What Comes To Pass

Things that suck

Things that suck

Currently Listening To: Goodbye Heartbreak from the album "Ocean Drive" by Lighthouse Family

And now, for our feature presentation - the comprehensive sundering of all that I hold dear!

I don't even know why I'm typing. Writing has always provided me with comfort in the past but it can do no such thing at the moment.

It might be some time before I feel like writing again, I can't even look at a book, much less anything else.

I have a few messages to give out to people who through the true legal definition of Innuendo will understand them.

Firstly to anyone who might now seek to impress their agenda - don't. Just shut the fuck up and be kind. If I hear one fucking iota of shit about any of the parties involved I will spurn you and refuse your company.

Secondly to anyone who feels they might have an opinion on the matter - you can shut the fuck up too. Its not anything to do with you, though you might feel some sort of righteousness know now that you have none. Fuck off. Its none of your business.

Thirdly if you want to know how to console anyone simply offer a bit of sympathy. There is an obsession in today's society with getting people back on their feet by saying what an unpleasant person the other was - we see it on TV all the time. Well it doesn't apply to anything and it sure doesn't apply here.

Finally know that any contravention of any of the above 3 guidelines I've been considerate enough to lay down will invoke a great deal of anger and distrust from myself.

If you think I'm angry with the situation you're wrong, I'd be playing Blink instead of Lighthouse Family if I was, however I know full well that I can and will be if any of the 3 lines are crossed.

To everyone else you deserve none of that and I can only apologize for not feeling like baring my soul just at this moment.

Best Wishes

John

There is no end!

Holy shit she's still talking to me!

Currently Listening To: Street Life from the album "Tropical Storm" by Beenie Man

That's right. My Grandmother is back.. With a vengeance!

She just walked into the room and began to talk to me. She didn't stop talking to me for another 40 minutes about her bloody horses. Gah!

Tomorrow I ought to be going to London with Richard Moore to look at the last pad. Lee and I went on the saturday but the place we saw wasn't really what we were looking for.

The place we should be seeing is superb - according to what we know if it - namely the area around it and the details given on the sheet. To be honest if it looks even vaguely habitable we'll take it. As long as it has the potential for Broadband usage we'll be happy. It's in such an 0wning area that it'd be stupid not to and the other was on a Camden council estate above a laundrette.

I successfully sold/delivered an old Law book I wasn't using but I've had little luck retrieving my cash. See Amazon has this really weird system which obliges me to type in this PIN which they 'mail' to me. Now this is an americanism which nearly everyone is aware of, however it becomes incredibly ambiguous when you're talking about e-commerce. Are they going to e-mail me this number or post it? Apparently I ought to receive it within 14 days but since I'm currently at the farm I don't know how I'm going to be able to get my post from the house in Rowhedge towards the end of the deadline, obviously I hope they are going to email it to me because along with other lax payments (after my last payment my employer currently owes me £110) I could really use the money. See its so bloomin' stupid. If I got paid at a normal time like most people I could deal with matters which have a short fuse (such as my credit card). If my employer wasn't a broke-ass media company and actually paid me my tiny fee in one go I'd be able to pay off a substantial chunk of credit card which would stop them anally-violating my bank account for interest/minimum payments. Barristers have a similar problem because:

1) You are at the mercy of the Solicitor who is at the mercy of your client and
2) You can't sue your client for the cash because the Bar just says you can't.

However the Bar society tends to forward you the money to pay taxes in recognition of this fact. Still there exists no such thing for "Webmonkey on Payroll of financially inept media company" so I am obliged to sit tight and hope for some cash injection from my father... Oh yeah he's a barrister and hardly anyone is paying him because they know he can't sue them ... Whoo hoo!!

In other new I've finally set up my computer at the farm - hence this post -. Hopefully it won't be set up for long as I'll be off to Nodnol for Uni where I can set it up there and lovingly hook it into some serious bandwidth ;)

Lee and I spent our spare time whilst looking over Uni property in PC World hugging LAN Routers... Mmmmmmm.... So much love in such a small box :)

Catch you all later

John

Aw man...

Aw man there are no words for this other than '1337'

I've been using this app called iComic. It's an OS X program which has an incredibly sleek interface and basically grabs every comic under the sun. Its free too and can in theory get any webcomic once someone has written a plugin for it. It has effectively rendered my "webcomics" tabbed window bookmark for Safari completely pointless and it lets me read the funnies like Adam@Home and BC, and the Wizard of ID!! Its so cool!!

