Crackerwax

The stag do will be taking place in either London or Manchester. Plenty of opportunity for nefarious doings either way.

While the final venue might not be known, what is known is that it will be taking place on August the 25th and is that it’s open to any bloke that knows me. Including you Smith, so get your finger out!

Sorry ladies, but unfortunately, you’re going to have to sit this one out.

So if you’re interested let me know, I’ll be booking hotels once I have an idea of numbers, so far I have seven. Any advances on seven?

The cheek of the boy!

The best song Bernie and Elton wrote.

‘I finally decided my future lies beyond the yellow brick road.’

Fantastic.

Oh, the shame. Still might keep me away from the chocolate…

Then again, I doubt it.

I sat on the phone for 48 minutes last night all in the vague hope someone at Microsoft might answer the phone. As before, fat fucking chance.

So I made a decision, if Microsoft don’t want to fix it I’ll get it fixed myself and send them the bill. Right on!

Let’s see if I get anywhere with this. So far I’m £38.50 in the hole and it sounds like the company I’m using actually take the unit apart, get rid of the shit and dust out of it and fit a decent cooling that doesn’t let the motherboard warp like a suspension bridge in a gale. We’ll see how they do but to be honest they can’t be much worse than Microsoft.

I’ll keep you informed in my quest for Microsoft to pay my bill.

From start to finish this movie is fun. X-Men is about super heroes that are rock hard and completely serious about saving the world, the Fantastic Four are more light hearted, and if I’m honest looking at their super powers that’s the way it should be.

In Rise Of The Silver Surfer we get to meet, well, the Silver Surfer and quite frankly he rocks too. Voiced by Laurence Fishburne, the Silver Surfer really shines as a character.

Galactus on the other hand has become smoke. How this happened I’m not quite sure but that’s the way it is. To be perfectly honest I don’t think the movie suffers any for it. Although the Andys of this world may disagree!

The whole movie rollocks along at a fairly brisk pace, never becoming serious and never digging into character any more than it really needs to. The product placement is a little overwhelming at times and could do with being toned down, but the underlying story is fun. Forget that Ben Grimm is a bit too rubbery looking, just watch cool stuff happen and enjoy an hour and forty minutes of silly fun that lets you switch your brain off.

The bottom line is that this is a popcorn movie, characters like Batman need a little bit of gravity. The difference being that they’ve got a decent human back story that allows for that. The Fantastic Four got zapped by cosmic radiation, yeah, cosmic radiation. Almost as bad as gamma rays.

If you’re at a loose end go and see it. Take a bit of booze with you and it’ll be even more fun!

This is my father-in-law, he’s a top bloke. Mad as you like, but a top bloke nonetheless.

The best bit is when he does his Fulton Mackay impersonation, it’s comedy gold!

Looks like my Xbox 360 has finally decided to pack in at the grand old age of 18 months.

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This isn’t the first time I’ve had this kind of problem, oh no, I’ve been having freezes for a few weeks now and I even rang Microsoft last week to report them. I was helpfully told then that a simple restore would cure the problem.

My arse.

I’ve worked in the IT support game long enough to know that the first thing on tech support’s mind, when handling a call, is to get rid of that call. This isn’t my idea of customer service by the way, I’m much more thorough, however my English speaking chum possibly wasn’t.

This time though it looks serious, I even had three red lights earlier tonight. I guess that means I’m fucked really.

The upshot of all this is, that tomorrow, I’m going to have to call Microsoft to try and get them to help me get my ’360 fixed. God alone knows how much that is going to cost me.

Be warned though Microsoft I’ve got a PlayStation 3 now, and I’m not quite as impressed by your machine as I used to be.

Hah! Listen to me, as if Microsoft gives a flying fuck about me!

The PlayStation 3 is the most amazing piece of hardware I have ever owned. It is worth every penny of the £425 asking price.

I’ve just tested its upscaling of DVDs. Star Wars upscaled to 1080p on my Samsung panel looks amazing. Absolutely fucking amazing. Like nothing I have seen before. The picture is crisp, vivid and alive, motion is smooth and shadows detailed. It’s like it was on Blu-ray, it really is.

