My Little World10

well a storm nearly stranded me at work all night (work was caving in anyway) but i got home and hopefully my car will live on...i have a headache for some reason - and i had issues to moan about

first, an easy one: farenheit! stop bloody using it we went metric 30 years ago!! the papers in particular annoy me, they slap "its 127million farenheit!!" all over the front pages coz it's hot, this is the only time you see farenheit because it sounds more impressive, as soon as its cold again we're back to -1C etc - just dont use it! it makes no sense and its regressive - next we'll be using pounds (lbs) as a form of weight! ahhh

and now my big controversial rant which will probably make me racist in the eyes of some twat 

there was an article in the paper today by a middle aged woman (i believe this was the right wing rag that is the express or mail but anyway...) and she was going on about RE lessons in school and how the national curriculum basically only covers islam, sikhism and hinduism with no christianity or judaism by the sounds of it

i went to a catholic school btw and it pretty much turned me anti-catholic in the end, we never learnt anything about world religions except how the jews murdered jesus so maybe im deluded - state schools are far more pc

so to keep this relatively short -

1) i think all major religions should be covered, the woman also pointed out how only the fairly bog standard "happy" side of other world religions were covered - ignoring issues such as 'honour' killings, forced marriages and general horrible stuff that goes with some of these religions - i do think its right that if kids have to learn about gineesha etc they should also learn jesus, even if i dislike organised religion myself

2) i dont really like organised religions taught at all, i dislike the french but i do have a degree of sympathy to their very harshly enforced no religion in public sectors, its not british to enforce in such a way but i think stamping out religion from school (leading into society in general) would be a good thing - however this is my humble opinion

3) it destroys our british christian-judaic heritage and culture, while i dislike it, britain is built upon christian traditions and a fair bit of jewish influence and not learning about this is baaaad - this is mainly the woman's view, as long as there's football england shall remain is mine

4) it creates a generation more sympathetic to foreign ways, which is fine, im all for tolerance but unfortunately i dont think force feeding pc stuff and tolerance as dictated by the government works, britain has been quite happily becoming secular for decades and here we are seeing young uns thinking religion is cool - i know i shouldnt feel like this but i feel threatened by the inroads foreign culture (ok religion - i love curry/chinese food) are making in britain, my fears that all kids will become muslims is pretty small but its there - my main concern is that more and more legislation will slide in and bend the rules for minorities - i am a majority man, i dont like giving unrepresentative power to minorities who are more evident because they stick out (silent majority etc) - im not saying outlaw funny religious practices but dont sacrifice britishness at its expense (eg. the pork incident which really pisses me off - basically a pub was forced to change its name because it said car pork because it had a link to pig farming due to offence to muslims or someone)

hmm thats the nazi stuff over with - sometimes i scare myself, im a hippy at heart, but a defensive hippy 

next: women!! yes, why is it that my only social contact at home now comes through work? very sad but anyhoo

the girl who i sort of fancy and may have moaned about several months ago (as shes very quiet and cynical) - does apparently like me after all, i think she just has to get to know someone first - she invited me to her party, very keenly i might add and it wasnt as if the guest list was short and embarrassing so get in! altho god knows what im gonna do now

anything else - no, its stopped raining - good job im off til friday, hopefully my dept will be dry by then 

well, i got me job back, its pretty good so far, feels good to be doing something again and earning money

anyway, second week of stargates, im not going to go through the eps much but i have a few points

in atlantis it was all about morals and stuff, in the end the ship got blown up and they killed the human wraiths for safety as the wraith were coming for them - but anyway, this will probably lead into them learning more about hives for use in a tense ep and i guarantee that some (probably michael) survived the blasting

in sg1, not a lot happened, stuff about morgan la fey from arthurian legend (one note: tealc watches star wars, reads the bible etc and often knows more culturally about earth than some of the characters, and yet is clueless about arthurian legends) - what i was interested in was the ever increasing complexity of ascension (which i think is a very bodged storyline) - how come merlin, who according to the next eps spoilers descended into human form to create ultra powerful defences retained his memories and knowledge, and yet when orlin became human as a child he lost his memories because a human couldnt handle it 

meep

anyway - starting at 6am tomorrow, night! 

