The Miracle Before Christmas!

It's Christmas, it truly is!
We've a new addition to the family!

Twas a cold, foggy night last night. Or evening. Or day. I don't actually know the full details. Come close though, my friends, what I do know is this... (from what was retold to me):

So homegirl Chubby's (obviously not real name) brother was out last night/evening/day when he saw a scampering in the road. He went over to check what it was... a two-toned ball of fur, rodent like but with no tail - why, it was hamster!

After trying to capture it, but to no avail, he asked some lads from the swimming baths (I don't get why or how, either!) they managed to corner it, then went into KFC to get a chicken box (I shit you not, friends) to put it in.

The next day (today) I got a phone call in the afternoon from homegirl Chubby telling me this sad story of the abandoned hamster her brother had found, and did I want it?

Now, its been about two months since Tootsie (our other hamster) died. The house is sort of empty without her. This fella would have died of cold, been run over or eaten had it been left to nature, and it is Christmas: I said yes.

'Tis the day before Christmas. Some call it Christmas Eve Eve. I decided there and then on the phone to call it Miracles (pron.: Mih-rah-klees, as in how you say 'Hercules')

And that's the story of how he came to be.

He's in our sitting room, in his new home, by the fire. Oh, did I not mention he is a he? O he certainly is - you heard the phrase "hung like a hamster?" He defines it, they're huge! Huge in proportion to his tiny body, that is.

When you see him, be sure to give my orphaned friend a friendly greeting, because he is the Miracle of Christmas!

"Don't be alarmed, Louis..."

"I think I may be Jesus!"

Oops, I started this post but didn't finish it.

Took the quote from Family Guy. My hands are so raw from breakin' my hands have blistered. They look like stigmata to me. So I'm going to show some nuns and make them cry.

Have I lost my love for writing?

I was updating my CV yesterday and adding new, updated, relevant bits that weren't in there two years ago. I've never had to use a CV to get a job thus far in life, so old details of how I went to sixth form matter not!

I was writing some details about how I'd like to be a journalist one day and the quote goes something like:

"I'd like to be a journalist because of my love of writing..."

Yet while writing that very sentence it took me severy minutes to write exactly why. Maybe my mind was exhausted from working so very hard all week (coursework retakes).
I simply could not bring words to surface and type down!

I mean, when was the last time I blogged? After having a pear cider! How am I going to get any page views from blogs I've been reading the past few months?

I'm still hyped as hell about stuff in life still, I just haven't put time aside to write it down. I must lose not my love of writing. Or I'm buggered next semester in my course. *Gulp*

In praise of Swedish pear cider

Kopparberg is where its at this summer, coming to a cider aisle near you, hopefully. Or Lloyd's Bar.

No doubt fruity drinks aren't that masculine, but a glass of this over ice on a sunny day is the refreshment every man needs!

Drink Kopparberg! *thumbs up*

Run down the shops, get the Mail On Sunday, please.

Like I'd ever actually buy it without a good reason!

But what do you know, yesterday was only the Sunday when *symbol* (that is, Prince) released his new album as a covermount, absolutely free. And guess what? Everyone, even those who don't read TMoS has bought up every single copy of the paper! What a downright dirty trick just to get people to read your paper, you bastards!

Had I not bought the Times on Saturday we'd be lacking a TV guide right now.
Anyone with a copy of the album that isn't a fan of Prince, can I please have your copy? Thanks.

Some summer resolutions

Just a couple things I want to get done over summer, in no order.

• Eat breakfast. As in cereal, not a cup of tea and toast.
  
• Send out my CV and get work placements - maybe at Nuts. Why? Because I'd only really get one chance to do it before I [hopefully] become a serious journalist!
• Get extra work thus earning wages to buy, I dunno, a car, so I can drive.
  
• Get my windmills SORTED.
• Go busk for money with said skill in my b-boy repertoire.
  
• Take hayfever HEAD ON! No more blocked, crusty noses!
• Wean myself off caffeine.
• Drink smoothies more often, wasting food less.
  
