Tomleecee

mp3G

2011-08-24T22:48:00.001-07:00

Whenever I try to ring anyone on my mobile, I find myself having to dangle by my feet out of the fucking window in order to get a signal. Either that, or go outside so the GoldenEye satellite can get a fix on me and triangulate my Nokia. And that, my friends, is because the mobile phone network in this country is utter dogshit. You may recall that a few weeks ago I was spunking all over my new 'non O2' network Giffgaff, and waxing about how good it was. And to be honest, my opinion hasn't changed. It's outstanding value for money. The only downside is that it still runs on the O2 network...a network that, in all honesty, is about as reliable as an Alfa Romeo without an engine. So, you can imagine my interest when the BBC released a network map of the UK that details the coverage of the 3G signal.

Where I currently reside (and in the vast majority of rural locales I find myself in), you can count yourself lucky if you can get two bars of 2G signal, let alone 3G so all these people with smart phones and other devices that rely on a high-capacity data connection in order to function - forget it. And yet the major networks are all getting giddy about the impending 4G standard that should start rolling out in the next few years.

Now, I'm by no means a telecommunications expert, but here's an idea O2, T Mobile, Vodafone and the rest of you cunts: how about sorting out the 3G coverage before you start looking at moving to 4G? Just an idea. Oh, and while you're at it, how about extending it beyond the boundaries of London? How fucking brazen can you get: I was listening to Talksport the other day - a national radio station - and I heard an advert for Vodafone that was boasting about how good their signal was in London. London! Fucking great! What about the rest of the country you douchebags?! I realise that a lot of people who reside in our nation's capital are probably oblivious to the fact, but there are other places that exist outside of the boundary of London y'know. Sheesh.

But I'm digressing. The crux of what I'm bitching about is this: what's the point of trying to improve the data capacity of the mobile network in this country if the current one is still a pile of festering arse? Surely it'd be cheaper and more useful to improve the 3G coverage as more people currently own compatible handsets. The mind, my friends, boggles.

Other news: Steve Jobs has finally stepped down as the head honcho at the world's most pretentious company. Thinking of sending him a farewell card with a note asking for the reimbursement of the money I wasted on multimple iPods over the years before I realised they were SHIT and stopped buying them. As I've mentioned here in thepast, I've cracked my way through several iPods in my time simply because they stop working for various reasons. Batteries stop holding a charge, chargers break, buttons stop working...I could go on. Anyway, on the subject of mp3 players, my last one (a Phillips GoGear Vibe) died earlier this week and so I needed a replacement to use while running. I headed to Tesco and found this thing for a mere £9.50:

Yes, it looks like something Miley Cyrus might shit out, but I'm quite impressed with it. It's a Samsung Tictoc, and it's clearly aimed at teenage girls, but I'm open-minded. And tight as fuck too, so the £9.50 price-tag was a deal-breaker for me. It's quite an odd contraption - there's only one button but it takes on multiple functions depending on how you orientate the device. Press the button while it's facing upwards and it increases the volume, press it while it's facing the floor and the volume decreases. Press the button while holding the thing horizontally and it skips tracks etc etc etc. It's a bit like a Wii, but in mp3 form. Without a shit-load of rubbish games. Or the layer of dust as it sits under the TV unused since the last strained dinner party with your wife's work friends. Or the stench of the death of Nintendo as a proper games company wafting through the room.

I'm digressing again. So I'll stop.

Fun with Dorset Naga

2011-08-23T06:28:00.001-07:00

Remember how I went to that chilli festival a few weeks back? Well, here's a video of me stupidly sampling one of the Dorset Nagas I bought there. At work. Not recommended:

The moral of the story is this: Do not eat a Dorset Naga. Especially when it's bright red and emits a low humming sound.

Incidentally, after the events shown in the vid I found myself experiencing severe nausea and stomach pain, so wound up back in the toilets chucking up my guts to get rid of the remnants of the chilli that I must've swallowed. I never thought that a chilli could deliver such a powerful kick, but I've been proven wrong in spectacular fashion.

FAIL.

Chillax. Do You See?

2011-08-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

There's a couple of things I want to talk about today. Or should that be 'blog' about? I don't really like using that word, even though this is essentially a 'blog,' simply because it sounds so disgustingly middle class. Its the kind of word an angsty teenager uses when they're ranting online about how misunderstood they are and how much they hate their parents. Whilst sat in a bedroom housed in the west wing of a small mansion, typing on brand new Macbook Air that daddy bought them a month ago to apologise for not coming to their sixth-form production of Romeo & Juliet (with a modern emo twist). What hypothetical spoilt little cunts these teenagers are, eh? Gah.

So. Item the first: Pepsi Max. I love Pepsi Max. It is, without a doubt, my fizzy beverage of choice. I don't drink normal Pepsi (or Coke for that matter) simply because it contains the equivalent of 24 bags of sugar per 100ml (or something similar), and I know that Pepsi Max is probably no better for the human soul...but it's sugar free. And that's why I choose it over normal Pepsi. Now, the reason I bring up Pepsi Max is this: why is it so fucking hard to find it in 330ml cans?! You can buy it in most newsagents and corner shops in those massive 600ml bottles that recently appeared, but what if you don't want that much? And what if you prefer it from a can because it always seems colder and fizzier from a can? I walked around town the other day searching high and low for a shop that sold Pepsi Max in a can, but could I find one? Could I bollocks. Every shop had Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero in cans AND bottles (and some even had that pointless creation Diet Caffeine Free Coke, the cola equivalent of a nicotine-free cigarette), but not a single one stocked cans of Pepsi Max. Why is this? Is Coca Cola secretly paying Britain's corner shop owners a fee not to stock it's rival's drinks? After visiting five different corner shops (and a supermarket) and still drawing a blank, I'm inclined to question whether there is some kind of Coca Cola-powered conspiracy afoot. Just like when they ordered the assassination of JFK. To that end, I'm currently in the process of writing to Pepsi Co. to ask whether they're aware of the horrifying situation faced by Pepsi Max loving can-fans. More on this subject to follow.

Item the two: I attended the Great Dorset Chilli Festival over the weekend. It was more like a big market than a festival to be honest, but it was still quite good. As the name suggests, it was devoted to our friend the chilli. The vast majority of the stalls there were being run by local chilli farmers and they all had free samples available to punters who were brave/stupid enough to try their wares. The first thing I and my girlfriend did was head to the 'tasting' tent where we were presented with a vast array of chilli sauces ranging from 'mild' to 'hot,' and encouraged to taste them all and vote for the most flavoursome. The term 'flavoursome' stopped having any meaning after I got halfway through the 'medium' selection of sauces though, as they all tasted like fire and I couldn't tell what I was eating due to the tears blurring my vision. To my credit, I did make it around the whole lot and by the end of the ordeal my tongue felt as if it had taken the full brunt of the Tunguska blast; but it felt strangely satisfying to have tested them all - even the stuff that looked like a grizzly bear had devoured Satan's spice rack and then taken a shit in a bowl. Attempting to douse the inferno ripping it's way toward my sphincter with a pint of chilli & ginger-flavoured real ale probably wasn't the most intelligent thing I could have done at that point, but I forged on regardless.

As you would expect, I also made a few purchases. The first thing was a little jar of 'chocolate chilli curd,' which for all intents and purposes is Nutella with a few bits of chilli in it. Actually a lot tastier than it sounds, especially on hot toast. The second thing I bought was a little bag of Dorset Naga chillies. For those who don't know, the Dorset Naga is consistently rated as the world's hottest chilli. I haven't actually tasted one yet, but there's still time before they shrivel up like tiny green penises and die. The last thing I bought was what I like to call The Motherload. Its a bottle of hot chilli sauce the likes of which I have never come across in all my days of loving hot food. It's called '10 Minute Burn' (see picture below) and features the tag line 'Another bottle of pure pain.' The most accurate description of a foodstuff yet? Possibly. This stuff is horrifyingly spicy - three drops in the curry I made last night was enough to almost send the whole lot in the bin, even though it clearly states on the label 'do not ingest directly - use only in cooking.' Cooking what, exactly? A fucking isotope pie? So yeah - it's hot. Stupifyingly hot. I can't think of any more stupid metaphors to describe how hot it is, so just take my word for it.

Note the skulls. They are relevant in this case.

And now that you've read all that, have another look at this post's title. Do you see? Eh?! Chilli. Pepsi Max.

I'll get my coat.

Cakes

2011-08-12T00:41:00.000-07:00

Did another half marathon last Sunday. It was the Sturminster Newton half marathon, more affectionatley known as the 'Stur Half,' and I must say that it was a really good event. My previous half marathon was the Plymouth one, and whilst the Stur Half was on a much, much smaller scale it was every bit as well organised. In case you give a toss, I finished in 50th place, which I don't think is too bad considering over 400 runners took part and I started quite a way back from the starting line. I'm not sure how the organisers got their timings, as the Stur Half didn't employ a chip timing system like Plymouth did, but I'm happy with my 01:31:09. Slightly dissapointed that they didn't award medals to all finishers, but I suppose that as it was only a small, locally run event I shouldn't complain too much (and I did get a free cake and t-shirt on completion).

The next race in my less-that-hectic schedule is the Bristol half marathon in September and I'm also considering the New Forest one later in the same month, but the only thing that concerns me about that one is that you aren't allowed to wear headphones/listen to music as you run. This is a bit of a problem for me, as music blasting through my lug holes is one of the only things that motivates me when I run. Have you ever tried running or jogging without music? It can only be described as horrendous - the only sound the desperate rasping of your own laboured breathing broken by the occasional clearing of the throat...it makes a pretty unpleasent activity even more unbearable. To that end, I'm not sure if I'm going to enter the New Forest one. I suspect I'm not the only person who will give it a miss either as several people I've asked about doing the event have also complained about the same ban on aural entertainment. Maybe I'll look at some other, less stringently managed races instead.

London's Burning

2011-08-09T00:28:00.000-07:00

What the fuck is going on in the capital? I've been watching the news for the past couple of days and all I'm seeing are reports about groups of feral youth smashing up branches of Debenhams. It's like a scene from that Clive Owen film Children of Men. Which is actually a pretty good movie, incidentally. It doesn't feature ferral youths smashing up Debenhams, but it does paint a picture of near-future London where people are out of control and the police are prety much powerless to stop acts of random violence. I'm drawing comparisons here, people.

I've also seen a few TV interviews with Theresa May, the Home Secretary. What fucking planet does this woman live on? The scumbags running amok on the streets of London clearly don't have a modicum of respect for the police, so how she expects 'robust policing' to stop them from smashing up Debenhams is a mystery to me. The only example of 'robust policing' that has been evident thus far has been a copper with a megaphone telling feral youths to stop smashing up Debenhams from the relative safety of an armoured car. Whilst other policemen, clad in armour and carrying shields, watched from across the road. Very robust policing, that.

Furthermore, what has Debenhams ever done to deserve being smashed up? Fair enough, some of their Jasper Conran t-shirts are a bit expensive, but does that warrant having the perfume counter demolished by a Nike Air-clad foot?

The whole rioting/burning/looting business appears to have stemmed from the killing of a young black teenager by Met officers a few days ago, and I'm not well informed enough to comment on that incident, but how this event leads to the setting alight of a carpet shop, the destruction of an Italian restaurant and the continued smashing up of Debenhams, I don't know. People keep saying "send in the army!," but what good will that do? Instead of police offers just standing there and being powerless to do anything because of the ridiculous laws of this fair land, we'll have soldiers in there doing the same.

Can you imagine if this kind of shit happenned in America? or Turkey? or anywhere where you give the police a wide berth because if you don't they'll smash your face in? Or shoot you? Quite. Anyway, David Cameron's cut his holiday short to come back and sort shit out. Kind of smacks of a mum telling her naughty little twat of a kid "you wait till your dad gets home" dunnit? I bet the feral youth smashing up Debenhams are quaking in the aforementioned Nike Airs now that Cameron's back in his pastel shirt and chinos.

Well, there's my two penneth. I'm off to Debenhams for some free stuff.

An Ode to Audi

2011-08-07T22:57:00.001-07:00

Time to use your imagination. Picture the scene: you're driving down a country road, windows down, music up. It's a lovely warm day and the sun is high in the deep blue afternoon sky. The subtle scent of cut grass blows through the car as you pass a field, and the rolling hills beyond create a magnificent vista not seen since the Riders of Rohan took to their horses to administer a knuckle sandwich to the baddies in Middle Earth. Quite simply, amazing driving conditions.

That is, until this fucking thing appears in your rear-view:

Right up your arse with those ridiculous little lights on that (to me at least) scream "let me past - I'm a fucking cock and I've got a fast car!"

I despise those little lights that most new Audi cars have. They're something of a mystery to me: are they 'always on,' like the sidelights on old Volvos? And if not, why do Audi drivers feel the need to pierce everyone else's rear-view mirror with the horrible little things? If I'm driving along - and not just in a situation like the one described above - and I see those cunting things appear behind me, I just know that within a few minutes they'll be right up behind me, growling in my mirror and making me feel like I'm driving Miss Daisy, no matter how fast I'm actually going. The other day, I was going at a fair old whack down some sleepy A road, and one of these Audi twats just 'appeared' behind me trying to make me speed up. I'll be honest, I don't think my Proton Impian could travel much faster than I was going, and it'll easily do 100mph, so you can kind of appreciate the speed we were travelling at...yet this absolute CUNT with his stupid little LEDs still wanted to go FASTER! Eventually, the bell-end overtook on a corner (!) and disappeared into the distance (hopefully slamming into a wall a few miles later).

To that end, I have bestowed upon these headlights a new name. One which I hope enters the Oxford English Dictionary along with the abominable 'LOL' and 'WTF.' This name is: Wanker Lanterns.

Wanker Lanterns (noun): The row of LEDs under the main headlights on any new Audi. They always seem to be lit, no matter how bright the sun is on any particular day. They serve no purpose other than to alert other road users to the fact that the driver of the Audi owns an Audi, and that their Audi goes faster than your car. Unless you own a Porsche.

Quick edit: Just reading today's edition of The I newspaper (see previous blog entry) and on page 11 there's a little piece about the rise in cyclist deaths on Britains roads. The story details the death of a cyclist in North London on Saturday, who appears to have hit an open car door before being thrown into the path of a bus. the last paragraph reads (this is absolutely genuine, by the way): 'A post-mortem examination is expected to take place today. The driver of the car, an Audi, was arrested.'

Your honour, the prosecution rests.

Snobbery?

2011-08-01T23:50:00.000-07:00

Got to work this morning and someone had bought a newspaper and left it on the side. I picked it up. Inevitably, it was The Sun (inevitably, because most of the morons I work with aren't capable of digesting news written in a style other than that of a Ladybird book). Now, I haven't read The Sun for quite a while because there's now a newspaper published in these fair lands called The I, which is an offshoot of The Independent. It's basically a smaller, condensed version of said broadsheet and is in all honesty one of the best rags I've ever had the pleasure of reading. And it only costs 20p - but that's beside the point. The point is, I read The I. Not The Sun. So, one can only imagine the utter disgust I couldn't help but display when I flicked through the nation's 'favourite' red top this morning. It's fucking full of stories about The X Factor, Rihanna's tits and (honestly) a scan of the sea bed that revealed a shape that vaguely resembled the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars. I couldn't actually be bothered to finish reading the fucking thing - so I threw it at the wall and left it there in a sorry heap.

I can't believe that people pay 30 pence to read such festering dogshite. I'm no snob, but after nearly a year of buying The I (and being labelled as 'intelligent' for doing so (it's meant as an insult in the military, by the way)), I'm shocked that this comic can still masquerade as a legitimate newspaper. Atomic Kitten are not news. Amy Winehouse is not news. Joey Barton's Twitter account is not news. I could, rather depressingly, go on giving examples of subjects covered in today's copy of The Sun that shouldn't qualify as news items. But I won't, for fear that I may projectile vomit all over the computer.

I suppose I shouldn't really be suprised that every single person I observe leaving the shop on the base where I live/work has a copy of either The Sun or The Star (spit) folded up under their arm on a morning - the vast majority of them look as if they have only just mastered the ability to walk in a straight line and/or fashion their own name on a slate with a crushed crayon. And if that comment makes me a snob, then so be it.

Take a Gamble on Giffgaff

2011-07-29T01:40:00.000-07:00

Mobile phones. We’ve all got one. And as anyone who’s read the past posts on this blog will attest, I’ve had my fair share. They’ve mostly been top notch bits of tech – The O2 XDA was a nice PDA type contraption; The HD2 was an amazing (if slightly large) iPhone alternative; and the Palm Pre was a pretty damn good Blackberry substitute – until it went tits up a few months ago and was sent to the big phone bin in the sky. After being snapped in half in a fit of furious rage. But that, my friends, is a different post.

I’ve got a Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type now, and while it isn’t a smartphone like the other two were, it’s still a really nice handset that has all the features you’d expect from a mobile that should cost well over £200. Stuff like Wi-Fi, 3G, 5 megapixel camera and a touch screen. All things that you wouldn’t usually expect to have on a sub £100 (well, £79.99) phone. But I’m not really here to talk about mobile hardware today. No, what I want to waffle about is freedom. Freedom from O2, to be more specific. I’ve finally done it! I’ve broken away from the monolithic and omnipresent mega corporation that’s been sucking £50+ out of my bank account every month for as long as I can remember. And it feels good. Damn good.

You know when you think you’ve lost you wallet or your keys and have images of the shit-storm that’s coming your way, only to find them again? Where that wave of nausea and sweatiness suddenly gives way to an enlightened sense of euphoria? That’s how good it feels.

Indeed. So, June saw the expiration of my latest hellish 18 month contract and I decided that rather than go for another 24 months of shite with said demonic network, I’d move my number (via use of a PAC code) to an O2 pay as you go sim. All fine and well…until the number porting didn’t go through on the day it was meant to. And so I waited. And waited. And then on the third day after it was meant to happen I rang O2 customer service again to find out what was happening. The idiot on the other end of the phone rudely told me that there was no evidence that any such request had been made on my account (it had – about a week earlier), and so I politely requested again that it be actioned. Typical O2 uselessness rearing its unsightly head like some hideous clockwork scarecrow. Happily, after waiting for another few days, the number went across to my new sim card and I was finally a pay as you go customer. Success! Or so I thought until a week or so later when I stopped being able to receive texts. I rang customer services again, whereupon an operative who displayed unrivalled levels of arrogance and rudeness proceeded to tell me that I may have a bar on my sim card “just because.” That was his actual reason for why I might not be able to receive texts, I shit you not. At that point, I snapped, and told him give me another PAC code. I was put through to yet another imbecile who tried her best to not let me have my PAC code until I virtually screamed at her to give it to me. So she did.

I looked at the other major networks and weighed up their pay as you go tariffs and bonuses, and I was going to go with Orange due to their network coverage (which is apparently pretty good now they’ve teamed up with T Mobile) and the Orange Wednesdays offer, but that was until I discovered a network that excited me greatly. And that network is Giffgaff.

Giffgaff? Who the fuck are Giffgaff? Exactly the question I was asking myself until I discovered the amazing tariffs they offer. They only do pay as you go sim cards, and the top-up options are nothing short of staggering in this age of ubiquitous customer fleecing. Example: I topped up with £5, for which I received 60 cross-network minutes and 300 texts. For a fucking fiver! Even more breathtaking is the way that if anyone rings me from their mobile, I get an extra minute added to my balance for every minute I’m on the phone! If you choose to top up by a larger amount, you get even more free shit like unlimited mobile internet and texts etc. Remarkable stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So there you go. It is possible to find truly bargainous deals when it comes to mobile networks. I’ve unshackled myself from the burden of the 50-odd quid bill and horrendous customer service of O2, and found a network where customer service is all done via a forum and email and costs virtually nothing to use. The only negative is that Giffgaff kinda runs off the O2 network and was actually set up by some O2 bigwig, but boy am I glad to be free of those cunts.

Moving on to a slightly different subject, you may recall me wanking (not literally) over the prospect of owning a Nintendo 3DS a few months ago. Well, I've finally managed to blag a go on one...and it gave me a monstous headache! It was only one of the display ones in GAME, and the game was Pilotwings or something similar (some cartoon flying game), but it was pretty rubbish to be honest. And the 3D effect was nothing like what I was expecting. When I think about it, I don't actually know what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I played the other day. I felt like I was looking at one of those magic eye things where you stare at a blob of spew for an hour and try to make out a load of dinosaurs. Or how everything looks after one too many ciders, where you start to go a bit cross-eyed. It wasn't pleasant.

I realise that you can turn the 3D effect up or down, or even completely off - but surely that defeats the object of owning a 3D-capable system in the first place. So to surmise: after playing Pilotwings for 10 minutes in a shop, I don't think I'll be investing in a 3DS just yet.

Roll on Playstation Vita...?

I Ran So Far Away

2011-07-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

Finally worked out how to upload my running totals from my Forerunner watch to the Garmin Connect website this morning. It's pretty cool to be fair. Not only is it much more detailed than the software that you can install on your PC, but it allows you to share the details of your runs and training sessions. Yesterday I completed a fairly epic 22 mile jaunt around the highways and byways of Somerset and here's the little info pane that relates to the run:

I did another run today, but it was only a ten mile one as my legs were fucking killing me from yesterday's little escapade. Here's the info box thingy:

I'm doing a few more half-marathons in the coming months so this gizmo really helps with the training, and being able to embed the workouts on your own blog is a nice touch. Still on the subject of running, I bought some Saucony Jazz 13 running trainers a few weeks back to replace the bargain basement Saucony Prestige I got from M&M Direct. To be honest, the only real difference I can see between them (apart from the price) is that the Jazz are 'Pro Grid' and have a little window in the heel so you can see the cushioning thing, while the Prestige are just plain 'Grid' and have a solid heel with no window. They're both pretty comfortable, as you'd expect from Saucony, but I'm not sure splashing out on another pair was such a good idea when I'm trying to save money for my impending return to the real world (see previous posts on redundancy for clarification). Saying that though, the Jazz are a lovely shade of electric blue whereas the Prestige are boring old white, so I suppose it was money well spent. Not just an investment in fitness, but also an investment in fashion. Like the Scarlett Pimpernel. Or am I getting that reference confused with something else. Meh.

A Retrospective

2011-06-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve been playing Aliens Vs Predator recently. I remember all the fuss when it was about to come out, and then the slightly poor reviews it received, and as I didn’t have an Xbox or PS3 back then, it kinda just passed me by. However, I picked a copy up for about a fiver a few weeks back and I have to say that I’m very impressed with it. As a ma-hussive fan of the sci-fi genre and of the Alien franchise in particular (c’mon, I’ve got a Weyland Yutani jacket), I feel that I am qualified enough to say that it’s the best game set in the Alien universe that I’ve yet to play. And I’ve played a few – including the gash 8 and 16-bit era ones, Alien Trilogy, Alien Resurrection (which I’ve still got for the PS1), and even the previous iterations of the AvP license. And yes, I even had the Jaguar version back in the day. None of them though, match the atmosphere and feel of the dank and gloomy colony like this new AvP does. The sound samples of the weapons and Alien screeches are spot on; and the franticness of the marine missions is perfectly pitched whilst the Alien missions capture the experience of actually being on the other side of the battle. I must, however, admit that I haven’t touched the Predator missions at the time of writing. I’ll get round to them, but I much prefer the other two characters.

