See ya later..

Parting is such a sweet sorrow

Okay enough of the dramatics..
Off to Spain in a few hours so I thought I'd bid you all a fond farewell for about a week..
Was planning on staying up all night, and in fairness my taxi arrives in about two and a half hours so I'm not doing too badly..
Anyway, I fully predict as of 6:40 am this morning, the UK will be blessed with a glorious heatwave whilst Spain will get freak snowstorms... cos that is sod's law!!
Have a good week y'all - see you on the 5th
Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Movie trailers lie!

So I saw Collateral last night and I must say it's definitely the best film I've seen in a very long time. Who'd have thought that Tom Cruise (sporting a 'do that makes him look remarkably like Richard Gere) could be a bad guy, huh? And quite an efficient little hitman he makes too.
However, if you've seen the trailer for this film, you may have noticed that they use the Alice In Chains track "Man In A Box" (which is a choon!).. and I was quite looking forward to hearing that in the cinema, blasted out in 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio. But, alas, I didn't hear it.. the buggers, why use a song to advertise a film if it ain't actually in the flick?
On a similar note, I notice that the trailer for the new Denzel Washington movie Man on Fire (crap title, and looks an absolutely average flick too), uses a Nine Inch Nails track on the trailer.. what's the betting that doesn't make it in either?
However, lack of Alice In Chains aside.. "Collateral" was excellent, Michael Mann again has directed a classic. Go see! Go see!

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Praise Be.
Hallelujah.
And thy Sky Website said unto me - "Verily, thine installation of the righteous Sky+ system shalt commence on the Sabbath, Sunday 26th September.." And lo, so it came to pass that on the Sabbath, the prophecy was fulfilled and fucketh me if it is not shite hot!

Isn't it just nice when technology works? And it just meets expectations? At the moment I'm sure I've not got any benefit out of having Sky+ installed yet (although I have got all my Eastenders and Mutant X episodes set up to record whilst I'm away, a process that took something stupid like six key presses) but I'm sure I'll soon wonder how the hell I got along without it. I mean, for example, I'll be recording the Spanish Footy tonight whilst I'm out and the luddites may well argue "well you could have programmed your VCR to do that" and they're right. But programming your VCR was such a ball ache: You had to hunt out a tape, work out what was on it, rewind/fast forward it to the correct position, program the fucking thing and then, additionally, program the Sky to come on at the same time as well as stopping anyone else from watching anything else on Sky at that time in case it fucked up your recording. All I did just now was look through the EPG, noticed that the Spanish footy was gonna be on later (and it's a Barcelona game so I'm anticipating lots of silky skills from Ronaldihno) and press the "R" button and I know it's done. Fabulous. And if my housemate wants to watch another channel, then he can. It's just so convenient.
Pausing live TV rocks too.. unfortunately I only had the Portsmouth v Toffee-Shite game to muck about with it, but being able to pause, rewind and fast-forward through the action almost made it an enjoyable ninety minutes!
I'm sold on it. It's a great system. I'd recommend it to anyone (particularly at the moment while it's cheap too!).

Funny Stuff

B3TA come up with some funny stuff in their newsletters, they seem to spend an infinite amount of time and energy bringing the funniest things to their hallowed pages, and their weekly newsletter is a riot..
However this week they have excelled themselves, firstly by compiling this list of unfortunately named authors (amazing what happens when you type random naughty words into a search engine, innit) and the discovery of what is returned as a result by typing chav into the search engine on the Argos website (go on, try it!).

Luck of the Draw..

Sometimes its difficult to know what exactly to search for on the interweb, it's a vast interconnected repository of information, trivia, opinions and -mostly- pornography. So anything that takes the effort out of searching through it has to be applauded. The Randimaginator saves you from even having to think of a phrase to type into your favourite search engine in order to get images returned to you. It is a totally random image search that works on Google, altavista, etc..
Not always worksafe, though, so beware!

This is the last time ever I mention this...

..but as it's quite funny, you can see Mouldy Lookin' Stain performing "Dogs Don't Kill People, Wabbits Do" by clicking this link
(You'll need Real Player to view it though)

Kinda interesting...

A Perfect Circle have a new single out, tis a cover of John Lennon's Imagine (this link is in Windows Media Player format, enjoy). It's minor key-tastic and certainly doesn't sound as upbeat and full of hope as the original. Apparently this is from their new album eMOTIVe, which is out on November 2nd. This is all news to me too. It hasn't been that long since 13th Step came out and I honestly thought the new Tool album would be out before APC got another CD out. But it's all good!

