Crackerwax

As it happens posts on the new Doctor.

• 18:08
  I’m done. This is more than a little disappointing.
• 18:07
  Blah, blah. Matt Smith is now telling us he he got a letter from David Tennant. Cloying horseshit.
• 18:03
  My bad. He does. Have a look.
• 18:01
  He doesn’t even have an IMDB entry! This could be great, or very, very shit.
• 18:00
  Matt Smith is the new Doctor. Who the fuck is Matt Smith?
• 17:59
  Ooh, They’re talking regeneration!
• 17:57
  Paul McGann gets a decent length of time though. Steven Moffat likes the idea of snogging too. Hmmm.
• 17:56
  Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy only get 20 seconds!
• 17:55
  The new Doctor looks old but is young. Who is it? Flipping heck it’s confusing.
• 17:54
  Steven Moffat also likes Tom Baker’s performance!
• 17:50
  The new Doctor is 26!
• 17:48
  Steven Moffat really likes John Pertwee. A good sign!
• 17:46
  Blah, blah, it’s a Doctor retrospective. RTD wittering on about how the series has never changed. Bollocks.
• 17:42
  Martin Freeman is just younger than David Tennant but is he an unknown?
• 17:39
  The new Doctor is younger than David Tennant and an unknown.

No sooner had I posted the Super Hans for Doctor Who than BBC posted the news that the new Doctor would be revealed on the 3rd January. They’ve also pulled that he-or-she cobblers again.

I’m not impressed.

Unless of course Super Hans is the next Doctor!

After lengthy dicussions, we have decided that the ideal actor to play Doctor Who after David Tennant is Matt King, or as you may know him Super Hans from Peep Show.

Look at him, he’s perfect!

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If you agree, please add your name to our petition by clicking here.

I posted the following piece on crackerwax.com in May 2007. I think it bears repeating though.

Russell T Davies has a wonderful sense of what science fiction can and should be like, read this and you’ll see what I mean.

Whatever you do on Doctor Who, whatever technology or futurism you’re putting on screen, it’s always going to look like it was made now and it should. You know, science fiction in the sixties looks like it was made in the sixties, the seventies, eighties. The worst and most stupid thing you can do is go in to a meeting and say let’s make it timeless.

For a start, why? I think these programs are a record of the year in which they are made and they should be and they should show that off, and plus you can’t fight it that’ll creep in anyway. There’s no such thing as a timeless design, ever.

And I think partly you have to celebrate that.

What a dick. Of course you can have timeless design, it just takes effort. Effort that you’re not prepared to make Russell. Then again it is possibly beyond your capabilities.

Take a look at Star Wars, thirty years old and you’d be hard pushed to definitively tell that it’s a product of the seventies. It was designed to be mundane but exotic all at the same time.

Try Blade Runner. I couldn’t tell if that was from 1982 or 1997, it’s so sure footed of its place within the framework the creators constructed around it. The film believes in itself and this shines through.

How about Firefly? That has a powerful sense of self that doesn’t place it in any particular place but does use a ‘wild west’ motif to reinforce the frontiersman aspect of its particular brand of science fiction. This suits it thematically yet it manages to blend this very strong ‘wild west’ idea with sci-fi technology and does so without it jarring.

Of course the big daddy of modern sci-fi is Battlestar Galactica. It’s a work of art, weaving stories and technology together cohesively to form a strong bond between the two, each driving the other forward.

Galactica’s technology remains believable, allowing the characters space to interact and play out the plot as a whole without having to rely on gimmicks as hinges that join little bits of plot together.

So before you indulge in any more pointless fucking waffle, there just to apologise for your piss poor stories and special effects, think about making a better television series.

I would be amazed if there were a series bible for Doctor Who, it seems that story lines, character arcs and technologies are just created on a whim, without any thought for canon or future progression. There just to solve a particular problem in a particular story.

In Doctor Who the universe is built around the story. That’s the wrong way to do it and it shows.

I think that T must stand for twat.

Before I start I would like to get the positivity out of the way. I liked David Morrissey in this, he was good.

Right, now that’s out of the way on with the beating.

