More Sun and Snow

Waking up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to fly off to the French Alps once again. More snow and more ski! Friends have been going and they all come back with the same report “this is the best I've ever seen it!”

Unlike any other time I've been the weather this season seems, for want of a better word, ideal. I wont bore you with tales of me trekking across glaciers, avoiding avalanches, instead, I'll tell you about a Sunday, out in London in what I can only describe as Arctic conditions.

It was freezing! We decided to head out and take a long walk, taking pictures along the way, we never expected such cold winds but by the time we realised what we were in for, it was too late. So on we went taking pictures and finding cafes along our path.

Unfortunatly, at the same time, my Macbook's hard drive died on me but thanks to backups, not a lot was lost. I've only just got a new drive in and the Canon software installed so I could download the pictures from that weekend, the results:

http://hjoshi.zenfolio.com/p745173741

Slightly uninspired but here for your judgement.....

Effort

Amazingly I get a lot of spam, yes I know that I'm in the minority here and spam is just not a problem for the vast majority of internet users. I feel sorry for the legitimate pharmacist or hand bag seller or former ousted minister who desperately needs help in getting access to his multi million dollar fortune. These people just can not get a break as their emails are often mistaken for spam and are ignored.

I would like to bring to your attention one such guy, he almost slipped through the net but as I was clearing out my spam folder, I thought I'd take the time to read what one Kevin Qu had to say.

Reply-To: 
From: "kevin Qu"
Subject: RE: JOB OFFER

Hello Sir/Madam,

TRANSLATED FROM CHINESE TO ENGLISH PLEASE PARDON ANY GRAMMATICAL ERROR:

My name is Mr.Kevin Qu and I am a manager of Beijing Richman
International Trade Co.,Ltd China, there is an opportunity of home 
base business, and I am contacting you because we are now in need of a 
Payment Representative in the United kingdom. So I would like to offer 
you a part time job as our payment Representative and you can earn 
between 1,000 - 3,000UK pounds in a month depending on your Speed, 
Accuracy and Devotion to your work.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO FOR US?
My Company needs a financial representative in the United
kingdom who will serve as our Agent in processing any of our funds 
made out to us by our UK Customers and Clients this is because We make 
lots of supplies to some of our clients in the United kingdom for 
which I do come to the UK to receive payment & have it cashed after I 
supply them raw materials.And that is why we seek your time and
assistance because Its always too expensive & stressful for me to come 
to the UK to receive such payments twice in a month.

JOB DESCRIPTIONS?
1. Receive payment from Clients
2. Deduct 10 percent which will be your percentage/pay on
Payment processed.
3. Forward balance after deduction of percentage/pay to any
of the Offices you Will be contacted to send payment to (Payment is to
Forwarded either By Money Gram / Western Union Money Transfer).

HOW MUCH WILL YOU EARN?
10 percent from each operation! For instance: you receive
1000UK Pounds on our behalf. You will collect the money and
Keep 100UK pounds (10 percent from 1000UK pounds) for yourself! 
At the beginning your commission will equal 10percent, though later it will 
increase up to 12percent!

DO YOU NEED TO PAY FOR THE TRANSFER FEE FROM YOUR
PERCENTAGE?
No you do not have to; all necessary transfer fees should be
deducted from the Balance after you must have cashed and 
deduct your 10percent of total money Received While finish cashing.

ADVANTAGES
You do not have to go out as you will work as an independent
contractor Right From your home / office. Your job is absolutely legal. 
You can earn up To 3000-4000UK pounds monthly depending on time 
you will spend for this job. You do not need any capital to start. 
You can do the Work easily without leaving or affecting your present Job. 
The employees who make efforts and work hard have A Strong Possibility to 

become managers. 
Anyway our employees never leave us.

MAIN REQUIREMENTS,
18 years or older,
Legally capable,
Responsible,
Ready to work 3-4 hours per week. With PC knowledge
E-mail and internet experience (minimal)
If you are interested in our offer, and would like to work
for Beijing Richman International Trade Co.,Ltd

Kindly fill the application below.



