Prepare to die

I mean why not? Having spent some time embroiled in all the necessary wedding arrangements, whats next? If only there was somewhere where I could start working out what I wanted for my funeral now, then at least when I die, my friends, family and next of kin would know exactly what I wanted.

I think the man Bill Drummond is behind this, its a nice idea.

posted by stu 4:38 PM | +

Anthony Cascarino

You may have either seen or heard some press about Tony Cascarino. Essentially he is a football player that played 88 times for Ireland, and it now seems there is not a drop of Irish blood in him.

I have some affection for Tony Cascarino, his name reminds me of the first football match I ever went to. Tony for all his mysterious Irish ways used to play for Gillingham. He was signed as a 19 year-old from Crockenhill FC in January 1982. The best thing about his transfer was that he was bought for 11 tracksuits and a white line machine. Foget multi million pound transfers and bosmans - 11 tracksuits and a lawn mower - you could tell he had class. Tony used to play in Gills’ number ten shirt and was top scorer in 4 of his 6 seasons at Gillingham, he also missed a few sitters as well. In 1985, he won his first full cap for the Republic of Ireland whilst still a Gill's player.

My dad took me to my first football games, I loved it, he didn't. Infact I'm still not sure why he used to go. He had a really annoying habit of leaving 5 minutes before the end. This habit always used to co-incide with the Gills scoring in the last 5 minutes, so that everytime we got outside the stadium there would be this enormous roar. He would say,

'there you go - they've scored.'

I remember on more than one occasion, when we got home and I'd checked the teletext, it had been big Tony who had bundled it in the back of the net.

posted by stu 2:20 PM | +

Fat Fellowship

Give the fellow fatster's new album a listen in full via nme.com.

posted by stu 11:17 AM | +

30.10.00

Blue Jam

Tragibutes looked uncannily like a Chris Morris sketch, and if you click on delivery options menu, you'll find some pretty crude stuff aimed at the Archbishop of Canterbury

posted by stu 6:36 PM | +

27.10.00

Burnt Bum...

Email from Julian after the curry I made him,

'Cheers for last night Stu. Top curry mate. Delicious and hot just how I like it. Burnt my arse on the way out this morning though. Hot curries don't usually affect me that badly. I almost had to splash my ring with the bog water!!

I write this with my arse stuck in a yogurt pot.'

posted by stu 5:18 PM | +

At this present time

My other half's birthday is rapidly approaching, so thank god for giftsforbirds.com, only problem for me being that as she rightly pointed out last night,

'I'm no longer just your bird, I'm your wife'.

posted by stu 11:11 AM | +

Train spotting

Yesterday I had to go to Ipswich for work, what can I say, I had the pleasure of experiencing the infrastructual problems of this country's public transport system.

I never got there!! the train was over two hours late, infact I never got to Ipswich (should take 1 hour), just as far as Colchester in 3 hours!!! In total, ended up spending 6 hours on a bloody train going absolutely nowhere and not very fast ...

posted by stu 11:05 AM | +

25.10.00

Curry favour with me

I've always loved curry, its my favourite food. One of my earliest memories is of my dad feeding me curry. Imagine it, a young boy of tender age being spoon fed curry, sounds great, but it was actually more for my Dad's amusement, as I ran into the kitchen desperate for a class of water to cool the fire in my mouth, I could hear the distant sound of my father sniggering like Muttley the dog. Despite this introduction, I went on to love curry and learnt how to cook various dishes from my Dad.

So it is no surprise to me that the British are addicted to curry, infact this news coincides with my mate Julian coming round tonight to sample my sag gosht and tarka dahl. I got some really hot chili's, its highly likely I'll be sniggering like my old man as he runs for the kitchen...

posted by stu 2:58 PM | +

The wedding photographer

Photos of the Keith and Jo's debauched evening do...

posted by stu 9:55 AM | +

24.10.00

Pixel passion

I sometimes play with the idea of getting a band back together and making some noise, but the reality is I just can't be arsed with all the stuff that goes along with it, although I am going to make more of an effort to play the guitar more. Surrounded by these designers all day, their love of the pixel figures suddenly inspired me, I think I might try and re-form my band co-star, but as micropop band.

posted by stu 5:24 PM | +

Psychopathia Sexualis

Not me, you understand, although I had some psychopathic tendancies last night as by upstairs neighbours proceeding to break the sound barrier by stomping about on their exposed floorboards for bloody hours. All I could think was 'Why can't you just sit down and shut the f**k up!' My patience finally broke around 1am, and I accosted them as they left their flat to go god knows where. Either they are just stupid or they have must have the intellect of a goldfish. My vote is with the former, I don't want to be detrimental to goldfish. Again I explained to them casually, but with determination that there is no sound insulation between their flat and ours, infact all there is is the floorboards, which seem to have an amplifing effect.

The reality of what I was saying seemed to dawn on her, if not him, when she said

'you mean you can hear everything that goes on in our kitchen'

I smiled my reassuring smile, 'YES'

Now she was concerned because, last week my wife and I were treated to sounds of some rather bizarre sexual gymnastics. Now it would be impossible, and I'd rather not have to, visualise what activity was taking place, but the best description I can give you is to imagine the sound that a dog makes when you accidently step on it, then imagine that yelp repeated staccato, set to a kind of rhythm of say the Mastermind theme tune and you might be someway there.

'Oh god', she said. 'Well, we move out in two weeks, the landlord is renovating the place.'

So today I called their landlord and suggested that he took the opportunity during the renovation to do some sound proofing of the floor. Thankfully he was quite open to the suggestion, saying that he was going to fit carpets anyway and he would investigate the option of putting some sound proofing under the floor boards. He also mentioned that he had been in Spain working on a film of a book he had written.

He had mentioned to me before that he was a writer, I had not taken much notice, but here he was, an expert on Alfred Kinsey, famous for his Kinsey reports on the species "man" as an orgasm-seeking mammal.

and all along I had these orgasm seeking mammals living above me...ain't life funny sometimes?

posted by stu 12:42 PM | +

23.10.00

Patent madness

One of the few interesting presentations I saw at this conference thing last week was given by a lawyer. He was basically talking about copyright of content on the internet and what a minefield it is. I saw a similar presentation from another lawyer a couple months ago regarding patents and the internet, his basic message was patent everything you can think of, including any bits of scripting or coding you're especially proud of. Naturally, there are some in the real world that take this advice a little too literally.

posted by stu 12:25 PM | +

I'm content

Last few days I've been conspicious by my absence attending a conference on content management. So now I know all about key strategies for creating a dynamic web presence to retain customers and develop a strategic advantage. Watch this space for a dramatic improvement in the content...

posted by stu 9:08 AM | +

18.10.00

Wouldn't it be nice...

A couple of years ago I gave an old television of mine to my mate Dave - he still has it the tight git. It was a Finlux, big old contraption, but the coolest thing about it was that it had this large wood casing - a touch of class to your living space. It was a real throwback to the early days of televisions and radios, which bizarrely always came in that wooden finish. Wouldn't it great if personal computers were made of wood?

posted by stu 5:27 PM | +

Spot the ball

Sex, synonymous with the pornography on the internet, but there are some people out there that have taken the time to digitally remove the participants so that you, the punter, can just enjoy the surroundings. My own particular favourite.

posted by stu 12:19 PM | +

17.10.00

This time next year we'll be...

My mate Arms emailed me this dot com idea this afternoon:

'its an on line game where you have 3 champions from each country in the world with a series of different tasks- physical, intellectual etc. The game is played by going around a board collecting letters like scrabble. Each stage will have a different board like the first stage will have letters making up different countries and when you collect certain letters you go to that country for your task. Also it will become a global media spectacle-Tv rights etc. Cool dont you think-billionaire stuff?'

Erm, not convinced myself, as my mum would say its a bit half baked.

posted by stu 2:13 PM | +

16.10.00

Its Shagtime!

I can't make my mind up if this url is zoot suit swank or zoot suits wank. But what I do know is that these pictures are scary.

posted by stu 4:52 PM | +

Best man for the job

Well I can now add a best man's speech to my list of public speaking achievements. The list now proudly boasts two after dinner speaches, ok, my wedding and Keith's wedding, but they were both after dinner. Maybe I should consider a new career on the after dinner speaking circuit...perhaps not.

