I left the house to go to Sainsbury’s to buy a couple of tubs of “Peanuts, raisins & chocolate mix.” The mix is soooo tasty.

So yeah, when I got back from PC World with my new speakers I set them up and they’re awesome 😀 I love spur of the moment purchases that turn out really well.

They’re not really big or really powerful or anything, but they don’t hum when the computer is off, so I no longer have to unplug them to sleep at night 🙂 They _do_ sound better than my old ones too, plus I can plug my iPod or some other device (not just headphones) into them very easily, so that’s good.

Now to work on my new amarok script to shutdown my computer (or other actions to be thought up) after a specified track. Should be relatively simple.

I just had a wonderful conversation with my mum, as usual.

She’s decided that when I get back from Germany I need to move out as soon as possible. One of the main reasons is that I spend most of my time in my room and we never talk. If I’m _always_ up in my room then she can very easily come and talk to _me_ if the mood should take her. Also, if I’m going to be living in a new house does she think we’ll suddenly speak more? God *_dammit_*.

I asked her how she expected to pay all of the bills by herself without a job and she said she could get someone in to rent and pay half. I pointed out that that’s _exactly_ what I’m doing now and got met with silence and a blank stare. Ugh.

I didn’t want to stay here for as long as I have done, but it’s still shit to be pushed out.

So yeah, I should find somewhere small to rent now. I should also start saving up two months of rent and a bond (typically another month of rent). We’re talking close to £1000. :\

I was just reading a bunch of random sites that link to images hosted by me when I found this video on one of them:

Japanese people are *_insane_*!

Well, yesterday was a good day for bad news.

First Sandra’s friend Jasna’s brother got run over by a 12-wheeler truck in Germany. He managed to push Jasna out of the way though, so I guess that’s some small solace. He’s in hospital at the moment with two broken legs, which has got to suck. No doubt it’ll take a while for him to get back to normal. I say he’s a hero. Managing to spare someone else from the same fate while that’s going on is just incredible.

Dave managed to get himself into hospital too, by playing football. Apparently a tackle ended up with him putting all of his weight on one ankle at an awkward ankle and _*hey presto*_! Swelling and pain! Apparently it’s not broken though, so again, it’s not as bad as it could have been.

The other bad news came from *Stacey and Len’s camp of fun and waterpark* and I’m not going to get into that.

Looking back at yesterday evening I’m just glad I _survived_.

Sexism and racism seem to be one-way streets. You can’t invoke either of these if you’re a white male.

It’s fine to call a whiteboard a whiteboard because it’s white, but you have to call a blackboard a chalk board. Baa baa black sheep is now baa baa woolly sheep because mentioning the word “black” is racist. Black black blackedy-black black. Get the hell over it.

How does that nursery rhyme even work?

Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? – Fair question. The sheep is black, as sheep sometimes are.
Baa baa woolly sheep, have you any wool? YES it has wool, it’s a woolly fucking sheep!

The thing that got me on about all of this is an article I just read about a guy being barred from a women-only gym. That’s not fair at all. That’s sexist, just not in the way that’s been complained about for the last hundred years. Some women go on and on about equality and such as long as the results are in their own interests, but when it comes to conscription or something similar they lose interest mightily quickly.

This gym belongs to a fitness chain with 300 employees. 4 of which are guys. If there was a company employing 296 men and 4 women then someone would be complaining about unfairness.

At Baja Fresh all of the employees were Mexican. No white people ever worked in any of the ones I went to. That would also be frowned upon if it were the other way around. It’s completely unfair. I know white guys have had things going for them for a pretty long time now, but if you preach equality then practice it. Not just to a certain level. Definitely don’t just start being sexist in the other direction. That makes you as bad as what you’ve campaigned against for so long.

Ugh. Rant over.

I got paid at just gone midnight and it’s *_so_* wonderful! 😀

Tomorrow I’m going to withdraw £100 to pay a couple of months of my share of the council tax, and I intend to withdraw £200 to save for my trip to Germany in 24 days 🙂

This weekend I need to take a trip into town to buy a spare battery for my camera, another spare for my PSP, and also a power converter so I can plug in my charger cables when I’m over there. I’ll also get my money converted so there’s no way I can possibly spend it before I get there. I think I’ll get about 100 euros in cash and the rest in traveller’s cheques.

Sandra’s kindly letting me use her account to store my money. 🙂 Saves me carrying so much around.

I’ve sorted out my phone so they know I’m going abroad. I’ll nip into my bank to let them know about the trip too. Saves their systems flagging suspicious activity when I withdraw cash in a foreign country.

It’s going to be an *_awesome_* trip.

I’ve been playing bass guitar all evening.

I haven’t played for a long time, so my fingers are rebelling against me. I’ve been having a lot of fun playing _Born To Be A Dancer_ by Kaiser Chiefs. I’ve remembered some old favourites like _Only In Dreams_ by Weezer and I’ve also completely failed to learn any Iron Maiden songs because they’re insane.

