Chris kr

You may think halloween is ages away, I sure did - but I was WRONG! Everyone already has an idea for what costume they will have (everyone = my sister and a small number of my friends). I tried to convince my friends we should go as the Village People; not too original I know but I want to go as the Indian and wear his big headdress. Sadly Kmac already decided she wants to go as Rainbow Brite, though not the "sexy version" which terrifyingly exists. Jenna has decided to go as post-transformation Sandy from Greese, which is probably quite a good costume for her since she has the hair for it.

As a slightly last resort option I asked Ava if she wants to go as the Village People but she is already going as either She-Ra (Princess of Power; He-Man's sister) or the Crazy Frog. Crazy Frog is the better idea and suits her more but she's too scared to wear it out and will only do it if she's going to a friend's house party.

I could still go as the Village People Indian but I'm sure it would be at least 90% less awesome without the other Village People present - basically just an Indian costume really. I have been pondering and Googling all evening and I have seen some quite horiffic things, but I have also come up with the following ideas:

- A lobster
- Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls (with a big paper mache head)
- A robot
- Aunt Bessie (of frozen Yorkshire puddings fame)
- A silent movie star (dressed in b/w or sepia tones with a selection of speech cards)

What do you think? Ava loves the Aunt Bessie idea but I think the concept would be better than the reality. Kmac likes the slilent movie star and Bubbles. It's not all that original but I think my favourite is also currently the silent star since the cards could be fun to use. I could have a few basic ones like "yes"; "no"; "lemonade please" and then a bunch or random phrase ones like "I'll be there, mit schnickschnack!"; "Now that I am gone, who will take my precious monkeys to be baptized?; and the old classic "Please get away from me".

At least deciding early gives me plenty of time to organise the costume. In the last few years I've spent a fair amount of effort on them. I also have a bit of a thing about using unusual/ unconventional materials.





This is the pitrate costume I wore to Club Noir last year.
I made the shirt fron a large men's shirt from Primark and the skirt and corset were made from scratch.
I made the boning for the corset out of plastic bottles!





For going out on actual halloween night I just wore the same thing with zombie make-up.
It took ages to put on and the blood got bloody everywhere.
And, in case you're wondering, my mate Ben (on the right) is in the world's shittest Son Goku costume - though Ava did his hair pretty good.





This my costume the year before; eh, it didn't really have a specific title although I did have a wand so I think it was a "Fairy Bubbles" type effort.
I pretty much just wanted to wear a tutu made out of bubble wrap - which I did, with awesome results!


The year before the bubble costume, I was another non-specific costume, it ended up being like a sort of cyber fairy. I made a dress out of silver duct tape - this was the main goal of the exercise. It was just a simple circle skirt attatched to a corset-y bodice type top. I had wings on the back which were wire lined with glow bracelets and accessorized with other glowy jewellery. The wings were attached to the dress so I even made them hinged so I could fold them in to out my coat on. It was quite a triumph, even if I do say so myself, plus the sturdy duct tape bodice gave me excellent posture all night. Unfortunately it was impossible to store and got all bashed so I eventually had to throw it away. This, coupled with Club Noir's old "no cameras" rule (now relaxed to "no photography of the performers" since practically evenryone has a cameraphone these days) means there are sadly no pictures of my cyber fairy creation - which, according to the rules of the internet, of course means it never happened. Boo.

Hi everyone, I was away in Spain on my holibags but now I have returned! Did you miss me? Ohohoho, I know you did really, you cheeky minxes.

