There Are Levels Of Survival We Are Prepared To Accept
Okay
this is a new low, I'm watching a football game. It's not even an important football game (whatever one of those may be, perhaps one played instead of a major international war), its a bloody friendly! On the plus side it is against Columbia, and as I recall one of their defenders was assassinated after the '94 World Cup because he'd scored an own-goal, so I know they take the game (a little too) seriously. I'm not really feeling all that entertained though...
Urgent Request
Well I didn't get much done with the rest of the day at all really. Washed some towels, wrote some emails, made a few phone calls... I've got an interview next Tuesday morning, which is pretty good. Now I seem to be reduced to watching Star Trek, which really is about as desperate as it gets here...
Somebody needs to think of a hobby for me, and quickly, before I go CRAZY!
Who Stole The Summer?
It was a glorious morning this morning, and although I'd have much prefered to stay in bed and sleep (nope, still not getting a proper nights rest, I feel like I've been beaten viciously about the head this morning), but I'd promised Dot (my upstairs neighbour) that I'd put the bins out this morning, so I dragged my arse out of bed and into the light. It being warm I broke my shorts out, and I seem to have somehow broken the summer by acknowledging its existence. I expect I'd better change before I make it rain...
Government Incompetence
So I'm in the middle of applying for jobs (already done three this morning and its barely 10am), but the governments jobsearch website is pissing me off, cos it won't work under Firefox (which is my browser of choice), so I have to go back to bloody IE, which then for some reason disables my mouse and so I have to reboot and I've already done this three times this morning and its just getting right on my nerves.
Of course once I've done these two applications I'll have done five today and I think that'll do for one day. Then I'll need to find something else to do with the rest of my day... I suppose I could always apply for more jobs eh?
Sunday Take 2
Man when I'm not working, I really hate Bank Holidays. I mean when I don't have a job I hate them, when I do have a job and its an extra day off they're great. When I don't have a job though, its just like having two Sundays in a row.
Finally found a playmate! Well, Jules came over cos she wanted to escape from everybody else she knows, which is why she usually comes to see me (it's nice to be a little oasis of calm in an otherwise depressing existence). We did indeed go for some driving (hehe, I love my new car, have I mentioned that?), but then oddly settled down in my living room to watch the guy over the road from me put a fence up. Now, normally thats not the sort of thing I enjoy, I'm not big on window-monitoring, but this guys DIY skills were just so amazinly incompetent that it was truly a fascinating afternoon's viewing. I'm still waiting for the fence (which incidentally has a big gap in it cos he'd messed up his initial measurements) to fall down. There were a lot of points when we thought it was going to fall and crush one or more of his kids, but it didn't. His wife wasn't too impressed with his work either, you could tell from the
very short exchanges between them, and the fact that he kept throwing his spade on the floor in a huff, before he realised that he needed it and had to pick it up again. In case you were wondering no, they couldn't see us watching, my net-curtains are extremely good for obscuring the view into my house, although I'll be surprised if they didn't hear Jules every now and then, as she can be very loud when she's insulting complete strangers. It was his mixing of concrete that got her most riled, to the point that I had to actually restrain her from going over there and mixing it herself. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, and yes we do have odd afternoons, but there you go. We didn't do any harm, did we? Sometimes you just need to take your mind off everything else, and if watching somebody make an arse of putting a fence up is how you do it, then so be it. Cheaper than drugs and/or alcohol wasn't it? Didn't give me a hangover either.
;P
Pimp My Brain
Oh jay-sus but I've just watched two solid hours of Pimp My Ride on MTV. I didn't mean to, I meant to be doing almost anything else, but it just kinda happened there...
Y'know what I always wonder though? How the hell can regular folk afford the insurance on their newly pimped rides? Maybe its different in the states and you aren't legally compelled to have insurance, although I doubt that, but the premiums on those cars must go from almost nothing to cripplingly huge in a matter of days. Maybe MTV pays for that too, I dunno.
Oh look, not its lunch time. Another morning wasted! Yay me!
Last Time 'Till August
Yeah, its the last Bank Holiday till the end of August and as is fairly typical it's grey and overcast and looks like its about to rain (this always happens too, I mean you could have a Bank Holiday in the middle of a heatwave (so exactly like now then) and it will somehow conspire to be a crappy day. Of course, right now Bank Holidays (every day is a holiday *ironic grin*) don't mean a damn thing to me, all of my time is time off, so it's not significantly different...
Okay so last night I watched a documentary about the Garry Kasparov vs Deep Blue match. That was very interesting stuff. First I need to 'fess up and admit that I suck at chess. I know the rules, I can understand the strategy and all that, I just don't have the patience for it. I guess I am a child of the television generation, cos I need constant stimulation and chess just to keep my attention. So yeah, I really really suck at chess. What I do find interesting is the game theory though. I've been thinking for a while now if I could write a simple programme to play a game like say, tic-tac-toe, and even a game as simple and frankly pointless as that is pretty hard to do, so I was interested in how exactly the guys at IBM managed to put together a machine that could and did beat the greatest chess player the world has ever seen. Turns out that for all the programming and technical genius that these guys had to offer, the easiest thing to do wasn't to beat Kasparov, it was to have him lose. Now Kasparov is paranoid as all hell, apparently thats something that is fairly common in all chess players. His recollection of the events sure bears that out, he talks about how unfair things were, how the machine did something that a machine simply could not do. In his opinion all chess playing computers are essentially stupid and... okay, the way chess programmes work is that they are always seeking a material advantage, ie they want to have more pieces than you, so they don't understand the concept of a sacrifice. In the second game Kasparov set a trap for it which any other machine would've taken for the short term material advantage, but Deep Blue didn't fall for it and he was convinced that a human player had intervened at that point. Now He fails to take into account here that the guys who programmed this machine are pretty fucking smart and will know just as well as he does what the failings of a regular chess programme are, and will have actively programmed against that. Anyway, the point here is that from this point onwards Kasparov's mind was NEVER on what he was doing, it was always worrying away at the point he felt he was cheated. His support team were exactly no help and fuelled his paranoid fantasies. He thought he was being spied on, he thought that there was no Deep Blue and that he was in fact playing a room full of Grand Masters... basically every crazy thing he could think of. Now the thing to note here is that IBM didn't do a damn thing to calm him. He was never allowed to even SEE the Deep Blue machine, hell he couldn't even walk past the room that it was in. In fact nobody ever got to see it, as soon as the match was over Deep Blue was disassembled and that was it. I'm not saying the technical guys were in on this, cos I honestly don't think they were, but the corporate guys... well look at it this way; the day after Deep Blue beat Kasparov IBMs share price increased by 50%, and IBM went from being a dull old-school hardware manufacturer to the people who produced the 'smartest' computer in the world. I don't know if any of this adds up to a damn thing, but it seems to be that IBM corporate saw a huge opportunity for publicity and to promote their brand and they were prepared to do whatever was necessary to get it. They'd spend a lot of money on this, and I think they wanted some return on their investment...
Like I say, I don't really know if any of it adds up to a damn thing, but thats how it looks to me.
Right well thats enough of that for one morning eh? Time to... what is it that I do exactly?
I'm Wasting My Life
Okay I've just spent, I don't know how long, far too long (certainly the whole time I was writing that last post) looking for stuff about Peter Jackson's King Kong movie. Why? I wish I knew. Its not like I'm even particularly excited about it (yet, although I know myself well enough to know that the hype machine will suck me in come December), I've never been a fan of Kong in any form, and I don't really know what PJ see's here that's worth doing. Equally the idea that Peter Jackson is one of the great directors and that his work is automatically interesting because it's
his is also fairly ridiculous. Okay I love the Frighteners and the LotR trilogy, but are those indicative of the quality of work we can expect from him, or is his earlier low budget work nearer to the mark? Has he just been lucky with LotR? I guess time will tell (although I wouldn't bet against my writing gloriously positive stuff about this movie at the end of the year). All I know is that spending any measurable amount of time looking for early images of a CG ape from a movie I'm not really all that interested in is strongly indicative of the fact that I'm bored and don't really know what to do with my evening...
Arctic Monkeys
Yesterday was a real bust, which is why I didn't post anything, I was just feeling too misrable.
I'd got my new car, a lovely late spring day, and could I find a playmate? Could I bollocks. That just made me all grumpy for pretty much the whole day.
Today hasn't been a lot better, but I forwent the need for playmates and just went driving anyway. Its been a long time since I've done that, since I've enjoyed the sensation of driving so much that I'd do it just for the sake of it, and I know I'm probably making my car sound like some kind of sports car and it most certainly isn't that. It's just a decent little car thats well put together and a pleasure to drive. Plus I listened to Athlete while I was driving. That was good.
TV has reached its usual annual low with the return of Big Brother to our screens. I know television hit a new and unexpected low with Celebrity Love Island a couple of weeks back (which incidentally DOESN'T show it when the celebs do make out, which surely defeats the whole point...), but with Big Brother there is something so wrong, so soul destroying, so indicative of the sickness at the heart of our society... I don't even know where I'm going with this. I suppose its the fact that BB is just an extended train wreck of a show, watching a bunch of self-important, shallow, opinionated, lowest common denominator morons exposing themselves, their prejudices and their ignorance for public entertainment... It's like deriving entertainment from watching drunks fighting in the street, which is essentially what the show has become. Whats even worse is that these people
want us to be watching them so convinced are they of their inherent self-worth. God, I hate it and what it says about us as a nation.
In happy thoughts, I urge you all to check out a band called Arctic Monkeys, who are currently rocking my world. They played a gig in Northampton just last Wednesday, which was unfortunate cos I didn't hear of them until Friday. I'd suggest the tracks Bigger Boys, or Fake Tales of San Franciscom but really anything is good. They're so young too! If I wasn't so impressed I'd be bloody irritated by them.
Okay as I seem to be in something of a grumpy and bitter place this evening, I'm gonna go and do.... whatever it is I'm going to do.
Road Trip!
