They think it's all over...

...But it's not really. Or rather it sort of is - it's all rather confusing frankly.

The point of all this inanity is that today is the last day spent living up in Birmingham at uni before I go home for the summer. It's a hugely surreal experience - this time last year I went home as soon as I finished by exams because I didn't like my housemates and I had nothing to stay here for - this year is totally different. Not only do I get on with my housemates, but I've spent the last month working non-stop doing stuff for Burn and obviously there's been one very significant reason for staying up as long as possible.

As much as it suprises me, I almost don't want to go home; 3 months is a long time to be away from everyone I know at uni - I know I've been away from home at uni for longer, but it's really not the same thing somehow. I say 3 months, but I'll be back in August/September to retake the 3 modules that I failed (27%, 35%, 37%) so it's only really 2 months plus a couple of weeks between the end of my retakes and the start of the new year at the beginning of October. It still just doesn't feel right at all and I've actually been getting worryingly emotional about the whole thing - it's like having no control over what happens in your life while being acutely aware of everything you do (or fail to do), no matter what you do you can't seem to get things to work out the way you want them too..

On a lighter note, I went to see this comedy play with Antonia on Tuesday night at The Rep - Noises Off - and it was brilliant, fantastic way to spend 2 hours and I don't think I've laughed so hard in a very long time. Sadly it's virtually at the end of its run, just Leeds and Cheltenham left - go see it if you can.

Apologies for the prevelence of hyphens in this post but I'm in a very hyphenated mood tonight.

Spad.

I'm A Visionary Philosopher...

...At least according to Emode - it's something of a suprise to me.

I was very bored, so I followed one of their banner ads to take their IQ test. What curious is that the result matches perfectly with my IQ average from all the other tests I've taken - namely 136.

The only thing that makes me doubt it slightly is the explanation of me here: "This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results."

My math skills suck - not really badly, but badly enough that I would never place the word exceptional in front of them except in some clichéd situation involving the word 'not'.

I'm also apparently well matched with 19-year old American girls who like Christian music - something is very much amiss.

If anyone cares to take the "test" you can do so here: http://www.emode.com/tests/uiq/

Equally, according to this here test: http://www.emode.com/tests/talent/

My True Talent is...verbal ability "You know how to pick the right words for almost every occasion. You understand the power and aesthetic appeal behind language. Your verbal knowledge can make you versatile in expressing yourself. And you are much more skilled than most people at picking up subtle meanings behind what people say."

So nerrr.

40 Hours...damn...

I've just finished a 40 hour week - now some of you might, quite rightly, be saying 'So what'. Well, I'm a student, that means my average week is less than 20 hours, add to that the fact that most of the 40 hours was spent down in the Burn studio at an ambient temperature of 29 centigrade with God-knows what level of humidity and you might start to see why I'm so knackered.

In addition to having to do work, something I object to on a matter of principle, I'm also no longer going home on Monday as I had planned. Instead I'm staying up at uni until Thursday in order to help Antonia finish off a few more things for the station before the end of term. She also asked me to go to some comedy show press night with her on Tuesday, which can be nothing but a good thing in my book - let's hope the old adage about women loving a man with a good sense of humour is true ;)

Spad.

An aimless rant...

Or possibly a question, I'm not sure which at the moment but hopefully it will become clearer as I progress. Now why is it that people never charge their mobile phones? When pretty much everyone I know answers their phone, one of the first things they say is "Can't talk long, my phone battery's about to die" or words to that effect. This puzzles me because, for example, my phone has a standby battery life of 200 hours with a 3 hour talk time - that's a whole fucking week of standby time - and most other phones have similar battery lifespans.

Does it never occur to people to put their phone on charge when they get home and they've been using their phone all day? Am I the only person on the planet who tries to make sure my phone will last all day if I'm going out?

Ah well, who cares really - except me obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this damn thing.

Spad.

Guild Council Meetings & Other Wastes Of Time...

Four and a half fucking hours of my life generally wasted listening to a bunch of people bickering over largely minor issues. It's like a bad soap opera - only even worse because you can't change the channel halfway through. Undoubtedly there are some issues covered which are of importance to me and to the Guild in general and some of the leaving speeches from the Sabs were vaguely amusing but generally it's 4.5 hours I'd rather have spent in TC's.

On the plus side I only have to attend one, maybe two more of them before my tenure as Station Manager is up and I hand over to some poor unfortunate sucker who'll have 8 lovely tedious meetings to go to. Of less tedium was the Board Of Management Meeting - a mere hour long - which primarily consisted of Antonia and I trying to shrug off hangovers while the BoM told us how great we were and how we were being let down by other people outside of our control. They also had free coffee and biscuits - the former being an excellent help in curing the hangover and the latter being a very bad idea as it made me feel quite ill.

