Watercooler Sub Zero: Ice Capades

Ooh good, I like naval gazing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/totheendsoftheearth/images/photogallery/340x255/anderson.jpg

his topcoat is styled perfectly for gazing of the naval

I quite liked the Alien Eye On Ebay episode with the dead bloke following them around, most of the rest I've seen have been a bit rub.

I liked the alien eye one too. I also really liked the one where Suzy came back. Fairies one was OK, the one about the couple with the makeshift abbatoir was appalling, and I can't even really remember the rest.

(I haven't seen this week's yet)

Just don't do any spoilers, please... I still haven't seen a single episode.

Should I have another mincepie? Why not.

I'm baking some more on thursday night so we can have some on friday (also to send as xmas presents to people etc.)

This was a very shallow sugary mincepie.

I wonder where my mum hid our mincepies! We bought two packets. I liked the Taste The Difference Brandy flavoured (coz, you know, I'm an alcoholic and all) but my mum perfered the ordinary kind which I found too sweet.

But of course home made ones are the BEST OF ALL!!!

Mince pies and Christmas puddings and Christmas cakes are HORRIBLE!

(I don't like raisins and sultanas and currants and things like that, which kind of takes the edge off Christmas eating for me)

I used to think that way, Ailsa. I *hated* raisins and anything that had them in. I'm not sure what got me over that hatred. Maybe I just outgrew it. Maybe it was Ed soaking his raisins in SO MUCH BRANDY and we all know that brandy makes everything better.

Brandy butter covers a multitude of sins.

I'd rather just have a glass of brandy (don't tell your mother, she'll have me locked up in the Priory).

You terrible alcoholic! Think of your liver! It runs in the family, you know!

Do you think having a bad chest cold would be enough to justify a glass of brandy just now for medicinal purposes?

(I'm pretty sure my liver's irredeemably knacked already))

Well, last nights Xmas party.. (Is this the right thread or should it be the other one? anyway..)

It had changed location/date several times, but settled on a greek restaurant in't stockbroker belt. We'd been told it was Chris Tarrant's favourite place and he often is there. Oh. Right. Good.

So anyway, yep. he is. Now, why should he happen to be there on a given night? He's not doing a standup/cabaret, so he either owns or joint owns the place, or he has some sort of 'I'm a celebrity, feed me for nothing' deal which pulls the punters in. Dafter things happen.

So, anyway, We're doing the usual eating/drinking/dancing/loving (actually, not that last one, went into bedsitland my only home for a bit there) and look up to see CT doing the Conga around the place with many others to "agadoo". Which is what you'd make up if you going to make up something plausible. Add to that, some time later we click that CT's guest tonight is Paul McKenna, and we see him later dancing badly to "Don't you wish your g/f was raough like me" which is almost (but not quite) the weirdest party night out involving celebrities I've been to.

McKenna probably hypnotised them into doing the conga.

These kinds of things just remind me of going to see the caged "celebrities" in the zoo.

Yesterday was PBW's birthday. I did not know that. Freaking Saggitarii, I should have known. Also, he's younger than I thought. Jesus.

'Kinell! HMV can be expensive when things aren't on sale.

£60 for the Doctor Who box set. But, at least I have it in my hot little hand. And it was the last one.

And got a bunch of other CDs, too. Gilbert and Sullivan (Pirates and Pinnafore complete), John Tavener, Lloyd Cole - Donovan and Dylan because I know it's music my mum will actually like, as opposed to just putting up with.

Excellent.

I should rip some of this to my work 'puter first.

Oh, and take the price tags off, even off mine own stuff, so my mum doesn't shout at me for spending too much money. Even though everything that wasn't Dr. Who was massively on sale.

£5 for Bringing It All Back Home! Best Dylan album evah! (If you are not PBW and therefore stupid and irrational on the subject.)

Can I borrow the G&S at some point?

Of course you can. I'll bring it on Friday, in fact.

super super xposty (sorry very busy today)

Maybe it was simply bad choice of words on yr part but if you are simply "glum"...

Yes, bad choice of words on my part (i.e. supermegaunderstatement) and *no* intent to offend anyone. My only point being that for most of my teen and adult life people have commented on or asked why I am depressed (or complained about it), meanwhile sometimes it seems like everyone else and their dog are "on" something.

Now back to discussions of Dr. Who boxed sets...

Yes, my lovely "Original issue CBS vinyl, perfect condition"... (xpost the Bob album)

Oh, are they knocking out the SACD versions for a fiver now?

Kate, mums will always shout at their kids for perceived overspend - especially mine with her fancy 'only schmucks pay retail' ways. It goes: "Ican'tbelieveyoupaidsomuchforthat IsawitforabuckatCostCo."

Ailsa, brandy, honey and fresh ginger in a glass topped up with boiling water is STEP ONE to shifting a cold. STEP TWO involves a trip to an Indian food outlet: think Jalfrezi or Dupiaza - somehow chili, garlic and onions help too. I trust you will find this agreeable, or at least more so than sinking a bottle of Actifed.

It's a Sony music 2003 version.

