So, where was I?

Oh yes. If you haven’t watched any of the Terminator TV series, don’t read on yet…

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles may have the most lumpy and ill-advised title ever to spew forth the creative machine that is the US TV system, but it is (surprise, surprise) damn good. It started a few weeks ago on Virgin 1 and I have been concientiously using SKY+ to record it. Unfortunately, at 10pm on a Thursday I am usually driving home through Plymouth’s dark streets with only Robin Lustig and Radio 4′s The World Tonight team to keep me company.

Regular readers will know that the first Terminator film ranks only second to Jaws in terms of cinematic excellence as far as I am concerned. A simple film, made with a small budget at a time when I was busy failing my O Levels. I watched it first in the 6th form common room after a school dance, completely wasted and only able to concentrate for 5 minutes at a time. Several months later, it arrived in Wolseley house and I watched it all the way through for the first of many, many times.

In an almost Phantom-Menace like moment, the sequel arrived in 1991 and after huge anticipation before and momentary excitement during, it faded away. Apart from the advancement of the mythos and ground-breaking special fx, I didn’t like it much. All of those “thumbs-up-hasta-la-vista-fake-smile-boy-and-his-terminator-I-promise-not-to-kill-anyone” moments didn’t sit well with me at all.

Almost predictably, I quite liked the third one.

So the TV series arrives. It completely ignores the third film (at least I think so, I am still not quite sure) and continues the story of a 16 year old John Connor and his mother still running from Skynet. As tradition dictates, the future John Connor sends a terminator (Summer Glau) back in time to protect his mother and younger self. Skynet has also sent back at least one Arnie-type evil terminator to kill John Connor. By the end of the first episode, the heroes have leapt forward in time from 1999 to 2007. At the beginning of the second, we learn that Skynet has been sending people back in time as far as the 1960s and that John Connor has been sending resistance fighters back for many tasks, not just protecting his younger self.

So far, this sounds pretty predictable and if you were not a fan of the film series, you are probably not converted. To be honest, I can’t see anyone being truly converted by the TV series alone. Apart from the issue with the third film, it is incredibly faithful to canon and will confuse the hell out of anyone who has not seen the films. I see from online episode guides that future installments in this 9 episode first series wil feature Dr. Silverman and Kyle Reese. So far, there have been previous few “friendly-terminator-becoming-human” moments, indeed Summer Glau’s character is written as far closer to Arnie’s character from the first film than anything else. You are left to wonder how this tale can be stretched over 6 or 7 years worth of episodes though.

On the plus side, the actors are all great, the budget seems to be huge and as far as I can tell from the interweb, seems to have been given at least one more series.

Back.

I hurt my back. Again. At almost exactly the same time as last year, I was reminded that I am no longer the lithe and agile I being I have never been. I was just bending down to switch off the PC before work when a shiver of pain shot up my right side from foot to armpit and I was frozen. After a few moments, it calmed down to a dull ache that only manifests itself after long periods of sitting or lying in the same position. Just the right thing for me then…

Its 4 days later now and it is much better. I finally got a few hours sleep last night and felt all the better for it.

On.

In hot dietting news, I had a disastrous few weeks. The graph in the sidebar of this blog died a few weeks ago when I installed Vista (long story) so I am going to sort it out later (update: Done!). Anyway, back to Slimming World. I put on ½ pound then stayed the same, then lost ½ pound then last week put on 1½ pounds. Perhaps not a disaster but damn demotivating. I have been so good this week and after Hayley returned from her holiday in the States and had a slight gain we have both promised to stay under 6 sins a day. This is hard but I have managed it so far. Don’t ever underestimate the value of having someone you see all day doing the Slimming World thing with you.

My sister Jo continues her journey to slimdom. After 8 weeks, she is now ½ pound away from her 2 stone award and has now been Slimmer of the Week for 4 of the last 5 weeks.

The end. There is no more..]]>

We Don’t Need That Bigger Boat Anymore.

