At last, the long couch-surf is over. Albeit relieved, I’m also somewhat disappointed that this period of my life has come to an end. Although it was undeniably demanding and stressful (and the fact that I didn’t have my own space was beginning to drive me insane) the three months for which I was homeless probably rank among the best of my life.

Despite the various jabs of my colleagues and the hardships, and stigma, that one inevitably faces, being ‘homeless’ brought with it a sense of liberation that is sorely missing in Western day-to-day life. Not knowing where you are going to stay the next night ingrains a sense of freedom into the uncertainty of your life.

There are no obligations to spend money in order to be happy, as you’re too busy living. You don’t need to devise ways of making yourself happy just for the sake of being happy. You either find yourself preoccupied with surviving or else having a fantastic time with the friends and people who are showing you their kindness by inviting you into their homes.

Leaping from one lounge to the next, you interact with people at their  most generous and welcoming. You yourself are stripped of many of the comforts that compel you to arrogance and safety, and rather are forced to acknowledge yourself and engage with those you trust (and sometimes those that you don’t). And when you realise just how seemingly unimpressive an ordeal / experience you are enduring compared to others in this world, you find a much clearer understanding of yourself.

Regardless, living that lifestyle is one thing when you’re backpacking through the jungles of Asia. Juggling that amount of freedom with a demanding career is quite another task unless one wishes to become a professional monk. And one can only live off the goodwill of others for so long. So it is that I find myself settled into a house in Earlsfield.

Yes, I had wanted to move anywhere but the South West of London. However, I gave up for the sake of convenience. Besides, after however many months of couch-surfing in London I felt that I ought to take the easy route for once.

However, being settled does open up some other opportunities and I shouldn’t lament the fact that I now am leading a somewhat more structured lifestyle. I’ve had the pleasure of having experienced some of these opportunities over the past two months and I’ll look to share them in the coming weeks.

From concerts to shows to clothes flying out of windows to unforgiving photographs to air-guitar bands, 2010 has been a hell of a year so far.

‘I’ve got AIDS. Beastman AIDS!‘  Yeah. Try to get that out of your head.

Written by the bearer of geek wet-dreams, Jerome Bixby, it focuses on a departing college professor whose friends throw him a surprise farewell party at his cabin in the woods. When they probe him for his reasons for leaving, he claims that he is a 14,000 year-old Cro-Magnon who somehow has not aged over the past millenia. Every ten years or so, when people realise that he’s not getting visibly older, he packs up and starts a new life.

This isn’t taken kindly by his friends and colleagues. Not only do they find the idea preposterous and outlandish, but even when they overcome the first hurdle of cynicism they are then faced with someone who claims to have had first-hand knowledge of much of humanity’s history. Unsurprisingly, his views at times differ significantly to written history which raises the tension levels in the room to boiling point.

And herein lies the film’s greatest strength, which is a pretty unsettling one: the film puts forward a damn good argument. It’s bizarrely feasible.

Virtually the whole film is set in his living room, and it is shot and rolls out like a play, with the plot moving forward through the intellectual and emotional arguments between the various characters.

There are some actors here that you’ll vaguely recognise (I’ll never forget the face of the portly fellow who sucked off Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Mysterious Skin) but the chances are that you won’t know the names of any of the cast.

Obviously a difficult film to market, it’s found its success through BitTorrent, with the producer thanking users for the film’s spread (hear that Hollywood!?). On the surface it might seem like a boring premise with no selling point, but it’s probably one of the most rewarding films to find its way onto my screen in the past year.

Ok, so what’s the bad stuff? The production quality is just not there. The images are grainy, the sounds are disjointed and the whole film feels like it was shot on a student’s budget (which it probably was). However, these are minor flaws in a great movie.

Having won a slew of awards, the film’s success shows what media is capable of and hopefully it’ll act as a catalyst for similar releases. With real quality finding success without the backing of the major studios, it’s perhaps inevitable that more and more gems will sneak through.

I just pray that it’s a trend that catches on. Fuck knows, it sure beats another Transformers movie, no matter how much Megan Fox bends over.

Even his poorer outings (like American Gods) tend to be pretty good, while his best efforts are remarkable. Few authors manage to deliver such profound work in such an understated fashion. If you don’t believe me then just pick up a copy of The Dreamhunters or Murder Mysteries and decide for yourself.

