I can't believe she made me do it...

I got my International Driving Permit sorted just before I came over here, including getting the latest mugshot - sitting in the photo booth on a hot sweaty day and capturing the beads of perspiration on my forehead for all the international police forces of the world to see... and then I got given the spare car keys, complete with Power Puff Girl keyring - gee, thanks BBFK, no GI Joe or Hulk for the boys aye? LOL ;)

So anyways, after 4 days of "I am a Passenger" and foot soldiering about... it happened...

The British instinct, when getting into the front seat of a car as a passenger, is to get in the left-hand side door. It was wide open. BBFK, I assumed, was in the driver's seat... so I slipped in and nearly pissed myself... WTF is this steering wheel doing here !!!

I was so shocked that I was half in/half out the seat with the car running, BBFK waiting for me to drive and laughing, and I mean really laughing her ass off, and I had to go back in the house to visit the boys' room... seriously!

Once composed and resigned to the fact I was gonna drive a goddam automatic, I confidentally cruised out into the quiet little side street... on the wrong side of the road, albeit for just a few yards before BBFK reminded me I was in the United States. LMFAO.

And apart from that, the journey to the mall and back went swimmingly :) OK, anyone 'round here got a 500-buck motor for me or shall I just go get that old Cadillac I saw downtown?

In A Big Country...

Dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountain side...
Stay alive...

Well, OK, I've stayed alive 3 days already... Woo Hoo!

And what have we been up to so far? Well, just after an 85°C touchdown @ JFK we took a drive through the heart of Manhattan and what's the first thing on a Brit's mind when he's with his beloved? That's right - BEER.

We stopped at "The Manchester Pub" and grabbed some grub and a pint - don't worry I didn't touch any of that Boddingtons rubbish, had to have a Newcastle Brown Ale :D Not the same when you haven't got the bottle or a half pint glass...

Oh, and after getting change at the bar for the parking meter, right outside the pub, BBFK went out to feed the machine... and when she didn't come back after 5 minutes I started getting worried... had she been towed again? I called the phone. No answer. I was gonna step outside when she came in the front door of the pub - from completely the wrong direction... she'd been told not to park in the bay and headed off to park in some expensive NYC basement carpark (that incidentally charged 750 bucks for parking of "exotic cars" :o )

Then we flew down 42nd Street and then nav'd our way back to Connecticut, got unpacked an set-up the laptop for remote working (about 3,500 miles remote)

Saturday we watched the new Tim Burton flick, the Corpse Bride, a most excellent movie... then in the evening we hit Keyspan Park, the baseball stadium home of the Brooklyn Cyclones, where White Stripes were playing. We got out a bit late, missing the first support band, but managed to get there just as The Shins struck their first chord and managed to get an earful of "Know your Onion"... so that was the main reason BBFK was there - to see the Shins, and she was happy :)

As for the White Stripes - I saw 'em on TV playing Glastonbury and was amazed at how much noise two people could make... so to see 'em live with the most crystal clear sound I've heard in ages was astonishing... the bird can sure beat those skins but Jack White knows how to throttle that guitar with demonic expertees... and the crowd went wild.

We ended up making friends with a number of random people around us, but NOT, I repeat NOT the two frat boy jerk-offs who were so overtly animated they were a parody of a parody of movie frat boys... LOL

Sunday we shopped and shopped, saw an 8 foot tall snow scene, watched movies (the Aviator) and learned a little of that intriguing Howard Hughes character. No offence to Mr Scorcese, but he only touched upon the life of that bizarre man... And the weekend finished with a stroll down the beach, getting to know the Long Island Sound, watching lighthouses, looking at not-too distant islands, with the promise of buried treasures...

Oh, and even after 3 days and she STILL hasn't kicked my ass...

How was your weekend? :)

Se7en Things...

Ah, OK, was gonna talk about the Maitre D minus, but then there just aint time - Life is moving at a pace I'm barely able to keep up with at the moment, so here's something I promised Rebekah I'd do a while back :)

Se7en Things I Want To Do Before I Die

Alright - there's actually a list on the blog circuit somewhere called 100 things... and I'd planned a twist on it since Feb... but I only got to 70... so these 7 will do for now...

1.) Write a book/website that connects people in such a way that people just know it'’s right... like a religion but without the bullshit/ dogma - oh wait; isn'’t that just life/ humanity?