On Monday 10th February, Roy Scheider, the star of the best film in the world ever (don’t bother to argue, it just is), passed away. Despite the fact that Jaws has given me a life-long fear of deep water and oversized man-eating sharks, I still watch it about four times a year. I watched it again on Tuesday and although the rubber shark still looks rubbish, it doesn’t detract from the perfection of the film one bit. I read the book long after I first saw the film but barely managed to make it to the end. I gather from a few people online that the book was a great read until the film came along. Once Scheider, Dreyfus, Shaw and Spielberg brought it to life, the written page was forever spoiled. The film didn’t change the book much really. A few plot points were removed (Brody’s wife and Hooper having a relationship) and the ending was changed – out went a drowning shark and in came an exploding shark (“Smile You Son Of A Bitch…”) and that was that.

Roy Scheider’s role in Jaws is that of the audience. He is the everyman, worried and frustrated by Quint, out-classed by Hooper’s intelligence and experience and completely out of his depth on a small boat. We see everything through him and we see him grow over 2 hours.

One of his last professional engagements was to provide the narration for an epic, fan-made documentary about his most famous role. It’s called http://www.sharkisstillworking.com and I for one can’t wait until you can buy it.

Yoofs

I had the good fortune to encounter a few of those drunken youths the media are so fond of the other night. I stopped at a local convenience shop with a friend because we both had the need to pay four times as much as normal for a few household essentials. Most such places now go once step better by having a cash machine on the premises, allowing you to pay £1.85 to take £10 out of your bank account to pay over the odds for own-brand, low quality imitations of quality consumables. Anyhoo, there we was waiting to pay when the automatic doors slid open when what can only be described as a white hooded tosser stumbled in and shouted a mobile number and the poor, hapless chavette behind the till.

“Oh, f**k off Brad”

Pissed, he took no notice and a dribble of expletives and sub-standard grammar spilled from his lips. What made it worse was that he was no older than 13 or 14. He wasn’t just cider-tipsy, he was full blown drunk as were the six or seven other wastes of space hovering just outside the shop.

We paid and slipped back to the car. They paid us little notice, unlike the poor woman still working in the shop and presumably still listening to his nonsense. It’s a sad reminder of the times we live in and the state of youth society. Did we do stuff like that at that age? No. We had Mr Tidmarsh’s German prep to do and by god we did it.

Dull Work Weeks Ahead & Family Slimming World

It’s all change and a period of dullness ahead for me. Hayley is off to Florida for 3 weeks next week and Julie is having her long awaited knee operation on Wednesday. She will be off work for a few weeks and not very mobile and excited for quite a while after that. So, lonely lunches, drives to work and coffee breaks for a while. Also, it will just be me and sis at Slimming World for a while. Jo is doing amazingly well. After a month, she got her 1 Stone award this week and was Slimmer Of The Week for the second week running.

I just lost another half pound this week. Not very impressive I feel but at least it’s still going in the right direction. After 6 weeks, I still haven’t gained or stayed the same. Even at this rate, I will hit target before Summer, so I must’nt grumble.

Look at me, all back of the bus and shit…”

You will hunt in vain for the relevance of the quote, I just like the sound of it. Try saying it at work and stare in wonderment as the Pitch Black fans pull odd faces as they try to remember where they have heard the phrase before.

Don’t get too big for you boots though and try it with Shakespeare though. A few will silently admire your education, most will think you a tosser.

Today started well. A flat car battery. That’s the short version anyway.

The long version. I turned the key in the ignition and the holy audio hell that is my car alarm woke a sleepy Plymouth housing estate from its peaceful slumber.

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans…

I tried everything – taking the key out of the ignition, putting it in again, getting out of the car and pressing the lock and unlock on the key fob, getting in again, turning the ignition. As blood began to pour from my eardrums and the grey-haired might of the Badgers Wood Net-curtain Nazi squad grew more angered, I noticed the “boot open” light on the dashboard was lit. I tore round the back and slammed it shut. I slammed it shut in just the way I should have done after returning from Tescos on Saturday morning.

Shit.

The little light in the boot had been burning for almost 2 days and whatever charge remained had been sucked away by the loudest car alarm in all Christendom.

