Aha, well, hello. I'm at the library. They're not open today, But I'm at one anyway, because I'm away from home, with an Immense surprise promised for this evening.

Busy couple of days. I reckon by the time I get home tomorrow it will be approximately 26 hours since I slept, and will have had only 8 hours sleep in about 48, maybe longer. Thats because at 5 in the morning I'll be on a coach travelling back to birmingham, arriving at shit o'clock from somewhere far away. yes, thats right, I'm not in Birmingham.

I didn't get to go to Whitesnake, though. instead, Saturday night, i went out to that old, old, rock haunt, Edwards No.8. I used to go there 15 years ago, and Now I'm there again, still listening to Motley Crue and Kiss and Tyketto and Firehouse and lots of other classics. *ahem*. Had a very depressing night watching younger, better looking people (like I was then) snoggign each other. I spent all night trying to work out who was single and then watched them mate with each other. Bollocks.

It just feels like that scene from so long ago, where exactly the same thing happened then as it does now; go out, get drunk, dance badly, move in a bit closer and the usual bollocks ensues. Only it doesn't, because the last time I did anything like that was, I think, 1996. I haven't pulled in a club in a decade, but it just feels like If I were it would be drunken fumbling that means nothing. Oh, except for the bride to be (big sash and all that shite) I spoke to whose friend said to her 'I think that guy is a knob' . All i did in response was just to say ' have a great day' and left. They don't know shit about me and are just basing whateevr they think on a drunken 2 minute conversation in a nightclub,. under which circumstances pretty much anyone would come across as a knob I think. Oh yes, And I saw an ex there. She's blond now, not brunette, but I recognises her in an instant; it was the cleavage. Despite having huge tits she always insisted on pushing them up ridiculously high so people would notice it. (Yes, i think lithaborn knows EXACTLY who I'm talking about, and yes, it was her). Having said that, she no longer seems to go for musclebound long haired meatheads, but shorthaired guys instead. I would say I might have a chance, except that she doesn't appear to have changed at all in the last decade and a bit, just stagnated, and anyway, I don't like her. Full stop. But seeing someone from your past in always a bit of an unexpected aside to take you back.

Then I got the night bus home, which turned up late, took the wrong route, and I got home at the same time as I would have done If I had walked, by my reckoning. Not good. Whether I then had a grudge wank thinking of the night is pure conjecture, of course.

Sunday, I slept until 4.47. I needed it. And Monday, I went to Tescos and bought chicken roll for sandwiches, stuff like that. Dull, Dull, Dull. Read 'Smile You're Travelling' by Henry Rollins. Good stuff, but too familiar from the same stuff appear in his spoken word stuff. Mind you, thats a danger when reprinting the best of your diaries and simultaneously listening to about 10 or 12 live shows of his. Bah.

Tuesday was work. A fairly eventful day, because nobody needs the shit some people come in. Fact is, he only wanted a giro writing out to him there and then so he could pay to go to the England-Hungary match in manchester. Giro's aren't given out to help you to football matches, the football match doesn't speed up or slow down the process of issuing one if any money is due to you, and swearing and hanging up on staff and then calling them a 'twat' to their faces will never put them on your side. Just a hint, geddit?

Saw Becca too. She likes the colour blue, and dancing. She dances with her fingers, wierdly enough, just sat on the floor moving and grooving, and can hold the bottle up to drink it herself. Which was pretty damn amazing. As was the fact she gurgles herself to sleep with happiness, which is just really, really, cool.

Sadly, Len Wiseman (Director of Underworld, Underworld:Evolution and props guy on Stargate) is just the guy to have the right mettle for Bruce Willis vs. Al-Qaeda in DieHard 4.0. Please, thats like giving the assistant sound editor of the Equilbrium the reins to the new Harry Potter movie. Oh, and there;s more news about the new theatrical editions of the Star Wars movies out there on this link but it seems like they are sucking the choad out of this, with non anamorphic transfers, just low res widescreen letterboxing from the 1995 laserdisc/VHS releases. Also, more news here and a big spot of news for Balde Runner fans here , most importantly a new definitive cut for theatrical releases.

Bollocks, thats enough of the itinery. more in a couple of days. I've got a digital camera and a city to explore. Toodles. x

METAL: A HEADBANGERS JOURNEY and GUY PRATT get reviewed. these might look familiar from previous postings, but have been adapted slightly.

I will be back no later than Thursday, and maybe before If lucky. toodles x

Ever wondered why the mormon church is the largest growing church in the world (Scientology excepted of course)? Well, maybe its They baptize you without you knowing it, and you don;t even have to be alive for them to do it. In fact a large number of their members are already dead - if you were baptized at 25 and didn't officially request your name be removed, they'll keep you there forever. Well, Havign worked in that church for a month in their admin offices, they don;t even remove the names of people who have fallen away or gone inactive until they are 110. By which point, they are considered likely to be dead. So you tell me, how likely are thery still to be aloive at that age? Not very, I think.

Right now, there are people born in 1897, baptized before the wall street crash, and still considered members of the church. No wonder its so big.

Of course, their zealotry also baptised people of other faiths for them witrhout their knowledge by proxy, and they don;t even have to be alive. they baptize the dead. Thats right, there you are in your eternal paradise with a god of your own choosing, when one of gods administrators comes along and plunges you into the fires of hell. You don;t know why, until they explain, well, actually, you're a mormon now, because they baptized you. Apparently, its an offer that can be taken up in the afterlife, though i)how would you know its even been made? and ii)By that point, you might know if your religion worked out ok for you, so why change?

Yahoo href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060526/ap_on_re_us/baptizing_the_dead"> has more . Cheers to Gilo for that one.

Since yesterday, All I've done is go to the library, and go home. lots of stuff to do today. Food shopping, mainly. I somehow doubt I will be seeing Whitesnake though. Bummer.

In the meantime, read up about Pearl harbor conspiracies, if you like

G x x x

I'm at lunch, and the library isnt open later. So I doubt I will blog much. Hell, I might blog tomorrow, but after that, I'll be off the radar until...well, next Friday. You see, the Libraries are shut Tuesday, and Wedsnesday and Thursday I won't have chance to get near one. I'll be burning the midnight oil on coaches and stuff. Anyway, thats by the by.

Maybe I might do a work blog, with a suitable degree of anonmyity, maybe not. Nothing Libellious , incriminating, or contravening privacy laws, you understand. ok? Oh, and Given the fact I worked in a record shop for a year or so, I could tell you some stories about the dodgy stuff that goes on sometimes...Maybe another time.

I'm still dead tired. But I'm feeling a lot better than yesterday. it was the nice long bath that did. Oh, and listening to Pink Floyd bootlegs. (Melborne 88, Turin 94).

Might be seeing Whitesnake on Sunday. Might not. Not a clue yet. Will let you know.bah.

I'm hungry.

\m/

THE DA VINCI CODE gets reviewed. Slight Variation of what I put below, actually.

Oh, and This makes perfect sense.The second patient in has toothache.This presentation is driving family doctors mad. The all caring Labour government has abolished NHS dentistry. People who cannot afford a private dentist do not go at all. When their teeth fall apart and become painful, they come to us.

Better dentistry for All, isn't it, mr. Blair? Funny thing is though, Mr. Blair and his perfect won't suffer, will they? is it related to the fact he can afford a private dentist? Eh?

Answer on a postcard to the Department of the Bleedign Obvious....

Suspect is hatless, I repeat hatless! Has wierd nasal ridges, long hair, dark skin, and wearing lots of leather. Warning: Excessive use of consonants is to expected.



In other news, I'm very very tired, having been averaging about 4 hours sleep a night, work is OK, and so is Becca. She took me for a walk yesterday. Well, at that age, you kind of hold her hands and follow her as she walks around, but all roads lead to mummy, it seems. But bless her, she is great.

Oh, and saw the Da Vinci Code .

Its a masterful adapation of the original book, which sadly means it retains all the original errors of the hack-written airport potboiler and destroyer of forests. Coincidence heaps upon coincidence in a haphazard manner, logic gets thrown out of the window (Whats that? Suspects wanted by interpol for four murders are seen in a central london tourist attraction wielding armed guns at unarmed elderly men? So, lets just release them qithout questioning, shall we? because of course, that is standard police procedure for mass murderers seen holding guns at unarmed cripples? Yeah, right, sure it is , Mr Brown...), Ian mcKellan steals the entire movie in a brilliantly camp performance, and the plot twists are signposted with all the subtlely of a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

In other words, it retains all the criticisms of the book faithfully. Its beautifully shot, magnificently made, brilliantly done film, but sadly, its an obvious example of a film maker outshinign his source material.

There's no doubt Ron Howard (best Director, A beautiful Mind ) is good, but sadly, he needs a hit. After all, His last two films at the US box office lost roughly $50 million dollars...The first one following Beautiful Mind was called the Missing , which was a horrific bomb, not even making back a third of its budget; the one after that was Cinderella man , which again lost over $20 million at the box office. So when the DaVinci Code comes knocking, it's obvious he'll make good this huge hamorrage of cash, won't he? Ka-ching! it makes me wonder what he saw in the book, because what we get here is nothign more than a boring, turgid, tedious, uninvolving thriller that doesn't thrill, has at least two endings too many, and is riddled with enough plot holes to make the time when Bobby Ewing micarously re-appeared in the shower look sensible. Honestly, following a murder, would you leave the louvre empty with only one security guard there, and with not a CCTV camera in sight? yeah, obviously.

Sometimes you cant turn dogshit into diamonds. This is no exception -a film hampered by the low grade hackwork of its original source material, riddled with blindingly obvious plot holes. The problem is this: if a book sells, they'll make a movie out of it, no matter what the book is like. You can't turn The Cat in the hat sat on a mat into a masterpiece, no matter how hard you try, and clumsly plotting and meandering setpieces abound. You Can't dress it up and turn it into art, because for all the films obsession with symbolism and hidden meanings, this film has NO hidden meaning, NO symbolism, NO subtext; its just a series of uninvolving chases, talky video game cutscenes, and works on a plot level about as simple as a single person shoot-em on the PS2. Go here, touch this button, clunk, move on to the next and easily solved yet incredibly obvious plot point which has remained hidden for hundreds of years until this whizzkid guy solves it in a matter of seconds where all the others have failed.

lazy, simplistic, devoid of subtext, this is a tedious piece of exposition that rarely rises above the level of 'Talk - Run - TAlk - talk - talk - talk - oh look, theres, some scary albino guy - talk a bit more - run - talk - slight stroll etc. etc. '

It'll inspire no one to read the book. I saw this movie done far far better as National Treasure, believe it or not. At least then it was entertaining.