( Holiday chit-chat + pics )

Since we couldn't go out at night with Izzy around (even if we'd wanted to), me and Maw took a buch of DVDs with us to view in the evenings. I got to see No Country For Old Men and There will Be Blood at last; both were really good and I thought There Will Be Blood was beautifully shot. Mum picked Mama Mia to take which I knew was going to be cheesy but wasn't actually as good as I'd expected, plus the girl who plays the daughter is fucking annoying. She also selected The Reader which was well made but I didn't like the characters so I didn't find it that enjoyable. Conversely, I made her watch 28 Days Later to add a splash of fun but I don't think she was impressed and refused to watch the second ending because she apparently only likes happy endings - meh. The last one we saw was Little Miss Sunshine which I thought was okay most of the way through (it was sweet and funny but didn't really stand out among other American indie films) until the ending where I really laughed and cried a little bit too (one solitary tear, Cry Baby Walker style - wtf is wrong with me?).

The last Confessions Of Georgia Nicolson book, Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?, came out right before the holiday so I read that while I was away, as well as it's predecessor, Luurve Is A Many Trousered Thing. It was great fun as usual and I thought the ending was probably what most fans of the series would want to happen. I also learned from it that "with knobs on" translated into German is "mit schnickschnack". I don't know if this is true, I hope it is but really I don't care if it isn't since Kmac and I have already pledged to use it in conversation whenever possible. After I finished those I started reading Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which I am about half way though so far. See, I do read some sensible things too.

Me septum piercing seems ready for it's first stretch up to 2mm /12g. I'm pretty excited but haven't done it yet because I only have jewellery in that size which has quite a large diameter and is unpretty on my small face. Also, I never realised how little suitable jewelley is available at 2mm; it has even been difficult finding a septum retainer. I do have cute glass and horn pinchers to wear when the stretch is healed though - yay!

Lately I have been listening to N.A.S.A.'s The Spirit Of Appolo album a lot even though I have had it for some time. It's packed full of tunes and has some brilliant artist colabs on there. It's worth checking out for Kool Keith and Tom Waits' track alone which sounds like Tom doing a parody of a pisstake of himself (in the best way possible). That's not my favourite song though, those are probably Whachadoin which has M.I.A., Spank Rock, Santogold and Nick Zinner on it and Strange Enough ft. Karen O and ODB (yeah, I don't know how this is possible since he died in 2004 either) - those are just out and out tunes.

AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRG! Why must I be allergic to summer? Must buy some hayfever eyedrops and nasal spray tomorrow. Sexy.

Today I came across this fashion blog/ site/ thing; PopGloss. It has a so many awesome items and ideas on it. Here is a very small selection of the things I liked:



Shoes made from recycled London transport fabric




Polymer clay tentacle necklace





Linda Farrow sunglasses (inspired by Enid from Ghost World, apparently)




Hoof Boots - cool but a scary prospect to walk in!







Yunju Lee jewellery






I will probably spend more time browsing through it tomorrow.

Ripped from mandarinascent:


001: Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
002: Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
003: Don't change your wallpaper before doing this. The point is to see what you had on.

( Click )

I am fairly broke of late so today, in order to make some extra cash, I decided to sell some of my crap quality items. So far I managed to sell a cheap pair of sunglasses and an even cheaper pair of wooden spirals for about a fiver - yay, go me! Unfortunately I have spent about £20 on earrings myself - swirly bone tunnel things which were going cheap because the shop is closing down and some honey coloured super spirals on gaugetrade. I'm pretty excited for the super spirals though since I've wanted some for ages, plus unblemished new pairs retail for $60-$75 so they were a total bargain.

Hopefully I will have more luck on Ebay than I did selling stuff on LJ since a lot of it is new and unworn clothes and shoes, I just have no patience for the auctions to end. I also have a couple of people interested in my snake earrings that have been sitting in my box, taking up space and generally being annoying for ages so that's pretty good.

