recepticle=<b>Friday, May 31, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>that's right - i'm one bad motherfucker</b>
<br />holy shit. holy <b>shit</b>. i just checked the stats for my site. now, these stats are provided by my host via <b>webalizer</b> (can't be bothered to link it), which gives massively extensive stats, but it's all a bit confusing. not only is this site hosted here, but obviously if you go up a level, then there's my proper company work site. as well as this, there's also the entire bulletin board for <a href="http://www.leicestermusic.com" target="_blank">leicester/music</a> hosted on here, so it's not the easiest of things to discern which hits are for which section. obviously it's all broken down to top 10 urls, entry & exit pages, search terms etc. etc., but it's still all a bit general. anyway, i just checked my stats. yesterday, i received <b>111,044</b> hits. which makes my total for this month <b>178,629</b> hits.
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<br />now obviously a lot of this is down to the fact that the <a href="jedi">jedi quiz</a> graphics are stored on this server, and every time someone sees them, even on someone elses site, that's counted as a hit on mine, but it's not <b>just</b> the quiz. i've also had an absolute <b>shitload</b> of hits from harry potter and christian bulletin boards. r0x0r! and my usually empty inbox had 9 emails in there this morning! w00t!<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 3:00 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77184556">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>counting the pennies; people are idiots</b>
<br />i was going to blog this yesterday, but i forgot about it as i got carried away with my new <b>harry potter killed jesus</b> investigation.
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<br />mumfy took her final first year exam on wednesday. she's been revising at home because certain uni flatmates have been driving her nuts, and so she borrowed her mom's car and drove up for the exam the day before. fine - no problems there. then, waking up on thursday morning, and someone knocks on her door and says "um... i think your car's been clamped.". and sure enough, it had been. she was obviously a bit upset by this, and had no idea why it had happened, but apparently you need a permit, even if you're just going to park there for a day or two. so, she had to go down to the office and a pay a fine to get her car released.
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<br />now, you're probably thinking "oh well, it sometimes happens, i guess" but let's look at it this way; emily drove up just to take her exam. <b>hundreds</b> of students were doing the same thing (apparently a couple of other people had been clamped at the same time). considering that it's a half-empty car park, don't you think that the university might have taken this into account? of course they did, and i'm pretty sure that's why they did it; it's a rushed, confused time all over the place as everyone is taking exams, there's a massive car park with free spaces - let's <b>clamp some of those motherfuckers</b> while no one notices.
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<br />and it doesn't end there; while they're doing the clamping, they actually <b>park vans across all exits to the car park</b> so even if you realise that you've made a mistake, and you want to park in the pay & display, you're <b>trapped</b>. then, as emily is paying the guy at the office, he sighs "i hate taking money off young people like this,". now honestly, if it were me, being a pacifist and all, i would have pulled out some ninja-jedi sonic boom moves and defeated him, tekken-style. or, more likely, i would have gotten angry and been a whiney, sarcastic little bitch about it. listen, you stupid old man - if you don't <i>like</i> taking the money, then.fucking.<b>don't</b>.
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<br />maybe i'm trying to think of it as a far-fetched conspiracy as a way for the university to get more money by scamming the unwitting students, and maybe it's all innocent rainbows and light - we'll never know. there's one way to find out; i'll find that old man that took mumfy's money, and perform the <a href="http://www.hippie.nu/~caniche/Crucio.html" target="_blank">cruciatus curse</a> on him. harry potter rules! i want to be a wizard! i especially liked it when he drank animal blood and then killed his parents!
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<br />that's actually funny if you read my last post.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 11:01 AM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77178788">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Thursday, May 30, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>um...</b>
<br /><a href="http://girlsarepretty.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">this girl is nuts</a><br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 3:57 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77144640">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>would you like some lemon & lime with that piece of advice, mister?</b>
<br />oh i can see this becoming a big issue with me; thanks to new visitor <a href="http://moongirli.livejournal.com/" target="_blank">moongirli</a>, who commented on my last post, and gave me a great link; <a href="http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/5012/5012_01.asp" target="_blank">look what happens to these girls when they read harry potter</a>. oh god, i would love to meet that bob guy. and i also found on the same site, some <a href="http://www.chick.com/catalog/videos/potter.asp" target="_blank">slight bending of the facts</a>, and some frankly <a href="http://www.chick.com/catalog/videos/kids.asp" target="_blank">made-up quotes</a>. i'm pretty sure one of those quotes is lifted from that article i mentioned in my last post on theonion.