Another year and another Russell T Davies written Christmas Special, this year’s was hyped on the basis that it would contain the unveiling of the next Doctor. Of course that wasn’t something anybody would confirm. In fact they went to such great lengths to keep the mystery intact that they called it The Next Doctor.

For fuck’s sake, I ask you. Anyway that aside, time for a brief plot outline.

The newly companion-less Doctor lands in Victorian London, out for a bit of Christmas fun. Were made to understand that it’s Victorian London in the usual Russel T Davies manner by the heavy handed use of cliché.

To ensure that we get it, the first thing the Doctor strolls through is a Christmas market. It’s full of roast chestnuts, people walking home with turkeys, carol singers and cheeky scamps in flat caps. In fact the only thing it’s lacking is Queen Victoria, which for Doctor Who is a fucking Christmas miracle all of its own.

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However not even two minutes into his perambulations the Doctor hears a familiar cry. Doctor! Doctor! You may want to sit down at this point because this is where it gets really exciting.

He investigates, finds that the cries are emanating from a busty wench in an alley (we’ve all been there) but, and hold on to your hats folks, it not him she’s calling for! There must be another Doctor! Madness!

After a brief period spent watching David Tennant doing his trademark mini-gurn, the Next Doctor (David Morrissey) arrives on the scene proclaiming himself to be the Doctor, the one, the only, the best. A Cybershade bursts through a door and bingo we get the titles.

The Cybershades are a pathetic excuses for a lack of budget and will be getting their own post soon but suffice to say, they’re fucking awful. I mean look at them!

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After a brief and unsuccessful chase scene involving a warehouse and some hilarious fucking about with ropes, we get to the bones of the matter. The Cybermen are in Victorian London and they intend to take over the world!

They’re going to make this happen with the help of the prickly Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan) the Matron of the Saint Joseph workhouse, who, sick of the male dominated society she lives in intends to rule the world with the Cybermen.

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Meanwhile The Next Doctor, after a brief bit of bickering with his companion Rosilita (Velile Tshabalala), breaks into the house of Reverend Fairchild looking for clues to the Reverend’s death.

Naturally the Doctor has gotten there first.

After a brief chat about sonic screwdrivers, fob watches and a bit of comedy relief (complete with a ‘sproing’ noise, can you guess what happened?) the two Doctors find infostamps, that’s right, infostamps. They’re described as being like disks, Cyber-disks.

You see, because they’re in a different century the Cybermen have to carry all their data around on a series of USB memory sticks. Clearly the biggest they could find was 512MB, because they’ve got loads of them. Haven’t they heard of Drobos?

It’s just as well they knew they were coming to a different century too, otherwise they wouldn’t have had the chance to back everything up on to infosticks first. Although part of me thinks their time could heve been better spent on bringing something, anything, else back with them.

Actually I’m doing the Cybermen a disservice here, these infostamp things are a bit more advanced than USB memory sticks. They’ve got built in projectors and can also shoot bolts of electricity across the room (once you rip open the cyclo-Steinham core of course). Handy!

Of course where there are infostamps there are things that need infostamping. Cybermen!

There are Cybermen in the reverend’s house, eek! Chase, yawn, chase, chase, zap, boom. The Cybermen in the house are defeated.

You’d think after that, that they’d set about finding all the other Cybermen and despatching them in the same way but no. No that would be far too sensible. Besides, we’ve got a funeral to watch!

Across town (although it feels like it’s across the street) at said funeral Miss Hartigan, with the help of the Cybermen and a couple of Cybershades, is going medieval on a load of old blokes arses. The old blokes in question don’t really help themselves by running into each other like the Keystone Cops but hey, it probably wasn’t the done thing to run away in a straight line in the Victorian era.

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Once all the old blokes that aren’t useful (the ones that ran pie and mash shops and opium dens rather than work houses) are suitably zapped to death it’s back to the two Doctors and the reveal of the Next Doctor’s TARDIS. That’s right his motherflipping TARDIS! Except it’s not a TARDIS is it. No, oh no. It’s a hot air balloon.

A fucking hot air balloon.

Why call it a TARDIS then? Well that’s easily explained, it stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style. What a bunch of jizz cocks, who the fuck thought that up, was that you Davies? What about Tethered Aerial Reconnaissance Dirigible In-flight System or in fact anything else.