EMPLOYMENT  APPLICATION  FORM
First Name________________ Middle Name_______________ Last
Name________________Residential
Address_____________________________
City ____________________State ________ __________Zip
_____________Home
Telephone Number______________________Personal cell phone
Number______________________Gender ____________ Marital
Status
____________________Age _____________ Nationality
______________________Are
you a U.K. citizen or otherwise authorized to work in the
U.K._________



Please note: only interested applicants should respond. And
check your email back for response within 24 hours...... and i will 
like you to reply your EMPLOYMENT  APPLICATION  FORM to this email 
address below :kevinqu_rep@live.co.uk




Regards,

Mr.Kevin Qu

Beijing Richman International Trade Co.,Ltd
www.richmancashmere.com 
Registered Nos. 01424399 and 2355834

Now, at first glance I thought “I love my job, I'm not looking for another one” but then I realised that potentially I can make a lot of money with very little effort!

What sometimes happens is that a cheque is sent to you, you deposit it into your account and because of the way the banks work, it will show up in your account before the funds are actually cleared. Of course, you will get a bigger reward if you act quickly and transfer the funds via western union within a day or so. This is all well and good until you learn (in about 5 working days) that the cheque you deposited has bounced and you've just paid out from your own money.

The problem is that old scams like this make it incredibly difficult for people like the sender of this email to be taken seriously. Personally, I think the guy here put in a fair amount of effort. For example, the website is indeed for a textile company in Bejing, and is managed by Mr. Kevin Qu. The guy who sent me this email went to the trouble of creating a live.co.uk email address that looks like it could belong, alas it is different from the one on the website.

A few pointers to the guy who sent me this email:

1. cashmere@richmancashmere.com is the email the ligitamate company use for enquiries, why would they ask you to send applications to a live.co.uk email?


2. Spelling and grammar, yes you are making this out to be a roughly translated email but even so, take a moment or two to scan though the email before you click 'send'.


3. So, you would like me to make payments via western union, clearly you have the technology so why on earth are you making 2 trips to the UK a month? Get your clients to use western union, or better still, an international bank transfer! This is what I call a spam plot hole.


4. Reading the headers of the email, I see you are using 3G broadband from the UK perhaps this is why your trips to the UK are so 'expensive' and 'stressful' perhaps wait until you are back in China before sending me a job offer, this way you won't have to use live.co.uk.

Quality scams that require the scammer to put in an iota of effort, is that too much to ask?

Sun, Snow and Santa

It's been a while since my last post and though I've been making an effort to read a number of blogs, even comment occasionally, I've really dropped the ball when it comes to updating my own. For this reason, I sit here in the back of a cab tapping away at a keyboard while zooming to the airport.

This time of year is traditionally a busy one for me mostly because of work (I manage a team of elves) but also because this is the time of year most people call me to catchup. We meet up for dinner and talk about the great advances we've made over the past 12 months.

This year has been a pretty static one, just like this time last year, I still live in the same place, have the same job and am still single. That's not to say it's been a boring one, I feel like a lot has been done, it's just that non of it has had a traditionally major impact in my life. Small things like cycling great distances or passing my driving test have marked this year as unique.

Also, a number of cousins, friends and my sister have given birth so this has also been a good year to be with family and lots of shopping at mothercare. All that being said, I'm about to jump on a plane to take me away from it all and into the French Alps.

This is a trip I've been looking forward to for a while, I want to ski! We have a great tradition this time of year, we all get away from family and the stresses of work to meet up in a small place out in the mountains, drink to absent friends, eat until bursting point and take in the dramatic mountain scenery.

After lighting some candles on a real Christmas tree, New Year's eve quickly rears it's head. A few fireworks, more food and more drink, we head our separate ways and back to what now passes as normal for my life.

I look forward to 2009, with luck I'll be kept busy. Rest assured, I'll make much more of an effort to update the blog more often, I just hope there are people out there who still check it when I do.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Touched By His Noodly Appendage

It's odd, people often talk about faith and the lack of evidence in god in a hand-wavy matter-of-fact way but it's quite difficult to fully grasp what this means. Most can be presented with facts and figures but all that doesn't really sink in as there are too many intelligent, respectable people telling you otherwise.

