webponce rants

the coolest site in the world?

http://smegsite.f2g.net/

more on the vampires upstairs…

i saw one in daylight this morning. as i was leaving - the front door buzzer rang. upon opening it, i found a posty attempting to deliver more parcels and letters for the flat upstairs - however as it was a registered letter i didn’t sign for it. the postman gave me the rest of the post as a sudden chill rushed down the stairs. i turned to see a ashen faced shadowey figure in a large cloak behind me. in single movement he broke the postman’s neck and started walking away from me. i stood, frozen to the spot not able to speak or move - wondering why he had spared me.

“because you are part of the prophecy” he said, almost as if reading my mind “you will not die today - but when you close your eyes, i will be there”

i stood still unable to say a word and the figure vanished as a crow called in the distance.

normally i dread going to the dentist - not because of the incessant scraping, prodding, poking, pulling, grinding, drilling, scratching (have i made you cringe yet?) but because they always give me a lecture on how i should have been to see them more recently than i did - even if that was about three hours nipping back to the flat to pick up my wallet to pay the bill.

however, this time was a pleasant and educational exception. upon explaining that i’d been up half the night in massive pain around my lower right wisdom tooth, he took one glance and said “ah yes, how is your latin?”. Not being a latin reader at college (we did hand to hand combat, weights of common street narcotics and dance at my school) he started to proceeed about the sad state of schooling these days. I interupted saying although my latin is poor, i’m always eager to learn, and he explain i have pericoronitis. Peri - perimeter, coron - crown, itis - inflamation - my partially erupted wisdom tooth has skin covering it which becomes abrased and infected stopping me from sleeping - and now drinking, as I’m on antibiotics.

I love this medical stuff :)

definition of irony?

sitting in london bridge tube station for 10 minutes not moving, and an announcement saying “we are pleased to announce there are no delays this morning on the northern line”

whoa.. just reading some old webponcerants and stumbled across a link to http://www.dotcomdotcam.com/.. not that odd in itself.. but upon clicking the link.. IT WORKED!

see, i don’t remember moving the domain and/or putting up content… matthew shall investigate further..

ps.. new content in the ponceproductions area.

pills? you want some pills?

no ta.. the standard reply.

i’ve just come back from a night clubbing.. i wussed out quite early as i’m absolutely knackered, but one can never spend too much time in a club without two or seventy people asking you if you want drugs. i wonder if i look the type.. or if they just ask everyone. however, tonight had a different spin. i was bopping away on the dancefloor to mr oakenfold’s banging choons, and for the fifth time, the words “you want any pills?” appeared in my ear. i laughed and said no thanks, and usually thats the end of the conversation - but she asked me “how many times have you been asked that tonight?” seeing the smile on my face. “oh, a fair few - but i don’t need the drugs.. the music is enough” i reply. “me too” she smiles and walks off. I grin and carry on dancing.

About a half hour later, she asks me again, then, upon clocking my face she says “oh, its you again, sorry..”, “no problems” i say, and she shuffles off.

Again, later, we bump into one another “you’re everywhere you are” she accuses me with a smile, and i respond “no, you’re everywhere you are” - lame perhaps.. but i was tired ;).. anyway.. we keep bumping into one another, and i end up buying her a drink and we chat for a little while.. of all the people i could buy a drink, of all the people i could talk to, of all the numerous avenues of opportunity - i pick the arguably most bizarre.

more on the vampire story..

i explained a few weeks ago about the sheer number of mirrors in our flat - and how our landlord couldn’t possibly be a vampire. it now turns out that our housemate upstairs is a modern vampire. evidence for the court: the boxes addressed to him downstairs (which are now piling up) keep arriving, and some of the newer ones have labels explaining exactly their contents: cool blood bags and vacuum cleaners. Now, of course, vampiring these days is probably a damn sight more modern than when nosferatu was hanging around in bars - the vacuum cleaner, i reckon, is for sticking on someone’s neck and sucking the blood out without having to do that biting thing.

