Brain. No longer functioning. ABORT.

Well today was a mixed day. It started off with me going to work as usual where I found that there was hardly anyone working this afternoon. On top of constant problems with systems not working and such it ended up being an extremely stressful afternoon. Come the evening things settled down a lot but I was completely mentally drained so was really slow and pretty much babbling to customers making no sense at all. At the end of the day though the manager came up to me and informed me that I could start work at the high street a week today. This is what I've wanted for a few weeks now so am thrilled to be getting normal shifts and not having to get taxis and walk ages just to make connections. When I got home my grandparents were over celebrating my Mums birthday: I hadn't forgotten this as I had bought her a Kenwood food processor at work. Sounds like a mediocre gift but her old ones broken and the was really pleased with it. After my stressful day I feel like my brain is about to die so that's it really. Song of the day is complicated by avril lavigne because I used to really like her old stuff but upon listening to it this morning for nostalgia value I was gutted to find that she's always been shit, not just after she sold out. Finally I'm not jealous of Catriona seeing her live in Glasgow all those years ago.

The Seven Trials of Tesco.

This morning I woke up absolutely dreading going to work. I'm not sure exactly what I was dreading but there's a few valid potential reasons. Anyway I hauled myself out of bed and walked the novelty short distance to the bus stop. On the bus I met beast who had far more reason to dread going to work as he was late due to there being no earlier buses yet his management were readying to give him a disciplinary on his arrival, even though it was his first proper late in three years. Obviously I was gutted for him but his misfortune did help me get a bit more enthusiastic about going to work. It turned out to be an okay day; nothing beyond minor annoyances to detract and nothing amazing. It was relatively busy but 75% of the customers were "browsers"; a totally acceptable thing to be but their presence makes managers give us a hard time because we're not looming over their necks forcing them to buy stuff. If a browser walks out without making a purchase, we have essentially failed in their opinions. End of low level rant. After work I went to Tesco with my family to accomplish the weekly shop as with no internet we can't get it delivered as we usually do. It was a truly abhorrent, scarring experience, with such a large proportion of tortured souls wandering aimlessly for hours, days, even weeks on end in vain attempts of finding the items they are looking for in the endless Narnia of sky high shelves. The signage only prolongs the agony as in one example I found the Quorn goods in a section marked 'soups'. Eventually we completed the hunt and I went to pay for a couple of items at the self service desk while my parents paid for their goods. These machines are the most heinous, deceiving part of the whole sadistic labyrinth. They lure you in with the promise of cutting queues and the novelty of doing the 'beepy barcode bit' yourself. But when you get there amd scan a couple of items, thus commiting yourself to the trial you discover it is the final challenge set by the blue striped overlords, designed with the sole intention of ending the lives, or st least diminishing the sanity, of those who have made it this far. You scan a loaf of bread and place it in the sacred bagging area, where the omniscient voice of judgement declares "please place item in bagging area". After shuffling the bread around and forceably placing it on the desk as though the inanimate machine will heed your over dramatic movements, one of the slaves of the underworld approaches, their limp soulless faces contorting into some sort of smile, clearly mocking your mortal existence, knowing that you are one basketfull of items (ten or less) away from becoming one of their kind. You eventually work through your load of items and proceed to the payment screen. here the machine senses you are strong, having not yet succumbed to the draw of the darkness and shows that it has become self aware, tricking you by boldly declaring "unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item". This last attempt comes close to working, making you think you will be framed for attempting to steal your items, you panic, wondering what will become of you, until one of the fallen ones approaches, sensing the strength in you that they had not mustered when facing the final task. They commit themselves to eternal damnation by waving the barcode suspended around their neck across the lasers, overriding the system, allowing you to complete the task. Finally you must ensure you have remembered the passcode to your funds and are then granted exit from the trial. You glance back at your rescuers who waves you goodbye, a solemn goodbye as while you have completed the trials and are finally leaving to return to your life in the outside world, you know they never will. They are doomed to an eternity of enslavery in the labyrinth of torture..... all in all it was an okay day, and tomorrows my Mums birthday, though I'm working all day so won't be involved in Amy celebrations. Song of the day is Year 3000 by Busted because I found my Busted t shirt from 2004 and it still fits. AWESOME!