In other (marginally less boring) news, the night out to Slabs last weekend was decent fun. Kmac had to go hame early because she had bad muscle pains in her leg (it was her first day back working at Debenhams as she was made redundant from her awesome-but-well-dodgey secretarial/ design job) but I was glad to see her for a while anyway. It was just me, Jenna, Katie and Martin by the time we went down to Slabs Of Tabernacle - the club was okay but not really amazing. I guess with a small club night like that it depends who they have to DJ that week, and also how much you're into that type of music (and for most of us that's 'not so much'). Jenna and (particularly) Katie were excited that the guy from the year above them who DJs there said hello when he usually just ignores them, even at uni. I sometimes wonder how old Katie is; she seems at once to be be both more and less mature than me - although I guess it doesn't matter since she can only be a year or so older or younger anyway. Oh, and Jenna liked my thoughtful birthday gifts which I actaully remembered to take out with me this time:



Also, Jenna was on a date the other day! She told us he seemed quite nice and they went to the cinema and he did the yawn/ arm around thing which was funny and made us all go "awwww". Afterwards I said "damn guys, now I'm gonna have to find myself a man" and Kamc went "hey, Sheps has this friend who is single right now, I think his name is Ben!" and we all laughed for a looooong time.

Apparently Ben is sort-of-maybe-not-quite back together with the Twig again anyway, though this is according to Jamie and his social perceptiveness and therefore not necessarily accurate. What's he like? It's not that the girl is nasty or anything (well as far as I know - plus dating young Benjamin for any length of time without going insane is a fairly impressive feat), she's just a bit of a vacant twig. The main problem is that he acts like a douche while he's seeing her and shockingly we all like his usual rediculously outrageous antics more than this new, rather more subdued persona.

I was out with Jamie to see Star Trek last night. I didn't really want to since I am fairly broke (he had the BOGOF Orange Wednesdays tickets), and also as I have said before, hanging out with Jamie sometimes makes me feel weird since I'm pretty sure he still fancies me while I have no interest in him in that way. Despite this he asked me a bajillion or so times so I eventually agreed, then I listened to Tomahawk on the way in on the bus and it put me in a really good mood.

The movie was like 5 movies crammed into one but it was pretty cheesy and not particularly well written so I kept laughing right the way through. Also, Leonard Nimoy's close-ups all have a blurrier filter on them than all the other actors', probably to make him look less aged compared to his youthful co-stars but it doesn't work, it's just weird and distracting. I was back at Jamie's new flat for a while afterwards playing games and looking at random YouTube videos - he has the most tragic collection of music and DVDs that I have seen in my whole life.

Ava goes on holiday to Salou with her friends tomorrow. It's only for a week but I think I will quite miss her and her crazy antics. I asked her to bring me back a postcard with an octopus on it but I don't think she will.

This week has been unusually busy for me! Last weekend I was out for Jenna's birthday celebrations. We went to the buff club (boo) but Kwan and Elaine(!) were there, as well as Jenna and her other Art School friends (yay). I think I'd only seen Elaine about one other time since we finished uni last year, I'm not that close with her but I think the cynical and standoffish sides of our personalities are actually quite similar and we get on surprisingly well when we get together. Plus, were were the only two not from Jenna and Kwan's Art School postgrad class so we could have a gossip about the rest of them.

( Pics of last weekend )

I'm going out again with Jenna tonight as she and Katie are going to Slabs. Kmac is also coming to give Jenna her birthday prezzies! I have missed Kmac so much this past month - damn her and her busyness - and I am partly going out tonight just so we can have a catchup. Also, I must remember Jenna's birthday prezzie too since I am a duche and forgot to bring it with me last week - durrrrrrrr.

In addition this week, Izzy and I have also been to The Burrell Collection and the Sea Life Centre at Loch Lomond on nursery tips. Those were good fun. Most of the other days I had to wait in while decorators were papering the back bedroom.

A bunch more bands got announced for ATP (and more should be announced next week) but it's selling out really fast this year and everyone is broke until at least mid-July. Thank god tickets didn't sell this fast for last year's fest - I was really nervy last year before we managed to get ours last year because of my Patton & Locust love. I'd feel pretty bad if it sells out before we book this year though since we promised we would go for Jenna this year (Jenna usually goes to New York with her family during the summer but her postgrad runs on until August this year so she can't go. Instead we said we'd go to ATP again this year and she could come). Still, the plan b for if it sells out before we can get outselves organised is just to save the cash and go to one of the weekends next May instead - I'm pretty sure Jen would still be cool with that.