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<br />the level of offence taken to harry potter simply astounds me - i knew that heavily religious people were mostly nuts, but this is absolutely fucking crackers. apparently, harry potter books contain very accurate information about the occult world, and how to perform spells, and the ingredients needed for potions. how would fucking christian know if it was accurate unless they a) tried it themselves, or b) had a witch-friend that could verify the information? the comment about 'your kids visiting the local coven'; i didn't know we had a local coven, but now i'm going to try very hard to find it, and ask the resident witches and warlocks if they've dropped the <a href="http://www.satanicrituals.com/bible.htm" target="_blank">satanic bible</a> by anton szandor lavey in favour of the harry potter books.
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<br />i really, <b>really</b> want a religious nutbar to comment on this. it would make my day.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 3:49 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77144336">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Wednesday, May 29, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>fucking religion</b>
<br />sorry if you worship any kind of god-like figure, or you are an active member of any church, but this is my blog, and i post whatever i like, so nuts to you.
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<br />ok, i <b>love</b> the harry potter books, and i frankly can't wait for the next one to come out. i've read all of the previous 4 books twice, and the fourth book i've read thrice. that's three times, to those of you born <i>after</i> chaucer published his works. so when i find out that christians all over the world are freaking out and burning harry potter books because of their promotion of witchcraft and encyclopedic content of satanism, i laugh. "ho ho ho" says i, because it's like the beatle-burnings in the 60's; thousands of people take offence to a lennon comment taken out of context, and people burn their records, excommunicate people from their church if they listen to the beatles, and the ku klux klan nail beatles memorabilia to burning crosses... but they had to <b>buy it all first</b>.
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<br />so anyway, i emailed a devout christian who had published an article online about how harry potter is evil and the books promote satanism and it's all against nature and god. i don't know <b>why</b> i emailed him - it was just a spur of the moment thing, but it was a pretty long, well thought out email, and in fairness to this guy, his weren't the usual bible-bashing ramblings of a loony; he had actually researched his case pretty well. what he wrote was still complete bollocks, though. you can read his reply to me <a href="christemail.html">here</a>.
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<br />for the most part, he quotes my email to him directly, but he starts off talking about a 'quote' made by jk rowling to the london times that i had mentioned, which was completely falsified bullshit. how do i know? well, two reasons, number one... well, <i>read</i> it:
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<br /><b>'i think it's absolute rubbish to protest children's books on the grounds that they are luring children to satan,' rowling told a london times reporter in a july 17 interview. 'people should be praising them for that! these books guide children to an understanding that the weak, idiotic son of god is a living hoax who will be humiliated when the rain of fire comes, and will suck the greasy cock of the dark lord while we, his faithful servants, laugh and cavort in victory.'</b>
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<br />and the second reason i know it's fake is because it was written by <a href="http://www.thonion.com" target="_blank">theonion</a>.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 3:52 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77104324">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>fux0r</b>
<br />yesterday, i spent 11 hours designing a new front end for <a href="http://www.leicestermusic.com" target="_blank">leicester/music</a> (that still links to the old front end), and now i don't think i even like it. have a look at the new front end <a href="http://www.leicestermusic.com/2index.html" target="_blank">here</a>. any comments are appreciated, even if you hate it. i've got another idea based around that design and the old one that means i won't have wasted an entire day of my life. *sigh*
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<br />no band rehearsals this week either, because damo has got his first year exams, and i know how much emily has been cramming for hers. on that note, emily is in her last exam of this year <b>right now</b>, but it's not much use wishing her luck, unless the moderator has one of those projector things hooked up to his computer and he's looking at my blog and <b>not</b> lesbian porn.
