Dan and the less than perfect haircut

Right, today I have finally got round to cutting my hair, eventually my keratin based tendril's had got so impressive, even the Triffid's were becoming to become jealous of what remains of my thinning mop of hair. Soon it will give up and give in to the 'Alsop' gene, which is really just a collective term to the genetic based cocktail of horrors that are: male pattern baldness, Altzeimers, a degenerative back and mental instability. But for now I'm fighting it, revelling in my youth, but for the sake of my safety a needed a cut.

So today a lovely lady popped round for a home visit, which is convenience at its best, and a pre-negotiated sum of £10 was reached, this immediately sounded like a bargain, and I chose to ignore the  girlfriend  nagging pain asking 'how can she give a price if you haven't told her what you want?'
Detail's! I scoffed, it will all be resolved when she gets here... how wrong I was
'So what do you want?' she asks in a sincere yet fairly quizzical tone,
 'told you so' I flaunted at my inner self 'there's nothing to worry about'
'to see' was my immediate reply (because I'm a comic genius), followed by 'but I really want to keep some length' stressing this somewhat (yet foolishly in a casual tone).
 The problem was that this hairdresser had no concept of the term 'some length', in her eyes 'short' was a length, infact any length was some form of length,be it long medium of short as hell, and this gave her a free reign, and so my hair is the antithesis of what I wanted, what I wanted was a nice fringe, long(ish) yet tidy, as is the fashion, what I got was a business man's hair cut, short and 'vague'.
The thing is, I don't seem to have much luck with hair dressers, maybe it that I'm never really sure what I want myself, although in my defence the last 'stylist' I was recommended to, was stone deaf (to my horror) and I had to describe what I wanted through the medium of interpretive dance.
My main issue is when they ask 'well is that ok?' I mean it may be 'ok' but that doesn't mean it's what you wanted, or asked for, it just means 'is it acceptable', infact the only time a hair cut wouldn't be ok is if they shaved ' i fuck babies because i'm a nazi'  into the back of your head or weaved bullet ants into your scalp, and even if you tried to complain they will say things like 'ah well its too short to do anything with now' or 'you'll grow into it'. Yes i know hair regrows, i'm not really that fussed, my hair routinely resembles a roosting site for large migratory bird's, it's just the helplessness that you encounter when you sit in a chair, at uni we used to cut each others 'biff's' and  if they went wrong, well hey there was always beer to drown your sorrows and you relished the notion that you were about to cut theirs..

Stuff I Like

Cyanide & Happiness

Learning through Osmosis, One of the Many Uses for Anime

Ok so recently ive been on somewhat of an anime binge, somehow (don't ask me how) I have avoided becoming some form of cave dwelling creature, surfacing only to feed, but at the same time I cannot ignore the mass of anime i have had the pleasure of watching, in less than a week I've watched the entire series of 'Full Metal Alchemist' (which is bloody magnificent!) including the film (naturally), what has happened as a result however is the insatiable urge to end every ones name with 'san' which is is basically a mark of respect (from what I gather through my fairly non existent, cobbled together misguided understanding of foreign languages) because of the constant use of it (it end's everyone's name basically), in a similar way I have started referring to my brother as 'nee san' not consciously I must add, it just pops out in conversation as a result of the constant bombardment of the word in both outlaw star and especially Fullmetal Alchemist where both of he main characters are well...brothers. I cant't complain, I'm practically learning Japanese via osmosis, (well diffusion technically, as my education has hammered home the fact that osmosis only involves water). Admittedly (like pretty much every anime series I've watched) it gets bloody mental toward's the end, even Hitler join's the party! nothing makes a party like an internationally hated historical figure!
Also it's this week's anime caption....

Context...some things need it

My Dog Sticks his Tongue Out

These are prime!

and my personal favourite...

This is probably one of my most favourite things in the world, party because he looks hillarious, and party because I'm pretty sure he doesn't realise he's doing it :D

Dan's first day of crochet. The Final Cut

Ok this is my days worth of work, I have no real idea how i done this, i just made it all up as went along after getting to grips with the basics :D

i think my next lesson is how to make real things... scarf?

in other news one of my baby mantid's got stuck in a moult, this i probably due to a mixture of cold weather lowering the humidity...sad times, I've stuck ll the others in an insulated box while i figure out a more permanently solution... although I'm limited mainly by the one power point i have in my room, in the most unuseful place ever *sigh*

Progress

Horrah i have single handedly made a poorly fitting eyepatch for stroke sufferers! behold my raw talent!

nk so it leaves a lot to be desired, the stitches aren't uniform, there are holes all over the place, BUT I have made rows which is a start...I hope 

now I have to learn to be consistent and then there are a the double stitches and colour changes to contend with. But in a miss guided kind of way i feel oddly proud, its the labour of several hours of hard sweatshop labour, but there it is :D

I respect old women, and despise meat thieves

That's it, I've taken the plunge, i now am the proud owner  of a 4.5 cm crochet hook and a shit load of wool and all i can say is that i have a new found respect for old women crochet is frigg' hard!!
My haul cost me 2.59 with a free (!!!!) booklet thats meant to make me a pro, and although it tells me how to make certain 'stitches?' it fails to teach me what the stitches actually do... all i want to do is make a scarf or something!

