...and dwarf throwing has just been made illegal in Canada. Grazie popbitch!

...and moving back onto matters of no importance whatsoever. Neighbours is going to have a terrorist bomb blow up the pub and buildings... so producers can renovate Erinsborough with a cactus garden and wine-bar. Joy!

John Peel is dead. The legendary broadcaster died following a heart attack while on holiday with his wife in Peru. There's a real sense of shock in the office at the moment - the man is irreplaceable, a true institution and one of the best advocates of unsigned bands around. Home Truths was Saturday mornings and those gravelly northern tones were much-loved by generations of radio listeners. He united radio audiences and will be sorely missed.

Apparently I have a cake above my head on Friendster. I like the fact that birthdays on the internet start well in advance so you get a proper build-up. More importantly, I'm looking forward to just having a birthday - even if I do share it with the US election. Bed? I really don't think so!

President Clinton of the USA: To Copulate he finds interns

Favourite anagrams of me...

Her worn beatnik
Bahrein network
Nora: web thinker
Hearken! Wit born
Breaker with none
Knower in the bar

J1 is Johnny Mash Pie which is ace.

Housemate: October+men=cash. Or "Car botches omen" - pass your driving test lady!
God I love break times...

Hi kids, I'm Glitter Silvers!

Mmm...a favourite thing to do - a quiz! This time a Munich university sleep quiz in The Times. Lovely way of wasting five minutes "constructively."

Hurrah! Bloc Party review is on the front page! Promise I'll stop doing this as soon as the excitement wears off. Oh come on, it's winter and I'm learning shorthand. I need some joy.

Shameless me plug: my first sub is up on Artrocker, J1 and I are rocking the front page! Read it here then read J1's Bees review. Smashing. Bloc Party review to be up soon.

Nice one to B and the folks at d21, once again nominated for NUS student website of the year. Barney's also been nominated for student photographer so well done to him.

Bloody hell it's Monday.

Went to glorious Cheltenham on Saturday (in a car no less! fancy!) to see Greg Dyke speak at the Lit Festival. Cheltenham is a mad place - utterly beautiful but looking as though every other building is an overgrown doll's house. It's also, as J2 pointed out, a fantastically un-useful place if you want a bottle of water. Crabtree and Evelyn - check, East - check, assorted glitzy pizza places - cher-eck, but score zero for newsagents. As if anyone in Cheltenham collects their own paper! Really.

Greggie was on good form once he got going and bloody Gillian Reynolds had stopped her sycophancy ("I remember Greg, that dinner party we were at with your lovely partner blah blah blah, when you said blah blah blah") CEASE YOUR INFERNAL PRATTLE WOMAN. He was pretty frank about Hutton and how angry he was about the whol affair. Unfortunately the room was so warm and dark and I'd been working the night before so I fell asleep for the last ten minutes. Useless fool.

J1 cooked a damn fine roast chicken yesterday which gave me vitamins and protein and all sorts of things you can't get from chocolate bars alone. We toddled along to Shot in the Dark with his housemate and engorged yet more vitamins and a shed-load of cream with a smoothie - mmmm. Went to Bloc Party gig later; sold out so lots of upset indie kids looking traumatise by the fact a band they liked had sold out. What? More than three people went? You lie! Damn good gig anyway and scribbled off a review for a website at lunchtime.

I am now a desk-bound lunch eater. God help me.

So much for a night of cerebral comedy and general telly visuals: J and I rocked up to Bristol on what might just be the train equivalent of a slow, miserable death before being unleashed into the rain with ten minutes to go, a mother of a taxi queue and drivers who said we had no chance of getting to Bath Road at all. So we thought "fuck it" and went and explored this rather lovely city - another one that reminds me of Strasbourg.

After looping through assorted streets, we ended up at the bottom of King's Street in a gorgeous Jacobean pub letting the rain fizzle off our clothes, supping ale and gin (not together - that would just be wrong) and, um, doing shorthand. Who says journo students don't know how to have fun eh?! Grabbed a very nice supper at a place called the Zee Bar (v pretty, but so empty that we felt not at all shabby) drank a bottle of wine and then toddled off to the train to head back to the Taf. Whereupon I found I'd left my keys at home. But of course. It meant I got to have a nice chat to the girls who live in the ground floor flat and then R got back from the flicks and let me in like an errant dog. Sleep, so much sleep, followed.

Tonight I am sitting on the sofa and doing sweet fa for at least three hours before going to bed. Hardcore is clearly not the word!

Bit of a gigtastic weekend and for free no less! Small price to pay for free tickets ie; picking emails etc although it's a rubbish job and once again I am vindicated in my hatred for the general public.

I ended up working the Razorlight gig on Friday which meant seeing Dogs (good then sliding down to average noisy rocktastic tie-swinging) and the Duke Spirit (lovely voice, not as amazing live as thought they might have been but lots of tambourine shaking which was nice) and Razorlight themselves. hmmm. Vice is good and I can see why teenage girls have taken them so far up the charts, but they're not exceptional.

The Zutons and The Futureheads on Sunday (latter very good, Zutons really good, loads of energy) but I got stupidly tired after running around London all weekend so went home early. Loser. Eastern Lane gig last night at the Welsh Club - miserably average support band first, no substance, less style. then the Paddingtons who had some overkeen indie boy stripping and jumping around naked which was, er, lovely. J and I were knackered so slid home half way through the set and missed Eastern Lane which was rubbish but hey, we're old or something. Half seven starts - boring life a necessity.