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<br />now i've got to track down the number of a bodyguard firm bloke that wanted a website in english and chinese, but obviously forgot about it.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 10:38 AM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77095671">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Monday, May 27, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>being immensely clever. you know, for a change.</b>
<br />emily rang me at 11am this morning, at which point i'd only been asleep for about 5 and a half hours. so when i drifted back off to sleep, my mobile slipped out of my hand and onto my pillow. when i awoke *cough*(2andahalfhourslater)*cough* again, i'd been lying with the side of my head right next to the phone, and since then i've had a tingly feeling right in that spot on my head. i'm scared, quite frankly.
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<br />i've been trying to be oh-so-clever with 3d studio max, and incorporating my rendered stuff into flash for a new front end to <a href="http://www.leicestermusic.com/" target="_blank">leicester/music</a>. i'm making some slight progress, despite the fact that i have absolutely no instruction manuals whatsoever, and 3dsmax is <b>immense</b>. but i spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to actually animate things. i saw roo do it, but he's a 3d rendering god of some sort, and does it without even thinking in 2 minutes. anyway, when i've finally figured it out, i will post it here because the new leicester/music front end will be sexual chocolate on a licking stick.
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<br />i'm going to my grandma's for a cup of tea now. <a href="http://www.emotionalhardcore.com" target="_blank">rich</a>, read <a href="http://www.mellowed-out.co.uk" target="_blank">mel's</a> journal you foolish child.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 4:50 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77027968">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>it's all just vectors, man</b>
<br />i spent the entire weekend indoors, at emily's, playing on my <b>playstation 2</b>. i cannot forsee a time when i won't be typing that in bold. she was revising, while i was shooting people and driving recklessly in <b>grand theft auto iii</b>, for pretty much the entire day and night on saturday, with a repeat of those events today (today, to me, being sunday). when we finally did venture outside, it was for emily to drop me back home, and as we were driving, i totally lost all sense of reality and saw everything as just rendered vectors. that's how much this birthday present has taken over my life.
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<br />but now it's 3am, and my house is cold and it doesn't have my girlfriend in it. i was tempted to ring her up and get her to pick me up again, but i'm pretty sure she's asleep and might not be entirely up to driving. who else thinks i should <b>really sort out my fucking car?</b> me too.
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<br />on a <a href="http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&q=lawrie" target="_blank">google search</a> for '<b>lawrie</b>' this site came up 121st. which isn't so bad. although i have yet to top <a href="http://www.mellowed-out.co.uk/journal" target="_blank">mel</a> ranking pretty highly for '<b>fat labia</b>' (or something).
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<br />on that note, the new design to mel's journal is a-rockin'. if she redesigns the rest of her site at the rate she replies to her emails, it should be done by the time she graduates from university. <img src="smileys/indie/shocked.gif"> <b>joke</b>.
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<br />i'm <b>so</b> off to bed now.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 2:13 AM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,77007527">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Friday, May 24, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>so, you think your kung fu's pretty good, eh?</b>
<br />in the first week of june my parents are off to new york for a week. since they didn't have the decency to at least coincide this with my birthday, i intend to take full advantage of the situation by having
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<br /><b>a)</b> possibly a barbeque, and
<br /><b>b) </b>more than likely a <b>tekken tag tournament</b>
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<br />muah ha haaa... emily advised her parents that an excellent present for me, in light of my new <b>playstation 2</b>, would be <b>tekken tag tournament</b>. and my god was she right.
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<br />so, anyone who reads this, and everyone else that i shall ring shortly, you're <b>all</b> invited round to my house just as soon as the parentage up and leave, and we shall have some <b>mighty tekken carnage</b>.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 2:11 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76923632">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Thursday, May 23, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>i'm a ninja! it's my birthday! i'm a ninja! it's my birthday!</b>
<br />almost 12 hours after i completed my <a href="jedi">jedi quiz</a>, and spammed a bunch of people across the globe, i'm awake again, and having my actual proper birthday.
