Summer Loving
The British summer has arrived. I know this as I have just have enjoyed my first Cornetto ice cream of the year. Everyone’s wearing very little, bra straps peep out from vest tops, pale legs in diabolical shorts.
You may be surprised to know that my favourite season is actually Winter, but I’ll talk about that another time. Summer’s okay apart from the following phenomena:
Hay Fever: I used to get awful hay fever during my childhood, and it’s not as bad now but I don’t enjoy the cold-like symptoms, and nor do I enjoy feeling like Itchy and Scratchy are playing war games under my eyelids.
Smells: From the high frequency of stale body odour on the train to the pungent stench of rubbish on the pavement, every bad smell is intensified in this heat. There’s a street corner which I pass on my way home with a couple of newsagents and a few Caribbean and Chinese restaurants. Normally along with the various foody smells you might be able to detect the scent of weed on the breeze while passing, but this week there’s a distinctly acrid pong in the area.
Insects: Bees, wasps, those tiny flies which attach themselves to your clothing, green flies (I kept on having to flick them off my yellow t-shirt today), those even tinier flies who gather in clusters near trees…
Humidity: British Summers tend to be fairly humid, so you feel all sticky and icky. Eventually the mugginess gets so intense that you look forward to the inevitable thunderstorm which will give a temporary respite from the humidity. And those hot, humid nights are evil.
Slimming Down for Summer: The pressure to look perfect in your skimpy summer clothes.
But why am I whingeing? Summer is an intense time, a time for living and loving and partying. So here are my favourite summertime tunes:
Video 1: Summertime by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald
Video 2: Summertime by Will Smith and Jazzy Jeff
Video 3: In the Summertime by Shaggy (I love the original Mungo Jerry version too, btw)
Thanks to: PJ and China blue. Leave comments (2)
Tomorrow is Doomsday
And I can’t wait. Rhona Mitra looks amazing, and you’ve got to love a British Mad Max-styled suicide mission to save the world…
Music IQ
I just happened upon a Music Intelligence Quiz via Chris’s blog, and decided to have a crack at it though I’ve never claimed to be a musical genius.
Your final score was 108/180
Birthday Party DJ (73-108 points)
You are a rabid consumer of music. You get a rush every time you hear something new but remain faithful to those artists you love. Your music collection represents who you are and what you care about and your home may even bear the tell-tale signs of your affections – posters, old band t-shirts and the odd music biography. But you aren’t a completist, you know what you like and make sure you have it. Simple as that. To expand your repertoire, perhaps there are some genres that you’d benefit from giving a little more attention to – perhaps now is the time to hear something new or get hold of that missing album from your collection.
And while we’re on the subject of intelligence, I heard about this dating site for intelligent people and had a go at the entry exam. Unfortunately when I saw the format of the exam I knew I wasn’t going to pass. I’m awful at those “complete the pattern” questions with triangles and squares and circles, and being given a minute to solve each one didn’t help. Luckily, there’s more than one kind of intelligence, and more than one way to meet your soulmate.
Love Gravity
London is Doomed
From midnight tonight Boris Johnson will become the 2nd Mayor of London, and I really don’t know how he pulled it off. The only ‘advantages’ that he had coming into the mayoral race was his notoriety from certain ill-advised comments that he had made in the past, his wild hair and bumbling persona.
Were Londoners simply voting for Conservative candidate Boris in order to stick two fingers up at Gordon Brown’s Labour government? I’m sure that was a big factor too.
For months the newspapers had been heralding the mayoral elections as a two-man race between the current mayor, Ken Livingston, and Boris Johnson. There was little reporting about any of the other candidates, including the former senior police officer Brian Paddick, who I would have liked to take over the reins.
So will Boris prove himself to be more than a wild-haired buffoon? I really hope so, for the sake of London. As Hammer says, £11 million pounds is a lot of money to control, and four years is a long time.
Thanks to: PJ, Kaz, and B. Varkentine. Leave comments (4)
Limbo
I haven’t blogged much this week, mainly because my head has been a mess. I’m pretty sure that my depression is back, and I’m not sure how to combat it. I’ve been feeling like a dark cloud has descended over me and the feeling of clarity only returns for odd moments each day. I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything, I’ve barely been able to focus at work.
I’ve been trying to distract myself, by watching movies, tv-shows, by eating crap, reading - anything to pass the time and keep my hands busy. I should exercise but someone’s always here in the house and I hate doing anything like that when my parents are around. I could go for a walk, but I don’t know where to go. I have no destination.