that would go a long way to explain why there are so many mirrors in our flat.. i’m sure of it.. and perhaps modern vampires don’t care about crucifix.. but cant go anywhere near boardgames and childrens’ toys.. which is why our flat had so many when we moved in. i shall investigate further and let you know.

today on the tube:

(the fourth time i made the journey between clapham and old street) i sat next to a man who smelt like meat pie.

got home and made cheese on toast - which is such a difficult skill to master when you don’t have a toaster.. making toast under our grill is a delicate operation.. but you will inevitably end up with charcol on one third of the bread, and slightly less than flour and water on the other side. but its edible - hell, cheese on toast is food of the gods anyway.

i was sorely tempted to use camembert as we have a load left in the fridge - but somehow i don’t think i’d get the desired effect.

then we had a game of fishing little motorised magnetic fish from a pool thing game, and homemade scrabble (both found in the flat when we arrived). I lost miserably at scrabble (i always do), but won the fishing game. I think that sums up the differences between me and slim.

today on the tube:

i met brian blessed’s stunt double.

de-construct have just bought a conference call phone, and it took every member of staff here bar one, to look at it, prod it and coo over it until it worked.

funny how gadgets get so much of a better response from people than most other things.. perhaps religion, morals and ethics should start marketing themselves as a gadget - NEW! godbot! place your faith in here, and get a guarenteed return from this LED display!

ta muchly to everyone to came to the housewarming.. i’d say it was a success, although our front room and fridge has never seen so much food.. slim and i are going to be eating like kings for the next week and a half. if you didn’t come to the first one this sunday.. there will be more.. so no need to fret

You know you need more sleep when:

You have a cold shower and grumble about it, and then realise you had the cold tap turned fully on.

You know you live in a geek house when:

The first thing you say to your flatmate in the morning is “Morning, I was thinking you could just use mysqldump to save out playlists”

You know you’re having a party today when:

A giant spot comes up on your chin.

You know you’re concerned with your own appearance when:

You make comments like the one above.

“tra la la.. reading my book, reading my book, reading my book…

BUGGER! I’m at waterloo! this isn’t on my line!”

still, slight testiment to my knowledge of london after 3 and a bit years, jump on another line, quick shuffle shuffle, and i’m back at work, only 30 minutes late.. on the day i actually got up in time to be in to work early.. doh.

good start to the friday methinks..

the people who work in the sandwich shop where we go for lunch most days are odd.

firstly, the smile too much. this, for londoners, is odd enough, but its slightly on the edge of scary “la la la, i’m going to eat your father’s spleen” smiling. i’ve not noticed any twitching yet, but i’d not be surprised.

secondly, and far more worrying, is they seem to want to put salad on everything - which in itself is no great oddity, but when you are ordering a toasted sandwich - when they ask if you want salad on that - now thats downright strange. warm salad?

i just spotted this from my webcam.

i think it visually describes fairly accurately the way i feel most days.

although i’ve not quite finished my story of our trip to madrid.. here’s a visual montage directly downloaded from head.

if you realise this is the kind of pictures i see in my mind.. you’ll understand me a little better.

oh, and by the way..

A new Ask Webponce Question has just arrived on our doorstep. Check it out if you feel that bored.

two rants this evening.

first, a culinary one.

i’d say i’m not bad at cooking - i love cooking, i love eating.. i hate washing up, but so is the way of a regular eater.. and i can pretty much throw together most things, occasionally with the help of jamie or similar types.. but there are two things which i fail miserably at every time: jacket potatoes in the oven, and omelettes.