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<br />money has been the main gift from everyone, because they don't know what to buy me - which is fair enough, because when they ask, i never know what to say. a dvd rom drive please, grandma? nah. but anyway, all of this falls by the wayside because, i don't care who you are, but
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<br /><center><b>my girlfriend is the best girlfriend in the world</b></center>
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<br />that's right. emily bought me a <b>playstation 2</b> and <b>grand theft auto iii</b> to play on it. how i laugh in the face of doing any work now. i'm going to take an extended work sabbatical, and my company will probably die, but who cares? i've got a <b>playstation 2</b>.
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<br />thankyou, princess mumfy.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 1:38 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76881558">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>i r0x0r! i fucking r0x0r!</b>
<br />oh yes indeedio. aside from the fact that
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<br /><center><font size="2"><b>it's my birthday</b></font></center>
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<br />(but more on that later, since it's only <i>just</i> my birthday, and i wasn't actually born until 8:45pm) i have also achieved a personal milestone in web design technology... i have <b>made my own quiz!</b> how fantastic is that? and now i am about to spam everybody with this news, and force them all with guilt to take it and post it on their sites.
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<br /><center><a href="http://www.gaijindesign.com/lawriemalen/jedi" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.gaijindesign.com/lawriemalen/jedi/hansolo.jpg" width="285" height="123" border="0"><br>:: how jedi are you? ::</a></center>
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<br />that's right baby!<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 1:27 AM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76863660">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Tuesday, May 21, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>sometimes my cleverness astounds me so much, i'm stupid</b>
<br />um.. apologies to mel, who commented here twice today, and to myself, when i commented earlier; i was trying to be a clever bastard with my comments template on <a href="http://rateyourmusic.com/yaccs" target="_blank">yaccs</a>, and somehow i deleted the last 2 or 3 comments. which is a shame, because comments make you look popular, and now i look like a sad web-muppet who's blogging for one.
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<br /><center><b>my daily pill dosage:</b>
<br /><img src="images/pills.jpg"></center>
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<br /><b>the big fat white one:</b> ecstacy (enriched with calcium and cod liver oil)
<br /><b>the 2 small white ones:</b> new cocaine tablets (laced with ibuprofen for a pain-free high)
<br /><b>the little green one:</b> slug repellant (aids the relief of blocked sinuses)
<br /><b>the little dark red one:</b> viagra (with added multivitamins and iron)
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<br />i also made me a stortrooper, which i will find a permanent place for later.
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<br /><center><img src="images/stortrooper.gif"></center>
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<br />and so did mumfy.
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<br /><center><img src="images/mumfytrooper.gif"></center><br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 6:56 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76808070">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>aaaaaaarrrgghh!</b>
<br />omfg - the pain in my eye... i hope that jets of pus come streaming out of it any moment now... anything to relieve the <i>pressure</i>.
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<br /><a href="http://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=709">top ten things that samuel l. jackson should say in episode ii</a>.
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<br />other than that, i'm just waiting for friends to be friends again.
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<br />my <b>eye!</b><br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 2:28 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76798681">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Monday, May 20, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>tax? i don' pay no steenkin' <i>tax</i></b>
<br />i just got a letter from the inland revenue today that quite literally said "what the fuck have you been doing for the past 2 years?". ah. it seems that my previous employers <a href="http://www.stayfree.co.uk" target="_blank">stayfree</a> neglected to tell the tax office i existed. indeed, stayfree didn't tell the tax office much of anything. it's not like i would have paid any tax anyway, on my sometimes-we-pay-you-sometimes-we-don't wages scheme. and it was lovely, calculating that, given my own company's profit for the last fiscal year, minus costs, i made about £12 a week on average. huzzah!
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<br />now what does this say about the inland revenue; i receive a letter from a 14 year-old who wants to do work experience with gaijin design, and she encoses a stamped, self-addressed envelope for a reply. the tax office, however, cannot even be fucked to frank the envelope they send to me - i've got to buy my own bloody stamp just so they can (probably) investigate me for tax fraud.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 2:28 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76757469">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Sunday, May 19, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>oh yeah...</b>
<br />before i forget (i only just realised, looking at the date of my last post), it's my dad's birthday today. he won't read this, because the old git has gone on holiday to some tropical island where everyone eats fish. so,
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<br /><center><font size="3"><b>:: hapi bifdae daddoo ::</b></font></center><br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 5:36 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76727092">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>we value our customer relations, and would appreciate your feedback</b>
<br />that's right - i've got <b>comments!</b> huzzah! this means that i will know exactly how many people just don't care enough to leave a message for me. was that enough of a guilt trip? how about this; <b>it's my birthday on thursday</b>. i hope to get an intro to this site up in the next couple of days, too.
