How Not To Die

If you are currently running up stairs, you are probably fucked.

I watched Zombieland last night, and I really quite enjoyed it. Funny, good characters, a few pretty good kills, Bill Murray, you can't really ask for much more. But the thing I liked best about the film was how Columbus, played by Michael Cera's Jewish cousin Jesse Eisenberg, seemed to survive simply because his OCD prevented him from putting himself at risk. A lot of his rules are common sense things that would help anyone survive a horror movie if the vast majority of characters in these films didn't just ignore them pretty much constantly. I am one of these people who will often find themselves screaming at the characters on the screen for being so stupid, and I can spot a potential kill situation from a mile off. So for the benefit of anyone who might find themselves facing down slavering zombie hordes, or trapped in an isolated farmhouse with werewolves on the prowl, or on a distant outer space colony where something absolutely frightful has devoured everybody, here are my cast-iron, never-to-be-ignored rules for surviving a horror movie. I have incorporated the most important of the principles that Professor Eisenberg has set out in Zombieland, but for the most part these will take the form of my own list, built up from years of horror movie buffery. Enjoy.

Rule 1) Cardio
Some idiots will waste their time building up muscles and trying to get strong. This is a waste of time. 100 per cent of the time, any fool that tries to go toe to toe with a monster will get slain. Look at Billy in Predator and that lunatic Geordie guy in Dog Soldiers. This ceases to matter at all if you are just really good at running away. This is why my top half looks like a burlap sack filled with jelly, but my legs are made of wrought iron - I am a genetic coward, built by God to very effectively flee any dangerous situation. As Prof. Eisenberg quite rightly points out, the first people to die in any zombie apocalypse will be the fatties. This goes for nearly any horror film. Would a fatty have been able to flee Leatherface, or Jason Voorhees? There is a reason there are no fatties in the Colonial Marines. In fact, it might even be useful to keep a fatty around just so you will have extra fleeing time while the fiends of hell are devouring him.

Rule 2) The Double Tap
More essential knowledge from Prof. Eisenberg. If you do kill a monster, make sure it is dead. And by that I don't mean poke it with your toe. I mean shoot it again. In the head. Either that or chop off its head. Fire is good also. While these methods don't necessarily work for every monster, you'd be surprised how close beheading and fire are to a monster cure-all. Note: Dracula always comes back twice. Be ready.

Rule 3) Don't Be A Hero
Being a hero never helped anybody. Make sure you always let some other foolhardy and/or brave person be the first to enter a haunted house, dark forest or derelict spacecraft. Just tell them you have their back and get ready to run away if something comes down from the roof and scoops them screaming up into a hole in the ceiling. A sub rule to this one is never go back for anybody. This includes all forms of rescue. If someone is lost, seperated and/or captured, you must NEVER go back for them. I'm talking to you, Ripley.

Rule 4) When in Doubt, Know Your Way Out
This one is self explanatory. Know your exits. Any building will have a back door, or at very least a window. If you find yourself in a bind, leave your colleagues to fight it out and flee. Note that this doesn't always work, for example, when Paul Reiser gets it in Aliens.

Rule 5) Check the Back Seats
One horror movie rule, of course, is that if something can jump up from the back seat and attack you, then it will. Always check to make sure this doesn't happen. The likelihood of the back seat attacker depends on whether or not you lock your doors. Keeping them unlocked is better for fleeing, negating that awkward moment when you have to scrabble to get the keys out of your pocket while the Hellbeast closes in on you, but will maximise the chances of you driving off thinking that you're safe, only to look in the mirror and see slavering jaws. It's a trade-off, really. There are, however, two things you can do to avoid a horrid death in this manner, the first is get a remote car key, so you can unlock the car while you are running towards it without breaking too much pace, and be safe in the knowledge that there probably isn't a vaguely humiliating death waiting for you inside your vehicle, the second is simply to get a two seater car.

Rule 6) Middle is Safest
Or to put it another way, never take point or bring up the rear. Being in front or behind is most likely to get you killed. Being in the middle gives you time to assess your situation while your friends or squadmates are being massacred, and in addition you will be surrounded by people who know how to do the fighting, or at very least present an alternative target to yourself. Also, if you're part of a military unit, it's likely the command element of the group will be somewhere in the middle enabling you to hear the order to bug out better when it inevitably comes.


Being an expert in something useful will help you survive, even if you're an obnoxious dick that nobody likes.

Rule 7) Categorise
When you're in a horror movie situation, you have to be very careful about who you hang around with. Divide your companions into two categories: 'assets' and 'liabilities'. The assets are the people with useful skills, such as combat abilities, medical expertise, monster lore, mechanical skills, telekinesis etc, whereas the liabilities will be people such as children, fatties, klutzes, the wounded and people who have lost their bottle and been reduced to quivering wrecks. Any 'carrier', that is, person who has been infected by the monsters, bitten by a zombie or a vampire or impregnated by an alien immediately becomes a liability regardless of any skills they have. When the shit goes down, you will want to stick close to the assets, and if possible ditch the liabilities. The only use a liability has is to take the heat off you by getting murdered in a lengthy and graphic fashion while you are running away. Note: while it is extremely common for an asset to turn into a liability, it is rare but not unheard of that a liability turns into an asset. Two examples I can think of offhand are Private Hudson in Aliens, who starts off as a quivering wuss but gradually gets more and more apeshit as the aliens begin to piss him off more and more, and Francine in Dawn of the Dead, who successfully made the leap from liability to asset by learning to pilot a helicopter. Which leads us to...

Rule 8) Every Day is a School Day
Of course, it is also vitally important that you are seen as an asset by your peers. If you aren't strong, you'd better be smart. Hang around with some of the assets and get them to teach you their skills. That way if the helicopter pilot gets killed, you're the next best thing. Any quiet moment you get you should be practising shooting at shit with the beefy guy in the cowboy hat or learning how to make thermite.

Rule 9) Use the Back Door, Not the Stairs
Again, this should be obvious. If you are assailed by monsters or a giant, silent serial killer and you happen to be in a house, you need to get out the back door and run like fuck. What you don't want to do is run up the stairs. There is no escape up there, and if you are lucky enough to get out the window, the chances are you will just fall and busticate an ankle anyway, rendering you basically useless.

Rule 10) Basements are Deathtraps
Don't listen to anyone who says that a basement is a safe place. A basement is a place to wait to die. You are somewhere enclosed, with usually only one exit. And there is probably the slavering reanimated corpse of a foul-mouthed old lady buried down there anyway. Fair enough, the chances are there are a lot of weapons in the basement, but if anything it's just a place for a heroic last stand. If it has got to the stage where the basement is the only safe part of the building you should have already obeyed rule 9 and pissed off out the back door anyway. Basements are not good places. See Night of the Living Dead, I Am Legend and any other horror film with a basement in it.

Rule 11) Tool Up
This should probably be higher on the list. Never ever miss an opportunity to get a weapon. How many times have you watched somebody, usually a promiscuous but not very bright teenage girl (liability), walk past a perfectly good garden strimmer and not pick it up for use on the killer that is inevitably lurking elsewhere in the shed with a pair of shears? Tool up and stay tooled up. Chainsaws, shotguns, machetes, axes, anything you can get your hands on. Don't be afraid to build your own weapons if you have time - sometimes the most effective weapon is a homemade flame-thrower.

Rule 12) Country Life
If there's been an invasion of zombies, vampires, cyborgs or alien parasites, the chances are that they are busy eating people in the large population centres. So it makes sense to get out of the city, right? On the other hand, if you're facing werewolves or Jason Voorhees, maybe it's better to stay in town. Depends really.

Rule 13) Keep Moving
Staying in the same place for too long is a death sentence in a horror film. Keeping on the move will probably stop the creeps from getting you. Probably. If you have to hole up somewhere for a while, it had better be somewhere secure, with several exits, a good field of vision, food and weapons. And no basements. God dammit.


Don't. Go. In. The. Water.

Rule 14) Avoid Water
This one is just common sense, really. If you can't see under the water, don't step in it. Sharks, crocodiles, anacondas, aliens and zombies can all swim. Vampires probably can as well, if they weren't bothered about getting their capes wet. In addition, water makes you slower, it makes noises and ripples that all allow you to be detected. Anyone who stands waist deep in water and then disappears gurgling under the surface probably deserved everything they got for going in there in the first place. See Aliens, Alien Resurrection, nearly every Friday the 13th movie, Crocodile, Jaws, Piranha and Piranha 2: The Spawning. Note: water is actually a pretty good shout when facing Terminators, as they tend to sink. Otherwise just avoid like the plague.

Rule 15) Science is Bad
Don't do science. That's probably how this mess started in the first place. And if you think science is going to make it better again, the chances are you're wrong. Also, don't waste your time looking for a cure to vampirism or a zombie virus. Science is bad. Naughty, science, naughty!

Rule 16) Have a Plan and Stick to it
Never change the plan. If you're on your way somewhere, don't stop off to get some erroneous item of supplies, like insulin for instance. Too dangerous. That diabetic is just going to have to tough renal failure out. If you meet up with someone else who needs your help, the answer is no. If the plan is to stay put until dawn in a spooky old house, you don't need to go back and get anything that you left in the car. If someone tells you there is a cure for zombies, tell them to go get it themselves. You've got a plan and you're sticking to it. And if that evil American bitch who shagged your man and then did a runner when he got impaled on flying metal spike suggests going potholing, I suggest you kill her immediately. Trust me, you'd be saving yourself a lot of trouble.

Rule 17) Don't Get Sentimental
Friends, family, lovers. If the body snatchers get them, you'd be best to gun them down just like anyone else. Likewise, dragging a buddy round who has been bitten by a zombie is foolish. You'd be best to give them one in the back of the head when they're not looking. You'd be doing them a favour. Since the chances are nine times out of ten when you're stranded in a life or death situation its with a disparate group of strangers that you don't give two shits about anyway. But if it is your buddies or your family, you might have to make some difficult decisions to survive. It really is up to you.

That concludes my rules of how to survive any horror situation. If you have read these, you are probably safer already.

Spendrups Old Gold

Yes, from Sweden! Home of flat pack furniture, snow and sexually ambiguous pre-teen vampires. This is the classic pilsner version of the standard Spendrups. It is light gold in colour, quite robust in flavour, but nothing to shout about. It has quite a suddy aftertaste. I'm struggling to think of anything to say about it. It's OK, but kind of unexceptional. It's nothing like the fruity-nutty Christmas Spendrups I had the other week. Maybe it's just because it's after the festive season and I'm just sick of beer. But then again, maybe not.

Spendrups julbrygd, from progressive Sweden

Obviously, when I said I wouldn't review another beer for a while, I was lying out of my arse. A recent trip to IKEA provided the opportunity to purchase some Swedish beers. And why not? Spendrups Julbrygd is strong dark lager that is as black as pitch, with a sugary molasses flavour. The taste and smell are quite walnutty. Despite the richness of the flavour it is quite easy going down, and while it would take me longer to drink than a pint of lighter lager, it still isn't sufficiently aley to take a significant time to drink.

This is a Christmas lager, and with the nutty and almost fruity texture, it almost reminds me of Christmas cake, except drinkable.

I was pleasantly surprised at this one because I bought the regular Spendrups last time I was in IKEA, and I wasn't too impressed. Good for a change, but not the sort of thing I would drink every day.

Quilmes - Argentina's favourite beer

A robust and slightly acidic, almost citrusy tasting 4.9 per cent brew from Argentina. Orange in colour, and very crisp, it is actually pretty good, despite having read several duff reviews online describing it as "watery" I don't think it is watery at all. It's golden and quite strong tasting. It sort of reminds me of Sleeman's, which my Canadian readers, if there are any, will probably like. It was tempted to compare it to Cruzcampo, the Spanish beer I reviewed last week, but it's not really a fair comparison. Quilmes goes down way easier than Cruzcampo. Definitely a beer for a sunny day.

This will be the last beer review I do for a while, before I get another crate in. I intend to order another one online and hopefully will be able to keep this section of my blog going. As for the other beers I bought from that speciality shop in York, Tusker will be getting drank alongside some jalof I am sure at some point in the future, and Brooklyn is being saved for Superbowl Sunday. Bring it on.

Scarily productive

I don't usually talk about my writing projects, mostly because I don't want people to think I'm a pretentious wanker, but some of you will know I am currently writing, or at least trying to write, two novels. I suffer from writer's block something horrible, and I regularly come up with an idea that I think is absolutely brilliant, is all I can think about, then start writing it and give up. This often happens when I hit a hump like introducing a new character and not being able to get them right, or hitting a particularly difficult piece of dialogue (I hate writing dialogue).

However, I have been ridiculously productive with my writing projects over the last two weeks, so I am just writing this blog to congratulate myself. Taking into account I only really find the time to write three nights out of the week and very often I'm too tired to do it, and when I do sit down to do it, I either get stuck or am so disgusted by how rubbish something I have written previously is I close everything down and give up. I am pleased to report, that in the last two weeks, I have not done that. I have made real progress on one of the novels, writing myself out of a massive corner, and I have even started on a short story - the first non-novel project I have done in a year or so.

Ernest Hemingway said "The first draft is always shit" and I think that has really helped me, because now I don't feel I have to make every sentence perfect before I move on. The other phrase which is helping me I can't attribute to anyone in particular, and it is "write through the shite". I can always go back and fix it later, and I will have to do a second and maybe even third draft in any case. Anyway, if I can just keep up this rash of productivity then I will one day be able to sell some books, quit my job and live on a yacht.

Spain's Cruzcampo

(Pictured: The jolly little Spaniard couldn't give two shits whether you like his beer or not.)

Although I'm still officially suffering from Threebola (like Ebola, but three times worse) but I'm now off tenecilin (like penicilin but ten times more powerful) so I can enjoy a cerveza or two again. This time, it's Spain's Cruzcampo that is under scrutiny. I must confess, this is not the first time I have had a Cruzcampo - they have it on draft at the Hub in Edinburgh, and the pint I had was decidedly minging. However, I'm not one to deny a beer a second chance, so I am sitting down with one just now. It's the type of beer, I think, that really needs to be got out of a bottle - it's a pilsner with a sharp taste that just seems soapy and kind of acrid out of the tap. Or maybe I just got a bad pint, I don't know. Using my complimentary Cruzcampo glass (complete with a picture of a smiling raffish early-modern chap with a feathered cap leaning jauntily on a barrel and drunkenly raising a flagon of beer, always a winner), it's a much more pleasant drinking experience. It has a deep, wholemeal-bready flavour, and just a bit of an aftertaste. It's another 5 per center, but it still tastes pretty light, and in colour it's a very light yellow. I would draw comparisons with San Miguel, or even Kronenbourg 1664, while keeping in mind that Cruzcampo is probably a superior beverage to both. Not bad at all, and I will give the Hub's pints another try.

On another beer related note, I found a specialty beer store in York last week and came away with a few bottles of my old friends Brooklyn, Tusker and Keo. I polished off the Keo last night while watching True Blood, but I'm waiting for some sort of sporting event with hot dogs before I touch the Brooklyn. Man, I love beer.

Columns from last while...

(Meades: "Somewhere on the spectrum" according to my ever politically correct mother.)

NOBODY happened to catch that ‘Jonathan Meades: Off-Kilter’ documentary on BBC4 last week, did they? Of course not, it was on BBC4. But if you had watched it, you might have been a little bit offended. Have a look on BBC iplayer and you’ll see what I mean. The show featured the verbose Mr Meades driving around what he calls “the football pools towns” - towns only known in southern England from playing the football pools, which are however quite familiar to you and I, since we live in them - all the while displaying a smug sense of intellectual superiority.
While Meades, who has presented programmes on architecture and written restaurant reviews for The Times, is often funny and a great deal of the comments he makes about the bleakness of Scottish towns are quite accurate, I feel he is a little bit uncharitable.
In his brief visit to Kirkcaldy, for instance, Meades describes Raith Rovers as “up and down like a barmaid’s knickers, not that barmaids are reputed to wear that particular garment in these parts”. While it would not be appropriate for me to pass comment on the underwear habits of female members of staff in Kirkcaldy’s many drinking establishments, I have to say that it is awful presumptuous of someone whose sole experience of the town is driving past Stark’s Park, filming a 30 second piece to camera and then retreating to a four-star Edinburgh hotel at the licence-payer’s expense.
Elsewhere in the show he suggests that Fifers and Scots in general are workshy drunks who sustain themselves on a diet of deep fried Mars Bars. He tosses us accolades like “highest teen pregnancy in western Europe” “highest rate of alcohol related brain damage in western Europe” and “more likely to get assaulted in Scotland than anywhere else in western Europe”. I would suggest that if Mr Meades ever returns to Fife, I don’t much fancy his chances. He even goes so far to say that the fact we have “the lowest life expectancy in western Europe” is sweet release from all the post-industrial ghastliness that we have to put up with on a daily basis.
This is, I think, unfair. I have often been surprised by this tendency, undeniably southern English and very specifically London based, to see not only Scotland, but northern parts of England as well, as if they were parts of the third world. The British media, which sees London as the centre of the universe and anything past the Watford Gap typified as ‘north’, makes programmes for a southern audience, never for one minute considering what it must be like for a Scot watching it. I would like to see how they would react if I made a programme in which I went down to London and essentially poked fun at their culture, food and architecture. If I provoked the stereotype that all Londoners are wishy washy new media types or crooked bankers, all of whom are privately educated and seemingly allergic to graft, I wonder how it would be perceived there?
Speaking as someone who has lived in both Scotland and England, I can with confidence say that the problems that my home country experiences are exactly the same as the ones experienced down south, and that if I had a choice between facing a generic Scottish ned or a London chav, I would face off against the ned any day. At least you know you aren’t going to get shot.

MICROSOFT’S decision to block Xbox users who have modded their console to play illegal copied games will no doubt be seen by most as a strike against ne’er-do-wells who broke the rules and are getting what they deserve. However, this is undoubtedly a watershed moment in the battle against computer piracy, that most hard to prosecute of crimes.
Indeed it might seem unnerving to some people, who spend there time and a significant portion of their bandwidth downloading games, movies and music from the internet. These are the people who should be watching out now that Microsoft have taken a stand.
Earlier this year, the founders of peer-to-peer file sharing website The Pirate Bay were jailed for a year in Sweden in another swoop against piracy, which ended up achieving absolutely nothing since the site, now owned by a Seychelles-based company, is still online and its users are still distributing files willy-nilly with no fear of the authorities. But, I think, things soon may change. In this current climate, even profit generating industries like video games need to guard every penny jealously, and with the industry losing as much as $750m a year, Microsoft’s decision, however unpopular it may make it with users, makes sound business sense.
The argument against piracy has been around for ages, ever since music companies first kicked up a stink about people taping their records (remember them?) and swapping them with their friends. One copy means one less record/CD/DVD/game/cinema seat sold, so less money for the industry, less money for the artists and people who actually produce the entertainment that we consume, therefore a decline of quality all round.
Except this hasn’t happened, not to any great extent. The film, music and game industries still make huge revenues, largely for the suits in charge rather than for the artists. The film industry will never be taken down by illegal downloads, mainly due to the fact that watching a film on a 15” laptop screen is mince. People tend still to go and see the movies they would have on the big screen, and reserve the small - or very small - screen for films they weren’t significantly curious about to go and see in the cinema. The music industry has been hit worst by downloading, because the experience of listening to an album can be easily replicated on a computer, provided it has decent enough speakers. You can even download the album art to go along with the tunes. However, this is offset by the way the music industry has used the internet to market and promote bands. In fact, many music acts even rely on the free distribution that file-sharing provides to get their songs out in the first place. Games are the most difficult thing to pirate, because of the specialised knowledge required to download the right files, get a crack for the game, and burn or mount .iso files. This ensures, at least for the moment, a dependence on retail to buy games.
In the future, when we look at the early days of the internet, they’ll look at it as the biggest free-for-all in history, a sort of electronic equivalent of the gold rush. The powers that be have made huge steps in the regulation of file-sharing and it won’t be long before they develop a fool-proof method of policing and punishing persistent offenders. Maybe it won’t be legal punishment, but broadband providers have been kicking around the idea of banning the IPs of file sharers for good. So if any of you sneaky people have been trying to get your entertainment without paying for it, shame on you, but watch out, because you could live to regret it.

Fatties

THE OTHER day I was walking down the High Street and I happened upon a mother pushing her child in a pram. The kid couldn’t have been more than a year old, but believe it or not, he was sitting there in the pram with his greasy, chubby chops wrapped round a Gregg's sausage roll. And we wonder why there is this upsurge in children too obese to toddle. The stuff that some parents feed their kids is absolutely appalling. I was told an apocryphal tale by a health professional once, involving a mother feeding her baby blended Big Macs instead of baby food. Parents should definitely know better than to encourage children to eat unhealthy fast food at a young age. We already have a huge problem with obesity without them starting the next generation down the path to an early heart attack.
We reported last week that something like 149,000 great British pounds was spent on providing giant-sized hospital beds and winches for obese patients at Fife hospitals. Does anyone else think that that is totally outrageous? Think of the amount of equipment that they could have bought with that money, from x-ray machines to incubators for premature babies. Of course, I would never suggest that we don’t have a responsibility to treat obese people on the NHS, but I have to say I find it very hard to be sympathetic for people who allow their bodies to get into that condition. And by “that condition”, I don’t mean people who are a bit tubby. Most of the foods and drinks that taste good make us a little bit plump and that is fine - all it shows is that you enjoy life. What I am talking about is the people who are let themselves get so abnormally giant that they can’t move and claim they have “mobility difficulties”.
OK, so there’s a fat gene, but you can’t all have it. I think people just need to take better care of themselves. After all, we all know what we can and can’t eat to stay healthy, and we know that we need to exercise. This is a well published scientific fact. If people choose to ignore it, they will have to pay the price.
I hate that they give these overly fat people mobility scooters to drive around on. Having to walk around would do these people some good. I disapprove of people trying to legitimise being overweight by turning it into a disability. A disability is something you’re stuck with, not something you can sweat out with a couple of trips to the gym and a few less burgers. To me it’s all part of the sad victim mentality that so many people in this country seem to have that they use to excuse themselves from working. It’s just unfair on all the people who through no fault of their own find themselves unable to move around.
People who are obese should be forced to run in a treadmill like a hamster and generate energy for the rest of us. We could dangle a steak bake in front of them and let them go. We could cure our obesity problem and our rising energy problem in one go. There we go, job done. No need to thank me.

Zambia's Mosi

I get to experience this beer courtesy of Drew Johnston's healthy professional interest in maintaining my rampant alcoholism. Not unlike Tusker, this cheeky little number from the banks of the Zambezi is 4% and goes down real easy. Like its Kenyan cousin it definitely assumes "thirst quencher" status. Pale yellow in colour, and light, crisp and breezy to the taste, it is a really refreshing beer.My favourite thing about it is the way it manages to balance fizziness and gassiness, if you know what I mean. I can't see myself ever getting gassy from drinking this. I have to say, from my experiences of both Tusker and Mosi, I'm actually really impressed with the quality of African brewing I've sampled so far. I'll have to see if I can get my hands on some more. Man, I love beer.

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.