BISY BACKSON

GON OUT



BACKSON

Shorn Of The Dreads

Quote of the moment:
Q: "How would you like it sir?"
A: "Take it all off."

Oops. I also let slip that I would be away until September, so the barber said he'd "make sure it didn't need another cut until then".


The beautiful curls are gone...


...revealing the shrinking source...


...and why I really need to wear a beret.

I actually rather like it. Better than last time, when it was just long enough to fiddle with. Now it feels like new tooth brush bristles.

Apologies for picture quality: taken with the webcam while my digicam ones are in the charger.

The Problem With The World

Quote of the moment:
A worldwide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a huge failure...
In Africa they didn't know what "food" meant.
In Eastern Europe they didn't know what "honest" meant.
In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant.
In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant.
In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant.
In South America they didn't know what "please" meant.
And in the USA they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant

- More fun from the classic Rob conversation.



The Phobile: attatchable to a mobile phone for that old school, grip between shoulder and chin feel.

Apparently my MP3 player has now, at last, been despatched. Sigh. Seven times as long to load it vs saving £10. Sigh again.

WILL GOES WEST

Quote of the moment:

Will Goes West
Possibly Good. Probably Bad. Provably Ugly

It's up, running and has an awesome picture grid menu with all pics stolen from Prill's Kr3w mugshots.

Tell Me About Your Mother...

Quote of the moment:
Rob says: im gonna be the next hitler
Rob says: im gonna kill all teh jews and 1 clown
You said: why?
Rob says: why what?
You said: why the clown?
Rob says: see, no-one cares about the jews

- A classic conversation I discovered in my folder of files cleared from my desktop, while searching for my UCAS login details.


The album cover of X&Y by Coldplay

What was the first thing that came into your mind when you saw that picture?

That Is A Good Name...

Quote of the moment:
"That is a good name and I would like to hear the story of it some day" - Greeting taken from The Borribles. An absolutely awesome trilogy. The second one was in the prep school library before it got stripped out and reinvented as a second computer room with a couple of bookshelves, but I found an omnibus edition in Waterstones and read them all in under a week. Awesome stuff.

The US Blog

What .blogspot.com address should my Summer Camp blog have? Camp Will Camp It Up Will Goes West Other Current Results

I've decided to have a seperate blog for my travels, because:
A) It'll be easier to go back and browse later.
B) I can keep it clean because my parents want to read it. Anything dirty and/or unconnected to my travels will go on here.

So I went to create a new blog and tried entering several addresses. Blogger told me they were all taken so I gave up and went to bed, but when I logged on today I discovered that the above three were obviously not taken because they'd appeared on my blogs list.

I wrote and meant to post this about 5 hours ago, but got distracted by drawing up a huge Excel list of songs to put on my MP3 player. Oops.

Icecream Coneheads

Quote of the moment:
"Pie is SO SO SO SOOOO Gay!" - R.I.P. Bob Wants Pie, 12th June 2005. I hope it rises from the dead. It's tinged with zombie green anyway.

I forgot to mention that when in Chelmsford on Saturday we saw various performing groups, including the Coneheads, pictured below:


How many are there really?...

They came into the opticians when I was trying on some glasses (since my old ones are knackered and falling apart) and all lined up next to me to try on a pair each, then stood around me while one of them 'took a picture' with his prop camera. If only I'd had my camera...

I have selected an MP3 player, but my dad refused to let me buy it from a shop for £99 and prowled the internet for a better deal. Eventually he ordered it from Amazon for £89 (inc. p&p), but it's due to arrive on Friday or Saturday, leaving me with plenty of time to load it up, obviously! How handy!


Full size image

It has 1GB of flash memory, which is easily enough for my needs. The (optimistic, obviously) quote was 45 CDs worth, and my music collection can easily be whittled down to less than that. The clincher, though, was that it can run for (up to) 70 hours on a single AAA battery, when the average is about 10 hours. Hurrah!

God Bless America Britain

Quote of the moment:
PWETTY DWESS! - Vicky's Leaver's dress, a snip at £205.

I went to Chelmsford as part of a family shopping expedition today. Sigh. The inevitable failed phone batteries and missed meet-ups ensued, from 11am all the way to 5.30pm. I did, however, manage to get my dad to buy me dollars and travellers cheques, while I ogled the fittie behind the counter in the Co-op travel bureau.

I bagged a hugely baggy pair of jeans in TK Maxx with cool stitching. Instead of twin lines of gold stitching, one's gold and one's light blue. As Prill would say, 'FUNKY!'. I also got two spankingly good t-shirts in Matalan, including one with ENGLAND written across a "Lion Passant Guardant".


3 x Lion Passant Guardant

The perfect choice for Independance Day.

R.I.P. My Job

Quote of the moment:
I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it I’m about to
lose control and I think I like it...

Hurrah! Last day at work. Hopefully. I put it down as my last day when I signed up with the agency and I told them I wanted to leave this Friday, but in a moment of weakness I said I'd do a handover day on Monday if necessary. It shouldn't be, I haven't used most of the stuff I learned and the stuff I have would only take about half an hour, maximum.

