it be cryin'; yeah, you thought it was rain

so here we are at christmas. not surprisingly, i've been drunk almost constantly since last week. chicago is a heavy eating and drinking town, and i indulged to the best of my abilities. that was followed by two leaving dos back in london and saturday i was pretty over being hungover. i also found evidence of a late night trip to burger king that reminded me i'd got on the tube, off at waterloo (where i procured said burger king) and then got into a cab from waterloo. so there is definitely the most idiotic voyage home of my life. except the time my flight to atlanta got diverted to maine. but that's for another day.

or is it? it was last christmas (just after i'd given you my heart, but before the very next day when you gave it away). we got onboard and the lady was like 'welcome to this delta airlines flight to atlanta, via bangor, maine'. i'm like 'oh funny joke! i bought a direct flight you mo'fos'. anyway, the whole thing was we have to land cause half the crew were off sick and you can't fly for more than eight hours without a new pilot or some shit so we had to pick up a new pack of yo yos to get us the whole way there.

i mean i would have just been like 'yo, ill take a long shift dudes, let's just get the fuck home', and the flight attendants really shouldnt have cared cause there were about 14 people on my flight. anyway, we stopped, we refueled, we got some new peeps onboard and then we taxied out to the run way.

it is at THIS POINT. not some EARLIER POINT ON THE FLIGHT that they say 'we have some paperwork to handle and have to go back to the gate'. you hardly have to be a frequent flier to know that paperwork never means anything but 'mechanical issues we dont want to talk about' or 'there may or may not me a terrorist on board'. in this case it must have been the latter because the guys who had been looking suspiciously like sky marshalls throughout the flight unveiled their shields (ooh la, la) and escorted this dude off the plane. then some puppies came on board and sniffed around everywhere. in case you're wondering if this feels massively unnerving, it does.

anyway we took off again and then all the women (inc yours truly) piled on one side of the plane to gossip about what may or may not have happened. we decided it was drugs, since otherwise i suspect we might not have made it all the way to maine.

today we aim for a less traumatic journey as we head up to razberet's parents' for more food and drink than i want to think about. merry christmas, all y'all!

And the embers never fade in your city by the lake

Please note: this post is about a week old. deal.

welcome to this special report of bor, broadcasting from chicago. yesterday we spent most of the day on a plane. we sat next to a very nice young man who'd just been studying in milan for three months. he was on a hellish journey from milan to sfo, via london and chicago. we enjoyed some delightful chat, he flattered me to the moon when he asked me if i was also studying in europe. i realised it's been 13 years since i was in college.

but i know what you're all focussed on is what i've eaten so far. well, last night we went to ing (not to be confused with that big bank), and had the 'nightmare before christmas' tasting menu. steve8 had oraganised the whole shebang and met me at the hotel after i got in. anyway, here are some pictures along with what, after about fifteen different drinks and jet lag, i can remember. 

 first up was this ball of something with mushrooms in it painted to look like the guy from the movie. neither steve8 nor i have seen the movie so we had no idea what the connections were, but it did look familiar. what was less familiar was the octopus underneath it. it wasnt quite my scene but it was good to taste. the broth and the weird ball were amazing.

i also had a pumpkin sour, which was, shall we say, not that great. they served it with this miracle berry stuff, which changes the way everything tastes. steve8 advised me i might not want to have that before a 10-course tasting dinner. some of the courses also came with booze, and we had a bottle of wine. you can imagine what sort of shape i was in after eating and drinking all that when i'd been up for untold hours.

 accompanied by low-lit pictures, and in no particular order, here's what else we had. pork belly with like six different kinds of foams and purees, accompanied by a luscious shot of rum and apple cider and pumpkin something. this was top notch. it also came in a massive silver skeleton hand, which was unnerving.

there was a deep fried frog's leg (meh), some little sweet potato things filled with sage, green cardamom and caraway pastes. delightful! oh, those came with truffle shavings. holy. fucking. shit. those are great.

then there was a whole fucking plate of duck. a devilled duck's egg, potatoes with a duck-fat gavy, sweet potato sticks fried in duck's fat, confit duck leg with stuffing foam and some berry thing.

then we ate the berry stuff and ate a lemon and it tasted amazing. the chestnut ice cream was also amazing. all in all, it was one of the most epic dining experiences ive ever had.

