DECEMBER 30
FOR Christ's sake, we've only just celebrated Christmas, we're yet to see in the New Year and Target already has its Valentine's Day tat out on the shelves!
AND as this is the last post of 2006, I'd just like to say Happy New Year to both of you.
DECEMBER 29
DARLEENE has nominated me for some kind of Interne meme thing, whatever that is. Basically I have to write five things that people don't know about me. So here goes:
1. Believe it or not, Mut isn't my real name. It was bestowed on me by my London cousins when I was five, meaning I'll have been called Mut for 30 years next month. That also means I'll have been called Mut for longer than most of the buildings in Southern California have existed.
2. I'm adopted and my greatest fear is discovering my natural parents are English.
3. I have a huge collection of toy Minis, which one day might make it onto this site if a) I get around to it and b) if I can withstand the level of pisstaking I'll probably receive.
4. I have huge problems telling my left from my right as Ev discovered when she came to visit me in work and, thanks to my directions, ended up in La Crescenta.
5. Sometimes I wish I was 17 again and driving around Ley's Hill late at night with Flynn while listening to the Smiths.
DECEMBER 28
FOR Christ's sake, last week we had a church burn down, Tuesday a building burnt down and tonight some pratt managed to get his car onto the railway tracks and got hit by a train (he survived). Why can't these gits do stuff like this after I've left the office or on weekends?
DECEMBER 26
SOME more shots taken with the XT and my Sigma 70/300mm lens on macro mode:
DECEMBER 25
IT'S Christmas. But it doesn't really feel like Christmas. The sky's too blue. It's not cold enough. Mum and dad's arguments about the decorations/turkey/where the Asti Spumante is are happening 6,000 miles away. My annual wind-the-sister up routine won't work over the phone*. I dunno, maybe it's me - as I stagger on towards my 35th birthday (January 28, toy Minis appreciated) Christmas has just lost it. It's gone from the getting-up-at-5am routine, then to the getting-pissed-at-Levy's phase, now I seem to be in the couldn't-give-a-monkey's phase. Ev is a huge fan of Christmas - she gets excited about the tree, the decorations, the dinner, wrapping presents, the 70s stop-motion TV shows - while I just scratch my nuts and go on playing Call of Duty. Happy Christmas.
*For the uninitiated: Lou gives me a perfectly-wrapped pressie. I hand her a rumpled fiver with the words "Don't spend it all at once."
Anyway, here's some pics I took with my new Rebel XT.
DECEMBER 22
WITH Christmas coming up - and with me facing a mad day of last-minute panic-buying tomorrow - I just wanted to wish both of you a happy Christmas. And if you send me a card, try putting the money in before you seal the envelope.
DECEMBER 15
TRUE to my promise here's the pics of the old British cars that are parked or in storage in the car park I use for work. I would have done this update this morning but Blunty phoned so I'm having to do it at midnight instead.
First off is a Daimler V8 Saloon. It's a C-reg, which means it's a 1965 model and sold for a whopping £1,745 when it was launched. Although the car is covered in dust the camera (and Photoshop) did a good job of picking up its British Racing Green paint.
The interior is in pretty good nick considering its age and it's nice to see the steering wheel on the proper side. The dashboard is made from walnut.
The V8 was based on the Jaguar MK II design and had a 2.5-litre engine, doing 0-60 in 13 seconds. I think my Mini can beat that.
Someone's nicked the V8 logo but the Daimler badge is still there.
The sticker in the rear side window says "James M Soutar, W. Main, Barstow, CA" but I can't find any info about him on the Interweb. But it does look like the Daimler belongs to a firm that rents out classic cars for movies. How it got from Barstow to Glendale is anyone's guess.
Next up is the masterpiece of British engineering that is the Triumph TR7. Introduced in 1975 it quickly dated and was ridiculed for its design - "front end done by the designer, back end done by the tea lady" is one way of putting it. It went out of production in 1981.
This interior isn't made from walnut - instead it's got the classic modern acres-of-black-plastic look (and to be fair my Mini's not that much different). TR7s were sold in America before they were released in the UK - the British launch was delayed twice as the Yanks couldn't get enough of them - which explains why this one's got the steering wheel on the wrong side and has automatic transmission.
