Vex Appeal is a weblog and collection of projects by Guy Parsons, a game designer for Mind Candy. He's 20, and lives in London, England. Read more about the saucy butcher boy here.

Portrait of the artist as a young man.

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101 things in 1001 days
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Vex Appeal

Nice to make a list. 'citing, if anything....

The mission:

Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

Overall, I'm taking a fairly chilled out approach to this - it's designed to succeed, and most of the tasks are fairly straightforward. I'm happy to swap tasks in/out as long as my priorities change (1001 days is quite a long time - fuck, I'll be 22 by then!) rather than stick to the list religously, which could rather take the fun out of it.

One thing I've been careful to avoid in the construction of the list is the use of tasks formatted as "do X every month" or so on - tasks that you can't truly complete until the end of the project. Instead I've opted for "do X 50 times", so even if I intend to scatter the occurances out evenly, I can blast through 'em at the beginning or race to catch up at the end if I need to.

Of course I'll be blogging about all these things - you can view related posts under the '101 things' tag. This project was inspired by triplux.

Start date: 15th January 2007
End date: Monday, October 12, 2009
Time remaining:

Witness the fitness

Wherein the boy attempts to make nice with his corporeal self by occasionally neglecting to fill it with poisonous substances.

  1. Whole day without smoking.
  2. Whole week without coffee.
  3. Whole week of being a vegan.
  4. Whole month without alcohol.
  5. Weight 10st 4lb or more. (i.e: not clinically underweight.)
  6. Scale and polish, goddammit.
  7. Register for a gym and go at least 50 times.
  8. Run a mile in under 10 minutes. (Note: I have no clue how easy that is. I've just worked out it's 6 miles an hour but that's a bit lost on me too. Might make this one harder in a bit...)

All-consuming
Things that involve buying, viewing, and so on.

  1. Switch.
  2. Get a suit.
  3. Get a bike.
  4. Watch 101 films. (Subscribed to Sofa Cinema and bought a DVD player...)
    1. And watched Primer.
    2. And Million Dollar Baby
    3. And The Interpreter
    4. And War Of The Worlds
    5. And Sunshine
    6. And Happy Feet
    7. And The Bourne Supremacy
    8. And Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
    9. And Brick
    10. And Abre Los Ojos
    11. And Memento
    12. And Half Nelson
    13. And 28 Days Later
    14. And Monsters Inc
    15. And Finding Nemo
    16. And The Day After Tomorrow
    17. And Children Of Men
    18. And Mad Hot Ballroom
    19. And Following
    20. And Shrek 2
    21. And Grizzly Man
    22. And Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself
    23. And Blow
    24. And The Corporation
    25. And Spirited Away
    26. And Bottle Rocket
    27. And Thank You For Smoking
    28. And Hard Candy
    29. And The Pianist
    30. And GoodFellas
    31. And Murder on a Sunday Morning
    32. And Oldboy
    33. And The Godfather
    34. And The Godfather: Part II
    35. And The Godfather: Part III
    36. And The Bourne Ultimatum
    37. And The Queen
    38. And Threads
    39. And Death Of A President
    40. And Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
  5. Read 101 books.
    1. An Encyclopedia Of An Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. (Charming.)
    2. A Theory Of Fun by Raph Koster.
    3. jPod by Douglas Coupland.
    4. Hey Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland.
    5. Opening Skinner's Box by Lauren Slater.
    6. Spook Country by William Gibson
    7. A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman
    8. (In Praise Of) Slow by Carl Honore
    9. How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson
    10. Imperial Ambitions by Noam Chomsky
    11. How To Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson
  6. See 50 bands.
    1. Frank Turner and...
    2. Beans on Toast at Nambuca.
    3. Foals @ The Scala.
    4. The Chap @ Hoxton Bar & Grill
    5. Explosions In The Sky @ The Astoria
    6. Shellac @ ATP
    7. Clinic @ ATP
    8. Les Savy Fav @ ATP
    9. The Noyze @ The Dublin Castle
  7. Subscribe to 5 different magazines. (Not all at once, duh.)
  8. Get Headgear.
  9. Get a decent array of booze in.
  10. Buy a scanner/printer/copier jobby.
  11. Watch an entire TV series in a day. Watched 6 hours and 30 minutes of The Staircase in succession between 2am and 8.30am on another sleepless night.

Been There, Done That
Things that involve going places.

