News bites: (as lifted from the Evening Standard)

So Chelsea Clinton was photographed at gay London nightclub Heaven with a mystery guy. Good for you girl, way-hay. But maybe do without the trouser suit from dorothy perks. just a suggestion.

The shop at #6 gerrard st in chinatown (the one that sells all the kiddy crap) is citing the Human Rights Act to try and stop its landlord from moving it nextdoor to #4, which we all know is the chinese numerical equivilant of 666 (ok, not literally, but you get the picture). I thought that was quite interesting, as even I know that shop, having bought a powerpuff girls hairband at the rip off price of £3. They were for my sister, I was going to buy two of 'em, but found I couldn't afford it. They're saying they chose the shop location 20 years ago because it had good fung shui, and hence the reason behind its success. I've wondered myself how they've managed to stay in business for so long selling the overpriced tat that they do. well, I guess now I know.

London is the fifth most costly city in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, preceded by Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong and Oslo. Are you telling me that London's more expensive to live in than New York? Now that is scary. I moan about London alot, well, I moan about england alot, but I would rather live in London than anywhere else in the UK.

Ok, UKOK? o please, who was the genious who came up with that inspirational logo? surely you'd get something more imaginative in a primary school art class. I sense another millenium dome like hit with this one.

my own happenings: I went to a dinner party thing last night in the murder capital of east london, dalston. Our secretary lady Luce (italian for 'light') had moved into this flat there some months ago, so it was a little get together to show off her place. she pays the same rent as me, but she gets a much bigger space, a proper living room, a proper bedroom, a nice little bathroom with a bath, and everything is new. however, you have to go into this pitch black alleyway which lead behind some shops on a high street, in order to access her flat.
there were about 10 people there, so kind of a small get together, it was people from our department, one guy who lived downstairs, one really strange guy from birmingham, and husband and friends of Nadia, another PhD student from the dept. The guy who lived downstairs was an ubergeek canadian, and was a teaching professor at kings college, teaching film studies. I know, doesn't that sound cool? I love talking about movies, but we didn't really converse much over the evening, as everybody else thought it was cool as well, so he'd be sucked in to these long conversations about different movies that people came up with. he was asked to explin what the f*** was going on in david lynch's mulholland drive, he was asked whether he'd seen this french move called jonny goes on the road (or something), and he was asked to talk about female porn movies (and that was only the stuff I heard) Oh excuse me, i mean erotica, ofcourse. The only movie related comment I mad to him was the observation that the average running time of movies just seemed to be getting longer and longer. And he said that in fact movie lengths tend to go up and down, and that short movies of 90 minutes tend to be comedies and horrors. I thought that was quite interesting.
As for the birmingham guy, yikes was he strange. Our very first minutes of conversation were literally like,
(me first:) 'so, where did you meet Luce?'
' we're both buddhists. yeah, let me see, what can i say about it? let me think, its all about looking for happiness in our lives, yeah, that's all i can think to say about it really, d'you know what I mean? So whereabouts are you from? are you chinese, japanese, korean, taiwanese, or what? or are you english?'
'well, i'm british chinese.'
'o right, british chinese. i'm actually half white and half jamaican. yeah, my father was black jamaican and my mother is white english. Yeah, my parents divorced when i was four, and then my mum married a white english vicor, who was also a solicitor. yeah, he used to make bucket loads of money.'
'o right.' then i legged it. Well, ofcourse i couldn't avoid him all evening. he'd just suddenly launch into what he did for a living:
'yeah, i'm a mediator, i work with mentally disabled children. I earn £35 an hour, that's alot of money isn't it? and I don't even have to do anything, I just take these kids out to the cinema, to the pub, and all expenses paid for. But these kids'll never change you know. i've been doing this for 14 years, and everybody's saying to me, that sounds like a great job, but I hate it, its really doing my head in, i'm 37, y'know. it's just depressing, d'you know what I mean sharon? No, you don't know what I mean do you?'
Very, very strange, i felt really sorry for him. he was obviously on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he was obviously not quite right in the head either. He spent some time seriously trying to discuss what the difference was between a motion picture and a still picture with the film professor guy. And it was the most stupid question, and he spent the rest of the discussion justifying it. The evening ended at 2am, with everybody working out how to get home. I hadn't planned to stay, but at 3am, i didn't particularly want to brave the streets of dalston on my own, so i stayed over. that crazy birmingham guy stayed over as well, but had got up at the crack of dawn to catch a train back up north. I told Luce later that I thought he was very strange, and she agreed with me, she hardly knew him herself, and was glad when I decided to stay over at her place last night.

Planning to see Mulholland Drive tonight, as there was so much talk about it last night. I was assured it wasn't sick or cruel or horrible, and i guess it can't be too disturbing if its rated 15, so i'm gonna go check it out.