Adventures In Alcohol

One of the drawbacks of working in a medical school is that when you announce your intention to consume your own weight in cider at your birthday do, people are likely to offer compelling biological reasons as to why this should not be allowed.  Following Plan A's nixing, I attempted to move onto plan B, which is to drink my friend Siew-Wan's weight in cider, she being the lightest person available for measurement.

Alas, this too was deemed impractical. She might be petite, but there's still an astonishing 92 pints-worth of weight to her.  It looks like we're going to have to make this a team effort.  In order to keep track of the resulting consumption, I have divided Siew-Wan into 92 areas, as shown:

Alcoholic drinks will be marked from the top down (she always claims alcohol always goes straight to her head), and soft drinks will work their way up from her feet.

Will we consume an entire Siew-Wan in seven hours? Will the soft drinks find themselves massacred by the alcoholic variety, or merely soundly thrashed?  Only the future can say!

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What else was I going to post for this particular birthday?  Four months from now, I'll have been on this earth for a third of a century.  I really should get around to doing some work one of these days.

We Shall Consult The List

For those desperate for more information as to why that last post kicked off with so much rage: what's wrong with you?  Still, I'm going to tell you, because the last 36 hours have been a horrifying shit show in all ways but one, but that one is damned important.

So, in chronological order:

1. Fuck you, Easyjet.  If you're running two flights within 25 minutes of each other, and you have a 45 minute queue at check-in an hour before the first of those flights closes its gate, you may wish to have more than two desks in operation. A third desk for "speedy boarding" does not count, unless you can summon up the brainpower to realise that when the line for speedy boarding includes no passengers, that desk can take some of the prole overflow.  It is the ease with which that desk can be reached that some people will pay more for.  The desk itself is indistinguishable from the others, save the fact that a fucking idiot is sitting behind it.
2. Fuck you, Munich Airport. Your signs are confusing and infrequent, and your insistence on multiple security checkpoints with letter designations in addition to your check-in desks with lettered designations seems deliberately unhelpful.  That said, though, the real reason you're in the shit is for running three passport readers when three flight-loads of people are trying to get through, two thirds of whom just got delayed at check-in by a jellybrain. Further fuck-you points are awarded for letting people push in if they're on a fractionally earlier flight than those further back, because these errant fuckwits decided that with half an hour before their gate closes the best plan would be to pick up a Big Mac and fries.
   
   Oh, and fuck you, woman who took my bag at security.  There's hundreds of people trying to get through behind me, and you're moving at a snail's pace and getting shirty with anyone clearly trying to keep things moving.  The most important lesson to learn from House is that you can only be a twatasaurus if you're actually any good at your job.
3. Speaking of which, fuck you, surveyors who my landlady employs.  Don't think the fact I don't know your name is getting you off the hook.  When I phone in a possible leaking/decomposing bathroom ceiling, I expect you to show up even if it is a Saturday.  Failing that, I expect that, when you finally bother to show up, you will successfully diagnose the condition of my ceiling.  You will not go home,  tell my estate agents that there's no real hurry, and put your feet up with a beer whilst my fucking ceiling collapses.
   
   Replying to messages left on a Monday morning saying "Our tenant informs us his fucking ceiling has fucking collapsed, you fuckers" would also be a good idea.  There's no reason why the rest of the ceiling won't come down any minute.  Or even the guy upstairs.  Which would be unfortunate.  He's a prick.
4. Fuck you, the guy upstairs.  You're a prick. I hope this time around I won't have to explain to you that legal liability extends to things you're responsible for even if you don't give a shit about them.
5. Fuck you, Sky Go. If you're going to spend twenty five minutes (at the very least) buffering every time you reach an ad break, you could at least not randomly restart the program every now and again, only to take longer buffering the second time around.  Took me four hours to watch The Newsroom and Supernatural yesterday. It's fortunate circumstances had ensured this could not eat into bath time.

So that's everything that really pissed me off since yesterday morning.  Except for one more thing, which was that an extremely good piece of news looked distinctly wobbly for most of today, for reasons we won't go into.  Fortunately, it all came together in the end, so it can now be announced: The Other Half and I are moving in together.

This is my first time living with someone I've had any interest in kissing (sorry Louise! Sorry Susie! Sorry my sister!), so I expect it will be a most instructive experience.  Depending on start dates for her new job, TOH and I could be ensconced as early as next month, or as late as New Year.  More details nearer the time, if only when I start panicking over not being able to scratch my testicles with my egg-whisk anymore, or whatever.

Hilarious update: visited the bathroom at midnight to find it was raining in there, meaning these people not only failed to predict my ceiling collapsing, but rather exaggerated when they suggested leaking wasn't going to be a problem.  Though in fairness, the guy above might have just lied about getting it fixed, like the turd he is.  This is so fun!

