The Hero of Time...lapse

A few hours ago, I was wondering what would happen if I actually put some effort into face painting. Like, a proper piece of art kind of effort. Well, needless to say, I set about my task, with my ever faithful and reliable (not) software...



And here is the final product. Alan, you better appreciate this!

A whole comittee of Scary Clowns

Yesterday was the Gravity Vomit elections. Traditionally, we all go out on a massive social dressed as scary clowns! This has to be by far the coolest fancy dress I have ever gone as. Karys, you would be proud! Anyway, this is the way we elect the new comittee. All have a few drinks and do some speeches and votes. The positions on offer were that of Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Equipment sec, welfare sec, social sec.

The whole thing started with Chair. I ran for chair, and so did my good friend Scott. We presented ourselves, gave a speech, took questions, and went downstairs to the main bar while everyone voted. We both wished eachother good luck. The votes were counted by 2 ex-chairs Rich and Kate, and we were summoned back up to find out who would be chair...

It was...

A tie.

This confused everyone as to what to do... both me and scott got exactly 50% of the votes each! According to Rich, this is the first time this has ever happened in the history of GV. So what now? So we took some more questions from the GV members. We touched on our previous organising roles, passion for juggling, budgeting, where we want to take the society next year and other things. Then we had to go back downstairs while everyone voted. We were summoned once more, and the result was...

Scott! by a margin of 1 vote! (a record for the closest ever contention of chair)

Fair play to him, he deserved it. I'm sure he is going to do a brilliant job. Anyway, due the informal way in which we elect comittee, I was able to run for Secretary, which is essentially Scott's right hand man- "vice chair" if you will. I ran against Ieuan, who was the previous secretary. So once again, stiff competition because he did such a good job. However, I won! Me and Scott are going to be awesome!

As the evening moved on, the other roles were elected. Tom Smillie was elected treasurer with Matt Kist another very close second. Matt got Equipment sec later on though, so we still get him on comittee! Leo and Faye made welfare and social secs. So once everything was completed we were left with our awesome new comittee!

We were then bought tequila shots by Kate as some kind of handover thing, nice! Leo clearly thinks it was very tasty judging by his face!

So here are a whole bunch of cool pictures from the night!
Thornton looking quite happy for being so scary!

Myself, looking as scary as I can!

Leo is going to be an awesome welfare secretary- he even brought an amazing cake that he hand-built! He had us won over after one bite.

Myself, with our new treasurer, Tom.

Owen, Juggling with his eyes closed! (its not even a clever blink shot, he was actually doing it)

Everyone applying scariness in the bathroom before we went out. Nice face Matt.

Kenny, Tom and Kelly. It is worth noting that many of these awesome pictures are taken by Kenny (middle), he is our unofficial GV photographer, and is amazing behind the lens.

 A lovely picture of Ieuan and kelly.

Lets not forget Rob Price, who went considerably overboard with the fake blood! Ronald McDonald has just been hit by a Bus, carrying bricks and knifes.

Finally, one of the coolest shots of the night. All you photo people out there, check it out. There is just something about it that made me want to put it on the blog.

The Wade Kitchen blog

This post is being broadcast from wade's kitchen. Aw yeah.

Also, Ricky has now come up with a new "pinehouse" style word.

"Condame"

...

The worlds most pathetic beard

Hey guys, sorry I have not blogged in a while- don't worry.

First and foremost, I would like to say that I am pleased that I have my friend Wade back again! He went off the beaten track for a while, but has been through some kind of epic epiphany since then. I wish him all the best with his pursuits!

Secondly, and considerably less important- my beard. I have now not shaved for 11 days. That is a record! however, I am unsurprisingly disappointed with myself as usual. I thought that since I am too embarrassed to keep it for much longer (damn you ricky and your beard competition) I will take a picture now.

Dont get me wrong, I am aware of the fact that this is by no means impressive (damn you Alan) because of sparseness and colour (Damn you genetics). However, this simply serves as recorded evidence for when I do get a beard and look back at my blog and realise how stupid it is now. Also, I believe congratulations are in order to Alan, who finally got the moustache he deserves.

7 hours of my time well spent

Yesterday I was doing my Lab report. Until somebody suggested we played monopoly.

Yes, there were many jibes about how the game takes too long to play properly, and how it is colloquially known as "monotony", and how the only eventual outcome of the game is everyone giving up or getting bored.

However, we began anyway. At approximately 11:30pm. Our new found friend James from next door joined us for the fun as well. The game started off slowly, with everyone except for myself ending up forcing everyone to not have a full set of houses and refusing to sell. My tactic is usually to buy the cheapest sets of houses while I can, and just build them up and start sucking money out of people early. This strategy usually works well if you are playing with people who give up after over 2 hours, so that way I usually win.

However, I was playing with 2 mathematicians and a business student.

