Batteries died after only one photo. Lame.

YAIH came third in this battle of the bands. Quite a respectable place for a first gig. I really enjoyed it. We only played two songs and it turns out that the winners had to do a four song set at the end which we wouldnt have been able to do as we've only been YAIH for two practices and only really nailed the two songs. I wish we'd won just to see what we'd have come up with.

I have been listening to the new Darkness album in my car. I like it but its not as good as the first one.

There has been some concern in the office lately because there have been several sightings of a mouse. I am currently preparing a hilarious joke to unleash on everyone who is worried about the potential mouse infestation. I haven't got the finer details of it quite ready yet, but it involves me claiming to have seen literally dozens of mice around, some on people's desks. However, it will later transpire that I was talking about the kind of mouse you use with a computer and from this hilarious misunderstanding will the humour arise.

I bet you are wetting yourself at this concept. Not literally because that would be disgusting and somewhat out of character for the average reader of my blog.

I am yet to witness this mouse. I have thought about trying to catch it, but then, what would I do when I've got it?

Your Awesome Intergalactic Heroes

Possibly a bit too silly but it makes every other name seem like a step down. Unless we called ourselves The Ace Division or something like that. It doesn't really fit the music but I think that a name like YIAH (as all the cool kids say) means that we should make music to fit the name.

In any case, it would look good on a poster.

And I couldn't stop laughing all afternoon at work because of it. Which makes a change from sleeping.

Today I went to the German market for lunch. It was ace but cold. I had a German burger. My boss went for a bratwurst hotdog. He was tempted by the alternative sausage but the name of it was unpronouncable and he didn't want to lower himself to the indignity of pointing in order to get what he wanted. I hope that Nottingham gets a Russian market sometime so that there's someone selling Khav Kalash like in the Simpsons. I like that guy.

At work I fell asleep for about an hour. This was after most of the normal-working-hour people had left, including my boss so thankfully nobody really noticed or played any humourous practical jokes on me. I think Lucy noticed but only because she is sat next to me, and even then probably only because I made a noise when I woke up. And I only woke up because the entire of my left side felt numb and for a minute I thought I was semi-paralysed. I couldn't get up for about 2 minutes because the blood flowing back into my arm and leg spazzed my muscles out. What an exciting hour that was.

When I got home, the day got even more exciting. Thats right, there was an incident that topped me falling asleep in the excitment stakes. Hard to believe, I know.

My housemate Claire had made a garden fire brazier type thing and set it up outside. I say made, but she just took out the drum from our old washing machine and put some logs in it. It looks good though. She invited some of her vegan anarchist hippy friends round to sit around it and discuss peace and blocking traffic (I am making assumptions about the topics of conversation based on stereotypes). I always feel a bit out of place whenever they are round because I like too many things that are undoubtedly banned in vegan anarchist hippy world and I know for a fact that they look down on me for this. Such as M&S All butter chocolate chunk cookies. And the new Girls Aloud song. These things would always be held against me if I ever tried to enter vegan anarchist hippy world no matter how many trees I hugged. I think they are slightly jealous of the cookies.

This is my artists impression of the fire. I don't think my picture conveys how impressive it is because it is actually quite good.

The hippies were not very impressed with my cunning kitchen game. It is an odd game because I am the only one who is intentionally playing it. Basically, it involves stacking plates, pans and mugs in the most precarious of positions possible on the drying rack. Ideally, I will have placed the most useful items at the bottom of the pile thus creating a skilful challenge for the next person who wants to use a pink bowl, for example, in a situation not dissimilar to when Neil needs to get some lentils out of the cupboard in the Young Ones. Claire complained that she had broken several plates as a result of this game - that incidentally, she was not even playing but was forced into due to my plate stacking antics. She obviously needs more practice.

I have just realised that (a) this is an extraordinarly long entry considering nothing much happened and (b) I have probably ruined my kitchen game in the event that any of my housemates read this.

Yesterday, Plinth played a gig. It was the Nottingham heat of a nationwide university battle of the bands event called 'Rock Idols'. Our set went quite well despite my own poor performance. We played all the tunes a bit fast which sort of helped us to gel a bit better. We also played two new songs, one of which is essentially the same simple chord sequence over and over that I just could not get right no matter what. It was like getting the words wrong to Humpty Dumpty but louder. As it turns out it can't have sounded that bad because somehow the judges decided that we were one of the better bands on the night and Plinth are through to the second round.

I am slightly amazed that we got through and not just because of my mistakes or the (not inaccurate) perception that Plinth are bed-wetting indie shit. There were several moments in the evening that made me think we were gonna have a bad night.

The first of these was our singer Nick spilling his coke all over himself. It was a moment of some skill because everyone was sat down, no one was moving around the room and there were no obstacles to his coke. I didn't even need to jog him. He was clearly too excited and the prospect of a sip of a caffeinated beverage just spazzed him out. I feel slightly guilty in that I just sat there and laughed at him rather than helping him out but in fairness I was not the only one - which obviously makes it okay - and it was really really funny. In the way that farts are always funny. And the crotch area of his trousers was wet which is also always funny. Because the wetness implies a lack of bladder control. And from thence the humour arose.

The next was our interview with the Rock Idols people. Obviously Nick would be saying the most as he is the singer, songwriter and has a reputation for talking utter bollocks with ease. I wasn't planning on saying anything but I decided to offset his bedwetting indie-ness by chipping in with my humourous comments. I decided to contradict everything that Nick said and appear arrogant and twat-like at every single opportunity (and from thence the humour would arise). Although to be honest it was not that funny, I was just (james) blunt and rude. In a way, I'd like to make the distinction that I was deliberately trying to be twat and therefore if I come across as a twat in the video then I can consider my act successful, unlike other twats being interviewed who are just inherently twatlike. But to be fair, I found it didn't really take much effort to be a twat. I should have just made fart noises.