I have *no* idea how long it takes to do a potato in the oven… I think its somewhere near three days, as i never seem to be able to do them well.. how on earth do those little stalls with victorian ovens get them so lovely and fluffy?! goddamit. maybe i need mrs beaton on my side.

and omelettes? jeez, they’re a mission and a half for me. everyone would agree, they’re possibly one of the easiest things to make, but can i keep them whole? can i stop them from turning into scrambled eggs and filling? can i? nope. i think the trick is make them a lot thinner than i do, and get the oil a hell of a lot hotter.. but goddamit, in both the potato and omelette circumstances, i’m always just too damn hungry to wait.. thats why i eat crunchy pasta.

rant 2.. and this is a spur of the moment rant, which no doubt you’ll all be aware of and be equally annoyed at:

“.. and our film will continue after the 10′o’clock news”

ARRGH! Will Timmy Dalton and MaryamD’Arbo manage to work with the Muhajadin to defeat the evil KGB defector and american arms dealer? Will webponce get to bed before midnight this week? Where are my slippers?

All this and more, continued, in 45 minutes.

where did we leave off?

we left the hotel in the search for interesting and quaint spanish bars, and stumbled across several who provided us with beer in a variety of shapes and sizes of glass. My spanish, which pretty much extends to ‘Una cervaza por favor’ allowed us to do little more than drink leisurely, which suited us just fine. First stop, a pool hall - we shamefully fell for some young lady giving out flyers on the street, and after UK closing time, we still found ourselves wandering around dimly lit and in many cases badly metalled roads, sitting on street corners drinking said cerveza and generally grinning.

One more turn around a street corner, and we were welcomed into a fantastic little bar where we started chatting with the owner.

My Spanish is truly dreadful - i spent about three months at school in Spanish classes for the simple reason I fancied the teacher, and came away with knowledge of the first six numbers, “where is the..” (but no destinations to ask about) and the word for beer. Fortunatly, the owner spoke better english than me too, yet still the understanding of some idioms I use isn’t quite there, and I find myself speaking in some stilted Jane Austin like English, “We would like to go dancing, do you know of establishments where this may become a reality, and how is Mr Darcy?” Nonetheless, we managed to build a comprehensive list of cool places to go, including Pacha, which i had a hankering to visit and bop the night away.

In direct opposition to the previous blog where i predicted that i’d be merry enough to fall asleep by 10.30pm after the previous mammoth day, we found ourselves drinking the night away in the bar with no name, meeting up with two other english types. simon taught the owner how to make B52s, and i drank far too much gin and ended up stumbling outside to cool myself down in a sprinkler i found adorning the roadside. We wandered back to the hotel, well, Simon dragged me along ensuring me that the direction he led us was correct despite my drunken disagreement. Apparantly, we got back to the hotel and went upstairs to fall asleep on the roof terrace. An hour later we fall into bed (seperate beds.. don’t worry). Day 2 bedtime: 5.30am.

Day 3 wake up time: well, debatable really, simon went downstairs to get breakfast, as is his perogative, and i stayed in bed, as is mine. I seem to remember he came back to the room, and then we both got up around 6pm (insert large innocent grin here). We wandered (there was lots of wandering this holiday) back to the bar with no name for a slap up meal of guacamole, pasta and croquettes (ever one for a fusion of a dozen different cultures). Day 3, friday of course, and we planned on making the most of the, erm.. rest of the evening and visiting three seperate areas of Madrid which are ‘good for going out’. The first of these was a street festival, where sheepishly we ordered food from a stall. I think we ordered the ‘most expensive food for the tourists, ho ho ho’ meal deal, and my usual ploy of giving the people at the till the largest note in my wallet failed miserably as she kept saying something about dos euros, and i nodded and smiled in a very english ‘yes yes, thats wonderful, and how is your family?’ way. the combined mighty brains of simon and matthew eventually worked out that she was asking for two more euros as the E20 note i’d given her wasn’t enough.