Heading off to Bristol tonight to watch Kings of Comedy which should be cool; I'm hoping for Scott Capurro and Dara O'Briain, but someone who'll make me laugh will do. Another late night though, however will we manage?

God - we're actually pathetic.

Things you've done when you had no money. Nice... Cheers B3ta!

And then there was Nick, a quiet Australian, who came to the Highlands to get away from a koala hospital in Queensland. A koala hospital? "Yup." Did you get lots of patients? "Hundreds." What dop they suffer from mostly? "Chlamydia." You're joking? How do they get it? "From people." Oh my God. Australians will do anything. "No, they have a dormant virus that's brought on by stress, which is caused by contact with people." How do you treat it? "We put them down." No? "You can't give koalas antibiotics. Their digestions are too delicate. I guess there won't be any koalas in Queensland in five years." Wiped out by a sexually transmitted disease caught by simply looking at Australians. Isn't God weird? "Yup."

Extract from AA Gill's latest food critique in the Sunday Times Style section. This is why the man is a genius.

Way to make your company sound thrilling: Boring business systems owned by Mr Dean Boring. We salute you sir.

Reports are coming in that Ken Bigley has been killed. This hasn't been confirmed yet but check the guardian for details.

From the Durham Alumni newsletter... "The BBC reported that more students at Durham complete their courses than just about any other University in the country. 97.7% of all students who start a course at Durham complete it. This compares with the national average of 14%."

14%?? What the fuck do they do? How can that many people drop out?

Fave new bits of utterly useless info...

Giraffes and turkeys are bisexual.

Steve Mason, the guitarist from 90s Indie-rockers Gene is now a male model, spotted recently auditioning for a bank advert wearing only Speedos.

And people who use their baby to meet celebrities. Oh God.

God bless popbitch!

If you do nothing else today, check out the pic of the "rejuvenated Tory party" on the front of the Guardian. Absolutely priceless.

Want to buy Prebend's bridge? Who doesn't!

Listen to the new U2 single and check out Bono's incredible spanish. One, two, three, fourteen indeed...

I really, really want a Belle and Sebastian calendar! Please, buy me one.

Alas my pre-term library enthusiasms have been thoroughly squashed by the enormous library fine awaiting me yesterday - no more books for me. Sneaky bastard librarians letting you take out cds etc without telling you to pay for them, so much for my exciting new reservations...

God it's sad.

Some excellent William Shatner quotes in the Times yesterday, bravo to him. Other than that, head to radio 4 and click on listen again to catch an amazing version of The Woman In Black. Third time's the charm I guess but it's still bloody scary. If you havent' seen it at the Fortune Theatre already then I highly recommend you head there and take advantage of some cheap tickets - one of the best things on in London.

William Shatner doing Common People! NME finally providing something good! Making up for their gratuitous over-exposure of libertines and every other band in the world ever!

No more !.

Shorthand! Nine in the morning! Everyday!

Sorry, what?

And for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of Steven Seagal's up and coming music career...

Oh god help us all.

Lots of free gigs coming up which is ace - after seeing the delectable Paddingtons last week I get to cover the Eastern Lane gig they're supporting at. I believe the word in cases such as this is huzzah!

Autumn has the potential to be sunny and joyful but more often than not ends up covered in gloom which is pretty much how it's been this week making us tired and mildly wishing to return to the warm embrace of the Known. Still, Zane Lowe and Annie Mac djed at the Union last night which was brilliant and we have actually met real, honest to god people and the course is going to be excellent so I'm sure we'll get into it soon.

I hate gloom.

_____GEEK ALARM GEEK ALARM____

My quest to read every single graphic novel in Cardiff central library continues apace - rather faster than my efforts to drag myself through Essential Law for Journalists alas - and continued last night with my first dabbling of Hellblazer. Met Mr Constantine before in Books of Magic but bloody hell, I wasn't quite prepared for how disturbing it was - child abuse, rape, homelessness, all dealt with in a fair, unflinching way that was excellently written but delivered a bloody great punch to the stomach. Phew. Not entirely sure that Kenau Reeves (slow, dark, american) is quite the right choice for Constantine in the film (british, blond, chain smoker, haunted) but it'll be bloody hilarious if it goes wrong.

(once again - joss whedon for X4! Rumours MUST come true. Dammit. Astonishing X-Men is fabulous)

....GEEK END....

Wow. I knew you could sell anything on ebay but the fact my *ahem* pop accident cd will eventually go for pretty much exactly what I paid for it is remarkable. TWELVE people want this cd! Or bid for it anyway. The internet is a truly marvellous thing. Shorthand on the other hand is worse than crosswords.

Devestation ran rife yesterday as new heights of geekery were reached - I maxed out my library card. R chastened me hugely and general loserness prevailed. We checked out Ifor Bach (or as it's much more pronounceably known, the Welsh Club) yesterday, taking full advantage of beats, funk, rock and all-out wonderful music, gallons of sweat and our new pretty skirts to dance around like fiends and generally have lots of fun. My brother and his housemates etc rocked up and we whiled away the last hour dancing shamefully/enjoyably to misplaced cheesy disco and pop klassix (TM). It's really good to have found somewhere like that to go and dance in though, lots of variety and some rather sexy gigs coming up. I get to go see The Zutons and Futureheads for the grand sum of free in a few weeks - yay for Wild! Yay for me! Yay for libraries and shorthand avoidance through books!