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Thursday, May 27, 2004

Whats up all. The problem with getting on here seems to have gone for now, you'll all be no doubt pleased to hear.
I have to apply for my own job! Actually, it would be better if I did have to apply for my own job, but since I'm only doing two temporary part time post cut+shunted into each other, I have to apply for one of my workmate's jobs. The fucking council suck ass. I knew this staff restructure thing would come to my level eventually, but its naff the way we have all these workers fighting over not enough permanent posts when we're already under-fucking staffed. I think everyone who's currently employed should be offered a job pending a review, then they can employ extra depending on how many more people they need. Actually, I'm just belly-aching because I have to go through the whole application/interview rigmarole just to get the SAME FUCKING JOB I'M DOING NOW, not even something better.
Anyways, now that thats all out of the way I can address Gareths comment. I just assumed everyone I knew had heard, or at least been told about fast lady, paul and Gaz's band. Apparently not so. Check out

www.brainwashed.com/vvm/releases_vvm_/vvmtcd19.htm

for mp3 previews of album tracks, and

www.swainlake.co.uk/fast%20lady/lady.htm

for more Mp3s, as well as MPEGs, remixes, pictures and everything else fast lady.
I've been listening to The Streets lately. He's very good isn't he? So different yet accessible, very funny and very sad all at the same time. Dead fucking hard on Vib Ribbon, though.
LAters all

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Just a quickie today. I think there may be a problem with the blogger server at the mo. Saw steveo last Sunday and went to see 'Eternal sunshine...' which was really good. Hands down better than Adaptation and will probably age better than Being John Malkovich. Carrey and Winslet make a believeable and sympathetic couple, and every time it looks like its gonna throw up a cliche- it goes in a totally different direction. Sadly the same cannot be said for Van Helsing, which I saw this Sunday. Pap. Utter shite. I knew it would be not good, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer vapidity of it all. I defy you to like it. Huge Assman is only good when he's being Wolverine.
More later.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Gah! stupid new blogger... thanks to a silly new shortcut when writing posts, I lost mondays post about the weekend in manchester. Needless to say it was a typically witty and wry comment on our activities will a strong narrative thrust and an eye to satire on the world at large- ho hum, I'll just have to paraphrase.
After an initial inconvenience involving an indian reserving us the wrong tickets, and gill engaging in a bout of telephone jousting with stupid british rail, we headed for manchester at around nine on friday last. It was like going out back home again- in sheffield you couldn't really go anywhere after 10 for a good night, but the lady weren't onstage to 12 so that was cool. The place was a bit like the underground bit in the casbah (for those lucky few who have been out with me in sheff) but smaller and with an infinitely more diverse and attractive population of goths and metallers that I'm used to. Even the barstaff had nicer tats. The gig was kick ass. The lady ruled the night, but I think the crowd was a shitload better than the dribbling necrophiliacs we're used to standing shoulder to shoulder with in steel city, which helped a lot. Anyways, they were playing with a band who's name eludes me for the moment, but these guys were up in front with us while the lady did there thing, and were so impressed with what they saw that the boys were cordially invited to a stage invasion for the last song. This other band were really good- but theres no band that can't be improved with the addition of three fully grown men in purple body socks and no faces jumping up and down on their equipment. I was talking to a pissed skinhead just as the other band were coming on, he appreciated the lady's lyrical content, but objected to the costumes somewhat (s'bit fookin' poncey...). I told him it was because they're all ugly bastards underneath. He said 'ah'.
Anyhoo. Gill met up with big gay paul (as opposed to little straight paul, who we were stopping with) in the club, she used to be his fag-hag when he lived in sheffield, and he introduced her to her replacement. BG paul is a club promoter, and we went back to his flat for a little after show. His flat was the fucking shit... like new york penthouse shit, even if it was filled with boho muso homos at the time. We hung out there for a bit and then sallied forth to didsbury where we drank, smoked and played mario kart double dash until well after daybreak. The next day me and gill were totally fried, and if paul and ruth were too, then they carried it off better than we could (Ruth isn't anything like as debauched as us lot), but we headed into manc anyway and looked round some shops. Even the shops there are better! You could fit sheffields forbidden planet into Manc's FP's counter area! Maybe it's just the shock of the new, but this, I thought, is what cities should be like.
Getting back to Shef was no fun either. Warm day + train + hangover= sad monster. It was to get sadder, though because this was no ordinary saturday- no- this was Eurovision saturday, and just because we couldn't shift our carcasses the extra two miles to Marybeth and Jonno's to watch it didn't mean we couldn't 'enjoy' all the mirth, ineptness and casual prejudice in the comfort of our own flat. Actually, the only reason I'm not going to say I actually quite enjoyed it is that Gill will then have something in writing, and I'll never have the choice to not watch again.
Anyway. That was uz weekend, and if you wonder why I don't go in to such detail after a night on the piss in sheff, well... so do I, actually.
It almost goes without saying that this week has been a fairly dull one aside from all that. This videogame club thing is on the cusp of going tits up if I don't get the stuff for it soon. Lesley's back at work (phased return) which will be good, because frankly, the place is a bit of a dump without her there.
Toodles

Thursday, May 13, 2004

So, i've been tinkering with my blog, and hopefully now anyone reading this should be able to post comments on it. Please do. Rest assured if I do not like what I read it will not remain there for long.
Went to see Bill Bailey last week, can't remeber if I mentioned this already, but we had a good night. I ended up sitting beside my ex-boss and her beau, because I had bought my tickets of another workmate who couldn't go. The situation was a bit tricky cos she had interviewed Gill for a job and hadn't given it to her, and this was the first time they had seen each other since. Anyways, bailey was hilarious, though he did use a lot of his old material. All the songs were new, though including 'I'm not gonna look at titties for a year' and 'txted u on monday'. Make him king.
Good news! Marybeth and Jonathan may well be moving in to a nice house on the same street as us. It ain't finalised yet, but it's looking good, and if they do, it means we'll only have to get one taxi home from the pub in future. We're lookin to get a few more locals in, so we can campaign to change the name of the street to 'little augher' or something like that.
Take a look at P45 rateit (the p45 is an irish pop culture website) if you're bored. They've done something similar to the 100 great britons, except its irish, and you can nominate anything, not just people, and post comments on what you find there. And theres more than 100. Funny shit.
Trying to finish Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of liberty, so I can throw myself into the new games I've got, but it ain't easy. Its a cool game, very well produced and eminently playable, but it can be frustrating, and sitting still for minutes at a time is not what I like to do with my playstation.
Anyway, have to go now and pick up some train tickets, we're going to manchester tomorrow to see the lady play. Gaz had got engaged- mystery of mysteries- to the lovely Bridget. This'll be the first time we'll have seen him since we found out.
Laterz