Fortunately, I pay £20 or so a month to a well-known motoring association in case of just such an event. A mere 20 minutes later the nice man arrived. I gave up singing “You’ve Got A Friend” only after it became abundantly clear he wasn’t going to join in and we passed the rest of our time together time happily, as only we British people can do with someone they have never met before and will never meet again, first by talking about the weather and then about work. I really shouldn’t have mentioned who I work for and I certainly shouldn’t have mentioned the strikes. Let’s just say that politically he was slightly to the left of me and leave it at that.

” You just call out my name and you know whereever I am….”

In other news, work continues apace on my Excel project at work. I have learnt more in the last 3 weeks about VBA code than in the previous 39 years. I even started calling it VBA…

Night Night Mary…

Aha. My wordiness has returned. I did miss it.

Anyway. Today. 39 years and 2 days old. I need a clock. A strange thing to say for sure but blessed with the ring of truth as it happens. You see now that I got a new stereo for my birthday, I no longer need (or have enough plug sockets) for my little radio clock alarm thing that sits next to my PC. Not a problem you may think, but after a week of being clockless, I can’t bear it.

So bright and early this morning, I found myself at PC World. Yes, I know…but I remembered this morning that they sold funky clocks. True enough, four or five very funky things. I could have got a USB one but I do turn my PC off occasionally so that wouldn’t be practical. So here I am now with an illuminated, globe thing that looks like a glitter ball. It has the current weather on too and it the base changes colour according to the weather and….well you get the idea.

Boys toys huh?

But I digress. As usual.

Today I have fallen over. Twice. The frailty of age kicked in at about 8.40am this morning outside PC world. Firstly, I parked up in that way that you can only do at car parks very early in the morning. Despite being the only car for miles, the average male has to park perfectly between two white lines and preferably nose-out. Oh the satisfaction.

I leapt out and fell over. I could have flowered this up as I usually do but the simple fact is, someone pulled the rug from under me and I dropped like a bag of spanners. Not an obstacle, obstruction or hinderance between me and a (now) laughing bloke about 30 yards away.

It gets worse.

As I slowly get back to my feet, the laughing bloke has bounded over and is now asking me if I’m ok. Jesus Christ. I am not even 40 and a bloke in his mid-50s is helping me up.

“No, I am fine thanks”.

“Well you have to be careful, that was a nasty tumble”.

Eventually, said samaritan was duly satisfied that I didn’t need medical attention and he bounded off to spend his navy pension in Homebase and I headed for PC World. I hadn’t gone 10 yards when I realised I’d left my IPOD on my passenger seat. I bounded back, opened the door and fell INTO my bloody car. For reasons that still escape me, my feet left the floor and I stabbed myself in the chest with the gearstick. To make matters worse, my now smaller but still considerable frame was now wedged under the steering wheel and I had to slide out backwards onto the red car park tarmac.

Eventually, I stood up. Hair in a mess, shirt untucked and pride dented. I was terrified to turn around in case the good samaritan had returned with Hetty Wainthrop to give me the kiss of life.

My visit to PC World was henceforth uneventful.

On the way back I bought another clock. Don’t ask me why. I now have two.

The birthday stash this year didn’t disappoint.

Gifts from the nieces and nephews.

1) A little fish tank with foam fish that swell up when you leave them in water for a few days. There have gone from about 1/8 inch to 1 inch across in two days and will probably burst the tank at about 3am tomorrow morning.

2) A really runny woodpecker that slides down a metal rod and pecks like buggery due to a spring he is attached with. The fact that he has purple hair just makes the whole thing work so much better.

3) A metal egg clock which needs a battery before it will work. Watch this space for a report as and when.

4) Hugo Boss. Smelly stuff.

I went to the cinema with my old mate Kelvin last night. I was very good in Pizza Hut and stayed remarkable close to my recommended diet. Quite hard though.

We went to see Spiderman 3 which due to its less than stellar performance at the box office was being shown in one of the smaller screens. At the back sat four “blokes” and their “birds”. They chose to spend the first 10 minutes shouting things out loud and then laughing like the oversized exhausts in their stupid, stupid, stupid cars.

“Will you please be quiet?”

Silence. Some old guy in a suit who had been near us in the queue to get in had piped up. What a star. Utter silence.