More crap I wrote years ago

Well I could resist no longer.. too knackered and skint to do anything else interesting tonight (and the TV schedulers doing their usual of serving up seven tonnes of shite as their early evening programming), I slipped the first Star Wars trilogy disk (Episode IV: A New Hope, for the benefit of any one who's been in a coma since 1977) into the DVD player and was transported to a galaxy far, far away.
Bliss.
It still kicks arse, even if I still wince at some of the Special Edition changes. Did you know George has changed the soundtrack as well as the visuals? And I don't just mean mixing it into Dolby Digital. No. Listen out for Ben Kenobi's howl on Tatooine to frighten away the Tusken Raiders - totally different (and nowhere near as good).. there also a couple of extra lines of dialogue in there I'm sure. Anyway, that aside it was fabulous..
And it got me thinking about a short story I wrote years and years ago, I think it dates back to either 1997 or 1998 anyway.
You see the thing is there's a bit of a plot hole at the end of Star Wars. The Death Star is blown up (thanks to Luke Skywalker, credit where credit is due), the rebels are flying home to get tarted up for the big piss up you just know happens after Luke and Han get their medals (and for the record, why did Chewbacca not get a medal, he's the fucking co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon for fucks sake).. but the last shot we get of Vader's TIE fighter is it flying off into deepest, darkest space.
So what gives?
We already know from the dialogue earlier in the movie that TIE fighter's are short range fighters, so there's no way Vader's flying back to Coruscant.
So how did he get back to the Empire?
Well I wanted that question answered, and took it upon myself to write an explanation. Reading it back after all these years, I'll admit, it's fairly lame, but there's a couple of good gags in there (I think).. So, here it is STAR WARS
Episode V.I - The McDark Lord.
(by the way the formatting of this document sucks, you may need to "save target as" and open it in notepad with word wrap on, unless you like using scroll bars a lot!)

Fetch the aspirin and the orange juice

It was bound to happen..
I have a bit of a sore throat..
I keep on sneezing..
Yup, it looks like I'm getting the first cold of the winter season, literally days before I go on holiday. Well it's not beating me that easily. I don't care if I have to step out into the sun drugged up to the eyeballs on Benylin and Lemsip (neither of which taste half as nice a Calpol and Tixylix used to, but never mind), I am going to chill in the fine Spanish weather for a week (or not chill, as the case may be, if I'm running a dangerously high temperature!!!)..
Bastard, though eh?
You just begin to contemplate that fact that you have a week off work to look forward to and nature's strikes you down with an annoyingly snotty nose and a tickly throat.
Never thought that "Puede por favor usted directo yo al químico más cercano pues tengo una nariz muy que moquea" might be the most handy phrase I'd have to learn before I departed, always imagined it would be "El camarero, ahora envía por favor sobre otro litro de vodka, salto a él" although I'm sure the latter will still come in handy at some point ;)

This week I have been mostly listening to..

1) A Perfect Circle - "Mer De Noms"

2) Fatboy Slim - "Palookaville".

The new Fatboy Slim album is class, cannot wait to own a copy of it. At first I was very disappointed with the track they were playing on the radio ("Slash Dot Dash") and thought this new CD might be pants. How wrong I was. Some fabulous tracks on there, particularly "Wonderful Night", "Don't Let The Man" (which I spent many hours snowboarding to in SSX3) and, my personal favourite, "The Journey".

Aww man..

..the weather is fucking awful.. It was so chilly this morning it was unbelievable. Did I want to leave my nice toasty duvet and face the chilly real world outside? Did I fuck as like.. But I have a mortgage to pay, so out into the dismal Autumn conditions I went. The only thing that made me smile is that in six days time I won't give a fuck about the weather in the UK, as I'll be sunning myself in Spain, drinking a stupid amount of cheap booze and smoking cheap cigarettes.
Bliss.
Speaking of which, apart from "Un burro con tres piernas es mejor que Salif Diao" I don't really know much Spanish.. anyone got any handy phrases for me to take with?
Add 'em to the comments section if you do, all contributions gratefully received!

A small serving of humble pie..

