Eastercon ho!

The countdown to this years Eastercon is well under way.  Thursday morning, I'm heading down to Heathrow, dumping the bags at the hotel, then heading into London to play at being a tourist, before meeting up with Steve and his other half for a drink.

The convention starts on Friday and runs till Monday.  I'm running a programme item (Do you worship Cthulhu?) on the Saturday, and I'm flying back on the Tuesday.  Get back around lunchtime, head home, get showered, and head back out to see Airbourne at the Academy.  It's going to be a hectic weekend :-)

It's all about money dammit.

Tonight I have to take one of the cats to the vet.  She's a bit tender round the base of her tail and round her backside, and last night was complaining if she was touched there.  Fortunately we're insured, so it should be a £50 max if anything needs done.

Tomorrow I've had to take the day off so that the boiler can be serviced.  British Gas don't appear to do servicings at weekends, so I've taken the day off.  With my luck that probably means the guy will turn up at 8.00am !  The earlier the better anyway, as it means I can head into town to pay some bills, and catch a movie before going to the karate club.

Music likes and loathes

I'm totally into the re-invented spiritual singer/songwriter that is Dan Reed.  I was a huge fan of the Dan Reed Network, and saw them a couple of times way back when, but when I saw Dan at the Garage a few weeks ago, it was awesome.
You know that moment in movies when someone sings or says something and the main character connects, and has a moment of total lucidity?  Well, that happened.   It was a moment of pure clarity, and I'm loving the new music as much if not more than the old DRN stuff.  In fact, the re-workings of the DRN stuff is superb.  The songs have a new life.

On the other hand, I totally don't get and cant' stand The Lost Prophets.  So working on the principle that if you can't say anything nice, I'll shut up right about now.

Life re-boot

There's things I want to change in my life.  Hoarding material things (OMG the cd's!!!) is getting to be a burden from a phsycic point of view.  I hanker after a life less cluttered, but letting go is hard. I'm obsessive about music/cd's/movies/comics.

I need to let go bit by bit.  There's a lot of books I could get rid of, but they "look good" on the shelf.  I know I'll probably rarely (if ever) re-read them.  I need to get down to the ones I do re-read (JRRT, Moorcock, Eddings, Barker).

My ideal would be to be like Cane in Kung Fu.  I could have one small-ish bag with all my needs in it.  Probably never happen, but it's something to aim for.

Back on the bike

Last year I mostly cycled to work.  It's cheaper than the bus/train, it's excercise, and it's faster than the bus.  I can take a route through a local park, and along the side of the River Clyde, that avoids LOTS of traffic lights, and as a result is faster than the bus.
When I get into work I can grab a shower in the gym, then there's still time to get a coffee before I have to start work, so it's win - win.

At the weekend, we had some friends round on Saturday for dinner, which was pretty good.  Sunday was a long lazy morning followed by a trip to the movies in the afternoon to see Shutter Island, which I liked, but K was a bit dissapointed in.  She liked it, but had thought from the trailers that it was a horror movie.

So, that was the weekend.  Short and sweet, and now it's back to work and as long as there's no horrible weather backlash, that's the bike now until December again.

Time to gafiate

(Google it)

I'm starting to prioritise things in my mind, and the monthly SF meet-up and conventions are currently not scoring too highly.  I need to get out of fandom for a bit for 2 reasons.

1. My sanity.  I tend to start something and immerse myself to the point that one day I wake up, and it's taken over everything else, and I start to resent it.  Fandom is getting that way.  I need to walk away for a bit.

2. I've realised what I knew all along.  It's not SF that I love.  It's fantasy, horror and comics.  That's not to say that I don't like SF, just that it's not my preffered genre, and I think I've been kidding myself by trudging through massive space operas when I could have been reading some Moorcock, Eddings, Barker or even Burroughs or Vonnegut.

This probably sounds a bit crap and over-analytical.  After all it's only books, but, I do tend to obsess slightly, and end up spending a fortune on stuff that ultimately I'm a bit meh about.

So that's it.  SF groups, only if I'm in the mood, not every month as I currently do.  Conventions?  If it's in Glasgow, maybe.  Elsewhere, highly unlikely.

Now THAT was a weird dream

Totally bizzare dream last night.  I dreamt one of the lecturers cam into my office with a 2 hole paper punch in his hand and asked me if I had the driver disk for it.

Now, yes, it's a bit weird, BUT, what's weirder is that the academic in particular is very IT literate.  If it had been certain other academics, it would still have been weird, but not quite as weird.

9

Finally got round to seeing 9 last night.  I'd got a loan of it from a neighbour, but I think this is one that might get picked up, as it really is worthy of repeat viewing.
Superb animation, a great story, just really really good.  You could totally empathise with these little rag dolls struggling to survive in a a world destroyed by man.

Can't recommend this highly enough.

