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There's a theory that goes that consumption of violent media - movies, TV, games, what have you - can result in increasingly violent behaviour on the part of the consumer. That the more violence we watch, the more desensitised we get, the less we value human life, and so on. That Columbine happened because of Doom and death metal, etc. It's a controversial theory and I for one have never had much truck with it.

So I'm somewhat pleased to report it's been conclusively disproven. It's been disproven because seems to me that if it did in fact have any scientific merit at all, there's absolutely no doubt that even the most innocent, previously violent-media-avoiding viewers of the film Rambo, which Andrew and myself went along to tonight (IMDB plot keywords: Execution / Unexploded Bomb / Dead Children / Cut Into Pieces / Rain) would emerge into daylight at the end of the film having been transformed within the span of its mere 91 minute running time into unbelievably homicidal mass murderers bent on ending the existence of the next person or thing they might see.

However, not only did I make it out of Hoyts without a killing, but also through a shopper-populated Pak N' Save and on homewards - all without so much as blowing something up. As I blog I am pleased to report that Karen remains as yet unkilled by me.

Another victory for the scientific method.

Sometimes I have occasion wonder what would happen if I applied myself. You know, to anything.

But then I think "Sure, but if you're busy applying yourself,  then who's gonna save that Bothan convoy from that Interdictor?"

Then I go and play X-Wing.
(The Y-Wing, by the way, is still a DEATH TRAP.)

In other news: Dave's lungs have appeared to have undergone something of a FAIL. There's a lesson here, but try as I might, I can't quite grasp what it might be. Oh wait, I can. SMOKING IS BAD, kids. Don't do it. Seriously.

In other other news, I started as a Publishing Coordinator today. Presumably I coordinated some publishing at some point, although I can't be sure. I certainly coordinated moving to a different desk. Now I have a pretty flash Mac to play with that I am pretty sure would be the envy of some of my Mac-loving friends. I, on the other hand, am in fact not so impressed, but instead still pissed off with the failure of the delete key to delete things. Intuitive. After working with Macs for a year now though, I will admit do miss the F11 function when I get home to the PC. (I'm sure there's a Windows equivalent somewhere, but I haven't bothered to go and find it.)

This evening I have been sitting here as usual, engrossed in what I am doing and merrily typing away, and then being freaked out every time I turn around and see a room with no furniture in it. Then approximately 0.3 seconds later I remember we're moving, and that Karen and her Dad took all that stuff away somewhere else today. It's still mighty strange though, let me tell you.

I may have a plan. Or not. The best clue to its ultimate existence will I suppose be its eventuation, or lack thereof. You can never tell with these things.

Ben away.

Standard service station price of a 600ML bottle of Coke these days: three dollars twenty. That is not a misprint. That is three freaking dollars twenty. 3. Trois. Drei. Treis. San. Toru.

Experienced Coke drinkers amongst you will agree with me that it has been something of a meteoric rise.

Meanwhile though my friends, meanwhile, the seemingly semi-permanent price at Shell of a 1.5 litre bottle of Coke is two dollars eighty.

900MLs more Coke. 40 less cents.

Can someone with an economics degree explain this to me?

I always feel that that phrase is cool enough to somehow warrant referring  to something apart from the Sega XBox Game (it was kinda cool in its own right, but the name "Jet Set Radio Future" was by far the best thing that it had going for it). But Wikipedia reveals no disambiguation page, no chic point of origin, no hipster movie quoting it, so I guess I'll just have to create my own special tribute to the coolness by titling this blog post with it - totally irrelevantly I might add, as you will no doubt soon  discover.

So it's been a while since I wrote anything. To be fair, the 6-odd weeks since the last post have been quite packed with stuff. One might go so far as to say that a number of things occurred, and, as the usual story with blogging, you're generally too busy out doing these things to spend the time coming back and writing with them. Then, when you get around to maybe thinking about doing so - like now -  those things are already far enough in the past, and you figure nobody really wants to hear about them anymore. It's a common enough problem and I have written approximately 96 percent of my total lifetime blog posts to date about it.

So I'm going to consciously ignore it.