As today was the hottest day that England has seen since August 2003, it seemed like the ideal time to mount a journey to go and fetch my new car. For a journey that took five hours, I was actually on the move for remarkably little little of it. I walked to the station (five miles, hottest day in two years remember) and arrived literally in time to see the train I wanted to close its doors and pull away. So then I had to wait for an hour for the next one to turn up. That train was actually on time and went where and when it was supposed to, but there were some amazingly irritating little girls on it... Okay I say little, they were probably 14,15,16, something of that order, and one of them particularly was just infuriatingly hyper-active. She couldn't sit down for two minutes, she couldn't talk without shouting, she just climbed on the seats and ran about and played 'music' on her mobile... I don't know about everybody else in the carriage, but I wanted her to DIE. Right there. Just DIE, like *snap* and she's gone. No, actually I was only minorly irritated cos I was reading most of the way, and I just kinda tuned her out. So then I get to Birmingham to change trains, run to the right platform just as
this train is closing it's doors, but the guard this time was really nice and let me in through his door and onto the train proper. Which would've been great except that this train went approximately 300 yards before it was halted by a points failure. So that was another hour of waiting, waiting standing up this time 'cos there weren't any spare seats. Anyhoo, eventually this train got underway and then things went pretty well, I got to Burton and walked the couple miles from that station to my parents house, where my new car awaited!
Its great, I should say that right now. Its a pacific green Ford Focus 1.6 Zetec, which basically means its a pretty nippy little car which is green, and has a CD player. Driving back tonight was great fun, zooming down almost deserted roads, Oasis booming out of the stereo, finding all the cool new things it can do. Okay admittedly it IS just a car and not the answer to all lifes problems, but this one is only five years old (with one not terribly careful owner, but low mileage and a full service history) whereas my Granada was like twenty years old, and whilst it was hi-tech when it was new it sure as hell wasn't by the time I got it. This car is like moving into the space age, at least in terms of little things like engine noise and road-holding (cos damn this baby sticks to the road!), and the little conveniences of life. I really like this car, it was a shame to be home and to not have anywhere else to drive... Still tomorrow is another day eh? hehehe
Stu's not coping all that well with being back in the real world though. I saw all his holiday photos (and he was right, the vast majority of them are from the one morning of the Star Wars exhibition), but he seems so sad to be back in his regular everyday job in Burton... I can understand that though, I'd be just the same. 'Twas good to see him again, even if it was only for a couple of hours.
I'm really tired again, even though I actually had a decent nights sleep last night (although I didn't realise that until I woke up this morning, and I was like "whoah! I've just woken up! Which implies I was asleep! Sweet!") but the days exertions were pretty exerting, and all that travelling sure does wear you out...
Ohohoh! And I've just come across a soundtrack album for the Sega Saturn game NiGHTs Into Dreams, and I'd forgotten how bloody magical that games music was. If you don't believe me, just listen to Gate Of Your Dreams...
Okay, and with that I believe its off to bed, and to the gate of
my dreams!
So Hot, Milk Was A Bad Choice
Today was actually a pretty good day. The weather has been as schizophrenic as usual, with rainy patches and a solid grey overcast counter-pointed by balmy summer temperatures, and what is a quite frankly glorious evening of blue skies and sunshine (which I will duly ignore and stay inside). I've applied for tons of jobs (well, about seven, but thats seven times as many as I have in the past month or so...), and I am for once genuinely excited about the possibilities that lie before me.
I think a big part of my problem is that I really don't expect a lot from myself on a daily basis. Thats crazy though, cos my favourite days are always the ones that start at like 5am with impossible goals, and which end at 10pm in glorious success. Days where I start late, finish early and achieve nothing noticeable in-between (so like most of my days then) really aren't all that inspiring to me, and I allow myself far too many like that. I need to get excited about my life, and yeah, I've been watching Dr Phil again, so sue me...
Okay, last night I watched what was in fact the second ever soccer game of my entire life. It was apparently a very good game, and tremendously exciting, but as it was 3-0 by half-time and the commentators kept telling us that no-one has ever come back from such a deficit, so I went off and did something else, only for Liverpool (for it was they and... possibly Milan) to draw level, and in a thrilling finale, win on penalties. So really I only saw like half a game. Anyway what struck me most was the apparent lack of organisation in the game. Its like, there're are eleven people on each side, and each and everyone of them does their own thing. There's very little evidence of team-work or any kind of planned attacking strategies. I could be wrong, I have on occasion been wrong before, but thats just how it looked to me. Also these players are supposedly the best in Europe right, so how come they all keep making the same obvious mistakes? Like when they're coming down the wing, and there's a defender inside them, they just keep pushing it and pushing it, until there's nowhere left to go. What kind of sense is that? They are obviously and unavoidably going to run out of room... I dunno, I wonder how much of what you see is the 'received wisdom' of how football should be, and how much of that has actually been tested by new ideas and strategies. Somehow I suspect very little of it.
You remember how I'd been thinking about doing some tidying and general chucking out of things? Well that kinda got done today... Jules was in a VERY stressed mood, I mean seriously I've known her for years but I have never seen her like this and cleaning does calm her significantly, so I let her have a play. Hey, it worked out good for me, my spare room has significantly less clutter, and I didn't have to do a damn thing to help. I am truly a great friend...
A Fork In A World Of Soup
Okay now this is the kind of story I like: NASA's Voyager 1 probe, at 8.7 billion miles from the sun, has entered the heliosheath (which is the bit where the solar wind and interstellar gases start to mix) and is therefore leaving the solar system once and for all. That is, to me, just mind boggling, the idea that something man made is leaving the solar system... that's pretty heavy. Now of course, ever since the first radio broadcast we've been sending signals out into interstellar space, although they'll be far too weak to get very far, but the idea of a physical object out in the cold vastness of space... like I said,
heavy. I hope Bush doesn't fuck up NASA too much, and that we get to see the rest of Voyagers journey, I'd love to know what its going to find in the next fifteen or so years.
In news I like much less, a single based on a fucking mobile phone ringtone is apparently set to beat the new Coldplay single to number one this weeked, due to some hideous flaw in the music buying public. I absolutely fucking HATE the 'crazy frog', there really is remarkably little I find more irritating at the moment (just the constant TV ads drive me to distraction), and I fear if I ever heard that ringtone on a phone I'd probably push its owner under the nearest train/bus/car/steamroller/combine harvester. I mean I'm not the biggest fan of mobile phones at the best of times, although I'll admit to them being handy on occasion. I suppose its the whole 'culture', if that isn't a total debasement of the word, that comes with them that I hate. Modern life is, indeed, rubbish.
Y'know when I was walking about today I thought of all sorts of things I had to talk about, some of which were even slightly interesting, but I am so tired right now that I can hardly think what my name is, let alone anything else. Just one decent night's sleep, thats all I ask...
Pearl Harbour Sucked
Nobody comes to visit me or my blog anymore *sniff*.
So I went to sign on this morning, and the woman there (my 'personal advisor') was super helpful and found me lots of weird and interesting jobs to apply to. I know that in the past couple of weeks the whole thing has just been getting me down, and I just end up looking at the job listings and feeling that I can't possibly do
that, which just makes the whole thing even more depressing and so on and on...
The Shallow End Of The Gene Pool
Okay, I just heard this on the news and, in a cruel and vindictive way, its the funniest thing I've heard in ages.
Two Star Wars fans (aged 20 and 17) have been critically injured whilst filming their own lightsaber duel. They had, in a stroke of mind-boggling genius, decided to make their own lightsabers by filling flourescent light tubes with petrol. Unsurprisingly (to everyone with half a brain) these 'lightsabers' exploded when ignited, leaving our two erstwhile Jedi lacerated by flying glass, and, oh yes, on fire. Even better, they had actually video'd this amazing and prolonged act of stupidity for all to see, although sadly this tape has not been made public at this time. I for one would
love to see it.
What's really amazing about this story though, is that somehow Star Wars is being blamed for this. I can see a lot of things being responsible for this, such as low grade mental retardation or aggressive stupidity, maybe alcohol or drugs, but seriously, how is Star Wars responsible for this? These people were going to find a way to mangle themselves one way or the other, it was just a question of when.
In other comedy related news, according to BBC management, yesterdays strike did not have a significant or adverse effect on the corporations output. Clearly they weren't actually watching yesterday then...
Every Day Is Exactly The Same
That's not strictly true of course, but it (from the new Nine Inch Nails CD, With Teeth) seems to have become my little theme song...
Another sleepless night last night. What was particularly irritating about that was that I was literally falling asleep where I sat by about nine o'clock last night, but whatever magic it was that allowed me to sleep sitting up dissipated as soon as I was lying down. Bugger. If I don't sleep tonight that will make exactly one week without a nights sleep, little wonder I'm starting to get a little crazy eh?
I have started on the whole 'cleaning' experience, and so far I really don't have a plan, I'm just throwing things on a semi-random basis, but thats fun too eh?
We're Gonna Need A Montage
I've just watched yet another of the BBC's utterly amateurish 'news' programmes and they really are pretty funny. They're certainly setting a somewhat different news agenda than everybody else, largely focusing on trivia, poor delivery, shoddy editing and a generally unfocused 'feel', whereas all the other news outlets are leading with the BBC being rubbish and showing clips of them being rubbish. Seriously, I'd never considered reading the news to be any kind of highly skilled job, I mean it's largely reading aloud, but having watched the B-team doing it (y'know, the sort of people who only get to read the news at 2am Christmas morning when absolutely nobody else will do it) I see that I was wrong, oh so very wrong. Its not just the talent in front of the camera, its the contributions of the guys & gals behind the scenes that are really missed. For reasons which ellude me I was just watching a few minutes of the live coverage of the Chelsea flower show, and the camera work and general editing is just obviously being done by an amateur. I can see what they're aiming for, but they're not getting anywhere near it. Its not just TV either, BBC radio stations have been pretty messed up too... much as I complain about the whole License Fee issue, the BBC is such an integral part of everyday life in this country that you really do notice it when its gone, or even when its just slightly messed up.
I saw Team America: World Police again today, and damn that film is so funny. I mean basically, it is a typical Jerry Bruckheimer action movie (it copies so many of Michael Bays camera moves its not even funny - except that it is funny), but done with puppets. And sex and extreme violence. And did I mention the puppets? It's just one of the funniest things I've ever seen. There really are no sacred cows where this movie is concerned, and it should offend almost everyone at some point, but it'll make you laugh and it might even make you think about a few things. Oh yeah and it has awesome songs too.
I'm thinking about doing something to my flat, but I don't really know what. Probably not furniture moving, I can't really see how that'd help, but I am thinking about some serious re-organisation of all the crap I keep, maybe trying to slim some of it down to a manageable amount. Of course thinking about it doesn't make it happen, but then I've thrown things out before in haste and regretted it later, so I don't want to do that again. Still I do think that I have huge amounts of stuff from chapters of my life that are closed, and that I'd have more room for the things I like if I got rid of the things I used to like (insert your own joke about my ex-wife here)...
Cynical Days!
There's being a journalists strike at the BBC, and its really hitting things pretty badly. The lunchtime news today is an amazingly amateurish offering with terrible camera work and editing, and I have absolutely no clue who the freak reading the news is. They keep switching to the wrong video and sound, the wrong studio... man they're only five minutes in, how the hell are they gonna make it through the rest of it?
I'm about prepared to give up on England though, this place is just getting so depressing. Drunken kids smashed up a childs graveyard in Bolton over the weekend. An awful chav family in Derby has three underage daughters all of whom have given birth (and amazingly named their children Lita, Amani and T-Jay, which isn't even a name) and they're blaming the school for its poor sex education (which is really odd, cos they clearly all know where the bits go) rather than accepting the responsibility themselves. And then there is happy slapping, in which gangs of particularly retarded kids go up to a complete stranger and give 'em a slap (if they're a bloke anyway, they seem to be incapable of restraining the urge to sexually assault women) which they video on their phones... I despair, I really do. Death is, as they say, too good for them.
I guess I'm having a day when all my liberal compassion fails me, although given the sheer overwhelming proliferation of idiocy its not hard to see why, is it? I know this is just the extremes of behaviour that the media has collated in order to paint a picture of a country going wrong, and that most of the country isn't like this at all, but I still cannot help but despair, if only a little.
The Morning After The Night Before
So after Eurovision and epic phone conversations last night I did the reasonable thing... and watched The Empire Strikes Back. I realise that going to bed would have made a mite more sense, but who cares for sense? Not I. The thing that struck me most in my sleep depreived state was that Yoda and Obi-wan weren't training a Jedi at all, they were training an assassin. They failed abysmally with Anakin (not just on a personal level either, their combined failures led to the destruction of pretty much everything they knew and held dear), and they only way they can think of to atone for these sins is to kill him. They fail again though, 'cos Luke doesn't do that at all, he ignores what they tell him and uses his own judgement to decide how to deal with his father. Hmmm so yeah I do think about these things too much, but I'm sorry that's just who I am. You all knew that coming in, now deal with it.
I did end up going to bed at about 5am though, and as per usual I slept remarkably little, which is starting to become annoying. I'd have thought that all these late nights would finally be starting to take their toll, but they've not yet. Another late night in store tonight as well, 'cos both Lost In La Mancha and American Movie are on back to back. If there's one thing I like more than movies, its movies about making movies. I'm particularly looking forward to Lost In La Mancha, which is an account of Terry Gilliams disastrous attempt to film Don Quixote. It should be good.
What else have I done today? Not a lot really. My shopping trip today was actually pretty good, I bought fresh veggies and everything (well I didn't buy EVERYTHING, my budget doesn't stretch that far, in fact it barely stretches to anything at all), so where was I? Ah yes, fresh veggies, cos I thought I'd make myself a yummy homemade pizza like I used to back in the day. It was disappointing though. I'll admit it's been a good decade or so, but it's not like I've lost the basics, so it looked and tasted like pizza, which was a good start, but the veggies were disappointingly bland and flavour-free which went some way to ruining the whole effect. Still it was fun to do some almost real cooking.
I've started playing Ninja Gaiden again, and y'know what? Coming back to it again it suddenly doesn't seem all that hard. I mean I'm not saying its an easy game, cos it really isn't, largely due to its appallingly bad camera which generally consipires to show you the least interesting thing happening at any given time, and an almost petty level of unfairness. But its not hard in the way games were when I was a lad. Scramble anyone? Zaxxon? Bionic Commando? Ghouls'n'Ghosts? Those are games (and that list is by no means exhaustive, they're just the ones that popped into my head while I was writing, most old-school games are in fact ridiculously rock hard) that not only demand perfection, but they also viciously punish even minor failure, and didn't believe in check-points of any kind. Modern gamers are just soft, thats all. I suppose its because the market has changed so much. Back in the day there only were hardcore gamers, and we were not deterred by such petty things as impossible difficulty, we just practiced until we could do the impossible. These days you have many different types of gamers, so you have many different types of gaming experience. The other thing worth noting is that all the hardcore gamers are old now, and we have RSI, crippling arthritis and other things to do with our time (like jobs, although that one doesn't apply to me right now which is how come I have time to learn Ninja Gaiden...). In a minute this is gonna turn into the gaming equivalent of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch...
"And you tell that to kids today and they don't believe you!"
*exit pursued by bear*
I Did NOT See That Coming
Hmmmmm so Greece won then. I mean, I know it was the pre-show favourite, and heavily favoured by the bookies, but I am damned if I can see (or hear) why. The early results in the voting were pretty exciting with lots of countries vying for the lead, but by the end it was pretty clear that Greece had won and no-one was going to catch them. Malta did however do well, they were second or third I think, so I guess the whole fat chick approach wasn't as whacky as it at first appeared. It was a pretty damn good Eurovision all round, but now its over for another year. One thing I did notice though, was that I wasn't anywhere near as prepared as usual this year. I didn't know the songs at all, couldn't remember which country was which... I need to prepare better for next year... in Greece!
What was interesting to notice was that the four countries who came bottom (Spain, France, Germany and the UK) are the ones who actually put up the money for this show. I got the feeling that all the little countries don't really like us all that much... And yeah, we did put in an appalling showing, AGAIN.
It was disappointing that there hasn't been a 'fifty years of Eurovision' documentary though, I would've enjoyed that.
Okay its like after 2am now and I really should be getting some sleep. Not really all that tired though...
Voting Time
Yep, time for the recap and for the people of Europe to rush to their phones and make their choices. Then all the results are tabulated and the UK loses again. Yay!
I'll be reporting back with mounting indignity as the results come in.
Blur
I couldn't pick any of this lot out of a line-up right now, they all seem to be merging together into some nightmarish blur of blandness. Let's hope somebody has a crazy entry soon, to shake things up a little.
As if by magic, the Swedish entry appears. Its some bloke in a leather jacket singing about Las Vegas... very Swedish I'm sure you'll agree. Its actually pretty cool in a Barry Manilow/Copacabana kinda way, if that sentence makes any sense to you at all. I mean "Barry Manilow" and "cool" aren't usually in a sentence without "isn't at all" being between them.
There are too many drums in Eurovision this year, although that Moldovan entry (Grandma Beats The Drum-a) was actually pretty cool, due to its higher than usual bonkersness...
I'm Going To Albania
If you'd seen that woman you'd damn well know why too. If I was designing her from scratch I couldn't do any better. I don't normally give in to that sort of thing, but DAMN!
Barring unforeseen circumstances I know who's getting my vote.
hehe
EUROVISION!
Yes, the show is underway, and four songs in I have to say that my favourite so far is Hungary, with their infectious magya rhythms and insanely hot chanteuse. The Maltese, bless them, have taken the name "Eurovision Song Contest" a wee bit too literally and have entered a fat chick who can actually sing. Its a brave move, lets see if it pays off for them.
For those of you who don't know, the Eurovision song contest is what we do in Europe in an effort to understand each other better and prevent wars... I know it sounds pretty stupid now, but in the post war years when this first started, the dawn of the television age seemed like an opportunity for us all to get together and try not to have any more holocausts. It's worked, after a fashion. Now we only have wars outside of Europe, and the Germans haven't slaughtered any ethnic groups in oooooo absolutely ages.
I love Eurovision, its always been one of my favourite nights of the year, but this year its made a little more sober by the fact that, like so much else, I'm doing it by myself. Its much less fun when you don't have anybody else to be all ironic/enthusiastic about it with. You just end up making witty comments to yourself, which has far less impact, plus the unobserved witticisms are always the funniest things you've ever said, and there's no-one about to appreciate your razorsharp wit. Ah well.
I'm sure there will be more updates throughout the show, or at least afterwards. I'll tell you now I'm not a big fan of the UK entry, as per usual, and I don't expect us to do well.
Somewhere Between The Sacred Silence And Sleep
So I'm sitting here listening to System Of A Down and drinking a nice cup of tea. I'm sure there is something wrong there, I struggle to reconcile the tea drinking with the militant noise-mongering of SOAD, but its actually a pretty good combination.
Eurovision tonight!
Steps Back In Amazement!
Well I don't have anything even remotely close to the hangover I deserve this morning, so that's nice. Also, I actually slept, which is even nicer. I did have a very odd dream though, which had a version of Northampton even more tribal and terrifying than it really is, and peculiar little car made out of tin, and lots of very very scary spiders. I never have fun dreams do I?
Okay, the reason for the amazement is that the DWP have finally decided to pay me benefit! OMG! Even more amazing the money went into my account this morning! Now admittedly six weeks worth of Job Seekers isn't a lot of money, and I am in no way in the clear financially, I'm also a lot further from total and utter meltdown. Which is nice.
Eurovision tonight! I need snacks and drinks for this, so I'm gonna have to wander my way somewhere and buy stuff I guess. But it's raining and I don't really want to. Although I suppose I could just go to the little local store (for local people) and just pick up whatever they have, rather than doing the whole Tesco thing, cos I just know there will be about eighty bazillion people in there and none of them ever know what they want, where the thing they don't know they want might be, or why they're there in the first place. Yes, local is the way to go. I'm starting to sound very League of Gentlemen now...
