'Appy birfday

To the dark dark seas
Comes the only whale,
Watching ships go by,
It's the day we try ..

On this day 661 years ago, 6000 Jews were killed after being accused of being the cause of the plague. Exactly 29 years ago today, the National Centres of Disease Control identify pneomcystis and Kaposi's sarcoma in people, symptoms of an immune disorder which we now know as AIDS.

7 years after that on this day, three fighter jets at the Ramstein airshow misjudge an aerial stunt and crash into the crowd, killing 75 and injuring 346. Yup, and exactly one year to the day before the USSR's miserable collapse, I was being born. The 28th of August has evidently been an uplifting day for centuries.

But, I share a birthday with Jack Black of Tenacious D fame, which pretty much makes everybody else dying and the collapse of decadent ideologies irrelevant, as that man is awesome. It's also coincidentally the same day that Martin Luther King made his '"I have a dream" speech, 47 years ago.

Cheers for all the birthday messages! x

Oh, and its Germany tomorrow.

Pimm's o'clock

Oh Won't you come on over,
Stop making a fool out of me ..
Oh why don't you come on over, Valerie?

Don't you just love the Pimms advert? You know, the one where all the people stroll together through the streets, each representing a different ingredient of a summer Pimm's? And the music, too. I'll save you time, it's The New Avengers by Laurie Johnson's London Big Band.

If I were in the advert, I don't know if I'd rather be Ice or Mint. What an advert. Its Pimm's o'clock.

Hollywood down the shitter

We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came,
And go round and round and round in the circle game ..

Why are there so many shit films coming out soon?

The trailers that keep popping up on TV do not bode well for Summer 2010. The one that tops the list is that one called Marmaduke, where Owen Wilson voices a poorly computer-animated great dane through what I can assume will be a brainless 2-hour long child-friendly feel-good shitstorm. Seriously, watch the trailer. It offers an explanation to Wilson's recent suicide attempt.

Next on the list is one that I've just seen a trailer for on Dave. It was called something gay, I think it was Diary of a Wimpy Kid (do correct me). It seemed to be in the family of crap American films about primary school kids who inexplicably possess experience and linguistic sharpness beyond their years.

And the last one is of course the excellent-looking Piranha 3D, which looks like a poorly executed excuse for a 3-dimensional tit-fest. How can you make a mess out of that? Oh yeah, add a healthy portion of angry flesheating fish. Man, it looks shite.

Back to the drawing board Hollywood. Inception, we salute you.

Would you kindly?

Why is it that civilized humanity

Can make the world so wrong ?
In this hurly-burly of insanity
Our dreams cannot last long.

Have any of you ever played Bioshock?

It's an awesome game that I've recently re-discovered after about a year. It's better than any other game that I know. Sure, theres violence and its a little bloodthirsty, but its backed up with so much brilliant storyline and wonderful art-deco design that it doesn't feel as mindless as others.

I'm gonna devote this blog as a tribute to it's brilliance; if you've ever played it, you might identify. If you've never played/heard of it, this will make fuck all sense but you might still get that feeling of wonderment that you do when you play. This is what the game is like in summary.

1. Witness the city of Rapture for the first time after you crash land in the ocean. Re-attach your jaw.


2. Listen to unnerving audio and creepy visuals, interspersed with the dulcet tones of a friendly Irishman.


3. Stab yourself with a syringe you find in a machine. Get special powers. Try and work out which part of the message 'just stay calm' insists that you hurl yourself off a balcony.

4. Explore the city more. Kill some splicers, ugly druggie bastards. Fight men in giant diving suits with drills. Injure small children. Snap your fingers to set everything on fire.


5. Hate the game for its frequent reliance on terrifying shock tactics, but at the same time love the game for said reliance because it's used so well.


6. Would you kindly note the exceptional plot twist. Re-attach jaw for second time.


7. Feel pangs of disappointment that the final boss is a fucking pushover and can be defeated with a sneeze and virtually no skill or perseverance.


8. Enjoy one of THREE POSSIBLE ENDINGS! AAAAGH!


9. Feel either thoroughly uplifted, slightly guilty, or utterly depressed depending on which ending you got.


In short, it's a beautiful and awe-inspiring game set in a post-war objectivist Utopia, with the underlying message that if man is given license to pursue his passions and individual goals in a laissez-faire environment, he will ultimately consume himself! Irrespective of egalitarian principles, free market competition will lead to a strict societal hierarchy! The Ryandian objectivism's failure to understand basic human nature will always, fatally, be its downfall!

Lets see Call of Duty work THAT shit into the next modern warfare.

All that, plus you shoot stuff.

And thats all I have for you. Forgive me for my nerdy spells, would you kindly?

Filmic gems

When night is creepin',
And I should be sleepin' in bed,
If you were peepin'
You'd find that I'm weepin' instead ..

When having vague, boring discussions about recent films with those I know, Transformers is often one that tops the list, seeing as it's a mindless two hour long man-fest of boobs, robots, guns and explosions.

