jayseven

Ok, I edited the first post to include a bit more of the info from the other thread. As you can see, I'm not too hot on being minimalistic. General gist of the update; - Check the National Express coach service website for details on cheap and cheerful journeys. Earlier departures are cheaper! - Check the train travel journey planner if you're going by train. - Book sooner than later. - Join the facebook Event group Next I'll update the post with details of the Hostels nearby...

Yeah me and shorty saw it thursday/frinday/i forget. I think he's reviewed it a few pages back? Basically the film can't decide what it wants to do - we paid to see the attempts at filming their own version of classic movies and we didn't care for the rest of the movie. Started off being a little fantastical, but the movie quickly forgot anything like that ever happened and tries to be all serious and shit. Enjoyable, for sure. Mos Def is ace. Slight 4th-wall breakage (see if you can spot it ) and a bit of a slow last 20 mins. But enjoyable

The worm's from a different bunch of stuff by a guy named Richard Scarry. I used to have some of the books, and I liked Fixit Fox the best :P As for Mr Men -- I am currently wearing odd socks, but on one foot I have "Perfect by name, perfect by nature" and a picture of Mr Perfect on them.. I liek teh ironiez. You seen how expensive the Mr. Men books are these days? *shakes head in disbelief* I've got a bunch of them at home that I found in a charity shop, mind.

What are you talking about, supergrunch? Everything I do is awe-inspiring, just nobody's noticed yet... :P

Lollers. I saw Shorty do all the metagame achievements in practically no time... I could do the same. Just don't aim to try and do it with too many skulls on at once and you'll be fiiine.. As for my day? Well shucks! Thanks for asking! I knew you'd be interested... Well i'm going to start with last night-- I witnessed (and called the police) some crazy-ass ninjitsu attempts by this massive gang of lads on the shop-owner opposite. Was crazy-scary shit. Love my window. Today I did little but watch Reservoir Dogs before dinnertime.. at which point I went to a chinese all-you-can-eat buffet with 7 other people (ho ho! I laugh at all ye who paid any attention to my previous post.. So I guess I'm just laughing at myself?) where I had 3 plates of foodage.. Then we went along to a pub, then another, then I bought a bottle of vodka and walked through a part of Sheffield I'd never seen before with the two french-canadians. Got back to their place, where for some reason I found myself in a room with the 7 other people, watching porn. MAN I've never felt so uncomfortable. I just kept excusing myself for cigarette breaks, and one of the Quebecians must've felt the same, so we spent a fair amount of time talking shit outside while the others.. did whatever people do when watching porn with other people... ... So yeah. Finished the bottle, said goonights, bought a spicy chicken burger on the way home, found my downloads progressing nicely, watched the end of Big Lebowski, plonked my coke down on my bedside cabinet despite having brushed my teeth already (naughty, naughty!) and now I'm non-literally tearing my own fucking eyes out for approximately four different reasons, hating myself for several of them... and, uh, still not going to sleep, instead deciding to type up this useless fucking shit that nobody reads and even if they did, they don't care. Why the fuck do I bother? I don't know. I guess it makes me feel better. Realised I've got an exam-thing on monday. Not prepared. Thought it was a week's time... So yeah. When I wake up (late) tomorrow, I guess I need to cram my face off. I used to leave my work to the last minute all the time.. but I'd planned to try fucking hard this year and seeing how massively I've failed at that so far just really, really makes me... yeah. Whatever! Bye!

