No really.  I keep expecting secret agents to crawl out of the air vents.  No tthta they could because it has a totally enclosed air system.

Some of you already know I work for South West Water, the water company for Devon and Cornwall (and yes, I am trying to work out how to cut off the whole of Cornwall).  I recently got moved to a different department, for a differnt job, and a 25p/hr raise (it's champagne all round methinks).  The cool part is that the only spare desk they could find me is in the secure section.  As Water is a vital resource part of our building is terrorist proof, and I now work in it.  To get in, after al the usual going through reception and swiping your card to get in and so forth, you have to hold your special card up to a reader, at which point it unlocks the door and you tunr the handle.  Then a mechanism takes over and open for you the 3" steel automatic door.  Once inside you must wait for it to close behind you before you can open the next door which also requires your special security card.  The air as I mentioned is on a special supply, so of course none of the multi layered windows open, and my desk is opposite the two "Incident Rooms".  Big empty rooms for use in the event of an "incident" for planning and so forth.  Glancing around I see a computer with 4 LCD displays just lying there in case it's ever needed.  But the coolest thing?  On one wall is a huge fucking screen about 3-4 meteres wide with some sort of interective data map of the south west, surounded by jumbo screens showing more maps, cctv of the various approaches to the building, wierd pie charts and data and one constantly dedicated to BBC News 24.  Seriously, when IU take over the world this will be my initial HQ.  I'm working in an evil lair.  Oh, and the bathrooms?  I've seen automated hands free nearly everything, which they have but the automated hands free soap dispenser was a first for me.

Oh, and the best bit?  My boss doesn't work there, as I said it was a spare desk.  He works over in finance.  He doesn't in fact have security clearence to enter.  He has to phone me and ask me to let him in. 

When it rains it... well it's mostly occasional showers outside, but my point is that I've produced two podcasts in one day.

Still more adventures of Tom not Ali. Well actually there's lots of us there but not Ali because he was traveling the world at the time.

This can be considered the second half of the other one seen in my previous post.

For those of you wondering why I call them podcasts, it's because they are. I host them here for your convenience, but Undermind have a video podcast thingy. I wouldn't advise you subscribe as it's mostly by people most of you don't know. And if you do know them then you already know about the podcast. If there is interest I can post the 4 earlier podcasts I made for it way back when.

Bonus prize if anyone can come up with the answer Mike never gave.

More adventures of Tom not Ali.

I recently discovered some old tapes lying about at my parents house. This will not be the last piece of history I drag up, but it might be my favorite. And for those of you in Sci-Fi, I have some archive footage of your illustrious leader.

And Chris too.

:p

Slightly different podcasty adventures of Tom not Ali.

Yesterday (Saturday) Mike and I drove up to see Peppa in Birmingham and visit the German Christmas Market.

HOWEVER, last podcast got very few responses (1, (thankyou Bex)), so if I am to continue to go to the effort of making these and putting them up here I'd like to know people are watching them.  So even if you didn't like it, please let me know you watched it.  Please?

Superhelmut is watching you...

It's pretty unusual for me to not be able to sleep.  It's fairly well known that I can sleep pretty much anywhere and anywhen.  I've slept standing up on public buses, just last week I fell asleep in the office whilst typing, I've fallen asleep whilst writing notes in lectures, I've slept in nightclubs, I've slept curled up under the spray hood whilst crossing the English Channel in seas rough enough to require me to still be harnessed in even in the cockpit.  Day, night or whatever, and not just when I'm tired, films and music don't keep me awake (see: nightclub above) and light has never bothered me.  The expression Karen once used, when she, Sarah and myself were watching Naruto in my room and I went to sleep in an apparently very uncomfortable position was that I could sleep on a wire. My only weakness is chairs.  I can sleep sitting up, but it's a lot harder. 