(I had an older CD version, no idea what happened to it. My parents had a beat-up vinyl one.)

x-post

What I don't understand is...

Lloyd Cole - Rattlesnakes (plus 4 bonus tracks) - £5
Lloyd Cole - Rattlesnakes Boxed Version - £10

Like, what kind of mug do you think I am?

I completist mug, one of them has a box!

Suzy, I had the remains of a lamb dopiaza for my lunch, having had the largest takeaway in the world delivered on Monday in an attempt to feel better.

A quick trip to the drinks cupboard shows that I appear to have finished off the brandy. Bah. I have some honey rum left instead, so am now drinking that. Oh noes, I am a terrible alky!

Are you drinking by yourself?!?!? YOU WILL GO TO ALKYHELL!!!

How can this be a best of Donovan if it has no "I Like My Shirt"?

Chiz!

I like the sound of Alkyhell

A lot of xposts:

My theory on raisins is that they have been dried up for the express purpose of soaking up liquid and that if that liquid is booze then so much the better.

I started to like raisins about the same time I started to like olives. I think it might be a tastes maturing thing. Or it might be the alkyhell.

Aaaah, it's too bad I can't wind up my mum by telling her that Donovan was a better lyricist than Dylan. I used to get great amusement by winding up my sisX0r's mum by telling her that. She was such a Dylan freak that she had this massive fuckoff terrifying Lionel-Ritchie-In-Hello-Video style clay bust of Bob Dylan in the spare room. It used to terrify me because with its massive larger than lifesize mole. Anyway, I used to tell her that "First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is" was heights of lyrical abstraction that Dylan could never hope to scale.

But then she gave us her copy of the box of A Gift From A Flower To A Garden. And my sisX0r and I sat up all night taking speed and eating M&Ms and we covered the cover of the box with M&Ms the same colour as the picture until we had a giant Chocolate Donovan. Hence the song of the same name.

Aaaah, happy times.

I had an odd dream once that as there were too many people called Mark in the band we had going, I volunteered to change my name to Donovan Leech. That way it would be less confusing.

I used that as a nom de poetry (or whatever you'd call that) for a while.

Lloyd Cole - Rattlesnakes (plus 4 bonus tracks) - £5.

That was the first cd I ever bought, back in 1986 and it cost me £13 back then.

I plan to celebrate Christmas by pouring brandy on my muesli.

brandy on my muesli! I never thought of that. I shall have it for breakfast tomorrow. Since my mum already thinks I'm going to alkyhell, I shall have fun going.

Man I had forgotten just how GROOOOOOOOOOOVY Donovan is. Why let hippie parents have all the fun?

Aaaahhh! Mellow Yellow! This is the first song I ever learned to play on the guitar - my dad taught me when I was about 4! He held the fingering and I strummed.

He's got the most hilarious accent this side of a Jesus and Mary Chain song - i.e. pretending to be west coast Dylanamericana when he's really from Glasgow.

Nick used to get compared to Donovan all the time.

I still hate raisins but have never met an olive I wouldn't eat by the kilo.

Ailsa it is now time for CURRY UPGRADE. Go for Thai red.

On Monday I had OMG proper Mexican carne asada burrito after which my entire family cussed me out for going to "the ghetto" to get it. Minneapolis has a LARGE Mexican population (who have all moved Norte over the past decade) and the bigot wing of my family assumes they're all undocumented unless they are practically brandishing papers. FFS. I'm kind of sick of this attitude my immediate family have developed where nobody in America does an honest day's work except for them.

I am going back to said "ghetto" (actually a heavily gentrified former Sears building) at least once every few days until I come home.

Curry only really works on a headcold with bad sinuses. Doesn't really work on chest colds or the dreaded chestycoughcold. (Not a Russian assasin, even though it may sound like one.)

Nick sounds nothing like Donovan. Donovan way cooler.

I thought Nick, along with Neil Tennant, was always getting compared to Al Stewart. Donovan's not the first name which springs to my mind.

HMV's market position, as far as I can tell, is that it always have everything but you have to pay through the nose for it. Which means that it must love Christmas, where walking down the street seems like a tough proposition.

Kate, has anyone ever recommended Hugh-Laurie-in-medical-drama House to you?

TISSP tried to make me watch House. Not as good as CSI.

(Though TISSP was getting off on just how formulaic it was.)

"Jennifer... Juniper! Lilacs in her hair..."

This is just the... *wettest* music ever.

He's like Twee on heavy LSD.

I'm waiting for the goo goo barrabajackal.

Got another 10 songs before I get there. Haven't heard it in *years*, honestly. I'm having such joy rediscovering these songs.

Kate's going to buy a hurdy gurdy.

Hurdy Gurdies do look pretty darn cool...

http://www.hurdygurdy.farmcom.net/parts2.jpg

drone...drone...drone...

Anything with drone strings is always going to be a hit with me.

I'm not saying here that Nick sounds like Donovan, only that he has been compared to him (although he's been told he sounds like Bowie, Gainsbourg, Al Stewart and a dozen other people so all this is ear-of-beholder). N. glimpsed him in a Paris hotel a couple of years ago but was too shy to approach.