Disgusted!!!!.............

This is just a quick blog post to say i am absolutely disgusted with what happened today!!!

Me and my mate Vin was just walking around trying to pass the time till he had to go to the job centre when he decided he wanted to go to the toilet, so we walked down to ASDA in Blackwood, we got there walked in and my mate dresses like an emo but he isn't one at all!! he wears a hoody like me but he had his hood up!!! As we were walking in just so he could go to the toilet some stupid old twat at the door turns around to him and tells him to take down his hood!!!!WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ABOUT!!!!!!!!

well we couldn't believe it!! so this is a call to everyone who wears a hoody and goes to any ASDA store!!! We all should go there and boycott them for what the did cos in my eyes it is outrageous!!

what do you think?

We Are Sorry......

To start things off we apologize for it being 2 weeks without a post and I hope you trust me when we say it wont happen again!!!!

Well I had a lovely day today!! it started with me getting up at(I wont say cos it is to early for a normal person) and started to watch a little TV, trust me when I say that there is not a lot on at the time of the morning that i was up!!!  I went on the Internet for a while and started our own little group on facebook called...................well you guessed it Kalmar.

I was then talking on msn to my ex which as you can imagine was very nice!!  We got into it a little as you do, she started to tell me about how her and her boyfriend of 3 years have just broke up!!(in the nicest way possible I couldn't give a rats arse)

I had a phone call of my mate asking me if i wanted to come down his for a bit(were I am righting to you from), so I did.  We went out for a little game of footy and played a little x box on a game called Army of 2, the bast game in the world in my opinion!!

well it was nice to speak to you again, we should do this more often.

http://blogs.ign.com/EA_ArmyOfTwo/2008/02/28/82165/

Today............

Well today wasn't great, we were supposed to have a band drink at 3 pm till 5 pm and then a practice from 5 pm till 8 pm, but of course it all went wrong!!! I had a phone call at about 3 to say that Jules didn't know what was happening today, so I told him, so I left the house at about 10 min later thinking that they would be on there way to meet me at the pub for band drinks. I got there and there just after 4 and no one was there!!


So Jules text me saying they haven't left the house yet and to phone Mike and ask what was going on!!! I phoned Mike and he said he was watching the football at this point I had been waiting at the pub for about 45 min. I had a phone call from Mike about 4.50 and he said we will have a compromise, he will miss the second half of the football and I will have to miss some of the program I wanted to watch at 9 called Lost!! So I agreed, they got to the pub at 5.30, so if you have been keeping a count I had been waiting at the pub for over an hour for them to show up!!



To cut a long story short they got there like I said at 5.30, we had a band meeting till 7.00 and then had a practice till 10.00! everybody was getting a little angry at the end of the practice and after all that I missed the whole episode of lost instead of the compromise and miss some of it!!!



http://www.soulcast.com/tag/bad+day

M.O.T's...........

The fucking trouble it was getting my car to pass a M.O.T was horrific, if it wasn't one thing it was another.

It started out as me tacking my car down and it failing on bits of welding and my emissions!! Put it this way with the emissions my carbon footprint was horrendous!!! On my car the Co levels is supposed to be 3.50 it wasn't even close, it was up to 11.68, as you can tell that isn't good. So the first thing i thought to do was change the oil filter, air filter, oil and spark plugs so i did, that was a improvement but still not enough, it took it from 11.68 to 5.16 which still isn't enough.

I then thought 'what the hell could it be now?' i took it to a garage to have it tested to see what was wrong with it and he said that something called the oxygen sensor was broke! which isn't good cos they cost 50 pound! The only problem is when that goes it screws up other things and i thought it would screw up the CAT and that would cost another 300 pound!!! Well luckily when the changed the oxygen sensor it was fine and i didn't have to pay for the other part.

Mike had a problem with his car also this week and he had to drive to Swansea to get his fixed!! There was something wrong with the spark plugs and his brakes needed cleaning and he had a bulge growing in his back tire, so all I can say this past week hasn't been that good for us with the damn cars.

http://www.manxforums.com/forums/index.php?s=8c1c43adb624b8c33d38da23e016213d&showtopic=23544&pid=309888&st=15&#entry309888

Recording studio's........

At the moment we are looking for recording studios to record 3-4 songs in!! It is not the easiest thing in the world to do, there are just so many of them, you never know which ones are good and which are bad. I have a Friend that owns his own recording studio in the valley of Blina in Gwent, it's called blossom studios.

I have known him for about 3 years i think, he is a good guy and he is good at what he does. I used to work with him in a pub called the Arena in Abertillery, but i only a couple of months ago seen him down at a pub called the dolls house(were by the way we are playing in April check the myspace) and we got to talking, he was telling me about the studio and how i should come and check it out, so me(Coran) and Jules went down to have a look around, it is a cool place we had a listen to what he has recorded for other bands and it was really good!!

The only problem is by the time we have looked around for recording studios he will be gone!!! Yes that's right he is moving his business to London. So, the whole point of this story is if anyone knows of any good recording studios could you tell us!! Because the quicker we record the quicker all you lovely people get to have a CD of us all to yourself.

Hope to hear from you soon!!

http://www.themusicfansite.co.uk/Blog/tabid/683/EntryID/412/Default.aspx

Rugby.... Officially the bane of my life.

I hate Rugby. I didn't used to, then I worked on Saturday night.

Wales won the triple crown. They seem to be winning everything. Instead of being safely closeted away in the kitchen, I was on the floor, on the front line of the battle. Literally, from seven, when I got onto the bar til we closed, we were insanely busy. The only time we slowed down was when a guy fell down our admittedly steep but extremely well signposted stairs to the toilet. He was dragged out on a stretcher, and two of the staff had to clean his blood up etc... So in a very real way, there were even casualties.

It's not that good a game. Really it isn't. It's certainly not good enough to justify God knows how many fights there were on the night, it isn't good enough to justify the guy who (and yes, I had him thrown out for this) leant over the bar, grabbed me by my hair and screamed into my face that the English are wankers, and he will call me a wanker and that I'd like it, and I should be grateful he wasn't beating seven kinds of shit out of me. The rest of the Bars special forces, S Company (Saturday) all had similar tales to tell.

Not only that, but I had to deal with what can only be described as an insubordinate employee. I didn't do it well and lost my temper, but this is not the first time him and I have crossed paths... However, it is quite clear that I am going to have to assert my authority, something I'm not terribly comfortable with and something I'm not all that precious about, but I will not have staff who've been there for three weeks telling me what to do, especially seeing as I've already read the riot act to him.

Watch this space. There will be resolution tommorrow!

The End... A new beginning

Undeniably, we were a little rougher than we should have been. Undeniably, we were a little out of sorts, and undeniably, we're working out what works with regards to playing live. We're all on a fairly steep learning curve, and it's been a while....

That said, we kicked arse. And I couldn't be happier with how we sounded.

All of the stuff that happened in the set, all the mistakes made... that'll be just down to practice and lots of playing live. That's just what we have to do. We have to get out there again and get used to it. But we delivered. It may not have been Hammersmith or Donnington, but it was ours and the mission began with a total victory.

We even had a heckler. It's something of a tradition of the bands that we've been in before that there's always some pissed dude ruining it for everyone, and I'm not sure I understand the mentality of the lone heckler. He's always going to be shouted down, and why argue with people who have mics? All you end up doing is bringing the rest of the crowd on the bands side, unless the band is Nickelback.

