Another Rally: Frozen Nuts! (And also some other stuff)

In case the title didn't give it I went on another bike rally, and I have just finished sewing the patch onto my cut-off. The Frozen Nuts patch was one of the three rally patches I wanted, meaning I now have the Another Piggin' Rally patch and the Frozen Nuts patch, the third patch of the three is for the Last Wolf Rally which I'll hopefully be going to this year.

Patches and rallies aside, for the time being t least, I have also been up to quite a bit this week. To be perfectly honest, this week didn't have the best of starts, self-doubt kicked in, and I spent the first half of the week thinking I'd get nowhere in life. Thankfully that disappeared on Wednesday, and the week could return to normality, which was good, especially since I had the first part of my army interview on Friday.

Thankfully it wasn't the real deal, it was a pre-interview in order to sort out my three job choices, since there is only a slim chance of me getting my first choice, I need to have back-up options. I'd also like to point out that I don't exaggerate when I say slim chance, in-fact I think a slim chance would be bigger than the chance I have. I say this because I plan to be a musician in the army, and I plan on entering as a bassist (but I will happily go for guitarist if need be). with there only being three army bands that require a bass guitarist, and each band will only need one bassist, there are only three potential jobs for me, that could be boosted up to nine by adding six guitarist slots (two for each contemporary band), but there are jazz bands which I might be able to slot myself into.

I now have two back-up jobs, I had to change at least one of my original jobs because the staff sergeant interviewing me, didn't want to send me into one of those job choices. This meant he gave me a nice big pile of job briefs to take home, sift through, select three jobs from and rank them in order of preference. The end result (in order of preference) was Musician, Combat Medical Technician and Military Policeman.

Army aside, the day before I restrung my bass. I used the thicker four strings of a five-string set (leaving me with a spare G string), and after about twenty minutes of playing part of the nut shot off making a satisfying ping sound. I literally busted a nut. I made a few quick measurement and ordered a new nut from eBay, while I was measuring I noticed that there was enough nut left to raise the string, but not enough left to hold the string in place. I decided to use my engineering prowess and I wrapped duct tape around the strings to hold the thick B string on the remainder of the nut.

The duct tape idea works quite nicely, but I had to put a bit more tape on not long after taking the picture, because the B string only stayed in place for two minutes of playing, I now get fifteen minutes of playing before I have to adjust it. At least I now have another nut on the way to replace my current on. Hopefully my new nut will be stronger, I order a graphite one to replace the original plastic lump.

That bass has a few more problems with it, which should be fixed by the next post. as it stands it an active on-board pre-amp which has died. I don't really know much about electronics, but I do know that the wiring is a mess, and it makes no sense to me, or to Nathan, and so I have decided to remove all the wiring and the pre-amp, and replace everything. I'm even going to replace the pick-ups with the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound P-J set. This will leave me with a pot connected to nothing (I'll ground to that) and an empty hole where the battery should go which I'll fill with a block of lead hopefully adding enough weight to counteract the headstock heaviness of the stock bass. I will at some point also add a set of Schaller Strap Locks, and buy a decent strap.

I have also had a bit more misfortune with guitars this week, this time it was my primary guitar. I've had her tuned down a step-and-a-half for six days, and so when I decided to tune her back up to E standard the 0.011 gauge high E string snapped and struck me on the infected scab on my right middle finger. My finger hurt enough as it was, that string really didn't help. Thankfully the Rotosound set I bought awhile back for another guitar came with a spare 0.010 gauge string, which will suffice for now.

I have now also decided it was time to restring the guitar I got off my brother. I've been putting this off for awhile because the Floyd Rose Floating Tremolo bridge seemed like it would be a ball-ache to deal with, I've also decided to replace the busted pick-up ring holding the neck humbucker in place, I'd like to replace both pick-ups at some point, but I don't really want to do something that will annoy my brother since I don't fully consider the guitar mine. That guitar is now back in her box after a vigourous cleaning, and there she will remain until her new pick-up ring arrives.

Hopefully I can get both of those guitars finished and theoretically, I should be done working on my guitars until June, when my Epiphone and Harley Benton basses get restrung. That is, of course, unless I buy a rolling tune-o-matic bridge, which won't take long to fit.

Anyway, as some of you know, this weekend was the weekend of the 29th annual Frozen Nuts Rally! Naturally as soon as we arrived some woman with a very hoarse voice came up to us and gave us a tongue lashing for something that happened six hours prior to our arrival. One of the lads from the Greedy Pigs started a very loud argument at four in the morning and kept everyone awake for the next three hours while they all shouted and screamed at each other. If you were one of those unfortunates who were affected by their arguing, I have a very strong feeling that disciplinary action will take place at the next meeting, but since I'm not a member of the Greedy Pigs, I can't say anything with any certainty.

