Thursday 26 February 2009

Thursday Thunks

Meme meme meme: Thursday Thunks:

1. What kind of dryer sheets do you use?

Are you serious? There's actually things that make clothes smell and feel even better when they come out of the dryer? Next you'll be telling me they've invented, like, uber-sliced bread.

2. How many times a week do you eat out/order in?

With all these "recession-busting" 2-for-1 vouchers around, a fair amount. 2-3 times a week out, 2-3 times a month order in (and it's always Domino's).

3. What did you do the night of your high school graduation?

Hmm, again with the transatlantic divide. There was a leaver's ball, does that count?

4. So Octomom is rumored to have been offered a million bucks to do a porno. Would you do it for a million?

Are they really calling her "Octomom"? And she's alright with it? Huh, I guess there's worse tabloid nicknames out there, like "race hate cleric" and "sex pest fisherman". And no, no I wouldn't.

5. If your child was born with an extra finger or toe, would you have it surgically removed?

Hmm. No such thing as risk-free surgery, is there? Finger probably, toe might not be worth it.

6. What was the last movie you saw?

Big screen - Slumdog Millionaire. Small screen - The Last Samurai.

7. I wanna buy you a dozen roses, what color should they be?

Blue without question. Replace the phrase "a dozen roses" in that question with almost anything else, and this would still probably be true.

8. You are walking across the street, you are not quite half way when a speeding car comes... you have to run to get out of its way, which direction do you run?

Even though I am by no means speedy, I always keep running. Even if I'm nowhere near halfway. I am aware that this is unwise, but I can't do anything about it.

9. Tell us about a time when you were invited over somewhere and had the most awful time.

Awful? None that I can remember. Boring, however, is another story. Being of a South Asian persuasion, there was a time when I was going to approximately one wedding a week, usually of extremely distant relatives who I had never seen before.

10. You open your front door and there is a box with a puppy in it... what do you do?

I'm not a dog person. Like puppies, not so much what they grow into. I'd play with it for a few days, then give it to a more dog-happy friend and watch it grow up from a safe distance.

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Wednesday Weirdness

Another meme, Wednesday Weirdness: http://wednesdayweird.blogspot.com/

1.) You're on a trip taking a tour through the jungle. You have a backpack with some food, some first aid supplies, a pocket knife, a flashlight and a couple bottles of water. Some how, you get separated from your group. By night fall you haven't found your group and haven't heard them looking for you. How long do you think you would be able to survive on your own?

Ignoring the fact that there's no way in Hell I'd be there in the first place? About 7 minutes. I would probably end up spilling the water, dropping the food in some sort of malaria-infested puddle, stabbing myself with the knife and accidentally overdosing on paracetamol from the first aid kit. Seriously, survival skills are not my thing.

2.) Do you think it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings? Why?

Sometimes, without a doubt. Because there are occasions where absolutely no good can come out of telling the truth, but nothing too bad comes out of lying.

3.) If a talking (insert your name here) doll were made, what are THREE phrases it would say?

First let's get one thing straight, it's not a doll, it's an action figure. And the Spyke doll's three phrases would be an insane giggle, "Let's just go and chill somewhere" and "Sigh."

4.) If the super power to be able to read minds at your own will were possible, do you think it would be... cool and helpful, intrusive and wrong, manipulative or maddening? Explain why you would or wouldn't want to be able to read anyone's mind at your own will.

It would be all of those things at different times. There have always been times in my life where I've wished I knew what someone else was thinking. But on the other hand, maybe I was better off not knowing for sure. I think if I had the power, there would be times where I'd know I shouldn't use it, where using it would probably only upset me, but I don't think I'd be able to resist the temptation. So no, wouldn't want it.

5.) Drunk confessions, are they the things people can't bring themselves to say sober or just crazy ramblings of an influenced and intoxicated mind?

In my case almost always the former, perhaps to a slightly exaggerated degree.

6.) What brings out the worst in you?

Perceiving (not always correctly) that I have been badly wronged in some way can turn me into a completely different person. This person can be bitchy, moody, sulky and irritable and I don't like him. Thankfully it doesn't happen very often.

7.) Do you think long distance relationships work? Have you ever been in one before?

Sometimes, and no.

Tuesday 24 February 2009

Man flu

I am currently suffering from what I am reliably informed is "man flu". Looking up the term on urbandictionary, I find that this affliction seems to be the focal point of a considerable battle in the War of the Sexes.  To illustrate what I mean by this, the definitions I found range from "when guys get a cold and act as though it's life-threatening" to "the one week a year when guys get ill and whine, as opposed to every fucking day of a woman's life when we have to hear you complain". Hmm. I'll confess right now that my current case is pretty much the first one. I hope I'm not letting the team down by admitting this, and that I'm not the first guy ever to do so. But seriously, when exaggerating a slight case of the sniffles gets hot chocolate made for you, it's pretty much worth it.

Monday 23 February 2009

Double Inmemenity

Firstly, apologies for the awful pun. But as it suggests, I'm going to use two different memes today, largely because the first is one is what I kinda intended to write anyway. That is Monday Peeves - http://kelly-robinson.com/mydigitalghost/?cat=19 - where today's topic is "Free-for-All: Consider this like an open mic session of Monday Peeves. Take this chance to rant about something, anything, that has bugged you lately, and then leave a link to your rant."

Before I even saw this, I was about to come on here and write about the fact that lately, I seem to be getting pissed off at pretty much everything. What triggered it today was a car zooming straight over the zebra crossing that I was standing at waiting to cross. At the moment I realised he wasn't stopping, I had an urge just to step out in front of him anyway, just to be like "Fuck you, you shoulda stopped, enjoy prison." Or, if I was quick enough, to pick up a rock and throw it the back windscreen. All in all though, I doubt either course of action would have been worth the consequences.