OK. So this is me putting my 'ass in gear' and making a separate thread to the meet-up thread, because everybody keeps asking wtf is going on. Oh! And Credit goes to DomJcg as I believe it was him who suggested Hyde Park This first post will be updated with the 'current' plans. The main 'event' will take place on saturday 5th July, beginning/occuring at Hyde park - a more specific place shall be determined closer to the date when markers have been actualised. There is the option to spend a couple of nights in london - from the 4th to the 6th. I've made some posts in the other thread regarding Hostel and camp-site locations, and I really can't be arsed to sort all that out right now. So yeah -- this first post will hopefully include all sorts of crazy plans, including what trains who will be arriving on where; what activities will be available, and whatever else. But right now it's late/early and I can't be bothered. So yeah, here's teh LISTT!!!!!! Here's hoping for a better, more coherant post/thread at some point soon. How To Get There By Coach National Express - National Express can offer extremely cheap fares called 'funfares' from dozens of places around the country into london and back. If I get the coach there and back from brighton, it'll cost me £17 roughly, and if I go from Sheffield it will cost me £25 - but the fares are cheaper the earlier you depart, so investigate thoroughly. MegaBus also have cheap coaches, depending where you're travelling from it might be cheaper to use MegaBus. It's much cheaper to use them if you're going from Glasgow. By Train/Tube - If you travel by train you will most likely be arriving either at Euston, Victoria, Kings Cross/St Pancras or Paddington. Here is a map of the relevant underground stops to demonstrate how easy it is to get to Hyde Park :P There are three tube stops that will take you to the part of the Park close to where we'll be meeting. Marble Arch, Lancaster Gate and Hyde Park Corner are your target destinations. Again, the earlier you book, the cheaper it will be! Accomodation

To be fair... it was a really crap joke :/

For once I'm not going to get too involved in the 'discussion, but; The problem here is defining who is 'deserving' and who is not. Sometimes a few of those 50 kids are fully deserving. Would it really be fair to treat that 1 kid the same as their 49 siblings? Yes, benefit fraud is abundant in society and yes, benefits are not always used in the way the government provides them BUT benefits are also not always fairly distributed, nor are they ultimately helpful. I remember as a kid, my mum had to stay on benefits because the only way to come off it was to find a 15k-a-year job - which wasn't easy due to qualifications (long, and probably private story behind that one) and also such a job would reduce time spent with me and my sister, maybe even requiring a 'sitter, thus costing more... The whole benefits aspect of our culture is reallynot something easily summed up or resolved. Sometimes, the gap between receiving benefits and being in a position to provide taxes is rather fucking large. Single mothers going from free NHS to having to pay for dental visits, to paying for hospital visits... Money goes so fucking easy it's ridiculous. I concur that there are individuals and families taking advantage of the system - but I seriously believe that it isn't wholly the system at fault, but other factors that drive, or indeed encourage individuals and families to take advantage of the system. It's about survival -- so why are these people needing to turn to fraud in order to survive? Isn't that a problem? I guess it's also a whole other debate, mind. Fair enough you don't want to pay for the consequences, but what about paying for prevention of the cause? In some circumstances that's a potential -- maybe contribute to charities determined to eliminate the causes of cancer and whatnot? I do have a problem with what you say about "knowingly"... I mean, i have a condition or two that might or might not (most likely not) be hereditary... Is it really fair to say I cannot have children? To bring it back to an earlier point; how do you know whether or not my children are of any value to society? We don't. I can tell you that no matter the disability my children may or may not have, I will bring them up to be proper denziens of the world we live in. I really believe that evolution has moved beyond survival of the fittest in teh physical sense. Sure, there's some argument there for eliminating disease and other catalysts of anomalies... but that's just not seen as a human thing to do anymore. We do have the capabilities to sustain the 'weak', and thus we can look instead at intellectual and technological advances. You realise that if what you believe was enforced, muhammed ali, Stephen Hawkins and... well probably countless other influential figures would never have been born. My views on how an (I'm sorry to say, but it's generally a consensus of opinion) utterly nazi-ish way of banning the weak from furthering their lives are truly for a different topic. Philosophically, how would the human race exist without disease? What would we focus on? Ideally, we'd focus all our resources on advancing our race -- but realistically I believe we'd just advance the flatness of our TVs. But it's a whole other debate... That's the thing -- if you were walking down a street in the dead of night and saw someone laying on the floor in a pool of blood what would you do? Following what you're saying, you'd leave them there. Not your problem. You didn't cause it, you don't have to solve it. But for me, I'd have to make sure they're ok - regardless of what they've done with their lives so far. But then, I believe in the good of man, so... *shrugs shoulders* 'Willingly' is the buzzword here. Again, I probably have too much faith, but -- well, you get people taking advantage of the system, whatever it is, but the system is there to help people that need the help. I wouldn't like to see a system where people who desperately needed the help could not receive it just because the Red Tape decided that the people taking advantage of the system was worth far more than the people who needed the help.

