This Month's Timmy-Time Catch-Up

Previously.....

Timothy got accepted for the reading 2010 team!
Timothy got sick :(
Timothy got a job!
Timothy got 2 As and a B!
Timothy threw a party to celebrate!
Timothy had to clean up after the party..... but had friends to help him!

These are some of the exciting things Timothy found during clean up the of the party:

• Half a bottle of Pimms
• Half a bottle of sparkling wine
• Half a bottle of vodka
• A crate of Carlsberg
• Sarah's crates: 1 Budweiser 1 Carling 1 Fosters
  
• shredded remains of jeans
• a broken keyboard
• a broken chair
• 3D glasses
• Cranberry juice
• Chocolate soy drink
• Some vomit

I'd also like to congradulate everyone on their results, it was a really good turn out and I think everybody is going to end up fine (I thought that anyway)

And thank you everyone for coming to the party, I think everybody had at least a pretty decent time and I'm glad that that that means so many people. I think that despite all the mess and trouble and bad heads and sore throats and aching bodies it was worth it just so that many years from now, an old friend will turn to you and say "Hey, do you remember that one night on results day?"
and you will answer
"No. Not at all"

Stay triumphant
x

Back in Blog

I love you all, really.

Thing is I probably don't know as much about you as I'd like to, because, I tend not to do anything.

I mean Jesus, I really don't do anything.
I don't work, I hardly revise, I've got no real hobbies. All I really do is read, do chores and surf Wikipedia all day and get depressed when I see Facebook/MSN status' saying 'doing revision' and I haven't done any. I mean man. It's like you wake up one day and suddenly realise you're nowhere near the person you would like to be.

But I'm going to stop beating myself up and I'm not gonna go on about how tomorrow I'll be an entirely new person because I get a feeling I did a similar thing a few months back. But I will make an effort to organise things and invite the people I want to get to know more.

I mean most of you here are going to university or a different country pretty soon so I best make the most of the time I have with you.

Here's an example of one of my missed opportunities:

NEW YORK 2009

I kind of hoped I could have used that time to be better friends with those of you who went and maybe I did a little bit. But it still seems that you've still got your own little circle going on and I've got my, err, kind of circle, thing, going on and now I'm just feeling lonely and making soppy little blogs about it all.


Now's the time you're going to point out that I really should just do something and not just complain but I don't really know what to organise;

pub (a bit dull I suppose)
shopping (don't really have much to buy)
picnic (weather a bit unpredictable)
clubbing (expensive)
gig (can't seem to find something everyone would like)
theatre (definitely hard to find something everyone would like)
cinema (actually a bit fed up of cinema as it's really the only thing I go out to do now)

bla bla bla winge winge emotions
out

x

Tit

Dressed up like a Prep, felt like a tit.
Walked to Chloe's house in outfit feeling like a tit.
Chloe's dad made jokes about me, felt like a tit.
Saw Ben and Chloe's outfit, felt slightly less like a tit.
Got to Mairs, met new people who judged me for looking like a tit.
Offered a drink, asked for a cider, felt like a tit, no cider, felt even more like a tit.
Happiness spoilt by pointless episode, felt nothing.
Memory gap.
After episode felt like a tit for causing bit of a scene.
Walked most of the way to Top Rock when everybody else began throwing up and collapsing, felt like a tit.
Rang Rachel for no reason, felt like a tit.
Walked Alan home, drank his hip flask, felt bit like a tit.
Made way back and slowly fell asleep with friends in front of TV and felt like everything was good.
Sick all Saturday, felt like a royal tit.

Feel guilty for having such a good life, all I want to do is help all of my friends that have problems and I don't even understand their problems most of the time but there's nothing I can do about them and there's nothing really eating me up other than that unless you count my social incompitance and inability to do something really creative. And that's all I really have to report.

Feeling Infinite/The Importance of Being Shitfaced

[7.46am]. You could say that I haven't been blogging for a while because my life is so jam-packed with constant fun and excitement that I couldn't fit in the half hour to type in front of a screen. You could say that, but you would be wrong.

So during my steady, contended way of life I was sitting and thinking about doing a self-reflective, stream-of-consciousness type blog about being young, I was thinking about doing another film review for Up in the Air (four Arnies), I was thinking about doing a rant blog about being alienated and alone in the world but eventually I decided that these were things which neither of us really wanted so I'm going to a blog simply about being drunk.

Several things are going well; I'm not hungover (all though I was kind of up for the experience as I've never ever been hungover, but let's not be negative), I'm the first person in the house up, there's some nice snow outside which makes my garden quite picturesque but doesn't mess up the roads, the birds are singing and I feel I've learned something from getting pissed -without having to screw up in one way or another in order to do that.