A few years ago I stumbled upon a site which blew that all away and showed (granted, in a fairly indirect way) the strength of the evidence by proposing another hypothesis that also fit the 'facts'. It all started in 2005 when the Kansas school board held a hearing to decide on whether or not intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution theory in the classroom.

The argument here was that there is as much evidence in intelligent design as there is in the theory of evolution. This is, of course, a complete fallacy! Sure, Darwin hasn't been proved entirely and the existence of god has not been disproved 100% (completely proving a negative is impossible as any experimental scientist will tell you); but the evidence for evolution and against intelligent design is overwhelming, to the point where it seems ridiculous to put the two on anything approaching an even keel.

Now part of the problem of putting intelligent design on the curriculum is that most religions have creation theories that have an equal weighting in evidence is the Christian one (as proposed by the Kansas school board). So which one to teach? At this point a completely new and unheard of theory came to light, with an open letter written to the Kansas school board, urging them to consider the flying spaghetti monster as a valid theory. As the letter shows, there is as much (factual) weight behind this as there is in a Christian god.

And thus, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was born. What's really worth mentioning is the correlation between pirates and the average global temperature, genius!

Fog Lights Off

It's rare but from time to time, I come across a great idea that's so great, so useful that I can't imagine how life was like before it. The other day, I saw just that. While waiting for a bus I noticed a police car pull up at the lights. They has a scrolling message board stuck on top by the flashing lights; as the car behind pulled up, they must have been slightly blinded by the fog lights as, on the board, they put up “fog lights off”.

The guy took notice, turned off his fog lights and they all went on their merry way. Imagine, if you will the unlimited crime fighting possibilities that this will bring up. As the car drives by they could put up the message “could you please stop mugging him” or “that knife looks a bit threatening”. Perhaps as they pull into a café: “coffee, black, 3 sugars”.

They shouldn't stop there, this could have more social benefits when displaying sighs like “is that shell suite really necessary” or “your trousers really don't go with your jacket”..... It is great to see the Metropolitan police trying out new things to make this city a better place.

Eyes Down

I keep going back to a local restaurant because (and this is the main reason) the food is good. On top of that, a nice service is a good bonus. Now, I rarely send things back as I'm well aware that mistakes are made in the kitchen and I don't need things to be just so, in fact at times a mistake can improve a dish!

The other day, I was in said restaurant and while waiting over 30 minutes for our main course to be served (they were hosting a party and understaffed) I ordered a pineapple juice. It arrived warm, by this I don't mean room temperature, I mean warm! I managed to get the waiter's attention as he was standing by the bar, it was quite definitive; I waved my friends saw the wave, he saw the wave, even the barman saw the wave.

As the waiter makes his way over, I look forward to sipping on a cool glass of pineapple juice soon. A he approaches the table, he lowers his gaze, ignores us and walks on by. I was baffled as to what just transpired, much to the amusement of my friends, how rude.

Sure, we've all spotted someone in the street, someone you really don't want to speak to, so you avert your eyes and walk on by hoping the person hasn't seen you; but this is something else, I was left telling my disbelieving friends that I swore he saw me....

The Year of Creativity (So Far)

This is going to seem like I jumped on the band wagon after the fact but that's just not true! I was an avid follower of a blog titled hermitguide, it wasn't about anything in particular but was always an interesting read. The author (Graham Nunn, who has been seen on more than one occasion lingering about these pages) would muse about mugging old ladies (no not really, it was a joke, he did not actually go out and do this!) and gave the world the excel dance all this whilst he was writing a three-times-a-week web comic ('doormat picnic').

I think that this was too ridged and didn't really take advantage of what it is he can do with photoshop (it's like paper and an infinitely big set of crayons). So 43 days ago, he launched 'Once Around the Sun', with the massively ambitious plan of posting one creative 'thing' a day for an entire year!

His efforts range from the comic to the serious, he sometimes sticks to common themes, sometimes topical or sometimes utterly random. We have the photo-realistic, we have the artistic and we also have the outright surreal, and everything in between! It's a great blog, which I hope you take the time to check out, believe me, it'll be worth it.

Bookmark it, take some time to go through the previous entries and then perch your self on the edge of your seat as you see what happens next...

