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(That's my suggestion for a LeStat spinoff where we find out he's really into scat play).

I've been catching up on the Interview With The Vampire series on Netflix and I'm here for it.  I'll also be giving the Mayfair Witches and the Talamasca series a go next, despite the latter already being cancelled.

I'm an average Anne Rice fan ever since a former goth girlfriend introduced me to the books at uni.  I've read a good chunk of her work but not all of them.  I've got what I needed out of them and moved on and it's probably sacrilegious to say it, but Queen of the Damned is one of my favourite (guilty pleasure) films to watch even though I know it takes liberties with the source material.  Mind you, I can say the same thing about the original film which — I feel- is poorly cast and the series does a better job of fleshing out the text while adding some interesting twists of it's own. I especially enjoyed Ben Daniels as Santiago and he was also good in Jupiter's Legacy which suffered from cancellation due to high budget costs (which having read the comics could only have gone higher).

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Like probably many sports teams, soccer teams will have a nickname for teams to use.  Everton are known as the Toffees because of a local sweet shop that sold everton mints with a toffee centre, Manchester United are the Red Devils because of their all red kit and Chelsea are the Blues because of their blue kit and presumably their fans lack of imagination.

If you're a local news sports reporter, one thing I have noticed in their reports is in the first sentence you call the team by their proper name and in subsequent sentences you use their nickname to, I guess, show the viewers your credentials or so fans think you're on their side or something.  "West Ham United came out fighting in the first half.  The Hammers scored in the first five minutes." That sort of thing.

I'm not a football fan, but I do feel sorry for some teams when their longstanding nickname gets reappropriated by modern slang terms.  For over 100 years, Arsenal have been known as The Gunners because guns are what you find in an arsenal and just as Newcastle fans are called the Toon Army as the word 'town' sounds like 'toon' in a Geordie accent, The Gunners are also known as the Gooners.  Who knew that 100 years after acquiring the nickname, internet culture would come along and gooner would have an entirely different context.

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Do you have a 'waiting mode' where you know you have something coming up and you feel like you can't do anything until it happens?  I get stuck in loops like that. I have an appointment tomorrow where I'm attending an induction for a new counselling placement which could lead to some paid work and today I don't know what to do with myself.  I reflected on it and realise I'm in waiting mode, like I feel like I can't do anything until then because I'm just waiting for it to happen.  It's weird like I'm stuck in standby.  What am i worried about?  It's like being afraid to do anything in case I might miss the appointment or something, which is ridiculous since I'm hyperaware that I have something important to do tomorrow so it's highly unlikely I'll forget about it and not attend unless I really want to self-sabotage (which I won't because it's important to me).

In a way it's frustrating because it can feel like a waste of a day, but at the same time I don't really need to do anything today or that I have anything else better to do, but I definitely feel like I'm waiting for something to happen and I can't do anything else until then.  The meeting isn't until lunchtime tomorrow but I know I'll also not sleep tonight in case I wake up too late tomorrow which again is unlikely to happen because I don't sleep well during the summer when it gets light so early (despite wearing an eye mask to block out the light).

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I’ve been investigating shenanigans in the ice cream industry, today I had my first scoop.

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A funny moment in Spinal Tap is listening to Nigel Tufnel playing a lovely melody on the piano and then telling the director it's called Lick My Love Pump.  The juxtaposition of the music and the title makes it funny but it happens to real musicians too.

Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers recently released his first solo album (which amazed me since he's been around for a long time) and it includes his version of an old Funkadelic song called Maggot Brain:

Lovely tune but lousy title(!)

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A parasocial relationship occurs when an individual develops a strong sense of connection, intimacy, or familiarity with someone they have never met and who is unaware of their existence.

Parasocial relationships feel like they've become more relevant since Covid hit and are more important to people as we become more remote from each other and seek out connection with others through social media bloggers and influencers etc.