Looking forward, because frankly I've been looking back in anguish far too much recently, I have a few days "off" now until Monday. Monday should be fun, I have to be in uni at 9 to start work painting the studio; then there's the meeting with the Guild marketing department at 11, followed by returning to the painting until 4, when Antonia has her dance lesson and I'll probably bugger off home. Tuesday is going to be spent wiring up the new second studio, wednesday is back to painting the studio for a second coat, thursday is more wiring and friday is more painting - if it's needed.

Meh.

A word of advice...

6 aftershocks, 3 vodkas and a couple of pints leave you with a bastard of a hangover. Drinking water to cure this is a bad idea, because it makes you drunk again. Right now I'm about to head into uni for this damn Board of Management meeting followed by the equally tedious Guild Council meeting - think I'll get some lunch while I'm there, might help with the hangover.

This is going to be a looong day methinks.

Spad.

I'm drunk...

That's right, drunk, which means I won't accept any complaints about the state of my spelling or grammar, because it's terrible. Now my lovely Antonia was out tonight, as was I - only at different clubs, more's the pity. Anyway, I made a couple of foolish propositions while drunk but nothing on the scale that I've managed one one occasion before (see the Blog archives for that one).

Hopefully all shall be well tomorrow when I have both a Board of Management meeting and a Guild Council Meeting - both should be thrilling - and then I'm heading to TC's with Antonia for some night thingie at which Andy (who works on the radio station) is playing with his band.

Life sucks, drunken life doubley so because you start to accept reality - thank god you forget it again once you sober up.

Enjoy.

Spad out.

As promised...

A brief review of The Hulk "Interactive Video Game"...

Yup, it's dire.

Think bad 3D sideways-scrolling beat 'em up with an abysmal control system that was clearly designed for a console (hell it still has all the force feedback options in the game). It's like one of those old skool arcade games in which the objective is to wear out the "action" button while having a conversation with your mates.

Camera is utterly useless and the sections where you play Banner rather than Hulk are dull - amazingly dull in fact - and frustrating. Think Splinter Cell without any of the things that made it good - now then add some really crap things to it and you're about there. On the plus side, some of the cut scenes have a very nice comic-bookly look to them but it's not enough to save this by any stretch of the imagnation.

Soo glad I didn't buy it.

A Pox on you, Blogger...

Well you were supposed to be reading a witty and clever piece about why time is evil and whatever controlling force may be 'up there' is a vindictive bastard, however, Blogger saw fit not to post the damn article and I can't be bothered to rewrite it.

Just sit back, close your eyes and imagine how good the post would have been, how articulate the writing, how humourous the content, how egotistical the author. Got it? Good, it was probably better in your mind that it would have been on the page anyway.

Back later to whinge about how shit The Hulk "Interactive Video Game" is.

Spad.

Upates? What updates?

I feel I must apologise for the lack of frequent updates, but it seems that life so often disappoints as far is interesting events go. Sure, one minute it's all an utter nightmare of things going wrong one after the other - or by some freak of reality, a utopian land of good luck and happiness - but then for the most part it's largely bland and uninteresting. I mean I could recount the events of today - Got up about 11. Had lunch. Made a couple of phonecalls. Stuck some wires in my housemate's PC. Had dinner. Wrote in my blog - but there's only so much mediocrity the human mind can take before it gets really fed up and wonders off to look at porn, and that's something I don't want to be held responsible for. Actually, I don't know, maybe it's a good thing to be held responsible for helping to improve the waning popularity of internet pornography? After all, without me referring all six of you, the poor porn barons might suffer unimaginable losses (unimaginable because I have no idea what kind of money a porn baron makes - nor whether there's actually such thing as a porn baron).

As the point of this blog is partially to inflate my ego, I thought I'd share a little piece I wrote in response to somebody on a messageboard badmouthing The Sun newspaper. Those with a sarcasm deficiency may wish to look away now:

I'm always found the Sun to be a stimulating and highly informative newspaper. It's phenomenal standards of journalism are equalled only by the journalistic elite operating out of the Daily Sport offices. A high image-to-text ratio ensures that you don't get bogged down with unless detail in articles and their technique of writing the first word of every paragraph in bold face means that I never loose track of my position on the page - and it enables speed reading of the article whitout sacrificing any important information.

I'd go on, but my sarcasm detector just exploded...

See, it's not all me whinging about the morbidly depressing state of my life - sometimes I do (subjectively) funny stuff too!

Spad out.