DarkAeon’s top household tips

Brought to you by THIS link )

And yes, these are genuine tips that readers have written into The Sun with! There’s nothing Lauren and I enjoy more on a Saturday night than opening up the latest woman’s weeklies and having a titter at some of the crap things that people do in the name of saving a few pennies hehe!

The link even has pictures!!

A few choice tips include;

MAIL-Y GOOD TIP

When drilling holes, hold an open envelope underneath to catch the sawdust. This will save a lot of clearing up.

Jacqueline Wilkins, 31, Frome, Somerset

EGGS-TRAORDINARY

Make a cheap toy for a rabbit or guinea pig by filling an egg box with grass, spinach, hay and carrots – then close it. They have just as much fun chewing through the cardboard to get to the food as they do eating it!

Kate Plumb, 28, Elmswell, Suffolk

VIDEO BAG

Get a hot new look with your old video cases. Simply attach a shoe lace to the empty video box on either side and slip in your favourite articles where the cover used to be. Chuck in your things, snap it shut and sling it over your shoulder. And if you get bored your can re-read your fave mag’s stories.

Pat Tipps, 44, Hove, East Sussex

MIRROR, MIRROR

My old steering wheel cover didn’t fit my new car but I couldn’t bear to part with it. So I used it to jazz up an old round mirror. It looks great and has pride of place on my bedroom wall.

Jodie Anthony, 19, Ystylafera, Swansea

OUT IN THE COLD

To save room in your freezer, take food out of big, bulky boxes, cut out the cooking instructions and using a fridge magnet, stick them to the freezer door. This will save you room for more ice cream! 

(DA: In fairness, this is actually quite a good one for people like me who have small freezer compartments!)

TAKE THE PLUNGE

If the handle on your chest of drawers is broken and you can’t open it, use a sink plunger. It helps you open your drawer so you can fix it.

Michelle Underwood, 30, Woking, Surrey

SNAKE IN THE GRASS

A trick to keep cats off your flower bed is to put a snake there.

Roy Wood, 45, Barnfield Mistley, Essex

SET IT STRAIGHT

I always panicked half way to work that I’d left my hair straighteners on and had to risk being late for work to go back and check. But now I’ve started taking a snap of my unplugged straighteners before I leave the house in the morning. So when my heart begins to pound I can look at my phone pic with the time and date underneath. No more worrying about burning the place down!

Karen Ramsey-Hampshire, 23, Northampton

GET IT STRAIGHT

If you’re in a rush to go to work and haven’t ironed your clothes just get your straighteners out and iron it with them. It’s quick and easy.

Tracy Mary Wood, 37, Croxteth, Liverpool

WHISK IT

When you’ve opened a window too far and are struggling to close it simply reach for your whisk. You can trap the window handle in the prongs and pull it shut. Magic.

Donna Bartlett 42, Sudbury, Suffolk

PIECE OF CAKE

The packaging from four little cakes makes a handy drinks tray. No more spills!

Hugh Joseph, 51, Cornwall

PERSONAL TOUCH

Save money on birthday presents by giving your friends and family personal vouchers, which will really help them out. ‘This voucher entitles you to three evenings of baby sitting, a massage, home cooked meal.’ Handwrite them or use the computer to make them look more professional.

 Rebecca Flick, 18, Nottingham

BAL-LOONY

Do you always spend ages hunting for your car in massive car parks? Why not attach a brightly coloured balloon to your aerial so you’ll spot the vehicle a mile off.

Steph Cuthbert, 22, Southwold, Suffolk

AND MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE….

THAT’S PANTS

If you really need to remember something, write it on a post it note and stick it to your knickers. Don’t remove it until the jobs done.

 

Karen Mills, 43, Exeter

The Show Must Go On

So, I have an extended metaphor for you which came to me earlier on today.

I would say that I am not usually flowery and icky when it comes to these kind of things… well, maybe at times(!)… but I do kinda like this one hehe.

As a bit of background, my media player always manages to play the most inappropriate songs at the wrong times… e.g. I am currently getting Christmas songs and when I broke up with Danny it wouldn’t stop playing “All By Myself” but occasionally it gets it right – such as when I’m in a delicate mood, it’ll play Evanescence’s “My Immortal”, and if I’m feeling camp and hyper, it always seems to stick “Under The Sea” from the Little Mermaid OBC on hehe.

Today, in succession, it played “Goodbye to the Circus” (Aqua) and then “The Show Must Go On” (Queen).

Click me to listen to Goodbye to the Circus (opens in a new window).

To quote Liza, if I may, it made me realise how life is a cabaret old chum, and that simply put it is just one big show. I know there are lots of songs which already use this metaphor (such as “Razzle Dazzle” in Chicago and “Shine” in Billy Elliot… and those are just the musicals!) however this was the first time that I’d been able to apply such a metaphor to my situation.

