This blog, and a Steinbeck piano

I HATE looking at old entries in this blog - it makes me just want to delete the whole thing, but I tell myself no, and just let them be. That's not easy, because they really make me cringe.
Also a certain someone said that I should write in 'proper English' in this thing because he thought my writing was really crap. That ended up in my entries sounding extremely posh, and I when I look at them now them seem really annoying, and they don't reflect me. So now - I'm gonna write the way I want! I don't care if its correct or not. At least I will be able to cringe less when I look at my posts, kna wot I mean?

Anyway.

On Edgware Road there's this piano shop that me and my friend just happened to walk by, and then we walked up to the window. There was this Steinbeck piano, and it was 25 GRAND (in £), in USD that's 50 GRAND. Why the hell is this piano so expensive? It looked extremely nice and slick and made wish I could actually play the piano, or anything at all, but....huh?? £25,000? For a piano? Pianos (ones like those) have got to be some of the most expensive instruments. I mean at that price its not even an instrument, just a showpiece of wealth. I'll take a photo of it next time.

Piano music is quite cool though, though I don't really listen to any. It's amazing for films, its like they were made for each other. The Amelie soundtrack just does my head in, pianos and all the other stuff that's there.

Here's the best part of the film The Pianist:

Why Jarvis?

I have been having lots of freaky and interesting dreams lately. I can only remember a couple though. For some reason I have been having a lot of dreams about Michigan and people I know in Michigan. Then I had this last night, or in the morning:

I had a dream that Jarvis Cocker threaded my eyebrows, in some odd joint in the Lower East Side.
I'm gonna write that down in my idea book.

I have been to the LES, but never went to some odd and freaky/funky joint like the one I imagined. And I've never met Jarvis Cocker. Or even listened to a lot of his music.

But he's a cool bloke, for some reason. Here's something I read by him a while ago:

'Jarvis Cocker's review of the year'
http://www.timeout.com/london/music/features/2385.html

Some excerpts:
'The only thing that spoils James Blunt for me is that I can’t abide his music or voice.'

'I can’t believe how many festivals are here in the UK now. Nobody wants to be outdoors that amount of the time. I just couldn’t understand why there were so many. Because the idea of a festival is that it’s something special, isn’t it? At one point, you just had Glastonbury, and it was around the time of the summer solstice, so it was a festival in the true sense – it was a big gathering and it was at least loosely tied to some kind of pagan ritual. Whereas with them happening every weekend, it’s kind of like they’re the new garden fête, which to me doesn’t go with rock music all that well.'

'That was the game where Zidane was really good, and the thing was he smiled. You just thought: God, he’s actually enjoying playing. That was the thing that did my head in about watching England – they all looked so miserable about it. Football is supposed to be about entertainment, so it was good to see somebody just relaxed and enjoying taking the piss out of the other team.'

Smash the system.

Global Warming

In early December (or something) London had a freak tornado.

Around Christmas time London had its foggiest weather in 15 years.

Just a couple weeks ago London had its windiest weather in 16 years.

How about a War on Global Warming?

Creep

UCLA student receives police brutality

From another source (believe it or not - facebook):

UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.

No university police officers were available to comment further about the incident as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, and no Community Service Officers who were on duty at the time could be reached.

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell "get off me," repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.

UCPD officers confirmed that the man involved in the incident was a student, but did not give a name or any additional information about his identity.

Video shot from a student's camera phone captured the student yelling, "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your ****ing abuse of power," while he struggled with the officers.

As the student was screaming, UCPD officers repeatedly told him to stand up and said "stop fighting us." The student did not stand up as the officers requested and they shot him with the Taser at least once more.

"It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life," said David Remesnitsky, a 2006 UCLA alumnus who witnessed the incident.

As the student and the officers were struggling, bystanders repeatedly asked the police officers to stop, and at one point officers told the gathered crowd to stand back and threatened to use a Taser on anyone who got too close.

Laila Gordy, a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident, said police officers threatened to shoot her with a Taser when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number.

Gordy was visibly upset by the incident and said other students were also disturbed.

"It's a shock that something like this can happen at UCLA," she said. "It was unnecessary what they did."

Immediately after the incident, several students began to contact local news outlets, informing them of the incident, and Remesnitsky wrote an e-mail to Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams.
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Yes it was unecessary what they did. There is no possible justification for the inhumane and sadistic treatment of Mostafa Tabatabainejad. Right now an investigation is pending and masses of students are rallying around the incident, understandably so.
What I cannot get over is the fact that he was tased multiple times, and told to "STAND UP!" repeatedly after being tased - when it has now become well-known that a person cannot be mobile for 5-15 minutes after getting tased. Mostafa couldn't stand up, while being told "Stand up and you'll get tased again!". This was done approximately four more times. Finally the officers dragged out his limp body.

http://www.nbc4.tv/news/10325914/detail.html
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=local&id=4763689
http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38958


Here is the youtube video, see it for yourself: