Kindred: The Embraced

Kindred: The Embraced is a show I've been interested in seeing for a few years, about three weeks ago I finally bought the DVDs and today I watched the first one and a half episodes and I've come to the conclusion this show really sucks.

While I was watching the pilot I was often reminded of mind numbingly bland Charmed ( well the few episodes I saw were incredibly bland so I gave up on it early on ), it's no that some of the ideas in Kindred: The Embraced weren't good but they were so diluted and the show chose to focus on soap opera aspects instead of proper storytelling.

My daughter is a big fan of Charmed and I suspect she'll probably enjoy Kindred: The Embraced as well, I was amused to discover that a lot of the same people were behind both television series, in fact you could almost look at Kindred: The Embraced as a early prototype for Charmed.

I think that unless you are a big fan of soap opera or concepts that are heavily dumbed down so as not to offend anyone then Kindred: The Embraced is a show that's probably best avoided.

Cowboys and Aliens

A couple of days ago my wife and I went to see Cowboys and Aliens, as movies go it was decent, I liked it but I didn't love it in fact my wife who doesn't usually enjoy science fiction enjoyed it more than I did but I suspect that may have had something to do with the male cast.

Cowboys and Aliens is certainly worth a look if you get the chance, it's probably not worth owning unless like me you have a wife who gets the screaming thigh sweats every time Harrison Ford walks on screen.

Customer Service

Well I'm sure if I asked pretty much anyone it wouldn't take long before I get some sort of customer service horror story, it seems that we've all come across that completely useless person who's only purpose seems to be to make life harder than it needs to be.

Well over the last week I've had one of the best examples of customer service I've experienced in ages and sadly I don't feel that I can say which company it was or the exact product that I had a problem with just in case someone might decide to take advantage of that companies generosity.

The company in question is a UK based DVD distributor who seems to have a less than optimal reputation when it comes to quality control, over the last year or so they have been re-releasing a classic 60's television series, one of the boxsets had a production error on all of the discs in the sets that meant the audio was mastered at the wrong pitch.

I'd bought the faulty boxset when I was first released but hadn't watched any of the DVDs and sure enough my boxset contained discs from the original production run featuring the flawed audio track.

The company in question has been happy to replace faulty DVDs with the corrected ones if customers returned the faulty DVDs to them which I was happy to do - well at least until I found out how much Australia Post wanted to charge me to airmail the faulty DVDs back to the UK.

I contacted the company in question and asked if I could just be sent the DVDs, I was happy to provide proof of purchase or pay a reasonable sum for the discs if this was a problem, while all this was being sorted out my computer died and along with it my proof of purchase.

Using my wife's laptop I contacted them again and said I no longer had access to my proof of purchase details and I would be happy to buy the replacement DVDs from them, they wrote back to me and said if I could send me a digital photo of the boxset they would send me the DVDs so I did as they asked but never heard any more from them but today a mere five working days later I received a package in the mail containing all of the replacement DVDs.

The truth is that I probably could have gotten a photo of the boxset online if I tried so in the name of customer service they ignored their usual return policy and didn't ask me to return the faulty DVDs, what they accepted as proof of purchase was almost nonexistent, passed up an opportunity to get me to pay for another set of DVDs and finally sent the replacement DVD priority air mail so that I received them on the other side of the world in less than a week - I don't know about you but I think that is pretty damn good customer service.

Daturazi W.I.P.

Got a little done on this guy, and thought I'd show the progress. Unfortunately, these later summer months just so happen to be my busiest at work. So, getting this far on him was actually a bit of an accomplishment.
Now that I've started on him he should progress rather quickly.

I am also very open to color suggestions for this guy. I plan on doing his chest a deep gray color but I am at a bit of a loss as to how to paint the arms and legs. 

Small update 8/30

Frelling Computers

A couple of days ago my computer died a spectacular death and really it was probably time for a new one anyway, I've had a lot of crap going on recently and I really couldn't be bothered building a new system so I called up my local computer store and ordered a new PC.
Well it all seem to be going well so far but I'd forgotten what a pain in the ass it it to reinstall all those programs and handy little utilities that make life so much easier.

