I hate Mondays

Once in a while, a day is sent to test you in every possible way. Continuing on from Thursday and Friday, which had already tested my patience somewhat, today was that day, the one that pushes you over the edge, for me. No matter what I did - how many people I called or how many exhausted, pleading messages I left on answering machines - it seemed to get me nowhere. I have another shoot tomorrow and am having my meltdown is due to the sheer lack of clothing that I have - not from lack of trying, believe me. I am still praying that my one hope follows through tomorrow and we get enough to pull it off. Just in case, I may have to raid my fancy dress box in order to have something worth using.

Mondays suck.

Geocities - the evil empire

So, once again, I find myself bitching incoherently about Geocities, rather than singing the praises of Kopparberg rediscovered. Apparently, I have once again exceeded my bandwidth on the site that I use as a dumping ground for big picture files and random crap. I'm not entirely sure HOW I've exceeded my bandwidth. Beyond the handful of people who visit this site and my somewhat defunct myspace page, there are few who would access images streamed from my geocities and I haven't uploaded anything in a while.

But apparently, the effort of five people visiting yesterday (and my boyfriend clicking onto my myspace to leave abuse about facebook) has exhausted geocities and so I'm now temporarily down and my myspace page is effectively a blank page without its' background image as all of the text is white. I've tried to like flickr, I really have, but it's just not a happy coupling. Thank God I've since taken off the blogger blinkers and realised I can upload stuff directly to here. Much easier.

I wish I had something more exciting to bitch/whine/brag about than Geocities.

Camden Crawl, part iii : Aha!

Part 3 makes its' way onto youtube:

Camden Crawl, part ii

So, I promised you videos and (since the last two days have been of the relatively mediocre variety), I bring you videos of YourCodeNameIs:Milo. Enjoy.






For some reason, youtube won't acknowledge the third video, so I'll have to post it another time. For those who care to know, my hearing is still fuzzy.

Camden Crawl(ing home)

Another weekend, another imbalance in the ears. Friday night, all very last minute, I ended up at the Camden Crawl after work. Having absolutely no idea who was playing and where, I was at the mercy of my boyfriend. We ended up in the Oh! Bar to watch Flood of Red, YourCodeNameis:Milo and Biffy Clyro. Unfortunately, Biffy didn't end up going on until sometime around 1am, by which point we'd left, feet notwithstanding standing with no moving in the very rammed venue. Anyway, on with the pictures. First up, Flood of Red (again). Please note the man in the front row who apparently wants to be Russell Brand - not only is he sporting RB's trademark backcombed hairdo, he was squeezed into skinny jeans, cravat and waistcoat. Anyway, photos:







Russell-Brand-man left after FOR, which was a shame. I swear I've seen him at other FOR gigs, although the over-familiarity could've just been caused by his hair. With him gone, it was YourCodeNameIs:Milo's turn to entertain me and entertain me, they did. Anyone who isn't entertained by a man playing guitar whilst wearing a pantomimie horse's head should question what truly does entertain them:







I'll post videos eventually, once I've regained the hearing in my ears.

Tales from the antcam

Yesterday, I mentioned the carboat and the coolest lift in the world. Tonight, I actually downloaded the pictures, rather than leave them to sit on my camera as I often do. So, without further ado, I present to you, Carboat:


Carboat from a distance


Carboat up close.

And now the lift I also mentioned yesterday, as found at the Sanderson Hotel, where I went on an errand yesterday afternoon:



It's really dark inside and the walls are illuminated 3D images of space, its oddly calming. If I were ever to get stuck in a lift, I hope it's that one. It reminded me of an amazing art installation I came across in Brisbane when I was backpacking. I can't remember the artist but I loved it so much that I would visit it almost every day that we stayed in the city.

Enough waffling. It's late and I need food.

Rawk.

Since I'm pretty tired and can't imagine I'll be up to writing a long entry, I'll say that I've been busy, which is kind of true. Friday night we went to see Flood of Red, Kids in Glass Houses and The Blackout. In my bright rainbow dress and yellow shoes, I stood out in the mainly emo crowd like a great big beacon of clownishness. So now, to some pictures:







Random dude's really cool hair


The crowd, all of whom were at least half a decade younger than me. There were also 3 teenage girls, no older than 13, who were sharing one pair of sunglasses, taking it in turns to wear them in this dark, dark venue. Very cool.




Sunday, we went to a pub by the river because like all English people, we have to make the most of the sun, when it so rarely appears. By make the most of, I mean binge drink, get sunburnt and maybe a touch of sunstroke too. This also means that most of my photos from then are bizarre, over-exposed images of my friends' drunken gurning. But there was a funny boat/car thing that a guy kept whizzing around in on the river so when I download more photos from my camera, I'll post them, along with the coolest lift in the world.

I bet you're intrigued now.

In the bowels of (shopping) hell

The video above is the opening of Primark in Oxford Street last Thursday - the day when Police had to be called, the queues for the tills were 100 deep and the store had to adopt a 'one in, one out' policy.