I still haven't had a bath yet, I must be all smelly. It's because my mum's been off work so much lately (because it is a private hospital, there are times when they have no patients booked in and she has to stay off 'on call') I feel like I can't completely relax and do all the stuff I would usually if she were not there. Also it doesn't help that she is still doing her mentorship course and has to call me through every 10 minutes to remind her how to cut and paste text on the computer. Today I asked how many parts there were to her project and she said about 10, then I asked what number she was on and she said 2. Then we laughed for a very long time, obviously hysteria has set in.

I will give myself a much required pamper tomorrow while Izzy is at nuersery if I can. I also should try and remember to take in a sequin dress I got from Boohoo.com last week. It was in the sale and I was indecisive about getting one for ages, then when I finally decided to get one, they were sold out of my size and I had to get the next one up. Curses to my indecision! Still, it's a really simple shape so it shouldn't be too tricky a job.

I hope my ankle feels a bit better tomorrow, it's been all sore for the last few days because I have buggered it up. I'm pretty sure it all started when I was on my way to the Ghostface gig the other night; just as I got off the bus, it started raining just a few spots of rain, then all of a sudden the heavens opened and all this rain and hailstones came pouring down. The gig was supposedly 'no bags allowed' for some reason so I didn't have a umberella with me and had to dive into the doorway of KFC to avoid the onslaught. After a few minutes the hailstones stopped and the rain became slightly lighter so I decided to make a dash for it rounnd the corner to the underground station and get the tube one stop up to where the venue was rather than just walking as planned.

Well that plan turned out to be a fandango in itself because some fool in the underground station helpfully informed me that only one track was working and directed me to the opposite platform from the one I needed to be on. Sadly the out-of-order track story turned out to be a falsehood, as I quickly realised when I went downstairs and could see people waiting around on the platform on the other side. Also, I was typically at one of the stations where there are seperate routes down to the two platforms so I couldn't just quickly switch to the right one. I ended up having to go one stop backwards on the train, get off, climb over some railings, get on the train going the other way and go one stop forward to where I'd started, then another one to where the venue was. What a day!

I was when I was making a dash across the road round to the underground station to get out of the rain that I twisted my ankle (what a day x2!). Being at the gig afterwards and then the Gallows gig the next night (and also walking home from that since its was ridiculously early when I left) seems to have aggrivated it somewhat too so now it's all stiff and clicky and creaky and sore. Bummer. Or, as I like to say; what a bottomer!

Spent much of the afternoon cleaning up old jewellery that used to belong to my gran.



Mostly all of it (probably except the wedding & engagement rings) will eventually be sold/ charity shopped/ I might try to sell some on TSUK. I get to keep anything I like for myself though so I mainly have my eye on this cute locket pendant:




Sweet huh? However, that is not the most awesome item in the selection! Nope, that honor goes to the other locket pendant which used to belong to my mum when she was a girl in the sixties.



Why hello Sir Paul Mccartney!

Lulz.

I found my phone charger which had been missing for the best part of the week - yay! I had been starting to consider buying a new one so thats all good. I really need a bath and a right good scrub.

My offiial jewellery wants list #2.

( Cut because its boring and pic-heavy )

I should do a collection post too but I should have some cool things coming in the post soon before I do that.

So now a proper update (of sorts). Last night I went to see Gallows at the ABC. I hadn't really been sure about going to see them or not given that I don't actually like Gallows but I do like the supports; Every Time I Die and The Ghost Of A Thousand but in the end I decided to go along, partly because the supports were quite good and also because the wealth of good gigs happening here seems to be fizzling out and I thought I should make the most of them while I can.