just watched garfield, i wasnt execting much to be honest but it turned out to be quite good

im not sure if garfield fans thought much of it, he's nowhere near as cynical as the real one and jon is far too happy and lucky but it is highly amusing at points and i think cat owners will appreciate garfield

some of the one liners and little tricks garfield does are quite clever, cant say i found the caper stuff that good, but thats the kiddie element i think and the dancing scene is bloody hilarious, just the look on his face cracks me up, his face is probably the funniest part of the whole film

the dog is pretty cute and funny as well, reminds me of my old dog 

in all i think the way he relates to my real cat is quite clever, stealing food, playing innocent, being a fat lazy bugger etc 

well worth a watch, and its only just over an hour long ..nice n easy

also - jennifer love hewitt is well fit

speaking of fit - there's a video of lindsay lohan in school uniform!! (its a harry potter spoof) dear sweet jesus my eyes nearly fell out.....argh!! much better than the sexless act she put on in mean girls 

awkhahaha...

well, the new series of both stargates have finally started...in the us, god bless the internet...

to be honest it's been so long since the last series i had forgotten what happened, especially the end of atlantis, dunno if that makes it a worse season finale, sg1 definitely had the better one tho, as it should seeing as its been going 10 years now

so what happened...if anyone actually reads this and cares - ####spoilers!!#####

well i watched atlantis first, which left us with some hive ships screwing over the team and damaging the only earth ships, with ronon and mckay imprisoned and sheppard 'lost' (again!)

well sheppard was ok, as always, and he ended up teaming up with michael (trip from enterprise) who was a bit put out and then they blew up one ship and sent the humanising gas (which apparently doesnt work on females...ooo) to the other as the daedalus was nearly blown up, basically ending up with the team in control of a hive and the deadalus on its last legs (the orion got used for some nice pyrotechnics) both sitting in the vast gap inbetween galaxies - so threat dealt with, but still stuck in space so im assuming this is a 2-part opener - oh and meanwhile dr.weir went back to earth to piss off the penpushers (and the doctor from voyager), which seems to be concurrent with the events in sg1 - unlike last season which saw a big gap inbetween the two openers (as sweet f a happened at the end of season 8 of sg1 and atlantis had hive ships...yet again)

onto sg1 - when we left the ori had destroyed the fleet of ships, including the russian one (i saw that coming) and sam was in space, daniel and cameron were missing and tealc was buggering about 

well the ori ships buggered off - leaving mitchell and sam out in space, then the odysey (sp.) - thats the new earth ship, as prometheus got blown up, came back and picked up mitchell, and then the lucian ship tealc was on turned on them and meanwhile daniel and vala were on an ori ship, as vala gives birth to miracle-grow child who spouts religious crap

the odyssey picked up sam and then there's a little face off as bratac arrives and destroys a lucian ship (just after they get tealc back of course) and they leg it, then they head off with bratac to destroy the ori ships at chulak - which aint gonna happen, bratac rams an ori ship but fortunately the odyssey beams out the team, as well as daniel and vala who were about to get shot as they failed to abduct the kid

then they all head home for the rest of the 10th series...

so how was it? - both good eps, there was a lot of explosions, naturally, i think series 10 is gonna have to have quite a few of them when the ori are about, theyre hardly little jaffa warriors like back in the day - we have yet to see the ori soldiers fighting on the ground in their armour so thatll be cool, i think the series will slow down a bit compared to series 9, which was like a first series due to the new threat, less prior crap and more exploration with an ori backdrop

as for atlantis, god knows where it's gonna go, they blew up their new ancient ship, but they seem to have acquired a hive ship, i think there's going to be a fair bit of exploration down the whole human/wraith issues road, which is all ethical and stuff, there's also going to be new bad guys, i cant quite remember who theyre meant to be - they were ancient enemies of the ancients/lanteans and if im remembering my websites something like replicators (just when you thought you'd got rid of em) and then there's the usual exploration stuff, which i hope increases because the wraith are very repititive (so were the goauld i guess)

anyway, how geeky am i? actually if i look around the net there are people who speak very strange stuff and i get completely lost, i am but a mere pleb 

what the hell sort of word is "rant" anyway...i shall look it up...ok wiki was no help, didnt explain the etymology

anyway - i had a list but as usual i forgot, what was i going to say??

ok - 1: pokerface, ant and dec's new show, i think im biased against itv (as it's shit) - i think its watchable, but it's not compulsive viewing, it's no deal or no deal basically and there's very little adrenaline rush, i think it would be an improvement if they didnt show you who was leading..maybe - it's not awful tho, and its got the golden boys

2: the price is right!! classic daytime viewing, it's so cheesy it's cool - it's got joe pasquale (and a pasquale finale!! brilliant!) and a bunch of northerners, fit women with far too much make up who stand, smile and rub the prizes, god awful jewellry as prizes - i love it, just make sure it stays in the daytime lol

3: big brother, im watching this for the first time while writing this - theyre weird and playing giant jenga

4: neighbours! bloody wimbledon, ive had to wait to see connor murdered (still waiting tho) and i think it's cool lou gets a mail order bride, i hope she stays a while lol - and i want to see a baby actually grow up on neighbours, babies always bugger off then occasionally come back 16 years later played by different actors, currently we still have oscar and charlie

enough tv, i watch far too much here, wat else was i gonna rant about

o yeh film reviewers - what a bunch of poncy, pretentious shits, don't believe anything they write because theyre looking for something that most people wouldnt care about (such as originality, and my favourite artisty word - "metaphor" - fuck offff) whereas my film reviews actually review a film for watchablity and enjoyment, with definitions such as pile of shite (royal tenaumbaums), mildly watchable chick flik (sliding doors etc), no brainer (kids movies, action, x-men), hilarious (anchorman), mild, fulfilling humour (good kids movies, cheap comedies) and those ones that make u think (the matrix, fight club etc and the occasional foreign watchable (amelie)

ok enough of them, i was just wasting time by reading the telegraph (**spits**) tv mag, through which i read a book review of a book called "londonistan", which was clearly enjoyed by the reviewer type person

firstly - this is natural as the telegraph is completely conservative, middle/upper class orientated (near to the express, - dear god i hate their new ad) and therefore is going to like a book about the threat of islam and how we're all going to die etc

my issue is this - i consider myself a liberal person, the english version of liberal is somewhat different to american, britain is liberal with conservative nuts running some of the papers, the american version of liberal seems to be feared by them and they (yanks) do stuff like ban harry potter and the da vinci code, our conservative party just stands for supporting big business and doing fuck all with services (therefore lower taxes) - i like the tolerance and the fact that half our law isnt written down

so (i repeat) my point is this - i agreed with this book to a point, mainly the apparent creeping introduction of sharia law - i first noticed hsbc using it, theyre a multinational bank and out to make as much money as possible so fair play - but is it going to be put into some degree of our common law??? i dunno, but i certainly know i dont bloody want it to 

so does this make me conservative?? am i standing in the way of progress? this is me being very reactionary and feeling quite passionate about something for once, so this is by definition me being conservative - or is it just ive got a backbone?