It was a good wedding, and I enjoyed it very much, but I think now I've had enough weddings to last me, at least to the end of the year...

posted by stu 8:47 AM | +

13.10.00

Wedding Theme Continued

Well as the weekend appropaches rapidly, I'm about to attend another wedding, although not mine, I have a bit part to play as the best man. Its a funny situation coming just three weeks after my marriage, and I'm really looking forward to being able to relax a bit. Of course only after I have completed the ritual speech, with its ritual jokes and ritual humilation of the groom ;-)

posted by stu 4:32 PM | +

Wedding

Ok, I've been threatening to do this for the last couple of weeks, so here are some wedding pictures. The real party pictures have to be scanned in, so they will come later. Bet you can't wait..

posted by stu 11:59 AM | +

12.10.00

Gameboy

I don't and never have owned a playstation, or nintendo games console. I don't know why, I don't mind having a bash at any game, but the idea of owning one of these things never apealed to me. That said, on my way to India, on a boys holiday, a couple of years back I bought a gameboy. Infact most of us did, we rather sadly found ourselves playing the damn things in the middle of our holiday, with amazing scenery all around us and all you could hear was the synchronised beeping of gameboys.

But one game that really, and I hate to admit it, has me addicted is bloody Championship Manager. It seems that there is a new version coming out at the end of the month and I'm not sure whether I can bring myself as far as ordering an advance copy, that really does sound sad...

posted by stu 2:27 PM | +

11.10.00

Boxman

Great, more e-commerce doom and gloom as Boxman collapses. They managed to blow a total of £50m, not bad at all. I actually used boxman quite alot, I thought the site was ok, simple and efficient but I would really like to know how you do £50m in 3 years?

posted by stu 5:18 PM | +

Really Fly

On the subject of short films, I have to recommend a friends film, Mosquito. Although Lars came to the wedding, he managed to duck out of producing the video.

posted by stu 1:54 PM | +

405

Spent some time browsing around ifilm.com, and watched 405, I'm just one of 2 million that have watched it, but I was still impressed to read that 405 was created by just two people, in their free time, with the only expense being their time and personal home computers.

I suppose I've have done a variety of things in my spare time, but they have barely kept me amused, let alone 2 million others.

posted by stu 11:46 AM | +

News

Don't know why but I find Naked News mildly amusing.

posted by stu 11:10 AM | +

10.10.00

Face me

Face generator is a face transformation tool (works only in IE4+), with realistic looking manipulation of facial features. Create a gorgeous looking bird and then sent the link to your sad mates. Hours of fun.

Heres a stunner for my mate Dave.

posted by stu 10:38 AM | +

9.10.00

Genome

You might of noticed, but I just got married and if I had 10p for every person who asked me if I was going to have kids, I reckon I'd have enough for a couple of beers. You might have also noticed the case in America where a baby boy was born because his embryo has the exact type of cells to treat his sister's life-threatening bone marrow deficiency.

So how long before we create your own genetically healthy child online? not long...

posted by stu 5:48 PM | +

Flasher

An interactive porn soundtrack.

posted by stu 10:07 AM | +

6.10.00

Thoughts of a married man

Part two - 'the day before'

The day before the wedding was one of much stress for my bride to be, it was a day of numerous minibus runs to and fro Munich airport, with friends and family arriving from England, France and Holland, this was coupled with flights delays and cancellations.

In the evening, the boys got together and the girls went did their own thing. The idea for the night was to go and have a Bavarian meal and a few beers. Well the meal bit was about right, but the beers turned into a few too many, plus some tequila shots. Infact I now know what the consumption of alcohol in this bar was (the proprietor, who couldn't believe his luck, dropped by my inlaws - 2 barrels of beer and 7 bottles of tequila). In the midst of this hazy craziness I had a vague recollection that I had something important to do the next day, so I sloped off at 2.30am. From what I heard about the others, Nick got lost - his hotel was next door to the bar, Keith fell asleep on the steps outside the bar - apparently the concerned German citizens who woke him accepted his "I'm English" explanation, Rudi puked all night at his parents and Julian tried to rectify the injustice of the 1990 world cup semi final defeat by attempting to slap some poor German fellow.