So Amazon finally got my Star Wars DVD box set to me today, only a day late and I guess it was a blessing in disguise. Knowing me, I'd have got in last night after the match and thought: "Hmmm.. well maybe I'll just have a look at a couple of the extras." and before I'd known it, it would have been three o'clock in the morning (or some other rediculous time in the a.m.), I'd have got fuck all sleep and I'd have been shit at work all day..
Instead, I came on the internet, whinged for a bit and then went to bed, got a half decent night's sleep (for a change).
Whether I was shit or not at work is for others to comment on!!! ;)
But.. the trilogy DVD arrived today
Wow!
I've spent most of the evening just going through the extra's disc (didn't even get a chance to look at the movies yet!) and it's a fabulous package so far..
Just finished up watching the two and a half hour documentary on the making of the trilogy: "Empire of Dreams", and it's great and even contains bloopers that I thought Lucas would be far too up his own ass to ever show. Yeah, there's a lot of back-slapping going on, and some of the slightly negative stories are glossed over or, more often than not, missed out together (where, for example, is the tale of George Lucas screaming "You're ruining my movie" at Empire's Director, Irvin Kershner, before going and re-editing Empire completely so that it lost much of the humour, characterisation and the subtle love story between Han & Leia (thankfully this was before the days before Lucas was surrounded by "Yes" men, and they convinced him to go with Kershner's version of the flick)). Skywalking by Dale Pollock is a great book for a slightly more balanced view, if you're interested.
Know what was weird though?
I kinda forgot, whilst watching that documentary (which is full of clips of the movie as you might expect), that Episode's I & II had ever come out and I was actually looking forward to watching the original trilogy again (even if I will grimace through the Special Edition changes).
So this is me eating a bit of humble pie, I guess, as, if nothing else, I cannot remember the last time I was looking forward to seeing Star Wars again - so well worth the asking price!

I don't want to talk about it..

..but we were shite in the first half, I was relieved after 45 minutes that we hadn't been on the end of a clusterfuck.. Ahh well, fuck it, there's always Saturday.

And, on an unrelated note it would appear that what goes around, comes around.. only a few days ago I was lambasting Mr Revisionist himself, George Lucas for further self-indulgent and unnecessary changes to the Star Wars trilogy. I must point out, in my defense, that I did say at the time that I'd still buy it (never underestimate the buying power of a Star Wars geek, even one who's been permanently in denial since May 19th 1999).. However it would seem that fate is not without a sense of humour. Despite pre-ordering it plenty of time in advance, I must be the only cunt in the United Kingdom not to get their copy of the trilogy on DVD today from that shower of shite, Amazon.co.uk. Perhaps Lucas has a personal vendetta against me as I won't stop telling it like it is (we still want the original trilogy as it was released in the seventies, George, no amount of CGI bullshit can make us think otherwise) or maybe the postal service is as shit in this country as I've been lead to believe by the media.
Arse.
Oh well..

Finally the question is answered

What came first? The chicken or the egg?

Oh and before I forget..

..people have been asking me how I know that some people have arrived via typing searches (most notably for "dogs don't kill people, wabbits do" - that should keep me at number one!) into various search engines. Well, as I'm nice like that, I shall share.. If you scroll past all the useless text, vitriol, diatribe and verbal diarrhoea to the bottom of the page you'll see a small logo for Site Meter, which is a hit counter but also tells you handy things like where people looked at your blog from and which websites referred them here. It's free and it works with blogger so why not? Can make you terminally curious about who the fuck was reading your blog at 4:40 am in the morning though! ;)

More shameless plugging and a request for suggestions!

If we all link to each other's blogs maybe we can achieve fame, adoration and popularity..? Naah probably not. At the very least linking to friend's blogs saves me the effort of having to add them to my favourites.. (Yes, I am that lazy, what of it?).
Matt's blog is a relatively new one and already hosts plenty of posts (hey I'm a poet and I knew), but he'll soon be bored of it and posting once a week like the rest of us I'm sure.. Anyway check it out! Now! Go on, what are you waiting for..?

Anyway another weekend has slipped away and work looms on the horizon, a mere 14 hours away.. at least there's only six working days between me and a week of sun and various alcoholic beverages - fabulous. Boy, do I need this holiday! I know I'm gonna regret this, but has anyone got any tips for any good novels to pass away the hours in the blistering heat? Suggestions in the comments section will be most welcome.. Already my mate has lent me
Living In A Box: An Adventure in Reality TV a behind the scenes look (or maybe that should be in front of the scenes book? I dunno) at Big Brother 2, written by Dean O'Loughlin and I have Michael Owen's biography to get through too, but surely two books ain't never gonna be enough.