For a few years, I've been enjoying watching a team of Parkour athletes who post weekly on YouTube.  They're seven childhood friends including two sets of brothers who got into parkour at an early age and managed to parley it into a career, even managing to work with film director Michael Bay.  They're confident and likeable and adventurous and regularly travel the world to explore various parkour spots, meet people and generally explore off-the-grid locations.  Why they appeal to me I'm not sure as I'm not a traveller or athletic in any way, but I admire their skill and determination to live their lives to the fullest.  It's fair to say I have a parasocial relationship with them, but the problem with forming a connection with someone is that they can let you down.

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Back in the day, it felt like there were two kinds of sci-fi films — those set in the far future (or a long time ago in the case of Star Wars) and those near-future dystopian films.  Max Headroom was set '15 minutes into the future' and Demolition Man began in 1996, three years ahead of it's release date in 1993 before picking up the action in 2032.  

The point of dystopias was to show what could happen to the world in a few years if society continued down it's current path.  Back in the 90s when the L.A riots were happening, Demolition Man seemed possible.  However it seems that recently were have caught up with our own dystopias and they're unfolding in real time.  The Handmaid's Tale seemed very plausible and in line with what was going on in the world.  Black Mirror famously had an early episode where the British PM was forced into congress with a pig on live TV just as revelations about David Cameron violating a pig's head at university came to light.  And now we have Trump.

'The Boys' Showrunner Says Trump's Image of Himself as Jesus Ruined a Joke

It must be hard for writers to satirise stuff when what's currently going on in the world is just as far-fetched.  It's also scary that we appear to be living in our own dystopias as they unfold and the world is letting it happening.  Our films always had a resolution where the regime got toppled, can we have one too please?

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It always amuses me how male grooming products are marketed to men in order to make them appear more masculin.  Like that Alpecin shampoo; it looks more like a bottle of motor oil and the shampoo itself is black like motor oil and it's got caffeine in it!  None of this nambypamby patchouli or hibiscus extract, but strong black manly coffee!  Grrr!

I just got back from a haircut and I think I found a definite candidate  — Sinep Hair Wax.  I know, let's just spell 'penis' backwards!  No denying this product is just for you, guys!  Either that or the font confuses me and some guy in maths class just got asked a trigonometry question, didn't know if the answer was sine, cosine or tangent and is taking a guess.  "Uh, SINE?"

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Just as you think President Trump can't pick a more unlikely target, he starts taking shots at the Pope and posts a picture of himself as Jesus on his social media, blessing a man who looks suspiciously like Jeff Epstein.  Later after realising it would probably offend a) most catholics and b) his voters, it was taken down and he claims it was an image of him as a doctor...

I could post at length about the idiocy of the man but that's not news to anyone, so instead I'm talking about Woodie Guthrie.  I'm a bit pressed for time so I'll copy and paste from an article about Woody and Trump's father, Fred trump to save me some paraphrasing:

Decades before anyone could fathom Donald Trump as a potential president, legendary American folksinger Woody Guthrie was having his own problems with the Trump family.

In late 1950, Guthrie moved into the Beach Haven apartments near Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Before long, he came to suspect that the development had an unwritten policy barring black tenants.

Using the melody of one of his earlier songs, "I Ain’t Got No Home", Guthrie re-worked the lyrics into "Old Man Trump". A diatribe against the apartment building’s developer—and father of the current Republican presidential nominee—Fred C. Trump, the song contains the following lyrics:

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I was having an okay day yesterday until I opened Facebook and saw that it was graduation day for some of the people on my course and my mood took a whopping nosedive. Due to still needing to submit some coursework, it's looking like november will be my graduation date and it feels like a long way off.  I mean, well done to those who got their work in on time and I'm happy for them, but I couldn't help but think that if things had worked out better for me, I'd have been up there with him and I could draw  line under my time at uni.

Practically it would have been difficult to attend as my mum is still recovering from knee replacement surgery and it would have been uncomfortable and painful and the most walking she'd have done post-op.  For me, it just reignited all the unhelpful thoughts about not being good enough and how I'm not as clever as I like to think I am and how everyone graduating was much better than I am.  I need to contact the uni to sort out submission details for my outstanding work, but I have procrastinated about it for two days as I'm stuck with lots of 'what's the point?' unhelpful thoughts.