Why then, at 3:45am, lying in my own bed, do I feel unable to sleep.  There's nothing unusual on my mind, nothing I haven't been dealing with for months anyway, and the room is unchanged and the conditions the same as it has been for ages.  I certainly should be tired by now, I had a late morning, not up till 11, but I'd had a late night on Saturday so that shouldn't effect me, or at least, not this much.  Is it because I'm planning on getting up early tomorrow of my own volition for my own reasons?  Because having to get up to work never bothered me, but this time it's for me.  Could that be it?

I don't have nightmares, so there's no problems there.  In fact I have never in my life had nightmares with one single exception.  I once dreamed that I was being chased by Ewoks and we were all riding on broomsticks through a starry sky.  MY single experience of midnight terror, and I have to admit, not very terrible, but I guess Nightmares are more scary when you're in them than when you actually consider their content the next day.  Or maybe not?  I dunno, that's the only one I've ever had in all my life.  I am either favored by Morpheus, or have a very chilled out unconscious mind. 

The secret I share with Ben, about how to get to sleep, is sort of, make up a fictional situation and play it out in your head.  Ben had a much better way to describe it, but it has momentarily escaped me.  This is not a problem.  I have a particularly fine one running at the moment.  (It should be clarified this is in no way related to sex or anything like that, I rather think that would make it more difficult to get to sleep.)

So what then is my problem?  This happens to me occasionally, but when it does it's always bloody annoying.

Help me Obi-LJ Community, you're my only hope...

The second episode of The Alliterative Adventures and Mundane Meanderings of Ali and Tom. 

The first episode of The Alliterative Adventures and Mundane Meanderings of Ali and Tom. 

When considering the use of Superglue instead of Polystyrene Cement:

Advantages:
Dried Quicker
Stronger Bond

Disadvantages:
Costs a little more
I keep gluing my fucking fingers to bits of plastic!!!

Why oh why does glue set instantaneously on skin?  You touch something with glue on it for just a second and your skin is instantaneously bonded to it.  It hurts!  Normally I'm pretty good, but I'm doing some seriously fiddley conversions and there's always a tiny little bit that drops off and you grab by the glue, or that drops glue into a piece below when you aren't looking. 

It's possible Ali and I have created a new religion, The Way of Delia Smith, she is the light and the way.  Only by following The Way of Delia Smith could such amateur chefs as Ali and myself have cooked such a delicious roast beef, with creamy cheesey mash and mixed vegetables.  By following the wisdom of the hallowed texts "How to Cook" we turned a loose collection of raw meat, bits of plants and assorted other ingredients into such a fine meal.  For example, did you know to leave the roast for half an hour before carving to let it ease and re absorb surface juices?  I didn't.  But the I placed my trust in Delia and was guided true.  Delia opened my eyes to the uses of the fan steamer, the most holey of instruments, and the benefits of basting.  Now that I've eaten enough delicious beef to last the winter I'm going to hibernate.  If you don't hear from me by spring come and wake me up.  

I've started painting again.  It's been about 6 months, but I've finally broken open the pots again.  I've spent about 7 hours this evening painting, and apart from the large rough blocks of colour I just started roughing out on the engines, most people can't even tell the difference.  My spine is probably permanently damaged, my eyes are aching and most of my muscles are sorely vibrating form the hours of stillness.  I haven't felt this good in ages.  And what's more tomorrow I get to do some more.  

So, my school friend Barney invited me to his wedding.  I won't go into all the detail, like I normally would, because I can't be arsed.  Suffice to say, I had new shoes for the occasion, and despite a bit of wearing in in the house, they still rub a bit.  Not a problem normally, but when walking all the way across Exeter (Approxmately the distance of Dani and Ian's house from Queen Street for Cardiff inhabitants) in them they rubbed like buggery.  So some nice big blisters to start with.  Joy.