still, food was good, and the place also insisted on us drinking 750ml glasses of beer, so hooray for lack of understanding and pointy pointy communication. after [more] wandering along the plethora of crappy game stalls (throw a ball in a hole three times and win a prize! oh, you missed one, here have another free go on me, oh, you missed again.. here, have a prize anyway.. bless) simon desired waffelage, and returned far too close to the stall with the lady of large bosom who have chorizoed us earlier. simon, all churros’d up, we wandered [count them folks] up a hill, turned left, turned right, wandered, more hills, tra la la, “somewhere down here, erm. no, here.. yeah.. erm. oh fuggit, there’s a bar” for a few hours more and ended up in a delightful shoreditchesque bar where we sat on a balcony overlooking other drinkers. made me feel very important (oh, and gave me a fantastic vista of the barmaid too).

right, onwards and upwards.. lets go to pacha (pronounched pa-chja), that club with the cherries innit, for a night of full on thud-thud-thud disco disco. We arrived at the club around 2am, and being the well known types that we are, we were able to jump the queue and get straight in*.

(Editor’s note: there was no queue. there were no people. the staff behind the bar made up around 70% of the population of the club)

So, the club was banging, we were right in there on the dance floor bopping away*.

(Editor’s note: no, it wasn’t. it was a little more like eurodisney when it first opened: a handful crazy european types, and us. we sat at the back of the club and kept saying to ourselves, “no really, it will perk up, i suppose 2am is a little early for these spanish ravers”)

4am and the club was heaving, the music was pumping, and it was hard to breathe of the dance floor

(Editor’s note: the club was nice and breezy, and i was doing the swing a cat dance.. still, the music was quite funky to be honest, and we had a bit of a larf anyway.. leaving at about 5.45am)

bangin’!

(Editor’s note: pathetic)

wandered home

(Editor’s note: yup.. we did).

Now, Madrid, I’d say is a 24 hour city, you can get beer anytime, you can go dancing (BUT NOT AT CLUBS) anytime, but can you get nosh? are there any food shops? nope.. but don’t worry! help is at hand! by people who sit on the street and sell chinese takeway from little paper bags they have between their legs. if this freaks you out as much as it did us, then not to worry, we didn’t purchase any.. we decided to stick to some equally dodgy bocadillos sold in a similar manner. yom.

3.30am, and the day begins. ouch.

our taxi arrives and off to kings cross, the domain of whores and crackheads. start as you mean to go on, and while i spend a clean tenner to catch the train to luton parkway to connect with our flight, simon decides to assault the ‘ticket to ride’ machine a few times and makes 60p profit from the �1 he was attempting to pay.

we sit on the station bleary eyed with the other dregs of society who also seem to be awake at time of morning, one, a bouncing little girl who, we reckon, had been a little over indulgent with class A narcotics, who attempted to a) hitch the train and b) pull simon (well, flitting her eyelids and, um, falling over a bit).

pulling into luton parkway, the sun is starting to rise, and the associated rabble of american tourists and spanish residents returning home (and a collection of assorted haircuts) begins to grow as we ever near the airport.

we check in, we buy food, the eggs as plastic as the cutlery, we queue up, we board the plane, we listen to the spanish air hostess making jokes about the safety procedure (which actually made me giggle.. come on, i was tired), we fly, we land. fairly uneventful apart from the moment i almost dribbled on my own shoulder being fast asleep for most of the journey.

Y VIVA ESPANA! we’re here! and its not even midday! so we jump on the pink line all the way to nuevos de ministiros, we’re already missing home - but not for long. the location of the hire car company is on a tube line which is closed - and it feels just like london once more.

we decide to venture on to the buses, and work out with our spattering of spanish that we’re meant to be on the avenue de foxylady - and we eventually with little or no confusion, find easycar and collect our mercedes a class - at which point simon seems a little excited that he can drive around a nice car for the next few hours - so we do, mainly in circles. Madrid has a driving infrastructure which allows you to do little more than turn right, and all of the signs on the roads seem to be slightly beyond the junction which you need to take - hence as you’ve read that you need to turn left towards Avila, you’re already half way to Southern France.

