvases in semi-darkness. The second you walk in, a peace descends upon you that is hard to find anywhere within zone one.

Level four is currently host to the Gilbert and George exhibit, which is amazing. It took us about an hour to get round, having had to stop in the shop to buy up postcards of some of them. Unfortunately, having the shop in the middle of the exhibit felt disorienting when you see prints of stuff you have yet to see on sale. I must admit that when it comes to Gilbert and George, my opinion veers from love to hate on a piece-to-piece basis.

After finding out that the slides were fully booked, we ventured to the gift shop to stock up on lovely things and happened to notice a massive queue on the other side of the Turbine Hall. It turns out Gilbert and George were signing copies of their catalogue this afternoon and the bookshop was full of people lugging the 9kg copies around, buying en masse while their friend stood in the queue, guarding their position. I really should've whipped out my camera and taken a few snaps but at that point, I was too tired to really care and just keen to get the rush hour over and done with.

More photos from my art adventure later.

Unemployment, Day 5

The last few days have passed fairly uneventfully - I have managed to keep myself reasonably busy without spending too much money or wasting too much time. While I admittedly stayed in my pyjamas until 4:30pm on Wednesday, I payed penance by cleaning all day yesterday. Cleaning my room is a herculean task - living in the attic, the eaves mean lots of stooping and crawling around with brooms, dusters and so on in an attempt to attack the large dust bunnies that seem to breed in the corners. And then there's the stuff. With two of us in one room, there is a lot of stuff and very little space in which to shove it. However, a lot of patience, energy and windex later, the room was spotless and the floor was once again visible. It was a nice feeling to flop down at night and look out across the room and not subconciously plot a path for emergencies trips in the night.

Which brings me to something that I saw on the news a few minutes ago. The Met Police have a novel way to deal with people throwing up all over town after six too many drinks. If caught by the Police, the Vomitee has two options - they can either pay an £80 fine or they can use a police provided bucket and mop and clean up their sick, avoiding the fine.

It would be novel to see the worse for wear trying to cope with their own sick, having just been sick. It strikes me that an already queasy stomach is probably not the best condition in which one should be confronted with the recent evictees of said stomach. I can bearly deal with sick when I'm sobre, I could see this being a lengthy process. Start to weakly clean up sick, catch whiff of sick, puke again. regain some composure, once again attempted to clean up sick, catch whiff, puke again. You get the drift. For some people, this option coupled with drunken determination could lead to lengthy battles with a mop and a policeman down a dark alley. Not the way you'd imagined your saturday night in town ending, right?

Unemployment, Day 1

My first real day of unemployment passed quietly. I did a big shop at the local supermarket, cleaned out all of the shit that had been piled on my desk for eternity and other mundane things. My big highlight was a return to Neighbours. Unfortunately, after two months of work induced abstinence, I am somewhat lost in terms of what the hell's going on -

1. Who is the cheap looking Skye substitute with sunglasses marks burnt onto her face?

2. I presume that (1) is the new lesbian mechanic's daughter?

3. Who is the woman who Paul keeps fantasizing about?

4. Where has Max gone? Where is Skye? Is Charlie going to be a ginge?

I clearly have a lot of catching up to do. Answers to the above on a postcard, please.

Celebration of the unemployed.

I have returned to unemployment with joyous abandon. Yesterday was my last day of work experience and as of such, I have no plans for the next two months, until I go back to the magazine for a six month internship. I'll be doing some freelancing and working on some other projects in the meantime though so I'll be keeping busy but also keeping my own hours.

To celebrate my new unemployed freedom, I've spent the last 15 or so hours in bed. It's now 3:30pm and apart from getting out of bed for a can of coke, I have not needed to move since around midnight last night.

All of this lying down has not been in vain, oh no. I have quietly been scheming and plotting to drag myself out of bed and up to the high street to eat a big mac and get some fresh air since my mac attack hit around noon. Hopefully the combination of grease and being somewhere other than my bed will finish off my gradually disappating hangover, caused by last-day-drinks last night.

I really must either stop drinking entirely or start drinking more and rebuild my tolerance for alcohol. These days I find myself falling about, waving umbrellas, being surly to the chinese takeaway man and engaging strangers in conversations at bus stops after three drinks, whereas little over a year ago three drinks would've allowed me to still be for the most part coherent and the least, able to still walk in a straight line. I miss those days.