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<br />oh yes, and i wrote a song today. i got mightily pissed off last night, and got a lovely bout of insomnia (part inspired, i'm sure, by the pain i have in my eye), which lasted until about 6am. when i woke up i was all monosyllabic and totally unresponsive. when i got home my sister, before my machine has even started up, declares that she <b>needs</b> the internet. fine, says i, and storm off to have a shower. when i come back down, not only is she online, she's online on <b>my</b> machine, while playing punk mp3s on the family computer. so i just grabbed my guitar, went into my bedroom and wrote a song, start to finish. i haven't done that in <b>so</b> long. i was playing with a chord sequence and chorus i've had for ages, but i can't put anything to it. this was still the case, and ended up writing a totally different song with a title that was sort-of inspired by <a href="http://www.mellowed-out.co.uk" target="_blank">mel's</a> last journal entry.
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<br />right; now i'm going to publish this, and then comment it. yay!<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 5:32 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76726971">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Friday, May 17, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>*sigh*</b>
<br />hmm... well i visited <a href="http://www.environ.org.uk" target="_blank">environ's site</a> today, and it's really quite nice. everything has been recoded in php, including the online store... and of course, i didn't do it.
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<br />for those of you who don't know, here's the environ story: i was in a bit of a slump around august last year, and while scanning the papers, i saw that environ were looking to get someone in to redesign their site, so i applied. i turned up at the interview, proceeded to impress the shit out of them, and subsequently got the job. so after a bunch of fucking pointless meetings, where they started sketching out the heirarchy of the site before even deciding what they were keeping and what they were dumping, i started designing some stuff. after initially agreeing to my sketches, then then said that they didn't like what i'd done. so, being the clever fucker that i am, i made them <b>sketch out on a piece of paper</b> what they wanted. i then went away, spent weeks and weeks designing, honing and refining this menu system they'd sketched (which, incidentally, was basically a rip-off of <a href="http://www.ralphdog.com/main.html" target="_blank">ralph dog's</a> menu system - which they said they didn't like...).
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<br />so, after a couple of months have passed, and i think that <b>finally</b> we're getting somewhere, they turn around and say they don't like the menu system, or the page designs. i had to choke back the urge to rip his more-conservative-than-tony-blair tie off, shove it down his throat, and then sellotape his eyelids shut and push biros through them into his eyes, twisting them around and around, and then hammering them into his brain with his 'investor in people' award. now, i was told that they hired me because i was the most creative of all the people they interviewed - which is a good thing, right? <b>no</b>. after a period of silence, they call a meeting, and show me some templates designed by a guy who they interviewed, but <b>didn't get the job</b>. why didn't he get the job? i'll tell you why - because <b>i did</b>. so why are they paying this guy <b>more money than me</b> to do my job... which, did i mention? <b>he didn't get</b>.
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<br />so i sit there, looking at these fucking atrocious templates (and i'm not just saying that... they were seriously craptastic), getting angrier and angrier... and then i realise why this other guy got to do it, and got more money... he was 40, had a degree, and was a lecturer in graphic design. now, can anybody tell me the main difference between graphic design and web design? that's right; they're <b>two completely fucking different jobs</b>. other than the fact that you work on completely different media, use different applications altogether, work on entirely different resolutions, and <b>don't even use the same fucking colour schemes</b>. meanwhile, i'm 23, have no degree, and i'm not a college lecturer. so no matter how good my work is, i guess all i'm seen as is a jeans-&-t-shirt clad dosser.
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<br />anyway - it's my birthday on thursday. use the contact form to <b>send me a birthday email</b>. if i don't recieve at least 5 birthday emails by tuesday, i will be putting a pop-up exit console on here, so every time you leave my site, it will prompt you to wish me a <b>happy fucking birthday</b>.