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Anyway, let’s move on quickly, I’m getting bored and this really isn’t worthy of my time.

So the old blokes that survived the graveyard massacre round up the children from their workhouses, hand them over to the Cybermen who put them to work inside the belly of their, their, well it isn’t really clear at this point where they are. Still we find out soon enough.

Miss Hartigan against her will becomes the CyberKing and starts wearing full eye, black contact lenses. Here’s a tip for any invading alien races out there. If you must insist on making your chosen leader wear contact lenses, make sure that they don’t blink and squint with them in. It detracts somewhat from the overall menacing air I imagine they were intended to generate.

Where was I? Oh yes, the two Doctors find a load of Dalek time travel gadgetry in a basement, the Next Doctor remembers he had a wife and child (wife deceased, child part of the Cybermen’s mini-pops army) and the new Doctor fathoms out what the Cybermen are up to.

Queue lots of child saving and Cybermen blasting, cut to a long shot of London and a massive, what can only be steam-powered, CyberKing with Miss Hartigan at the controls, bursting out of the Thames.

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So after a bit of stomping around and lot’s of screaming from the masses the CyberKing is confronted by the Doctor in a hot air balloon (the TARDIS, yeah?) and Miss Hartigan gets blasted with an infostick. Clearly being made of sterner stuff than mere Cybermen who’s fucking heads explode when this happens to them, it has no effect on her.

Except it does, her contact lenses are evaporated in the blast (the Cyber-connection being broken), her mind is opened, she realises exactly what freaky shit is going down around her and starts screaming like a fourteen year old, all the Cybermen and Cybershades explode and the CyberKing starts stumbling around like Britney Spears in a 7-Eleven parking lot.

Oh no, we all cry, all those poor people are going to be crushed under a bad special effect!

Don’t worry! The Doctor simply points his Dalek time wand at it and it disappears conveniently into the time vortex, where somehow it gets safely disintegrated. Although exactly why or how that happens is anyone’s guess.

And that’s it. Everyone’s happy. The Doctor goes for dinner with the not Next Doctor and the end credits roll with the joyous information that the Doctor will return in Planet Of The Dead. I can’t wait.

This wasn’t good television, it was terrible. The problems with The Next Doctor are legion.

1. Do the Cybermen really need Miss Hartigan? They don’t, they could have done everything that she did on their own, or at the very least topped her once they got what they wanted.
2. The whole Next Doctor thing was pointless and cheap. A gimmick designed to get ratings and nothing else. It had absolutely zero relevance to the story and was almost entirely unnecessary.
3. What was the purpose of the Cybershades, why were they called Cybershades and what could they do that Cybermen couldn’t?
4. Children? A workforce made entirely of children doesn’t seem like a particularly practical solution to the problem. Surely Cybermen are stronger and altogether more motivated?
5. While we’re at it, doesn’t murdering people and stealing workhouses full of children draw a little bit of unnecessary attention to your plan?
6. Rosita? Rosita? Please…
7. Speaking of Rosita, do companions always have to be mouthy gobshites?
8. Why does everything have to be Cyber-something. Why?!
9. The CyberKing looks like a Cyberman. Why? Probably not the best shape for a spaceship really is it?
10. The powerful and together Miss Hartigan becomes yet another weak screaming women at the end. Go empowerment.

Why don’t they spend more time developing cohesive plots instead of going for cheap gimmicks and overuse of existing villains all the time?

The sooner Davies leaves the helm the better. God help us if he gets the movie gig.

I forgot to mention, I got some really cool shit for my birthday.

First on the list is a scarf, a reet long multi coloured scarf, with matching skull cap. Of course that’s not all though. Oh, no.

No, no, no, no.

I got an even cooler gift than that. I got a voucher.

For what? I hear you cry. For what?!

Well calm down my cherubs for I shall now impart to you what exactly it was the voucher was for.

It was for a day of Segway Rallying, just how cool is that?

I know, awesome isn’t it. Although I am slightly concerned by the photos on their site, the people on the Segways all look a bit, well, special needs.

Of course if you hadn’t you’d have missed a treat.

Fucking great isn’t it?

Yay! It’s Dickerdoodle time!