Another Year, Another Post

The unquestionable mathematics of linear time have deemed that this day be considered my "birthday".  It's been thirty two years since I first squirmed out into the world, and global domination is still as far from my tentacle tips as ever it was.  Other than that, though, I seem to have done OK.

I've certainly been damned lucky in my choice of friends and girlfriend, certainly.  Currently sitting on my kitchen worktops is this deliciously citrus-tinged delight, baked by The Other Half, and just waiting for me to digest my Chinese dinner enough to allow me to start gorging. 

Also on display in chez calamari: this truly beautiful birthday card, designed by My Other Half's workmate, and our mutual friend, Michelle Webb.

Cocktails, doggies, and probability formulae.  The woman knows her audience.

Further examples can be found at her shop, which I recommend browsing.

Moving On

I am pleased to announce that as of 2pm this afternoon, I have a new flat!  I shall be transferring my decrepit frame to it at the start of April, but I thought I'd share a few pictures of the new domicile.  This is the outside of my block of flats:

These are some internal pictures:

This is part of the view from the living room window:

And this is Kenilworth High Street's giant rotating clitoris.

I am still not looking forward to leaving Durham, but I'm definitely liking the idea of living in Kenilworth much more now.

It's That Time Again

It's my birthday today, so no posting.  Whether or not anything materialises tomorrow depends entirely on the amount of brain damage I take over the course of the day.

The Two Sweetest Words In The English Language

Happy Halloween, everyone!  May your spooky fun be/have been of the very highest quality.  Also, look out for zombies.  And leopards.

Caution: costume may contain spoilers

Not pictured: the bottle of cheap wine I won at the pub quiz for best costume.  Entirely by default, admittedly, but the booze will surely taste no less sweet for that...

Good Things Come In Threes

Have just secured myself an extra five months funding, with a pay rise to boot. Hooray! Now all I have to do is teach a lecture course on a subject about which I know nothing!

To celebrate this rare moment of good fortune, I'm off tonight to see my second favourite band in the universe. So let's have us some videos. The first is for "Private Eye", the second Alkaline Trio song I ever heard, and the exact moment at which I fell in love. Sometimes bands grow on you, and some just gut-punch you in the best way possible.



Also submitted for your approval is their latest video, for the song "This Addiction". I'm offering it partly as a compare and contrast (clearly the coffers are a little less barren than once they were), and partly because it reminds me of The Tribe, that somewhat bonkers but occasionally brilliant New Zealand show from the turn of the millennium, which managed to be a typically ludicrous teenage soap opera melodrama and a neat look at a common childhood fantasy (i.e. no more adults) at the same time. It was the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures, but I still remember it fondly, in that way we all do with experiences too far in the past to clearly recall their faults anymore.

At Last I Am Victorious

Confirmation came through yesterday afternoon that my corrected thesis has been passed. I have thus now graduated from telling people "I will be a doctor conditional on not screwing up my corrections" to "I will be a doctor conditional on not burning Durham to the ground by accident." Whilst the latter scenario cannot be ruled out entirely, this is still a tremendously positive step.

Breaking News

Ladies and gentlemen, you are now adoring fans of the entity known as... Dr SpaceSquid!

Please update your worship of me accordingly.

The End Of The End Of The Beginning

First up, I would like to announce that I have, at long last, been judged employable, and can expect to spend the next nine months considering the inner mysteries of oil wells. This makes no difference to some of you, probably, except to say that normal service will be resumed (i.e. my rants will become longer and more X-Men based) sometime in the middle of April.

Having said I never wanted to discuss that show ever again, I find that I can't stop thinking about last night's finale. I'm suffering from a degree of confused disbelief so intense that my mind keeps absently wandering back to it, the way your tongue seems to keep heading for the gap caused by a missing tooth.

What was the point of all those flashbacks? I mean, Anders' made thematic sense (although since I'm not in the most generous of moods, by "thematic sense" I mean "A cynical ploy to make firing him into the goddamn sun seem like a reasonable fate"), and there was a nice moment with the Tighs. But Adama? Roslin? What the hell was that all about? Baltar's flashbacks seemed entirely there to remind us he comes from a family of farmers, which I guess led to a nice payoff at the end, but there was far more shown than you needed for that.

As for Lee and Kara, I'll grant that showing they were attracted to each other from the start is nice and all (though not necessarily something one need see in the final episode), but the pigeon chasing? I mocked this yesterday, but to be more clear, if your metaphors are coming from a Nelly Furtado song, you're in trouble. Such things do not belong in one of the best sci-fi shows of all time.

