See you soon

I'm probably - probably - not going to update for a week or so.  I know my single-figures readership will not miss me, but I thought I'd explain for the benefit of the me who will probably read this in a few years time, as a sort of diary.

Look, incidentally, at the time of this message.  I'm still at work well into the afternoon (well, I will be when lunch is over).  This is WRONG and UNFAIR.  Stupid work.  I hate working on Christmas Eve, although working on Christmas Day was quite fun, the one time I did it.  But that was before I had a wife, and commitments such as that.  I get the feeling we will be sent home a bit early, but not much.  Gah!

Anyway.  Have a very happy Christmas, and I shall see you when we all re-emerge in the new year.

Christmas time

I have done my Christmas shopping!  Well, assuming people at work don't RANDOMLY BUY ME STUFF, which does happen.  In which case it's a panicked dash down to M&S to snaffle up some 3 for 2 presents which is never good.  I hate giving presents that I consider to be, you know, substandard.  But what can I do?  I don't have the spare cash!  Bah.

Oh, I was so sure I had something to post here.  Oh, yeah, people who read the Bible on the bus or the train -  what's up with that?  Are you worried they've changed bits?

Oh, balls

I didn't post last week!  Damn.

Well, as the nights are at their longest and darkest, it's time for ghost stories!  I will try my damnedest to get my own effort finished and posted before the end of this winter, but in the meantime, enjoy the work of the no-arguments master of the form, MR James.  http://tinyurl.com/6qzmrc (Go for the BBC-produced Jacobi ones for preference).

Or, if you want it for free:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8486

Mystery Case Files - Return to Ravenhearst

A confession - I am a casual gamer.  We both are.  So, with that in mind, imagine how excited we were to see that there was a new Mystery Case Files game.  And that it was titled Return to Ravenhearst!

For those of you bemused by the above paragraph, you may as well give up now.  Or go to Big Fish's website and see for yourself.

Anyway, yes.  Mystery Case Files games are a  class above the games found in the seemingly unending slew of hidden-object games.  Their artwork is crisp, distinctive and varied - a noteworthy feature in a genre dominated by repetitive object hunts.  Their games have enough of a story to pull you along, but not so much that you're clicking through pages of irrelevant, annoying exposition before the next cluttered screen (the exception I make here is for Nevosoft games, whose long dialogue scenes are often very funny).  The atmosphere they generate is top-class, from the goofy Huntsville and Prime Suspects to the creeping dread of Ravenhearst and the black comedy of Madame Fate.  On top of all this, the extra bits are great - the locked doors in the first Ravenhearst are a high-water mark in casual game puzzles and the morphing objects in Madame Fate gave revisiting areas a whole new level of challenge.

Well, good news for those who like the extra bits - this time out the emphasis is firmly on puzzling, with object-finding a close (and still satisfying) second.  The game even moves you around in a less conventional hidden-object fashion.  Instead of a hub screen with locations to be investigated, instead there is a seamless point-and-click interface to walk you from one location to the next, with objects or areas of interest highlighted with sparkles.  All very Nancy Drew (but that's no bad thing, since Her Interactive's series is also head and shoulders above the competition).  The puzzles are once again designed as maddening locks, some conventional and some entirely novel.  Added to these are the occasional take object a to spot b type of conundrum, though these rarely pose much of a challenge - they mainly exist to keep you hunting through the hidden object screens.

Once again, the atmopshere is superbly sustained.  Whistling wind and unpredictable creaks mingle with pleading for ghostly release as you creep through the battered Ravenhearst mansion (incidentally, this is set in Blackpool but please try to put that out of your mind or you'll go crazy at the shaky grasp of all things British), each click drawing you nearer to some half-seen shape or ghostly glow.  As well as the odd genuinely creepy moment, there's a real sense of oppressive fear to the game, and even the questionable live-action inserts do little to dispel it - for the record here, the acting is mostly fine for a videogame but edges into hammy with the late appearance of a new character in the Ravenhearst story.  They've clearly put a lot of effort in, though, and there's even a nice gag reel over the credits.

My one criticism would be that it is too short.  We blasted through it in about 6 hours, which is an okay duration but not nearly as long as we've come to expect from Mystery Case Files.  A few more hidden-object screens wouldn't have gone amiss, I think.  After all, how can one begrudge padding of that nature when it's of such high quality?

But that's a minor point, and I think almost irrelevant considering that it is a casual game - hardcore gamers won't be sitting down for day-long sessions on this, it's a diversion for an hour or so on a gloomy Sunday afternoon.  Very gloomy.  Almost unnaturally gl... hey, was that someone walking past the window?

Halloween 3: The Season of the Witch

This is quite spoilery, but the film is over 20 years old! Get over it! Also, watch the film, because it's great fun. Anyway..

No other franchise before or since has attempted to reinvent itself quite so forcefully. Star Trek "rebooted" as a teen flick? Bond "reinvented" as a troubled, monkeyish Bourne-alike? The Planet of the Apes "reimagined" as the fever-dream of a retard? Child's play compared to this. Carpenter was determined to do something new with his Halloween property and this was how he did it.

Failed, didn't it? Oh, well. It's given us a briliant, mad, flawed film. Creepy, low-key and apocalyptic in that way that 80s horror films often were. Where are the films like this nowadays? It's all zoombies and torture porn. Bah. No fun! I want a film which starts with a robot assassin in a car park, counts itself down to doomsday with a cheery earworm of an advertising jingle and ends with a stone from Stonehenge essploding and THE DEATH OF MILLIONS OF CHILDREN! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IIIIIIIITTT!

Surprisingly effective in its use of gore, too. Really, you hardly ever see anyone killed by the masks, but the image really sticks with you. I suppose there's a decapitation, but that's funny more than anything. The film is long stretches of things happening quite quietly punctuated by a head full o' bugs.

I was tempted to say it's more of a character piece, but that's just a lie. The main dude is barely there, a moustache and a flannel shirt who cheats on his wife with, like, two seconds of hesitation and claims to be a doctor. Pfft. Dan O'Herlihy ("We had a time getting it here!" I WANT TO KNOW!) approaches a character, but ends up caricature. Which is fine, he's the villain. Boo, hiss and all that. And the love interest literally disappears about halfway through, only to re-emerge as the most persistent robot assassin in history. Arnie looks like a total quitter in comparison.

An interesting glimpse into what never was, as Myers returned for the fourth part. The public, eh? You have to give them what they want.

Down again

I feel like the weather is playing tricks on me.  Yesterday I went out to the market and it rained, rained, rained.  Then I lost my umbrella.  Then I found it again and then it broke.  Numbly, I walked back home in the driving rain, then I gave up and waited for the bus.  Which came, after 10 minutes of waiting in the rain.  Then I walked the last stretch from the house in the rain.

I got changed out of my wet clothes and what happened?  Sunshine.  Bloody sunshine.  Bloody bastarding sun put his stupid arsing hat on.

This morning, it rained on me.  And my coat was still wet.  I'm not happy.

I bet that you look good on the danse floor

I'm currently a little obsessed with finding the perfect version of Saint-Saens's Danse Macabre.  Well, without actually buying some sort of album.  I want to see what's out there on the interweb.  So far I have a version with only violin and piano (which is oddly staccato) and one by a cello trio (which doesn't have enough variety of noise).  There's a version on YouTube, which you'd think I'd link to, with a description of what's going on with every instrument and why.  It's great, full orchestra and all that, but it's - I say again - on YouTube.

Danse Macabre, of course, feels a bit hackneyed to us these days.  Years of abuse (and the kiddy self-parody of the Fossil Movement of Saint-Saens's own Carnival of the Animals) makes it seem somewhat plinky-plonky and cutesy.  But I've been listening, again and again, and I'm slowly working my brain away from the cliché.  I think it's great.