• Get bigger pecs. My stomach clearly outdoes them, as some of y'all know.
• Read the paper. More often.
  
• Go to a museum.
• Go to the theatre more than once.
• Keep up uni-related reading.
  
• Retake any papers/modules I have to.
• Do something for charity, again.

Let's see how that stands up by October, shall we?

Our new arrival

It is a she, and she doesn't have a name yet. Yes, that's a poo hanging off her coat.

She's a piebald. Apparently that means she has two shade of colouring or something.
I see it as she looks like a cow print!

She's teeny-weeny-tiny and when she wakes up I'm going to play with her.

The survey concept

You know those stooooooopid bloody surveys you get in emails, now on MySpace?

Damn "questions about you" things that are so pointless because they only stay there for 10 days?

Well, I'm thinking of doing one every month, and keeping it on my blog to see how things change from month to month, as to keep a record of how I change under circumstances which I may not be able to control.


Yup. I shall be keeping a record on here of them. And if you don't want to read them, just choose another blog to read that is actually intellectually stimulating. I'm not really filling them out for you anyway!

Enjoy the read as I post my first one soon.

Flav's thought for the day

"Nothing is as sweet as a woman's love
Not even one's tea can taste sweet after an extra sugar"

-Dave Flav Esq.

A little somethin' somethin' for free. Consumables.

I can't believe the consumerist society we live in.
My belief is that if I'm going to invest good money in something, it means I'm going to indulge in it.

So if I'm going to buy something expensive I want to get the most of it.
Consider - if I see a pair of jeans I like, that cost a bit more than I'd normally pay, I'm wearing those jeans as much as I can!

Some people I know buy a clothes nearly every, wear them a few times then buy more. Why? Because we have too many consumables in this world. We can feed and clothe the world several times over if we just shared.

Part I:

Well, let me say, I was sickened to see the staff at **a coffee chain** (trying to avoid libel!) clear the shelves of their refrigerators into bin bags as they were closing. Paninis and toasties, all with a day or two left until expiration all being thrown in a bag, fully packaged. They can't even decompose that way.

Well I had to speak up didn't I? I say I, I was in fact with Mateo and Chubby. We had to speak up.

Walked out of the place with two - TWO bin bags of paninies and toasties, some with two days left of shelf life.

At home, we had a damn feast for dinner!

30-odd cheese melts are in our fridge. Breakfast, lunch and tea. SORTED.


For the record, at £2.85 x 30 = £85.50's worth of sarnies!

Student to the max!

I implore all who read this to go to coffee chains at closing time and ask, just ask them what they're doing with their sandwiches/toasties at the end of the day. If they're chucking them, rescue them for being disposed, because unlike Benjy's who give their sandwiches to the homeless at the end of the day, they're not going anywhere except the bin. And that's a waste.

Hear me now.

Part II:

For some of us, right, it's been a while!
Well I was going through the old, ahem, condom selection in my 'nookie box' and realised that a fair few of my stash have expired!

So I've had to dispose of these consumables. It's truly heartbreaking that they couldn't have been used for better means, but hey, from what's been learned to day - when things pass their expiry dates, they have to be thrown away.

Around the place are condoms lying about after being snapped like elastic bands.

Nice.

Remember guys, make the most of your consumables. They're made for consuming, sure enough, but consume them well!

In memory of... Cookie

Cookie went to hamster heaven, it was believed, last night in her sleep.

Despite that I checked her around midnight last night, she was found this morning not moving in her plastic yellow house.

She was known, to us and others, as a bundle of joy to our lives, always keeping us entertained and capturing our attention with her vanity and gymnastic ability of being able to walk around upside down on her cage bars.

She was buried by the rhubarb in the garden this afternoon at around 7:30pm. The dull weather reflected the mood.

Now when I make toast, I have nobody to give the crust to.

Cookie, you will be remembered!

Cookie baby ill?

Cookie (with an 'ie'), our pet hamster hasn't been well the past week.