But like I said, a lot of things and people are annoying me these days. My iPod has been set to play only Rage Against The Machine since Thursday. High up on my list are the twat who shares my kitchen and seems to always be using it at the exact time I want to, whether it's an early dinner at 6 or a late dinner at 11. And his frequently visiting girlfriend, whose inability to leave said kitchen in a state fit for human beings is the only thing in life that's ever tempted me to leave someone a passive-aggressive note. Also, the course organisers who seem to have decided that the best plan of action for destroying my mental health is to give me 3 essays to do in 3 days, every week. I think this rage may be largely to do with being separated from most of the people who actually made my life fun for the last 3 years. Still, that should be rectified in a few months. Hopefully then I'll turn back into the calm, laid-back guy whose friends have at times in the past tried very hard to get him to display signs of anger just because they literally could not imagine it happening.

And so, with those memories of better and very recent times, I turn to the second meme, Monday's a Bitch:
http://community.livejournal.com/mondaysabitch/ because their topic today (edit: just realised it's actually from 2 months ago, don't care, I like it) is the kind of thing I could easily and happily spend hours thinking about:

The Movie of Your Life in 2008

1. What would be the title?
2. What would be the tag line?
3. Who would be the main characters? Who would you cast to play them?
4. What would be the climax in the story?
5. What song would play for the closing credits?

1. F.I.N.A.L.S. (based on a popular acronym)
2. It's all about the cotch.
3. Myself and 10 or so of my closest friends. I would be played by Michael Cera with some sort of RDJ-in-Tropic Thunder-style pigment alteration. I don't think I have the time to think up the perfect actors for all my friends, but if I were to find actors from my favourite TV shows whose characters come closest, they would be Donald Faison, David Schwimmer, Nicolas Brendon, Allison Mack, Tina Fey, Jenna Fischer, Lisa Kudrow, Erik Per Sullivan, Neil Patrick Harris, Johnny Galecki, and maybe a female Dylan Moran. All of them reverse-engineered (or in one case, forward-engineered) to the age of 20.
4. Graduation.
5. Feeder - Just A Day followed by Nelly - Ride Wit Me

And that's me done for now. I don't think I'm gonna make every post from now on a meme, I just happened to really like two of today's.

Saturday 21 February 2009

To meme or not to meme

My first meme question thingy. From http://samanthasaturday9.blogspot.com/:

1. Where would you go if you wanted to spark your creativity?
If the last couple of weeks are anything to go by, my laptop. Or, occasionally, marketing lectures.

2. What would be one thing that would embarrass you a great deal?
Dancing while sober.

3. What values did your parents instill in you?
Hmm. The standard ones, I guess. Apart from eat healthily, they kinda missed the boat on that one although they try their damndest to make up for it now.

4. What’s a fad of your teen years that you remember well?
Dude, my teen years only ended in late 2007. If we're talking earlier teens, um, maybe Ali G impressions? And then, later on, Borat impressions. And presumably pretty soon Bruno impressions.

5. What is your favorite breakfast?
Ah there's this M&S cereal, Apple and Cinnamon Crunch. I remember taking it round to a friend's place for some sort of breakfast party (this seemed less strange at the time) and her being shocked that it had "authentic cinnamon". Rather than "synthetic cinnamon". I dunno, she lived in Scotland for a long time if that explains anything.

6. What is the best birthday gift that you have received?
Probably my Sony Ericsson K800i. I am aware that one of my readers (my only one that I know of in fact) is in mourning for a beloved phone and this will be my second insensitive phone-related remark of the day, and I'm sorry for it. But it's true.

7. What gadget could you not live without?
Does a laptop count? I remember when the charger for this thing broke. The panic and stress levels that ensued, my god, I think I genuinely understood how new parents feel the first time their babies get the flu.

8. Do you collect anything?
Many years ago I collected the free toys from boxes of Frosties. Then I discovered Crunchy Nut. Now, if anything, pop culture-related t-shirts, although I don't know if this counts as a collection since do in fact wear them on a regular basis.

9. What website (non-blog) do you regularly visit?
Ignoring the standard answers of facebook, youtube and wikipedia? The football section of BBC Sport.

First Post Down

Welcome to the Pleasuredome. I don’t actually remember what that is, but I wanted to say “Welcome to the [something]” and ‘Pleasuredome’ was the first thing my subconscious had to suggest. So to begin with, Spyke is not my real name. This should be obvious, as Spyke is not anyone’s real name. It’s a nickname, albeit one I came up with myself that was roundly dismissed by all my friends. Why the secrecy? Firstly, this is the internet, and my paranoia tells me that even having a blog in the first place is probably the identity theft equivalent of walking down a dark alley with a large wad of cash sticking out of your ear. Secondly and (arguably) more importantly, my name is uncommon enough to basically make me a one-man Googlewhack. If any member of my family happened to Google me, they could find this and it might destroy their perception of me as a grunting, barely sentient post-teenager. We can't have that.

A little more to explain. I'm writing this blog as part of a New Year's resolution (my first serious one at the age of 21, and it's actually going spectacularly well) to write more stuff. I started out just writing facebook notes, but I think I was starting to piss off my friends. Now I can piss off the internet as a whole. It's called First Soldier Down because a friend and I have spent much of the last 2 years thinking up names for hypothetical bands, and this one is far and away my favourite. If you recognise where it's from, then I like you. If you don't, ah I'll forgive you, and encourage you to watch more Angel.