But there we are, the first gig is out of the way. And my nerves are well and truly gone.


* * * * *


In other more heartwarming news, Shannon Mathews the schoolgirl who went missing nearly a month ago was found alive and well... admittedly there may well be some questions raised as to why it took the police so long to search the home of a man who was by all accounts some sort of relation to the family and who lived less than a mile away from the familial home... but it is still heartwarming.

Since I was about sixteen, I have carried myself with a certain level of cynicism when it comes to stories like this, namely that when you hear that a little girl has gone missing, my first thought is "You won't find her alive, and she'll probably have been raped." It's hard not to view the world through grey tinted spectacles when the empirical evidence of your eyes ears and historical knowledge can only prepare you for the greyest of outcomes.

This is why my cockles have been warmed. She's alive, and appears to be unharmed. Whatever dark details of the case may later emerge (there was talk of some sort of stockholm syndrome) the fact remains unchanged that in a culture of cynicism and preparation for the worst, one of the better outcomes against all odds and past experience has in fact happened instead.

It seems like a lesson for life. Don't abandon hope.

For the full story, visit

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/15/nshannon315.xml

Quick before we leave the house....

Just about to leave and practice for a bit, then go to the gig.... Wish us luck in whatever way you can, and I'll leave a more in depth post a little later.

The mission begins today!

Clock watching... In more ways than one.

One of the things I hate about working in the evenings more than anything has got to be the relentless feeling of keeping your eyes glued to the clock, or to your phone. It's almost like a nervous habit of mine, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who does it, but boy it sure feels like it.

Every five or so minutes, I fumble around in the arse pocket of my jeans for my phone and check the time. It's not for messages, it's not for missed calls, it's always for the time. Anyone could be trying to contact me and I couldn't care less, just as long as I know that the passage of time hasn't sped up miraculously in the last six minutes.

I'm much worse if you put me in a room with a clock and my phone. The time on my phone is ten minutes fast... Now I know that a lot of people do this; Ten minutes fast on whatever time keeping device it is they use and the theory is that they will always be a few minutes early, but it never ever works that way. The presence of the second clock for me is the best evidence for it. Firstly, there's the frantic scrabbling in the back pocket for the phone, checking the time, then looking at the clock. You go from panic, to relief then to smug self satisfaction in a matter of seconds. Panic; Shit, what's the time?! Relief; Oh, it's ok. Self Satisfaction; Well, it's even earlier than I thought. I can relax and feel good about my time keeping.

Thing is, my time keeping is terrible. I'm always without fail about half an hour early for work, so I just sit in the staff room listening to music. So any time I have saved I just waste. I do believe that there is an earlier post about my relationship with time, and it's still true... Time is easy to waste for me, so why on Earth when I save it do I then just let it slip out of my hands?
There are untold hours where I was doing absolutely nothing that i will never get back.

We're also clock watching now because the gig is only two days away now! Yay! I'm still bricking it though. I spent an hour just practicing one particularly difficult bit of guitar playing because it still gives me the most trouble, and live that's where we'll suffer... if the intricate details aren't ironed out, then we'll sound out of our depth. You don't want that on a bands first gig.

Furthermore, one more reason to clock watch : "The Dark Knight." The new Batman film with the late Heath Ledger and the ever brilliant Christian Bale. Apparently required reading for Ledger for the role of the Joker was a graphic novel called "The Killing Joke."

Now, you and I will both agree, that pictures of Ledger as the Joker were... disturbing. And you can see that out of the required reading, he did well.


R.I.P. I suppose. But at least in this instance, watching the clock is worth it. We'll see the newly reinvigorated Batman franchise in the best shape its ever been and we'll see a star turn from an actor who deserves to be remembered as an excellent method actor.

As for me, I'll have one eye on the clock, one on my phone, and a hand poised to circle a day on the calender.

ughh...... hangover hell

It is ironic that I am writing this with a horrendous hangover considering I'd done a massive post on binge drinking and its cultural impact... all I can say is ugh....

My. Head. Hurts.

Why the fuck do I do this to myself? I'm not going to be ok until sometime into tomorrow day. I have things to do, like recover and play computer games, possibly write songs... who knows? I know we have to have a little bit of acoustic jamming and stuff....

Just done a little research on hangovers themselves... no I didn't go to wikipedia, for it is not the font of all knowledge, but the Thinking Blog

(http://www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/01/how-to-recover-from-hangovers.html)

has just told me the the formal term for a hangover is veisalgia; it comes from the Norwegian word Kveis "uneasiness after debauchery" and Algia... a catch all Latin term for any kind of pain.

It hasn't helped me at all. I will probably be drinking water by the pint, avoiding any and all food, and cradling my head feeling very sorry for myself. My housemates and bandmates will tell me one of two things;

1)They have no sympathy for me whatsoever, I did this to myself.

2)Suck it up and quit being a wuss.

*whimper*

Meeting parents and shameless self promotion.

I met Sarah's father today. I really wish I'd not died my hair poppy red mid week and I wish that I had shaved. I didn't exactly look as straight laced as I wanted to. For some reason, every single set of girlfriends parents have hated me. I'm not sure why. I always turn up well presented, I'm polite (Exceptionally so. You have to be if you're going to meet their parents) and I don't outstay my welcome, nor do I touch their daughter inappropriately in front of them.

So why do they always hate me? I found this (http://www.wikihow.com/Meet-Your-Girlfriend's-Parents)

Thankfully it was different this time round. I'd met Sarah's mum first, and she's lovely, and seemed to genuinely like me, so score one there! She now probably thinks I can do no wrong. So it was just the final hurdle of meeting her Father and Stepmum.

Like I'd said, I really wish I'd shaved, and really wished I didn't have poppy red hair (it really is quite vivid), but all that aside, I performed admirably. I showed that I was a responsible adult who thought the world of their daughter and kept up with her old man in the drinking stakes (we did drink an insane amount).

And yes, he liked me. Full score!

Because of this monumental win and the large amount of alcohol consumed, I decided that it would be a good idea to continue the drinking long into the night. I went to my bar, and got hilariously pissed. I then spent the rest of the night shamelessly self promoting Kalmar and our monumentally important first gig. I don't know how it happened, but we are now headlining, and have a forty minute set. Woop woop! My head will be fucking painful tommorrow mind....

The three close....

I worked the most hideous shift... the most hideous fucking shift that can be worked if you're a bartender.

Yep, I'm talking about the 3cl.

You start at three in the afternoon and just keep going until closing time.

Which was four in the morning.

Then we had to clean up.

That is in total about 16hrs.

I'm only 24, and already, I'm beginning to get a little too old for this shit. A shift like that completely kills me. I think I prefer splits.... at least that way you guaranteed get a break. But Saturday was just fucking mental. It was jam packed with people, and they were all looking to get as off their chops as possible. More kept coming in. More kept getting ruder as the night went on...

It shattered me and I lost my temper with one couple. It's the first time I'd done it in months, and I felt really bad about it, but my sympathy is limited if you are wilfully rude and I've been working nearly ten hours straight.

It has to make you wonder why people act like that... alcohol isn't enough of an excuse and people blaming everything on drink is as far as I'm concerned just lazy.