 I've been playing for about 3 hours now and my progress is...well minimal 

i have a very shakey foundation chain, but I can cast on and make my chain on my own now... but if i try to single crochet... well this happens

That's right, an abortion! I'm taing a tea break and having a brief reflection on my dismal performance, and will hopefully, by the very least be able to string a couple of chains together by the end of the day, this is my mission.

Also sainsbury's have apparently had a spate of meat related thefts of late:

 weird...

Nice stuff

I totally love this blog, check it out :D

SALT DOUGH!

I have no idea where the urge came from, but it surfaced with such excitement that nothing would quell my desire  to make some form of creation from the medium that is salt dough. Salt dough is a medium usually linked to poorly formed 'tot sculptures' which beg the question 'mate, seriously, what the hell is that?' a question which is instead twisted and reformed by professionals  into 'sooooo....tell me about your sculpture'. The child involved will then offer an exclamation so lucid that even an LSD seems dull in comparison, after which the child's mother involved would demand that it sits pride of place on the mantelpiece to advertise to any visitors that the child of the household has the artistic ability of a lemon. Bless
Basically i just wanted a play, and i broke Anna's room plaque that her niece made because it was shit I was drunk, so i totally owed her one. so as usual I over stocked on salt (i bought 5 times more than i actually needed)
and used this recipe

SALT DOUGH
1 cup of  table salt
1 cup of water
2 cups of flour

Throw the salt and flour in a bowl, then gradually add the water  untill it makes dough, of it's to sticky add flour and if its too dry add more water...
And I don't mean American cups either, I just mean A cup (obviously the bigger the cup the more you will make)

And this is what I made...

with the dinosaur being my favourite...OBVIOUSLY!
You can leave it to air dry (takes a day or two  or cook it on low heat, what i didnt realise is that it still takes a billion hours on low temp (50-100 Degrees C)  so i did it for an hour and then left it to air dry for the remainder of the time :D

Dinosaurs!

So this week i went to Annas, and revelled in the joy that is a partnership, i'm not one for public affection, but we had a snazztastic time :D
on our travels around the ever so popular tourist destination that is Maidstone, a place renound for for its classy inhabitants, beautiful architecture and pristine river water... well maybe not, but I digress. SO in TKmax we hunted for some suitable winter attire, however after feeling swamped with unsuitable clothing for nearly an hour, i tugged on the rope tied to my waist 3 times and was returned to the the surface.
And then i saw it, its surface distorting the surrounding space, glinting, as if flaunting its brilliance, dancing its seductive dance...

Yes its crude as hell, but it's DINOSAURS FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!!1!!!!!oneone!!!1eleven, admittedly it drawn in a style similar to medieval bibles and for 30 quid I'm sure i could get a decent scientific etching for that, but still it filled the world, for a second with glee of that found only within 5 year old's.

Obviously I am easily entertained and a randomly, well placed dinosaur related object is all needed to make my day, so here i am cheerfully beaming in the fact i have seen this monstrosity of an art piece (i love the grumpy triceratops in the centre of the painting XD ) and i go nect door to hobby craft where i manage to pick up this little fella for a few (3) quid...

A VELOCERAPTOR!?!?!! probably the most badass of all dinosaurs portrayed by film? yes please!
so i pick up this cheeky little gift to myself to entertain me for an hour or so whilst the bird is doing boring degree related follies...
After 15 minuites of quizzical brow scratching, eye strain and a spattering of dinosaur noises i begin to realise that this 'little model' isn't going to be so little after all...its FUCKING EPIC! its man sized!

That my friend's is the BARGAIN of the century!

YEAH ROY!:D :D

Bad News...

Via:Very Demotivational

That is all.

Wait...What?

Wait....what? how do you cruelly obtain wool? Armed Robbery?, pulling it out? , skinning the sheep/llama alive? Claiming to have slept with the ovine's mother whilst harvesting warm fluffy treats?

Also why just cruelly obtained wool from Australia , not every where? Surely if your going to make a group like this you may as well hit as many birds with the same stone (bad metaphor, I know)

I would look into it further but i have an instant hatred of groups like this, regardless of the causes that they endorse...