Hadoop workshop : First success story

We completed our first hadoop workshop on 20th August with great success . This post summarizes some of the insights and feedback we got from the event.

People love to learn a new hot technology in market. So many people are interested to learn Hadoop but they just did not have the right place to start. I think our workshop gave them the right platform to kick start in hadoop. We sold all our 17 tickets to the event within few days. So we even sold out next workshop tickets and the third workshop tickets are already selling . Yeah! its on fire.. We are doing small workshops to get the feedback and improve the overall experience.

Out of 17 , twelve people attended the workshop. Participants thoroughly enjoyed the interactive sessions and expressed that the hands on were great . The hands on went as planned which gave the participants an insight to hadoop and map/reduce .Putting in their own words,the following is what the people expressed....

“Great work by small company having effective people...Impressed! I want to have the same training once again” -Vijesh
“Good and Interactive sessions delivered.Nice job by Madhu and company” -Devang Gandhi
"Hands-on trainings were good" -Uma Mahewari
"Content delivery was very good" -Puneetha

With this kind of positive response we are charged to host more workshops. We sold out few tickets for students which is a student centric workshop on 27th Aug . People already signing up for our third workshop . So if you are interested you can register here http://hadoopworkshopsept.eventbrite.com/  asap , since we are sure that we are going to sell out that soon.

We are also launching advanced trainings particularly for the workshop attendees which gives opportunities them to go deep into Hadoop and start their carrier as a Hadoop developer .If you know hadoop and if you want to know more this will be a great opportunity.

So overall it was a great experience and it gave the feeling that we are in a right path.
If you are interested in Hadoop and its ecosystem meet us at any of the above events. We can assure you that it would be a great experience for you.

You want me to google WHAT?

Whoopi has heard of a lot of things in her life,

but THAT is just taking the biscuit.

STUDY

You know when people lose something , they say they've merely misplaced it? (other than their virginity of course, be honest, have you ever heard someone say that they've "misplaced" their virginity?)

Well... I've "misplaced my punctuality".

Was I late?

No... the Universe made me arrive at the required destination at a later time than previously estimated. 

Yeaaaah.

Trust me to be late on the one day I needed to be in on time. We were in a new Study class on Friday because our Study teacher was Mrs McKay, who left last term. 

Why did I need to be in on time? I didn't have a clue who the study class would be supervised by or which classroom it would be held in.

The good thing was, I ran into Caitilin (who was apparently on my bus) on my way to the office, if were getting lost, we were getting lost together.

When we finally found the class, which was literally half a metre across the hall from our old Study class, it was boiling. Like attempting to study in an oven.

Mmmm... Roast, toasty succulent humans.

That's what the cannibals would say anyways.

Of course, my school isn't full of cannibals.

Nope. We draw the line at thief's and paedophiles.

No matter, we literally walked inside the classroom and right back out, we were called for a prefect meeting in the old staff-room.

Which brings us to our new segment...

FACTS ABOUT THE STAFF-ROOM

• The walls are grattified with posters that no-one would ever care about reading.


• It's uncomfortably hot in there.


• You're able to hear the distant calls of past conversations, a polite exchange of words between teachers who really dislike their jobs, or their pupils, or one-another.


• It smells of rotting plaster and broken dreams

It's not a huge space, but they expect us to sit our exams in there... sure thing  bro'. We'll easily fit in a hundred kids in that space without having them sitting on each-other's laps...

*gasp* The reading says the atmospheric sarcasm levels

are presently at "Dr Gregory House" level.

That's like a 15 on the Richter scale.

The prefects dragged seats from the cold-bar to the staff-room because our school is so poor we can't afford janitors we are genuinely nice kids that just want to do everything we can for our school. 

One of them had a brown stain in the middle of it... Trust me to pick that one.

Had a sit down in the library with Jennifer following the meeting because there wasn't any point in going back to class. 

Mrs Fulton then hobbled towards us and rolled her eyes in a typical Fulton fashion when she discovered that the one person she wanted to speak to (Librarian Ms Haggarty) was busy.

MRS FULTON: Hello girls.

ME: Hello, how are you?

MRS FULTON: My foot is a bit sore - my other one.