2.) Build an "eco" house from the ground up... or is that the underground up...?

3.) Build my own chopper, a totally original Harley D with those little touches that are Lever's and Lever's alone - and then realise I can't get it out of the living room

4.) Go see some culture, experience it, live it, write about it, take pictures, speaka de lingo, then colonise and Anglicise it… ;) j/k Ah, well OK, just travel some :)

5.) Get back into some major art/ design again and do something big/ nice to go on public display, then check out how happy/ thoughtful it makes people...

6.) Produce a trance/ ambient record that is so full of sexy/ ecstatic sounds and rhythms that people feel compelled to make out to it...…

7.) Live the rest of my days with her ;)

Se7en Things I Can Do

You don't wanna hear about XHTML, PHP and CSS so here's some non-nerdy shit...

1.) Crash bikes and chip/ crack/ break bones without too much blood spillage

2.) Quickly identify and subtly eliminate liars, fakers, egotists, sensationalists and generally negative/ deceptive/ ulterior-motivated assholes

3.) Take-out punch bags with a mean right jab

4.) Stay awake for hours on end without admitting to insomnia

5.) Feel ecstatic without the use of class A drugs

6.) Juggle

7.) Instinctively navigate & drive like a demon

Se7en Things I Cannot Do

Apart form listen to Pop music, but that's most of us here, right?

1.) Lie -– especially when having to remind elders, betters and people in power of their distinct lack of intelligence/ experience/ grip on reality...…

2.) Keep a straight face in inappropriate situations

3.) Organise piss-ups in breweries

4.) Give birth to children or play with my boobs

5.) Tolerate politicians, businessmen, salesmen and lawyers (ref: Things I can do, item #2)

6.) Visit Iraq or Afghanistan for a holiday

7.) Watch anything on TV other than documentaries, news and the occasional bit of sport. Also see celebrity crush #5.

Se7en Things That Attract Me To The Opposite Sex

1.) Intelligence, Intellect, qualifications, geekiness,– playing chess, battleship, RPGs and strategy games -… awesomeness with a capital YEAH

2.) Honesty, Modesty, Loyalty

3.) To be well read, and not just of the classics - she has to have some oddities in there...– and bookworms are a major turn-on.

4.) Sense of humour - twisted & intelligent - e.g. likes h2g2, The Young Ones, Ealing comedy, Farty Towels, Trainspotting and some o' that over the pond stuff like Frasier would be good :) OK, only Frasier - what else is there?

5.) Beauty - Legs, boobs, belly, lips, eyes, cheeks, mouth - you know, all the classic parts that make up the female body...… ;) My mate used to have a thing for girls'’ ankles *shrugs*

6.) Decent taste in music, ability to play instrument a bonus

7.) Admitting that English is English and there's no such thing as "American"” English ;)

Se7en Things I Say Most Often

1.) Fuck, fucking, oh for fuck'’s sake, fuck off, fuck you, I must not fucking swear...…

2.) Do What?

3.) I Love you

4.) You'’ve gotta understand that...

5.) Yeah, and...…? (Your point is...…?)

6.) *Sigh*

7.) Nah, mate, wasn't me!

Se7en Celebrity Crushes (in no particular order)

1.) PJ Harvey (awesome)

2.) Angelina Jolie (who?)

3.) Katie Derham (British newsreader)

4.) Alright, this one was a toss-up (is it OK to say "toss-up" as part of the selection process between women. or is it just plain rude?) between Sandra Bullock and Famke Janssen (The Faculty, The X-men (Dr. Jean Gray))... so it's gotta be... Joanna Lumley Had to go for a bit o' homegrown talent ;)

5.) Bettany Hughes (Sexy British Historian)

6.) That one-eyed bird out of Futurama

7.) Becky Bumblefuck (Celebrity blogger)

That'll do for now, ask me again in a year and I'll change me mind... Adios amigos :)

Su Doku

On the train journey back from the beer festival the other week, I endured the smalltalk of a guy who said he had a number of illegitimate children. He proceeded to attempt to impress me with his "philosophy" of refusing to impregnate women of his own race because he regarded them as his "sisters" and presumably wouldn't wish upon them the hardship of single motherhood.

His contempt was matched only by my own for him and my disdain remained firmly under control, despite my inebriated state, only to be eventually replaced by a more publicly palatable facade of sheer indifference for the fact that the next endeavour of conversation was his proud ownership of a BMW...