The jubilation was rather overshadowed though, because on the way home I hit a cat. I was coming down the road from the Green Dragon, only about 500m away, and it ran out, paused in the lights, then ran on. I did the correct thing and braked without trying to swerve out around it, because that would have put it right between the wheels. Unfortunately the side of the car just clipped its bum, which was less resilient than Zulu's.

*** If you're squeamish, don't read on ***

When I turned around and drove back to find it, I discovered it lying in the middle of the road with its stomach split open and its intestines sliding out. It was a full Saving Private Ryan job. I got a Tesco bag from the car and tied it around the midriff to hold the guts in, then took it to the door of the bungalow it was running towards, since it had no collar or tag.

The little old lady (L.O.L.) who slightly opened a window next to the door said it was one of the ones she fed occasionally (as LOL's do) but it wasn't really hers or anyone's that she knew of. I thought it would be a bit harsh to make the LOL go digging, so I agreed to take it home and bury it.

P.S. A shocking appearance in the awesome cast list of Saving Private Bob Ryan: Vin Diesel! How rare!

Mastercard

Quote of the moment:
Flowers for your girlfriend's birthday: $35
Bottle of Champagne: $50
Forgetting to lock the bedroom door: PRICELESS



That looks eerily like Prill m8's head. I haven't seen enough of the legs for proper confirmation.

Lo! A Viking!

Quote of the moment:
Buliwyf: 'Lo, there do I see my father. 'Lo, there do I see...
Herger the Joyous: My mother, and my sisters, and my brothers.
Buliwyf: 'Lo, there do I see...
Herger the Joyous: The line of my people...
Edgtho the Silent: Back to the beginning.
Weath the Musician: 'Lo, they do call to me.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: They bid me take my place among them.
Buliwyf: In the halls of Valhalla...
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Where the brave...
Herger the Joyous: May live...
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: ...forever.

- The 13th Warrior. Antonio Banderas in Viking garb. The sort of thing that would cause Emma to break her budget yet again, no doubt.



Still forced to use poofy soap, dammit. No Viking would smell of apricots.

I Smell Like A Poof

Quote of the moment:
Mmmm cheesy poofs.

There was no normal soap stuff at work today so I had to use the uber-harsh stuff for grease, paint and the like instead. For some reason it smells of incredibly poofy apricots.

Weebl & Bob Geldof Strike Back

Quote of the moment:


I only had to edit Bob's head, because the first picture that came up when I put weebl+bob+pie into Google was so appropriate!

Argh. One of my ears is bleeding, probs from having too many ear plugs rammed into it in the last 3 weeks. I have 13 seperate cuts, ranging from papercut-style to a ripped out chunk from a saw blade, on just one finger. 25 on the hand. Forget America, I'll be glad just to stop working there. Shitheap it is, hmmm? 4 days left...

Damn You, Bob Geldof

Quote of the moment:

You scored as General Grievous.
Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

General Grievous		92%
Chewbacca		92%
Yoda		72%
Anakin Skywalker		69%
Darth Vader		69%
R2-D2		67%
Mace Windu		61%
Clone Trooper		58%
Obi Wan Kenobi		56%
Emperor Palpatine		50%
C-3PO		25%
Padme Amidala		19%

Chewbacca is obviously cool and nearly as hairy as me, but 4 lightsabres at a time is just awesome. The cape is a little unhealthy though.

Mowed lots of grass today. Also went running, doing the 1.5 miles in 12 minutes 57.6 seconds, down from 13min 21.8s on Wednesday. Hurrah!

I have just had an awesome idea:

Weebl and Bob Geldof
(The Live8 Special)

Weebl, Bob Geldof and the Jams go protesting. Weebl does his specialty club singing of "Feed the world (with pie)", but is topped by Wee Bull and the Hairy Lee Childs Orchestra performing "He's got the whole pie in his hands". Damn you, Wee Bull.

Piratical Connections

Quote of the moment:
Well, it's all rather complicated... there's one set of cousins called Mallock and another called Maddox..."

My dad was explaining some family connection to Sarah, but I just picked up on us being distantly related to a family called Maddox.


How do I look?

I was outside The Cave at 5pm as instructed. No show from anyone who might be there to pick me up. After about fifteen minutes of wandering up and down outside the door, I went in to check that the job wasn't actually in there before heading home. It wasn't, obviously, but that counts as my first visit to a poledancing club. Admittedly the only girl in there was vacuuming the floor.

Perhaps we should make it the venue for a kr3w reunion?

Changing The Guard

Quote of the moment:
Dear Rita, do you think the world would be a much more peaceful and happy place if everyone had Down's syndrome?

No. We'd just have really clean windows.

I'm sure she's related to Jim.