She's 'baby' Cookie because in human years, you're still a baby at 2.
At age 2 for a hamster you're old age, but I don't want to think of our baby like that!!

Normally she's perky, up and about her cage, having a good old sniff at passing people, gnaw at her cage bars, having a run on her wheel or performing gymnastics on her ceiling. Recently she hasn't been moving too quickly.

Its hard to tell what's wrong with her. Is she ill? Hibernating? Or did she fall and hurt herself?

She's just lying in her cotton-padded yellow plastic house and not moving much. When she does, she has a limp, but its hard to see which paw she's having trouble with.

She finds it hard to move about her cage. The other day I found her slumped over her food bowl and using her mouth to scoop up any food she could into her pouches while her front paws lay limp.
When she saw me she perked up a bit, but she tried getting in through the small window of her house, her footpaws kept failing her so I had to scoop her up and put her in herself.

She felt a bit stiff, like her spine is hardened into that position, but her paws didn't make a scramble for terra firma as they normally do when you pick her up.


I wonder what she thinks? Can she think?
Its only her that knows what's wrong with her.

When I come along and stroke her, is she thinking "fack off, what you doing, let me be!" or does she appreciate me lifting her about so she can drink and eat?
Perhaps she feels like those sad scenes on TV when good-hearted people try helping an OAP, but they resist help, they just want to do it themselves? And I'm the interfering human trying to help a rodent because we're the superior species (humans always interfere: We found a hedgehog in our garden so we gave it some milk! - do hedgehogs dine on milk if it wasn't for human interference?!).

Well, she served her time in her more active days giving us lots of attention and performing for us, so now its our turn to spend lots of attention on her.

While in the living room we keep a vigil over her.

Baby Cookie

I WON SOMETHING!!

I won it last night (well that's when I checked the email that said I won)

I won a large promotional poster of Natural Born Killers from a student competition site.
And it came this morning in an enormous cardboard tube.

It was bloody quick too, I only sent my address off at about 10pm last night.

Hooray for me, I hardly ever win competitions!

Me, me, me!

The Easter holidays have given me so much ME time - its as if to say all my hard work has paid off! I just hope it has, in exchange for a high percentage mark!

Partly to blame for so much time to myself is the movement of comrades going on holiday during this time, which would seem disheartening at first, but its worked out fairly positive for me :)

All my email have been corresponded to. My summer work application was emailed to as many contacts at the council I could harass to read. My interview for my voluntary journalism project has been secured thanks to my uni placements officer. I have a work interview for my aforementioned summer job (I only really had two major emails!)

This makes my future look exceptionally bright. Around 100 watts, were we talking of a comparison with a light bulb. Enough to live with, not quite floodlight brilliance though.

While on the subject of work, I have been working like a biiitch on Saturdays, and with fantastic rewards too in the form of time off at the end of the day. I don't mess about, I want my summer work and I'll do anything to do it and not enter another less fulfilling profession!

Work brings me to money, where I scoured everywhere to reach the final £3000 needed to fill up my ISA for April 5th. I emptied all my pennies into the money converter in Sainsbury's (£9.56 it came to- they take 8pence of every pound you put in) it came to!
Anyway, I got my interest returned to me, but I don't feel it was the advertised 5.30% advertised, so I'll be writing my bank a formal email! Why leave the zero at the end of it, too? Any mathematician will tell you you don't leave zeros after the last number in decimals!

All this success has gone to my head a bit.
My latest problem now is I'm becoming a bit of a narcissistic. Thanks to the excessive working out going down for my dancing, I'm becoming even more defined than I was before. I'm catching my reflection and going "Damn, is that really MY body?!" This is all minus any sort of gym membership too.
I'm looking to buy some tighter fitting sleeveless tops for summer.

So that's ME done. Me, me, me.

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Coursework: Survival on Red Bull and broadsheet newspapers

I've spent too much time doing coursework. Of course, there is never too little time doing coursework, because coursework should be perfect, and that requires a lot of time.

Nevertheless, I have put untold hours into rushing the coursework. The time of year I don't think I ever work so hard.