Speaking of movies, as we weren't, trailers I feel I should comment on: first and most obviously The League Of Gentlemens Apocalypse is so very... English. I'm not sure anybody else in the entire world is gonna get it, but it looks very funny, and dark and peculiar. Just like the TV show then. The Fantastic Four trailer really does look pretty bloody fantastic. I'm a big fan of the FF comic books, at least when they are done right. Much as I hate to see yet another comic-book movie, this looks like it could be fun. On the other hand... Stealth. Yes, fresh from his Oscar winning performance in Ray, Jamie Foxx stars in this cretinous action flick about a crack group of stealth fighter pilots, who have to hunt down and destroy a robotic plane when it gets struck by lightning and becomes sentient. And decides that man is the
real enemy. Oh yeah, and its directed by Rob Cohen, who directed The Fast & The Furious and xXx. Words in all honesty, fail me.
Which makes a change.
In More Dire Need Of A Blow Job Than Any White Man In History
Don't ask why that's the name of tonights post, it just is okay? It's most likely because I've had too much to drink and am regretting the unusual path I have taken through life, as I so often do at these moments. I sometimes think this innocence and unworldy-ness is part of my charm (assuming I have any charm at all), but I also think I have spectacularly wasted my life in ways that almost cripple me. Would I want to be more like everyone else? That I couldn't say. I would like to have had different experiences, and more (ie
any at all) of them, but what is a person but the collection of their experiences? I could not and would not be me if anything had gone significantly different, but am I all that great? Would I be missed, even by me? Does any of this make sense? I thought not.
Went to see Revenge of the Sith again (well you just have to, don't you?) and I was absolutely stunned by the people going to the toilet, or to buy popcorn or wherever the fuck they were going in the middle of The Duel. I mean, for fuck's sake, just sit still for another twenty minutes and then you can go sacrifice babies to your black hearted, goat-headed god for all I care, just sit down NOW. I realise that the vast majority of people don't have anything like the connection I do with Star Wars (which probably explains the need for that blow job), but who has anything remotely pressing to do at the climax of a movie? Its not like it's free, you've paid and paid handsomely to go see the film, so damn well sit and watch it! At the very least, do nothing to disturb me.
For someone who hasn't really slept in a few days I'm surprisingly untired, if that be a word.
Y'know what would be a really good idea right? Not listening to Nine Inch Nails, that would be an excellent idea. ;p All Mr Reznor is doing is adding to the desolate empty failing feeling, which is nice.
I'm just tailing off into incoherent ramblings now, and it had all started so
well...
Dangerous And Disturbing This Puzzle Is
Another sleepless night, and there isn't even any good reason for this one. I feel utterly wrecked already today, and its barely 10am. This does not bode well. I almost feel like I should just go back to bed again, and I hate doing that...
Well That's The Real Trick, Isn't It?
As soon as Stu finished work I called him up and we got to have a good ol' Star Wars geek out over the phone. That relieved a huge amount of the uber-nerd pressure that had built up inside me during the day. *Phew*
I should be going down there in a week or so, and we'll go see the movie then. Stu was saying that, aside from the fact he's already seen it, there isn't actually anybody in Burton he wants to go see it with anymore than I want to go see it with anybody I know here (not that I actually know anybody, but even if I did I still wouldn't want to go with them on principal!).
I'm watching A New Hope even as we speak, and its weird how seeing it all in order for the first time actually changes your perception of things. It's also exceptionally cool to see the whole story in the right order for the first time!
Turns out I can't talk about anything other than Star Wars after all... ;p
The Circle Is Now Complete
I don't even know where to start with this one. I want to talk about the movie, obviously, but I also don't want to spoil anything for anyone who is even remotely interested, so I think I'm gonna limit myself to talking about my reaction to the movie.
Y'know what? I was actually reluctant to go. When the time came I so nearly didn't go, like if I somehow didn't see Episode III I could pretend it didn't happen and I could carry on like normal. That was a pretty ridiculous way to think though, so in the the theatre I went. There was a cool little merchandise/geek stall that loads of memorabilia, action figures, autographs, that kinda thing. I was sooooooo tempted by the signed photo of Christopher Lee (as Dooku, naturally), but it was £50, so I restrained myself. Then I went and saw the movie.
I've gotta be honest, there are beats and moments in every Star Wars movie that make me cry if I let myself get caught up in the story, and this one was no different. In fact the whole experience was pretty emotional, and there were several moments that made me cry (as much as I thought I wanted to see Anakin slaughter the Younglings for instance, it turned out I really didn't - not for the kids, but for him, I wanted him to stop before he'd gone too far even though I know he's not going to), but dammit that was the movie I have waited my whole life to see! The final duel with Anakin and Obi-wan is just nuts, they're so goddamned fast! And there are so many little things in there for the hardcore geek fan, awesome things to look out for, things that tie it all together Dammit that was sooooooo awesome! Oops, said I wasn't gonna talk about the movie...
Much as I thought I was going to have to somehow let go, somehow grow-up, y'know it turns out I really don't have to! Yay me! Do I feel any different? No I do not! Do I feel like I've seen the entire Star Wars saga? Yes I do and it feels great!
The were only two sad things about today. First and most obviously, this is the last time I will ever see a new Star Wars movie, and that is sad. On the other hand, the saga is complete, there really is no need for anymore movies, it's all done, so it's not a tragedy or anything. Second and less obvious, but in many ways a lot sadder was that I had this experience by myself. I have always shared these experiences with my brother, and then we'd spend hours geeking out and discussing it afterwards. Not today. I didn't have another geek, or even a non-geeky person to share it with, and that was... sad. It made me feel more alone than I have in a very long time, hell I didn't even feel this alone when me and Jacqui split up. But y'know what? Let's not concentrate on the negative. That was one hell of an awesome movie, and if you have even an ounce of interest in the Star Wars saga, then you owe it to yourself to go see it immediately!
Maybe I'll stop naming my posts with quotes from the movies now too, but I wouldn't hold my breath!
Excitement, Adventure... A Jedi Craves Not These Things
Yes, like a small child waiting for Christmas I didn't sleep a wink last night. Overexcited, me?
;p
He Was Armed Only With This
Dammit! Qui-Gon dies yet again! Bastard. There is something so... noble, so calm, so centred about Liam Neeson's performance as Qui-Gon that you really believe he is at one with the Force, and he became my favourite Jedi when I first saw Phantom, and he always will be my favourite no matter what (so inspite of all my earlier cited examples of the corruption and decadence of the Jedi then, and inspite of the very existence of Mace Windu). Every time he dies I get choked up, and everytime Obi-wan comes out swinging I want him to calm down 'cos he is fighting from hate. I think about this stuff way too much...
Begun The Clone War Has
So despite promising myself I wasn't going to (because "it's not canon!") I bought the Clone Wars DVD anyway. I knew I couldn't hold out forever. It was really cool though, so I'm glad I got it. Now the pre-Sith frenzy is starting to build nicely. I even investigated ways of getting into town for that midnight showing, but there's just no way that makes any sense. I'm starting an evening of Star Wars with Phantom Menace.
I know what you're gonna say, a lot of people have a problem with Phantom and y'know what? They can shove it. Only one person knows how the Star Wars saga was meant to go, and that was George. I've heard lots of stupid complaints about it, and very few of them really stand up to scrutiny. Far too many people of my age wanted Phantom to be a movie for them, guys in their thirties, but that was never on the cards! Star Wars was and has always been a series of kids movies, and its because we were kids when we saw them first time round that they have stuck with us as long as they have. Making Phantom for the older fan would have been a terrible mistake, and would have left a jarringly uneven tone throughout the series as we moved from Episode III to Episode IV. Also Phantom, as the first chapter of this story has a lot of important things to do, and does them well. It paints a picture of failing democracy, and how the Jedi order is fading having lost touch with its true purpose. Look how little thought Qui-Gon gives to using the Force to manipulate others to get what he wants. He over-rides the laws of the Gungan council with a wave of his hand because its convenient for him, and on two occasions (that I can think of) uses the Force to swindle or attempt to swindle Watto (who even though he's not exactly a nice guy is as far as we can tell and honest merchant) out of his money and possessions and then smugly presents it as some form of morality lesson. I could go on, I can talk about how the Jedi don't understand the Prophecy, hell I can even defend Jar Jar (which actually isn't all that hard, I have more difficulty with the midichlorians...), but I am going to have to restrain myself and just stop. There was too much ranting yesterday, and I just KNOW tomorrow I'm gonna have a thing or two to say... ;p
I bought Pepsi today for the first time in months. I'd forgotten how much I miss caffeine based drinks! Yummy. Speaking of caffeine based drinks, apparently the popularity of tea is descreasing in this country, due to the influence of the demon coffee! Tea producers are complaining that only 40% of the population drink tea on a daily basis. Read that again. Yep, thats right, they're upset that 40% of the
population drink tea. Not 40% of the market, or 40% of supermarket shoppers, or old ladies or anything else, they're talking about the 40% of the entire population of the UK. That is the kind of market penetration that most other products would kill for, but apparently its not good enough for tea.
Ooooooo nearly time for Darth Maul to do his thing, and that's my cue to go. Let's hope that Qui-Gon survives this time!
Stir Crazy
Boy I wrote a lot of crap yesterday, and I pity anybody who actually read it. This is what happens when I don't get out and talk to people.
Well, I still feel fairly crappy, so today is gonna be awesome fun...NOT. I don't like being sick at the best of times, and I doubly hate being sick by myself, cos there's no-one to look after you (yes, I am begging for symapthy here).
Ooooo now this is unexpected, there appears to be a lorry on my lawn, hang on a sec...
...
..
.
Okay, got that sorted, they were at the wrong house. Its not especially hard to actually read the numbers on the houses, unless you are delivering a skip, in which case I guess you just kinda dump it wherever. They probably figured that mine was the house that looked most desperately in need of a skip, which is mean (although entirely accurate).
Y'know what surprises me most about today? The fact that I'm NOT going to the midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith. That's almost entirely down to transportation costs though, I have to admit - no buses running at that time of night, and I'm not paying a tenner to take a taxi into town, so I'll just wait until tomorrow and go catch it then. Although come to think of it the midnight show is tomorrow also, but you know what I mean eh?
