All In The Mind
Well here we are at the end of my first proper days holiday (not including the weekend just gone) and well, it's been good and bad. The bad is that yesterday, for no apparent reason, my dizziness came back. I suspect this is because I managed to miss a pill on Saturday afternoon, because I woke up and rolled over Sunday morning and the room just kept on rolling. Yesterday was a bloody nightmare, and whilst today has certainly had it's moments I've managed to actually do things other than lie down and stay very still. The mantra "It's not really happening" has proven very useful when everything starts to go a bit pear shaped.
So, what's happened today? Well I've played some Dawn of War, played a bit more, fiddled around with the army painter to get myself some lovely Black Templars to kick butt. I've also tidied the house a bit, and tried to get a few things ready for Shaz to take with her tomorrow when she goes to druid camp. Then played some more DoW. And now it's now. So it's not been a tremendously active start to the holiday but I have been crippled! Well, that's my excuse anyway and I'm sticking to it.
Revolution!
I remember when I first did the deliveries in King's Lynn I was assured that it was just the occasional Monday and it wouldn't become a regular thing. This week it finally just gave in and became a regular thing; I did every day EXCEPT the easy Monday! This morning I got up at just after 3.30am so I had time to have a shave and get myself together in time to go; even then it was a close run thing and by the time I left the depot I was already running late. It was a heavy day with a lot to do, but I was finished by one and after a bit of mucking about getting vans into their appropriate places for the week I'm on hols I was home by half two. Then I slept. I had some lunch, had a bath, slept in the bath (and dropped my book in the bath, so Fulgrim is now very wet) and then slept some more. It's been a tiring week.
On the plus side, I am now on holiday for a week! Woohoo!
Actually I am pretty fucked off about something; remember last week I worked six days and some sixty odd hours to make sure that I earned a decent wage for the holiday week? Well I did get to take home a little bit more, but not as much as I'd have liked. Damn me but the government, our pissy little interfering, big brother is always watching, mummy knows best nanny state wankering government took 25% of it in tax. 25%! And they wonder why we hate them. God knows there's a lot I'm really starting to hate about this country, and I know tax is a fact of life, but come ON! It's not like I'm a high earner, a company director or anything, I just work as a van driver, barely above minimum wage and I work every hour I can get my hands on just to keep my head above water, yet I'm getting fucked up the ass and HARD.
So yeah, I'm a bit annoyed about that. It's funny, 'cos I've always tended to the left wing, and believed in the welfare state, that the government should take care of us when we fail or when life fails us, but what we have in this country now... it's not a Labour government. The gap between the rich and the poor is wider than it's ever been, there's civil dissent everywhere, and more and MORE AND MORE rules and regulations covering every single aspect of our lives (example from the news today; a painter and decorator was given a fine of £30 for smoking in his own van whilst running an errand for his wife; I ask you, where exactly is the crime here? Where? Seriously, show me, I'm interested). I mean, really, what gives the government the right? We, as citizens (or more correctly in this country, subjects) don't live and work for them, those fuckers work for us and yet somehow they seem to have forgotten that! And I don't want to be surveilled every where I go, I don't want to be on fucking CCTV, I don't want my emails and web usage monitored and recorded, my phone calls stored, and this is the country that we're living in! Why? Because we might be terrorists. Well I'll give you a heads up shall I? You continue to erode our civil liberties like this, and you'll get your fuckin' terrorists, you'll get a bloody revolution!
And we're back again, at the familiar call for revolution. It'll never happen, this country is too fucking apathetic, too busy watching Eastenders and Big Brother and getting wankered at the weekends, but how I wish we could wake them up, get the people to see and care about this country, their lives, and wipe the slate clean and start again.
So yeah, tax kinda made me mad.
Sleepy
Pretty much nothing at all happened on Monday, work wise, until about four o'clock when I suddenly had a job which, quite naturally, was a rush job.
I started a run of 4am starts today, and yesterdays rush job came back to bite me in the arse when the magazines I'd shipped from Warners needed delivery. So even though I had a reasonable amount of parcels and other mail to deliver, I had a good couple of hours of extra magazines to deliver! On top of that I had to play taxi for the daughter of the person doing the collections this afternoon, so I did NOT get an early finish, as seems to be the norm about these here parts. Still, tomorrow is another day and we can only hope, eh?
