recepticle=Sunday, December 28, 2003

so, how was your jolly season?
whomever said that it is better to give than receive clearly had the right idea, but was also born millions of years ago, possibly on planet krypton, and therefore had no idea about christmas economics.

i am by no means a wealthy man, but i did receive a fairly large cheque for (a mountain of) work rendered just before christmas, and coupled with some pretty good ideas for gifts, i went a-shopping.

three years ago, i happened to buy a close relative (herein known as "bob") the same gift as someone else with whom i am associated by marriage (herein known as "frank"). technically, frank is family, but i don't like him all that much, so to me he's just "that person". this same-present-buying was a coincidence, and one that hasn't been repeated since. however, out of the blue i was asked to inform frank of what i might be buying bob for christmas this year. well, i had plenty of ideas and i'd already bought bob one gift, but i saw another fairly more expensive and much better suited gift, so i took the original back and purchased this great new present for bob.

i duly informed frank of what i had bought for bob, to which frank replied "i've already got him that. it's wrapped and under the tree." this made me a little suspicious. the unneccesary addition of "it's wrapped and under the tree" could be translated as "i'm not taking mine back", and frank is... how shall i say this? a cheapskate tightwad no-brain git. the gift i bought required a fairly good knowlege of bob, and a fair chunk of change too. an amount i've never seen frank spend at christmas.

so, begrudgingly, i take my gift back and exchange it for two others. the new gifts were still pretty good, but not as undeniably great as the previous one. come christmas day, the presents are exchanged, and bob seems pleased with the gift i got for him. however, i did not see him open frank's present, so i took a sneaky opportunity to have a look round.

the present frank had allegedly bought for bob wasn't anywhere to be seen. and it was pretty fucking big and shiny, so not really hard to miss. frank had clearly been at a loss for what to buy bob, and instead of asking me for any ideas, he had tricked me into giving away what i had bought for bob. then, upon seeing the price tag, had decided not to get that gift for bob, and instead leave lawrie pissed as a bear.

aside from that, i received a crackpipe, some brown liquor, four kilos of ganja, and mom was going to get me a quantity of rock cocaine, but couldn't find any decent stuff so close to christmas, so we're going to go out together and pick some up in the january sales.

- posted by lawrie at 2:51 PM ~ comments

Thursday, December 25, 2003

i am the christmas number one
i was hoping to be the first blogger within the british isles, at least, to blog a merry christmas to all. however, since it's now six minutes past midnight, some dork has probably beaten me to it.

regardless; merry christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!

- posted by lawrie at 12:06 AM ~ comments

Saturday, December 20, 2003

who will be christmas number one?! excited?! NO.
ohmygosh! it's like, the most intensest battle of what songs is good on christmas!

you know, its really hard to write like a dummy. it took me a full two minutes to get that first sentence sounding right. and even then i couldn't bring myself to drop in multiple exclamation marks (the only punctuation... uh, thing, invented by satan hi'self).

so, apparently there's a whole bunch of songs that are vying for that hallowed christmas number one slot, including:

michael andrews %26 gary jules, "mad world" - my favourite by a long shot, but how is it that people are only just catching on to the masterpiece that is donnie darko when it came out in 2001? and how come brilliant films like that and bubba ho-tep are severely limited to a stuttering release in indie theatres, while hollywood vomits up wad after wad of gelatinous bile for harry knowles to lick up?

alex from fame academy, "mad world" - um... yes. alex, this year's winner of bbc's fame academy is releasing a cover of gary jules' cover of "mad world". i'm not going to say that's unoriginal, overproduced shite, but... oh wait, i just did.

all the 'pop idols', "happy xmas (war is over)" - apparently exceeding new levels of irony, and perhaps redefining the word forever, one of the most unashamedly capitalist, sensationalist and exploitative creations in recent times, headed by simon cowell, decided to release a cover of lennon's ironically-titled 'happy xmas...'. "and so this is christmas / and what have we done" what have you done? and did anyone notice that war most definitely isn't over?

edit: i saw this on tv last night, and used google's lovely news search to pull it up:

massive attack and cnd condemn pop idol's cover of lennon's "happy xmas"

- posted by lawrie at 3:47 PM ~ comments

Saturday, December 13, 2003

i am afraid!
apparently, i am a communist state in the technoratisphere. can you see me? i'm at the top, far left. i'm red! i've got a star and everything.

this beautifully crafted map of blogs (which, were i an american citizen, would almost certainly put me very high on the fbi's bullying list for being a red, thanks to the wonderful us patriot act) is based on the technorati top one hundred (i'm around number seventy three, last time i checked).

so, thankyou to the comisar at acepilots for that.