Whoopee Fucking Do!

However, with the "sister" in the same part of our carriage intensely reading, his observation and susequent exclamation was "Su Doku"... He was racist, sexist, irresponsible and stupid but he did enlighten me to the existence of Su Doku, so he had just 1 everso tiny redeeming quality...

Since then I have thought little of this term, this concept; Su Doku. Admittedly I neither knew much nor cared at all for this apparent phenomena. Until yesterday, that is, when my stepmother presented me with a gift - a Su Doku puzzlebook.

I awoke in the early hours of the morning and glanced at the first page, trying to fill in the blank spaces, failing miserably and putting it down to weariness, and slipped into a fitful slumber.

After sunrise I sought the eraser and started afresh... logically and correctly marking down the placements of all the missing numbers, completing the puzzle and winning the prize of simple self-satisfaction, ameliorating my own mental alertness in preparedness for the day ahead.

And now; on to other more important things, more numbers, more empty boxes to be filled in... 132,069.75 is a BIG number, wouldn't you agree?

Don't ya just hate... Sausages

No I'm not going mad, I'm just having a torrid time with food at the moment, especially the tinned, processed, pre-packaged stuff... for example... in last night's shopping basket...

• Dutch Sausage: Don't get excited girls, trust me - "look into my eyes, look into my eyes, not around the eyes, only the eyes *clicks fingers* and you're under - you don't want any Dutch sausage OK? *clicks fingers* you're back in the room!"
  
  Anyhow - the point is, I'm happy that food labelling standards are improving, at last I can tell what I'm eating. And Smoked Dutch Sausage has... wait for it... 50% pork (that's good!) and then... connective tissue (pork, beef) WHAT THE FUCK? CONNECTIVE TISSUE? What, like sinews, muscle etc? I'm NOT eating that! *spits it out*
  
  Another ingredient was mechanically seperated chicken! Mechanically seperated? Sounds like some medieval torture device! Seperate chicken's head from body - body goes to the breast & drumstick department whilst cranium, beak, brains and eyes, being mechanically seperated, "head" for the Dutch Sausage department...
  
  
• Hot Dogs: They're not hot and there's no dog in them, so what silly fucker named this "foodstuff" so? You'd expect that with all the brands of hot dog on the shelf that the one dollar 50 can is better quality than the 50 cent variety... Oh no, stupid mistake...
  
  And guess what the main ingredient of these little babies is? Mechanically recovered chicken! Now correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that all the gristle/skin they wash off the machines in the aforementioned "breast & drumstick department" or just another name for the mechanically seperated shit?

Well that's it, I don't care anymore, I think I'm going to be a vegetarian now... Jamie Oliver was right about the turkey twizzlers...

Oh, and here's some stuff about mechanically recovered meat and a random link about gristle, cow brains and stun-guns I found whilst looking for images of recovered meat... Enjoy :)

"We got a Bleeder" II

And if one crash test dummy isn't enough (ref: "We Got a Bleeder") Lever has to go and copy Jim two days later...

This time it wasn't dark, it was daylight, on the South Downs, just north of Chichester... everyone went tear-arsing down this chalk track and the last in line is Lever. He puts on a dig of speed and overtakes Jamie and is catching up with Jim, bouncing off the hard-packed chalk ancient trackway.

*Bounce* Bloody hardtail! *Bounce a bit more* Fuck me! That's quite vicious. *Bounce once last time*... CRASH!!!

I SMASHED the bike into the deck, flew in some crazy trajectory over the frame, catching various appendages on the way and end up facing the way I came, on my back with a rucksack to break my fall. I'm winded. I can't breath. Not for a minute anyway.

Jamie is concerned at the comedy Tom & Jerry lump on my right shin to go with the grazed & bloody leg, dodgy left knee, grazed arm and bashed ribs...

Eventually I get my wounds washed and bandaged and get home eventually to do copious amounts of painkillers and place ice on swollen wounds. Looks like you'll have a black & blue Lever tomorrow, good people :)

Right - talking of painkillers, where's the beer? I fancy a pint of Wychwood Hobgoblin...

Oh, and maybe I should change the front tyre? Somehow I don't like this "Tioga Psycho II" right now...

"We got a Bleeder"

And Momma used to say "don't you stay out late"...

Try telling that to Jim! What his momma shoulda said was...

