So, I'm walking down past Downing Street and, well, (you heard it here first!) those "wacky" guys from Fathers 4 Justice have got themselves all dolled up for action again and had climbed out on the wall of 10 Downing Street (which meant that Downing Street was blocked off which meant I couldn't meet someone outside 10 Downing Street as we'd arranged, which annoyed me a little). Cause, y'know, i ...

I don't envy this man the task ahead of him. ...

Okay, so, I went to a movie last week, and the movie started at eight, and I clocked off work around six-thirty, so I figured I had an hour or so to kill, yeah? I figured I?d like, go to Borders on Oxford Street and chill out for a bit. Get a few books filled with photos of distant galaxies and find a chair in the in-house Starbucks with something chocolatey and caffeiney and wow myself out until ...

...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } More! More! Bring it on! ...

I?ve always been a big fan of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I remember quite distinctly going to see The City of Lost Children, having heard absolument rien about it, and being taken by utter surprise. I think the thing that impressed me most was that he used cutting edge special effects not for their own sake, but to give the audience a new perspective on the story. While he stumbled seriously with the exe ...

One of the (many) advantages of being, well, me, is that I seem to gravitate, through accident or unconcious design, towards extremely talented people, particularly in the creative arena. Most of my friends have exceptional gifts, be they manifest in music, poetry, art, photography, web design, modelling, writing, cinematography, animation or comedy [and a few of the bastards are just good at bloo ...

...

Does God exist? From: AQA [63336] The Bible is the most significant piece of evidence that God exists, but it is not scientific proof. It's the choice of the individual to believe in God. ...

I would happily support Yet Another Hike in tube prices if, and only if... they used the money to hire James Earl Jones to replace the automated voice that tells you what station you're at. Just imagine how much perkier your day would be if every morning you got to hear Darth Vader's voice coming over the PA: "This.....is Great Portland Street." ...

under the category of things not to say to your office manager, ostensibly the most powerful person in your working life "This is the shittest Visio diagram I've ever seen. What moron put this together?" "I did." "Ah." ...

Sometimes I hate this city. Sometimes the cold seeps into my bones, and the grey of the sky shakes its fist at me and threatens to never give way. Sometimes the bus driver sneers at me for no reason and I can't help but notice the dirt on everything and I feel like I'm breathing in a mix of soot and exhaust and sweat and hatred and I'll never be clean, really clean, again. Sometimes I sit star ...

I?m blessed with a life that is frequently (weekly, really. Saturdays at eight? I?m like a sitcom) both: Interesting; and Hilarious Less frequently, but still way too often (and I?ll admit this may be because I simply have a tenuous grip on reality), it dives headlong into what can only be called the downright surreal. How many times in the last four months have you fallen to your knees and s ...

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } The world would be a lot happier if everyone woke up to this. ...

This is Fabulicious, a New Zealand confectionary that consists of red liquorice filled with sherbet. It was so spectacularly popular when it first came out in the early 90's, there were news articles on how you couldn't get any. Dairies (that's the kiwi word for convenience store) would hike the price 500% and they'd still sell out the moment supplies hit the stores. Hordes of stoned teenage ...

I was surprised to hear the chime of a small bell as I pushed open the frosted glass door. A small glance upward revealed that it wasn?t an actual bell, but an electronic simulacrum designed to give one the reassuring impression that they were entering the sort of place that might have a little bell above the door. I wondered if a genuine bell might be more convincing. I gingerly pushed the door b ...

...

On Friday I went to a club in Soho called Guanabara for a friend?s birthday. Jane lost her job recently and was feeling so down about it that she wanted to flag her birthday entirely, but myself and others told her that now was precisely the time she needed to get out and have some fun. The venue itself was initially not to my liking- it had a fairly cool design (large circular dancefloor in the c ...

In the spirit of the Valentine's Day weekend (and yes, if you're staring lovingly into your lover's eyes and giving them small kisses on the tube and giggling at how insufferably adorable your lives are and you see, out of the corner of your eye, someone espying you with barely restrained disgust, say hi! That's me. And I hate you), I thought I'd pose a question. A procedural matter, really. I'v ...

...

"Charles and Camilla waited twenty years, baby. I think we should, too." ...

During my Uni days, my job was a 'mobile DJ'. Not what a Londoner might think of as a DJ (turntables, mixing dance music, mumbling into the mic every now and then), something a bit more provincial. I'd be the guy who would turn up at weddings, 21st birthday parties, dance nights at country pubs, office parties and the like, with my rig, and play hot hits until the party ended. My rig had 'DJ Moon ...

It took me a while to get over my fear of locker rooms. When I first joined a gym, I used to actually change in the shower cubicles, so traumatic were my early high school locker room experiences. Then I moved flat and switched to Fitness First Brixton* and they didn't even have cubicle doors (it was like prison!) so I had to get over that. Nowadays, I'd like to think I'm pretty well locker ro ...

So, a few weeks ago I went to a James Bond theme party and got incredibly drunk (damn you, Enormous Vodka Ice Gun!) and consequently have very few memories of the evening itself. I remember getting there. I remember winning a magnum of champange for being the best dressed male. I remember staring down the barrel of Enormous Vodka Ice Gun. I remember waking up on a friends floor the next morning, g ...

My sister-in-law, Lisa, has a tradition that's not entirely without merit: Every new year's eve, she catalogues her year for whoever she's with, and then encourages them to do the same. I think I got about 30 seconds into this exercise before I was overtaken with a wave of misery, and had to go running into the darkness below Primose Hill, weeping. But Lisa noted, and I think she's right, that wh ...

If loneliness is an absence, why does it feel so heavy? From: AQA [63336] It is because we live in a tough world. Everyone on earth goes through periods of loneliness. Be strong. ...

Did I tell you, probably not, the girl who used to sit next to me at work, Shannon, a friend of hers from high school (so, right, here is the point that we're at: an old friend of a girl who used to sit next to me) is dating Moby, of blues-inspired electronica fame. Anyway, Shannon used to have all these reports about what the friend was up to, what fabulous parties she was going to with Moby and ...

"What's this Executive Summary thing?" "Oh, it's kind of a brochure we send out ahead of the Bid, just to talk the company up a bit." "I didn't see it in the Bid Requirements." "Oh, it's not a requirement, in fact they specifically ask us not to send one, but we always send one anyway. They say they won't read it but they always do, and we often find it..." "...helps bias the judges?" "No, de ...

[in patronizing tone] "Oh, one more thing: the plural of Appendix is Appendices." "I know." "Then why did you write Appendicks?" "I didn't. That's an E." "Oh." ...

I wasn't particularly suprised when "Researchers" discovered that the region that inhibits impulsive behaviour is not completely formed until the age of 25. I'm still waiting for mine to kick in. After spending a few years looking thoughtfully at the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex, Dr Jay Giedd was inspired to say: We'd thought the highest levels of physical and brain maturity were reached by ...

Looking back on it now, I don?t know why I did it. Isn?t that often the way? We do something barely consciously and then, when asking ourselves why, we realize we never even made a choice. We just acted. Like an animal. No past. No future. No regrets. No consequences. Just the ever present now, the desires that must be instantly sated, the threats that must be instantly extinguished. Maybe there ...