Also Why is wool never as fluffy as you imagine it?

There is nothing more fantastically awesome to an invertebrate keeper when their insects shed ESPECIALLY when they shed to adult and ESPECIALLY when they are female (more often than not) because females are on the whole bigger, more epic (especially in the case of mantid's and phasmid's (stick insects) ) and are more productive (they make babies) and it is usually much  better to have a high female to male ratio for this reason :D

So when my sub adult female shed to adult and finally earned her wings i was more than ecstatic :D

she looks so much like a leaf!:D  males on the other hand look a bit weedy in comparison having functional wings that spoil the leaf illusion somewhat...
also i love the females facial features...

they just look a bit clueless, like a confused Tusken Raider

Vis some obscenely long blog thing

These things literally scare the crap out of me, but my little leafy is like a raider crafted from marshmallow, with a hint of green ^_^

Also my mantid's have all been shedding too, which means they are happy :D but they show no noticeable difference apart from longer legs...bless

A Household Mystery

Strange things have been appearing of late within my humble abode, Firstly my kitchen was visited by a wandering mollusc, that i have christened 'Norman'

What i love about the appearance of Norman the most is my Brothers reaction to 'Chris there's a snail bombing round the kitchen' in which he replied 'Yeah he was here the other day i just left him to it' I love how my a combination of my brothers laziness and his interest in 'what will happen next' had culminated in letting a snail loose in a culinary setting...how daring.

The Mystery Currently however is that of 'The Dolphin'

He's been her for nearly a week now, and we have only just realised no one has a flamin' clue as to where he has come from...he's just appeared and has become a resident in the Alsop household, but he does look ever so happy with a bottle of Radox protruding from his rectum.

Also the Bread Fairy has visited us :D HOORAY!

Anime, Rediscovered With a Hint of Rant

Bonjourno! ect
Of late I have been reveling of my long lost delights of anime, something i havn't really seen in a non hung over state for a very long time, so long ago infact that the last time i ever really watched a decent bit of anime was on cartoon networks channel 'CNX' which i don't even think exists any more, a channel, with a little nurturing from my malaysian rooted friend Gideon that formed the basis of my 'japanorama' section within my soul.

I re-watched some old school anime in the form of Trigun and a Dash of Outlaw Star, which although are very old now (10 years at least) are still a decent watch. I then started on the epic saga that is 'Bleach' Bleach is in short pokemon for teenage boys where 'pocket monsters' are replaced by entities that inhabit 'soul slayers'(i.e Fuck off weapons) which are owned by members of soul society (in effect Ninja Grim Reapers) and for about 60 episodes I feasted on a banquet of awesome characters, epic fight scenes and Animation which would have Tony Hart smiling from the heavens.

Also Bleach is the origin for the 'leek spin' meme that went round a few years ago, it blew and subsequently made my mind go Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! in a satisfied moment of realisation



I have also deduced that animé is roughly 20 BILLION times better in Japanese with English subtitles, there's something whimsically beautiful about watching anime in japanese, it feeds the soul and strains your eyes, but in a good way, ,in the same way that aching arms are an acceptable consequence of holding puppies within ones arms. I just feel cheated when I watch them dubbed in English, however that could be because of the terrrible voice actors which inhabit the arena of translated media.
Also sometimes Translations are...Well Brilliant...

heh heh...willy :D

The Only thing that angers me regarding animé is the stigma attached to it, there are two main types of of people that wrongly dismiss animé :

People That Believe That if its a Cartoon it Can't Possibly Be of Any Value to Them
 This includes my mum who refers to any form of animated media as 'The Muppets' which actually doesn't make much sense anyway, as the muppets aren't actually animated. The thing which angers me the most about this mentality is the absolute close mindedness of these people, surely the content of media should be rated by it's content, not in the method chosen to portray it, as long as the method used to display the 'story' is effective in doing so (i.e does it justice). Animation allows all kinds of things to occur within a series/film that would otherwise be costly/difficult to do in live performance. And for that reason its foolish to assume that 'cartoons are for children' and 'Theatre is for Toff's'. Judge the content BEFORE you judge the method chosen to portray it


The 'Isn't That Porn' People
This generally includes Men that drive white vans, or teenagers that soon will, Basically...No that's Hientai, and yes although the same animation style is used, animé isn't any more erotic than the average BBC Drama, well maybe ITV... That's like saying 'Theatre is porn because it uses real people'...again method of portraying a story doesn't necessarally indicate content...


Obviously its not for everyone, but i think the main issues are based on the anime series that people have watched have not engaged them, or that pre-existing expectations hinder the enjoyment and acceptance of animé as a form of 'proper media' put i forgive them....