Day Thirty Five: Halloween

Red Alert 3 will be here soon. I can feel it. It teases me, my Amazon package tracking page. Red Alert 3 is on its way. It's been dispatched. And soon, it will be mine. I'm excited.

So, anyway, its Halloween today. I was never really someone who got into Halloween, at least in the traditional sense. For the most part it was just chucking eggs at houses and then coming back home and having to give sweets to other people who would no doubt be returning shortly to throw eggs at your house.

But still, tonight promises to be a very fun night. I'm Ninja'd up, again, because it's a nice and cheap costume. Man, if only I had a labcoat, then I'd be going as Dr. McNinja, but sadly that geeky dream will not pass. I've got a crate of beer to drink, along with whatever else I come accross at the LCR, and I'm going there armed with various plastic ninja weapons that I got in a set at poundland. I'd never before quite embraced the beauty of pound shops. I'm going to start doing all my shopping there dfrom now on.

Anyway, as tonight promises to be extremely drunken and fun, expect a lovely after action report this Monday. Expect it to contain rambling and overly frightening topics, such as just how many people went as the fucking Joker from Fucking Dark Knight. Seriously people, be a little creative. So, you've got that to look forward to on Monday.

Unless I'm busy playing Red Alert 3. In which case, expect a post about just how fucking awesome Red Alert 3 is.

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Now playing: The Band / The Night They Drove Old Dixie

Day Thirty Four: Here is something that you will like.

We all know that roughly 95% of internet web comics are shit, right? Sure as night follows day, sure as eggs are eggs, sure as every odd numbered Star Trek film is shit.*

However, there are a few bright shining stars out there.You've got your XKCDs, your Penny Arcades and the like. However, the one, absolutely unquestionable best webcomic ever is The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.

This is a fact. I will explain it to you. And, if at the end, you do not agree, then we simply cannot be friends anymore.

This comic stars Dr. McNinja, a doctor who is also a ninja and therefore torn between his desire to kill and his desire to heal. His receptionist, Judy, is a gorilla. He occasionally dreams about being Batman. His ward is Gordito, and 11 year old Mexican bandito who grew a moustache through sheer force of will. Gordito also rides a velociraptor. Just because.

The problem is trying to treat this as a webcomic. A webcomic is something that you visit once a day, laugh and move on. With Dr. McNinja, you want the story to keep going so that you keep on getting the awesome. This feels much more like a full-blown comic, one that would, and indeed should be stocking the shelves alongside the big names from DC and Marvel.

So. Visit, and read around. The complete issues in the archive include Dr. McNinja fighting a Giant Paul Bunyan, and fighting hundreds of zombies. Oh, and punching out Dracula. Finally, the final phrase that will seal the deal, and decide whether you love or hate this comic.

"CHAINSAW NUNCHUCKS"

Check it out. I can absolutely promise you won't regret it.

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Now playing: The Fifth Dimension / Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In

*That's actually not true anymore, as Star Trek X: Nemesis was so awful that it broke the curse of odd/even numbered Trek films. But that's a subject for another day.

Day Thirty Three: Dear me.

I'm still hungover as I'm typing this today. Last night was quite heavy. Extremely fun, of course, as the LGBT socials generally are, but still, my god. I was feeling it today. Jesus.

So, anyhow, have you been watching Dead Set? You really should be. It's fantastic. My drunken blogging aside last night, it truly is a fantastic show, and I wish that it was going to last longer than just this week. Imagine it, a fullblown series charting the zombie outbreak in Britain. Someone get these guys a miniseries on HBO.

The American election is worrying me. The polls and whatnot have Obama up, and he looks set to win this by a quite nice margin in the electoral college, but I'm still fucking nervous. I was worried back in '04, in my happy-go-lucky, Michael Moore tells me what is right state of affairs, and I'd have been glad for anyone to replace George, even though Kerry would have been a fucking terrible president.

The worst thing is, I'd have been happy for either McCain or Obama to become president up until recently. The problem with McCain is twofold, firstly, he hasn't really been able to run as himself, given that Obama far better represents change then he does, even though they've both broken ranks inside their individual parties.

Secondly, we have Sarah Palin. Jesus. Sarah Fucking Palin. The woman terrifies me more than George in his worst moments. Her public interviews terrify me. The woman does not read papers. When pushed, she couldn't name any. I like to think that even (still!) President Bush would be able to tell you what the fuck the New York Times was. Plus, admittedly, I do the tiniest crush on Joe Biden. Motherfucker is from Scranton. He seems genuinely passionate about politics. In short, he seems like he gives a shit about what he does, while Palin just cares what she can do with power once she has it.

