Every Friday.
Saturday.
Sunday.
Tuesday.
Wednesday.
Thursday.

The golden rule when offering a service, so I am told, is assuming that your audience is stupid. I, however, shan’t be so pretentious in my ways and will idly throw into conversation that I spent several hours last night/this morning implementing a new design to this here blog.

After going to sleep (and having awoken again, of course), I tidied my bedroom for what I believe to be the first time in 2005. It looks ruddy good. But then it didn’t really need tidying in the first place.

Forgetting all of that for one moment, my hopes that the rest of the weekend would be similar to the events of yesterday have already started to come together; Other than tidying my room, I’ve been taking it easy. Furthermore, I’ve just had a chicken tikka masala and now I’m retiring to my bed to watch a video or DVD.

There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard. (Although technically, money did buy everything that I just mentioned. But you get the idea.)

It was because the tutorial didn’t go too well yesterday that my group decided to get together fairly early this morning to think through some new ideas for our project.

Although we haven’t got any solid ideas out of it, we had a lengthy session of discussion & brainstorming. Furthermore, it was quite funny - particularly Ben W’s detailed suggestions involving the orbital sanding of kittens until people donated money. Which, come to think of it, is reminiscent of an idea I was working on for a short film before I came up with Sleep. (Chris T. knows the one )

Now at home, I’ve just finished watching one of my all time favourite films whilst eating a curry. And if I have my way, the rest of the weekend won’t be too dissimilar…

Have you seen my finger?

I didn’t go in to Racodac until a bit later today, as I was up in the early hours with an upset stomach. (Both ends.) This was annoyingly due to having consumed a single sip of regular Pepsi, which I’m not supposed to drink because of ongoing stomach problems.

NB. Drinking it wasn’t my fault - someone mistook it for Pepsi Max, which, funnily enough, I can drink in vast amounts.

Anyhow, on the way to the bus stop, a mini cab passed me by with “Bab’s Cabs” printed on the side of it. I didn’t get a look at the driver, but I’m sure they were very hairy.

Once at Racodac, I worked with my group until our tutorial at 3:30 PM, which didn’t go as well as we’d expected.

At home now, I’m about to watch Daredevil with my two little brothers. (I’ll be taping The Bill in case the 11:00 PM repeat on ITV3 is cancelled. So worry not, for I shan’t be missing it.)

Finally, as discovered by my little-little brother, Google Images have now indexed the majority of piccys used across my sites. And the best result is probably that when searching for “director Blake Neale” (without the quotation marks). Click here to see.

How very amusing indeed.

Today is up there with my best spent at Racodac thus far. I did much mingling, and had many a laugh. Most of which, I must add, were thanks to Jordan A.

Perhaps the funniest thing he did on this occasion was insert an earphone up each nostril and open his mouth on the “ahhh” noises of a Michael Jackson song, as then (and only then) could the song be heard by anyone else.

Put simply: The song was heard through his mouth when he opened it and not when he closed it.

And he gave me a kiss.

Bless.

To help with our rainforest project, tutor Keith G. managed to get the editor-in-chief of Tree News magazine to give a little talk at Racodac this morning.

To be honest, I was expecting some hippie type character to preach about saving trees. Not that I don’t respect people’s rights to believe in whatever they wish (because we don’t want to get into the sh’t on this one). It’s just not my cup of tea.

And although it’s not encouraged me to do the same sort of things, it was rather inspirational.

After that, the Moving Image & Graphic Designers were subjected to a couple of hours of numb botties whilst watching a truly boring film about a boy, an oilrig and a racoon.

It was sooo boring that a whole row of students (as well as many others) walked out on it. I would’ve done the same, but by that point, I’d lost the will to live.

Today was full of people over-exposing themselves and touching other people up.

As has become the highlight of software training Mondays, today I conversed with Zehra A. via email. I did consider trying the browser based MSN Messenger instead, but I gave it a miss having not used it before.

Also in my inbox were emails sent by Jordan A. containing images that he’d Photoshopped during the training session. Most of them involved fellow students on the course. But what he did with Her Majesty the Queen shall continue to tickle me forever. In fact, I’m laughing out loud thinking about it now.

(I’d post the piccy here, but it’s not mine to post and it could be considered offensive.)