Have I plugged my newsblog for journalism? http://news-for-frank.blogspot.com. Its fortunate I can blog, because this was the easiest piece I've had to do.
It did mean reading the papers and scanning for the stories I was going to blog about, so I've survived off reading the happenings of the world in the papers.

So I've also been up til the early hours, I'm talking about 2am, and it has a devastating effect on my beauty, because I've looked a state for the past week. A funny hot water cycle also means I haven't had a shave either.

To add to this, I've been doing the dance training I do every week.

• Sunday (this is why Red Bull has been mentioned in my blog title), Red Bull came to U.D.S to promote their breakdance classes and they brought two crates of cans, so I took as many as I could.
• Wednesday I was tired. But I packed some Red Bull that I took on Sunday, and I was on some other shit with memorising the [first] routine. I mean, normally at a professional level I have trouble remembering counts, but I actually did alright.
• Matt gave me the sound system for Thursday's class, and its a heavy fucker. Hauled that thing home.
• Thursday, ha! A deadline for my newsblog, so I headed to uni to hand in my cover sheet. All the way to Ealing, with the system over my shoulder, and we never had to hand in a cover sheet. I hadn't read the email properly. So I had to haul it all the way to Staines via public transport. Later that day my shoulders and calves (why?) were aching me.
• Friday was another deadline and the previous night I had drunk the remaining Red Bull to stay focused! I'd like to take the opportunity to thank my film studies tutor for extending my deadline (and the Academy for this speech...)

On the way home I was at the paper stand in Tescos deciding which paper to buy with my remaining coupons.
I don't like Tescos much, as some of you may know, but I knew I could use expired newspaper coupons at the self-service tills which would result in a loss from Tescos, so who cares? It backfired though, and the till said to "seek assistance" on the screen. It wasn't the voucher because they're identical in every way to the ones in date. Procedure, I guess.

Some foreign-accented assistant came up and typed a code into the till, but then told me it was cash only. I only had my card on me and 20p in my wallet. I couldn't believe my luck when she took 5pence from the till and paid the remainder of my cost! I killed two birds, using expired coupons and a further 5pence out of Tescos' oversized pockets! Beat that! I'll probably have Tescos on my back now, ha!

Anyway, I flicked through it (The Guardian) and onto G2 magazine to see Peaches Geldof had a whole one-side page to her name! Why is Peaches preaching?
I'm annoyed because of having the contacts/agency and fame she has being the daughter of Bob, she isn't the one going through a journalism degree to get her name in the paper! Why is she doing it? And why am I reading it?!

The footnote said she was covering for Andrew Chancellor. At present I am getting into reading columnists so I can identify with each of their styles and opinions. Now, off the top of my head I can't think who Mr Chancellor is, but his surname alone suggests he is a man of high profession!

I never said the article was shit though. Yes, I agree with what she is saying about MySpace. But Guardian readers don't need to know about what a celebrity's daughter thinks, because Guardian readers, in my mind, are not active MySpacers! Her thoughts are better identified to being commissioned by Mizz, or a tweenage publication.
I don't care much for her dog either, because the way she wrote it too girly, and men read G2 as well!! Getting a dog is not responsibility, getting a goldfish when you're five is, because at five the carvings of responsibility are drip-fed to you by your parents trusting you to take care of another creature. Responsibility is not putting your puppy on the table in Subway - why do you think people look at you!?

I just get so mad when I see stuff like that. You're just 18 and you're writing for the Guardian. I don't have time for this!

Where the blogs at, Dave??

Truth be told (as I'm about to tell you) I been damn busy with allsortsastuff.

Firstly, I been doing the Shadow Shift rehearsals. Which, I cannot lie, are bloody hard. I mean, for someone who has taken up dance late in life, the routines we're doing are daunting. They're sophisticated. But I want to get there.
On the plus side, being involved is fantastic, and I like that I'm being trained, not only in routines and the Shadow style, but also improving or learning new skills. Link funkercising. Hittin', poppin', lockin'. I wanna be there!!

