James Titcumb

So for my friends back in UK, its about 3am, and I guess most of them are now sleeping, and I hope they have ridiculous hangovers tomorrow morning. However, it is 7pm here, and I’m sitting on my own listening to Opeth’s Damnation CD, just relaxing with one beer. Who knows where this night will end?

Whichever way it does end, I’m excited about going to the desert near Barstow tomorrow morning to fire rockets into the sky with my boss. That should be fun! I look forward to it – fire and fast-moving objects.

So I notice Tom has joined the bandwagon too and has started blogging on his Facebook also. I guess it’s being away from loved ones that makes you really miss what you normally take for granted – being around friends and family. I know I keep going on about blogs, but I’m still quite apprehensive about them, and perhaps this will only last until I return to my normal life in UK.

Well we played a bit more Guitar Hero II today, I managed to play several encores reasonably well (on medium still) including War Pigs, Sweet Child o’Mine and another song. I nailed Dethklok’s Thunderhorse a bit better today, which I found immensely satisfying.

Anyway, another closing note… the weather here is sublime – a very warm and sunny start to the day, and hot throughout, and finally a warm evening. I shall enjoy sitting in the middle of the desert tomorrow in the baking heat of Barstow, and hopefully – for once – come back with a tan! I bid you farewell… for now?

So as you might have gathered from my last entry, I’ve not been a huge fan of blogs, nor online profiles indeed. I’m growing to this quite quickly however and, in fact, have waited all day to write my thoughts.

I was thinking earlier about names for blogs. A friend of mine runs a successful blog called Velcro City (www.velcro-city.co.uk) which I am proud to host on the TC server. Also, a friend of mine writes one called “Genuine Interest”, on which his first post explained why he had chosen that name — but alas, my memory fails me and I cannot for the life of me remember why. I have also seen a few other blogs, with titles like “The Inner Mind of xxx” and “The Insane Ramblings of xxx”, or thereabouts. With regards to the latter names, I don’t feel that great about calling my blog something like that, and feel that with a little thought I could procure something better. However, at this time, I feel rather uninspired and unimaginative, so shall therefore leave the name out for now. And in fact, after that little “rant” — as it were — I realise now that even if I did procure a title, it would be pointless as this Facebook application doesn’t have room for a title, or so I believe.

So anyway, I digress. I meant to write a short exciting blip about how Seb and I managed to complete “Easy” on Guitar Hero II, and have purchased the Dethklok song “Thunderhorse”. I now realise how amazing (or otherwise… I leave that to your opinion) some people are at this game, when both Seb and I find it extremely difficult on the Medium setting. Although we have been learning well! I’m sure it won’t be long til we are, indeed, Guitar Heroes. Having said that though, my fingers are feeling quite numb!

In other news, on Tuesday 29th May at 10:12am, my sister gave birth to my first nephew, Finley. Unfortunately I have only seen photos so far as I am still in the US of A, and I have not yet met him “in person” so to speak. This is something I greatly look forward to. For those of you who wondered why my MSN Messenger name was “Uncle James”, there is your explanation.

It looks like I’ll be here in California for another week or so, and I doubt I’ll be getting any peace and quiet from the office for the remainder of my stay.

On a penultimate, slightly obscure and off-topic note, I have really taken a liking to Simen Hestnæs, who has (or does) do vocals in Lamented Souls, Ven Buens Ende, Borknagar, Dimmu Borgir, Arcturus and Dagoba. I do love his more powerful singing where it has been layered a number of times, for example in the newest Dimmu Borgir album, In Sorte Diaboli, especially The Serpentine Offering. A very powerful song I think, and epic as expected. On the note of that album, it’s taken me a few listens to warm to it, but I do like it I think.

And finally, a short mention of the new Frosthold website address. Instead of the hard to remember (not to mention reel off at gigs) http://frosthold.zapto.org/ we now have a simple… www.frosthold.com. Very nice. Update your bookmarks.

And at this point, tiredness takes over me, and I must sleep and dream of better times. Good day my friends!

Well this concept isn’t new to me, and personally I’ve never been that attracted to “web logging” and telling the world of my mundane working life. Indeed, nor of the nights (and sometimes mornings) of extreme inebriation. However, of late I seem to have taken a liking to Facebook, much more so than the wretched MySpace (which I loathe more and more when I log onto our band’s page and see all the pointless — for want of a better word — crap floating around).

So, as I lie here in bed in Lake Forest, California, I sit and think a few things. Firstly that my head hurts, possibly due to having had a few beers. Secondly, that Guitar Hero II, although a remarkably likeable game on the X-Box 360, is quite hard to get the hang of. Thirdly, the thought that has been in my head for the entire trip is the “pining” to be back home with my fiancée for several reasons, one of which is to get our wedding planning back on the road.

There is an awful lot more I could type – random thoughts and such like, but I highly doubt that anyone will actually bother to read this and in addition the time is 1:20am and I do have work tomorrow. As to how long I keep this web log going for is anyone’s guess, but for now, if you are really that interested in the confused rants of my mind, you have a small taster of what may or may not be to come. I bid you goodnight… all one of you reading this.

Although having noticed that all of my friends are from UK, I bid you good day…