Anyway, ever decreasing circles later, we park in an underground car park, and i jump on the laptop, bluetoothed up, and hunt for the name and address of the hotel. i felt a complete urbanhacker, sitting on a bench on the side of the road spodding, and decided to hack into the IRS dbase as well. It was password protected, so gave up and took the name and address of the hotel, along with simon to the tourist office and begged forgiveness for our naivety. the nice young lady provided us with maps and a not too condescending route of getting to our hotel from the tourist office. i’ll not mention how often we actually drove within 100 yards of the hotel.

so, after dropping off some of our stuff (well, my laptop) at the hotel, we progress on to a restaurant and have, what else but a spanish omlette. upon attmpting to pay for the food, the waitress stared as blankly at me as i did to her, and eventually i pulled out a E50 note and hoped it was enough. It was about time for us to make a move from madrid and start driving towards salamanca. i was the navigator, simon was the concerned. once i’d worked out which way was north through a clever combination of checking the position of the sun and trying the three other compass points first, we effortlessly glided through the spanish streets of madrid, onto the N6 out of the city ever northwards to take us to our destination.

i’ll not bore you with our constant battle against right turns, bad signage and shit spanish radio, but we arrive in salamanca a good 200Km and three hours later - and its lovely. hesitantly parking our car on road some 2 minutes from the palacio de congrecesos and stumble into los bar amigos. true to its name, we found a group of friendly american types, a dood with an afro who loves london (don’t all people who don’t live there?) laurence the insurance dood and kevin the lesser spoken. we chatted for a little while about the midge problem in scotland, politics in the US and simon’s bull riding, before it was time to enter the venue to see the one, the only, the purpose for our tour - radiohead, not before a german techo techno but quite good anyway DJ warmed us up, so to speak. Sitting 6 rows from the front, we could litterally reach out and touch indiepixie thom yorke, and leith lookylikey guitarist blokey, and i think simon was trying to for the 2.5 hrs that they played - and wow, what a set. if you ever get a chance to see them, do (and take a large stick to hit people infront of you who get overly excited when songs start).

back to the car, and hmm.. do we drive back now, or wait until la…zzzzzz

a few hours later we wake up in the car and decide to drive home, ala pitch black. now i had my eye in, i was able to navigate us back to dark dark DARK roads so we could stand in the middle of nowhere looking up at the starlit sky spotting shooting stars. lovely.

the journey continued and after reaching the boundaries of the city of madrid just before sunrise, we decide to go up a hill and wait for the sun to come up, sharing proximity with a bunch of cows who had seen it all before and weren’t particularly interested.

completeing the journey, we dump the car in a deserted car park, set it alight, run for our lives escaping armed policemen, seeking refuge in our hotel breakfast bar and eating as much as possible to change our body frames to become unrecognisable. it seemed to do the trick, and 31 hours after we’d left hackney, the first day of our holiday is over.

we woke at about 4pm and wandered towards the old town, did a touristy ‘oo, look a church’ thing for a while, and ended up in a nice little bar drinking danish beer watching chaffinches bathe in dust. dos cervaza later, and we head back to the hotel to pick up more cash, eat pringles and write this blog on the roof garden - but not before spotting mad clapping spanish old ladies and eating ice cream. its now about 21.20 local time, and i think although tonight isn’t going to be large, poor simon who couldn’t really drink yesterday, deserves to go out and get mulleted - but how tired we are after yesterday, thats quite likely after half a babycham.

tee hee.. spodding from a park in madrid.. its about 30C, and i’m sitting with my laptop checking mail and wotknot.

i think its food time :)

well, the journey begins with pizza, a hearty meal to start any intrepid voyager’s epic life defining travels (and chicken wings and garlic bread). we’re at simon’s now, and he’s on the phone whilst rummaging around under his bed looking for socks and ethernet crossover cables to wear on his feet, and connect my laptop to his machine respectively. we’re attempting to put together a series of maps so we know down the nearest pixel exactly where we’re driving to. now, as much faith as i have in simon’s abilities as both a driver and a navigator, i still feel a little safer having one or two jpegs of major roads in salamanca.