I’ve re-read some of the reviews that appeared upon AvP’s release and I can’t help but feel that a lot of them are just a little harsh. The graphics are actually really good and the aforementioned sound effects are straight out of the movies. Sure, the Alien’s controls do get a little confusing in the heat of the moment, but they’re nothing a fully dextrous, sober (cough) human can't handle. Basically, what I’m saying is that if you’re a fan of the Alien films and/or canon, then you have to get hold of a copy of this game as it is the most authentic way to fully immerse yourself in the xenomorph mythos. Fuck the reviews, come get some. Furthermore, on the basis of AvP, I have spectacularly high hopes for Aliens: Colonial Marines, which I believe is out later this year. But don’t quote me. I’m often wrong, and this is no different.

Remaking or rebooting old games seems to be the ‘in’ thing at the moment though, and I have to say that the subject is one that definitely interests this particular gamer. I’ve just been looking at comparison shots of the new Ocarina of Time for the 3DS and the original game on the N64. Saying that the new shots look amazing is an understatement – the level of detail lavished upon familiar and well-trodden low-res haunts is heart-warming, and may even sway me towards actually investing in a 3DS. It looks that good, in my opinion. Another retro-ish game getting the upgrade treatment is Halo. It was the first thing I ever played on the Xbox and it was a truly great game. Having it re-mastered for the current console is a masterstroke. Screaming around that little tropical island on a Warthog blowing the fuck out of Covenenant grunts in full HD glory will be nothing short of orgasmic, you mark my words. Obviously, rebooting an old favourite doesn’t always go well, as we have seen with the recent release of the new Duke Nukem game. So, it’s not technically a reboot as it’s a whole new game, but I see that the reviews have been a little harsh on the Duke. To be fair, a lot of the critics have lambasted the game simply because they view the central character as an archaic womanising asshole rather than because it’s a poor game. Erm, wasn’t the original reason Duke shot to fame because he was an archaic womanising asshole?! If Duke Nukem Forever had been set in a sanitised suburbia and featured a suit-wearing family man in the title role, I’m sure the same hacks would be complaining about the dullness of it all. Pricks.

(Half) Marathon Man

2011-06-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

Took delivery of my latest piece of running-based tech yesterday - a Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS watch. You may recall that I previously owned a Garmin Forerunner 405 (or you may not. In which case – I did.), but had to sell it in order to pay my rent when I lived in that fucking weird house-share last year. Anyway, I got my new Garmin 110 yesterday and went for my first trial run with it (13.6 miles, just in case you wondered), and the verdict is thus: It’s every bit as good as the Forerunner 405, and happily (in my humble opinion) omits the slightly fiddly touch-sensitive bezel and questionable water resistance.

As you may be able to guess from the numbers in the title of the device, the 110 is marketed as a ‘lite’ version of the 405, and as such it boasts fewer features (for one, it doesn’t support wireless data transfer to the PC software suite that collects your activity records), but to be fair I never used the advanced features of the 405 anyway. For me, the important factors of any run are covered: time taken, distance covered and speed. Don’t personally need any more than that to be fair. I’ve not updated this blog for a while (well, prior to last week) so you won’t know (or care) that I’ve been keeping on top of my running and even took part in last month’s Plymouth half marathon. According to the official timing website, I completed the 13 mile course in 1 hour and 31 mins, coming in 200th out of about 6000 runners. Which suits me fine, considering it was my first competitive run/race. I think the actual winner did it in 1 hour 5 mins, so I’m more than happy with my time. I can see why people get so addicted to doing those kind of events though, as even though I’ve done much longer road runs on my own, the sense of achievement when you cross the finish with a large crowd cheering is amazing. As a result, I’m also doing the Bristol half marathon in September and there are a few 10k runs I’m looking at entering between now and then.

On a slightly different note, last night I looked at the records from when I had the Forerunner 405. I only owned the thing for 5 months, but I appear to have run, jogged and staggered a grand total of 741 miles during that period. No wonder I fucked my leg up...

In other news: Wii U. Why? I know I said the same thing about the iPad when it came out, but for fuck sake Nintendo - who exactly is the Wii U meant to be aimed at? They're taking a console that alienated the hardcore Nintendo fans and then complicating it. I don't know about anyone else, but when I saw the promo videos for it, it just looked like too much hard work. What, by the way, is wrong with just having a normal console with a normal joypad that connects to your TV? Pfft. I already know I won't be bothering with the Wii U and it's not even out for another year or so.

Call me a morbid, depressing, nay-saying cunt-hole if you want, but the Wii U just looks like a gimmicky waste of time that'll be fun for a few days and then just end up sat under the telly collecting dust. Like most of the Wiis various mates own.

Right. I'm off for a run. Or a brew. Probably a brew. Knackered.

A Brief Social Commentary

2011-06-11T01:44:00.000-07:00

Have a look at this:

It's a snap of a page from the Argos Catalogue mini pamphlet thing that fell out of the paper this morning. Look closely at the picture. Right there at the bottom, below the image of a wallet containing at least 20 quid and a load of credit cards, and below the price tag of £6.49, it says 'contents not included.'

Contents. Not. Included.

Argos obviously felt the need to include this helpful notice. Think about that for a moment. Quite scary, eh?

Assorted Stuff from the Ether

2011-06-10T01:20:00.000-07:00

Hello. It’s been ages since I’ve even thought about updating this shit. Mainly because no-one actually reads what I spunk out on here. But I’m a bit bored so I thought I might as well have a go at writing something to see if it makes any sense. To be fair, I’ve actually done quite a lot of interesting stuff since I last put anything on here (and looking down there at my previous entry, my amazing deduction skills tell me it’s been 9 months), so I may start updating again on a more regular basis just to boast about the exciting shit I’ve been up to. Maybe.

But anyway, here we are. I’m still in the employ of the navy, but hopefully not for very much longer. Why? Well, I’ve applied for voluntary redundancy. You may think this is madness in a time of recession, but I think I’ve definitely had my fill of being treated like an imbecile and living in ‘unsuitable’ conditions. I’m not one for being cryptic, so let me explain. When the powers that be in government decided to bin the Harriers and flog the Ark Royal for scrap, they also happened to shut down most of the Fleet Air Arm’s operations at several RAF bases around the country. As such, we had an influx of naval personnel sent back to Naval Air Stations. Where accommodation was already stretched. So the top brass decided that all junior rates should be taken out of single living accommodation and forced to double up – that is, cram two people into a room designed to house one. This might not sound like the end of the world, especially considering the cramped conditions people serving onboard ships have to live in, but when the only place you have to store all your belongings in suddenly has to accommodate the belongs of two people, you can imagine how crowded it gets. So yeah, along with hating my job, I now have to live in a cramped shoebox. With a bloke who snores so loud that the corpses in the graveyard at the back of the base probably have to wear earplugs every night.

To combat this, I have been sleeping on a couch in the mess square (basically a communal TV room), and it was during one such night a few months ago that I decided that I’d had enough of living like this, at nearly 30 years old. Doing a job I fucking hate, sleeping on a couch, living in the middle of nowhere and only getting to see my girlfriend at the weekend and never being able to go home to Manchester because it takes 5 hours to drive back there. So for me, the idea of taking voluntary redundancy has been a bit of a dream come true. People constantly ask “what are you going to do?” and I constantly reply “start living my fucking life again.”

So that’s the main thing going on at the moment – getting away from here, this job, this subservient lifestyle. Meh.

Got my car insurance renewal quote a few weeks ago. For some reason, the same company that last year demanded £550 for third party fire and theft cover wanted £2165 for the next. £2165 to insure the most undesirable car ever built?! To them I said “fuck you kindly,” and went on the hunt for a new insurance company. I eventually managed to get a quote of about £400 and I’m happy with it, but because I went on Compare the Finance Supermarket or whatever the fuck website it was, I’m now getting constant phone calls from dodgy insurance brokers asking me if I want a quote or, more worryingly, if I want to claim the accident I had recently. What fucking accident?! Has somebody stolen my identity and started having accidents? Sounds outlandish, I know, but there are shady fuckers around and they’ll stop at nothing to make a quick buck and bollocks to whoever’s life they screw up. Hypothetical cunts.

Also managed to acquire another Xbox360. Selling my old one cut me deep, but I had to in order to buy food or something. That was last year so since then, the only consoles I’ve been able to play have been my trusty old Dreamcast (respec’) and my crusty old PlayStation. But now I’m back in the game (excuse the piss-poor pun), but not without a bit of annoyance. You see, because I’m a cheapskate, I thought I’d go for a pre-owned Xbox 4GB from GAME. It was £139.99. And then a day later I saw that Argos were selling the exact same machine for about 10 quid more, but brand new. I then, after a few weeks of ownership, discovered that the 4GB hard drive fills up pretty quickly and have had to fork out for a hard drive that slots into the bottom of the console. That was another £30. So all in all, I would probably have been better off just buying a 250GB model in the first place. It’s not all bad though, as I now have a 250GB console, but in the preferred matte black, as opposed to the shiny, smear-prone actual 250GB. I’m confusing the hell out of myself now, so I feel for you, dear reader. The games I have bought thus far are such: Aliens v Predator, Alan Wake, Halo Reach, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Forza 3, Fight Night 3 and WRC and I must say that I am impressed with all of them so far (and looky over there at my gamertag thingy! It's automatically updated itself! The wonders of modern technology, eh?!). Not so much Fight Night, actually, but it was only a fiver so I can’t complain too much.

The last thing I want to announce, proudly, is that I have finally defeated my Facebook addiction. I decided one day a few months ago, to go cold turkey and totally deactivate my account. I thought I'd only be able to last a few days...but here I am, three months later and I don't even miss the cunting thing! So you see, it IS possible to exist without updating the world on when you're having a shit! WIN!

That’s enough from me for now. I’ll probably write some more words next week or something.

Bonjour

2010-09-18T03:27:00.000-07:00

Well bugger me! It's been a fair auld while hasn't it?! But hold your freakin' horses...I'm back! Back again to spin you amazing dits of derring-do and heroism the likes of which have never been seen. Or something outrageously similar.

Went to France last week. It was alright if I'm honest. Bit disappointed by the complete lack of anyone wearing a beret/stripy jumper combo or riding a bike with a baguette wrapped around their neck...but you can't have it all. But yeah - Paris. It's a cool city, but there's a distinct lack of 'normal' shops, y'know, like an Off Licence or whatever, just selling odds and ends, drinks and stuff: every shop you come across is either full of plastic Eiffel towers or is a brasserie. And do you know what a brasserie is? It's a cafe. Albeit one that will sell you a cup of coffee the size of a thimble and then charge you about 8 quid for the pleasure. Also, and at the risk of offending an entire culture, what's with the fucking tips? Every place you go in, there's a waiter who comes hovering over and making you feel uncomfortable while you try to smash your food in...and then you have to give him a tip for it. Gah! Just give me my food and go away! Ho hum.

Other Paris musings: the metro (underground) is always ridiculously busy...yet you get the odd carriage with a classical violinist playing in it. The cars drive the other way, so you spend your first few days trying not to get knocked over when you cross the road. There are people selling corn on the cob in the street...that they've just cooked in a shopping trolley with a BBQ in it. Fewer people than you'd think actually speak English.

Which was a bit of a shock to an ignorant English fuck like me. I suppose the French have every right to speak their own language in their own county...but Jesus does it make things difficult. Especially when you're staying in a hotel that makes Fawlty Towers look like the Malmaison and none of the staff can speak the Queens, or apparently understand the most basic of improvised sign language. Bloody foreigners. And yes...that was a fucking JOKE before you decide to write some pathetic complaining response in the comments section. I feel I have to include these disclaimers just to make sure anyone reading this doesn't report me to the FBI or something.

Going back to the holiday though, we (myself and my better half, naturally) managed to cram a hell of a lot into the 5 days we spent in Gaul. Some of the fine attractions and museums we visited included The Louvre (where we saw the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa), d'Orsay (where we saw some Van Gogh pictures), Le Orangerie (where some bloke called Monet had some pretty pictures of flowers hanging up), Conciergerie (a historic prison-thing), Montparnasse Tower, the Eiffel tower, a Seine river cruise, Notre Damme, Sacre Couer, Napoleon's Tomb, a museum about the army...and various other excrutiatingly cultured things. I reckon I ingested that much culture in those 5 days that I could get my own show on Radio 4 where I don't actually say anything - the culture just radiates from my inanimate body and out through the listener's speakers. Cough.

The best bit really though, was going to see a show at the world famous Moulin Rouge. It's true - the birds have their tits out the whole time...and there was some cool dancing too. In short, it was ace - and a special mention must go to the incredible juggler who was throwing about 20 clubs about at one point...whilst he walked around on his fecking knees! Awesome. And even more awesome was the way we were only meant to have a small bottle of champagne between us...but the staff fucked up and gave us a full-size one instead! Hehe!

Summat else in Paris that made me happy was this:

Yep, it's a white chocolate Twix. Why has this never been done before?! It's so beautifully simple, yet I've never seen one in a shop in dear old Blighty. And yes - it was simply divine.

Speaking of food, I spotted something in ASDA this week that registered on the opposite end of the edibility scale to the white chocolate Twix: The Crispwich. I took a pic of it on my trusty Palm Pre but I have no way of getting said snap onto the net at the moment so I'll just have to describe the horror to you: It's essentially two monstrously thick slices of buttered bread, entombed in a cardboard sandwich box along with a little bag of crisps. You build it yourself. You eat it. You feel dirty.

Other news: Proton. It's quite well known to those who...er...know me that I drive a Proton Impian, and if you check back through the archives of this very blog, you'll eventually come across a post where I go on about my experiences with said vehicle. I think it's a quality machine and have had no problems with it, other than people taking the piss. Last week though, I discovered that Proton actually had a team in the 2003 British Touring Car Championship. Here's a pic of their vehicle:

Yes! It's an Impian! And according to the little blurb I found on Wikipedia about the team, the vehicle was only a slightly modified version of the one I've got! So in your face, all you twats who take the piss out of my car!

Right, that's enough crap for one day. Only a few weeks left of this fucking horrendous job...and then I'm free! Woohoo!

Update: I've just washed my beloved Proton...and some cunt has traded some blue paint with it. Grrrr...

Bleary-eyed Musings

2010-08-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Well, it's 4am and I just thought I'd check in to spill my thoughts across the technological void. Just finished watching series 1 of Dexter - a US TV show/drama about a psychologically unhinged Miami forensics expert who also moonlights as a serial killer. And I have to say that it's one of the best shows I've had the pleasure of watching. Prior to Dexter, I was pretty engrossed in Fringe - a kind of next-gen X Files clone, but I got a bit bored of it towards the end of season 2 because it got a bit ridiculous and started throwing loads of random new characters in...and just got a bit boring. Same thing happened when I tried to get into series 1 of 24. I know everyone bleats on about how good 24 is, but I got to episode 15-ish (I think) and then got bored. Dexter, on the other hand, kept my attention all the way through. I borrowed the series 1 DVD box set off a friend last week and blasted through all 12 episodes in under 2 days and I'm seriously considering purchasing series 2 and 3 once I have sufficient funds. And for someone who never, ever buys DVDs, that's a strong indication of how good I thought the first series was.

Thinking about it, it's quite apparent that I do have something of an issue when it comes to sticking with things to the end. That's because it something doesn't really grab me, I switch off and let it fall to the wayside. And it's not just TV series - I do it with films too. Most movies follow some kind of formula and with the vast majority, I seem to be able to predict what's going to happen and then just switch off about three quarters of the way through. And then there are games too - I usually get a fair way into a game and then get bored and end up trading it in before I've even finished it. Why? who knows...but I guess I'm just one of those people who needs to be constantly shown something new for my attention to remain focused. Probably why I'm always complaining about being bored. Hmmm. Either that, or I'm just generally bored with my life at present. Yeah - it's most probably that, to be fair. Pfft.

Just looked at the little clock in the corner of the screen. It's 4.35am now. 2 hours to go before I can get the fuck out of this hideous little cell and go to bed. And fuck, do I need to get some sleep. The past 3 days have seen me go to bed at about 7am and then get up again at about 11 to go to the gym or some shit, but I know for a fact that today that simply isn't going to happen. I am absolutely fucked beyond belief and I reckon I'll spend the whole cunting day in my pit. The upside of that is that tonight I (hopefully) won't feel like a wet, crumpled newspaper; the downside is that when I awake I'll only have coming back here to this fucking horrendous cubicle to look forward to.

It's bad news when you hate your job as much as I do. You spend so much of your life at work that when you despise it this much, it has an adverse effect on your whole personality. Look at the facts. If you enjoy going to work, there's a damned good chance that you're likely to be a generally happy or upbeat person. Which is great. If, however, you see your job as some kind of punishment or prison sentence (as I do), and you spend every second that you're away from it dreading going back...then it's going to manifest itself in the form of a generally negative attitude. Hence my current, slightly melancholy outlook on life. Oh, to have a job I enjoy. Oh to have a job where there's someone to actually talk to or have a laugh with. Humph. I have had jobs in the past that I enjoyed, but they were mainly temp jobs and so by their very nature didn't last that long. One particular job I had was working in the reprographics department of a huge law firm in Manchester. The 'workshop' was in the basement of the office block and there was a team of about 5 of us down there basically photocopying documents etc. Sounds dull as fuck, I know, but in reality it was anything but. Normally, we would have to enlarge building plans etc and because the photocopiers were only able to enlarge up to a certain size, we sometimes had to do it by hand, using rulers and massive sheets of paper across the tables. It was actually quite good fun recreating massive scale copies of the documents and architectural plans, and the banter was brilliant, too. Ah...halcyon days! A far cry for the miserable and solitary existence I now lead. Tut.

This post has gone off on a bit of a random tangent (don't they all?!) and I'm bored now (see paragraph 2 for further information), so until the next time (probably 4am tomorrow morning)...adios.

The Week That Was

2010-08-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hola. It's been a week since I last updated and a fair bit has gone on. Well, a 'fair bit,' when compared to the usual amount of non-stuff that happens in my weeks away from this hallowed keyboard. Non-stuff. Hmmm. Could be a worthy entry in the Newspeak dictionary of 1984. Anyway, yeah - I've been away for a week but now I'm back grinding out the night shift for the next seven. Pfft. I can see myself getting to Wednesday before I start to hate all of humanity and the entire pantheon of creation on Earth, due to the cranium-destroying boredom and tiredness that is associated with my current post. Hopefully the vast collection of reading materials I have amassed will tide me over. Bit of Lovecraft, bit of Orwell...and maybe even a tiny little bit of Dan Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol, if I can prise it from a colleague's gnarled talons.

Went to a driving range on Monday. Was a bit elitist, being in deepest, darkest Dorset and all, and when me and my accomplice entered the club shop in order to collect some clubs/get some tokens for the ball machine (er...where you get the golf balls from) there was a sudden change in the courteousness of the old twat behind the counter. Probably because neither of us speak like we have broom handles wedged up our rectums and weren't wearing chinos and pink tank-tops. But nonetheless, we acquired some 'irons' and some balls and proceeded to smack them up a range for a good hour or so. Was quite a good laugh and I actually went again later in the week for round two. Probably won't make me want to dress up like a prize prick and take up the 'sport' proper, but visiting the driving range is something I might be tempted to do with more regularity after trialling it this past week.

Tuesday saw me take a trip out to visit a mate at his flat. We played on the Xbox for a bit and then, inevitably went to get a few cans of 'refreshment' from a local shop. This then turned into a load of other people turning up at his gaff and us both being coerced into visiting a local town for a few more 'quiet drinks.' It was a fairly uneventful night to be honest, and certainly didn't involve me relapsing and doing everything I poured scorn on in one of my recent posts - i.e. getting wankered and spending a shit load of cash on booze...although it did see me get twatted by a group of bouncers and then taken to the hospital for a head X-ray. I won't go into the details of the story but it involved me being refused entry to a bar, me trying to gain entrance, and then me being punched to the ground and having my head jumped on by several rather burly gentlemen clad in black bomber jackets. Police, ambulance, X-ray, yadda yadda yadda. I ended up with two black eyes, a broken nose and various other cuts and bruises...which I'll bet looked a treat here at work the following night when I covered a mate's shift on the Desk of Doom (TM). Quite brilliantly, my wounds seem to have healed with amazing rapidity and now, barely 5 days later, the only signs of my beating are a slightly bruised right eye and a scab on my elbow. Ain't the human body ace?!

Wednesday I recovered (a bit) and did the aforementioned night shift. Thursday I went to Lidl and gawped at the weird and wonderful foreign scran they sell there. Seriously, if the one nearest to me was closer than Tesco, I reckon it'd be my supermarket of choice. They've got all kinds of shit in there that you'd never get in ASDA or Tesco. And it's cheap as fuck too. May make an extra effort to get over there more often in the future.

On Friday I just chilled with one of my mates (who, incidentally has had my Dreamcast in his possession for the last two months, and has completed about 20 of my games...something I've not managed in 5 years of owning it), watched Roadhouse (yeah, that shit Patrick Swayze film), ate sausage & mash and just generally loafed about in a pit of filth. It was just like being back at university...but on a military base. Frankly, it was awesome - you've gotta love working over leave periods. But I digress. Went over to see my ladyfriend at the weekend and we indulged in various activities including a visit to an abandoned town called Tyneham. Tyneham, according to the various articles on the net, was cleared of it's population during WWII when the US Army set up a tank training range nearby. The people left all of their belongings there but never returned after the war, so there's this eerie abandoned village just there, slowly falling to bits in the middle of the countryside. It's pretty cool to see it all there and fully open for the public to wander around in. Some of the buildings (the Parish church and the school house) have been renovated and are like mini museums to the history of the town, but the rest of them are empty shells.

On Sunday, I was persuaded to go to the cinema and endure The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I was fully expecting it to be a complete load of shite...but I must admit to being fairly impressed. In case you have no idea what the fuck I'm on about, it's the new Nic Cage film and is about some young lad who is a descendant of Merlin and who is the last saviour of mankind. Fairly bog-standard stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, but there are a few laughs and some excellent magic-filled fight scenes. After that, I enjoyed an amazing Sunday roast (all 20,000 calories of it), and today I came back to reality. Which is where I now reside. And will continue to do so for the next seven nights...but it's not all face-shatteringly bad: I'm off to Paris in two weeks' time. And that will be superb.

So, 'till the next time I can be arsed to update: bonjour mi amigos. Or some shit.

Rotten Apples

2010-08-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

So my iPod has finally died. Well, semi-died. And I have to admit I'm slightly annoyed. It's an iPod Nano 5G - the one with the camera on it - and up until about two weeks ago it worked perfectly and I pretty much took it everywhere with me. It provided tunes in the car (via my slightly antiquated tape-deck adapter) and it provided the motivation I need when I go running. Alas, a few weeks ago it started playing up. Namely, the 'wheel' stopped registering commands and only worked intermittently when I tried to lower or raise the volume and then last week it just died on me altogether. It works fine when attached to the (expensive) dock/speaker thing I bought a few months back, but once it's disconnected it just shuts down and dies. I had a quick look around the iPod forums online and discovered that I'm clearly not the only person who has suffered from this rather infuriating iPod 'death' and it seems that the only way to remedy the problem is to send the thing off to Apple who will attempt to repair or replace the thing for an extortionate amount of money. And they can fuck right off. I've already spent £120 on the thing - I'm not paying to have it fixed when the fault is their...erm...fault! Apparently it's some kind of battery malfunction that stops the iPod from holding a charge, thus rendering it useless unless it is connected to a power source. Grrr. This is, infact, the third iPod I have owned and had go tits up on me. The first two were iPod Shuffles - a first (long and white) and a second (with a clip) generation. They both stopped working due to charging issues. Now this one, my third and most expensive one has also stopped working as it should due to charging issues. I'm seeing a developing trend here.

Here's another developing trend: I will never buy another Apple product for as long as I live. They've had enough of my cash for their products just to fuck up after a few months of moderate use. And to think that my first 'proper' job after I left University was working for an Apple-authorised dealer! Yes, I was a sales monkey at a Apple dealer in Manchester and my days usually consisted of demonstrating the (then) new Power Mac G5 to potential customers and trying to show people why they should go for an iMac instead of an eMac even though at home I had a PC and wouldn't have had anyMac (see what I did there?) even if they gave me one for free. Sure - they look nice...but what, exactly, can you do on them that you can't do on a PC for less money and with more support?! Pfft. Indeed, one of the managers was trying to persuade me to purchase a teeny weeny Powerbook through the staff finance system and as such let me borrow a brand new one for a few days. I got it home and unboxed it, marvelled at the tinyness of it with my housemates...and then it just sat there in my room until I took it back to work because all it had on it was the OS. Great fun.

We also had a load of those old skool iPods with the black and white screen and an actual 'wheel' that span round on the front instead of the fuck-up prone 'touch wheel' that the newer ones have. I bet those fuckers are still working now...unlike my Nano. It makes me want to fucking scream. As a result of Apple's crappiness, I'm having to use my Palm Pre in the gym or when I go running and even though it's pretty small as far as phones go, it's still like having a pebble in your pocket when you're out pounding pavement.

I've decided that as soon as I've got the cash, I'm going to just buy a normal MP3 player again. Sure, it won't be able to utilise the admittedly brilliant iTunes-based music transfer interface I know and love...but Apple - you've lost a customer here. I'll Probably just go down to Argos and pick up a mid-range Phillips or Creative player (or maybe another Sansa Clip, if they still make them), and hopefully it'll last longer than a few months. Gah...

Books and Boredom

2010-08-12T00:27:00.000-07:00

Hello there. Me again. Finished my book yesterday - Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. And what a book it is/was. It's an account of the trials and tribulations faced by the author as he tries to eek out a meagre living whilst looking for work in Paris, and then later living as a tramp in London in the late 1920s. Reading it, you'd be forgiven for thinking the book is a factual account of Orwell's personal experiences (indeed, I though it was), but upon researching the book on the net and looking at Orwell's biography, it appears that the tale is a work of fiction. Fiction based in fact, but fiction nonetheless. Which was a bit surprising considering the amount of detail Orwell goes in to when describing his various situations throughout the story. Fact or not though, the book is a fantastic read and you'd never guess it was Orwell's first proper novel if no-one told you. I was a little sad when I finished it - kind of like how I felt when I completed Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I played that fucker from start to finish in about 2 weeks whilst I was in the first year of my A Levels, and when I finally restored the land of Hyrule to it's former glory, I was gutted. Gutted because in the back of my mind a little voice was saying "now what?!"

So, while the various inhabitants of Kokiri Village and Hyrule Castle were engaging in an eternal dance of victory, muggins here was sat there wondering how the fuck he was going to continue to fill his evenings. And good as it was, I'm not the kind of person who completes a game, only to start again and repeat it. What's the point in that? You've already seen everything so why do it again? OK, so I didn't catch a massive fish in the hut on the shores of Lake Hylia...but who gives a fuck? Reminds me of Metal Gear Solid on the PSX. Yeah - it was a fucking incredible game...but do I really want to replay the entire thing just because Snake is now wearing a tuxedo? I think not.

But going back to Down and Out in Paris and London, I feel that it was such an amazing book and painted such vivid images in my head that I don't think I can read anything else for a few days. Just need to get over it's brilliance before I start on The Road to Wigan Pier. I've also got Animal Farm (as mentioned t'other day) and The Clergyman's Daughter to read, but I've never heard of the latter so may read that last. It seems that I've become slightly obsessed with George Orwell in recent months, but I suppose an obsession with a dead author and his work is more desirable and less destructive than an obsession with drugs, booze, prostitution, crime or vandalism...right?!

I also managed to get hold of some second hand HP Lovecraft short story collections when I was in Bath (love that place) a few weeks back, and I've already smashed through some of them. Slight deviation from Orwell, being horror and all, but they're very good. Noticed severe over use of the term 'waning' when describing the moon...but who am I to argue with the creator of Cthulu (pictured above, yesterday)?!

On a different note, I've started road running again. Went on a few lengthy runs at the start of last week whilst I was up in Manchester, but running through a city like that is fraught with perils - namely busy roads and bus stops crammed with people who simply refuse to get out of your way even though they can see you coming a mile away with your luminous yellow top on. Running in Somerset is somewhat more enjoyable (if running can be described thus) due to the quiet lanes, stunning scenery and over-powering stench of cow shit that wafts like a wraith across hill and dale. Well, maybe not the last point, but you get the idea. Been for three Somerset runs this week and will be embarking on my fourth today. I'll be doing it at dinner time just so I can get off this godawful base for an hour or so. Small pleasures.

Been thinking about my future over the past few weeks. Well, my employment future. I'm quite unhappy with my current job and can't decide whether to put my notice in or not. I really miss city life and wouldn't mind leaving the navy and going to live somewhere like Bristol and just working in an office or a shop or something. Sounds a bit dull, I know, but I really miss having some kind of stability in my life. As it is, I never know where I'm going to be from one month to the next - even now I have no idea how long I'm based in my current location so I simply can't make any plans or think about my future on a personal level. It's quite unsettling not to know where you're going to be in a year's time...which may be great if you're 19 and have no worries in the world...but when you're almost 30 and it's a little worrying. I've got no home, is what I'm getting at, and it's an awful feeling knowing that there's nowhere you can retreat to when things get a little stressful. Hmmm. Leaving the relative security of the services right now just because I don't like my current position may seem a little hasty, but that's just how I feel. My next draft may be fucking awesome and actually live up to everything I thought being in the navy would mean...but so far, I'm decidedly unimpressed with the lifestyle and the levels of abject boredom I'm privy to. Wouldn't mind working on an oil rig or something to be honest, but where does one start when trying to transfer into a career like that?! Something to think about, for sure.

Until next time, bitches!

Austerity Measures

2010-08-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Well here we are, only 10 days into the month of August and already I'm worrying about having no money. How? Well, it's down to my age old problem of going out on the piss and spending way, way too much money. It's something I do far too regularly for my own liking and it's got to fucking stop sooner rather than later. Here's the scenario: I go out on a Friday or Saturday night. I plan to spend a set amount, say £30, so I take it out of the cash machine before the evening begins. A few hours later and after several pints of lager or cider, I decide that I'm not drunk enough yet (I'm probably smashed already, I hasten to add) and then proceed back to the cash point and draw out another ridiculous sum of money. Cue more drinking, ridiculous behaviour and waking up in the morning with a massive hangover, feelings of regret and a gigantic hole in my bank balance. And this destructive cycle has happened not once or twice, but thrice this month so far. And I'm fucking sick of myself for it.

Granted, the nights out I've had have been pretty good, but this is besides the point. By the middle of the month, I don't want to be scabbling around in the dirt for enough money for some petrol, a loaf of bread or a day out. It's no way to live and after next month's trip to Paris (more later), it fucking ENDS.

The nights out? Well, the main one was a trip to Bristol that culminated in a stay in a backpacker's hostel. It was a really good night out to be fair and I always enjoy taking in the experience of an unfamiliar city, it's just that the excursion signalled the start of my week of unbridled spending. That was on the Friday. The Sunday saw me take a car trip up to Manchester and the petrol wasn't exactly cheap, and the following few days were a flurry of nights out, meals and trying to entertain myself while various friends and family members were at work. As a side note, I must stress that whenever I do go back home, I kind of feel obliged to go out with alarming regularity simply because I have various groups of friends that are totally unconnected and others who can never make agreed meetings due to working hours etc. I obviously feel honoured that people actually want to see me and make arrangements to do so...it's just that it all adds up price-wise. Which leads to my current and rather boring predicament.

Anyway, I'm back at work now and I fucking hate it, but what can one do? At least sitting here and writing this crap, worrying about what I've done and how I'm going to survive the rest of the month means I can't go out and blow the meagre sum I have left on ridiculous, wasteful and unessecary sheight. Urgh. Speaking of work though, I believe I only have around 5 months left in this truly hideous position before I am 'drafted' back into my actual, trained branch. I can't actually put into words how happy this makes me feel...but more about this (maybe) in a future post.

Anyway, must try to stay positive and learn from my mistakes. Although changing the habit of a lifetime will be tough. But tough it must be, or I'll never break this fucking horrendous cycle. I need to start saving, so that's what I'm gonna do instead of go out drinking and wasting money. You'll see. In exactly one year from this post, I'll tell you how much I've managed to save up. Mark my words.

Next week (Monday) I'm off to see the final show of Jimmy Carr's UK tour down in Weymouth with my lady. Actually really looking forward to it. I saw Frankie Boyle live in Bournemouth a few months back and he was brilliant so I'm expecting similar things from Carr. Well, he's pretty funny on TV so I'm guessing it'll be more of the same at his live show, right?! Knowing my luck though, Jimmy Carr will fall ill the day before the show and we'll have to endure an hour and a half of Lenny Henry instead as a back-up act. A man so unfunny he makes cancer look like Shooting Stars.

Random interlude: I had no idea Scott Mills, the Radio 1 DJ, is a big gay. I read it on this thing called the 'Pink List' on the Sunday Telegraph website when I logged on to the internet this morning. I thought it might have just meant he was a gay icon or some shit, but when I looked at his Wikipedia page, it confirmed that Mills came out in 2001 and now prefers the cock. He kept that quiet. Let me clarify that this in now way changes my opinion that the guy is the most tolerable of all the cunts who spout their shite on that godawful station, I just found it quite suprising. Probably won't listen to him anymore, like, but hey. And for those who can't tell - that was a JOKE. Not the gay bit...the not listening bit...erm...

Cough. Anyway.

Decided to smash though all of George Orwell's back catalogue after reading his classic 1985 last week. I've already read Animal Farm and bits of The Road to Wigan Pier, but that was years ago so I'm starting again. This time, however, I'm starting with Down and Out in Paris and London....something I'm likely to be next month if I don't try my damnedest to save some of the remnants of this month's wage to supplement my/our jaunt to the French capital at the beginning of September.

Nights into Dreams

2010-07-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

Something is wrong. I finished my shift at 0630 this morning and only managed to get about 2 and a half hours sleep before I had to get up again...and I've been up since then (and been to the gym. And Tesco. And Gamestation), but yet I don't feel even slightly tired. True, I've had about 15 cups of coffee today, but still - I should surely be feeling some kind of lethargy. Maybe it'll kick in at 3am and I'll get court-martialled for falling asleep on duty. Ah well.

As I mentioned just a few sentences ago, this afternoon saw me venture to Gamestation with all of my 360 games with a view to swapping them for something I'll actually play. Previous hopes of getting a good trade-in value for Modern Warfare 2 didn't come to fruition though, as the cunts would only give me £18.50 for six (yes - SIX) games. They were: Fifa 09, Fifa 10, Modern Warfare 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla and Project Gotham 3. I left with Lost Planet 2 and Project Gotham 4. Doesn't really add up thet - especially considering that I also had to pay an extra fiver. But hey. Fresh games come at a price.

Not played PGR 4 yet, but Lost Planet 2 appears to be quite a good shooter in which you get to run around a jungle shooting massive aliens with massive guns. I'll post more in-depth thoughts on it when I've played more than the first few chapters, but initial impressions are positive.

Speaking of jungles, guns and aliens - I went to see Predators last week. Wish I hadn't bothered. That's because it's a nonsensical load of old bilge. Sure - it's better than both of the AvP movies (fuck, eating dog shit is more enjoyable than either of those celluloid carbuncles), but there are so many "eh?!" moments peppered throughout the film that I left with more questions than answers as to what the fuck was going on. OK - I get the basic premise: humans are dropped onto an alien world and then hunted by the Predators...but why is that other Predator strung up on that totem pole thing? And why do the 'dog' things disappear halfway through? And why is Lawrence Fishburn a big fat cunt if he's been living off the land and fighting Predators for so long? And what's with all the half-assed pseudo references to the first film? See where I'm going with this? Basically, I didn't like it. It wasn't a complete disaster (see AvP Requiem for that), but it was well below par in my humble opinion. I just hope the rumoured Aliens prequels end up being semi-decent, or I'm giving up on both franchises.

I might go and watch Inception next week as it's one film I've been looking forward to for some time. That, and Di Caprio's movies are generally quite good. In fact, most of the films I've seen with him in have been pretty damn decent: The Aviator, The Beach, The Departed, Catch Me If You Can...the list goes on. Hopefully Inception will be added to that list, and if the reviews are anything to go by, it won't disappoint. The only slight issue I have with the concept of the movie is thus: all of the 'dream' clips I've seen tend to be set in real-word locations like cities or hotel corridors etc. How often do actual dreams resemble anything like real life? Sure, some do, but the vast majority of my dreams (well, the ones I can remember) seem to take place either in completely unrealistic places or just 'nowhere' and don't actually have a narrative or logical sequence of events. OK- maybe having dream sequences in a film where a frying pan just floats about in front of a rainbow wouldn't actually lend itself to any kind of decent or coherent storyline, but Hollywood always makes 'dreams' out to be totally legible things - not just a load of completely random bollocks...which is what the vast majority of mine are. Just thinking out loud, people.

Anyway. I'm off to heat up some ASDA Smart Price soup in the microwave. Now that's the stuff of dreams. Or is it nightmares?

Perplexions of a Dangerous Mind

2010-07-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

Howdy. Been off for the past week and couldn't be arsed writing owt. That, and it's been quite sunny so I've had no inclination to sit indoors on my laptop writing arse just for no fucker to read. But now I'm back for another week of the dreaded night shift, so blog away I will!

Just read on the BBC News website that PC Zone magazine is closing down in September. Seems that a lot of mags are being wound down at the moment because no-one is buying them. I'm not particularly fussed about PC Zone shutting it's doors as I've probably only read it once or twice (I've always been more of a PC Gamer kinda guy), but it's still sad that yet another mag is going to the wall. During my teenage years, my whole life was gaming - buying/swapping games, talking about games, arguing about games, fighting - yes, fighting - about games and reading/writing about games. I was obsessed with games and more to the point, games mags. I regularly bought about 3 or 4 of the things a month and still have the vast majority of them stacked up in a bedroom at my dad's gaff. There are hundreds of them and if someone with a sadder life than mine actually wanted to arrange them in date order (requests via email, peeps), you could probably see which console I had at the time due to the leanings in the purchased content.

I used to get CVG and Gamesmaster every month anyway, but along with those I bought stuff like Mean Machines Sega, Saturn Power, Official Saturn Mag, N64 Magazine, DC-UK, Dreamcast Magazine etc. Because of the mags, It soon came about that I started to think that maybe I could become a games journalist and began writing reviews for a local newspaper (South Manchester Area News...anyone know if it's still going?!). I did that for about 2 years all in all and got paid £20 per article...which was a fair old bit for a tramp like me back then. As usual, this isn't going anywhere - I just thought I'd regale you with a tale of Tomleecee of yore. A trampy, skint cunt who played too many computer games and wanted to write about them for a living. It didn't work out as I planned - I'm in the navy now. But who knows where I'll be in 20 years. I could be the editor of Edge by then. And if I am, I'll sack the whole editorial team and reform the team from Amiga Power circa 1994 and turn it into a decent, fun and entertaining periodical. Edge: taking the fun out of gaming since time began.

So yeah, PC Zone is no more. Which is sad. Sort of.

Did some volunteering last week. I've not suddenly become some kind of charitable avenger of justice - I just did it to avert my attention from the boredom of living in Hades (Somerset). The week before, I signed up with a volunteering website and then someone from the Council rang me a few days later...and viola - the following week I was building a gate in a field. Oh, and removing some graffiti from a fence. And pulling up weeds. It was a pretty good day to be honest and quite a good laugh. I may go back and help out again next week - it certainly beats walking around the town centre on my Jack Jones looking at crap in shops that I don't really want or need but am buying because my life is dull and void of interesting shit. Although, speaking of interesting shit - I'm going to Paris in September with my ladyfriend. Actually quite excited as I've never been to France before - hell, I've never organised a holiday before - so it's a whole new (grown-up(ish)) experience for me. Me - doing 'grown-up' shit. There's an oxymoron right there. Hmmm.

The hotel I've booked is pretty basic (and has received some horrendous reviews), but to be fair - I don't give a flying toss. I spent the early part of my life living in battered wives refuges and homeless families hostels so I'm sure I can handle sleeping in a basic-looking hotel for a week. Furthermore, I'm not going to be sitting in the fucking hotel 24 hours a day - I'm going to be out and about and revelling in the culture and hustle bustle of a 24-hour continental capital city. It's going to be about as far removed from fucking Yeovil as you can possibly get. And for that, I am truly, truly thankful. That's because - and I make no apologies whatsoever for the following statement - Yeovil is a boring cess-hole. But I digress.

Completed the single player campaign on Modern Warfare 2 today. I'm a bit perplexed. Y'see - I was just getting in to it...and then it ended. What a goddamn joke! And what a crap final scene! Sure - I'm happy to take back my previous comments about the game, but the ending is such an anti-climax. Bah! And what's all that shit with the museum thing at the end?! Bizarre. I'm going to take it to Gamestation this week and swap it for Alan Wake or Lost Planet 2. Hopefully they'll give me a decent trade-in amount for it as they've bumped the price of a new copy back up to £44.99...aaaand here I am talking about swapping games again. Old habits die hard, evidently.

I've got more stuff to write about, but I'm going to try and stretch it across the week. Because it gives me something to do when I'm at work, to be honest. Bye bye, me hearties.

Topical Thunder

2010-07-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

Imagine sitting in a tiny cell for 12 hours a day with nothing to do but constantly get up to hand ignorant fuckwits a key that they bark the number of as they walk through the door. Imagine doing that for seven days a week. Welcome to my hellish existence. And people wonder why I sometimes appear to be a miserable cunt. Yep, my job involves little more than what I have just described, only augmented with a liberal dose of boredom and a good dollop of feeling like a worthless bitch. So, the next time you may think your job is dull or maybe a little monotonous, spare a thought for me sat in this horrible, tungsten-lit nightmare...where every fucking day is exactly the same. Groundhog day ain't got shit on this...at least Bill Murray could kill himself in inventive ways, safe in the knowledge that he'd wake up again the next morning to the ambient chords of Sonny and Cher. Damn him and his fortune. Damn Bill Murray to hell.

Just seen an advert in the jobs section at the back of The Sun (the newspaper, not the heavenly body) that is advertising a position with a salary between £40k and £100k per annum. What is slightly bizarre though, is that it doesn't actually state what the job entails...just that you need your own car. I'm guessing for that kind of cash, it won't be delivering Grattan catalogues to council houses in Merseyside. Saying that, it could be delivering catalogues to houses in Newcastle - the massive wages coming in the form of danger money, what with that nutter running about with a shotgun up there. Topical and humourous? That'll be me. Guffaw.

It's 'Air Day' this weekend at the base that I'm currently calling 'home.' What this means is that the airfield will be opened up to thousands of plane-spotting geeks and their spoilt, bratty, posh children so that they can wander around taking photographs of old planes and marvel at the Vulcan bomber as it soars overhead burning thousands of pounds worth of aviation fuel every few minutes. Not that I'm all about berating the Vulcan. I've seen it flying a few times at various airshows I worked at whilst I was a recruiter, and it's a pretty impressive sight. I'm just being a moany biatch because I hate my job (see paragraph one, above). That's enough cock and bull for one day. See you next time for more of the same. Bye!

Minimal Pretention

2010-07-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

Hello. You must excuse my absence from bloggage...it's just that nowt has really been happening that I thought anyone would want to read about. Saying that - does anyone actually blog about stuff anyone else wants to read about? The answer is: NO. I've been looking at some other blogs on blogger, and the vast majority are complete and utter arse. I'm not saying that the shit I write on here is any less arse, but at least I fucking know that what I compose comes under that heading. I can't actually explain why I get so riled up about this, but blogs with stupid, in-jokey names and have posts about the most mundane crap written in some kind of obtuse manner in order to make the author appear to be a troubled literary genius...well, they fuck me right off. Don't use long words where you can use a short one, dickhead, because contrary to what you may think, it actually just makes you look like a fucking cunt. Oh, and you're not a troubled genius - you're a pathetic amoeba scrawling excrement all over the internet and nobody cares what it is you're scrawling, big words included. So there. And my dad could beat up your dad, too.

As an experiment, go to the top of this page and click 'next blog' or whatever it is in the blogger navigation bar thingy. Chances are, the next blog will be some minimalist bullshit with a little entry written about raindrops on a window with a sultry image of the author holding a rose. FUCK OFF! I wouldn't mind if it was meant to be a joke or something, but the vast majority aren't! Aaaaargh!

Anyhow. Now I've got that off my chest...what else? Went and watched Shrek Forever After the other day with 'er indoors. A word of advice: never go to watch a kid's film at 6pm. Because, invariably, the theatre will be full of...erm...kids. As this one was. Fucking thousands of the little cunts. All screeching and whooping and cackling at the screen. Now, I realise that what I'm saying here is making me sound like Victor Meldrew...but fuck it - I don't give a toss. The film was pretty good...the surroundings slightly annoying due to having to strain to hear the film over all the prepubescent hollering. Furthermore, when we emerged from the cinema, I managed to fall down the steps and land on my back like a complete retard. Winner!

The day after, I went down to Plymouth and got hammered. Which was all well and good...except the drive 'home' on Sunday was slightly emotional due to the fact that I kept (almost) nodding off at the wheel of the inglorious Proton. I stopped a few times in order to get it together, but it was no use - I just had to power through. Got back in one piece though, so it's all good.

Look, I told you there was fuck all interesting happening at the moment.

Another rant though: Facebook. Again.

Right, on my phone (Palm Pre), I used to be able to access three different versions of Facebook: The official Palm 'app,' the official Facebook 'touch' site, and the actual proper version of Facebook that you get on your PC. Now, for some reason I can no longer access the proper version of the site, just the two cut-down 'mobile' sites. These are all well and good for updating statuses etc, but they are too basic to do anything else...you can't view photos without the thing locking up, you can't view photo comments, you can't actually do anything of any real use...in short, it's fucking useless. The thing is, somehow, the powers that be at Facebook have engineered it so that you can no longer access the full site, even if you put the normal url into the address bar...it just reverts to the 'touch' version. Why? WHY?! Fucking arseholes.

I'm off to look at some more pretentious blogs with stupid names. Adios!

A Thousand Words

2010-06-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

Have a look at these two pictures:

Do I really need to say anything? Well yes - I do, actually. That first picture...why did the artist see fit to include the broken pots on the right? There's a naked guy with a face in his chest wandering around - surely anything else in the picture is purely academic? And the bottom one...what the fuck?! Jesus after a car crash? No - apparently these two creations are actual mythical (oxymoronic) 'beasts' from cultures around the world. I don't know about you, but a guy running about with backwards legs is hardly the stuff of my nightmares...but hey. Who am I to argue with shit cultures from foreign lands?

Speaking of foreign lands, Jamaican rozzers have arrested a 'suspected' drug lord who goes by the name of Christopher Coke. Could his his name be any more apt?! Chandler mode de-activated. I'm bored, by the way. Just so you know. I was going to do a post about how much I hate my job and how shit everything is, but what's the point? Every cunt thinks I'm a moaning twat anyway, so why fuel their bonfire by confirming it through well-written, humorous, Booker Prize-worthy prose? They can suck my 12ft cock, to be sure. To be sure.

Hurry up and get here, Sunday night. You herald my release from this work-based prison of boredom and my one-way ticket to drunken buffoonery. Can't wait!

EDIT: I deleted the top picture because I was accused of being rude. There are some fucking assholes on the internet aren't there? The artist probably only realised I'd posted it here because they Googled their own name or some shit. Tragic twat.