ME: And you still came in.

MRS FULTON: *grins* I still came in. 

Our English teachers have a tendency to be a little... flaky. To say the least. Mrs Fulton seems to be the only one who comes in, whatever the weather. Actually, that's the reason she put emphasis on the fact that it was her other foot that was hurting. She fell over on her way into school because the ground was icy. She was hobbling for ages. But she still came in.


I swear the English teacher my class was supposed to have last year broke a nail and took three months off for it.

MRS FULTON: I've been taking paracetamol for the past couple of days. Yesterday, I took three paracetemol before school and I swear, I was *looks shocked, dazed, confused and delusional. In one look* and my mouth felt rubbery. 

I took the opportunity to tell her about my Paracetamol and piritin episode during the English exam.  She took it much better than I had anticipated she would, it's all about finding the right time to bring these sort of things up.

MRS FULTON: But you did quite w...

ME: *looking shocked* I got a B!

MRS FULTON: Well... Maybe we should do that more often then!

ME: Did anyone know that you were zonked out on Paracetamol? 

MRS FULTON: The scary thing was that they didn't! 

I can't imagine how Mrs Fulton would act when stoned on paracetamol...

...

Maybe that's for the best.

FREE

The collage of boobs in the common room has grown significantly.

As a writer (am I allowed to call myself that without sounding pretentious and insanely self-absorbed?) it's kind of my duty to observe human behavior and comment on it.

So what did I notice about behavior in regards to the "collage"?

The males sat facing the collage of boobs straight on.

The females sat with their backs to the collage.

Obviously, there was a couple of exceptions, but for the vast majority, this was the seating plan. 

I preferred the magazine cut out, a picture of Dawn French with the caption "Would you?"

Going to emphasise that ""Would you?" was the genuine caption.

Lucas had his concerns about our new additions to the common room...

LUCAS: I think we should take that down... What happens if Mrs Murray sees it, comes in to tell us to take it down, looks up and sees that *gestures to the collage of boobs*.

We all had a laugh at that mental image. Mrs Murray would go absolutely ballistic. 


Other than the pornography and crude captions, we all had some good conversations about music and movies. 


Rachel and I were trying to decide what was the best comedy out of:
Bridesmaids
The Hangover: Part II
Horrible Bosses


Sara also pulled a "silly face".

ME: That is such an attractive face...

SARA: That's how I managed to get Andrew. 

Hah! Cute.

DOUBLE ART

Kelly's leaving the class.

I complained about the fact that she has to leave the class for the rest of the day. 

Three people have jumped from Standard Grade to Advanced Higher, by passing Int 2 and Higher completely.

One of my best friends, Megan, was begged to bypass every. Single. Level of Art Qualification and go straight onto the hardest level that Secondary schools are allowed to teach.

Yes, she's just that good at art.

Now, Kelly is a talented artist (with the defining quirk of producing work that looks better when viewed upside down) who was cheated out of a qualification by what can only be described as the hipster, wannabe art critics down at the SQA. 

She has never been good at the writing part of Art. The art department have never helped her with this, so she hasn't improved. This is the main reason she didn't pass Higher Art.

Now, why is it that she should be forced to drop the course that could let her do what she wants to do in college (art) just because she couldn't do the writing that no-one sat her down and helped her with? Why should she get kicked out when half of our class are crashing the course? Explain to me how it makes sense to re-take a course that puts more importance on writing than the course she was previously taking, the course that didn't have an exam that focused solely on writing at the end?! 

Look. I'm pissed off for her.

The class was more of a laugh than an fest of anger and grief over losing "one of our own". 

We began to talk about words we had difficulty spelling.

 BEV: I always had difficulty spelling "Cupboard". Cup-board? *confused face* Who made that one up?

ME: I could never spell "Restaurant". (Yes, I did manage to spell that correctly) 

KELLY: I used to have  problems spelling "Special".

Oh the irony.

There was a moment of silence, followed by laughter. 

KELLY: *Looks confused* S-P-E-C-I-A-L?

ME: Yeah, you got it! I remember Michelle's sister couldn't spell Banana's without singing "It's Banana's, B-A-N-A-N-A-N".