Penny Arcade is running its/their Dickerdoodle competition again! I missed out on it last year, due to laziness and incomprehension but this year I want to win.

If any of you love me, you’ll help. We only have until December 8th, so if you even vaguely care about me and my bizarre inclinations you’ll rock up to my place on Saturday with ingredients and bake until your balls (or lady bits) turn blue.

So, are you in?

I should have posted these shots some time ago but me being me I never got around to it.

Kate came around one Sunday, what feel’s like yonks ago, and we went out for a couple of beers. Kate being Kate of course she didn’t manage to get to Nottingham until gone 18:00. On a Sunday. So as you can imagine we didn’t party particularly hard.

I’m happy to report though, that when I got up in the morning I found that my bin hadn’t been disturbed during the night. I think you all know what I’m referring to.

For those that don’t know what I’m referring to, let me clarify.

My subtle allusion is to an incident from a number of years ago, whereby Kate fished some pizza out of a bin and had it for breakfast. Bad enough you may think but no, there’s more. The pizza had been discarded along with a number of used tea bags.

I think that takes recycling a step too far, no?

In the interests of balance I would like to point out that Kate denies ever having fished the pizza out of the bin. She claims it was merely resting in its box (on its own, no tea bags), atop the bin.

That’s what she would say though isn’t it?

The new Star Trek is shaping up nicely. Can’t say that I like all of the casting choices but Spock and Bones are perfect.

It sounds like they’ve sorted out a decent plot too. Guess we’ll have to wait until May to see for sure though won’t we?

Spock’s a nice touch but is it me or does he look uncannily like Brucie in this trailer?

Looks like the site’s almost back to normal. Never again!

Except it didn’t.

My plan to renew my WordPress installation and change my blog theme have gone proper wrong.

Primarily the version of WordPress I’m using is out of date by several revisions, so an upgrade of that would have been good but (there’s always a but) the theme I’d chosen which is a K2 style, is broken under anything more modern than WordPress 2.7.

So, to cut a long story short I’ve just fucked it off for now. The blog is working, sorta, and I’ve changed the Lightbox effect on images but I’ve still got a major job on my hands to get it properly sorted. Lots of admin to do.

I also want to get my One Year gallery centred on the page, but it’s proving a real bitch to do. Damn it.

So far outstanding jobs are:

• File structure housekeeping
• Element alignment (galleries and video)
• Video hosting (move files back to Revver)
• Various layout issues
• Investigate Twitter feed’s temperamental nature
• Update WordPress without breaking anything
• Document issues with NGGallery
• Reduce categories, tag all posts
• Clean up photo galleries (tagging, image sizing)

I can’t think of anything else at the minute but it looks like these issues will have to wait until I take a break in January.

I’ve decided to retire this site.

It’s looking old and well past its best and as Restless Cheese said the other night, it’s a bit word heavy.

So, in order to revitalise www.crackerwax.com I’ve been fiddling with a test site.

Have a looky!

Bear in mind it’s not finished and is only up there to give you a feel for the style I’m going for next.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

I snapped this while I was out getting some coffee the other day.

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Hen do’s seem to be viewed as a great excuse for overweight heifers to trot around cities they’d never normally dare visit, dressed like chubby prostitutes, shouting their fat northern mouths off and generally indulging in their usual small town, gobshite behaviour, just on a bigger canvas.

There are normally an abundance of cock shaped novelty items floating around too.

Oh and just before any smart arse (Tony I’m looking at you) decides to put a comment on this page about my apostrophe use in ‘do’s', I’ve checked before.

It’s acceptable as typographical embellishment to add clarity.

So there.

‘Change gear, change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That’s a lot of effort in a day.’. Ten points to that man.

My Dad bought a Philips Video 2000 system in the early eighties. It came with a groovy little video that showed you how to use it, y’know program it and such.

The one abiding memory I have of this video is a little fella in a hat, that spoke gibberish and had the most amazing bendy fingertips. In fact I sometimes think I imagined the whole thing.

No more though! Now, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I’ve found the actual video! Rejoice in its bizarre splendour.

Freaky, huh? Made all the more freaky by the weird alien thing that it makes you imagine actually starts your recordings when you’re out and the music towards the end (a cross between Jean Michel-Jarre and a bad trip in a fairground). Amazing stuff.