It's a lively and ongoing debate across the country; what is to be done with our boozy nation? Apparently we now consume more Vodka than the Russians. Now that's a scary thought, isn't it? We now drink more Vodka than a nation famous for its fatalistic pickling of its population. The owner of the JD Wetherspoon chain Tim Martin has weighed into the argument too, blaming the visibility of celebrity drinking culture in particular and just cultural problems in general as the reason why there has been an apparent escalation in booze related violence.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/03/should_celebs_carry_the_can_fo.html

From a personal point of view, Saturday was a boozy punch up that threatened to and did happen a couple of times that night. I've had violence threatened upon me, I've had to physically defend myself in the bar, all of this while I've been working...

It's quite clearly a problem that's not going to sort itself out any time soon, and nor is it as simple as saying "they started it," and pointing the finger of blame at famous people. Famous people have always been pickling themselves and finding ever more glamorous ways to destroy themselves for the benefit of their viewing public. One only has to look Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse and the way that the public still continue to watch with morbid fascination their terrifying descent into new drug and alcohol induced lows.... no, Mr Martin is right that the problem we have is a cultural one. How are we going to get around the fact that even with an option for it, there is no 24hr drinking, rather six til about four in the morning at the weekend and only at the weekend? If we want to get rid of the boozy fights, the lairy antics and the terrifying crowds of pissed people wandering up and down the high streets of the UK we have to seriously think about ways to stop this all pervading belief that you only live for the weekend.

First Gig Jitters...

I haven't experienced first gig jitters in a while. Not since I joined Girl 13 actually, and to be fair, the my first gig with the band was the biggest of the bands life at that point. Played at the Ponty Muni hall and actually full of people, it scared me a little. The rest of the band took it in their stride, and within ten minutes of actually being there I'd calmed down. This was all stuff they'd seen before, and to be fair, so had I so it was just another day at the office. They were calm because they'd done it all before.

Kalmar is a totally different proposition. We are untested as a live band. I know that that is a totally academic point; the three of us have played as a collective before, and we were the ones that worked the best together; that's why the band was born in the first place. I'm totally sure that this will not prove to be anything of a different experience from gigging with Girl 13, except that there will probably be fewer or no fights, and we'll actually spend the evening in each others company rather than pissing off and being nowhere to be found for ten minutes.

But the point remains. This is a different band, following a different blueprint for success, necessarily so because Girl 13's obviously didn't work. R.I.P and all that, sad to see the good old days gone and everything, but hey... Kalmar is such an awesome band to be in. It's fun, we challenge each other, we're on the same page, and we're writing good songs that are getting more and more complex every time we step into the practice room. We're in the honeymoon stage of band formation where we're writing on average two new songs every week (we timed our whole catalogue of material today. It clocks in at an hour and a quarter). This is what worries me.

We have our grand designs in the practice room, but will it all fall apart on stage? Will we play everything note perfect but look wooden and gauche? Will we be completely uncharismatic? Will we find that the music we're playing only works in the practice room and we're not competent enough musicians to do it live? Will I severely fuck up a song that Mike and Coran have got down to a T? (And will we never ever be welcome in the lovely pub to the left here ever again? Yes, this is where the battle begins in earnest).

These ladies and gentlemen are the pre-gig jitters. Everything is still new enough to be scary, and it's doubly scary because we have so much forward momentum now that it would probably take more effort to slow the whole process or stop it than it would to just keep moving in the direction we're going. We've invested so much time and effort in being the best we can be as musicians and delivering music we believe in heart and soul that of course we can't help but be scared.

When next Thursday arrives, we'll have our answers. We'll have a played a kickass gig and we'll bed the ghosts of failure and Girl 13 forever. Till then, I'll just sit here and quietly worry and practice furiously the tougher parts of the songs we'll be debuting to the City that have been wondering what the boys in the band have been up to.

When I was a child, I was never afraid of an ass whupping...

Ok, so as an opening title, that's not strictly speaking true. I was afraid of getting my arse kicked by the playground bully, and I hated fighting, but that was just how it went. If you got in a fight, you stood up and defended yourself. I was tried of my older sister emasculating me every day and sorting out my troubles with bullying kids. So I took up martial arts and learnt how to fight as well as excellent ways to avoid such confrontations... I didn't then care that people would call me a coward from walking away from a fight, because I knew better.

But the fact remains... you stood your ground and threw punches, even if they were terrible and were going to make no difference.

I have read an article on the Telegraph online

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/06/nguns106.xml).

I cannot even begin to imagine what sort of lives these children and teenagers are living; I grew up in the suburbs of a quiet midlands town where nothing ever happened officially ever. At the time of course, it felt like a war zone, but everyone feels like that to some extent while growing up, and people who say that their teenage years were not some sort of battleground are just plain lying; even if the struggle is within yourself, it's still a struggle. But every problem could be solved by chucking a few fists about and at the very worst, someones mum going around to see someone else's mum.

The knowledge that it's only a matter of time before a police officer in a major conurbation will have to shoot a child wielding a weapon is one that makes me immensely sad. I could go on about the declining state of youth, the lack of strong father figures (to the point where David Beckham is seriously called a good role model to children), where did the parents go wrong, etc etc... There's no point. Everyone in the world has heard these arguments ad nauseaem, and if we're totally fair, it's no big surprise. One only has to look at the Favela's in Brazil to know that we don't have it that bad.

It must be heart wrenching to be an armed police officer in this country though; You are armed because you live in an area that is armed, and the violence has escalated to the point where criminals will no longer listen to the stern words of a police officer, or even his night stick. All they will listen to is the barrel of the weapon pointed in their face.

It must be heart wrenching going to work and wondering if today is the day you shoot a twelve year old child.

It must be heart wrenching being those children, who already at such a young age have gotten to the point where they feel like there is no other answer than to pull the trigger.

This HAS to stop.

Assistant commissioner to the Metropolitan police John Yates has said that the attitude of Police officers and their unwillingness to take rape claims seriously are contributing factors to the appalling conviction rates in rape cases, which is at a ridiculously low level, just under 5%.


He's said detectives don't apply the same professionalism to rape as they do to other serious crimes. He blamed police for too often greeting complainants with a skeptical manner, and said officers "must absolutely accept the victim's version of events unless there are very substantial reasons to do otherwise".

Do the police seriously have to be told this? SERIOUSLY?

You may cry miscarriage of Justice at me all you like, and innocent until proven guilty, but this is a totally different sort of crime, and most of the people you hear using that kind of language will be men. I'm not a man hater, I am a fucking man. But this gets severely under my skin. "But when you start using guilty until proven innocent in one case, what's to stop you doing it to others?"

I'll tell you what. Common fucking sense.

Rape is a crime that is almost exclusively feared by almost only one half of the population. Rape is a crime that happens to almost only one half of the population. Rape is a crime that is perpetrated by almost exclusively one half of the population. And, sorry to break the news fellas, but rape is a crime that ALL men are able to commit. Apart from one or two very bizarre and admittedly disturbing cases, men are the perpetrators, and they come from all walks of life, from all ages, and all nationalities, all creeds, etc etc etc. I am capable of rape. My buddies in the band are capable of rape. Women are 99.99% incapable of that.

That may not make sense as to why we should treat rape differently to other serious crimes, but I'll attempt to explain. When a system of life like the patriarchy is so strongly in place, innocent until proven guilty just doesn't work. No one will ever try to insinuate that a child deserved to die in a horrific murder case because he wasn't careful, or left his mums side, and as such was asking for it. No one will ever insinuate that because a guy bought a big house that he was asking to be robbed. However, a women wearing a short skirt can apparently be invitation to rape. A woman kissing a guy on the first date can be an invitation to rape. Eye contact can be an invitation to rape. How fucked is that?

