Hello.  Welcome to 2009.  Kindly take your seats, the show has already started, but you've only missed a tiny bit and we're confident that if you concentrate you'll catch up without a problem.  Please refrain from eating sweets or drinking alcohol in public until February - the de-toxing fad will have left most people by then, so you won't get any jealous stares from those throwing themselves willfully into salad and spring water. 

There will be an interrupted service, I'm afraid, possibly until as late as May... You see someone got an Xbox 360 for Christmas, so there will be ever shortening interludes of gameplay as opposed to blogging.  We do apologise, but as this is a free service you'll just have to put up with a) the long pauses and b) wordy nonsense concerning Fable II and any future games that may come our way.

What's that?  Yes of course you can participate!  This is a multimedia interactive world, people!  Unfortunately, due to the Xbox Live scenario being a) unclear, b) inefficient and c) somewhat expensive to rectify, you are unlikely to encounter Furydoll online.  She is there, but none of her gaming achievements came with her, and so she is in a bit of a sulk.  Some people are just like that and you have to give her some space and let her get it out of her system.  Instead you can coordinate in LiveSpace with Pokeyozo, who is, if anything, even more furious.  This is due to living in a swamp.  Not everyone gets a condo on the beach, you know.  Some people live in stench every day, and it does nothing for their disposition, let me tell you.

Luckily Xbox Live is a virtual experience, and so you don't have to smell anything but your own eau de cologne / parfum / dinner / shake 'n' vac / dog / flatulence. 

Pokey has asked me to mention that SHE doesn't smell.  Not of anything bad, anyway.  She's got a bottle of Agent Provocoteur that she's quite liberally splashing about, but aside from that she smells of talc and roses. 

That's quite enough about smells.

Thankyou for participating in the 2009 experience.  We are sure it will be real.

Goodness, I have neglected you, haven't I?  I apologise.  I've been ill, busy, and then unable to summon the motivation to come here and witter on via my keyboard.  I realise that I have not kept you informed on either the state of my magical fish OR my magical chilli seeds.  What sort of blog monster am I, to promise exciting updates and then keep them from you?

The LAZY sort, to be quite honest.  And it looks as though you'll have to wait a bit longer...  I've saved all my fish photos somewhere, and now can't remember where.  Since they're not on my laptop they must be elsewhere, and elsewhere is inaccesible until the 5th January.  You'll just have to stick with that patience thing you've been doing so well.

In other news...

I had Labyrinthitis.  It isn't as exciting as it sounds.  Much as it would have made a nice change to be transported to a new and exciting maze-ing place, full of fantastic creatures and David Bowie, those unfortunately are not the symptoms.  The symptoms are wobbliness, nausea, and headaches.  I felt seasick for a week, and should expect to continue to experience dizziness for the next two at least.  I plan on drinking heavily, in the hopes that this will correct the balance problem, and make me walk in a straight line.

Dan and I went to see Glasvegas a the Shepherd's Bush Empire.  This has become my least favourite venue of all time, and this could well be my least favourite gig of all time.  We've been to quite a few goth-centric things lately, and everyone at those gigs is very well behaved and lovely.  I was not prepared for the crowd of drunken obnoxious pushy shouty idiots that filled the venue.  Glasvegas took a stupid amount of time to come on, by which point we had tried to find somewhere less annoying to stand, been unsuccessful, ignored stupid comments from a bunch of idiots in the crowd, and ultimately walked out of the venue just as the band hit the stage. I didn't care, I was sick of the atmosphere, my feet hurt a bit, and the venue was FREEZING.  But Dan was very angry and I felt bad for him. 

We saw IAMX at the Astoria2 and, (crowd gripe coming up) despite the stupid arse who decided to stand in the 5 millimeters of free space right in front of me and pretend that I wasn't there, it was fantastic.  The lead singer's voice was spot on and wonderful and they rocked the place.  Dan and I bounced up and down and in general had a pretty fantastic time.  Hoorah!  The balance is restored.

This week we went to see The Might Boosh at the o2.  The first twenty minutes were fantastic, then it dipped a bit.  The second half was the same story, only the dippage was worse.  We left during the bowing and wotnot, which is indicative of how un-mind-blowing the experience was.  Caite and I saw The Boosh years ago, before they had their radio series even, and I fell in love with them.  I am thrilled at their success, but a bit peeved at the amount of catch-phrase happy material they wheeled out at the o2.   It felt a bit like the easiest way to get the laughs, but then again, watching the monkeys in the audience all cheer along to the words "It's an outrage!" perhaps they made the right call.  Most people are much more easily pleased by a phrase they recognise than me. I am not good with repetition...

This gig had the worst crowd person of all, though.  Sat in front of us was a drunken Scouser and her boyfriend, and they talked through the whole thing.  I don't know why they bothered paying for tickets.  She was on automatic chat.  Someone on stage said the word Poland, and she banged on about Krakow for 10 minutes.  In a normal sized theatre they would have been chucked out, but somehow there's no-one to complain to when you need them in somewhere as enormous as the o2, so the people in front of her and next to her had to content themselves with requesting a drunken ignoramous to be quiet.  They asked her three times, and she couldn't manage it at all.  We thought we might have lost her in the interval, because she moaned very loudly about the fact that there was nowhere for her to go and have a smoke, proclaimed that "I've had enough of this, I'm off" and left her seat, banging my shoulder on her way past.  Unfortunately they returned just before the second half started.  Bummer.  Still, I had a pretty good seat and managed to tune them out.  Dan watched them more than the show during part 2, but I hink that may have been out of choice, since what was happening on stage wasn't all that entertaining.  The whole Sunflash play thing could have been better in my opinion...

Anyway.  Today we saw Edward Scissorhands at Sadlers Wells and it was fantastic.  VERY Christmassy, and I thoroughly recommend it.

This has turned into a much longer blog than I expected.  Lucky you.  Apologies for the focus on audience-moaning... You know I wouldn't have to if everyone had a bit more respect for it...

Anyway, have a lovely Christmas, and if I don't post before, happy 2009.

xxx