Priority Check

Posted on the October 26th, 2008 under Life by Dan

1. Harvey Wallbangers
2. Job applications

In retrospect, not in that order - makes you sound too much like Jose Mourhinio.

Trendspotting

Posted on the February 28th, 2008 under Life by Dan

The delicious Richard Martin has invented a new game, Trendspotting.

You surf on over to http://www.google.com/trends and input two things of seemingly meaningless connection to see what is more popular, here are some of the more amusing.

Leprosy v Doctor Who
Leprosy is a constant year-on-year winner, but Doctor Who has some sort of resurgence in 2005 and beats Leprosy hands down.

Macbook, Facebook, Logbook, Good Book
God, Technology or Zukerberg? Zuckerberg wins - it seems.

The United Nations, The Post Office, The Butchers
Methinks the Post Office is playing a long game, methinks.

Incest v Puppies
The Brits, a nation of dog lovers, would rather sleep with their labradors than their sisters. The high number of american which hit before new year must be the drunken frat boys wondering if their Cousion mindy is sufficiently ‘out there’ for it not to be weird.

Socks v Children
Socks just can’t beat the immovable force of Kids.

Cabbage v Egg
You can notice here that every time there’s a small peak in interest in Cabbages, suddenly the Egg marketing board ramp up their promotions and whump - Egg remains king.

Lego v Legs
Check out how en-vogue Legs were in 05!

Beer v Philosophy
Exactly the same trends at exactly the same time. WOW

Vampires v Beck
Vampires on a downward surge, except at Halloween, where suddenly they get cool again.

and of course, finally…
Success v Failure
Failure being, oh the irony, the victor here.

I am mad

Posted on the February 22nd, 2008 under Life, The London Adventures, University by Dan

I had reached 2nd stage for a training contract in January this month but today received an email telling me I’d not made it to the 3rd. Which is a shame because that was the last application I had on the fire. It looks like I shall be repaying my student debt at Birds Eye.

I have suffered through a month of sobriety, 18 hour days at the library and no fruit or fresh vegetables. I am suffering burnout - not because this is a gargantuan effort, I’m aware Lawyers have to do thrice as hard work. I am suffering burnout because at least the Lawyers in question get paid to do this.

I have had an exam every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for February. This Tuesday I finish.

Kate Bush thought it a wise idea to use Pi as the lyrics to a song.

and this exists;

I am truly mad.

Unafraid of Change

Posted on the February 16th, 2008 under Life by Dan

That dreaded Facebook sent me an email today with the following information.

… your strengths:
#2 funniest
#3 best public speaker
#4 most famous

… your weaknesses:
#140 most reliable
#142 most kiss-able

I’m of the opinion that if someone has felt the need to inform me that I’m neither kissable nor reliable, then it’s a good thing, because now I can do my best to improve both kissability and reliability.

So, my regular reader, I open the floor to you - Is it my Dental hygiene? My choice of Facial Hair? Does my breath displease you?, am I late for events often? Have I ever broken a promise to you? Why not tell me, and thus help me, to help you.

Thankgyou.

(For a special bonus, I’m going to try to open comments on this entry so you can even tell me, straight into the blog!)

Some People Have Real Problems

Posted on the January 30th, 2008 under Life, The London Adventures by Dan

As the battery warning symbol began to flicker on my mouse, I clicked the email notifier and waited for gMail to load. I looked at the time – 10:55.
‘Shit’, I said.
As I went down the titles, one read ‘Human Resources’. They don’t send emails out for nothing. My heart leapt into my mouth.
‘Dear Mr Cooper, Thank you for your application for a trainee place to commence in September 2009.

We received our highest ever number of applications and I regret that your application has not been successful and we will not be calling on your for interview..’

I ambled toward the shower, every step a condemned man.

The Perils of Penelope

Posted on the January 19th, 2008 under Life, The London Adventures by Dan

‘Get me a Lawyer!’

‘But Harvey, you are a lawyer!’

‘I mean a good one!’

I’m still reeling from my Magistrates court summons for non payment of council tax. It’s infuriating from the standpoint that it’s not only grossly ridiculous, deleterious to my being a solicitor, it’s also horribly miss-applied.

I had sent my first council tax exemption form along to the office during the first request, some time around November, and had thought nothing of the following letters since the ball was surely footed within their own court. We received a ‘Too Late!’ final demand last week, (Why do Council Offices send out final demands on a Saturday when the banks are all closed and you have to then have your weekend ruined?) and managed to speak to a guy at Hammersmith & Fulham Council who told me that he would push the summons forward post-haste if I didn’t give him my credit card details.

Needless to say, I didn’t like being held to ransom.

So I got an electronic copy of the exemption and sent that off to the local taxation division as well – but that seems a little too complex for the peons over at LBHF.

The demand requests that I attend court the same day I have my advocacy final exam, which is amusing because I’m considering going, making my oral representations and getting one of the lecturers to come along and judge my competency accordingly.

Sadly such summons is insufficiently clear as to the next procedure, and so on Monday I shall be forced to again, not study and instead leap through more of their loopholes in order to avoid court. It’s at times like this I wonder whether I should bring an action back against them (or ‘countersuit’) and prove to them that they fucked with the wrong lawyer when they tried to bully me, or blithely comply and avoid the tedium of the courts system.

