Man, Goldfrapp’s Strict Machine. Just flipped it on for the hell of it after hearing it at least twenty times over the Glastonbury period - over a year old and still pulling no punches. Totally obligatory quasi-pop electronica.
Buy Black Cherry (amazon.co.uk link)or visit your nearest p2p stockest for details.
THANKYOU.
[edit: I’ve uploaded a couple of choons for a post made @ PCGF, Strict Machine is here, and have a browse of the temp folder for more. Stuff.]
So anyway, let me tell you a story. A couple of hours ago I was hellishly bored, so I broke into a porn site. This is nothing special; it’s easy, and it still gives me a vague thrill. Note: hacking is never as cool as its depicted in films, it’s a bunch of bots (read: scripts) running really really fast trying passwords and sniffing packets and whotnot. Well, it’s cool in a way. Sidenote: I’m never paying for porn - not a moral thing, it’s just in so much abundance that it has very little value to me. Let’s continue.
So the bots run through, and a while later they find a working set, and I’m in this site. I don’t actually want to look at the porn, I just broke in for cheap thrills, like I said. Now what? Scan down the options: boring, boring, boring - ah - live cams. Live cams are something of a misnomer. Far from being sleazy hardcore peekshows, they’re basically utterly banal. Unless you’re paying, there’s little to see. But they’re little views into the lives of random urbanites, eclectic bunches of funky people. From that point of view, it’s exciting.
I scroll down the list of cams - mostly young naive students looking for easy cash - and I pick one, “SilkEyes”, an eastern european-looking femme with something of the Keira Knightley about her. Whatever. Cam loads up, chat loads up, I say hi and wait and watch. Imagine me, if you will, as slinking to the virtual corner of the room, and watching. In a non-seedy way. Remember: this is all about observing the weirdness of it all; I’m not getting involved. Gradually, the chat window fills up with the usual roll-eyes misogyny from faceless misanthropes in farflung locations (but probably America, one can’t help but assume).
“wht are you wearing underneath?” “nice legs baby” “dance for me” “your sexy” “how old are you?” “are oyu feeling hot” “im horny”
Yeah, yeah. I ALT-TAB to BBC News 24 and grab some munchies to eat. A while passes. I tab back. Ooh, interesting. I get out my virtual notebook, pencil readied.
SilkEyes says: “please, don’t call me again butch1.”
SilkEyes says: “didn’t mean to give out my number”
I won’t paste what the other person was saying. You can imagine. He was kicking off. I scrolled up. A while back she’d meant to have gone into a private chat with someone, who’d left for whatever reason during the session, and her private words had appeared in the main window. Along with her number. Below that was a list of appeals from SilkEyes for people to stop calling her, and for people taunting her because of it. (Yes, she could’ve ignored her phone, but I think she was just a little anxious about a room full of men nabbing her number, and possibly her location). I scrolled down some. Now the rest of the chatroom was split between rounding on him, and rounding on her. Scrolled back to the end. I mean, I’m not one to get offended, but frankly it sucked. And as part of the chatroom, albiet someone who was AFK for the whole time, I detested being part of the mob. The male mob, who was totally abusing her. Glanced at her cam and she was looking pretty upset. Clicked “private show”.
Ah, silence. The message window went black. List of particpants: her and myself. I grinned. For the others to be able to see her, or talk to her, they had to pay double what I was paying. That worked in my favor. I chose the longest time available - 120 minutes. Can’t remember what it cost, but it was extortionate.
And then we talked. Me and this random wanabe-something student from Hungary (so it transpired). First thing I said: “It’s okay. Take your phone off the hook. Do you want to come back in five minutes?”
In buying 120 minutes of private time I had just earnt her a hell of a lot of money, she said when she returned, tissues in hand. I managed to convince her I wasn’t about to sleaze all over her. I told her about the hacking thing. Asked her if she was okay. She nodded, a smile. Did you watch the Olympics at all? She grinned:
SilkEyes says: Hungary didn’t do too well!
SilkEyes says: What country were you supporting?
And so it went on…
I felt great. Even better when I closed the window after my alotted time and a caption read: “Thankyou [a username] for using Peepshow 101, your card has been billed for $212.” I giggled.
[oh, and for those wondering, nothing of the sort happened with “SilkEyes”. Julia. She was, without doubt, one of the nicest most interesting people I’ve ever spoken to. Weird. Maybe I’ll share some of the conversation in a few days.]
I must leave grouphug.us after 10 minutes.
I must leave grouphug.us after 10 minutes.
I must leave grouphug.us after 10 minutes.
I must leave grouphug.us after 10 minutes.
I must leave grouphug.us after 10 minutes.
Big update needed. More apologies, I’ll try to be as readable as possible. (Someone emailed me saying they actually liked reading my long posts - AND they’re just some random blogger. How cool is that?!) Lots of things have actually been happening recently, yet I didn’t even rush to blog. Meh, angst.
A level results came out on the 19th. Bloody ages ago, I know, and I apologise (hah! as if anyone was left hanging! [angst]). I’m only really proud of the A I in English Literature; whilst this may seem pretentious I’m pretty sure that the rest of the exams were undermarked by a grade - B in General Studies, C in RS (philosophy) and D in Design Technology. But then some of my friends and relations did worse, and they’re happy - so I feel like a big sulky slut for even mentioning it (which I did, frequently).
Anyway, I was all ready to fight the world: I slumped back into my parents car as they drove home that day, conversating conspiratorily to each other. I felt like a piece of shit because the results made me look BAD in their eyes, although they were kinda pleased. I fucking hate all examiners, especially those who marked my papers. [angst] But I got home, and after a phone call it transpired that Kent had offered me a place (they wanted ABB) because they liked my personal statement and the A. So elation, then! Jesus, that was ages ago..
I’m still going to get those papers remarked, by the way :|
The Olympics is almost over. And it’s been fantastic, right? Last night, Saturday, Team GB did awesome. Actually quite frankly team GB has done the nation proud throughout. Medals that stand out to me now include the badminton silver medal (awesome match - I watched it whilst on the phone to a friend, also watching), Ben Ainsley’s Gold in the boating, the men’s coxless fours gold, the 4X100m relay gold.. and of course Kelly Holmes’ DOUBLE distance event golds. Bloody awesome!
I’ve been watching a hell of a lot of films. But that’s not very interesting, and I talk about it all too much here! Anyway, go and see The Village if you haven’t, it’s a masterpiece. Other films that you need in your life include Fellini’s 8 1/2, Saturday Night Fever, The Big Lebowski and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S which is on this monday. See it.
Hmm. A note to finish. I need to publicise this blog more - not because I actually hold my ramblings in any kind of high regard, but because sometimes blogging is a fairly lonely sport, apart from the odd email; without comments (never could get those damn things working) or friends looking at it (don’t openly promote the link to them, even though I rarely post anything salacious.) it’s rather hard to know just who’s reading. I know it’s a fair number of you. But still. [ANGST!] CHRIST!
Haha, I’ve just discovered another totally pointless (yet highly addictive) activity to waste time on the interweb: editing my Blogger profile and putting in obscure things to see if anyone in the blogging universe has tried the same. I’ve decided that the quest is to find one person who has written the same word, and that this is only marginally less stalker-ish than searching for phone buddies*. At least this time it’s thoroughly private. Probably.
Previously I thought that I’d sunk to a new low with playing “The Links 2004 Waiting Game”. Essentially (it’s a very simple game, lads and lasses) when waiting for a friend in said game one enters the Add Friend facility and tries to find the most obscurely named Xbox Live member possibly. It really is fantastically geeky. Thank god, then, that my friends are totally hasty at getting into my games.
* - phone buddy, noun,
a person who owns a mobile phone number of one digits difference from ones
own.
Ah, the Pulp Fiction board at IMDB. Basically an excuse for me to wax film-lyrical. Scuse the self-promotion if I post an exerpt and a link to a post I just made. It was a bit of an effort. (But never a chore)
“…consider the ways in which Pulp Fiction focuses on stories and story telling as a critical aspect of the film’s subtext (ie, what is going on underneath the dialogue, the action and the narrative). There’s Vincent and Jules’ car discussion about America and Europe (storytelling *and* a story about variations), Jules’ story about Marsellus throwing Tony Rockyhorror through the window (a story that he’s heard from someone else, and that is later RETOLD by Vincent to Mia in Jack Rabbit Slim’s - “Is that a fact?” “No, it’s not a fact.” etc), Butch’s Watch backstory (literally told to the audience at the same time as Butch with all the POV shots, and a story that through stressing the importance of the watch later creates its own story) and finally above and beyond all of these and others there’s Pulp Fiction itself - a story that is overtly “told” through jumbled chronology…”
link to more: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/board/nest/10744389
The Xbox forums make me cry.
Today I experienced a strange and disturbing reoccuring glitch in Knights of the Old Republic. When arriving at either Korriban or Yavin IV (from either Korriban or Yavin IV) the Ebon Hawk would load with all the central characters clustered around the central hub (as in the [bit-in-the-story] where they do) and the area-map would be that of Manaan’s sub base. And there’d be upto 4 or 5 Zalbaars. Yes.
The side rooms would be full of swoop bikes, with a little orange droid who’d mutter something about not knowing galactic locations (erm?) and in the front of the ship where the Galaxy Map was there’d be a floating “Galactic Droid” who I could speak to, and pick a location from: Yavin, Tatooine, Taris, Dantooine, Unknown Planet, Kashyykk, Korriban and Star Forge. And any answer would herald the same bizarre reply:
“And… we’re there already. Space travel is great isn’t it?”
Don’t know what it is about bugs (?) like that but something about them makes me all squirmy, like it’s actually a nasty Xbox virus that is going to infect me eXistenZ style. Same feeling I get with moths. Breurgh. It was the Zalbaars that did it.
(Though it was vaguely cool leaving the ship - when it didn’t crash the game - with two Wookiees trailing behind.)
In other news, Kieron Gillen is being intelligent and funny again in his blog.
TTFN.
Christ, this needs a post.
Necessary to do a real-life blog recap? Hmm. I’ve largely spent the last few months rediscovering my nocturnal bodyclock via films and videogaming - most recently highlights have been revisiting Twelve Monkeys and Knights of the Old Republic. Though has anyone tried the latter on “Difficult” difficulty? It’s quite fantastically ridiculous (after having my three-jedi strike-force slapped around for several hours, even by those bloody Sandpeople on Tatooine, I flicked it back to Normal).
Last night myself and a group of mates went and saw I, Robot. It’s not got the smarts of, say, Minority Report (which it is pretty damn similar to - but then they’re both based on the general sci-fi canon), but it still rocked some serious booty. Saying nothing, but the frenetic splodes and bot-smashing of the finale is cracking stuff. And the last shot: about as good as summer flick endings get. Smith didn’t really get the future-cop character nailed, mind, but he’s as watchable as ever.
More later, I have pizza and Links to deal with.