Monk Bust Up

Imagine, if you will seven different sects of the same religion, working together to maintain peace and harmony for all. I'm taking about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the supposed tomb of Christ (you'll note I didn't say 'final resting place'). They do a good job in keeping and maintaining the Church but the problem is they don't really like each other. For this reason, the complicated sharing of responsibilities that has evolved over the years is followed to the letter, even the slightest divergence from status quo is bound to upset people.

On a hot day during the summer of 2002 a Coptic monk who was stationed on the roof to express Coptic claims there (this is a given but the monk still sits there), moved his chair to a spot in the shade. Unfortunately the Ethiopian Orthodox monks saw this as an act of aggression and the resulting farce saw eleven people hospitalised.

With this amount of tension amongst the tightly wound monks one really has to wonder what was going through a Greek Orthodox monk's mind when he picked the time the Armenian Apostolic monks prepared to mark the annual Feast of the Cross to go into the Edicule. Yes that's right, it makes no sense at all, regardless from which angle you choose to see. With this obvious violation to status quo, it's not shocking to learn that these monks came to blows over this, throwing whatever they could get their hands on.

The police were called in and a number of people were arrested but as I see the footage and read the story I can think only one thing: What the Fuck?!

The Times, They Are A Changing

I'm sure everyone that reads this will be aware of the momentous event that occurred last night. America held it's presidential election with a whopping 70% of people turning up to cast their vote. The president of the United States, like it or not, will make decisions that effect the entire world. For this reason, I hoped that the people of the US would not vote in an out of touch old man and the funniest woman alive.

My faith wasn't misplaced in this case as with a landslide victory, Barack Obama is the new president elect. He promises change, in terms of foreign policy, and is willing to take steps that other world leaders refuse to. I'm incredibly optimistic about his term in office, after eight years of frustration with George W. Bush and choices he made that almost made me tear my hair out!

So, I sit here on the edge of my seat, let's see what happens once he takes office; I know that the 'honeymoon' period will be short and he'll be under close scrutiny. I have faith that the choices he'll make, will be choices for the better.

Great Impressions

Tina Fey (American comedian and one of the funniest women alive) does a great impression of Sarah Palin (American governor and one of the funniest women alive, though probably not intentionally). In the run up to the US elections (Tuesday, I believe), Fey and been bringing her Palin character to Saturday Night Live with a number of sketches, it's like watching Palin herself!

This time though, she was out done by a guy who does the best impression of senator John McCain:



Imagine my disappointment when I learned that this wasn't a great impression but was, indeed, John McCain himself. Yes it reeks of desperation but it is hilarious!

Does Nothing, Goes Nowhere

Last night, I went out to see the new Bond movie 'Quantum of Solace'. I don't really know what I was expecting, after seeing a number of adverts by Ford, Sony and even Coke using Bond to flaunt their products, I knew the integrity (ish) and style of 'Casino Royal' was gone. It was a huge disappointment, even the gorgeous Olga Kurylenko couldn't half-save it.

So rather than rant about how pointless and disappointing this film was, and believe me, it was; Bond villains should make you quake in your boots, they should be crazy, will stop at nothing to rule the world, this one wasn't. I'll make a mention of another film, loosely related as Kurylenko starred in one of the 5 minute segments, I'm talking about one of my favourite films, 'Paris, je t'aime'.

Paris (the city not the Hilton airhead) is split into 20 districts, starting at the Louvre and numbered as you move outward in a clockwise spiral. The concept of the film was to make twenty stories, 5 minutes long, directed by different people which are loosely based around the theme of love. At some point during production, two of the segments were dropped so Paris, je t'aime consists of 18 short films.

The film features some well known directors and actors, for example: the segment about the the 1st district (titled “Tuileries”) stars Steve Buscemi and throughout the entire sequence, he doesn't say a word but it's truly brilliant and sums up the age old rule: never make eye contact on the Metro.

The film about the 16th is just beautiful. Some of the segments are comedies, some are just plain weird (the Eiffel tower one and 'Porte de Choisy'). A few of the segments are heart breaking and some are quite intense (I remember one of the segments was filmed, entirely, in one shot). In short, there really is something for everybody in this movie it really is worth getting and I can almost guarantee that you'll love it!