What other crime is there that asks the plaintiff, or complainant, or the fucking victim to stand up and be cross examined about her past sexual habits, whether or not she owns sex toys, whether the children she has are all from the same father... so that means that a woman seeking justice for a horrible fucking crime committed upon her has to endure pointless and irrelevant questions about her sexual history and have the most intimate details of her personal life scrutinized and have lawyers attempt to smear her character. What is the point? Part of the anti rape literature points out that the accused never has to take the stand about any of that.

Isn't that also missing the point?

The fact is, you could be the village bike and have fucked every man from Cardiff to Beijing, sucked strangers off in the street, worn indecently short skirts or no skirt at all, and could have a veritable United Colors of Benetton advert as your litter of children. People's past character matters not one bit, nor does their sexual history.... (mild mannered family men and clerks and accountants none of whom would have ever hurt a fly suddenly raped pillaged and murdered in the Vietnam War, past character be damned. Would they have gotten off in court if they had just proven good character enough?)... None of that changes the fact that if she is raped, someone still forcibly took carnal knowledge of her without her consent. If she said No, then it's WRONG.

Anyone reading this will be thinking one of two things. "Right on!" or "You can't make one law for men and another for women."

The person thinking the last thing will be a man. Let me get your attention buddy. When was the last time you walked down a street somewhere and feared being raped?

Was that answer never?

The worst you will ever fear is a good kicking. And you have no idea how lucky that makes you.

And if you'd like to open your eyes.... see this here http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/

Fallen Heroes....

Last night, I was at the open mic night in the place I work and I started to get unfeasibly excited. A guy that played the open mic night all the time when I had first started working there was once again playing. He'd been on Hiatus for ages and ages, and I knew like everyone else who'd seen him before that the only reason he'd been away for so long is because he was working on putting together a band to help support his sound; this was a sound that was at the time so vast, so incomprehensibly good, containing ethereal vocals, decency, humility and grace that he would need a band behind him because he was just that good.

The Open mic progressed in the same way it usually does of a Sunday. Everyone else plays, the headlining band plays, then I play... it's something of a little vanity project for me. I get to play sticky sweet acoustic ballads about love and loss that just wouldn't fit into the band... The songs are in general too angry and all about my exes, and when we get together and play I have to stop being selfish in order to write good music. While I'm there, I plug the band and play "crimes," which in turn lets the Sunday night lot know that I'm made of sterner stuff and not just a teen angst complainer in the form of song... and everyone goes home happy. There was however a palpable buzz from the people who had gathered to watch this musical collective unleash what was surely to be an epic swirl of soaring vocals and huge cavernous sounding guitar work....


...And we were all horrendously disappointed.

Before, I watched a lion roar. Now, I saw that same lion with his mane shorn and his throat ripped out. There was no roar. There was just a formerly great musician and his backing band of pub standard session musicians.

Proof that if we are not careful, the mighty can fall if we listen to our own P.R. and bullshit. I like to think of myself as humble. I obviously wouldn't be pinning all of my future on this band if I didn't think we weren't good enough, but after last night, I no longer think that being cripplingly self doubting is a bad thing. I think it keeps me honest. And I think we're all like that actually... Mike and I give the impression of being either difficult to approach or just plain arseholes, but it's armor... or at least it is for me. What if you get to know me and don't like me? And good god... what if you don't like my music? I put 100% of myself into that, it's the most honest thing I do!

That's what keeps me honest. If I constantly doubt my abilities but still push as hard as I can and try to be the best musician I can be and put everything I have into it, then it means I still have something to prove, to me as well as everyone else. I'm never going to stand there thinking "I'm so great I never need to try..."

The minute you do, you should put down your guitar, stop singing and leave the band you're in. You've just turned into a cock, and you do not deserve the opportunity to make music.


News on the band front.... we have another gig confirmed! See www.myspace.com/thekalmar for details, but it's the 13th March, The End in Cardiff. Cheers Jeff, we owe you one buddy!

Royalty on the front line?

It cannot have escaped anyone's notice that Prince Harry... you know, the one who turned up to a fancy dress part dressed up as a Nazi, and who smokes a lot of weed... has been in the news as of late. Yes, anyone with half a mind and half an opinion has been chipping in their two cents, usually centered along the lines of "My God... the party prince? Fighting? On the front line? with our boys?"

Some papers have gone as far as to say that Prince Harry is something of a hero. I find this a little churlish... He' s not gone and liberated a country from a despotic rule, he hasn't furthered any regime's plans upon a stockpile of oil, and details are scant on the ground about how much action he has actually seen while over in Afghanistan. Now presumably, because he was stationed in the Helmand province, one known for not exactly subdued by the heavy military presence, one can surmise that he may well have seen some combat, and who knows, maybe he may have killed a man. Or Men. Maybe great numbers of both. This is not cause to call the guy a hero, this is cause to call him a soldier.

Yes, that's right. He's a soldier. Nothing more, nothing less. He's someone doing a job that people have been doing for time immemorial. Soldiering.

It is admittedly somewhat of a surprise to see him in that role; the mantle of battle hardened soldier is not one that would look like it would immediately fit someone who is third in line to the throne of Great Britain, but there he is, in Desert Camo, clutching his semi-automatic Rifle, and he looks every inch the soldier. So why is he getting any extra praise being heaped upon him?

Back in the Feudal periods of any nascent country, being a King, ruler or Emperor used to mean something. Either you or your family is the one responsible for bloodthirsty power struggles that result in rule, or they unite a country a single, or become a Ruler to defend your lands from a foreign threat. Kings used to lead the charge into battle.

Now obviously, things have moved in since then, but detractors of the Monarchy have always argued that they serve no real purpose and that they are literally an ornamental and ceremonial drain upon the taxpayers of Great Britain. It is a pervasive as well as persuasive argument. Even though it is supposedly only the Queen who can declare war upon another sovereign country or state, she never does, because it's not a decision she really gets to make. It is made by the be-suited men and women in Westminster. But there's something comforting about the idea of seeing Prince Harry, gun in hand on the battlefront. It almost seems like he's fulfilling a contractual obligation as monarch to fight when fighting needs to be done.

But he's being treated like a VIP. People may argue "of course he's getting special treatment, he's third in line to the throne," but all Kings ever were to begin with were the soldiers that were the best, or the soldiers that happened to head an army. While I don't necessarily agree with his 'outing' by the press of his deployment, I don't see it as that big a problem. At the end of the day, he's a soldier, just like everyone else in his unit. The fact that he's royalty in my mind means he should stay where he is, and not be pulled out by the powers that be. As a decent monarch who is supposed to be willing to fight, he should face all of the dangers that the rest of his fellow soldiers would have to face, whether that's being shot or blown up, or kidnapped and beheaded by Afghan religious insurgents.


Hero? He has yet to prove it.

Basketball......

Again I am doing a random story, as you can see on the title it's about basketball....

Well today I went out up the road to play a bit of basketball since i haven't played for God knows how long, it seems I am not nearly as good as I was all though's years ago in school. Back then I could shot from here, there and everywhere but I think I need to start from the beginning again.