Small Pleasures

2010-06-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

Life is full of small pleasures. From the sound of cartoon bluebirds tweeting outside the window every morning, to the smell of freshly cut grass and sizzling bacon. Some may also cite the tarring and feathering of a black person in this category, but I don't, as such an activity being carried out by myself would probably make me some kind of racial hypocrite. But I digress.

Today, I discovered a new small pleasure:

Yep, it's Original Source Mint & Tea Tree shower gel. What's so great about shower gel, you may be thinking. Well, apart from the divine menthol fragrance that eminates from the dark green slurry once it is ejaculated from it's plastic prison, Original Source Mint & Tea Tree has a little trick up it's sleeve (?). When one applies said gel to one's scrotal region, the sensation can only be described as 'pleasurable,' and I'm also reliably informed that if you shave your bean bag prior to applying a lather, the experience is magnified thrice-fold. Guess what I'll be doing next time I visit the shower. No, not that - you filthy fuck.

But don't take my word for it, people: in the immortal words of Art Attack's Neil Buchanan (above left, in the shower, yesterday) - "try it yourself!"

Wonder what would happen if a female experimented with the stuff. Hmmm. Answers in the comments box, please.

In a slight change to the tone of this post (it was getting a bit on the perverted side - I know), I've recently learnt of Nintendo's successor to the Nintendo DS, the imaginatively monikered Nintendo 3DS. Who the fuck comes up with Nintendo's hardware names? OK, Wii is a departure from the norm, but the vast majority of their consoles have been pretty obviously named: Nintendo 64 was a Nintendo console with a 64-bit architecture; Gamecube was a cube that...er...played games; DS had Dual Screens etc etc etc. So, with the 3DS...you get, well, a 3D screen! You read that shit right, Sherlock - it's a Nintendo DS-style contraption that plays games in 3D...but without the need for 3D specs! I know it sounds mental and hard to believe, but according to the various reports that have come out of this year's E3 convention, the technology is pretty darn special-looking.

Here's what one looks like:

So yeah, you can see the similarity with the DS but it's the specs-less 3D technology I'm excited about. And it's not crappy old red & black pseudo-3D like you got with the Virtual Boy (I actually owned one of those, back in the day...and it was shite); it's genuine, full-colour, Avatar-esque 3D...BUT WITHOUT GLASSES! This kind of shit is what I used to dream about when I was a nipper...and now it's real! Also, a lot of the launch titles seem to be re-releases of old N64 games but re-invented with 3D imagery in mind. This shit makes me want to rub more Mint Source on my balls right now, and make no mistake. I want 3D Mario Kart, and I want it right fucking now, Nintendo.

I've honestly not been as excited about getting my hands on a new piece of gaming kit since I saw the first fuzzy, low-res screens of Super Mario 64 in CVG Magazine back in 1995. I was always more of a Sega/Sonic man when it came to allegiances, but as soon as I saw Mario in 3D, I knew I had to have it and an Ultra 64, as it was still known as then. That's what it feels like now. Call me sad if you want - yes, I'm 28 and I'm getting a boner for a fucking games console...but FUCK YOU! I don't care! Nintendo 3DS - you will be mine, oh yes...you will be mine.

Right, I'm off for a shower. Peace out, ma bitches.

Clutter Snipe

2010-06-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit of a miserable cunt recently and I've let a few things get out of hand, so what I propose to do from now on is try to keep myself busy to take my mind off all the less appealing events that have been going on recently. So, the first things I intend to do are finally have a good auld fucking tidy up. You may remember how I waxed about being evicted from my house-share a few weeks ago via text message. Well, since then, I haven't actually unpacked any of my belongings or clothes - I've just thrown them into a big cupboard in my room and left it all in a big heap, leaving me rummaging around for items of clothing whenever I need them. Not an ideal situation by any means, so I need to sort the detritus out and put it in some kind of order.

On the subject of my recent eviction, once I had got back to my previous (or is that current?) dwelling, I noticed that I was slightly lighter on clothing than I thought I should have been. After a quick call to one of my previous housemates, I discovered that I'd left a load of clothes in some draws in my old bedroom. Shortly after this call, the cowardly bastard of a landlord texted me to tell me he was leaving my clothes in a bin bag outside the back door on the following Sunday. Fucking charming behaviour for a middle aged, apparently professional adult, eh? What a cock (sucker). Hope him and his live-in closet boyfriend go on to be very happy in their own little version of Narnia.

I also need to tackle the obscenely scruffy article that is my car. Since I used it to move all my shizzle from the house of a thousand pillow-screams, It's become something of a shit-tip. Food wrappers, empty bottles, old shoe boxes (?) - it is just full of crap. It needs a damn good internal clear out and a good scrub on the outside too. It shall be returned to it's former glory and regain the crown of best mid-range family saloon driven by a family-less bloke in the South West...you mark my words.

So what else has been happening? Well, it looks as though my time as a glorified security guard/boredom researcher is coming to an end - and thank fuck. I can honestly say that the last 6 - 7 months (of my employ, naturally) have been pretty damned dire. Overall though, said months have been pretty interesting and, let's say, 'character building.' Sometimes, random sequences of events pepper your life and they can leave you head-fucked and completely at a loss as to who you are, where you're going or where you've even been. My sequence of events, I'm sure, have been going on for a few years now, but I just need to re-address how I'm looking at things and move on. So that's what I'm doing. If not physically, certainly in an emotional sense. And the first thing I'm going to do is sort my clutter out.

Insomnia

2010-06-15T21:25:00.000-07:00

Christ. Feel like I'm some kind of ethereal trance as, for some reason, I haven't been able to sleep for the past few days. I'm currently working nights (that is, from 6.30pm through the wee hours up until 6.30am), so as soon as I finish my shift I try to get my head down. However, due to some fucked-up disorder (or whatever it could be described as), I'm finding it very difficult to drift off to slumberland during the daylight hours. Makes me kind of glad I don't live in Alaska or wherever it is that the sun doesn't set for 6 months. Perpetual daylight would no doubt inevitably lead to my premature death through obscene tiredness and exhaustion. On the flip-side, living in such a location would also mean 6 months of perpetual shadow, meaning I would probably have to go into hibernation like some kind of bear/human hybrid. I'd gladly take that though, if it meant I could evolve massive Grizzly-style claws with which to gouge out the eyes and throats of my enemies.

But yeah - back to reality, and here I am - bleary eyed, feeling light-headed and fuzzy and oh so tired...but without the physical means to actually go to sleep. Could this be the fabled insomnia? Whatever it is, I'm going to invest in some sleeping tablets if this crap doesn't sort itself out over the next 24hrs.

I'll keep you pos...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Excursions

2010-06-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

Hello there. Been an odd couple of weeks for me, and I've been all over the place so not really had the time or the inclination to post any of my usual brand of shite on here. I'm back at work for the next two weeks though, so I should be spilling my mind onto the tinterwebs with alarming regularity over the next couple of (well, 14) days. So what's been occurring then?

Well, last week I ventured out of the south and headed back up to the Great Industrial North (tm) for a week of head-clearing, reflection and relaxation. Inevitably though, it just ended up being a bit of piss-up that lasted for 5 days. I had every intention of going up there to just chill out and get some good running and cycling done, but due to recent events my mood was slightly awry and this was perceived by most of my friends and family (Gawd bless 'em all) as "let's get him pissed to cheer him up." It kind of worked for the most part, and I had an enjoyable time (more later), but I still just couldn't help but go over the events in my personal life over and over and over...ad nausea. Which was shite.

However, apart from get monumentally bollocksed, I did partake in some decent activities. I went up to Jodrell Bank space telescope in Cheshire with my cousin after enquiring with a former housemate (who now works there) as to whether there was a visitor's centre. He enthusiastically informed me that there was a 'small' one there. So me and cousin ventured out to the place...only to discover that the 'small' visitor's centre (that also charged a £2 entry fee), was little more than a room with a few pictures and an extortionately expensive cafe. Unimpressive is the least offensive word that I can use to describe said vistor's centre. The telescope itself, however, is a real feat of engineering - the thing is fucking hur-uge, and it can rotate on a massive track-type job. It did actually move at one point, and it makes you think why it was moving and what the bods in charge were looking at/for. As a side note, I remember that when my former housemate (who was studying for a PhD in Astrophysics at the time) hooked up his bedroom PC to Jodrell Bank's through the internet, all that came up on the screen were rows upon rows of numbers etc. Not what I had in mind when I thought about telescopes...although it is a radio telescope so assuming that there'd be big pictures of nebulae and shit on the guy's computer screen does seem a little on the naive side when I actually think about it!

Also at Jodrell, there were these things called 'the whispering dishes,' which are these two big green...er...dishes facing each other and are spaced about 200 yards apart. If you stand in front of one and whisper into it, the person standing in front of the other one can hear your voice as clear as a bell. Fuck knows how it all works, but I would hazard a guess that it's got something to do with acoustics or something. Still, a brilliant little curiosity and unlike the crappy visitor's centre, they were free to marvel at.

After Jodrell Bank had offered up all (well, both of) it's wonders, I took a trip to Stockport to see a mate who I've not seen for about 2 years (which, as you've probably predicted, turned into a visit to the pub). This event was tinged with regret though, as it saw me break my year-long, self-imposed ban on the consumption of the donner kebab. Look - It was late, I was pissed and I hadn't eaten all day. I was attracted to the bright lights of the kebab outlet like a moth to a flame...and the rest is history. I have to say that after I'd consumed it, I felt disturbingly horrible. Greasy and disgusting, in fact. I toyed with the idea of trying to wretch the fucker up into some bushes, but there were a load of boy racers watching me from their hideously coloured and 'tuned' Vauxhall Corsas in a supermarket car park across the road.

The week also saw me take a train ride to Southport, which is a little seaside town just down the coast from Blackpool. It's quite a decent place, but you can tell that it's a shadow of it's former self (thanks Resident Evil for that quote - I use it more often than I should). There is a fun fair like the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool, but it's been closed for a while and there are umpteen closed down food stalls and arcades along the seafront. It's quite sad, really, as you can see that the whole place is slowly dying off - maybe it's down to the recession, or maybe just down to the fact that Blackpool is just up the road (you can see the tower and the Bog One roller coaster from the beach at Southport), but it's still quite eerie when you walk past the closed rides and empty pier. On the plus side, we did stop for a pint at the world's smallest pub (they've even got a plaque on the wall that was issued by the Guinness records people) and also got some proper fish and chips that was devoured with gusto on the sea front.

On Thursday, I finally got to speak to my sister and see her baby girl (my niece, obviously). She's a big old unit considering she's only 8-ish months old and I was scared shitless of dropping her, so declined the offer of carrying her. Added to this, she was probably wondering who the fuck I was and started to flap every time I got near her, but I eventually got the chance to have her sit on my lap...at which point she shat her nappy. Always nice. But yeah, seeing a real-life baby was cool. Which reminds me that my brother's baby is due in August, too. Mental. Gonna be an uncle for the second time in the space of a year!

So, it was fairly good week, and it was good to see so many people again who I've not seen for ages...and it only took me 4 hours to get back up there in the Proton (which is still going strong, for those who are interested). If only there hadn't been so much negative horse-shit going round in my head. Ah well. Maybe the shrink I'm off to see can suck it all out of my swede. If that doesn't work, I'm going to employ Mike Tyson to beat it out. Hmmm...!

Home Truths

2010-06-04T00:57:00.000-07:00

Why the fuck can't someone hurry up and invent a time machine? Preferably priced at £9.99? If such an item existed, I'd more than likely travel back to last weekend and change the course of my personal history drastically. As it is, I've lost my abode, lost a lot of self respect and am now on the verge of losing someone very dear to me...all through my own rash stupidity and bad behaviour. I suppose I'm just one of those people who has a self destructive gene. Hardly surprising when I sit back and actually think about my upbringing - most of which consisted of chaos, destruction, violence, women's refuges, homeless families hostels, fighting, violence...and, er, fighting.

Obviously, there was a bit of guidance away from this cycle in the latter part of my adolescence (hence my journey through college, university, umpteen jobs and now the military), but I can't help but feel that if I'd had a more 'normal' childhood (y'know - like not having your toys smashed up on Christmas day by your dad; or seeing your mum beaten up by her subsequent boyfriends) I wouldn't be anywhere near as melancholy or generally self pitying as I am now. Don't get me wrong - I don't walk round with a constant scowl adorning my face (infact, quite the opposite), I just seem to always manage to bring about the worst outcome in any given pseudo-negative scenario. Recent events have only proven to me that I need a drastic change of attitude, but how does one go about changing one's entire outlook on life, the universe and everything?

I have learnt through this past week though, that I must completely change my outlook if I am to change my attitude and subsequently my life, and just writing this is actually making me feel slightly better about recent events. Obviously I give more of a fuck about some of the past week's events than others, but without going into too much private detail (well any, actually), I also need to work out how to repair the damage I have done in certain areas of my life. I know this diatribe is a diversion from my usual rantings about O2, fucking ASDA Smart Price and the like, but it's been a while since I've felt so completely devastated and wracked with remorse over my actions, and I just wanted to vent.

On the flip side of this though, the rational, intelligent Tomleecee is whispering in my ear. You can't please everyone, is what he's saying. And you know - I think he's got a point.

Come back next week and I'm sure I'll be back to my usual crap, regaling with tales of drunken derring-do and bargainous gadgets that I've managed to beg, steal or borrow...but for now, I'm in a slightly pensive mood.

Audacity

2010-06-01T05:06:00.001-07:00

Just spotted some adverts in the newspaper for O2 (spit) broadband. These adverts ask the reader to meet the 'No Support-A-Saurus;' a shitly designed cartoon monster who apparently represents useless, ignorant, condescending customer support call-handlers:

One of the ads goes on to say 'If you're tired of his gibberish, why not give us a call?'

Surely the dictionary definition of irony? Either that or a very bad joke.

Guess What?

2010-05-31T23:14:00.000-07:00

Its raining and I just ate some crisps. However...

Don't usually talk about current affairs on here because, well, I don't want to - but what the fuck is going on with Israel? Boarding aid ships full of civilians and blasting the hell out of them? That ain't on, seriously. Can you imagine if British forces did that? or French or German? Hell, forces from ANY supposedly 'developed' country? No, me neither. Those fuckers seriously need to be dealt with by the international community. A nation that allows it's special forces to board an AID SHIP full of unarmed CIVILIANS and then shoot a load of them, is a nation that could potentially cause problems of the mushroom cloud-shaped variety, if you catch my (radioactive) drift. Anyway, that's enough about pseudo-interesting news items - lets discuss ME. That's me, by the way, not M.E., just so we're clear.

Really need to sort my shit out. Not literally, you understand - I'm not implying that I need to take a dump into a petri dish and have a rummage around with a scalpel/breadstick - no, I mean I need to actually unpack all my belongings and get my current (albeit hopefully temporary) abode in some kind of order. Since I moved last week I haven't had the inclination or the willpower to get up off my arse and get all of my crap out of my myriad suitcases and put it all away. Ergo, my room looks like the kids' bedroom from Poltergeist after the little girl gets sucked into the telly. But fuck it, that shit can wait. I have more pressing matters to attend to - namely Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Now, I know that I lambasted this game upon it's (in my honest yet humble opinion) over-hyped release, but I finally bit the bullet on Sunday and bought it. It was reduced to £22 in CEX (used) because Gamestation has recently reduced the price of a new copy to £25, so I just thought "why not?"

And yeah, I have to concede I may have been a little hasty in my slagging of the game, as from what I've seen so far, it's a quality piece of software. Granted, I only managed to get up to the infamous Airport mission, where you have to mow down scores of innocent civilians in the terminal with a massive great gun (Israeli military training aid, perhaps?) before I had to retire to my pit, but yeah - I'm suitably impressed. Great graphics, brilliant shoot-outs, baffling storyline - it has it all. Don't know if I'd have been as impressed if I'd shelled out 50 notes for it like some knobs did, but what you gonna do?

Went for another run last night. It was pretty balmy and my balls kept squashing out of the side of the lycra boxers I was wearing under my shorts, but it felt good to be running the old routes again. Somerset - even though I think most of the towns are chav-infested shitholes with fuck all going for them - has some beautiful countryside, and for this reason I find running round here more of a pleasure than a hindrance. I'm also going to join a proper running club and start entering runs etc, just to keep me busy. And with any luck, my fucking knees will hold out permanently this time.

Anyway, that's enough inane bullshit for one morning. Might check in later with some more. Peace, bitches.

Living and Learning

2010-05-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

Well. How the devil art thou? It's been a long time since I updated this little baby hasn't it? A month and a day if I'm not mistaken, and rather shockingly, quite a bit has happened in my social-wraith-like existence.

Went camping in South Wales during the second weekend of May. I went with my better half to the idyllic, shining beacon of industry known as Swansea...and it rained. It wasn't actually Swansea town centre that we camped in - it was a place called Clyne, a bit further down the coast, and had it been as sunny as it was when I decided to book the campsite, I wager it would have been a pretty spectacular weekend away. As it was, we got there on the Friday evening and had a little BBQ in the brief spell of sunshine that the Gods granted us...before the heavens opened and unleashed Dante's vision of Hell upon the campsite. And there said vision presided - through the night, into the Saturday and then on into Saturday night. The weather was, happily, the only shite thing about our little excursion. We had a nice walk into the town centre, ate a fucking enormous meal in a pub, and walked around some ornamental gardens. All in all, a rather enjoyable weekend. Shame the tent was fucking tiny and the rain came through in one corner, but you can't have it all.

Which is pretty fucking weird, considering the weather has been pretty damn fine throughout most of the rest of the month. Ah well. Speaking of the fine weather, I have made the most of it by resuming my running. My knee has finally decided to stop pissing me about and sorted it's act out. So no more ridiculous pains and no more painful feet when out pounding pavement. I, as previously documented at great length, had reverted to using a cross-trainer to get my exercise done whilst my knee was out of action, but in recent weeks it seems to have fully recovered and as such I'm back out in the wilderness again. Not to the excessive levels I was previously, you understand, but out there nonetheless. As such, last week I bought some new running trainers: Saucony are back in my life.

Saucony are, without a shadow of a doubt, the best running trainers I have ever used. I was previously wearing Nike, and the physio I was seeing advised that I get some dedicated running footwear in order to lessen the effects of my injury. Alas, I couldn't afford any new trainers at the time and that's where my love affair with the cross-trainer began. Last week though, I pooped into the new TK Maxx store in Weymouth and spotted a pair of (gasp!) size 9 Saucony Grid running trainers for the meagre sum of £29.99 wedged in between the hideous bright blue pairs of Converse basketball shoes (who the fuck buys those?!). As soon as I spotted them, I knew they had to be mine...so I handed over the card and purchased them. And as predicted, they are every bit as comfortable as both of my previous pairs - the first of which fell apart after so much use; and the second which shrank after I washed them and tried to dry them on the radiator (as previously documented here, on this very blog folks).

Also been doing a bit of reading. After the marvellous Frankenstein, I have acquired a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and it is superb. Far better than the film adaptation, but then that's to be expected these days. Not finished it yet, but getting there.

Remember how I was going on a few months ago about trying to find somewhere to live and then deliberating about how I was thinking of moving out? Well, the decision was made for me earlier this week by my landlord: I was evicted via text message. Seriously. The reasons are still a little cloudy, but the story leading up to the aforementioned text message are as follows.

On Sunday last, my dad and cousin ventured down from Manchester to visit me in my shared house for a few days. I had previously asked the (live-in) landlord if this was OK, and he was quite enthusiastic and had said it was fine - they could use the spare room. He even went to the trouble of making up beds etc. Which was very good of him. When my guests arrived on Sunday evening, I had already arranged a bit of a BBQ for them and a few beers in the extensive garden, and also strategically arranged the seating etc in an area as far away from the occupied bedroom windows as I could in order to a) prevent smoke going into open windows from the BBQ; and b) prevent anyone being bothered by noise. Furthermore, I invited several of my housemates to come and join us. None of them did, but the landlord and his partner (he's gay) came out to chat with us for a while. It was all fine, up until half eleven that night when the previously jovial landlord came storming out of the house in his dressing gown to tell us, quite abruptly to shut up and keep the noise down. It was news to us that we had been making an inordinate amount of noise, but with that we decided to call it a night and went to bed after tidying up our mess. The next morning, I spoke to him (the landlord) and apologised for the 'noise' and that was the end of it...or so I thought.

That same night, after being out of the house all day showing my old man and cousin around the town and the beaches etc, we went back to the house end ended up sat outside again, as we had the previous evening. Not long after we had got back, one of my housemates appeared with his girlfriend, a crate of Budweiser and a bottle of vodka. Cue much merry making, but in greatly hushed tones due to the previous night's chastisement. We finally retired at around 2am, making sure as not to disturb any of the other people in the house. And so the night was done. Until the following morning, at about 8am when the landlord decided to boot my bedroom door open (while I was still asleep and thus waking me up), and go into a raving tantrum about how we'd kept him up all night with our 'yapping' and how we'd left the garden looking like we'd had a 'festival.' Don't know how many festivals the tit has been to, but if any of them looked like how we'd left the garden, they must've been pretty shit.

I got up, went downstairs and tidied up the beer bottles and ashtrays that had been left on the table. It was done in under 3 minutes - just to illustrate the scale of the debris. Landlord then flounced off to work. After this (and after also, unbeknown to me, being rude to my dad and cousin), neither of my guests wanted to stay in the house and cut short their visit by a day. I avoided the landlord for a further two evenings by staying one night in my room and then the next night at my girlfriend's house. By this time, it was Thursday morning and I still hadn't seen or heard from the melodramatic twat. I decided to try to clear the air by sending a text message to him asking if we could sort it out. He responded by saying he thought it would be best if I moved out by the middle of June!

For a bit of fucking noise!

I'm actually working for most of June, and won't be at the house very much, so decided to move out there and then, humping all my worldly possessions back to my previous residence at the military base I sometimes (but once again, exclusively) called home. In some ways, I'm a bit disgruntled because there are some people living in that house share who have done some pretty shocking things whilst lodging (one guy held a fucking knife up the throat of a previous resident, for example...but still happily resides there); but in others I'm quite happy to be out of the place as I no longer have to give a chunk of my wage away just to live a lonely existence in a town where I know nobody whilst sleeping in a room the size of a shoebox. Silver linings and all that.

Other events that have littered May are: a cricket match that turned into a piss-up that nearly turned into me pissing in my girlfriend's wardrobe; a visit to a tapas bar that, again, turned into a piss-up; a day's temp work on a building site that saw me dig a ditch around a building with a pick-axe; nearly getting citizens arrested by a Community Support Officer (a fake cop, basically - with no real powers of arrest) for riding my bike along a coastal path that didn't have any signs stating that I wasn't allowed. At 7am. When said path was deserted (what the fuck was the jobsworth doing down there at that time anyway?!); being recognised by somebody watching a Navy recruiting video; meeting my girlfriend's parents (I was shitting myself, but it turned out to be a great day); and then, at the death of the month, having a bit of a fall out with the aforementioned lady in my life. Not a great end to May if I'm honest, as both that and the eviction episode occurred in the same week, but we live and learn don't we. Well, most of us do.

Lastly, yesterday I purchased a used copy of the much-hyped Modern Warfare 2 for my 360. Got it home and popped it into the drive to be confronted with the 'disc unreadable' message. Upon closer inspection, it appears that the disc is cracked in 3 places. Which means I've got to drag my ass back to the shop and get an exchange. Not impressed, CEX. The moral of the story is to check your game discs before you leave the shop, folks.