My shirt is very wrinkly, almost enough to make me want to iron it, but not quite.
You Say You Want A Revolution?
Well I've just watched Nintendo's pre-E3 press conference, and it was as... frustratingly Nintendo as ever, which is to say they didn't actually tell us ANYTHING. Well, hardly anything. The Revolution will apparently not only play its own games, but also GameCube games AND via Nintendos online service,
every Nintendo game from the NES onwards! Even if it had nothing else going for it whatsoever, the opportunity to play Earthbound again is more than worth the price of admission. To be honest it looks like they're abandoning the GameCube (at least from this press conference), the only games worth mentioning were Killer 7, Fire Emblem and the new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (in which Link appears to be a fucking werewolf!), although to be honest a couple of good Nintendo games are worth almost any number of titles from lesser developers (and yes I know Killer 7 is a CAPCOM game, but you get my drift).
I feel all woozy, so I'm going to go and lie down. And no, its not because of Nintendo-fanboyitis so ;p
Day Of The Dead
Yeah, not really sure where today has gone. I started well, did lots of useful things before 10am, and then totally ran out of steam. I've spent the rest of the day listening to music, watching junk TV (I am becoming oddly attached to the show America's Next Top Model - now that's a title eh? Tells you exactly what the show is gonna be about, without ever trying to be imaginative or eye-catching) and doing laps on Forza. Oh yeah and I went for a run too, that was useful (in the sense that it made me fitter, marginally). I finally succumbed to my last piece of Episode III LEGO (Anakin's Jedi Starfighter) which was super fun and happy, I was glad I'd saved it for a dull moment.
My main pre-occupation today though has been the steady trickle of information about the next generation of video game consoles. So far we've seen the presentations from Microsoft and Sony.
The Microsoft hyperbole machine gave us Xbox 360 (stupid name right there, what happened to Xboxes 2-359? Was I unconcious for 1432 years? How careless of me). What struck me most about that launch was the massive preponderance of idiotic marketing speak (it will apparently offer the Zen of gaming) and the almost total lack of those whaddayacallems that these things are designed for... games, thats it. There were no games, or at least no games that made you go "ooooooooo I gotta get me one of them". No, what we were told about was the multimedia capabilities, how it played DVDs and music, how it connected to the web to offer downloadable content, how it offered voice and video messaging, how it was a next-generation media centre. In short they showed us pretty much everything but the games. Now call me fussy if you will, but I don't want or need any of that non-gaming stuff from my console. My DVD player plays DVDs, my stereo plays CDs, my PC connects to the 'net... what I want my console to do is PLAY GAMES. I doubt that Micro$oft will be offering you the option to pay less and have a 360 that just, y'know, plays games. What little software was shown was so disappointingly bland that it totally failed to inspire. So whilst I was left with the feeling that I really
wanted a 360, I couldn't for the life of me tell you why. A bit like the DS and PSP then. ;p
Sony on the other hand, dispensed with all the glitz and glamour (so The Killers didn't play at
their launch then), and showed us the PlayStation 3, and (*gasp*) its games! Sure the system offers a lot of the media-centre functionality of the 360, but in this case it seems like a nice bonus feature rather than the whole raison d'etre of the machine. Sony talked to us gamer to gamer, they showed us the stats and talked about the architecture of the machine. Then they showed us what it could do. Now I've seen a lot of talk on the various boards I frequent that what they were showing were just renders of what a game
might look like. I don't buy that, I think we can tell the difference between renders and in-engine stuff and with launch less than a year away a lot of software should be starting to come together, at least enough to give us some tech-demos. A lot of what was shown looked like in-engine stuff to me, and damned inpressive it was too. Even if it was just pre-rendered, at least they were trying to get us excited as gamers, which is more than Microsoft could be bothered to do, they just wanted to sell us The Vision (which is great in a marketing meeting, but didn't move me in the slightest). Bloody hell I was impressed by Sony, whom I hold responsible for the death of video-gaming as I once knew it. Sony in the gaming arena don't have a track record of impressing me at all, quite the opposite, so the fact that I didn't treat the whole thing with derision is something of a breakthrough for them.
Now all we have to wait for is Nintendo. They're coming last to the next-generation party, and to be honest they're not there for the same reasons at all (Microsoft and Sony both want to get drunk and make-out with a hot chick, Nintendo just wants to dance and have fun). Both Microsoft and Sony want to make games with a higher graphical fidelity than ever before, and that seems to be the sum total of their ambition. Nintendo however don't really think that graphics are the be all and end all of gaming, and are actually concentrating on new ways of interacting with games (just look at the DS, for all that third-party developers don't have a clue what to do with it, it's giving us some potentially very interesting new ways to play games) and new types of gameplay. I don't know what any of that is gonna mean in practical terms, I guess we'll find out later on today. As usual though, I'm in Nintendo's corner, and I'm excited to see what they come up with.
Spaced Cowboy
It's a lovely sunny morning this morning, and I'm trying to find things to keep me occupied. So far (and its not even 10am yet) I've done laundry, cleaned and thrown out a huge amount of the old crap I've been meaning to get rif of for ages. This isn't to say that my home is now some spartan, minimalist bachelor pad. Quite the reverse, there is still more stuff here than you are likely to see anywhere else outside of a warehouse, there's just a teeny tiny bit less stuff. Whats the betting that I regret this later? I'm a terrible hoarder, I keep everything!
It's a terrible situation though, being unemployed and trying to find ways to effectively kill your days. It's just so directionless and meaningless. *sigh*
More later, I've no doubt!
Now THAT Was Dumbing Down
Yep, Celebrity Love Island really was that BAAAAAAAAAAD. And not in a "bad meaning good" way either, more in a "bad meaning possibility of irreversible brain damage" way. Seriously you cannot believe how utterly banal that show was. Stupid, shallow people (one of the boys said "we've got a lot in common; no attention span and neither of us like to read") and a truly stunning inability to tell the difference between lust and love (the same idiot boy described all the physical qualities of one of the girls and then proclaimed he was in love with her, even though he's only just met her and doesn't know a damn thing about her - I could readily accept that he wanted to fuck her, but I don't really think you can know if you love someone until you've actually faced adversity together). I know I should be able to be all ironic and hip about consuming trash, and sometimes I can be, but that show was so insufferably awful I just couldn't. Also, does telling a woman that she "has a really incredible body" actually impress them? I just can't see it, but then I suppose I don't know any women stupid enough to find that kind of behaviour charming... So yeah, I didn't enjoy that one little bit.
Remember the smoothie I was so keen on earlier? I don't want to fall for the logical fallacy
post hoc ergo propter hoc but I know I felt fine before I had it, and now I really don't feel fine at all. Bleurgh.
Smoothie
Okay this smoothie is indeed super-yummy, and I in no way regret buying it.
Just a scant hour now till Celebrity Love Island. I can't believe I'm going to watch something like that, but I also don't see how I can NOT watch it, its just too trashy (in concept if nothing else) for words.
Has everybody heard the new track by the Foo Fighters? That is one awesome track. Speaking of awesome tracks though you should probably look (or listen) out for the new tracks from both Jamiroquai and the White Stripes as well. This is gonna be one excellent summer for new music!
A Rainy Day Of Little Consequence
Well the rain that made Paris so wet on Saturday finally made it's weary way to the middle of the UK today, and it did its very best to get me soggy this afternoon. Luckily I was protected my hoody, although I guess the hoody itself got wet, and my hair did get slightly flattened by the application of hood to hair. Still, it could've been worse. I could've been going to the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, where they have banned hoodies because (apparently) the elderly and the overly timid find them terrifying. I suspect that its not the hoody itself they find frightening, but the kid inside. I wonder what they do if someone of my (slightly!) more advanced years were to turn up in a hoody. Would they refuse me admission, confiscate my apparel, what would they do? And what would they do if a timid elderly person showed up wearing one? If they only take them off people who don't seem all that threatening then there is clearly a double standard there that is just gonna make all the frightening hoody wearers bitter and resentful. Also if they can already identify the scary people, then why not just ban them and let people wear hoodies in peace? It all seems very silly to me.
Whilst I was at the shops I found a Darth Vader PEZ dispenser, which I naturally bought. Yay PEZ! I also bought some hellishly expensive smoothy which was so expensive (in comparison to my weekly food budget) that I haven't actually dared drink any of it yet. I should probably have it sealed in mylar or something...
As you've probably gathered I've been watching a lot of junk TV recently, but tonight there is a new show starting which seems to be the very nadir of the television experience: Celebrity Love Island. Just read that again: Celebrity Love Island. The premise should be pretty clear from the title; a whole group of Z-list celebs get put on a Fijian island and then we watch them to see if any of them make out! Its like one of those celebrity gossip magazines playing itself out right in front of you! There is something so irrestibly trashy about that formula that I am going to have to give it a try, although I'm sure I'll hate myself afterwards. It will probably lower my IQ, but that is a chance your intrepid reporter is prepared to take!
Other Things!
In an effort to appear a more rounded human being, I shall point out that this week not only heralds the arrival of a new Star Wars movie (which I'm sure must come as a surprise, I don't think I've mentioned it before and it has had precious little publicity) it also brings us the joy of Eurovision! Eurovision Saturday is one of my favourite days of the year, and this year is gonna be no different. It's also the fiftieth anniversary of Eurovision, so its gonna be a special one. I hope that they do a retrospective of some sort, that'd be cool!
See, there's more to me than just Star Wars! Not much more, I'll admit, but a little more nonetheless!
Always A Pleasure To Meet A Jedi
War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the rutheless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.
In a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader General Grievous, has swept into the Republic capital and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the Galactic Senate.
As the Seperatist Droid Army attempts to flee the beseiged capital with their valuable hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to free the captive Chancellor....
