Sunday, March 27, 2005

Doctor Who

There's probably thousands of opinions floating around the net on the new Doctor Who, adding to them seems pointless, so let me just say that I loved it. Proper British scifi and a worthy successor to the original, Kneale, The Avengers, Triffids, etc.
A friend of mine (hi Sam) was so impressed he decided to wake us up with a drunken call at 1:30am to share his joy at it's quality.... and I was polite and friendly! Not because that's the kind of guy I am, but because of our shared geek joy.

Friday, March 25, 2005

We're leaving home, bye bye

Felt the need to delete my previous post, I doubt anyone saw it so it's no big deal but drunken I love you all and goodbyes just have no place on here, sorry.
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Booked a removal firm yesterday, shopped around and ended up going with a place that wasn't actually the cheapest but was still the best choice. One of the big pains for us when we move (especially to another city) is that we can't drive and have to travel with the removal men. The idignity. I feel like a kid asking to sit up front.
So other than finishing the packing (a fair bit done already but we'll finishing up on Sunday) we're done. The removal men will round on Tuesday, about 9:30, they reckon they can get us to Lancaster at about 2-ish. And I start work the next day.
It's a weird feeling, moving. We've done it a fair bit and it gets no better. Some moves go easier than others, but that's like talking about the least painful broken limb you've had. At the moment I'm feeling incredibly disconnected and adrift.
My fingers are tightly crossed (and yet my typing isn't suffering) that the house we move into (and I'll feel sure that's going to happen when I've got the keys in my hand and using them to open the front door) is going to work out and we can stay in there until we move into the place we eventually buy, which I'd like to be sooner rather than later.
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This weird disconnected feeling, don't like it and rather not think about it. Got to think about all the positive possiblities, pay off debts, save up, do well at the job and progress in the only thing I've ever had resembling a career, write more, draw more, develop myself, create more opportunities, have proper holidays, not look like a loser and just do more. All this hinges on me doing well at work and my wife getting a job. No point in acting like I can't do the job, that won't get me anywhere and my wife's chances of getting a job in her field are pretty decent due to her abilities and experience. So fuck it, a move taken for the best reasons and with our eyes wide open... wish us luck?

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

"Imagine there's no possessions"

There's no two ways about about it, moving is a pain, it also usually gets me thinking about all the stuff Rebecca and I own.
A peculiar quirk of mine (that I reckon a lot of people share) is that I empathise with certain inanimate objects. It sounds weird, and a bit stupid, but we've just left our old couch out in our garden to be picked up by the council and most likely chucked in a skip and the thought of this faithful item that provided the best service it could being heartlessly cast aside makes me feel guilty. Generally I try and recycle and there is a charity shop nearby that takes old furniture but we're running out of time so we couldn't use them - also we had hoped we could pass it onto a friend in need, but it didn't work out. See how I try and rationalise my guilt?
What I'm thinking is that this quirk of mine, is actually an emotional reaction to a genuine issue; The strange way we find it difficult to give up unnecessary possessions (books, comics, DVDs, victorian dolls, cabbage patch kids, etc), items we don't need and probably no longer enhance our lives (the point where it's no longer about the individual items and about the 'collection' itself) but we happily get rid of important items (cookers, washing machines furniture, etc) in favour of nicer shinier ones. Important items become replaceable and less important items are like an extension of ourselves and therefore much more difficult to give up. Strange priorities.

Monday, March 21, 2005

Is it even worth gettingso bothered about this?

Adverts, horrible things aren’t they? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a well done interesting looking ad, but they count for very little of the advertising out there and it doesn’t matter, basically ads are inducements to buy things you don’t really need and didn’t even want. I don’t want things I don’t want, the world’s full of pointless junk as it is without greedy companies and individuals producing more and then spending vast amounts of money in the hope of making vaster amount of money.
The reason ads have raised my ire this time (this is what an honest PHD blog looks like BTW, moaning about stuff that probably doesn’t matter. Oh well, I do like stuff too, I’ll talk about that some time, promise) is because of Pot Noodle. Now when Pot Noodle recently relaunched themselves as ‘the slag of snacks’ I thought that was quite clever, crude but clever. They were telling us what we already knew and it was funny enough an idea and recognisable to us that it was possible to appreciate a pot noodle for what it is, a foul indulgence best avoided but occassionally enjoyed. But the jokes gone too far now with the new ‘pot noodle horn’ ads. Crude, purile, over the top, lame, pointless and worst of all for something like this, shit and not funny. This kind of one note inuendo is cropping up more and more in the highly sexualised and glamourised media industry which seems intent on not just damaging our intelect but desensitising sex to the point where we could have a world of eunuchs - perhaps this is part of greater plan to slow down population growth? If so then maybe I don’t mind.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

"What some people will do"

A friend tells me that he likes that I held back from swearing on this blog, in respect to him I've toned down this post because he made a good point, however I think the odd expletive is justified here, read on fellow bored blogger.
Once again I feel the need to talk about a site and not link to it. In fact I’m not even going to bother naming it. Denying it of the patronage of the few people who actually look at my blog is petty and a pretty poor act of defiance but as the site I want to write about is run by a scumbag of the highest order I don’t really want to give the guy even the smallest amount of publicity.
So what ‘s site about? I stumbled upon it earlier today after seeing it linked on a blog I occasionally visit. It goes like this; there’s a guy who’s set up a site which displays a domestic rabbit he found, instead of finding the owner he decided to love and care for it up until a set date when he will have it killed and eat it unless he receives $50,000.
Let that sink in a second.....
He’s already received about $18,000 and a fair amount of hate mail. Has the money come from sensitive, gullible, and yeah, maybe even stupid, folk desperate to not see a bunny die? I suppose so. But it seems that a lot of people think this guys like rilley funny dude. He’s sooo clever, it’s genius, do you see what he’s doing? Preying on stupid people by using a bunny to extort money from them, ha, they’re probably meat eaters dude! Wankers. Apparently this isn’t the first time someone’s done this, it’s just the first time someone's done it with any degree of professionalism.
I don’t want to run through why I find this morally repugnant, I’d honestly like to believe that it doesn’t need explaining any further than profiting of the death of a living creature in any way is just fucking wrong. What bothers me is that the site that this idiot bought his domain name and uses to host from is happy to do so. They claim that as there’s nothing illegal (and this does seem to be the case) they don’t want to take away the wankers freedom of speech, they don’t want to censor him because they’re just one big happy corporation of freedom loving upstanding noncensoring wankers. If idiot who uses their service was spreading racist propaganda they would take it down they say, but he isn’t, so they won’t. Anyway, argues one of the owners of the band hosting thing site, the guys not serious, he won’t kill the rabbit, he won’t get any money from his merchandise (that’s right, you can buy merchandise, it all goes to help save the rabbit), why would he eat his cash cow, or rather, rabbit? He wouldn’t do it no matter how much money he got, so don’t don’t worry about it you humourless fools. And this is the argument that really bugs me. There’s no way of knowing this guy is just fooling us but if we say he is then we aren’t guilty of helping him, our hands are clean, phew! Of course it’s expecting a bit much to believe that a company will have some basic human fucking decency, would put morals before money especially when it wouldn’t create the same kind of dangerous publicity supporting a racist site would generate. The hosting site is losing the odd customer but it’s gaining some for it’s oh so healthy non-censoring stance. No one is questioning the fact that they take this stance, as do the idiots who think the guys so terribly funny, simply to removing themselves from any complicity with a man willing to kill a pet for money.
To every smug Nathan Barley type idiot that believes this is some seriously funny shit that messes with people’s head I hope that you die as soon as possible. To the arsehole who set up the site I want you to die a little slower, I’m only sorry that if you ever saw this site you’d actually like that you got this reaction.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

First 'new' post

Seeing as I'm bored I've been 'surfing the net' (an odd phrase, physically active people (who say 'dude') surf, people spending hours online don't strike me as particularly physical) and I ended up on salon (I want to start using links in these posts again but I won't this time, my spite will become clear) which is supposed to be a smart online magazine, I've seen it around but never really looked at it. The article I spotted today seemed pretty interesting (celebrity blogs, why do they do it, why are so many embarrassing (I'm not aware of this phenomenon but the opportunity to laugh at celebs seemed like fun)) so I decided to give it a look. What I discover is that Salon sucks. Two paragraphs or so into the article I find out I need to be a member to read it all (okay, maybe I should've known that already, but frankly it bugs me that online mags or anything online (well, apart from pornsites I suppose) won't let the casual browser have a look at something, I thought the web was supposed to break down those walls?) Fine, I think, I'll get a membership, I can have it ad free but I have to pay or I can get it free but I have to endure ads. Personally I hate being coerced into buying crap I don't want with unimaginative ads but on the other hand I don't feel like paying to read one stupid article, so I click the free with ads button and have to wade through pages of ads for one fucking film! a crappy looking piece of shit with Queen Latifa as a hairdresser and Andie MacDowell as a talentless actress who does stupid makeup ads, oh sorry, that's the real world. I gave up. One ad would have been enough, maybe I'd even put up with two or three if they'd at least been for different things, but a bunch of ads for one thing is just taking the piss, that fuck it wasn't for a film I might've actually been interested in, it could've put me off.

hmmmm

I'm getting bored with my blog. Not blogging, just this blog. I started another one about a month ago (popfun.blogspot.com), it's meanspirited little thing and I'm already a bit bored of it to be honest - although it's probably better than my proper blog! The problem is that I'm a fairly restained blogger (far more than I am in real life), even my rant against the fur wearing talentless arse known as J-lo was restrained. I rarely mention work related mishaps not just because I don't want to lose my job but because I don't want to upset anyone who might happen to google their way here. I've had some interesting (well, maybe not interesting, but I've wanted to talk about them) experiences in the world of small press comics but I've kept them to myself incase I get caught criticising soomeone. I could hide behind a fake name and sling mud to my hearts content but that strikes me as a particularly shitty thing to do. I think it might be time to pick a new template (wish I could design one myself) and revamp the blog to reflect the really me. All that'll probably change is that I use more swearwords, I've not got that much of an interesting life!

Monday, March 14, 2005

Bang

Apparently Nottinghams Chief Constable is asking for help in investigating gun crime. I also read that in America some guy has killed 7 people in a church before killing himself and a 2 year old boy is fighting for his life after his 4 year old brother took his mother's gun out of her handbag and shot him in the head after they had an argument.
I can't help but be a little simplistic here, but it would make me feel a lot better if every single gun was destroyed and no more were made.

Blue Peter Rocks

Due to my wife's Ewan Macgregor obsession I happen to be watching Blue Peter. I have two observations to make. 1 is that David Beckham seems to be covered in make-up, has had his eyebrows plucked and possibly has more botox than blood in his body. 2 is that being a Blue Presenter is the best job in the world, they get to do all sorts of cool things, Caron Keating wing walking, that ginger bloke with the funny glasses hanging onto a windmills sails, etc.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Madness

Oh dear. I've just seen an advert for a very lame looking TV Quick kind of magazine. I honestly can't remember what this rubbish looking rag is called, probably because I was too busy cringing in pain due to the fact that the advert used 'Our House' by Madness as a backing track and Suggs seems to have provided new vocals where he sings the name of the magazine instead of the words 'Our House'.
I'm used to hearing songs I like used to sell stuff I don't care about, but the artist actually lending a hand in the butchering of the song is a new one on me.
'Our House' is a song I've loved since I was a kid. Cheers Suggs, it'll never sound the same again, hope you were paid well.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

update

Rebecca and I went to Lancaster on tuesday and stopped over night. Thankfully my brief view of the place was pretty much on the money, in other words Rebecca loved it and so did I.
We may have found a place to live, it's renting so the we've got to put up with the usual wait and see process, there's also a few other issues. Hopefully it'll work out as we liked the place.
It looks like Rebecca will be ok with agency work, although annoyingly she missed out on a regular job. Anyway, workwise it's looking like she'll be fine which is important to me. Rebecca's giving up things to go to Lancaster, her position as an assistant manager being the main one so I'd like thingsd to be as smooth and sucessful as possible.
Very strange to be moving again, there's a lot of worry and frustration but I find myself hoping. I hope this will work out, I hope the new job goes well and I fit in, I hope that Rebecca gets a good job, I hope she looks into new things, I hope we can afford to buy a house, I hope to get out more and be active, I hope I write and draw more and get published. I hope we're happy.
That's the great thing about moving. Despite all the turmoil there's a lot of possiblities and opportunities.