When I was in school in the sixth form I only took as art so I had a lot of time on my hands, I think I only had about 6 maybe 7 hours worth of lessons, the rest of the time I was up on the basketball court with people out of my year and the year above playing basketball. I can remember me and my friend Hodgey, we made the best team in the world back then of course with others on the team, whenever we played a game together we where unstoppable it was like we had played together for years, we new exactly where the other was at all times, so half the time we didn't have to look at each other to pass it to the other one. But then of course we left school and went our separate ways, I went to college and i don't know what he did after that. I took a National Diploma in Fine Art in Crosskeys college and went there with a few of my friend.

I had a girlfriend at the time and I spent most of my time with her not knowing to me that my friend every brake went down to the basketball courts to play, but me being the good boyfriend spent most of my time with my girlfriend that's now my ex-girlfriend.

Also I was watching a basketball game on five US(the TV channel) of my favorite team of all time the Boston Celtics, they won again this week. They are on top of there league at the moment and of course I hope they win the whole thing this year.(it is there year this year by the look of things)

Well there you go another random story about me and my day.............well not all of my day but just a few hours.

GO CELTICS!!!!!

EU fines Microsoft record $1.4bn.........

The European Commission has fined US computer giant Microsoft for defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft must now pay a record 899m euros ($1.4bn; £680.9m) after it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its dominant market position.

The ruling said that Microsoft was guilty of not providing key code to rival software makers.
EU regulators said the firm was the first to break an EU anti-trust ruling.
The fines come on top of earlier fines of 280m euros imposed in July 2006, and of 497m euros in March 2004.

An investigation concluded in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in products such as media players, while unfairly linking its Explorer Internet browser to its Windows operating system at the expense of rival servers.
The European Court of First Instance upheld this ruling last year, which ordered Microsoft to pay 497m euros for abusing its dominant market position.

Last week, the firm announced that it would open up the technology of some of its leading software, including Windows, to make it easier to operate with rivals' products.
"As we demonstrated last week with our new interoperability principles and specific actions to increase the openness of our products, we are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future," Microsoft said.

Last month, the European Commission launched two new anti-competition investigations against Microsoft into similar issues.
The first will look at whether there are still problems regarding Microsoft abusing its dominance of the PC market to grab market share of the Internet.
The Commission will also investigate the continued interoperability of Microsoft software with rival products.

Family Guy......

Family guy is one of the best shows on TV at the moment, considering it was taken off the air a few years back, but so many people wanted the show back that the Fox network put it back on the air. It was at the time the only show to ever be canceled and then brought back.

I watched the 6Th series on DVD the other day and it was brilliant, the funniest episodes i have ever seen. If you haven't seen it i would tell you look away..............but that would be silly so tuff. On there is a 2 part episode where Stewie finally kills Lois(that's right he does it), Peter and Lois go on a cruise that Brian bought for Lois' birthday, Brian and Stewie get in to it about how Stewie always says that he is going to kill Lois and never does it, so Stewie gets in a moater boat and drives to the Cruise ship where Lois is looking out to sea, climbs aboard,sneaks behind her and frightens her.

He goes off one one explaining why he is there, then all of a sudden he shoots her with a Uzi(shooting someone with an Uzi is NOT a good idea)and in slow motion you see the bullets go through her shoulder, arm, chest and stomach. She falls over the edge of the ship into the water and sinks further and further down, the camera goes back to Stewie and he shouts 'I did it, I finally killed Lois' and runs away but he falls over and scraps his knee and starts to cry and call out to Lois because he is hearting.

If you want to know what happens in the next episode, you should watch it because it is hysterical. Be grateful i only ruined the one episode(LOL)

http://www.free-tv-video-online.info/internet/family_guy/season_6.html

lip piercing's.............

I don't know why I am writing about this but what the hey.

I had my lip pierced oh back in October I think it was and everything was fine, I did what they told me to do with it, to use rock salt on the inside of my lip and use tea tree oil on the front. The lip piercing was on the bottom lip in the middle and of course for the first 4-6 weeks I had a bar with a ball on the end. The whole time I had the piercing I thought to myself that she did it to low and I wouldn't be able to put a ring in it like I thought, because after the 4-6 weeks I took the ball out after buying a 10" segment ring(that they told me would fit!!!)and tried to put it in, but as i suspected it didn't fit.

So..........I then went back to the shop and had to buy a 12" titanium silver lip ring that fitted after forcing it through!!!

Going off subject for a moment, I also have a eyebrow stud with 2 black spikes on both ends which in my moment of thought after having the lip done and putting in a silver ring maybe I should change it to a black ring(sorry back to the story).

Well it was fine with the silver ring in it and then I started to look everywhere for a titanium black 12" lip ring(which is a lot harder than you might think), it took a while but I finally found one, bought it and put it in like you would. I asked the guy who sold it to me how did they make it black without the chance of your lip getting infected? He said that the ring is coated with the same stuff they put on pacemakers, so naturally I assumed that it would be fine. It was for a while, until the one Sunday not long ago I got up and was feeling a bit sore so I thought I just slept on it or something and it will be fine. All through the day it just got worse and it started to feel like it was swelling, but as the type of person I am I thought I would leave it till the morning when I wake up to see if it is better.

Well I got up the next morning, it had swallen up that much I couldn't get the lip ring out by myself. I had to get someone else to do it for me! Within one day of the lip ring coming out the swelling went down and the back hole closed up and I obviously haven't worn it since.

I was thinking of trying again but on the side of my lip this time and sticking with the normal silver ring, what do you think?

Well I think the moral of the random story is: If someone says to you when you buy a black lip ring that it's coated by the same thing as pacemakers, don't buy it in my opinion!!

http://www.bmezine.com/pierce/05-lips/A50704/lipmyunf.html

Check out this persons story.

Myspace page.......

Good news. Kalmar is now a fully fledged member of myspace, this is one step closer to media domination. There will be video and audio of the band, that’s right all your cravings for everything Kalmar will be met. We currently only have a few friend so there is room for every one (that includes you punk in writing ). The recording you will fined on there is a live recording with the video of it further down.

There are a few videos on there like us in the house playing on the wii, and one of my favourite videos, what will happen if you hit a paper thin Zildjian cymbol to hard in a practice session , with things called ride sticks. There are pictures of all of us on there(that’s right there is a picture of Coran on there finally).

www.myspace.com/thekalmar

Nice to speak to you again, bye for now!!

Day at the pub

Day at the pub

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Just us discussing blogging, politics and a whole load of random bollocks. This is apparently what classes as regular conversation for Kalmar.

This was a band meeting as well. I remember us as having acheived a lot as well!

Gaming Heaven!!

gaming heaven

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Just a little vid of me enjoying probably my favourite toy in the house; Our Nintendo Wii. If you look real close, you'll be able to see that the game I'm playing is Resident Evil 4. You may also have to forgive my hand signed francais....

Paying with a 'tip'

paying with a tip



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Just a silly little video of us paying for beverages with small change... like the poor and broke band that we are!

Practice Room

Tuning up and preparing to rock out... can you feel the tension?

B.O.P.S.

Here it is as promised, a song by Kalmar, live for everyone to enjoy:-
The Battle of Sekigahara Plain

Enjoy....


battle of sekigahara plain a video by kalmar

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Broken Home ...no Cymbal

Ever wondered what a broken cymbal looks like?

check our drummers out ;p

Blasphemy? pfft....

