Dude. Week.

Deliverance is a fucking bleak film.

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Bleak is a fucking great word.

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Alex is building me a Frankenkarma out of the 2 busted ones. I can't wait. Pimp My Karma indeed. In the absence of recorded music I've been listening a lot to XFM, Lauren Laverne is nowhere as terrible as I found her to be on channel 4 years ago but she could do without playing pretty much exactly the same songs every day. Ho hum. On Saturday I was listening to XFM too when someone played the supposedly great new song by the Futureheads, and it was rubbish. I don't really recall when all this new breed of British bands actually came about, eg the Futureheads, Kasabian, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, The Kooks, etc etc (actually I don't even know if they're all British), but I've got a feeling they're all mostly famous because they opened with a blinding song or album and now may all be releasing dreadful sophomores. I hope that doesn't happen with the Arctic Monkeys. Oh God how I miss listening to the Arctic Monkeys album.

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My ears are going to bleed soon. On Saturday I'm going to see 5 black metal bands down the Peel. Sunday I may actually turn up to the studio for a jam, and then I might be going to see Napalm Death, and on Monday I'm going to Unholy Alliance II in Brixton. BRING FORTH SLAYER.

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I've got an xbox360 now. A proper fit of peer pressure plus a few minutes spent playing Dead Or Alive 4 at the weekend convinced me it's the right thing to do. I also needed a flimsy excuse to spend enough money on my AA credit card to push me over the top of the "now you can fly to the USA for nowt" threshold. Table Tennis is a good game, Dead Rising is piss funny, DOA4 is frustrating and I'm yet to take PGR3 and Burnout out of the shrink wrapping.

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I wish this sore throat would fuck off. I've had it for over 2 weeks now, and with the masses of cough sweets failing to fend it off I've resorted to actually taking something medicinal. Seems to be doing the trick, but I should perhaps leave out the peperami firesticks until it's proper better.

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Waterloo to the office is less than a mile, and the opportunities for alternative routes aren't exactly great. I did walk to Vauxhall on one evening last week but that's less than 3 miles despite not going the most direct route. Or did I? Straight down St Martin's Lane, then Charing Cross to the west side of Hungerford Bridge, cross the river and hug it until Vauxhall Cross. Hmm. Maybe that is pretty direct. Either way it wasn't far, but my ridiculous sleep patterns combined with great weather and not a tiny amount of boredom and restlessness meant I prefixed and suffixed my extraordinary weekend with 10 miles of walking.

Both walks were between Waterloo and Euston station, Saturday morning's being in that direction. Went along the south bank of the Thames as far as the Millennium Bridge, crossed and wandered through the city, Bloomsbury, and Fitzrovia. Sunday saw me revisit Fitzrovia, then pile through Mayfair, along the edge of Green Park and then through Victoria, to Parliament Square and along the river to Hungerford Bridge again. Both routes marked out on gmap-pedometer, Saturday here and Sunday here.

Uni reunion between those two walks. Jesus christ. I'm too old for all this drinking. Fucking cracking weekend though, ending with loads of us rampaging through Rockworld as if we owned the place, chalking the pool cues off the walls and necking Red Stripe like there was no tomorrow. And in fact Saturday's tomorrow was monstrously painful and I would have preferred it not to exist, at least in the form it chose to take.

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