"don't go out on your bike on a pitch black Thursday night with Lever and his buddies, watch where you're going and don't forget to unclip your shoes from the pedals. And don't, under any circumstances, go crashing into concrete gullies filled with brambles!"

But then you try saying that to a hard-as-nails ex Royal Marine!

He was OK, a decent aprés-ride pint o' beer dulled a lot of the pain.

That reminds me; I really must get some decent lights for my bike now that Autumn's here...Whatever happened to the old floodlights from Wembley stadium?

Don't ya just hate... Packets of Bacon

...you know, those plastic packs of 8 rashers where the film on top has a little corner you're supposed to lift and peel back, but it never works, like it completely rips off altogether? Or you pull with all your strength and it just doesn't open, the cover film adheres to the pack by industrial strength bonding processes?

Glad I'm not old, senile and arthritic or have big clumsy fingers shaped like balloons, that would drive me nuts. More nuts!

Thought: I wonder if vegetarian bacon comes in the same packets?

Anyway, three cheers for Morrisons, that northen supermarket chain that bought out Safeways (yeah, "up yours" Walmart!!) They sell bacon packets that actually peel open... Proof >>

Bumblefuck, MD

8 o' clock. The phone rings.

BBFK: "Baby, I'm lost"
Lever: "What?"
BBFK: "I think I'm lost"
Lever: "Well, either you are or you aren't. Which is it?"
BBFK: "Well, I'm supposed to be on Highway 13 but Noel wanted potty break, so we took a turn off and then another and... yeah, we're lost. How do I get to 13 from here?"

Now, this is *not* my part of the country, not even my part of the world, *and* BBFK is lost so how TF am I supposed to get her to 13 North?

Lever: "OK. So where do you think you are, which road, what town? Any landmarks?"
BBFK: "Um, 331 I think, er, 14? Vienna?"
Lever: "Jeez."

After quickly tapping vague details into mapquest I booted up Google Earth

Lever: "So what about 318?"
BBFK: "Too far north"
Lever: "So you DO have an *idea* where you are?!"
BBFK: "I see 392"
Lever: "Wait, 392... East 20... 13 North. Go for it."
BBFK: "Noel needs Wendy's. And potty. She keeps farting and saying 'Wasn't me!' "
Lever: "LMAO, erm, OK. 392, East 20, Pizza King, Taco Bell, 13 North. Says there should be a Domino's then a Wendy's"
BBFK: "OK, cool. 13 North alternative"
Lever: "No, not that one. Go back"
BBFK: "What?"
Lever: "Go back. Finish the 20 East or you'll bypass Wendy's"
BBFK: "OK."

Idle banter...

BBFK: "13 North... Domino's... Hey, Wendy's. Thankyou babe!"
Lever: "S'OK. Have a blueberry muffin for me OK?"
BBFK: "Or a potato ;)"
Lever: "Yeah, thanks! See you later hon! X"
BBFK: "See ya later, babe. X"

So... to add to my love of both Blogger and BBFK you can add a big passionate snog for Google Earth... It pinpointed the routes, city and state borders and even highlighted all those places to eat. If you're lucky enough to live in "hi-res" places you can even see the cars on your drive (I spotted my black GTE and my old red GT or was it the old GTi ?)

If this gets any better I'm sure could see the girl 'round the corner, topless in her garden... =) *waits for slap*

Jet Powered Punch

Remember ROM #21 from Marvel Comics, August 1981? The one titled "Move over, ROM, there's a new hero in town!" with the return of the Torpedo? You know, the guy in the blue suit with the natty rose tinted visor? Well he had this Jet Powered Punch.

WTF?

OK. Work and the business have been taking over Lever's life recently with little time for blogging and such. Also taking a hit has been my karate. Haven't been in about 6 weeks now and I miss it dearly. So, at the weekend I hit Blackbushe market for a 5' punchbag. I lugged the thing home and hauled it up on a rafter of the garage, secured in place by a decent rope.

This morning R drops off my gloves and I immediately go hell for leather with this punch bag, laying into it with gusto. At one point I needed to purge the soul of a little residual visciousness; so I left the disciplined moves of karate and I visualised on this bag and lashed out with all my might.

BLAM! The rope snaps, the bag hits the deck. Hence the Jet Powered Punch sprung to mind. I laughed.

But I do miss my workout, so now I gotta find some battleship chains :)