I had seen this picture on my Stumble travels before and had been hoping to find it again at some point.

Yes indeed, atheism is extremely strong at the moment. It seems a new atheist website or group is being formed every day... and more power to them. If you don't believe in God or in any form of deity, then you should be just as free to be a practicing atheist as you should be free to practice your religious beliefs.

Atheists while being fairly unkind about the beliefs of devout religious groups at least accept that those who 'get' religion are free to do so. That said, they don't believe that that means religion is afforded some sort of special protection from criticism or satirical targeting.

I had thought that this would be the last post on religion etc for a while, but I'd read a while back that MySpace had deleted the Atheist and Agnostic alliance, which was just a MySpace group.... this had a something of a cultural impact though, because this group was massive; It was the largest collection of organised atheists in the world; It had its own wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist_and_Agnostic_Group. There cannot have been any way for MySpace to think that they could do this and not kick up a massive furore. Which it did.

The group has been restored, however, the 35,000 odd users are now no longer part of it and will have to sign up to it again. There was content lost that will never be recovered.

I just find it amusing that people call atheists intolerant.

Mikes post...Today was a great day, albeit tiring.

I spent most of the day wandering around town with my girlfriend, who needed to buy some presents for a friends 21st birthday. We found some great items at the disney store, which is always fun to bimble around!

Charlotte then got a little stuck for gifts, so I suggested we order a special 'cookie' cake with 'Happy 21st' written on it.

An hour and a half later and there it was, looking yummy, full of milk chocolate cookie, with a vanilla covering!

All in all, walking around town for 3hours is great, except when you are shopping for someone else, mainly my partner and her friend. Guys, you know what i'm on about. But having M.E. and doing that much walking meant major burnout for me personally, which is not good considering I have a full day and evening of band related activities.

Yes, tomorrow we are recording some of our tracks live on video for uploading right here. Then in the evening having a band night out to show our faces in certain 'key' venues. The planning for the day has been arranged by our Drummer coran, so lets hope he hasn't got too much chaos planned. Either way, its an early night for me!

Last rehearsal, we played a song I had written in my head and it was all down within 15mins!

I guess when you really gel as a band, it's a whole lot easier for everything to go right. I know it won't all be plain sailing. There will be times when 1of us feels like they're burnt out, but i'm optimistic about that. Living with that kind of feeling everyday, one has to be, so you get used to working through, or around it. Even with major burnout, I still managed to pen ideas for a new song, which is reward enough, for working through the tiredness.

On a final note, I bought A lovelly pink - yes pink - address book for the band. It says 'Gold Digga' on the front, which I thought was an appropriate reminder of one of our goals!

I thought I would leave with a picture of the Hoff, I mean everyone remembers Baywatch right? Dare I mention Pamela Anderson? I never saw those pics she did for Playboy. However, I thought it fitting to leave with this picture because - just like the saying goes - 'i'll be ready'!

Until next time.....

New Stargate Film......

The brand new Stargate film(The Ark Of Truth) has been confirmed. Even if you are not a Stargate fan you should fined this interesting, because to my recollection the creators of the show said that they were not going to make anymore of the series because of funding. That the tv channal Sci Fi wasn't giving them the funding they needed for the show anymore.

To see the trailer go here:-

http://www.free-tv-video-online.info/internet/movies/(2008)_stargate_the_ark_of_truth.html

I have seen the trailer and i am not going to spoil it for anyone but the main plot is about.............you guessed it 'The Ori'. It is after they killed the Adria but the ori followers are still alive and after the team. It looks really good and unfortunately they only have showing times in the US. Over here i have been told it is coming straight to DVD.

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/13259-new-stargate-film-confirmed.html

Well there you go like i said even if you don't like Stargate it's always something good to know!!!!

Bye for now.

Blog Changes and polar opposites

Yes, there have been changes to the blog indeed! You may have noticed the addition of video... which certainly means yes, we've worked out the HTML problem (we needed a couple of things that Blogger couldn't neccesarily provide, so coding it was tough, but thanks to Mike, not impossible).

Be prepared for some Kalmar based shenanigans from the practice room! We're going to be doing a whole days filming on Friday, so who knows, that may even mean a full track to post.

Plus, there's a possibility of gig March 13th: Keep your eyes peeled!

On my Stumble related questing, I have found this;


http://honeyandlance.com/

Have you ever seen the original Odd Couple? Walther Matthau and Jack Lemmon are hilarious in this as two polar opposites. People with opposing views are often comedy gold, especially when they argue (I mean, you only have to watch a fundie xtian argue with a hardcore atheist to see that).

The two authors of the blog are Honey and Lance. Lance is a smooth talking multiple women seducing cad and bounder but who seems to have his head screwed on his shoulders right when offering advice; Honey follows the more conventional dating to find the right person model of seeking a significant other (and it's only one other) and also has her head screwed on straight.

It's quite clear they don't like each other, and it makes for very entertaining reading.

And from our dear friends at http://www.explosm.net

A few things I've learned about life so far. (aged 24)

Inspired by an amazing blog post from http://zenhabits.net/ , I have decided to make this another one of those highly amusing blog posts that you come across in various stumble travels. They make you laugh, they make you think, you may even comment on them, but will you remember them? Probably not.

So why am I doing this?

Because it's a blogging tradition. And I know that to get noticed in the blogosphere you're supposed to buck the trend, but I like this tradition. So here goes.... a few things I've learned about life so far! (aged 24)

1: Morning is less of a time, and more of a concept.

This is actually one that the rest of my house mates are trying to change my thinking about, but the only way that that is going to happen is if I quit my job. I work such crazy hours (in general, I am never home before 5 am. If I am, it's been a good night), so I go to bed in the morning, and wake up mid to late afternoon. For me, it is not officially morning until I've gone to bed and woken up again, regardless of the time.
I don't think that I'm alone in this.

2: Time is so easy to waste.

There are a million and one things that I should be doing, even right now. It's one of my two or three nights off work. I should take advantage of it and go to bed early. I know I won't. I'll be either stumbling around on the internet, or I'll be giving myself cramp in my arm by playing the Wii again for God knows how long. Or maybe I'll get a phone call and decide to piss thirty quid up against the wall by going out and drinking.

And the thing is, today's been quite productive already. We had a band practice earlier, wrote another new song, and we even managed to film some of the practice and meeting (Next week, the footage will be up on the blog: We have a few software gremlins to iron out, and after that we'll be fine). We've probably secured our first gig (a headlining slot, but more details as they come!), and we've set the agenda for the next week. Check us out, we've been uber organised.

And because we've been so organised and productive, it is ironically leaving me more free time. Any projects I have to do are ongoing (like the blog), I have some phone calls to make, and I have to change the layout of the blog. The calls are to friends, so that'll be easy and fun (even if it is for gigs), the blog, though time consuming is also fun, and ties into stumbling, which is easily one of my favourite things, and the layout can be redone in a couple of hours with help from Mike (there's some HTML crap we need to do apparently).

So what am I going to do with all of my free time? I dunno. But two options involve a screen, and one involves drinking a lot. Neither involve an early night.

3: Money is so easy to waste.

I own seventy pairs of trainers. Fact.

How did I manage such a gargantuan number? Oh sure, I've only thrown away about seven pairs of trainers in my life. And yeah, I am nostalgic about them. I can look at trainers and remember what I was doing that season I was wearing them (I wear shoes to death, it usually take a season).