I used a RAZOR BLADE correctly for the first time in over a year! Yikes! I've just been trimming with scissors as close as I could be arsed to in all this time. Just got rid of any neck-beardage. I'm starting to feel old. Related at all? I have no idea.

The portfolio doesn't necessarily just need finished products. Rough work can be fine so long as it serves a purpose in the folio - i.e. you can talk about it, about whatever programs/code you used - the learning experience/the way you taught yourself/etc. Don't freak out about it too much. Do you have any idea how many people apply for the course? If there's a lot then this is a weeding process -- as in, weeding out those who literally have nothing to show, or those who cannot be arsed to put a 'folio together. They probably just want to see that you know what you're talking about, about what you're letting yourself in for -- that they will get a student who will actually be able to learn Good luck!

I don't doubt that taxation could be way more efficient, but I do think that we are living a lifestyle not possible if you don't pay taxes at all. I don't see the poor as a drain on the rest of society, i see them as people just like us, unfortunate to have started off worse. Hell, I say 'they' when I'm the product of a household that would not have coped without the benefits of others paying taxes. But that's another matter entirely -- I'd be playing devil's advocate if I acted like taxes are a grrreat thing :P Do you think letting the weak die is going to somehow make the strong stronger? If we didn't have to care for the stumbling, what would we do? Spend all our money on designing faster cars? :| It's a bit of a leap, I know.I But I believe there are situations where sitting aside and doing nothing whilst knowing full well that you can actually help someone is not neutral. Sure, you're keeping your conscience clear, not helping and baddies - but you're neglecting your capacity for good. No worries As the paraphrased saying goes; i may disagree with you, but hell if we agreed what'd we have left to discuss? :P Depends on how much you're willing to give... I mean if it's 10 pints you may as well sign up yourself Funny thing? If you were in the military over certain periods of time, you're not allowed to give blood. Why? Ohh, conspiracies abound! .. I could only find intra-military donations, I'm afraid. If you're serious then email the blood organisation. A quick tour of some sites, it appears that many countries are freaked out about 'mad cow disease' or something, and if you've lived in teh uk for six months or more between 1980-1996, you can't donate (in germany and Australia, at least) Very decent perspective on life I see it more as who dies, not who lives. Of course you can argue that they're two sides of the same coin, but even if they are then they're inherently polarised in value, thus there's a difference in choosing one or the other. But if you're paying the same taxes and receiving the same benefits, what's the problem? Don't want to pay for libraries that you're not using, or streetlamps on streets you don't ever use? Maybe we do need a tax thread

Kurtle; Yeah pretty much what Bluey says. You can't determine if someone does or does not deserve blood that easily - and to be honest I don't think it is something we should be in charge of judging. The whole idea of a democratic society is the reciprocal aspect; that none of us are able to live the lives we live without aiding or benefitting someone else. With things like giving blood and taxes, we are instilling faith that others will return the favour someday, or that our taxes will return reapable benefits. Of course it's your choice whether to donate or not (hence the charitable terminology), but to think only of the negative possibilities -- what about saving the pregnant victim of a hit-and-run? I don't know of facts and figures, but I would guess that the figures the blood organisation produce as their estimated, predicted amount of blood needed daily/weekly/monthly/yearly would have something to do with blood disorders that people are born with. I can understand you not wanting to donate to a drug dealer who's lost a lot of blood over a turf war or whatever, but you have to recognise that you're letting the minority of malignants prevent you from helping the majority of society-benefactors.. In short; You talk as if you assume all people who need blood are a waste to society. That's silly talk :P

Kurtle; How do you figure that?

The meet's 'unofficial' so there'd be no problems there So long as we can all get along *wuv wuv wuv* ... then there's no reason why a banned member may appear in the same place at the same time as non-banned members. But I WILL be packing a STFU stick.

Woke up to a phonecall -- got dinner plans Also found out I've got a timed-essay to do in my lecture first thing monday... I thought it was next monday... Luckily the questions are 'seen', so I checked 'em out online and... well they're not too tricky. I'll pass, just a question of how well... So in the last week I've; Watched season 1 of veronica mars (and first 3 eps of 2), watched a bunch of movies including; Falling Down, Battle Royale, Panic In The Streets, Barton Fink, Blood Simple, Big Fish, Monsters Ball, Twelve Monkeys, Reservoir Dogs, Amelie and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. I've got Stand By Me, Short Cuts, Collateral and the Animatrix to (re)watch and then... Well then I have Quantum Leap season 1 to watch, Band of Brothers to finish and Series 3 of league of gentlemen... but THEN i'm stuck.