Termination

2010-04-29T01:44:00.000-07:00

Went for a run yesterday. It wasn't a proper 'outdoors' run, mind. No, I went on a treadmill. It was the first time I'd actually stepped on one for about 8 months and to be honest it felt a little strange. As I've documented here numerous times over the last few weeks, I've been suffering from a knee injury that was brought about by excessive road running (70 miles a week on average), but yesterday's return to the treader has had no repercussions whatsoever. So hopefully, I'm fixed! Like the 6 Million Dollar Man, but on a budget of 28 pence. I'll still exercises some restraint with my...er...excercise over the next few weeks so I don't encourage my knee to go tits up (?) again, but hopefully I'll be back out pounding pavement like the good old days soon. Possibly won't be trying to crack 20 milers like I was doing...but we'll see how it goes.

That's about as exciting events in my life have been since my last post to be honest. Well, the events I'm willing to write about on here, anyway. Sorry. Er...I'll be getting my tax disc tomorrow. Heart racing bloggage, right there. Oh, fuck it. I don't even know why I'm bothering to write this arse. No cunt reads it anyway. Bye.

Misadventures in Perpetual Skintness

2010-04-27T00:41:00.000-07:00

Hello. Suppose I'd better update. I've been off work for the last two weeks, and it's been nice and sunny...ergo I've been spending a lot of my time beyond the veil. Well, outdoors in the garden. To be honest though, I haven't really been up to much of real interest owing to the fact that I'm still monumentally borassic. So last week I went for a walk down some coastal paths (where I was attacked by a particularly large bee), went for a bike ride around the villages and hamlets of south Dorset, and went for a look at Lulwoth Cove and Durdle Door. For those who don't know, Durdle Door is a bit of rock that sticks out into the sea...and has a natural archway in it. All very quaint, I'm sure you'll agree. The best bit about all of these activities, though, was that they were all completely and utterly free. And being a broke-ass motherfucker, they suited me just fine.

I did, however, partake in a few activities that involved the exchange of currency - the most notable being my return to the enchanting world of the carboot sale. Back in the mists of time, before I joined the navy, I frequented car boot sales pretty much every weekend. The result of this activity was the assembly of a rather magnificent collection of retro games consoles and software. Said collection was hardly a treasure trove of rare and collectible items: Megadrive, MegaCD, 32X, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, SNES, Game Boy, Game.com, Game Gear, Nintendo64, Nes...but I did have a shitload of games for them all. Regrettably, I was forced to flog the lot to Computer Exchange (or CEX, or Entertainment Exchange, or whatever they're calling themselves today) when I graduated from uni because I was massively skint (never!) and jobless. I think I got about £300 or thereabouts for the haul. But I digress.

So, I went to a carboot at the weekend. It took me right back to the 'good' old days. I wasn't looking for anything in particular (although my fair accomplice was hell-bent on finding a picnic hamper, fuelled only by intense and burning jealousy that her housemate has one), but my eyes lit up like beacons when I spotted a MINT condition (Dual Shock) PlayStation on a table...for a fucking FIVER! And by 'mint,' I mean that it had all the wires, two joypads without cheese or rotting flesh stuck between the buttons, and the console itself looked like it had never even been out of the box...mint! It all came flooding back: the heart palpitations; the cold sweat; the overwhelming JOY of finding a retro (ish) console for a knock-down price at a carboot! After some discussion about whether I should buy it, and the pooling of several pockets' (and a purse) worth of change...the deal was done. I also managed to blag boxed copies of Ridge Racer Type 4, Rayman and Colin McRae (RIP) Rally for a quid each. So yeah. I'm now the proud owner of PlayStation. For a total cost of £8, which is pretty cool considering that when they came out, they sold for about £300. Which leads me to remember how much N64s were when they launched in the UK - and the fights outside HMV on Manchester's Market Street when people queueing for one found out that there weren't going to be enough consoles to go around. Fucking idiots.

I was secretly hoping to find an 'as new,' still-sealed copy of Rez or Project Justice for the Dreamcast on an old lady's table and selling for 50p...but alas there wasn't even a whiff of anything DC related. Damned heathens.

Thinking about games for the moment, though - they've played a pretty big part in my life. I can recall any era in my past by thinking about the console that I had at the time. Sounds pretty sad, I know, but they are the one constant thing that I've always owned. No matter what else was going on in my life, be it school, college, university, various jobs or family feuds...I can pretty much remember which console I had at the time. Probably because said bit of plastic was my only real source of fun and entertainment at the time. My only friend. Sniff. Just to be straight - that last bit was what's called 'poetic license.' Just so you know, yeah?

It's payday on Friday. Not that it's much cause for celebration. Pretty much my entire wage packet is already earmarked for some dreary activity - my overdraft, car tax, rent or loan repayments. Due to this, my love (hate) affair with ASDA Smart Price foodstuffs will not be abated this month...and will probably continue into June and beyond. It's not all bad - I'll just be giving the Noodle Snacks and 2% lager a wide berth. And on the subject of lager...it's almost BBQ season again. Had two BBQs in the past fortnight, both of which were superb...and involved chicken breast! When I was a lad, the sole preserve of a BBQ was a packet of Farmfoods hoof & arsehole sausages and a box of economy burgers with added onion and rusk. Usually sold in a box of 48 for 99p. Thinking back, this is probably because the main purchaser of the BBQ fodder was a very, very...almost perpetually skint man. My dad.

Like father, like son eh?

Big Brother is...

2010-04-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Facebook. It's a modern phenomenon. Pretty much every fucker I know is on it, and in my opinion it's a society-defining application. Back in the olden days, before Facebook, if you lost touch with someone or lost their mobile number or something (in my case usually by losing/breaking my phone whilst out pissed), that was it. No more contact until you randomly bump into them 6 years after you last saw them. This happened to me loads of times before I entered the world of Facebook and to be honest, these situations are generally quite awkward. Awkward becase you find yourself face to face with someone you used to know but haven't seen for fucking ages. Any common ground you had has long since been swallowed up by the canyon of time and so you just end up asking the same fucking moronic, 'polite' questions: how've you been; where are you working now; what've you been up to...BUT YOU DON'T FUCKING CARE. I'm just being honest, people.

Like I said, when I was living in Manchester this kind of thing used to happen all the time, until it got the the point where if I saw someone in the street who I used to sort-of know, I'd make a point of avoiding them. Where is this bullshit going, you may ask. Well, with Facebook, you can avoid all that awkwardness and crap. If someone you used to know pops up and requests to add you as a 'friend,' then it's fine. Exchange a brief message, click 'accept,' and all is right with the world. There's no making excuses to get the hell away from them, and no cringeworthy "can I have your number...we'll meet up" moment. Because you know, you fucking know that after you walk away from that encounter, you'll never, ever ring that cunt you just spoke to. And that's life. So yeah, Facebook has it's good points - one of which I've just illustrated up there in the paragraph you've just read with your eyes.

It's not all rosy in the garden of Facebook though. Oh no. And this is what I really want to get off my chest in this post. There are several things that I find vexing when it comes to everyone's favourite social networking site. And here they are:

Status Updates

Some people post short, enigmatic statuses (stati?) about something. They are usually of the sad/fed up variety. They don't give much away, just that they are sad or melancholy for some unknown reason. Why? Because they want fucking ATTENTION. Next time you see someone with 'is annoyed,' or 'is pissed off,' have a look at the comments box. It's the same shit, every fucking time: "what's wrong, hun?" Firstly - anyone who uses the term 'hun' need wiping off the face of the Earth like a bug splatter off a windscreen. I despise that term, as many people who know me will attest. What the fuck does it even mean? Honey? It does my nut in. So, to surmise - sad status updates simply written to invoke an enquiry of the problem. Gets up my nose. Like a Gillette Fusion (see previous post).

The next update variety that I despise is the 'I'm having a great time' update. If you're having such a fucking good time, WHY THE FUCKING SHIT ARE YOU ON FACEBOOK?! Example: "...is in the pub having a pint and a good laugh with my mates." No you're not. You're sat on your jack browsing Facebook because either a) you've got no actual mates; b) because the mates you're with are either outside smoking and you're sat on your own inside waiting for them to come back, or they're in the bogs; or c) your mates are sat at the same table as you, but they're not including you in the conversation because they all think you're a bit of a twat. The reason I know these FACTS? Because I've done it. Many a time! These kinds of updates can be used in any kind of situation, be it at a party, at a concert or anywhere that's meant to be a 'fun' place. Don't do it, people.

Another kind of update that irritates me is the 'too much info' update. For instance: "...went to the shop and bought some peas for my tea, then went for a shit and the shit was green." Does anyone actually give a flying fuck? Negative. So sort it out.

OK, so people can put what they want as status updates, and that's the point of Facebook and freedom of expression, but when people don't even try to write something interesting it bugs me. Who cares about the inanity of somebody else's existence? Not me, for one.

At the risk of sounding like either a cuntish hypocrite or a narcissistic wank stain, I at least try to make my updates humorous or relevant. But even that back fires on me almost daily. People are constantly asking me why I'm so miserable or pissed off/angry all the time, but they are missing the point totally. I could write complete arse, and for the general populous this is fine, but I enjoy in-jokes and slagging things off. I enjoy finding the faults in everyday life and pointing them out - and the best way of delivering these thoughts to the masses is through Facebook. I'm kind of descending into a diatribe here, I know, but the point is that...well there is no point. To fucking anything, really. Just speaking my mind. So arse off if you don't fucking like it.

Privacy

One thing about Facebook that my cousin recently pointed out (at great length, I must add), is that Facebook is a kind of 'encouraged voyeurism.' And he's got a point. Obviously, it's up to you to decide how much personal information you make available, but the vast majority of people will share their address, telephone number (indeed, my Palm Pre automatically imports people's phone numbers from their Facebook profile!), relationship status...every minute detail about their lives. Add to this the photos, the videos, the interests, the political leanings...and you can pretty much choose any one of your 'friends' and make a fairly accurate profile of the kind of person they are. It's quite scary when you look at in that way. Obviously, you can only look at the pages of people you already 'know,' but this is besides the point - and the single reason that as of today, all of my personal information has been deleted. I don't want people knowing where I work, live or how many times a day I have a danger wank in my boss's office. But it's 3, just incase you're curious.

Addiction

I don't know how many other people this actually applies to, but I'll be the first to admit that I have gone through various stages of Facebook addiction. You know you're an addict when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do it check to see if anyone's commented on your status. I'm speaking from experience here, and yes, I know it's sad. Now, I have various actual friends who are scattered around the globe in various hostile environments and their only real link to home is through Facebook, so this particular niggle isn't aimed at them. But there are people whose lives revolve around Facebook and what other people are doing. The number of times I've heard people talking about what somebody else wrote on Facebook, or people who've been caught cheating on their partner via Facebook, or even people who've had arguments on Facebook that have escalated to actual punch-ups, are many. And it all comes down to an unhealthy obsession with the site. It's not right to always know what other people are doing - whether they offer up the information willingly is irrelevant. Having to be constantly looking at what others are doing is akin to being jacked into the fucking Matrix, and I'm just as guilty as anyone else. But no more.

Friends

Friends. Friends. I have about 203 'friends' on Facebook. I speak to about 20 of them regularly on the site, and even fewer of them in reality, on a day to day basis. Some people have thousands of 'friends.' These are the people who actually have no real friends, the people who are so fucking insecure and pathetic that they feel the need to garner thousands of virtual sycophantic followers just to feel needed. And what's with people who request your 'friendship' that you've never even met?! What's that all about? I got a request the other day from somebody who'd seen a question I asked on a Facebook forum, liked my question and wanted to be my friend. A little bit of investigating revealed that they lived in Peru and were a devout Catholic. Not got anything against 60-year-old, sexually ambiguous Peruvian Catholics, but seriously - how far is that 'friendship' going to go? As a result, I rejected it.

Just to clarify, this post isn't a declaration of war on all things Facebook. I use it almost daily and I do appreciate the benefits of such a global network...it's just that some aspects and users take things to the extreme. And if it came to light that Facebook was actually a New World Order-backed scheme for keeping tabs on the world's population, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

Some Friendly Advice

2010-04-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

The best thing to do with advice, reckoned Oscar Wilde, is to pass it on. So without further ado:

Fucking nose hair. Ghastly stuff, and I seem to have a talent for growing the shit. I was having a shave today when I caught sight of my nostrils and could've easily mistaken them for a photograph of Murkwood. Without further ado, I embarked upon a mission to fell said nostril-forest as if I was the smog-based baddie from The Legend of Fern Gully. I tried first to do the deed with my fingers, ripping the blighters out, but this proved quite painful; and trying to cut the bastards with scissors also proved a logistical nightmare due to the delicate dimensions of my breathing apparatus - the scissors were simply too big to fit up my schnoz. And then I had an epiphany. I had been using a Gillette Fusion razor to shave my face, and this particular shaving utensil has a nifty little blade running across the top of the razor head that is meant to be used for trimming sideburns, goatees etc. I seized said razor and shoved it into my left nostril, decimating acres of nasal woodland. So far, so good. One nostril: clear. It was as I approached the other aperture that my concentration waned and I ended up smashing the blade up against the septum and cutting a deep gash into it. Cue much bloodshed, stinging pain and lots of swearing. I endeavoured to clear the hairs within said nostril after stemming the flow of claret, but I have learnt a valuable lesson: do not try to trim your nose hair with a Gillette Fusion. Just buy a proper fucking nasal trimmer. Or simply put up with giant redwoods growing out of your conk. And there's the advice. Do with it what you will.

Prior to my Saw-esque encounter with the razor blade, today saw me venture back to see the physio regarding my knackered knee. After walking up and down and performing several ridiculous variations of the 'lunge,' (possibly) simply for her own amusement, she (the physio) came to the conclusion that the reason for my continued knee pain (and now foot pain, to boot*) is that I have one leg shorter than the other! Furthermore, my right kneecap is 'twisted.' As a result, I now have to walk around with a heel-raising insole in my left shoe and my right knee has been taped up to buggery in an effort to 'reset' it's positioning. I feel like Forrest Gump prior to the leg-brace escape scene. I just hope I don't have to have my right leg lopped off and replaced with a MOD-issue steam powered cast-iron replacement. From 1875. It is fucking annoying, not being able to run free, but I'm still nailing the cross-trainer and the weights so keeping on top of my fitness.

I'm off work next week though, and that means no gym access, so in an effort to keep my fitness revolution going I'm going to hit the cycling, and hit it hard. I've been looking into cycling routes around Dorset and fully intend to get my ass up and out onto them. I may be a born and bred city-dweller, but I love cycling and where better to do it than the great British countryside? There must be hundreds of little trails peppering my little part of this green land, and I fully intend to explore a few of them. Hopefully the weather will hold out, which isn't a lot to ask seeing as we've now officially entered British Summer Time.

Should also have some family members coming down to visit from the North in May, and several of them have expressed an interest in hiring bikes and going for rides, so what better reason to undertake my aforementioned mission? Two birds, one humongous stone, wouldst thou agree?!

This is a slightly random and disjointed conclusion to the post, but I've just sat through the Brendan Fraser remake of Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Whilst it's a fairly entertaining family romp, I feel I must make an observation: the special effects are absolutely fucking terrible. In places, it's hard to believe this film was actually allowed into cinemas in this state! In one scene, the hapless trio that make up the main cast are involved in a fairly standard runaway mine cart scenario...but in places, the sequence resembles that subterranean level from Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. Truly pathetic CG, I kid you not. Watch it yourself and you'll see what I mean. Oh, and watch out for the equally bad piranha bit. Laughable stuff, really.

And there I shall bring this particular diatribe to a close.

* pun totally and hysterically intended.

Slow Burn

2010-04-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

Went for my first run in ages this week. It went OK, but alas my knee still doesn't feel 100%. Time, as they say, heals all wounds...but it's taking longer than I'd like to sort this particular ailment. More physio tomorrow, though, so hopefully progress will rear it's bulbous and frightful head. Hmmm...what else?! Well, I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein over the course of two nights, which is the quickest it's ever taken me to read a full-length novel. OK, it's not exactly War & Peace (actually - has anyone actually ever read that book...and if they have, is it really so long as to warrant an entire cliche be named after it?!) as it only weighs in at 214 pages...but still, the fact that I sat there and read for hours on end is surely an attestation to it's quality. Bit melancholy in places like, and that didn't really help my current frame of mind...but yeah, it's a great read. Wouldn't mind seeking out the recent (well 1990s) film adaptation now and seeing how faithful it is to the novel.

Also this week, I've sat through the mindless bilge that is Gamer. It's got Gerrard Butler in it, and it's about humans who get controlled by other humans in a Gears of War-style deathmatch in order to win their freedom. Yawn. Haven't we seen similar themes umpteen times before? Recent takes on the idea such as Surrogates and Avatar instantly spring to mind and indeed, even one of my short film ideas (that remained on the drawing board due to it's been there, done that nature) while at University was a project titled 'Game Over,' which, funnily enough told the familiar tale of gamers who played a video deathmatch and who were killed in reality if their avatar in the game came a cropper. Like I said, "yawn."

And apart from the usual crap like going to the gym, eating noodles infused with hotdog sausages, and sleeping...I have done very little else of interest. That's the problem with working these night shifts - I'm either sat in work for 12 hours through the night, in bed, in the gym...or back at work again! Not an ideal situation, really, and ultimately excruciatingly monotonous. But what can you do? I don't expect I'll be doing anything more interesting over the coming week either, seeing as I have just enough money to sustain life through frugal food shoppage, but all things come to pass. That's the PMA (positive mental attitude) kicking in. If I actually spoke the truth about how fucking pissed off I am, and how I'd like nothing more than to run naked through a shopping centre with a pump action shotgun...well, I'd probably find myself locked up under some kind of obscure terror/mental health act. And that just simply would not do. So I have four nights left of incredible boredom and eye-burning tiredness to look forward to. In the immortal words of Tony the Tiger: Grrrrreat.

Flat Caps & Whippets

2010-04-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

Well hello. And how are we all? Good I hope. Excellent. Right, enough of the niceties - lets get down to the real reason you came here: ME! The past week or so has been quite eventful, if I'm honest. The early segment (i.e. Monday through Thursday) saw me take a train journey from the deep, dark South all the way up to the enlightened and glorious North. That is, my better half paid for me to take a train journey from Weymouth to Manchester. Not only that, but we stayed in one of Manchester's finest hotels, the 4-star Palace on Oxford Road. It's funny, because I used to pass the Palace pretty much every day when I lived and worked in Manchester. Every time I cycled my fucked-up old Saracen up Oxford Road's deadly bus lane/cycle-path, I'd pass the Palace Hotel and never once did it cross my mind that I'd one day actually be a guest there. Truly bizarre how things work out, ain't it. Of course, I owe the entire experience of staying in such a fine establishment to the lady in my life, but that's besides the point - I stayed at the mother-fucking PALACE! Booyah!

When you go into the main foyer there's this massive stain-glass dome forming the ceiling, which is pretty spectacular. The sliding doors that comprise the entrance portal to this wondrous void are less awe-inspiring - they seemed to open and close at random, leading to some interesting situations involving, well, being squashed between two sliding plates of glass. Elsewhere, the dining area and bar didn't fail to impress me: soft classical music, the aroma of quality coffee, the helpful and polite staff. Tis superb and is as opulent and luxurious as you'd expect a 4-Star hotel to be. Special mention must also go to the lift, which makes a bizarre beeping noise every time it arrives. Why? Is it announcing it's arrival to those people too ignorant to notice the doors opening? Who knows. But it beeps. Oddly.

Apart from being over-awed by the hotel, the rest of my/our time up there in the great industrial North was spent taking in the sights, sounds and (usually quite pungent) smells of the city. We went to Salford Quays (via the newly refurbished Metrolink - which is like the London Underground, but less crowded, over-ground, and without the constant feeling of impending apocalypse) to experience the blistering cold razor-wind and the Imperial War Museum North; we ventured into the Gothic splendour of the John Rylands Library; we were seated in a Slug & Lettuce gastro-pub but then left before ordering any scran because they wanted £15 for a fucking salad; and we even went to the Royal Exchange Theatre to watch a production of Shakespeare's A Comedy Of Errors.

I have to admit that I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to Shakespeare (although I have read Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet and...er...The Shakespeare Secret), but I really enjoyed the play, and totally understood it too - which was a bonus, considering how dense my swede is. We sampled other delights of the city (Joseph Holt Mild, a meat pie that required it's own foundations, the Arndale Centre, the Wheel of Manchester, the Printworks, all-you-can-eat Chinese, the Frog & Bucket Comedy Club and the Curry Mile included) during the visit, and I must admit that I was quite sad when Thursday rolled around and checkout time loomed...but all in all it was a bloody marvellous excursion and I enjoyed pretty much every second of it. Apart from the feral kids running around the Museum of Science & Industry and the fucking blistering cold, wind and rain that persisted throughout the duration of the stay. But cest la vie, eh? Many thanks, once again if you're reading this drivel, by the way. No, not you.

So yeah, got back to my oft-mentioned house share on Thursday evening and desperately tried to enjoy handing over my rent money, before going to bed. And then on Friday I jumped in the car and drove back up North to Gloucester to spend the Easter weekend with my uncle, various cousins and several gallons of alcoholic liquid. Which was nice. But alas, all good things must come to an end, and now I'm back at work writing this shit whilst a cretin polishes a weapon behind me. And that, my friends, is not a euphemism. Gotta take the rough with the smooth I guess. Now excuse me whilst I embark on Mary Shelly's Frankenstein...it's gonna be a long week.

Mind Slurry

2010-03-26T23:31:00.001-07:00

Urgh. Checked my bank balance last night. More overdrawn than I thought. Fuck sake. How the FUCK do I manage to spend so much money and have so little to show for it? It's not like I live in an episode of MTV Cribs or owt. So yeah, I'm horrendously overdrawn and my next wage will be swallowed up by the Black Hole of Barclays. Next month's gonna have to be excruciatingly lean if I'm to claw my way out of this bog. And by 'lean,' I mean 'fucking boring.' Because that's what it all boils down to really ain't it? We all (well, some of us) work, in an effort to earn money in order to live...but when it all boils down, modern life in a 'developed' country is all about the pursuit of entertainment...stimulation of the mind. And that's it.

It makes sense when you think about it - if you flout the rules of society and commit a crime, your punishment is the removal of all forms of stimuli, ie prison. Well, that's the theory, anyway - but most of the tabloids would have us all believe that 'lags' all live in fur-lined cells with four poster beds, solid gold Xboxes and enough cake and sweets to enable them to become disturbingly plump. No, what I'm getting at is that without money, it is hard to entertain oneself and ultimately the main goal in most people's lives is to find entertainment. So by overspending last month, next month will essentially be a form of prison for me...a massive, Butcher Bay-esque prison of long, quiet days and drawn out, mind-numbing evenings. Urgh, urgh, and thrice urgh. Spot the oxford comma, win cock all.

Apart from being eternally broke, there is another thing that really, really annoys me and I feel I must write about it here. It's blokes...talking about football. Now, I love football. Can't get enough of it. I love playing it, love watching it, love playing it on the computer...but talk about it?! I can't think of anything worse. As I write this, I can hear people talking about football. And it's sapping my will to breathe. It's just cliche after fucking cliche. A pale imitation of the kind of horse manure that tumbles from the lips of Garth Crookes or Alan Hansen during any edition of Match of the Day, only without the action replays. It really fucking winds me up, even more so when I'm roped into the conversation. I don't give a fuck about West Ham's game with Wolves. I don't give a fuck about Tevez. I don't give a fuck about fucking Liver-fucking-pool! AAAARGH! I'll happily sit there and watch a match...but please, don't try to talk to me about inane footy-related subjects...because I'm likely to slap you. Or fall asleep.