I left the gig early as I had to be at work - to be able to write my blog funnily enough - the next day. However, more important than work was the continuation of my Football Manager season and to be honest, I left early so I could get through a crunch part of the season before I went to bed. My Spurs team were showing league-winning form although it was very tight between us and Chelsea and Man Utd with only 2 points separating the three teams. We beat Arsenal and they sacked Arsene Wenger afterwards. This disappointed me as I was now unable to use the 'manager comment' facility to gloat about our victory. The next game had a cruel twist. We were totally caning Bolton but only 1-0 up thanks to a rather flukey free kick and some ridiculous goalkeeping. It was approaching the 90th minute when my phone rang - it was Nick excitedly telling me we were through. But just at that exact moment, Bolton equalised. I was not happy - this probably spelt the end of Tottenham's title ambitions for the season and I blame this entirely on Nick.

Bastard.

I was not planning on posting today but I felt that I had to record further evidence that the saying 'there's no such thing as a free lunch' is bollocks because today I had another free lunch. Admittedly, I was unable to appreciate it fully because I had it after I'd already eaten the lunch I had prepared. And it wasn't as nice as my own lunch that I'd prepared (caramelised onion and poppy seed bagels with prawn salad filling - anything following that would struggle). But I felt I had to eat some out of principle.

This is by no means the only saying I don't like. I also hate it when people who say 'literally' and then go on to use a metaphor. For example, when a football commentator is describing a player who is performing particularly well as "[Player X] is literally on fire!". But he's not, is he? If he was on fire, then playing football would be one of the things he would definitely not be good at. If anything, he would be avoiding contact with the ball so as not to irritate his burns (and so and so forth...)

But yeah, free lunch is a real thing.

I have been at work (at the weekend, again) for some 8 hours now and I have eaten most of my Sainsbury's 'Taste the difference' Chunky chocolate and hazelnut cookies and drank all of my orange juice and several mugs of tea. The sheer volume of tea consumed meant I had to steal some milk from upstairs (I don't like black tea so it was a necessary crime). I bought some M&S all butter chocolate chunk cookies too, but I will save those for tomorrow. 2 different brands of high quality biscuit in one day would just be decadence. I think I did some work too but this was for only 2-3 minutes at the most.

I have to say that both the Saino's and M&S cookies leapfrog all my previous favourites in the biscuit stakes (see here). The Saino's ones are super nice on their own but a bit too crumbly - you can't dip in your tea because then you would just lose them. The M&S ones are fantastic. The chocolate chunks are huge and of a distinctly higher quality than your average Maryland choc chips. The cookie is both nice and quite resistant to dipping, allowing one to enhance the flavour with tea/coffee/hot chocolate without fearing the splash of wet cookie in their mug or on their lap. The only slightly bad thing about M&S cookies is that none of their other cookies are even nearly as nice: whenever I've been in recently, there has been a shortage of all butter chocolate chunk cookies but shitloads of other bollocks like oatmeal or sultana filled cookies. If anyone from M&S food is reading this then FOR FUCK SAKE ITS OBVIOUS THAT NO ONE BUYS THE SULTANA/OATMEAL/SHIT COOKIES BECAUSE THEY TASTE LIKE SHIT, THE ALL BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHUNK ONES ARE WHERE ITS AT YOU LAZY CUNTS.

Somehow I don't think they will take this on board.

This cookie-orientated entry is basically because I have been doing very little apart from playing computer games and playing guitar. I blame this:

One of the new features is half-time team talks where you can tell your players that they are shit even though they are 5-0 up or praise your goalie for making Massimo Taibi style errors. Unfortunately the game doesn't really interpret this kind of sarcasm (or indeed any sort), so my digital statistical Ledley King is probably quite confused that I keep telling him he's 'clueless all over the pitch' even though he's probably my best player, if my digital statistical Ledley King was capable of being confused. I will probably have to resort to my usual tactic of looking for players with funny names to source some humour from Footie Manager until the day comes when the makers decide to make the players capable of understanding weird reverse psychology.

I think I've written enough about my adventures for today.

Initially my blog was just to fill time at work. However, as time has gone on I have had more time to fill at work and had to extend the content to stuff I do outside work. Then today I decided that I would use my blog to try and get better at writing. Actually, I didn't decide, so much as look at Richard Herring's blog and copy his idea, but I don't think that is relevant.

I missed work yesterday because of a (hilarious in hindsight) misunderstanding where my dad got really pissed off with people calling him up from India asking him if he wanted a new credit card or a free phone and decided to disconnect the phone. As a result, my mum (in Mauritius visiting her parents and the rest of the family) couldn't call him up and got so worried that she thought he might have done something stupid and told me to drive down to Epsom to make sure he was ok. This was a bit of a double edged sword as it made me very worried about what could have happened (usually my parents would go to Mauritius together but my dad couldn't as he had hospital appointments) but it meant I could get out of a rather tedious game of Monopoly with my housemates. Actually it wasn't a double edged sword at all I just am being stupid with cliches.

As it turns out my dad was ok and very happy with his current credit card and phone situation. While disconnecting the phone did cause a lot more stress than it was worth, I think he had a point. When I stopped at a service station on the way back, some short bald guy was desperately trying to get me to sign up for a Barclaycard despite the fact that the only words I said to him were "I don't want a Barclaycard". He told me not to worry about Barclaycards - which I was already doing - even though he had a badge with Barclaycard written on it and was attempting to lure me over to a big stand which said Barclaycard on it by pretending he just wanted to be my friend. And besides that, I already have a Barclaycard.