Currently… Playing:
Dungeon Defenders
Listening to:
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Watching:
Smallville: Season 10
Reading:
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Hey look, a Paypal button.
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 They are the main themes I picked up whilst listening properly to Lana Del Rey’s album, Born To Die. I listened to it a while ago at work, but due to the subtleness of the overall sound, it was more like background music. I couldn’t pick out individual lines, just the basic melodies – which is in no way the ideal environment to listen to this album. I listened to the album in it’s entirety twice earlier today while I was drawing a picture of Jane. Little wonder Jane looks kind of melancholic in the picture.
I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first person to describe her voice as haunting. I sure hope I’m not. It haunted me for hours after that first listen. Born To Die lingered in my memory for a long time, although Videogames is my stand-out track. There seems to be a lot of hoo-ha and fuss on the internet about Lana Del Rey not actually being her real name (I don’t remember such fuss about a certain Ms. Gaga), but the way I see it, whatever her name, it’s all about the music, and I feel the real emotion in the music comes from personal experience. As I noted in the title, the album is all about getting that boy to be hers forever, doing what the boy wants and what she thinks the boy expects. It’s about drinking and having fun with boys, wearing summer dresses, little red dresses and bikini tops. Real emotional music always tends to be based on real-life experiences.
All in all, it’s a wonderful album. Listened to from afar, the overall sound of the album is a little samey. But a focused listen reveals many subtleties, not just in Lana’s incredibe voice, but in the tone of her lyrics. I didn’t find it depressing as such, more an insight into something very personal, a tale of someone’s adolescence, told through music.
Walked into the local independent music shop yesterday, first CD that catches my eye? Dig Your Own Hole.
I’d call that fate.
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I did.
I picked it up and I used it to make lines on a bit of paper.
I feel… Good about this.
It was the first time in many, many years I’ve drawn properly. I’ve been struggling with it for a while now, feeling like I’m wasting my life, hating almost every second of retail (but feeling utterly trapped in it as it’s the only thing I know). When I was younger I never saw a future in art or design for me as I didn’t feel good enough to make a career out of it. Now I’m older, I’ve realised I love being creative, and regardless of whether I can or can’t make money from it, I should just do it!
Jane noticed my plight, and tasked me to create the famous Yiberdeedo. Four lines of text was all I had to go on, and they described the fantastical world it lives in rather than the creature itself. I just had a little brainstorm about what kind of fantastical creature would live in such a fantastical world, then, this evening, just started jamming. Pencil to paper. And it felt great. Really great. So many ideas coming so fast, I felt alive.
I really must continue this course of action.
In a bit of a Chemical Brothers mood.
Why do I not own Dig Your Own Hole? I have all the others except that one. How odd.
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I’ve been thinking about the “threat unlike anything the Master Chief has faced before”, and while shooting at actual, real Forerunners would be pretty cool, at the end of the day, they are aliens. The Chief has fought aliens before, The Covenant was 100% alien. Grunts? Alien. Elites? Alien. Hunters? Alien. What if this “new” threat is human? What if the threat of insurrection resurfaces? We all know that mankind can’t be peaceful. Just watch the news.
Fuel for this fire: Red Spartan IV’s fighting Blue Spartan IV’s. Could the “compelling reason” behind multiplayer be civil war?
They sure are. After listening to the album for the past three days straight at work, I just had to buy the new Ministry of Sound collection: Big Beat Anthems. Every track has the biggest of beats, every track takes me back twenty years, every track is utterly amazing. I’m having some issues naming tracks and what-not with the Zune software, but this always happens when you buy a newly released album, it takes time for the names and album art to be locked in.
I also bought The Thing prequel. Pretty good how they made it fit in with the original film, with exploded ice coffins and axes embedded in walls.
Seeing as I’m a huge Prodigy fan, my first tattoo had to be the ant logo. It didn’t hurt massively, it just felt like a lot of little pin pricks, or tiny slices, which is pretty much exactly all it was!
I’ve got loads of ideas for other tattoos, but I’ll hold off for a while as I want to let this one heal and settle in first.
Jane and I would like to get kinda matching tattoos. She wants Hebrew, but I reckon Latin would be pretty awesome. Ready for a Halo reference? In the Halo 3 reveal trailer, Cortana says “I am your shield. I am your sword.” – I’d get “I am your sword” and Jane would get “I am your shield”. It’s a primal thing – men go and fight, women protect. It’d also be kinda like the Master Chief (sword)/Cortana (shield) dynamic. We’re both massive Halo fans, so it would be pretty cool, and it fits us so well on so many levels.
I’d like to get the Dark Angels Deathwing logo (yes, the Space Marine/Games Workshop Dark Angels): The broken sword on my right shoulder/upper arm with the wings going onto my chest and back. Not strictly the Codex version of the logo, but a more realistic version, with a fully shaded sword, and angelic wings.
Would getting a Death Eater tatto be in stupidly bad taste? I did really enjoy the Harry Potter books, and the films were alright (hey, deja vu). It’d be the basic “snake and skull” motif, but I’d like to design it myself, make it more original than the one sported by the bad guys in the films.