So a schmaltzy, reflective, life lesson type of blog we have indeed. But first let me tell me about one of the books I'm reading (alongside Dracula, Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby and probably a dozen more books I haven't finished); It's called The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, I got it dirt cheap on Amazon and it was recommended to me since I predictably fell in love with The Catcher In The Rye which I also got dirt cheap on Amazon. It's ok but it's full of these little moments, these simple, understated moments where everything just feels right and if you take out everything in the context of that moment then the moment may seem like the most perfect thing in the world even though nothing great in particular happens. I'm going to quote just so you can understand my blog title a little bit and what I'm on about.

Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.
"I feel infinite"
And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent, and we felt young in a good way. I have since bought the record and would tell you what it was but, truthfully, it's not the same unless you're driving to your first real party, and you're sitting in the middle seat of a pickup with two nice people when it starts to rain.

[10:02am, after shower and exercises etc]. And that's kind of how I felt during and after Carrie's party, I managed for the first time to get a level of drunk that's in between just disorientated and slightly energetic and writhing in pain blowing chunks on Rob's carpet and for this reason it felt like I had never been to a proper party before, and I don't really care if it sounds a little pathetic but it was just right. It was also a strange kind of drunk where I could still say big words and be introspective, I probably would've used the word introspective had it fitted in to a sentence. And I was aware of my friends and how great they are, I was even able to tell them that, how great they are which isn't something I would usually do. I felt like I was turning in to a much more open and spontaneous person, other people probably didn't get such a poignant experience and I'm sorry if I'm making you feel even more like shit through irony.

[11:15am, a deserved lie down and some pointless web searching] Anyway at the end of the day I decided to write what what was in my head on the pad by my bed, this is the pad where I write notes that may important or little thoughts that I get. Sometimes I get afraid that good days or moments would be lost forever so I keep note of stuff. Which is also why I have a folder stuffed full of little keepsakes of last year with no real purpose anymore, it's also why I might take a little photo of something which I might find kind of beautiful but in a way that nobody else would notice or bother to take a photo of which makes it even more special. So on this pad, when I was still surprisingly drunk it said this:
BLISS
CLARITY
OPENNESS
LOSS OF MUSCULAR FUNCTIONS
LOVE
IGNORANCE
ONE OF THE BEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE (but crossed out, and underneath it said: THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, for some reason I think this might be right)
IS YOUR REASONING RATIONAL? IT SEEMS SO.
TALK. COMMUNICATION,
FORGET THE PAIN.
SMILE. FRIENDS.
P.T.O

(next page)
YOUR LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL! (circled and underlined)
WRITING IS NEVER DELETED (I accidently deleted an epic text I was working on earlier)
LACK OF CONTROL
WATER!
WRITE A BLOG ABOUT SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
SWITCHING LIGHT ON AND OFF TO WRITE
SANITY- FEEBLE CONCEPT
CHECK TEXTS
CONFIDENCE
EXCITEMENT!

that was nice way to finish the drunken note I think.

you might think that's all of this is pretty strange but new Open Me doesn't really care.

I tend to write my blog in sporadic way throughout the day which is why I've posted the times that I contribute in brackets, and that the fact that I started in the morning is still clear.
Anyway, I think I'm done with telling you my moment of infinity.

Stay lovely
x

Who said I'm not hip?

I made one of these things too.

http://www.formspring.me/timothyted

Tim reviews the last film he saw

The last film I saw was Avatar. In case you've heard of it.

So this is Mr. Cameron flaunting his prowess in spending lots of money on making a fairly mediocre film that manages to gross a fairly ridiculous amount, which is then usually used to fund his next, ever-so-slightly more ambitious project. After twenty years of this practice and a lot of time off spent being underwater and getting old, Cameron has come up with Avatar: now rated by Time magazine as the most ridiculously expensive thing in the world ever (paraphrased) and the absolute highest grossing movie about giant blue aliens with pointy sticks ever (also paraphrased. Expect me to use brackets a lot in this review.)

The reason it has, so far (It's still in the cinemas isn't it? How long has it been?), way passed the $1 billion mark is probably because 3D tickets are so f*cking expensive. You'd think gimmicky technology that started in the 50s (Don't tell Cameron that, "I'm doing everything in 3D now" he tells a journalist in 2003) would ease its way a bit more in to the mainstream by now. But no, I ended up settling for the normal ticket, begrudgingly as it was the one thing about the film that excited me.