My realisation was that each night an audience gather themselves together to watch a performance; the curtain rises and the performers do their thing. [This 'in-between' bit is where the music came in] The very next evening, that same curtain can rise to show a different cast than the night before but acting out the same story, albeit with their own little qwerks and slant on the roles. Usually the leading man or leading lady has changed, and although some people may be disappointed for the first few minutes, the majority of people will take the opinion that the cast change was really beneficial and actually worked a lot better than it may have done had they been the night before – you just never know until the performance has started to run it’s course.

Anyway… badly worded/explained flowery insane moment over – just the pairing of those two songs really made me pensive earlier! Plus I’ve managed to use the word ‘icky’ twice today – woo! hehe.

Thanks for reading my random ramblings :oP xx

Goodbye to Stu

For the record, this one was my doing, and although I deeply regret the icky circumstance under which it happened, I stand by what I said at the time and my reasoning for saying what I did. I appreciate how hurtful it may have been, and if I could re-do the process again, I would do in a heartbeat. I wish him every happiness going forward and hope that friendship can come out of this given a little bit of time.

another ditch in the road
you keep moving
another stop sign
you keep moving on
and the years go by so fast
wonder how I ever made it through

Eurovision 2008 / Belgrade

Rather than make comments about how we came joint last with Germany and Poland (lets face it, our song wasn’t particularly good!) I thought that I’d share some of my favourite performances with you all.

I thought that this was a very strong Eurovision, and the Spanish entry was the only one that I watched and thought was awful. Yes, some of the voting may have been political (although if the masses are voting, I’m sure that’s not such a big factor) but I always get the impression that your musical tastes are going to be very similar to your neighbouring countries / those with a similar culture. E.G. I can’t say I’d normally be a fan of Serbian folk music over German dance for example!

This year, I really liked the introductory ‘postcard’ pieces as well as the quality of media surrounding the logo for this year’s contest and the tag ‘confluence of sound’.

The Eurovision website is rather good, and it seems that they may be thinking of putting the whole final up on YouTube themselves if their Media section is to be believed (BBC iPlayer is also showing it this week). I would also suggest that you visit the participants page and check out a few of the artists that I have listed below for great quality videos of their Eurovision entry for 2008. Check it out! )

Anyways, here are some of my highlights and songs which I can’t stop humming!

Sweden - Charlotte Perrelli / Hero

[this one is my absolute favourite!]

Azerbaijan - Elnur & Samir / Day After Day

Norway – Maria Haukaas Storeng / Hold On, Be Strong

Iceland – Eurobandið / This Is My Life

Ukraine – Ani Lorak / Shady Lady

(there’s a goregeous backing dancer on this entry, though the clip that I’ve had to post doesn’t show him off all that well/in good quality pictures  - gah!)

Latvia - Pirates Of The Sea / Wolves of the Sea

Portugal -Vânia Fernandes – Senhora do mar

  

Georgia – Diana Gurtskaya – Peace Will Come

Russia – Dima Bilan – Believing

 

Apolgies for the quality of some of the videos, alas as the contest was only last night, YouTube is hardly awash with decent clips to post. As I say though, there are high quality videos on the official website.

Terry Wogan wasn’t too unbearable this year apart from when he started mumbling about the show’s producer who was retiring that year. As for him hinting about leaving Eurovision, he says that every year and we all know he’ll still be there next year, and the one after that, and the one after that…! 

The Russian entry was rather good I thought and so fair play to them on winning – there were far less enjoyable songs which could have won, and the Russian singer is also fit as f**k, so that helps a lot too hehe :oP

Thanks for reading xx

Last.FM stats for W/ending 18th May 08

 Top Artists for the week ending Sunday 18 May 2008

  1    Meat Loaf  7
 
   2    Linkin Park  3
 
   3    Michael Ball  2
 
   3     Luke Evans  2
 
   5    Destiny’s Child  1
 
   5    Diana Ross and The Supremes  1
 
   5    Cirque du Soleil  1
 
   5     Inaya Day vs Michael Jackson  1
 
   5    Mika  1
 
   5     Charlotte Crossley  1
 
   5     Frederick Owens  1
 
   5    Pulp  1
 
   5    Madonna  1
 
   5    Liza Minnelli  1
 
   5    Alannah Myles  1
 
   5    New Order  1
 
   5    Soundtrack  1
 
   5    Juanes  1
 
   5     Audrey Hepburn  1
 
   5    Hard-Fi  1
 
   5    Faith Hill  1
 
   5    Kylie Minogue  1
 
   5     Flashdance  1
 
   5    Ace of Base  1
 
   5    Keisha White  1
 
   5    Green Day  1
 
   5    Danny Elfman  1
 
   5    Pink  1
 
   5    Lee-Cabrera  1
 
   5    Céline Dion  1
 
   5    Bugsy Malone  1
 
   5    The Mamas & The Papas  1
 
   5    Gwen Stefani  1
 
   5    Bond  1
 
   5    Blood Brothers London Musical  1
 
   5    Wizzard  1
 
   5    Original Broadway Cast  1
 
   5    KT Tunstall  1
 
   5    Just Jack  1
 
   5    Paul Williams  1
 
   5    Bodyrockers  1
 
   5    Gnarls Barkley  1
 
   5    Boy Kill Boy  1
 
   5    Tatjana  1
 
   5    Jonathan Larson  1
 
   5     Flip’N'Fill  1
 
   5    Black Lace  1
 
   5     Caroline Sheen  1
 
   5     DJ Sammy ft. Yanou  1
 

Image of the day?

An office funny that actually made me chortle! *SHOCK!*

D

Shayne Ward – O2 Arena

Not even worth commenting on I’m afraid.

I accepted the tickets out of curiosity rather than being a screaming hardcore die-hard fan, and although most of the audience seemed to have a fantastic time (yay for them), I didn’t enjoy all that much of it to be honest. Rather than completely slate it, or look for redeeming features, I just figured it’d be easier to say absolutely nothing at all.

On the tube home, some drunken youth managed to throw up in the faces of three of his friends, whilst catching the second lot of puke in his mouth and having to hold it in there until he was passed a carrier bag from a nearby good samaritan and could get himself off the train to vomit in a corner.

His friends (scally girls) stayed on the train and were literally covered in the stuff.

I know I shouldn’t laugh… but HA!

(and no, I don’t feel guilty as it was their own silly fault for being underage and overdoing it by letting their mate drink more than he could handle, plus no-one was in any serious danger etc).

Oh, and one last thing on the Shayne Ward thing… getting your backing singer to sing two of the songs in their entirety is just cheating!

Faceparty – Update to missing accounts

*** UPDATE to my previous post ***

OK, so now I am thoroughly pissed off.

Over the years (since 2001) my page had accrued an impressive 99,990 hits to it, and was once one of the most popular pages but yet Faceparty have still seem to have seen fit to randomly delete it as of this afternoon. 

Faceparty is clearly going down, sinking into administration, and I for one will be glad to see it go. Ever since they started allowing/encouraging some of the near-pornographic content from questionable 16 year olds that they were allowing on there I stopped logging in. And they wonder why they found that they were hosting a large paedophile ring on their servers?

They make bitter reference to some ITV thing, which to be frank I’ve not even heard of. Either way, they cannot deny the torrent of kids using their site for illicit purposes and putting up inappropriate images. Given that Faceparty have to approve each and every image on their server, they cannot then just turn around and say “well we didn’t know”!!

Rather interestingly, they have re-written the page that comes up regarding deleted accounts… someone’s digging a grave me thinks!

RIP Faceparty, alas you won’t be missed.  

Never Forget – Savoy Theatre

Yesterday evening I was at the Savoy Theatre, London for the press night of Never Forget, the new musical which is largely based around the songs of Mancunian boy band Take That.

I say ‘new’… however, as a Mancunian, I was fortunate enough to hear about the creation of this musical production well in advance of the West End crowds. To set the context around the creation of this musical, as it appears to me, the idea of making a musical seemingly came shortly after the reformation of Take That and the huge Box Office success of their concerts. Take That themselves reportedly wanted absolutely nothing to do with the show, although in interviews since the show hit the stage, their former manager Nigel Martin Smith seems to be happy enough with the final result. I’d also heard that the production itself only went into the rehearsal stage a few weeks before the show opened on its Live Nation regional theatre tour in August 2007. With such fairly well documented rumours flying around with regards to the status of the show, naturally I was a little concerned as to what I’d see this evening.

However, I must say, this has been one of the best ‘jukebox’ musicals that I have seen to date – it was absolutely awesome. Slick, professional and left me hankering for more.

The storyline was somewhat typical for a musical of this genre; however it carried itself along nicely and still gave the actors a great opportunity to shine. I especially enjoyed how ‘northern’ this production felt and, in a city of tourists, I surprisingly managed to feel at home for two hours. Dare I say it, but I was even sniffling away quietly at the back of the theatre by the time they wheeled on the most adorable bunch of kids you ever saw ready for the show stopping finalé.

The set itself was magnificent. What they manage to do with the rain water is absolutely astounding and deserved all of the attention and whooping that the audience were readily directing towards it. The stage design is second to none, and I especially liked the positioning of the orchestra for this production.

Cast wise, this production benefits from a strong and able range of performers, and if you don’t go for the songs, you should certainly consider going for the abundance of muscles!

The strong reviews that this show has been getting since embarking on the regional Live Nation theatre tour of August 2007 and in the run up to its magnificent West End opening are a testament to how fabulous this musical is, especially given how easy it is to be cynical when faced with a jukebox musical of this type. I would be very surprised if this show didn’t get the rave West End reviews that it deserves! I can’t stop singing all of songs that I heard last night, and, dare I say it for fear of being shot down, I actually preferred some of the musical’s live orchestrated versions over the originals!

GO AND SEE THIS MUSICAL – I implore you! D

Marguerite – Theatre Royal Haymarket

This evening I was fortunate enough to be invited along to the Press Night for one of the West End’s newest openings, Marguerite.

This opening marks the world premiere of a new musical collaboration between Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (Les Misérables, Miss Saigon and Martin Guerre) and the Oscar award-winning musical legend Michel Legrand and lyricist Herbert Kretzmer (Les Misérables). The ever fabulous Ruthie Henshall, the award-winning West End and Broadway actress, returns to the London stage to play the title role.

Needless to say, I was rather excited as I am a big Ruthie fan, and historically have also really enjoyed the musical by-products of the Boublil-Schönberg partnership.

Therefore, if you’re looking for a musical that is typically Boublil-Schönberg then (perhaps unfortunately) this will be right up your alley. I say unfortunately, as it seems that they have stuck to their usual tried and tested themes and contexts with Marguerite, and have not really thrown anything new into the mix that I’ve not seen them do before. However, if you are looking for something new that isn’t adventurously different from their other works, then I think this will be the musical that you’ve been longing for since their frustrating attempts back in the mid 1990’s at telling the story of Martin Guerre.

At around 2 hours 15 minutes including interval, I found the length of the show to be just right. It didn’t feel particularly rushed, and I was left feeling that I could have stayed for a little bit longer had the story wanted to progress further.

The story line to this show is the ‘typical Boublil-Schönberg’ war-time, boy meets girl he shouldn’t have met but decides to sing in a big booming voice at her until she falls in love with him kind of thing – perhaps more succinctly summed up as a love story set in occupied Paris during the Second World War. Marguerite, the beautiful and notorious mistress of a high ranking German officer, falls for Armand a young musician half her age. Armand’s obsessive love for Marguerite puts them both at risk. The story itself is based on the romantic novel, La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas [incidentally, the exact same story as Baz Lurhmans’ film "Moulin Rouge" was based upon]

I was disappointed to find that there wasn’t really a keynote song in this production, unlike the big punching-the-air, résistance-wins-hurrah songs that the writing team usually come out with. Indeed I cannot really remember too many of the songs from this production, though I do remember liking the jazz song “Jazz Time” quite a lot.

At times, I found it quite difficult to distinguish the lyric of the songs due to the staging of three or four actors all singing over each other, all in the same pitch and at the same volume. This made it nigh impossible at times to pick out bits of a character’s story and contrast it with another’s. Similarly, it seems that some of the lyrics of Boublil’s penmanship may have been slightly lost in translation as some of the lyrics just didn’t gel and actually jarred (in my humble opinion).

I do not wish to appear negative about this production though, as I actually rather enjoyed it. Perhaps I’m being a little too critical as I had been hoping for something new and exciting as opposed to traditional and safe.

The staging of this production is amazing. The scenery is wonderfully mastered and they really do manage to transform the stage so many times over. Carlos and I were both left going ‘wow’ every time they did a scene change and so hats off to the very talented production crew!

Ruthie Henshall is, as always, stunning. There’s no other word for her performance and I feel that she really sold her character’s story to me. Not only that, but she is looking fantastic! Alexander Hanson didn’t quite live up to my expectations of a fierce German general, especially having seen him play a nasty bad guy in We Will Rock You a few years ago, though he still managed to bring an unnerving sense of danger to the persona of his character in the most subtle of ways. Julian Ovenden was also a good leading man and seemed to fill the role very well.

I did find the lack of accents slightly unnerving to watch as French and German characters alike were all talking in the Queen’s English without even so much as a regional British, let alone foreign, accent between them. I know that this is the magic of the theatre and something that’s a typical trait in Boublil-Schönberg productions; however I felt that at least some attempt at an accent would have helped bring a little more authenticity and context to the production.

Despite my earlier comments, I did really enjoy the story line to this show and I must confess that by the end of the production I was dabbing my eyes quite a bit! At one point, I was actually quite shocked by the blunt and graphic staging of the final scenes and at at times even flinched in my seat. I found these final scenes especially to be very well performed by all involved, though it did make it a little hard to watch without being appalled at what was being acted out on stage.

If you’re after a gritty, well acted, intellectual and intelligent musical but have already seen Les Mis, then this would certainly be my recommendation for you.

******************************

Principal Cast [as at May 2008]

Marguerite	Ruthie Henshall
Armand	Julian Ovenden
Otto	Alexander Hanson