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<br />sometimes, when i'm angry, i swear more.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 3:13 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76660251">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Wednesday, May 15, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>*feels humbled*</b>
<br />oh yes indeed. i visited a couple of sites today, and they impressed the crap out of me... so much so, that i vowed to redesign gaijindesign <b>and</b> <a href="http://www.leicestermusic.com" target="_blank">leicester/music</a> after seeing these sites. the reason i ended up on the first one was because, apparently, a band from florida ripped all the email addresses from the band listings on leicester/music, and then spammed everybody to download their mp3s. i was personally quite flattered by that. and on this bands site was a link to a site called <b>supergreg</b>, which isn't there anymore, but links to a <a href="http://www.leedungarees.com" target="_blank">lee jeans site</a> which is very pretty. look at all that bouncing! and the shadows on the lettering conform to the angles of the 3d shelf! excellent. i wonder whether they did that as an animation, or whether it's calculated mathematically? you know, just to be clever?
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<br />well, what could be sadder than me admiring virtual shadows? i'll tell you what - i'm presently hacking into the <a href="http://www.luthorcorps.net" target="_blank">luthorcorps</a> intranet. don't know what luthorcorps is? then you should <b>watch more smallville</b>. everything's encoded in flash, so all i do is decompile the crap out of it, and see where it's making it's calls and password comparisons to, and then bust it's ass open.
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<br />i've now had a couple of emails from people saying that i should put more crap on here, and i really want to, but the thing is... i don't know <b>what</b>. i thought briefly about hosting a <a href="http://www.sifl-n-olly.com" target="_blank">sifl & olly</a> webring, but then decided i didn't really know how to start. by the way, sifl & olly are two socks that have their own tv show. i've seriously considered a lawrie game, but that would take me aaaages to do, and would probably drive me nuts. i want something that's going to make my site <b>world famous</b>, like <b>lego porn</b> but, you know, original.
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<br />and is it just me, or does <a href="http://www.vesperalley.com" target="_blank">vonda shepherd</a> piss everyone else off too? ah fuckit - ally mcbeal has been cancelled anyway - no more of <b>that</b>.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 11:18 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76595173">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Monday, May 13, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>superman is a super man</b>
<br />warner brothers, upon release of the series <b>smallville</b> issued their "no flights, no tights" credo. just like it says on the tin, clark kent is growing up in smallville and is still discovering his powers, so the ability to fly, and thus, any need of an tight outfit with a cape, is pretty much out of the picture. how do we know this? well, if you watched <b>lois & clark</b> or, as it was called over here <b>adventures of superman</b>, you'd note that clark realised there was a need for a superpresence in metropolis in the first episode, but didn't want to compromise his own identity. so, he went home to mom and dad in smallville, and mom made him the infamous outfit.
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<br />and all of this was taken into account with a <i>fairly</i> neat tie-in to the prequel-series <b>smallville</b>. apparently, it's only been about 4 years between clark leaving high school and going to work for the <b>daily planet</b> because the <a href="http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/smallville/torch/home.jsp" target="_blank">school newspaper</a> is produced on an iMac (unless lois & clark is set ever-so-slightly in the future). however, clarks parents appear to have aged at least 30 years.
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<br />anyway, the point of this post was not to reveal how very very much i know about superman. no - it was this; i watched superman 3 yesterday, and not only did i not realise that lana lang (clark's friend that he fancies in <b>smallville</b>) was an already established character, but that annette o'toole plays lana lang in superman 3. the super-neat tie-in here is that annette o'toole plays clark's mom in <b>smallville</b>. at first it was like "oh cool - see how they did that?" and then it was like "oh wait... so that means that the christopher reeve superman is trying to get it on with his <i>mom</i>?"