I will say one last thing about the ending, and then I swear I'm done. Turning a series that has lasted half a decade and impressed hundreds of thousands of people with its maturity and complexity into an extended public service announcement on the dangers of science is just, well, fucking stupid. Justifying it by having two of the most ambiguous and intriguing characters from the show explain it to you while walking down the street is an extra level of dumb. We're simultaneously getting a banal lecture on the human condition (with a point Lee had already made, and far more artfully, earlier in the episode), and then you're scrawling "THEY WERE ANGELS ALL ALONG, WOOOOOOOO!!!" on top of it. This is to say nothing of the rug pull of "All this will happen before, and will happen again," we had to endure. "DO YOU GET IT, PEOPLE!?! WE ARE THE NEXT STAGE IN THE CYCLE, WOOOOOOOO!!!" I'd spent the whole of the show thinking we would turn out to have been the first stage of the cycle. You know why? Because THAT MAKES FUCKING SENSE. Baltar even went so far last night to point out the astronomical odds of finding another race of humans that had evolved independently. I took that as proof that we were going to find out something more was going on. But what was going on was apparently "GOD TOTALLY DID THIS YOU GUYS, WOOOOOO!!!!" It's a non-explanation. Every time the show has previously talked about massively unlikely coincidences (The Hand Of God, Rapture), we now know it's because God was pissing around. Not by helping out, or anything, just by orchestrating events in a really weird way. It's pretty clear that I don't believe in an interventionist God (to paraphrase Nick Cave), but even if I did, I think it would be fair to say that I wouldn't believe in one that intervenes in ways that maximise dramatic tension.
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I'm not even going to talk about Starbuck; I'm still too angry.

On the other hand, the idea of Capricans using "horns" as grave markers? Genius. In fact, there was a massive amount I liked about the finale, but 90% of it was in the first half. The second just collapsed under the weight of its own pretentious nothingness.

Update: Oh, and one more thing. I have earned my displeasure at the finale. I would just like to warn people ahead of time that anyone dissing Daybreak who has previously run screaming across the intertubes wearing "Nu Who Is Awesome And Doesn't Need To Make Sense!!" I will punch them right in the crotch.

It Is I, Sidney Feldman

It strikes me as a generally bad idea to post up pictures of oneself on one's blog. Especially in my case, since I look like a fat, balding Damon Albarn, and that isn't what anyone wants to see.

Thus, in future, when you imagine what I look like whilst reading my rants, I suggest you think of Mr Octopus, the new office mascot created by BT.



Update: it occurred to me a few minutes ago that I have, in fact, posted a picture of myself up on this blog before. Since it was disguised as a portrait of Russian royalty, however, I have decided that it doesn't count.

So Damn Old

Right, I am old as Hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Well, I guess I am, but at the very least it's my birthday and I'll post what I want to. With that in mind, some whiny white boy music from a band that needs a bit more exposure: The Answering Machine.



Also, following a discussion with a friend not so long ago, and since I'm about to get a free copy of the sequel printed (God bless you, NaNoWriMo), I've finally bended to (almost no) pressure and decided to start putting up my novella on these here pages. Anyone with an allergy to spectacularly mediocre sci-fi is advised to look away... now!

What I Learned In Jersey

A brief summary of the trials and tribulations of time spent on the largest Channel Island:

1) Senor Spielbergo's house is huge. You could fit my entire flat into his bedroom and his own personal living room (as oppose to the general living room, which is somewhat larger). You could lose my parent's house in his garden, and then squeeze an Olympic swimming pool in there as well. You could also probably insert an adult camel into his TV. Well, not insert, exactly, since the damn thing is wafer thin, but it could certainly display a life-size image of a camel, in high definition and with surround sound.

It would be enough to make me sick if it weren't for SS plying me with free booze all week, and allowing me access to his hot-tub. He has a fucking hot-tub!

2) I already had a taste of this last year in Scotland, but since that was pre-blog, I thought I'd mention that trying to put together a film with your friends whilst on holiday is almost impossible, to say nothing of stressful as Hell. I'd roll out the old cliche of it being like herding cats, except that cats are generally sober, and don't require constant costume changes. And all I was trying to do was put together a 45-second trailer. The logistics for the film written by SS, Kimmy and Tom was an order of magnitude more complicated. Once you have to employ me as Second Unit Director, you know things are getting hairy.

3) One of the less pleasant experiences an entomophobe can experience is to lay prostrate on the ground at night, with a halogen lamp shining on your face to reveal all of the nocturnal arthropods getting jiggy right in front of your face, convinced one of them has shouted "Hang on lads, let's blow this scene and have a party in that bloke's nostrils!".[1] This is an even less enjoyable situation than sitting on a cracked concrete German bunker only to find the occupants of the ant's nest within are irresistibly drawn to the human backside so as to use it as a foraging ground cum discotheque. Since I faced both scenarios in the same week, it is faintly surprising that I am still as sane as I am.

