Waterworld, Happy-Go-Lucky and the week that was

The time things actually occur in my life that are somewhat blog worthy, I’m not bothered to write in my blog. That’s so like me.

Saturday: Waterworld (Not the Kevin Costner Movie)
It’s Saturday morning and as usual, I tidy up my kitchen. My copy of A Room For Romeo Brass was delivered that morning so I was watching (but mainly listening to) it as I tidied up. My sister came downstairs and started to watch TV. I’m easily distracted, well, I like to deviate from what I’m meant to be doing, so I watched TV with her for about 40 minutes. I then went to continue with the kitchen. As I made my way there I heard the sound of water trickling, it was coming from out laundry room. I looked in there and what did I see? A whole wall and part of the ceiling was pouring down with water, my first response? “Krystal, there water coming from the light bulb!”, which it was. She immediately rang my brother because, come on, water+electricity=nothing good. It turns out that she left the bath running. Think about this. She came downstairs, some time later I watched TV with her for 40 minutes, all this time the bath was running.

My sister just kept panicking and for one of the first times on my life, I was the cool one. I assessed the situation and said what needed to be done. She asked me why I was so calm, I didn’t say this at the time but I think it’s because I was secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t my fault. Probably two hours later, we finished the superficial aspects of restoring the house. As a safety precaution, we didn’t turn on the electricity in the laundry room. My sister kept asking whether turning on any of the electricity (we’re talking about the whole house now) would cause an explosion. Feel free to correct me, but from the little knowledge of physics (GCSE Double Science) I have, I’m quite sure that’s not the reaction you would get from water and electricity. Water conducts electricity so I think you’re more likely to have a surge of electricity.

The house is okay now, the light fitting had to be removed but…that’s about it.

Wednesday: Happy-Go-Lucky

Being the film nerd I am (I’ve written that so many times), I’m subscribed to the mailing lists for all the picturehouses in London, and one on Brighton. A few weeks ago, I got an email about a preview for film called Happy-Go-Lucky with a Q&A with the director, Mike Leigh. This was very exciting to me because:
a) It’s a preview, I’ve never been to a preview before. I was going to go to a preview of Deathproof earlier in the year with a Q&A with Quentin Tarantino but, obviously, Deathproof was rated 18 (damn you BBFC) preventing me from seeing it.
b) Happy-Go-Lucky is a Film Four film. They tend to be quite good. I believe their flagship film last year was This Is England, and I’m trying my best not to go off on a tangent about how great that was. Read my review instead.
C) I had heard of it. I’d seen the adverts for it on Film Four. It didn’t look that great from the ads but then again, neither did This is England.

Anyhoo, Happy-Go-Lucky was great. I was in tears laughing but as it progressed the film became a bit more complex. Let’s just say, my reactions were like this.

I’ve haven’t achieved that much academically this week. I had one piece of work to do during the holidays which I haven’t even thought about starting. I plan to do it tomorrow. My brother fixed my bike, well, me gave me his, so I may ride it up to the library tomorrow. Let’s see if I do.

I downloaded a 30 day trial of Adobe Illustrator (mainly so I could do pictures that resembled A Scanner Darkly), it’s been fun. It’s also allowed me to do my stick man doodles digitally. Good times.

Living Well is the best Revenge

REM are back! A few days ago iTunes had a free download of their new video “Living Well is the Best Revenge” and it’s reasonable entertaining. It’s not the flashing lights and robots we’ve come to see from Kanye West videos, it simply one camera shooting as the band play the song in a car. Evidence that they always sound as they do when recorded.



It’s Bette Davis’ 100th birthday today. She’s mothers favourite actress. I heard on TCM that they’d be playing some of her films in cinemas this month as a celebration so I tried to find out where and when. Unfortunately. I found out today that they’re being played none other that today. It’s a bit short notice so it looks like I won’t be going. Oh well.

Ooo, I found an amazing game today. Well, it was one of Empire's timewasters of the week. It's called Boomstick.

A Nerd? Me?

I should be writing an essay right now but I thought that if I got all my internet time out of the way now I might work a little later than usual.

Now, to the main topic. I was on the bus today and I couldn’t help but hear the conversation the people behind me were having. They were two boys in the year below me and they were talking intensely about Stargate SG-1. I couldn’t help but think about the magnitude of their nerdiness. I slowly began to be quite entertained by their conversation and added my own comments (in my head of course). The more they spoke, the more I agreed with them and I slowly came to the realisation-I’m like them. Yes, readers, I am…a nerd. I thought I’d get a second opinion so I went onto a site called Nerd Tests to see whether I was at the deep end and my gosh, I’m in the middle of the ocean and I can’t swim. I got:




So I got a third opinion

our 500 Point Nerdity Purity Test Results
You answered "yes" to 243 of 500 questions, making you 51.4% nerd pure; that is, you are 51.4% pure in the nerd domain (you have 48.6% nerd in you).
According to the scoring guide, your nerd experience level is: You refuse to live anywhere without pizza delivery
Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 23%, based on a comparison of your test results with 52554 other submissions for this test.

The average purity for this test is 63.4%.

I then did the geek test

45.95661%



I shall now be proud of my Geekiness/ Nerdiness. It’s a full time job being one of us, one of us, gobble! Gobble!

The Dare

I understand that many of the things I do aren’t really logical, for example, I’ve taken to burning my junk mail. I can’t explain why. Anyhoo, many people don’t seem to realise that some the things I do are fun for me even if other people don’t find then fun. I’ll start at the beginning.

I’m listening to Movies You Should See, you know, as you do, and the hosts were telling a story about when their car had broken down and had to call the AA. While the AA guy was fixing the car, they tried to take a picture of him without him realising. They then proceeded to dare the listeners to try to take a picture of their bus driver or equivalent on their next commute. As I was on my home from college yesterday, my bus and another were next each other. My bus driver recognised the other driver, stepped out of his bus driver section, opened the front door and had a conversation with him. It’s not just me, that’s strange isn’t it? Not just strange, it’s very dangerous. Upon seeing this, I remembered the dare. I tried to take a picture of the driver with my phone but missed.

From this point on, I knew my objective for the rest of the day. Whilst I was still on the same bus, someone sat opposite me. One word: Opportunity. I expanded the dare to include passengers. I got a great picture of him.

I take two buses home to I took another attempt at getting a picture of a bus driver. Problem; I live in London and I have an Oyster card. It takes me less than a second to touch my Oyster card against the reader so there’s not much time to get a picture of the driver. The result:

 

As my picture didn’t turn out so well, I extended my journey home. I took four extra buses home and I got these !

 

 

I also got a bobby on the beat.

 

Now, if you happen to be in one of these pictures, even though that’s quite unlikely, I shall remove it if you wish.

Hold on! I was telling a story! Back to why I was talking about the things I find fun. I found this picture taking experience very fun. As I was changing buses the first time, sent a message proposing the dare to most of the people in my address book. Many people where wondering why they should do such a thing and why I would even ask. Firstly: It‘s a dare. Secondly: It’s fun! No more reasoning is necessary. Not everything needs to be logical or make sense. A lot of fun can come from illogical actions (even if Spock wouldn't agree).