We all think for a second.

ME: Why can't Gwen Stefani spell Banana's?

MEGAN: Because she's an idiot. 

Mr McDonald wasn't happy over the noise levels.

MR McDONALD: Why are you two making the most noise?

KELLY: Because their awesome! 

This is one of the reasons I love that kid, she's always got our backs!


I walked her half-way home after Art, where she told me that she named these guys:

KELLY: I named one google, because he wears goggles. I'd have called him Goggles but that's too simple.

ME: I know right, that would have been stupid! 

I then went up to the common room and played a game of "Bounce the filthy ball off the table and try to get it into the Styrofoam cup that is attached to said table with blue tac I luckily had in my bag with me that day" (Abbreviated to: BTFBOTTATTGIITSCTIATSTWBTILHIMBWMTD.) Catchy name, huh?


The Mosh Monkeys (Lucas and I) won 2-0. Sara squealed whenever the ball entered her "safety bubble". She really dislikes the state of our Common Room.


Had a chat to Caitlin about her holiday in Florida.


Somehow, she told me about the time Lily sent her a picture of Shamu's penis.


She then suggested I google it.


Going to skip ahead to Double Maths because I literally have no thoughts on how to end this section and I refuse to end it on the mental image of me googling Shamu's penis.

DOUBLE MATHS

Probably the fastest double period of maths I've ever had. 

Mostly due to the fact we spent our time talking about Big Brother and doing the easiest work in the entirety of the Higher Maths course.

Mr Shaw had some awesome one-liners, but it's now 1am on Sunday morning, so I can't really think of what they were right now.

Megan came round with Buddy (her cute little dog) to "collect" me after school, Buddy then jumped up on my Mum and viciously face raped her.

FACE RAPE: Aggressively licking someone's face who is unwilling to be licked. Not to be confused with:

FACE SEX: Aggressively licking someone's face because you are both horny wee buggers.

It was hilarious. I went home at 11.30 and asked her if she had washed her face. 


She replied yes, and that she's also brushed her teeth.


I told her not to smile...


Lauren xxx

Crap crap crap etc

Fiona arrives home from her trip early this afternoon, I have a month worth of cleaning to do in a few short hours as well as hide all the Blu-rays I've bought over the last month, with any luck she will be too jet lagged to notice.

Universal Soldier

I picked up a guilty pleasure of mine on Blu-ray a couple of days and re-watched it last night and I have to say I still find Universal Soldier to be a lot of cheesy fun which is interesting to me since I don't usually enjoy the work of either Jean-Claude Van Damme or Dolph Lundgren.

Apart from a couple of dirt marks / scratches on the print they used to master the disc the Blu-ray looks and sounds pretty good, it's certainly a step up in quality over the DVD version I recently borrowed off a friend to watch.

Paul

A friend of mine came around to watch a movie last night, he really wanted to see Paul so we fired up the Blu-ray and gave it a watch.

Paul is a movie it would seem I was destined to love, I've always enjoyed the comedic partnership between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in all their previous work especially Spaced but somehow despite it's subject matter Paul just doesn't work for me, maybe it was because Edgar Wright didn't direct the duo like he did in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz along with Spaced on television, perhaps it's because this was a larger budgeted production set in America so it lacks the atmosphere of their previous work or a combination of both but for me there just seemed to be something lacking.

Paul does feature some genuinely funny moments but they are few and far between but despite that it's still far from the worst movie I've seen recently and I'm still interested to see what Pegg and Frost do next.

Incubus of the Despot

Well, this is the guy I had tried some different skin tones on , and I gotta say, I really like how he turned out.
The green was also a bit of a different choice, considering how the rest of the army is usually covered in blood. But these guys are supposed to be poisonous and toxic, so I thought it fitting. I do think I've finally kinda burned out on painting the Mid-Nor figs so much and should be moving onto some other things now.
We will see how long that lasts though, as these beautiful figures always seem to call out my name whilst I am painting something different. 

What would you do if I wet myself right now?

You read right.

As always, all shall be explained.

(NOTE: Written about Wednesday. Giving you a heads up!)

STUDY

One word: Balamory.