Today, a link

This is so effing cool.  I've wanted to see this for, I think I'm not exaggerating, about two decades.  Near that, anyway.  Ordinarily I'd just link to the YouTube pages, but the story linked to here is quite interesting anyway so... 

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2008/10/31/lost-horrors-ending-found-on-youtube/

A curious phenomenon

I was sitting on the bus today and the woman next to me was reading, well, porn.  I mean, not a copy of Razzle or anything, but it was - I think - the Belle Du Jour book.  So I'm sitting there listening to my mp3 player and every so often my gaze is caught by descriptions of spanking and blowjobs.  On the bus!

What's going on here?  When did it become acceptable to read this stuff in public?  I'm pretty sure that if I sat there browsing Playboy... well, I might get away with that, actually, because it's all articles and only about three naked women a month.  Plus Playboy has a bit of respectability to it, it's sort of just a slightly more naked Esquire or GQ.  But if I was unfolding the centrefold on the bus?  No that would not fly, my friend.  But a woman reading a book full of graphic descriptions of anal sex and fisting?  Sure, go ahead!

Excelling

Excel is really hard!  Did you know that?  I know that, because I am currently looking at a worksheet and going "But there MUST be a way to do that!".

Often there is.  There really is.  I Google the sort of thing I want to do and helpful people in the Internets tell me what to do.  But right now I think I'm asking for the moon on a stick (wait, is moon capitalised?  I suppose if we're talking about our moon... it's name is kind of The Moon.  Like the Sun.  Sorry).  i can't even Google it because I don't know exactly what I want to do!  It's sort of like a pivot chart... only not.  Oh, wait, maybe I have some stuff about that in...

Not much of a post this, is it?  Christ.  I'll have something good to say soon.  I told my neighbour not to call Down's Syndrome kids "Mongols" this morning.  But that's not really a story.  Oh, yeah, unlike my kickin' Excel tale.

Gloomy

The clocks go back soon.  I keep waking up to darkness, soon I shall be leaving work to the same.  Once again we, as a nation, plunge into the darkness.  It'd be depressing if we didn't have warm coats, scarves and real fires.  We must be cheerful, above all, when the nights are cold and dark.  And so we bring on Hallowe'en and Bonfire night and Christmas and all the jolly festivals which really make us feel good about standng around in dimly-lit areas watching our breath condense out of our bodies.

I am in a corner re Hallowe'en.  I can't not do a window display involving pumpkins this year, no matter how much I won't want to bother come Friday afternoon on the 31st.  I'll want to sit down on the sofa and play videogames, not carve squash into amusing shapes and hand out individually-wrapped sweets hastily bought from Woolworth's.  But I will do it, because it's fun, the sort of fun we as adults can have on nights which are no longer intended to amuse us as once they were.

Reclaim the night, indeed.

Oh, lor'

I got back from lunch about 10 minutes ago.  There were five of us, and it took them forever to get our order out, about which they were very apologetic, and gave us bread and oil.  Then another bottle of wine.  Well, I mean, we could hardly refuse.  So now I'm finding it a little hard to concentrate on work.  And staying awake.  Still, Friday afternoon.

A great start.

So I called Vodafone in a desperate attempt to stop them activating my account - and consequently de-activating my T-Mobile account - until I get my phone (it's a Samsung Omnia, just like I wanted.  Vodafone had it for less than anyone else ever... even the woman at T-Mobile confessed that there was no way they could offer it that cheap and that she couldn't believe they were doing it).

No chance.  "We can't actually cancel that.  You'll have to pick up the phone from the Royal Mail.  They're usually good at having it at the sorting office."  Yes, but I'm at work.  "After work." (that wasn't a suggestion, by the way.  It was just a statement of how things will be)  The sorting office closes at HALF PAST ONE!  I AM AT WORK! There followed the audible equivalent of a shrug.  I want to reach into the phone and smack the surly scouse fuck on the end of the line.  So I'm going to be without any kind of service at all for two days.  "You need to pick the phone up from the sorting office."  AS IF I AM ABLE!  I'm screaming this in my head as I don't like shouting at call centre people because I have been there.  But, with hindsight, I kind of wish I did scream at him.  He sounded like he deserved it.

So that's it.  I can't collect the phone tomorrow morning because the buses are on strike and I can't walk up to the sorting office and get to work at any reasonable time.  Well.  Hmm.  If I get out of bed at half-six, maybe...  But jeeeesus!  This is VODAFONE'S FAULT!  They didn't ask me what delivery address I wanted, sent it to the billing address... now this.  They'd better be solid freakin' gold for the rest of my contract.

I'm in the market for a new phone

Yes I am.  I get a bit obsessed when this happens.  Last time I went with a Sony Ericsson W850i on T-Mobile and, while I was happy to have a nice, up-to-date phone with Walkman and fast web-browsing, it was somehow a bit of a disappointment.  The buttons aren't very well spaced and the navigation pad cracked within weeks of opening the box.  And it crashes all the time when I'm using Opera Mini.  I think I made my mind up too quickly based on looks - although its competitor for my affections, the Nokia 6300 was prettier but less well-featured so it wasn't entirely a shallow decision.

This time, I'm trying not to make the same mistake.  Although, to be fair, my main criteria are "touchscreen and 3G".  Now, I know what you're going to say but I HATE APPLE so forget it.  After that the main dfficulty is finding a touchscreen phone which isn't a bit, you know, girly.  The Nokia N95/96s are fugly and expensive.  The Samsung Tocco is small and rather lovely but again pricey and might well be for ladies.  The LG Viewty seems ok, but not very exciting.  The LG Secret even *sounds* feminine, though it seems quite kick-ass, features-wise.  The Samsung Omnia is red-hot awesomeness, but it costs a billion pounds.

I don't know.  I'm going to research a bit more, then get the prettiest one.

I'm too busy

Sorry.  I shall fling my hands around to demonstrate this ABSOLUTE MAELSTROM OF BUSY IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF.

Now I shall go home and open some packets of food and call it cooking.

Tip top

Screw you, Big Brother! The very best reality TV show ever returns tonight - America's Next Top Model. And no Twiggy! Yes!

More random brain things.

I just looked at the copy of New Scientist what I bought a week or so ago because of CERN.  It's issue number 2671!  I make this approximately 51.4 years of New Scientist, meaning it started in about June 1956, which means it is SO NOT NEW anymore.  It's really OLD Scientist.

If we can't trust it on something as basic as its own name, how can we expect to trust it on important things like us all being sucked into a black hole and dying - OR NOT?

Closure

I did buy the automatically-retracting umbrella.  It's so effing cool.

my arachnoid nemesis

I had a big ol' fight with one of those evil bastard huge spiders this morning.  You know the ones I mean, the ones that grow HUGE and then scare the living daylights out of you as they scuttle madly across the living room - but only once, then they disappear, leaving you wondering where they might be...

I was just rinsing the draining board when I noticed something move by the plug.  Thinking it a regular house-spider, I pulled the chain of the plug and out it scampered.  There's something about they way they move - purposeful, quite light, and extremely fast - which just makes my skin crawl in a way which a normal, regular spider just doesn't.  Still, at least it wasn't as big as they can get.  With this in mind, I grabbed the spider-evicting glass and approached my foe.

Damn his eight eyes, he was on the corner of the sink, not the easiest place to get to.  OK, so I needed a new tactic.  Not taking my eyes off him, I part-filled the glass and sluiced him with water.  Because, as you know, spiders hate that.  It doesn't seem to do them any harm, but they do curl up in defensive balls, which are much easier to entrap.  Not this one, though.  Hard bastard that he was, he just rode the wave down into the sink.