I randomly discovered some tune from Super Mario Bros. but I can’t remember from where in the game it comes. Maybe I’ll see if I can find it somewhere tomorrow or something. Or just record myself playing it. It’s only a tiny file.

Anyway, it’s been fun. Oh yeah, and I found £20 in one of my drawers when I was looking for a guitar cable attachment. It turned out that that cable attachment was already attached to the cable, but I only checked one end :\ Well worth it for the £20 though 😀

I wonder how much more money I have hidden around my room.

I went to my sister’s house after I’d had some dinner in the Rushley. I started to sort out her computer and she put some gel in my hair. I left things updating and being sorted and she gave me a lift to Dave’s house and then me and Dave got a lift to “The Town Mill”:http://townmill.com/ where we met my co-worker James and a bunch of his friends (and eventually Eli). James invited me along to see a band called The Dirty Riffs.

They did an awesome cover of _Folsom Prison Blues_ by Johnny Cash. I’ve been listening to the original since I woke up because it’s such a good track.

James and his friends left at some point after that while two other bands were playing. Dave and I hung around. It turned out to be *completely* worth it too because the fourth band, _Grain_, were completely awesome! I recorded about 5 of their songs on my camera, and I’ll post one or two of them when they’ve finished processing. It’s tough to track down any of their information because Grain is quite a popular name for bands and groups.

We went for some food from this horrible little place in the town centre with Eli after that. She left to go somewhere and then Dave and I left for home too.

It was a good night.

*Edit*
Oh yeah! Some woman who was standing at the bar randomly fell backwards and sat on mine and Dave’s feet. Then she fell to the side and so Dave, James, and I helped pick her back up again. Her eyes were ridiculously wide. It looked like she’d been doing something other than alcohol. Maybe her drink got spiked or something. She did look ok later on in the night though, so that’s re-assuring.

It was completely crazy though.

*Edit again*
Here’s one of the Grain videos:

Some cops at UCLA(Univeristy of California Los Angeles) tasered a student (Mostafa Tabatabainejad) who was in the IT Centre there when he refused to leave. It was gone 11pm and apparently there are regular checks of the IDs of people in the centre after 11pm. Well, the guy didn’t have any ID so the cops asked him to leave. One of the cops took hold of his arm and he began to shout for the cop to let go.

After a few seconds another cop comes over, and eventually they taser him, after he’s told them he has a (non-specific) medical condition. He also shouts a bunch of stuff like “here’s your patriot act” and whatever.

After a bunch more arguing and resisting they taser him again and he’s still being a moron, but by now the cops are too. Instead of carrying him out they just look down at him and shout “stand up” a few hundred thousand times regardless of the fact that it’s not achieving anything. There are at least 3 or 4 cops there towards this point, and I have no doubt in my mind that they could have just carried the kid out of there, but they don’t. They stand around and argue with him a bunch.

Someone filmed all of this and stuck it up on YouTube.

So yeah, it’s a bit long, and mostly just a bunch of people shouting, but there you have it. Maybe something I can try out at work over the next few weeks when the students forget their cards. I can at least get them to look up what’ll happen if they forget them again 😀

The UCLA Acting Chancellor, Norman Abrams, has issued “a statement”:http://newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=7513 saying that the security checks after 11pm are clearly posted for all to see and must be adhered to.

It’s got me wondering how the guy even managed to get in there without any student ID. He *_is_* a student there, so perhaps people knew him and let him in or something, but meh. Rather than having an ID check at random intervals why not just hire someone to be there to check the ID of everyone as they enter the place, then you can be sure they’re all students? Surely that’s a much better idea than having police with tasers come around and zap people every now and again. Although I bet nobody forgets their card for a couple of weeks 🙂

Oh yeah, they guy who got tasered seems to be Iranian, so that’ll go down well.

One month from today I’ll be in London, probably sitting on the plane wanting the last few people to hurry the hell up so we can take off already. The plane should take off at about 11:55.

I will have been awake for over 8 hours and spent the majority of that time on a coach. My iPod will have run out of battery (6 hours ago) and my PSP will be on the way too. I should probably buy a second battery pack for the PSP before I leave 🙂

From Heathrow I’ll fly to Frankfurt and sit around in the airport for 3 hours and 20 minutes waiting for my next plane to Bremen to arrive. Sandra should be meeting me at Bremen airport and then we’ll catch a train to Emden station, and then a taxi from there to Sandra’s flat.

A couple of days later we’ll both catch a train from Emden down to Speyer where we’ll be for Christmas and New Year. We’ll hopefully travel around a bunch while we’re there.

After New Year I’ll pretty much do every step of the above journey in reverse.

Here’s a map 🙂