my answer to this is that sharia law is conservative by its nature, obviously im not part of the bnp and i appreciate that we would retain common law - but it's always a slippery slope with these things, people would begin to claim things that are legal under sharia law and not english law (honour killings? i dont actually know anything about the ins and outs  of sharia law, but thats my example) and then its just going to get worse and start to encroach on our freedoms

here's the next point of argument - sharia law is based on religion, i support a completely secular government and legal system - which is seen as liberal (at least historically, like ive said liberalism is pretty much ingrained now anyway) - im not a fan of the french going to extremes by ripping off religious symbols, but maybe its necessary for equality (if that exists) - i appreciate that christianity pretty much wrote our laws, but so did common sense and the ideas of justice and freedom and the majority of our population has sensibilities based on christian values, eg. i still say thank god, there's no religious connection but its a part of our society, i wouldnt go to iran and force them to accept our legal system (the yanks might tho) and hopefully vice versa - i think its that tolerance thing, when those cartoons appeared we sort of realised "hang on, weve been bloody tolerant of women walking about with covered faces and yet these immigrants, a tiny proportion of our population have the audacity to burn down buildings and have a whinge" - i dont mind a little bit of a whinge, im doing it right now, but there were those few who turned to violence and writing nasty things - i have two words - LUMP IT!!

so there's my incoherent rant, it doesnt make much sense, its probably hypocritical and most of it was based on the fears of some mindless conservative, i dont have a clue about whether the law will be changed but i would like to make my feelings clear right here and now

so am i a conservative?? i dont think so, i dont think anyone can be totally liberal, i tend to not be offended by anything (except bill o reilly - it was a bizarre sensation, the sheer amount of lies he spun was my main beef) - i have a defensive, conservative element in me, don't we all to some extent? i just want the world to be a better place, which would of course be better in my eyes and therefore is hypocritical

animals are so much easier to live with... 

urgh, i fear i am a creature of evil now - anyway, if anyone bothered to read my almost-nazi rant - answers on a postcard!!! (or comment, either way) 

well, time to swallow my pride and get me old job back...hopefully, im gonna ring em up in a bit so i might be back later to edit this...fingers crossed!!

so whats happened in the world? - italy won the easiest world cup since 1938 by playing very defensive, average football (see! it can be done, england!!) - it shouldve gone to a team who deserved to win like england or germany, not one who cheated to beat australia but at least it was a european side (see earlier)

so how was it? the tournament wasn't that great to be honest, the group stages were and i suppose that's a fair bit of it but ppl only remember the final and england defeats - the major problem was teams underperforming in the last 16 onwards, switz ukraine was horrible, spain and argentina fell at the first hurdles, france, italy, brazil and england all underperformed, france italy and portugal used far too much diving and cheating - basically, germany was the only team doing anything decent, and they had to, as hosts - my verdict, none of em deserved it!!

so it all ended with a fairly large anticlimax, have all the italian clubs been demoted yet?? that would be rather sweet justice

i also have bones with fifa - the undisputed homeland of football is england, correct? hence the line, "football is coming home" - so why do fifa constantly punish the english for playing the english way? - going in hard, fighting over the ball, staying on your feet etc etc - fifa said they were going to be tough on diving this year, they weren't at all, little shit ronaldo got away with about 50 against france, the refs also booked players for sweet F.A - peter crouch jumping for example

i think rooney hasnt been criticised too badly because 1) we all hate ronaldo anyway and 2) in english football he didnt do anything, he was being fouled by two potuguese prats and being as strong as he is he battled through, most fancy players wouldve gone down long before - this is what i see as wrong with fifa and the international game in general, it doesn't respect decent sportsmanship and the english become particularly incensed when they see players doing unsportsman like things (such as telling the ref to book him etc) - in short, we need alan hansen on that fifa panel (even if he is scottish)

well, i have successfully turned into a recluse now im at home, i live in a bloody mud pit and all my old friends seem to be ignoring me...great..oh and i cant find a job....bored and frustrated and irritated and bored!

so guess what ive been wasting my time doing?? - playing with emulators, im currently playing pokemon (ruby et all) the tech is pretty cool but why am i playing kiddie games? i think its coz its quite a long game and san andreas loses its appeal after 20 times and i dont really have the cash to burn at the mo

so thats me in a nutshell, poor and bored and billy-no-mates, i miss uni and i miss money

on the plus side - nice to see ronaldo (diving, whinging, winking, handbag wearing little shit one - not the fat brazilian goalscorer) getting bitchslapped by the english web users and voting for valencia over him, apparently he was number one for a while (on the fifa young player of the world cup) only because the scots tried to put him up there to annoy us - i guess having a decent sized population and "the internet" is to our advantage, theyre just bitter, do we really care about them?

think ill get those leaf green games.. 

yes it's review time! i have seen 2 epics this week - mean girls and final fantas: spirits within (woooooo)

firstly, mean girls - ok, first a note to say that the only reason i watched this was because i realised how fit lindsay lohan is and figured it would be worth a look

but somehow that film sapped all the sexiness out of short skirts and low cut tops, therefore making it unappealing to me - it wasn't unwatchable, but also not worth wasting money on

- basic premise is new girl, who is stunningly beautiful and completely naive about american school makes friends with geeky art/gay types, who get her to join the bitches that all american high schools have (according to movies) - she becomes like the bitches inadvertantly as she tries to win a characterless bloke and sabotage the bitches power base, she gets in trouble, her real friends getted pissed at her, and it all ends happily ever after once she realises the importance of maths

ok, onto final fantasy - i knew this film sucked, it was the biggest bomb of all time or something (hence why it ended up on channel 5) but as a final fantasy fan i was determined to see it for myself regardless

was it watchable? yes...was it worth the effort? no

ill look at it from two angles, the film angle and the FF angle

filmwise - despite having alec baldwin (team america...fuck yeah) and james woods it was pretty poor and lacklustre, the storyline (big meteor from dead planet contains angry ghosts which kill stuff, dr. person works it out and turns the spirits good etc etc) didnt really make sense and it seemed it was hastily created just as an excuse to piss about with revolutionary cgi

FF-wise - i am not a hardcore fan, i love the games usually but im not the sort of person that gets all anal about why or why not it's final fantasy - for me it's not final fantasy, but im not going to slate it for that

so why not? well for one no swords!! there has to be swords! it was set on earth and in big cities like new york etc no decent airships, no weird non-human things (bar alien ghosts), no manically evil antagonist, too many guns and stuff and there were no decent characters

it did have a Cid (altho it was Sid for some reason) - and it was clearly attempting to copy FF7's storyline with the whole planet energy and life force etc and even a meteor - didnt work and it was nearly as confusing as the actual FF7 (trust me it was not lifestream and mako that made that game a classic)

i appreciate its hard to make a game into a film, but there was almost no correlation between the FF series and that film - hence why the fans hated it, maybe if it hadnt been named "final fantasy" it may have made profit, it was just a typical apocalyptic sci-fi flick with spaceships and aliens and a cheesy love story

how about making an ff7 film (as in actual ff7, not 2 years afterwards)? a remake of the game? (did i ever review advent children?) i would buy a remake of ff7 even if it sucked (and cost 20 quid or less) just because of what it is, ive gone on about this before somewhere...

anyway, time for italy to looooooossssseeee!!! 

so football is dead temporarily, i shall make no more moans about it

onto the corporations!! i saw this cool ad today, it had a mayfly, (famed for it's one day life) and it showed it not wasting a second etc etc and what was it advertising? bloody vodafone - how is that in any relation to a phone company?? i thought it would be something cool but it was probably the most unconnected ad campaign ive ever seen - how much do those marketing types get paid?? - that's my disgust at that advert over..... to emphasise, i liked the ad, so pat yourselves on the back - but it had no relation to vodafone and i am not going to change to vodafone because of it (actually im already with vodafone, the only network with no coverage in my field - but it aint coz of that ad!!)