On top of that, we're careering wildly towards holiday time, which is pretty exciting. It's not that I have anything in particular to do, just a lot of not being at work and messing about with games and toy soldiers and movies and such. Which is good enough for me.
Quiet Morning
I was utterly knackered from my weeks work, and almost unavoidably spent most of Sunday asleep whether I meant to or not; I'd sit here being awake for a few minutes, then suddenly I was asleep and that was another two to three hours gone, and it in no way impacted on my ability to sleep Sunday night either! Shaz was nice enough to call her cousin and offer my apologies and let me off going to the christening too, or god knows what sort of shape I'd have been in!
Over the past week I've been watching/reading the coverage from E3 this year (if you can call what they do these days E3, hell even EA said it was rubbish this year!) and it occurs to me that we're well into the current generation of games and consoles (there are sequels coming to games I don't have the hardware to play!) and, well, it's all just passing me by. I look at Nintendo and I've no idea who they are anymore. I suppose they couldn't carry on the way they were, only making games for their hardcore fans (after all, the GameCube was only well liked by people who were already Nintendo fans, those on the outside stayed there) so I can't really blame them for changing their focus to the more casual gamer but so much of what they do these days just leaves me cold. Sure I want Mario Galaxy, Kart, Metroid 3, Twilight Princess, and Smash Bros, but after that it all gets a bit... pointless? As for the other two, well Microsoft seems desperately to want to be Nintendo (avatars? Surely you mean Miis? Don't even pretend it's a fucking innovation, it's outright theft!), and Sony, oddly, is playing catch-up and is trying to copy the things that Microsoft got right on the 360 (and if you're honest, on the Xbox before that). And yet oddly, I'm still most drawn to the PS3. I know I should be wanting the 360, it's got DMC 4 and now FFXIII (that must've hurt, eh Sony?) and lots of other good stuff, but somehow I'm more attracted to the PS3; it has all the same multi format stuff but the exclusives (like Motorstorm and God of War) sell me a lot more than those on the 360 do. Maybe I should just do what Bill and Ted would do, and choose both!
Road To Nowhere
The run down to Plymouth was exhausting. It wasn't difficult in any other way, I knew exactly where I was going and such, but the length of the journey and the length of the day just made it so tiring. I left home just after 5am, and got back again just after 5pm; with the exception of a few rest stops and the time spent for the delivery itself, that's almost a solid twelve hours of driving.
That's really been the sum of my day; a lot of driving. I knew what I was letting myself in for when I took the job, and I wanted the extra hours for next week, so it's all good, but damn am I tired!
The journey was made harder by the huge number of caravans that appeared after about nine o'clock (a more civilised time to be on the road to be sure) and the surprisingly large number that blew over or over-turned taking their cars with them! Maybe it was just a bad day weather wise, or maybe there were a lot of amateur caravanners out there today, but it seemed like every few miles there was another one (although realistically it was probably only two or three, it somehow contrived to feel like a lot).
And that was my day. I could mention how easy it was to get onto a naval base on a high state of alert, how neither I nor my van were searched and how, after one visit there, I was admitted as an unescorted visitor, but we already know that delivery drivers can get in anywhere!
And now I'm off to bed before I fall asleep on the sofa, again!
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes (trailer)?
I was right about the caffeine, although I didn't need it until Thursday when I did a third consecutive day of early deliveries. Not that it was a problem, I still enjoy the early mornings (at least at this time of the year, I can't imagine they'll be that much fun in December...) but the additional hanging around when things went wrong everyday this week certainly stretched my patience and sanity to near breaking point. Still all those hours go on the time sheet and twelve and thirteen hour days don't hurt none. On top of all that tomorrow I'm off down to Plymouth again, so that'll be another LONG ass day, but hopefully it'll be worth it.
So, work aside something earth shattering has happened; the trailer for Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie has been released, and it looks positively stunning! Just as he did with 300, Snyder has almost literally translated the images and style of the comic book onto the screen and the result (at least in the trailer) is little short of astonishing. To see Rorshach's mask change pattern, or Dr Manhattan's glass palace on Mars... hell to see such a brilliantly realised Dr Manhattan at all is amazing (the trailer seems to concentrate mainly on John), and whilst the majority of the characters costumes have been adapted the look is still amazingly faithful to the source material. Empire Online have already posted a scene comparison between the book and trailer and the fidelity is astonishing. So, yeah I've used a lot of hyperbole but really, I am impressed as all hell. Maybe the finished movie won't live up to the weight of expectations placed upon it, but the trailer certainly ups the ante by promising so much!
Buggeration
Today was a four am start. Not a problem right, do them all the time? Normally, yes, because I'm finished and back home by 2am at the latest. Not today, today the guy who was supposed to be coming to do the afternoon work (my relief if you will) was stuck in London. The result? I got home just after five pm. It's been a hell of a long day, and I'm gonna feel the effects tomorrow, which is another four am start! Gonna need a lot of caffeine tomorrow, I can tell...
Resultantly I've not done a great deal else today, although I did get some writing done in the hanging out about waiting, although it was also so hot I felt like I was melting. It was surprisingly hard to find somewhere to park that was out of the sun, even for someone as familiar as the odd corners of King's Lynn as I've become. Eventually I parked round the back of some superstores in the retail park, in the shade of some trees. Made a hell of a difference.
Tyrantasaurous Rex
I've not commented on current events a great deal of late, and that's largely because I just don't have a clue what the hell is going on. Well, I'm developing a theory; I believe the stupidity level in the country (and perhaps the world) is reaching critical levels and we are facing some sort of Stupidity based Apocalypse. As far as I can see that could all too easily happen, the average person in the street is composed of roughly 85% stupidity and 10% ignorance, with the other five percent being a mixture of arrogance, alcohol, football, Big Brother and other minor constituents which vary from person to person. However it seems, that the average stupidity level is rising and that could be a problem. A stupid critical mass could be as little as one celebrity magazine away, and that could prove disastrous, forming a "black hole" of cretinousness from which no thought (intelligent or otherwise) could escape.
I mean, what the hell is going on with all the bloody stabbings? In our metropolitan centres teenagers seem to be stabbing one another with an almost gay abandon and the police, the government and their parents seem powerless to stop it. The politicians have bizarre ideas like taking people with knives to see stab victims, like they're somehow so divorced from their actions that they don't realise that the point of the stabbing is to hurt people. Yet this seems to be the line the government is taking; they've raised and educated a whole generation that doesn't know that stabbing people is bad. What's massively more likely is that they're raised a generation who have no hope. They're the children of the children of people who failed in school, failed to work and who've lived their whole lives scrounging from the state. And they get no encouragement from their parents, and they're lost, for want of a better word. How we find them, I'm damned if I know, but no matter how much the government claims that it's creating a society of opportunity for all it does no such thing; it's still far too much a question of who you know and not what you know. In essence it's the same thing I've always complained about; there's too much of the old ways left in the very structure and essence of this country, and until we have the sense to sweep the board clean (and let's face it, that'll never happen now, the government will go to any lengths to protect itself) we will always have these problems. We're an old country, and we've never had the revolutions we needed to clear out the old crap and now it's just choking us, or perhaps more accurately, growing like a cancer in our towns and cities.
So yeah, that was cheery. On the other hand, ever since I saw the end of Fellowship the other day, I've had Lord Of The Rings on the brain! With a weeks holiday coming up soon, I'm wondering if it might be the right time to try the free trial of LotR Online. There's a big part of me (that'd be the nerd) that wants to give it a try, and there's a much smaller and more realistic part of me that points out that I hardly have time to play WoW these days, let alone embark on another alternate, online life. And don't even get me started on EVE...
Movie Day!
After last nights Speed Racer overload today I've seen The Day The Earth Stood Still (still an absolute classic in my book!). It's a shame that they just don't put old black and white movies on TV anymore, so much of the basics of my film education was the old matinees on BBC2 back when I was a kid. I know I saw DESS when I was of a fairly impressionable age 'cos the idea that the military is essentially run by idiots is still in my head! I shake my head in disgust when Klaatu's shot after being on Earth for just two hours, but we all know the American military shoots first and asks questions a very distant later, no matter whose side you're on! I have to say though, Klaatu takes being shot twice, killed once and having them attempt to dismantle his saucer and robot with remarkable even temper and delivers his warning rather than just saying "fuck the lot of you" as I know I'd be tempted to do (but then I'd be a rubbish superior being, I'm just as sick of the petty squabbling but far less likely to give a second chance).