In other news, Lost starts up again in the States tomorrow and I am excited. Most people I know have given it away by now but  I am definitely still a highly interested fan. The first 4 episodes in the new series apparently have very good advanced reviews, so I am taking that as a good sign. I went to check out ABC.com  to see what was up and came across their official (and surprisingly flippant) "Lost so far in 8 minutes and 15 seconds" summary video. The first two seasons take up 4 minutes to explain, and the most recent season another 4 minutes. As a summary it's interesting in that 8 minutes 15 seconds is indeed enough time to tell you all the most important facts from 3 entire seasons of television, while, at the same time utterly not telling you even the tiniest fraction of what you need to know about what is going on. I guess this is Lost summed up. Well, it is, it's a recap of Lost. But you know what I mean. Or you don't. Oh to hell with it, the other 3 people still watching it will know. I suppose what I'm getting at is that it's a show of details; endless endless intriguing details. I guess either you go in for that or not.

In other other news, books are good. In the last month or so I have churned through Altered Carbon (very cool, highly violent, look forward to the film), Pillars of the Earth (still good, now I can go find the new sequel), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (OK, but a bit disappointingly predictable), League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (weird but still followable, a bit gimmicky but still cool, curiosity inspiring but obscure, the least good of  the three volumes to date for me - but still good. Going to have to go and eventually read a whole bunch of other stuff because of it. Also starting to think Alan Moore is turning into a dirty old man) and am now about 150 pages into the Gormenghast trilogy (very slow moving but VERY atmospheric, highly intriguing to date. Lost in book form?). My first Tom Holt and Neil Gaiman reading experiences await my attentions after I plough through the next 800 odd pages of Gormenghast (and then probably look up , download and view the 4 part mini series the BBC made of it, because I have to see who they cast and what they did with the visuals) Quite a timesucker but then I think being able to have "what are you reading at the moment?" asked of me and readily answered is a good thing.

In other other other news, time to post this hodge-podge and go to bed, I suspect.

Today is the last day of me being in my 20s. Ever.

How the hell did that happen?

Still, turning 30 is certainly better than the alternative.

Meant to blog, meant to blog, meant to blog, haven't. But now I'm here, semi-occupied by keeping track of NZ doing rather surprisingly well so far against South Africa in the first test, thanks very much - what meaningless piffle should I fill the internet with?

Well, for one thing,  in order of recentness (recentality?) we went to 1408 tonight. OK, in its predictable Stephen King-y sort of way. Thankfully John Cusack generally serves to make anything he's in that much more watchable. But there was some weirdness going on with the script.


Still, points for the Wilhelm Scream.

I also really meant to blog about going to Auckland a few weeks back, but failed to do so in a timely fashion. I can probably sum it up in the following concise manner: good. Although, Auckland, you know what's not good? Charging $8.50 for a bottle of Heineken. Even if the bar in question does look like a set from CSI, one of those places with chambers or alcoves fronted with diaphonous materials for people to get murdered in, or at least stand in front of to act as scenery while Grissom asks them about people.

GRISSOM: Was this man in here last night?

CSI BARSTAFF MEMBER OF THE WEEK: Yeah, he was. He ordered a couple of beers and I said "That'll be 17 dollars" and then he hit the manager with a pickaxe.

GRISSOM: He could be our man.

CSI BARSTAFF MEMBER OF THE WEEK: Quite possibly, although you don't want to jump to any conclusions. There's always a piece of crucial new evidence uncovered about three quarters of the way through the hour, and historically of course am myself the killer in around 33 percent of cases. I'll be in this diaphonous-material-fronted chamber if you have any more questions.

GRISSOM: Jolly good. I'll be at the lab, thanking God I'm not David Caruso.

Aside from contemplating publicanicide, the trip had plenty to recommend it. I drank some invading Martians on stage, watched a volcano and climbed up a number of tequilas, or something like that (it all gets a little hazy after the tequilas). Actually, considering the number of tequilas consumed in one setting, haziness was relatively avoided. I even had the mental accuity required to send a desperate cry for help to Australia, urging TBALC artillery to come down on my position, but it seemed my men just couldn't bring themselves to barrage their beloved figurehead, because more tequilas later I strode out into Mission Bay, jumped into a bush and hit my head on a tree (the tree had enough sneaky weasel cunning to be lying unseen in wait for me in said bushes, uprooted) and simultaneously picked up some splinters in my finger, one or two of which I think may still be in there. So the point of this story is if anyone is after a souvenir of my trip, I can probably get you one. ("Oh, we laughed it off at the time, but of course no-one was amused when he suddenly died of blood poisoning"). Anyway, Auckland grew on me a lot in this most recent visit, but is still TOO BIG. Also the motorway is exactly like two Ginsu knives clashing with it's distortion of TIME and SPACE and is WEIRD.