Parental Advisory

Foreward: an apology..
I always try to link to friend's blogs (as soon as they let me know the URL anyway).. but before I post the link to this one, I have to warn you that this is quite likely to offend, may contain nudity and none of the links are worksafe.. not a single one
So you have been warned.
Don't blame me.
Anyway, enjoy Monty's unique brand of sick humour and gratuitous images here

Four words: an apology
I'm really, really sorry

No 1 on Yahoo!

Again, some poor unfortunate soul has arrived at this site thanks to the search phrase "dogs don't kill people wabbits do". Who'd have thought including that phrase on a blog can make you so popular? Again, I can only apologise to anyone who visits this site (presumably) looking for an MP3 of Chris Moyles' amusing parody of the glc tune "Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do". Just goes to show how pants search engines can be from time to time.. Anyway, hope they enjoyed their visit, maybe they'll call again? (They could at least leave a comment letting me know how disappointed they were!).
I should probably be helpful and point out at this point that you can listen again to Chris' show by visiting the radio 1 web site and I'm sure he's probably played "Mouldy Lookin' Stain" in the past seven days. Go get it! :)

Blockbuster update and the Return of Babs

Regular readers of this blog ('ello mum!) will know I am trying out the free month's trial of Blockbuster's rental by mail service. The key word there of course is free. Cheap as chips. And to be fair, they got off to something of a shaky start (the first disk that arrived failed miserably to play all the way through, another disk went A.W.O.L for nearly a week, turning up unfashionably late). However, it looks like they're getting it sorted now.. Two more disks arrived promptly yesterday, and they both worked.. so you can almost say I'm getting value for money..
We'll see if this upward trend continues or if they bollock up the next round of movies.. any one want to make any bets?

Also Peggy Mitchell turned up again in Eastenders last night -yes I know I should know better than to watch that shite, but it's the only soap that's still got me gripped. It's kind of like people who want to quit smoking, but can't. They get to the end of each cigarette and wonder why the hell they lit it up in the first place, they didn't enjoy it but cannot resist having another ciggie a few hours later regardless.. Well I get to the end of an episode and, more often than not, wonder why the hell I watched it, I didn't enjoy it, but then the next Monday at 8p.m. I'm sat in front of Beeb 1 whilst the signature tune blares out regardless. Sad, but true.
Anyway, where was we? Oh aye, Peggy. Just how long was she out of that show for? They seemed to spend half the fucking episode pointing out every plot point that had happened in the last x number of months (Kat nearly marrying Andy, Little Mo & Billy splitting up, etc, etc). Had she been gone for chuffing ages? Or, in true soap stylee, has absolutely loads of tragedy and joy befallen the residents of Albert Square in a relatively short space of time??
I need answers.

This week I have been mostly listening to..

1. goldie lookin' chain - greatest hits
"Rap is more deadly than f**king Kung-Fu"
2. Donnie Darko - Original Soundtrack..

Actually the Donnie Darko soundtrack has some serious tunes on it including "The Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division and "Head Over Heels" by Tears For Fears. Or maybe I'm just getting old?

No. 1 on MSN

Wayhay - this blog is number one (yup, top dog, numero uno) on the msn.co.uk search engine when you type in moyles dogs kill people wabbits into it.
You have to feel sorry for the person who went to all the effort of typing that into a search engine only to be directed to this blog.. Whoever you are/were: Sorry, cannot begin to comprehend how bitterly disappointed you must have been!

3 Movie Observations

Okay.. so I'm more awake now (obviously) than I was before.. so I'll write just a tad more before buggering off and trying (desperately) to get some sleep..
I have three movie-related observations to make tonight..
I apologise for the first in advance because I know it's going to be a rant, and I've tried to wait a few days before saying anything about this, thinking my initial reaction might be some what diluted over a couple of days (it hasn't) and I might be a bit less annoyed (I'm not - but then I'm an angry individual it would seem)..
Those who might be offended (I may use cuss words when I get into mid flow), might want to skip to point 2.

1. Oi! Lucas! No!
I got this link forwarded to me the other day (thanks PJ). No, it's nothing new and has been probably doing the rounds for a wee while now, but it basically highlights the additional changes George Lucas has made to the original Star Wars trilogy (i.e not the prequels) ready for its spangly release on DVD next week.
Yes, you read that right.
Additional changes..
Not happy with serving up the bastardised versions of some of my favourite movies of all-time in 1997 (some details of which can be found here) where we saw Greedo shooting first, where Han (in a "comedy" moment that Lucas so adores now: see Jar Jar Binks standing in pooh in Episode 1 as another example) steps on Jabba's tail (and that Jabba was the worst CGI I've seen ever.. Fuck me, Tron looked better than that piece of shit), and where we got "treated" to loads of "Gratuitous Boba Fett shots" in Jabba's palace in Jedi, George has made further changes..

