Tuesday 20 July 2010

Nights into Dreams

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

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.

Thursday 8 July 2010

Topical Thunder

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!

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Minimal Pretention

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!

Wednesday 23 June 2010

A Thousand Words

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.

Thursday 17 June 2010

Small Pleasures

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

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.