what else do i want to moan about, oh yeah - reverse racism, political correctness, the scottish, the general decline in the morality of society (kidding! im not a yank/old person) and possibly attractive women

my main beef is one show - "young black farmers", now i dont particularly watch tv that much, especially in summer, as it tends to be rather wank and this show may be brilliant for all i know but i want to fight those politically correct network execs (im using the simpsons stereotypes here - presumably this show is american, our farms dont really get much press) - my main argument is this - what would happen if i produced a show called "young white farmers"? - allegations of racism, KKK etc etc im sure would ensue - i am not saying what is right or wrong, ive come to realise that ideas of right and wrong change etc - the correct term is socially acceptable, so why is it socially acceptable to discriminate (aka positive disc.) towards black people (and women) - i dont know whether it should be right to discriminate either way, but surely the fact that you couldnt have a "white" cast but you can have a "black" one - (because of those same 'people' that claim christmas is offensive) is a bit suspect??

fortunately no one reads this crap i write, but if they do i would urge them not to start waving flags and shooting people etc etc - it's just a tv show and the show isnt what bothers me - it's what it represents and says about society

it's also that old argument about being allowed to have an all female workforce, i have no objection to this, i used to work in about a 90% women environment but the fact that if you said it could only be all male (say, lots of physocal labour or summat, i dunno, its hypothetical) then youd get slaughtered, but all women oh that's "wise" and "progressive" -  personally i really dont care, but i do wonder why people feel the need to even care - obviously a brothel would generally be all female, possibly the odd gigolo or something - if you have an all male workforce, why does it matter - the job shouldnt go to the blokes simply for being blokes, but if all the jobs are fairly assigned and vice versa - why not?? bloody humans

anything else?? oh yeah, andy murray is a little gimp, as is leyton hewitt but i already knew that - murray is an unsporting spoilt brat from what ive seen of his behaviour - i have no objection to shouting at umpires, that's what theyre there for but when he loses or gets narked off he just storms off, no autographs or fan appreciation - bit of a sore loser, there doesnt seem to be any enjoyment there for him

also he's scottish,  this naturally causes me trouble especially during football tournaments as a lot of them (in true, grumpy, bitter, scot fashion) will do out of their way to slate england, aside from their usual whinging about english dominance in everything (bar curling) (you know why that is?? because there's 50 million of us!)

murray openly said he would support ecuador, or was it sweden/paraguay etc but the point stands - he regards himself as scottish and to be honest im glad he didnt win, he isnt a british competitor, he's a scot (who very likely trained in england..hmmmm?) - obviously at this time of great sadness a lot of us feel emnity towards someone who stomps about with a st.andrews cross on his arm rather than a union flag, itll probably subside for the next wimbledon 

it's not just murray - fergie is also a grumpy scot, i know several scots down here happy to see us lose - and yet? they live here, work for english bosses and earn their money off english punters (ok fergie works for the glazers but still) - i dont mind them supporting their own teams - im sure jose is delighted, but he didnt come out and say "england are crap, i want ecuador to win" and he wouldve been justified in supporting portugal over england, but he used tact in public, possibly due to the fact england is half chelsea and he gets enough abuse as it is

i am not saying all immigrants should support us, ive met ghana, TandT, italy (top of me head, ive met most countries recently) football fans and they were happy to cheer for england second to their own homelands, but oh no, the scots will just cheer for everyone else out of spite

is it friendly rivalry?? the kiwis have the same tshirts "i support 2 teams - NZ and anyone playing the ozzies" rather than scotland and england respectively - down under its a rivalry, and if it was the same degree here it would be also, but nz is actually 3 hours flight away from oz and not part of the same country and doesnt whinge about independence while pilfering our funds (the argument is that if only scottish money was used too many people would sink into poverty etc - so it would be immoral to share the wealth where it was produced, fine! but dont bloody whinge about independence, scotland is the same country so therefore yes it should get an even share of uk wealth - but it doesnt have the right to claim oppresion and interfere in our parliament as well as their own little one)

there! all out now - is this scottish question a serious issue?? maybe, the tories are bringing it up currently, i doubt itll come to the destruction of the union and im not for it but i am supporting the tories for once, stop the bloody scots interfering since they get to piss about in scotland as it is (as a student particularly - no fees in scotland, bastards) 

all done, why cant we all just get along? probably because of people like me :S