The bastard.
I wouldn't mind so much if he at least restored the original versions of these films, cleaned up the negatives and what-have-you and released both, thereby letting people decide which ones they want to buy (and, George, as you probably wipe your ass on $100 notes anyway you probably don't need it - but, fuck, some people might even buy both, which will probably allow you to buy more servers and graphics rendering packages to construct further movies which are over-glorified CGI toy adverts with NO FUCKING PLOT: See Episode 1 (all of it) as an example)).
No.
George Lucas keeps claiming each revision is now the definitive version and hides the original away.
Why?
By today's standards, the special effects probably are a bit pants in the original versions of these films.. But, you know what? I never fucking cared.. Not one bit.. It was the story, the characters, the dialogue (okay, not the dialogue.. Well certainly not until Empire and Jedi anyway as George never could write convincing dialogue for his actors to say)..

The change that's really annoyed me, though is at the bottom of this page, where Uncle George has got rid of Sebastian Shaw completely and replaced him with Hayden Christensen. This is obviously just in case anyone is too fucking stupid to realise that the Anakin Skywalker that everyone's referring to in Return of the Jedi is actually the same character that's the centre of the tale in the prequels.
Well, fuck me, is it? How can it be? It's played by a different fucking actor!?
No, go on, it can't be. Honestly, you'll be telling me that James Bond bloke is the same character all the way through whereas I just thought that all secret agents working in fucking British Intelligence had to be called that..
What an arse..
I could go on, but I won't.. And, yes, despite all this I'll still part with my hard earned at the end of the day and finally buy these on DVD. But I just hope that when George shuffles off this mortal coils, some genius at Lucasfilm goes and releases the original versions of these films (much like Warner Bros finally lifted Kubrick's ban on "A Clockwork Orange" being available in the UK when he snuffed it) and I might get to see the films I originally saw as a child in a nice spangly digital format...

2. What ever happened to Guy Ritchie?
You know who I mean, don't you? Mr Madonna and all that. It's just that I watched "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" (stop that sniggering he means as in "to grab") over the weekend and I'd forgotten what absolutely brilliant films they were. He did that "Swept Away", which he probably wants to forget (never saw it, but by all accounts it was a festering pile) - but that's what he gets for putting Madonna in a movie. But surely we've forgiven him for that now? Isn't it time we saw him back in the cinemas (and back to what he does best: London Gangster flicks) sometime soon? Hope so.

3. The Blockbuster update
So far Blockbuster have mailed me three movies since I signed up to their free trial of their rentals-by-mail service.
One arrived and was faulty.
One (Posted second out of the three they've mailed to me) has yet to arrive
One actually turned up and would play all the way through (hurrah!)..
So disappointing so far - glad I'm not actually paying for this service.
Right.. the vitriol has gone, and so I'm off..
Catch y'all later

The wheels are falling off..

Someone should have warned me.. it'd have been polite if nothing else just to at least hint at the fact.. a clue.. an anonymous note.. anything..
Why did no-one tell me that, after hitting thirty, everything goes pants?
Already since hitting the big three-oh.. I've had my first asthma attack and this meant, after years of avoiding the buggers (for four years I wasn't even registered), I've been back to the doctors every few weeks..
Now something else has come along.. I'm knackered all the time..
Well apart from about nine o'clock in the evening when I'm so wide awake it's untrue..
Honestly it's stupid..
During the day I feel like I have narcolepsy, it's a struggle to get out of bed, am knackered all day, am amazed I get home in one piece due to constant yawning.. feel sleepy all the way through the first part of the evening and then...
BING!
Nine o'clock on the dot I discover of this fountain of energy, a reserve previously unavailable to me, and it's like I've drunk about 20 expresso's or something.. thus making an early night net to impossible..
It's madness I tell you ..
Nothing so far has helped.. have tried "quiet weekends", lie-ins, getting up at weekday times at the weekend, but just can't break this cycle.. I think I need some horse strength sleeping tablets or something (but Boots are notoriously reluctant to provide this sort of thing without a prescription and I'm buggered if I'm going back to the doctors again).
Oh well, off to yawn through another day..
Laters

More "Shaun of The Dead" stuff

As anyone who knows me will tell you.. I think Simon Pegg is a comedy genius.. "Spaced"(which he co-wrote with Jessica Stephenson) is one of the finest pieces of British TV comedy in recent history, and "Shaun of the Dead" (which he co-wrote with director Edgar Wright) is a brilliant movie (and gets better with subsequent viewings - it's one of those ones where you cannot possibly spot everything going on in a single sitting).
Anyway, those nice people at Empire magazine have published some rather fabby interviews with Mr Pegg and Edgar Wright to tie in with the DVD release of Shaun of the Dead.
Just thought I'd share cos they're pretty cool..