Other than the bad start, the rally was quite enjoyable, I was only there for the Saturday, and so I didn't get to the the Jalepenos perform, but I hear they were good. I did however see half of Disturbin' the Peace's performance. I say half because I went outside for a breather during there interval and all the booze, the cold and the fact I had been awake since six O'clock that morning all struck me at once. I just couldn't continue, and so I dragged myself to the tent and slowly drifted to sleep.

I may have missed the half naked sexy girls, I may have missed Disturbin' the Peace cover a Rush song, but I did witness the worst proposal ever, which naturally took place in the middle of a hen party. I then saw (about five minutes later) the newly engaged woman fall over on the dance floor, spilling booze all over the singers pedals and the monitor by his feet. I reached out to help her up, and she gave me a really dirty look.

The bride-to-be from the hen party also randomly gave me, and a few other confused looking dudes, a big hug, while someone followed her with a camera. As soon as she stepped away from me, Dion (Nathan's dad) walked up to me and said "You lucky git, I've been eyeing her up all night." I on the other hand was eyeing up another member of her party, that entire group were wearing corsets, and one of those corsets looked like it was about to pop, so I was eyeing up the owner of that corset.

At some point between the proposal and the band kicking in, the bride-to-be had a male stripper, I get the feeling that he was her soon-to-be husband, judging by everyone's reaction. He didn't do the full monty, but it was still funny as hell to watch. Shortly after that I went to get me and Nath a drink, and on the way back from the bar I congratulated the newly engaged lady, turns out she has a voice that can break glass, I don't know if that's normal or just because she was drunk and/or excited.

I am also aware that none of this post is in chronological order, but the rally has thrown everything out of perspective and so I don't actually know what order anything happened in, I just know within two hours of getting to the rally I had had four different beers in three different pubs, one of those beers was a can I had bought with me, which I drank by the fire.

Rocking Tunes!

As you may know from reading my previous posts I'm in a pop-punk band called Six Stories Up. So far we have written a grand total of two of our own songs, and we are also preparing a crap load of covers to perform. At least two of us are taking this seriously, that's me and Nathan, we're not so sure about the third.

Anyway we have been spending a nice amount of time jamming together, and decided just the other day that we should each choose four songs to cover (making twelve covers), those songs have all been chosen and we're now learning how to play them, unfortunately we don't have access to a drum kit at the moment, which is a bit of a pain, especially since we have an area to put it (Nath's garage, which will soon be converted for our band practice).

As I said we have two songs, one of them just needs a few minor adjustments, and the other one we have forgotten how to play, but we still have the lyrics so at least something is on our side. the first song simply just needs the guitar part for it's quieter bridge rewritten.

On to other ventures, I celebrated my 100th YouTube video last Monday and I had a nice little party with my friends, after I had finished celebrating that I started a secondary YouTube channel called G_Man TV! which is essentially me doing the stupidest things I can think of for the sake of it. So far I only have one video, which is me attempting what I call the Mustard Challenge, and failing miserably.

I also went to Hanley the other day, which made a nice change, I spent the day causing chaos with my friends and wishing I had money to buy myself some nice things. I did however visit the new music shop that has opened in The Potteries Center, it didn't have a very good selection of basses which was a shame but there were some damn nice guitars there, more importantly there was a lot of other nice things there, including, and not limited to, a sexy female employee.

Overall my week hasn't been too interesting but I've been enjoying myself nonetheless, and now I have yet another fun day at the House of Zed, unfortunately I wasted all my money whilst at Hanley so I need to ride my bike there.

Yet Another Exciting Week for The G!

I have had an absolutely incredible week! First off I spent a day at college to get to know the students I'll spend next year with, and I even made a friend. After that I had an absolutely incredible Saturday which may have started rough, but it became one of my happiest days. Today has also been pretty darn good too!

I'm going to start with my day at college which was Wednesday. I didn't really expect much out of it in the first place, I went because I wanted to see who I'd be spending the next year with so I had time to mentally prepare myself for it. Most of the lads seemed alright, but they definitely aren't the kind of dudes I'd usually attach myself too, one of the girls wasn't either. The other girl however I did find some connection with, I ended up spending the majority of the day making friends with her, she seemed to be the most like me.

Surprisingly the people I met that day seemed to like me, I usually have people hating me straight from the get-go, but not this time. I'm also not sure how long this will last, but most of the year will be spent team-building so I imagine we all might come to be friends, maybe not good friends but friends nonetheless.