Smoke and Mirrors - The anthology containing 'Instructions'

One of his more memorable pieces is to be found in his Smoke and Mirrors anthology. Instructions is a poem that acts as a guide on how to survive a fairy tale. Now Gaiman has teamed up with celebrated fantasy artist, Charles Vess, to convert the poem into an illustrated book. Here’s the amazing trailer:

For those of you not in the know, Millwall is one of England’s truly great clubs. Unlike a Liverpool or a Manchester United Millwall hasn’t made its reputation by winning any major trophies. It’s currently battling for promotion from Football League One (30 odd places below the bottom Premier League side) and its factory-like stadium is situated in the delightful South East of London.

However, Millwall’s history is unmatched in one aspect – that of brutal and bloody violence. You see, Millwall’s the club that Mike Tyson would support if he weren’t such a pussy. These are the guys who have a reputation for drinking beer, throttling opposition fans with barbed wire when their team wins and firebombing retirement villages when it loses (or if there doesn’t happen to be anything on the telly worth watching).

Millwall fans getting ready for the big game

And that’s pretty much their legacy in a nutshell (that and a run to the 2004 League Cup Final where they got trounced by the Red Devils). Oh, and they have a song:

No One Likes Us, No One Likes Us, No One Likes Us – We Don’t Care!
We Are Millwall, Super Millwall, We Are Millwall From The Den!

In short, it’s an experience worth having. When a mate (a Millwall fan) called and asked if I was interested in catching the Gillingham game, I of course said yes. With just enough time to write up my will and buy a stab-proof vest, I caught a train at London Bridge and tried to be as invisible as possible in a carriage crammed full of gigantic dock workers, beer cans and Millwall tattoos.

After meeting up with my mates and having a few beers at a local pub, we made our way into the stadium (past a disturbing lack of security). Walking to our seats we were greeted by a gaggle of fans frothing at the mouth and waving ‘pikey’ signs at the visiting Gillingham contingent. For a moment I was worried that I had made a significant mistake and that my lack of tattoos would prove to be a fatal flaw.

Well, suffice to say, I obviously survived the affair, and I actually ended up having an amazing time drinking it up with some local fans.

The match report follows:

• Goals: Millwall 4 – Gillingham 0
• The amount of times I heard ‘fuck’ in the 90 minutes: 97
• The amount of times I heard ‘shit’ in the 90 minutes: 14
• The amount of times I heard ‘cunt’ in the 90 minutes: 173
• People removed by security from the stadium: 4
• Number of stabbings witnessed: 0
• Best comment of the day: ‘Nutter, your dad was a cunt for having you!’

As you can see, ‘cunt’ is the preferred term when attending a Millwall game and one needs to master its use in order to blend into the crowd and to fully appreciate the event. Some variations that can be integrated into your speech for the 90 minutes of playing time include:

• ‘You cunt’
• ‘Fucking cunt’
• ‘You fucking cunt’
• ‘You yellow cunt’

If you can accompany the slur with a two-fingered ‘V’ at the opposition then you’ve just taken your first step to becoming a Millwall fan.

The match itself was a a scrappy affair, however three of the goals were pretty damn good, albeit they all benefited from poor defending, and the seats offered a perfect view of all of the action, both on and off the pitch. With the London sun blazing in at 17 °C (this is the borderline territory where Londoners consider bringing out the oil), a kick-ass atmosphere and a great excuse for drinking, it was a Saturday well spent.

Igor Vovchanchyn could be such a person. A retired Ukranian mixed martial artist who left the MMA circuit with a record of 49-2-10, Igor seems as pleasant as a tiger wearing a testicle clamp – and probably more dangerous. With seven of his ten losses coming well into the twilight of his career, Vovchanchyn embarked on a dominance of MMA that was purely staggering (this included a 30 fight winning streak!!!).

Arguably the best MMA fighter of his era, his highlight reel is as about as delicate as Apocalypse Now:

The following, by Tomas Nilsson, is a somewhat unusual example – Little Red Riding Hood like you’ve never seen it before (hint: switch the vid to full-screen mode):

In case the style or the idea seem somewhat familiar, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Nilsson was inspired by Röyksopps Remind Me:

Startlingly, some of the properties have also been found throughout nature. Whilst further investigations seem to indicate that these proportions aren’t as constant as once thought, and that variations are sufficient to disregard the common claim that the golden ratio is present within nautilus shells, their approximation and presence in other entities are nevertheless bewildering.

Made by Cristóbal Vila, Nature by Numbers highlights the mathematical properties hidden in organic beauty. Starting off with the Fibonacci series, it then moves on to the golden ratio and the Delaunay Triangulation and Voronoi Tessellations.

And no – I didn’t know what the heck those last two were either until I clicked on the link.