Now I've got James Cameron's Aliens on in the background. It's been a long time since I (or anybody!) has seen a James Cameron movie (although Avatar is due next year I believe) and I'd forgotten how good he was, especially at all this hardware/sci-fi stuff. Another thing I'd forgotten is how terrifying the Alien is supposed to be! I mean I've not even seen one in the movie yet, but just watching Ripley's nightmares reminds you of how awful those things are supposed to be and yet in the AvP films they're almost like pantomime baddies. I'm not saying I haven't enjoyed the AvP movies, 'cos you know I have, they just seem to devalue both the great movie monsters that are employed in them. I dread to think what Ridley Scott would have to say about them...
Terrible What Passes For A Ninja These Days
Well I've finally seen Speed Racer, and all I can say is; I loved it! It was everything I'd hoped it was going to be and more, and I am thoroughly disappointed in the movie going public for shunning it! I suppose the critics are to blame though, and it's marketing. It was obviously marketed as a kids movie, yet with an extended running time, inter-cutting time shifted narratives and an anti-capitalist plot about the manipulation of sports for the gain of corporations I'm not sure kids are gonna sit through it. Then again, it has a comedy chimp. Much like the Matrix trilogy was, this is the Wachowski brothers doing what they apparently like to do, make smart movies about dumb things. Technologically and visually it is just stunning, there's no other way to describe it; like the ultimate sugar rush of colour and motion and whilst it starts as over-whelming you soon start to wish our world was as vibrant as theirs. And they do have a world, a whole complete parallel to our own, perfectly realised. And I'm completely in love with Trixie; obviously she's beautiful 'cos she's Christina Ricci, but she loves all the same things that Speed does and is just as good at them. And as I mentioned, she's beautiful.
So yeah, I enjoyed that.
Today is also the day the the fifth (count 'em!) edition of 40K graced us with it's presence and I have to say I've been actively avoiding going into GW for pretty much that very reason. Not that I'm not excited about the prospect of 5e, 'cos I am, it's just having to shell out for anothe rule book so soon? I suppose it's not that soon since fourth came out, I've just been away for a while. And I am looking forward to a new Space Marine Codex. Still they've made it all but irresistible by putting extra fluff in and actually adding to current events in the universe rather than it's back story ('cos let's face it we all know that anyway and the Black Library Horus Heresy books are filling in more detail than any rulebook could ever hope for). I had been hoping to make something of a return to traditional Warhammer land, maybe even dabble a little in the LoTR game ('cos I just love the miniatures, I absolutely have to paint the Fellowship, at least one troll, a Balrog and something of Nazgul persuasion at the bare minimum!) and even though I will go to my grave saying that fantasy is the better game there is something about the characters, scope and iconography of 40K that is utterly irresistible and constantly draws me back. It's been a while since I've frittered money away in GW, in fact it's been a while since I've had money to fritter, or the time to enjoy things thus frittered on. Let's hope my upcoming weeks holiday (upcoming in a couple of weeks) will herald time to enjoy toy soldiers. And movies, video games, running and anything and everything else I can think of! It's only a week...
Nothing To Say, But Saying Nothing At Length
Oh my goodness what a day. Only the two jobs, but due to a combination of awkward customers, bad weather and a couple of horrific looking accidents it's taken literally all day. I know when I started off this morning, heading off into the wild blue yonder my head was full of nonsense about miniatures, Lord of the Rings, and just Games Workshop generally. That was probably because I'd had a bit of a brain wave yesterday and managed to get some work done on my secret project for the first time in weeks. Today of course my mind wandered for a bit, but once I'd been held up for nearly an hour and a half while somebody checked their delivery, no matter how many times we explained that no matter what they found, items missing, damaged or broken, we could do absolutely NOTHING, we're contracted to deliver and deliver we had; end of story, and my imagination was brutally surpressed by their overwhelming stupidity (they asked on multiple occasions whether we knew if we had another of x,y, or z in the warehouse when we'd explained we don't HAVE a warehouse, we just collect and deliver what we're given). Still, difficult customers are rarely encountered in this business, so it's not all bad.
And it did add up to putting a lot of billable hours on the sheet, so that means next week (and the week after, 'cos I'm working the Saturday) I should be getting a decent wage. Even though I only got paid today I've already been hit with two bills (one of which seems over-inflated but they sneakily never have customer service open when I'm not at work, so I just paid it rather than loose 'net connection) and I'm already depressingly close to the bottom of my overdraft. I shouldn't be beating myself up, it's only been a couple of weeks since all the car expenses and it'll take a while to recover. Towards the end of next month things should be looking a lot rosier.