However, if you've seen the trailer for Sucker Punch, directed by Zack Snyder of Watchmen and 300 fame, then even at this early stage, Transformers seems to now be coming in a modest 2nd place. From the trailer, we immediately deduce that Sucker Punch includes, but is probably not limited to:

• Guns
• Swords
• Boobs
• Dragons
• Samurai
• World War One
• World War Two
• Explosions
• Burlesque
• Different planets
• Robots
• Zombies
• A soundtrack whored from all the stuff not used in Watchmen and 300
• Mental asylums
• Dogfights
• Pole dancing
• Mafia
• Zeppelins
• A giant Samurai with a minigun
• Close-ups of eye makeup application.

It beats The Sound of Music in any case.

Counting down.

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow,
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all ..

So this blog is liable to become a little less busy over the coming months. Instead, theres a whole new one, as promised.

You can find it here .

You'll get frequent updates, probably of varying degrees of interest and humour. I might do a few in German, just to spite you.

How is this even possible?!

For the loser now,
Will be later to win,
Oh the times they are a changin' ..

THE GUY FROM INCEPTION CALLED ARTHUR IS THE GEEKY KID FROM 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU!

HOLY 11 YEAR AGE DIFFERENCE BATMAN!

Inception

Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice in the church
where a wedding has been, lives in a dream ..
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps
in a jar by the door, who is it for?

*Potential spoilers ahead*

Hot damn.

This film exceeded every expectation I had.

Naturally, it being a film by Chris Nolan, I was certainly thinking along the lines of The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Memento - all his great stuff. But this - this is beyond any of those.

The plotline follows Leonardo Dicaprio as Cobb, who along with his wingman Arthur, infilitrate people's dreams and subconscious minds in order to extract information that they will not, or cannot reveal consciously. The stakes are changed however when they are employed to enter the subconscious realms of a business tycoon with the objective of planting an idea that will affect his future decisions, as opposed to removing something.


The ideas of dreams are brilliantly explored, such as the notion of the impossibility of dream scenarios which are accepted as real. And while the dreams can be affected by external factors, most prominently the notion of falling, the team find themselves exploring dreams within dreams, facing off against the hostile projections of the victim's subconscious.

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."

In short, it's ruddy excellent, striking a balance between a dangerous mission and the personal life of the team's leader, Cobb. Go and see it.


Oh, and Piranha 3D looks fucking rubbish.

Name dropping

Any time I try to get through,
Your phone is quiet and so are you,
The consequence of my demand,
Oh what I need ..

Yesterday I booked a one-way flight to Germany, which means that on the 29th I'll be stepping off British soil for 4 and a half months or so. This blog will inevitably stay intact during the next year or so, but I'll probably make another more dedicated one exclusively about life and times in Germany.

I kind of whored the idea from here. Cheers Soph :)

God bless us.

A singer in a smokey room,
A smell of wine and cheap perfume,
For a smile they can share the night,
It goes on and on and on and on ..

I was out in Sheffield last night with some folks from uni, a night which proved to be an interesting experience for all concerned. Alcohol continues its ongoing mission to change the sexualities of those I surround myself with, but if full blown lesbianism in slutty schoolgirl outfits is the price I pay for their company, you'll forgive me if I don't stop hanging round with them just yet.

We also saw the return of 'realising how pissed you are when driving home in a taxi', which has been sadly rare this past month or so. The conversation was like this:

"We drank a lot more than I thought we did."
"Yeah, it was a lot."
"It didn't seem like it was that much."
"Were all the drinks about 50p?"
(Together, with a sigh of sudden realization why we feel like shit): "Oh, fuck."


God bless us, everyone.

Bam! Liberation for everyone!

Place a name upon the night,
One to set your heart alight,
And to make the darkness bright,
Paint the sky with stars ..

So, just as the war in Afghanistan was getting more boring or exciting depending on your viewpoint, Obama has announced that all US combat operations will cease by the end of August, to be followed by us, at some point in the .. next .. 5 years or so.

So while we struggle on with our crappy 'humanitarian' mission (4 soldiers killed in a single day today, go humanitarianism!), Obama seems to have seized the initiative and should have a nice big win in the propaganda war. Take that France, you big fairy peace queens.

This will of course now force America to take a similar stance to ours, the one that seemed doomed from the outset 9 years ago; that is, forming bonds and winning hearts and minds. When shock and awe campaigns are all done, attention will turn elsewhere to something more entertaining, as the whole 'rebuilding damaged country' thing isn't that glamorous.

But has terrorism really died with Western intervention? The war seems to have produced more anti-Western feelings than ever before. The insurgencies of Iraq and Afghanistan were exacerbated by our role there.

Will our intervention ultimately equate to further 9/11 or 7/7 attacks? More burning of effigies and flags? Will our failure to decisively and swiftly defeat the Taliban, as with the Soviets, act as an inspiration to other countries or groups who wish to act against us? And most importantly, when we eventually leave, will we be left with a crap government who will neglect to prevent our military failures in the Middle East from becoming our permanent legacy?

These are all good questions, Max.

Why, cheers Max!

These issues will most likely pursue you for years to come

I'm well aware of that, Max. It's an unnerving thought.

Indeed! You look very summery today, by the way.

Thanks! I'm planning a haircut again soon.

Good idea.

What's to be done with the Middle East, eh?

I just don't know. I'm tired of talking about it. This was a heavy post. What's on telly?