It's also unforgivably, unbelieavbly dull and tedious.For the level of talent involved in this to create somethign quite so tedious, unexceptional, uninvolving and boring takes an incredible amount of misapplied talent, and blatant box office greed.

More news on the Klingon batleth amnesty when we get it.Q'Plah!

EDIT:Slight update on the review, BTW

You're The Dictionary!

by Merriam-Webster

You're one of those know-it-all types, with an amazing amount of
knowledge at your command. People really enjoy spending time with you in very short
spurts, but hanging out with you for a long time tends to bore them. When folks
really need an authority to refer to, however, you're the one they seek. You're an
exceptional speller and very well organized.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Bah. Wot, no post-millenial angsty chuck palhunik books in there? dang.

Well, I didn;t sleep much again. Mark asked me at 8PM to do all the INXs albums for him, and that took ages. normally if you want about 12 albums of material doing as MP3s, you'd wouldn;t ask the night before. Thats why I was up til 2AM, doing it. In the end I gave up when I decided I needed to sleep, which as I was in bed when he rang and made the request, was a\ bit bloody lucky to be done.

Ive changed the name of my blog, but am thinking of changing it again. 'City of the 85's' anyone? (The a clash reference, incidentally, to the B-Side of an old single. 'City of the dead')

Oh, incidentally, hthe main lesson i've learned today is that i)getting someone else to signing on whilst you are in prison is bloody stupid, because you get caught VERY easily and ii)Walking in and saying 'fax Me a Giro' doesn't seem to work , not even if you end up saying it for the hour and a half down the phone to the enquiries line either. but today, i've just watched someobody do that for 95 minutes, to no avail. bah. City of the 85s indeed...

First day at work.

I didn't sleep very well last night, not at all.Work nerves, i think. I got up too early (ie erm, before midday) , got to work on time (well, the time they told me), and it all got a bit interesting sicne there. Shuttled down to various departments to observe and get a bit of a feel (well, as much as I could before the paperwork is organised), and that was that. Yes, I am knackered, no I don't have much to say, and yes I am annoyed at the bureacracy of paperwork.

Oh well, not much else to report.I can't break the rules and tell you the gossip....ok?

*yawns* I know, I'm a bit tired all of a sudden.Anyway, Maybe keyboards and Pyro don't mix, huh?

Dear NATIONAL EXPRESS

Damn you and your insistence on not running Funfares in june. IF I just could leave london but 1 hour earlier (departing you see, at 1AM on the first of june), I could save myself a tenner.

Bloody ludicrous, innit?

Oh well, back to work on monday. I won't sleep that night, I'm sure of it, unless I suddenly start taking zopiclone, the most powerful sleeping pills ive ever met. 14 hours out with those.

Always Nervous before starting a new job, you see.Aren't you?

England My home sweet hell hole.....

Somewhere on my estate is a pole in someones garden. nominally, I suspect it is normally used for having washing out to dry on. At the moment, it is instead, bearing a big St.Georges Cross on a humoungous England(EN-GER-LAND!)flag, flying in the wind like the pennant of a pirate ship sailing the seas of anti-everyone else xenophobia, anti-zee Hun and the frog eating surrender monkeys that we will fight on the fields of green with emptied pigs bladders, on a footballing mission to stop the forty years of hurt since '66, and to plunder the trophies which should rightfully be ours.

Similarly, many of the cars on my estate now resemble owls, with England (EN-GER-LAND!) flags trailing off either side, and England (EN-GER-LAND!) flags hanging from pretty much every house. Yes, and the world cup hasn't even bloody started yet. I know it's only going to get worse. Much Worse. Empty, Vacous, meaningless displays of empty patriotism, of allegiance to a lump of rock in the sea thats obviously better than any other lump of rock in the sea simply because, well, we inviented football and therefore, football hooliganism...oh, and because once every four years we stick a bunch of flags up, because being English (EN-GER-LAND!) doesn't matter any other bloody time of year. Except, of course, when there's the remotest chance we might actually win something.

Whats the bloody point? Is it goign to make the game any better? Is it goign to improve their performance? I mean whats going to happen? Will Rooney and Becks really do a tour of shitty council estates in England (EN-GER-LAND!) > knocking on peoples doors, and thanking them for sticking up the flags? 'Yeah,' they'll say, 'I mean I would have completely ruined the game and played well below my level, what with it being the whole world championships and with the whole world watching you know, '. And then they'll continue ' But you know if it hadn't been for that mass produced cheap low quality flag made in Korea and bought In poundland, I wouldn;t have realised anyone gave a shit. So, like, there was no pressure before, and now, well, it means everything. . So yeah, thanks for taking the pressure off and making my job easier you know? I'll do it for you. Just YOU! he'll say, relieved knowing that because Johnny Chav in Cracktown, Birmingham,England , (EN-GER-LAND!) bought a fucking flag it'll make all the bloody difference. Because you all know, if he hadn't stuck that one soilitary flag up, the entire England (EN-GERLAND! EN-GER-LAND! EN-GER-LAND!)team effort would fall apart and collapse like Wayne Rooney in a Liverpool whorehouse after being snapped by a paparazzi snapper.

You know, Some people say I'm not very patriotic. I can't imagine why.

Oh, and two banks lost my business today. I was trying to set up a bank account, so I can get paid for this job. You know, not having a passport or a driving licence did kinda scupper that from two major high street banks, what with the three week processing period by post and the basic bank account options they gave me. Instead I just walked down the high street until I found one that would give me a bank account, and would do so there and then, and though it was a little touch and go for a while thanks to the moronic and officious wording of regulations for acceptable documentation, it got sorted, thought that was after the person in question had to go to the branch manager to get it waived at bank managers discretion. You see, a letter from the DWp claiming you are in receit of benefits IS acceptable, you see. So you'd think that actually having a job offer letter form the DWP saying you have got a job working for the DWP would be better, surely? Well, you'd be wrong...because its not exactly as stipulated in the regulations, they had to go and get the branch manager to waive that and accept it at his discretion. Does that make sense to you? Does it bollocks.

Still, it got sorted in the end. meh. More runnign around and hassle tomorrow, I'm sure of it. library books, buying shoes, and telephone calls about broken toilets await me...But first, I'm goign to have a celebratory back to work tipple.

I might not be quite so sober next time I blog. In the meantime, the macca and Stump jokes have begun.

'Did you know Paul mcCartney gave Heather a plane for christmas? She Still shaves the other leg though...'

I blame mr pratt.

When We were young...




I was watching the DVD of this earlier today. Whilst cooking, and ripping the audio. (yes mark you will get it, just stop nagging and bring some blank dvds)

I'll never be that young again. or that thin. Or that geeky. My hair was longer, at the front and the back. i was thinner. The music brought me joy, happiness, a sense of escapism and pure release. I was more innocent (relatively speaking) then. My whole future lay ahead of me, and I hadn't yet fucked it up by losing jobs, spiralling into depression, homelessness , or anything like that. Watching it took me back to another time, when dayglo T-shirts looked good, the bands and music was better, bouncier, poppier, less serious, the choruses (chori?) more memorable.

Nostalgia for the days gone by, the days that will never return. The glory days. The young of today? pah, they don't appreciate how good it is when you're young and that enthusiasm and joy is so easily captured. Because it'll last forever. Well, it seems like it will, but then it's all over, and there you are watching you favourite bands die onstage in front of you, reeling out those hits for the last time. And it seems so important, or as least it did. Now no longer does it matter so much.

In the tear of a young boys eyes, Glory Days....

You'll never be able to buy back those days. i know I won't. I wonder how I'll look back on these days in the future, with a vague feeling of regret over my general uselessness or with fond memories? probably the former I reckon, with a critical eye and a school report that goes ' Could do better ' . Yes, i could, but it's getting better bit by bit. Slowly and gently. You know that I've been drunk a thousand times,And these should be the best days of my life, Damn blast, look at my past.....

I wouldn't want those days back. I was deeply unhappy alot of the time, miserable, stayed in a lot, masterbated even more, was single for years on end, scared of girls and poor. Sounds a lot like now, actually. I probably sound like I was quite an unhappy teenager, and yes, I suppose I was; socially awkward, bad hair, bad breath, bad clothes, and low self opinion.



(CAUTION: Contents may vary, and are for illustrative purposes only. Blogger might not bodybuild, or look very scary at all, in real life).

'I think you got a low self opinion man I see you standing all by your self,unable to express the pain of your distress you withdraw deeper inside......'

(yes, this song is very me. the whole album gets played a lot at Graham Towers.It scares small children and dogs, and sometimes, it even scares me with its monolithic crushing slabs of intensely intense metal, mixed in with 1/5th maladjusted and unresolved psychological issues. As one friend of mine called it, it's 'Single mans music')

Anyway, Listening to the songs of those days, it takes me back to the old days, where He sings the songs that remind him of the good times He sings the songs that remind him of the better times . All I have is the good of the music, and the bad of those days is gone, lost in the past, like tears in the rain (yes, thats the obligatory cyberpunk bladerunner reference).

Yesterday has gone,yesterday went too soon...but I don't want it back. All i have is now, and you know, its not as bad as it once was. As president ringo might say, Stuffs getting better .....

Call me an old rockist, but I'm voting Finland this year for Eurovision. It's a nice breath of fresh air compared to the usual pap.

"On the day of Rockoning,It’s who dares, wins..."



Reports that the set of lord of the Rings is suffering a shortage of Orcs, who have allegedy formed a heavy metal band, remain unconfirmed. Honestly.

