Lyndsey and Paul have kittens. We are jealous. They need names. Suggestions?

Flickr seemed to think it would adjust the contrast of my images. THANKS FLICKR!

Haven’t taken enough photos recently, but wanted to take these for a while.

I get the impression that Paul is really enjoying this. I’m so pleased with how it’s coming on. We’re 4 hours in now – still got the inside of my upper arm, then detail and shading. I am not looking forward to the inside arm – hopefully if I get my pain appetite up, I’ll be alright.

Yes, my arm is an odd colour. It hurts.

I’m misplaced. That woman has no trousers on. That guy spent too long doing his hair. The music I like is too loud. I spat in someone’s ear trying to tell them I couldn’t hear them. £7 for whiskey?! I don’t pee in gutters. Don’t put that picture on Facebook. Charlotte’s probably in bed by now. I can’t be bothered to walk home, but I’m not paying for a taxi.

Just a few of the criticisms.

I’m not sure how many people will have this problem, but I did so this will remind me.

PHP 5.3 release, for some reason, does not like my default install of iconv. Firstly, I made the grave mistake of failing to point PHP properly at an install in /usr/local/, so replaced my OS installation of iconv with a new one. This was all well and good until I started opening apps that needed specific parts of OSX’s default iconv. So, an OSX restore later, we’re at square one. PHP keeps telling me various crap when I’m trying to compile that it didn’t work with iconv because it’s the wrong version, but would fail during make because it couldn’t find the correct symbols.
…

I was always going to watch this movie. Against my better judgement, I had to. The first was one of the most astoundingly ambiguous and engrossing movies that basically anything namesaking it is work a look-in. I read essay upon essay, I did the website treasure hunt, everything I could find. I came to my own conclusions, not about how time travelling “works”, but about why Donnie was given the powers that he was given. However wrong my conclusions were, they totally made sense to me.

The original being so open to interpretation, and that you could make any interpretation work are why you can’t just give some hack free reign to do whatever he wants with it!

As much as it may tempt you, seriously don’t be taken in by S. Darko. It’s a waste of your life that you don’t have the commodity of time travel to undo.

I’d be remisce if I didn’t say something, so here goes. The one thing that annoys me about this whole thing is how most people have forgotten that they wanted to burn Michael Jackson at the stake a couple of years ago. I know that it’s always nice to remember the great things about someone, but it’s a little too much hypocrisy for my tastes.

This leads me onto my next gripe; “innocent until proven guilty”. This is all well and good, but with the fashionable crime of paedophilia, accusations stick and even if you’re acquitted or the charges are dropped, you still have that label. I’ve always thought there was something wrong with the accusations, and it seemed a little like people trying to capitalise on Michael Jackson’s high profile and, maybe, a relationship that might seem inappropriate from the outside (again, the popularity of paedophilia (when I was at school, it was being gay) has basically made any adult->child-that-isn’t-yours relationship inappropriate). The settlement can look suspicious from both sides – yeah, it can look like a payoff, or it can look like a bunch of people getting what they came for.

Anyway, I’ve waffled on more than I’m qualified (or informed enough) to, so I’ll just say that Michael Jackson was a phenomenal pop star/singer/dancer, and how he ended up is incredibly sad no matter who he was.

Strawberries are the best fruit. I’m not a huge fan of the taste, but look at those things. They’re so cute!

I’m not sure what this really says about me, but it should keep me in vodka for at least a week.

I’ve wanted to get a sleeve for ages, but the question was what. I had a few ideas in mind, but after Charlotte started visiting Paulys Tattoo in Southampton, I fell in love with a type of tribal tattoo that I hadn’t really seen before. I basically associated tribal with any kind of pikey-looking crap and it didn’t appeal. Paul is something of a specialist in this area, and all the patterns and designs on his arm and wall made me decide that this was where I wanted to go with my left sleeve (I’m going to go for a more new-skool, bright coloured, floral thing for my right sleeve – yes, I’m already planning it!).

Being the talented guy Paul is, I had no trouble just telling him to do whatever he wanted, so he freehanded some ideas onto my arm this morning, then started jabbing away at me. Incidentally, this is one of the very few occasions where it’s ok for another guy who isn’t your boyfriend to shave you.

He’s about two thirds done on the line work (about a fifth overall) and I fucking love it. The way he’s incorporated by bass clef and the ideas for detail and my upper arm are just what I wanted. If you’re looking for something similar, definitely check him out – he’s an amazing artist, and a really good bloke.

EAT THE PAIN!

I can confirm that elbow-bisecting line work FUCKING hurts. I ate a considerable amount of the pain for this.

(Expertly taken by Charlotte, who can barely lift my camera!)