( Gig Photos )

Gallows are incredibly popular, particularly among younger fans if the gig turnout was anything to go by. I really don't see what the fuss is about though as their music isn't exactly something to write home about though. The thing I really dislike about them is all the rockstar showboating that was going on - I go to gigs with the hope of listening to good music, having a groove and seeing a good show, not to worship false idols, y'know?

Anyway, apart from going to gigs, this week I've had to help my mum a fair bit with a mentorship course she's doing at uni for her work. The fact that computers are not her friend isn't exactly compatable with her having to find all of her journal sources online. The whole thing has been a bit of a fandango. I managed to have an afternoon off from it yesterday when I popped into town to get my Gallows ticket and also to some new 10g earrings from Nirvana since I lost one of my old ones at Ghostface. I just got some little single flare stainless steel tunnels which have the tiniest front flares ever - they're so cute (and also possibly the chepaest non-plastic jewellery they had in the shop).

In other news, Ava, Caitlin and I had a fair gossip about this at the Alec Empire gig last week. That dude used to be my computing teacher - I never liked him either, not because I thought he was a child rapist or anything though, I just thought he was an arsehole.

And now to end on a high note, some new tunage from Dizzee Rascal. I love Dizzee, he's such a scamp! He was on Jonathan Ross lat night but I only saw ther in of the interview - I must search it out on the BBC iplayer later.

<

Ooops, almost forgot about this - obviously I'm been quite busy of late.

( Cancer Bats @ ABC2 29/04/09 )

On Thursday I went to see Ghostface! It was in the O2 Academy (previously the Carling Academy) which is a pretty large venue but this show was up in the bar area which is fairly tiny. It was good fun, apart from the guy who was grinding himself against my ass for most of the gig... still feeling a bit violated from that... ew. Anyway...



( Photos )

Photos and Text from the Alec Empire gig last Sunday with Ava, Caitlin and Kmac.

( Lots of pictures. )

Today I was doing my best Ichirou Agata impression and scraped damp-infested wallpaper off half the bedroom. Initially we were just going to give it a lick of paint ourselves (or myself as would be most likely) but we discovered a damp patch on one of the corners which was a bit scary. Luckily, it looks like it was just caused by condensation being trapped under painted vinyl paper but my mum has decided to get someone in to decorate it since it'll need to be papered again (the damp bit was discovered after some accidental paper rippage when I was taking some shelves down). My wrists and shoulders and neck are sore from the scraping; hopefully I will finish it tomorrow afternoon.

Last Wednesday I had to babysit Cara in the evening while Teresa was at the preview of the Art Fair and my dad has a wine tasting. It all went pretty well; I'm glad Cara is such a cool kid really. We watched Legally Blonde which she liked a lot (the choice was between that or Charlie's Angels 2 which are honestly the only films I own suitable for her to watch since she's already seen Hairspray and Better Off Dead), then I got to catch a bit of The Apprentice before we flipped over to Desperate Housewives. Apparently Cara and my dad are Desperate Housewives fans and Cara gets to stay up late to watch it every Wednesday night with him. When Dad came in from the wine tasting I had to fill him in on what had happened, then we watched the first episode of Life On Mars which I'd brought him over to watch before I got a taxi home with Izzy.

On Thursday I was out at Jenna's sister, Rhianna's event which she had to hold as part of her event management college course. Rhianna and the other girls organising it were pretty frazzled because they were having technical problems with the venue (it was like a faux horseracing night involving DVDs of horseraces which you could bet on, it was different and kinda cool despite the problems they were having). As well as Jenna, her friend Laura was there and Katie and Kwan who I hadn't seen in ages! Jenna, Katie and Kwan were all fairly stressed as they have hand-ins for their post-grad course at the Art School coming up mid-May, We're all looking forward to having a birthday night out for Jenna at the end of May when they don't have as much on though.