*explodes enough pyro to bankrupt NASA*

Oh, last night I saw a bloke chat to 60 odd people in an urban leisure centre. he came on stage, smoked a lot, and derided rock stars for taking drugs.

No, it wasn't Bill Hicks. it was Guy Pratt. The man with the most punk rock name ever, who is easily distracted by hecklers, who told us that whilst he is rehearsing weith David Gilmour at Bray Studios Shepperton in Studio 1, Roger Waters (dreaded ex-rival leader of Pink Floyd, ) in in Studio 2. It says on the sign "Bray Studios Welcomes David Gilmour and Roger Waters". . Guy says 'Why don't they just say 'Welcomes PINK FLOYD?" then??

He comes on stage and chat for about 75 minutes. He plays bass a bit , recreating running around the stage avoiding the strobe lights during pink Floyd Concerts baiting the crowd, mocking Duran Duran for having the same bassline for every single song, mocking mad American shouty fans who think the best way of making the concerts even better is to shout "YOU! YOU! DAVE! DAYYYYYVIIIIID!" during the queit bits of ' Wish You Were Here', sayign backstage at Floyd Concerts is like a David Lynch movie, and about the blind man at their Earls court with his guidedog was a bit odd. 'Woof' goes the dog, obviously meaning 'lasers. 'Woof Woof' goes the dog again. 'aha! Goes the blind bloke thinking mmm, thinly-veiled reference to ex-bass players dad dying in the war. And then he tells us about his times with Heathrow customs, drinkign with Jimmy Page, how David Coverdale is just a single bloke in a pleasure park called ManLand where everyday is a 'Jammies and a Robe' day in his villa in Nevada, and how wherever a woman expresses an interest in you, you've got to be 'Cocksman'.. Bless, what more could you expect from a guy who once described his band 'Whitesnake' as 'All about exploring the themes of love, mainly on a perpendicular and horizontal level?' . (In his defence, David Coverdale is from a small coastal village called Saltburn, which is about as exciting as Bartley Green after dark with all the shops shut).

Well, Guy is Biotchy, witty and funny. And he regales with anecdotes about Spandau Ballet not being able to read, going on a date with Madonna at the only time she's ever been seen in public with no paparazzi, and the mayor of Sydney ('People think us austrailians are more arse than class. To them, i Say BOLLOCKS!' )

He was drinking in the bar afterwards. Giles restrained me from stalking him and getting him to sign records and telling how it was really him and not steve harris afterall who made me want to play bass.(Ok, I lie, it was Steve Harris).

But Often i found myself going on into further comic avenues he left unexplored in my head, and yes, sadly, I did heckle him. About curtains. I know, me bad.

Oh, yesterday was my wifes birthday. I texted her 'Sorry, I've had to sign off, you'll have to pay for the divroce now. happy Birthday'. The fact is that I had signed off the same afternoon as her birthday was a coincidence, but god knows how i managed to make it such a coincidence. Wierd.

Now, I need to email some people. Bye, bye, bye....

I start work on Monday.

I went to the job centre. I Had an interview with them, and then I gave them back my dole card.Come Monday, I'll be on the other side of the desk and back at work.yes, i'm nervous. No, I won't blog so much. the first month will be very difficult to get thorugh, because I'll be struggling in that period when you don't get paid but have no accumulated funds to help,at all - paying out for everythign as if you are work, but living on dole money. That first month is always difficult, and this will be more so than most.

I'm glad to be getting back out there.

it's impossible to cram in the whole history of metal into 99 minutes, but dammit, Metal: A Headbangers journey does a good job of trying.

Interviewer: ' What does heavy metal mean to you?'
Norwegian Death metal guy from Enslaved: (Extremely long pause, then he sips from a glass of red wine, puts it down, and speaks) ' 'Satan'
Interviewer : ' What does Satan mean to you?'
Norwegian Death metal guy from Enslaved: (After an even longer pause, which is the heaviest silence in history since Metallic's Sad But True) 'Freedom'

Hilarious. Not on paper, but in execution.Imagine it said in the same accent as Jamie Lee Curtis In trading places,and you get the right picture. He Doesnt so much say 'Satan' as 'ZEY-tarwn' and doesn't so much say 'Freedom' as 'Fvlreeeeedum'. Its all in the delivery, I promise you.

From Sabbath to Slipknot, from Autopsy to Venom, from maiden to Metal, its there. Not all of it. But a lot of it. And Damn, is it funny. And Does it rock? yes. But damn, is it funny.See Manowars rippled, muscular chests ...and ridiculous mustaches which they stole off the Village People.See The worlds shortest metaller, Ronnie James Dio. (I met him, and he didn't even come up to my shoulder. But he did rock). See the ludicrous pantomime fun of metal, of grown men doing wiggling metal horns, of air guitar and moshpits, see exceprts from the legendary 'Heavy metal Parking Lot', see all that and more. It reminds of that perpetual fifteen year old trying to get out, regressing back into a time of pure fun and enjoyment and play. Thats what heavy metal is - a celebration of enjoyment, of seperatism, of a sense of belonging to somethign when you feel so on the outside and spurned by the cool kids you know. Its the sense of release and pleasure you get for doing soemthing just for the pure enjoyment of it all.

Its also, bloody funny. But its got a special resonance for us brummies. Why? Well, one of the first bands he investigates in his roughly chronological history of heavy is Sabbath, who take you down the streets of birmingham. Interviewer Sam Dunn strolls out of Birmingham New Street Station, and into the streets on which metal was born, the narrow terraced houses of Aston. Then we pan away to Tony Iommi in the country house, his personalised number plate of his car (99 GTR) outside, and the cinema erupts in widespread laughter. All because our interviewer wants to do is get back to to finding out about the source of true metal, and asks away.

It's especially relevant to someone like me, who spent their teenage years on the streets on which metal was forged, stomping around aston with a particular brand of surliness and acne and air guitar. Metal? Real men play on ten. But I was a teenager, and well, I didn't get to ten. I got to go to sixth form, because I got to go to school on the streets of Aston. The streets on which Metal was born. I don't know about the three chords part, but Tony Iommi certainly had the truth.(And No, even though I do come from birmingham, i don't know Ozzy, Ok? Even if Birmingham City Council is annoucning that the 27th May is 'Ozzy Osbourne day', which a tie in event at Aston hall. BTW, Did you know that ozzy's first wife still lives in harborne with his two kids?))

Anyway...

Interviewer: 'So What is Aston like?'
Tony Iommi takes a short breath, and then speak. A lofty pronouncement of gravitas and truth...
Tony Iommi : ' A shithole'

Firstly, sorry about the abscence of the skyscraper picture. it was caused by a logjam at the library, and an IEXPLORE.exe error wiping my post. Secondly, the dog was abducted by aliens whilst i took a phone call from someone playing hockey...maybe its just wishful thinking, stef, to be abducted by a female hockey team??

I'm cold, I'm wet, and it's may. I have spent today running around, mildily strssed, assembling and disassembling furniture, talking to rarely seen relatives and my neighbours for the first time (whilst they hang a huge ENGERLAND flag from the kitchen window). Oh, and carrying bookcases onto car trailers, phoning up jobcentres, and employers. It's been busy, but not enough has been done, as usual.
No links, because this poxy Pc only allows one window open at a time and to search for a link I have to kill the window and then copy the url and then manually log back into blogger. Dagnaggit.

Oh, I'm not seeing guns n roses. Sorry bout that.My back hurts, I'm off to see some freinds, and the future doesn't seem quite so bleak all ofa sudden. But If i ever do feel bleak, I listen to the answer phone on my mobile, where a little girl can be heard sayign 'dada dada'. bless.

Elsewhere in the news, Blair says 'Kick out the darkies', making Enoch Powell seem like fucking Tony Benn, and Thumbs Aloft (aka Paul mccCartney) and Stump (Heather Mills) split.

Oh, and if you are the wierd bloke in the library who stinks of unwahsed clothes and keeps on asking me for my blog address, don't bother. I won;t give it out because i) its got personal information on it ii)I don't like you iii)You freAK me out and Iv) most importantly, you're bloody wierd.

Talking of wierd, how do you beg withotu sayign a word? Walk into the library with a sheet of paper sayign 'I'm deaf and homeless and hungry, please help'. is it a sign of compassion fatigue, nastiness, or just cynicsm at expecting to be conned all the time by wondering what he would do if I could speak sign language? If he could talk back,well then I might believe him.

Whats next? oh yes, 'METAL: A headbangers journey' ? Rock on, brothers and sisters...

As Inspired by Marks post about its taller sister in manchester....

See This? The Tallest Building in the UK outside London...well, until its sister is completed. 122 metres, 400 feet tall, and top 20 floors being 128 apartments. (Originally designed to be 192m tall, or some 580 feet, until its plan for a big spire was shelved with plannign restrictions post 9/11).

Look closely at this picture and you'll see two grey needles reflected in its mirrored panelling, two grye needles conviently expunged and omitted from every single one of the 'official' photos of this new pristine housign complex built at the cost of millions. Almsot as if the architects and designers are well, a bit embarrased to share airspace with two of the other tallest buildings in Birmingham. Cleveland Tower and Clydesdale tower, residential blocks originally built by the local housing authority, now turned over to another housing association for the running of them. Incidentally, in the past six months, I have been offered flats in both of these two towers, but had to decline as well, I already have a flat elsewehre.

The top penthouses of Beetham tower have been converted into Luxury apartments, cost of approximatley erm... £2,000,000 - £3,000,000 each. Bargain.

Across the Road, the apartments at Clydesdale and Cleveland Tower are run by a local housign association. Cost to rent them? £78 a week.

Lets run those numbers, shall we? £3million quid versus, paying rent at £78 a week. It'd take you 739 years and 40 weeks to pay £3million in rent at those prices.

Now to me, thats not an example of the free market leading to the best solution for everyone all round, is it? Nor is it an exmaple of how the free market elads to lower prices all round. No, what it is is a perfect example of how the free market stabilises the price at the highest it thinks it can get away with.