I was persuaded into working tomorrow night by the offer of £7.50 per hour. Quite reasonable, especially for being a 'Security Guard' 'and supposedly watching over a swimming pool. Yup. Sounds great, doesn't it? I apparently have to sit near it and tell people not to go in. I have no idea whether it's outside or inside, or where the hell it is. I have to be outside The Cave nightclub in Chelmsford at 5pm, but that doesn't sound to me as if it's actually working there. Besides, why would a nightclub in Chelmsford have a pool?! The Cave's right by the train and bus stations, so I suspect there may be a minbus for a load of staff to some event somewhere. Whichever, I'm going armed with a book.

News from Felsted: the prefects have been chosen and there are, bizarrely, 18 of them already plus 2 more that could be promoted after serving time for naughtiness. That makes a total of 20. If that seems a little daft, then consider this:

Melanie Balfour (Deputy Head of School)
Susie Bradley
Loren Sherer
Kat Malyon
Torty Lee (Head of House, prefect when time served)

All of the above are from Follyfield. What a coincidence that the Housemistress is married to the Deputy Headmaster.

Elwyns did quite respectably, securing 3 prefects for the second year running:

Freddie Blackwell (Head of House)
David Rees
Charlie Paterson

Lyme Disease?

Quote of the moment:
Alarm at sharp rise in tick disease
...
British hotspots are Thetford forest in Norfolk, the New Forest in Hampshire, the Lake District, the Yorkshire Moors, the Scottish Highlands and the uplands of Wales.
...
Many people may be carrying the antibody after a tick bite years ago, but showing no symptoms. In those cases the full-blown disease can be triggered by another illness or severe stress.

It causes a rash and stiffness in the joints and, left unchecked, it can affect the central nervous system, causing tingling in hands and feet, or facial palsy. In the worst cases the disease can also affect the heart, liver and spleen and even lead to encephalitis, which can kill. Depression and chronic fatigue grip many patients and ruins their lives.

The symptoms are not identical for every sufferer though — Lyme disease imitates other diseases, which makes it difficult to diagnose.

- The Times, Monday May 30th. Left out on the kitchen table when I got home.

Here's one for Prill and Jim. Patient W spent 18 months or so suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. Stiff joints and impaired balance were also frequent. Patient W was tested near the start of this period for various possible causes including glandular fever and diabtetes, but all tests came up clear. Glandular fever became the accepted cause because after about 2 weeks, for some reason unknown to the author, it no longer shows up in blood tests. However there was no obvious contagious person who then suffered from glandular fever that might have infected Patient W, as might have been expected.

Since the age of two Patient W has been visiting the Scottish Higlands for an average of a week per year and can recall having a tick removed with the traditional just-extinguished match at least twice.

Conclusions please. Bonus marks for use of technical language and/or Latin names. Oh yeah, I get tingly feet too.

The Seven Kr3w Dwarves

Quote of the moment:
It just so happens that this "children's movie" has a scene where a guy gets his hands chopped off, a graphic decapitation, the wanton slaughter of children (the highlight of any movie), and the coolest scene in any space action movie starring Ewan McGregor: Anakin getting his legs chopped off as his stumps catch fire while his face melts. By the way, if you haven't seen this movie yet, don't read the previous sentence.

- I sense a disturbance in the force: Maddox on Episode III is here.

I was pondering today which kr3w members are part of the Seven Dwarves. It wasn't utterly random - I saw a pair of guys from the next door factory who looked like Grumpy and Doc.



The Seven Kr3w Dwarves:

Doc - Rob
Sneezy - Prillo
Grumpy - Jim
Happy - Jimmy
Bashful - Podgy
Dopey - Hawwy
Sleepy - Me!

If you want reasons, Rob has specs and an anti-sport belly, Prillo has an anti-dog nose, Jim rants worse than Maddox, Jimmy is glad to be alive, Podgy gets worried about everyone she meets, Hawwy famously said "ACER!" and I obviously rule in the sleeping stakes. Arguments plz kthnx.

[Edit 02:33 - I've just finished watching the double-bill finale of Desperate Housewives. Spankingly good, but highly frustrating in the loose ends left over.]

A Renault Return

Quote of the moment:
"The Renault F1 Team has stretched its lead in the Constructors’ Championship, and now has 76 points, while Fernando Alonso sits atop the Drivers’ Championship with 59 points."



How badly must Williams regret losing their Renault connection?

Zulu has begun to display sheepdog tendencies. Yesterday he tried to herd two year old Sam, (my mum's cousin's son, which could be my 2nd cousin?) to make him keep up with the rest of the dog walkers after the big family gathering. Unfortunately Zulu knocked him flat, then licked his face when he tried to get up. Bless. Sam does a very entertaining "Amarillo" impression too, but can't get beyond the "la-la-la-la-la-la" bit. Very cute.

I got a telling-off when I got into work today. The automatic machine I normally look after wasn't working on Thursday so I used the manual one instead. Some of my cuts were less than perfect, but that should be expected from a n00b. The real problem was that I wasn't there the next day so the deputy foreman had to sort through and discard the bad ones himself. Diddums.

The wonderful machine played up today as well. Somehow the blade skipped, scraped down the side of the steel guiding block showering out sparks, then stalled and refused to restart. How handy! I ended up sitting on a stool putting cut tube into the tooled connector parts for the final 4 hours. Yawn.