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<br />and even <b>that's</b> not the point of the post... the point was; did anyone see <b>smallville</b> either yesterday or on thursday? because lana was about to split up with whitney (who is a boy and not a black woman) because she realised that she had feelings for clark, but she only realised this and decided to do something <b>after</b> clark decided to take a risk and sort-of express his feelings for chloe, who (he only just found out) has feelings for him. which was <b>so</b> obvious. so anyway lana's like "whitney we have to talk" and then whitney's like "*sob sob* oh man my dad croaked it" and then lana's all like in her mind "shit now i can't split up with him because that sux0r" and then they're at the funeral and clark, even though he has an umbrella and is superman, he's getting soaked in the rain, looking at lana in this kinda deep, unfathomable way, and lana's looking back at him, and then chloe does this little upset sideways glance at clark and turns around and goes, and clark doesn't even notice and i'm like "fux0r! what happens now?" and so i have to watch.
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<br /><b>superman</b><br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 3:31 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76497972">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Friday, May 10, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>revealed: lawrie has emotions</b>
<br />yes, it's true. for those 5 of you that visited my site today (ha haaa - i now have a tracker) will have probably guessed, this isn't one of those "man-i'm-so-deep-and-have-more-pseudo-emotional-baggage-than-imelda-marcos-has-shoes" kinda blogs. i generally just talk crap about random stuff. well, tonight, my friends, <b>lawrie got emotional</b>.
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<br />that's right. i was sitting here at 1am with nothing to do but totally awake, wondering why some people had to be such complete bastards, seemingly for their own amusement (and no, i will not go in for that whole 'cryptic' shit; the person is <a href="http://www.akakrupa.com" target="_blank">adam krupa</a>, and we are not friends), and why a whole load of people are so apathetic when someone offers them some <b>help</b>.
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<br />jesus christ, half the time i'm surprised i don't go absolutely batshit almost every single day; i offer people fucking good websites that are cheaper than a pair of nike trainers, and they want it to be cheaper. and better. i offer people a super-cheap cd that will get their music 'out there' <b>and</b> get their music online, for free, with no adverts, and they just can't be fucked. i offer people a night where they can play some tunes acoustically in a great little bar, i pay out of my own pocket to publicize, and not only can none of the bands be fucked to <b>show up at all</b>, but neither can anyone else. in the whole world. ever. and i really miss mumfy.
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<br />so all of this just kinda crashed in on me, and i sat there thinking "i miss emily, and i really, really need a hug." and by the time i got to the phone and woke up my girlfriend 135 miles away, i was already crying. i told her everything i've put here, and straight the way she just... she was really cute, and it made me smile right away. but i think tears are something that you just need to get out of your system once in a while, otherwise your face gets blocked up. so i went for a walk to the shell station a mile and a half away, and bought a bottle of summer fruits oasis and some biscuits.
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<br />now here's a thing; my oasis was 20% cheaper than it is in a mercury news shop, but the biscuits were almost <b>4 times</b> the price they are in asda. how does that make any sense? i mean, if you're going to rip people off, at least be consistent with it.
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<br />and just a note: i don't care who you are, but if you've just ended up on my site for whatever reason, please <a href="contact.html" onClick="return openPopup('contact.html')">send me a message</a>. it will make me feel like i'm not pouring all of my thoughts down the drain. who knows? maybe we could become friends, and you could come and live with me in my bucket.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 1:32 AM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76377786">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Wednesday, May 08, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>i am brilliantest at being the best clever person</b>
<br />as you can tell by the shit 'trying-to-be-thick' subject line, i am simply too immensely clever to even be any good at <i>pretending</i> to be stupid. i just took another iq test (i've recently discovered myself needing to know how smart i am; self-affirmation is a good thing) and... well, it didn't actually give my iq. which was a bit crap. but it was a 'should you join mensa?' kinda thing, and i got 21 out of 30, although i was 3 minutes outside of the allocated time limit. apparently i 'have a fairly good chance of getting into mensa'. the lowest score needed is 130, i think, and the last time i tested at 144 - although i didn't entirely trust that scale, since it declared me to be gifted, proclaimed people with an iq of 160 and above to be geniuses, people with 180+ to be prodigious, people with <b>200+</b> to be 'extremely prodigious' (what?) and people with an iq of <b>220+</b> to be godlike. or something. i watched this programme about an 8 year-old kid who had an iq of 216, but nobody really believes it because he's <b>so</b> intelligent that his thoughts, mental imagery and brain signals move so fast that he has no way of articulating what he thinks. which much must be a complete bastard, and when you think about it, is kind of ironic. he's phenomenally intelligent, but because of his intelligence he can't even communicate properly, and so no one really believes that he's actually very intelligent at all. sux0r.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 8:52 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76316888">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Tuesday, May 07, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>picturelicious</b>