And then politicians wonder why a lack of social housing causes difficulties, not seeing the blatant link between the two.And don't they think that maybe £2-£3 million is a little bit out of affordability for some....

Am I just alone in thinking that maybe if the government built more, affordable housing, and kept it under the control of local authorities, it might solve a few problems? Like homelessness? Like Debt? like reposessions?

Questions, Questins, mr. Blair.

This morning....



There I wa sat at home, when i had a Phone Call. From a womens hockey match, at Wembley Academy*, from a woman who doesn't play Hockey or live in London....when I looked out of the window and saw a grey scottish terrier wagging it's tail quite happily, whilst floating in mid air, and rising upwards. Towards a very silver chrome coloured UFO which was in the process of abduct the rather oblivious , hapily wagging canine. It was at the point I realised in fact, that I was asleep, and lost it by emitting a loud shriek of surprise.

Well, it was a rather disturbing way to wake up, after all.Maybe I should stay off the cheese before bed ?

*CAUTION: Does not exist.(NOT A FLYING TOY etc.)

I am simmering with a barely suppressed rage today...a low level intensity fury that is just under the surface. Not that anyone here deserves it, but I just feel really, really, really pissed off When i discover someone has changed their phone number, and not told me i)they were changing the number or ii)what the new number is or iii) anything. I really don't like it when that happens, and given it is someone I spoke to last about a month ago, and did so fairly regularly before then, I must confess to feeling very very annoyed. If they didn't want to know me anymore, they should have just said, and they certainly shouldn't have asked me to send up cds in the post to them if they wanted to break all ties. So Yes, I feel very annoyed at such bloody rudeness.

(Edit: As it turns out,they hadn't got any credit to text anyone, but that didn't stop me feeling kind of let down by not being told.Thank God they are still alive though!)

Todays bargain:The double DVD of Amelie (the 29th best film ever, according to IMDB) and Delicatessen (which with 7.9 out of 100 on IMDB in also in the top 250, somwehere between 197 and 248) in poundland. yes, Poundland. A pound for both movies on DVD, in one box. (Single disc edition of Amelie rather than the double but it was orginally a HMV exclusive apparently. Still, now its only £1, its an incredible bargain).



I have an exceptionally busy week ahead of me, comprised of deocrating. But first I must buy food, and pay bills, and sort out lots of other stuff I've been putting off.

Putting things off is one of the few things I'm good at though. I'm always putting thigns off, always late for things, Always let things slide. its part of my personality I very much detest, but mainly comes from the fact I'm selfish, like all of us are.We're all selfish, and we all do what we want to do - to a certain extent at any rate. And I alway leave thigns to the last minute,b ecause I'm doing things and stuff that interest me, and I leave thigns to the last minute and cut things fine and miss buses often ebcause well, standing aroudn at bus stops don;t interest me much, and I want to spend as little time as possible not doing stuff I don;t want to do, such as, erm, waiting for buses. So Yes, I am selfish, and yes, I do put things off, and yes, I am a bit of twat, but all things considered, I'm trying not to be quite so much of a twat and trying to do things better, even though I don't find it very easy to break my bad ways (Like all of us) and do better to people.
It takes time, nothing happens overnight, and I really, really, really, don't like rowing with people.

Oh, well. Back to business.

Oh, for those of you keeping tracks of careers of people in the movie industry..The new bond has not one but THREE directors... inane? yes. but the Editor is Stuart Baird, Director of Star Trek:Nemesis , US MArshals and Executive Decision , and the second unit director is Alexander Witt , Diretor of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Talk about a demotion eh? Sorry, you were good enough to make moviies, but not good enough to carry on making movies...whoops.

Oh, and even better, the director of Donnie Darko? Terrorist according to the Us Government. Looks like writing a film about the implication of the crackdown on internal security post 9/11 seems to be more hazardous than we thought eh?

Blah Blah blah Blah Blah Blah Blah etc....

DEATH TO THE HUMMER! A 4 ton monstrosity, which does 10 miles to the gallon, coems to an end, and only aboput erm...14 years too late. Thank God. Workers will be switched to military production, apparently.

Interestignly enough, the epidemic of Alcholism seems to continue in Britain. Especially as Ectasy currently carries a sevenyear prison sentence, and posession of Alcohol carries just a few pence in tax.

Ectasy kills approximately 20 people a year. Alcohol misuse, according to Professor Davdi Nutt, kills approximately 22,000. Which one is more dangerous? "Authorities prefer not to make the comparison, roughly 20 deaths a year ranks ecstasy alongside electric blankets in a list of Britain's biggest killers," said the Guardian.

Isn't that Ludicrous? (Thanks to Skrufff for that little nugget though)

Is there any truth in the news that Kate Moss is relocating to LA to escape any possible prosecutions by the UK authorities? Um ? Really?

Oh well.

I've had a rubbish day. I've been rained on for half an hour, because I had to walk to the library. This had a lot to do with the fact that the road was blocked with polcie cars and ambulances, because of a crash and a smashed up moped. Whatever happens, I can't have had as bad a day as them. But Wet and miserable and with a headache, I then gopt to the library to discover ....the computers were down. I found one of a seperate network that wasn't, hence I can blog.

I will be blogging less and less in the next few weeks. I have a very busy time ahead of me. Cryptic I know, But a lot needs to be done. Now, Does anyone know how to wallpaper?

Oh, yes, I did get the times today. I think its the 1927 black and white version of Metropolis. Still a classic though. But other than that, I just feel like, well...somethigns waiting to happen. I don't think I have long to wait.

P.S. ta Stef, Fixed the link

Apparently, I gave away a lot of spoilers for MI3. Thing is, if you've seen the trailer, you'll know a lot of it anyway. The vatican, the setpiece on the bridge, stuff like that.I specifically tried not to talk about the plot, and I think I did an Ok job there. Did I give away too much?

Oh, in another question, Do I blog too much? Do I? I don't know. Do I over examine myself too much? Do I try to analyse when all I need to do is feel? Do I try to put too much logic in a situation when logic just does not apply? Is that I find it difficult to relate to people? Because I try to understand, try to rationalise everythign, when All I should do is just experience it? Is it wrong of me to try to find order in such chaos? Shoudl I abandon my rational self unto chaos? Go with the flow? is it that I was just guessing, At numbers and figures, Pulling the puzzles apart , Questions of science, Science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart? *

or do I just ask too many bloody questions?

Oh, and according to Pynchon, 'Graham is the man.' . Shucks, stop It, I'm blushing. The reality is, I'm a bit of a twat, but don't tell anyone.ssssh.

* As changed because of mark moaning. The page I pulled the lyric from didn't have the letter 'g' on it, Presumably to appear more down with the kids and with it. Dagnaggit

I don't know if you've noticed, but there's certain things on this blog you don't read. The attitude is more Live and let live, rather than live and lets gossip.

I don't mind discussing my own private life on here, and frequently do. This is made much easier by the fact that, well, I pretty much have a dull and boring life withno private lfie to speak of. But I don't names names, I don't gossip about other people's girlfriends or ex's, and certainly not in a manner as such as can be blatantly identified. You might get the odd blind item and anecdoteabout a friend or an ex, but I don't ever identify them.(If I have, I shouldn't have ; the only example I can think of is when I had a brief encounter who ended up trolling in the comments out of what appeared to be a grudge). Sometimes what you need to do is let someone find their own way, right or wrong. No amount of gossip will make that any easier.

In fact, I pretty much go out of my way to avoid any such identifiers. There's such things as names of the mother of my child I don't mention, names of ex's, stuff like that. The reason is quite simple ; Whilst I don't mind talking about my past,It's presumptous and wrong to assume that they would want me to do so and. i've made a decision to write about my life, and I can't make that decision for them.

They have a right to a private life, and thats how it remains. So whilst I may talk about something happening to someone, I go to great pains not to say who.I don't want to feel 'forced' to interfere in anyones personal business, not many how much a sense of moral indignation I have. (It's different when talking about someone who happens to be the Deputy PM and its on the news everyhour, because in that case it's not an issue I'm personally involved in, I'm not the whistleblower, and there's a big difference between being in the public eye and being a nobody with a blog).

I don't tend to 'name and shame' about people I know. There's a lot of feelings I do have about people, opinions based on my experiences of them, and so forth. It's perfectly valid to have those opinions, but it's another thing telling the whole world about it. Because I have these opinions, it doesn't mean I have to stick it on a webpage.

Simply this is because I don't try to interfere in other people's private lives, because it's their own business. Not mine. I'm not interesting in grinding axes, settling vendettas, or any of that bullshit. life is too short, and we're dead too long, and being an interfering gossipmonger busybody won't win anyone any friends, or kudos points with the big man upstairs.

There comes a point where you realise there is a line you shouldn't cross. Where you have to let people live their own lives, right or wrong. You might not agree with how they live their lives, and they certainly might do things you don't do. But interfering and spreading gossip and half truths won't ever solve anything. All it will do is aggravate, annoy, irritate, and cause trouble, hassle, recriminations, shouted telephone calls, and anger.

And None of us need that.

Last night was, being orange wednesday, a busy day. it was a day in which I got up early, went to the library, then travelled an hour from library to sign on, and then travelled an hour to get to to town, where bought lots of bags of frozen food and filled up the freezer .That took me, erm, six hours or so.And then i cooked, and arranged with giles to come over, and where we left the house for the weekly commute to the movies.



In this case, Mission Impossible 3.

Well, Its certainly the best of the three MI movies,plot wise and action wise. Its no doubt flawed and farfrom perfect, but its probably the best bond movie since Tomorrow Never Dies. in fact if you took The hyperviolence of Tomorrow Never Dies and the emotional content of On her Majesty's secret service, and then added in a shade of Licence To Kill and True Lies (Which it steals one sequence from wholesale), you'd be about right.

There are a number of incredibly annoying things about Mi3 (Or Mission unpossible, as I called it as it box office). Quite simply

- Antony Hopkins, where art thou?

- the IMF now appears to be part of the CIA at langley, part of the UN, and embedded into the US govt as yet another agency like the FBI, CIA, NSA etc. Wholly inconsistent with its 'off the radar' nature in the other films.

- everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is shot in close up, like a TV Movie on a small budget. Which means that the film feels hampered by a lack of space, despite its globetrotting locale. After all, you don;t go to film across the world when you could just do it with a closeup, surely. (By the way, here's where we visit: the US, Berlin, the vatican, Florida, Virginia, Shanghai).

- The action sequences ; inventive, big, and fantastically relentless. But sadly, all shot in close up. You never can tell just how big they are, how much danger people are in.

- Tom Cruise. Jumping the couch. This film would be so much better if we didn't have endless shots of him running, and running and running, and running, just to see him in motion.

- Tom Cruise , in a Lecter style facemask, captured by authorities. I almost expected him to mutter 'hello clarice' before chomping someones ear off, his heart beat never going above 85 beats a minute.

- the Macguffin. In a classic conceit of Macguffins, is it just a Macguffin. Never explained, never verified, never told just what it can do. it is just a generic bad thing we must stop from getting into bad guys hands.We don;t even know what it can do, except it has a biohazard symbol on the side of some red liquid. I mean, I could create the same effect with a bottle of cherryade and a stencil.

- And Cherryade just isn't scary.

-The fact that just like before, its one of the IMF agents / staff on the inside betraying everyone else. Yet again. You'd think they might actually find a bad guy this time who isn't one of the insiders.

- Laurence Fishburne doesn't kill anyone.

- In fact All he does here is just shuffle paper.

- oooh, scary.

- the Car Chase. Could have been great, but again its shot up close like a Tv movie.

- The end. Like the last two MI movie,s it comes down not to a setpiece, but a fistffight in a normal, boring location. in the second one, it was a beach in Austrailia; here, a rickety hut in Shanghai. Wheres the big villian base we want? the exploding volcano filled with rocketships? Please?

- No, the very very end. The last shot of him in that sequence. There he is, fighting for his life, and its dragged out just a little bit too long. One or two seconds too long. Just enough for that suspension of disbelief and have the audience erupt in giggles.

- the relentless pace. After twenty minutes of character buildings, its followed by a 10-15 minute action sequence. Two minutes of a breather, and then a phone call drives the plot along to the next sequence. Where its 10-15 minutes of an action sequence, followed by two minutes of a breather...etc. You get The picture.

But parts of it are utterly great, as action movies go. The break in to the Vatican, for example. The exploding Lambourghini.The fact that for once, we don't get to see him at work, but instead wait outside listening to people complaining, waiting for cruise to appear out of the sky like some avenging scientologist.The setpiece in the Florida Keys, where transporting a prisoner acorss the 17 mile long bridge inevitably leads to their escape. (sadly, seen before in Licence to Kill and True Lies). You just know that when they hit on that bridge, he's gonna get sprung. the fact it involves a UAV drone armed with missiles and black helicopters shoudld tell you by now, that there's something rotten in the IMF.

Mi3: Better than the other two. Perhaps thats not praise enough. but It is a good, tense, relentless action movie. far from perfect, but still, pretty damn good.

Sadly though, being the kind of movie that attracts afficionadios of jet li and hollywood blockbuster movies - perhaps telling the trailer for 'The Fast And the Furious:Tokyo Drift' played before it, and Superman Returns (I tell you, Kevin Spacey has nailed lex Luthor down to a t, in a performance that erases Gene Hackman from memory) - Cinema twat was out in force last night.In this case, he was not alone, being a bunch of six teenage lads two rows down and to the left. Yabbering on endlessly, during the adverts, the trailers, fones in hand, gibber, gibber, gibber. Louder than the trailers and the movie. And then one of them can be heard ordering a taxi to leave the cinema. Obviously, these guys, along with using the camera phones to snapshot the warning notices at the beginning, aren't going there for the movie. They are being idiots, a nuisance, and obvciously have zero intetion of shutting up and enjoying the film. They're just being an antisocial pain. I know that telling them off will do nothing,being outnumbered six to one. I also know that groups of asian lads in their teens could be aggressive and give me attitude, and threaten me.

I also know that I have no way of expressing my disgust or anger without being confrontational, and being too chickenshit to approach the issue head on, the only way to do it, is to do so fairly anonymously.And do something thats really not like me, but I'd had way too fucking much of people fucking me off, and being antisocial. I wonder how they would react to antisocial behaviour themselves? Would they be aggreivied? Feel pissed off? Annoyed? maybe even chastised and calm down and shut the fuck up and let us watch the movie?

Life's too short for bullshit, sometimes.

So, Taking the empty plastic bottle of Frijj milk from the seat, I could be seen taking aim, calculating distance and trajectories to hit the offender of the head.The quiet bunch of asian kids sat next to me and giles can be seen grinning their heads off, not quite believing what will happen. I put my fingers to my lips to ensure their complicity. The copyright notice continues. You will be ejected blah blah. The certification screen comes up.This film is a 12 A.Cinema twat continues talking fairly loudly 'I want a taxi from the cinema to' reeling off his address in Sparkbrook.

It then goes dark. Completely dark. And in that two-three second period of total blackness in the
auditorium, a loud 'DOINK' can be heard in the silent room, as a plastic bottle lands squarely on the back of cinema twat's head.

As the logos appear on screen, there's a movement as he rubs his head, and then asks his mate 'Did you do that?'. His mate shakes his head. Someone in the auditorium, who might have been the bloke taking aim whilst he was gabbering on and ruining the film, has just clonked him on the head from elsewhere in the auditorium behind him. And he is not pleased. He stands up a little bit, looks around at the other people there, trying to work who it was who dare have the guts to do a bit of crowd control, and tell cinema twat in no polite terms to shut up, watch the film, and stop runing my night out. And it works, because he's quiet as a mouse until his taxi turns up and he leaves.Its not really like me to be like this, but lifes too short for putting up with bullshit that gets in the way of stuff. I don;t think nelson mandela is a good comparison here, but I am reminded of when he met piers morgan, and piers morgan said nelson knew he didnt have long for this world, and nelson just cut through the bullshit and got to the point, said it as it was, because thats all that matters. In this case was, he was being a twat, ruining my night and the night of other people, and I just wanted him the shut up so I could watch the film free of interruptions.

After all, I paid to watch the film, not to listen to his talking. Which is exactly what was achieved. I was also amazed that in the dark, My aim was perfect, which astounded me more than anything.

Eoither way, Cinema twat got his just deserts, and everyone else in the screen heard it. And me, I'm amazed I did it, but at the same time, lifes too short for anything but the sheer economy of bluntness. I just make a snap decision. , I dealt with the situation, got what was required out of it. Simple and effective.Just a matter of crowd control, really, thats all.

DOINK .

God, and I used to be such a nice bloke, really...



(Stolen from mark, but I love this jpg)

Whats the Frequency, god?

(39.17hz, police band, is the right answer. But this tale of the visit of some debunkers to a god squad rally includes some classics, such as A man with cancer of the uterus, about whom apparently god* said ""That's the guy from Anaheim! He's a stooge! It's a man - a man! Get away from him! That's the guy from Anaheim! Drop him fast!" "

(*P.S. God is apparently the scammers wife in this case. Mysterious ways I know...)

Oh, for classic film buffs, this weeks free DVD with the Saturday times is Fritz Langs MEtropolis. no news on whether its the colorised 1984 version thats got the soft rock soundtrack, but there you go. Oh, and fans of Panic Room might want to pop round woolies for the 3 disc super-duper set, which is currently £3.99 there. or £2.84 in some select brances of tesco. etc.

Accent: Vaguely neutral, public school English. Allegedly Brummie, but not Birmingham. Don't use the word 'Yam yams' too much.

Booze: Tesco Value Dry Cider.Vodka mixed with stuff.

Chore I Hate: I hate tidying, but I love being tidy. Ummm.

Dogs/Cats: Dogs, but I love cats too. And Rabbits. All pets.

Electronics: Erm, no. I'm not the Six Million Dollar man.

Favorite Perfume/Cologne: ha ha! I don't use either, but deoderant is always a good idea.

Gold/Silver: pah, I leave that for the local chavs.

Hometown: Birmingham.

Insomnia: I can't get no sleep (plays keyboard riff from heaven). Oh, and a good single by Feeder.

Job Title: Minister without Portfolio, grand General of GrahamWorld, leader of Manland* (obscure reference to an itnerview by David Coverdale, i know)

Kids: is one of the most depressing films i've ever seen, by larry Clark.

Living Arrangements: Alone, with a stuffed Flat Eric and a back garden that needs mowing.

Most Admired Trait: Sharpness of mind.

Motorway of Choice: A19.

Number of : Three. Its a magic number.

Overnight Hospital Stays: Not since 1992, when i got hospitalized for being in the wrong street at the wrong time with the wrong accent in middlesbrough.I couldn't walk for three weeks.

Phobia: Spiders.Anything with More legs than corners.

Quote: Too many.

Religion: Is one of the most dangerous things in the world. Or, failing that, pastafarian. Have you been touched by his Noodly Appendage? (p.S. the fact that this god is edible does help a lot though)

Siblings: 1.

Time I usually wake up: Daylight hours.

Unusual Talent: Oh, Sleep.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: All of them. If it doesn't have a face, I don't eat it. Which is wierd, because I know ethically I don't like inflicting pain on animals, but I also know that they are kind of tasty too. So I'm sort of a confused vegetarian who isn't vegetarian at all, because I like the taste of chicken too much.

Worst Habit: I'm never on time. My default setting is late. Usually half an hour. Get over it, it just the way I am.

X-Rays: A few.

Yummy Foods I make: Oh, Pot Noodle. Chocolate spread on toast.

Zodiac Sign: Cancer.

W're getting old. I know it. I know I'm getting older. My waistline expanded and then settled down, and when I look in the mirror I see some old guy looking back at me. He's got short hair, and its receded a bit. There's lines on his face, by his eyes, and bags under them ; and red in his eyes. And when he yawns, it ain't pretty.

I'm reminded of a conversation I once had where I was about to say 'we're getting old' and before I could, like a steam roller came the word ' Don't say it, Graham'. In that authoritarian tone of voice that I thought only came from schoolteachers, such was its forcefulness. But overall, You can't stay young forever. Like the ex of mine who decided the best thing of mine to do was to go out to the pub everynight simply to prove they weren't dead yet, and then said that 'I'm not old'. Maybe not, but you are older. Older than you were at 18, at 21, and you aren't gonna get any younger.

All you can do is accept it, or spend the rest of your life in denial; maybe by pumping botox poisons into your body, or cosmetic surgery to have a perfectly natural body mutilated and chopped up in a vain attempt to halt the progress of time, and to fit into some vague unattainable ideal of beauty that only exists in magazine pages, exuded by airbrushed and desperately unhappy people who happen to be anoxeric or simply good looking, depending on what definition of thin you happen to use.

Accept yourself, You aren't ever going to be anyone else. You aren't going to stay young forever, and I know I won't be. I'm not anymore. It's just the way things are, there's nothing I can do about it, and I'm not going to make myself unhappy pretending I can. Only a fool would do that.

Thinking about it, there seems to be a lot of fools out there.

I'm at the library. Quelle Surprise.

Last night I did some putting stuff into boxes. Took Ages but had a vague sense of actually having done something.

The other blogs I used to have appear to have acquired comments from Zombie spammers, judging by the updates list and I havent done anythign to them. Nice .

Oh, Chig? Your blogpage appears to consantly crash Pc's. Somethign strange afoot there, and I don't neccessarily mean internet exploder. Wierd thing is that On multiple library Pcs at different libraries, loading up the page has caused them to crash. Yes, I've got as blank a look as anyone, and that can be, erm....very blank indeed. ummmmm.

Oh, yes. When reading about someone lamenting that they have long baren stretches of their life when they are alone, i don't expect it to come from someone who boasted not too long ago that they had , in the past decade, never spent more than two weeks being single.Given the fact that I spent two and a half years single between '91 and '94, and have only spent 3 months with someone and not being single in the past 2 years, I find that particularly galling to find him whinging. (Especially given his co-habitation track record - 5 women in a decade, as opposed to my 2. Hmmm.) Does this come across as sour grapes? I hope not. Its not meant to be. it's meant to provide some bloody perspective.

Oh, and you know you are getting older when you start to listen to talk radio, out of choice. As I do know. I suspect its got a lot to do with loneliness, and the sound of another human voice engaged in conversation helps fend that off. However, FiveLive has far too much sport and football on it, and If it was just about politics and history I'd be far happier. When can we ban sport, and if not, why not? Oh, and while we're at it, its looks attributable than one of the major reasons for people voting BNP is apparently due to - lack of social housing, and its consequent problems. I wonder if this is exactly what Maggie had in mind when she gave away all the council housing to rich people, preferably in marginal constituencies. havign been on the sharp end of this stick, I'm very aware of the problems that a lack of social housing causes. i've written about it befoe, a few months ago.

Me and Giles were chattign the other night. His ideal niht out would seem to involve a lot of hard electro music. Mine would be somewhere where you can get drunk, listen to britpop, and watch the History channel, all the same time. So You can have a good time, and learn. Stimulate your mind. Maybe thats one of the reasons why I don;t go out much. it's not that it doesn't interest me, I just don't find it very interesting. I don;t find it stimulating, educational, insightful. And even though someon said to me the other night that you don't have to go out to the pub to meet people, I did point out that pretty much everything you do that involves meeting people involves spending money, money I don't much have. You don't have to go out ot the pub no, but you don't find bunches of people on street corners unless you are looking to become a wino, queing for a soup kitchen, or wanting to get your face kicked in by teenage chavs* - Of which there seem to be a few of in the area where I live, congregating in nice riot size (7 people and over) groups and who may or not be related to the incidences of police helicopters, burnt out cars on local grassland opposite the shops.Perhaps its telling that I don't think I've met anyone this century so far (in a relationship sense) who I haven't first met on the internet, or at least spoken to online by email or newsgroups or chatrooms or something.

Talking of crims, there's nothing that screams clas about a shop so muc as putting 'Cash' in the front of the title. Normally Cash Generator or Cash Convertors (usually known as the local fence, and more commonly known as Chav Convertors. ok?). The example I encoutnered the other day - of two stupid as pigsiht blokes arguing with staff because they didn't understand the concept of gettign a receipt for an item whilst it is in for repair, and thought the shop was trying to rob them of it simply by repairing it inhouse - only depressed me further. The gold ring sayign 'DAD' on the his fingers didn't make me think we were dealing with a rocket scientist here, but that impression had a lot to do with the general inability to construct a sentence that didn't use a carnal expletive. Or for that matter his admission that he didn't know what the word Warranty meant. Or, whilst we're at it, ....oh, you get the picture. I'm such a snob. Is it so wrong to find it preferable the ability to speak english rather than txtspk as a primary lanuguage? LOL. etc.

Mind you, It was all different back in my day. I remember when it was all fields round here, courting local maidens over Scrumpy etc.

I was thinking of something else, but Its momentarily escaped me. Toodlepip.

'Our Armies do not come to your cities as conquerers or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth ahs been stripped of you by unjust men, the people of Baghdad will flourish under institutions hicha re in consonance with your acred laws' - General F.S. Maude, Commanders of the British Forces, 1917.

The more things stay the same, the less it changes , eh? Oh, and may I reccommend the book the otherwise mostly odious Piers Morgan? Full of gossip and salacious infromation, only know do I truly understand just how mcuh the game we call politics is stage managed, how the things interconnect, and how corrupt it all is. It's not that Labour are less or more corrupt than the Conservatives, and its not that there is a particular party that is less corrupt. What there is people, no matetr what side of the left and right divide they fall, and people often work for their own vested interest, no matter what political allegiance they claim to have. After all, all there is corrupt people. Neither Tory nor Labour, and both. Blunkett, amongst others. Prescott. Tories, whatever.

I'm not saying I have a solution. I just know that once government bends the people to it's own will, and not bends itself to the will of the people, then democracy is but a name, replaced by a goverment over the people, not of the people.

from lithaborn and Justa G irl:
I AM clean shaven
I WANT ornage ice Lollies
I WISH that feeling of numbness in the little finger of my left hand would go away after all these months
I HATE the fact that KFC makes my nose itchy
I MISS someone
I FEAR everything
I HEAR tap tap tap of a ketboard
I WONDER if the BNP will actually admit what the N really stands for
I REGRET far too much, and not enough
I AM NOT a number, Im a free man (aka Iron maiden...)
I SING very badly
I CRY at random moments for no real reason,
I AM NOT ALWAYS in the library.Sometimes they even chuck me out
I MAKE toast very well
I WRITE too much, but you'll never see it.
I CONFUSE myself a lot of the time
I NEED a passport, and a bank account
I SHOULD get those soon. If I do it.
I START but never stop
I FINISH this, now.

bah.gots to go now. Have you been touched by his noodly goodness?

Oi! Why do none of you comment anymore?

*sulks*

'And Ziggy Played guitar'...




Air guitar Cures smog, according to Bill and Ted. And We also all know that Air Guiat rocks. But this isn't Air guitar.This is Harder. much harder. this is...Guitar Hero.

Guitar Hero is, without doubt, incredibly, unbelievably addictive. It is also hilariously great fun, and interactive. But all games are. It's not about collecting little golden rings, fragging pixellated Nazis or space monsters. No, its about being a rock star. All ya gotta do is play the right notes. You get a plastic guitar with buttons on it, and you plug it in and play. There's a large number of songs to play, some a lot harder than others, and all of which are in common with one thing - all soundalikes, but bloody great ones, and even stranger, all very very metal.

Smoke On the Water. I love Rock n Roll. Sharp Dressed Man. Iron Man. Oh, man.It's great. All i need is a tennis racket and a mirror, and I'm away. And I am. I'm playing rock, man!

What it is, is a great game. Great fun. Play those notes, make the sounds, and it feels creative, to a certain extent. it is guitar karoake that much is true, but its bloody great.

Sadly, i'm crap at it.

Not because its a difficult game - well, because it has to have some difficulty, but sadly, I'm handicapped by one thing.

I know how to play guitar.

Thsi is weird. it's like a SAS sniper complaining about the lack of weapon recoil in doom, but its' true. To play Guitar Hero and be good at it, if you play guitar in the real world you are hampered. You have to unlearn and forget everything you think you know. Think simple.

So, when you know that you've got to play 'Unsung' by Helmet, You know the main riff is comprised of a open E string and the first fret, an F. Nope, on this, its one note. You use the approximation of a plectrum, (a sort fo switch where a pickup would be), and the red button, and press it once. Every instinct in my body is telling me to pull my finger off the fret and play the open riff, but if i do, i get the notes wrong.

Similarly, when you play the guitar solo, you know the only way to do it is with tapping. Only, if you tap, you get it wrong, because you have to use the placktrummy thign instead. Aaaaargh. Oh, and the harmonics at the end of 'Ziggy Stardust'? the frtted octaved harmonics off the 12th fret of three strings at the end? yep, you guessed it. Plectrums again.

The rigid nature of it means, you've got to hit the notes at the right time. No room from improvisation, or counter harmonics, scales, anythign like that. No points for trying to get the right chords, play it like you should. Nope;All you get is a scrap of pick against string, And its totally inconsistent. And I'll explain why.

I mean, just how difficult can you make a ramones song to play? Really? Aaaargh. Why Do you change the itnervals of when you have to pick when the song is the exact same BPM throughout? Aaaargh. Thats what I mean.

Its seriously addictive though. its got great gameplay. I could lose months in this. But its not for guitar players. its for gamers. Its not a guitar sim, not even close. Sure, tis got some wonderfully entertaining bits - that bit with the whammy bar where you end up doing divebombs and squeals is just cheesy grin inducign to the point of total childish fun, listenign to 'WHEEEEE-QUEEEEEENUAL- WUAAAAAAARGH!' noise, and it makes different noises depending on which direction you pull the whammy bar (he he), but seriously, if you play guitar yourself, you'll probably find incredibly addictive, and hate it for its lack of realism.