Anyhow I've been using it for a while and even with its support for the odd webcomic I declared it "the coolest thing in the world" but today I actually bothered to read the plugin (you drag and drop plugins to add support for new cartoons) descriptions and discovered that some of the slightly vague titles up for download actually contained all the old school funnies like Adam etc :) I tell you this is the greatest app ever created by man. I'm going to be in heaven from now on. The funnies were the one thing missing from English life - the one thing. Ok so there probably is a whole lot more that I'm not thinking about at the moment but I'm a simple guy and this is just so damn cool. In the words of Calvin (Who I think is actually in one of the plugins I just downloaded - w00t!!!) "This is so cool I've got to pee!"

Later

John

...

...

Currently Listening To: Diamond Road from the album "C'mon, c'mon" by Sheryl Crow

I'm currently feeling a bit down.

I hate people who spend their whole lives pouring their sorrows into their weblog's but I'm going to indulge myself just this once.

I'm at home, in the house in Rowhedge, alone. The house is large and empty to me and I'm here to finish an assignment I was given on friday by Kris because I wasn't woken up to head back here this morning to my beloved computer.

Life at the farm is sucking. Even the relatively cramped conditions of Thanet Walk are preferable to the vast acreage of Corvette's Paddocks because it really feels like a family when we are here. In Corvette's Paddocks my insane Grandmother runs around despoiling all that is good and pure. My mother is going mad and having a mid-life crisis of sorts and the whole thing is likely to get worse with the addition of yet more Swaines into the mix with the coming arrival of both my Grandfather and my Uncle Jason.

My family, my immediate family is something I hold dearer to me than anything else in the world and yet it is somehow trodden on time and time again by people who have no care for it. Luck has dealt us poor cards in the past and they have been worsened by the play of others. The six of us constitute my desire, my future and my love and it is sad to see such a thing being debased.

I honestly do not know what the future holds for us. What the next flip of the card will be or how we will choose to play it and I have always stood an optimist in such matters.

My ally in this is God but I feel as if I ought not be facing such a time, in the words of many a child "It's not fair".

John

Bugger

Fucking fuckmunches

I have just heard that my father has spent the afternoon talking with Jim. Now most of you won't know who the hell Jim is as I haven't ever spoken of him, mercifully he exited my life 2 years ago and I felt like I was rid of him (that fact also made my last year of Sixth Form the best of my life). Put simply if my father offers anything and I mean anything to that fat piece of shit, mother loving ass-licking syccophantic fuckwit I'm going to confront him and articulate my, and my family's exact feelings on the matter.

I felt like spending some time to explain Jim further but then I realized that nothing could really do a better job of demonstrating my feelings about him than a my journal entries during a time when he was at the 'zenith of his powers' of manipulation over my father.

The following was written about 2 years ago.

"INTRO

Hiya, after many failed attempts to keep a diary I feel that now I can finally make a commitment. I'm 17 now, my Nonna just passed away and I am at war with a perpetually oozing 54 year old sycophantic arsewipe ex-taxi driver from Colchester who is currently getting free board, food and shit for surfing the net to find Q's for his game whilst maiming my family life. The battlefield is most commonly the trench warfar of the dinner table
we are seated as below

___TWAT (aka Jim)___TOM__
/ MUM |
| DAD
\___SPAG___FRANK ___ME___/

Jim begins the meal by sticking his head up dad's arse, unplugging it only to stick his foot in his mouth, on these rare occaisions where he isn't licking dad's shoes or making lame threats to me (or indeed lame jokes) my sister and I pelt him with the best zingers you have ever heard mwahaha.. Spag is on a role at the moment and she appears to be in good form =].
Jim drives dad to work utilising his immense knowledge of:

a) Cantonese
b) the Legal profession and Business sense
c) well.. Everything.

In actuality Jim has knowledge on 3 completely different subjects:

a)Taxi Driving
b) Turf Engineering
c) Fucking up familys (he knows how, he did a great job on his own one so now he has a new challenge)

So With that I'll get on with my life, read on and enjoy, but first my own mantra and groove I live by:

My Nonna died 2 weeks ago, her death was sudden but she seemed to know and had made peace with all her previous enemies, she spoke with her sister. My Great Aunty Jilly and made up, after 4 years. Out of all those people she called she had time to speak to me. She phoned me the day before she passed away. In this call she told me to "Keep looking after the family" "your brothers and your sisters" And to "Keep helping out your mum because she needs all the help she can get". This is now my Modus Operandi. My reason for living, I have a purpose now. So I intend to get on with it. You only live once, My Nonna showed me that too.. Now I have to get on with living. Enjoy my diary of life for this 17 year old in 2001--->.

Saturday, 5th of May 2001
Today was spent in a typically lathargic manner. A breakfast of my usual egg&rice made up for the nutrition early on and we (siblings and I) vegged out in front of MTV. We had already ordained that today should be spent by the pool, loafing. So after dad said he was going to get ready I headed off to my room and got changed as normal, shorts, T-shirt, shades and the obligatory moccassins (after an incident last week I won't be leaving them out in the sun <8O ow! ow! ow! ow!).