This is one of the few films that I knew I would get on DVD as soon as I walked out of the cinema. I believe the producers are making an equivalent for New York and though I doubt it can be as good, I'll be sure to catch it when it comes out.

Dogs, Purple Elephants and Bad Light

Meeting up with a few friends with the intention of walking around, taking a few pictures and maybe getting some lunch in the process didn't seem like a bad way of spending a Saturday. Though, as always, the company was good; the light was not (too much cloud) and neither was the inspiration. It speaks volumes when all the three of us could do was take clichéd photos of red phone boxes and the like.

With the threat of rain constantly hovering over us, we walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral where we ran into a bunch of students who, for some inexplicable reason were dressed up as animals (notice the waving dog), the weirdest of which was a big purple elephant. No, I got no reasonable breakdown as to why someone would want to do this, let alone parade around London's biggest tourist attraction like this.

This was a far cry from a few weeks ago when we did pretty much the same thing but in glorious sunshine, it lead to a great day with some pretty good pictures (it was the day I saw the 'Ghost Bridge'). Near the end of that day, we ended up opposite the Palace of Westminster where I snapped this picture. It inspired me to go through the trouble of getting it printed.

The walls in my flat are quite bare and it's been to my list of 'things to do' to get some pictures printed, framed and hung up. Unfortunately, being almost completely lazy, I've managed to do nothing about it. I contacted the nice people at bigfoot imaging who basically took the picture, retouched it and made it look absolutely amazing on paper! Granted I'm still pretty lazy so I've yet to get a frame for it but I've taken the first step, I've got something printed....

You've Got me on my Knees

I don't listen to much radio (I don't own one) but when I'm in someone's car something is usually on. More often than not (in my brother-in-law's car) it's Virgin radio, usually an odd mix of classic rock and modern crap. A few weeks ago the radio station reinvented itself as 'Absolute', it's essentially the same thing but with subtle differences.

They say that one of their revolutionary changes is that they play all songs in full! Amazing, I thought, there are so many songs out there that are too long for radio, they take a 10 minute song and reduce it to 3 for the sake of their schedule. I say if you can't find time to play it in full then why on earth play it?

Driving along and through the crackle, I hear Laya by Derek and the Dominos, it's one of my all time favorite songs. It has an instantly recognisable introduction and some great guitaring (shockingly it was not Eric Clapton playing the opening section but Duane Allman) throughout. This made me go into my usual rant that most people wont ever get to hear the excellent piano in the second half as pretty much every station will cut it before it comes on. The point where the song is usually cut came and went and the piano came on, I couldn't believe it, they were going to devote prime broadcasting time to the entire song, how refreshing.

The lyrics of the song are amazing, the title was based on the Persian poem 'Layla and Majnun'. The poem is about a guy who falls madly in love with a triable princess named Layla, he can do nothing but think of her all day and writes a number of poems about her. I can't remember much of the story but I do remember he asks for her hand in marriage and is refused by her father, Layla eventually marries another man (of her father's choosing) , on this, our hero wonders off into the desert; he slowly goes insane with the thought of never being able to be with the woman he loves.

All this isn't completely irrelevant in terms of the song, as the story goes, Clapton fell in love with George Harrison's (yes the Beatles guy) wife, naturally he can't be with her and (I guess) this is where the song comes from. A guy (a poet if you will) falls for a girl, it's forbidden love just like the poem. He longs for her and rather than writing poems for her, he writes one of the greatest rock songs ever!

Clapton's story and the poem diverge at this point as I believe George Harrison's wife left him and married Clapton in the end (though I think that ended in divorce, such it life); that and I don't think Clapton ever went insane, but don't quote me on that.

I digress, what made me think about this was a tiny little gem Clapton put at the very end of the song. I don't know how he does it but he stretches the guitar string in such a way as to make a bird 'chirping' sound. This was supposedly a nod to the great jazz legend Charlie 'The Bird' Parker; believe me (or not, listen for your self), after it's all died down and the song is over, you'll hear the bird, almost as an afterthought.

Absolute radio, playing the song in 'full', they manage an impressive seven or eight minutes, they get both parts in but the very last note, the 'bird'; it was nowhere to be heard, shocking, after all that air-play, they cut the last half second.....