And now you can see where the tea-lady joke comes in; the back end of these cars are hideous. This TR7 is in pretty terrible condition with damaged bodywork, scratched paint and flat tyres.
The Triumph logo is just about hanging in there. The paint looks like it's thoroughly oxidised and no amount of Turtle Wax can help.
For car number three we're back to Daimler - a DS420 limousine, to be precise. Built between 1968 and 1992, this is a pre-1980 model. I'm fairly sure that the last time I had a close-up look at this car (but didn't have the camera) it had old-style British plates on it, but they appear to have been nicked.
Again the dashboard is made from walnut. The front seat is a one-piece bench and the huge steering wheel didn't leave much room for the chauffer.
Here's the back end. As you can probably see the local dickheads have been writing in the dust, although how that's the only damage this car's received is beyond me - in Britain it would have been nicked, dumped and torched within an hour of being parked (or 20 minutes if it was left in Merthyr). Apparently the Queen Mother owned two DS420s, one in white which was kept on the Royal yacht and one in black which was kept close to the nearest off-license. Still, she's dead now so there's no need to be catty about the snobby old bitch.
DECEMBER 14
TONIGHT was our office Xmas party, which kicked off at 5pm and ended at 11pm, unless you're in production which means we got over there at 7, filled a polystyrene container with food and went back to the office at 7.20 to finish the paper. Pictured above is my Xmas dinner in all its glory, along with a can of Squirt from the vending machine that had me burping even more than usual. Note the tortillas casually strewn over the desk to add some class to the scene.
And pictured above is the crappy Albertson's disposable lighter that packed up on me when I went for my post-Xmas dinner fag. Luckily Garland had a book of matches he gave me so all was well. I hope he doesn't want them back as I managed to lose them somewhere between the office and the car park, a distance of 50 yards.
SPEAKING of the car park, for some reason there are three old British cars at the bottom end of it that have been there for years. I got some pics of them and I'll put them up tomorrow* as I just can't be arsed to do it at 2am on a Friday morning.
*Honest
DECEMBER 13
I NEED a quick bit of advice: If you're stuck in a car with someone and they've put a Jessica Simpson CD on, is it better to jump out of the door onto the freeway at 80mph, or grab the steering wheel and make the car crash in a fiery ball of death?
DECEMBER 6
I DON'T know if anyone's interested, but there's a Christmas tree available for pickup on the left-hand shoulder of the southbound 5.
DECEMBER 4
THEY were filming a TV show close to our apartment last week. It's some new programme called "Day Break" about some guy who relives the same day over and over, which pretty much sums up American TV anyway. Ev and my sis went in for a closer look and I hung back to take photos.
I'm pretty sure the star of the show is the guy in the leather jacket in the pic above. The shoot seemed to be going pretty well, but then the nutter below showed up and started yelling about how much he wanted to be in movies.
One of the crew members had to tell the guy to shut up, but he kept on shouting for a while before sodding off somewhere. Ironically my mum had been shouted at earlier for straying into a shot when she and dad were taking a walk. If you're watching the show and see a Welsh OAP in the background, that's mum.
SPEAKING of the parents, the family arrived back in the UK safe and sound this morning to be greeted by black skies and pouring rain. Their taxi home from Heathrow took the wrong turning and ended up in Teweksbury and they couldn't get in the door as it was too dark to see the keyhole. After they finally got in they realised there wasn't any food in the house so dad set off to the bottom of town to the chippie, only to discover there was a power cut and the chip shops were all closed. That's pretty much a typical day for my family.
DECEMBER 3
EVERYTHING'S now been uploaded so there shouldn't be any missing files. Of course, that means there will be, so if you spot any let me know and I'll get round to replacing them sometime in the distant future.
DECEMBER 1
THE DNS transfer went through tonight so I'm on my new host. I'm currently uploading files but it's 2am and I'm knackered, meaning lots of parts of the site are going to be missing and there'll be quite a few 404s until I get my act together. Bear with me as you both know it's worth the wait.
