Kenya's Tusker and France's Desperados

Yes, you are in luck today. I'm also going to do a couple of beer reviews. I mean, I may as well, I'm drinking anyway. This is Tusker, the national beer of Kenya. This is the first African beer I've ever drank, and it's not bad at all. At 4.2% it's not the strongest lager in the world, but it's got a surprisingly robust flavour for how light it is. It's a pleasant dim amber colour and probably fits heavily into the 'thirst-quencher' category that a lot of beers from warmer climes tend to abide to. In a way, its quite similar to Keo, although I think that Cypriot beer may well be quite a bit stronger. Anyway. I like it a lot. Good fact about Tusker that I learned by reading the back of the bottle: Did you know that Tusker was the name the elephant that killed George Hurst, one of the founders of the brewery. And for some reason they saw fit to immortalise the homicidal pachyderm by naming the beer after it.



Let's be honest. Desperados is a girl's drink. I don't care if it's 5.9%, has tequila in it, or has a tough, Mexican wanted poster typeface on the bottle. El Mariachi or even Inspector Yuen from Hard Boiled would probably spit it out if they drank it. It tastes like Babycham. It pretends to be Mexican, when it's not, and it pretends to be a guy's drink, when it's not. It's a girl's drink. Fact. I'm just telling you this to put the review in context. I don't dislike it, the limeyness is pleasant, and it goes down very easily. It is very noticably intoxicating though, even though you can't really taste the tequila in it. There's also something very dry about it, putting it firmly in the 'drink to get pissed' rather than 'thirst quencher' category, which is what I like about Corona and Sol, the beers that Desperados seems desperate to ape, albeit in a much stronger way. Put it this way - I would buy a crate of this if I was trying to get blazing, but not just for the pleasure of drinking. Having said that, I gave one of the bottles to my wife and she said it was the best beer she had ever tasted. Ergo: girl's drink.

Cook Like A Bastard - Episode 2: Singapore Noodles

Ni hao, motherfuckers. You know, helping people is my game. I like to help people make delicious dishes to eat and enjoy alone and in company. I like to help share my knowledge and help show the poor, gastronomically retarded people who shop at Iceland and eat the same food all the time that it is easy to cook a decent meal from scratch for a decent price. And if you fuck with me, I will help you in another way. I will help you to die.

It's not just Ramsay I dislike, weak and ineffectual Jamie Oliver also ires me. Middle-aged women may love you, Jamie, but I can see through you. Jamie Oliver wouldn't last two seconds in the joint, unless he shaved his ass and became somebody's man-wife. He'd turn punk in a second, no doubt.

Enough of this sorry shit, Oliver.

This episode, I intend to show you how to make Singapore noodles, a curry-based noodle recipe that is the ultimate collision between Indian and Chinese cuisines. Quite how the Chinese got hold of curry, I don't know, but they certainly put it to good use in this spicy, savoury and deeply delicious dish. All qualities are relative. Feel free to jack up the chili rating if you so desire. Something that I didn't do, but would probably work well, is to add ground peanuts or cashews to the mix. Maybe next time.

What you need:
Noodles (rice noodles if you have them)
Mushrooms, chopped
Mangetout or petit pois
3 tablespoons groundnut oil
1 1/2 tablespoons of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
2 chilis, chopped
Water chestnuts, chopped
3 spring onions

And for the curry sauce element:
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
3 tablespoons store bought madras curry paste
2 tablespoons Chinkiang vinegar or Shaoxing rice wine
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
Half a can of coconut milk
175 ml of chicken or beef stock

For the egg element:
Couple of eggs
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper

For the meat element:
Pork, ham, chorizo, prawns, chicken, or whatever meat you want to put in it

I find it helps to split this recipe into five phases: meat, spice, vegetable, curry, and egg. This recipe is actually unbelievably quick to put into practice, you will find that it's all the chopping and mixing that takes all the time. Prepare all the materials above before you start, mixing the curry and egg elements in separate bowls. First things first, boil your noodles for 3 to 5 minutes, then sieve it out. Then pour through some cold water and toss with a little sesame oil. This will stop the noodles from congealing in an unpleasant manner.

Put the noodles to one side and heat the wok. Always heat the wok before adding oil. Not quite sure why this is but I am reliably informed that it is good practice. If you are using pork or chicken add it now and stir fry until sealed. For chicken, give it a little longer. You don't want to mess with chicken. It can be a most unforgiving meat. When you don't see any pink left, pop in the garlic, ginger, chillis, onions, and stir fry that sucker until the meat is coated in its goodness. Then add the mushrooms, water chestnuts, mangetout or petit pois and spring onions. Stir fry until the mixture shrinks.

Now comes the moment of truth: dump in the noodles and stir like a maniac. Make sure it doesn't stick. You should add your curry mixture - which should be a thin and oily sauce - now. Continue to stir, making sure it doesn't stick. Give up around five minutes until the moisture has evaporated off. Then add the egg mixture and stir until the egg sets. Garnish with coriander leaves, or don't bother if you're a pleb, and serve with Tsingtao beer. Job done.

Give me a show, BBC.

Update

Hello peeps. As most, if not all of you will know, Kaki and I got married nearly three weeks ago, and this is the reason for my lapse in blogging. Since most of my readership were probably at the wedding, I will scrimp a bit on the details and say it was a thoroughly enjoyable day for all concerned, not least the people who drank themselves into comas.

Feeling pretty good to be a married man, though in reality I think it doesn't actually feel that different. I have pretty much considered Kaki and I "married" since we first started seeing one another 4 years ago, but there you go. So same old Dave, if anyone was worried about me up and changing on them.

In other news: met Gordon Brown this week, at Kinghorn Ecological Centre. I was allowed around 60 seconds to ask him whatever questions I wanted, so long as they were about Kinghorn Ecological Centre. So I asked "How do you like Kinghorn Ecological Centre?" He said he approved of it. It's not like I had any barbed questions up my sleeve, but it wasn't great to have people telling me what he would and would not talk about. Anyway, he seemed all right, looking perhaps a little pale, but certainly like he would rather be mucking around with ducks in Kinghorn than being spit-roasted by Cameron and Clegg on the floor of the House of Commons. Urgh, actually that is a truly horrible image. I meant metaphorically spit-roasted. You're sick in the head.



Had a bottle of this while I was on my holidays: Black Isle Organic blonde. It's a natural tasting, wholesome and full-flavoured lager that has made me vow never to drink Tennants again. That is it. Never again. Why should I? I deserve better.

FACT OF THE DAY

Men Without Hats are by far the best musical group consisting of a man, a woman, a dwarf and a dog that has ever existed.

Brooklyn Lager - USA

This is a first for me. An American beer that isn't like making love in a canoe ("Fucking close to water!"). Brooklyn Lager boasts that it's the "pre-prohibition beer" which may or may not be true. Still, there is something distinctly classic tasting about this reddy-ambery, malty, yeasty, floral and quite strong lager. Drinking it makes me think about hot dogs and baseball, and I delight in the idea that depression era pissheads might have sipped this while looking nervously over their shoulders in damp basements and wearing fingerless gloves. I think I will be having a bit more of this in the future. Probably Americans look down on this stuff derisively but it is still quite a novelty for me. Like it.

Cook Like A Bastard - Episode 1: Lamb Saag

(From the rather crap picture, this looks quite minging, but I assure you it is not. God dammit, I'm celebrity-journalist-chef, not a photographer)

Konichiwa, bitches. I read an article not long ago that said that precisely one quarter of Britons (that's a metric quarter, not Imperial) can't cook a meal from scratch, and the other 75 per cent have trouble with anything more complicated than spag bol. "Holy shit!" I thought "Can my countrymen really be that dense? I bet the French don't have this problem."

Contrary to popular belief, cooking is easy. In fact, it can be piss-easy. All you really have to be able to do is follow a simple set of instructions. In essence, as a wise but crude man once said, and I paraphrase: "All you have to do to succeed is not be a mong." Are you a mong? Yes? Well, Cook Like A Mong is next door. This is Cook Like A Bastard.

Cook Like A Bastard is the most important event in culinary history. Gordon Ramsay can swear, sure, but can he swear as well as me? Gordon Ramsay makes talk that we do not care to understand. I will give it to you straight, idiot-style, and thereby drag you kicking and screaming out of the gastronomic muck.

I remember a time when also when I couldn't rustle up grub to save my life, and was content to eat Chicken Mcnuggets morning noon and night. I called it "childhood". Now that I am a grown up however, I must be able to prepare my own food.