More dumb links

God you can tell that I'm bored this evening.. as yet again I've found myself trawling the Internet and finding more pointless and trivial links..
Anyhoo, didn't see why I should be the only one looking at this rubbish ;)
So...
Remember the Nissan Micra advert that decided to go about bastardising the English language? Yeah, I thought it sucked too.. but tonight I've found out that it was directed by no other than the creator of Twin Peaks and director of such classic films as "Blue Velvet", "Wild At Heart" and (ahem.. well not such a classic) "Dune".. Yup David Lynch! He's directed a whole bunch of commercials, and you can find the proof here!

There's something very wrong, but undoubtedly funny with this site that swaps the heads of babies and grandparents in pictures. Made me giggle, anyway.

Weebl and Bob rock - now you can get quotes from this classic flash animation on demand with the Weebl and Bob Soundboard!

In case winter cannot come quick enough for you.. here's an alternative Winter Sport.. yup the world's first virtual "write your name in the snow" emulator!!! Get some practice in before the blizzards hit here.

Sites that sound dodgy but aren't..

Just because I'm puerile and because the American President has a rather amusing second name I've found lots of sites recently that sound rude but aren't..

Women against Bush - not a Lesbian site as you might first think..
Bikes against Bush is not a gynaecological solution to the problem of safely parking your chopper (ooer!)
Bushes against Bush fnarr! fnarr! Although the thought of shrubberies organising political uprising is a bit scary
Kids against Bush - surely that's illegal!?

One day I will grow up and this shit won't be amusing anymore

Free shit on the Interweb..

Sometimes the internet is just your usual collection of blogs, mundane links, amusing jpegs, flash animations and porn.. But then, somedays, you actually find it actually quite enriching (and I don't just mean by selling all your posessions on eBay) provided, of course, you can drag yourself away from the porn..
So stop all that left handed browsing for a while, and read on..
Today I found something quite cool, quite by accident.. I was logging onto the Blockbuster website, just to see what new rentals were out, and there's a very cool offer there. You can basically use their Mail Rental system for a month, and you can rent as many films (up to three titles at a time) as you want during that month for free. That's right kids.. free, nowt, gratis, nada, "no pee". Basically you compile a list of films you'd like to see, and then they mail them out to you, and you send them back (they cover all the postage costs too!). All you have to make sure is you cancel before the end of your month trial and it aint cost you a bean.. You can sign up for a free trial here. What have you got to lose?? Anyway, as there's been shitloads of films I've missed out for one reason or another over the past year this was far too good an offer to pass up (plus it'll give me something to watch until Sky+ turns up - 17 days, count em). So I'm planning on caning it for the next month or so and will let you know if I reckon it's any good or not. Signs are positive though, as within seven hours of signing up, my first DVD was on its way to me - nice!

This week I have been mostly listening to..

1) The Chris Moyles Radio Show - "Dogs don't kill people wabbits do?" - hilarious

2) Foo Fighters - "One by One".

Surely it's about time the Foo's put out a new CD? It's been nearly two years..