I’d also like to get a very subtle Doctor Who reference: Do you remember the Silence episodes? The main characters marked on their skin when they saw a Silence, because otherwise they’d forget they had seen it. I’d like to have “seen” eight Silence, if you get me. Eight is my favourite number.
See, told you I had loads of ideas! I’m sure I have more that have currently vacated my mind as well. Whether I ever get around to having them all done is another matter though.
Well, it’s been and gone and I stopped smoking for two and a half days, then again for another day, and now I’m back on the cigarettes again. Day fourteen, the day I did stop, I was brutally ill, and didn’t really feel like smoking. Day fifteen I was still ill. Day sixteen I went back to work and I bought some on the way there. Smoked one, almost passed out. On the way home from work I threw them over a random wall, as I was convinced I could do without them. I felt better when I wasn’t smoking, even though I was ill, yet I’m still back on them. It’s not that I enjoy the taste, or that I get incredibly agitated when I want to smoke but can’t, I just feel more comfortable when I am a smoker. It’s hard to describe.
Anyway, the Champix did actually work really well, it’s just that I was ill and didn’t go to the smoking cessation clinic to get more. I will go this week.
This whole episode has really brought my mind into conflict about how much personal information I should divulge on here. The whole idea has always been that it’s more for me to write than for anyone to read, but how much do people have to know in order for it to be coherent? Maybe the current balance is perfect, maybe it’s not – who’s to know, really? Priorities first though – less hours at work, more time for doing what I enjoy, and activities I want to persue, then I can decide how much I need to write. I think I need to update the About Me page though.
Day two of the higher dose, and I think we may be getting somewhere. Today would have been the day I stopped smoking, but I decided to push it back a little as I didn’t feel the tablets were working as much as they should be.
Throughout the day my desire to smoke was normal, although I am beginning to question whether it is a desire to smoke or a desire to continue a routine of smoking. The relief after smoking (or continuing the routine) was normal.
Today is my first day of taking 1mg twice a day. I’m getting more and more down, feeling like this course of tablets won’t work. Coupled with the news that my best Asda buddy has got a job elsewhere, today could have been better. It did have it’s good points – I got to go home a bit early because they were saving on wages and I did quite a lot of excercise in the afternoon – but I’m really going to miss Jenna.
Throughout the day my desire to smoke was normal, and the relief after smoking was normal. Some cigarettes made me feel a bit sickly, and I do have a somewhat nagging feeling in my belly. Not sure why.
Positive: Day off from Asda – done loads of weights and had a good hour on the rowing machine.
Negative: Feeling a bit sorry for myself – Jane had some (potentially) bad news, and I don’t know what to do.
Throughout the day my desire to smoke was normal, and the relief after smoking was normal, but again, some cigarettes made me feel queasy.
I seem to be needing the toilet more than usual. Is this yet another side-effect?
Throughout the day my desire to smoke was normal, and the relief after smoking was normal, but the actual smoking made me feel slightly queasy at times. Progress?
 First proper look, anyway. There’s a video up on Waypoint (and most probably everywhere else on the web by now I’d imagine), and it’s really good.
The Battle Rifle is back. Three shot bursts confirmed.
The graphics are insanely detailed.
You play as a Spartan IV (yes, four) in multiplayer, and it looks like an even shinier version of Vanquish. It’s almost anime Halo – they’ve certainly moved away form the traditional look and gone for something recognisable, but different. It’s still smooth as well – my main worry was that they’d lose that Halo smoothness – but it’s still silky.
There’s a “compelling” reason why Red Spartans are shooting Blue Spartans. My guess is training, but it could be something as sinister as various human factions battling for supremacy.
Sprinting is still in – at one point in multiplayer the guy lowers his weapon and moves faster. The HUD is beautiful – it may be a little too opaque though, hard to see when there’s a bright light source right in front of you. I like the new score indicators, stylish and more futuristic than before, much like the new visual style. It looks like there are slots for three grenade types up in the top right of the HUD. Cool.
Still no word on the enemies you’re fighting, although there was mention of Forerunner weapons in one of the recent Waypoint blog posts, and if you’ve seen the Terminals in Halo Anniversary then you pretty much know the main antagonist will be the Didact.
All in all: HALO FUCK YEAH.
Day two of having two tablets. I had a go on my new rowing machine (did I not mention this? I bought a rowing machine with my bonus from Asda), walked to Waterlooville, had a haircut and then walked home again. It reminded me of the reasons why I don’t want to smoke anymore – my health, and the impact of flooding my body with nicotine (a strong poison, for fucks sake), and starving my muscles of oxygen when I’m trying to build them up.
Throughout the day my desire to smoke was normal, and the relief after smoking was normal. Will it kick in soon?
Sunday, bloody Sunday. I slept in until about 10 this morning as I was so tired. Working the late shift until 10pm on Friday night then coming in for 7am on the Saturday always takes it’s toll, but it was worse this time for some reason. I felt I needed to sleep more. Is this a Champix effect? Who knows. It is what I will attribute it to.
This was the first day that I took a tablet in the morning and then another in the evening. I think you have to give your body time to adapt to the medicine, if you went the whole hog straight away it’d be too much. Maybe this will make it have more of an effect.
Throughout the day my desire to smoke was normal, and the relief after smoking was normal.
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