Let's quickly now dash over the ugly little patch of slushy ice that is the story. So there's this crippled marine called Jake Sully (yes that is a fairly masculine action hero name isn't it?) who is sent to a nice planet called Pandora that is made entirely out of CGI. But of course we don't expect anything disastrous to happen on a planet called Pandora do we? Of course not. Jake Sully spends a lot of the time narrating the action in a voiceover which seems somewhat unnecessary as there's also segments of the film where crippled Jake narrates the action on whatever the extraterrestrial future military version of Skype is, and this fulfills the same basic narrative function. Anyway he plays puppet with on of the aforementioned giant blue aliens that bare a striking resemblance to the martians from Futurama.

There are other scenes where the simularities are definately there but Google Images can only do so much.

Meanwhile Sigourney Weaver also plays puppet alongside Jake with an alien that looks shockingly like Sigourney Weaver. Weird. So on a mission to a, err, well he's on an undercover mission that has something to do with the blue guys even though the marine folks plan to blow them all the way to Tatooine anyway for some kind of precious natural resource hidden under a magic tree. But Jake's an idiot and he gets seperated from creepy blue Sigourney Weaver and falls straight in to the hands of the blue apache folk's tribe. They don't seem to mind that he speaks in Italian American English and they soon take him as one of their own. After the training montage.
A training montage ensues.
So as we see from the training montage, loveable idiot Jakesully is now an honorary blue wierdo. But oh noes, something disastrous happens. Who'd have thought it? Honorary blue weirdo Jakesully falls in love with the sexy blue weirdo Neytiri. Which is kind of creepy. And the marines plan to blow up the blue guys magic tree with spaceships that are only occasionally resistant to fucking bows and arrows. Anyway yaddayaddayadda, explosions, kickass exoskeletons from the third Matrix film, man with scar becomes bad guy. I won't spoil it all.

Avatar is what idiots call 'a popcorn movie' and what pretentious idiots call 'a breathtakingly intense and visceral experience'. I thought it was a bit of fun. There's plenty of great action sequences and technical magicianry to keep you entertained, or if you're a grouchy sod like me you'll start thinking about the financial crisis and find the film as incongruously mocking as the Piers Morgan programmes 'Gawping at Foreign People Who Have Way Too Much Money Than They Really Need.' -which I suppose is mildly better than most celebrities option for a limited series of 'Tutting at Foreign People Who Have Bugger All.' Back to the film, wasn't 2007's 300 just as visually pleasing a skull-crushing action movie, if lacking in characters and narrative, and for hundreds of thousands of dollars less? Maybe I'm just being cynical again. Anyway, I'll leave you there. You might find more of these pretentious rants in the future if I don't have anything else to blog about.
So rating. I'm giving Avatar a genorous three out of five Arnies for reasons you probably already guessed.
And why I'm rating with Arnies? Because I can.

The Case of the Missing Carrot

Here are some surveilance photos from when I was struggling hard to attatch a carrot nose to my lovely snowman last week:




All done.

Coast is clear.




Goddamn you Wilson! Our paths have crossed for the last time!

Mafia

It's time to talk mafia.
Not the silly men in hats playing with horses and hacksaws mafia, the discussion game mafia. It's one of those useful little things you pick up from hanging around a lot of Christians, however the game involves the fair bit of deception betrayal and murder, plus a version involving shots. It was invented by some Russian psychologist chap and is generally played in some kind of youth club environment.
The problem is you really need at least seven people to play and at least half an hour free- plus nobody has ever heard of the game. However, done right it's a lot of fun, trust me.
So in case you don't know what it is, here's the lowdown:

Like I said at least 7 people, maybe 5 with special rules but 11 to 13 would be the ideal number. Someone who knows the game well and is good at telling a story is the narrator. The group sit in a circle, the narrator usually describes them as being citizens of a small town under serious threat by mafia -how far the roleplaying goes is up to you. The narrator starts by given the players a card each- these could be pieces of paper, playing cards or specially designed cards, whatever. The card either represents a 'villager', 'mafia', 'doctor', or 'detective'. I'll explain them in a bit.

You look at your card and do not show anybody.

The rounds are split into (fake) day and night. At 'night' the narrator tells everybody to close their eyes and one at a time gives the people with special cards (non-villager cards) instructions.

The mafia (or killers, cultists or werewolves) would be asked to open their eyes together and silently decide amongst themselves who to kill, once decided they silently tell the narrator their decision and close their eyes.

The doctor (or paramedic or guardian angel)would be asked to open his/her eyes and point at somebody they believe might be a likely target for the mafia, then to close his/her eyes. If that was the person chosen by the mafia then that person survives.

The detective (or investigator or psychic)would be asked to point at somebody they suspect of being the mafia, and the narrator would silently say whether or not that person is in fact a mafia.