Its the most expensive air guitar you could ever own. but damn, is it fun. Oh yes, lots. next time You'll see me, I'll be a goddamn guitar hero. honest. What more cna I say?

LET THERE BE ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, there was a birthday party on Saturday night. The 40th birthday of the Mighty (TM) chig, in a pub in moseley. Turned up for half eight, just like it said on the invite, and was the erm... second person there. (Well, me and Nic were). Chig said he was exhausted from all the rushing around, and rather than interfere, me and Nic settled down for a quiet pint. There were nibbles (bombay mix, peanuts, tortilla chips) on each table, a DJ called martin who mixed using vinyl (a positively archaic concept nowadays) and some music.BY the way, I was the guy in black jeans and a sisters of mercy shirt who didn't really talk to anyone.(oh, and mark, Chig asked whether you were coming. I explained as you now live in Ashford, it was a bit of a way to come).

Before I could blink an eye, the place was full of people. About 40 people, one for each year.

Sadly, I didn't really know anyone, except for later in the evening when a bloke called Steve who I used to work with at tempest records a decade ago and i started talking. he didn't look how I remembered him - he wasn't as young looking as he did then. Mind you, im surprised he remembered me, because I had a more hair then, both at the front and the back.And it turned out we both knew Chig from the same workplace, only at different times, years apart (Steve had worked at BPS and then gone to Tempest - I'd worked at Tempest and then gone to BPS.Not so much a small world as , well, a small Birmingham really). However me and Steve did reach one conclusion : the guys who we'd worked with with on the dance floor where like Beavis and Butthead, only without the brains.

And then Chig and his sister sang. They sang Eurovision entries from years gone by, including one by Katrina and the Waves. I'm afraid the minutae of eurvoision escapes me, not being an afficionado. (However, I did buy my very first and only bass from two people who ran a shop in Birmingham who entered songs for the UK leg of Eurovision once, which is as close as I get I'm afriad, as their names escape me. One of the two people sort resembled James Whale, mind you, and I'm beginning to forget what relevance this has, if any, to chigs birthday).Oh, by the way, Chigs sister has the better singing voice of the two - trained, so I'm told, unlike her older brother.

After a buffet was prepared, leading Chig to comment something about a highly localised outbreak of food poisoning in the Moseley area,(a highly topical joke for Spurs fans, by the way) and I ate a lot of vegetable Samosas, and answered questions about Microwaves. (People wanted to know how powerful they were, and I'd been the only person sad enough to read the wattage from the back). Then we sang happy Birthday.

The most memorable thing I remember about singing happy birthday was laughing, when i realised that in fact, people singing happy birthday couldn't seem to decide what his name really was. About 20 people sang "happy Birthday dear Chris", and the rest sang "Happy Birthday dear chig". Together that last name came out as an utterly identifiable word which is completely untypeable, but thats only because it's impossible to say "chig" and "chris" at the same time.(I think the closest approximation si the name Chigris, but I'm not too sure.)

And The Birthday cake. Was very, very nice.It came complete with a picture of chig as a young boy on it on the front, but I didn't eat any of those bits. it'd be like cannibalism, really. And I still can't believe how young his mum looks.

Happy Birthday, Chig.

Slightly sozzled and after midnight, as the venue started to thin out, so did we. After many times of being asked if Nic was 'just a friend' (yes) 'Are you sure?' (yes, definitely), we left. Chig was slightly behind us as we walked down the street, & when strangers talk to people at cashpoints I get wary. Which may explain why at least two of us had the arms folded, security of the first world, Public Enemy style pose after one of us who wasn't me had visited the cash machine.

We walked back. From moseley Village to Stirchley, via Reddings Road. A Road I've made a concious point of avoiding for years. Ever since the news of the selling off the rugby ground my father sacrificed his weekends at, where I spent far too much time as a youngster because I wanted to be close to my dad but couldn't stand the game, I couldn't play, had bad eyesight, and resented standing around in a muddy field in subzero temperatures in winter squinting at things I couldn't see...well, since then, I've made a point of not going down that road. I think the last time I went was at the wake after the funneral of my mother, and my father had spoken about spreading the ashes over the ground she destested.

Now, It's not a ground. Its prime time real estate sold off for housing, and my mother lies in the back garden of a stranger as far as I know. I walk past, my mind, telling me I'm in about the right place, and I walk across the squint at the sign on the Road. Its called Twickenham Road, named after the rugby ground. I've not been here in a decade, and I feel a little bit shaken & upset. But i carry on walking, and get back to Nics.

After shitchatting, music and possibly the most addictive game since Grand Theft Auto : Cotteridge, i decide to walk back home from Nics. Its quarter to four when I leave, and I know I'll be getting back just as the sun rises, according to my estimation. So I walk home, the dawn slowly rising over the city, the night rising and the lights visible over hills and roads and churches, until bed calls me home .....

Anyway, thanks to the following piece of unassaiable logic, I can conclusively prove that Global Warming is caused by a lack of pirates, and as such, I consider Pastafarianism as perfectly rational and scientifically proven as well, any of the world major religions, including ones involving the great green arklesneezure. As Bill hicks said, found my brand .....*



*I don't actually believe in a flying Spaghetti monster. But I do believe its bloody funny.....

Its strange how times and things change. I was looking over some old stuff on the PC and was taken back to things I'd forgotten, so many things; people in my life, the rows and furore that was had, the declarations of emotions and hatred and love, lust, whatever. And how many of those people are in my life now? None. It's all movedon, we live in different homes with different people, kiss different faces, do different jobs. Old times, not so long ago but long forgotten.

Sometimes, Nothing changes but everything. I don't want those days back, but I do miss the good things about them I suppose; The Bad things I don't even want to remember. The wya I occasionally hurt people, for example. Those things I can't forget. But its all too easy to forget the good things. Isn't it always? Sometimes there are consequences that cannot be undone, things that will never go away, but won't mena antything to anyone but me and two of us. Words said, words that could never be uttered in public, lips we should never have kissed but tasted so sweet; well, they certainly did in temptation, if not in reality. Sometimes it's not what we got that was what we wanted, but we wanted what could have been. What might have been. At the end of the day though, all we were is all we are, and nothing more, and thats all they got. Just another guy or girl, thats all. Just another two people who weren't right for each other.

On that cheery note, i've got a party to go to. Hurrah!

There's many reasons why secretly, I love Raise the Titanic.

Some days, there's really no more enticing prospect than starring Obi Wan Kenobi as a grizzled seaman and Franics 7 - The bad sandman of Logans Run - as a paper shuffler in a quest to do somethign really, really silly. In this case, the only thing to do is to raise from the depths of the ocean (12,000 feet), using only airbags and a scale model, the worlds most famous shipwreck, in order to get hold of some miracle stuff dug from the ground thats convieniently located only in the shipwreck. For some strange reason, they didn;t call it unobtainium.

Based on a book which was written with the sole and only purpose of seeign the titanic sail into the harbor of New York, Raise the Titanic is a disaster. Financially and artistically. The beautiful score aside, it has pretty much no redeeming features, and a catalogue of errors so fundamental its unbelievable.

I can;t believe they splurged some $35 million on this shit. The film itself recouped only $7 million in theatres, and Lew Grade (producer) once remarked "It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.".The most expensive prop was the Titanic model itself, meticulously built at the cost of some $350,000. Only then they discovered it was too big for the watertank they already had and had to build another big pit in the ground to put it in. Net cost: Another $6million.

Now, as outlined in robin gardiner's 'Riddle Of the Titanic', not to mention many another book, the official story of the Titanic at the time was that it sunk in one piece. It didn't, as any researcher would have discovered a lot of evidence to the contrary even before the wreck was discovered in 1985.

Despite the fact that there were many witnesses, and even one member of Staff, who said that it split before sinking; many witnessess from Third class. In this days,t he word of a good man from first class was seen as better than any third class passenger, who obviously didn't tell the truth. Fact of the matter is, the third class passengers had much less to lose in telling the truth. Simply this is becasue the white Star line, were already millions in the hole courtesy of the Olympic - the Titanics uninsured and out of service sister ship, which needed seven years of running at full capacity before it would even break even. The last thign the White Star Line needed at the time was yet less confidence in the ship, for it would mean financial ruin. So these eyewitnesses and reports were buried under the carpet. (Anyone who reads up on the court proceedings - and theres a good book at Stirchely Library about it - will be amazed and how directed they are to reach a single conclusion).

But no ship thats in two pieces could ever sail back into New york, could it? Especially not one thats been underwater for 60+ years, and for whom exposure to air would lead to instant oxidisation. The ship would literally be oxidised to death, the metal turning brittle and crumbling within hours of exposure to the air after all those years.

Anyway, it's easy to pick apart bad acting,short-sighted directing, and a purely moronic stringing together of words that many of the studios term as "prose". Its easy to point out the wrong year on the tombstone at the end of one of the people who died, easy to point out that the russians fly American vietnam era Huey Bell X-1 helicopters, with a red star on the side. it's easy to ask why the American government would spend billions to raise the ship without some simple survey work. It's easy to point out the ridiculous and pointless ending, where they do discover the minerals they are looking for in a grave in Cornwall; and then wonder why no one else will ever come along and dig that up, why the US government will never doublecheck the findings. No, it takes a level of brilliance to make something this truly awful.

Devoid of tension, with a razorthin plot which manages to create new levels of tedium above and beyond the threshold of insanity, terrible photography and composition, Raise the Titanic is an utter and total disaster on every level. It is a peice of entertainment that doesn't entertain, doesn't contain any artistic talent - except the model of the ship itself and the score from John barry at the height of his powers - and is qutie franky, a compelte waste of time. Its' dreadful, atrocious, and brilliantly bad. It's not just a very bad movie, its exceptionally bad.