4) Driving an automatic car is an interesting experience. I'm not sure I'd want one, but given how hard I find it to adjust to a new automobile, it was a relatively painless switch. The only problem is that the lack of a clutch means you're tempted to have your left foot on the break, which quickly proves to be a fairly critical mistake since the slightest pressure on both peddles simultaneously causes the car to engage a breaking system that would put a brick wall to shame.

5) After much controversy and academic discussion, it can at last be revealed that my eyes are blue. Other observations have also been recorded but not revealed to the public. According to the perpetrator of this study, "some of them were nice".

6) Jersey is very pretty. It is also rich beyond measure, although Big G and myself both took solace in the fact that no matter how wealthy an island community may be, it still has a high street filled with drunken borderline-hookers on a Friday night.

[1] Having a slavering Manx attempt to chew off your cheek doesn't help much either, but that's another story.

Denied Once More

I was tremendously happy to discover a spare copy of Mario Kart Wii in Sainsbury's today. I've been wanting a copy ever since discovering the joys of dirtbiking dinosaurs back in Oxford.

Of course, this being me, it turned out they didn't have a copy after all, they'd just put an empty box out to, I don't know, perform some kind of psychological experiment, or something.

I mention this incident as a perfect example of the First Rule of SpaceSquid's Universe: it is not enough to simply deny me what I want, every effort has to be put into making me believe what I want is within my grasp, so that it can be whisked away at the last minute to the sound of the laughter of the cosmos.

Not that I'm bitter, obviously.

First Steps

I've thought long and hard as to whether or not to set up my own blog, mainly because it isn't immediately apparent as to what exactly I can bring to the sphere as a whole. I had hoped I could sell myself as offering an above-average number of dick jokes, but considering some of the competition I have in that regard, I might be setting the bar a little high.

Eventually, though, I decided not to worry about it. Time will tell as to whether or not this exercise is entirely futile. I guess at this point some kind of introduction is in order. So, in order of importance, the following things can, in a very rough sense, be considered the parts of which I, SpaceSquid, am the sum.

1. Mathematics

Specifically, probability. The theoretical behemoth through which I (just about) eke out a living. I'm not idiotic enough to be liable to discuss probability in great depth here, so you can breathe easy on that score, but it is worth noting that it tends to creep into my thinking whenever statistics are presented by politicians, journalists, or foaming-mouthed amateurs.

2. Writing

Prose, mainly. Well, exclusively, in effect, since every poem I have ever written has been bilge of the highest order (I eventually switched to haikus, since they at least are over too quickly for anyone to be too disgusted). I've done a lot of short stories, one novella, one novel (that is in desperate need of an edit and a proper ending), and a screen-play for a short film which we shot last September, and which could have been a lot worse than it turned out to be. Of course, this may be down to the director, assuming you buy into the Auteur theory, and further buy into the idea that it applies to drunken insurance agents waving a camera at his actors essentially at random.

3. Politics

US politics, mainly, because their endless ideological war is far more interesting than our tendency to agree on almost everything, and respectfully agree to disagree on the rest. Remember how much trouble the Tories got into over "New Labour, New Danger?" Our American cousins would pull that shit in an election for class president, unless the guy they were running against was black, in which case they'd come up with something substantially worse.

4. Japanese

About to take the exam for the end of my second year, which means I can navigate, order food, state preferences, and read two of their three alphabets. Since the third one contains upwards of fifty thousand symbols, I might choose to give it a miss, and just spend my first trip there pretending to be blind.

5. Guitar

This is towards the bottom of the list for the simple reason that I am awful at it. Right now, I can play exactly three songs, and maybe a fourth if I can ever remember the chord progression in the chorus, which currently puts me at the talent level of a drunken hobo busking with a penny-whistle. I am only a bridge-figuring-out away from reaching the legendary fifth song, at which point I will have reached the talent level of Mark Ronson. Seriously, listening to the aural abortion that was his version of The Smith's Stop Me... was like hearing your old friend's baby being beaten to death by a crack-addled cyborg using a microphone with the gain turned up as far as it'll go. Maybe it was irony that led to the song choice ("Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before"), but the actual arrangement is shit, and you can't equate irony with shit unless you're Alanis Morissette, at which point you're still doing it simply due to an inadequate grasp of the English language. Still, you have to admire the brass testes it takes to murder both The Smiths and Radiohead with consecutive releases. Anyway, I digress.

6. Digression.

Not so much a skill, talent or hobby as an inevitable occurrence. Consider yourselves warned.

7. Single.

That's right ladies, SpaceSquid is open for business. For now, anyways; previous experience has taught me that it could be as little as three years before I'm snapped up again, so book early to avoid disappointment. Or, to be more plausible, to change the packaging in which your disappointment will be delivered.

Right, well I guess that about covers it as an introduction. I'll be back when I can think of something more specific to scribble down.