This, I feel, was him taunting me.  Well, not today, my friend!  I was going to be late for work if I didn't sort it out soon.  So while he was temporarily discombobulated in the sink I lunged with my spider-glass and, by some amazing stroke of fortune (because I was only half-looking), I got him.  Hah!  We'll see who's several orders of magnitude larger than who now!  Or is it whom?  Anyone who can tell me when to use "whom", please get in touch.

Anyway, this ends with him being dumped outside and me getting on the bus to work.  I hope to have more exciting news soon (eg. "Ooh, I bought an umbrella that automatically retracts!"), but that's it for now!  See you later. xx

Minibreak.

Sorry, been ages.  Been on holiday.  Been to Norwich - it was our first anniversary, so we pretty much looked at places we haven't been to and went to one.

So what's Norwich like?  Well, it's very pretty, as it happens*.  Small, but that's half a decade in London for you.  All places that aren't London seem these days.  I'm just kidding; I'm sure Tokyo is a perfectly reasonable size.  Anyway, yeah.  We walked, we rode open-topped buses like SHAMELESS TOURISTS, we took boat tours of the Broads, it was great.

We had a lovely hotel room, though I'm not sure about no shower curtain and parquet floor.  Well, feh, we don't have to live with their damp-proofing.  We actually felt a bit constrained by our proposed three-night stay and ended up there for four nights, which was lovely and oddly made the holiday 50% more relaxed for a simple 33% increase in time, or something.  I'm not sure about the maths, someone else work it out.

So that was our first anniversary.  Or, to look at it another way, our sixth.  We're over half way to ten years!  You know, I think we might just be right for each other...

*Though, true to stereotype, at times the denizens made you feel a bit like you were wandering through the set of David Lynch's new adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth.

4th place is not a fancy term for losing

Well, all things considered, the Olympics went very well for Britain - or "Team GB" as we inexplicably seem to be calling our collected athletes - and we managed to valiantly fend off the twin challenges of Germany and Australia (the latter, oddly, being the more satisfying win since the Aussies can't quite believe it).  We held out against the Russians until right near the end, too.  I suppose being a monolitic superpower helps at the Olympics - China, USA, Russia.  Hmm, what a startling top three.  Still, 4th place is HUGE (and we were in THIRD for A REALLY LONG TIME which totally COUNTS), and better than we've done in decades.

There's a thing outside Tate Modern - it'll be gone soon - which is sponsored bumf from Adidas.  We went down there a few weeks ago, before the Olympics, and there's this map.  Sort of, not a map really.  The absence of a map.  It has dots and then people's names, and it's Team GB and where they come from.  The dots give you a pretty good idea of the shape of Britain.  It's quite cool, really.  Anyway, we sort of looked at it and we went "Oh, look, right up at the top there's... Chris Hoy on his own.  Ha ha, poor old Chris Hoy.  Wonder who he is?"

Went back there yesterday, and it was like "Oh, there's Chris Hoy.. and Tom Daley down in the West Country (though where's Pete Waterfield, eh?).. and Shanaze Reade* in Crewe, and Christine Ohuruogu** and... hey, where's Rebecca Adlington?"  Suddenly these people are household names.  And rightly so.  I'm usually fairly ambivalent about national sporting success, and sport in general is not my thing at all, but I've really enjoyed the Olympics in Beijing and have felt quite excited and proud by our national achievements.  Yes, they have my approval and I'm sure their lives are enriched by that.

*yeah, she didn't win, but watching BMX because she was in it has shown me that BMX racing ROCKS.
**I've sort of got how to pronounce that now, but not spell it so apologies if it's wrong.

Oh, and

Remind me, I need to post about the Olympics, when I'm able. I mean, woo! 4th place! In your face, everyone but China, the US and Russia! Your FACE!

Titles are for chumps.

I forgot to post from work! Nuts, now I'm posting from my phone. I'll easily lose track. A sentence may start one way and end with a complete set of original 1930s footstools designed by... Wait, where was I?

Not this week

I keep thinking "What's the harm if I take a week off blogging?"  Well, nothing in the real world.  But I quite like doing this, it gives me something to try to think about, and I know if I let myself off one time... well, slippery slope to abandonment.

This email, writing it out, almost feels like work.  Yes, I blog by email.  That's why I never format it, or put links in.  A picture, like the one a few weeks ago, is EFFORT and TIME.

This is my life: I lost my umbrella.  The next day it pisses with rain.

That makes me sound a bit pessimistic.  I'm not, actually.  I'm rather an optimist, and I just keep looking around on my bus into work, hoping that this will be the one that I left it on and it'll still be there, wedged down the side of a seat.  Not seen it yet, but here's hoping!

I'd like to mention that the exact circumstance which I anticipated when I said I wouldn't comment on Big Brother when it was fresh has come to pass.  I reckon my early post would have said that Rex was great and I liked him.  Hooboy, imagine that!  I wouldn't have used the words "Pointy-headed bellend" at any point!  Madness and folly.

Here endeth the lesson.

and whose army?

The spiders are back, back, back!  I'm starting to wonder where they come from.  I mean, I evicted one from the ceiling above the shower with the ol' cup and card before I got in.  Halfway through washing my hair I look up and there's another one which was, I swear, nowhere to be seen scant moments before.  To my surprise I just sort of shrugged and got on with my shower, but really this is too much.  I had to get rid of four before showering the other day.  They're taking the piss.

And the ripping sounds every time you open the door!  If we didn't open it fairly regularly we'd be trapped in - untended, the hallway would be Shelob's lair.  I'm happy to report, however, that the front of the house is being painted in the next few weeks so their days are numbered.  A hard rain is going to fall, Incey-Wincey.  A hard rain of brushing.

Facts about Whitstable

I was asked if I knew anything about Whitstable.  I do not, but a challenge is a challenge, and here are some definitely 100% TRUE FACTS about a town I've never thought about.

For a start, I'm going to assume it's in Dorset, as it sounds like it should be.  It has a small shopping mall which no-one likes but everyone visits.  In this mall there is a Boot's, a Footlocker, a chinese herbal remedy shop, a pound shop, Game, Millie's Cookies, WH Smiths and a small independent bookshop which deals exclusively in first editions of the great occult works.

There is a large Allied Carpets on the edge of town, next to a Tesco with a belltower, which is only used during gas leaks or when the Great Beast of Whitstable is loose again, devouring shoppers and generally being a bit of a nuisance.

 
Only five people called "George" have ever lived in Whitstable, but they never met.  People still talk about "The Georges", and it's a captial offence in Whitstable to name your child George because it would get dead confusing, like.

 
On May Eve every year, a man dressed as a pantomime horse parades through the streets of Whitstable, beating a drum and making small children run through his legs to bring their household good fortune.  This is thought to be an old tradition, but in fact the man with the horse costume made it up in the sixties.

 
There is one hotel in Whitstable, The Hun's Repose, which became famous in the 1740s as a meeting-place for witches and demons.  Even now, it's impossible to get a decent beer because a witch cursed the barrels after the landlord refused to start a tab for her.  How a pub which sells notoriously poor-quality beer maintains its status in a small town is unknown, but it's thought that the seats are very comfy.

 
When visiting Whitstable, keep your valuables in a large wooden trunk and display them only when questioned by the landlord of The Hun's Repose if you can afford a room for the night.  Do not wear a cap, hat, crown, headscarf or tiara when visiting Whitstable as the locals regard hair as lucky.

 
Whitstable was flooded in the 1970s when the river Whit was dammed, but the residents don't let that sort of thing get them down.  SCUBA gear is available for visitors in the nearby town of Hindbury.