Terry Wogan's Cock

Today was really good. I started off by utilizing my new, more central situation by walking to Drews house. There, I helped with some filming for milk paton, including a highly serious matter of trying ti sellotape a toy fiat 500 to a kitchen knife with a flashing light suspended above it. Stupid as it sounds, even I was laughing at it, sure enough the test footage drew got was pretty effective. That's one thing I love about film making; you literally make do with what you've got, ending up with some ridiculous scenarios like above but you work around it so that in the final piece it looks completely in place, sometimes even totally unremarkable. What they say is true though; the best special effects go by completely unnoticed. Also this afternoon I went with drew, darroch and josh to James redmonds 21st barbecue. It turned out to be more than acceptable banter. They even had some Quorn for it as they didn't know I was a veggie but someone else was, so GREAT SUCCESS etc. This evening I went into town, driven by Darroch who was picking up Beast. Along the way we encountered the hordes of people marching towards the rod Stewart concert. We did sit in the car screaming."rod Stewart's shit!", reenacting his gruff voice and comparing his general appearance to a 'drunken squirrel' as darroch put it, but we realised this was drunken neddish behavior and stopped before our voices got loud enough to be heard by the human herds. I stayed in town, not to see Rod, but to go to Ironworks to take photos of nick and Matt's band, seed of sorrow. I got a backstage pass which was awesome as not only did I get in for free but there was free beer backstage meaning the night didn't cost me a penny. The support act were called Bin Laden's Daughter and were a punk band who sung imaginatively titled songs ranging from 'Condoleeza Rice' to 'Terry Wogan's Cock'. They weren't my sort of music really but played well and were sound guys. Waiting for seed of sorrow I was excited about seeing my friends' band completely aware that even if they werent that good id enjoy it because they're friends. However when they broke into their first full song I was blown away: they're really really good. Matt is the vocalist and he completely owned the stage and audience. Everyone else had great presence as well, so the relatively small crowd were all hooked. I got some good photos which ill sort out once I actually have a computer in the house. Song of the day really has to be clown puncher by seed of sorrow. You won't find it on YouTube though.

Moving house is hard work...

Today was finally the day that we moved into our new house. But first off all I had another appointment with the psychiatrist which went fine. Nothing major was discussed, but they always help. When I got home from the hospital we went full force moving all the furniture and such between houses. It was knackering moving all that along with the kitchen appliances and everything else but eventually, at about 7:30, we were officially moved in. It's great having a new, airy, clean, bright house unlike our ancient croft cottage with no natural light and stale dust and soot constantly present in the air. It's also going to be great to be actually in Drum too. That's really what took up ky entire day; no time left for movie reviews, anecdotes or insights. Just heaving sofas and washing machines. Song of the day comes from when I woke up this morning and I was in the annoying mood where I can't think of what to listen to. After randomly picking various songs I came across 'Hurt' by Christina Aguilera and I was reminded how amazing it is; its a great song made all the better by her ridiculously good voice. I've heard people slagging her off recently, saying she's copying lady gaga... Erm no, she's been around much longer, is much more talented and will be around long after people tire of lady gagas progressively more unimaginative freak show tricks as I have.

Drive! DRIVE! oh wait, stop.