The great hard disk crash 2004

So computers are a labour saving device huh?
Then explain the lost hours of yesterday to me, please.
When I finally dragged myself up yesterday afternoon, I thought I might check my mail (not an unusual request, surely).. so fired up the ol' PC and sat there, ciggie in hand, waiting for it to boot up. Though my eyes were bleary (having just got up) and the room was smoky (forgot to open the window) I couldn't fail to notice that all was not well with the booting up of my PC.. rather than the Windows logo appearing I was presented with a single message:
NTLDR MISSING
No, I didn't know what it meant either.
Sod it, CTRL+ALT+DELETE.
Reboot.
NTLDR MISSING.
Bugger.
Oh well, one more reboot can't hurt.
NTLDR MISSING.
Hmm.. something is not right here.
My old PC used to have problems with it's BIOS and sometimes "forgot" about my Hard Drive..
So I checked the BIOS settings, showed it my hard drive..
Reboot.
NTLDR MISSING
Aww fuck..
The next ten minutes were spent trying to find my Windows XP CD.. -under which pile of junk is it?
Anyway, whack in the Windows XP CD and get the PC to boot from CD.
Hit "R" to get the Windows repair console..
Type "C:\"
Type "DIR"
Aww.. shit where the fuck have half my directories gone (the most noticeable absentee being the WINDOWS directory - never a good sign).
Anyway the next four hours were spent trying to use CHKDSK to repair whatever damage had been caused by the evil XP-killing fairies that had obviously switched on my PC overnight and FUBAR'd my hard drive.
(In all fairness CHKDSK did recover NTLDR - but the operating system was missing)...
Bugger, bugger, bugger..
So, to cut a long story short, I ended up reformatting (and repartitioning) my hard drive and re-installing XP. Which means I've lost everything, MP3s, movies, emails (all emails from the last four months anyway), the lot.. bugger, bugger, bugger.. So if you've sent me anything in the last four months via email (anything important anyway) it's gone, and if you emailed me for the first time in the last four months not only do I not have the mail but most likely I don't have your email address either.. sorry!
Anyway, at least I have a fresh XP installation, just gonna have to spend the rest of the week re-installing software now (Progress Bars! Yippeee!).
So, as I said, computers are a labour saving device huh?

+++ UPDATE +++
Well with some help from my housemate we've located the cause of the problem..
It would appear that my DVD-ROM was, to use a technical term, buggered.
It was shorting out (it wouldn't even work in his PC) and due to the fact it shared a connection to the motherboard with my HDD, that's what caused that to royally fuck up!
Found a solution too: Bin the DVD-ROM
Seem to be up and running A-Okay now, and seeing as I'd have to replace the DVD-ROM anyway, thought I'd spend a bit more a get a DVD writer instead (want a Pioneer DV108)!!

An end and two beginnings

Taking a break from the International football (only the England match to go) to come on here and scribble some more..
Somebody reminded me that I'd not put my End of Story entry up on the t'internet like I'd promised to on my old blog. For those who don't know "End of Story" was a competition run by the BBC that had eight professional authors begin short stories, and then asked you to provide an ending in under 1200 words (at least I think it was 1200, forgive me if I'm wrong, the actual figure escapes me).
Now as anyone who knows me will tell you, I'd always fancied writing something (and to be fair, still do) and have had many a stab at writing.. The results of this was that I had many beginnings.. some of which ran to a few chapter's worth in the end. But I eventually lost interest, or (most commonly) decided they were shit and binned them (and in a lot of cases they were literally binned), I no longer have them in any form whatsoever.
The only two remaining pieces of writing I have left are a couple of scripts that I started (with the advent of digital video camera, and more than a little inspired by Kevin Smith's debut "Clerks" I fancied writing and filming something - how up my own arse was I?). The first of these scripts, Paid Breaks, was actually an idea I came up with in 1999 (and is based on what we used to call our cigarette breaks where I used to work in London, mainly to piss the non-smokers off! Don't worry, though, they'll have the last laugh when we all die horribly of lung cancer (or poverty brought on by the criminal prices of fags)) and took me until early 2001 to write a single line.. The last edit on this document was sometime in 2002 so it was the first time I'd seen it in a while today when I thought about it. Anyway.. it could never be finished or filmed now as the idea has been brilliantly ripped off by BBC3's comedy "The Smoking Room" so thought I'd share.
The second piece of remaining evidence of my failed attempts to be a writer began life as something for a scriptwriting course I attended a few years ago (which was quite a good course actually until I eventually lost interest - sheesh, is that a common theme or what?). Anyway U.S. Convicts was my response to the Big Brother/Reality TV fascination that seemed to be sweeping the nation at the time, and I just got to thinking how far would they take the format? I was shortly told (funnily enough around the time I did the last edit on this document) that at the time EVERYONE was doing reality t.v. show themed scripts (I think one famously made it into a movie too, "Series 7: The Contenders") so this got binned fairly quickly afterwards..
So I have no problems sticking them up here on the 'net as the ideas are no longer original and the writing's probably pants too!
Anyway, how did I get on to this?
Oh yeah the "End of Story" competition.. well here for curiosity value if nothing else.. here is my non-competition-winning entry..
To put it in context you'll need to download Shaun Hutson's beginning from here and then you can read my stab at an ending here.
Catch you later, you crazy kids..