Actually I haven't done anything even remotely like that today, well except playing the Episode III game (which is both not good because it is too short and easy, and also excellent because of it's Star Wars-ness and because you get to be a kick-ass Jedi). In just a few short days though, I'll be seeing that title crawl for myself. It will be both a happy day and a sad day. Happy day cos it will be a New Star Wars Day, of which there have been precious few, and sad because it will be The Last New Star Wars Day. The story will be complete, and the thing that's been in the back of my head for the past thirty years looking forward to the next Star Wars movie will suddenly have nothing to do. As seeing Star Wars for the first time is one of my strongest and clearest childhood memories, not having new Star Wars to think about will be a strange and frightening experience.
So yeah, Stu got back from his trip yesterday, and he popped in here on his way home. He'd got me Star Wars presents, naturally; some cool Star Wars LEGO. He also gave me his pass to the movie screening, which was extra cool. Actually I think it was Bree's pass, cos Stu kept his, but I don't really care whose it was, its still neat.
Y'see how all I've written about is Star Wars? This whole week is probably gonna be like that, so either prepare yourself for it, or just tune it all out...
Here Be Dragons
OMG! This morning I....
MOWED MY LAWN!!!
I know, this is verging on the unbelievable, it has been a very very long time since I did that, and it wasn't easy. 'Cos the grass fought back, some bits of it, I don't know the technical name but I call it Evil Bastard Chunky Grass actually had to be cut by hand cos it just refused to be cut by machine. Actually I was surprised that my lawn mower even worked, I mean it's been about eighteen months since I actually
used it. So it actually starting up was pretty much the make or break moment of the day, but bless it it worked first time, and kept on working. I feel pleased with myself for taking this small, but important step. And even though by no means could you say my garden looks good, it sure looks better.
Last night I finished Resi 4. I still say it is one of the finest games I have played in the past couple of years. I mean obviously its still Resi (so there's clunky movement and all that) but it is without question the best looking game I have ever seen on any platform (it knocks everything I've ever seen on the Xbox on its ass), has fantastic sound and music which genuinely add to the atmosphere, has massively high production values and is just awesomely great fun. The last boss was actually surprisingly easy to beat, he hardly hurt me at all. I suppose I learned alot from fighting the other bosses, I know I was getting surprisingly cavalier about fighting Los Ganados towards the end (just run up to them, knee-cap 'em, then go to work with the knife). It did continue to be a Capcom game (ie rockhard) by taking the opportunity to kill you cheaply
after you've killed Sadler, although the pay-off for that was the most awesome Millenium Falcon escaping the Death Star feeling I've ever had in a game, so it was worth it. Completion opened up new bonus games too! Yay! Go buy a copy of this game, and a GameCube if necessary, it really is that good.
Oh yeah, Friday the thirteenth note: today is the day that Stu flies home! That made my Grandma have kittens, bless her superstitious little cotton socks.
Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
So last night I was watching this programme about architecture, and it got me really wanting to go visit Chicago. Which is a pretty odd result, I think you'll agree. To be fair the programme was about the rise (pun intended) of the sky-scraper and whilst it mainly covered New York (which contains one of my favourites in the Chrysler Building - I think the Empire State is actually pretty boxy and dull) it also had a little section on Chicago architecture and it really made me want to see that city. It looks really cool and very interesting.
For that to have even the slightest chance of happening though I need to sort my life out. That's gonna be a challenge, it feels like everything is such a mess right now. For some reason I am almost paralysed into in-activity, and I can't quite figure out why. I was watching Dr. Phil yesterday (yeah I know, my days are taking on a disturbing shape aren't they?) and there was someone else on there who was feeling much the same as I am right now. Phil's insight was interesting; that you deliberately leave things in a state of crisis because you like things being out of control, because once things are in control you're not needed anymore. I'm still thinking it over, seeing if there is anything in there I can make use of. I know I've got to make some pretty fundamental changes in my behaviour though, cos I don't like this anymore, I just don't know how to change it. I know I'm afraid of something, but what I can't imagine. Failure? Bah, I've already failed in almost every way imaginable and it doesn't kill you, although there is a possibility it trains you to expect failure. So what do I do? I need to learn to think more positively about things, to think more positively about myself, 'cos really thinking is what its all about. I'm so close to typing something cynical and sabotaging here that it is unbelievable! As I believe I've said on many occasions before, I'd try positive thinking but I'm just not sure it would work...
Not quite sure how I got there from tall buildings. Actually there kinda is a link in there if you think about it. I became fascinated by architecture and buildings when I went to a building museum (yes, that's what I said, a building museum) on a school trip when I was about ten. I wanted to be an architect sooooooo bad, but somehow I consistently convinced myself all through my academic career that it was beyond my abilities, which was complete crap looking back at it. Yet it seems to have a set a pattern of low expectations for my life which inexorably led me to were I am now. That's pretty sad when you think about it, that I managed to sabotage myself when I was ten. Somethings gotta change, probably a lot of things.
Wow this post is a lot of miserable bullshit isn't it? Its impossible to even tell how much of this is true, and how much of it is simply what I perceive to be true at this moment. Of course it doesn't actually matter
how I got here, what matters is that I am here and now I need to figure out how to get out!
To infinity, and beyond!
You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye
I despise The Weakest Link.
It's a combination of two things really; the freakshow of the incredibly stupid that passes for the shows contestants, and Anne Robinson. Lets deal with the contestants first: they are, without doubt, the stupidest things ever to walk the earth. I mean seriously their brains must actually be made out of Teflon because it is not physically possible to reach adulthood and have no knowledge in your head at all without there being some mechanism which makes knowledge just
slide right off your frontal lobes. There are some quiz shows which actually make demands of you, which require specialised or erudite knowledge, but TWL is not one of those shows. Here is an example of a question from today's show:
"In maths, what is 120 divided by 4?"
This simple act of division very nearly reduced the contestant to a gibbering wreck, but luckily time ran out before she could embarrass herself by actually getting the answer wrong. I guess in her mind it was better to keep her mouth shut and give the impression of being a fool rather than open it and remove all doubt. Other questions of the day asked how many minutes there are in an hour and a quarter (this contestant felt no shame in proving their utter stupidity by answering 'thirty'), and the sack of which city by the barbarians signaled the fall of the Roman Empire ('Milan', apparently). Speaking of the questions (as I vaguely was) what is with this "In maths" bit at the start of a simple sum? Is there some other category in which that would make sense? "In geography what is 120 divided by 4?". No? Maybe entomolgy? International jurisprudence? History? Botany? How about you just ask the fucking question!
This segues us smoothly into the other source of my ire: Anne Robinson. If the contestants are stupid then she is their Idiot Queen. I don't even know where to start with her, so lets just pick a place at random: her alleged cutting insults. She's not funny, she's not witty, she's not sharp, she is, and I hate to say this again, STUPID! Here is my favourite of todays insults "Who is one wheel short of a tandem?". Eh? A tandem has two wheels, like any other bike. So why say tandem? What makes a tandem special is that it has two riders, not two wheels, every bike has two wheels. What the hell have tandems got to do with anything at all? More frighteningly how many wheels does she
think they have? And you can have tandem unicycles anyway! Let's see what else do I hate about her? Lets try her supercilious attitude. She stands there, looking down on her cretinous subjects, acting like she
knows all the answers, when in reality at least half the time she can't even read what is written on the card in front of her. The number of times I've heard the total lack of comprehension in her voice as she struggles to read something out loud is beyond laughable, its shameful. I just wish somone would take the time to teach her how to pronounce all the 'difficult' words, y'know, the ones with more than two syllables. If the contestants are vacuous idiots then she is a complete knowledge void.
And breathe.
Sometimes I want to go on there just to put that stupid bitch in her place once and for all.
So yeah, okay, I hate The Weakest Link, its Official. I should get a t-shirt made or something, maybe start whatever the opposite of a supporters club is. A detractors club I suppose.
I think the fact that I can get this worked up about something so spectacularly trivial is a strong indicator that I have too much time on my hands, don't you?
Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios
Well I got some of my enthusiasm back with a little effort and a surprising amount of running (guess all those endorphins helped eh?). When I got back home I ended up spending most of the day watching trash TV and was astounded to discover this reality show called The Farm which, well the title pretty much gives it away, its set on a farm, and 'celebrities' have to live together on this farm and do farming related tasks and all that sort of thing. So far so Big Brother right? I suppose the only reason that it stuck in my head at all was the sort of people who are on the show. You've got the usual collection of models and wannabes, a couple faded entertainers (one of whom has bought his bloody bastard puppet - I hope somebody murders Keith Harris and fucking Orville...), some bloke whose only claim to fame is that he used to date some actress from EastEnders, and then it gets weird. Y'see the remaining three contestants are: Italian porn-star turned politician La Cicciolina, another porn star in the disturbing form of Ron Jeremy, and Flavor Flav from Public Enemy! Now everyone else I can understand being there to one degree or another, but Flavor? What the fuck man? If I need to lay down my credentials here, I was one of the first people in the UK to have a copy of PEs debut album waaaaaaaaay back in '86, so for me to see Flavor in a situation like that is just utterly bizarre and wrong. Also I really doubt that anybody watching the show has the first clue who he is, it's not like Public Enemy ever had any mainstream success back in the day. Still its fuckin' weird. It's like... actually I can't think of anything its like that is even close to as bizarre as having Flavor Flav on a reality TV show set on a farm...
Resident Evil 4 continues to be the finest game I've played in forever, and it's also making me unreasonably excited about the impending arrival of Killer 7 (no that one isn't a sequel,you play a killer with multiple personalities and there are seven of them, hence the title - doesn't sound at all weird does it?).
Have I mentioned Casshern? No, no I don't believe I did. Okay I don't even know where to begin with that one. I saw it a couple of days ago, so I'm kinda surprised I haven't mentioned it, what with all the incessant H2G2 ranting. Okay, here we go. As a movie it's a mess. The plot is all over the place, characterisation is minimal to non-existant, the visual style varies from the brain-buggeringly magnificent to unbelievably cheap and shoddy... and yet somehow I found much to enjoy there. I'm not even going to attempt to justify my enjoyment because it is entirely unreasonable. If you get the chance to see this one, make sure you're stoned first. It'll help... probably.