That said, since I moved to Cardiff, and found TK Maxx, I reckon I buy three or so pairs a month.

I'm also addicted to T shirts too. I have thirty or so T shirts. I contrast this figure with the number of shirts I own. (Five; and they're all for work).

This is all crap that I won't have in maybe a few years time. But if there's a sale on, how am I supposed to resist?

4: Hangovers get worse the older you get.

When I was younger, even despite being the lightweight of the group of peers that were my drinking buddies, I could still put away a frightening amount of alcohol. Of course, back then, drinking was a means to an end, and that end was the end of sobriety. We had no pride in what we were drinking. If it got is wasted, we drank it.

The hangovers then were horrific, granted… the difference between now and then is that back then, all that I’d need to recover from that hangover was a lot of food, a little bit more time in bed, and about four hours out of direct sunlight.
Now, the hangovers I get are deceptive. I wake up feeling fine, to the point where I fool myself into thinking that maybe I’ll even go for a walk. So I swing my legs out of bed, and head to the kitchen. By the time I can see the tiles, I realise I have disturbed the carefull crafted equilibrium that my body had been constructing for me to aid my recovery. In disturbing that process I have made things much worse.

There are lines in front of my eyes. My whole body aches. My tongue not only feels foul, but it’s sore. I have no coordination between any of my limbs, and thus stumble into furniture with rapidity and ease. I fight off waves of nausea that threaten to turn into projectile vomiting. And the worst part is the thudding sub migraine headache that is jackhammering through my head, with a layer of sickly acidity just underneath it.

This is all bad enough, but as you get older, your ability to metabolise alcohol hit its peak and then started degrading again. My liver has all but said “sod this, I’m off. I don’t get paid enough for this.” As a result, a hangover that six years ago would have lasted four hours now lasts three days. That’s nine times as long.

5: Getting dumped gets easier... and more frequent.

I don't think that I'm a particularly difficult guy to go out with. I may not be the most attractive guy in the world, but I'm not the ugliest (that award still apparently goes to "Beaky" Stevens of Milton Keynes, a man whose grotesqueness is so legendary that I have heard of him in Cardiff). I don't think that I'm all that riddled with personality problems, I earn enough to take a lady out with enough regularity as to ensure that the "we never go anywhere," argument never happens. I'm an ok dresser, my politics are fairly liberal live and let live, I'm maybe a touch opinionated, maybe quick tempered, but I think overall, I'm fairly easy to date.

That said, I get ditched quite easily.

My latest ex promised me the world. One of the most serious (and I mean serious: There were raised voices and items thrown: Cushions) arguments we had was about whether or not the dogs would sleep indoors or outdoors. Apparently, this was just how things were meant to be, and we were going to remain together no matter what.

Then she moved back to Cork.

I'm not bitter. She couldn't find a job in South Wales, found one back there, tried the long distance thing, and it didn't work. Oh well, it happens, and yeah, I was gutted, but I'm ok. I'm in a new relationship, and Sarah's amazing. I feel a bit mean, because I kept her waiting while I got myself Ok'd and ready to date again, and was waiting while I was still doing the long distance thing.

What I don't understand is how I went from being the guy she couldn't live without to the guy she needed to leave behind. And how that happened in the space of a month.

The last really tough breakup I had was when I was eighteen. She was all kinds of wrong for me, and still I kept going back. She broke up with me three days after my birthday at a train station. (funnily enough, my last ex dumped me at the same train station. I'm beginning to hate trains...) and I cried and listened to the greyest songs I owned. I did stupid things like start fucking around with other women hoping she could somehow psychically feel me doing it. I wasted hundreds of pounds getting blitzed on anything strongly alcoholic. I cried a lot. I wrote ream after ream of awful poetry, and hundreds of songs about being alone and unloved. And suddenly, after half a year of this shit, I was Ok.

I was single for a grand total of a month before getting with Sarah. Of course, I grieved, and I cried, and I listened to sad music, but maybe because I was doing long distance and learning to live like a single man anyway, and maybe because this didn't end horrendously like the breakup I had at eighteen, I had finished mourning after the first week. The second week was comforting. And the third week was beginning to party again. By the fourth week, it was New Years Eve, and that's when Sarah and I got it together. It means we have no excuse for forgetting our anniversary.

Maybe I had a decent breakup. Or maybe being dumped just isn't such a drag anymore. Because it's happened a lot.



Well, there you have it. Like an intricately woven tapestry, I have knitted myself into the grand tradition of blog posts with lists about life in general. I hope you enjoyed it. Tomorrow will hopefully be slightly more worldly stuff, grand political satire, biting discourse on the banalities of the net, or fuming about music or gaming. Hell, it may even be about the band.

Whatever it is, I'll see you all tomorrow!

The city of Kalmar.....

Kalmar is a city in Smaland in the south-east of Sweden, situated by the Baltic sea. It has 35.170 people(2005), and is the seat of Kalmar Municipality with a total of 61.321 people(2006). It is also the capitol of Kalmar county, which comprises 12 Municipality's with a total of 233.776 people(2006)

(Seal of Kalmar 13th century)



From the 13th to the 17th centuries, Kalmar was one of Sweden's most important cities, between 1602 and 1913 it was the episcopal see of Kalmar Diocese with a bishop, and a Kalmar cathedral from 1702 is still a fine example of classicist architecture. It became a fortified city with the still mighty Kalmar castle as the center. After the Treaty of Roskilde 1658 Kalmar's importance diminished, until the industry sector was initiated in the 19th century.



Geographically Kalmar is the main route to the island of Oland thanks to the Oland bridge.





In 1611-1613, it suffered in the Kalmar War, which began with a Danish siege of Kalmar castle. 1611 is mentioned as the darkest year of Kalmar history. But by no means the only dark year, much blood has been shed in the vicinity of the castle. The last was during the Scanian War in the 1670's, leading it's siege to a total of 22-yet, the castle was never taken.



TODAY.

In more recent time's, Kalmar has been an industrial city with Kalmar Mekaniska Verkstad making steam engines and large machinery, it has a university with over 9,000 studants(University of Kalmar) and a research facility for Talina Sonera.

Well there you go, just in case you wanted to know where the name came from!!!

Have a good one............Coran

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar

This has to be the most insane thing I've found on the net so far....

This has been floating around on the net since the 8th of this month. The preferences attached to my stumble button should make it impossible to miss a story as insane as this, but there we go... I missed it anyway!

http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/index.php/2008/02/steroids-in-professional-gaming.html

Now this only leads me to wonder... who on Earth is desperate enough to win Guitar Hero (even if it is a professional tournament, presumably with a cash prize) that they would take steroids?

Steroids? To win computer games?

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think that there is a single gamer on EARTH that hasn't felt at least a modicum of anger towards their TV/ PC screen while playing a particularly difficult game, or particularly hard portion of a game (for me, these are almost always Boss fights for ANY Metroid game since Super Metroid; that particular game frustrated me so much I went to the Metroid database and got easy hints how to kill each boss: the game was a disappointing breeze after that. Just goes to show that you should do as much as you can on your own, otherwise, where's the fun?), but I've never felt the compunction to buy a performance enhancing drug to better increase my ability to play something that is a leisure activity. Now, I know it was a professional gaming tournament, but I have friends that play in professional gaming tournaments. They are the happiest people in the world, because quite literally they get to just play games for a living (It's a pretty good living too. Top prize in most gaming tournaments is around £10,000 in the UK, and the amounts decrease by £2000 a time for each place lower than 1st; so come 3rd, and you've won about £6000. They compete in about seven or eight tournaments a year, the rest of the time they spend "training." Bastards.) and have never EVER felt the need to enhance any of their abilities with drugs.

