Pitch Black

I watched ‘Pitch Black’ last night. Well, actually I started watching it on TV last Sunday, remembered that I had bought the DVD of it cheap, so put that on instead and then fell asleep half way through, and then actually finished watching it four days later. It was good, stylish, SF fun, albeit spectacularly stupid – how does a species that dissolves in sunlight evolve on a planet where it is only dark every twenty-something years? 

I watched one of the special featurettes after the credits had rolled, and it was film of special promotional rave parties that they put on before the film was released. Supposedly, these events were supposed to recreate the full ‘Pitch Black’ experience, although all this seemed to involve was the lights being turned off half way through and didn’t feature anybody being ripped apart by horrible things with razor sharp teeth. I had a much more realistic ‘Pitch Black’ experience in the woods tonight, with pouring rain, a failing light source (the batteries in my torch that hadn’t been used for six months starting to fade) and a group of chavs, tanked up on White Lightning cider grunting like neanderthals somewhere in the darkness. I gave them a wide berth and hurried home.

I spent two and a half hours last night collecting snapshots in San Fiero, but I was slightly miffed to find that I hadn’t saved my game properly, so I’ve got to do it again. Still, the surreal sight of a homie from da hood flying with a jet pack around the districts of Garcia and Hashbury (who are supposedly organizing a ‘Joint Festival’ according to the street banners) is wonderful fun.

Ah, time for QI … :-) Evening all!

Business news

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Originally uploaded by neilh.

What do *you* eat for lunch? :-)

Bits and bobs

Well, the darkness has returned – it’s now dark for the morning walk at a little after six, and by the time I got home from Birmingham tonight it was persistently raining and almost dark enough to need my torch to pick my way round the woods. I need to buy some new wellies as my left boot has a leak in it and my foot was soaked after trudging through the puddles.

Still, I’ve got some positive things to offset the lack of sunlight – I finally cracked the problem of replicating a sql database across the firewall by using ftp to transfer the snapshot files, so I no longer have to copy the backup files and restore them manually. It’s taken nearly a week of messing around off and on, and I now know more about sql server security than is healthy. Also, I’ve finally beaten the remote control plane mission in San Fiero – the little Red Baron is frustratingly difficult to manoeuvre and shoot at the same time, and the fuel limit allows very little room for error. I went back to using my original xbox controller which has the black and white buttons (for rudder control) at the top of the button layout rather than at the bottom as with the S controller, and that did the trick. Just one more mission for Zero, and I can finally cross that annoying Z icon off the map.

Now, it’s time for a cup of coffee to stop me nodding off half way through Lost, and to watch the excellent drama documentary Space Race. It’s fascinating to learn more about the Soviet space programme, in contrast to the rather more well known US efforts as seen in ‘The Right Stuff’ and ‘From the Earth to the Moon’.

Music Quiz Answers

The answers are hidden below – just select the text with your cursor to reveal all (just in case anybody still wants to guess)

1. Luther Wright

2. Las Ketchup

3. John Otway and Richard Holgarth

4. Cabaret Voltaire

5. The Shaman

6. Goldfrapp

7. The Doors

8. CW McCall

9. Bjork

10. Melle Mel

 

Strange Days

Just when did my life get so god damn weird, exactly?

I’ve been working for Woozie down at the Four Dragons casino on the main strip in Las Venturas. We were getting ready for a heist and seeing as how high explosives always come in handy on such occasions I went to check out a quarry on the edge of the desert. After taking care of some business there, including disposing of a dead cop and his bike before any more heat turned up, I ended up running the place. A kid from downtown Los Santos driving a dozer sure is weird, but that’s not the weirdest thing – no sir.

I got another call from Mike Toreno, up at the abandoned air strip to the north of the quarry. Not many men scare me, but Toreno is one of them. I still don’t know who he was working for – CIA, FBI or the Russian Mafia – and after a lifetime of double dealing, I don’t think he does either. The crazy mother got me learning to fly a plane so I could run some deals for him, and somehow it ended up with me blowing up a cargo plane full of goons in dark suits somewhere over the desert and bailing out with a parachute on, so high up I couldn’t even see the ground. Sheeee-it.

Then it got weirder. The Truth turned up again, talking about aliens and conspiracies and green goo. He gave me a pair of night vision goggles so I could sneak into a secret military base (Area 69, would you believe?) and steal their secret project which turned out to be a jet pack, like something out of a whacked out James Bond movie.

A homeboy like me flying round on a jet pack is powerful strange, but it’s still not the weirdest thing. It’s not even my new girlfriend – a croupier from the casino who likes me to dress up in a gimp suit and whup her ass with a two foot long plastic johnson.

Nope. The weirdest thing was standing at the side of the road and seeing Elvis riding by on a motorbike. Damn straight – the King on a Harley.

Strange days indeed …

The Last Laugh

Thursday night is comedy night at the Lescar, and my friend Andrew had been nagging me to go for years, so this week we finally got the necessary circular tuit and went, and well worth it it was too. We got there slightly early, but that was no great hardship with some excellent Timothy Taylor’s Landlord on tap. The show kicked off more or less on time at nine o’clock with an excellent warm up from the resident compere Toby Foster – it seems that everybody who has ever appeared on Phoenix Nights is now destined to compere stand up comedy nights for the rest of their comedy careers. He had an excellent rapport with the audience, particularly the girl celebrating her birthday who was sat near the front with an unopened present. He got some good comedy mileage out of the gifts, which turned out to be a chick lit novel and a packet of friendship tea (“Stalkers Tea more like. Ingredients – includes rohypnol”) – bet she wishes it had been a dildo now …

The first act was Susan Murray, who was born in Scotland and raised in Wolverhampton (“because my parents wanted me to sound like a twat”). Some of her material was deliberately controversial, but it all went down well with the crowd, particularly the stuff about internet dating which struck a chord with a rather drunk woman sat in front of us called Diane who was offered a ten minute open mic spot next week by Toby Foster.

The headline act was the excellent Paul Sinha whose act was based on his experience of being fat, gay and asian, and also being a football fan. Tales of doomed stag weekends, being mistaken for a fellow squaddie and of being asked some thug one night – “Oi! Do you fancy my bird?” – and wondering how to tell the bloke that he was the one he had his eye on. Painfully funny, and it’s refreshing to see a gay standup who isn’t in the least bit camp.

So, an excellent night out, and one that I’ll definitely be up for again.

Random Music Quiz

Here's a simple idea for a music quiz - open up your music player of choice, shuffle the playlist and post pictures from google images of the first ten bands that come up. Anyone want to try to guess these?

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