The latest Gallup poll has the Democrats sitting on 52% of the vote and the Republicans on 41%. This is good news.

Americans have spent the last eight years living in what amounts to a dictatorship. With fudged elections and battles with fictitious, unseen terrorist enemies Bush has lost credibility.

On top of this his attacks on foreign countries, each of them carried out with a cry of freedom, being little more than attempts to seize control of their resources, it’s about time the USA stood down from its role as global oppressor.

Should Barack Obama win tomorrow’s election, and I for one hope he does, he will have a monumental task ahead of him to convince the world that the USA can change.

Too long have Americans been seen as illiterate, boastful and brash. As bullies that proclaim their superiority to the rest of the world by dint of the fact that they claim to have God on their side and have the guns to back it up.

The USA is simultaneously enriched and bankrupted by the notion that you can be what you want to be and that everybody has the chance to control their destiny.

Sadly this is not true.

One look at the top ten in the Fortune 500 from 2008 shows you that only a select few are in charge of the world and chances are you’re never joining their club.

1. Wal-Mart Stores
   CEO: Lee Scott
2. Exxon Mobil
   CEO: Rex Tillerson
3. Royal Dutch Shell
   CEO: Jeroen van der Veer
4. BP
   CEO: Tony Hayward
5. Toyota Motor
   CEO:Fujio Cho
6. Chevron
   CEO: David O’Reilly
7. ING Group
   CEO: Michel Tilmant
8. Total
   CEO: Christophe de Margerie
9. General Motors
   CEO: Richard Wagone
10. ConocoPhillips
    CEO: James Mulva

Oil, automobiles, a bit of money and a retail giant. The men at the helm of these companies, and they are all men, are in control. It is these people that Obama will have to deal with.

Now I don’t know enough about Senator Obama to know which side of the fence President Obama will be on. My guess is that he’s not too deeply ingrained into the world that President Bush is, I can only hope that he will be enough of an outsider to effect the change required.

My fingers are crossed.

It looks like BT are flogging a whole series of tunnels underneath High Holborn in London. The asking price is unconfirmed but I bet it’s more than I could raise.

I love shit like this, it’s too cool for words. Can you imagine how amazing it would be if it was turned into a hotel or a night club?

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It’s awesome to think that places like this even exist. It was built during the war, which is clear to see and has ended up, through privatisation, belonging to British Telecom. Now they’re selling it off.

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As is mentioned in the Telegraph’s article it’s unlikely it will be turned into a hotel because of risks about fire evacuation and such but some enterprising individual could work out a way around that, surely?

I’m sitting here in front of my Mac and I can’t think of a single thing to write, well apart from this thing about how I can’t think of anything to write.

Sometimes it feels like there’s too much to do and I’m paralysed by the choice available to me.

So I’m sitting here listening to Eels and lazily browsing the web.

So often do I end up sitting in stasis, unable to move, not going one way or the other for fear of missing something. Unable to even commit to watching a film, two hours is too much, I might miss something else.

Consequently I miss everything.

This is a mess isn’t it?

I feel compelled to complain to the BBC about the cruel mockery, in Fawlty Towers, of Spanish speaking migrant workers.

It is high time that the BBC prevented this sort of thing from happening in the past.

Clearly I would have complained at the time of broadcast back in 1975 but I was not aware of the outrage I would have felt, had I been watching it then, up until recently, when I saw a rerun on UK Gold.

From what I understand it was originally screened on BBC Two in the early evening. This is entirely unacceptable in my opinion.

I demand that the creator of this racist filth and anyone involved in its portrayal be executed and that the BBC pay Spain a fine of at least €1,000,000.

This is probably the only thing that would enable me to sleep at night knowing that racist, so called, ‘comedy’ like this had at some point been created.

What’s more Aubrey Singer, who I believe was controller of BBC Two at the time, should be exhumed and his corpse made to give a public apology.

Death cannot be tolerated as an excuse for allowing this sort of filth onto our television screens 33 years ago.

It is high time the BBC and its disgusting former performers and controllers realised that the very fabric of space and time itself is liable to rip apart should this sort of thing be allowed to happen at unspecified dates in the past.

Another week and another ridiculous overblown hoo-hah in the press about some poor sod or other.