we had a chilean wine.

today i went to the gym and then went a little apeshit on the mag mile. i had to go to the apple store to get something and on the way back i basically stopped at every store i could find and bought at least one thing. after all this, i was pretty freaking hungry so i went to the corner bakery. here i was able to get a half a rueben and something called fully loaded potato soup. 

they deftly manouver and muscle for rank

despite royal mail having told us all that things were gonna be amazingly simple when it came to receiving packages this year, i still ended up queuing (twice) at the southwark post office distribution plant or whatever they call it these days. you can see here, in this picture i so lamely took, that this was a pretty hefty line. i mean we were out the door and around the corner. anyway, this is what i did last saturday. it took up a substantial part of the day.

what a black & white will look like

monday, beep visited from new york and brought me a black & white. for those of you who have been deprived of the experience of black & whites, they are large, very cakey cookies that are iced with half chocolate icing and half utter pointlessness. The chocolate icing, you'll notice, will cling to whatever style of wrapper your black & white comes encased in. cling film, a plastic packet, whatever it is, the chocolate, in all its chocolate glory, announces its gooey nature by drawing the plastic to it like a moth to a flame. meanwhile, the white icing has the reverse effect. plastic can't be paid to stick to this hardened version of tasteless toothpaste. this is all by way of saying, when you buy someone a black & white, that person will always eat it exactly this way:

1. break off tiny piece of white side - this is to make sure that yes, it does taste like nothing useful at all
2. eat most of the chocolate side, relishing every bite
3. eat another bite of white side. still sucks
4. eat the remainder of chocolate side, bar one bite
5. break off a chunk of the white side. peel the icing off and eat the cake
6. eat your last piece of chocolate
7. look at the remaining disappointment
8. 20 minute later, peel off the rest of the white icing, eat cake
9. wonder why they even bother with the white side

it's all a mystery

this is a technomolociaglly themed post. i know you guys are mega geeks like me so it's all good. first up, we have this yesterday morning's commute. my iPod's battery died and blah blah lazy blah blah didn't listen to music on my way in today. that didn't matter, cause someone on the bus was fucking blazing his ears off with some shite techno shite. so i was in like the fifth row of the bus. i had to narrow it down. this is where i discover i am a racist.  i looked around. it was clearly not a chick. we dont listen to cock music. and this was like gay cock music. but cock music, nonetheless.

so my options are: guy with shaved head and from what i can see not impressive facial hair who has a blackberry and some clear headphones that like come up around the back of your ears and look more like a hearing aid than a hearing destroyer. chap 2: beats by dre headpones and his collar up (twat). these were who it was, in order. the first guy i was like 'wow dude that is really loud cause you're in the first row and i am way back here in the fourth row so holy jesus, you are not going to be able to hear much longer'. he totally ruined my theory when he departed the bus (looking much older than i thought he was from the front) and the noise remained. then it was little mini twat. he was young, and as we know, the young are prone to stupid behaviour like keeping their noises too loud and being anywhere i am. then he got up and left the bus. 

so now there was just one bottle of beer on the wall. the guy right in front of me. here's the racist part. i pegged the facial hair guy and the young guy even though their distance from me was not in any way indicative that they might be the culprit. so this guy, sat in front of me, was spilling his shitty techno all over my airwaves. he was, in no particular order, asleep (who can sleep with that shit on??), large (like very rotund), asian, possibly chinese, with a longish pony tail (vaguely pink from previous dye job), old and sporting fu man chu facial hair. 

dont be racist, kids.

hello from 1994

next up we have something that's been causing me endless joy ever since i saw it. someone hacked a website .here is what they did.

i mean if this isn't the lamest hack since johnny lee miller and angelina jolie in that movie (which i have of course not seen like 20 times), i don't know what is. but it's also fucking brilliant. yeah evil hacker. it gives me a weird sense of joy to know that these kinds or people are still kicking around, doing this rather than making hats out of people.

and finally, last thursday i was cajoled into going out for a few pints and the liverpool match. of course, i got home at 9 or so and was thinking 'why stop now?'. so i called up xx via face time on my phone and cracked open a pumpkin ale. cut to two hours later. she has found a bottle of whisky she claims is mine (i have never bought jamesons ever) (she also hates whisky) and i have started to eye up a 2-year-old bottle of polish gin.