Fulci-fest

Last night's Lucio Fulci double bill at the GFT was outstanding.  Sold-out audience was there to see the spaghetti-gore classics The Beyond, and The City of the Living Dead.
There was a Q&A session after each movie, with the stars of the films, Catriona MacCall and Giovani Lombardo Radici.  David Hess, star of the original Last Houuse on the Left, was also in attendance (Last House had been screened on Friday), and he and Giovani had also stared together in The House by the Park.

There was some givaaways, including a dvd signed by Dario Argento, which was won by a girl who managed to list all of Argento's movies in order of  release, with only one error.  No one else even got all the movies! 

Zombie-fest

Lucio Fulci double bill at the GFT tonight.  Seen both movies before, but never on a big screen.  Should be fun.

Kilt query

I'm off to Eastercon in Heathrow over the Easter weekend.  As they're having a ceidlih, I'm thinking of taking my kilt.  When you're travelling with a rucksack, the easiest way to carry a kilt is to wear it for the flight.  Question is, will the kilt pin be a "terrorist" item, will it be classed an offensive weapon just like nail scissors, and have to go in the hold in the rucksack, or will it simply be part of an item of clothing and I'll be able to keep it on the kilt for the flight?

See what you've done Osama!!!  Wearing a kilt used to be simple.  You've partly criminalised my national dress.

Next on the reading list

I tend to multitask when it comes to reading books.  One by the bed, one for the commute (if I'm not cycling), and one in work to read at lunch.

The books being consumed at the moment are only two (I've just finished the bedside book and need to start a new one), and they are :-

Commuting book - The Tao Te Ching
Work book - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick.

There's also a selection of Byrons poems in a pocket of the courier bag, that can get dug out if the mood takes me.

Tonight I'm off to karate in about an hour, and then home to veg.  Tomorrow night there's a Lucio Fulci double bill at the GFT (Glasgow arthouse/independant cinema), so I'm off there with a couple of friends while K goes to a classical concert I got free tickets for.

Trout and about

Last night I took myself along to the Ressurgence of Trout, the Glasgow city centre SF fan meet-up.  This is on the 2nd Thursday of every month, and is currently at home in the Edward Wylie on Bothwell St.

It was a fun night.  Food was eaten, ale was quaffed, and talk was talked.  Some of it even related to SF !
 There was an announcement of the launch of  Satellite 3 (the successor to Satellites 1 & 2), in the Central hotel in 2012.  If you like conventions and want to come to Glasgow, watch this space for more details.

Aching muscles adn cheesey grins

Was down at the local climbing wall last night, and apart from one OMG! moment when a hold spun as I had all my weight on it (I managed to stay on the wall btw), it was a great night.  Lots of tiring fun.
Managed some more level 6 routes, but weirdly came a cropper on a couple of 5+'s.  I suppose it depends on who has set the route, and the difficulty is reletive I suppose.  Anyway, loads of fun.

Shhh it was a secret gig

On Wednesday night, myself adn three others boldly headed out to deepest darkest Kirkintilloch to see GUN playing a secret warm up gig prior to supporting Lynyrd Skynyrd at the SECC, and the start of their Popkiller 2010 tour.

The gig was in a pub slightly bigger than a postage stamp, and there was about 90 people there by my guess. It was packed solid.  The band put on a brilliant show, and played as if it WAS the SECC they were playing to.  After the gig, the guys came into the crowd and happily mingled, chatted and posed for photos.  It was the first time I'd met them, and they're all really frinedly and happy to chat.

Great gig by a fantastic band.  They're heading out on tour now, so try and catch them if you can.  You won't regret it.

Dan Reed 20 years on

On Monday I went to a small club in Glasgow to see Dan Reed.  This was the first time in about 20 years, as the last time I'd seen him was the last time he played in Glasgow with the Dan Reed Network. 
It was a great show.  Although there was a full - and extremely talented - band with him, there was still an acoutsticy feel to the proceedings.  This was a good thing.  The older DRN songs sound great stripped back like this, especially I'm So Sorry, which while a great song in the original form, is now an extremely poigniant song about a tragic suicide.

This was a really good, gig in an intimate setting.  If you get the chance to check him out, then I really recommend you do.  An extrememly talented guy with a superb backing band.

Ok, so I've included AdSense

But WTF?!  I mean seriously, an ad for Indian Sex!!!  I say again, WTF!?

Do something new every year Part 2

In an addendum to the previous post, it looks like I might have stumbled across this years' new thing quite by accident, at work.  I had to do a wee (extremely wee) bit of html for someone, and quite enjoyed it even though it was extremely basic.  There's an Intro to HTML course running in the work at the end of the month, so I've signed up for it.  As long as they get enough people to sign up - 6 - it's a go-er. 

Here we go again, time to feed the grey matter and stave off senility.