Now thats what you call bravery.

Red

Many of you have been holding your breath waiting for my detailed report following Operation Fence Spray. After one week’s delay the news is not good.

What a complete waste of bloody time.

Picture if you will the television advert with the laughing fat bloke. There he is spraying his fence quickly and with consumate ease whilst his nerd-like neighbour flounders about with the traditional “brush”. Well, I may have started off as laughing fat bloke but I ended the job rather happily with my trusty brush.

Points to ponder, re: The Sprayer.

• I stupidly bought one that runs on batteries. Shouldn’t be a problem I thought, after all its only a little pump and they are 4 big batteries. Wrong. Batteries lasted almost 2 fence panels (I have 18).
• You are advised by the enclosed pamphlett that you hold the nozzle (ooerr) about 25cm from the fence and move it from left to right in a continuous smooth motion. If you do this, the slightest whisper of wind blows the fine red mist up in the air, left, right or even worse back in your own bloody face. The 2 fence panels I managed to took almost 2 days to dry and are now covered in an uneven, gloopy mess.
• It goes bloody everywhere. The grass around the bottom of the fence has a nice red moustache, as has the top of my neighbours hedges and the back of his shed. Luckily, he can’t see the back of his shed unless he stands in my garden.

So I gave up and used a brush. Yes it took 4 hours and my back hurt like hell after, as did my arm the next day but it looks so much better.

The Sleeping Car

Part of the reason for my lack of blogging in the last week of so is a serious case of insomiability. Oh come on. You never saw that coming did you? A new and original excuse if ever there was one.

Let me explain.

The car is not well. It all started about 6 months ago. Over-revving when pulling away from traffic lights, lack of power going up hills forcing me into 2nd and, last Saturday, 1st gear in front of huge queue of rapidly-angering drivers.

I also did a bit of a freelance jobby last week and I could not solve one of their problems. This bothered the hell out of me and for some reason combined with the car nonsense to prevent me from having a decent kip for a few days.

I am not overly stressed about it but when you find yourself lying in bed wide awake at 8am on a Sunday morning listening to a church service on Radio 4, its quite unsettling.

It all seems ok again now though.

Work is fine. I am managing a team this week and there is not too much stress. I had to break some bad news to somebody which always lightens the day. Once again, I had a desperate need to keep talking and fill the gaping hole in the conversation whilst the news sank in. I really need to sort that out.

Excitement

Spiderman 3, Fantastic Four 2 and Die Hard 4 all coming soon. How excited am I? Like a 12 year old child. I have been to Quicktime and looked at the trailers for all 3. Bruce’s 4th outing looks particularly proposturous and over the top.

These Made Me Laugh

There is great truth in the statement by someone whose name I can’t remember that it would be a really good idea to write down every joke you ever hear the minute you hear it. I would have a huge and very valuable tome already after my 38 summers but as we all know, theory is one thing and practice is another.

It is also true that although TV and Radio comedy is probably as good as its ever been, I still laugh the most at things I hear at work or read on the forum. I have lost count the number of times I have laughed almost to the point of collapse at work and said to myself “I must put that on the blog”. Sadly, after a few hours more work and a drive home, it either seems not quite so funny or I forget.

So here I am trying to write this wrong. Here is a concise list of things that made me laugh over the last week.

• The news story that an airline pilot is currently suspended after an April Fool’s gag he played on the passengers of his 737. Shortly after take off he switched on the cabin radio and addressed the happy band of bleachy white folk headed for Malaga..”Hello, this is you luggage handler. I don’t know what I pressed but we appear to have taken off…”
• The mighty, underated and too quickly dismissed Danny Baker. The man is a genius. I first started listening to him in 1994 when he took over the DLT slot on Radio One. Since then he has been all over the place, GLR and BBC London. In the last few years I have been reduced to listening to him on the BBC Website. This is not exactly perfect, so imagine my surprise when his new podcast popped up on Itunes. If you have the capability, download it and listen. He seems to think that podcasting is where he is going to be now as he seems a little jaded with radio.Also, listening to comedy at work on your Ipod is dangerous at the best of times but this is deadly. Don’t miss the “man with a lisp sings the Pink Panther cartoon theme” or the regular “shoot me I am a session musician”. Anyway, enough eulogising. Just listen to it.
• In the category of “only makes Neil Laugh probably”, we are getting new “daylight” lighting at work. Great news for us. Bad news for the Night Shift who will probably be sent to sleep. Think about it. I know I did.
• Punchline of the week…”I thought I was putting my arm in a butcher’s dustbin.”