Elaborated description on why said word was chosen? Basically, in Study, Sophie, Abie, Rachel and Lauren were singing songs from the Children's show "Balamory".

This is our childhood.

I don't know if that's something to be proud

of or not.

Yeah...

SOPHIE: What was Edie McCreedie's song again? Duh, duh, duh duh duh duhh....

RACHEL: If something breaks it doesn't matter...

ALL TOGETHER: I can fix it with my spanner!

SOPHIE: Aww yeah, It's all coming back to me now. 

The amount of times I talk about Children's TV shows with my friends is shocking to say the least. 

This little dude is the trending topic of

my conversations 60% of the time.

Scientific fact.

Most of our time in "Study" (They really should think about re-naming that period) was spent singing songs from children's TV shows. 

The rest of our time was spent eating Conor's sweets and, in Kelman's case, scratching off the panels on scratch cards.

Oh, and having conversations such as:

ABIE: Conor! Have you been to see Mrs Fulton yet?

CONOR: A... *mumbles*

ABIE: *To Sophie* What? You mumble.

CONOR: IS IT 'CAUSE I'M FAT?

ABIE: No... It's because you mumble. 

Classic Shlaam.



And classic Abie. *shakes head* I know some right characters.


Anyways, Conor threw Sophie a sweet, which she sniffed sceptically.

SOPHIE: This isn't a nut one, is it? *sniffs it*

CONOR: Aye, I know how you like your nuts.

SOPHIE: You better hope I'm not allergic! *takes a tiny bite* 

Turns out, she wasn't allergic.


The boys then started to throw about the sweets. One hit off Conor's head and landed on the floor.


Abie was almost certain that they threw this sweet to Sophie.

SOPHIE: Did this tweet land on the floor?!

BOYS: Nooo...

ABIE: Don't eat it! It'll have a hair on it...

SOPHIE: *looks at sweet* It's one of the fine ones as well... Ach well. Ten second rule. *dusts sweet off and bites into it*

CONOR: Just eat it!

SOPHIE: Wooaah. Deja vu.

ABIE: SHE IS EATING IT! 

Then... an interesting development.

KELMAN: I think I've just won £67,000...

ABIE: If you have, you better give some to charity!

CONOR: F*ck that!

SOPHIE: A couple of grand each then?

You get your solid gold toilet...

And we can finally afford a few of these. 

Everyone's happy!

We then hear foot-steps... the clickety-clack of high heels from a close distance away...

SOPHIE: Opening book.... *flips note-book to an open page*

We fully expect Mrs Murray to come into the room looking like:

Instead, our head-teacher walked by...

Our head-teacher is a man.

EVERYONE: ...

Our head-teacher wears high heels?


Let's move on.

FREE

Moved approximately two doors down to our common room (it smells in there) 

Linzie decided to take several playful digs at Bev whilst doing her Accounting homework.

LINZIE: And the amount that you have saved is... £23,000!

BEV: Woo!

Turns out... It wasn't remotely close to that.  

ME: Linzie... don't become a banker.

BEV: *laughs* Sorry... I was going to do this *pulls sides of mouth apart with her fingers* and say "Banker".

SARA: ... Why?

BEV: Do it! Do it!

SARA: *thinks about it* ... OH! You're so immature. 

Other than that? Nothing much was said. I went on a waffle rant (three and a half weeks now!) and went down to help hunt out Mrs Murray with Lewis, Sam and Kati. 

DOUBLE MATHS

First double period of my third year of doing the course... Yaaaay.


Mr Shaw is a really good teacher though. Don't tell him I told you. He's egocentric enough as it is. 


There's two Lauren's in my class (typical, such a common name!) so Mr Shaw puzzled over how to distinguish us.

MR SHAW: We'll call you *thrusts hands at other Lauren* Lauren you and you *Thrusts hands at me* Lauren you.

Uhh... That makes... sense?

After two hours of Maths and awkward silences, Rachel decided she needed a pee.

RACHEL: What would you do if I went myself right now?

ABIE: That would be... awkward. 

RACHEL: What would you do if I aimed it at you?

ABIE: What?!