This week it’s the turn of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to be on the receiving end of the tabloid press’ moral indignation. How journalists can consider themselves moral is beyond me, still that’s a rant for another day.

As you are no doubt aware by now, given that it’s the top story on every news channel at the moment (wonder if Al Jazeera have covered it?), Russell Brand had Jonathan Ross on his Radio 2 show and they left Andrew Sachs a series of rather misjudged and ill advised answer phone messages.

The gist of it is that Andrew Sachs was due to give an interview on Brand’s show but for one reason or another when he was called they got his answer phone, Brand being Brand and Ross being Ross this lead to an ideal opportunity for a spot of tomfoolery. Let’s be honest though it’s kind of what you expect from a stand up comic who hosts a radio show, we’re not talking about Jimmy Young here are we?

Unfortunately the message got out of hand very quickly and three things happened.

1. Ross said ‘fucked’.
2. It was made clear that Brand had slept with Sach’s granddaughter.
3. An impromptu and bawdy song was sung about the liaison into Sach’s answer phone.

I happened to hear it live and whilst I didn’t think it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard, I didn’t think it was anything that anyone should have lost their job over.

Of course the media being the media were falling over themselves to expose Brand for the filthmongering, sex obsessed, junkie scum bag he so clearly is. I half expect to wake up and read calls for Ross to have his tongue cut out and for Brand to be castrated!

So far the result of all this has been:

• Russell Brand has resigned.
• Lesley Douglas has resigned as controller of Radio 2.
• Jonathan Ross has been suspended for 12 weeks.
• Gordon Brown has made a statement about it.
• Amazingly, despite the answer phone message, the world still continues to spin on its axis.

That the show only garnered two complaints at the time of its broadcast, yet has since received over 37,000, stands as testament to the media circus that has developed. Of course most of that can be attributed to the Mail On Sunday’s front page article about it. I think the very fact that only 0.00003% of complaints were received from actual listeners speaks volumes.

Meanwhile Georgina Baillie, the outraged granddaughter in question (you’ll probably know her best as Voluptua from the Satanic Sluts), is rubbing her hands in anticipation of the deals she’ll receive as a result of the publicity.

Judging by the number of videos of her on the news sites already (every one of them with her droning on about how outraged she is, whilst at the same time maintaining her doe eyed, smoky makeup, big-titted temptress look), she’s milking it for every last drop.

All the publicity seems like quite a good return on her initial investment of letting Brand fuck her because he was famous. Of course her new line is that,

I will be speaking to him [Sachs] to ask whether we should complain to the police and we’ll be making the decision as a family.

Oh come on! Let’s put this in perspective, no one died nothing in that call was malicious, stupid yes, malicious no. Is this the best use of police time? Do you think the CPS should even entertain this?

What’s more all of Baillie’s comments around the event are so hollow it’s unbelievable. That they’re being given any form of credence at all astonishes me! The best I’ve come across so far is this belter on the news that Brand and Ross had been suspended.

I’m really happy with the investigation. Me and my grandad are both really happy because it could have damaged our reputation permanently.

Sorry love? Your reputation? What reputation would this be? Your reputation as a woman who flashes her flange for money? Is that the reputation you concerned about damaging?

Please.

I do have a great deal of sympathy for Andrew Sachs, it wasn’t a nice message, I wouldn’t have liked to receive it. At the end of it all though everyone has admitted it was stupid and apologised for it, on top of which Sachs has accepted the apologies. There is no reason for this to be getting the attention it is.

The call that’s causing the outrage is transcribed after the jump if you fancy reading it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Kate you need to read this Benjamin Wachs article.

I await your comments on this matter.

I’ve always liked reading Edge, it’s got a more mature outlook on gaming and treats it with the same level of respect that film critics treat their field.

This does of course lead to outrageously pretentious bollocks making its way from mind to paper. Witness this belter from a review of Motorstorm: Pacific Rift where, what they are trying to say is that the ground textures are a little indistinct and are made worse by the use of motion blur.

…which blend into amorphousness mere metres ahead. The problem is only exacerbated by excessive motion blur, further serving to muddy the aesthetic…

Oh, do fuck off.