Ta Ta

Windy Miller Never Buys Levis

I am off work this week. Did I say? Sorry.

For some reason, I reached the ripe old age of 38 and managed to avoid jeans with fly buttons. There is nothing wrong with the zip, but we cowboys obviously appreciate the original rivets. Not when you are 38 and really need a pee you don’t. If you want to simulate my predicament in the comfort of your own home, try opening a can of John Smiths wearing mittens.

No wonder Trumpton smelt faintly of wee.

Piratical Ponderings

In about 2 hours, I will be comfortably esconced in the air-conditioned, comfy seated heaven that is my local multiplex. X-Men 3 here I come. Those of you who have recently patronised a cinema will be aware of the anti-piracy propaganda that assaults the eyes in between the adverts and the trailers. There are two sorts.

The one that shows a crappy little postage stamp sized image of The Fantastic Four and says something along the lines of “some people have already seen The Fantastic Four, but they saw this crappy picture and had crappy sound etc…” Would that it were so, noble film studio exec. Unfortunately, within days (actually the day after I think), I had the opportunity to sneak a peak at a copy floating around at work. It was DVD quality, as are most of the copies floating around by now. This is bad. Of course it is. Intellectual theft is still theft. What still amazes me is that the campaigns to stop people downloading these films still concentrate on the illegality of it and that it is morally wrong. Sorry guys but that doesn’t work with music and doesn’t work with films either. Do you really expect people on a limited income to resist a free DVD quality version of the latest blockbuster or a free mint copy of Eminem’s latest CD? Sadly, I think they do. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us would still pick up a £20 in the street and pocket it. That’s what this is guys. Picking up things on the street that other people have dropped there. Be it a DVD, a CD or a £20 note. Downloading Movies and Music is about as difficult as putting on a hat and the only way to stop it is to stop it being there. To paraphrase Richard Dreyfus from my favourite film, if you take the swimmers out of the water, the sharks will feed somewhere else. Is it that simple? I think it just might be. On that sad day when you suddenly can’t easily download stuff from the net, 99.999% of the population will shrug their shoulders, possibly cry a little and then get on with something else.

The other sort is the card that appears just before each film inviting you to shop anyone you see using a video camera in the cinema. I have a feeling that the sort of person who would shop someone would do so without any encouragement from Warner Brothers. I would probably do it if the person was sitting next to me, but only if was smaller than me and didn’t look very tough……and I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Jaws. The Best Film In The World.

Yep. I happened to hear a Radio prog about said 70’s blockbuster and it brought to mind the first time I saw it. At school. Yes, in those pre-dvd, pre-video days we had to wait for TV to get round to showing it. I remember seeing it in ‘85 at school but that probably wasn’t the first time it had been on. Boringly, I know it was 85 because I was studyless and sleeping in that odd gap at the end of one of the freshly-cublicled dorms.

The bloody film scared me so much, I couldn’t get to sleep.

I was 17.

I still hate deep, dark, blue water. Doesn’t everybody?

Man alive…how can 28 degrees seem so hot? One 35watt fan burning away all night and I still only managed about 2 hours sleep. Its now 8.56am and I am back to work at 1pm, fit and ready. Around 3am I gave up trying to drop off and instead dove into the ever-expanding Argue DVD collection. It’s quite surreal to be watching John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (set in the antarctic) when its hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum. My mind however, was not fooled and the long night drew on.

Sunday afternoon was disappointing. After a quick jaunt to the garden centre, I slammed my car door and the window dropped down into the door cavity like a guillotine. It took me nearly an hour to close it enough to be safe from rain and car thief. I took the car in this morning and they can’t do it until Thursday.

..and now the exhaust is blowing.

Never mind. Work in 4 hours.