An hour in, I knew I had made a mistake when all the other properties were out of reach because people were trying to sell them on for absurd amounts like 2 and a half grand for 2 properties. A further hour in, and some of us were staring bankruptcy right in the face, but some of us were raking it in. Phil for example managed to acquire the green set and built 3 houses each on there. This was almost immediately effective on our money- he may as well have just built a pipe from our wallets into his pocket.

Well, 4 hours in, it was getting late. I said, "you realise now that we have come so far, nobody is allowed to leave until the game finishes according to the relevant rules." I suppose we were all doomed really.

At 3 in the morning, I decided to cook a pasta bake to sustain myself.

At 4 in the morning, Phil brought his duvet and pillow down. He still had only put 3 houses on his greens, and said he 'simply couldn't be arsed to build more' (even thought that is the purpose of the game)

We all knew at one point it had to finish. As the sun began to rise for the next morning, James Rooney went bankrupt. I shortly followed due to my lack of worthwhile income.

After heated debates and a LOAD of banter, the game was finally over. AT PRECISELY 6:23am.

Even though we had lectures in the morning, playing monopoly for 7 hours flat was time well spent. I can now honestly say I have participated in a monopoly game that has reached completion. Beat that. I have never seen a monopoly borad like this, where pretty much anywhere you land charges you over 1000 pounds. It was insane, really.

What was ironic, was that we had a toss up between scrabble and monopoly to start with. I said that monopoly takes almost exponentially longer to do than scrabble, however Joe disagreed and said "oh come on, Scrabble takes just as long."

I don't know what type of scrabble joe has played before. You also may notice that Joe attempted to hide himself from every picture, because 'his hair wasn't ready'.

In the words of Phil, "man the f*** up Joe!"

The morning Report

Well, the program crahed in the middle of the night, so I got nothing. But the fact that nobody noticed it was a plus. All I have to say is, trial run successful.

Roll on this evening.

Detective Inspector JD

Recently, our most prized possessions have started to go missing in our house. We all know that theft is unacceptable and it has caused some of us great loss.


Thats right, someone is stealing our food from the freezer.

Tom was distraught when he discovered his chicken had vanished. Sam was upset too, when his Pizza disappeared. (Mind you, he was more upset by the fact it was a "waitrose" Pizza- not one of those common pizzas). Since then, amongst the list of missing items include eggs, yoghurt, another pizza and a packet of mince.

After some rather grimy detective work in the bin, me and Tom could not account for the disappearances in terms of the possiblility of people confusing the food for their own and accidentally eating it.

We came to the conclusion that wherever all this food was going, it was definitley leaving the premises. There was no evidence of used packaging, no witnesses of people taking it, and only an unconfirmed report by Oli of hearing people in the kitchen at night he didn't recognise.

We have no evidence. Our resident tutor is now involved, but I don't want to risk my food being stolen any longer. As a result, I have decided to " bug the kitchen". Some of us suspect a particular member of the house to be the culprit, but for privacy I shall not mention any names. But hell, I'll find out somehow.

Tonight I am setting up my camera and concealing it. I shall time lapse the whole night until 7:30 in the morning. So on a limb, I hope to shed some light on the matter. I will let you know in the morning how things have turned out, but until then... you have the right to remain in the fridge.

Oh and by the way, my red-eye in the photo of me looking all detectivey is in fact my spy laser. So there.

A Long post, for a long weekend. (part 1)

Hey guys. sorry about the fact that for the last few days my blog has been somewhat entertainment free, but I have good reason. For the first time, Sophie came up to visit me for the weekend! It was so nice to see her, because, well, she's awesome. I feel I have to split this blog into a number of parts so it is not too daunting to read, and I hope that makes it better. However, I must warn you, this is nothing short of a novel.

CHAPTER 1: WELL THATS JUST 'MASSIVE ASS'

Well, on thursday, I was greatly anticipating the arrival of a certain Sophie Ackers the next day. As a result, I had tidied my room for the first time since new year, washed all my clothes, hid the dead body of a decapitated badger, washed my crockery and cutlery, and even made my bed. However, me being a Chemistry undergraduate and all, there is never nothing to do as far as work is concerned. As it stood, if I wanted a free weekend to spend with Sophie, I would have to complete my lab work and hand in a full lab report by friday at 1:15. Just to let you know, Sophie's train arrived in the station at 12:56.
I said to myself, OK, this is do-able. Just work hard and get it all sorted out. And that was exactly what I did. I did all the lab work, and at 5:15 in the evening, I was confident that my results would stand up and I would not need to attend Friday's laboratory session. All that was left to do was complete the lab report.
I went home.
I had dinner. (Jacket potato with cheese, pepper and salmon trimmings)
It was now 7:45pm. Lab report is still do-able for tomorrow. A few minutes later, I decided that I should start my report. I opened my bag, and what should I find?
A PEN.