Heatwave

It's been hot, hasn't it?  I'm glad to see cloud over London today, but I can't say that I'm convinced it's not going to be the kind of cloud which keeps the heat in.  Once I step out of the aircon I wonder if I'll melt like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Oh, speaking of which, I sent Lego Indy back to LoveFilm after completing it 100% totally.  I rock Lego Indiana Jones.  Don't say I don't, because I do.  Anyway, my replacement arrived.  You know how sometimes you put games on for a laugh?  Yeah, well, now I have My Horse and Me at home.  It's rock hard!  I mean, the grooming bit is easy.  The bit where you choose your jodhpurs is a breeze.  But riding the horse?  Major hard.  The remote and nunchuk act at reins, and they're not forgiving.  I spent most of my playing time with my horse in reverse, which is clearly all wrong.

Sorry, I've been ill.

We're well over the halfway mark for 2008 now, which can mean only one thing - we'll soon be talking about "Best of 2008" lists.  By the time we reach December we'll all be thoroughly sick of them and will be quite happy to see 2009's stupid, ugly face leering at us from New Year's Day.

So what has 2008 done for us so far?  Well, we've had... um, some stuff... happen... like, there was a picture in the paper and they've arrested Dumbledore in Serbia, or Latveria or someplace.  And in Celebrity Not-Guilty-of-Child-Abuse news, R Kelly totally did not do the thing he was videotaped doing.  Videotaped by HIM, or at least, not him.  Some guy that may have been an R Kelly lookalike or something.  And some dude got stabbed!  I mean, probably a few did, but it's been, like, woah, knives and shit. 

So yeah, that's 2008.  Pretty crazy year, eh?

All cisterns go

This is venturing into the realms of TMI, but it's too ghastyly/funny not to share.

I just went to the loo (yeah, all good anecdotes start that way, don't they?) and noticed that there was a small pool of water at the foot of the... whatever that bit is called.  The bit you sit on.  Anyway, it wasn't, like, toilet bowl water it was clean so I assume there's a bit of leakage from the cistern.  Unperturbed by this, I wiped it away with a few of the paper handtowels, figuring that, like most leaks of this type, it'd take ages to come back.  Comfortable with this conclusion, I used the toilet.

Can you guess where this is going?  Yep, when I stood up - big ol' wet patch on the back of my trousers.  Soaked.  I guess the cistern is leaking quite heavily.  What does one do?  A quick application of handtowels proved ineffective so the only option was the most risky one - drying my trousers under the electric hand-dryer.

How best to do it?  Remove one's trousers and dry them directly while standing around in one's underpants?  Oh, but no.  What if someone walks in?  Act casual?  "Hi, yeah, just soaked my trousers.  It's cool, it's only water.  Why's it on the ass?  Uh, well, look..." and then you have to kill them.  So I took option b, which was to stand with my back to the dryer, arse stuck out like a pole dancer, hoping that no-one comes in.  I guess I could just snap round and pretend I was drying my hands, but then they'd see the wet patch.  And I'm not that quick.

There is, alas, no punchline.  I dried my seat to the best of my abilities without being disturbed.  No-one had to witness me, sans trous, struggling with an automatic hand-dryer.  But still.  Not a good thing to happen.  My only comfort is that it could, even now, be happening to someone I don't like very much in this office.

Rain, unexpectedly

Well, who would have guessed that July would be rainy?  I thought we'd got that out of our system - where's your global warming now, Al Gore?  I joke, of course, but seriously.  I'd like to not carry my umbrella round all the time in the middle of summer.  Not true, either: I love my umbrella.

Apparently this post is just a tissue of lies, much as the last one was.  I ought to break this habit.  truths:  I love my wife.  Timothy Spall is not the new Doctor.  My job is ever so slightly too dull.  The Asus eeepc is the coolest computer in the world.  I have a yucca plant on my desk which I have named "Jeremy". 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

I wrote a whole post

I did.  It was about Big Brother, but the last time I did that I said that Pete chuffing Bennett was a really jolly nice chap and should win, which turned out to be WRONG and MISGUIDED, the Gamelan-paddling twat.

So I shall refrain from discussing any of the freaks-to-be-poked in the house this year, unless something happens which means I simply have to comment.  Like, as with the post I didn't use, Alex being chucked out.  But what did I have to say?  Nothing.  There's nothing sensible to be said, not by me anyway, and any comment will inevitably be banal.

In other news, I'm really coming round to Lego Indy and am starting to think I may have been a bit harsh.  It's no Star Wars, true, but it has its own joy.  The extra characters are still uninspiring, though.  Who honestly wants to play as Some Nazi Truck-driving Guy?  He's no Walrus-face.

You can't afford the drumkit

Though I can't approve of the price-point (£150 for a videogame?  Sure, you could just buy it without the instruments but by the same token you could also buy a Wii and throw away the remote), I have to say that Rock Band does get some points for using Suffragette City on its adverts.  In your face, Guitar Hero III!  Velvet Revolver?  I mean, honestly, who gives a shit?

Still.  The whole thing is getting out of hand.  Rhythm action games - does anyone still call them Bemani?  I think they probably don't - are, at best, a charming novelty.  Donkey Konga was great fun for a few days and now we have a pair of plastic bongos gathering dust.  They're quantatively better when you're not very good at them, because, you know, what's funnier than someone flailing madly at a pair of comedy bongos in vague time to a cover of Don't Stop Me Now?  Not much.  A nun falling over, maybe.  Alistair Darling being appointed Chancellor.  An elephant in flip-flops.

So, yeah, the idea of buying a game for £50+ and then honing your fake guitar skillz until you're standing in front of your TV, your plastic axe strapped round your neck, brow furrowed, playing along, note-perfect, to Velvet Revolver... Is it any worse than flailing about with the Wii remote, pretending to play tennis?  Well, I think it might be a bit.  At least you're not thinking "Yes.  I am bringing the rock" while you're playing Wii Sports.  Adding in friends on drums and vocals?  You're multiplying the uncool, but at least you're probably going to have some fun.  Still, that's another £100, just for a videogame!  The madness must end, before we're buying specialist peripherals for every two-bit music game that comes along.  Mind you, I'd be prepared to fork out as much as they dared charge for Glockenspiel Hero.

L'egoist

So, Lego Indiana Jones. Is it as good as Lego Star Wars? Is it as good as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even?
Well, no and yes. I mean, I liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (except for the end bit, which killed me to death), but I loooooved Lego Star Wars. I'm getting ahead of myself.

It plays well, definitely. The bouncy, seemingly-simple control scheme from LSW has translated well to the whip-crackin', treasure-plunderin', Nazi-punchin' Indy milieu. A swing of the Wiimote and Indy's whip is lashing at enemies or snatching up out-of-reach objects. Playing as other characters, the same action will cause them to smack someone in the face with a shovel, or crack them with a bottle. But you won't want to play as someone else for long. It's all about the Indy. The range of his movement far surpasses that of the Star Wars minifigs (ducking punches, slamming both-feet-first into an enemy's chest, swinging across gaps with his whip), and his charm in the cutscenes is bountiful (thanks largely to the accuracy with which Traveller's Tales mimic Harrison Ford in teeny-tiny plastic form... this is most evident in his College Professor incarnation).

There's a lot to love about Lego Indiana Jones, most of it from the source material. That music kicking in when the action is at its most hectic , or the aforementioned charm of the characters.

But there is something.. wrong, somehow. I suspect it's also due to the source. The set-pieces lack the frenetic rhythm of the films; quite rightly, of course, you're supposed to be able to enjoy them and beat them without being perfect. The boulder escape is a classic example - the film version is over in moments, really, but it's a huge scene. The Lego version lasts longer, giving you time to pick up extra studs and find secret passageways, but this has the side-effect of diminishing the peril. The Star Wars games got away with this because the pacing of the films tends towards the ponderous, even in the most frantic sequences. This allows the players time to wander through levels without feeling as if they really ought to be getting on with it. There's a sense through Lego Indy that, you know, things aren't happening quite fast enough.