That’s actually my main problem - a lack of direction and destination. I don’t have any motivation. I just want to sleep.
I started seeing a counsellor last week (after 2 years on the waiting list). Apart from the fact that she looks exactly like someone who I used to work with (and didn’t get on with), we’ve been able to have some interesting conversations about what I’m going through. It’s too bad that I can barely bring myself to look at her.
My mother’s been on at me again this week:
I spend too much time on the computer
I need to go out more
I need a hobby/interests
I need to find a boyfriend
I need to find a new (full-time) job
I need to move out, and they’ll help me to get a place
I need to exercise
I don’t actually disagree with a lot of that, but I don’t think that I need to be told all that stuff like I’m a child. And I hate hearing the words, ‘It’s for your own good.’
‘You’re a nice girl, Penny,’ she said to me. Why can’t that be enough?
Thanks to: Noni, PJ, Dr. Monkey, and SamuraiFrog. Leave comments (5)
Goodies
It was my brother’s birthday yesterday (though I mixed up the days and sent him a birthday text today…), and I know that he would have loved to get this Star Trek Enterprise Bottle Opener. Too bad that it’s not available until July.
(via Neatorama)
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I’m Banksy. Yes, I am.
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Top 25 80’s Action Show Opening Credits - This took me back. I enjoyed this post, which ranked the opening credits via the criteria of Action, Sexiness, Cheesiness, Homoeroticism and Intangibles. There were several shows that I didn’t recognise, and this list needed the Dukes of Hazzard, I don’t know how that show was missed out. I do agree with the #1 choice though.
My top 3 would have to be TJ Hooker, The A-Team and Hunter, so here they are for your enjoyment.
Thanks to: Chris, PJ, Nicholas, and Splotchy. Leave comments (5)
A Head for Figures
(I was sure that I posted this last night, but all I could find today was a earlier draft version which I’ve amended from memory - sorry if you’ve already seen this via rss.)
I haven’t paid much attention to my flickr account lately, though I’ve had the odd comment or group invitation from time to time. Today I had an interesting one, the Figurehead group invited me to submit the following pic to their photo pool:
It’s the figurehead of the Cutty Sark, a clipper ship which is held in dry dock in Greenwich. She looks quite attractive from this angle, doesn’t she? All long flowing locks and pert bosoms. Interestingly, she looks quite different from the other side of the ship:
Not so pretty now, eh? I did some research and discovered that her name is Nannie, and she is a witch from a Robert Burns poem:
Tam saw that among the ugly group of witches, there was one which was young and beautiful. Her name was Nannie, and she wore only a ‘cutty sark’, a short shift. Tam was bewitched and, as her dancing became wilder, in his excitement, he cried out “Weel done cutty sark!” The witches then pursued Tam who fled for his life to the bridge over the river Doon, for he knew that witches could not cross running water. Nannie was faster than the others and, as the mare galloped over the bridge, she seized it by the tail, which came off in her hand. Hence, the figurehead is always shown holding a horse’s tail in her left hand.
Thanks to: PJ and Nicholas. Leave comments (2)
How Trigger-Happy are you?
You’re a cop, and you come across a random guy who’s holding something that could be a gun. How long does it take you to decide whether or not to shoot? Does the skin colour of the person matter?
This was the question asked by the University of Chicago in an online psychology test, which gives you a split-second to decide whether to shoot the guy or whether to holster your gun for an unarmed individual.
Interestingly, the results showed that black and white participants shot the armed black guys sooner than the armed white guys.
I tried the test twice, because I was confused at first about which button to press, and took a few seconds to get used to the process. The first time I scored really low because I often took too long to make a decision, but my results showed that I took less time to shoot the armed black guys than the white guys.
Strangely though, even though the second time around I wasn’t trying to game the system, just wanted to play it right, I actually shot the armed white guys quicker than the armed black guys… I’m not sure what that means but the test has reinforced the fact that I never should become a police officer, especially as I shot a few unarmed guys too…
Of course the test isn’t realistic at all, but it raises an interesting point.
(via Neatorama)
Thanks to: SamuraiFrog. Leave comments (1)
Tomorrow
And later on I’ll check out Street Kings, just because it’s the only film that my friend and I can agree on for a Saturday night social endeavor, and besides Keanu is always fun to watch. 