Then, I wa almost late.  I caught all my trains on time, but instead of arriving at the other end with a full hour to find a taxi and get to the church, I arrive with just 18minutes, and then I desvcover it's Ede, and nobody will send me a taxi.  So I stand b the Taxi stop and hope whilst wondering what to do.  SOmebody smiles at me.  A taxi pulls up, this means nothing to me of course becuas ethere's a small group of youths in front of me in the queue, however luckily for me one of them has just buggered off inside for some reason and the taxi driver won't wait for them.  Score 1 for the home team.  So I ask for the church, and I'm counting the clock, with absolutely no idea where I'm going or how long it'll take to get there.  At 13:32 we pull up, and I'm just 2 minutes late.  And I run up to the earest man, standing nearby as the Bride and Bridesmaids are being photographed, nobody else in sight, and say that I'me very sorry I'm late, but is this the Barney Goodall wedding (emporarily forgetting Liz's name (who I havn't met before)).  Oh  what a way to meet the father of the bride.  But I get in the church and take a pew near the back. 

Commence an exceedingly Christian wedding.  Now this is only the second I've been to, but the first was considerably less godly.  Seriously.  The wedding was pretty much an afterthought in an otherwise very god heavy wedding.  And seriously, I havn't sung hyms since school, that was less than fun.  Especially when I look up to find nobody else is even looking at the words, they just know them.  Still, God asside, it was a lveoly wedding, although if the priest ever points out that the wedding is for love but also now they can have sex at my wedding I'll punch him.  As it wasn't my wedding I just found it very funny. 

Queue the Wedding photos.  Fortunately I got to spend this time catching up with Paddy Myres, or Midshipman Myres as he now is.  Dresed in his Navy uniform complete with white officers cap, he got quite a bit of notice, and the best man at one point reffered to him (in regards to stand ing where he was for photos as the "military guy or some sort of traffic warden". 

Dinner was delicious, havn't had roast beef in ages, and met some lovely people.  I was sat between Paddy and a guy called Dan who made low budget films in america, and we had Emma from St Mags with her boyfriend, three lovely chinese girls who's names I forget becuase I couldn;t pronounce them.  Except I remember Ting, because that was her whole name appearently, no surname, and also one of Barney's sort of Best Men (he cheated and had several) who I didn't know so either a university or church friend. I suspect the former, because as it turns outr, we were the non-christian table.  Worke dout pretty well for us, as nobody on the able minded the few jokes about how Christian everything was, plus when we hammered through the wine from our table, we moved onto the wine that hadn't been drunk on the Christian tables.  Score 2 for the home team.  After this came the dancing.  Paddy had made a bet that he would dance with 25% of the girls (not women) by the end of the night (about 25 conveniently), and now that he was wearing his formal naval dinner uniform I gave him high chances, however the odds stacked against him as it turned out that they we having a Caley (sp?), so not the 3 minute disco songs he was expecting.  Further, it was ruled that only his partner counted, not the various other girs he would briefly dance with during the course of the dance.  Personally I had to phone my hotel and high tailed it out of there.  Spent some time checking out the local grounds, only returning to fill up my glass with the spare wine.  After the buffet however I was cornered by Barney's Mum and sister, and one cannot refuse the combined might of the Groom's mother and the Groom's sister who is also a Bridesmaid.  So in the end I too Caleyed, and yeah, I admit, it wa sfun, but I wouldn't have wanted to do it all night.  By the time it finished Paddy was way behind.  8/25 was a poor show for the Naval Elite and I shall be reporting his failure ot his senior officers, however in his defence, most of Barney' office friends buggered off early leaving almost exlusively married Christian girls, less suceptable to Paddys Undeniable charm. 

Headed off to my hotel about 11:30 ish, getting a lift most of the way and finishing the way on foot, I was accosted by a pair of ladies who were very loud with the whole "hello stranger" and "oh arent you hansome" (interstingly I had always believed this sort of language was only seen in fiction by badly written cockney charecters, rather like I never believed Workmen dived away at the last minute from vehicle carreening through their road works, until I was on a crazy bus which did just that and they really do, which just goes to show it's not as fake as you think, except the bits which are... anyway...). Fortunately, clad as I was in smart, wedding suitable attire I engaged both my charm exuder and my educated and well enunciated accent and asked directions for my hotel. They were most helpful. Then we parted ways they looked at me from behind and told me I had a nice bum. I thanked them for their kind comments and walked on.   It was all a bit surreal. 