I spoke to Ben the other day on msn to tell him Mastodon are playing here soon. I also invited him to come to Alec Empire next Sunday with me and Ava. I think it should be really good fun and he seemed kinda interested though didn't say for sure that he'd go. He's become a terrible emo after breaking up with his girlfriend the other week (the Twiglet - none of us liked her much tbh) but since I've never been all that sad about breaking up with anyone so I'm not really very good in these situations, I just hope if he comes out and has fun it will take his mind off it for a while.

And now here's an enjoyable video for you all. Go Rahzel, Go!



Methinks I need to take some pictures to post soon.

Ashes to Ashes starts back on Monday!!! I love Doctor Who and my mum has done a frankly admirable job or getting me obsessed with Spooks but when it comes to BBC drama series, I fear Ashes is my one true love. It's 'cause Gene Hunt is in it, innit?

OM-freakin-G! The ATP Nightmare Before Christmas festival for this year was announced today! My Bloody Valentine are curating it this year and the bands that have been announced so far are: Sonic Youth, De La Soul, the Horrors, Sun Ra Arkestra and E.P.M.D. Obviously its not as good as last year's inital lineup (Mike Patton and The Locust - I doubt anything that sexy-awesome will ever occur again) but even so, I'm already mega excited!

Me, Izzy and Ava were over at my Teresa and Cara's place yesterday for some belated Easter celebrations (Teresa uses any excuse to crack out the pizza and party sausages). Me and Ava were both shattered since we had both been out the night before - me to the Devil Sold His Soul gig, then when I got back at about midnight, Ava went out to the Garage with Julia. I then stayed up until about 4am watching The Science Of Sleep (which I'm thinking of getting Jenna for her birthday) and messing about on the net. Later, when Ava came back home at 6am, she decided to wake me up and start telling me about her night out. I think I properly got up at about 10am in a not-so-refreshed state.

( More About Yesterday + Pictures )

Ava: JP2 was a good pope, wasn't he?
Me: Yeah, he was a goodun.
Ava: What did he do again?
Me: I don't really know but we used to think he was a robot.
Ava: Oh yeah...

The new pope kinda freaks me out, partly because he looks like an evil teddybear.



Me and Ava has been watching and discussing Doctor Who so far all day. Now we must tidy though.

The last few days in the house have been spent stripping wall paper off the hall in preparation for the walls being re-plastered on Tuesday. The decorating company my mum is using's gimmick (or Unique Selling Point, as i should say) is that they are all Polish. The company is actually called Polbuild or something similar. I don't really care mind you, so long as they do a good job. They apparently will be starting work at 8 o'clock on Tuesday morning - oh joy.

I got my septum pierced last Thursday! I would post pictures but I'm healing it with a retainer in though so there is nothing to see. I suppose I won't really even know if it looks good until I change the jewellery in it in about a month and a half. It didn't really hurt to get done (that's what everyone always asks, isn't it?) - more of a quite strong stinging sensation (like that when you get an injection, but a bit worse) and major watery eyes but not outright ouchy-ouchy pain. Feels weird to have it up there but I'm getting used to the sensation as the days go by.

I was out with the cronies (Kmac and Jenna) on Saturday night. We went to a gig at Cassette first as I'd been wanting to go see Corpses for a while now (Corpses features members from another local band, The Poisoning who boke up last year), plus the gig was free which was a major selling point. The first band on, Celebrity Love Crisis, was a bit dull and repetitive, Corpses were actually fairly similar to the Poisoning, though maybe with slightly more proficient musical skills and the last band, Secta Rouge, were not bad too - though we did leave during their set. Afterwards me and Kmac went to the Classic Grand, though by the time we waited on a taxi with Jenna (she had work the next day) and with the clocks changing that night, we were only actually there for about an hour. Still, was decent fun though.

My new socks have made my feet all black. Still, that's Primark quality for you.