Should maybe someone update the first post in this thread with the general plan for this meet? The 'main' day for people to come is saturday 5th July. Personally I will be going from the 4th to the 6th, staying in a backpackers hostel nearby. I think the options are to either come for the day if you live close enough, or book a night or two if you got to travel a fair way. I don't know if I'll be travelling from Sheffield or Brighton yet, myself. As for the location -- well wasn't someone planning a trip to alton towers? There doesn't have to be just one meet. I picked this date and this venue because I didn't want another thread like this to come to a dead end again I've posted some info about possible places to stay if you need to, and others have said some handy stuff -- I guess if you're serious about coming to the meet then you've got over 3 months to read the whole thread... Each time someone says "i can't be bothered to read the entire thread, can someone summarise?" the thread actually ends up getting bigger by a page or two.

Interesting... You describe that line as masculine but I thought it was more femenine; the soft consonants dominating the harsher sounding 'k's and 'x's. Also the word 'cascade' to me summons the beauty of a fall; it's a very visual word that avoids brutality or indeed much masculinity. The repetition of "not expecting" is a shade ironic; the terms are suggesting that the indian is capable of expecting Norm from beyond the grave -- the confrontation in that respect turns to an intellectual 'battle' rather than a viscious one. One could argue that the terminology used to describe the 'fight' is all from Bowie's perspective, which is why it is not particularly primal in tone. "fisticuffs" certainly ties the two sides together as a description Makes the indian seem working class at the least Do you think the indian thinks in terms of blueprints? So what do you think made you write this? What frame of mind were you in? I think you ought to put more stuff up I'd also like to hear what you think about the rubbish I've written :P oh, and 'scagging' -- typo, or are you seriously alluding to heroin here?

well it's a prescription drug :P I certainly wasn't prescribed it. I've been prescribed codeine and MAN that was fun. Accidentally took three doses instead of one... Good times :P

I've knowingly used weed, laughing gas, poppers, valium (i think that's it) and accidentally smoked crack maybe twice... I gave up smoking weed due to paranoia, but recently I've been smoking it a little more - by myself watching films is quite teh funz. I dunno why I tried them... 'peer pressure' doesn't really match the tone of any situations. I might be addicted to alcohol as I have a pretty high tolerance *looks at empty vodka bottle besides him*. There aren't really any other drugs I'd want to try... Maybe mushrooms, maybe sativa, but obviously I'd want to do them somewhere awesome.

Man, that's pretty cool. Not got any vinyl so I won't be attempting it though :/

I am witness to the spreading of Havers throughout the 'Smiths accross the land! :P Yeah, what Shorty said about dialogue - it doesn't sound like natural speech. I imagine there's a bit of adrenaline running when he says that, but teh commas slow the sentance down... Um, but yeah, I did like reading it One of the more coherant bits of freewriting in this thread, yet still intriguing. Is it the indian saying "this is my property", and the other character is the old man? It sort of seems obvious that it's Bowie talking but at the same time it's not... I mean I had to consciously think "hmm who is saying that?" I like the line "Or. Stay, face him down, shoot the Nazi, take the bullet, give the lung, run the robber." It seems to fit in with how I'd be thinking in that situation -- i mean, just thinking the key words and not really linking them properly? I like "the marshmallow jab" as it perfectly describes the sensation, the inability to fight sometimes in dreams. I can't say I know what is going on, just that I have a general idea (feels like it's set in the first quarter of the 20th century, for some reason). Would it help if I knew who Normal Mailer was? So my catching of your drift; A guy walking, in my mind through trees or a forest, when someone tries to rob him. Now, Bowie is aware that this sort of thing could happen where he is, so he's prepared himself a little - yet he is still faced with two choices; fight or flight. He initially chooses fight, but with an attempt at communicating with his assailant. Once he seems to have decided to take on the up and coming scuffle, he seems to think that it's all going to go horribly wrong. My mind decided the background to this was the stereotypical white-man-steals-natives-land, an that Bowie had just moved to the area. As I said, I have no idea what it's really about :P There's 'pavement' and 'TV' so I know what I'm imagining is wrong. But hey! I mean, I imagined the indian to be a native american as opposed to someone from India! Oddities. There's a lot of reiteration - "The refund, the reimbursement, the rebate they, They, the less-successfuls, never got", "a resolution, a relief", "that question, the question", "for their slice, for their plot of land, their bit of the Island" and so on, and so on. I think there is too much of this, as it weakens the meaning each time you do it. I can understand that each separate word/phrase adds a new nuance to what you're talking about, but the constant use of this just strikes me as if the narrator doesn't actually know how to precisely describe what they're talking about. It's also a little wistful; a contrast to the presumably heated moment actuall occuring - to the presumed fear that Bowie is feeling (mixed with other emotions, obviously). There's a certain ambling quality to the tone; the pace is almost leisurely. "pavement-level, ground-level" - the second part of this just seems unnecessary. Either you think the reader won't understand what pavement-level is, or you're trying to draw some sort of juxtaposition between the two levels... But is there one? The reiterations draw focus to what is being reaffirmed for sure, but the weight of what is being said cannot rely only on the repetition. You have a great way of describing texture and shape, very imaginative and fun to ponder.