I slapped on tonnes of factor 15 and steadily got into the pool, flanked by posey 40 year olds but reasuringly Jimless... Bliss. Swam for a while, then sat out reading magazine whilst Dad finally gets into the water (All that while I was in he spent reading), doh!

Head back to house and grab one of Mum's Italian Orangy bottly things.. Sweet at first taste then sudden kickback which tastes like you've just gargled cammal piss.. Needless to say only 3 sips actually taken. Then I turned out into the sittingroom and was greeted with a view of Jim's arse, (I daresay I still need counselling) there he was doing the garden (About time to fucking &*^% layabout!!!) With Uncle Jeremey, Alas I think he too has fallen prey to the fattwat's sycophantic slobbering.. Darn, I thought out of all of the Swaine 2nd Gen he would be the best hope, with him down there's no stopping Jim from maiming my Upper family life, sadly this day will also be a doomsday for my internal family life, read on.. Sorry for the news.

I got him a drink of Water, since I was feeling nice.. Then I vegged out once again (we were all wiped out after the sun, i'm kinda brown at the moment =]) everyone else came in.. Then they vegged out.. Then after a long while I got up and played some more Biliardino (after having surfed for cool tables to purchase) the game was frenetic to say the least as I had WD40'd up the poles leading to abusive slipperyness. After a whole lot of this came dinner where twat still attended (Darn I had hoped his gardening antics would have rendered him unable to rise off his fatarse and eat (but then is there anything, which could stop that &^%$^&$% eating? I didn't think so).

I had been campaigning for us to head off to Dan Ryans tomorrow so I casually mentioned it to dad, sadly just as I had tried to stop it happening the venture was brought out into the open and I motioned vigourously for my siblings to stop discussing it lest the bastard overhear, sadly they didn't get the message and the whole thing dragged on for about half a minute!!!! Nooooooo! but then it faded just as quickly as it had arised, I breathed a sigh of relief and continued eating the cotage pie (in small portion size as that is all we seem to eat can't stand it anymore, never really liked it much any other time of my life so far).
So anyhow I was content with the topic not being taken any further, but then, just as Spag and me had settled down into some vintage friends (the one with the breast-milk tape) Twat started speaking to dad, once again he waffled on for ages, a mix of buttlicking and complete and utter pomposity passed by the ears of my naive parent (in this respect he is) then I overheard the mention of Dan Ryans, My heart sank, then sped up and I breathed heavily, then finally as if to twist the knife Dad gave Jim the Alright to &^$% come along with us.. I snapped and had to run off upstairs to avoid blowing my &^% top.

Let me explain why. Jim has slowly assimalated my uncles and my father, it has taken a while but now he has a strong foothold in the upper family. However the internal family is another matter, his progress has been slow and Mum and I have made him pay for every inch he has gained.. Dearly. Sadly mum wasn't here (she's in Italy following Nonna's death) so she is unable to hold the fort in this instance and fulfil her role of Jim-Buffer, now I'm a good buffer for my siblings, if Jim lays in I set him straight with a mix of Spag's and My wit

>>(ROFLMAO at dinner Jimm says how tanned he's getting and how he was 'posing' outside, I nonchalantly said you needed to have something people liked looking at in order to pose and then suggested he was as black as a pint of guiness now, the fool being so thick didn't notice the hidden meaning as the white frothy head on a guiness is kinda similar to his overall lack of any colour in his rapidly depleting hairline ROFL! Spag got it though mwahahahaha!)<<

However, a buffer for Dad I am not and so I cannot prevent events, which mom would normally stop. This was such an event and I could only watch and listen with tears in my eyes as it played out..

In his campaign to infiltrate out lives the twat has managed to infiltrate many of our favourite traditions, Grappas (he had to learn how to 'like' Italian food for that one.. The Jockey Club (the first to fall thanks to weak willed dad) The only vestige of the once proud family tradition we had, still untainted by the twat was Dan Ryans, the breakfast that is. There is something sacred about this meal. maybe its the fact that its been a favourite tradition of ours for.. well ever or because we go there near enough every weekend, to the tsim sai tsui one to watch the boats come in as we pile on the pancakes and other American delights. Whatever it is its ours and its special to us... well to me anyway. Mum's absence only makes things worse as he is almost 'taking her place'. Now that great bastillion has fallen... I fear with Uncle Jermey and the Chicago breakfast, falling in one day, its all over for us in this war, the only thing we have left is our dignity and that I intend to preserve..