Having said that, it looks great, it plays like a dream and it's still plenty fun. I look forward to the extras I haven't got yet, and I can see myself spending a lot of time wandering its large, rich levels.

A week is a long time in blogging

I missed last week's post!  Sorry, single-figure readership.  Still, you had a funny video to watch in the meantime, what's wrong with you?

Anyway, I went back to Plymouth this weekend.  Ah, Plymouth.  City of my... uh, year-or-so of renting.  We passed through Totnes on my way, and I was very excited by it.  It was a lovely place to live, and the simple act of passing through on a train made me smile.  Plymouth, well, I smiled but I wasn't really as happy.  I never really liked Plymouth.  Sorry, I know it'll be devastated.

They've got a big-assed shiny shopping mall in there now, which for a lot of cities is a cause for concern.  The town centre might be in trouble!  But with Plymouth... it's so bloody grim with its post-war austerity-years Albert-Speer-planning that a nice new mall is actually a good thing.  I bought jeans for the first time since I was 19!  Madness.

Anyway, other than that it's not changed.  If you'd like to visit, I can recommend the little cafe on the cliff side near the Citadel, just between the Mayflower Steps and the Hoe.  Nice cheese 'n' chutney sandwiches.

i'm with you, hitler

i have nothing to say

Sorry.  You might find diversion somewhere else on the internet.  I hear there is now to be found a great variety of entertaining treats out there to be explored within your browser.

Why not try one of the many websites dedicated to the art of puppetry?  Or, in a pinch, bonsai?  I, personally, find the large number of sites dedicated to the naming and categorisation of the nation's monkey puzzle trees to be uproariously interesting.  My favourite is Steve Palmer, a monkey puzzle tree in Leicestershire: Class 4 silencer, mildly puzzling.

Have fun!

A vision of the future

As you may or may not know, our new Mayor has instituted a dumbass law banning the drinking of alcohol on tubes, buses, trams, overground trains, stations... basically anything that is operated by Transport for London.  How this will help I'm not sure.  Are we intimidated by open containers, I wonder?  Perhaps there is evidence of "second-hand drinking" we've yet to see?

Anyway, I was standing in the sun outside Liverpool Street Station the other day in a haze of cigarette smoke (I don't smoke, btw, nor do I, for that matter, drink on public transport.  But even I think that is a stupidly restrictive policy  - I don't care if you're having a drink on my bus!  The only person you're harming is you!  If you were going to get loaded and cause trouble, you'd be drunk before you got on..) and I realised how this was going to go.

You can't smoke inside so there's a large community of smokers who hang out around buildings.  They're in place.  It's a new social network, you know.  The pavements around pubs are much chattier than the tables inside and the smoking areas outside offices (well-established by now) are where departments connect in a way they don't when they're on different floors.

Soon the crowd outside stations will be joined by those who are having to finish their drink before they go inside.  The smokers and the drinkers will both have outcast mentalities and points upon which to bond ("Politicians, eh?  Cuh, what'll they ban next?") so they'll be chatting away to each other quite happily.  It'll be a buzzy place, much more sociable than the inside of the station.

This will be fine when the drinking ban starts, in June, but as the year draws on there will be a distinct sense of discomfort which the smokers are used to but the drinkers are not.  As there are small awnings on some office buildings to keep smokers from the worst of the weather, so small shelters will probably start popping up around stations for the drinkers.

Some enterprising soul, seeing a large, untapped, captive market will no doubt move in on these shelters and start selling cans, bottles and cigarettes.  This will obviously be illegal to start with but after a while there will probably be some sort of regulation (if only so they can be taxed!) and they'll be somewhat more legit.  Maybe the shelters will be built to include a stand for the vendor of such things.

Eventually, the shelter, the stall, the smokers, the drinkers... it will all be so settled and stationary that the shelter may as well become a building.

I suggest a name for such a building.  A "pub".

But why?

It's not the first time, but I got comment spam today.  Two points - 1) I don't like it because it makes me go "Oooh, comments", then it's a real disappointment when I see it's spam. 2) What's the point?  If I'm lucky this blog is read by, like, 10 people.  In all honesty it'd be easier to take names and just copy you in on my emails but I like the format. So where's the audience?  I know they don't know that, but really.  I don't like having the futility of this pointed out to me so clearly.

bankside

All right, a bit down the road from Bankside, but the pun sort of works. Doesn't it? No, okay, fine, it doesn't. Leave me alone, you meanies. Anyway, this intimidating fellow here was from the Leake Street Cans Exhibition, curated, I guess you'd say, by the ubiquitous and elusive Banksy.

It was good. The day was pleasant and sunny, the crowd was happy and enthusiatic, no-one called anyone a retard, I think we can say it was a success. I have a whole photoset here which will enthrall and amaze the whole family!

Oh

Fuck.

London holds its breath.

They're still counting the votes.  Boris is ahead as I type, but they're not onto 2nd votes and I genuinely think Ken could still win it on 2nd votes.  Because you might vote Brian or Sian with Ken as a back-up "better than Boris" option.  You wouldn't vote Brian or Sian and put Boris second, you just wouldn't.  No-one is that stretched across the political spectrum.

There are also no right-wing equivalents of Brian or Sian for Boris to scoop up the second votes of.  Sure, crazy-assed BNP-types, but they're not in the same likely-to-come-3rd-and-4th league.

I remain, ever, optimistic.

Borken

I'm a little bit worried about tomorrow.  For those of you who haven't been paying attention, I live in London and tomorrow is the London Mayoral election (yeah, there are other ones, but I'll repeat - *I live in London*).  I'm getting a bit frantic that Boris Johnson might actually win.

It was all fun and games a few years back when the thought of Boris being leader of the Conservatives seemed like a jolly laugh and how funny would that be, eh?  Now we're staring at the actual possibility that he could be in charge of something real, serious and hugely influential in a lot of people's everyday lives... Not funny any more.  Quite terrifying, in fact.

I don't buy the hapless bumbler shit (well, I sort of do, I suppose, in as much as I think he's somewhat inadequate in many areas) so much as I do the idea that he's an intelligent man with a fairly approachable public persona and a set of political and personal values which make me want to die/kill.

Not, it has to be said, that I'd want to hang out with Ken Livingstone.  But, you know, he has two factors in his favour.  1) The congestion charge rocks.  2) He is not Boris Johnson/a Tory of any description.  Oh, three factors - 3) He patently capable of running the city.

Personally, I'd be quite pleased if Brian Paddick won.  He won't, of course, but it's a nice thought.  He couldnt' really be trusted to run the city, either, but then someone has to take over from Ken.  The only way you learn is by doing.

Progress report

Not doing too badly.  At least one update per week since the start of 2008 (ish - mid-January really).  Some of them with actual content.  Comment count - fairly low, but I don't necessarily define success by number of comments left.*  Number of posts about office equipment - much improved.  Will almost certainly be a thing of the past by Q3 2009.  Number of posts dissing MySpace/Facebook/LiveJournal - practically zero.  Good work, though I did notice an offhand comment about Facebook a few weeks back.  Keep that in check.

Now I need to start putting pictures in - to entertain, inform and arouse.  Let's see how that goes.

*Not true.  I'm just trying to cope with rejection.

A good Deal.

I don't really go to gigs any more - it's the knees, you know, all that bouncing isn't good for them - but I make an exception if The Breeders are in town because, well. Fuck it, they're brilliant.

We picked up the new album last week and I've spent the last few days cramming - I hate going to gigs without knowing the songs. It's good. I recommend it. Quite low-key, lower even than Title TK, but with that album's odd sprinkling of jaunty, punchy pop-rock.

There was a small question mark over whether this would be a full album play-through or all Best Of, a la the 4AD Birthday Celebration gig we saw them play a few years back, but thankfully they wove the new tracks into a set which included greatest hits (Cannonball, still one of the greatest tracks of all time, cropped up along with Divine Hammer, Son of Three and Saints to name a few) and a couple of less well-known tracks. Hell, they started with Tipp City - an Amps song!

The band were, as ever, on form. Kim and Kelly bantered with the audience and, mostly, with each other quite winningly. Charisma and likeability flows from the two of them like smoke from KoKo's over-zealous smoke machine. The rest of the band were quiet, but tight as anything. We are both particular fans of Jose, the drummer, who is spectacularly great and looks like he should have a much less exotic name, like Graham.

Shuffling out after the world's longest encore (read: they went out for a fag brak half way through the set), we both agreed that it had been worth it. Somehow I think it always will be, if The Breeders still think it's worth playing.

Overstatement

I just turned my stapler over and it says on the bottom "This machine uses Niceday staples." Machine? I mean, yeah, okay, I suppose so.

But still. Let's get some perspective here, people, it's still a stapler.

Dear sir/madam

Christ on a bike. My email got hijacked. Oh, yes. Not my regular nickname email-to-friends one. My serious, real-name, send emails to serious people one. So I was locked out (they changed my password, the beasts!) and to everyone in my SERIOUS EMAIL CONTACT LIST, they sent the following message, with the header "i need your help please!!!"

"Hi
" How are you? hope every thing is ok ? Just wanted to seek your help on something very important, you are the only person i could reach at this point, and i hope you come to my aid. because something very terrible is happening to me now,i need a favor from you now,I had a trip to the African on some works."

This email went to my boss, by the way, the very day I called in sick with some kind of nasty stomach bug. She must've thought "Oh, yeah, sick, sure... not IN THE AFRICAN??" And on some works? Now she's thinking "We didn't send him anywhere! He must be doing some work in the African ON THE SLY!!!".

"Unfortunately for me all my money got stolen at the hotel where i lodged along with all my belongings also with my passport ,and since then i have been without any money i am even owing the hotel here thats why my telephone service is disconnected so i have only access to emails for now because my mobile can't work here,"

Which doesn't make any sense, does it? How do I have no access to a telephone, but access to email? I'm no technical genius, but I'm sure they're linked somehow. Maybe I got the email from a free cyber cafe, I hear there are lots of them in the African, where I am on some works.

"so i didn't get it along,"

Indeed I did not.

"please i need you to lend me about 1,500 so i can make arrangements and return back please,"

Woah, 1,500 whats? Nice non-use of currency symbols, although if I'm actually from Zimbabwe, joke's on you, suckers!

"i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I would return the money back to you as soon as i get home, I am so confused right now."

Oh, ain't that the truth.

"I have made inquiries and was able to find out that you can have money sent to me through a service called Western Union Money Transfer."

I'll point out here that this also went to my bank. And my debt management agency, who were very concerned. My bank told me they would be happy to arrange a loan.

"Please i will be waiting to hear from you as soon as possible. And please scan and attach the copy of the Western Union Money transfer to me or you can put it in writing by sending me all the informations you used in making the payment via western union to able me collect the money down here."

I'm not sure of the mechanics of this scam at this point. Presumably the scammee replies and "I" give bogus details for a collection in... let's assume Nigeria, to pick a country at random.

"Thank You. "

No, thank you, brave scammer.

Luckily, few people were fooled. I wrested control of my email from them (they changed the password, the fucks!) and now I'm in the process of cleaning up. I mean, sure, some have volunteered cash and, because it would be rude to refuse, I have given them details and now I have £1,500 of their money. My favourite reply has come from my bank - the Co-op Bank, lovers of financial institutes with a sense of humour - who said this: "Thanks for letting us know. Glad to hear you're not in the unpleasant, but slightly unconvincing, situation described by the scammers!"

Anyway, from now on, all my passwords will be dotted with random numbers. This must not happen again!

adorable bastards

I don't think there's any shame in admitting we have mice.  They're not indicative of a dissolute lifestyle, they're just one of those things.

We had them in the garden for ages, which was fine.  Gave the local cats something to do.  Then, a couple of months ago we heard one in the cupboard under the stairs and it's been like a long, gruelling nightmare ever since.  They get EVERYWHERE.  They just run riot in your house when you're not about, until one day they start running riot when you are about.  i could just about - just about - live with them downstairs.  Then on Tuesday night, the unthinkable happened.

They're in the bedroom.

Oh, god, I am so effing tired right now.  They are so bloody disruptive!  Scratch scratch scratch squeak squeak squeak all the time.  I mean, i was hopeful when we caught two in our (humane!) mousetraps.  Two!  That's loads!  In fact, last night we got two more (one of whom was suspiciously tubby in a pregnant sort of way) and it almost makes you feel hopeful.  And they're so cute!  So very extremely cute!  How bad can it be?  You convince yourself that it might be ok.

until, of course, you speak to someone who knows about pest control.  Then you get told that you are, basically, fucked.  Visible infestation in a terraced house?  They're going to stay.  You can perserve with humane traps, and live with mice forever (not an option) or you can poison the ones you have (no!) and seal your house like a tupperware tub to stop them reinfesting.  Reluctantly we have ordered some poison but my god I don't want it to come to that.  But the Rentokill man was quite clear - if the population becomes critical, they are going to need so much nesting material that they might well strip your wires.  Then you could get fires starting.

It's them or us, in other words.  Well, them or us and them.

We need to talk about books.

I'm not really a literary snob, I promise.  I read PRATCHETT and the Potter books, for Christ's sake.  But it gets to me, going into WH Smith's in Liverpool St.

For a start, the entirety of the non-genre Fiction section is basically chick lit.  Which is fine, in moderation.  I don't care if you want to read a book with a sketch of a scatty-looking woman on the front, you're not hurting me and I feel a bit like "Well, I bought the Bridget Jones books so I've contributed to the genre's success..".  The point is, put it in a genre!  Crime and horror and fantasy are segregated, why isn't chick-lit?  I suppose the very title chick-lit is somewhat demeaning.  But there's got to be a heading out there for it!  Mind you, if Smith's took it out, the Fiction bit would start to look perilously thin, with only the Flashman books and erotic blog novelisations to prop up the Dan Browns.

Then you've got Classics, which are on the end of a shelf block.  All the classics!  In one tiny section.  Basically a bit of Tolstoy, a lot of Dickens and Austen and one or two things by anyone else who comes to mind.  This is not a broad range, Smithy!  Your Children's section runs to a whole shelving unit plus the end of the unit plus another block of Dr Who colouring books on another unit!  Your Biography section dwarfs your Classics section by a factor of 3!  And... and...

God, I can hardly bear to say it.  The Classics section is exactly as big as the section headed Tragic Life Stories.

Gold!

I get an annual travelcard loan from work.  It's great, because it works out cheaper than buying a monthly one and I also get a gold travelcard which makes me a SUPER SPECIAL passenger and I get GOLD STANDARD treatment from the travel people.  Actually, it's just a record card.  My travelcard is an Oyster, and I love it.

Anyway.  Last year, the fool who gave me my travelcard managed to print the record card, my lovely gold record card, upside-down.  Upside down!  I had to live with that for a whole year!  Any time someone wanted to check my ticket, it was a bit embarrassing.  I was looking forward to the new card because - yes! finally! - I would have a proper-way-up record card.  I took my travel warrant along to Liverpool Street and eagerly awaited my new, sensible, neat record card.

Yeah, they printed this one upside-down, too.

Thwarted but happy, I suppose

Many years ago, I wrote a screenplay for a fan film of Maskerade by Terry Pratchett. It never got made because everyone else involved was a flake, damn them. Anyway, never mind. About a year later, I was the flake when someone asked me if I could write a script for a version of The Colour of Magic. I just couldn't make it work (because there's no coherent story, just a bunch of episodes), so it never went anywhere.

But but but, the big idea I had was to combine The Colour of Magic and its sequel The Light Fantastic, to give the thing a bit of structure. And I just checked out the website for Sky's adaptation of The Colour of Magic aaaaand, guess what they've done?

Well. Seems like it wasn't such a killer idea at all. At least it got made, I guess. And, hey, Sky? If you're thinking of doing Maskerade at any point, I have this script...

Shadow over the sanctuary

In my quest to immerse myself in spookiness to aid with my own writing (I'm limbering up with a short story before embarking on an epic venture, much as a marathon runner might do the odd lunge before donning a Spongebob suit and getting out on the streets of London), I'm reading some Lovecraft.

I've always thought I'd like his stuff, and a talking book of The Call of Cthulhu & The Dunwich Horror cemented that view late last year (it's on Audible.co.uk and the narrator - Wayne June - has the best voice for this sort of thing, ever.  He's also got his own website, but I can't do links when I'm posting here via email.  But you can guess the url).  But it's surprisingly hard to find his work in shops.  Thank heaven for Foyle's and for Penguin Modern Classics.  Three big ol' collections of the good stuff, but one at a time, moth, one at a time.  I have in my bag The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales.  It's got some crackers.  Herbert West - Reanimator, Dagon, The Colour Out of Space and the Shadow Over Innsmouth.

What I didn't realise, from my distance, was just how much I would love his New England.  How richly drawn the area of the Miskatonic Valley is, how vividly alive (and crawlingly sinister) the landscape and its inhabitants feel.  I could wallow for hours in this world, seeking out its twisted farmhouses, blasted hillsides and quiet, menacing populace.  It's like cryptozoology for people... cryptoanthropology, I guess.

I was just expecting big, shambling monsters.

We have a map

There's a map up at work, showing the Health Authority boundaries in, oh, 1982.  Pre some reform or other.  For some reason our case management system works in these archaic boundaries (there's even a Wessex!).  The trouble is, it's a bit... odd.

For example, Hampstead and Bloomsbury are classed as North East Thames.  North East!  Mental.  This can of worms was opened this morning.  I then foolishly blundered in and mentioned about Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, all of which were classed as Trent.  Not Yorkshire.  Trent.  I say foolishly, because guess who has to go through and find all the cases which are geographically correct but, well, wrong?  Yup.  That'll be me.

Weirdly, though, some of the Yorkshire/Trent ones are even more wrong.  Rotherham - in Mersey..?

Rain, and a sort-of joke about breasts

I got a chance to try out my new umbrella this morning.  It is quite small.  No, scratch that, it's wee.  It's tiny.  I can barely get my head under it.  It does, of course.  But I really want a proper umbrella, from an umbrella shop.  One with a curved wooden handle, that furls up in a satisfying manner and protects more than just me from the weather.  Plus, at about six foot, I am in the group least likely to poke you in the eye with an umbrella spoke.  People of 5'9" and under - watch where you're going with those things!

Oh, while I'm here, addendum to the Tomb Raider post.  They use a sort of ragdoll physics model to show you lifeless Lara when, for example, she drops from a dizzyingly high platform for the billionth time and you have to restart the section.  While I'm sure it accurately models the way her dead limbs would flop about, I find it unlikely that she would fall on her back with such unwavering regularity.

It is too hot. Yes, too hot.

Amazingly, our photocopying room makes our office - with its broke-ass air conditioning and giant greenhouse windows - seem cool and refreshing.  I long to get out into the freezing wind.

Thank you, lord

I'm glad I don't live in America.  I think this whole pre-election bollocks would kill me. I mean, it's tedious enough as it is being over here.  Over there, where it's actually important, day-to-day?  I think that would be sort of like hell.  And this isn't even the election!  This is just who gets to stand in the election!  There are NINE MORE MONTHS TO GO before someone is elected.  And after that it'll be appeals and dimpled chads and all that guff.

Refreshingly, the elections for the Mayor of London are coming up in May and it's so very...  I mean, I know it's not as important in the grand scheme of things, but it's pretty close to home and I'm not really hearing much about it at all, beyond a sort of background hum.  Maybe that will change when the candidates are officially announced, but I think by then we'll be close enough to the day that it'll be, well, it'll be time.

Meanwhile, America will be voting on what socks each candidate will wear during their inauguration.

Back again...

So I've been playing quite a lot of Tomb Raider: Anniversary, which is basically a do-over of the original Tomb Raider with snazzy graphics and a bunch of new puzzles.  It's a sharp reminder of what I loved so much about the first game - and what I hated.

It's at its very best, always, when it is you vs. the environment.  As limited as the original was, the at-the-time freedom of exploration was immense and felt very liberating.  Lara could run, roll, backflip, grab and slide around a complex and solid-feeling environment without feeling hampered by invisible walls or illogical dead-ends.  Of course, they were there but very cunningly disguised.. and we were less used to looking for them.  This new iteration does a good job of giving you a similar feeling (although the more savvy gamer will now notice the strictly linear progression of the levels more acutely), and the increased flexibility of both Lara and the world she inhabits is at times an absolute joy.  The simple touch of the way her body strains to stretch far enough to grab an almost-out-of-reach ledge is a neat shorthand for "this is a real person, sort of".

So, yes, when it's running, jumping and swinging off poles it's an absolute blast.  The puzzles are often vast - though they usually boil down to Pull Lever A, Place Object B, Run Through Gate C, but who cares when it's that much fun?

The only problem, as ever, is combat.  I never liked the fighting and with the Wii version even the nifty auto-aim has been removed, making it even more of a trial to run about, avoid damage *and* aim with the remote.  Nightmare!  Still, the use of QTEs to short-circuit a lot of the boss battles has drawn the sting a little.  The fight with the Tyrannosaur was, inevitably, more fun than the fights with the raptors.

So on with it I plug.  I'm now in Egypt.  I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to the moment that the giant Sphinx is revealed.  That was my favourite bit in the original.  Don't screw it up, guys!

A Simple Plan

I've tried to simplify this, but I'm just not a very efficient cook...

Sprig of thyme
Some sage
1 red onion, cut into 1/8ths
8 or 9 cloves of garlic, fuck it, call it ten
Two glasses of white wine
200ish mls of chicken stock
Maybe, what?  2tbsp of single cream
A whole chicken
Enough pasta for as many people as you're feeding.  You know how much pasta you want, you're a grown-up
Peas
Carrot
Groundnut oil
Salt
Pepper

Place the onion, garlic (snap it a bit first so the flavour can get out) and thyme in a roasting tin and plonk the chicken sort-of over them (it doesn't matter too much, but it's quite nice to get the chicken slightly raised).  Scatter the sage around the chicken.  Be liberal with the sage, because it's nice.  Rub some oil onto the chicken, then season as you like it.

Roast the chicken as usual, ie. 20 mins per lb + 20, remembering to baste it otherwise what's the point of the herbs and stuff, eh?

About 20 mins to the end of cooking, pour one glass of the white wine into the roasting tin.  Why?  Oh, why not.  It works.  Whose recipe is this, yours or mine?  Well, quite.