  1. Get outta the country (doing another of the 101 things doesn't count) (Paris, baby! Precisely nothing was done apart from chilling, eating, etc. I recommend against eating pigs' trotter - like, believe me, it's an actual pig foot. On your plate. Why the fuck would you order that? There is a perfectly normal steak right next to it on the menu - use your head.)
  2. Go skiing/snowboarding
  3. Go on holiday with me mam
  4. See a Real Play I went to see A Wonderful World Of Dissocia and rather enjoyed it. Hurrah!
  5. Go to a cool, unusual event that I would usually neglect to attend due to suspicions it will be too pretentious for me to enjoy, and be pleasantly surprised
  6. Go to a live sporting event, preferably something mildly ridiculous
  7. Go see some stand-up comedy
  8. Go on a Friday Night Skate
  9. Go to Speakers Corner
  10. Go canoeing/kayaking
  11. Go to the beach
  12. Go to 5 London markets and buy something awesome from each
  13. Go somewhere mega-awesome with Sophie
  14. Go on a day/night out with Meridy
  15. Go on a day/night out with Dad
  16. Walk along the Thames from Greenwich to Wandsworth Bridge (that's 10 miles.)
  17. Play all-night pool with Matt & Alex.
  18. Visit 20 museums/galleries.
    1. Hayward Gallery, Blind Light
  19. Do 10 things from Timeout's 101 things to do in London.
  20. Play a proper game of poker.
  21. Eat somewhere Fancy with a capital F.
  22. Sing karaoke. - @ Lucky Voice w/ PXC story team and friends
  23. Go do some new kind of dancing. LIKE JIVE BABY JIVE
  24. Go rafting
  25. Climb a mountain
  26. Go to the US
  27. Go urban exploring
  28. Throw myself out of a plane (note to self: don't forget parachute)
  29. Go to Edinburgh Fringe

Creation Myths
Making stuff, or more accurately, learning how to make stuff.

  1. Technorati rank <100k
  2. Get published in something made of paper
  3. Set up a podcast
  4. Set up a vlog
  5. Make a zine or Lulu book
  6. Cut an EP (my keyboard is on the way!)
  7. Record a song using no real instruments
  8. Record a song featuring all my friends
  9. Play a gig
  10. Sell something daft on eBay
  11. Make a t-shirt
  12. Take 1001 photos - this means having 1,695 photos on my Flickr account.
  13. Set up profile site. - GuyLewisParsons.com
  14. Get as good at an audio package as I am at Photoshop.
  15. Get as good at a video package as I am at Photoshop.
  16. Make something weird/functional "Make Zine" style
  17. Make a mini-site
  18. Make a stop-motion animation
  19. Make something that celebrates my awesome friends
  20. Complete a project about something totally niddly
  21. Hack off my own hair to hilarious effect (Done!)
  22. Participate in a larger/social creative project
    • This for the Heather Gold Show, but want to do something slightly more, er, substantial.
  23. Cook a roast dinner!
  24. Release a message in a bottle and a message on a balloon. (Update: I have a bottle specially imported from the Pirate Store at 826 Valenica! We're ready to roll in style.)
  25. Paint some moss graffiti.

More Productive
Getting Things Done For Profit & Fun

  1. Set up a workflow for contacts, tasks, notes, and so on.
  2. Do something for charity.
  3. Register to vote. Then actually vote.
  4. Get out of any commercial debt. (i.e: not including student loan.)
  5. Pay off £1,500 of my student loan.
  6. Go through my spending and optimise it. (Like: do less of it.)
  7. Save £1 a day for each of the 1001 days.
  8. Set up a savings account.
  9. Give blood.
  10. Get First Aid trained.
  11. Be more energy efficient.
  12. Get a qualification in something or take a course. (First Aid doesn't count.)
  13. Get paid for something that isn't my job.
  14. More cold hard cash.
  15. Manage to complete one of those loyalty card thingies.
  16. Backup my computer.

Miscellanea

What's left over.

  1. Stay awake for 50 hours straight.
  2. Appear on TV - "in the background" doesn't count.
  3. Throw a house party.
  4. Make 5 new proper pals in London.
  5. Win a competition.
  6. Meet N.
  7. Blowout 21st birthday party.
  8. Celebrate my 666,666,666th second (or 11,111,111st minute, if you will) on Monday, April 7th, 2008, 1.11am
  9. Participate in an online community.
  10. Apply for a job I'm ridiculously unqualified for.
  11. [secret] (Embarassingly, I've forgotten what this actually is. I've now generalised it to mean, "something challenging, realistic, and measurable [therefore a 101-style thing] that's too sordid for the internet to know about.)
  12. Make a new list!