As I said Saturday has been the best day in recent memory for me. Unfortunately though I started it off by talking to my ex-girlfriend (and not the good ex-girlfriend either) so I started the day feeling pretty damn horrible. I'm not going to go into details, it's not very interesting, (for me at least).

That feeling lasted about an hour, it stopped when a little knock at the door signaled the arrival of a package for me. Inside the package was a new headset for me to record my YouTube videos with, and more importantly, a set of bass strings (D'Addario Chromes XL if you must know) so I distracted myself for the next few minutes by listening to Tool and restringing (and polishing) my bass.

Once she was restrung I felt like I could marry my bass guitar, flat wound strings are amazing, they feel so smooth and they flatten out and smooth the tone to really emphasise the fact it's a bass instrument. I don't think I'm ever buying round wound strings for my basses again.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to play her for very long, it was time for my day to start. To jump back a little, Wednesday was Zaina's birthday, but she was unavailable that day due to plans with her family, Saturday was the day where me and Ash were able to celebrate with her. and come one O'clock on Saturday afternoon I set off for Ash's house where I got a lift to Zaina's house (after a brief clothes shopping trip).

The day with Zaina was spent pretty much in the same way as all other days with Zaina. We just sat back and chilled whilst having a great laugh. The highlight of out time there was that she made us a really nice curry, and even supplied us with a nice amount of naan bread and poppadoms, as well as prawn crackers, mango chutney and some weird tasty chicken things. That meal really did kick ass.

That time soon came to an end and it was time for me to face what I was expecting to be the hardest part of the day. To jump back once again, that morning I noticed a post on the Bronies UK Facebook page saying that the blog was going to be opened up to a few new authors and he was looking for applications. Being an aspiring author, and a big fan of the My Little Pony television series, I added him on Skype, thinking I'd have a higher chance if I applied that way instead of by filling in the form. I was told at the time that he couldn't speak to me because he had to go to work, and that he would be able to speak after nine PM.

When I got back home from Zaina's house at about half past nine, the first thing I did was send him a message. No reply, so I waited. While I waited I decided to plug in my new headset and test it out. I thought progressive rock sounded incredible without surround sound, with it it sounds like pure magic being pumped into my brain. It's Heaven.

Half an hour later I received a message and we started talking. He asked me if I'd ever wrote for a blog before and I told him that I have my own blog (this one) and then sent him a link to last weeks post. He was so impressed with it he just accepted me onto the team there and then. I couldn't believe it. Then he started asking me the interview questions just for the sake of it.

I don't think I've been that giddy since just before May Day when I started seeing Lydia. I wanted to celebrate and dance around my house, but unfortunately my brother was asleep and he needed to wake up at stupid O'clock in the morning, (his words), so I couldn't make much noise.

Today was a bit more toned down, I spent the morning trying something new with my YouTube channel, and I spent the best part of two hours editing my video, at least it felt like that long. It was all worth it, I quite like how my video turned out.

After all that was done I went to my friend Nathan's house where we discussed our band and recorded a silly video for his YouTube channel. The majority of that visit was about how our band needed a name change, because the name we had was more horror-punk than pop-punk. We now have a new name, and this next week will be spent on a logo, and also creating a set list that gives us about fifty minutes of play time. Hopefully we can soon get our hands on a drummer and then get around to doing some proper rehearsals.

I'm pleased to be able to end this post by saying that i am most definitely pulling myself out of my depression, I now have a band, I've made a new friend, I also have a new hobby and even a bit of a job. As long as I keep on going like this, I reckon I'll be back to my old self by September at the latest.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

As some of you may know, I am in my final year of school, of which there are only three more weeks. This means I'm soon to be released into the wild so to speak. Anyway this week itself held some interesting events, unlike the previous week, in which, nothing happened, and that is why there was no post last week.

So the first thing that happened was my computer had a Trojan virus and the entire computer needed to be purged, which meant I lost my pirated version of Guitar Pro 6. Thankfully the version I actually purchased this time arrived yesterday, but nobody told me until this morning. My family really is helpful. I'd also like to say that my pirated version was much better, because when it was still pirated I could open the files I download directly from my download bar, which for some reason I can't now.

Next was the jolly roger, since my computer took seven and a half hours to purge I went downstairs, booted up my brothers computer, and then I installed Inkscape, taught myself how to use it and designed a jolly roger to put on a t-shirt, when it was done, me and my dad transferred it onto his computer so it could be turned into the right file type, and cut it out on vinyl first (as a test). It worked surprisingly well first time, so my dad stuck that jolly roger onto the wheelie bin. We were satisfied with the results, so now my dad thinks it would be a good idea to print out a load more of these logos to stick on t-shirts and sell them on eBay. I feel quite special, this shirt received quite a few compliments when I wore it to school on Friday.