RACHEL: What would you do if I aimed it at you? *turns self towards Abie and "pretends to pee on her"*

I can't remember the rest of the conversation, I was laughing too hard. 


And that was my Wednesday! 


Good times, good times.


Lauren xxx

Macross Plus

Well after wanting to see it for a few years I finally watched the four episodes of Macross Plus yesterday, overall I'd have to say I was disappointed, there were large chunks of this story that were just incredibly boring, I know the Macross Plus movie is a re-edited version of the four episodes with some new animations sequences that were created especially for the movie, perhaps with the re-edit they managed to salvage things and create an interesting version of the story.

More Movies

Over the last couple of days I've watched Conan The Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer and Ladyhawke on Blu-ray, given the time they were made and the technical limitations placed on the film makers at the time I thought they all looked and sounded great, of course the score for Ladyhawke is still one of the worst film scores I can think of and hearing it in HD audio hasn't made me appreciate it any more, to this day I don't know what on earth Richard Donner was thinking when they went ahead with that music, it couldn't be more out of place in that movie.

What is the true definition of beauty anyways?

The sneer of the pretty, popular people. 


If you haven’t been on the receiving end of one of these sneers, then either:

a) You haven’t been looking hard enough or
b) You’re the one sneering at the rest of us.


If you apply to b), then I am seriously considering telling you to get the hell off of this blog right this instance because this is definitely not the place for judgemental people. However, I think that if we can learn from our own mistakes, then we can make the world around us a little bit better, so read on. Maybe we’ll all learn something.


Over the past few months, I’ve learnt one thing if nothing else; 
First appearances are often, if not always, deceiving.


Look in a mirror, what do you see? Are you young? Old? Pretty? 'Ugly'? Thin? Chubby? Are you a conformist? Or are you 'out there'? You could describe your appearance until you're blue in the face, but it’s going to change nothing. 


People initially see you as a face and a body, nothing more. If you start talking to them, if you start befriending them, then the only reason they would see you as a face and a body would be to recognise you. They don’t care what you look like. If they are a good friend, they will love you for who you are, whatever you look like and whatever your body shape is.


Yet, people are still insanely self-conscious. Dieting, plastic surgery and botox are common words in today’s vanity obsessed society. The new generation are exposed to these words daily, whether it’s on TV, in movies, on magazines covers or even the adults in their lives talking about it amongst themselves. Think about it, have you ever seen a fat Disney princess? No. Have you ever seen an ugly Disney Prince? No. Do they put ordinary people on magazine covers? No. Do the actors and actresses on TV/In movies give a good representation on what your average man or woman looks like? No. Children are being lied to every single day, when they didn’t even ask a question in the first place. We’ve got to the point where girls are prancing around in their high heels, wearing provocative clothing by the age of seven and boys are denying sweets so they can watch their figure. That’s not right.


What about us older generation? Why do we have such an obsession with diets, plastic surgery and botox? Is it because we aspire to be celebrities in our own rights? Is it because we attribute the perfect body to perfect situations (I.e. good job, beautiful partner, big group of friends) due to the role that the media has played on our lives? Or have we simply been misled that losing that three extra pounds will make you much happier than you were before? I wish I had the answers. I don’t. 


The thing that truly sickens me is when brands discriminating against certain sizes of people.


Any company who influences extreme dieting in order to fit into their clothes either explicitly (which has been the case in the past) or implicitly (only offering certain sizes in their clothing) should be brought to a stop straight-away.


The clothing industry have an obligation to ensure that all their potential customers can find clothes that fit them, not just the skinny ones, because they would make good walking advertisements. 


These same walking advertisements? The majority of them turn into the sneering people that I was speaking about at the very start of this post. They seem to only take people at face value, missing out what is truly important in life and seeing things in only monetary value. Vanity appears to make you bitter, hateful and judgemental  If you can see the timeless beauty, the beauty that time cannot diminish or steal from us (our hearts, minds and souls) then you are already better than anyone who sneers you for being different, or not conventionally pretty, or poor. 


Just remember:

• The modern definition of “Beautiful” exists only in Photoshop.
• “Skinny” is not a synonym for “happy“.
• To see outer beauty is a sense, to see inner beauty is a blessing.
• Individuality is not a sin. 

