Quart - September 03 2002

06.49 am It is still very cold in the mornings, and I have to open
the back door to make sure I know just how cold it is. I am listening
to Blink 182's "Buddha" album which has most of the track's from
"Cheshire Cat" on it.

Yesterday (02) I woke up at 6.10 and fed the cats. They know how old
the food is, and won't touch anything from last night's tin. No amount
of drawing a pattern on the floor will change that either, they are not
stupid. I wrote my online journal then read the forums.

On the train I listened to Four Star Mary's album on my Discman, as it
makes a change to hear something I havent heard for a while. I still
take the Alkaline Trio's album in with me as well.

At work we had a new bloke come in for a working interview and it looks
like he will be starting on Monday. He used to work on a Help Desk so
that's what he will be doing mostly. It will mean that I can spend more
time on development. I spent most of the morning working on an update
to the mainframe program and I finally cracked it about mid morning,
and I still don't know how, maybe its like relationships, we dont know
how to fix them when they are broken and then they fix
themselves.

At lunchtime I took the opportunity to get some money and transfer ?300
into my current account from my Visa account, and take ?200 in cash. I
went in HMV and bought 3 CDs and a copy of Mojo. I got the Prisoner
soundtrack album, the Pattern's debut and Finch's debut. I bought my
latte, but they had run out of panini altogether, so I had a beef
sandwich.

I didnt have much time to look at the forums. In the afternoon I worked
on the program and then got the train home.I listened to Finch which
started like Jimmy Eat World, then went into something that made
Nirvana's shoutiest tracks sound like the Beatles. I think for about
half an hour the band just screamed. There is a genre called Emo which
might include this, basically punk/hardcore but the songs have a strong
emotional content and usually end up with someone crying at times. I
expect that soon you will see a category in Virgin called Emo, and you
read it on the web first.

I have switched to "1977" by Ash.

I got in and went online for a while, then had a bath. Then I listened
to the Pattern which is a great album. It reminds me in places of the
Damned's second album "Music For Pleasure". Solid chords with a Velvet
Underground feel.

I spoke with D and then went offline to have tea (vegetable chilli) and
to watch a DVD my wife had borrowed : Vanilla Sky which is well weird.
I liked the film immensely, the film starts as a romantic story
switches into a psychological drama and ends up as Science Fiction.
Some people say its not that good, but then I don't think they get the
film, my wife saw it before at the flicks while I was watching some
cartoon or other at the Odeon. Tom Cruise seems to like working on
SF/Drama type films, and I expect he will do another Phil K Dick story
soon.

I spent some time on the NME chat room just listening and making the
occasional contribution, it is still anarchy in there.

I didnt get around to playing the guitar. My favourite tracks on "1977"
are Goldfinger and The Girl From Mars.