Saturday, July 19
I Live In A Scuzzhole
I just popped down to a cashpoint in the centre of my town, Melksham, and I was amazed just how many good-looking women there weren't around. 10.30 on a Friday night usually means at least some "totty" wandering around, or at least it did in Leicester Square when I was there (can't find the link for the relevant archive...). Not in Melksham though. Hell no. Of all the women walking around, which must have numbered over 30, there were about 2 or 3 half-decent lookers amongst them. I'm so glad I don't go out on Friday nights. Give me a "double vodka for £1" Thursday or a bog-standard Saturday night please!
I've also changed a couple of little bits on the site, including updates of the Music and Literature pages. The biggest change, however, is the oh-so-spangly-new links to the Archives of this blog. Click on a month name to the left, and a new menu will open where you can choose which week to view. This is mainly to save space, since the list of dates by each week was getting a little long... It took me a little while to remember how javascript worked, but I'm pleased with myself for getting it to work. Tough shit to those of you who use Netscape, I really don't want to translate the script into stupid Netscape layers. Go download IE or Opera.
Tomorrow should be a good day, taking my Mum out to lunch, then getting about 1000 new mp3s from this guy I know from work, followed by a few (many) beers in the pub with some mates. Good stuff.
Friday, July 18
Speak Like Me
Nothing of note has happened today, except a slightly larger than expected pay packet, which can only be a good thing. Rather than leaving this post as short as this, I figured I'd write a little on a subject which has been running around my head for a couple of weeks now. Namely, the way in which I speak in real life.
First things first, I come from the West Country in England, which is stereotyped as being farmer country, where everybody is really retarded and backward. This is entirely true. Well, almost entirely true. I know of a few exceptions, myself included (I'm only backward, not retarded), but I know plenty of people who seem to adhere to the stereotype down to the smallest detail. The main reason why the rest of England views us in this manner is because most of us speak in an odd manner. Vowel sounds are drawn out and emphasised above consonants, which basically means that we speak fairly slowly.
Now, I don't speak completely like this, and I really don't notice it whilst I'm in this area, but I notice the way in which I speak differently to the rest of my mates whilst I'm at uni in London. Of course we all speak differently, but I stand out a little because of the little nuances which occur so often whilst I'm speaking. Patrick, you probably didn't notice a huge amount because all English is so different from American. For a start, we pronounce "herbs" right.
The first of these not-so-subtle nuances is the way I pronounce the letter "a" in words such as "bath" and "class." I say it very, very flat, as in the word "flat" itself in fact, whereas most people pronounce it as if it had an "r" after it. Why do they do this? There's no "r" in the word, it's just an "a"! I also extend the vowel sound, as noted above, which makes me sound like a proper west country bumpkin. All good.
What else? Oh yeah, the classic "tooth." This came to the fore in the whole 'knocking out my two front teeth whilst paralytically drunk and not remembering' incident last October. Apparently, pronouncing "tooth" to rhyme with "book" is wrong. It should be the same as "soon." i don't think this is a West Country thing either, just me. Oh well, another individual personality trait. That makes a total of, ummmmm, 1.
I swear far too fucking much as well. I'd be crap on live TV because I swear so much. Every other word is "fuck" or "shit," or so it seems. This isn't just me, I think it's my generation as a whole. Damn us and our profane voices.
I also use random descriptive words all over the place. "Proper" has become my word of choice, replacing "quality," the mainstay from the age of 15 to 18. I tend to say stuff like "yeah, it was proper good" or "nah mate, it was proper smart." Makes no sense, I know.
What annoys me about the way I speak is that it's becoming americanised (note the "s" rather than a "z" in written form though). I use "like" too much when I describe a conversation that took place, and also "And then he was, like..." I obviously watched Saved By The Bell too much when I was younger. That programme was fucking wicked though.
That's about it, I think. Go forth and spread the vocal style of Rob.
Thursday, July 17
Bored Bored Bored
I'm afraid that absolutely nothing interesting at all has happened recently to me. I've been working every night, sleeping for most of the day and trying to fix my fucking computer for most of my waking hours before work. Stupid bastard arsing fucking computer. It got to the point where Windows wouldn't even load 90% of the time, but I managed to get System Restore to do its work, uninstalled a couple of programs and edited a bit of the registry, and it seems to be fine now, touch wood. Dammit, I want to get my own computer (with WinXP) online, rather than this (WinME) piece of junk. It's also a pain in the ass to transfer files bigger than a floppy disk between the two computers, which is why I'm going to pick up one of these little gadgets this weekend.
Just on the subject of work for a minute, I have absolutely no idea how the company I work for makes a profit. It is so disorganised it's not even funny. I will explain fully tomorrow, but I need to shoot off to work now. Oh joy.
Monday, July 14
Small-time Amusements
From MS Messenger, when you click the box to stop auto-downloading of updates: "Are you sure you want to disable this feature? It is only meant to improve your Messenger Plus! experience." Pretty much begging you not to turn it off...
At the cash register in my local Sainsbury's: "ALL checkout staff must say to every customer: '
A couple of search terms which find my blog: wanting to get sober; 22 girls on my floor 22 guys; hate man utd; I like writing fairly eclectically, it gets me visitors.
Sunday, July 13
Oh Dear Oh Dear Oh Dear
Copied from a post I made on my favourite message board, because I'm too lazy to type it out again
I was out last night at this ball thing a few friends of mine organised in aid of Cancer Research. It was all going well, the wine was flowing, and I was chatting away, having a laugh, with a group of friends who I hadn't seen for a fair few months.
Anyway, one of my best friends, who I've known for ages and ages, and I ended up getting off with each other, and now I'm completely fucked over by the whole thing. She used to go out with my best mate for a long time, and they were always at it like rabbits, even when the rest of us were around. Since we've all kinda split up and gone our seperate ways to different universities, she's the one who i've seen most, because we're both in London.
Last November (ish) we went out for a big night out in london, and she tried it on with me then. For some unknown reason, I turned her down, and she got well pissed off with me about it. Things have been fine since then, and we still get on really, really well. Then I fucking went and pulled her last night! Now it's going to be really awkward. Why can't friends just stay friends? Makes me angry.
I've managed to dig out a picture of her here. She's the one on the left. The other girl is my friend Helen, and the guy is PH, pronounced PH. (Sorry, running joke which nobody else will get, ever)
This is my second attempt at posting this. Earlier, I got the blue screen of death about 4 times, which is not good. Stupid fucking WinMe and Media Player. I fucking hate Microsoft products before they got it right with XP.
One other thing, go to The BBC Website and search for "hate man utd." What comes up? My blog. Yay!