You realise nobody can see that unless they're a member of those forums, yeah?

Zeromancer's cover of "Send Me An Angel" (from australian band Real Life, iirc) is way cooler... That's all I can think of...

Darn! I took the lead, but of course had to end up losing by a single goal. Always losing by a single goal. I've got third spot by a single point at the moment! I think the top two are pretty much certified; I don't think I'll sustain my position because I've got tricky games the next 3 matches... Odwin; this game is better than I expected:P wish I'd joined up earlier.

coen bros seem to be the topic of the week, eh? :P Well, I've just been watching Panic on the Streets, a 1950s movie by the director Elia Kazan who did East of Eden. Panic is a noir-ish movie about one guy trying to convince the establishment that there's a plague on the loose - sort of like how the guy in jaws knows what's happening and nobody believes him, 'cept people believe this guy :P To tell you the truth, any film before the '70s is hard to rate. It's tricky to place the movie in some sort of 'chain of events' leading towards modern cinema; tricky to see exactly how any film had any bearing on modern cinema. Panic is special in that the movie was not shot in any studio, and that the actors chosen weren't just so because of notoriety; they were chosen because they looked the part, and I must say that the characters, especially Blackie, were solid epitomes of character. The story itself carries a lot of the weight of the movie, and of course it takes a while to get going, but it was a fairly enjoyable unfolding of an inevitability that seems to be the generic way of story-telling of that period. I always feel that these black and white movies are overlooked, but it's a different period of cinema and thus I find it hard to appreciate them properly. But this movie was acted out well, and told swiftly. The film delivered different perspectives in terms of how immigrants viewed the law, in how the law dealt with their problems and so forth... But still, I'd like to see other opinions on the film I would rate it 6/10; above what I was expecting but certainly nothing there to blow me away, unlike a couple of Orwell films around/before the period where it's easier to tell how the film had influenced the modern era. I also saw Be Kind Rewind at the cinema today, and we agreed that the film was confusing in terms of what it was aiming to be. The funnies in the first third of the film are based on unrealistic, bizarre circumstances yet the rest of the film relies on ties to the real world for its laughs. The premise is almost forced, and treads a tightrope over the realm of cliché. It's as if the film makers knew they had a brilliant idea for a film, but couldn't bring themselves to execute it without at least trying to adhere to one genre or another. There's a few moments of breaking-the-4th-wall (sigourney weaver ffs!) and many moments of unnecessary circumstantual positioning that could have been best absent, and a general sort of feeling that the film is either trying to be seriously clever with its deep meaning or, which is most likely, has been sloppy with its execution, and eager to pretend it means more than it really does. Jack Black is not his normal over-the-top self, and I think the film is no worse for it. I've started to appreciate Mos Def as some sort of actor, but I just can't get past the fact that the film has shoe-horned a cool idea into a generic hollywood plot, of sorts. Again, apologies for the nonsense ramblings. I'd've made more sense if I'd gone to bed earlier. 6/10 *goes back to Falling Down*