So we come to stand at the brink of the weekend; my DVD of the original The Day The Earth Stood Still Arrived yesterday, and I'm very excited to see that, but I also know I'm gonna want to do the whole nerd thing and watch the documentaries immediately afterwards so maybe that should be saved and savoured at my leisure. If that's the case I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I suppose I'll find out in a minute!
Random Ramblings
Today's been a pretty good day work wise, just a series of deliveries and collections where everything went as it should do and nobody was unhappy. It was good. It didn't even rain. On top of that my copy of The Day The Earth Stood Still arrived in the post, so it's happiness all round.
However I have to wonder what my government is doing with it's new car tax policy. They talk it up as being a "green" policy, but that just seems to be the buzzword that's attached to anything which seems faintly ridiculous and unfair these days; "Oh that's terrible" "Yeah, but it's green mate, saving the planet".
SO, the plan is apparently this; rather than the simple two tier road tax system we have now, there will be many tiers reflecting the carbon friendliness of the engine. Which seems reasonable. However, it's applied retroactively, which is to say it's being applied to cars registered BEFORE the law is passed. Now, for the law to be "green", that is to say altering the behaviour of consumers to act in a more ecologically friendly way it has to have the power to alter future behaviour, in this case encouraging you to buy a car with a smaller or more efficient engine rather than a ridiculous 4x4 for urban driving. However what this law is gonna do, as it's applied retroactively, is punish people for making decisions before the law was passed and simultaneously lock people into those decisions; by which I mean if you've bought said 4x4 back in 2001 when it seemed cool (it wasn't and you're a cock, but still) you're suddenly hit with a prohibitive tax bill for it you never knew was coming and you can't realistically sell the car and move to a smaller and more friendly one because who's gonna want to buy this monstrosity with the huge road tax? The market for these heavy polluters will be destroyed, so the people who already have them will think "Fuck that" and keep driving them as long as they can! Is that ecologically friendly or unfriendly? I'd say just plain unfair.
Another thing that I've been wondering about is the number of census zones I've seen whilst travelling about. Now, I expect to see them during census year, especially on the day that it's supposed to be done, but just randomly? I wondered what legal force they have; I know they police wave you in and out, but the people asking the questions are just people in hi vis vests, and I've got one of them. Do you have to answer their questions? Do I really have to account for my movements to the government? After all the government works for me, and I KNOW they have to account for their actions and explain themselves to me, but I'm fairly certain that I can go about my law abiding business as I wish and not explain it to anybody. Then I wonder if these wandering census' are normal or are they a new invention? And why does the government need all this information? They already know far too much about where I am and what I'm doing, virtually the whole country is covered in bloody cameras and various electronic devices that track us 24 hours a day. I don't understand the people who are comfortable with this surveillance society that we live in these days, in fact I think those are some very naive people who in all honestly don't think that The Powers That Be will fuck you over just because it's convenient; after all it's not like governments don't have a history of screwing with, experimenting and imprisoning people for no apparent reason. And as you know, I firmly believe we need to retain the power to rise up against our government because there will come a time when they cannot be trusted.
This is turning into a very stream of conciousness rant now, so I'll stop.
Life, Don't Talk To Me About Life
I had lots of things I wanted to talk about today, witty and irrelevant things about stuff I'd seen or heard or whatever, but I can't be bothered with any of them.
There's £14 left in my bank account. No matter how long and hard I work I never seem to get anywhere. Fourteen fucking pounds! Jesus. I can't even buy take out pizza with that. I keep wondering if life ever gets any better, if you ever feel like you're making progress, and it really doesn't seem that way does it?
Fuck.
And indeed, shit.
Shed Of The Year!
Oddly it's been national Shed Week, and the much coveted Shed of the Year has been awarded to a shed with a bar in it. To be fair it actually looks remarkably cool, although I can't imagine how it hasn't been broken into yet. Still, now we've got the vital shed news out of the way, and we can move on. Actually no we can't, I can't believe there's such a thing as National Shed week! I mean, sheds for fucks sake! Do sheds need promoting? Aren't they thrilling enough by themselves? Well, they obviously aren't, otherwise National Shed Week wouldn't exist in the first place. And having written "shed" so many times isn't "shed" a strange word? Okay I really will move on now.
