Abandoned!

I've moved house.

http://www.sargant.com/blog/

Hywl
- Rob

Hauld Aun

Not posting today. Too busy bashing my fists of meat at a keyboard in order to get a swanky-looking wordpress template - tt's much more work than the cafelog days. Plus our central heating is shit and my hands need defrosting in a microwave or thermonuclear device.

Schroedinger's Cat Hates Me

2.20 A.M. is far too early/late to be doing quantum mechanics. It's got a horiffic name for a module anyway, so it's better off ignored.

I'm going to stare at the ceiling for a few hours until it's time to wake up.

Avoid The Festive Sandwich

Earlier I commented on a traumatic experience I had today with my lunch. Now to relay it in full.

I bought a sandwich from Tesco on Market Street in the city center. A christmas sandwich, it proclaimed. It had turkey and stuffing and cranberry and all manner of nice, christmassy fillings. My brain said YES, and said sandwich was bought.

Had I inspected the packaging closer, it was covered in musical notes and had the line "eat your sandwich while enjoying some festive music" very small underneath the description (I would have taken a photo, but I was too scared for any evidence taking).

Upon opening the box, pressure was released from a small electronic device embedded in the cardboard and it began to sing. Jingle Bells, nonetheless. This panicked me somewhat, so I closed the box to try and make it stop. Failiure. I tried putting pressure back on the device, and that didn't work either. All this time, it was regailing me with little MIDI tunes about snow and fucking reindeer.

Thanks to the IRA, the Arndale center doesn't contain any litterbins, so I put it under my jacket hoping to keep it quiet, but it carried on with sadistic technological intent. Never have I been stared at in such an bewildered fashion before today, when I mingled with the people in Dixons with a singing coat.

Asking baby jesus to make it stop, repeatedly, had no effect either. In the end I stuffed it in a bin back on Market Street with delight and relief. If you know any tramps out there, warn them about the musical trash they'll be hearing tonight or they might just go insane.

November - Cancelled. Returns 2006.

My form has returned - I have spent a month without blogging and not thought about it once until today.

To summarise November, I shall be using bullet points and interesting facts.

• Fireworks are ace. As much as I'd like to have launched my own, firing Roman Candles out of your living room window is a sure-fire recipe for, well, fire.
• "Hotel California" is not the most-played song in California.
• I spent the evening of the 26th in the company of scary neo-communists and other assorted hard line lefties at The Dancehouse.
• Manchester has had the stupidest weather ever - snow, frost, cold, sun, clouds, air, nitrogen and moon. I predict sandstorms before next weekend.
• Lab reports. Fucking lab- reporty- writing- sciency- theory- up- all- night- reading- about- phenomenon- that- don't- actually- existy- bollocks- malarky. I don't like them.
• A sandwich sang to me this afternoon. More on that story later.

I'm sure other stuff happened inbetween, but my brain has interpolated between the events above and if I try to think of anything else, I just think of toothpaste.

Tech Support

My weekend at home has consisted mostly of bashing angry fists at a computer. Thanks to some magnificent bastard of a virus, I spent the whole of friday night and saturday fiddling with various tools trying to resurrect this computer. At about 9 P.M. on saturday I decided I couldn't be arsed and just reformatted. Obliteration of any form is very satisfying.

I also think I'm turning into Chris Langham. On the train back I saw a small child wearing a ticket inspector's fleece, clearly the son of a conductor. Instead of jumping to this logical conclusion, I spent about ten seconds considering what a small ticket inspector he was. Come to think of it, I also thought the same of the daughter of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park 2 the other night.

I'm beginning to think maybe I don't believe children actually exist anymore. They're just small but terrifying geniuses wanting to wreak havoc.

Sold out?

Look liek the rest of Manchester also knows about the comedy festival. Tried to get into the City Life comedy finals last night in Deansgate, only to be told to sod off as we had no pre-reserved tickets.

In Rich's desperate attempt to see some comedy, we then headed to the Frog and Bucket. Just 2 people from the front of the queue, we now get told they're sold out too. Bollocks.

Ended up in Dry Bar with some live music from unknown indie bands. It turned out that these were a comedy experience in their own right. One band consisted of two bearded men, one of which had an uncanny resemblance to Bernard Black from Black Books. They then played a 20 minute song of guitar noise and primal screaming similar to a rhesus monkey escaping from their lungs.

Apart from another one who played no instruments and just waved hands around in front of a TV while changing the demo track on his keyboard every 30 seconds, they wern't too bad. I even bought a couple of singles to "support indie music" or some guff like that.

I'm going to regret it.

YER SHITE

On the way back from the pub, I ran into an amusing crackpot at the bus stop. He seemed to have a problem with Manchester students in general, calling us "fucking oxford rejects on oxford road" and finding it quite satisfying. He was suprisingly articulate for someone completely salad tossed in the brain.

I didn't manage to catch him in a full-on torrent of abuse, but I surreptitiously managed to record him getting shouty at other intervals.

Clip 1: "You're degenerate shite" [124 kb]
Clip 2: "You're a complete arsehole" [114 kb]

I found it very hard not to laugh during these. This is exactly what technology was invented for.

MASTERCHEF

Today, I discovered I can actually cook despite living off frozen pizzas and Uncle Ben's sauces for the last year and a bit at uni.

Fry some sausages in some butter, after a couple of minutes add apple segments and dried sage. Obliterate anything that used to be living about it with firey gas until golden. Top up with cider for that rustic pisshead-from-Somerset authenticiy and simmer on a high heat until the cider's almost evaporated entirely. Serve with your favourite form of potato-starch-stodge-juice-absorber. I tried adding arrowroot to make the cider residue thicker, but it just ended up with the consistency of mucus. Fruity apple mucus. It was still edible, so my improper kitchen chemistry didn't really matter.

To celebrate not eating rice for a 20th consecutive night, Patrick then made pancakes. Which is always a celebration in its own right.

Seeing as I now have arrowroot in my kitchen cupboard alongside the supernoodles and stir fry sauces, I might just try adding it to everything. Orange juice, coffee, shower water, toasted sandwiches. It'll be a great big experiment in doing stuff wrong.

Laser Boredom

One disadvantage of doing a physics degree is that after a while, lasers become almost boring. Especially when every day involves shining them at special sensing things that aren't your lab partner's eyes.

Luckily we haven't come up against much radioactiveness yet, so there are still some dangerous toys that have an appeal.

Bzzzzzzt

Can't sleep. Being buzzed continuously by (possibly) a police helicoper.

I'll wake up in the morning to find all of Manchester's pavements have been stolen by some kind of mysterious 2 A.M. riot.