Turns On A Dime
Dammit I don't know where all that enthusiasm I had this morning has gone but it has just completely evaporated.
Bollocks.
Sonofa!
Okay so good news first: I have a job interview next week! Woohoo! Yay me, Steve is great and so forth.
Bad news, its on Thursday and at exactly the same time as my ticket for Revenge of the Sith...
This is a major conflict of interest: new and final Star Wars (on opening day, natch) versus possibility of employment. I already know what I'm going to have to do, I'm gonna have to skip the early screening of Sith, but damn this is hard! This is, to quote Ron Burgundy, a dilly of a pickle!
There are remarkably few days in my entire year where I really didn't want anything else to do, and that was one of them. I better get this damn job!
Important Shouting That Needs Doing
Today was a pretty cool day. I woke up bright and breezy, and that good mood was immediately ruined by Official Correspondence: After five weeks, the local council has... SENT ME A FORM TO FILL IN! Yep, they've not made a decision on my housing benefit, they've not made a decision on Council Tax (which I have stopped paying as of today cos they're just taking the piss) they have sent me a form to complete! How quickly the wheels of government turn eh? Needless to say there was much exasperation and shouting when I went down to the local offices, but I ran into Jules who was also there for shouting, for much the same reason. I'll say this for her, she really shouts a lot better than I do, its louder, more vitriolic and more personal, although she thinks I'm a better complainer because I am more rational and likeable, and because I don't offend people. We should probably complain together in future, in a kind of good cop/bad cop way. Anyway from there we retired to the pub for lunch-time drinking and a good bitching session which encompassed all of our usual targets and a few people unlucky enough to be passing by at the wrong time. Then I had to walk her home (not that I'm allowed to actually go all the way to her house, her bloke absolutely HATES me for reasons that I've never fully understood - we are in fact FORBIDDEN from talking to or seeing each other) and that was pretty scary. I've never actually walked into Thorplands before, and whilst I know she was just telling me all the bad stories to think of to make me feel nervous (places where the drunks and junkies hang out, where the murders have happened, and best of all the segregation wing of the local pre-school which is actually double barred to prevent escapes...) it was working surprisingly well. So well in fact that I came back another way entirely. Then I was collared by the local neighbourhood watch guy who wanted me to help load a carpet into his car... I suspect that I may have been instrumental in helping him dispose of a body; the carpet was awfully heavy, and the back of his car was stuffed almost to over-flowing with black bin bags. Seems very suspicious to me. And I got invited to a garden party as reward, which I am sure to attend. NOT!
After that I got to chat to Ash for a couple of hours which has pretty much made my week. I really don't need anything else good to happen, I'm set for happiness! Yay me!
Stu called to ask about things I might need him to by for me on his mad San Francisco based shopping spree. Apparently he's already managed to get hold of a CD I've been after for ages, and for only 99c! Thats utter madness. Sounds like he's having a great time. And look, I've restrained myself from a bitchy comment for a change.
Sweet.
I'm Up & Dressed, What More Do You Want?
Yeah today has been kinda like that...
So last night, at what musta been about 2pm local time, Stu phoned me from San Francisco in what can only be called a State of Excitement. Y'see, he'd just met George Lucas, having just watched an employees screening of Revenge of the Sith. And no, he's not an employee of Lucasarts, but he has a friend who is and she invited him. Then there was an after-movie party and he met George (and had his photo taken with him - interesting fact: my brother is taller than George Lucas). It is, as they say, alright for some eh?
What'd I Say?
As usual the name of the post has strikingly little relevance to whatever it is I'm going to talk about (so I suppose it is actually possible that it will have some resonance, but if it does it'll be purely accidental), it's just what I'm listening to right now. Ray Charles eh? Musical genius.
Well I finally did get my act together enough to go grocery shopping (thank goodness, I was down to eating dust bunnies), although that wasn't quite as straight forward as it would once have been, mainly because I didn't want to get wet. See, considering the weather hasn't really been a big factor in my life since, oh since I was at school I don't think. Basically since I got old enough and having-a-car enough to not have to walk places or wait at bus-stops (although to be fair I can only remember taking the bus on one occasion when I was a kid, and it was when I about 8 or 9 years old - I remember because we had to take a bus to the dentist so I could have two teeth pulled and my Mum bought me a Star Wars landspeeder (y'know, like Luke had) for being a good boy!), the weather has had scant attention in my travel plans. Not that it got much thought today, just that by the time I was awake and ready to travel it was raining, so I sat and played videogames for an hour or so till it had stopped. I also managed to restrain at least some of my shopping impulse, so that was good.
Then I saw the Hitch-hikers movie again, and I liked it more this time knowing the shape it was going to take and the things it wasn't gonna have in it. Things about the movie I really like are Martin Freeman as Arthur, Mos Def as Ford, Sam Rockwell as Zaphod (a supremely superficial and flashy creation who appears to lack all sincerity - basically exactly what you should be gettin' for your Beeblebrox, remember what happened with him and Total Perspective Vortex?) and Bill Nighy is just bloody magical as Slartibartfast - he seems like a guy who really loves his work but hates his job. I also really love the design of the film, especially the Heart of Gold. I still have don't really understand why so much of the supremely witty and clever dialogue was either removed, edited or just generally messed with, but enough of it is still there to make it one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Again I implore you to go investigate, you'll be happy that you did. Probably.
And then it was now. I'm tired, although I really couldn't tell you why, I think I actually slept pretty well last night. I certainly didn't wake up terrifyingly early or anything which made a pleasant change. I need to start taking better care of myself again I reckon, healthy mind in a healthy body and all that. Plus another downside to not having a job (besides the lack of money, demotivation, the isolation...) is that my life is so inactive now! One thing I'll say for the kind of work I was doing before, it was nine solid hours of physical exercise every day, day in day out. Now, even when I try to keep myself busy there is an awful lot of not getting enough physical exercise... guess I need to get myself a new job eh?
Good News/Bad News
Well the good news is that my head didn't pop off, at least it hasn't
yet. I don't suppose its one of those things you can definitively say isn't going to happen because there is always the off-chance that it might. At the time of writing however, head still fixed to shoulders. Which is nice.
Bad news... well it's related to my excellent not spending any money plan. Nope, I still haven't spent any money un-necessarily or necessarily as it turns out. The problem with not going shopping, with not buying proper (or at least as proper as it gets with me) food, with not having an even half-way decent meal, is that I begin to devour all the junk that I do have in the house with all the abandon of a plague of particularly hungry locusts. None of what I have even vaguely resembles food, none of it is either nourishing or filling, but I'm eating it anyway. Hell remarkably little of it is even fun, there's no chocolate at all, and precious little ice-cream. All I know is that whilst I may have succesfully avoided the temptation to buy games or books or DVDs or CDs that I don't really
need (I want pretty much everything, so need is the only reasonable distinction I can muster), I am eating too much junk (in fact I think I'm eating pretty much all my junk) all because I couldn't be bothered to risk going out to buy a loaf of bread...
If there's a moral to the story I don't know what it might be, I'm terrible at working out morals. Feel free to supply your own. Who knows, there may even be a prize for the best one.
Woot!
Yay me! I have email from Ashley, and therefore all is right with the world!
Actually all isn't quite right with the world, still no job, money worries a-go-go, and gardening the really REALLY needs to be gardened, but regardless I AM extremely happy!
I should really focus my head on what needs to be done and just get on with bloody well doing it.
This afternoon has been largely spent trying to distract myself from spending money (what with not having any and all) until the shops had closed and I couldn't spend money even if I wanted to. I was succesful in this, but at some cost to my sanity. You see, my distraction technique involved playing Resi 4... Now don't get me wrong, I think it's a great game, easily the best I've played this year, but after something like four solid hours of it your head starts to go a bit funny. Not in the sense that you imagine that people are zombies or anything like that, none of this blending of fantasy and reality nonsense, its just that my head is POUNDING like it's got on of those insect parasites in it. I would express only mild surprise if my head popped off and sprouted little legs right this minute, assuming I was actually able to express surprise while my head is popping off...
Well Duh!
Okay so I didn't stay up for all the election results at all, it got to be pretty dull pretty quickly. New Labour are back, but with a severely reduced majority. I suppose that could have an interesting effect on the way Tony does business, 'cos there are enough 'rebels' there to make his life difficult. Time will tell I guess.
What is interesting is that right now some of the elder statesmen of British politics are talking about the election and the result, and their mis-givings echo mine. Never thought I'd actually agree with Lord Tebbit on anything, but even if I disagree with his politics (and I do very vigorously) I certainly agree with his view that the various campaigns weren't
about anything. Nobody discussed issues, nobody wanted to present their vision for the future, nobody wanted to talk about dealing with any of the problems looming on the horizion. Just shows how much politics has changed I guess...
I don't know what I'm gonna get up to today. Its actually not the finding of things to do that is hard, cos I hav plenty of those. The motivation is hard, I'll admit that. What's really difficult is knowing that I'm not likely to see or talk to another human being till sometime next week. I don't really consider myself a gregarious person, but I guess we all need some human contact, even me.
Beware of the Leopard
Remember how I earlier said that I enjoyed the H2G2 movie? Well I just read a VERY good, and amazingly negative
review of the movie, which gives voice to a lot of the concerns that I have (particularly that all the clever dialogue, y'know the thing that actually made this stuff funny in the first place, has been butchered to the point of incomprehensibility) and also goes to great lengths to rip apart whatever story logic may have been in there (which to say isn't a lot). I pretty much agree with almost everything that the reviewer has to say to be honest, and for all that it is a fairly piss-weak version of the Guide I STILL got enjoyment from it cos it made me remember how much I LOVE that stuff. Yes the movie is a missed opportunity, but somehow I still enjoyed it. I guess if all the movie does it makes the fans go home and listen to the radio show, watch the TV show, or Zarquon help them, read the books, then all is well and good. For all the non-fans though, there is so much more than this movie, and you should go explore it immediately!