Part two of ‘Reading, Writing, Doocing, Image and Death’ shall appear shortly

Reading, Writing… (part one of two)

Posted on the January 17th, 2008 under Books, Life, The London Adventures by Dan

I sat in the library hammering out the first chapter of that novel, the one that’s been fudging around in my head for (now) quite literally, years. Sadly upon re-reading I had the violent compulsion to wrench the screen from it’s wall mounting, throw it to the floor and beat it with my hands and feet screaming ’You bastard!’… which wouldn’t have been too good for a library computer.

My problem is that as I’m currently on a rather large Michael Chabon bender* I am obsessed with having such deliciously delicate prose as the master. I finished reading ‘The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay’ late last year and I’m midway through ‘The Yiddish Policeman’s Union’, as far as I can tell, I should have been reading Chabon years ago – few writers of angsty, grown-up literature (or the sort that grown up people who live in London and read in coffee shops whilst chatting up nubile young literature graduates read – and no, despite four months here, I’m still not that pretentious. I don’t have the cheekbones or fringe to carry it off). Anyway, the point Is that I’m feeling rather inadequate as my literary voice has disappeared, as much as I can drench these little ditties in irony and sarcasm, doing the same for a full blown novel is doing some harm.

It’s one of two things I’m mulling around in my head at the moment, the other is that in 2007 I had made the new year’s resolution to get a 5 minute pilot into Channel 102, and didn’t. In 2008 I made a similar resolution but time has so far been unkind. The two ideas that I’m trying to turn into a reality is a me-fronted parody of ‘Secret Diary of a Call Girl’, entitled ‘Secret Diary of a [Male] Call Girl’ – the gag being, that no-one as unprepossessing as myself** would never be able to engage in having people pay me for sex. The other, which has the benefit of being slightly more promising (as in it’s not one-note) is entitled ‘The Game’ and is inspired by my reading of Metro every morning on the tube.
Whilst not a sports fan, if you ignore the final 3rd of the Metro you suddenly find yourself lacking anything to read (and I could never get away with reading books on the tube. Every time I pulled it out, there would be a crush at Green Park and it’d be wedged into my face so fast I’d have to pull paper from my sinuses), coupled with my Monday evening’s quiz team’s inability to answer sports questions, means that I’ve started to read them. What I’ve found is not the sport itself that’s interesting (I am talking about Football, after all) but the business that surrounds it – the playing, the moving, the shaking, the personalities off the pitch which actually do sound like some sort of engaging, West-Wing esque drama surrounding the fortunes of a football club.
Which is what the show is going to be based on – I’ve never seen a film relating to the business of sports, rather than merely glamourise the excesses of the sportsmen themselves – and if I can make said show funny, then I shall push it into production post-haste.

Speaking of which***, I’m a little excited and almost tempted to give Ian McEwan’s Sebastian Faulks’ Bond novel a go – or I was until he revealed, derisorily, that he had ‘fired it out’ over a couple of weeks. Sadly I had hoped that perhaps Chabon’s taste for writing would mean that serious authors would write books about things like explosions and boobs, as opposed to the inertia one middle aged man feels when his wife goes mental (Waterland), his child is stolen from a supermarket (A Child in Time), he gets stalked by a mental Welshman (Endless Love), but no, as far as Faulks’ is concerned, he fired one out like a casual piece of public toilet onanism after seeing a particularly attractive woman sidling past in the street.

Moving on..

*A pun, surely?
** Fugly.
*** Or not, since when I re-edited the passage, the segue was lost in the annals (hurr) of time.

Not Dead Yet

Posted on the January 2nd, 2008 under Life by Dan

But soon, perhaps?

Edinburgh 2007

Posted on the September 7th, 2007 under Life by Dan

Edinburgh, City of Gingers, Goths and Beautiful Architecture. I could die happy there, oh yes I could.

I have:
Traversed the Falkirk Wheel in a Boat, twice
Ridden a Horse (For the first time!) up and down a mountain
Been in the depths of Mary King’s Close
and the Heights of Edinburgh Castle
Stood in the centre of the debating chamber of the Scottish parliament
Sat staring at the future in a rotating planetarium
Saw ‘Knocked Up’ (It’s not very good, by the way)
Stared at some Goths

Lordy. I need some sleep. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Urban Scrumping

Posted on the August 27th, 2007 under Life, TV / Media / Music by Dan

David Barrow used to be a stockbroker, but he’s given up on all that to write his great novel - something set in history, about a lost soul, something that’d make Martin Amis wet with jealousy. There’s a few problems. He knows nothing about history - for one, then there’s his wife. She’s determined to make him fail so she can go back to being the wife of a rich stockbroker, and his drug dealer’s been replaced with someone not altogether convincing…

Urban Scrumping features
Me (Sadly) as David Barrow,
the Tolerant Rachel Warnes as Serena
and the Brilliant Sam Johnson as Mike.
DOP: Matthew Long
Sound: Laura Adams (with no help from my godawful ATR 55)
Written, edited and directed rather shamefully by me*, it was rejected for the Channel 102 August 2007 screening.

* note to self, create more pseudonyms.