Momentum of a Runaway Bus

Monday night I mentioned how Ariane Sherine launched the Atheist Campaign, in an attempt to reassure Londoners that they need not worry about not believing in God as He probably doesn't exist and they won't go to hell.

By the time I got into work the next morning, she had published an article on the Guardian's comment is free site. This got the ball rolling and people stated to donate, these people emailed their friends, they emailed their friends and before you know it, a viral campaign was born. The story was picked up by The Telegraph, BBC News, The Times, The Washington Post and a whole heap of other publications (across the globe!).

Interviews were given, commentaries were made and with each iteration, people went to the donate site and gave a few pounds. Ten hours after the campaign launched, their goal of £5,500 was reached, fourteen hours, it was doubled! By lunchtime today, they have over ten times their goal!

A lot of hard work went into this and the success they have had so far is well deserved. This is an idea that people can get behind, it's not threatening, not 'in your face', very approachable and (I'd argue most importantly) it brings a smile to most that see it.

What started out as a few adverts to run for a few weeks has turned into something much bigger, why stop at London? Why just buses? It's getting to a point now that reason can be promoted wherever the threat of eternal damnation is.

A lot of people have donated but the momentum is still strong, so head on down, check out the website, leave a comment and put a few pounds down! Fundamentalists have had a free ride for a long time, I'm glad reasonable people are doing something about it but more importantly, I'm glad the public have spoken and are backing the campaign in huge numbers, almost makes you have faith...

All Aboard!

It all started with an article on the Guardian's Comment is Free site, a friend noticed an advert on the side of a bus which essentially said “accept Jesus as your saviour or go to hell!”, a disturbing message if you ask me. Rather than doing what I did, which was acknowledge it as a part of a plethora of religious adverts out there and do nothing about it, she suggested running a more comforting advert telling people that, if they did just get on with their lives, they won't go to hell.

The idea picked up momentum with people pledging £5 towards what became known as “the atheist bus”. Although, not enough people pledged to make the advert runnable, enough people did pledge to make the idea feasible. So after a lot more planning, writing and organizing, Ariane Sherine proudly launches “the atheist campaign” tonight!

The message is a simple one “There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” People need to know that if they don't devote their entire life to god and Jesus, they won't suffer eternal damnation! With everything else that's wrong with the world today, why should people bow to a doctrine that was essentially constructed to ease the worries of people in the dark ages?

For this reason, I'm planning to donate and I ask you to head on over to http://www.atheistcampaign.org/, have a read and join me in supporting this campaign, we can get a positive message out to people, not to change their minds or 'convert' them but to reassure them and, maybe, put a smile on their faces....

A Touch of Frost

Pretty much everyone knows about or has seen the famous 1977 Richard Nixon interviews, for those that haven't I've found 10 minutes of 'highlights' on YouTube. It was headline news back then as David Frost, who was not known that well in America but still a well accomplished journalist, some how got a full confession and an apology out of Nixon for the Watergate scandal. It's been deemed as one of the great interviews of the 20th century!

What I didn't know was the story behind the interviews was made into a west-end play which in itself was surprising. Today I learned a movie has been made based on the play, apparently it premiered this week at the BFI film festival (alas no invite) so I looked up a trailer for it. It looks great, unfortunately it's not out until January next year so I'm just going to have to wait.

Nixon resigned in 1974 after 'Watergate', when I first read about this, trying to figure out what was bad that the president of the United States would have to give us his post! Nixon was the only US president to have done this to date, Bill Clinton didn't do this after it was found that he outright lied to the American people.

After a bit of light reading, I picked up a copy of 'all the president's men' (I'd recommend it if you like thrillers) by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who were the two journalists who bought the scandal to the public eye. Admittedly the story wasn't that easy to follow and I was just waiting for the big revelation that would tell me why the president stepped down. The revelation never came and it took me a while to realise why, I think as members of the public, we've been desensitised to scandal over the years.

What Nixon and his men did, wasn't that bad considering what we read about about today but I guess people had more faith in their public officials in the 70s. It's unfortunate that a scandal that would only just raise an eyebrow today was big enough to overshadow all of Nixon's great (yes there was quite a few) achievements back then.