As a man, there are only really two types of meals that you need to be able to make:
1) Meals to seduce.
2) Meals that you make because you want to eat them.
Today's recipe falls firmly into the latter category.

I pretty much learned to cook so I could cook curry. Curry is, as has been observed often by rational men around the globe, the greatest foodstuff in existence. It comes in many forms, but my current favourite is this delicious Saag Gosht (literally, spinach lamb). It is minty, herby, and leafy. "But hey!" I hear you cry. "Minty, herby and leafy! That sounds like the sort of pretentious shit that celebrity chefs always spin! I thought you were going to give it to us straight, Dee Oh Double Gee!" Well, listen up suckers, I am giving you this straight. The main ingredients are mint, herbs and leaves, therefore it is minty, herby and leafy. I speak the truth, straight into your mind-sponge.

So if you want to make a curry fit for Lenin himself, just follow these simple steps. Go ahead, it's not rocket surgery!

INGREDIENTS: Many chefs will start a recipe by saying "I only work with the finest ingredients". Good for you, shitbird, but until the book people give me the money I'm due, I will have to make do with the cheapest. Anyhoo, all you need is:

500g Lamb fillets (or chicken, if you are poor or unimaginative)
1 large onion, chopped fine
1 bunch of spinach leaves, roughly chopped
1 tub of fresh cream, 300ml ought to do it
Ghee if you can find it anywhere, otherwise oil

FOR THE MARINADE: chop up the lamb and stick it in a tupperware container overnight with the following:
2 tsp of garam masala
1 tsp of cumin powder
1 tsp of turmeric powder
Pinch of salt
2 green chilis, or more if you are an ultimate badass
1/2 cup of mint leaves
1/2 cup of coriander leaves
4 cloves of garlic, mashed
1" piece of ginger, chopped or ground
1 cinnamon stick

1) When working with meat, it is imperative that you start the night before so you can leave it to marinade for exactly 24 hours. Anything less will not give you a complete food experience. White people, with the exceptions of the ostentatious French and the Fascism-prone Italians, never marinade anything. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. This is why the British have a reputation for bland food. So take all the stuff for the marinade, chop it up together with the lamb and leave that bad boy in the fridge. If you possibly can, mortar and pestle spices and leaves into a paste, if not, roughly chop everything, chances are it will dissolve during cooking anyway.

2) Heat the ghee, or more probably oil, in a wide, flat bottomed pan. Some people like to add the meat first, but I tend to always start with the onions, because I like mine crispy. I'm a barbarian that way. So slam the onions in with the garlic and fry them for a minute or two.

3) Add the meat and marinade. Stir fry until the meat is sealed, and then some. Should be about 5 minutes (that's metric minutes, not Imperial).

4) Now it's time to plop in that cream and shortly thereafter, the spinach. Drop the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes.

5) When the spinach has broken down and dissolved, the sauce is a thick and luxuriant green, and the lamb dark and enticing SERVE THAT FUCKER RIGHT THE FUCK UP with pilau rice and naan bread. Drink a fine Indian beer with it, or if pressed, shit domestic piss.

6) I am king.

I hope you have enjoyed this introductory session of Cook Like A Bastard. That will be £50 please.

If Gordon Ramsay comes around here, I will choke-slam him through a table and put him in the beast choker until his balls burst and his eyes pop out his fucking skull.

Deathmatch of the Day

Who would win in a battle of looking like a nazi? Udo Keir or Jurgen Proktnow?

Keo Premium Beer - Cyprus

For my birthday I was gifted with a crate of international beers, so I thought I would enlighten you to the relative merits of a few of them. I have in my hand at this moment a cold glass of Keo Premium Beer, brewed on the island of Cyprus, and fiercely proud of the fact. It's a light, crisp tasting beer that's damn good if you are drinking because you are thirsty. It's not gritty or synthetic tasting like a lot of other beverages I can name, in fact it's refreshingly natural tasting. The blurb on the back of the bottle says it is unpasteurised, but this makes no sense, because how can beer be pasteurised? Surely that's only milk and cheese? Nevermind, its a good beer that goes down easy with a bit of a wheaty aftertaste. Give it a go next time you're in Cyprus.

Column for Dec 4 2008

Johnston Press owns this shit. Reprint it and I will cut you.

AFTER watching Channel 4’s ‘Cutting Edge: The Fun Police’ last week, I’ve started thinking seriously about health and safety. We are, we are told, all in a significant amount of danger at any given time, in any given location, especially at work.
My own workplace is no different. The Fife Free Press office has wheens of posters (well, three) telling us of ways we could come a cropper. You know the sort. Pictures of people with haircuts from 20 years ago tripping over conspicuous cables, or slipping in spilt coffee with looks of shocked stupidity on their faces. We were recently handed a risk assessment checklist that basically asked us to assess the risks of sitting at a desk and using a phone. It’s as if they think the phone cord might leap up and garotte me, or that the chair might throw me off and roll all over me with its little plastic wheels. About the biggest danger I’m in is the danger of a coronary from my increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Then there’s fire. In the event of a fire, as we know, we should proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest fire exit (usually just the door you normally use). But if there really was a fire in the building, would you honestly go in an orderly fashion, or would you run full-pelt towards the door, shoving over co-workers and leaving them to fend for themselves? That, I think is the purpose of all of these fire drills - so that when a real fire actually happens we just won’t believe it and tramp out miserably like usual.
Whenever you get a new job, of course, you have to go through the bother of learning how to survive in the jungle that is the modern workplace all over again. You will be sat down, and usually shown a video containing all the common sense things that we really ought to know anyway. Things like: don’t stick your extremities into machinery, and don’t try to reach things on high shelves by standing on top of a swivel chair in high heels. Since I myself don’t wear high heels, this isn’t a problem for me, but it does make me wonder what sort of a person would do that sort of thing in the first place. I mean, for that to appear in a health and safety video it would have to have happened to someone at least once, correct? I would like to meet that woman. I bet that every time she and her colleagues are called for refresher health and safety training she hangs her head in shame as she is taunted with great vigour.
One thing the video will always tell you is the correct way to lift a box, even if your job does not actually require you to lift boxes. I have absolutely no idea why this is. One thing I do know is the apocryphal tale that once a weight lifter lifted a heavy dumbell wrong and their bowels fell out. Maybe this is the same principle. We couldn’t have someone’s bowels falling out of them at work, could we? I can hear it now: “Where’s Jimmy?” shouts the manager. “His bowels have fallen out!” comes the reply. “Well then,” the manager tuts, “he should have lifted that box with his knees, not his back!” That’s you telt, Jimmy.
I suppose that health and safety videos, in the end do offer some sage advice, even if in an emergency it tends to go out the window. My own dad, the scientific genius that he is, once nearly crispy fried himself trying to put out an electrical fire with a water fire extinguisher. This is something I would avoid, firstly because I saw a health and safety video that explained to me that water plus electricity equalled death, and secondly because my own keen sense of self-preservation (cowardice, to some) would not allow me to do something as dangerous as fighting a fire.
To be perfectly honest, with the amount of training in health and safety I’ve had I must be a black belt at avoiding injuries and/or death by now. Even from primary school it was instilled in us. We had visits from policemen, telling us how to cross the road properly, visits from firemen, who gave us little cartoon pictures of homes in which we had to circle every fire hazard we saw. Let me tell you there were an awful lot of hazards about. In fact probably only reason some of us go out now is because there are so many things that can kill us in our own homes. Thanks for nothing, school! I know virtually zero about science or mathematics, but I do know an awful lot about fire safety. I’m just another member of the mollycoddled, paranoid health and safety generation.

Column for April 2

This is property of Johnston Press. Reprint at your legal peril.

LAST week’s FFP story about KHS pupils boycotting Council-enforced healthy school lunches got a bit of discussion started in the office the other day. I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t really blame the pupils. I was the same when I was in school, nipping off to the shops to buy chip butties, pot noodles, and most importantly pies. Is there really anything better than a decent steak pie? I spent a couple of years living abroad (for work rather than legal reasons, in case you ask) eating rice and fish almost exclusively and sometimes I would wake up in the night clawing at the air, trying to grasp the beautiful, crusty steak pie that I saw in my dreams. Have I ever had dreams about salad? No.
There are two things teenagers hate more than anything else - healthy food and being told what to do. Imposing a healthy menu on them from above has only made them recoil further from the idea of healthy eating. Personally, if I was in charge I’d just let them have the standard school menu, because surely its better to have them eating a hot meal in school - even if its not the healthiest in the world - than going out and eating absolute junk. That way the school could covertly control what goes into the food without them knowing. Clever, eh?