<br />i was bored, so i put up some <a href="pictures.html">pictures</a> in an effort to make this site feel a little bit more complete. tomorrow, i intend to have the downloadable <b>lawrie:malen</b> emood pack. which i'm pretty sure no one wants. ooh - i also finally implemented my stylesheet. i've had it working offline for about a month, but i just couldn't be fucked to upload it. let's hear it for apathy.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 5:55 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76269379">comments</a></u><br /><br /><img src="http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/tests/affliction/rabies.gif" title="I am Rabies. Grrrrrrrr!"><br \><a href="http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/tests/affliction/">Take the Affliction Test Today!</a><br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 3:58 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76265293">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Monday, May 06, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>tvic epbic brv</b><img src="images/star.gif">
<br />wondering about that subject line? me too. i was sitting on the tube this evening, going from liverpool street to st. pancras (and not, as every half-witted shell-suit-wearing muppet insists on calling it, "st. pancreas") and i suddenly realised that these, um, 'words' were carefully laid out on the top of the window frame opposite. you know when you get a set of letters on a sheet, like for labelling videos? they looked sort of like those letters, but there was a little blue star at the end with a white border. i've already run it through the <a href="http://babelfish.altavista.com" target="_blank">babelfish</a>, and it's now that i realise that altavista's translator just <b>makes stuff up</b>. it came out as "tvich of epbic of brv" which is exactly the same, but the three letters are now seperated by the word 'of', and there appears to be an 'h' at the end of the first word. that's not even <i>close</i> to english, unless you count the blatantly added preposition.
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<br />so anyway - why did this capture my attention? well, i'll tell you. i'm just about to finish <b>everything's eventual</b> by stephen king. there's a story in there called <b>all that you love will be carried away</b>, and it centres around the (possibly) last few moments of a travelling salesman's life. he's in a motel room, and he's decided to kill himself. it's a brilliant little short story that insinuates a whole load, but tells you very little, and the cornerstone of the story is the salesman's hobby; he collects grafitti. not tags like you see on the subway, but that crap that people write on the walls of bathroom stalls. there are tons and tons of examples of this and i won't repeat them here, but the unresolved assumption is that this <b>isn't</b> just random crap written by bored kids, but some kind of meaningful thing; some kind of message, or entity. as soon as i saw <b>tvic epbic brv</b><img src="images/star.gif"> on the subway, i thought of the story. if you have no imagination, you probably should have skipped this whole paragraph. oops - too late.
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<br />speaking of stephen king; i decided that i wanted to tell <b>him</b> a story. this is, of course, very presumptuous of me - why would one of the greatest storytellers alive want to hear a story by me? well, it's not <i>by</i> me, smartass, so quit ya yappin'. anyway, i just searched for the phrase <b>contact stephen king</b> on google, hoping for some kind of website email address that might, hopefully, end up in front of the man himself. you know what i got? his home address, and the address of two of his offices in maine. that's some scary shit.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 10:07 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76235780">comments</a></u><br /><br /><b>Thursday, May 02, 2002</b><br /><br /><b>what a shambles</b>
<br />musicians. what a bunch of fuckwitted numbskulled unappreciative inbred no-brain thoughtless zero-talent waste of space, air, time, effort and molecules they all are. i apologise if you are a musician yourself. i am too. this statement only refers to the <b>fuckers</b> that cancelled and/or pulled a no-show at make:out:club tonight. i played anyway, and everybody commented on how they liked angels day. paul said that he listened to the lyrics and loved it. which is a good reaction. almost sang 'paranoid android' with damo playing guitar, but in the end i decided i just wanted to go home, speak to mumfy, eat, and sleep. which is pretty much the way i'm heading now. cheerio.<br /><br /> - posted by lawrie at 11:18 PM ~ <u><a href="asfunction:loadComments,76097783">comments</a></u><br /><br />