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Long Weekend

It has been, and there's still a bit more to go yet. Although technically tomorrow is also a day off, I have to drive down to Andover in the afternoon, so it's not off all that much really.

But, I haven't done much, which is good. Mind you, today I'm surprised I didn't go square-eyed. I watched seven episodes of Angel from season two, with a 'break' for four Babylon 5 season four eps in between, one after the other. The Angel eps were all Darla-fied, which was fun, especially when Drusilla showed up.

She makes me laugh. Freaky and funny, in a scary-mad-witch kinda way. Everything she says makes sense, it's like she's prophesying all the time. Like, in a flashback she's calling Darla 'grandmother' and then says 'I could be your mummy'. In the "present" she turns the raised-and-human Darla into a vampire... Cool. She talks about fire... five minutes later they are on fire. Not so cool, for them anyway.

And I finally looked her up... Juliet Landau, who plays Drusilla, is indeed the daughter of Martin Landau as I had suspected but never bothered to check. She has the same look about her face. And her mother was Barabra Bain, who was in Space 1999 with Mr Landau.

And her accent is fake. She's American, after all. But you never know till you find out.

I like the accent too.

B5... just started on the War For Earth. Soon Sheridan will get captured, and lots of cool stuff will happen.

And on the plus side of going back to Andover, I should finally get my Firefly DVDs back. Yummy.

"Yeah! Yeah! Spank us till Tuesday! Rrrr... We promise to be bad if you do!" - Drusilla, Reunion episode 10, season 2 of Angel

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Friday Haiku - Triple Edition

So here is the official start of my own meme... It probably won't go any further than here, but we all have to start somewhere.

It was a slow week.
Not much work, but not much sleep;
I need more of that.


Long weekends are great
If only because I get
More sleep than normal.


I wish I could give
Her more things to smile about.
Make it my life's work.

"What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable." - Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719)

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Van Helsing... Urgh

I got talked into going to see it. It's... really not all that good.

There are really two sorts of film when people talk about a movie being a 'non-brainer'.

There's the no-thought-movie, where you don't have to worry too much about the why's and how's of what's happening, you just get on with enjoying it. But then there's the no-central-nervous-system-movie, where the possesion of even one cell of nerve tissue somewhere in your body can ruin watching the film because it's just so fucking stupid.

Frequently incoherent. Numerous dodgy special effects that are not quite as good as they could/should have been. A great deal of general inexplicability to the why and how, above and beyond hand-waving and glossing over.

I read this version of the movie again earlier. It really does describe it very well.

HELSINGWOLF: *claws go snick*

ROXULA: NO FAIR STEALING FROM OTHER MOVIES!

HELSINGWOLF: Dude, this whole movie is stolen from other movies.

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Sunday Delay

Laziness and forgetfulness have made me a bit late to do this, what I intend to be my replacement for the no-longer-with-us Friday Five.

So I give you... the Friday Haiku!

Friday Five is gone
What can I do now instead?
Write five-seven-five crap!

"A Haiku is just like a normal American poem except that it doesn't rhyme and it's totally stupid." - Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Roger Ebert Should Lay Off The Fatty Foods, 1998

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Police Escort

So I was driving back from watching Kill Bill Vol.2 last night -

Great film, I think it's definitely the better of the two. It concentrates more on the characters and the situations and makes far more use of that classy Tarantino dialogue. More plot, less violence (only less though, it does have it's great fight moments). And Bill himself is great, a top class villain, style, nastiness, has a great Villain Look and a fantastic Villain Voice.

- and, as usual, I got a bit lost getting back into Andover. Now, it might not have been so bad had I not been forced to concentrate less on "where the fuck am I and how do I get back" and more on "I'd better obey the speed limit because there's a police car behind me". What can I say; I'm male, so I obviously can't multi-task.

So I take a turning... they follow. I fume. I take another turning, mistakenly into a car park for some offices or something... they follow. I stop... they stop. I tell them I'm lost. The woman in the car, she's no help; she's only just moved to the area. Thr guy gives me some directions.

When I follow them, it turns out that if I had not turned off to try and shake my pursuers, I'd have found myself right where I wanted to be.

Bloody annoying.

"We're not lost. We're locationally challenged." - John M. Ford

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I Queue For Haiku

The last ones I did were in October last year, on the 24th. These ones follow the 5-7-5 pattern instead of the 7-5-7 pattern I just used. Not sure which is right, or more right, or whatever. Here they are again, anyway.

When I hear no word
I imagine disaster
and hope for good news
(go to post)

My days are empty
No rhyme or reason I find
Without thoughts of you
(go to post)

So there you go.

"Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom." - Benjamin Cardozo (1870 - 1938)

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Celebrity Children Naming

I'm just going to share my little theory with you all...

Have you ever noticed that celebrities always give their children really stupid names? Brooklyn, Romeo and now Apple (daughter of Coldplay's Chris Martin and blubbing Gwyneth Paltrow) are the first examples I can think of, but there are many more.

