So I'm in the South of England. The occasion? My sister's 19th birthday (May 1st) as well as a general catch up with family and - to a lesser extent - friends. Life moves on, I guess. Now I have been here for almost a week, and between wrestling with jet lag and wrestling my sisters dog - a clinically retarded Chocolate lab with an oral fixation - for the many remote controls, shoes and plastic bags he decides he needs to chew on, there's something I have noticed. Having been to a few bars since being here, it appears that nobody knows how to bartend. I went to a restaurant bar/grill and it took no less than 10 minutes for two cocktails - a Lynchberg lemonade, and a fruity rum drink for my sister. She made them one at a time, and didn't appear to know what was in them. Maybe the girl was new, I don't know. What I do know was that, not for the first time on this trip, I wanted to jump the bar, make it myself, and give her the money. Ah well. I suppose if you're strapped for cash and know your Jack Daniels from your Jose Cuervo, get a job in England.

In other news, I found this great comic online that i have been reading all morning. Subnormality deals with science in a non geek way, humour in an off the wall way, and its hatred of Nickelback in a glorious way. Which got me thinking: I don't think I know anyone that likes Nickelback. I don't even know of anyone that likes Nickelback, although Google gives 11,400 hits for "I love nickelback" and under 3,000 for "I hate Nickelback". There's proof right there that the world is a fundamentally flawed place.
Here's the real kicker: I love music, and I roll with people who share my tastes. (No wonder we get along so well.) How then, is this, this and this happening?
Just thought I would alert the world to some injustice, that's all.

By The Way: I am hungover. But it's that horrible kind, the one where you think you've dodged it when you wake up, then around 10am it kicks you in the stomach. I haven't worn anything but sweatpants all day.

Web Roundup

Well, I'm in England. Jet lagged to death, and not sure what's what, but I'm here. My sister turns 19 today, and we're going to go see X Men Origins tonight. I don't know when the transition goes from fan to "fan boy", but I must be crossing the line soon. Forgive me if my prose isn't up to code, and I thought I'd do a quick Stumbleupon recap of my latest greatest finds.

Musicovery.com is a free webradio with a difference. This is one of the first websites I discovered with SU, and made me realise how much fun the browsing app can be. Essentially, you can click on a small mood map depending on how you are feeling(where the vertical axis goes from energetic to calm, and the horizontal goes dark to positive) and not only will it generate a playlist, it also creates a visual map leading to a song and artist fitting to your mood. Genres are categorised by colour, and you can also browse by year. The best is that it will pick songs you may not have heard of or wouldn't have thought to listen to on your iPod. And it's free. www.musicovery.com will set you up.

Next, if you think you're having a bad day all you need to do is check in at one of the following sites depending on your mood. www.e-admit.com - confess your sins, it says in the header - is for the voyeur who doesn't want to actually see any dirty business, just wants to hear about it. Its an open forum where people who hate having some secret can air their grievances. Anonymously. That's the best part: anonymity = honesty. It's like your own little soap opera. Most are relationship related... that doesn't look right. Most are to do with cheating or having feelings for a forbidden other, but once in a while you get some gems:

I’m tired of lying to my friends and family, saying that everything’s fine. I’m tired of not having the ambition to do anything productive with my life. I’m tired of trying to be someone I’m not just because everyone else expects it of me. I’m tired of letting every opportunity pass me by because of my constant fear of failure. I have a flight that’ll take me miles away in a month, which I was already going to take for the summer, and I’m planning on trying to rebuild my life where it takes me. I’ve already been planning the note I’ll leave for my family to read, telling them that it has nothing to do with them except that my love for them is keeping me from killing myself instead.

It opens up a side of you that you didn't know you had. How can these people have no one to talk to except a bunch of lurkers on a website? Heartaches all round.

For something a little lighter, F*** My Life has mini anecdotes galore, usually involving nosey or embarrassing parents, but not always:

Today, I didn't have any money to buy a tampon from the dispenser at my school but my hands are small enough so I can just slide them up and grab one. My hand got stuck in the dispenser and my school had to call the fire department. Now everyone calls me tampon girl.

Today, a random girl called me asking for one of her friends. She wouldn't believe me when I told her she had the wrong number, and I spent few minutes convincing her she did. After a while she said "what the fuck" and hung up. That was the longest conversation I had with a girl in months.

I'm not going to lie; I frigging love this site. Its juvenile, but it takes 10 seconds to read, and chances are it'll make you laugh.

I think that's it for now...
Except the very awesome trailer for the apparently awesome movie The Hangover.

By The Way: I miss English beer. Bishop's Finger of the Shepherd Neame brewery in Faversham, Kent, is like a tasted memory.