Got hold of the third book in the Takeshi Kovacs series a few weeks ago. It's called Woken Furies, but I've not started reading it yet because I can't be arsed. I think I only bought it because I've read the first two and the completest in me forced me to purchase it in order to silence some little part of my soul that would boil and burn in anguish forever if I didn't. Like one of those weird kids at school who had to have all of the Teeny Terrapins out of Kinder Eggs. Fucking Kinder Eggs. What a load of arse those things are. The suspense...the awe...the horrible 'foreign' chocolate followed by the life-altering depression that came crashing against your sense of self like a tsunami when you opened up the little plastic capsule to discover...a plastic molded hippo wearing a tutu and holding a harp (especially when all you wanted was one of those little cars with a flywheel inside). That, my friends, is the stuff of nightmares. Forget Tim Burton and his (well intentioned, but often poorly executed) bullshit - the Kinder Egg is pure, unrefined horror...that can be matched only by having to listen to blokes talk about football.

Noodle Snack My Bitch Up

2010-03-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

What up, ma be-hatches? Cough. Seemed to have slipped out of my usual Queen's English for a moment there. Anywho, I thought it was about time I updated you, erm, be-hatches on what's been going on in the wonderful world of me. First up - I'm not moving. Which is a major relief, because according to some bullshit article/urban myth we've all undoubtedly heard of, moving is apparently the second most stressful 'thing' that can happen to you, after a family bereavement. I personally believe this to be a massive, steaming pile of sweetcorn riddled shit. To whit: when you move house or whatever, all you're doing is throwing your meagre possessions into a few boxes, transporting them to a new gaff, and then getting them out again. What's so fucking harrowing about that? Fair enough, it's a pain in the fucking arse - but second to a family bereavement? Have a word, sunshine. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of things that are worse than moving house:

Having Cilla Black sit on your face

Knowing that you had a fiver in your pocket, reaching for it when you've got a load of ASDA Smart Price Noodle Snacks on the checkout, and then realising that you've lost said fiver.

Waking up with a hangover and spew all over your duvet

Having a shit job that you hate

Living in a the squalor of a shanty town

Not that I've ever experienced the last point on the list, but I can guess that the notion of moving for someone who does (live in a shanty town), is far from the 2nd most grief-filled experience of their life. Especially if they're moving out of said shanty town. Into a big pink mansion. But I digress. I'm not moving. This is because after weighing it up, moving all the way back to my previous abode, what with it's freezing temperatures, basic kitchen facilities and complete lack of mobile phone signal, would be an adventure too hideous to bear. Furthermore, my landlord offered me the opportunity to keep my room, but pay vastly reduced weekly rent when I'm working (for a week at at a time) on the base. Can't say fairer than that, really. Furthermore, the nights at the house that were intended to be my last were actually a really good laugh with my housemates, so I rescind any previous comments I may have written here without justification. Consider me devouring an entire, family sized ASDA Smart Price humble pie.

On the subject of Smart Price, who the fuck decided this shit is 'smart'? Fair enough - the price is low enough, but 'smart'? I think not. Y'see, this month I overspent massively. And I mean massively. So with just over a week to go till payday, I found myself a fair way into my overdraft, and keen to avoid any further sinkage into the mire of debt, I cleverly decided to try and get to payday spending as little money as possible - something I'm sure we all do from time to time.

Cue a trip to ASDA, and a trolley full of green and white-labelled foodstuffs. At this point, I'd just like to point out that on a QWERTY keyboard, the letters A,S,D are all next to each other. Conspiracy? You decide. But going back to the point, I bought a butt-load of Smart Price stuff. And it's all fucking disgusting. Case in point: the 'Noodle Snack.' Now, I know it's only 20p a pot and I know that it's hardly going to be a luxury dish by it's very nature (it's dried noodles in a pot, for Christ's sake), but fuck me...the shit is barely edible once you've added the boiled water. The noodles themselves simply will not soften - no matter how long you leave the thing to stew...and the lack of any discernible flavour is...well...not really that surprising, to be honest. In retrospect, I suppose having to endure the tasteless sensation of an ASDA Smart Price Noodle Snack is my punishment for being too frivolous with my money. A rather fitting main meal to go with my dessert of humble pie. Hmmm.

Ass Clowns

2010-03-16T04:12:00.000-07:00

Hello. Thought it was about time I updated this bastard again. It's been a few weeks. Not that much of note has appertained in said time-gulf. You know how I was bitchin' and whining about finding somewhere to live? And that I found somewhere? Well, today I gave my landlord notice that I'm moving back to the military establishment from whence I came. Sounds a bit retro-active, I know, but the reasons for this are two-, possibly three-fold.

Firstly, I'm hardly ever at the house. The weeks when I'm at work I stay at the base; the weeks I'm off I'm rarely at the house...and also I don't actually know anybody in the town where the house is situated so when I am there I'm bored off my fucking nut. Now, you may be thinking "you soft cunt...go out and meet people..." Have you ever tried to meet random people?! In a town where you know no-one? To say it's difficult is an understatement...especially when there is no common ground to fall on, as that twat who sang Breakfast at Tiffany's may once (or maybe twice) have said (sang). The other biggie for me kinda ties in to the other reasons for my desertion - the rent. I'm effectively renting a room out that I only stay in occasionally. When I think about this, it just seems fucking stupid. And finally...my house mates. There is nothing particularly menacing about any of them - in fact they're all perfectly decent people...it's just that they're a totally random bunch who never socialise together. Not really the kind of environment I was looking for when I set out to find a suitable abode. Ah well, we live and we learn. So yeah, I'm moving out. On the plus side, I'll have lots of money again, and I think one of the first things I'm gonna do is get one of those European train tickets and go for a little jaunt around our fair continent. See a bit of the place. I've not been to many places - namely Turkey, Holland and Sweden outside of the UK, but I really want to experience France, Germany, Italy etc.

Everyone needs a change of scenery every now and then, and I've been moping around sleepy rural England for far too long. It's fucking boring, is what I'm getting at. So, certainly within the next few months I expect to be updating this motherfucker from Paris or Rome. Well, that's the plan anyway.

In other news, I was involved in a bit of a fracas last week. It's all been dealt with though, so I have no worries about recounting the experience here. Here goes:

I went out for a few beers with some mates last week to 'celebrate' a birth. We went to a well-known chain pub and had several beverages. Afterwards, as is usually the case, a few of us decided that some food was in order, so we ventured out in serach of a chippy/olde worlde kebab shoppe. We found a suitable outlet and went inside to order our chosen grease and trans-fat laden delicacy, which arrived promptly and was, in hindsight, thoroughly delicious.

As we were all shoving horrendously tasty fast food into our gobs, the door swung open and in marched a 'jolly' fellow dressed up like a 50 Cent's younger, poorer cousin who then proceeded to aggressively enquire as to which one of us (we were the only 6 people in the shop) had spilt a drink on his shirt. Bemused, we all politely told him that he was mistaken and that he should take his line of enquiry elsewhere - especially as none of us had a fucking clue who the ass-clown was. 30 Cent (geddit?!) then approached one individual in the group and 'squared up' to him, repeatedly accusing him of spilling a drink on his shirt; before ripping said shirt off his back pushing his forehead into the face of his quarry. At this point I decided to step in and try to diffuse the situation, so I took 30 by the shoulder and escorted him to one side explaining that there was a mix-up, none of us had spilt our drinks on him and that he should probably just go home. He then shoved his forehead into my face, while simultaneously asking what I was going to do about it. Without going into too much detail, I then demonstrated what I was going to do about it and the following actions left him in the corner with a busted lip and nose.

At this point, two Policemen came barging through the door and gripped a hold of both of us...although when I explained what had happened, they let me go and took 30 Cent away for some 'questioning.' I've since spoken to a Policeman friend of mine, and he says that the other guy was in the wrong for head-butting me and that I was technically acting in self defence. Whoever was in the right or wrong is irrelevant...the fact is that that guy came into that chip shop with every intention of starting a fight - and he got his just desserts.

Moving on, by FAR the most annoying thing that's happened since my last blog here is the malfunction of my Nintendo DS. Well, it's less of a malfunction, more of a fault that developed literally overnight - I turned it on the other morning to play a bit of FIFA 10, only to discover that the top screen had spunked several blue vertical lines all over the middle of itself. I can still play it perfectly well, but said lines are a little distracting...and they simply were not there the last time I put the thing down. I've looked into replacing the screen myself with a DIY screen replacement kit you can get off ebay, but I've decided that it'd probably be wiser (if not a little more costly) to get Nintendo to do it for me. I'm good with a screwdriver, but I'm convinced I'll just end up breaking it - so I've filled out a fault report on their website and they've sent me a little freepost sticker thing to send the console to them for repair. Which is nice. Still probably gonna cost the best part of £50 to mend it though. Fuck it...travel comes first.

A Pinch of Salt

2010-03-04T12:28:00.001-08:00

Well, it's my birthday. Yep - 28 years ago today (at 5.30 PM, to be precise), I was dragged from the warmth and comfort of my mum's womb into this disgusting reality. I can vividly remember lying in my bed while I was still at school (after the school day had finished, obviously) and wondering what I'd be doing in 10 or 20 years. If I'd known then what lay in store for me (various massive family bust-ups, nights sleeping rough, a bullshit University course that has given me nothing but hideous debt, and the eventual downward slide through the gutter of office temping and into a pointless role in Her Majesty's Royal Navy), I'd have probably have just drank a bottle of weed killer and be done with it. Or ran away to join the Texas Rangers like Lard Ass did in the alternative, Teddy Duchamp ending to Geordie Lachance's campfire tale in Stand By Me.

It's not all bad though - I've finally found out just what the hell is going on with my knee. I went to see a physio on Tuesday, and I have to admit that the cynic in me had actually already completely devoured the rest of my personality before I'd even entered the surgery. I was determined that I'd just be made to do a few star jumps and told to fuck off. And I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the actual session that ensued. The physio asked me to detail how the injury had come about, how long ago, what it felt like etc and then did a proper examination of my legs, range of movement and strength...before coming to the conclusion that I have fucked up my knee by having weak ass muscles. Which is nice. So now I've got a programme of leg exercises to do, and with any luck I should be out running again in the next few months. Happy days.

I've also found a rather nice little trinket in the local Pound Shop. It's a little opaque-white ball that you can put on a shelf (or anywhere else you may want) that lights up when you turn it on via the little switch underneath. Only it doesn't just light up...it cycles through all the wondrous colours of the rainbow! It's a pointless little contraption, but for a single pound - a QUID - I thought it was rather marvellous. I use it as a little night light thing next to my bed, and with the big light off it casts lovely pastel hues across the walls. A bit gay, yes, but soothing...and it COST A FUCKING QUID! What else can you buy for a quid nowadays. Not a fucking lot, I'll tell you. In some newsagents, a can of Pepsi Max costs a quid these days. I remember when a can of pop was 30p - I shit you not, there was a can machine in our school that dispensed ice-cold cans of Sunkist and The Official Alton Towers Nemesis Drink (that tasted of Sambuca mixed with 18 bags of sugar and turned your tongue black) for thirty New Pence. Ah, halcyon days of yore.

This post isn't really going anywhere to be honest, I'm just rambling for my own enjoyment. And there's not a fucking thing you can do about it! Well, there is - you could just go back to reading Wikipedia or adding random fit birds to your 'friends' on Facebook - but where's the fun in that?! Remember my Palm Pre? It's going from strength to strength you know. It updated itself to WebOS 1.4 the other day, and this new software edition has added a few cool new things to the phone. Cool things that you'd already get on other phones, granted (video recording, more stable OS etc), but cool nonetheless. I even got Need For Speed Undercover to download onto it for free the other day. You should see the graphics - it sounds like I'm taking the piss, but they're better than owt I've ever seen on the PSP. Madness ain't it!

Regardless of the above though, it's still my birthday and I still can't go and get bollocksed because I'm at work. Never mind, I'll make up for it next week by necking a bottle of vodka and walking in front of a bus.

Friday Fun

2010-03-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are then. I'm back at work. I call it work, but in reality it's nothing more physically taxing than sitting at a desk for 12 hours a night. Sitting on your ass for 12 hours straight can get a little tiresome after the 3rd shift of the week, but I shouldn't really complain. I could be sat at a desk in some sandy warzone somewhere, but I'm not (yet) so it's cool. One thing that ain't so cool is the fact that I have managed to fuck my other, 'good' leg up. I have already documented the trouble I have been having with my right knee (I have officially been diagnosed as having iliotibial band syndrome now, rather than just speculating), but now I've managed to injure my left leg too though idiocy. It's only a matter of time before I'm in a wheelchair - mark my words. How did I do it? Here:

On Thursday I felt like it was about time I tried going for an actual run as my leg didn't feel too bad. I smothered my knee in Ibuprofen cream and set off. About three miles in, I passed a leisure centre that I previously didn't know existed (I've moved to an area I'm not overly familiar with). After my run (and with my knee not feeling too bad), I called the leisure centre and booked an induction for the following day. For some fucking retarded reason, the only induction time they had was at 6.30pm. Why? Why couldn't they have just organised one for the morning or something? There was no point in arguing, so I just accepted it.

6.00 on Friday finally rolled around, so I cycled down to the leisure centre for the induction. It was as I entered the car park that I realised I'd forgotten my fucking wallet - the wallet that contained the £10 with which I was going to pay for the induction. I was particularly annoyed because for some fucking stupid reason, I'd still remembered to pick up my driving licence and bank card...but not the wallet. When I went up to the receptionist in the gym and told her what I'd done, she went off to ask if I could pay by card. This fucking knob of a gym instructor appeared from nowhere and marched over to the reception desk with a face like thunder. "Is there a problem?" he barked at me. I told him what I'd done and he just stood there with a vein popping out of his forehead. "You can't pay by card" came his reply, and just walked back off into the office. Fucking ignorant cunt.

At that point, I was happy to just sack the induction off and go home - since when do you talk to paying customers like that? I'm not some mincing soft-arse, you understand, but you expect some kind of politeness when you are trying to spend money somewhere - be it a pub, shop or a gym. As you can imagine, I wasn't overly impressed with this cock's customer service skills. I went back outside and got on my bike, ready to cycle back to my gaff, but then I remembered that I'd passed a Tesco on the way down and that it had had a cashpoint. So off I set, to get a tenner out from Tesco and then come back for my induction with the roid-rage ignorant wank-stain gym instructor. Why? Because I'm a fucking prick, that's why.

Anyway, I was riding along the pavement, doing a fair old speed on my trusty Carrera Subway when I decided to turn onto the road. I turned, fairly sharply, not noticing that the path was covered in mud in the fading light, and the front wheel just went from under me. The bike slid one way, I went the other and I came to rest on my back several feet away from the bike with my legs on the road and my head cracked against the pavement. My hand was cut open and my knee, thigh and ankle had the skin scraped off. Then a car went past and had the fucking cheek to beep at me as I lay there like a tosspost half on the road. What a wanker. I got up and went to Tesco, got the money and still went back for my induction (that was actually conducted by a different instructor), but my leg was killing me, and I was covered in blood so I just did a quick weights work out and fucked off home. Also, I didn't actually join the leisure centre because the gym itself was pathetically small and all the equipment looked like it'd come out of the dark ages. In a word, it was shit. So basically I threw away a tenner, got spoken to like a cunt and fell off my bike. All on a Friday night. Woop.

A Grimm Tale

2010-02-20T00:57:00.000-08:00

Are you sitting comfortably? Good - then I'll begin. I've just been on Facebook (doesn't everyone check their notifications as soon as they get up for work? No? Oh.) and somebody's status update about a nappy and a shit-covered child reminded me of an incident that occurred a few years back that I have very scarcely spoken of. I now believe though, that the time has come for me to disclose the details of said incident - and where better to do it than here, on my very own blog? It's sort of like when the Ministry of Defence decides to release details of UFO sightings by 'terrified' British Airways pilots 15 years after the event, only without the threat to national or global security.

OK, here goes - and please bear in mind that the various people depicted in this story still do not know any of this and I have changed their names to protect their identities.

A few years ago, when I was back in Manchester on leave, I arranged to meet up with a friend that we'll call Kevin. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and I had agreed to go down to the flat that he shared with his long-term girlfriend...er...Kate. After a bit of a chat about what we'd both been up to and watching of a bit of TV, it was decided (as is the norm on a sunny Saturday afternoon), that a trip to the local boozer was in order - so off we went.

I can't really remember the order of events that fateful day, but I seem to remember seeing various faces from the past, multiple pints of ale being thrown down my neck at a rate of knots, and getting very, very pissed. Obscenely pissed, maybe. We then decided to go into Manchester city centre at some point in the evening to continue the bender and maybe go to a club. Then it sort of goes fuzzy.

Cut to the next morning. I awake in a state of half undress in the single bed in Kevin's spare room. The curtains are closed, but due to their (possibly) pound-shop origins, the bright sunlight outside has no problem penetrating them and virtually blinding me as I stir. As I lie there in a state of head-banging semi-consciousness, the reassuring notion that maybe - just maybe - I hadn't done anything stupid the night before crept into my head.

At this point I'd just like to state that this was particularly welcome because I - on my own admission - tend to act like a bit of a bell end when I've had a few too many beers. I don't really partake in anything sinister, like fighting or vandalising stuff etc; no - I usually just make up outlandish lies for no apparent reason in an attempt to impress people. And usually just end up looking like a bit of a cunt. But I digress. This particular morning, I had no feelings of dire regret - just a skull-splitting hangover.

Things, though, were about to go downhill. After wallowing there for about 20 minutes I realised that I didn't have my jeans on. Fair enough - I was in bed. Then I realised I had no boxer shorts on either, which was slightly more bizarre. I sat up in the bed and looked around the room. Due to the slightly laizzez-faire nature of Kevin's interior decor, the room resembled an Oxfam shop that had recently been hit by Al Qaeda - there were discarded clothes everywhere. I scanned my surroundings and located my jeans on the floor by the door and my boxer shorts a little further away. Why I had taken them off, I still didn't know. So I sat up, pulled off the blanket and prepared to get up. And then I saw the devastation.

I had shat the bed. Not just the bed, mind - I had literally shat the room. There were clods of shite all over the sheet and the underside of the bedspread. Even worse, trails of brown ran down the side of the divan and culminated in an almighty dollop of faeces on the carpet by the side of the bed at exactly the same latitude as where my arse would have been if I'd been lying down. I did the math: I must've needed a crap during the night, decided that I didn't need to visit the bog like a regular human, and just hung my ass over the side of the bed and opened the torpedo tubes.

Never, in all my days on this planet have I sobered up as quickly as I did that morning. I jumped out of bed, still semi-naked and covered in shite, threw my jeans on and rolled up the boxer shorts and bedding into a macabre poo-filled swiss roll. I then proceded to the bins outside the apartment block and stuffed said blanket into the furthest-away wheelie bin I could find. After legging it back upstairs and scooping the carpet-based turd up with newspaper and kitchen towel (which I then 'cleverly' discarded in a different bin to conceal any evidence), I located some bleach and Febreeze under the sink and began scrubbing and spraying the carpet in an attempt to banish the big brown stain. The cloths and sponges I was using quickly became fetid and the smell of the scat was overpowering. Kevin, meanwhile, was still in bed with Kate and I figured that due to the lack of noise coming from their room that they were still asleep. I opened a window to let some of the noxious fumes escape and, thankfully, the stain was fading rapidly as I pounded it with more and more Sainsbury's own-brand multi-purpose bleach.

I made another trip to the bin to dispose of another brown sponge and was beginning to think I might actually be able to clean up all the 'mess' before Kevin even stirred. These hopes were dashed when I re-entered the flat to find him stood at the door of the spare bedroom in his dressing gown, with a confused look on his face. The smell in the flat was barbaric - the fact that I'd opened a window only amplified the stench as the breeze carried it out of the spare room and dispersed it, but Kevin appeared not to notice (!). "Aw man - what have you done, Tom?" He slurred. "I...er...threw up mate...sorry."

He entered the room, still apparently oblivious to the overpowering odour of death permeating every pore. He sat down on the bedding-less bed. "Shit Tom," he began without a hint of irony, "I even put a bucket down for you...couldn't you have spewed in that?" He pointed at the pale blue, sparkling clean washing-up bowl by the bedside table. "Sorry mate," I repeated "I got some on your covers too so I just put them in the bin...I'll go into town later and buy you some new bedding."

Kevin sat there staring at the brown stain, the smell of shit whirling around us like some angry daemon. "No worries mate...do you want a brew?" He got up and shuffled off into the kitchen.

What. The. Fuck. How had he not rumbled me? How, with a big brown stain on the beige carpet (why is everyone's carpet fucking beige?!) and with the nostril-singeing bouquet of human faeces all around us, did he not rumble me? I didn't stay around to find out. "No mate," I replied, "I'm just gonna get off home and have a shower." Which I did.

Kevin has since moved out of that flat and is still with his girlfriend, and I still see him every time I go back to Manchester. He has never mentioned the described incident and neither had I - until now.

Hopefully, this blog will never attract his attention...

...and if it does - sorry mate!

The Man from the Pre

2010-02-19T00:13:00.000-08:00

So my new phone turned up in the post. Surprisingly quickly, actually - and in a totally undamaged state. I saw a documentary the other week about Royal Mail and was pretty disgusted (although not exactly surprised) at the way postal workers treat our mail. Opening birthday cards and stealing the inevitable cash inside; chucking parcels about like rugby balls...it's a fucking disgrace. However, as previously stated, my new mobile telephony device arrived in perfectly good order. Well done, postie.

It's a Palm Pre. Here's what it looks like:

Now, some people who know a bit about mobile phones may think I'm a bit of a knob for swapping my all-singing, all dancing HTC HD2 for this handset. However, even though it is technically inferior I believe that the Palm Pre could be the new 'best phone I've ever owned.' Why? Well, it's in the subtlety of the thing. When I first unboxed it and turned it on, I was slightly underwhelmed by the simplicity of the OS and the comparatively basic features: text messaging, web, email...a few memo and calendar programs and the most threadbare options menu you've ever seen. But then I dug a little deeper. There's an 'app store' where every single app is free. The phonebook pulls in contact details from your Facebook account and merges all the duplicates you already had on your sim card.

Palm offer 'over the air' OS updates that continue to improve speed and stability of the operating system almost monthly. A good example of this is how the Palm Pre I have now does not have the ability to record video through it's 3 megapixel camera, but the next update will reportedly add this feature to the OS. I personally find this level of support from a manufacturer very impressive because it shows that they not only have faith in the hardware and continue to push it, but that they also give a shit about improving the experience for owners of their device. The same simply cannot be said of HTC.

I went onto the HTC website numerous times with the sole aim of updating the ROM on my HD2, only to be constantly confronted with error messages and such like. And that leads me to another aspect of the Palm Pre that I'm massively impressed with: everything just works. It doesn't freeze, the apps you download run perfectly and even YouTube runs smoother that it ever did on the HD2. Granted, the jitters I had viewing videos on the HTC could be levelled at the crapness of the O2 network (again), but I've been using the Palm in the same location as I used the HD2 and the quality and speed of the downloads/web browsing speed is vastly superior.

This thing came with my Palm Pre:

It's called a Touchstone and is essentially a wireless charging device. You change the standard battery cover for the Touchstone one and then you can just stick your Pre to the 'dock' part and it will charge up without the need for plugging wires etc in. It may seem like an insignificant feature of the Pre, but in practice it becomes invaluable. I've certainly never been able to just throw my mobile onto the windowcill and have it charge up, and then just be able to grab it again if somebody rings. Like I said, the beauty is in the simplicity.