this is the part where you're all 'holes in the story, wcs! your battery wouldnt last that long!' and, my smart readers, you are right. it was also around this time that we were grappling with my dying battery on my phone, which we still had to use to communincate properly to figure out what was going on with the SIMULTANEOUS usage on my macbook of: facetime, iChat video, Gchat video and a Google+ hangout. for those of you keeping count, that means we were on five different versions of the same kind of programma and couldnt get any of them to work. it was not cause we were drunk!

ps after the last guy got off the bus, you could hear something else. the guy two rows behind me snoring. ahh, commuting.

not a chill to the winter but a nip to the air

amongst my many cultural endeavours of late are nsfw at the royal court in sloan square, followed by a long period of time wandering around whole foods in kensington acting like going to a grocery store is an actual activity for a saturday night rather than just something you do when you need milk.

nsfw was pretty good. we all found ourselves vaguely shocked to discover that julian barratt is quite hot in real life. i won't get into the plot but it was a pretty weak swipe at sexism and gender equality and 'are women doing it to themselves'-ness. it was good but it was almost so superficial there wasn't much point in bringing it up. like saying, 'those poor people, eh?' then going for ice cream.

speaking of cream! we bought some of whole foods' very, very good pumpkin pie and a cup full of fresh cream. it was, as you might expect, lush. i bought a whole bunch of other random shit, including gefilte fish, which never ceases to make whoever i am shopping with (unless it's a select few people) relatively uncomfortable.

artsy fartsy king's cross picture

anyway i also went to see talvin singh and some lady who seriously kicks ass at percussion play a live score to a movie at Kings Place. i've done this sort of thing before, so i know it's a bit of a crap shoot. it was pretty cool, though. not least because the film itself was shot in new york in like the god-knows-whenties. they went to coney island when luna park and the steeplechase were still around. those of you who care will know what that means.

then we went to the grosvenor and had a lovely roast and a relaxing evening and it was lovely and i was happy. i am in love with a pub. like truly in love. with a pub. although i don't know if i'd get the lamb again.

if. i. would. would. you?

some of you remember the good old days when i was just a drunk with a keyboard. now i'm a sort of older-than-i-feel actual adult person who defo drinks more pints of water at the gym that fozzies at the pub. so boring as i may have become, here's a bit of old school wcs.

Friday i decided to attend after-work drinks. we started out at the old crown, where i promptly re-claimed my mayorship. after a few drinks, we decided to rock up to camden to see a band called Steak at the Black Heart. Steak are made of up, among others, the boyfriend of a lovely little lady called lindseed oil, who i work with. I recommend you go see Steak, if you are into loud music that might be in the direction of metal. I would not recommend you see them if you are me. I gave it a shot, but that is severely not my thing. they are nice guys, though.

after that, we went to the world's end, which is seriously where i cut my teeth as a drinker. i spent almost all of 2000/2001 in this bar. and it was oddly just like i remember it. it's also massive. they also still play the exact same mid-90s grunge in there. but the girls are all different. it's all young (like i used to be), really dressed (tarted?) up (like i never really managed to get the hang of), apparently indian ladies (which i am not). i found it a bit weird really. i wouldn't have guessed these kinds of girls were particularly into like alice in chains and nirvana. but you know, more power to them!

so i ended up trashed. i remeber telling damson jam and her bf that alaska punches you in the face when you get off the plane in juneau, so that's useful. we got the tube home and i went to switch back north at kennington but doh! last nbound train was gone. so i went up and tried to get a bus. i was cold and tired and no cabs were anywhere so i got on the first bus that came. which only went to Elephant & Castle. what happens next is just the kind of thing you tell you young daughters never to do. i walked from E&C, mainly focussing if anywhere that sold curry was still open, at 130am.

but! i made ti to chicken cottage. there is a £5 minimum to use a card there. so i bought two meals and had one for breakfast.

eating barbequed iguana

i made 554 dollars last year.
i spent £44 on stamps today.
i am down to two bottles of salad dressing.
my bagels are always extra cream-cheesed these days.
will bailey is in a new show, and it's good. i'd venture to say it's sort of a sexed-up version of the killing. with will bailey!!!!
kate is knocked up and the media in at least the UK has lost its damned mind over it.
if loving tesco's finest mexican cole slaw is wrong, i don't wanna be right.