Ghost Bridge

Walking along the shores of the river Thames (it was low tide and not a torso in sight), we walked up to Blackfriars railway bridge. What a lot of people don't always notice is that just west of the railway are the remains of the old Blackfriars railway bridge. It was removed in 1985 as it wasn't strong enough to take the weight of modern trains.

What was left was the pillars that held up the original bridge. They look quite eerie standing alone with no bridge to support while just next door, it's bigger brother has trains going in and out all day long.

I'm obviously not alone in seeing this slightly chilling sight as they (the powers that be) have set up an art installation called 'The Ghost Bridge' where they have used green lasers that hover just above the pillars to make a bridge out of light. It was simply done and, once the sun went down, it looked pretty surreal, I quite liked it.

Ten Years in the Making

Today has had the endorphins racing through my system, nothing major has happened, this is usually an experience most people have at the age of 17 but not me. Today, at the ripe old age of 27, I finally passed my driving test!

I'm not usually one to get nervous or stressed but this morning I was shaking, stuttering and generally crapping myself. I've (over the years) managed to fail, I think, five times for various reasons, including one disastrous test where the examiner fell asleep during the test!

Today was a slightly different matter, the nerves melted away and I think the drive went quite smoothly, I took my foot of the clutch for a moment so could place it in my mouth by asking the examiner: “where abouts in Italy are you from?” only to get the reply: “I'm polish”, oh dear.

We got to the end of the test and I was relived that he didn't ask me to do a 'bay park', he places a few marks on the sheet and tells me that I've passed with only three minors; that's fewer minors than Gary Glitter had!

He takes my license to get my details down and raises a well justified eyebrow at the 10 points I've acquired on a motor bike but doesn't bring it up (thankfully). Next thing to do (so people tell me) is to get a car but at the moment I don't really feel the need for one. Granted I live fairish distance from the city but I've not felt hindered by not having a mode of transportation, I mostly rely on the underground and frankly, most of the time, it's quicker.

Now with a nice clean line drawn under this I'm thinking maybe now is a good time to go back and finish my masters..... maybe not.

A Disturbed Mind

I was working late in the office with a lukewarm coffee beside me and the jukebox playing whatever it felt like throwing at me. Usually this isn't too much of a problem as the songs in the collection are relatively tame and - baring some occasional cheese - not cringe worthy.

Every now and then, the unthinkable happens, I hear a song that leaves with unable to phantom the artist's intention or the song's meaning. Today it was 'Dead Puppies (aren't much fun)' by Ogden Edsel. What the hell was this guy smoking when he wrote this song?

They don't chase squirrels, they don't come when you call and that's just the start! I'm sure at one point, the deceased dog (who, by now, you've figured isn't very entertaining) is put in a stew. I don't think I can justly describe the song so I'll just link to it and call it a night, enjoy (and I'm sorry).

Dead Puppies (Aren't Much Fun)

A Forgotten Story?

Sometimes you read a book or watch a movie that's quite good, that can stand up as a piece of fiction but, for some reason, people will want to dress it up as a true story. I was watching Sleepers the other night, a film I've not seen since I watched it in the cinema over 10 years ago.

Despite having some big names in it, it's been all but forgotten over the years. I don't know why as it's a film I'd recommend. It's a touching story set in Hell's Kitchen, New York in the 60s and is about four young boys who are sent to a correctional facility where they are tortured and raped by the guards. After release and into adulthood, two of the boys see one of the guards in a bar and shoots him.

The crux of the film is about the following court case in which the district attorney (another one of the original four) attempts to try the case in such a way as to get the murderers let off while bringing to light the horrors that went on at the facility.

The weird thing is the fact that no one seems to remember this, including the people I know I went to see this with! Granted, I've given little thought to this film over the years but as soon as I saw the name, I was able to recall the story, maybe not all the details but enough to know that it didn't completely slip out of my mind.

This time round, I learn that the author of the book claims it to be a true story, even though no evidence has been found to corroborate it, I find this adds nothing to the story but the thought's there non-the-less. It's crazy but people have actually looked into the details of this, I have no idea who but probably people with to much time on their hands (that is to say people with a smidgen more time on their hand than I have on mine).

All the controversy, I found this to be an unforgettable story....