When there's a championship for sex appeal, you know the world is a messed up place.

I introduce to you Taylor York, sex appeal champion 2011...

Okay, okay. Taylor York (sadly) isn't sex appeal champion 2011. However, there IS a sex appeal champion out there

Kind of weird to have a sex appeal champion. That's like having a sexy version Olympics. I'm pretty sure it would be exactly the same as the normal Olympics, only with models completing the sports... naked

Decided not google "naked Olympics" for a picture

Let your mind fill in the blank space.

Met Lucas in town on Monday for a catch-up session and to have something to eat.


Those of you who follow me on twitter (you poor wee souls) will know that I have been madly craving waffles for the past two weeks now. 


Last week I woke up to the smell of waffles...


I was alone in the house, and we never buy waffles.


I am losing it. 


...


Okay. I already lost it. A long time ago.


Anyways, two solid weeks of food craving makes you desperate:

ME: If they don't have waffles... I think I'll cry...

Which quickly turned into:

ME: I'll actually give them a lap dance... I just want my waffles! 

Guess what?


They ran out of waffles.

I managed to hold back the tears.

Just.

So Starbucks it was.


Lucas bought a really chocolatey cake (and, as is always the case, couldn't eat it all) whereas I opted for pancakes, covered with the slowest pouring syrup you've ever seen.


The slow-mo syrup amused us both.


What can I say? Not much exciting things have happened during the Summer holidays this year.


We accidentally bought sparkling water... which was disgusting.

Seriously! Who puts salty bubbles in water?!

If I wanted a carbonated drink, I'd buy an IRN BRU.

So the mosh monkeys (Our team name, don't even ask) decided that instead of  selling bubbles in water, we'd sell bubbles and water. 

LUCAS: We'd be selling two products that have already been invented, and selling them together.

That is the definition of genius, right there. 


Just don't drink the bubble liquid, thinking that it was the water instead.

CONFESSION OF A MOVIE GEEK

I did something like that once. I wasn't looking at what I was doing, and I had placed my bottle of IRN BRU right next to a bottle of sun tan lotion. I took a swig from the sun tan lotion bottle. Let's just say my face looked a little like this:

Off to the bank next, where a child was trying to run away from her Mother.


She almost got out the door and onto Union Street when... BOOM! Her Mum comes over, picks her up and carries her towards the hole where money is transferred from the outside of the bank to the inside. 


I honestly thought the kid was getting shoved through the hatch.


Hey, weirder things have happened.

...I prove my point.

The mother didn't shove the kid down the hatch. The kid did however hang onto the door that separates staff from customers.

LUCAS: I hope someone doesn't come out of the door or that kid'll go flying.

She would have...


I'm going to be brutally honest, I'm not sure if the kid was a girl or a boy.


Man. I feel guilty.


Came across some weird albums in One up.


How about I tell you the top three weirdest album artworks/band names we saw?


Butterfly explosion - Crash... see you on the other side.


Butterfly explosion is an epic band name. Your mental images totally decide to confuse you.


On one end of the spectrum it's like:

D'aaw! Butterfly!

And on the other?

Explosions! Death! Destruction!

Mad guitar riffs and drum beats!

They make some really beautiful music.

My favourite has to be Carpark. Either that or Sophia. Not going to lie, they make awesome background tracks, they really mellow you out.

Next up, a band called Blood red shoes.

What makes them interesting?

Their album isn't red... it's blue!

LUCAS: Why is the album artwork blue when there name is Blood Red sho... *turns CD around* WOW!

Their first song?


Don't ask. 

LUCAS: So when people ask why their album is blue instead of red? They just turn the CD around and there it is, "Don't ask."

The last one is by  far the weirdest.


It's a band called Milk Man.... their album? Deerhoof.


And their album artwork looks a little (well... identical) to this:

LUCAS: Why has he got bananas stabbed in him? Why is he bleeding? Why is he wearing that mask... *gasps* Why is he wearing a strawberry as a hat?!

I don't know what I'm most haunted by...


The questions that is life, or Milk Man's music.


Expect the... uh.... unexpected. 


Lauren xxx