- posted by lawrie at 3:54 AM ~ comments

Sunday, December 07, 2003

i don't want to harp on, but...
i know i haven't really been on such an online crusade for a long time... not since i found out about all those people who wanted to tear down harry potter for teaching satanism to kids, but i'm afraid i'm unable to stop myself.

as you can see by my last post, i was rather angry at finding the "white camelia knights of the ku klux klan". i was even more angry that i was unable to at least get their forum shut down. ironically enough, their forum was remotely hosted by a service called everyone.net.

my fire was fuelled again this evening when i caught the second half of the brilliant bowling for columbine, followed by louis theroux's wierd weekend with survivalists. louis visited aryan nations which, as the title suggests, is full of... great big fat fucking bigots! i googled aryan nations and came up with this fucking atrocity. then i took a quick glance at the forums and found this.

i honestly don't know what to say. i'm fucking astounded that there are not only people like this, but that there are communities... and i mean physical fucking communities dedicated to these beliefs. there are entire areas of land that are signposted "whites only". and of course, that doesn't go for homosexual white people, or jewish people, or white people married to or affiliated with people of other races; they don't count as proper white people. what the fucking fuck? these people make the guy who wears a loaded .45 calibre weapon (safety off) inside his home, with his children, look like the most sane man in the fucking universe.

- posted by lawrie at 3:44 AM ~ comments

Saturday, December 06, 2003

it's like somethingawful.com, but just awful.com
how can these people not be kidding about this and this? i mean, holy shit how can this even be real?

" Sanhedrin 105ab: "Jesus fornicated with his jackass."

" Gittin 57a: "Jesus is in hell and is being punished by being boiled in semen. Christians are boiled in dung."

fuck right off.

- posted by lawrie at 12:20 AM ~ comments

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

ho ho ho!
have a christmas skin!

- posted by lawrie at 7:21 PM ~ comments

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

how to make lawrie sad in one day
you might think that stopping me from shelling out Ł115 might make me quite happy. but it makes me sad. because this particular Ł115 is for my new tax disc, which i legally require to drive my mini. however, due to some administrative fuckup, neither mumfy or i are officially registered as the car's owners, so we have to send away form a new rigistration form. without this, i cannot purchase the tax disc. have a conversation with a welshman:

welsh dvla person: haelloo, how can i help?
lawrie: hello, we sent off for a new registration form early last week, and were wondering when we could expect it.
wdp: ooh, there's a bit of a delaaayyee i'm afraid. another week or two.
l: is see. so in the mean time, while i'm illegally driving around in my car, is there anything i can do provisionally?
wdp: oohh no, i'm afraid there isn't.
l: and that's all the help you're going to give me, is it?
wdp: another week or two.
[click!]

this phone call made me more sad.

so, after this week, i am presented with the possibility of not being able to drive my car at all without attracting the attention of the police and getting a Ł1000 fine. this makes me sadder still.

so i drive off to the studio where i was laying down some drum tracks for a girl called emma, and as i'm getting out of my car i notice a whole shitload of scratches down the driver's side, where someone in what i can only imagine as a white 1988 citreon decided to see how close they could drive to my car and make that lovely squealing sound. all those scratches made me even sadder still.

and that is how to make lawrie sad in just one day. does this make me emo?

- posted by lawrie at 5:51 PM ~ comments

Monday, December 01, 2003

play nicely, children
well, i might as well tell you; at gaijin design, we developed a game for the official atomic kitten web site. it is currently online, but i'm not going to link to the game or the site, for a dozeon reasons i'd rather not mention. find it yourselves. but that's only a part of this blog; the game went online about two weeks ago, and today we received this email from a frustrated young kitten fan:

"I am writing to you to inform you of the fault that is on the Be With You Track level 5. It is impossible to play the game as all the arrows come up at once so therefore you can not pass this level."

what she means is that her stubby little underdeveloped finger muscles are too weak and slow to cope with the truly awesome power of our atomic rhythm-action extravaganza. what she also means is that she failed to get onto the high scores table currently dominated by jeanette perez, and is a sore loser. tough luck, kid; you wait until we release robotolympics 2050 - your fingers will wish they'd never been born... onto your hand. or something.

- posted by lawrie at 5:41 PM ~ comments