Finally I arrived at the Highwayman Inn, and I've never stayed in an Inn, so that was fun.  Wondered in through the drunkards to the bar where I found the steward who booked me in and took my to my room.  Nice small ensuite single room for £40 was fairly reasonable, but sadly the shower was more like a dribble.  That asside, I was content and went to sleep. 

Then I woke up, at about 1am, in the most pain I have ever been in my life.  In four places.  I had horrific shooting pain on either side, both front and back, of the bottom of my rib cage.  When it didn't stop I crawled out of bed to the bathroom in case I had to throw up.  I very quickly realised that this wasn't the case, and nothing I could do was making this go away, in fact it was getting worse.  At this point I thought it quite possible I was about to die.  Not knowing what's wrong whilst being in more pain that I've ever exprienced inside my chest, I was, concerned. So I phoned home.  Yep, I thoiugh I was about to die on my hotel room floor but I didn't want to phone 999 in case I was wrong. But dad was trained as a doctor (he was a facial surgeon before he became a dentist) so I phoned home.  Forgetting that dad was on holiday.  But Mum picked up, which was good.  Being as I was almost totally iincoherent with pain and breathing difficulty, having phoned up out of the blue in the middle of the night and obviously in extreme pain, I proceeded to scare the fuckjesus out of her.  But hey, share the panic right?  After a few false starts with her asking if I'd been mugged I managed to communicate to her that I was in my hotel, and I didn't know whatwas wrong, oh, and I might have mentioned, in passing, the extreme pain.  So she askes my to describe it, and I do the best I can, and after few moment she regognised it.  Have I mentioned my mother is amazing?  My lungs are fucking up, I need to slow my breathing.  My lungs are fucking up, and I'm just a teensy bit panicked, what with the thinking I might die alone on a grubby bathroom floor, but hey, Mummy knows right, so I do my best, mostly by only letting it out between tightly clenched lips, and after a while, my breathing starts to come under control and the pain lessens.  After five or ten minutes I am totally calm and the pain has all but dissapeared.  So I talk to my mother for a bit, appologise for waking her and thank her for not letting me die.  Apperently it's called Pleurla Rub or something, where the mucas membrane between my lungs and the inside of my chest had moved apart and the raw naked lung was being scraped against the inside of my chest.  In four places.  I don't even know why. 

So, yeah, fear of the unknown death, extreme agony and being totally alone, that my friends is a life experience.  Won't be forgetting that in a hurry. 

Oh yeah, and on the train home the next day I got to help a nice lady by lifting her bag onto the train for her as the hurried buisnessmen breezed past.  That left me with a nice feeling of a good deed well done  that lasted all the way home. 
So all in all a pretty unique weekend, and it only cost me several hundred pounds.  Hurrah. 

Oh god, my poor poor bank balance...

Dear LJ, I'm going to France for a week.  If anyone needs me, tough shit.  Um, well I guess my phone technically should work.  But it'll be expensive.  For both of us. 

Helen and Chris, I leave Cardiff in your hands, it'd better still be there when I get back or we will have words.

Peppa, likewise for Devon. 

Mark, well I don't much care if London goes, but protect Camden with your life. 

If for any reason I do phone you this week, please answer because I've probably fallen down a mountain and need a bit of help. 

Truely it was a might New Year Party.  Massive kuedos to Ninja Team Kitchen in it's final formation.  The curry was awsome, and though I never tried the chicken or the pasta they too looked mighty.  The potatoes were plentiful and made for a delicious lunch the next day (whilst watching Gibli no less).  Thankyou to Dee for bringing the Pimms, I'd never tried Winter Pimms before, but I think it's definately worth a repeat visit.  I shall be digging through my kitchen for a suitable pot/couldron for the making of warm alchoholic joy as soon as I get back to cardiff.  Also Alex, your White Pirate is truley a mighty beverage, I will be adding a bottle of Koluha (sp?) to my drinks cabinet (aka my secret hidden stash) very soon (I already have the Rum as you will no doubt have already guessed).  A wonderful night of revelry, climaxing in drinking in the New Year in the Hot Tub (also kudos for Team Hot Tub Extreme, those brave men and women who joined me in leading the initial rush semi naked through the cold to the steamy glory of the hot tub, especially Bex for being so keen she was already wearing her bikini when she arrived).  Well don Gid for trying so hard to sing the whole of  Auld Lang Syne despite not knowing the words.  As for costumes, I give the Bravery award to Deya "skin tight" Brown and the In Charecter award to Micheal "monkey bastard hands" deSelincourt.  I'd also post photos but I left my camera in Cardiff, so I'll wait until I get copies of Alis and Gids. 

