Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will...

.....but remember it didn't work for the rabbit

What a day! The reason for the title is i think I must be in for some good luck after today. I admit that when I woke up this morning, I wanted something eventful to happen, being off work on a Thursday is never really a good thing for me. I distinctly lack the ability to plan my time ahead of events, so as such the majority of the day I spent floating about writing emails and drinking tea.

This in itself is not so bad, the easy life and all that, Looking back now, what a godsend it would have been to still be drinking that awful Lidl tea ( I`m cursing ringtons for closing through gritted teeth as I write this ) But yeah, this was all a pre cursor to a far more eventful evening.

I had been out for a wander, beaming sunshine and all, I had not quite got the energy to go to the gym, so a walk in the park seemed like a reasonable alternative. So anyway, I get back in and check my email. Gmail happily informs me that I have 56 new email messages. I enjoyed a brief moment whilst my mind painted a bizarre picture of everyone I know deciding to send me an email whilst I was out on my afternoon constitutional. Upon close inspection they all seemed to be responses to questions that I had asked on eBay. The fact that I am a pretty inquisitive person not withstanding, I was thinking to myself that there was no way I had enquired about that many TV`s, Laptops and intensive care health monitors recently.

Yup, You guessed it. Some enterprising individual of the under handed nature had hacked my ebay account and started spamming many an eBayer enquiring if they would ship goods to Indonesia. To make matters worse, upon attempting to log into my ebay account, I am presented with a screen saying that my password is incorrect. So after much cursing and gesticulating at the screen, I manage to reset my password and log in. At this point my horror intensifies, as I can now see notifications that I have purchased a number of items, including a rather nice 42 inch LCD TV.

Now, I am not sure if I am going to be able to describe what the feeling in my stomach was like at this point, as not only has this unscrupulous git hacked my ebay account, but my paypal as well, and, upon trying to log in, surprise surprise "The Password you have entered is incorrect"

So for the next 2 hours I was participant in a game of trans Internet "Who can reset the password fast enough" I must have been annoying the guy pretty badly because he eventually went the whole hog and changed the password on my email account! How this guy did it I still don't know, I found what looks to be a key logger on my computer so I guess that's it.

So at the end of this ordeal, I find myself with a maxed out credit card, and a bunch of stuff bought from my bank account, I have pleaded to the better nature of the sellers who this guy bought from, So hopefully I will receive the money back without having to go through too much paper work.

As all of this was drawing to a close, and I finally had my accounts secure, I thought I would be smelling the sweet smell of relief/success. But no, the aroma that was filling my nostrils was none other than the acrid stench of a Sainsburys finest Asparagus, goats cheese and pancetta pizza burning away in the oven! Damn, that guy, he has temporarily bankrupted me AND burnt my dinner and I cant even so much as go and shake my fist at him!

So, off I toddle to the reliable establishment that we call somerfields over in Heavitree shops. I was still going to have my Pizza tonight dammit. Pizza ( and bottle of wine ) purchased, I start walking back. As I`m walking up the road, I see this guy on a bench gesturing at me, so, being the courteous person that I am I unplug myself from my iPod and ask what I can do for him. The guy turns out to be some random drunk sat there with his two stooges, he takes my hand in what outwardly came across as a friendly gesture and started telling me how much he liked me. After about twenty seconds of this I try and disengage my hand, which is still firmly grasped in this special brew pickled blokes hand, at this point, where I realised that he was not going to let go, big ole alarm bells start going off in my head, I`m frantically trying to ascertain what the hell this guy wants. As it turns out, he wants 50p.

So, I have to weave my left hand into my right thigh pocket ( right hand still stuck ) I gave the guy a pound, thinking that this is double what he wanted, so he will be so taken a back by the shiny pound as apose to the crumby 50p, that I will be able to make my escape. But no, He starts going on about how he has got respect for people like me and blah blah blah.

Enough is enough, I practically tear my hand away, wish the three gents a good night, re insert iPod and start walking. The next part is a bit of a blur. I go from walking along the pavement, to my face being squished against a car window in what has to have been less than two seconds, Obviously the guy had been upset by the suddenness of our parting, or maybe he wanted more cash i don't know. So he turns me over, and I`m stood there staring at this guy, who is talking/shouting something at me ( I cant hear what he is saying cos I am listening to Avenue of hope by I am Kloot ) Scuffling ensued, and before I know it the stooges have come to the rescue and pulled him away.