This morning I woke up relieved to find the hole where my wisdom tooth used to be was not painful at all. This made me pretty enthusiastic about the day and I headed down for the early bus. My good mood was soon dampered by the bus stopping at lochend because a battery warning light had come on. The driver phoned the mechanics who told him "ah it doesn't matter; keep going". He did so, and about half a mile later three more warning lights came on, including one that has the rough meaning "stop the bus' engine immediately". So now the bus was officially broken down and I had to phone for a taxi. Whilst the taxi driver was struggling to find me based on the terrible instructions he was given by the call centre I had a chat with the driver, as the only passenger on the bus. He's Polish and through the discussion he was saying that he was actually happier working back in Poland as a mechanic. I thought that was a really surprising twist to the argument that 'they come over here and take our jobs' and all that, suggesting they're just here for easy money. I eventually got to work where it was fairly quiet for the first half of the day, picking up a bit mid afternoon. It was Allans last day before he leaves to work in Harveys, incidentally right next door to currys. He's basically the best salesman there and is the main man with the answers for any technical queries. This means that his absence is going to ruin the stores results in PCs, naturally a major section. This fact is apparently clear to the deputy who spent all day in complete meltdown, running around getting more and more annoyed at the inevitable events that were occuring and being extremely bitter to Allan. I had a few run-ins with him throughout the day which are always entertaining. One featured him claiming I wasn't paying attention to customers which I rebutted, firstly with my sales being top for the day, almost double those of the person in second. Furthermore, I was able to tell him what every customer in the shop was looking for and a brief summary of the conversation I had with them. Every single one. That's the sort of annoyance you have to deal with there. This evening I bought Gran Turismo 5 prologue at gamestation and spent ages playing it with my brother. I have very mixed thoughts of it. It has stunning graphics and all that but the cars feel sluggish, like you're driving a corsa instead of an impreza, and the physics are atrocious. I was blasting round the Daytona speedway at about 150mph when I decided to slam into the wall. My car gently bumped away straight back into my previous racing line with no damage or serious loss of control that a couple of flicks of the stick didn't rectify. On a rally style track I was duelling for first place so decided to ram them off the track. We both slowed down considerably from the impact and floated away from each other very slightly, just like dodgems going really slowly. I sincerely hope they fix these flaws in the final release because it has great potential. Song of the day tonight is 'oh' by girls generation. They're Korean and feature on a promotional blue ray that plays constantly in the LG section at work. They feature because LG always sign in one or two Korean groups to their marketing, being a Korean company. Now if anyone thinks its an odd song for me to pick, YouTube the video for it and consider that I was being paid to watch it. no more needs said.

Excruciating nostalgia.

This morning before work I decided to sort out a dentist appointment. This triggered a whole shitstorm of confusion. Firstly I phoned my old dentist who informed me I have been removed from their list by the NHS, but the NHS haven't registered me with another one. So I had to try and get an emergency appointment which eventually was sorted out after the usual madness on the phone with NHS 24; "Are you conscious and breathing, sir?"... "Yes." etc. So I informed work I would be late and headed off to raigmore where I was given vague instructions on where the dentist is. These directions turned out to be completely useless and I spent nearly three quarters of an hour walking around the outside of the hospital in the pouring rain. Eventually I got there and was recommended I have my wisdom tooth removed because it was too far back. I never expected a tooth extraction to be so rudimentary; after the anaesthetic numbed my mouth she got to work with various types of pliers literally yanking away at the rogue chomper. It worked though and it was taken out to reveal the roots to be at ridiculous angles rather than the uniform shape they are supposed to be. I headed to work after this was done with the anaesthetic still making half of my mouth completely numb making talking a difficult task. Once there I discovered it was horrendously quiet with hardly any customers at any given time. As the day went on the anaesthetic started to wear off leaving me with an agonizing pain across the whole right side of my head. As I was surplus to requirements and was in a lot of pain making me terribly moody I went home early. After going to my grandparents for a brief while I went home where I spent the evening on my computer with my brother looking through all old photos and videos in the lack of internet. He was amazed to see pictures of himself from five years ago, aged 2. And it is really strange to look at them, remember clearly the scenario in which it taken before looking at him, realising how much older he is now. The few that I cropped up in were equally as terrifying, seeing how different I look too. Another cool thing I found was todays song of the day. It's fool for love by Das Pop. I remember seeing them at rockness in 2008 where I had never heard of them but ended up being my favourite act of the day. They're pretty straight forward pop rock really but nonetheless I think they're really good and this is the only song I have of theirs just now; its a good'un though.

Horrendous day

Today was set to be pretty straight forward; a day off spent packing. For the first half this is what i did and with classic fm playing in the background i was having a great time. Unfortunately the afternoon got complicated and annoying. Firstly I had an apppintment at the doctors becaue ive had really bad pain in the back of my gums for a few days. Turns out its a wisdom tooth that is attempting to protrude at a Jaunty angle thus getting into bother, creating an absess at the back of my mouth. I have to see a dentist to get it sorted which created problems because I don't actually have a dentist with the shortage just now. So I have to phone the NHS early tomorrow morning to try and get an emergency appointment.