Pretty tired, should try to go to bed soon.  Pretty late night, we were still in Ali's parents hot-tub at 3am last night.  Such a glorious hot tub, but getting from the warm water into the house through the cold whilst wearing wet shorts was the coldest I've been in a long time.  Getting out there was bad, my feet were numb by the time I got to the hot tub, just in time for me to melt them in the steaming hot water, which hurt.  But going back, dashing through the dark in rapidly freezing shorts with icy water tricklin down your bare skin.  Ouch.  But it was so worth it. 

So Christmas is fast aproaching.  Went shoping today for a few last minute things.  Good God I hate people.  Really.  A lot.  It was a day of hat down over m eyes and headphones in; just cruising along in my little world of warmth, safe from the cold and the horrible puny-brained meat CHILDREN!!!...   ...breathe...

Filthy Humans.

Aaanyway, on a lighter note, Mum accidentally ordered a turkey over twice as big as we need.  So It'll be cold turkey and chips for dinner untill I'm forty five.  Woohoo!

Fucking Christmas.  I have a bizzarre love hate relationship with it.  I love the family, and the exchange of gifts, but I hate the comercialism.  Really really hate.  There is a fine line between enjoying gift giving and being a capitalist whore, but I'm living here and broadcasting my condescending hate.  I hate the idea that people feel entitled to presents.  I hate the idea that people fell they must spend X amount of money. I hate the way MArk does it, he went to plymouth with his mum so she could show him what to buy.  That's not a gift, that is directly equivelent to giving your mum money for christmas.  Which is fucking stupid, because she already has far more money than you, so it's pointless.  Gifts are about trying to find something that will please a person, it's not supposed to be about money.  I'm not saying it's bad to give people a vuage idea of what you want, but it's supposed to be special, not just another financial transaction.  What's worse is companies, and their bastardly systematic abuse of your feelings, but that's a rant for another time.  Personally I've been trying to dissasociate all the cool things about winter from the Christmas bundle, so mostly I've been happy about winter, and I play to stay happy about winter for the next couple of months.  So whilst you bastards are all sad that Christmas is over for another year, I'm gonna be out there in the frost enjoying the cold. 

Sitting on a bus today and I glance out of the window to see a random filth child.  It's freezing cold, hat and glove weather, and yet she still has her top unzipped enough to show her cleavage.  WTF?!  Bah.  Filthy human meat puppets. 

Now we all know I hate chavs, it's part of my unique charm, but one of the worst things about chavdom?  The normal people.  They are getting more chavy.  You see it all over.  Otherwise normal people gravitating towards chav fasions.  I don't get fasion at the best of times, but who the hell wants to look more like a petty criminal with far to little grey matter, a magpy-like facination with tacky shiney things and no concept of individuality.  In the decades to come, will all humanity gravitate towards the lowest common denominator in a last ditch attempt to destroy the human race?  Are we all to change from the glorious multinational breakfast buffet of individuality into a grand trough of porridge.  Admittedly porrige with lots of tacky shiny things, but monotinous unthinking mass produced porridge non the less. 

Stand up for individuality.  Have the courage to express yourself in any way you see fit, do not become another human meat clone.  Be brave enough to be a fucking fruit salad in this world of beige cereal dominated breakfast metafore.

This has been a message of Christmas Cheer from you're friendly neihbourhood sociopath.

Damn You All and a Happy New Year.