Oh yeah, and the Palm has a proper QWERTY keyboard, so everybody's happy. Well, I am. Right. No more boring posts about new gadgets. For now.

Facebook of Psalms

2010-02-15T00:28:00.000-08:00

Yep - it's been more than a fortnight and I've not written anything down. No particular reason, other than that I simply couldn't be bothered trying to get online. To wit: it really annoys me that getting online in this day and age is seen as a privilege as opposed to a right of living in the so-called 'digital age.' I remember when I was at secondary school in the time before the world went online mental. IT lessons were the only time you ever got near the internet (usually to check cheats and other such game-rated shite), and because stuff like Facebook, Hotmail, eBay etc didn't exist then, it wasn't overly important. And because of this lack of importance, the fact that the only way to get on the internet seemed to be a few stolen minutes in an IT lesson didn't matter. Fast forward to now though, and little seems to have changed - for me, at least. Trying to get the internet up on my phone inevitably leads to constant 'page error' messages, whilst trying to access a wifi hotspot on my laptop almost always leads down the dead-end, pot-holed lane of 'lack of connectivity;' or the appearance of one of those BT Openzone pages where you have to pay £6000 with a credit card for 3 minutes of internet access. Alas, in a parallel to my earlier internet experiences, the only time I seem to be able to actually get online with a decent, reliable (yet censored) connection is a few stolen minutes at work every now and then (like right this minute, for example). And yet still we are being coerced into thinking we live in some highly advanced, hi-speed online world. Come and live with me for a week. Not only will you learn to live on a diet of Cornflakes, toast and lager - you'll also learn that trying to get online appears to be more trouble than it's worth.

But enough ranting about that. In the time gulf between now and my last post, a few things have happened. Perhaps the biggest thing is that I finally managed to move into an actual house. It's not an exclusive, me-only house though. It's another shared one. However, unlike the one I lived in down in Portsmouth the landlord is a live-in one and so actually possesses the right to turn up at the house when he wants and sleep on the couch. The last landlord didn't live in the house, yet still partook in this activity. Which, as you can imagine, was a bone of contention with me. No, this house is infinitely better than that hole. It's massive, has a top view of Weymouth/Portland Harbour and I'm living with a good, varied bunch of people. Really can't complain. For now. I also got my first ever valentines card yesterday (which wasn't sent to me by myself), which is a result!

Tech news: I'm swapping my new phone. Yes, I harped on about the HTC HD2 a few weeks ago, and I still think it's one of the best gadgets I've ever owned. The only problem I have with it is the touchscreen interface. I'm forever texting and on Facebook (when it loads, fucking shitty O2 network), so a good input method is a must for any phone I own. This is really where the HD2 falls down for me. For obvious reasons, the keyboard you have to use is a software one that pops up on the screen when writing. It must be the buggiest input device on the planet. 5 times out of every 10, it will not register the letter you are trying to press and even with the predictive word suggestion (which is a godsend, by the way), it's still all too easy to end up writing a sentence of complete and utter gobble-de-gook when all you wanted to say was 'crypto-zoology.' It's even worse if you're outside in the blistering cold. For some reason, the capacitive touchscreen doesn't like the cold weather, so trying to text in such conditions truly is a test of patience. The only thing stopping me from hurling the bastard thing at the pavement at times was the knowledge that it's worth about £400. I thought about going into the O2 shop near my new gaff to see if they'd swap it for another handset with a keyboard, but abandoned that because I knew what the answer would be. So instead, I went back to my old friend swapz.co.uk.

Lo and behold - I have found the perfect replacement for my HD2 - the Palm Pre. Whilst it doesn't look even half as technically advanced as the HD2, it has one massive advantage: a proper qwerty keyboard! It's also a bonafide smartphone with all the bells and whistles you could want (including the coveted YouTube app that I've been abusing (when it works)). So I've arranged a one for one swap with a guy who wants rid of his Palm. It comes with a fairly nifty little charger that allows you to simply place the phone on the charging 'block' without actually plugging it in. Sounds pretty cool. I should have it by the end of the week, so I'll post my views as and when.

Speaking of that swapz website, I got my Nintendo DS. To say it's addictive is an understatement, especially since it came with a thing called an R4 cartridge that is in effect a device that allows you to put roms on an Micro SD card and then play them on the DS. Since I acquired the DS, I msut have played nearly every major DS games there is...and I'm impressed. I used to have a PSP and granted, whilst the visuals of most of the games are far superior to any on the DS, I have to admit that having the touch screen adds an extra dimension to a lot of them. Most impressive for me is the way that a lot of the first person shooters use the d-pad and touch screen as a mouse and keyboard substitute. So you use your left thumb to move around and your left index finger to fire (via the left shoulder button), whilst you control the view with the stylus and touch screen. Intuitive - especially in Metroid Prime: Hunters. Furthermore, the range of different games available for the DS is staggering. From games where you have to survive on a desert island (Lost in Blue), beat em ups (Viewtiful Joe), racers (Mario Kart) and crime sims (Crime Scene) to slightly more bizarre things like a game called Scribblenauts where you get to solve puzzles by 'drawing' items - every gamer is catered for. Seriously though, the sheer number of genres represented is amazing - I for one never thought I'd be playing an air traffic control game on a handheld console before I got my DS. It's a brilliant console, and even has wifi capabilities...not that I've been able to use the wifi, or access any of the multi-player modes in any of the games. See paragraph 1 for details.

Random Meandering Crap

2010-01-27T14:04:00.000-08:00

Hello. I'm bored at work so thought I'd update this thing for my own amusement. It's a bit like a virtual version of writing down the day's date or a comment in the corner of the page you're reading when ploughing through a book. Ever done that? I have (obviously). No point to it, just think it's cool to randomly stumble across shit written down years ago. For example, I recently found my old copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (the one with all the books in one volume) and remembered that I'd done the old 'write in the corner' thing with that. The notes I found were scribbled while I was reading said sci-fi comedy epic during night shifts in my job as a concierge in the Hacienda Apartments in Manchester. They were only things like 'bored, it's 3:12 am and I need a piss' etc, but I thought it was quite interesting to glimpse back into the past, and at the inanities of previous employ.

The Hacienda Apartments, yesterday.

That was a fucking weird job though. It was 2004 and the building itself (constructed on the site of the renowned Hacienda nightclub) wasn't even finished - indeed only a handful of the flats on the lower floors were actually occupied. The upper levels of the building were far from finished though, and some sections didn't even have the lid on yet - an aspect of the place I used to exploit by going up on the roof at night and watching the skyline twinkle. All very romantic, I'm sure you'll agree. Took a dump in a few of the unfinished apartments' toilets, too. Perks of the job an' all that. Seems like a lifetime ago now - so much shit has happened between then and now its unreal. But that's another post, on another long boring night here at my desk. I suppose it's quite apt, writing about my nights at the Hacienda though, seeing as I'm doing nights now and am equally as bored!

The Hacienda, back when it was a nightclub

Anyway, back to now. I've recently, through a website called swapz.co.uk, managed to swap (naturally) my Flip Video Mino and O2 XDA Mini S for a Nintendo DS Lite. I'm still waiting for it to arrive in the post, but hopefully I'll have it in my hands by the end of the week. I've never actually played on a DS so I'm intrigued to see what all the fuss is about. I used to have a PSP many moons ago and was addicted to it, but sold it to fund the purchase of my first car. I know, from looking at screenshots on various websites that the DS's graphics aren't really up to the standard of those displayed on Sony's handheld, but it appears to have a fair few decent-looking RPGs available for it, and that's what I'm after if truth be told - a game with some longevity and a meaty storyline. Oh, and a bit of Mario Kart action.

A low quality size comparison of the iPad and other devices. It's between the DS XL and the Amazon Kindle.

Been reading about that new tablet PC (Mac?) from Apple - the iPad, too. Personally, I don't really see the point. It just looks and sounds like a big iPhone, with the functionality of a Macbook. Who, exactly, is the thing aimed at? Most people who want the features that the iPad offer already have either an iPhone or an Apple laptop of some description...so who else is there left to appeal to? Steve Jobs reckons that the iPad will offer a 'complete' browsing experience. Don't iPhones, iPod Touches, Powerbooks, iBooks, Macbooks, Powermacs, iMacs, PCs, PDAs, Blackberrys, smartphones, laptops, internet tablets and games consoles all offer a 'complete' internet browsing experience, y'know, already?! I'm not an Apple basher - I used to sell/demo the fucking things for a living (and I've still got my 'Apple Product Professional' badge and certificate to prove it), but the iPad just seems like a bit of a stupid thing to exist. Very cool, don't get me wrong, but still stupid. I have no doubts whatsoever that I'll be proved very, very wrong when Apple sell 20 billion of them and then use the profits to buy the moon, scoop a big chunk out of it and turn it into a massive, ubiquitous nocturnal corporate logo. Bah. Fuck you Apple and your money and stuff.

On the subject of money, it appears that an immediate lack of the stuff is having a profound impact on my ability to find a house share. I've been looking at various house mate websites, but all the landlords advertising seem to want some ridiculous deposit paid up front before you move in. I can see the point, don't get me wrong, but even when I explain my circumstances and offer to pay a deposit over, say, a few months, I just get the silent treatment. I'll keep trying though...and if it comes to it, I suppose I'll just have to save a deposit this month and then move next month when I get paid again. Not ideal, but what can you do?

Anything else I can bore you (ie, myself) with? Oh yeah - stop the press! I finally finished my book! I didn't actually write on any of the pages in this one because I forgot to, but I digress. The book was Fallen Angels by Richard Morgan - the sequel to hisawesome debut novel, Altered Carbon. The series depict the exploits of one Takeshi Kovacs, an ex-Envoy soldier ( hard cunt) who lives, dies and kills people with relative ease in a distant future where corporate corruption is rife, humanity has crossed the stars, and life is cheap.

Cheap, because the vast majority of people have their personalities 'backed up' in little canisters, or 'stacks,' that are implanted in the back of the neck. If they die, the stack is just implanted into a new body (called a sleeve) and then carry on regardless. Obviously, there's a fuck load more to this particular pantheon, but I can't really go into any great detail here simply because I can't be arsed. But take it from me, both Altered Carbon and Fallen Angels are brilliant books. There's a third in the series called Woken Furies (which I'll be buying), and Altered Carbon is rumoured to be getting the movie-adaptation treatment...so yeah. Go and check them out if Sci-Fi awesomeness is your bag. If it's not, then...er...go and read something else. Or don't. It really is up to you. You could go and wander around a shopping centre, looking at stuff in shop windows that you can neither afford nor have the inclination to buy, for example. Or you could have a biscuit. See - there's loads of things you could do. Bye.

Kneesy Peasy

2010-01-16T00:26:00.000-08:00

Annoyingly, I have done my right knee in. As regular readers (all one of them) will know, I am quite the keen runner and I tend to average between 45 and 60 miles per week...but since last Friday I have been out of action. I'll explain. One of my routes takes me along a 1.6 mile stretch of fine Somerset A-road, and during the recent blizzards it naturally got blanketed. The constant trampling of this snow by other users of this route, combined with sub-zero overnight temperatures created a terrain not dissimilar to that of the surface of the moon - I would imagine, having not been there myself. And it is down to running over this icy, uneven lunar surface that I blame the recent destruction of my right knee. It feels like a particularly nasty daemon is sticking a knitting needle through my kneecap when I run for any period of time, and so have been giving it a miss over the last week, instead using a zero-impact cross-trainer/elliptical machine in the gym instead. This is fine, although I can only go for around 40 minutes before becoming so bored I want to strip the skin off my arms...I seriously need to get back out in the fresh air and once again embrace the freedom that road running offers.

When I think about my current predicament, it amazes me that I, up until a few months ago, almost exclusively ran on a treadmill in the gym. Now that I have started to run outdoors, I just can't see the appeal of sweating away in a dingy room with a load of other equally sweaty people. But I digress. I need to get this knee sorted asap and get my luminous yellow jersey on again soon as I fully intend to take part in a sponsored 7 miler in mid February. I forget the name of the good cause that funds raised will go to, but it will be a first for me to actually take part in a running event rather than running for the sake/enjoyment of it. Let's just hope my knee does the right thing and sorts itself out before then.

Also occupying my mind at the moment is the constant nagging feeling that I need to sort my shit out and find somewhere to live, properly. Since I joined the military, I have only really lived in service accomodation (apart from my brief stint in that shared house I moaned about last year). Whilst this is perfactly fine, I really need to acquire my own actual abode. Somewhere I can go to when I am not at work, for example. As it is at the moment, I live and work within the same barbed wire-topped fence, and I'm beginning to go a little stir crazy. So the hunt for a dwelling has resumed at full pace. Wish me luck.

Rescinded

2010-01-15T06:07:00.000-08:00

What's new then? Not a lot, really. I am the first to admit that my life is probably about as dull as is humanly possible. It could quite possibly only become more mind-numbingly boring if I was a fucking corpse. Case in point - the highlight of the week thus far has been my trip to Halfords. You know, that car/bike shop where there is never a shop assistant around when you need one, and when you do actually find somebody who works there they haven't got a clue about anything - anything - to do with cars or bikes. Anyway, I went to Halfords...to buy a replacement exhaust pipe cover (see left) for my car as the previous one fell off. Oh, and a new cigarette lighter poppy-out thing because there wasn't one in the car when I bought it. See. No matter how fucking depressing you may think your existence is, there's always somebody else enjoying their time on this mortal coil less than you. In retrospect to reading what I have just written, I suppose I should be thankful that I live in the UK and not Haiti; that the few items I once owned are not now lying beneath the destroyed remains of my home, and that if I want something to eat I can just go to the fridge. And for that reason, I rescind all feelings of boredom and depression previously conveyed.

Eye Spy

2010-01-11T02:25:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that a lot of the detritus that weeps out of my mind and onto this blog is generally about various gadgets and bits of tech tat that litter my life. And you'd be right. That's because I like gadgets. I can't give a reason for this slightly obsessive fascination with little lumps of plastic that perform various non-essential tasks, nor can I give a reason as to why I waste yet more cash on magazines that pre and review new gadgets. What I can tell you, though, is that I've accrued quite a number of them over the past year or so, and I've noticed one thing that a lot of them have in common. Cameras. Yep, about 75% of the things I've acquired have cameras on them, and it only really occurred to me after reading one of Charlie Brooker's rants about ubiquitous screens, over on The Guardian's website. What he was saying is that no matter where most of us go throughout the average day, we're surrounded by screens. You know, TV screens, computer screens, phone screens, etc etc. But on the flipside, cameras are just as prevalent. Obviously, I'm aware of the ridiculous number of CCTV cameras dotted around Britain's towns and cities (did I read somewhere that the British public are the most observed in the world?); but, going back to the gadgets thing, I'm on about little mini cameras. Where the fuck is this meandering shite going? Well, the other day I counted the number of devices I own that are capable of recording either a still or moving image. Here they are:

Flip Video Mino. Obviously. It is a mini video recorder afterall. It'd be a bit fucking daft if it had no lens. Don't recall the resolution of the video it records, but it's pretty good quality. There is a HD version of this little beauty available, but it's slightly bigger than the original Mino and is more expensive.

Fuji Finepix J20. Again, its a camera. It captures brilliant 10 mp stills and there's also a fairly decent video option too.

O2 XDA Mini S. My old(ish) PDA/phone. It's got a 1.3 mp camera on it. Can also record average quality video.

Alcatel OT 707. I bought this cheapo touchscreen mobile to use after I got my old Nokia wet whilst on a mountain biking trip. It has a 1.3 mp camera on it and is capable of capturing (very low quality) video too.

iPod Nano 5G. The new Nano is an awesome gadget. Obviously, it stores music - but the new 5th Generation Nano also has a little camera on the back. The quality isn't mind-blowing when recorded clips are viewed on a PC, but when played back on the Nano's display it is perfectly acceptable. For some reason, the Nano can't take still pictures, but I'm sure the inevitable 6th Gen one will have the ability.

Dell Inspiron 1545 Core 2 Duo. My laptop. Finished with a lovely red lid. It also has a little camera lens embedded into the shell just above the screen. The quality of the pictures and video it records is perfectly acceptable for the function it serves. It is only meant to be a webcam, afterall.

HTC HD2. My new phone. That I went on about in my last post. It's got a 5mp camera that can shoot either stills or video.

So there you have it. Without even trying, I have accumulated SEVEN devices that can shoot pictures or video. Do I use any of them? Well, I use the Finepix to take photos when I'm out on the piss (incidentally, I've lost my two previous digital cameras on nights out) and I use the phone camera now and then, but apart from that the rest of them are pretty much redundant. Ebay time, methinks. There's no point to me telling you all this, by the way. I'm just bored at work so thought I'd amuse myself by writing something. Anything. Urgh.

Howdy

2010-01-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

Ooooh look! Snow! It's snowing outside. Fucking great. This snow might be good if you're ten and looking for a day off school, but for the rest of us (including me), it's a pain in the ring piece akin to having a jalapeno pepper rubbed in your eye. By Bluto from Popeye. Why so? Well, the whole country seems to have ground to a halt. And it pisses me right off. Look at countries like Russia, Norway, Sweden etc. These places have heavier snow than this all year round, yet you don't see their societies completely break down. Case in point: I am currently trying to get my O2 mobile broadband account cancelled. Mainly because the service delivered by the dongle/network signal is dire, but this is besides the point. Yesterday I called O2 to discuss my account.

I was met with a recorded message saying that O2 was closed due to 'adverse weather conditions.' Whaaaa?! It's a bit of fucking snow, for shit's sake! I reiterate: O2 shut down their complete customer service operation because of snow fall. Do people have mobile phones in Russia, Norway and Sweden? Yes. Do their phone networks have customer service helplines? Yes. Are they closed when it snows? No. Because if they were, they'd be closed 75% of the fucking year! Yet here we are in good old Blightly, wimpering behind our curtains because Jack Frost has emptied his ball sack over our gardens and roads. Makes me wanna fucking scream. Fair enough, I appreciate the treacherous nature of the roads during this cold snap (I skidded off the asphalt and into a field last week), but surely staff who live within a certain radius of the call centre (it's in Bury, near Manchester - and I used to work their many years ago) could, y'know, walk into work? Bah.

Not O2, today or yesterday

On the subject of mobile phones, you may remember that in one of my last posts I was blathering on about my O2 XDA (jeez, a lot of my life is ruled by O2 ain't it?!). Well, as January rolled around my contract matured and I was offered an 'upgrade.' For those who don't know, it's a clever way of tying customers to another 18 month contract by offering them a spangly new handset. I, like many before me, have fallen victim to this ploy and received my new handset. At this juncture, I would like to push aside all forms of cynicism and sarcasm because the handset O2 have given me is nothing short of a miraculous piece of technology. No, it's not an iPhone. Spectacular as it no doubt is, it seems that every man, his dog and big issue seller have one these days and I strive for minority status.

No, what I've got is an HTC HD2. A phone that looks and behaves very similarly to the iPhone but (in my humble opinion) is superior. It has a superior operating system (Windows Mobile 6.5 with HTC Sense interface). It has a superior screen size. It has a superior CPU (1 Ghz Snapdragon). It has a superior 5mp camera. It has integrated Facebook, Twitter, MSN Messenger and Windows Live. It has Google Maps, Opera, Internet Explorer (that allows playback of page-embedded flash and video files) and Youtube as standard. It has a proximity sensor so the screen locks when you hold the phone up to your ear. It has a light sensor that automatically dims the screen in low light conditions as not to burn your retinas out. It can be used as a WiFi router by your laptop. It has Microsoft Office as standard. It has an accelerometer. It can cook your tea for you - and eat it - while you watch Countdown in the next room.

Basically, it's awesomely good. Actually, scratch that - it's benchmark-destroyingly good. I suppose the only areas in which the iPhone could be considered truly superior are the App Store and iTunes connectivity. But I already have an iPod Nano 5G (fucking brilliant, by the way) and the built in Windows/Microsoft Marketplace used by HD2 promises to expand rapidly with the launch of the new Zune HD in the good ol' U S of A. Obviously, the iPhone has a massive advantage over the HD2 in that it's been out longer and has a much, much larger installed user base already, but it's always good to look at the alternatives and if I had to choose between the two, the HD would get my vote every time.

A bit of a geekish rant there, but that's what I like. That, and slagging shit off. That'll be coming soon...

Erm...new (old) phone and car. Yay!

2009-11-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

My new phone/PDA thing arrived at the tail end of last week. I was beginning to give up any hope of ever receiving the damned thing after several fruitless trips to the post room, and the logging of 'negative feedback' on ebay seemed inevitable. But alas, it came on friday and I was overjoyed. This 'joy' quickly turned to abject horror though, when after ripping the box open and putting my sim card in, I discovered that the device wouldn't switch on. Devastation washed through my body as I sat there cradling the thing in my arms like a wounded soldier. All the scene needed was some rain and a muddy field for me to kneel in. I tried various different plugs and USB cables - none of which would charge the thing and even with the battery out and the mains connected there appeared to be no power entering the unit at all.

A little digging around on the internet proved useful though. An ancient forum, long since abandoned by it's members held the answer to my conundrum. Apparently, if the XDA's battery gets to a certain level of, erm, deadness, it simply will not boot at all. So, what you have to do is 'jump start' the battery with a bit of juice. So I stripped down a USB cable to it's four basic wires and blu-tacked the positive and negative power wires to their respective electrodes on the battery...and then plugged the other end of the USB into my laptop. To be honest, I was expecting a spectacular pyrotechnics display that would spell certain death for my laptop, battery and probably the whole electrical infrastructure of the building. But happened. I left the battery 'charging' whilst I made a cuppa and when I came back I slotted it into the XDA. I turned it on. IT WORKED!!! I quickly plugged in the proper USB power cord and it began to charge. The relief was unbelievable.

What I mean to say is that my phone came, I thought it was fucked right out of the box, but then I got it working. And I'm glad I did because it's a storming bit of kit. Sure, it's a bit of a brick and is uncomfortable to put in your jeans pocket, but it's essentially a handheld PC and it does everything it needs to very well. Running Windows Mobile 5 and with features like wi-fi and stuff it's a superb little (massive) phone. I'm sure the iPhone would kick it's ass in terms of features and cool 'apps,' but to be honest I don't give a flying shit. It cost me £40 and I reckon I look like less of a cunt than the average iPhone user when I get it out to text in the street. Obviously, when my upgrade rolls around in January I'll probably get yet another new handset (that new Palm thing looks alright), but until then the XDA Mini S will do for me.

Proton Impian. No, I'd never seen one before either.

Apart from new(ish) phones, this week saw me acquire a new(ish) car. My old one was a Vauxhall Vectra 2.0 SRi, which sounds quite impressive. And it was - it went like shit off a shovel...but unfortunately so did the petrol. So I sold it to a mate and then went off in search of a newer, smaller alternative. What I've ended up with is a Proton Impian. Now, 'Impian' is possibly the worst name I've ever heard for a car - It doesn't really conjure up the same kind of images as 'Mustang,' 'Spyder' or 'Veyron' does it, but like a book, it shouldn't be judged by it's name. Or summat. Now, I didn't know this but apparently Proton is owned and run by the Malaysian government. Strange but true. Also true (I think) is that Proton and Lotus are the same company. Or summat. But I digress. Ultimately, I wanted a car of similar size to the Vectra but with a smaller engine and better fuel economy. And that's what I got with the Impian. It sounds like it's got a fucking hair dryer under the bonnet at times and only has a shitty tape player/radio built in as standard...but it feels really light to drive - totally opposite to the Vectra which was a lumbering beast of Armageddon in comparison, only rearing it's roaring head to devour a star system every now and then. Furthermore, the Proton has a very basic dashboard display. That's something brain-dead Max Power reading chavs may see as a bad thing, but for me it's a godsend - no more fucking messages popping up on the trip computer mithering me to check this or replace that. Now if something's fucked, I can drive on in beautiful ignorance until black smoke fills the cabin and flames spew out from under the bonnet like I'm driving a Nicholas Cage-sponsored stunt-car. Simplicity, people, is what I'm all about. And ignorance. 70/30 split.