The XMB (the interface you get on switching on the box) is beautiful and surprisingly functional. Even the built in web browser is usable (this site looks awesome running full screen at 1920 x 1080).

So in summation, I’m sorry Sony. I really doubted you on this one, at least now you’ve gotten rid of king of the egos Ken Kutaragi the platform has a fighting chance.

As we all know he was a kind caring man who loved his Mum, he just hated coons that’s all. Lovely man.

I agree that words are just words and as odd as it seems I defend Manning’s right to say anything he wants, about whoever he wants, I don’t have to agree with him though.

Using words is beautiful and even ugly words can be used in imaginative non-offensive ways, but singling out a couple of waitresses in Derby and calling them wogs isn’t exactly comedy gold, it’s just bullying and worse still it’s almost pack-mentality, this contradicts what all his close friends would say of course, to him he was a loving caring man who’s racist ‘banter’ was just an act.

I can respect somebody for being honest in the face of opposition but for taking something so vile and turning it in to an act is pathetic. If he truly hated blacks, asians and jews then fine he’s just a bigot but if he does it as an act he’s using people’s hatred and ignorance for profit.

Hopefully he was the last of his breed…

This is the view from Stuart’s back garden, I’ve only just got it off the camera (see that freaky bug thing below), it was taken last weekend though. I love photos like this, I wonder where that jet’s off to?

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Take a look at the pictures in the gallery below.

What the fuck is that supposed to be? It was crawling across a pavement when I was out for a wander today, had to take a photo before I stomped it into oblivion.

That was a joke by the way, once the photo session finished I let it go about it’s creepy little bug way. Freaky looking fucker though.

Come on Kate you’re bound to know what this is, chances are you’ve probably got a jar full of them somewhere.

In a shocking turn of events it would appear that Woolworths has cottoned on to the Pic ‘n’ Mix flat fee scam.

Traditional Pic ‘n’ Mix entailed filling a bag with sweets, getting it weighed and paying for the amount you bought. This was the way it’s been since the dawn of sweetie-time, it also made up about forty percent of the material for Peter Kaye’s stand up routine (in case you’re interested Rola Cola and ‘garlic bread!?’ make up the remaining sixty percent).

I digress, this pay by weight business went on for ages, until about four years ago when Woolworths introduced a new way to pay for your sweets. Pay by volume! That’s right, you got two different sized tubs one priced at £1.99 and the other slightly larger at £2.99, filled them with as many sweets as you liked and that was that.

This was a revelation and, if I’m to be completely honest, an opportunity for well intentioned freeloading. You see the sort of sweets I like were those ones that are made out of foam (bubble gum bottles if you’re feeling generous) and foam sweets are very easy to compress. Straightaway you’ll be able to spot exactly what happened every time I went for a bit of Pic ‘n’ Mix, I went in with £1.99 and came out with a container that had such density it warped space and time.

It was great and I will miss it. However I did at least find out exactly what value I’d been getting for the blag. My tub today, which was filled before I realised the new rules and was consequently at risk of collapsing in on itself and forming a black hole, cost me a whopping £3.27! Still, it’s nice to know that I saved £1.28 every time before now.

Well, she is isn’t she? Look at her.

She never stops moving, doesn’t tell the truth, demands to be the centre of attention and generally just never shuts the fuck up.

I’m not saying it’s funny, it’s not, it’s tragic.

Plus on top of it all, she looks like Freddy Mercury (but not dead).

They’re only going to release a new cut of Blade Runner!

That’s right everybody’s favourite dystopic view of the future is getting digitally fiddled with, new scenes added, old scenes re-shot and generally tinkered with by Ridley Scott, and I for one can’t wait.

It’s the best film ever and to think that all the annoying little gaffs (geddit!) will be ironed out and a definitive cut, that Ridley Scott is truly happy with, is going to exist for the first time ever is just joyous.

But wait, there’s more! They’re only going to go and release it on Blu-ray and HD-DVD! You fuckers, get in!

I’m so happy right now I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until October.

My copy of long forgotten 1981 classic Condorman arrived in the post today.