A girl from work and I decided we would head down to the new giant Primark for a little browse after work, the aim to get our hands on some gold wedges we'd seen in a magazine. We had foolishly presumed that a week after it had opened, the pandemonium would've died down and we'd be able to stroll right in.

Oh, how wrong we were.

The queue just to get in snaked from the corner entrance, down the side of the building, right round the back of the building and back again. Inside, it didn't get much better. It was as though half of Oxford Street had descended in a co-ordinated attack on the Marble Arch end. We had originally planned to divide and conquer but even as a seasoned Primark scrummer (I survived the christmas time sequin dress delivery), I couldn't take it. There were no shoes on the display racks, instead they lay in mock-croc ballet pump puddles, meaning that it became impossible to move upstairs. After twenty minutes of trying to fight past people and witnessing the till queues that wove through the store, I gave up and went home empty handed.

And that almost never happens when there's Primark involved.

Sunny style

On recent shopping adventures, I have noticed something. Maybe you have noticed this oddity too. Perhaps you are guilty of the oddity yourself. Ambling around Selfridges last weekend, on a mission to get my boyfriend some new trainers, I noticed something, or rather someone, odd. A woman was sitting on the stools as her own boyfriend meandered amongst the displays choosing shoes, wearing dark sunglasses, indoors. Now, as dazzling as the concession's back wall may have been, it did not warrant sunglasses. Nor did the overhead lighting. All around us, people browsed; some with sunglasses on top of their heads or tucked into the necks of their t-shirts, some without but noone else wore sunglasses indoors amongst us.

As you may remember from some of my previous posts, I have a thing about people wearing sunglasses. Not that I dislike sunglasses, far from it. I own at least 15 pairs and am always gurning over others that I am yet to add to my collection or admiring others on passersby. But I also believe in discipline when wearing them. Perched on top of the head or worn as a hairband indoors during sunny days, fine. Summer, when they become a whole new level of accessory, ditto. But in the dark or indoors... I'm sorry but you look like a tool.


I'm sure some of you are by now disgruntled and mumbling about the possibilities of blindness, eye disorders and so forth. Fair enough. I too considered this but it was quickly dismissed when I recognised that the sunglasses she was wearing were Gucci and somehow I don't think they've yet branched out into medicinal purpose black out glasses. The theory was further backed up when the lady in question got quickly up to point her boyfriend to some shoes that had caught her eye.

For the approximately twenty minutes or so that we were there, those sunglasses never once left the bridge of the woman's nose. And for twenty minutes or so, I stared at this woman. I apologise if I creeped her out but I found her behaviour so odd that I couldn't tear my eyes away.

However, she was not the only one afflicted with this habit. Later, downstairs in the Topshop concession, I was flicking through some rails when two teenage girls who could not have been older than 14 tripped in through the doors in matching Nicole Richie tribute outfits and large oversize sunglasses perched on their tiny noses. They were clearly incredibly pleased with themselves and their ability to copy, down to the tiniest detail, the skeletal waif's style and yes, they looked great. As they breezed through, wafting a faint smell of sick in their wake, they made no effort to remove the giant bug sunglasses from their faces. Quite how they didn't trip or knock into anything, I'll never know.

And ladies, just because Nicole Richie does it - or Lindsay Lohan, Britney or any other number of vacuous LA souls do it - it does not make it cool. In fact, it just makes you look rather silly in the eyes of us (non-wearing-sunglasses-indoors) mere mortals.

The week that was

Firstly, Happy Easter to all those celebrate it. To those who don't, Happy Bank Holiday Weekend.

Before I am accused of running off into the sunny weather, never to be seen again, I feel it only fair that I am allowed to plead my case. Since our technical crisis not that long ago, I have been thrown to an internet Siberia. I have now resorted to using our iMac and its weird feeling keyboard where the @ is not where it should be. I am by nature a creature of habit and find the whole business frustrating, jabbing relentlessly at the wrong keys.

I could use the computer at work but I'm not sure it's allowed and I'd rather not be reprimanded for inappropriate internet behaviour. It was bad enough last week when I tried to access a PR company's website and for some inexplicable reason, it registered on our system as porn. Cue much red faced emailing to the IT guys, persuading them that I'm not a pervert, I'm just trying to do my job. Great.

My first week as a fully fledged intern went more or less smoothly, bar the incident with a package full of clothes not arriving at a shoot destination on time but sometimes, stuff like that is out of your control. Unless someone officially accompanies the stuff there, you just have to keep your fingers crossed and pray that customs doesn't screw you over.

Thankfully, apart from that, I've been broken in gently with the two four-day weeks that we have now and the sun has definitely eased the pain of full time employment. Basking for an hour in the local park can make even the most horrible day just that little bit better and having an entire four days off has done wonders for my mood and my pallour - I refuse to alternate between pastiness and the dodgy orange fake tan smears on my ankles any longer.

And now, since I can no longer bear this crazy narrow keyboard, here's a new batch of photos: