Category Archives: Life

Comics

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I know it’s not very popular or cool to like Keanu Reeves, or at least it wasn’t, maybe it is now. Anyway, I like him, I’ve enjoyed a lot of the movies he’s been in and that includes Constantine (did I ever review it … apparently not). I knew it was based on a comic book (sorry, graphic novel, although no one ever goes to GraphicNovelCon2008) but I never really did graphic novels or comics. I read the Beano, Whizzer and Chips, Shiver and Shake and that kind of stuff when I was very young, but I never really graduated onto 2000AD and the like and once I discovered novels I never got into ‘the comic scene’.

I guess it’s a bit odd because I did the other stuff comic readers tended to do, I was a tabletop roleplayer (sounds like a movie), I played computer games on my 16k and 64k spectrum (and atari 400), I even wrote software (I wrote a whole bunch of tools on the speccy for roleplaying, databases for stuff, loot generators, yeh I know how bad that sounds). I loved fantasy and sci-fi movies (and Lost Boys which even features comic loving geek heroes), novels, the whole deal, but I just never ‘got’ graphic novels. I passed up the chance to buy the two David Gemmell graphic novels when they were newly out, I just bought the books instead (although I own them both now), so it wasn’t even an issue with the material. Just the format.

Anyway, I like Constantine, I like the world setting and the general premise. It matches similar work by Mike Carey (Felix Castor) and Jim Butcher (Dresden), modern day anti-heroes almost using supernatural or mythical powers in a modern world to hold back some kind of generally evil evilness. Incidentally if you’ve not read Mike Carey’s “Felix Castor’ stuff you should. Odd kind of full circle here because Mike does a lot of comic book work himself.

I’ve slowly drifted away from high fantasy and heroic fantasy and into an appreciation of a very limited number of books around ‘modern crossover’ or ‘modern fantasy’ or whatever you want to call it, and Constantine fits that bill. So, I enjoyed the film, I bought a novel and it was ‘ok’, and so I thought I’d buy a couple of comic book anthologies and see what the buzz was about. They’re upstairs, one in the guest bedroom on a bookshelf and the other in the bathroom, I read it now and again when I’m in there for any length of time.

Maybe I’ll let you know if I enjoy it sometime.

Food Weirdness

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Do you have any weird food habits? I do. Many of them revolve around even and odd numbers, some of them revolve around an almost supernatural fear of not serving enough food and one of them relates to cutlery. I guess this post is not going to paint me in a good light.

I think, looking hard at them, that it may be mild OCD. Although (and this is without any disrespect what-so-ever to true sufferers of OCD which is a terrible illness) I think many of us think we’re ‘a bit OCD’ because people are more aware of the symptoms in recent times. Maybe I’m just plain crazy and it doesn’t have a name.

Do you find that you can’t just toast one piece of bread, and that you must in fact toast an even number of slices? Maybe because toasters have two or four slots (a quick search on google didn’t find any with odd slot counts). Certainly when I was young you had to put single bread slices into specific slots in our toaster, otherwise the universe exploded (or something). I mean, I don’t fall over if I have to eat an odd number of toasted products, but I certainly have pause to think ‘this isn’t right’. Our Tesco sells crumpets in packets of 6. There’s two of us in this house. That’s 3 each. Distressing.

I hate mismatched cutlery. We have a range of cutlery in our draw and I really don’t like having a mismatched knife and fork. Usually of course I only use a fork and don’t bother with a knife, I am after all a man and I can eat my food with only a fork thank you very much. But on the occasions where I do use a knife it has to be the same model as the fork (and if I bring cutlery in for other people, I make sure they’re matched as well). This isn’t even really different types of cutlery, we have two sets of stainless steel, one plain and one patterned and I don’t mix them.

Then there’s the deep psychological issue of not serving enough food. I really have no idea where this came from but I have no doubt it contributes to my weight issue. It goes hand-in-hand with serving up everything that gets cooked, and not being able to leave it or throw it away if I cook too much (and since I fear not serving enough, I always cook too much).

Lastly (for this far too revealing blog post) is the habit of eating the stuff you like least first and leaving the stuff you like most to last. I first remember doing that at school during school dinners, getting rid of the stuff I didn’t really like in the meal and leaving the nicest bits to the end.

Two years

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It’s now over two years since David Gemmell passed away and I wrote this post. It doesn’t feel like two years.

You’re still missed David. Your writing, your storytelling, your force of personality.

Creativity

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I have what I think are creative urges every now and then. Sometimes they last a few days, sometimes longer, sometimes less. I can’t really explain why I feel like I have to create something, I can’t explain the feeling in my head that makes me feel like I have to make, produce or create. Over the years I finally came to realise what the feeling meant. When I was younger I would write roleplaying adventures for whatever game I was playing or reading at the time, or if I was running or playing a game at the time I’d express the urge during the game or while running it. Haven’t done any paper roleplaying for long time though so haven’t had a chance to write anything.

I used to paint miniatures as well, which was another way of expressing the need. Not particularly well I might add, but still, it worked. I also spent a lot of time writing little bits of random code in random languages to do random things. Writing code for me has always been more art than science and satisified my creative urges.

I guess the urge manifests itself now in the creation of random new websites (www.bookthing.co.uk, www.onelinemoviesreviews.co.uk), reviews, blog posts, forum/usenet posts and the like.

The main problem I have with the feeling is that I want to be creative, I want to create something, but I’m not always really sure where to direct the energy. Sometimes I think I want to ‘write’ (fiction) but I’m either too lazy or too scared to do it. Sometimes I think I’ll just write pithy and insightful blog posts but that doesn’t always suffice (and I usually fail). I envy people who can sing or play musical instruments, I’d love to be able to make movies or short videos of any kind of quality but have no clue really what I’d make them about (and certainly don’t want to be just another ‘ranter’ on YouTube).

I don’t know how common this sensation it, feeling like you want to create or write or do something but not really having much idea what it is you actually want to achieve, or maybe, feeling like the things you would like to create you don’t have enough skill to do them justice.

Cat in a Box

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We’ve just shipped Bubbles off to the vets again, hopefully to have her staples removed and hopefully the last visit for a little while. As soon as we started shutting doors upstairs she knew something was up, and starting pacing and hiding. However, it was still less stressful than it used to be, she sort of skulks around but doesn’t have anywhere to run.

In case you wondered, if you put a cat box standing up on it’s end, so the door is at the top, you can carefully lower the cat in, arse first, which is a hell of a lot easier than trying to stuff them in head first (at which point they turn into a cat with a thousand front paws).

Anyway, fingers crossed she’s ok and the staples can come out.

Fat Thin – Yin Yang

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I have decided, unilaterally, that thin people should thank me. I’m fat, mostly because I don’t exercise enough and have a sedate lifestyle, and I eat food which is too rich in calories. However, I have decided that in keeping with a Yin Yang approach to the world’s population, there is an overall balance generated by people who are thin and those who are fat. Yin and Yang describe the polar effects of phenomenon (thin vs fat people), but also share a duality that form the entire state (i.e. the weight of every living person).

There are two possible Yin Yang options.

  1. Thin people are thin because I am fat. In which case, those thin people should thank me for being Yin Fat and allowing them to be Yang Thin.
  2. I am fat because thin people are thin. In which case thin people should thank me for not complaining about this and just accepting that I’m the Yin Fat to their Yang Thin.

Either way, I’m doing the thin people of this world a service, and I think maybe just once in a while they should be good enough to admit it.

Temptation

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The temptation to have a second bacon cob is high today, but so far I’m holding back. I know you were all waiting for this post with bated breath.

By the way, bated breath is the correct spelling, not baited (despite British newspapers getting it wrong more often than right). After doing some reading, bated is an abbreviated form of abated, and hence bated breath (abated breath) means almost not breathing or holding your breath.

Reference: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bai1.htm

The Brighton Trip

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Last week was really stressful, but the weekend was relaxing and really enjoyable so it all worked out. We’d been planning to go to Brighton for quite a while, some friends in Everquest were having a guild meet (The Blue Dragons) and we’d said we would be going along. It’s easy for us in Brighton because we can stay with Grete’s family down there, and the only pressure at the time was whether the Mondeo would make the journey or not. We sorted out the Mondeo issue by replacing the car, so we were happy the Megane would be fine.

And then last Sunday it all went to pot! Grete’s step dad wasn’t well so we couldn’t stay with them, and we had a frantic two hours checking the web and making calls to try and book a hotel. Needless to say, it’s not easy to get a hotel room in Brighton, in Summer, with only 4 or 5 days notice, and it’s virtually impossible to get somewhere at the budget end of the market. So we sucked it up and decided to just make a holiday of it, celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary a week late. We booked into the Queens Hotel, which is right on the sea front and pier in Brighton. We knew car parking would be a nightmare, but there’s one right next to the hotel (The Lanes) which was £15 for 24 hours (map here). Sounds a lot, but in Brighton it’s not so bad, and we knew we wouldn’t be needing to move the car once we parked up.

So we had the hotel booked, and we were getting more excited. We had a friend lined up to pop in and visit the cats on Saturday, they’re fine for 3 days / 2 nights on their own, but it’s nice if someone can pop in and check on them. Then of course, Bubbles had her ‘incident‘, so now with only 2 days to go we’re faced with having to give her antibiotics and really needing someone to check her every day to make sure she’s ok and her staples are in good condition. The vet we take her too recommended someone who can visit to feed cats while you’re away, and we managed to get in touch with her and she visited on Thursday, we got a key cut, and we were set. Of course, we also had to get Bubbles into the vets on Friday morning for a checkup (8am) so our weekend started at around 6:30am.

Bubbles was fine, Grete was back at 8:30am, I spent the last hour finishing up the packing and sorting out litter trays, food and water for the cats while she was out. We set off, the sun was bright, not a cloud in the sky. Quick stop at Tesco to pick up bottled water and have a solid breakfast, and we were on the M1 before 10am. Traffic to Brighton was as to be expected, M25 was slow, A23 was really bad into Brighton itself, and we finally got to the Lanes car park at around 3:00pm.

Checked in, flaked out!

But we hadn’t spent all that money so that we could sit in a too-hot hotel room, so we showered and headed out onto the sea front. The weather forecasts had all said it would be showery and overcast, but on the Friday it was steaming hot, blue skies and 28 degrees. We had a walk up and down the pier, and then met up with some friends and walked around a bit again, had some drinks and generally relaxed. Fish and chips on the pier was excellent. We managed to get some sleep on Friday night despite the heat, and were up bright and early for our cooked breakfast!

Saturday morning was spent wandering the Lanes in Brighton with our friends, before finally meeting up with the other Everquest players at the Clock Tower. From there we headed over to Donatellos for some excellent pizza, then some beers (in the Druid’s Head), then some wandering around and a visit to the pier, and more beer, and more food, and finally a few of us settled in Horatio’s and listened to some live music while the rest went in search of more quiet beer.

As we were leaving the pier, I’d had a couple of drinks, we passed a hen party leaving as well. A woman dressed as a nurse, in a short white rubber dress, a few others in various stages of fancy dress, and a woman who was clearly dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, complete with basket and red hood. As I was passing, I said ‘my, what big ears you have’ and she gave me a stare of death! She looked very confused, you’d think that if you’re going to dress up as a sexy little red riding hood you’d at least read the source material on which your costume is based, but apparently not. Anyway, it was only a few moments later when we realised if she hasn’t read the story she’s going to be going to bed worrying that she has big ears and some ugly oaf on the pier insulted her.

Sunday morning meant more cooked breakfast!! A quick exit from the hotel, moving the car to another car park near to the China Garden (superb Dim Sum place in Brighton, I can recommend them), and then some paddling on the beach! No offense to people from Brighton, but you really need to get the government to import some sand. You can not go paddling when the beach is covered in pebbles without getting hurt. We wore some crocs but the rocks just collected in them. Anyway the water was fantastically cool, the beach was great, the sun was hot (I got burned, yeh I know, but I didn’t think we’d be out long enough). We wandered around Brighton a bit, and then met up with friends for Dim Sum, which was excellent as always.

Finally we headed out, did the family rounds (meeting up with Grete’s folks) and headed home. Got back here around midnight on the Sunday. Bubbles is fine, but grouchy. We’re knackered, but had a fantastic time.