She may end up costing McCain the election, and that's unfortunate, as this is something that he's tried to do several times, and it's just never worked out. Imagine if he'd won the nomination in 2000. No George. Just John.

So, we'll see. Popular opinion seems in favour of Obama. But, it's politics. Who can tell what'll happen in the next 5 days?

Day Thirty Two: BLAH

So, Dead Set appears to be the spiritual prequel to 28 days later then. That is fucking awesome.

I mean, Davina McCall as a fucking manic zombie is awesome, but dammit, this is great.


Anyway, I spent tonight at an L G B T social, whic was facinating. LGBT stand for lesbian gay bi and transgender by the way.

I think it might be easier being a dude who fancies dudes. As far as I can make out, the guys I was with had absolutly no problem pulling dudes who they found. I do not have any clue why some of these guys had to ask me later on "hey, am I boring?" given that they had some random dude attempting to lick their face. SO, damn, I should probably turn gay then. Seems to be fun enough. Except I don't really like having sex with guys.

Heh, "I'm a normalite."

Sorry, I'm liveblogging this as I'm watching the latest Dead Set.

"Merry fucking Christmas"

My god this shit is awesome.

So, at gay night I was able to decide that it doesn't matter whether you're straight or gay; making out in public is disgusting, and you should go home to fucking do it.

I mean, jesus christ, just go home and get your sex on.

"It's not a submarine you specimen, do you know how air works?"

This show is fantastic and I wish to make love to it very much.

SO.

The point is that I wndered over to gay night, watched dudes make out with each other, then had Callum steal some kind of head dress and then j'accuse me of stealing it.

I feel slandered.

And drunk.

Well. Mostly drunk.

Right.

So...

Day Thirty One: A couple of points.

Firstly, fuck yes to actually getting my essays done last night! I even got sleep, which I don't think I've done ever on an essay night at uni. So, woo yay me.

Secondly, holy shit, did you see Dead Set tonight?

Man, that was not only one of the best opening episodes to any series ever, but it also managed to combine some quality satire with brainsplosions. And that is something that I am all about. However, watching it did raise an issue that I have with Zombies in the media.

WARNING, THE REST OF THIS ENTRY WILL BE DEEPLY NERDY AND LAME. ONLY READ ON IF YOU THINK YOU CAN BEAR THE GEEKINESS, OR IF YOU REALLY LIKE ZOMBIES.

Dead Set cheats here a bit, I think, by using fast zombies. Now, there are a couple schools of thought on this, but generally fast zombies are really, really fucking easy to make scary. Whereas, the art of making the traditional, slow and shambling zombie is, well, just that, an art. Slow Zombies aren't scary because of their individual nature, you need a massive crowd of them, so that you get wave after wave of the fuckers. While fast zombies are dangerous on an individual level, you need a group of slow zombies to freak you out righteously.

So, yeah, I'm not saying it's bad or anything. After all, 28 days used fast zombies and it was one scary motherfucking film. I'm just saying, it'd be lovely to have a shambling horde of slow zombies attacking the Big Brother house.

Anyway.

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Now playing: Liam Lynch / Rapbot

Day Thirty: Hah, the one month anniversary!

Gosh. This is far further than I expected I'd get. Thirty fucking days, of nonstop churning out retarded crap is all well and good, but when it's me attempting to stick to a regular schedule and I actually achieve this goal, well, I think that allows me a little moment to reflect on just how fucking awesome I am.



FUCK. YES.

All right, admittedly this blog does tend to just be aimless ramblings about me, or about TV with a level of critical analysis that would make my lecturers vomit if they were to read it, and tends towards long, rambling entries about nothing much in particular. However, I'm just happy about the fact that I've managed to keep this up for as long as I have. The point of this blog was never to produce works of soul searing quality; precise and beautiful lines of prose that make the reader humble and weak, inspiring men and awing women.

I mean, it does that already, so that's not really an issue. The point is, that I'm just happy that I was able to stick to a schedule without cheating...for the most part. I've bent the rules on a couple of nights, but I've always had an update, every weekday, for over a month now. And the fact that I was able to stick to that, pointless and stupid though it may be, still makes me very happy.

Also, I still have an essay to do. So, fuck you, I'm going to go write some more of my essay, and then weep uncontrollably because I just. can't. finish. it.

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Now playing: Guster / I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today

Day Twenty Nine: Just a Placeholder

I'll be throwing up a larger update later on tonight/early in the morning.

The reason for this is that I'm determined to finish my politics essay tonight, and taking a break to ramble incoherently for 250 words about South Park would distract me from rambling incoherently for 1000 words about The Office.

So, stay tuned. Also, I've no idea what the fuck this will do to my facebook feed, so I've got that to look forward to.

Edit: So, fresh from the wave of absolute bullshit that was my (finished!) essay, let's launch into a rambling bit about South Park. The latest episode was pretty fantastic. The inclusion of Craig into the group as a way to criticise the main four boys was a great way to actually pick apart these guys, and their place in the school. Then, later on, we got a Cloverfield parody that was absolutely inspired, taking the fear that film evoked and taking it a completely different way, made all the better thanks to it being in the hands of the most retarded character within the show, Randy. I'm pretty sure Stan's Dad is moving closer and closer to being another central character, as opposed to a character that makes up part of the background scenery, as most of the other parents do.

However, there is one pretty strong criticism that I'd make of this episode, which is that, around the middle of the episode, the plot pretty much stopped moving. When you realise that this is going on, the immediate reaction is to become annoyed, because you just know that this is going to be a two parter, and the rest of the episode is filler. Don't get me wrong, I think Parker and Stone are fucking brilliant at what they do, and they've done some fantastic multiple episode plotlines, including the frankly wonderful 'Imaginationland', which was actually a three parter. The problem is that while that felt that it had enough plot for three episodes, this just feels like a one episode concept that is going to be stretched out far too much over two.

Anyway. Now on to the next essay. Which is longer. And about four times harder.

Fuck.

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Now playing: Lou Reed / Walk On The Wild Side

Day Twenty Eight: Goddamnit.

I have two essays due in on Monday. I am going to London for the entire day on Saturday. I have done maybe 200 words on each essay, which are 1000 and 2500 words. That's not including referencing, research, bibliographies and other words which all basically mean 'padding'.

I often wonder how references are justified. We reference shit in our essays, and that reference will refer to another essay, and so on, and so on. Except, for some reason, once you've written enough, the it just becomes fact when you say it. So, essentially, all essays are just massive, frightening circle jerks stemming from "That guy said it, so it must be true."

Anyway, I'm too tired to be doing any of this nonsense. And, my (admittedly, illegal) copy of Assassin's Creed has decided to start playing up and run in spectacular crappy mode. I know it's nothing to do with my system, because my system is fantastic. So, as a compromise, I decided to dig through that pile of Rockstar Games I bought the other week, and fired up GTA3 instead.

Rather than doing work.

Because I hate myself.

So I'm plugging away quite nicely, remembering all the old spots around the map, where to get the best cars and stuff, and I've done about half the missions when the game crashes on me. No popup, no warning, not even a helpful windows popup informing me that the game has crashed. Nothing.

Shit.

Ah well, these things happen, it's a game that was made in 2001, (Holy shit, 2001? Thats fucking insane, this game is near 8 years old. Holy hell.) these things happen. As the proud owner of Windows systems since I've been using computers, I'm used to these things. I cut my teeth on Windows ME, a system that takes all of the worries, unreliability and annoyances of Vista, and then compresses them into the finest, most painful user experience ever. The fucking thing once decided to wipe the entire hard drive, seemingly as a recreational excercise one day, which provided a good week of excited trawling through illegitimate forums and nigh-incomprehensible system analysis.

So yeah, I'm used to crashes.

No big deal, I just boot up the game again, prepared to confidently resume from where I left off, only to discover that no, no I can't. Because GTA3, and indeed all it's succesors appear to hate the idea of quicksaving. It's just a crazy idea to them. For me, unfortunatly, it's two entirely wasted hours. I don't even have fake progress on a computer game to show for it. Fuck.

So, if I seem a little annoyed tomorrow, it's just because of a couple of things that I've got going on. No worries.

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Now playing: David Bowie / Ziggy Stardust

Day Twenty Seven: This post is about Heroes.

If I don't post something tomorrow, it's because I've been arrested. For murderin'. The facebook raping that I underwent will not be mentioned again, other than to say that it hasn't taught me to turn my computer off when I go out, just that I need to remember to lock it before I do.

Bastards.

Anyway, once Heroes finally downloaded, I watched it. And it rocked my socks. I'm pretty sure that Parkman's turtle is going to be the biggest player in the new season. Also, every single scene with Ando and Hiro was brilliant, and I loved that they solved the whole Hiro stabbing Ando thing in exactly the way I thought it would be, but the absolute best thing was when Hiro was tracking down the African Mr. Isaac. Don't fuck with someone who can see the future, because he will wang you over the head with a shovel is a moral, I think, that we can all appreciate.

Furthermore, Arthur Petrelli is a stone-cold badass. I mean, absolutely hardcore. Adam I could never really take credibly as the big bad given that he was English and drunk (and therefore reminded me of myself) and Sylar is just too fucking cool to be the bad guy.

It's like, you remember that time they tried to make Hulk Hogan a bad guy, and you were all like, hey, I can't boo the Hulkster, he's just too awesome, and plus, when he hulks out after getting knocked down good it pretty much defines the best qualities of Pro Wrestling.

It's exactly like that. Plus, this episode, we also got some Peter/Sylar fighting, which panned out in a way that probably won't end well for either of them.

And finally, I think Mohinder is actually turning into the fucking Fly. I'm waiting for the next episode where he breaks someone arm by challenging them to an arm-wrestling contest, and then vomits on some dude's hand for shits and giggles. Things are certainly looking up.

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Now playing: The Chiffons / One Fine Day

Day Twenty Six: So. Zombies.

Ouch. That's just nasty.

Anyway, yeah, have you seen the previews and stuff for Dead Set? A zombie invasion takes over Britain and contestants in the Big Brother house are forced to survive? Not a single part of that sounds bad to me. Not one single part.

I've been on a bit of a zombie kick recently. In my first week, as well as buying a single textbook, I also bought World War Z, which proceeded to rock my socks so hard that I have actually been left sockless ever since I finished it. Holy hell, it's just fantastically well written, but what made it even better is the way that I came into it. I thought this was going to be a nice comedic novel, with maybe a bit of zombie 'science' thrown in. I mean, the book has a review by Simon Pegg on the cover. This has got to be hilarious!

Well, in the opening chapters we've got the most unnerving scene developing as the zombie plague spreads worldwide, like a freakier version of bubonic plague. Countries become overrun, economies collapse, and international relations break down further and further with OMG SPOILARZ ETC ETC. Needless to say, the shit really starts to hit the fan later on, as the armies get called in, and this is how the book really excels, putting across not an American centric view, but a true, global view of how the war is going down.

The genius lie in the fact, however, that this book is set in the aftermath of the war, post zombie outbreak, in a completely changed world, with all the old geopolitical realities changed and the makeup of humanity irrevocably changed. And man, I just ate this shit up. Fantastic.

So, when I hear that there's a movie being made, I have two reactions.

1) Holy shit, this is awesome!
2)Fuck, I really hope they don't screw this up.

It's still in the air. And hopefully, it'll come out, be a massive success, while kicking serious ass at the same time. And it's at that point, my friends, that you'll point to your copies of World War Z, and say "Pfft, the movie? I had the book before this shit was cool.

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Now playing: The Long Winters / Pushover

Day Twenty Five: False Advertising works better than expected.

Emily: "Can you really see famous naked people at your site?"

Animation seminar today was great. We saw the horrors that corporate capitalism unleashed on The Flintstones, and latterly was a formative part of much of Saturday morning programming. This course is fascinating, but I get the feeling that it might be destroying my faith in humanity.

That said, we did get to watch not only Voltron, but also the mighty He-Man. I mean, Voltron is about Robot Lions that transform into a giant Mech that wields an enormous sword in order to DEFEND THE UNIVERSE. I mean, I'm pretty sure that's what people had in mind when they were redefining the word 'awesome'.

The seminar was also successful in that I managed to be labelled as a Communist, Fascist and a Socialist. Admittedly, this was because James was extolling the joys of Capitalism a little too hard, and I kind of get the urge when people are so committed to an ideal that I like to be contrary, just for its own sake. Ryan also expressed fear about my early essay starting, but I reassured him, as out of the two essays, I've only started one, and it's not the film one. I couldn't start that early, its just traditional that I do all my film work at the absolute last minute. That's just the way that the world works.

Also, I only realised today that Joe Biden is actually from Scranton, Pennsylvania. This is awesome enough to warrant my unquestioning support for the Obama/Biden campaign, because I'm hugely gay for the office, and all that surrounds it.

Plus, Barack is actually Superman.

Finally, I'm going to go off and enjoy Burn after Reading, and also get myself a beer and a burger. God, university life is fantastic.

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Now playing: John Murphy / In the House-In a Heartbeat

Day Twenty Four: A revelation that will destroy your mind.

So, today in Politics and Popular Culture we discussed how all art, entertainment and media products are ultimately a product of the corporate machine, propagating an endless lie that we are happy and content, while not realising that ultimately, there is no creativity, and we'll eventually be absorbed by the corporate miasma of absolute crap.

After hearing about, seeing trailers for, and eventually seeing the box office results for Beverly Hills Chihuahua, I'm convinced. The world is doomed. God, I love my course.

But anyway, enough of the media controlling us all as mindless sheep, let's talk about something important.

I have started an essay that is not due in until the 27th of October. You must understand, that I have never done this in my entire University career. I've made an effort, in fact, to never start an essay until the last possible minute, then wait for an additional two hours, and then finally start it. So for me to actually be writing things down about this essay, that I intend to use, as well as doing some textual analysis on the subject of my essay, is nothing short of wrong.

Can you seriously believe that the fucking Chihuahua movie has been at #1 in the US Box Office for two weeks. That's so fucking awful.

Anyway. We've got an animation seminar tomorrow that will be dealing with 'limited' animation. The screening on Wednesday was really weird. I'd always considered things like Hong Kong Phooey and the Flintstones to be classic animation, but man, when we were watching them in the screening they dragged. I mean, they dragged a lot. Neither compared, however, to the might of the Star Trek Animated Series, which I believe was actually the result of a bed between a pair of producers over who could make a cartoon series for the least amount of cash. I think there were only about 5 minutes of moving animation in a cartoon that lasted for twenty. Even as an unabashed nerd, this was really fucking painful.

Also, have you seen the latest pictures from the new film? It looks fucking awesome! Spock should totally be using telekinesis and interfering with brains.

Anyway, the screening was eventually saved at the last minute by the healthy addition of Ren & Stimpy, which is awesome.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with this. It says more than I could ever say.

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Now playing: Ritchie Valens / La Bamba

Day Twenty Three: Senseless rambing about not much in particular.

Today, I will talk about drinking.

I'm a fan of drinking, I will admit. It's fun, it's easy, and it enables me to better discuss matters of deep social importance with people I barely know. This is an important skill. Too often I have been trapped with people, unable to enlighten them with various eloquent and watertight reasons on why their particular stance on taxation is wrong, or how their chosen government is a terrible choice, and that they should feel terrible for choosing it.

Anyway.

I find that the most likely thing that I will discuss, while drinking of course, is just how drunk I, and everyone else is. It's fascinating, the way that we're drawn to arguing about how totally drunk one person is, or how another person is totally faking it, and they haven't had anything to drink, and, dude, I've totally had more shots of vodka than they have, man.

The point that I'm laboriously crawling towards is that drinking is a great activity. It reveals the true nature of a person, and more importantly, the true nature of the self. If you've ever had the experience of being by yourself while completely drunk, either walking home, or just unable to sleep, you'll know the feeling. It's a fabulous amount of introspection that goes into this, and it's at a level unprecedented when you're completely sober. Fuck all this Buddhist meditation and shit, what a person who is desperately seeking intuition into their soul really needs is a good night on the piss.

Basically, what I think people should do, rather than follow religion or politics or any of that, is get completely and horribly drunk instead. I think that everyone will feel a whole lot better for this. Also, we should all get naked.

Really naked.

Just better for everyone, y'know what I mean?

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Now playing: Dirty Pretty Things / Bang Bang You're Dead

Day Twenty Two: Youtube will be the death of me.

I was originally going to post something completely different tonight.

My copy of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut had finished downloading, and since it's been ages since I've last seen it, I thought I'd do a comparison between my current response and my fifteen year old response. The twenty year old one would have been a long, insightful and thoughtful analysis. The Fifteen year old one would have been "Hur, they swore a whole bunch of times. Also, Boobs."

Yes, I plan my entries around single jokes, and then hopelessly twist a whole mess of words around them. Leave me alone.

Anyway, the point I'm laboriously struggling to get to is that about 10 minutes into the film I'd shifted it up into the corner of my screen while I clicked around on youtube for random stuff, and that's where I ended up spending about two hours watching Boris Johnson in pretty much all his guest appearances on Have I got News for You, Room 101 and that sort of thing, and laughing myself silly.

Now politically, I may not agree with Boris. As a filthy lefty centrist whatever it is you pick when the two main parties horrify you, I generally am turned off by much of what emerges from Westminister. Politics, and all the media, spin and shit just irritates me. That's why I like following it so much. Like anything that infuriates me, I keep wanted to understand the hows and whys.

Boris, in this respect, is quite refreshing. A healthy departure from all the lovely soundbites and shiny-facedness of Cameron, and far more cheery than Gordon. Have you seen Gordon smile? It's fucking creepy.

What's more, it's clear that he's got something that very few UK politicians have, which is actual charisma. Holy shit, it's just nice for a politician to crack a joke! I'm not advocating that we go to the American system, which is all about personality, but guys, let's have some fun in politics!

Although, seriously, Clegg is the fucking man. No, really.

Now, back to youtube!

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Now playing: Graham Coxon / Standing On My Own Again

Day Twenty One: Video Games are Fantastic.

I want Far Cry 2.

I know, I know, I already spend too much time playing games, and yes, I should probably focus more on my course, and okay, I've already got enough fucking games, and, seriously, dude, what are you doing even thinking about this, I've got to stop playing video games already, but man, does this game look pretty.

And fun. It appears from the production teams blogs and video diaries and whatnot that you can set fire to THE ENTIRE FUCKING MAP.

This may not sound impressive, but then you realise that the map is about 20KM square. It's insane.

Also, you can shoot Zebras. Because the game is set in Africa. Near Diamond mines.

Nice and non-controversial, right?

Anyway, the game features crazy procedurally generated plotlines and total freedom to do whatever you want. It looks like the game STALKER wanted to be but was not, due to that one bug that completely broke the game. Or that other bug, that completely broke the game.

Fuck, STALKER was fucking shitty.

Anyway, lovesick as I am for this game, I probably won't get it for a while. Partly because I want to keep my grades on track so I can get a decent fmark for the year...

...but also so that I can play the absolute shit out of RED ALERT 3, which features George Takei!

And fucking J.K Simmons!

HOLY SHIT SULU AND J JONAH JAMESON ARE GOING TO BE IN A FUCKING RED ALERT GAME. THE ONLY WAY THAT THIS COULD BE BETTER IS IF THE GAME GAVE ME BLOW JOBS AND PRINTED MONEY AT THE SAME TIME.

CAPITALS!

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Now playing: Spinal Tap / Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight

Day Twenty: You are a thief of joy

Man, the Office is awesome. Even in episodes that aren't particularly fantastic, there are still plenty of moments which make it better than 85% of all other TV. Like Michael tackling Jim right before the credits.

Or Jim's discussion of Battlestar Galactica with Andy while Dwight is driven slowly insane by his inability to intervene.

Dammit, I love this show in a way that is not healthy.

Right, so, Blog Post, and so on.

Had the second seminar in Animation today, and I'm not sure I gave a sensible answer for anything for the entire two hours. I mean, normally I struggle to keep the horrible sarcasm out of my answers, but today I think I was too tired. Plus, it was focused around Wallace and Gromit, which I absolutely adore, and therefore hate deconstructing. I don't want to discuss how Wallace represents essential Britishness, or how the entire cast of the movie is a metaphor for class struggle in the UK. I'm quite prepared to hear more about how Disney appear to be a hellish pit of absolute evil, because it reinforces my beliefs that anything that appears cuddly and child-friendly is probably Satan in disguise.

It's the big Saturday LCR tomorrow, and I plan on getting rascally drunk and comporting myself with the usual dignity and poise that I do at all my social events, so I think you'll be treated to a write-up of my adventures on Monday. I'll be working on still being hungover on Monday, despite my ambition to actually plot out the rest of my deadlines for the year and possibly, just possibly start work on some of these essays that are looming over the horizon.

I know, right? Starting work early? PLANNING?

Well, fuck it. It's third year. Maybe I should start doing some actual work.

Nah, I'm gonna play Assassin's Creed instead.

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Now playing: Walter Murphy / A fifth of Beethoven

Day Nineteen: Man I am just crazy tired this week.

Honestly, I'll be so happy when this week is over. I'm just crazy tired at the moment. Still, only one more seminar to go, and the this week is done. And it's the animation seminar. This week we'll be discussing how Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit differs from conventional animation.

Then I guess we'll throw in some absurd and insane political interpretations of the film, because that appears to be what my seminars are all about at the moment. That's fine, I guess, but for once I'd like to spend a couple of hours not looking for Marxist interpretations of a film and instead just remark on how Gromit epitomises all that is good and wonderful about modern silent comedy. Man, some of the actions in the film, even the simple raise of an eyebrow, are simply fantastic.

Anyway, if you've ever played Oblivion, Morrowind, Everquest, World of Warcraft or anything in that sort of vein, you should download Progress Quest. It's a fantastic little program that operates as an awesome satire of all of the above games, as well as something that's quite nice to just run in the background. When you first boot it up, you'll choose your characters name, class, and race, before sorting their individual stats out. Finally, you click 'start game', and the magic begins. You see, this is an automatic RPG. And all it means is that instead of having to do all that tedious grinding, fighting and selling loot, you just watch your character do all this stuff for you, communicated in a lovely window. Here's my current character, Cohen, who's in the Bastard Lunatic class, and is a level 38 Half Man. And I have a +26 Heavy Venomed Broadsword. This cannot be overstated enough. This is a silly, pointless game. And I love it.

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Now playing: The Box Tops / The Letter

Day Eighteen: I AM TIRED AND CANNOT THINK OF A TITLE

Seriously, I was completely knackered today. I decided to go to the bar for a drink with my old housemate Damien, which turned into a goddamn pitcher of beer, and then several Jack Daniels and Cokes, which holy shit, are still £1.80, and therefore cheaper than beer. WHY DID NO-ONE TELL ME THIS?

Anyway, I think I decided around half an hour after I got to the bar that I was going to head upstairs to continue partying, and a half hour after that I wandered upstairs to get my ticket, being the completely prepared and organised motherfucker that I am.

Fun Fact: When the LCR opens at 10 on a fancy dress night, they give out free shit. It's so rare that I ever see this, given that usually, I'm either too drunk, or arrive too late because I'm too drunk. So, I go up at ten, and set my eyes on this beauty:


FUCK YES

So, I ended up rocking this hat for the rest of the evening, and getting so very drunk and spending so much money that I actually had to ask Kate for a fucking glass of water. God, the shame. Damn fun night though.

The problem was, I got woken up at about 10.30 in the morning (This follows stumbling in, completely destroyed at 2am, and then spending the next three hours looking at random youtube videos and giggling to myself) by a phone call from a shitty cold calling agency that I'd signed up with the other day for a phone interview. I'm really not that passionate about calling people to offer them exciting new deals, but this is tempered by a severe need for money.

Apparently, I'm on form when I'm hungover, because I've been asked to come in for a full, proper job type interview. Although I suspect their screening process is not that intense. After all, I assume I just have to follow the script, and not mind when people ask me to kill myself.

In completely unrelated news, the cat who sort of lives in our house despite us never feeding it and infact mostly treat with disdain has shown us his political leanings.


I'm so proud.

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Now playing: Sam & Dave / Soul Man

Day Seventeen: Heroes was mega awesome

I'm not kidding. It rocked my socks. It's so hard to tell you exactly how awesome it was without spoiling it for you, so I'll just say that not only do people get fucked up in this thing, but entire towns get their shit ruined as well. It's fantastic. Watch it. Watch it now.

Emily has come into my room and won't leave me alone now. She's now insisting that I write about nail clippers. I don't even know. What the fuck. I think she must have reached a new level of boredom, as she's yelling abuse at strangers through my letterbox. And now she's posted her umbrella cover through my door.

What a twat.

Anyway, she's been kind enough to tell me that I am never going to achieve this challenge, which is bullshit, because I totally am. Well, maybe.

Okay, probably not, but still, I like to think it reflects personal growth, or some hippie bullshit like that. And I think it's working. I'm not actually feeling THE FEAR when I sit down to write these little rambling posts any more. I mean, there is always the worry of 'what in the blue fuck can I write about for two hundred and fifty fucking words?', but I don't dread writing this nonsense any more. It'd be nice to think that this lovely ability will translate into a better ability to write essays at more reasonable hours, and also start them with slightly more advance time than the night before, but I think we know that this is a deeply unlikely scenario. Primarily because this still works, and always will.

Hopefully.

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Now playing: Oasis / Fucking in the Bushes

Day Sixteen: The Day of not very much really.

Why do people send text messages to me at 7am?

Do they not know who I am? I'm lucky if I'm up at all before midday, let alone 7am. In all likelihood I'll have gone to bed just a few hours before. Terrible state of affairs.

Of course, when I finally wake up and call back, it's really helpful if you've turned your phone off. YOU IDIOT.

Anyway, all this aside, let's talk about this Lost thing. It's a TV show that a few people are excited about, so I thought I'd use the magic of piracy to get involved and start watching some of this thing. I'd caught a couple of episodes when it first started showing because 'omigod, you gotta check out this show, it'll blow your mind', but I'd never really paid it much mind because, well, I'm lazy. I've got the commitment to maybe watch one or two shows at a time, and I think at the time I was busy with, hell, futurama or south park or something more fun and entertaining than what I thought this was.

But now, having started rewatching the whole lot (after finishing my epic Doctor Who marathon. No kidding, every single episode since the 2005 relaunch, including all the specials and stuff. It's mighty good stuff.) it turns out, at least so far, that Lost rocks pretty hard. It's an excellent opening two parter for one, and it has the mark of a great show in that someone totally gets sucked through a jet engine.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to giving the rest of this a watch. Although, as I understand it, it's around the second season that it all turns crap anyway, so, y'know, we'll see.

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Now playing: Earth Wind & Fire / That's The Way Of The World

Day Fifteen: Where the fuck is the Office?

What the hell is this nonsense? Not airing until next week? What the fuck?

Seriously unhappy at this stage. I mean, yes, I know I'm not watching on telly, but downloading it, and yes, that means I'm stealing it and should not be entitled to complain about a goddamned thing, but still. Dammit.

This means I have nothing to write about. I was going to wax lyrical about how fantastic the Office was continuing to be, but now I'm stuck. And I nearly downloaded a fucking virus because some absolute arsehole decided to upload a virus, stick it in a fake video file and pretend it was the latest episode. What absolute bastards.

Okay, I'll ramble about what I did today. This bloody website is going to become an actual blog. Got woken up this morning at 10.30 by James asking where I was. He seemed to think we had a seminar, forgetting that the one we had last week was a one-off event. So I laughed at him a little bit, told him the right time, and lay in bed for a little while longer. Then, when I finally left the house at 1.20 and stepped into pouring fucking rain I realised that God must be punishing me.

Although, sitting outside our room at ten to two and getting a call from James asking where the room was, him having walked down to a completely different building in the rain was fairly amusing.

And, as far as I thought, the seminar went very well. Plenty of Disney hate got spread around, plus we got to debate Capitalist vs. Communist interpretations of the Seven Dwarfs, which is always a bit of lighthearted fun.

But still, no fucking Office until next week. Shit.

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Now playing: Rush / Tom Sawyer

Day Fourteen: Miscellany

I woke up today, confident, refreshed and ready to face the world. I stayed in a good mood for all of a minute, which was how long it took me to check my phone, realise the time, and grasp that I had a lecture starting in less than five minutes.

Shit.

Rather than trying to get into campus, turning up late for the lecture in a horrible sweaty mess, I instead opted for the far more prudent option of skipping the lecture entirely and leisurely turning up at two o'clock instead.

This did mean that my first act on campus was joining Ruth and James for a pint rather than starting any work, but hey, I'm sure it worked out for the best. After all, beers quite a social lubricant, and I'm sure it only makes me a more entertaining person in seminars. As to the actual intellectual content, as I did try to prove that watching The Dark Knight makes you a better person. Which it totally does, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong to a painful degree.

As a completely random aside, this makes me giggle like a moron every time I read it. Yes, I know it's the Sun, but fuck it, the day I can't laugh at someone for being fat and getting a parking ticket outside KFC is the day I start proving the arguments about video games leading to insane killing sprees right.

Furthermore, I've discovered a neat little plugin for Firefox that lets me insert my "currently listening to" into my blog entries, helping keep this on the march to becomeing a fucking livejournal. Before you know it, this'll be nothing but thinly veiled Harry Potter slash fiction. The change will be seemless.

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Now playing: Scatman John / Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)

Day Thirteen: The Adventure Continues.

So, I woke up this morning feeling pretty terrifically hungover. Post-mortem analysis of the night reveals that I drank at least ten cans of beer before I even left the house, so I can only imagine how drunk I was when I turned up at the Pyjama Party LCR. Further investigation reveals that there are several half drunk bottles of scotch in our house, my dressing gown smells even more peculiar than usual, and there was a sash to fasten someone elses dressing gown in my pocket when I woke up.

I don't even fucking know.

So, I wake up to an empty house, and all this excitement ahead of me, and get a call from James to meet in town. Hungover shower and getting dressed later, I meet James in Maplins, where we talk shit about USB hubs for far longer than is healthy, then head to Wetherspoons for Epic beer and burger. It feels godly, and it's not just because of the pint of beer that I had with it. Shortly after that, we head back to campus to grab a lecture on the evils of Disney and watch us some Snow White.

I have nothing to add to that video, other than Dopey is fucking metal a good fifteen years before rock and roll even existed. Finally, I head back home, and I've literally spent the entire time watching Doctor Who, apart from a short break to watch Men in Black and eat pizza.

Christ, it's a hard knock life being a student.