So that take lots of mental energy, focusing on that.

Next I've been travelling all over to get extra break dance training in, whether getting down during a U.D.S class at a school or going to Westminster University to train with Damien.

Importantly, and I haven't written this in any order, there's uni.
I really, really want to make every one of my lectures. Even if they're at 9:00am and I have to wash and go to bed early, and wake up at 7:00am to get through the school-rush traffic. Which, sometimes I don't make, but at least I'm trying. Thanks to our lecturer, Clare, and her 15-minute deadline rule, I get the hell in.

So to put some pressure on myself, I'm trying to involve myself in as many extra projects as I can, like doing some voluntary nationwide study. Yep, not enough hours in the day, not enough days in the week!

Then there's the ridiculous hours I choose to live when not doing those things, usually not being conscious before midday, and being up until the latest hours. Sigh.

Oh, and there's my uni news blog. news-for-frank. Do check and leave comments.

C'est la vie, putains!

Shadow Shift audition - the result

I forgot to say, I made the audition of Shadow Shift and have been invited to the first audition taking place within the next fortnight or so... trouble is, I don't believe that actually means I'm in.

No doubt its fantastic news, but my belief, upon reflection, is that I made it in by my teeth, based on my breakdance freestyle thanks to my well-practised linking of footworks and freezes.
How do I know? I asked some of the judges what they thought of my new move (patent pending) and they thought it was tight.

So that's where it stands at, until the next mysterious phone call comes in...

Shadow Shift audition

This honestly had to have been the most intense dance session I had ever done.

Obviously it wasn't a session, it was an audition, but hey, how many auditions do I turn up to?

Firstly I don't know what to say, I have mixed feelings on how it went.
The turnout turned out to be quite a few people - the studio was packed with about 40 auditionees. I knew, because I was told, that it was best to get the best view of whoever was teaching I should try and be at the front, but that was hard because it was so tight.

How each routine went varied. I'll mention names, as they'll be big stars someday and I want people to believe I knew them before they got famous!
Keiran's routine I felt was the easiest to pick up, it had a flow from one eighth to the next, in my mind it made sense.
Matt's was something different. Despite only ever really knowing his dance style and technique I found it hard. Fragments of each part of it stuck, while others chipped away.
The result was I froze when it came to performing it second time round on camera. I don't actually understand what happened, it was some devastating shit.
Damien's routine I was waiting for with baited breath, because at least doing breakdancing I'd be able to pick it up and add my own style to it. I feel I breezed through it.
Finally was the freestyle, the moment of truth to see how we'd all do put on the spot.
I was a little concerned about my uprocks, as I often am, but once I took it to the floor I was in my essence.
Get down, 6-step, custom swipes© (patent pending on whatever the move I discovered is called) linked into a chair.
It was this that I feel saved any chance I may have had as I was one of the minority of breakdancers there, and I did it exceptionally well.

What happens now? We'll find out soon.

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Thamesmead Rock Concert

Oh yes. Another fantastic show under my belt (when I wear one).

I tell you something, the kids at that school are pushed to get them where they were today. I don't remember being encouraged enough to get myself pushed out and be seen (or heard).

Aside from us, who were dope, and our set went very well, thanks for asking, I haven't been taken back by a school's talent in a while. Not to defame, but Bishop Wand was only okay ha.
What I'm saying is such a variety was put up on that stage, I couldn't believe it. Some guy (I forget his name but I can amend this later) was drumming with all sorts of drums, tins, household objects, you name it!
A teacher was up, singing!
Friends and groupies were gathering around the stage for the bands!

MAN! I wish I chose the right secondary school. Too many emos for my liking though. LOL

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Broke, but well dressed.

Top London designer shops shouldn't do January sales!

£10 a t-shirt is NOT healthy for my wallet, and I will admit openly that I did spend over £50 in Criminal Clothing! T-shirts that usually cost £32 each are hard to resist once their price has been lowered!

Now I have not much money for a while, but I am dressed incredibly fashionably!

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