And I would’ve stayed to watch the much hailed Garden State tonight, only I didn’t find out about it until during its screening because the email didn’t go out properly.

…go on and tell me what it is.

Much like yesterday, today has been horrible.

To cheer myself up in the latter part of the evening, I decided to venture forth onto MSN Messenger for the first time in 2005.

The plan didn’t start too well, as no sooner had my computer powered up, a spidey dropped from above and landed on my foot. Naturally, I shot upwards immediately to kick away the little [expletive deleted]. But by the time I’d got someone to shift it, it had got away.

Sitting on a less restrictive chair (foreseeing the possibility of the spidey returning), I initiated the MSN Messenger ignition sequence. Once signed in, I chatted with Paul B, Jo E, Steve P, Chris T, Harry T. and Michael W. I would’ve spoken to a fair few more of my contacts, but having not been on MSN for ages, I’m out of practice in holding multiple conversations simultaneously. That and I hadn’t planned on staying for too long either.

Still, it was wonderful conversing in ‘real-time’ with so many of my buds. In fact, I even cleared the air with my old comedy partner and childhood sweetheart, Michael W. (What with us both going on to do different things, our relationship has been somewhat ’strained’ of late.) But now, all seems to be back on track.

Blake: an aside: this is prob the first serious convo we’ve had for years
Michael: close to ever probably
Blake: lol yeh

Furthermore, we got a fair few Red Dwarf & Bottom quotes into the proceedings. A good conversation in every respect, then.

And finally, shortly after I signed out of MSN, I spotted the aforementioned spidey directly above my head. Jumping up and standing on the chair as quickly as before, I grabbed a plastic cup from the shelf at the end of my bed, downed the ‘flat’ & dusty contents left in entirety since the early hours, and bravely captured the little beast myself - trapping it inside using the firm cardboard casing of the Service Pack 2 CD.

Not one of the best weekends, but I like a good bit of suture. So at least it ended well.

’cause if there’s nothing better than this, what is the point in carrying on?

Today, putting it bluntly, has not been a good day. I shan’t go into details, but retail therapy now means that I’m expecting eight items through the post.

Talking of post, in this morning’s was a Service Pack 2 compact disc that Microsoft kindly sent me for free. Amazingly, when I requested the CD a week ago today, the receipt stated: “You can expect to receive your CD within 28 days.” So I’m quite impressed - as should you be.

The only other niceties of the day:

• A surprise episode of Columbo was on. I say “surprise” - it’s normally shown on Sundays but was on today instead.
• Auntie screened the 20th anniversary edition of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

What to do now…

Waiting for the bus this morning, I saw a hearse bombing it down the main road. I can only imagine that the driver was in a rush to pick some-body(!) up.

Alright, so it was a bad joke. But then, death isn’t funny.

When the bus, which I had to wait forty minutes for, got going, it was jumping about all over the place. So much so that several of the passengers (including myself) were ready to blow chunks. Lucky chunks, eh?

I didn’t need to be in Racodac until 2:00 PM, and even then, that was to prepare for a meeting with tutor John L. at 3:30 PM. Only we didn’t have our meeting until gone 4:40 PM, which meant that by the time I got home, I’d missed both airings of Neighbours. Bah.

Going in to Racodac today was another waste of time. I could’ve returned home literally a minute after arriving, as nothing was going down.

Having spent so long on the bus getting there, I opted to do some digging about on the ‘net for Amazon rainforest information. Danny P. kindly gave me a copy The Man Who Planted Trees, which I was all set for ordering for just under £10.00 last night. I wouldn’t mind, but the full story doesn’t even take up a full five pages of A4 in 12 point font. What a rip-off.

The only reason I didn’t order it last night was because it made sense to check Racodac’s library first - it wasn’t listed. And not that I can remember why I was searching, but I did find Small Objects of Desire: History of the Sandwich in the library catalogue. Oddly, it does have some relevance to my previous post about Luis Buñuel. But I’ve actually mentioned it because it reminded me of one Mr. H’s DT lessons at RWS: His process of buying a sandwich.

After talking with Zehra A. & then assisting Jordan A. with his Flash animation for a couple of hours, I made my merry way home.

And now I’m going to watch The Bill. Good old pigs.