So I`m now stood there, with this enormous grin on my face. I don't know if its a good thing to always see the comedy in a situation, but here I am, and the only reason that I am here is that I am out replacing the pizza that got burnt because I was trying to stop myself getting even more fleeced than I had already been victim too, and I am getting done over by a frikkin tramp who most likely thought that I was being cheap by only giving him a pound when some miserable bastard has just done me over to the tune of 850 pounds! Crazy world eh?

So, I am thinking I have had enough drama for today, I have another Pizza in the oven which I am watching like a hawk, And I am gonna enjoy that Pizza gad damn it. Then I gotta stitch a spare button on my new coat which got lost in my little kerfuffle with that boozer dude.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, I just really needed to get that all out of my system.

P.S title quote is by R.E Shay
I am kloot are great, here is a link for them :-
http://www.iamkloot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Kloot

Sunshine

Ok, this is just going to be a little post, but for the sake of talking about something I like...

After about 2 years or so, The soundtrack for the film Sunshine has finally been released. Something to do with legal issues, blah blah and all that but I have finaly managed to get a copy.

Most likely most who read this might be a little vexed by why I am writing a post about this OST, but hey, this is what blogs are for right?

The film itself, could have been a lot better in my opinion, It had the makings of a potential cult class film but seemed the plot seemed to get lost about half way through and turned from a beautiful spectacle of a film into yet another trip on the hollywood badwagon. But hey, thats another post in the making. The one aspect of this film that shone throughout in my opinion was the score. Danny Boyle and Underworld have done a fantastic job in creating a soundscape which easily matched the scale and scope that the director was trying to achieve.

The majority of the score gives a perfect backing for the story, with equal measures of eerie soundscape and high adrenalin pieces for those claustraphobic "help the bad guy is chasing me down this dead end passage" moments.

My closer friends will know how fanatical I am about film scores, but I would heartilly recomend this to anyone, but if you dont fancy getting the whole album, If I were to recomend 3 pieces from the album, it would be these :-

Sunshine ( Adagio in D Minor )
Cappa meets the Sun ( To heal )
Peggy Sussed ( by Underworld )

Seriously guys, have a listen :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(soundtrack)

Thoughts on Mentoring

Ok, Since the disastrous death of my last blog I have gotten out of the habit, but I am thinking that it might be a good time to start blogging again. Not sure if it is because I am feeling especially expressive or just inspired by the fact that its sunny outside now and my fears of vitamin D deficiency have finally dissipated...

Anyway, I am going to start of by writing a little bit about mentoring...

"The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself"

Ok, I am useless at following advice. At many points in my life I have been on the receiving end of a lot of good advice, which, If I am honest, I never really took the time to really listen to and follow. Not sure if this is down to personal stubbornness or perhaps at the time the advice itself did not seem relevant, either way I think that out of all the pearls of wisdom that have been thrown my way; I have not really been the model advicee and acted upon it.

And now I find myself volunteering as an online mentor. The guys that I am speaking to are of varying ages, youngest so far has been 14, oldest 67. The website is based around anonymous support from normal people, who are qualified in the sense of that they have experience in the problem you are currently encountering.

In honesty I was a little apprehensious about responding to people who are experiencing mental health issues, especially the people having trouble with self harm. After having such a poignant experience with self harm, I was pretty freaked out that it was going to start me off on a downward spiral if I was to come into contact with people who were actively doing it. Surprisingly though, It has had the complete opposite effect.

Having come through after 3 years of it, I am now being able to give people some food for thought on the matter which is actually based out of reasonable experience. Too often the response to self harm is based along the lines of "Pull yourself together! If you want attention just ask" But I don't think that it is like this all the time. Whilst the advice I have been giving people has not really been of a soft shoulder to cry on nature, I think that it has been well met judging by the attitude of the responses.

From experience I would say that self harm is a horrible symptom born out of complete mental anguish and frustration. I do not think that every case of it is purely someone trying to make a statement to the people around them, The cries for help come from other far more subtle locations. The starkness and brutality of self harm is usually mistaken as the cry for help because it is so real, it is something tangible that other people can see with their own eyes, when the true problems go unseen.

All in all, this is turning out to be a very mind opening experience, and whilst I am only really starting out, I honestly think that this is something I could dedicate a lot of time to. The responses I have had from some of these guys has been truly heart warming, And whilst on more than one occasion, my responses have been referred too as "Ball Breaking" The people I have been communicating with really seem to be taking the advice on board. I will not go into all of that though because I think it would be a little out of context here.

That's it for this little snippet, My alcoholic endeavours of the past two days are finally catching up with me, so I am off to bed, take care all!