Another of Andrew's movie binges was survived. Black Devil From Hell,  which Andrew unleashed upon his innocent viewers with Machiavellian glee, would certainly have been the worst movie I have ever seen, except I refuse to class it as a movie. I don't think this was really a conscious decision mind you - more an automatic decision of my brain to protect itself from any potential "this can't be a movie, because if it was a movie, that means that movies can be this bad, then you can't...I mean you like movies, but if this is one..then ARRGGHH, GINSU KNIFE CLASH IMPLODE" situation. It's just another level of the body's natural defence - the blood/brain/blackdevildollfromhell barrier. I don't think anything in round 2 (BDDFH included) really topped The Manipulator from round one for me on the "Oh God, my BRAIN!!!" scale, though - that now, well, man, that was a thing. Ohhhh, Mickey Rooney.

Hmmm, the options at this point seem to be continue to waffle about whatever springs to the old lobes, or go to bed. Bed it is , I think. See you all at our house on Saturday night, providing you're sufficiently cool, of course.

This post brought to you by random factor, like a tractor.

C/o my partner in crime the Street comes the sequel. Naturally enough Youtube leaps into action, and some bastard of course already thought of my idea.

Post still coming. Today may be a good day. But who can tell.

Oh YES.

Slightly longer at least post to follow in short order.

In previous years I have always been surprised at the depth of feeling and sheer amount of arguing that goes on when the Madcaps nominations list comes out. Somewhat personally involved as I was this year in a major show, I now comprehend completely.

Abby, "official" recognition be damned, I really think we put on a good show, thanks in large part to you.

I am genuinely sorry that the fantastic work of many other people in our show was not even so much as acknowledged. Jeff, Eli, Matt, Steve, Andrew, Henry,  Alex, Todd, Sarah, Emmac and Emmab, Dave, Alice - you guys were all very good, and some of you in particular deserved far more recognition than was in the end meted out to you. I apologise for that. Well done Alice - a deserved award.

Elsie,  I don't care how good the Madcaps judges thought the Law Revue costumes were - I don't need to actually see  what they came up with to know that our costumes were 10 times better. Call me biased if you like, world-at-large - your accusations make me no less right. You made the show happen Elsie, and should take pride in that far from insignificant achievement.

In summary I suppose, thanks, Catch 22 crowd. I hope you were as proud of the show as I was, and enjoyed it as much as well. I found you all very funny, even if (officialdom claimed that) no-one else did.

-Ben.

Alice in Wonderland, 2004

Started out amusingly with sheer amount of fury a certain director had towards Rob, Nick and Dan's final night trick of appearing as surprise backup singers in the Turtle Soup song - I believe the phrase "It ruined the whole show" was pulled out. Before long people were sitting in the hallway tightly clustered around bowls of Icebreaker, competing to drink the largest percentage they could through a straw. It was about this stage that Tilby began displaying his testicles to anyone that was interested, and indeed, many that weren't. In a physics experiment, me and someone else managed to lift Dan directly from the first floor to the second floor without bothering with any of that pesky stair business. I piggybacked Karen up the stairs. I piggybacked Karen around the house. Was informed drama had occurred. Entered elder brother mode. Charged through Hagley Park yelling "Daaaaaaaaaan!" at the top of my lungs - giggled drunkenly to myself at general ridiculousness of life. Yelled "Khaaaaaaaan!" once for variety. Got drama sorted. Walked back to Bailey's place. Spent some time kissing some girl. That turned out pretty well. Emerged blinking into the light at 11am next day along with several other cast members, all finally booted from the house by Bailey's aggrieved flat mates. Went to pack-out.

Little Shop of Horrors, 2005

Ease slowly into party with gentle game of horse races. Best drinking game ever. Bet 20 drinks on diamonds - diamonds loses. Bet 20 drinks on diamonds again - diamonds loses. Bet 20 drinks  on diamonds a third time  - diamonds loses.  Have now consumed something like  7 cans of beer in about 20 minutes. All or nothing - bet 40 drinks on diamonds. Diamonds wins! Do victory dance while dispensing 40 drinks amongst my fellow competitors. So - quite drunk. Investigate kitchen. Discovered by Bailey in pantry cupboard, standing in the dark eating Coco Pops from the box. Party continues. Go outside. Tackle some bushes. Fling lawn chair away into the darkness. Lawn chair catches impressively on clothes line and remains suspended. Conclude defunct fridge on lawn needs rolling about a bit. Roll fridge about a bit. Scale fire escape, climb in bathroom window. And then, and then my friends, we invent stair surfing. Tania's flat features wooden, uncarpeted stairs. At bottom of stairs is large window. Using couch cushion in the fashion of hydroslide mat, power head first down stairs. Manage to come to natural halt before powering through window. Nice! New sport proves popular among  other partygoers. Demonstrate correct technique. Several make stair runs. Amadeus steps up. Technique all wrong! Rest of party in hysterics as I stand at the bottom of the stairs screaming "The cushion, Amadeus! For God's sake, HOLD ON TO THE CUSHION!" (now something of a catchphrase in certain select circles). Amadeus, however, is incapable or unwilling to hold onto the cushion - he has invented a new, extreme version of the sport. Those of us eager to prove ourselves um, idiots, now take it in turns to superman head first (face down, arms out) down the flight of (uncarpeted, wooden) stairs. Scientists need look no further than this evening for evidence of the effects of alcohol as a painkiller. Ribs eventually implore me to stop. Upstairs to have Mushnik beard shaved off, leaving only handlebar moustache. Tania takes one look at this and declares I am secretly a porn star named "Jimmy Nailer". Eventually crash in giant bed with Calum, Pru and Tania. Karen calls to ascertain my whereabouts and my phone battery dies before I can inform her I am in bed with Tania, my cousin and a lesbian. Good times. Next day: hungover, oh yes. Tania wins biggest, nastiest, most purple rib bruise contest amongst stiff competition.

The Fiend, 2005

Party occurs next door to house full of bogans.  Their party is similar to ours, but has more knife fights on front lawn. Bogans obviously attempting to chastise each other. Police turn out in force. Then, police turn out in more force and riot gear. Our party attempts to remain a bit less conspicuous - not so much a problem as we are inside listening to 3 hour presentation ceremony. Tilby emotional.  Everybody emotional. I attempt to rectify this situation at least a bit by sniping away with one liners from the corner occasionally. The absolute archetypal example of the Luke Di Somma post show speech occurs, with the words "fabulous" and "talented" being pulled out approximately 16,000 times each. Dan and I are caught up in a slightly weird conversation in which we are asked if our younger brother is an arsehole or not. We adjourn to the roof. Words exchanged with few remaining bogans, their party now thoroughly broken up my police action. Poke my head over the fence, am informed by junior Fred Durst clone, apropos of nothing at all, that "this is how we roll!". Burst out laughing. Have beer bottle thrown in my direction. Mass mission heads to McDonald's at approximately 6:30am. While walking down Riccarton Road, see hedge that looks good for throwing myself into. Bound into someone's front yard, take running leap off picnic table or something and fly into top of hedge Fosbury Flop style, arse first. Hedge proves unexpectedly resilient. Rather than yielding to my attack, it bounces my flying arse up, and I roll completely over the hedge and fall face first a metre and half onto the concrete footpath. Ow, my knees. Hobble to McDonald's, eat. Catch bus to go home. Wake up in the middle of some kind of conversation with someone. It is the bus driver. Realise I am talking complete drunken dreamy bollocks. Look up, find myself in Linwood. Apologise to bus driver, who is very understanding. Suggests I stay on the bus, as it is reaching the outermost point of its outward journey and is headed back to town. Do so. Total time to bus home: 3 and a half hours.

Threesome, 2005

Failing to be involved in this Threesome in any way, weirdly, I decide the least I can do is go to the after party. Do so. Get a Mintie despite non-involvement for creation of the line "wank me a river". Suddenly overcome by unreasonable hatred of Milk Arrowroot biscuits.  Violently  stomp all over packet on kitchen floor, Charles Napier in Supervixens style (to later non-amusement of Jo, discovering powdered Milk Arrowroot tracked throughout house). Wear beer box on head (natch). Wander around outside a bit, discover empty unused coal bin with lid outside. Climb in.  Discovered by Pru. Pru  and I discuss all manner of bollocks inside the coal bin for a while. Eventually we realise we need more to drink. Attempt to raise lid to climb out and fetch a beverage. Lid not budging. Other partygoers have placed large concrete weights on it. Pru and I talk more bollocks. Need for drink becomes desperate! I feebly attempt  to raise it, and fail miserably. Begin to consider possible benefits and drawbacks of new life in the coal bin with Pru. Pru reaches up, powers lid up and concrete weights off with one mighty thrust. Am impressed.

Catch 22, 2007

Existing only as a sensational theoretical concept until this point, the Voltron is pioneered by yours truly, a great honour. Feed the Voltron to many partygoers. Pioneer the Double Voltron. Rob Enari I think, then Dave, pioneer the Single Vessel Voltron. Gods. Become first man in history to have a Triple Voltron. Survive. Abby turns cannibal. Bites an extraordinary number of people. Not content merely with leaving teeth marks in people's arms, she begins an ongoing beer / water fight. Karen, somewhat concerned by how drunk Abby is, attempts to bring her glasses of water. Poor strategic move. Have glass of water thrown on me my Abby. Have bottle of beer emptied on me by Abby. In fact, Nic, Tim and myself are all bitten / soaked by Abby. Beer bottle ends up in washing machine somehow in the middle of all this, to later annoyance of Todd's hapless flatmate. Crash uncomfortably on floor, stoically go to pack out at 9 or so after about 2 hours sleep.

Trainspotting, 2007

Another crash - decide that voting to put the show on is a good enough excuse to show up at the party. Good decision. The first after party I have ever attended without receiving a Mintie. Fails to prevent me getting rather drunk. Lead the shower cram - we set what I believe is a new record. Consider number of open Weetbix packets on top of fridge to be ridiculous. Hiff one out 4th story window (rather guilty about that. Must buy Alex some more Weetbix.) Have flash of inspiration. 4th floor = 4 flights of stairs. Lead mass stair surfing. Results in entire party giggling raucously in a pile in a small area at the bottom of the stairs. Back upstairs. Ludicrous conversation with Damo, Andrew, Fi and Dave about Admiral Ackbar and Anthony Anderson. Andrew held down and tickled mercilessly. Fi captured in fireman's lift and spun. Still too many Weetbix on fridge, damnit! Second packet shares fate of the first. Accept offer of lift home from Damo - discover unexpected pear in back seat. Eat delicious pair, with commentary. Write name and messages with pear on car window. Rest of the vehicle in hysterics for some reason.

Threesome, 2007

After party tonight, Matt and Jeff's house. Be good to see you there.

P.S: Where and when did we start the shower cram? Anyone? I've lost it in the mists of time and alcohol.

Todays "PWNED!" award must surely go to to the nation of Portugal.

Now, don't get me wrong, Portugal is surely a fine European nation which, as Wikipedia points out, has witnessed a constant flow of civilisations since prehistoric times, and dates back to 868 even just as a nation. They enjoyed the management of a not insignificant global empire in the 15th and 16th centuries. Indeed, many's the time I myself sailed proudly under the Portuguese flag playing whatever iteration of Sid Meier's Pirates! I happened to have on my Amiga 500, PC, or PS2. And lets not forget their having a bloodless revolution in the 70s to introduce a democracy after nearly half a century of dictatorship. Good work there.

However Portugal, proud 1200 year-old nation of 10 million souls as you may be, little (not) old New Zealand has undoubtedly pwned you. Come, in, Graham Henry, talking ahead (ahead, mind you) of this week's upcoming World Cup game between Portugal and the All Blacks :

Henry said the All Blacks would take a responsible approach at scrum-time.

"If we've got dominance at scrum-time, and hopefully we will have, we just don't want to kill people, if you understand my logic.

"I think we need to be sensitive about, if we've got big scrum dominance, how we handle that scrum dominance and make sure we look after opposition props to some extent. I think that's pretty important.''

Translation: in the upcoming game of rugby (yes, rugby) between our two countries, the apparently key and publicly stated concern for our team is to not hurt the opposition too badly.

Pwned, Portugal. PWNED.

And now marvel at my my segue skills, for it seems the Portuguese rugby team aren't the only ones about to be in a world of hurt - stormtroopers look to be in for some tough times ahead as well.

Well, it's 3 o'clock in the morning and many, many Assault Marines have just perished during the long, arduous capture of the Pavonian Heartlands. Many. I feel almost like Sir Douglas "Stroll casually towards that machine gun nest, men!" Haig. They died doing what they loved, though - very slowly knocking down several enormous concrete buildings with their chainswords. Which is living the dream really, when you get right down to it. Living it briefly, to be sure, but living it nonetheless.

Damned stupid having a new game to play. I can't help but notice that it's 3am on a school night. Thank God for the foul-tasting substance that is coffee.

Me: So have you cast the female roles in your fill-um?

Herr Direktor: Yees
You will be appearing in scenes with a professional actress. Guess which one.
 
Me: Hmmm.
Meryl Streep?

Herr Direktor:  no...think older, more British, and more having-played-Queen-Elizabeth-I-in-Shakespeare-In-Love.

Me: Judy Dench, eh?
I can't believe that was the best you could do.
Oh well, if I have to slum it with that hack, so be it.

Herr Direktor: Well, it was a toss-up between her and Maggie Smith, but I thought Mags would be better in the other female role. Oh, and the Academy has bought the distribution rights already, just because of who's in it.

Me: Nice. I think you should immediately write out that mud wrestling scene though.

Herr Direktor: But that was the main reason they agreed to do it!

Shut up, I was amused. Ahhhhhh, there were script problems from Day Minus Three.

Right! Bed.

Occasions on which I have found myself the only person laughing in a full movie theatre:

1) In the first X-Men movie, which I believe is the last film I went to by myself. Ray Park as Toad grabs a staff and swings it about fancily a bit, neatly reusing all the exact moves he learned in order to play Darth Maul. People looked at me strangely as I laughed the truly alone laugh of the complete nerd.

2) In Robots. I can't remember the exact situation, but Rodney (a robot voiced by Ewan Macgregor) is riding Big Wheel (a robot voiced by Mel Brooks), who is possibly under someone else's remote control at the time. Can't remember. Anyway, they're going along in some kind of chase sequence, and Big Wheel starts to run out of energy or batteries or something, and gets slower and slower, and eventually grinds to a halt, singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do" in a wound-down robot voice as he does so. I'm pretty sure no-one else laughed. Philistines.

3) Tonight during Die Hard 4, following the following exchange between Bruce Willis and Kevin Smith:
Bruce Willis: Cool poster.
Kevin Smith: Oh, so you're a fan of the Fett?
Bruce Willis: No, I was always more of a Star Wars fan.

(Karen admitted she would have laughed at this too, but missed Kevin Smith's line. I have taught her well.)


So, onto a completely unrelated matter. Come with me now as we explore a little story of the Interwebs.


To finish for no particular reason on a down note:

Super news from China

Weird, superficially-amusing-but-at-the-same-time-really-quite-nasty news from China

And to ultimately give the lie to recent (6 lines up) claims about finishing on a down note, for those that may not have come across it on TV yet, as I did tonight:

The best ad in ages.

Sales Rep meeting, Wednesday afternoon.

OUR SUPERVISOR: So can you guys think of things that might be stopping you from making the target number of calls?

CO-WORKER #1: Well, sometimes when we have work shout morning teas, that takes up some time in the morning, that needs to be taken into account.

CO-WORKER #2: Yeah, and then we knock off early on Friday afternoons and go over to the pub for drinks on the company, that's a bit more time out of the week.

ME, INNER MONOLOGUE: Shutupshutupshutup SHUT UP!

In other news, nice to see Star Wars pulverise Star Trek 88 percent to 12 percent in a recent Facebook poll. But has this translated to more votes for Admiral Ackbar in Fake Election? Hell no. He's now 35 votes behind that Borg-loving Frenchman cueball, Jean-Luc Picard. Hmmm, clearly he needs a bigger campaign presence. Step up, YouTube:

He tried to warn you, people.

And the movie is really actually about him, anyway...

So let the tributes flow...

Um...as well as the death metal videos...

And...er, OK, that's just weird.

And this is definitely weirder.

Ah, the written medium cannot really accurately convey how long I just spent laughing so hard at such silly things.

Something unrelated to Admiral Ackbar or Anthony Anderson may be posted here at some point, who knows. I have after all been working on an extensive expose of the Automobile Association.

....what have they done to Ray Winstone? The dude is nearly unrecognisable.

Got some hopes for this film, but Grendel and the dragon look worryingly naff in the brief flashes in which they show up.

And care of Penny Arcade, oh look - next gen consoles appear to be about to start living up to their potential. From the people that bought us KOTOR comes mmmm, graphics. And Keith David. You have to have him in your futuristic games. I think it may actually be a rule.

1) All new films are now contractually obliged to have Anthony Anderson in them somewhere.

2) Anthony Anderson's directorial pseudonym is Steven Spielberg. He uses that  white guy with the beard and the hat for publicity purposes because if the world knew the truth, The Man would act to keep a brother down. Look what happened to Spike Lee.

3) Many 'famous' actors and actresses have felt compelled to pass on their Oscars to Anthony Anderson in recognition of his constantly outstanding contribution to cinema. He has so far collected 46 Oscars in this manner.

4) Anthony Anderson starred as Marlon Brando in The Godfather 2 years before his own birth.

5) Anthony Anderson's full name is Anthony Anderson Robert Dean Vincent Andrew Richard Kelly. The aardvark is named for him.

Hmmm, there are many posts about Harry Potter and it's quite tempting to click on one of the "Spoiler Warning!" comments sections. So then, any of you more hardcore fans that have already bought and read the book got a now spent copy lying about you want to lend me?

The weekend's party was jolly good, the hangover on Sunday not so much so.

A recent musing: why do people use "magic beans" as a metaphor / simile for getting fleeced? The magic beans from Jack and the Beanstalk were magic beans. As a result of trading his cow for them, Jack ended up with a life of luxury provided by all the filthy giant-lucre he acquired. That seems like an extremely good investment of one cow.

If you are on Facebook and have not yet signed up to the Fake Election app for the specific purpose of voting Admiral Ackbar into power, you should do it NOW.

And now back to work.

Fun fact: people in the United States named "Norman Norman" outnumber those named "Benjamin Allan" by a factor of 5 to 1.

Oh dear.

(Let's also take the time to sympathise with the 114 unfortunate bastards called Harry Potter.)

So conceptually at least, I've been trying to write blog posts a lot more regularly again for some time now. The intent is very definitely there. It's just the practical, actually doing it element I seem to be missing (a not uncommon problem in so many walks of life). I've been incrementally adding to a post on my Blogger blog very, very slowly over nearly the last month now, and it's starting to creak under its own weight. The trouble is that the speed of update is never equal to the speed of events, and so I always spend at least the first 20 to 30 minutes after pulling it up adjusting everything to the right time period - "yesterday" to a "week ago", "going to" to "went to", "anticipating excitedly" to "hated it with a burning passion" - and then the thing starts to resemble some kind of evolutionary throwback, a lumbering dinosaur in the world of current events, unable to keep up with its speedy little mammal competitors. Or deal with the massive asteroid impact of, er, let's say, lack of inspiration. That's right, The Asteroid of Lack of Inspiration. You heard me.

Sadly this isn't new and it's not exactly process on the 'blog more, you bastard!' front. Quite a few meandering posts of this type have been abandoned by the wayside to die in the last 12 months or so (if you want to carry on the dinosaur metaphor in your own head, you could imagine that bit from 'Rites of Spring' in Fantasia, where the dinosaurs drop one by one to die by the wayside, abandoned. I suggest you just move on with your life, however), after becoming so irrelevant to the world at large that I couldn't consider them worthy even of the Internet. I know!

So I've decided maybe the trick is to write more shorter posts over here on LJ, where that sort of thing somehow feels a lot more natural. (Don't ask me why, but LJ for some reason strikes me as the snot-nosed punk kid of blogging). Maybe a greater frequency of off-the-top-off-my-head candy floss posts will lead back to a few more substantial, less-meta posts and a reduced amount of worrying about how I should really write a decent account of that thing that happned to me 2 months ago, gosh, I should do that ASAP, I'll get around to it tomorrow, etc. More dancing, less prancing, to paraphrase C. Montgomery Burns.

And with that new spirit in mind, rather than segue into something else in this post, I believe I'll just stop.

Post number two! Just because. Now friend me, people. Friend me. (if you haven't already yet).

That's all. Carry on.

(There may be something here soonish though.)