Oh, mark, look what you've gone and made me done. I happen to find this film fascinating, because of its terribleness.Like firefox, it holds a place in my heart - in a pantheon of truly awful 80's action movies involving uberpowerful commies hellbent on taking over the world and redneck yankees fighting for truth, justice and the liberty to exploit anything they can find, it holds a place there. Liek Airwolf, Rambo of arabia, and so many more movies, its so unintentionally bad its entertaining because of its awfulness.

File Under Water. Literally.

I've been tagged by mark to choose a movie for 'Bad Movie Club' . I think I've made a choice, because it's a movie I secretly, secretly, really like, despite its utter awfulness. This is in the main due to its brilliant and iconic score by John barry, sadly never ever released on record, and for which the master tapes have long since been lost or destroyed. I haven't time to go into any real detail about it's truly utterly awfulness, but here it is....




Check out the fansite here

Mind you, in marks panoply of truly awful movies, I must say I own, erm.....five. Including the total awfulness of Who Dares Wins , which is only because it was given away in the Sun a couple of years ago. My choice was also given away free in the sun, but I didn't get it. if anyone has a copy of it on DVD, i'm utterly desperate* for it. SO if anyone does have a spare copy of (cough splutter) 'Raise the titanic' on DVD, please don;t throw it away, throw it in my direction. (You also may wish to chekc out this page here




*Actually, I'm utterly desperate anyway, so this should come as no surprise.

Well that was an interesting election....




Listening to Radio Five Live on AM Radio, up until 6AM, and I wasn't even (that) caffeinated. Rather predictably, because of the calls of various ministers to quit and so forth, the expected cabinet reshuffle has now wiped the widespread defeat of Labour off the top headlines. The news moves fast, and the latest news always wins. So a caebinet reshuffle the morning after a defeat gets to knock the defeat headlines off the top of the webpages. Damage Limitation anyone?

The elections in all honesty, were like that of a banana republic. A complete and utter bloody farce. Because the stuff reported on Five Live but not the webpages were pretty fascinating. Well, some of it anyway.

i)In two councillor seats - one was crawley, i think - the votes were so close (after three counts) that it was a exact draw. Both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives had polled the exact same number of votes. Unable to declare a clear winner, the electing officers decided on a way for the vote to be decided. The Liberal democrats won one, the Conservatives the other. But how did they win? They drew Pencils, and the shortest one won. ,such as in St. Albans.

In this age of democracy, winning a political seat comes down to pulling the shortest straw. Is this really the democracy we want to set by example in iraq, that so many people died for, so candidates can win by chance? If this is what our current political system comes down, it is quite frankly ludicrous. (The electing officer came to conclude it was actually far too much effort to re-hold the elections, and thus, the shortest straw was pulled. Not for the candidates, but the for the voters).

ii)In one bourough, It wasn't so much the case of the smoking gun as the smoking ballot box. Again, literally. The box was sealed with wax at the end of voting and literally seconds later, was discovered to be emitting smoke and smouldering. So what they did was throw water into it.Well, it extinguished the fire but also happened to ruin every single ballot in there. They couldn't decide what to do with the box so they dealt with it last, and it covered 11 tables with a soggy mess of indecipherable paper, which was hopeless to identify who voted for what. How exactly does a ballot box catch fire from the inside, when paper isn't known for spontaneously combusting? eh?

iii)In Kingstanding in birmingham, the BNP won the local council seat. The returning officer then stated that, the result was invalid - the BNP had in fact come in THIRD place. Not first. So how is this possible? because this was a seat where voters can vote for two candidates in order of preference.A lot of voters voted for the BNP as their first and second choice. The problem with this is that the BNP only fielded ONE candidate. (It says a lot about their voters that they think they can cast two votes for the same person, really, when you're only allowed to vote once). So Basically, thanks to the stupidity of their voters, the BNP vote effectively doubled, and then that double voting has had to be invalidated. The only way to amend the official result was by acquiring a court order this morning to officially overturn a misdeclared result, which is exactly what the returning office will do. (This had me in tears of laughter at the utter farce that it is). The official statement is here , but it doesn't say how exactly it happened.Mind you, anyone whose ever been to Kingstanding wouldn;t be too surprised at the groundswell of BNP support theres ; it's always been strong, and its a majoritally white area thats very run down with a tiny ethnic population, and racist graffiti is prevalent.

iv) Other birmingham news? Longbridge went conservative, but if you want to know how related this is to the shutting of the Rover plant, I suggest one also looks at Coventry. Which also went conservative. Both of which have in the past 12 months had the news of huge jobs losses as the car plants - Rover in Longbridge, Peugeot in Coventry - are shut down forever. In my ward, the conservatives won by polling almost 250% the votes of their nearest competitor, Labour. The BNP were third, with some 900 votes. Which would have made any vote I made pretty pointless anyway. Thought whether its related to the fact that the only guy to doorstepped my road, who left a 'Sorry I missed you' slip in my postbox, was in fact the conservative winner.

v)The BNP won seats in barking (11 out of 13 candidates fielded), 3 in sandwell, one in solihull and one in redditch. However, the party leader, nick Griffin, was initially refused entry to the count in Stoke-On-Trent where he was standing, because of wrong accreditation. Pah! People can go on about their success, but it wasn;t a success. However, maybe if the Conservatives had fielded candidates in some areas, might there have been more options for people to protest against Labour other than voting for the British nazi Party? Who despite claiming they were racist, their winning councillor interviewed on the BBC used the word 'White' within the first sentence on live national radio. Hmmm.

Given the smoking ballot, election by pencil and double voting,I wonder just how legitimate these elections would be considered by our media if they had taken place in somewhere like say, iran, or iraq?

And people wonder why turn outs are so low, eh?

It's election day. I personally expect Labour to get trounced. But, It's never been more dangerous to vote, Imean how long has it been the case that there ar ePolice officers at polling stations in Birmingham? As the BBC reports, 'Meanwhile, police officers are being deployed at several inner-city polling stations to prevent vote-rigging.West Midlands Police said officers would be sent to Bordesley Green in Birmingham, where specialist electoral fraud investigators have uncovered alleged irregularities relating to 190 postal votes.'

# Panic on the streets of birmingham.... #


(On the left: Police in Birmingham. On the right (like always, because he's hardly left-wing anymore)....Well, This guy looks like a Labour voter to me. both of them. Which one is the bloke again?)

Minister without portfolio, Graham Reed, staggered through the library and slumped onto the desk in front of him, the broadband connection flashing up the webpage. A heavy day of blogging awaited him....

*erm* yes, I did a contrast and comapre on Dan brown, and you know? this was exactly right.Sloppy, sloppy, writing. Now, with the news of a similar plagarism from another author meaning they lost their book deal , I expect Dan brown to lose his deal with imminently, even if the person he did plagarise was himself. And not Michael Baigaent, whose theory of the Holy grail he ripped off and shoehorned into his own book as a dramatic device. I'd say ripping off vast swathes of plot and archeological research is more worthy of being stripped of a book deal than a borrowing less than half a paragraph. I read the sentences in question and must say this: perhaps the unconcious borrowing of two vaguely similar sentences isn't plagarism, not compared to to likes of what happened recently with the crime novel of a certain editor of a major newspaper and his book about a crime syndicate ripping off $1million from a film financing company, and the rathe rless well known work he plagarised... but of course, someone the status of Littlejohn isn't going to get their book deal ripped up are they?

Oh, and yes, me bad. It was Mary J. Blige , not Macy gray. Still think its bloody rubbish though.

Saw Giles last night, went to see 16 blocks. Its Ok, but the ending is a let down. Builds up so much to deliver a limp ending. However, if we're talking plagarism, the fact that a burnt out cop is taking a witness to testify in a hijacked bus surrounded by SWAT teams shooting into it with tear gas and high calibre weaponry should really inspire a plagarism suit from the makers of one of clint eastwoods finest; The Gauntlet. A film I really like, despite having not seen it in a decade. Oh, and Mos Def is incredibly annoying, but the only way I found to explain it was that the character was meant to be autistic, of which he displays a vast number of traits of.(Speech patterns, repetitive behaviour, obssesion and grounding of himself with certain times, and so forth). However, I did find myself at one point predicting he would clipped by a bullet in the ear, which would mean he might actually bloody shut up. (He didn't). Now, that would have been interesting. Still, it is very well done, but not a patch on Inside Man.

Anyway, I saw Giles, he came over, and we did the movie. Thing is, as I said to giles, we need to get out more. Both of us. At the movie the only time he and I ever go out is to the cinema - and I don't mean us going out together right, I mean its practically the only time either of us are socialable. It's hardly expanding our dating pool, is it? But neither of us are spectacularly socialable at best of times, and I find it difficult in social situations. I also find that as it's the only time either of us leaves the house, (except for me to blog), its gonna be wierd if one day orange Wednesdays stop. Or, even worse, I find myself doing other things those days. Or get a new social circle, like working or something. It does make me worry about my firends, a lot of the time, and him. Well, he is my friend, am i supposed to not worry? Mind you, things always change. People do too. Somewhere inside me, maybe there's even a nice bloke trying to get out. he needs to try harder, if he is...

Oh, more introspective bollocks eh? I was thinking of something else introspective, but mainly because of why relationships fail. is it because I'm myopic? Is it because I'm selfish sometimes, and sometimes want to be left alone? is it because I can be excessively physical in a relationship, mainly because my insecurities mean I don;t ever know if I'll ever have sex again? Is it because I have difficulty connecting with people emotionally? a combination of all these things? Or is it because I blog too much? i don;t know. Still working on that.

As usual, me and giles discussed whether we missed the boat. I'm not so much sure I missed the boat as missed the fleet. I didn't even hear the call as the ship left. By my age, Bill Hicks was already dead, Rollins had stuck out about 20 zillion albums, robbie has had two seperate greatest hits albums out... or i can just list my life of failures against others for the rest of my life and depress myself. I'm still not doing that bad. not yet, anyway.

In the meantime, check out EXTREME MAKEOVER - where all you need to turn you into an airbrushed celeb is just a reality Tv show.

And it's not every movie review that can include the withering putdown "Think about it, if there is no earth, what are all those comic books you've been saving gonna be worth on ebay? NOTHING. "



Right, I'm off.