this is going to be a journey of both discovery and technology… seeing if we can combine as many geekskillz and gadgetz as possible - laptop, pda, digital camera, mobile phone, bluetooth, gprs, blogger, emails, sms, and lots and lots of sangria.

i’m being reckless and having a midnight snack which contains cheese.. now i’ve studied sleep, i know a fair deal about the topic - and i know the stories about never eating cheese before bedtimes (ie. they induce nightmares).. but i’m intrigued if thats accurate or not. i shall tell you in the morning - although i am also having a glass of milk which is meant to be good before bedtime - maybe one cancels out the other.

then again, at this rate, i’m not going to bed in the immediate future anyway.

forget victorian house

forget edwardian house

forget frontier house

this is clapham house.

we’re in the process of installing a new light switch in the bathroom, one of those pully clicky cord light switch type of affairs and due to the case of the missing flat head screwdriver, the job hasn’t yet been completed - resulting in toilet activities being fine during the day, but all manner of hilarity during the darker hours. I just went for a erm.. tinkle.. by candlelight. How many people can say they’ve done that? I’d write more, but mother is calling me to clean out the grate and collect more firewood.

there are three places i should never be after drinking:

1) near my mobile phone

2) in a music store

3) in sainsburys

the first i’m getting better at, but i used to have the most fantastic ability to write badly spelt SMS’s confessing truths which should be best unannounced to people listed in my phonebook, and worse, calling them. At one point, i was calling people abroad, on a mobile - to their mobile. But i’ve grown up somewhat now (i only do that during the day and sober now ;)

number two (fnar) and danger will robinson. again, i’ve not done it in a while - but more due to lack of ability - ie. its too late, or my legs have stopped working, but the last time it happened, i found myself in Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street at the checkout with over �50 of music.

number three, and the most recent occurance - well, yesteday, i’d been out for a couple of pints with Jake, just enough to make me smiley happy, and upon returning to Clapham, i decide to go do my weekly shop, and yay! lets buy for dinner! so i plan on doing a simple fish based dish, but wait! ACK! the deli counter is calling me.. its like the stationary store when i was a kid.. so many things to look at, so many different types of the same thing.. wow! self sealing envelopes, non-lick-needed stamps, silver pens, double entry bookkeeping ledgers. and now i’m older, its the same with black olives, honey roasted hams, topsides of beef, giant bowls of hummous and pork pie.

so i return home, and make sunday lunch just like mum used to.. cheeses (two types), meats (two types), crusty bread (cut), salad (home made with home made dressing and more than one type of veg), all the trimmings. didn’t cook dinner in the end either, fell asleep at 7pm :)

still, this is a dry run for the first in a series of housewarming events i’m planning over the next few months.. so not all gone to waste

slim is determined to make me remove the underscores from my site (hyperconsequence_) as he thinks its design wank.

i’m inclined to agree, but have to argue for, well, argument’s sake. however, he found evidence that my underscores may well be linked to a global conspiracy as urbanwire had a sprurious underscore in their title tag.. however evidence from the site’s creator proves otherwise:

Hi again Matthew,

the underscore thing was unknown to me, now you’ve pointed it out (in the <title> tag) I see what you mean.

Actually it’s nothing more than a typing error, so, say sorry to wettone for me but the global conspiracy theory is just not true ..

har har ;)

as part of my ongoing attempt at global domination, and higher google ranking, i today am pleased to announce that i feature on http://www.urbanwire.co.uk/ as a strange little boy who lives in london with a slightly warped mind, in print in CreateOnline (available in all good bookshops now) in a feature on sound online, djsasha.com posters are adorning pretty much every wall and railing in london, and the sun is shining (not technically my fault).

went to sasha’s launch party last night at bedrock with helen and stacey. who needs to join a gym when you can just nip down to your local discotheque and dance the night away in what seemed to be little more than a giant sauna. was an excellent night though.

From our Sydney Correspondant:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4819235%255E421,00.html