The writer here clearly felt they had to embellish their writing to the point that it was practically unintelligible.

I like reading Edge but it does have a habit of pulling shit like this from time to time. At least it’s better than Gmaes™ which seems to desperately avoid proof reading and basic grammar in favour release deadlines.

It’s true. Today was a voyage of discovery for me that lead to my uncovering of two amazing gems.

The first is that we have Ronald Reagan to thank for GPS navigation! Well, a point of clarification perhaps, he didn’t invent it but he was responsible for allowing its use by civilians.

After a Korean Airlines flight got lost over Soviet territory and was shot down by fighter jets in 1983, it was Reagan that decided that GPS should be declassified. GPS then moved from being a military only doodad to being accessible by the general public!

Additionally in 1996 Bill Clinton authorised the phasing out of selective availability. That’s the noise that’s injected into the signal to prevent it from being too accurate.

So a combination of Clinton and Reagan has meant that I can now locate my nearest McDonalds on my iPhone without batting an eyelid.

The other amazing fact is more of an epiphany.

At the end of Mr Blue Sky by ELO I always thought the robotic voice said ‘Mr Blue Sky’. No! I was wrong!

It actually says ‘please turn me over’, how mad is that? For the past twenty years I’ve thought it said ‘Mr Blue Sky’ and now I find out it says nothing of the kind.

Thing is, I now can’t hear anything other than ‘please turn me over’ no matter how hard I try.

My life is amazing isn’t it?

If John McCain becomes President of the United States Of America I will never go there so long as his administration is in power.

That my friends is promise.

John McCain is out of touch and Sarah Palin is a moron. Not the dream ticket I imagine running a super-power. I guess that means New York would be off my holiday list.

Then again, Tokyo wouldn’t kill me. Who wants a DSi?

Sarah Palin is astonishing. And I mean that.

The intelligent amongst you will realise what I mean by that I’m sure.

So without further ado, watch this…

Find more videos like this on The Spill.com Movie Community

Anybody confused as to my thoughts on the way I want the US elections to go?

Good.

By the way, SpillCrew rock. Nuff said.

I think we all need to petition Nestlé to bring back Golden Grahams. It’s a travesty you can’t get them anymore.

Someone should start a petition!

It was with interest that I noticed today that Pizza Hut has become Pasta Hut. Weird, I thought. Best tweet it.

And tweet it I did.

Turns out everyone in the world seemed to know that Pizza Hut has rebranded to Pasta Hut as part of some promotional thing they’ve got going on. At least that’s what all my Twitter chums told me.

But wait! What’s this? A quick google seems to indicate that this may be a permanent rebranding exercise! At least this article from The Times would have me believe that to be the case.

It does beg the question though, why? What do they hope to achieve by retaining the the same style logo and the exact same restaurants by just changing the name. Even the font in the logo is the same.

Surely if, as The Times article suggest, they are trying to appeal to the middle classes they should have started anew, ditched the hut roof logo altogether and gone for something a little classier.

It just doesn’t work, they’re clearly trying to maintain a very dangerous course out there in the middle ground.

They want the unwashed, pizza chomping masses to still recognise that they’re, more or less, the same Meat Feast flogging chain they were before but at the same time let the yummy mummies, with their sad eyed children, know that, ‘Hey! We’re healthy now, look we do crayfish arrabiata!’.

I seem to recall that Bella Pasta became Bella Italia a few years back, didn’t seem to do them much good. Their food was still shit and the service still abominable. I once got served a 10″ pepperoni pizza with just eight pieces of pepperoni on it. The manager couldn’t offer me anymore as head office had decreed that eight pieces per pizza was the limit. Madness.

It looks like Pizza Hut are about to fall into the trap of believing that a lick of paint and a new menu will sort out all their problems. It won’t.

It’s not their logo I dislike, it’s not their name or the decor inside. It’s not even the menu, I happen to like the occasional Meat Feast and go there now and again to sample its greasy delights.

No, it’s none of that. It’s the staff I can’t stand. Any shit hole can be made bearable with the right staff. Ditch the students and the Saturday working school kids and get in proper staff for proper wages.

Mark my words the first high street, down market eatery that serves half way decent food and employs adults on good money won’t be able to keep people away.

That I promise.