Hmm, actually not a lot has happened really; been to work (super early start again), come home and felt so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open. It's not that I dislike the early starts, even today with a heavy load I still had the afternoon to myself, it's just that the early starts are utterly exhausting. Shaz was away over night as a friend of ours' sister was having an operation today and we wanted to show support and just be there if needed. It seems that things have gone well, she survived the surgery which was more than expected, and is now in IC. How things go from here only time will tell.
Archie was very clingy over night. I don't know if it's just because I went to bed early and he didn't have anything else to do, or if he was worried I'd forget to look after him when Shaz was away and wanted to make sure I remembered him! All I know is that it wasn't a good night and every time I rolled over I found mitten under foot. If I slept for more than a few minutes at a time I'll be amazed, and then I got up at ten to four just to make sure I had the extra few minutes to feed him before I left, or he'd have had no breakfast at all! As it was he had breakfast just after four am, and therefore was starving when I got home about four in the afternoon and therefore had an early dinner as well. Let's hope he doesn't try and continue the trend tomorrow!
Nanny State
Our not so glorious leader today chided the British people for throwing away too much food. I think that might actually be the very pinnacle of this labour governments attempts to control us, the ultimate expression of the nanny state, we're now being told off for not finishing our dinner! Who are you, my mother? Also, I wonder what exactly the mechanism is by which throwing food away increases the price of other food. Surely it's the buying of the unnecessary food that increases it's price, by creating an artificial shortage, what you do with it after you've purchased it is neither here nor there, you could eat it, feed it to cows or pigeons, set fire to it or just chuck it all in the bin. Also, given the mess that the economy is in, especially given that ours is so consumer led, I'm not sure of the sense of telling consumers to stop shopping. Still, he's the Prime Minister, not me.
I did the deliveries again this morning, and I felt utterly shattered when I got back, crashed out and slept right through the alarm I'd set to wake me up. About an hour later Archie in his never ending quest for food, finally woke me up. It's not good to be this tired at the very start of the week, and I'm delivering again tomorrow, so wish me luck; it's nearly time for bed!
A Life of Quiet Desperation
So I've just finished reading Mark Millar's rather excellent Wanted (the inspiration for the film of the same name folks!), and I'm left wondering about it's sub-Fight Club message, which seems to be something on the order of "real men solve problems with violence". I say sub-Fight Club, because whilst that seemed to be all FC was saying on the surface, really it was saying a lot about personal responsibility and rejecting consumerism and a pre-packaged life, and it just happened to say it through the medium of punching. Whereas a couple of times the anti-hero of Wanted talks about murder and rape as though they are activities that he enjoys and is worried when he really isn't in the mood. Now I suppose you should accept that the hero/anti-hero/protagonist is the son of a supervillain and therefore has some pretty extreme appetites, but the story sells is almost like a wish fulfilment power fantasy and... actually as I'm writing it I suppose it's just taking that fantasy to it's extreme. You don't just escape from your boring life, you escape from human morality all together; you don't just learn to defend yourself, you snuff out random lives like turning off a light; it's the power fantasy without a moral centre. What is disturbing about it is that I find it so oddly attractive, and that's what compelled me to write about it now. Whether that's the persuasiveness of Millars writing, or just some short-circuit in my head... now that's the really disturbing question.
On another seemingly random note, I see that one of the two players in the final at Wimbledon today invited Gwen Stefani, for she sits in the players box. With her idiot husband, Gavin Rossdale in tow. Now, I'm just taking a wild guess here, but if I were to invite the lovely Gwen anywhere, there is almost no circumstance that Rossdale would be welcome. I realise they're married, have a child and so on, but seriously, why him? Why not, just for the sake of argument, me? Anyway, just seemed to me that Gav, your presence isn't required mate. Anywhere.
Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto.
I know I've used the title "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid" at least once before, and most probably whilst addressing my concerns regarding the soon to be released movie of almost the same name. The rumours that've been wildly circulating have made it sound like exactly the sort of abomination you've come to expect from studio thinking rather than film-maker thinking. However, now the first trailer is upon us, and I'm pleased and excited. Let's face it, TDTESS is a classic movie, but it is very much a movie of it's time with the concerns of the time when it was made. Certainly a lot of it's message is still scarily relevant today, but a straight remake would struggle to make the same impact it the original did fifty years ago. So the decision to update it with modern, environmental concerns replacing the old warlike humanity thing, looks like a pretty cool idea. How it'll all play out I honestly don't know, but not only did I not hate the trailer, it made me look forward to seeing the finished movie. Way to go!