But that was all. NO LAB MANUAL.

I must state that my lab manual contains not only all my results from my experiments, but all of the calculations I had prepared in order to analyse everything properly. They weren't by any means easy.    *FLASHBACK*    I suddenly remembered being at my locker, and calmly placing the manual on the top. *END OF FLASHBACK*    Never having needed the labs at 8 in the evening, I took the risk about running there and trying to see if it was open. I made it! But it was locked.

I only heard the sound of a solitary hoover in the distance somewhere in the building.
I muttered to myself, "...massive ass...", and left for home.

CHAPTER 2: I DON'T WANT YOUR THUMBS UP

After my massive blunder the night before, my alarm alerts me to the presence of a new day at precisely 6:01 in the morning. (why not go for the extra minute?)

I get up, brush my teeth and head out to the lab. (I know, they're open at 6:30. I was like, "good, but why not 8pm? huh? huh?") I picked up my lab maual from where I had left it and trudged out to the library. I walked in through the automatic doors and saw one of the night-time staff were just leaving. We made eye contact. I pointed at the lab manual and shook my head. He looked at me and gave me a F***ING THUMBS UP! Not what I need. I sat down and worked solid until half 11 in the afternoon and gave in my lab report, finally. I checked my wallet and many a metaphorical moth escaped. Looks like I was walking to the station.

Looking back on it now, It was a very nice day. In fact, the first actually decent weather we have had on the hill in quite some time. This made the walk nicer, and somewhat erased the memory of the sarcastic thumbs up in the face of despair. I made it, having felt thoroughly refreshed from the journey.
I waited at the station until Sophie's train arrived. She came through the gates, visibly shaken from the journey (seriously, she has a fear of travelling alone on trains) and we hugged and exchanged a few little 'I missed you' kisses (they are one of the best kinds).

We made the journey back up to campus as Sophie described to me how her and her mother got lost on the way during an open day, ended up in claverton (3 miles east. I know.) but still beat a lot of the prospectives because of the horrible traffic situation. Never a better use of the word WIN.

CHAPTER 3: ...AWKWARD...

Well, needless to say, me and Sophie have spoken on webcam before. Therefore, she had already met a few of them. This takes something away from the whole 'first impression thing' as you would expect.

I then said to Sophie that now is the time I usually go and practice juggling with my fellow jugglers at the juggling club. She insisted on coming along becuase she wanted to see 'how I live my life' at University. Well, we went. And I juggled a bit. Spoke to other jugglers. But I felt like I couldn't just zone out and practice without neglecting my dear Sophie, who had only just arrived. Sophie started talking to Kelly, one of the members of the club. They quickly established that Sophie could not successfully throw a ball from one hand to the other. On that note, we left early. But hey, I don't base my love for her on the abilty to juggle. That is by no means what I look for in a relationship! haha.



Wow, Its getting late. Well, stay tuned for more on this weekend when I get around to it (it gets better). In the meantime, I have a brief but important post to write on my undertakings this evening.

JD

You should have seen my face

This was amazing, literally having made my day. This word verification thing barely ever spells real words anyway. As soon as I saw this I took a screen shot and came straight here. Maybe broast is just going up in the world and has infiltrated the internet?

I hugged Haggis McLeod and was in shock for hours

For those of you that juggle, yes, thats right, I hugged THE Haggis McLeod.

For those of you who have no idea who this "Haggis" guy is, here is the low down. Haggis and Charlie are a comedy juggling act formed in 1984 by Haggis McLeod and Charlie Dancey. They learned their skills together at the Walcot Village Hall juggling workshop in Bath, England. Their first performance was a busking show that took place on the waterfront of Bristol Docks. Haggis and Charlie performed regularly on the streets of Bath in their early years together, which I suspect is one of the reasons they came to perform for us at our own juggling convention on campus. They have been seen almost every year at Glastonbury Festival and became something of a tradition at the Winchester Hat Fair!

In short, they are both Gods in the juggling world, and have performed all over the world, even in front of 13 million people. And yet here they were, 25 years older nonetheless, performing their famous 7 club routine in front of us Bath UpChuck convention go-ers.

Here they are performing said routine alongside another juggler, Pippa Tee. Haggis is in the suit, Charlie is dressed as the painter. Enjoy!

Juggling video hosted @ Juggling.tv

Not bad eh?

Ok, here is some shoddy filming of them at Upchuck (our convention) a few days ago.



Still got it! James Strutt was wincing all the way through the whipping the newspaper section. However, both of them have lost a considerable amount of hair- especially Charlie.

And for the best bit, my picture with Haggis McLeod. You honestly couldn't meet a nicer man. He was awesome to talk to, however briefly. Soon, I will properly post about Bath UpChuck 2010.