Day of Decision
Yep, it's General Election day here today! Woohoo! *ahem*
Actually it's not terribly exciting, everyone seems to think it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that we will have another New Labour government, the only questions seem to be about voter turn-out, what size of majority the Labour party will have this time. Interestingly, or at least semi-interestingly, I had my first and only canvasser of the entire campaign today, a nice old bloke who wanted to remind me to vote, and if it wouldn't be too much trouble would I vote for that nice Collins boy, the Conservative candidate... Needless to say I already had voted, and not for them, no.
I intend to stay up and watch the results come in (at least for a bit - say until it's past the stage where it's inevitable that Labour win), so if anything
interesting happens there will live commentary, assuming I actually manage to stay awake.
In totally unrelated news, in two weeks it'll all be over. I'll have seen Revenge of the Sith, I'll know all there will ever be to know about Star Wars. That will be a sad day indeed.
I don't know if I've mentioned this before, so I'll just quickly sketch it out: I'm a MASSIVE Star Wars nerd. Seriously, never try to talk Star Wars with me unless you possess quite exceptional powers of geekery, because I can't just have a normal "oh yeah, that was pretty fun" conversation about it. Oh no. I can debate the arrogance of the Jedi, the nature of the Prophecy and how Anakin fulfills it, why Ewoks aren't crap, how Han shooting first in the new editions destroys his entire story arc, why Boba Fett is rubbish compared to his dad and oh so many other sad and pointless things. My favourite Star Wars moment of all? Luke watching the binary suns go down on Tatooine in Episode IV. At least so far, y'see there's this one light-saber duel that I've waited pretty much my entire life to see... I guess that is the real core of my Star Wars addiction, it hit me at exactly the right time as a kid and it's followed me for my whole lifetime. Seeing Episode IV for the first time (before it
was Episode IV) is the clearest memory I have from my early childhood
, and whenever I see a SW movie now, I am that seven year old again for the two or so hours it's on. That brings with it all sorts of resonances between my childhood and the adulthood I am failing so spectacurlarly at, and it always makes for an emotional experience that the films themselves almost certainly aren't worthy of. Trust me I will cry at some point during Revenge of the Sith, probably at lots of points. Hell everytime I watch Phantom I somehow hope that it'll go differently this time and that Qui-Gonn won't get killed, 'cos he's my favourite Jedi of all time. It's sad that I even have a favourite! Oh my god look what's happened! I'm talking about Star Wars and it's just getting totally out of control and super geeky and I have to stop!
Of course for Stu it's the end of an era on Saturday when he gets to see the movie at a screening attended by George Lucas! I want to wish something awful to happen to him for that, but I can't, I know he would've taken me if he could, and to be honest I don't begrudge him the experience. As long as he brings back cool toys!
Don't Panic!
Well I've finally seen the Hitch-hikers movie, and all I can say is "wow-ish!". Sure it doesn't get it all right, and it does lose some huge chunks of my absolute favourite dialogue ("the lights had probably gone", "so had the stairs!" for instance) but it actually a pretty damn good version of the story - or at least it will remind fans of the good bits. Okay sure it draws in some of the greater conspiracy elements from later in the novel sequence (elements I never particularly cared for - part of the joy of H2G2 for me was the totally and utterly freeform way it was written with no thought of an over-arcing plot whatsoever), it emphasises the Arthur/Trillian thing and I thought it lost its way completely in the second half-hour or so when it deviated quite wildly from any known Hitch-hikerness and attempts to have a plot, but as soon as it's back on course and we're off to Magrethea everything is all well and good again. It does an absolute ton of things right: the cast is almost uniformly good (Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast is a particular highlight for me, although Helen Mirren for Deep Thought is just dreadful I'm sorry to say), the look of the film is pretty amazing (check out the Magarathean planet building yard!), and it does hit an awful lot of the right notes (witness the awesomeness of the Earth Mark 2 when life is begun, the few cameo's from other Guide alumni, or the final image being Douglas' face). My favourite new thing is definitely the Point-of-View gun. My favourite old thing is probably the whale, although like almost all the old stuff it is nearly wrecked by unnecessary changes. If you're a fan I think you'll love it with reservations, not just for what it does, but also for what it's trying to do. You will however go home and listen to the radio show again and remember just how good the material REALLY is. How regular people will react to it is anybody's guess, they'll probably be scared and confused...
This reminds me of one of the odd drunken conversations me and Stu had while he was here: Best and Worst Comic Book Adaptations. Our nomination for Best was unanimous, we both went for Ang Lee's The Hulk. I know lots of people hated it, but I think they are stupid and wrong. We felt that Hulk was a worthy winner for several reasons, most notably its amazing visual style, but also because we felt it had an emotional resonance that other comic book movies lack. We also applauded it not being a big slam bang action movie, in fact there is remarkably little action in it at all, it's all about the characters. So there, Hulk, best Comic Book Movie EVER. Controversial I know, but hey, we're right and you're wrong! Worst was more difficult to decide on. We both reckoned that Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. must be pretty bad just cos of the source material and the fact that it stars David Hasselhoff, but as neither of us has seen it we couldn't really include it. The Punisher (eighties version, although neither of them is a work of genius), Captain America, those dreadful seventies Spiderman movies with Peter Hammond, The Justice League, Tank Girl, The Crow we considered them all. We settled on Judge Dredd. When you think about it, that's a no-brainer. The movie takes every single good thing about the original Dredd, and ignores it. In fact, it doesn't even ignore it, it deliberately seems to go out of it's way to do the exact opposite thing, and therefore piss on the source material. We could identify only two things that the movie got right, those being the casting of MacGruder (who is only a background character in the movie), and Mean Machine Angel, again only used in passing, far too easily dispatched and therefore almost totally wasted.
Bloody hell I've written tons about nothing... that's unlike me eh? ;p
Afternoon Delight
I'm just listening to the song (by the Starland Vocal Band fact-fans!), and as this post is mainly gonna be about my afternoon it seems vaguely apropriate. I've always loved this song, even when I was a kid and had no idea whatsoever what it was about. Of course I know now, but only on a technical level...
Hmmmm so what have I been up to?
Not a lot really. I avoided the whole 'nap' issue, but I probably shouldn't have cos I spent the whole afternoon being tired and listless. I managed to entertain myself though, I played Resident Evil 4 (poor old Leon got killed an awful lot today, the number of times he's had his head cut off in an extremely graphic manner is much, much higher than is altogether necessary), and then this evening I watched The Butterfly Effect, which is cool even though its got Ashton Kutcher in it. Then I wallowed in some misery and loneliness, then I got Leon's head cut off a few more times (this time it was a scary guy in a dungeon who I foolishly released), and now it's now.
Stu should be arriving in San Francisco in about an hours time. That's just a weird thought all round really. I hope he has a good time when he's there. He better bring me some cool presents!
Speaking of my little brother again, he pretty much drank all of the alcohol in the house when he was here (I like how I say 'he' when I mean 'we'), but I've discovered yet another forbidden drink for him: first it was vodka cos it makes him violent, now its tequila cos it gives him double (and eventually triple) vision. Weirdly (or maybe not so weirdly) the double vision is a severe enough effect to actually stop him drinking my tequila, so I at least have some of that left.
I ought to call Erin cos I haven't talked to her for a while and I'm being a rubbish friend, but I just don't know what to say, so I know I won't call her. I hate feeling like this, feeling like a failure, like a loser, like I have nothing to offer anyone but the burden of knowing me.
*melodramatic sigh*
If You Can Dodge Traffic You Can Dodge A Ball
Well, that's that done then. Stu's at the airport right now, his flight leaves in about fifty minutes, and my little brother is away to San Francisco...
It's been a fun couple of days. Mainly its involved talking bullshit, drinking, playing video-games and watching movies, the usual brotherly bonding activities really. It was fun. Movies I would recommend from our little festival would be Shaolin Soccer, one of the funniest things I've seen in months, and Layer Cake, an utterly brilliant brit gangster flick. Don't make the mistake of thinking Layer Cake is gonna be another Guy Ritchie-alike either, there are no cartoon gangsters in this one, just real characters, real plot, real violence. Its a damn fine movie indeed, very much in the same vein as The Long Good Friday if anyone has seen that.
We hired a car yesterday so I could take him down to the airport. We got a Ford Focus, which is actually a pretty cool little car. Also it really is (fairly) little, at least compared to that great big boat I used to have before, but that was pretty easy to get used to. What is more unusual is that its just a
newer car. The Granada was seventeen years old, and that was evident in all kindsa things in the technology throughout the car, whereas the Focus, even a relatively low-end one like our hire car, has some cool little gizmos in it (like being able to control the stereo from a stalk by the steering wheel, so I don't need to take my eyes off when messing about with the radio). It was a fun drive down to the airport this morning, and now I'm back.
For all that I was bitching about having him here, it seems quiet here now. Thats probably emphasised by the fact that he's not just NOT here, cos let's face it, he isn't usually, it's WHERE he's gone - to San Francisco to see Brianne and of course, Revenge of the Sith. Oddly I'm not that bothered about the movie, I mean it's so close now I'll get to see it soon enough, and in an odd way with all the media attention and hoopla surrounding it I actually feel like I've already seen it. I don't even begrudge him getting to meet Bri, or anything like that, I just wish I could be with Ash, if only for a couple of weeks, days, hell I'd settle for an HOUR. We've known one another for so long now, been as involved as you really can be from this distance, but neither of us seem to have the finances to get it together to actually meet up, and it kills me. Most days its actually okay, but I suppose today is just being a confluence of things, what with Stu travelling and it being Ash's birthday (Happy Birthday princess!). It doesn't even make sense, but I miss her, I mean physically miss her presence, even though we've never met... I can't claim to understand it. Long distance romance kids, it's a very peculiar and exquisite form of torture. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret our relationship at all, not in any way and I wouldn't give her up for the world, but dammit sometimes it is SO hard. In all the ways you can interpret that ;p
Okay well right now I am tired and hungry, so I'm going to have breakfast/lunch and then I don't know what. I've not really slept all that much in the past few days (drunkeness, late nights and financial worries do not a pleasant and relaxing combination make), but I hate napping for reasons which elude me, so I probably won't do that... at least not on purpose!