More fun was had with BT. Their promise to reconnect our line today was not met so I phoned up. I was informed that they had cancelled the reconnection instead of the transfer which we had requested be cancelled last night in addition to the first attempted cancellation last week. I was fuming and instructed it be sorted immediately where I was told they could have it fixed by friday. Essentially that's three days to press a button. I told them it wasn't a matter of days I wanted it sorred but a matter or hours. So he made some calls and it was sorted this afternoon. Meanwhile dad found out BT had taken the liberty of cancelling our internet with zen and in phoning them about the cock up was told it would cost £130 to have it reconnected on friday. So that's no internet for us, therefore im on my phone again and will be for a while. The last chapter of this saga is when I phoned my dads mobile to ensure the line was fully functional. Sure enough I got through to him without hitch; only problem being that its not our phone number theyve reinstated to our line; its a whole new number. What this means we have no idea but I couldn't handle another half hour on hold with the same ten second loop of music.

This evening i watched the box, directed by Richard Kelly who directed donnie darko, my ravourite movie. It was gripping throughout, completely unpredictable and genrwlly very well made. I loved the was it was filmed to look like an old 35mm movie, being set in the 70s. My. only gripe is that in the third quarter it gets a little bit too high level and doesnt quite pull off the big ideas it introduces. Nonetheless it pulls everyrhing together for a dramatic final quarter that leaves you thinking for a while afterwards. Perfectly acted and mostly well written, it doesn't come close to donnie darko in my estimation but is still a very good film. 9/10.

Due to my non internet having I can't embed songs for a while but ill keep song of the day going. Today its bullet for my valentine - your betrayal. I heard it this morning and immediately adored it. So much so that not being able to go online to hear it again I sky+'d the whole evening of scuzz and fast forwarded through it all unttil finally it came on. Sure enough it did and I think its a really original song with some great ideas in it. Face melting intro, stunning verses and a catchy classic BFMV chorus its a mind blowing song, definitely one of my best of the year so far.

Raging

This morning i got the buw to town as i always do. Except today I had to get a citylink, in the knowledge that it would be slightly more expensive. Upon asking for my ticket, a single from urquhart castle to Inverness I was charged £8.10. That is literally just under two hours wages gone before I have the opportunity to earn it. How the government can urge us to be 'green' and use public transport when these sort of prices are involved is a joke.

Work went fine, nothing to note really.

Tonight when i got home I found out that our internet and phone line had been cut off by bt even though we cancelled the line switchover last week. When we phoned to rage they were all ready to install a new line and charge us £127 for the priviledge. So I've had to do my blog on my phone relying on drums atrocious signal to load pages. Hence any typos in this.

Song of the ive decided is phantom of the opera from the 2004 movie. It's amazing and I realised today that i love some of the lyrics too. That is all, I can't embed the video because it would take me hours to load YouTube on two bars of G mobile network coverage.

I was pulling out my hair.

I wasn't starting work until 12 today so me and Dad went to some shops to get stuff for the house. Started off in B&Q where we somehow managed to spend over 70 quid on literally nothing; screws and brackets basically. Horrific. After this I looked at the furniture shops for a sofa. It disgusts me how they're so expensive. I walked around DFS without even pausing and six assistants approached me asking how I was, etc, etc. The seventh guy asked me what I was looking for to which I replied, quite honestly, "something cheaper than what you've got here." He guided me to the cheapest sofa, a vomit coloured disgrace to modern interior design for the 'bargain' price of 350 bucks.

Work went okay. It started off really quiet but picked up as the day went on. I spent literally an hour with one elderly man who had no idea about technology but wanted a digital camera and to be able to print them. He didn't have a computer so it was complicated explaining how to do it with one of the printers with a screen. To sum up the conversation nicely would be to quote his question upon seeing the camera I recommended: "Where does the film go?" He finally got a vague understanding of what everything was and left happy with his new toys.