Unfortunately, I have no tales of drunken stupidity with which to regale you on this occasion. I did go for a few beverages last Saturday night after watching that pathetic England display against Brazil, but I could feel myself becoming very, very drunk by about midnight. You know you've had enough Strongbow when all you can taste with every mouthful is the bitter-sweet tang of battery acid. So I stumbled out of the club and got a (fucking rip-off £20) taxi home. But not before ordering a big old greasy donner kebab...

Old habits die hard.

Modern Whorefare

2009-11-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

So Modern Warfare 2 came out today. Hoo-fucking-ray! Anyone'd think the world had stopped on it's axis the way people are going on about it. What's the big deal? There was an item on the fecking news this morning about it, for God's sake. It's the sequel to a game that has you shooting generic middle-eastern terrorists (or 'rag heads,' as many of my colleagues refer to them) with a selection of generic weapons. In a selection of generic middle-eastern towns, cities, slums etc. In a word (actually two words, technically): it's GENERIC. I've not even played it and I'm BORED of it. Yawn.

Okay, the first one was entertaining in places - that level where you get to blow shit up with a helicopter mounted gun was quite good...however I have to admit to finding Gears of War 2 much more fun. Maybe, once I find myself with £50 to spare I'll wander mindlessly into GAME and buy a copy. But to be honest, I'll never have a 'spare' £50 so that'll never happen.

The guy who lives down the corridor from me has obviously been out and bought Modern Warfare 2 though, because as I sit here writing this crap, all I can hear echoing up the void between our rooms is a cacophony of simulated gunfire, floor-shaking explosions and Americans shouting macho shit. I'm pretty sure I also heard the ubiquitous "MEDIIIIIC!" at one point too. How depressingly predictable. Why this man plays computer games at over 20,000 decibels I will never know, although on the odd occasion that he does open the crypt-like door to his domain, I have glimpsed the 60+ inch projector screen that he plays them games on. When I saw that, I realised that 'moderation' is not a word in the cretin's vocabulary.

Today saw me liberate myself from the Prison of Daylight(TM), too. As I mentioned in my last post, I have taken up road-running and since the clocks went back my window for getting out and pounding pavement has been severely limited. That's because I was wary of running in the dark...but no more! I have bought a simple yet brilliant little device...which in reality is a flashing LED on a bit of elastic that can be placed around the arm so that motorists can see you in the dark. Look, I never said my life was exciting. I also bought some new Nike running trainers since my Saucony ones shrank after I put them in the washer and then tried to dry them out by placing them, quite innocently, on a radiator. Silly me, putting wet shit on a radiator, eh? Fucking twats could've put a label inside their hideously expensive trainers saying 'do not put on a moderately warm radiator in case these £80 trainers shrink.' That little escapade actually happened last week so between then and now I've been running in some old Reebok Classics. A word of advice: don't run in Reebok Classics. I now have a blister that goes three quarters of the way around the big toe on my right foot and am in constant agony whenever I walk. So there you go.

Bought a new phone on ebay too. Well, I say new but what I actually mean is used. Hopefully not by the kind of person who shoves cheese into every little nook and cranny of every electrical device they own. And hopefully, it'll arrive tomorrow. Hopefully. That's the thing with ebay - the waiting for the item to get posted. And then the waiting for the item to get delivered. It does my fucking head in waiting for shit to arrive, it really does - especially when the item is an XDA Mini S PDA phone thing (above) that looks about 500 times better than ANYTHING I've ever owned in my pathetic life before. It's got a touch screen, wi-fi, a FUCKING STYLUS!!!!!!! I'm so excited I could spunk in my kecks at any given moment. But where is it?! WHERE?! Please GOD let it arrive tomorrow...

Optimism

2009-11-08T13:27:00.000-08:00

Hello there. Does anyone actually read this shit? I'm guessing not, but I'm fucking bored so I'm writing this to entertain myself. Can't believe it's been 3 months since I updated this blog. Mainly through lack of motivation and a fucking crap 1992-style internet connection, I hasten to add. So what's been happening in my life? Well, I've moved away from Portsmouth - which is good. I fucking hate that place. And I've taken up road running, ditching the treadmill for the lovely outdoors. I used to think running 10k on a treader was quite good, but nowadays I tend to crank out distances of the 17-mile variety instead. How can I tell how far I've run? Well it's down to my latest gadget acquisition:

It's a Garmin Forerunner GPS watch. It's basically a watch (natch) that has GPS abilities and is tracked by a satellite so you can view, in real-time, how far you've run. Once your run is complete, you can then link it wirelessly to your PC and view your route, calories burned, distance, time, speed etc. It's a cracking little gadget although it was quite expensive. £200 actually, but I use it quite a bit so it's paid for itself. The only thing is that it doesn't like getting wet, which is a bit of a pain in the arse in England. In Winter. But when it's dry, it's brilliant.

I really love running through the countryside too, but I'm not very fond of the fucking arseholes who thunder around the pavement-less lanes of Somerset in their Volvo estates. I got hit by a deaf and dumb driver the other day whilst out running. I wasn't injured or owt, but I was wearing a bright yellow running top so I was hardly inconspicuous. Cock tried to blame me mouthing and mumbling that I should've been on the pavement, to which I replied "what fucking pavement?" Should really have poked the ugly twat in the eye, giving him the full set of sensory disabilities. Speaking of inconspicuousness, I could've done with some of it when I got caught short while out running last week - about halfway through it became apparent that I was dying for a shit and every little lane or path I ran down in my search for a decent toilet-bush had some knob walking his dog sculking about. When I did finally find a spot, I let out the most explosive watery shit I've ever experienced...but the relief was almost nirvana-like. Didn't wipe my arse though, so ran the rest of the route with a shitty crevice. That's how I roll, peeps.

What else? Oh yeah, went to yet another wedding yesterday. It was good but I'm getting a bit tired of going to these events now. Yesterday's was my fourth (yes, FOURTH) of the year and whilst I'm happy to have an excuse to go and get obscenely drunk, I'm getting a bit sick of seeing other people happily in love whilst I grow old alone and stinking of piss. Speaking of being drunk, I was yesterday. After the wedding itself there was the expected reception where a frankly unbelievable amount of free champagne, wine, beer and port was being thrown about. Not literally, you understand, but I simply couldn't control my inner alcoholic and so I (naturally) drank everything I could get my hands on. This lead, rather inevitably, to me being unable to walk after a few hours and I have only vague memories of the rest of the night's events. I do, however, remember waking up this morning feeling like a human turd and then throwing my guts up in the toilet several times until nothing but stinking bile came out. Oh, and I seem to have mislaid my brand new, 10 megapixel camera. FUCK! Hopefully, someone has handed it in to the bar at the place the private reception was held...but if not, I'll just have to wait till next payday and buy yet another one...that I can leave in a bar when I'm pissed.

I'm meant to be going to another wedding in a few weeks but I'm seriously considering making up some lame-ass excuse just to get out if it. There's only so much soft smiling and acting like you give a flying fuck that a man can fake. Great, you're getting married. And it's nice that you've found your soul mate. But let's cut the crap - when's the ceremony over? I want to get pissed and eat free food. And don't fucking judge me - everyone thinks the same way.

Oh, and my back hurts. I can't even stand up straight, so I'm walking about like the frigging Hunchback of Notre Damme at the moment . It's probably down to something that occurred last night that I can't remember. Oh well, I'm sure someone will tell me how much of a cock I was at some point.

Lastly, just to address a post I wrote several months ago - I saw Terminator Salvation the other day. I never got around to seeing it at the cinema, even though I waxed lyrical about how much I was looking forward to it - and I'm glad I didn't. What a load of shit! Crap, confusing storyline and what's with the computer generated Arnie at the end?! He didn't even look like that in the first movie - he had short hair, not Conan-style flowing locks! How the producers managed to fuck it up is beyond me, but hey. I'm contemplating going to see The Fourth Kind this week - hopefully that won't turn out to be poo. But probably will. I'm such an optimist aren't I?!

More random bullshit to come this week, fans.

The Law is an ARSE

2009-08-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I nipped home from work at lunch time. I ride a bike to work, and a very nice bike it is too - it's a Carerra Subway. No suspension, no fancy bells or whistles, but it does the job and does it well. But this ain't a bike review, oh no. It's a review of the type of week I'm having: a fucking bad one.

So, like I said, I rode home from work at lunch time. So I'm cycling along a deserted street and get to the traffic lights. No cars behind me, none infront. Not even any waiting at the junction ahead to turn. But the lights are red, so like any dutiful cyclist I stop and wait for the green. I wait for another 5 MINUTES for the bastard lights to fucking change, still perched there like a bell-end on a deserted street, with no pedestrians anywhere in sight; waiting for the lights to go green.

Enough. I proceed across the deserted junction at a leisurely pace...only to spot a bright yellow blob in my periphery accompanied by "EXCUSE ME, SIR."

The fucking filth. On extremely expensive-looking mountain bikes. There was no way I could outrun them on my Subway. FUCK. They booked me for contravention of some traffic law and gave me a £30 on the spot fine for going through a red light. On a deserted road. On a fucking push-bike. What makes me even more annoyed is that at the time this jobsworth cop was writing me a ticket, a group of about 5 (obviously unemployed) scrotes shuffled past on the other side of the road clutching bottles of alcohol and jeering at me.

Justice always prevails, eh.

Self Improvement

2009-02-04T01:22:00.000-08:00

I recently booked myself onto one of those courses that teach you how to teach other (non-English speaking) people how to speak English. It's going to cost me close to £300 when it's all paid for, but it's something I've been interested in for a while so thought "fuck it," and rang them. The actual course is called TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language - er, I think), it lasts for 3 days and it basically shows you how to construct lesson plans and give people with a basic grasp of English a bit of tutoring on how to improve their skills. The main thing about this course that interests me is the opportunity to travel to the Far East and Europe to teach once you've gained the qualification - something I'd love to do.

One of my friends has a brother who did this and he now lives in the heart of Tokyo, teaching fit Japanese birds dressed as schoolgirls and Jet Set Radio characters (I'd imagine). My jealousy can hardly be contained.

You may think this is a bit strange, what with me being in the Royal Navy and all, but to be honest I'm probably going to leaving the service in the near future. Tried it, (really, really) didn't like it - nothing more to say on the subject really...apart from "roll on freedom."

And to be frank, the fact that I'm going on this TEFL course and that I've got plans for the future is the only thing keeping me going through these dark Navy days.

In other news, I think I'm going to skip the gym and do something enjoyable tonight - like drink a few beers and play on the 360. Possibly. There's only so many times you can spend an evening waiting for the treadmill or queuing up for a go on the peck deck whilst a load of moronic Marines grunt and flex around you. Last night was just like this, and as I sat there surrounded by guys pumping their impractically large forearms in mirrors, a line from Fight Club popped into my head: "self improvement is masturbation. Now, self destruction..."

At that point I left the gym, downed a bottle of Smirnoff and cooked up a hit...

...I wish.

Adventures in Newcastle (Brown Ale)

2009-02-03T00:38:00.001-08:00

Well I finally moved into my new gaff at the weekend, and to be honest it all went pretty smoothly. It only took me two car journeys to haul all my shit across town from my previous abode to my new place, so after I moved and sort of arranged my effects into some sort of coherent 'pile,' I went down the gym. And that's where I lay the downfall of the rest of my weekend...

Later on Saturday (after getting up at the crack of dawn, moving house, slogging it out in the gym and practically eating nothing all day), I went into town to meet some friends who were out celebrating a birthday. I started drinking Newcastle Brown Ale at 2pm. I was back in my living room, unable to walk or talk by 10pm that night after being put in a taxi by mates who were drinking such piss as Budweiser and Foster's - by the 330ml bottle I hasten to add. So to them I say this - YOU were drinking minute amounts of piss-water. I, on the other hand was downing pint bottles of Hell's own beverage. Newkie Brown - separates the men from the boys.

Apparently, I rocked up to the house with a bottle of wine (where I got it from, I still don't know) and drank it with one of my new housemates. I have vague flashbacks of this and I must've looked like a complete fuckwit spouting forth all kinds of incoherent shite to the guy. Bear in mind that this was the first time we'd met since I moved into what is effectively his house and you can see my concern. Unbeknown to me until the following afternoon, I'd also knocked over a rather large glass of the aforementioned vino tinto. All over the spotless beige carpet.

I awoke on Sunday morning with a raging hangover, unable to recall: a) how I'd got home; b) whether I'd eaten a kebab (something I plan never to do again after hearing about the recent investigation into the nutritional values of said post-pub lard-a-thon); or c) if I'd done/said anything to offend my new housemate.

You know that feeling where you can't remember if you've done something terrible whilst drunk? That's how I felt for most of Sunday. I had this disgusting knot in the pit of my stomach that was hinting that I'd carried out some heinous act of ignorance and stupidity whilst intoxicated the previous evening...but I simply couldn't recall what. It didn't help that my nose hurt (had I been fighting? with my housemate? Surely not!) and upon texting various friends about my activity I hadn't had a single reply by 6pm that evening. It must've been bad - whatever it was that I'd done.

Imagine my relief when my housemate called me saying that Saturday night had been a top laugh and all I'd done was spilt some wine. It was akin to a scenario in which the Grim Reaper opens your bedroom door whilst you're having a wank and tells you your time is up, before looking at his Blackberry, explaining that there's been a mix up and that you can carry on bashing one out over the lingerie pages of last season's Argos catalogue in peace. I was that relieved.

Oh, and I didn't throw up, piss or shit in my new room either - which is always a bonus.

Bale us out, Christian

2009-01-28T01:43:00.000-08:00

Like most people dragging their ass though life seemingly at random, I have little to look forward to at the moment. Obviously, there's the move coming up - but apart from that the only thing in my life that takes the form of a 'goal' is the long overdue repayment of my overdraft.

I've been overdrawn with the bank since I graduated from University in 2003 - that's nearly SIX YEARS of being nearly two grand in the red with Barclays. I don't blame Barclays for this - on the contrary, unlike most people who are in debt, the only person I blame is MYSELF. I'm the one who spent a £2,000 overdraft on booze, kebabs, computer games and shit I didn't need. I honestly think more people should adopt this attitude, but I digress. Last month though, after several months of saving, I managed to pay off one of those grands and it feels like a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders. There's still the small matter of the remaining £900 to go, but that'll wait another 6 years. Why am I telling you this? Just to give you some sort of background to the tale of uber-anger that engulfed my this morning, to be honest.

It's like this: I'm skint and £900 overdrawn. It's the end of January and it's always fucking raining. Imagine my face when I opened a letter from O2 this morning to discover that I'd been billed £180 for internet useage via my crappy dongle - when it's only meant to be £20 per month. Apparently, this extra £160 on top of my usual £20 charge is for 'downloads and useage outside of my 3Gb quota.' BOLLOCKS!

You don't pay £180 per YEAR on some proper wired broadband deals, so how the fuck can O2 justify charging me this amount for looking at my hotmail and surfing Youtube on occasion? Apparently, they're meant to send you a little text alert when you're nearing your data limit...an alert I never received. I'm currently in the process of getting this charge refunded, but if - as I'm expecting - the cunts turnaround and say "no," I'll be straight down the small claims court faster than you can say "cancel my direct debit."

Going back to the start of this diatribe, I have actually found something I'm quite looking forward to, although there's going to be quite a wait for it: Terminator: Salvation. Here's a shot:

"He's behind you etc..."

Yep - that's Batman himself, Christian Bale, playing a grown-up John Connor battling against Skynet's finest. It's almost guaranteed to be better than Terminator 3 simply because it won't feature a half-arsed performance from Arnie California or (hopefully) feature any gaping paradox-based plot holes. Terminator 2 style, ass-kicking action-o-thon? I certainly hope so...

...Roll on July.

Oh Yeah...

2009-01-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

Ever heard of a Rube Goldberg Machine? No? Neither had I until today. Well, actually I had - I just didn't know that that's what it was called.

A Rube Goldberg Machine is one of those things that has loads of bizarre events going on (like a candle burning through a piece of string, that in turn makes a spring-loaded boot kick a ball, that in turn turns on a fan that blows over a box that releases a balloon...etc etc etc.), but ultimately results in a rather mundane and simple task being carried out. We've all seen them in adverts for cars, dynamite and tampons* etc.

But check this awesome example out:

It's amazing isn't it?! Some of the processes involved look a bit suspect to me, but you have to applaud the inventiveness and patience the creators must have had to get it all together. If it'd been me doing it, I'm pretty sure I'd have lost my temper when the CD cases wouldn't stand up and smashed it all to bits. That's because I'm an angry twat with Satan's own temper. But enough about me and my massively and irretrievably flawed 'personality'...click here for more info on this intriguing art form.

*-confusing the latter two could be hazardous to health

I'm Outta Here!

2009-01-27T12:43:00.000-08:00

Wahey! Only 3 days till I move now! The excitement levels, as you have probably guessed, are approaching something resembling happiness. Not true happiness you understand. No, more like the faux happiness people working in offices display in the run-up to Christmas. You, know - like when someone who has never previously acknowledged your existence suddenly starts speaking to you as you make a cup of tea in the kitchen...simply because it's nearly Christmas?

I'm straying from the point though. Let me explain my situation. As you will probably see from looking at my profile, I'm currently in the Royal Navy and as such live at a shore base. It's really not that bad and I'm sure some people currently serving onboard a ship would kill to live here...but there are a few things that really get up my nose and as such I've decided to eschew the cheap rent and relative security of the base and move into a shared house nearby.

You may think I'm a bit stupid considering the recent onset of a recession, but paying rent to a landlord is small fry when you consider the absence of things you might take for granted living in 'civvy street':

On the base, there are minimal kitchen facilities. Granted, there is a 'galley' that provides meals at certain times of the day, but if you'd rather not eat chips and mashed spuds for every meal (washed down with warm coloured water falsely advertised as chilled cordial), you're pretty screwed. That's because the kitchen areas provided only contain a fridge and a microwave and there are no proper cookers or ovens, so healthy eating isn't a viable option.

The aforementioned fridge. Because the kitchen areas are communal, everyone has to share a fridge. Put anything - anything - other than milk or margarine into this fridge and you can rest assured that it WILL be gone the next time you go to the kitchen. Once, I put a bag of shopping in the fridge and tied the handles together in a misguided attempt to deter any would-be thief. Silly me. The thief simply untied the handles, went through the food and took the items he/she wanted. Then had the fucking audacity to cook this food in the microwave (it was a microwave lasagne, just in case you were wondering), take one fork-full, decide he/she didn't actually want the whole thing and then tossed it into the goddamned bin!!! What a fucking cunt!

I have bought two toasters for the communal kitchen - both of which have been stolen.

The security staff on the gate insist that you show your ID card entering the site. Fair enough - it is a military base after all. You also have to show it going out of the gate. Why?! This means groups of people fishing around in bags/pockets/wallets etc looking for ID cards hanging around...when all they want to do is go out! I remember one occasion where I entered the site, got a phone call from a mate asking me to meet him outside, turned around literally in front of the guard...and was ordered to show my ID again before I left! I'd shown it to the guy literally TEN SECONDS beforehand!

The shop on the base is about 3 times as expensive as the ones just outside the gates. And the staff all have faces longer than Ruud Van Nistelrooy.

Don't get me wrong - it's not all bad, but after several months these little annoyances start to grate...so It's time to go. And like I said - only four days and counting!

eBastards

2009-01-26T06:52:00.001-08:00

You know what really pisses me off? tHIS. wHEN YOU MISS HIT THE cAPS lOCK KEY ON YOUR KEYBOARD AND WRITE AND ENTIRE SENTENCE IN OPPOSITE CASE, LOOK UP AT THE SCREEN, REALISE WHAT YOU'VE DONE AND THEN HAVE TO RE-TYPE THE entire fucking thing!!!

But that's not what I want to bitch about right now. No, another thing that pisses me off (there are quite literally hundreds of thousands, by the way) is the random postage cost of items for sale on eBay. Why does it cost £10 to post a game or cable, yet it costs £2.50 to send a fridge freezer?! I'm exaggerating, naturally, but there's no standardisation on what sellers can charge for postage costs.

As you may have deduced, I do use eBay quite a bit and it really annoys me that people can just state random (and generally over-the-odds) amounts for the postage costs. Recently, I purchased an Xbox 360 game and the postage costs amounted to nearly a fiver, but when the thing arrived, the total cost of the stamps on the envelope came up to something like 98p. I wouldn't have minded if the game had been in a padded envelope, either - but it wasn't, it was just wrapped in brown paper. Brown paper that clearly didn't cost £3.02.

So where did my postage money go then? I'll tell you where - straight into the pocket of the arsehole who sold me the game. Hopefully it'll go towards the cost of a tin of Haze and a bottle of Shake 'n' Vac, because judging by the stench eminating from t'game the house fucking needs it.

A couple of final thoughts: why is is always written as 'eBay' when the actual logo doesn't feature a capital 'b,' and why isn't it called 'eBid'?

Hmmm...

Technological Breakdown

2009-01-26T05:23:00.000-08:00

Hello. Thought it was about time I started a 'proper' blog. I'm pretty confident no-one is gonna give a flying toss about anything I write on this thing, but hey - it's what all the coolest kids on the block are doing these days, right? I do write on another blog - The Dreamcast Junkyard, but that's mainly just about games and stuff. This one is going to cover any random shite that I feel is worthy of writing - or blogging - about.

And there's no time like the present, so I'm going to sing the praises of my newest technological acquisition: my Sansa Clip MP3 player. It's fucking awesome. I used to have an iPod Shuffle that I used in the gym, but the piece of shit broke after a few months of use (the little metal bit inside the charging hole broke off so I couldn't charge it up with the dock anymore), so I had to go back to using my old £6.99 Aldi MP3 player. Which was fine, but it didn't have a belt clip so I had to put it in my shorts' waist band when I was on the rowing machine...which led to me having to fish around inside them when it inevitably fell into the void between shorts and underwear. Not a good look in a busy gym.

Anyway, I got this Sansa Clip 2GB from Currys at the weekend for 25 quid, and it blows the Shuffle out of the fucking stratosphere, let alone the water. It's tiny, has an FM radio and is loud as hell - perfect for drowning out the twatting Basshunter infinity loop they have on in the gym.

I'm quite into technology and stuff - especially cool little gadgets. Another top bit of kit I recently got hold of is the Flip Video Ultra. You've probably already seen one or own one, but if you're not familiar with the name, it's a super-basic video camera thing:

It's possibly the most idiot-proof piece of technology I ever clapped eyes on - it's got one massive red button on the back...press it and it records. Simple. Plug it into your PC and you can upload what you've just recorded straight onto Youtube. If you have a fucking crap net connection like me (one of those shite O2 mobile broadband dongles), it can take several millennia to upload though.

The quality of the video is really quite good, but due to compression or whatever the fuck it is, when you upload to Youtube the resolution takes a dive. It's still decent enough though. The Flip usually sells for about £100, but I managed to blag one off eBay for £30! God knows how, but it wasn't boxed and didn't come with the cable that you use to plug it into t TV.

Went to Maplin on Saturday to try and get one of those cables and the one the guy sold me doesn't work so now I'm gonna have to haul my ass all the way back over there tonight after work to get a refund. Yes, I know I'm a moaning cunt - but surely that's the whole purpose of having a blog...isn't it?!