I popped it in the DVD player excitedly expecting to see Michael Crawford hamming it up with Oliver Reed, what I got was nothing of the sort, I couldn’t see a fucking thing. It’s the world’s worst DVD transfer. It’s shit! Really, really shit, and that’s coming from a man who owned the original transfers of Casino and Blade Runner.

How could something so great have been butchered so badly?

It’s presented in non-anamorphic 2.35:1, so that’s approximately 240 lines of vertical resolution gone straight away. Having said all that by ten minutes in you’re glad there’s so little resolution, it helps avoid seeing all the shit in the print they used for the transfer. It looks like it was found in a bucket full of soil and razorblades. I won’t even start on the 2.0 sound track (the marketeers way of saying stereo).

What is it with piss-poor transfers like this? How difficult can it be to get a decent anamorphic transfer off a relatively clean print and chuck a remixed 5.1 soundtrack on it? It’s as if Disney doesn’t care about the lesser known movies it did and just wants to churn out straight to DVD toss like The Fox And The Hound 2.

I’m really worried about the future of the hi-def formats if this is the best they can do with DVD.

It’s back! The premier site for would be dictators, arch-enemies and evil henchmen is back.

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In an act that can only be described as magnanimous, Tony Blews has resurrected the fantastic www.villains.co.uk for all to see! Well, actually it’s www.villains.co.nr now, as I think the old domain has been purchased by someone else. Nevertheless the content is still 100% comedy gold.

I say we club together to buy Tony his old domain back. £2 from everybody who reads this site means we could have £4 raised by the weekend!

Seriously though go and have a look it is really funny.

Cats need to be taken down a peg or two. They seem to think that just because they share an evolutionary path with lions, they’re entitled to pad around the place looking at you as if you were shit.

If you think for one minute that the creature in your kitchen, currently fussily chomping it’s way through its fourth bowl of Felix that day (courtesy of your neighbours who all think it’s their cat) wouldn’t eat you alive if you were a bit smaller. Think again, because it would.

Say you lived alone, had an accident and were laying on the floor bleeding to death. A dumb dog would lick you and whimper, a clever dog would go and get help, a cat though would do neither.

A cat would weigh up its options, assess the likelihood of you feeding it in the next five minutes, fuck off out of it to get fed next door, then go and terrorise a few smaller animals for fun.

Fair enough it might return in a few hours but only to scratch your sofa, and dependent on your neighbour’s generosity with the Felix, eat your face.

They are mercenary bastards of the highest order. Quite frankly if I had my way anybody that said they loved their cat and that their cat loved them would be sectioned immediately.

What really gets me is cats’ love of revisionist history. If they fall in a swimming pool, they scrabble out like they’re on fire, before resuming a cool, casual, strolling pace. As if the whole thing must just have been the result of your fevered imagination.

What makes them think that we buy this? It’s not as if we should turn a blind eye because of all the great things they do.

Their contribution to society is only slightly higher than that of Paris Hilton. Sleeping all day, then waking up grumpy and clawing everyone in sight isn’t going to win you any awards. Yet people still want them around!

The cat’s problem is that it’s genetically programmed to think it’s the king of the jungle, when in actual fact a well placed size nine would put it in its place right away. Our problem is that we’re too caring to boot cats about.

I say mankind needs to toughen up and show cats who’s boss. Learn them some respect!

In a neat twist, of the word of the law vs. the spirit of the law kind, I have still managed to avoid buying a PlayStation 3.

I was bought for a present instead! Huzzah!

So now I’ll be able to enjoy MotorStorm, Resistance: Fall Of Man and, erm, well that’s it for now but soon I’m sure they’ll do a Wipeout and I’ll be well happy. What’s more come next Saturday I’ll be able to use it in glorious 1080p-o-vision. Double plus yay!

For now though I’m off to fiddle about with MotorStorm for bit!

Decided to purchase a box of Kellog’s Frosted Wheats (formerly Kellog’s Toppas, if I recall) the other day and found this scary bastard on the back.

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Not entirely sure what message they’re trying to get across with this amazing character, I can only imagine they hoped it wasn’t the sort of message that gets scrawled in blood on the wall of a murder scene.