RomZomCom

Play.com proved that they are, bar none, the best place to get your DVDs online again today. Yes, they are cheap, but that's not why they're the best, oh no, it's their blatant disregard for release dates when you pre-order stuff from them. As soon as they get it in stock, they ship it. Fantastic. So am I going to be waiting until Monday for Shaun of the Dead? No, my nice new spangly copy dropped onto the doormat this morning. Hurrah! So take a bow, play.com - we salute you!

I notice Chav Bashing seems to have taken the nation by storm at the moment, a few weeks ago people had no idea what the word meant (the preferred nomenclature, up until recently being scally). But now everyone's at it. Even Radio 1's Scott Mills has been banging on about it on his show (which is pretty good listening for the drive home). Anyway, my housemate brought to my attention this piss-take set to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody" which really made me laugh, so I thought I'd share.. enjoy, it's quality! :)

Oh, and by the way apologies for the very poor visual gag in this post.. and a word of warning, if looking for an innocent picture of a baby chicken, never type "Chick" into Google images (especially if you have SafeSearch off).. You think I'd know better after many years on t'internet..

Avast ye, me hearties

Yarr!
Oh joy of joys..
I'd almost forgotten about this (thanks to Pedders for using the word Yarr! on his blog)
It's nearly time for Talk Like A Pirate Day. Yup September 19th is the day to immediately mark down in your calendar- go on.. do it now, what the fuck else are you going to do at this precise moment in time? For the clueless, you can begin learning handy words or phrases by using this handy How To Talk Like A Pirate Guide or simply rent Pirates Of The Caribbean (after all it does feature the rather lovely Keira Knightley). Now it's not going to be as much fun as last year as it's at the weekend (whereas last time I think we managed to piss just about everyone off in the office with our sea-shanty-shenanigans (try saying that 10 times really quickly)), but still you can make everyone aware of the upcoming Pirate event by downloading and printing off this poster.

It's just going to suck I tell you..

Trawling the internet at lunch turns up this little nugget of information.. By all accounts it would appear (although there are plenty of warnings that this may be nothing more of a rumor) that George Lucas is going to script Indiana Jones 4 all by himself. This man cannot write dialogue for shit (that's why Empire is so much better a movie, the script was doctored to fuck by talented writers!) and so hearing that he'd be solely in charge of the script for a new Indy flick has gotta be a more heinous idea than Greedo shooting first..
Mind you, I'd be quite happy if Indy 4 never got made at all, I mean just how old is Harrison Ford these days!?! And nothing would suck more than our favourite intrepid archeologist stopping halfway through the film and proclaiming: "Shit, I think I broke my hip".

Shit what I have found on the Interweb

Broadband.
Don't you just love it?
A wealth of information at your fingertips, millions of the world's greatest ideas, opinions a mere mouseclick away.. but most of the time I just trawl it for incredibly dumb shit..
Here's what's amused recently:
Online hangman featuring a particularly funky tune whilst you're swingin' from the gallows!
The Chav Good Food Guide - or the definitive guide to those dodgy KFC-alikes, this is an exhaustive guide as to what to look for ;)
When The UK government registered www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk to go with their anti-terror advice leaflet, they forgot to register the co.uk equivalent. Quite funny.
A very cool 3D ball game can be found here.
A virtual flickbook anyone? Get it here
Star Wars fans rejoice! The Scout Walker Kama Sutra
And Finally.. Dokaka is the Japanese beatbox artist whose acapella remakes of well-known songs have earned him a worldwide fan base. Hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit" like you've NEVER heard it before
by clicking here (Oh and if anyone knows "Angel of Death" by Slayer I can recommend clicking on that too - piss funny!).
Right, I'm off to get some shut eye, s'later.

Famous Footie Fans

Was watching "They Think It's All Over" this evening and it emerges that Adam Woodyatt of Eastenders fame (who plays chipshop owner and all-round whiny twat, Ian Beale) is a Liverpool supporter. Oh well.. I suppose even the most successful club in the land cannot choose it's supporters ;)
Anyway, got me thinking about what other "celebrity" fans there are and which club they follow.. fortunately the internet did not fail me.. find out which B-list celebs support your club on this site..

This week I have been mostly listening to..

1) Velvet Revolver - "Contraband"

2) The Prodigy - "Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned"


..Christ two albums actually released in 2004?? This is not like me at all, might go and have a lie down or something

Shameless plugging

While I'm in a chatty mood.. I'm going to shamelessly plug a few friend's blogs (for those of you who cannot be arsed to trawl through the old blog -can't say I blame you, it was 99.7% shite anyway)..
Check out this the words of wisdom to be found here:
PJ's blog
Pedro's blog
Leon's blog