Next there was Wednesday, which was pretty mundane other than one thing, a girl at school asked me to join her for singing practice, so I did, and the next thing I knew two hours had passed. During that time I did ask her out, but I didn't get a reply, unfortunately...

Thursday was the most important day of the week, that was the day of my Sixth Form Concert! and the few hours before it were torture, I had teachers rammed up my arse because my taste in music is too inappropriate for school, and because someone in the audience might have had a miscarriage, or accidentally killed their girlfriends, raped her then committed suicide. I was actually told I couldn't sing one of them in case someone had had a miscarriage, I don't know why, none of the songs had anything to do with miscarriages.

Anyway despite all these setbacks I had a blast performing, and for some stupid reason I put my hardest song first, which meant I screwed up more because I was still nervous at that point. I was especially glad to have been taking part in the concerts finale, that received many compliments from the attendees, we performed Thin Lizzy's Dancing in the Moonlight, I played the bass for it, and I looked good doing so.

The final interesting thing was Saturday which started off as a "totally-not-a-date" but ended up with actually being one. It was simple really, I was to meet that girl who I joined for singing practice, outside a school near her house, and then she'd show me back to her house, and we'd all have a sing and dance. That is exactly what happened, but before we had the song and dance, I went out to walk her half-brother's dad's dog Pluto around the country park in my town, which is typical because i'd just walked through two towns to get to her house in the first place. During this dog walk I realised that I've finally overcame my cynophobia, HALLELUJAH! I actually stroked three strange dogs yesterday without even thinking about it.

After the walk was over, we had our song and dance, and after that we stopped and I got the yes I had asked for on Wednesday. the next few minutes went uphill hill, I even got offered lunch by her mother (who has amazing carpets by the way, so soft and fluffy). I then went look at her ponies (not a euphemism, I mean My Little Pony toys) of which she gave me two, I think they are G2 Ponies, I'm not too sure though, one is an earthpony variant of Rainbow Dash, and the other is another earthpony, neither of us know the name to, but we just know she is part of the Apple family, so she is now to be known as Apple Picnic, based on her cutie mark which appears to be a red apple on a green picnic blanket, (she has a red coat and a green mane/tail).

Unfortunately she had an unfortunate realisation; she has never had a boyfriend before and therefore didn't know how protective her friends would be over her, especially the one I had my first "totally-not-a-date" with the other week. So now she fears for my balls which she strongly believes are going to get kicked in, I really hope they don't. either way we won't find out about it until Tuesday since it's a bank holiday tomorrow, so wish my balls luck.

Late Post is Late... Again

I'd like to apologise for the lateness of this post, yet again my brother threw my schedule off. I'll be honest with you last week was not even remotely interesting, I thought it would be, but it really wasn't. So this post is just about today.

The first thing I did when I got into school today was cause a lot of controversy and get my self into some serious trouble. How you ask? I wrote a song, however, this wasn't just any song, this was a special song that was designed to be performed at the Sixth Form Leavers Assembly. The reason it caused so much controversy is because I named certain people I despise, and insulted them. It was worth all the trouble, it brightened up my day, it was an epic experiment to see how quickly news travels around the school (25 minutes), and the damn annoying wench I hate, now knows that I hate her. Job well done if you ask me.

The annoying thing that happened to me today is that I found out I only have one more guitar lesson left, so I won't be doing a graded exam. It's a shame, but I can cope, I'll just buy the books from Amazon and learn everything myself (well that's the idea anyway).

Finally I got dumped, I sure as hell hope she doesn't want to remain friends because that didn't work last time, so it sure as hell won't work again, I plan on staying dumped, until another subject approaches worth dating, and no, I don't care how bad that sounds.

About this "damn annoying wench" I mentioned earlier, the only reason I included her into this song was to prove to my jealous (at the time) girlfriend that I didn't like her, so I was quite pleased to know that the "damn annoying wench" was giving me nasty looks between tears. Now I think it was a waste to include her in my song (which I titled Screw You by the way), since Dana dumped me anyway. I guess jealousy wasn't the only reason she wanted me gone.

Anyway the one thing the "damn annoying wench" doesn't know is that the song I wrote for my year 11 music GCSE was actually about her, I hated her vanity (back when I had self-esteem issues), so I wrote a song about how she'd only look pretty if I doused her in kerosene and burned her alive. It got me a Distinction.

Anyway now that I'm no longer tethered to a post, I guess I can go back to doing stupid things again! The only problem is, I've had a girlfriend for so long I can't remember how to be single. I guess I'll just have to sit at home with my Warhammer figures and watch cartoons while I either paint them or play bass.

Speaking of basses I'm being lent a 6-string bass, so I can finally start learning some Dream Theater songs.