Now, these are the sort of names that would get children born to and raised by everyday people ruthlessly laughed at and bullied at school.

I reckon that because such relatively daft names are given to the children of people who can all afford to send them to all the same expensive schools, everyone there has the same sort of name, and anyone with an ordinary name like John, Paul, Lisa or Alison gets picked on instead.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet." -
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Romeo and Juliet", Act 2 scene 2

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Creativity

Marnie wrote some poetry. I commented on it. She said I should write some myself so she could critique it.

So, here's a poem. From me. A bit derivative, if you know what to look for.

I wish a lot
But about it I do
Not a jot

Ambition is for
Other people
With get-up-and-go

Mine got up
And went

Only myself to blame
Biggest fool
In the Fool Hall Of Fame

The things I want
Always out of reach
I don't stretch for them

Don't know how
I hate that

And to follow that... a haiku. I did a few a while back. Can't remember when; you, oh reader, can go looking if you want.

One day the key to my heart
That I gave to her
She will use it and bring joy

Comments, critiques, laughter: leave a message.

"[Poetry] is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake." - Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)

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"...Cos I'm Not Sleepin'..."

So, I was on the net till about two a.m. last night, or rather morning. I turned off to go to bed and... I wasn't tired. At all. So I watched some season one episodes of Angel till about five a.m., which was when I first yawned. I got up at half eleven this morning. Feels almost like I've had no sleep. And now my left eyebrow is twitching, a sure sign of tiredness.

It's the eyebrow twitching that got me writing, by the way. Wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

Good to be watching that first season again. I Will Remember You and Hero were particularly great. And the two-part Faith story as well, good stuff. I always liked Faith.

Or as I call her... Faith-ah-Faith-ah-Faith-aaaaaaah.

Hmmm. Possibly said too much there...

"You just gotta have Faith" - George Michael

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"Nothing Ever Happens, Nothing Happens At All..."

Sorry, no Del Amitri news. It's just that, well, there isn't much going on just now worth mentioning.

I should get more into political/world affairs commentary, I'd have more to write about.

Like how coincidental it was that Maxine Carr's new identity details just happened to be 'lost' (and subsequently recovered) a few days before she was due to be let out.

Or how the rush to show those UK soldier abuse photos are fake means everyone has forgotten that the claims of actual abuse still exist.

Or that it will take an unfeasably long time to download the new almost-700 MB Half-Life 2 E3 video.

Shocking.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." - Ernest Benn

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An... Alternative Van Helsing Review

This is simply a work of geeeeenius. Head on over to this entry on the Occupation: Girl LiveJournal for a sort-of-complete rundown of the film.

I almost feel like I've actually seen it now...

"MUSIC: Dundundundundundundun DUN DUH! DUN DUH!! DUN DUH DUN DUH DUN DUHHHH!!!!" - cleolinda

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Things

I really was not in the mood to go to work today, or to get up at all, actually. But here I am, at work. Thankfully it's just me here, so I can sit around and do fuck all. That suits me fine.

On another note, looks like the Friday Five has, finally, officially, died. It is no more. It is an ex-meme. Bummer. One less thing to pointlessly fill up this blog with. Great.

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Friend or Phoe?

Admittedly, that only works if you pronounce it the way it needs to be pronounced in order for it to work... But you can't have everything. So sue me.

Actually... don't, thanks.

Anyway, she's moved back to her old digs now because the domain she had her new blog on has kinda vaporised, or sumthin'. So, catch her latest exploits back at the old homestead, the Angry White Girl blog.

"Life is an escalator: You can move forward or backward; you can not remain still." - Patricia Russell-McCloud

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Disruption

The sooner this lovely house gets sold the better. Than we can be free of that bastard.

This whole business with that fa-pu-ta has had it's effect on my mother; besides the weight loss and the stress of all the crap he brings down upon her, it seems to have affected her memory too, so she puts things down and can't always remember where she put them. Drives her fucking crazy, it does, she was always so good at that before.

Another good reason to cut that fucker's life short.

We discovered a weird thing today about the people who are currently set to buy the house, something that almost guarantees they'll buy it. They are buying it because our neighbour is the guy's daughter. He wants to live close by, but not that close.

"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" - Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

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Firefly Redux

I really like this show. Infinitely better than, say... Enterprise.

It's a crime how long that show has been carried along, given so many seasons, so many chances, irrespective of (an admittedly stupid system of) ratings and general pointing and laughing, just because it's Star Trek, when other, better shows have been cancelled before they could even find their legs and hips, let alone their feet. For that reason alone, Enterprise must be allowed to die, and sooner rather than later.

"I'll be in my bunk." - Jayne Cobb

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Audi Olympics

Yes, it's time to address it. One month on from what many first thought was an April Fool's joke, Audi Man's Audi Olympics blog really is still gone. So... off my list it goes. It is... no more.

Adios, Audi.

"Funny, and not a little bit strange" - The Guardian
"An offbeat treat" - Web User

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