I also had my first Rock Band experience today and I wasn't as overwhelmed as I expected to be. Honestly, I thought I was gonna be blown away like I was the first time I played Guitar Hero and I just wasn't. Probably because GH did all the actual ground breaking and Rock Band feels more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Also drumming is very hard, or at least it seemed so to me (probably because I didn't do it very much and I've been playing GH for well over a year now). So yeah, I'm not gonna pretend it's not good, because it clearly is, but I'm not bursting to own it in quite the way I expected. Which is probably for the best, all things considered.
The Only Good Thing About That Game Was That It Ended
Thursday eh? Never could get the hang of Thursdays. In fact things went wrong almost immediately when I went to pick my boss up and he was still asleep, and continued to be so for the next hour! Then the van we went to pick up wasn't fixed in any traditional sense (in that it over-heated wildly and dropped power like it was going out of style). Then the place I had to collect from was unstaffed and when I FINALLY got into London to make my first drop I got a parking ticket despite being parked directly in front of the sign that said it was okay for me to park here. The traffic warden was utterly unhelpful, I approached him calmly to ask him to explain the violation, but he wouldn't even make eye contact let alone talk, and that DID make me angry. Still, that said Thursday ended and we all moved on.
To Friday, and my seven thirty pick-up at IKEA. Which wasn't ready on time. "Fifteen minutes" we were told, so we waited, and then another fifteen minutes and another and so on until five hours later we finally got loaded and left! The actual delivery was fine, the customer was pleased to see us as IKEA had been stringing them along for far too long with their usual bullshit, and then it was time to turn around and come home. But so many jobs passed us by today, must've been a good two or three we could've done and extra pennies that could've been made. Bloody IKEA, must've cost me a fortune today. Tossers.
So another working week comes to a close, and the weekend is upon us, at last.
My brother flew off the the States for a couple of weeks today. I know surprisingly little about where he's going or what he's gonna get up tp (perhaps wisely) but I hope he has a really good time. He deserves it, he's been having it rough lately and a good happy holiday is just what he needs! Hope he arrived okay, assuming his flights are even supposed to have arrived yet!
Choose Your Own Adventure
And with that the three days of excruciatingly early starts were finished. Just as well really, I'm currently only kept alive (well, concious) by the consumption of heroic quantities of coke (the fizzy kind) and even that has it's limits (in fact it'll be finding it's limits in precisely one more can, when I run out). That said, the actual work itself isn't that bad, and usually by about half nine you find you've pretty much broken the back of it and done most of the work. The bit you have left from then seems to take forever though; it might only be half a dozen drops but they're spread out and you have to wait for people (usually about twenty minutes at Tesco, they fill me with murderous rage). I've no idea what I'm up to tomorrow, but I suspect it will involve driving a van about and possibly delivering something. Sadly I suspect it'll also involve going back to bloody King's Lynn for the afternoon, but nothing's perfect.
Somewhat randomly, whilst driving home I noticed that the skin on my drivers arm (ie the one that goes out the window and has the tan) is looking, well, old. I suppose it's the sun and the fact that I haven't moisturised it. Can't say I was happy about that, but I suppose I'm gonna notice these little signs of wear and tear from now on, can't even pretend I'm young anymore. And yes I probably should've been looking at the road rather than my arm, but there we go.
Right, well I think I'm gonna play a little Guitar Hero to avoid any actual thinking, and then do the washing up. Or maybe the other way round. No, bugger that, a little Guitar Hero first, I've earned it.
Can You Die Of Insomnia?
As I hinted yesterday, two days in a row of four am starts is taking it's toll already. I'm bloody tired now, but earlier I was nodding while driving home. I wasn't asleep, but the real world had taken on a dream like and slightly unimportant quality which is less than ideal when you're driving, so I stopped and had a little walk about, that brought me back to immediacy. Which was nice.
Today was a lot harder work than yesterday, just the simple volume of deliveries changes once you get into the week, but I still finished early enough, although by the time I'd done a couple of jobs for the boss it wasn't SUPER early (maybe about two o'clock-ish).
It's been a lovely day, bright and hot and well, summery. Apparently normal service will be resumed tomorrow when it rains.
Reckon it's time for a little monster bashing now; Diablo here I come!
