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Friday, April 29, 2005

Time moves strangely in San Andreas.
Technically, an hour passes every minute, yet when I'm playing it hours (in real time) seem to flow by like minutes. I must confess it's got me bad. I recently discovered the 'territory' system and have spent most of my intervening waking hours expanding my little vitual empire, happy as a pedo in a primary school. This in itself is neither here nor there, but I done so well over lent, writing-wise, and I have barely done a tap since then.
I have however signed up to be a poll clerk on election day. Good news is it pays over £100 for the days work (on top of the £40 you get for training) and it occurs on my day off, so I'll get extra flexi to use at work, bad news is the working day starts at 6.30 am (and I have to be there by then- so I'm looking at getting up sometime around 5) and finishes at 10pm, no lunch hour, no breaks, no refreshments provided. Oh, and I may not have my own vote counted. So there.

Films, books, games etc...

Watched Rodger Dodger last week. Very good it is too, though it had a couple of false endings which always pisses me off. The basic conceit is that Rodger is a womanising, misogynistic egotist who lives in BigCitysville, USA and he is visited by his 16 year old nephew from back home in Bumfuck, Montana and they spend a night harassing various ladies. Rodger sees this as preparing nephew for life in the big bad world, but it rapidly becomes clear that the lovely ladies prefer nice little nephew to aging sexist uncle (duh).
Also watched Bangkok Haunted, a collection of three stories about ghostly going on's told by each of three women in a bus station or somewhere. Each story is pretty unremarkable, but what I love about eastern cinema is that even when the story is dull, or old, or silly or whatever, they always show a better fundamental understanding of the film-making craft than their western counterparts. When you go to see a shit american movie, that's exactly what you get. Watching a shit asian movie is like drinking bad milk- you only realise it's no good after you've finished it. Weird huh?
Finished the Artemis Fowl trilogy of books. First one: Excellent. Second: Let down. Third: Return to form. What really pisses me off though is that theArtemis of the first book- a really nasty piece of work- doesn't make an appearance for the rest of the trilogy; he goes and develops a conscience, which I abhor in my protagonists.

Friday, April 15, 2005

Hello little people. (and Gareth)
Sheffield can seem like it's own little country for those who spend to long in the same area. I travelled to Millhouses yesterday to see Ben and Liz and their new sprog, Sam (cute, sleepy- it's a BABY- I'll give a more detailed report when he can talk). I'm not saying that the Hillsborough is better than any number of other places in the town, but we do seem to breed a better class of chav. Millhouses, of course, is really rather posh, but the poorer folks seem to be encroaching all the time, and these chavs have more in common with the city-centre variety (the kind who would set fire to your dog, rape your car and wee in your ear without even offering the cheerful grin of camaraderie you get from the Hillsborough kind). I heard some of them discussing the impending general election on the bus.

Burburry Cap: Can I vote?
Peroxide ponytail: Yuh. Din't you vote last year?
Burberry Cap: No. I never got an invite.
Peroxide ponytail: That's awful. This'll be my first time. Is it free?
Mum: Yeah.
PP: Who should I vote for?
Mum. Labour.
BC: One of them's on about not making people pay tuition fees. Is that labour?
Mum: Yuh.
BC: That's who I'll vote for then.

I'm starting to worry.

Saturday, April 09, 2005

What's up dawgs? (Sorry, I've been playing quite a lot of GTA: San Andreas)
Hope you are all well. I'm not too bad, spring is upon us with a vengeance and there is real live sun outside (though it was snowing yesterday.)
Watched Napoleon Dynamite last night, which I will recommend heartilly to all and sundry- but not hype to high heaven. Just trust me and watch it if you can. Also worth a mention is Firefly- a series by Buffy creator Joss Whedon which looks, sounds plays and just is fantastic, so of course Fox axed it after 14 episodes that were only screened in America. There's a film of it coming out later this year, so I wanted to be in the know (ITK) before it hit these shores, so I bagged the DVDs of ebay and am loving every minute of it. He's clearly taken his cues from Cowboy Bebop rather than Star Trek, which, I need hardly tell you, can only be a good thing.
Finished watching Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, and have submitted a proper full review of it to my fave Anime site (www.animeworld.com), so hopefully it'll be published soon.

And before you all think that I've just turned into a listless couch potato (you'd be at least 89% right) we went out to the Corporation last week for some shits & giggles, which was exactly what we got. Jonno was giggling his guts up into the bog for most of the following day, however, but myself, Gillo and Marybeth were nursing very mild hangovers and I didn't even say 'I swear I'll never drink again' the following day, which is a new experience for me.

Work is just dull dull dull. I am happy enough to stay here and work away, since there are many worse jobs out there, or worse still- unemployment, but it's just become so 9 to 5, you know? And the money is good for the work we do, but it's pretty far from enough to pay for me to get my debts in order and on to new things.

As I've said, I've been throwing myself into GTA: SA- but at least I was good enough to finish GTA: Vice City first (with help from Gillo), and it's pretty fucking sweet. I'll not list off all the things I love about it, but I do find it exceedingly hard to simply walk or run or drive from one end of a street to the other without going 'Ohhh- what's that?' and finding myself in some scrape or other. Scratch what I said last time about it- it poops on the old GTA's. Though the 'Theme' for this one isn't quite as appealing as the last one- it's all gangsta's and ho's and shit, which is fine to an extent, but not as amusing as Vice City's 80's Miami cheese.

Until next time then,
Keep it slippy.

Aido 'Busta' Potato.

Friday, April 01, 2005

Gah! and Buh!
So I haven't forgotton my blog, these stupid PCs just keep crashing everytime I go to publish it, and I never leave myself enough time to rewrite it.
Happy Eastermas one and all. I've been to Sunny Scarborough (but not the sunny part of scarborough) for the bank holiday weekend, where there was sand, water and other things associated with any self-respecting coastal region. Fun was had.
Since then my life has been little more than the steady consumption of chocolate and videogames (both of which I spent lent avoiding). I have been playing Silent Hill 2, at Gareth's recommedation, but despite that, it's rather good. Ok, the movement/combat controls are a bit eccentric, but the scares are there and that's what matters. Has anyone else found that games have a better capacity to scare one than films do, once you reach a certain age? Something to do with feeling directly under threat yourself I suppose- but all I know is I nearly filled them when that guy with the huge weird hammerhead pounced on me on the roof of the hospital and dropped my ass two stories into the special care ward.
Also got GTA: San Andreas, which I've sampled, but not really started yet. It looks nice, but it's hard to shake the feeling that when you've played one GTA game, you've effectively played them all.
Still haven't heard from that mammyrammer in Leeds who wanted me to fix his stoopid script. Fuck him: I finished my own this lent, and it's way better than his (and it's finished), all I need to do is rewrite it, coerce some studio into making it and voila! Instant superstardom. Next up: thundercats.
Gillo got me some kickass prezzies in Scarb; two of those original, deluxe giant turtles. We were in this really cool little underground market where this raving geek has a little cupboard-sized shop where he offloads all his toys and merch. I would have cheerfully bought the lot if I could justify the expense, but Gill insisted on getting them for me when she saw me drooling at them.

Anyhoo, better get back on the clock, I'll not leave it so long next time.

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Suzie McKenna. Noisy, smelly, hairy and sadly missed.

Aido Mutato.

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