Monday, May 10, 2004

...continued.
Went to see 'Capturing the friedmans' the other day which is a film about a pederast who may not be a pederast, his victims who may or may not be victims, and his sons, who had a videocamera on hand. I'd like to think that if ever a terrible situation was destroying my family from the inside out, I'd have a camera on hand to catch it all. Those jews think of everything. Anyways, this guy admitted to purchasing kiddieporn (since it arrived at his door in an envolope with his name on the front) but steadfastly denies buggering any of the children who came to his computor classes after school in his basement. The situation sounds dodgy, yet the way the evidence was collected, and the behaviour of those involved made it a really difficult one to call. It threw up an awful lot of questions, not only about the mind of sick pedos, but about the nature of hysteria and the way the justice system works.
Videogames now, and I got a couple of doozies offa e-bay the other day.
First up, Gitaroo-man, which is a 'beamani" game (japanese rhythey-action based shit) its extremely colourful and entertaining, yet with an absolute bitch of difficulty curve. The version I got came with the soundtrack on CD, so when I've tired of listening to the tracks for the 1000th time playing the game, I can play in to myself while I do something else. Genius, no?
Next up, Vib Ribbon. A name that should mean something to Playstationers the world over. From Japan again, this time you play a rabbit running along a chalkline on a black screen. The line loops and bumps and vibrates and changes in time to the music, and it is your job to ensure that vibri the rabbit negotiates all the obstacles successfully. The real gimmick here is when you have finished the game, you can use it with any of your own music CDs to create new levels. This game is genius, and I was thrilled to finally track it down (its ultra rare, and I've been hunting it for donkeys now) it allows you to totally re-appraise your music collection in terms of how they translate into the gameplay. eg- hip hop is surprisingly easy, since the music normally only has 1 'layer', but putting on a Mozart string symphony is a whole different story yet. I tried playing 'Yoshimi battles pink robots' by the flaming lips on it, but that, frankly was impossible.
Finally, I got 'freedom fighters' which could have been good if just alittle bit more thought had gone into the control mechanism. You play an average joe in manhatten the day those damn reds invade america (alternative history, you see, ruskis won WW2, and subsequently the cold war) and you have to recruit a team of rednecks to go and kick some commie butt. So I'm told. In truth, the simple task of gunning one of these bastards down is rendered all but impossible by the absurd camera and hilarious first person view, I've played it on and off for about a week now, and am still not far enough into it to recruit any monkey to do my bidding. I'll probably trade this piece of EA shit in the first oppertunity I get.
Toodles

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

So, in lieu of any reportage on the seemingly random series of events that make up my life, I'll update you all on my recent cultural intake for a change.
Movie-wise, I went to see Kill Bill Vol 2 on sunday- Predictably enough the dragon was quick to layer it in abuse as we left the cinema, and, I must admit, I was happy enough to agree with her. Its not bad, but suffice to say anyone going in expecting the frolicks of Vol 1 to continue will leave disappointed. Bring back the Crazy 88s.
Friday night, Marybeth and Jonno came round and we watched One night at Roxbury, which, as any of you who know who Will ferrell is will know, was very very funny. Not so keen on his sidekick (Chris Katton, I think), but well worth checking out if only for the dance scenes. We also watched Psychomania, which is a really really strange, cheap 70's horror/biker movie. Any attempt on my part to describe or expain this film will be a waste of my time- if you like weird shit (I'm talking to you, Gareth) try and track it down (good luck, though), and needless to say a plentiful supply of mind-altering substances won't harm your enjoyment of it.
Next up, Spiderman-the animated series. Didn't know about this until recently, but apparantly its a new cartoon produced by sony, set in the spidey universe of their (pretty bad) movie. Don't let this put you off though, or the initially overwhelmingly flashy cg animation. The more I watched of this the more I was convinced that it works better as a cartoon than it ever will as a live action film. Plus, the humour and characters are much closer to the comics than the film too. It's on Nickolodeon, so the only reason I got to watch it was thanks to an admin fuckup at work here where we recieved a shitload of copies to hire out when it specifically says on the back that its for retail only. Its an ill wind and all that.
I'm reading the latest few editions of Ultimate X-men and The Ultimates (Capt. america, Ironman, Wasp, Hulk etc...) X-men is always getting better, Ultimates is much better than I thought it was gonna be, the crossovers are a bit duff, but none of it touches Ultimate Spiderman (mind you, I would say that).
I am also re-evaluating my idea of adapting Flashman for the screen. Those of you who don't know, the Flashman books are a series of fictional memoirs by the villain in a far inferior childrens book called 'Tom Browns Schooldays'. They cover every serious war/political intrigue between about 1850 to 1870 or 80, and they all kick ass. Flashman is a proto-bastard and the benchmark by which all future bastards will be measured, and the stories all all action swashbucklers. Anyway, I thought about adating them a while back, absently, but since then I've heard there is a big budget reworking of Tom Browns Schooldays in the works, so now might be a good time to look into it. I'll keep you all posted.
Anyway, breaktime now,
laters

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