This evening I watched the World Cup Final. It was pretty boring if I'm honest. First half featured two terrible teams playing with little more urgency than a friendly. Second half both teams racked it up a bit but still weren't showing off any sort of skill that justified them being in the final. It wasn't until the end of the second half and during extra time that they seemed to care about winning but still it was in the last couple of minutes that Spain managed to score their winning goal. Not a great end to the world cup coupled with the ridiculous amount of yellow cards being thrown around for the crazy amount of fouling occurring. Highlights of the match for me were firstly in the opening where the commentator said "It's Orange versus Clockwork" I immediately got the Clockwork Orange reference but it took me a minute to figure out what it meant; very clever, BBC, very clever. My second highlight was the ninja kick dealt out by one of the Dutch players. Amazing. Thirdly was the funniest part where Puyol ran into his own goalkeeper who was in mid air causing a huge mid air collision of a flying goalkeeper and long flowing locks, which looked beautifully hilarious in slow motion HD.

Song of the day today is one that I have had stuck in my head for a majority of the day. It's Marina and the Diamonds - Guilty. It's my favourite song from her album. It took me a while to get into it because it doesn't have the instantly catchiness of some of her other songs but after a few listens I really started to like the power of it and it's a really unusual yet easy to listen to song. When I saw her live a month or so ago this song was mind-blowing. So the first video is the actual song and the second is form the gig I was at. It's the best quality version I could find on youtube at the expense of it only being part of the song.

I kissed Bella. And she broke her hand. Punching my face.

Today I had a stupidly early start, needing to leave the house at 7 in order to get to work for a meeting about the company before actually starting work at 9. The meeting was lead by someone from Head Office who was pretty sound.

Once we opened it was fairly busy for the day. The best part however was the Sharp Rep visiting, to showcase the Quattron TV's. I was tasked with assisting her and, as such, being trained on them. As previous posts explain, I consider these TV's to be a con based on the physical attributes of light dictating that all colours in existence are derived from Red Green and Blue. However, the Rep made a convincing display in gifting us a couple of Quattron branded magnifying glasses tuned such that once pressed against a TV screen you can see individual pixels. Sure enough the Quattron has yellow pixels. The lady went on to explain that the extra colour pixel also has the bonus effect of the blacks being sharper and deeper. I questioned how this works, confident in the knowledge that it was a blatant lie as black is created on an LCD screen by the LCD shutter being closed, disallowing ANY light from passing through, yellow or not. She didn't give a real answer, literally repeating the phrase "the extra colour pixel". After this I resorted to thickly-veiled sarcasm, suggesting that Sharp employ this four-colour technology in cameras amongst other technology. She was genuinely interested in my feedback so clearly didn't get the joke.

Tonight I went to the cinema with Florence to see Eclipse. It was actually pretty good in a genuinely decent film sense, not a trashy fun sense. This time they focused on the plot rather than spending half of the running time having silly little flourishes of 'stylish' shots and general annoyance. The biggest thing I was impressed with was that they portrayed the vampires much better than the first two did. Previously they were pretty pathetic and wingey, but in this they are animalistic monsters as they should be. They still have the characterisation in them but there's the dark edge to the whole thing that was missing before. This dark side allows more violence too, with a climactic battle featuring vampires limbs being torn off all around amongst an ultra stylish flurry of good vampires, bad vampires and werewolves. It's short lived but really well choreographed. The CGI is pretty good too, not mind-blowing but the scenes where Bella interacts with the CG wolf are certainly well done; far better than New Moon's attempts. There are a number of gripes I have however; firstly is the shaky cam. Whenever there's a low-level talky scene, the camera is wobbling all over the place, not just in a steadycam style, literally force 5 earthquake style. In theory I understand why it's there, to add some interest to the frame, but I really feel that the beautiful grading of the whole movie adds more than enough interest to such scenes. I found it very distracting when the camera was so lively. My other gripe is some of the acting nuances they seem to have given to characters. I've noticed mostly that whenever Kristen Stewart is required to display an emotion she pulls a brief grimace as though suffering from trapped wind. Seriously, look out for it; "I *grimace* love you, Edward". It is so consistently apparent that I don't think it's fair to say it's a sign of bad acting, more somewhere along the line someone has decided it works well when in fact it looks atrocious. Overall though it is a very entertaining movie and outdoes both of its predecessors. 7/10.

Song of the day is Claire De Lune by Clause Debussy. It plays in Eclipse and as soon as I heard it fading in I decided to have it as song of the day. It's very nice. And I'm so tired that I shall say no more and shall sleep.