The narrator announces that everybody wakes, and if somebody was killed he would announce a mysterious death (often detailed in a particularly gruesome and funny way). The 'day' part of the round then consists of the players determining who were the killers. This would usually be settled with a vote. The voted suspects have a little moment to defend themselves and a decision is made on which one would be lynched/killed. In some versions the lynched player can then reveal his card but in almost every version anyone dead (either murdered or lynched) can not converse about who the killers might be throughout the rest of the game. The purpose of the killers is to blend in with the other characters and not reveal their disposition, while all the while defending each other from lynching (although a bit of back-stabbing might be necessary in desperate situations). The game can end by all mafia being killed or by the mafia succeeding in killing off everybody else (the civilians).

During the day the detective can announce that he or she is the detective and help the voting process by saying who they have found out is innocent or guilty.
Yet as cards cannot be revealed this could always just be a mafia manipulating the game to his advantage, claiming mafia are innocent and innocents are mafia. A trusted detective is usually chosen to be saved by the doctor (obviously, mafia don't like detectives).

If you're a doctor, it's best to shut up about it as you're stopping the mafia do their job and they would be likely to kill you if they know who you are. In some games though, doctor's are allowed to save themselves. Admition to being the doctor is most common when that person is being lynched, whether that person is actually the doctor, or a lying mafioso is, however, is up to the citizens.

This all becomes incredibly simple once you start actually playing the game. Trust me. Good for parties or gettogethers, or camping.



An experienced group might find themselves experimenting with new roles, I'm not sure how interested you'd be in this but here goes:

A 'Romeo' card might be given to a civilian and a 'Juliet' card to a mafioso. These two will know each others identities and try to defend each other- as whichever one dies, so does the other.

A 'Vigilante' is a civilian with the power to kill who he suspects to be the mafia during the night. He gets his own little phase.

A 'Medium' can interrogate dead characters.

There could also be a 'Traitor' -a civilian who wins with the mafia or a 'rat' -a mafioso that is secretly on the civilian's side.

The 'Godfather' is a mafioso with some special privelage- other than being the deciding voice of who to kill, he might be given an extra round to kill, appear to a detective as a civilian or be given the oportunity to recruit a civilian to become part of the mafia. Alternatively there's a psychiatrist character who can turn a mafioso good.


There's loads of these things, I've even come across 'thief', 'baker' 'lawyer', 'judge', 'village drunk', 'serial killer', 'prostitute','Rambo' and 'village bicycle'.
It's suprising how big this thing is considering nobody's heard of it.

Stay Alive
x

Frohes Neues Jahr!

Ja!
So I'm back from Austria, remember when I said I was going to Austria for New Year's? Yeah I'm back from that. So 2010 has just swooped down in front of my garden and taken a huge dump in my hedge, thanks a lot 2010 you big metaphorical nonce*. No, I didn't do as much work in Austria as I planned to but don't worry I won't go on about that.

Snow really is rubbish here isn't it? Maybe it's just compared to the ten inches of fresh powder I've got used to in Austria where you drop your skis and in ten minutes find them almost completely buried.

I picked up a Guardian in the services and there was this story about a pub in the Yorkshire Dales that was snowed in for over two days over the new year, everyone just had a non-stop party and got to know everybody. A student there said it was like the 'ultimate lock-in'. How great does that sound? They were mostly Leeds University students. If I don't end up in Leeds Uni I will be extremely sad. Having talked to somebody from Leeds I've started getting extremely excited about it, it sounds like the place to be. I'm also excited about my birthday even though it's four months away. But there will be an epic club crawl around Cardiff and most people I know would already be 18 by then so they can come with me.

Also I came home to find this story and assumed you must be worrying about me especially with the amount of FIREWORKS that were going off in the valley and echoing for miles.

So on New Year's Eve, the skiing folks (must have been at least 80 of us) went on a huge trek in the mist where we couldn't see a single firework. Some Austrian kids even attacked us with fireworks. (There is apparently no health and safety in all of Austria during New Years) and we ended up crashing a tiny empty Austrian bar and letting off hundreds of party poppers and singing Old Lang Zine. We felt a bit guilty afterwards and volunteered to clean up after some awkward miming to request a brush. The owners of the bar didn't seem to mind, they were busy setting fire to whole boxes of fireworks and spraying it with deodorant, almost killing us. It was a good night and I decided to get up late to go skiing the next day.
Prior to that there was some curling with the towel trolleys you get from hotel bathrooms, with a borrowed small child as the house. As well as a pub quiz and the odd bit of Scottish dancing.

So that was my New Year for you, gluhwein bingeing, makeshift winter sports, snowstorms, frantic ballistic attacks and some very bad dancing, I hope you enjoyed wasting your time to read about it, now excuse me while I go bury my head in the snow for the rest of the year.

Stay wunderlich!
x



*I have to stop using that word having only just discovered it means child molester.