While the chicken is cooking, why not prepare your vegetables?  I cut a big carrot into about 1cm cubes so it'd be sort of the same size as the peas.  But, you know, whatever vegetable works for you at this point.  On reflection, I'm not sure peas worked, taste-wise.  But what else would I use?  Maybe broccoli that was cut into little mini-florets.  Purple-sprouting broccoli would probably be good.  Try that.

Ok, chicken's done, take it out, put it on a plate and cover it in foil.  At this point I will be telling you what you should do, not what I did.  I made this a bit too complicated.

Ok, get the roasting tin and skim off some of the fat.  Not all of it, it won't kill you.  Then pick out the garlic and herbs and put the pan over a reasonably high hob.  Pour in the stock and the rest (or, indeed, all) of the wine and stir it about so it reduces down nicely.

Meanwhile, boil up the veg and the pasta, as appropriate.  Try to time it so that everything is ready at about the same time.

Tear up the chicken meat (it's better than carving it for this recipe, gives you nicer chunks), drain the veg and pasta.  Take the roasting pan off the heat and stir in the cream.

Get a big-assed serving bowl and put the pasta in it.  Then the veg.  Then sieve the reduced chicken stuff into it, and grab the onions from the sieve to put into the bowl.  Then in goes the chicken.  Toss everything together, put the tongs in the bowl and take it out to the table.  Let everyone else do the rest of the work.  You can finish the wine off.  Well done.

nb. If this is horrible, don't blame me.  You just didn't do it right.

It's not you, it's me.

I am probably setting myself up for a fall with the posting from work thing.  What can possibly be of interest while I'm sitting at my desk?  Nothing, that's what.

Well, heh, I could tell you things about people suing their doctors, but I would get myself sooo fired.  Which would not be funny, long-term.  I can't say it's not tempting, but the lack of money and whatnot would be a bit of a bummer.

Ok, so on my desk there is, from left to right - a red folder, some photocopied letters, a three-tier in-tray thing which wobbles, a croissant, a bottle of water, a calculator, a desk tidy, a rubbish calendar I can't write on, a cube calendar which rocks because it's a bit like a Rubik's Magic, unrecycled Christmas cards, a cup of water, half a mug of cold coffee, a post-it with cinema times on, my mobiel phone, a monitor stand, a monitor, a keyboard, a computer terminal, a phone, a mouse pad, a mouse, a tube of moisturiser, a barcode scanner with a really loud bleep a hole punch and someone else's work.

I think I'll go home early.  That's just depressing.  Why did I type that out?  Oh god.  I had an interesting thought part-way through that but I didn't act on it and now I just have the list.  Perhaps I can get it back.  Or perhaps I'll just eat the croissant.

Today is another day

A fine day, cold but otherwise perfectly nice.  I have to make this post, sorry.  It's a law, or something.

Marv has started his blog again, but the url I have here is wrong.  Some crazy Hong Kong-based blogger has his old Blogspot site.  Actually, I'm considering moving myself to Blogspot.  It seems a little rude of me to be sitting here on Mike's server space still.  But, well, one step at a time.

I also really need to just spruce this place up a little.  Trim the dead links at the side, put in any new ones I need to.  If you're reading this and you're someone I know with a blog TELL ME and I'll link to you and even try to read your stuff when I remember.  Just keep in mind - it's this or Facebook.  And you'll get me onto Facebook only at gunpoint.

Super Emo Mario

So I finished Super Paper Mario over the weekend (Well, I mean, I completed the story part, but I'm guessing I can still go back for the Pit of 100 Trials and Tiptron and maps and stuff).  So sad!  I mean, for a platform game it got pretty bleak and the main character was a total nihilist... or was he?  Was he not, in fact, simply Super Emo?  I mean, he's got a top hat, fer cryin' out loud.  And he covers one eye when he's thinking about how sad everything is and how he, like, just wants everything to not exist anymore.

Still, kudos for a Mario game having character ambiguity - Dimentio in particular is very difficult to work out - and, most importantly, Bowser as a playable character.  Rarr!  Fire!

Ask me about cancer survival rates!

No time to update this week.  This will have to do.  I'm busy, ok?  I'm looking up fun things like five-year survival rates for cancer.

Oh, if you get the chance, pick up Neil Gaiman's short story collection Fragile Things.

Figures

I'm sorry, my head is fullllll of figures, and charts and spreadsheets and I feel very dull and stuffed up.  I've kind of made a vow to update every week (at least!) so I am going ahead with typing this, but I can't promise that anyone reading this is going to feel that they have got their no-money's worth.

Still, it's Friday and January is nearly over.  To celebrate getting paid yesterday I went and bought myself Super Mario Galaxy, and that is my final indulgence for the year.  This next twelvemonth I shall live as an ascetic beggar might, if they weren't allowed to beg and instead had to just strain nutrients from the air or from nearby rock pools.  Anyway, I haven't played it yet.  I am saving it for the weekend.  Am looking forward to 2-player...

Cloverfield

What do you get if you cross Roland Emmerich's US reworking of Godzilla, The Blair Witch Project and classic 70s disaster movies like Earthquake or The Towering Inferno?

Well, an unholy mess, obviously.  But also Cloverfield, an oddly satisfying chunk of New York-based monster mayhem.

It starts badly, with unlikeable characters (think Friends cast by JJ Abrams) introduced at a confusing party.  While the film does the din of crowds superbly, what it fails to do, therefore, is the dialogue of movies.  So it is frequently very difficult to tell who is saying what to whom, and often it's even hard to work out who is who - especially with the two brothers.  I think they're called Rob and Jason, but I'm not 100% on that.  One of them wears a tie.  Anyway, just as you start to slump in your seat and wish that the moster would show up, already - BOOM!  The monster shows up.

Well, sort of.  You never really get much more than the odd glimpse of the monster (it appears to be a big-assed troll airlifted in from LotR.  But a troll that disgorges SPIDERS!).  But boy do you ever hear it.  The sound design is fucking aces in this film.  Explosions are hugely powerful, the footfall of the monster shakes the ground beneath your feet and when the first pieces of flaming debris smash into the surrounding neighbourhood it's s bit surprising that the cinema doesn't come down around you.  Forget the shaky camerawork (didn't bother me after the first few seconds), the element which will leave the lasting impression on you is the sheer volume of this thing.

Spoilers follow, be warned.

After the arrival of the monster, the film pretty much never lets the tension down, and zips along to its inevitable conclusion in Central Park in a sprightly 85 minutes.  The central conceit - Blair Witch - is handled well for the most part, but it does need a bit of "People will want to know" dialogue in order to explain why they wouldn't just ditch the camera at the first opportunity, especially when it is actively a hindrance.  Still, it is used to good effect when, for example, they use the nightvision facility or switch on the built-in light.  And the feeling of "being there" is difficult to escape during the horrible, vertigo-inducing climb to and from Beth's apartment.  The main problem is that it makes these people "normal", so when they appear utterly superhuman (Jesus, I don't think I could run that fast with (probably) a punctured lung, nor do I think I could survive so violent a helicopter crash) there's a kind of disconnect between film talking the language of home movies using the grammar of a blockbuster.

Performances are fine, mostly.  Well, they might be shit but, as I mentioned, there's so much background noise who knows if they're saying their lines ok?  They run fine, they look scared - a lot - and someone even says something which was genuinely fairly amusing once.  Oh, yeah, not a film with a particular sense of humour.  It wears its 9/11 badge quite prominently (there's a shot which will be very familiar, very early on, of a dust-cloud barrelling up a street and people running in panic) and so doesn't really seem able to poke fun at the idea of a huge monster flattening Manhattan.  Because, you know, that's not funny, man.

So, yes.  Short, punchy and well-made.  Better than I was expecting, but disposable in exactly the way it clearly doesn't want to be.