I used to compete in Martial Arts tournaments. I competed in two disciplines; Shorinji Kempo, and Muay Thai. I loved the buzz of competition. I loved the fact that I was pitting my skill and learning and stamina against someone else's skill learning and stamina. I hated losing, don't get me wrong, I fucking hated losing. It made me angry, but I accepted it. I seriously believe that that's what taking performance enhancing drugs is all about. They can't accept the reality of loss, and never want to accept it. They want to gain an edge on people that they must feel don't deserve the win as much as they do (that's how they must think. otherwise, why work so hard to take away a win from someone else through any means apart from the fair ones?). These people cannot accept that they have limits.

It is a reality of life that no matter what it is that you do, no matter what your strength is, what your God given talent is, someone out there in the big wide world of over six billion people is better than you at that particular gift. The trick is realising that it doesn't make your talent worthless, and if anything, it sets a benchmark and a goal for you to strive for.


If there's no competition, what's the point?

Men and women aren't that different really.

Patriarchy...it rears its ugly head in all places.

No, I am not a radical feminist. I believe in being a decent human being, because that's what we're all supposed to be. I don't believe in participating in a system of power (the patriarchy) that crushes people because of their gender, and then crushes people of the opposing gender because they're saying "hang on a minute, that's a bit out of order."

I've just been reading a blog called PunkAssblog, and one thread about guys pretending to be on side with feminists and supporting the cause when in fact they're just trolling made my blood boil. There were two trolls on that thread, one of them decided to state matter of factly that the "Patriarchy doesn't exist."

Ex - fucking - scuse me?


Just take a look at today. Valentines day. A lovely idea. A lovely sentiment. What's the reality though?

One day in the year when men have to be really romantic. Only one day when they have to make any effort with their respective partner. The rest of the time they can be lazy and unaffectionate, and it's OK, because I bought flowers, chocolate and a card for her.

Perfectly sensible women fall into this trap too. "Valentines day's so sweet! He was really nice this year."

Um. He should be nice to you. Every day of the year. That should be a given. That sentence is on par with "He's good to me," for making me angry. He's good to you? HE'S GOOD TO YOU?! What are you, a battered wife?! Of course he's good to you, he fucking should be, it should be a fucking given!

I'm not trying to be an Uber scrooge, and before you start, I'm not single and therfore embittered. I just know that for myself and Sarah, Valentines is fucking pointless because I make an effort to be a sweet and loving guy to her all the time. And it's no effort. I like doing that because I like seeing her happy.

Valentines day is one of the best examples of Patriarchy in action; Don't worry fella's, we'll fix it so that you don't have to put any effort in for the rest of the year with your girlfriend or wife, we'll fix it so that as long as you're really romantic on this one day of the year, you can get up to whatever crazy shit you want. Hell, buy her big ass ring on Valentines and you can probably cheat on her! We'll also make a butt load of money hawking tacky crap that you'll never use again! It's better than Christmas. It's a license to print money!"

Don't be so blind.

Cloverfield and freedom of speech...

Well, Kalmar have been and done it. Well, at least two thirds of us have done it anyway. Yup, that's right. We went to see Cloverfield. With no truly pressing concerns about the band, we took some much needed Rn'R. We've even decided on a logo. Here it is!











Now, you would have had to have been living under a rock for the last couple of months not to know at least something about Cloverfield, not least to say its rather brilliant marketing campaign. Relying on techniques not used for quite some time, they created an incredible sense of mystery and hype around the film, and the posters were a powerful lesson in iconism; The things that Cloverfield will be remembered for the posters depicting either a headless statue of liberty, or the head of the statue of liberty lying in the street. Instead of blowing its load in the trailers and showing us all of the best bits ahead of actually seeing the film, it let us wonder, speculate and generate massive word of mouth about it by saying almost nothing.
When it comes down to it, Cloverfield is actually a monster film; You know, monster attacks city and we track the movements of a group of protagonists and we witness their very human struggle for survival. Where it differs is the almost Gonzo nature of the storytelling, by relying on the Blair Witch model of dramatic tension by having it all captured on a camcorder. It's a well told story, with likeable characters who you actually care about, especially when anything happens to them. The Monster is perfect, if not aesthetically (my only criticism is that the monster is quite obviously a CGI creation); It's not something that can be reasoned with, it's an unstoppable berserker, it has no reason to be there apart from destroy things and when it's needed, is a perfect Deus Ex Machina.
As soon as I saw the trailers and heard the buzz, I also knew that this film was going to be the most fashionable thing at the box office to hate, a) because it was doing something different, b) because it was incredibly successful, and c) lots of people thought it was quite good. If there's one thing the internet has taught me, it's that people hate success, hate fresh and forward thinking, and if it's popular, it has to suck. In Cloverfield's case, I'm glad that that many people are actually wrong about it.

In other news, the controversy in 2005 surrounding the printing of cartoons that depicted the prophet Muhammed by Danish newspapers has been stirred up again by their decision to reprint them today. This follows the arrest of three men who had been plotting to kill the artists, and seems to be a direct response. Sweden, Holland and Spain have also printed the cartoons. When the cartoons were originally published, the Cardiff University newspaper Gair Rhydd also published them. Following widespread protest from muslim students, the offending issue was removed from circulation and furthermore, security was posted from opening to closing of the main Union building, where their offices are based, in case of violent reprisal. How ironic that Gair Rhydd as far as my understanding of Welsh goes actually means free word. I'm writing about this particular issue because it angers me as much now as it did then that people could possibly fear for their lives exercising rights protected in law to free speech. I find it contemptible that people feel that religion should be above ridicule, especially when considering that you only have to look at the selfsame religious conservatives calling for mutual respect and their actions to see that they have no respect for any opinion that differs from their own. Religion is not above being satirised, and it should be, and as frequently as possible, especially if it's a religion that tries to take a womans choice away from her as to what she can do with her body regarding abortion like fundy christians do... especially if it's a religion that advocates the blowing up of innocent people for a holy war (and I don't care WHAT your holy book says... kill innocent people, and if it exists, you're going to hell. Simple as that) like fundy muslims do... especially if you try to teach creationism as SCIENCE when it is quite clearly religious hokum like fundy christians do, but most of all, ESPECIALLY if you try to censor what everyone else says and thinks about your faith like both sets of fundies do.
I'm afraid the UK has freedom of speech laws and acts. The right to and write or draw whatever we feel like is protected by UK law, and by European law. That means, by law, you have no right to censor what I say draw or write. You may not like it, you may find it insulting to your faith, but I have every right to say it, and by trying to stop me you are trying to break the law.
Put it this way, if I have to hear or hear about an ultra religious islamic cleric telling young minds to go and blow up innocents in the name of Allah, or hear or hear about Christians telling gay men and women that they are going to hell because of something that is quite frankly none of their business and far less damaging than the sexual abuse they heap upon their altar boys, then you WILL listen to me laugh like a drain at your fervent belief in a belief system that is nonsensical and contradictory.

Mutual respect? Stop threatening to kill people for speaking their minds, then we'll talk about mutual respect.