It’s just plain wrong for so many reasons.

Let’s list them!

• He looks like a mentally ill plank of wood.
• He’s cross eyed.
• In long shot he resembles a cigarette butt.
• ‘Taste This!’ is more of a command than a suggestion when it’s printed in 20 point, bold, block capitals, and put in a speech bubble next to a staring breakfast cereal.
• His hands don’t join his wheaty little body.
• He’s encouraging you to eat miniature versions of himself.
• Holy shit, they might be his offspring!.
• He looks pissed to me.
• What makes him a Mr? Is he a “he”? Does he have, *shudder*, genitals?
• Looking for the way to Tesco? Yes. Looking for the way to Nirvana? Yep. Looking for a tasty cereal that has all the goodness of the whole grain? Yes. Looking for a tasty way to whole grain goodness? What are you asking me, you wheaty retard?
• Look at the motion lines on that spoon handle. That spoon ain’t stopping till it’s punctured the back of your throat.
• Noel Gallagher style monobrow combined with Roger Moore style eyebrow lift..
• Imagine ‘Taste This!’ being articulated in much the same style as a Glaswegian pyscho would deliver the phrase ‘Stitch This!’.
• Bowl of drowned young has clearly driven Mr Wheat over the edge/to drink/to kill again.

My recommendation is to wait until Stephen King stops doing work for Kellog and co. before buying any more ‘Frosted Wheats’…

Take a squizz at this retina-fucking abortion of a logo.

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What the fuck is that supposed to be? God help any epileptics that stray into the centre of London in the next four years.

Just look at it! It looks like a new logo for Top Shop designed by Duran Duran. The good news is that it only cost £400,000. Bargain!

I really think Wolff Ollins, the designers, surprisingly not Bananarama, have really fucked up with this. The neon zeitgeist is coming to an end and certainly won’t last the next four years, in fact as my mate Shaggy says:

‘They have lost the plot. It will never stay in date for four years. Looks like an album cover for Kylie Minogue!’

Bottom line is that it doesn’t look professional, nor does it look friendly, worse stlll it can’t even be said to be artistic, it’s just shit.

It has recently been brought to my attention that all I do is rant on my site.

This is not true!

To prove this I will now provide a list of things I like, and more than that I will provide an article on each of them (at some point).

Here we go, things I like!

1. Mighty Joe Moon by Grant Lee Buffalo
2. Commodore 64 music
3. The Sweeney
4. Christopher Walken impressions
5. Rain
6. Resident Evil 4

That’s about it really, sit tight and you’ll see that I really do like things too.

Promise.

This is a beast!

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The world’s sexiest television, no?

It’s 1920 x 1080, that’s full 1080p! It’s got 3 HDMI sockets, one for every witch in Macbeth and to top it all the screen’s a maahoosive 40 inches.

So the question is, should I buy it?

Vote! Vote now!

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It’s even tastier when it’s the strawberry flavour!

We all tried it on Saturday night and decided it was very, very tasty what’s more according to Ian it’s the beverage of choice when one is up to their nuts in rain and mud at Glastonbury.

Quite what Glastonbury is I’m not sure, I’m lead to believe it’s a ‘happening’ that all the youngsters go to in the summer to catch popular beat combos, plying their filthy demonic trade, corrupting the youth and generally being a bit outrageous.

Anyway, we like the cider as you’ll see…

Have a look at that.

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That’s proper cool, even though Suzanne can clearly be seen casting disdain at it from over my shoulder. Fucking philistine!

You bastard.

Where did this come from!

Harrumph.

Actually, hang on, give the dude some wedge he wants to buy a Defender. Go here to part yourself from some cash that you probably worked harder for than he ever did.

I know this, I used to work with the work shy cheese muncher!

Love you Tony.

Davina McCall is shit. It really is that simple.

I used to love her when she did MTV with that Spanish bloke. Now though she’s just a complete arse. Not only that but sadly she thinks the world’s most amusing woman. She’s not though is she? The last amazing thing she did was a Garnier Nutrisse Creme advert. A quote from which follows.

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‘Mother!’

Fucking comedy gold that.
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