A fine night…

posted by stu 2:14 PM | +

Das Bild

My initial attempts at digital photography, just a few shots while I sort through what I can post up...

posted by stu 10:40 AM | +

5.10.00

Putting the Fat into Skier

I ate a lot of food during the course of getting married and honeymooning, definately gained a few pounds but not sure if I'd be up to putting on 30lbs in 30 days?

posted by stu 4:46 PM | +

Thoughts of a married man

If you wondering what happened to part two, I just managed to mistakenly delete yesterdays posting...

posted by stu 12:03 PM | +

Thoughts of a married man

Part three - 'the big day'

So I awoke with a kind of dread, not about the days proceedings, but more about what the extent of my hangover would be. Would I be able to shower it away, nice cup of tea and away we go? Or would I be taking on the day with no sudden movements and seeing it through half-closed eye lids? Ermmm well I didn't feel the brightest, but I knew it could have been a lot worse - a view confirmed later on when I saw the rest of the boys. I didn't feel any real stress during the morning although I'm assured by all that saw me that I looked nervous, all I can remember is that I just wanted to go and get married, all the waiting around was torture.

Everyone knows that brides always look beautiful on their wedding day, I will say that I think my wife looks beautiful anyway (she reads this page), but when she arrived, she looked so good it took my breathe away. From that moment on everything goes so quick and you enter a kind of surreal world of a big occasion. The basic order of the day was I said yes, she said yes, rings, photos, food and drink, then more food and drink, speeches including my comedy German speech, more drinking, music, dancing, drinking then I finally got to leave and head for the honeymoon suite. Hurrah! It is a funny feeling leaving everyone having a good time, but at the same time its good to get away and leave everything behind. By that stage of the evening, the was a heaving mass of English and Germans pogoing around the dancefloor to Come on Eileen - I ask you…

posted by stu 11:59 AM | +

3.10.00

Adult entertainment

Add N To (X), the band, are producing a no-holds-barred 50-minute porn film called 'Plug Me In', also the title of their new single. It features 2 women exploring each other's bodies with a large range of sex toys. The band used small surveillance cameras and attached them to the girls.

The band response to the morality of such an exercise,

'We were presented with videos of quite young - though of legal age - girls being coaxed into doing things they obviously didn't want to do. Because porn has been pushed underground, it does attract a lot of unsavoury folk, and we were guilty of believing many of the publicly perceived prejudices. But when you get involved with the models you realise that these aren't damaged or exploited people. The women we used loved sex and were completely open about it. They knew exactly how far they were prepared to go, and your preconceptions fly out the window.'

Watch an edited quicktime version of the pop promo - 13mb

posted by stu 4:33 PM | +

Thoughts of a married man

Part one - 'the honeymoon'

We had a great time staying at the Hotel Belvedere, just leaving everything behind and breathing a huge sigh of relief. We spent 5 days in Florence, Italy. I was a little dissapointed with Florence, maybe it was the time of year - the place was heaving with tourists, but it didn't really do it for me, my overiding impression was of an overpriced city packed full of tourists and rude, arrogant inhabitants. Anyway as a result we didn't queue to see any of the cultural stuff like Michelangelo's David, but just took it easy and ate too much food.

posted by stu 12:52 PM | +

Picture this

I promise to bore everyone solid with wedding pictures in the near future, haven't seen any myself so far, but I do have a few pictures that I will put up of our honeymoon in Florence. Couldn't resist buying a digital camera at the airport, I didn't do any background research just bought the one I thought I had to have.

posted by stu 12:05 PM | +

2.10.00

Ahhh, back to work

Lovely feeling, back at work, mere 297 messages in my inbox, fantastic! But my hotmail account provides the best reading. 80 spam messages, and those pesky spammers are coming up with increasingly ingenious message headings. Here is a collection of some of my favourites:

You said I should remind you
Think You Know His Or Her Background?
Re: Urgent account information
Do you have any more?
You Are So Fine
Viagra can save you in bed!
Re: your decision ..
ENLARGE YOUR PENIS....PLEASE YOUR PARTNER

posted by stu 11:25 AM | +