THE Jacqui Smith porn expenses claim scandal has certainly not portrayed the Home Secretary or her hubby Richard Timney in a particularly good light. In addition to finding out a little too much about Mr Timney’s leisure activities, we’ve also learned that the pair have a chronically bad taste in films. What sort of person would need to watch ‘Ocean’s 13’ twice? As for ‘Surf’s Up’, the surfing penguin epic, I hope that one was for the kids.

THIS week I also watched the G20 with interest. The thing that interests me most is that the two world leaders who always seem to be having most fun are Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy. In every picture they appear to be grinning like loons or laughing maniacally. I also worry about how orange Berlusconi is. He looks like he is made of plastic and almost certainly has doll’s hair.
Sarah Broon also hosted a girl’s night in for the other halves of the leaders. I’ll tell you who I feel sorry for: quantum chemist Joachim Sauer, husband of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Who did he have to hang about with? He couldn’t go to the G20 or the girl’s night in. At least Richard Timney was probably free.

THIS weekend I intend to do nothing. Absolutely nothing. This was my plan last week but I was cruelly suckered by unplanned appearances from friends and various other obligations. On Saturday night I intend to drink beer and watch ‘Mad Max’. I will not leave the flat unless absolutely necessary, and by that I mean if it catches fire is subject to some other catastrophe. I think I will have a pretty good time.

THIS WEEK ... tried to persuade fashion columnist that what women really need are utility belts ... cooked pad thai, peri-peri chicken and rice and peas ... played ‘Call of Duty 2’ on the ancient Xbox

Not blogging

Wow! I've been a lazy asshole! It's been nearly three months since I have posted anything at all on this blog. Perhaps it's because I know have a newspaper to write every week, and blogging seems less fun. I promise I will do better.
I'm going to reprint some of my columns here, and hopefully that will keep my adoring public sated. If there is still anybody out there. Maybe nobody reads this at all... Maybe I'm just talking to myself... Ooh, scary. Comment so I know I'm not going ga-ga.

Holy Hell! Aren't you a lucky bunch! Two scoops of vintage Blackwood, coming up!

Misadventures in journalism

Apparently the following is too close to libel to print in an actual newspaper, so here is an unpublished column. This is my opinion, and it's fair comment so don't bother suing me. I haven't got any money anyway.

Lewis Moonie has been taking up a disproportionate amount of my time the
past few weeks. He has been keeping a low profile, which is not
surprising considering the myriad of transgressions that the media have
been accusing him of. Being a reporter in the local paper of the area he
served for so long, it falls to myself to obtain a quote from Lord
Moonie. Just one quote, I think, and I will go away. Sadly, all attempts
to contact the peer and erstwhile Kirkcaldy MP have all failed. I have
phoned, phoned and phoned again, but to no avail. I have left dozens of
messages. In a fit of blind panic, I even went to his house to post a
letter through his door politely requesting an interview. This attempt
also did not bear fruit.
It seems, however, that I am not the only one suffering from Lord
Moonie's reluctance to speak to the press. Huffy reporters have been
plopping phrases like "Lord Moonie was unwilling to comment" and "Lord
Moonie did not return our phone calls" into their articles all over.
Some reporters from a publication that will remain nameless even went to
his house to ask him for an interview there. Apparently, he yelled at
them to get off his land and threatened to summon the polis. It strikes
me that by releasing even one press statement, he could stop the press
hounding him. I know this for a fact. We are a lazy bunch - why bother
interviewing someone yourself when you have a juicy press release? After
all, the other three peers all commented, Lord Taylor even apologised in
the Lords for any ills he may have committed, and nobody is bothering
them.

I was disturbed to read that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA) had sent a letter to the owner of the famous Anstruther Fish Bar
urging them to change their establishment's name to the Anstruther Sea
Kitten Bar. Presumably, this is to point out the hypocrisy of carnivores
eating some types of animals and not others, and to tastelessly try to
put us off our food. First and foremost, this parallel is nonsensical,
because kittens and fish are nothing alike. Fish aren't even cute and
you can stroke or play with them, so why not eat them? Even kittens eat
fish. The fish deserve it.
I would also like to state categorically to PETA, right now, that if I
was hungry enough, I would eat a kitten. I know, I know. I consider
myself a cat lover, but if there was no other meat on offer, then I
would be forced to get my proteins somewhere. Animals are animals, and
provided I had formed no emotional bond with said cat, I would have no
problem devouring kitty burger or even cat curry.
I honestly think there are things more pressing in the world than
complaining about people eating animals. Another thing that annoys me is
when people raise money for animal charities. I say we sort out the
ethical treatment of animals once we have attained ethical treatment for
people. People in some parts of the world live in worse conditions than
most animals in this country, in crippling poverty or under threat of
violence and torture. I say give money to charities that would help
them, and forget about the animals.
When was the last time a fish did anything for you, anyway?

This Week: Got stuck into series 3 of The Wire... Re-read Watchmen
comics in anticipation of next month's movie release ... got down to
cooking some serious cuisine in my new flat's spacious kitchen

Hair Don't

I feel I must share this all with you.

I am a man who has, for as long as I can remember, hated getting haircuts. As child I would wail incessantly and flail like I was having a seizure to avoid the barber even touching my hair. For years as a teenager I decided to cope with this problem by simply not going to the hairdresser. It was only after people started calling me "rat fink" that I decided I needed a certain amount of care in that department. Since then I have regarded haircuts as a necessary evil.

I don't know what it is, but you can't seem to get a decent haircut for a decent price these days. Last year in Nottingham I had to get my hair cut regularly by students for 3 bucks a pop, because all the barbers in the city centre were charging £16 or over, which, quite frankly, I am not willing to pay for just a trim.

In KDY I have always gone to the same place. It used to cost me £4.50 and I was always happy with the service I got. No-frills haircut: never great, but cheap and once I murder it with product no-one would notice anyway. Recently however, this place has been getting a lot worse. The people who used to work there have moved on and been replaced. There are three guys who work there now and none of them are that good.

This time though, they really, really fucked up. I went in and sat down, and told the guy what I wanted. Which is short back and sides, just a trim, and don't get creative. All was going well, until for no apparent reason, he reached up with the clippers and cut a square centimetre chunk out of my hairline at the temple. I wasn't happy but thought I would trust the guy to know what he was doing. Strangely, having done this to one side of my head, he then left the other side untouched, giving me an asymmetrical look, as if I had mange on one side of my head only. I mentioned it to him, but he told me he had "just squared it off a bit". I wasn't happy but bit my tongue.

I went home and looked at myself in the mirror. I thought I looked like I had been shaved ready for surgery. It looked terrible. He had plainly made a mistake and cut off too much hair, and I think he knew that he had done that because he didn't do the other side as well. I also discovered that I had a mole I didn't know about before on the pale, virginal skin of my skull, which has not seen the sun since I first grew hair in the mid-eighties. This should be a good indication that he went too far. So I marched back up to the barbershop to start some shit. At this point I didn't care that I had been going to that barbershop for years, and if I alienated them there would be nobody left to cut my hair.

I went in and told them I wasn't happy with the haircut. I explained that he had cut off too much hair and I was now asymmetrical. He offered to do the other side. I told him I didn't want him to do the other side, I wanted my money back. He kept saying that he had just squared it off, and I had had a full haircut so couldn't have my money back. I think the barber (who shall remain nameless as shall his shop) knew he had done me wrong, but it pained him to admit it. I could see I was close to getting my money back.

One thing you must know about Fife, is that no matter where you are, if you are having an altercation of any sort in a public place, some random tosspot will always pitch in his two cents. In this case it was one of the customers who waiting to be served. He was that sort of guy who always blunders into any discussion and gives you his totally unasked-for opinion. You know the sort of guy I mean. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but the barbershop is quite close to Smeaton, and the customer to whom I am referring was reading The Sun.

"I've never heard of someone asking for their money back after a haircut" He tutted, like that was a good enough reason for someone not to do it. Well, you have now pal. I explained to the gentleman that while this was none of his business in the first instance, I was not going to pay for a haircut that I was not satisfied with, and that I had been coming to the barbershop for years and had always been happy (lies) with the result. But then they had never shaved a huge chunk out of my head either. At this point I was given my money and I left. I didn't even have to threaten never to come to the barbershop again (although take it as a given that I won't be going back) or even threaten to destroy them, which as a journalist it would be well within my power to do. I have a column coming up, and I could easily use that to bitch about being given a shit haircut.

Anyway, I left, never to return. That is the last time I will ever pay for a haircut. I have had it. I'm buying clippers and I'm just going to do it myself from now on. I'm not going to do it right now because the shaved-out chunk is literally to the skin, and I think it would look weirder if I shaved it shorter all over. In fact the only thing I could do to make it even is to go completely skinhead, which I would only do if I joined the army or if pattern baldness set in. So I'm just going to have to cope with looking like I've escaped from some kind of laboratory. Which sucks because I have to meet with some important people this week. Bollocks.

Hot Damn!

Somebody actually died of eating chilli peppers this week. It's true. He engaged in a manful competition to see who could devour most of the scorching peppers with a bowl of Dolmio sauce and then had a heart attack. Apparently he was complaining of itching all over so maybe he also had a stroke or some kind of brain embolism. This scares the bejesus out of me, because frankly, if someone bet me to eat a bowl of chillis with cooling Dolmio sauce I probably would. That dead guy might as well be me.

I'm a sucker for hot food. I come from the school that believes if a food doesn't make you sweat then it's probably not worth eating. I like a food that bites back. Anyone who has sampled my jerk chicken will tell you I have a tendency to overseason things. I like food to be so hot you'll shit your pants just to cool down.

I am also a sucker for extreme marketing, and am known to purchase any condiment that has either of the following things printed on the label:
1) the word "death".
2) a picture of a flaming skull.

This leads me to hope that any autopsy on this bold, bold gentleman will reveal some other cause of death, because although he died chasing the ultimate chilli high, if it turns out that I'm playing Russian roulette every time I eat a meal and chillis actually contain some kind of secret carcinogen, then it's going to take some of the enjoyment out of it for me.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Meryl Streep?
Do Androids Dream of Quantum Leap?
Do Androids Dream of Little Bo Peep?
Do Androids Dream of The Big Sleep?
Do Androids Dream of Ryan Phillipe?
Do Androids Dream of Uriah Heep?
Do Androids Dream While my Guitar Gently Weeps?
Do Androids Dream of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap?
Do Androids Dream of Creep?
Do Androids Dream of the Battle of Ypres?
Do Androids Dream of owning a jeep?
Do Androids Dream of Gormley Keep?
Do Androids Dream of Haggis and Neeps?
Do Androids Dream of Helm's Deep?
Do Androids Dream of the Wild Eep?
Do Androids Dream of Beep Beep, Richie, Beep Beep?

Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane
Snakes on Dean Cain
Snakes on Bahrain
Snakes on Robbie Coltrane
Snakes on Singing in the Rain
Snakes on Nathan Lane
Snakes on Max Payne
Snakes on Peter Hain
Snakes on Dara O'Briain
Snakes on Insane in the Membrane
Snakes on He Got Game
Snakes on John McCain
Snakes on Bloodrayne
Snakes on Tom Jane
Snakes on Drury Lane
Snakes on Citizen Caine
Snakes on Purple Rain
Snakes on Kurt Cobain
Snakes on Slaine
Snakes on John Wayne
Snakes on Come Back Shane
Snakes on John McClane
Snakes on David Blaine
Snakes on Big Daddy Kane

New job

I start a new job on Monday as a proper journalist. This is good news, and I will write about it in greater detail soon.

Just remember, if you want to dine with the devil, you need a long spoon.

Fact of the Day

CAUSE OF DEATH: Robots

The first human fatality due to robots was recorded in 1979. One Robert Williams, a factory worker in a Ford plant in Michigan, was killed when the arm of a robot designed to retrieve parts from storage struck him in the head.

Urada Kenji, a Kawasaki engineer who died in 1981, is often cited as the first person to be killed by robot attack. While performing maintenance on a robot, he was pushed into a grinding machine by the robot's arm. Some idiot had forgot to deactivate it while it was been tinkered with, and it clearly didn't take too kindly to some flesh-bag interfering with it.

Robots are a threat, I tell you. I pray to Metal Jesus that he shows us mercy.

Spin-offs Suck

(pictured: Torchwood - only one of them is all in the way straight, and they all look ridiculous walking in slow motion.)

I've recently been watching BBC 3's Torchwood - which I previously avoided like the plague - due to an intense feeling of having missed something in the series finale of Comrade-General Who the other month. There was so much that I felt I didn't understand full about Russell T. Davies' reconstructed Whoniverse, that I resorted to watching what I knew to be an utterly awful spin-off show to plug the gaps. Let me tell you I have not been disappointed. It is the worst sci-fi show I have ever seen in my life. By far. I have watched most of the first season and every episode has been like pulling teeth.

Partly it's the script, which is beyond lousy, and the characterisation, which makes no sense at all, and seems to actually change from episode to episode. Is it the acting? Maybe. John Barrowman is reasonably good in Doctor Who as a comedy sidekick with a penchant for armaments and buggery, but as a brooding hero type? It doesn't really figure. And it's not because he's gay, it's just because there's a rotten script to go along with the concept of having a gay hero, because apart from his sexuality the character is so poorly drawn, and because at the end of the day Barrowman just isn't that watchable as an actor.

The other characters are unfeasibly dull as well. Eve Myles' character bores me to tears. Her dilemma about her affair with Owen (Burn Gorman)is an utterly unnecessary attempt to sex up the show and leaves the viewer - frankly - not giving a shit whether she chooses a boring chud or an obnoxious wee nyaff. Elsewhere the characterisation makes no sense. Throughout the first season they try to build up this impression that Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd) harbours all this utter despair and a burning hatred for Jack, who whacked his cyber-lady G-friend in the fourth episode. Surprisingly, within a few episodes, he seems to get over it, then boffs Jack, the murderer of his girlfriend, instead. Whatever, Russell T. Davies.

I was actually going to watch Torchwood tonight, but I was so put off by the idea of sitting through another episode that I actually decided to write this blog saying how crap it is instead. What I don't understand whenever they try to bring in a more adult tone to TV shows, they do it by inserting pointless sex scenes and the word "fuck" every now and then to remind we're watching a show for grown-ups. TV's Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off went a similar way some times. The second episodes of both Torchwood and Angel are in fact exactly the same - an alien/demon transfers itself from person to person by having sex with them, and then gets killed by someone in a long coat. Truly rubbish, although Angel did have its moments.

Other miscellaneous things I hate about Torchwood: 1)Way too much walking in slow motion and trying to look cool. When will people learn that walking in slow motion to a pumping bass-heavy soundtrack just makes you look like a knob. That goes double if you are wearing a long coat. 2)I cannot take anyone speaking in a Welsh accent seriously, especially if you are trying to be scary, talking dirty or speaking in technobabble. It's hard enough if they're English for Christ's sake.

Why are we even talking about this? I should go and read a book or something.

I will not be coming to live in London after all.

As many of you may know, I was recently down in our nation's capital for a job interview with a fairly prominent media organisation. Of course, being the Bond-like individual I am, I aced the interview, but I had a few misgivings about it being a fixed term contract. I was also thinking that I couldn't afford the exorbitant rates in London town. We need to be saving money for the wedding - and eventually for a house at the moment - and I have a feeling we wouldn't be able to do that there. So when they called me up on Monday to tell me I'd got the job I said I was sorry but it just wasn't enough security for me at this point. The next day they rang me up and offered me a permanent position, which I said I had to think about. After a lot of humming and hawing I was eventually decided that although it was a tremendous opportunity, and that I may well have a huge difficulty in finding a job in media in Edinburgh, it's just too risky at the moment financially. I have a feeling it would have screwed us indefinitely. So I once again turned the very generous offer down.

It's rubbish really, because I have been looking for a job like this for ages and when one finally comes around I'm not in a position to take it. It was an incredibly difficult decision to make. I sort of wished I had a magic telescope with which I could look into my possible futures. I think if I had taken the job I would have ended up a jaded, power mad media executive, like Bill Murray in Scrooged.

Oh well, what's done is done. No point in regretting it now. I have no doubt we could have made it but it would have meant a long time of financial hardship, and probably me having to turn some tricks on the old main drag. And I don't want to do that again.

I'm still waiting to hear about a reporting job in Fife, and that might still pan out for me. And if it doesn't, I will break in somehow. And if it doesn't, I will rob a bank. I will become the new John Dillinger.

Spaghetti Cat Redux

The second chapter in the Spaghetti Cat legend.

Spaghetti Cat is Lord of us All

If you haven't already seen this, check it out.

I like the idea of Spaghetti Cat appearing at random in an unexplained context. The story was much funnier before I found out the somewhat prosaic explanation for his presence, so I won't go into it here.

I think I'm going to start leaving pictures of Spaghetti Cat in seemingly arbitrary locations, just to see what happens. I hope I am able to start a cult.

Rant about the TV Licence

I like to pick my battles carefully. I am what could be described as a tactical coward, engaging in conflict only when I am absolutely sure that I will win. This strategy has served me well for years, but as you all know, I occasionally have moments in which bloody-minded rage overcomes my powerful sense of reason and I lose it completely. It usually involves money in some capacity. Those of you who are aware of my long standing legal dispute with Royal Bank of Scotland Plc (or thieving, godless swine as they are known) will know exactly what I mean. Perhaps I will be on the phone, talking to some low-level customer service serf, arguing that I shouldn't have to pay a £12 late fee, since they persist in sending my statements to the wrong address, even though I have phoned to inform them of this several times already, meaning I don't actually get the statement until long past due date. Then a change will occur in me. My normally placid and spiritual demeanour will be shaken and I will start to swear and tremble with barely contained rage. The vein on my head will bulge. I will beat the phone receiver off the wall and scream ruefully.

RBS is not the source of my troubles today, however. Today I have totally different enemy. It is the TV Licensing Authority (or penny-grubbing, shafting bastards as they are known). The TV Licensing Authority, for the benefit of our transatlantic cousins, is the organisation from whom you buy a TV Licence. This is what subsidises the BBC and even if you don't watch the BBC you can't have a TV in the UK and not pay it. They will send the heavy mob to break down your door. It's not like in Japan where you could just grin and pretend not to speak Japanese when the NHK man came around. You can end up with a rather hefty £1000 fine, or even imprisonment.

My gripe with the Licensing Authority began earlier this month when I received a letter telling me it was time to renew my licence at the end of August. I was initially confused because I had paid for the licence up front for a year at the end of September last year. My supposedly logical brain saw it like this: 1 year = 12 months. Apparently, according to the TV Licensing Authority, this is not the case. No, it seems that without realising it I had paid retrospectively for the month of September, a month for which the most part of I didn't even own a TV. I bought my licence on the 26th of September 2007, foolishly expecting it to run until the 26th of September 2008. Now, perhaps I should have known that, but this is the first time I have actually ever paid for a TV licence, and they don't make it very clear at all on the literature. This is because they want to scam you out of as much money as possible, because they are the devil.

So I phoned up to try and get the thing sorted. All I wanted, I told them, was to have my TV Licence for a year like I was I was getting when I signed up. After two conversations with slow, reptile-minded urban youths I was able to get on the phone with a manager who said he couldn't do anything, but if I wrote to customer services they would be able to change it for me.

That lying fuck.

So, nearly a month on and nothing has changed at all. I'm still in the same position. So I rang up today and offered to pay one month's worth of TV licence just so I'm covered up until we leave the flat on the 20th. Guess what? "We can't do short term contracts." Thanks a lot, you fucking drone. Apparently you have to pay an entire other year, then cancel the contract and arrange to claim the money back from the Authority. Oh, and I forgot to mention, you can only claim nine months worth of money back, meaning as well as my extra month they would be confiscating two extra months worth of dough for me for absolutely fuck all. Well, fuck you, TV Licensing Authority. I am not paying you a shitting cent.

My mistake was trying to play by rules. What I should have done when I bought the TV was just use it illegally for a week until the start of October, then got the licence. Then I would be covered until October 31st instead of August 31st. I should have known and tried to fuck them, because they would sure as hell try to fuck me if they got the chance. This is really just reinforcing my opinion that there are no rewards in this life for doing the right thing. It pisses me off that I have to give virtually everything I earn to some poisonous London turd born with a silver spoon up his arse and my licence fee/late payment fee/tax paying his six figure salary so he can twat about eating croissants and drinking bottled water that costs more than my suit. One day I'm going to defenestrate those motherfuckers. I am going to beat every last one of them senseless with nine iron. I am going to chop off their heads and stump-fuck them.

ENDS

Live every week like it's Shark Week

I was looking back at a post Gen wrote about the bit in Jaws II when Jaws leaps out of the water to eat a helicopter. It made me think about sharks, and how awesome they are. Sharks are the fuckest uppest. FACT OF THE DAY: Sharks have only one natural predator. Can you guess what it is? You can find the answer here in this very rare bit of documentary footage shot for Animal Planet. The late Steve Irwin just out of shot. Or maybe he isn't out of shot at all...

Premature Regeneration

(pictured: Who MD and Mad Woman - like it or not one or both of them is worm food)

SPOILERS - Do not read this if you did not watch last week's exciting episode of Who MD, starring Dr Donald Who as Himself and Catherine Tate as Mad Woman.

Premature regeneration - no, it's not some kind of humiliating complaint that you have to go and see a sex professional for, it's what happens when ratings-hungry TV execs decide to kill off the latest incarnation of everyone's favourite Time Lord.

While I agree that every incarnation of the Doctor has his time to go, I think that the Doctor (or the BBC at least) is using up his lives too fast. In 2005 we were treated to Christopher Eccleston's Doctor - created of about equal parts stoicism and buffoonery, with perhaps a dash of carmudgeonliness - and following his demise next year we got David Tennant with his silly quiff, weasel face and trainers. But despite my early reservations that Tennant was totally wrong for the role the man has grown on me, and now I find it hard to imagine anybody else playing the Doctor. Tennant's Doctor so balances the qualities that we expect from Planet Britain's top time-travelling physician. He fluctuates between a sort of wounded loneliness and a near-psychotic joye de vivre. So much so that you occasionally wonder if the Doctor is having fun, or just trying really hard to have fun to cope with the utter horror he seems to live with on a daily basis (planet blew up, keeps getting people killed, main squeeze trapped in alternative dimension etc). The moments that work best with Tennant's Doctor are the ones where you see the cracks appearing - when he is forced to confront the human cost of his temporal galavanting, like Peter Davison's Doctor did when he realised that he had inadvertently allowed the death of one of his companions.

In the old days, incarnations of the Doctor lasted for years. Or did it just seem that way? Tom Baker did the job for seven years continuously. But most of the rest only lasted about three years. Either way, I don't think it's time to wax Tennant just yet - he has proven a very popular Doctor. It's possible that a poorly thought out regeneration could shaft the shows popularity (Step forth from the shadows, Colin Baker!) and in any case such a formidable Doctor as Tennant's shouldn't out like a wuss having been zapped by a puny Dalek's death ray. In addition to that, he needs the opportunity for one last quip before he dies: "It's too late, I'm regenerating!" doesn't really cut it.

Doctor Who is essentially a tramp - he never changes his clothes, he hasn't got a job and he lives in a phone box. To top that off he seems to be a pervert as well - flying round the galaxy abducting any fine young fillies he desires (and for some reason gurning Catherine Tate). To play the Doctor well you need to have a somewhat whimsical aspect to you, and I think Tennant has that down to a tee. All the others who have been mentioned in connection with the role of the Eleventh Doctor - Robert Carlyle, John Hannah and James Nesbitt (Begbie, Rebus and Parlabane) - I can't really see any of them doing it properly, apart from maybe Nesbitt. But who knows? I've been wrong in the past. Gah, it's getting late and I have to go to work tomorrow. I am a businessman you see. I have no time to finish this meditation. Just rest assured I will be watching on Saturday with bated breath (or possibly on iplayer later on with bated breath) to see what they come up with. I will have my fingers crossed for a not-dead Tennant.

Stan Winston dies

Shit a brick.

Old person moan of the week

(Pictured: A first class stamp - worth "fuck all" these days)

Is it just me or is a first class stamp not worth the paper it is printed on these days? Last week I spent nearly all of my free time filling in countless application forms, printing out CVs, covering letters, personal statements, photocopying documents and articles from times gone by, before folding them nicely into several big friendly brown A4 envelopes to be sent to prospective employers. I dropped them in the post box, listening to them hit the mountain of post with a satisfying rustle. "Good job!" I thought and ran around the park in celebration.

When I got back, I learned that apparently, there are now special stamps for letters over 240 x165 mm and anything over 100g in weight. I was flabbergasted. By the time I realised my error the postie had been, and there was no chance of getting my letters back. All of my work was undone. I might as well have flushed them down the bog. I called Ma Blackwood in the hope of an explanation.

"What's the deal with this?" I demanded.
"Didn't you get the leaflet?" She said, before casting the phone to the ground to brutally discipline one of my many siblings.

No, I did not get the leaflet. After a quick investigation I discovered that the system had been changed while I was in Japan on Her Majesty's secret service. I wailed in affront.

I remember the days when a single first class stamp would allow you to send even a large parcel containing generous amounts of pornography, a pound of raw sausage meat, Gentleman's Relish and a brick anywhere in the UK and it would be there the next day. Guaranteed.

Not so today. It more or less defies the point of even having ordinary first class stamps if you can't even send most birthday cards with them. As for the 100g rule, who has a set of scales just sitting around to weigh an envelope? Women, probably, but not I. I have to rely on guesstimation.

Even worse is the dawning realisation that Royal Mail may have delivered my letters anyway and charged the editors of ten regional newspapers that I want to work for a surcharge of £1.60 plus the postage to read my CV. This will probably not get me a job anywhere.

I know this is a bit of an old person style moan, and you might think that at 25 I've turned a corner into carmudgeonhood, but come on - Big long stamps? Rubbish!

Busy

(Picture: me, Kaki and Uncle Chuck share a couple of laffs)

You know I'd just love to write a big steaming blog for you all to read but sadly things aren't shaping up that way for old Blackwood. I've got so much crap on at the moment it actually hurts. The NCTJ only have a few more flaming hoops for me to jump through before I can get round to actually being employed (properly) as a journalist. I aim to start soliciting myself for a desk sometime this week - I only hope finding a job in journalism isn't as impossible as everybody I have ever talked to says it is.

I've also been busy writing a novel. It's looking more and more like it might eventually get done. I have finally hit two completed chapters which means that it is no longer a short story and it is time to get someone more qualified than myself to look over it and tell me how to make it readable. I will post more on this when there is more to say.

I hit a quarter-century old last week. So much for all you haters who thought I'd have choked to death in a horrific pie-eating accident by now or even been suffocated by my own beard (which I have now shaved off to due cleanliness issues, and the fact it interfered with various mouth related tasks, such as eating and breathing).

No more right now.

Science Question of the Week

At what point does a milkshake become a cake?

No.

Treachery!

Hard Bastard of the Week

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7353025.stm

You got stabbed? Seeking medical treatment? No, just have a sausage and a bit of a kip and everything will be just dandy.

Mental.

Engaged

It has been a while since I have updated, indeed some time since I have done anything not related to my course. In the first week of so-called "Holidays" I was up in Newcastle enjoying the hospitality of Amy Hunt and Fergus Mackinnon while working as a hired goon for a certain daily in the area. As usual got a lot done, had a few laughs, voxpopped a few unintelligible Geordies, got some primo ideas and advice and left with a slightly better idea of what I'm meant to be doing than before. This is good and it should be encouraged.

In addition to that I have found myself gainfully employed again. I am now a bar. man at a respected club/venue in Nottingham's centre. I like this because they pay me money to sling drinks to metallers, although it does suck that I can't drink any myself. Tantalus, one sympathises. The sheer amount of stuff vis a vis weird customers and characters that hang about would take ages to summarise, so I'll just say that I will get to that some other time.

The big news this month, however, is that Kaki and I are engaged. Apologies to my vast legion of female fans and admirers, but I'm off the market for good. I'd be lying like a mofo if I said it went down exactly the way I'd planned it, but she graciously accepted my offer and now we're betrothed. Next thing is planning how we're going to cope with the immense logistical difficulties of importing either her family from Canada to the UK for the wedding or visa versa. Perhaps we'll have it on some neutral spot in the middle of the Atlantic so nobody can complain. I hear Reykjavik is nice this time of year. We're just going to enjoy being engaged for a time though, before the nerve-spackering stress of planning takes hold.

So this is how it happened: I bought the ring some time ago with the assistance of co-conspirator Salma Conway who agreed to take me to Birmingham's jewellery quarter to make my purchase. I sort of expected the jewellery quarter to look like a Warsaw ghetto in about 1879, but actual it looked a lot like Glenrothes. Nevertheless, we got down to business and after a little while found the perfect one. It was a classy little platinum number with a slim, tapering band ideal for a lass with skinny fingers. In the centre was a gleaming diamond sitting there like the most expensive carbon allotrope you've ever seen. I got a sort of jittery feeling like being tasered by a mall security guard but being too drunk to really feel it - so I bought it and left.

All was well. I hid the ring in a secret place where Kaki would never find it. Occasionally when she was out of the house I would get the ring out and fondle it like a domesticated Gollum. Unfortunately, when you love someone you have to do this thing called "sharing". And sharing also means that you have to tell your other half things, for instance when you buy an expensive engagement ring and then cock up budgeting for it so you run out of money four days before you were supposed to go to Rome, ironically enough where you had planned to present said ring.

I am, by all accounts, a fabulous liar and deceiver, but Kaki has this way of getting through my fibs like some Orwellian interrogator. Anyway, she succeeded in catching me in a lie about my financial situation (much better now since I got paid btw) and went about tearing me apart with a combination of awkward questioning, ranting obscenities and feminine doublespeak. Kaki does have a bit of a temper, and I confess I pushed one of her major buttons by lying to her, but I can honestly say I had never seen her that angry. No - not angry - crazy. Shithouse rat, Grace Jones crazy. She was knocking plates around in the kitchen with a wild-eyed expression and cussing me out when I realised I couldn't put up with the deception any more, went through to the other room, removed my precious from its hiding place and prepared to hand it over. I walked back through to the kitchen and said I could explain everything.

So I whipped it out in our crappy little kitchen, got on one knee and asked her to marry me. Ten minutes of crying later, she agreed. Talk about an emotional rollercoaster. Anyway, everything got resolved in the end, I was vindicated and it was established that I would only lie to Kaki in special situations where it was in her own interest. Like this one.

So there it is, the arse-backwards, clod-like and awkward way I proposed to my soon-to-be wife. It's not the least smooth thing I've ever done but it comes close. Still, she's happy and that's what matters. The way we did it was a lot more real than if I'd performed some big showpiece proposal in Rome anyway. I'm pretty sure she'd have figured it out when I put my good shirt on in any case.

Cloverfiend

Don't read this and then bitch to me about spoilers.

This weekend I went to see Cloverfield at the big cinema in town. I was pretty pumped up about finding out what Cloverfield was after the viral marketing campaign and teaser trailers. I was a little disappointed that Cloverfield didn't turn out to be quite as iconic a monster as the likes of Godzilla or Mecha-Bingo but it was still a gripping and well-made film. Essentially what they did was turn the monster movie concept on its head - rather than focussing on the scientists, politicians and soldiers who normally are tasked with eliminating the beast it concentrates on the monster-bait civilians whose lot it usually is to be stomped, chomped or incinerated with atom breath. This means that the sudden appearance of a Cloverfield in the middle of New York goes more or less unexplained. Plot elements such as the inevitable nuking of Manhattan by the desperate military (of course anything called "Operation Hammer Down" is going to be a nuclear strike. If anyone told me they were going to initiate "Operation Hammer Down" I'd get the fuck hence) are told through either peripheral characters or through the news coverage of the events that the characters occasionally stop to gawk at.

Contrary to what a lot of reviewers have said, I actually liked the characterisation and thought it worked pretty well. Dedicating the first half hour of a film about a giant monster levelling a large metropolitan centre to watching a bunch twenty-somethings knobbing around at a party was a risky move on behalf of 'Ol JJ and his directer Matt Reeves but it honestly paid off, because throughout the film you do actually find yourself caring about certain characters. Granted, you hate them to a certain extent for not doing the smart thing and bugging out when they get several opportunities to do so, but you do genuinely hope they make it out OK and there are a couple of extremely shocking moments when characters that have been prominent throughout the first portion of the film get unexpectedly ground into a fine paste by the monster's blood-lust.

Another complaint a lot of people seem to have with the film is the 9/11 parallels are too obvious and that seven years is frankly too soon for a film about 9/11. They accuse the film of simply glorying in the destruction of New York and not actually saying anything. I can sort of see the point of these critics, but it's worth remembering that Gojira (Godzilla to you), which was a thinly-veiled allegory of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings was released in 1954, only nine years after. Besides, the horror and carnage created by both these cinematic brutes was sort of the point, wasn't it? Gojira was a safe way to pass commentary on the pain Japan still felt about the war without irking it's new "ally" the US. Surely New Yorkers deserve the same catharsis? Transferring all the anxieties of this terrible age into something tangible, rather than just a couple of pointless wars against an inscrutable enemy that doesn't deliver the sense of triumph that it should.

Here's a good point though: How many times has New York been destroyed in movies? Fucking loads! Don't ever go there!

Anyway, I digress. I suggested to Kaki (read 'forced her') that we draw how we thought Cloverfield might manifest itself. So here, without further ado are our artists impressions of Cloverfield:
Well, here is my interpretation of Cloverfield. Predictably, I went for a giant hamster design, of the kind I have been drawing for years. The monsterous hamster stomps through New York and swats a jet plane out of the sky. Observe the plane dropping an H-bomb on the rodent scourge. Like all hamsters, it has giant, square bollocks.

Not quite sure what this is. It seems to be a sort of facially-malformed cat/rat monster with a lizard tail. Note also atom breath. I also like the embryonic Death-Chicken design that has been scribbled out.

So who is closer? I won't tell you because it will spoil the surprise of seeing for yourself.

You are in for a mental beasting.

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=5484697431

Hilarious in a terrible, guilty way.

Slow News Day

(Pictured: Heathrow crash - not quite as bad as we'd have you believe)
I have to admit to feeling slightly underwhelmed by the coverage of the BA 777 crash at Heathrow on Thursday. Fair enough, it could have been disastrous and people could have been killed, only saved by the actions of the skilled air crew (just doing their jobs, surely?), but I can't help thinking that the news media have blown the whole thing a little out of proportion. In an instant after they heard the news on the BBC News they were on the phone to Political Editor Nick Robinson, who happened to be grounded at Heathrow on the Prime Minister's flight to China. For his part, Robinson seemed to be quite annoyed with the whole affair. I suspect they might even have woken him up, or interrupted his reading of a particularly interesting article in the in-flight rag. They asked him what he could tell them about the incident, which happened to be very little, apart from that he told them he could see some fire engines. Soon enough they seem to have got a chopper in the air and took some pictures of the crash, clearly somewhat disappointed at the lack of flames and wounded at what was clearly the aeronautical equivalent of scraping a bollard in the car park at Asda. Long and short of it, I can think of worse plane crashes to be in. Soon the news that everybody had been evacuated safely reached the Beeb and they left it alone after that.

The next day the papers did their level best to make it sound a lot more dramatic than it really was. Metro, the only paper I have time to accommodate into my busy Friday schedule ran with the slightly ill-conceived headline "WE THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A BUMPY LANDING: Air crash passengers oblivious to their brush with death". That does tend to play down the seriousness of the situation. If it had been me I would have focussed on the pilots rather than the passengers, unless they were spacking out in the cabin and foaming at the mouth in pant-shitting terror. The best part about the article was the fact that it described the passengers as "survivors". Of course they were survivors! Nobody died! I mean, technically you could say the were survivors of a plane crash but that does sort of imply that some people didn't survive.

Well, at least it beats reading another article about the Diana inquest.

Journalism: it's a funny old game.

No to 2008

I know, I know I haven't blogged in a while. I've been horribly negligent. It's because I have a tendency to take on more than I can handle. Take for instance last year's poor career choice of journalism and supermarket shelf stacking at the same time. I walked around for weeks like a 1970's "slow" variety zombie (as opposed to a modern "fast" zombie) and have generally fallen behind with things. It's not good. This isn't even a proper blog either. Just a note to remind everyone that I'm still alive, and as soon as I can think of something witty or incisive to say and find coincidentally that I actually have the energy to write it then you can be assured I will. Quality guaranteed.

New Model Army

(Pictured: 'Evil' Tyrant Banks lords over all)

It’s funny how many women complain about being treated as objects, but yet so many of them aspire to work in modelling. How did this ever become the pinnacle of ambition for a generation of females? Being dressed up, posed, photographed in compromising positions wearing ludicrous outfits, then criticized for not being pretty enough by men who have (let’s be honest here) absolutely no interest in women beyond the academic. Who would want a life like that? I suppose the vast heaps of money might help.

Which is presumably why Oprah-in-waiting Tyrant Banks invented America’s Next Top Model. To give young women the opportunity to make a living in the competitive game of standing, walking, looking at things and very occasionally (but not often) talking.

With only six hopefuls left, this week Tyra whisks them off to Shanghai for a “posing challenge”, a make-up advert and photo shoot, and some more of that feminine cure-all, shopping. To the credit of the shows makers they do actually relent from the filming of female flesh to show a little bit of local colour. The shots of the city are glorious, and you almost feel a little jealousy for the girls who’ve been plucked out obscurity for a shot at a jet-setting life in the big time. But only almost, because by the end, one of them has to go.

At the hotel, they find that there are only five beds in their hotel room, obviously to foster yet more tension between Asperger’s sufferer Heather and bitchy hood-rat Bianca, who feels – perhaps rightly – that the show’s judges are carrying Heather because she has “a disability or whatever”.

After a nights kip the girls do their challenge which involves apparently learning “karate” (it’s not) and posing while flying through the air on a rope. Bianca throws a hissy fit and refuses to do it, putting her in the running for the boot.

Luckily for her, Amazonian Lisa screws up the shoot for her advert and Heather gurns all the way through hers. So who’s going to get shitcanned? I’ll give you a hint – it’s not Heather, because she “has something”. What it is that she has, I’m not entirely sure. But what do I know? I’m only a straight guy.

Fact of the Day

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine is an expert in Taekwondo, and can crush a man's skull in the palm of his hand.

In this picture, Dave has done just that, and as such is proclaimed the winner.

TV: A Minor Diversion on the Road to the Grave

(Pictured: Mulder literally does not give a fuck)

I watched a fine program on the telly last night. Mulder is back in X-Files Nights and is more raucous than ever. In this x-rated spin-off of the seminal 90's conspiracy documentary we follow Mulder in his sexcapades around the borough of LA and watch him lament his inability to pen his memoirs, but not that much because it's all about the sex really. In this episode Mulder drove around town in a fine car, drank liquor out of a bottle in a brown paper bag, insulted environmentalists, harrassed his ex-wife, traumatised his daughter slightly, suckerpunched an asshole and took advantage of a drunken girl. He also said the words "holy fucknuts" which should be all the reason you need to watch X-Files Nights, if you aren't frantically downloading already.

I also watched the American feature film Ghost starring Jed Eckert from Red Dawn as the eponymous anti-hero. Let me tell you that is a truly horrific film. It all starts when a crooked banker pays a latino thug to murder Ghost in order to steal money (or something). Unfortunately, Ghost doesn't stay dead and then all hell breaks loose. He vows to take revenge on his killers and tracks them down with the aid of Sister Act. Ghost finally finds his murderers and mounts a campaign of psychological torture on them, driving them half-way mad before brutally slaying them with his ghost-powers. Then - in a twist that isn't particularly well explained - despite having committed two murders himself, Ghost gets to go to heaven. God must not be particularly picky.

Not been there, but I bought the t-shirt anyway.

(Pictured: impossible lies)

You know what's been annoying me recently. The seemingly endless amount of guys who go around in t-shirts with OSAKA 07 and NAGOYA 12 on them. Do they think they are part of a Japanese sports team? Having passed two years of actual adult life in Japan and having visited most of the places that these t-shirts name I can't help but feel a great of annoyance. It's such a feeble trend. I quite want to ask them to name which island of Japan the city is on, or if they've ever been there. See, they don't know. They don't know why they're even wearing that shirt. Probably, they even own a pink shirt for going out in. Of course, they don't like pink, and they'd never say if you asked them "Hey dude, what's your favourite colour?"- "Pink!" That would lose them a few dozen masculinity points, and even where I come from earn them a 'kick-in'. Why are they so popular then? Why do people mindlessly follow trends? A few years ago Top Shop started a 'Rock Chick' fad that lasted a couple of months, whereby girls would become 'Rock Chicks' by buying a Motorhead (sorry, don't know how to get an umlaut on this keyboard) t-shirt and maybe a dog collar or something. I remember being surprised and delighted that so many pretty girls seemed to be into Motorhead, and then immediately dejected and sick when I realised that it was all a commercial sham and these foolish girls didn't actually know who Motorhead were. I wanted to grab them and scream in their faces, spittle arcing out of my mouth in slimy threads: "MOTORHEAD IS NOT FOR YOU! MOTORHEAD BELONGS TO UGLY, HAIRY BOYS! LEMMY HAS WARTS! REAL FUCKING WARTS! THEY DON'T EVEN ALLOW HIM ON THE TELLY ANYMORE, SO HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE YOU'VE EVER HEARD OF HIM! NOT ON TOP OF THE FUCKING POPS THAT'S FOR SURE!" Then, probably after someone had bailed me and I'd been forced to apologise to everyone involved, the girls would abandon the t-shirts in favour of some other stupid fad, big surprise there. Anyway, that's sort of how I feel about the OSAKA and NAGOYA t-shirts. Being that my knowledge of the places is so intimate, I just feel sad that these poseurs are wearing them, unaware of what they might mean to other people. How would you feel if some douche was walking around with YOUR hometown written across his chest because it had somehow become fashionable? Getting status by associating himself with YOUR background, YOUR personal history, YOUR heritage, or whatever? Could you find in your heart to say "Hey, nice KDY t-shirt, even though you're from Derbyshire." Maybe. But there's an equal chance you'd go Eazy fucking E and bash the twunt's head in with a rock.

Cohabiting

So I live in England now, with a girl. As my grandmother would say “in sin”. What can you do? Living with your girlfriend is quite like living with a flatmate, except that they are generally cleaner, much fussier, and require more to make them comfortable. Bath mats, for instance.

Living with a girl is not like living with a pal, because you can’t say things like “Dude! Look at this video I found on Youtube of a dog having sex with a cat!” If you do, it’s more likely that they will ask you why you are wasting your time looking at videos of interspecies sex on Youtube rather than working on that novel you’ve supposedly been writing for the last two years? Which is, of course, a good point.

You also have to watch what you eat around them. If they knew the full extent of the foul takeaway foods that students and other idle young males indulge in on a daily basis, the chances are she’d run a mile. Your best bet is just to eat what they eat and sneak out for a kebab when they’re not looking. Also it’s important not to drink too much in their presence, especially not in your boxer shorts in front of the TV or videogames console, lest you risk being called a “scrub”. This is a girl word for bon vivant.

Toilet etiquette: girls get funny about toilet seats for some reason. They have invented some kind of weird equation which states that since all women-doings are done sitting down, while one of a man’s doings is done standing, the duty of putting the toilet seat down is the man’s responsibility. Why the seat needs to be put down at all is a mystery to me. The solution? Leave the seat down and do your business anyway, pretty soon she’ll be the one putting the seat up after she’s used the crapper. Slambango!

Girl bidie-ins do have their benefits though. You are far more likely eat at least one good, hot meal a day and will often find that when you come home your underwear has been de-loused and smells of flowers. Nothing a man ever washes, no matter how many expensive powders he uses, will ever smell of flowers. Your general health and physical appearance will improve. You will find yourself becoming respectable pretty fast. Possibly, you now also think the bath mats were a good idea.

To top it off, girls are soft and smell pretty good, and every day you get to pet and cajole one another in the way that if you tried with your old flatmate, you’d probably have to have a quite serious talk about personal boundaries. As much as I have fond memories of my old flatmates, the idea of having tickle fights with them does not really have much appeal.

So, my conclusions: girls = good; cohabiting = not evil like the bible says. It’s a pretty sweet deal all round I think. Women are something of a civilizing influence on us dudes. I know many people will call me “domesticated” and “house-dude”, but it is true. Living with a girl gives us reasons to do things like clean our bodies and wash dishes. In the olden days, dirty dishes would pile up and pile up until we were eating beans with a pencil out of an old boot. For want of kitchen roll, I would wipe up all spillages with a slice of bread so I could save it for later. That sort of shit won’t wash with a woman in the house. No sir. Thank you, womankind, for saving us from ourselves and implementing domestic equilibrium.

I am on my own in the flat now. My sweetheart has gone down the street to buy some kind of kitchen implement that I have no knowledge of, or perhaps a vegetable that I would be unable to identify. That leaves nothing for me to do except watch that video of a monkey flagellating itself on Youtube. I am, after all, still a dude.

Death Parp

(pictured: Death Proof may look like a tough guy, but in reality he is a big wuss)

SPOILER ALERT! DON’T READ THIS AND THEN BITCH TO ME LATER ABOUT ME HAVING SPOILED QUENTIN TARANTINO’S DEATH PROOF FOR YOU! THIS IS A SPOILER WARNING!

I went to see Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof the other night. I found it to be something of a mixed bag. It was very much a game of two halves, the first half being Death Proof stalking, perving on and then murdering a group of chicks by driving his stunt car into their automobile, and the second him stalking, perving on, and then being murdered by a similar group of chicks. The first half is definitely the best, as QT gives full time to character development, and although you don’t really ever get to like the lassies particularly, you at least get a good sense of their characters before the lot of them are slaughtered. Also, Kurt Russell as Death Proof plays a far more prominent role, actual interacting with his prey and generally creeping the shit out of them. By contrast the second half seems a bit rushed, the characters less definitively drawn, the lovely Rosario Dawson is a bit of a princess, the Kiwi girl is an adrenaline junkie, the black girl drops N bombs a lot but in terms of character development you get left feeling a little short changed.

The dialogue is Quentintino’s usual fare of snappy back-forth hipper-than-thou repartee, although it must be said a great deal less quotable than the likes of Pulp Fiction, for instance, or even Kill Bill. Q-Tip has been praised for being able to write convincingly from a female perspective in this movie. About 50% of women I know who have seen the film agree with this, but the other 50% have said “bullshit! We don’t talk like that!” Since I have no idea how girls talk when they’re alone I can’t possibly comment, except to say that it sounds OK to me. More or less. They talk about boys a lot, which at least sounds about right.

My final real complaint about the movie is that after being tough and scary in the first half of the movie, in the second half Death Proof turns into a massive pussy. He is woefully ineffective at killing those girls. You sort of expect him to come back for one more scare, but pretty much after he gets wounded in the arm by the black girl (who is, of course, packing heat) he turns into a big wuss and tries to get away. It’s sad to see, that Death Proof’s weakness is in fact bullets. After that he gets beaten savagely by the girls and the credits roll. That’s pretty much it, apart from Rosie Dawson landing an impressive stiletto kick into Death Proof’s surprised looking face.

Death Proof is a good film, and pretty entertaining, but it isn’t a great film. And that’s what the Quentinator is supposed to be famed for. Hopefully, whatever he comes up with next, be it Inglorious Bastards or the Vega Brothers movie, fits that bill.

Personal Life Update

Just to let you know: got back from Englandshire a week ago, after spending a further two weeks plying yon trade. Saw some more whacked out things - the crown court gets way scarier felons than the Magistrate's court, a couple of paedos and rapists, was happy to see them go down - and also wrote some more stories. I tend to get a lot of kids-who-have-terminal-diseases-and-do-sports-with-cuddly-animals stories, which is fine. When I was up north they had me running around looking for 'attractive females' to photograph 'standing side on' for a piece on plastic surgery.
"Attractive females? In this town?" quoth I. So I went up to every vaguely attractive girl I saw and tried to entice them with my charms to be in my photo. Surprisingly, there were actually a few attractive girls out, but they were nearly all either English or some other kind of foreigner. The majority of them just thought I was a wandering pervert anyway. Eventually I got a few who fit the bill and was able to go home.

Tomorrow Kaki comes over from Canada. I will pick her up first thing in the morning and bring her home. I'm going to spend the next week playing the tour guide and then we'll move down to Nottingham next Saturday. I will keep you posted on events as they occur.

Shot to the Heart

(pictured: Shoot 'Em Up does what he does best) Went to see Clive Owen Is Shoot 'Em Up last night. Shoot 'Em Up lives up to his name by shooting everything in sight. I don't think he even lets up for 30 seconds in the whole film. He shoots while standing still, running, jumping, having sex with Monica Bellucci, parachuting and delivering a baby. It has a hilariously mixed message on gun control too, it seems to advocate stronger gun control measures while glorying in an almost unparalleled level of bloody violence and almost pornographic gun fetishism. It's hard to work out if the movie was even meant to be serious in the first place. It's almost like they tried and then halfway through got ripped and decided it would be funny to let Shoot 'Em Up kill someone with a carrot. He does - he kills about 8 people with this unobtrusive orange vegetable, the highest amount of carrot-based fatalities in any movie in history. Stupid as it may be, it's still a hugely entertaining film, with Clive Owen's Shoot 'Em Up proving an eminently watchable character. He is essentially a heartless misanthrope who several times commits random acts of violence for reasons which are largely gratuitous - he runs people's cars off the road for not signalling and mercilessly beats a woman who he deems to be a poor parent. If you don't take yourself too seriously, and you like your action fast, silly and with a very low BDQ then take yourself off to see the filmed version of Shoot 'Em Up's autobiography, stat.