Whilst the others go off and put up with that fat asshole sucking mother fucking piece of shit eating buttweasel facistic arsemonger I will stay home tomorrow and call mum and complain... thats about right...

Well I guess I better go to sleep. The following update I write tomorrow will, I suppose, clean things up in this respect.

G'night
Johnlouis

Tuesday 8th of May

I went to Dan Ryans in the end, it was a ridiculous affair. Jim just sucked up all the while and I sat opposite him. In the end I just stopped talking, its pointless speaking with Jim, even more pointless trying to speak to Dad with Jim around. Communication is a big part of todays entry.

Anyhow Mum got back, I ran from the bus (As fast as I could in the 99% humidity!) and gave her a massive hug, missed her lots. She had come, laden with a massive selection of Italian tastibits. Si!! FORZA ITALIA =P (which I shall undoubtedly be eating for the rest of the month en masse =] ).

Anyhow the days passed with little event until today. After dinner I brought up the subject of global warming and mentioned how George W Bush had gone against the Kyoto agreement linking it with the topic of Italy we had just discussed (we love it. We don't want to let jim in with us etc) during, which Jim made a snide attempt to get himself a possible future pass to Italy with us:

"I would reaaaaally love to go to Italy"
"Dyuknow I really must got there sometime"

Mum and I exchanged glances of contempt.

So I said that Venice will be underwater pretty soon and Bush is responsible for not acting on the subject of global warming. At this point Jim enacts.. TO A TEE no-less, the In-duh-vidual debating technique as described by scott adams:

1) In-duh-vidual takes your arguement and magnifies it to reidiculous extent
"well y'see what your saying is EVERYONES TO BLAME! Just by turning a light on !"
2) In-duh-vidual uses elaborate and thouroughly unrelated metaphor to explain why he is right
"Back in my day when places closed loadsa people lost their jobs so people will loose jobs if he does it"

3) In-duh-vidual claims high ground
"You see your wrong there!"

Ahem... heres the points:

Me} GWB acted irresponsibly by not dealing with global warming
Dad} well he was only doing what he was voted in for, infact everyone is to blame really
Jim} (see debating technique mentioned above)
me} Does that really change my arguement? is he not, as dad said, to blame?
Jim} Yes but you can't blame him for everything can you?! We were doing this aaaaaages ago!!
Me} I didn't say he was the only one to blame did I?
Jim} Ahhhhhh but you said "insert part one of in-duh-vidual debating technique here"
Me} You what?

This goes on for about half an hour.. me reaffirming my arguement.. Jim not disproving it. Ahem......

My reason for being so pissed and hurt at this outcome is as follows:

1) I like debate, I like court from what I have seen, Jim is master of all things, including 'legal stuff' as he puts it. I enjoy whupping his sorry little butt in arguements because I convince dad and dad whupps jim down with my arguement (he won't listen to it when it comes to me) here dad shifted to Jims side of the issue but actually emphasized my statement. If everyone is to blame then isn't Bush somebody? Dad failed me and without dad to voice my arguement I am a lone 17 year old battling for my Father's attention and in some respects, I confess, his approval against a battered out old duffer whose argument is total crud but won't listen to any other opinion.

2) Dad is a rare entity indeed, he is kind, loving, logical and yet he is swayed massively by Jim. Over the period mum was away for I didn't manage to speak one word to him as Jim was up his arse 24-7. Jim and I 'compete' for my father's attention. Waffling on in his sycophantic drones aaaaaall the car journey to dad's work then aaaaaall the way back then when he gets in and AFTER dinner is not enough for Jim, he has to speak to dad during dinner. Over the course of the repas this evening I spoke the following to dad:

# Idle chit chat about food/school (1 min)
# that time when we were in senegalia in the house with the train running round it (2 mins)

Thats it.. I had hoped to get his view on the Bush's actions re: the Kyoto Accords when Jim opened his ugly gob and started the whole arguement. I don't speak to my father anymore... If I were to dye my hair blonde today and buy eminem albums the transformation would be complete.

So you see I am less than happy. I am sorrowful and hurt, it feels like Jim is worse than ever and I doubt I will ever be able to synthesize any more false civility towards him. *sigh* I hope I can make it through tomorrow.....

Cya
Johnlouis "

I hope that better explains my position. If need be I'll force my father to read it. I speak for all in my family when I say

"we all fucking hate Jim"

Hey.. You know what? That'd make a kickass T-Shirt to wear about the house if he doesn't get the message.

Later

John

pwning!

pwning!

Currently Listening To: The Obvious Child from the album "Greatest Hits - Shining Like A National Guitar" by Paul Simon

Awww yeah!!

Conrad and I had our first, second, third, fourth and fifth games of Alchevien Struggle today and it bloody well Owns!! Loads of people were interested in it and we ought to be able to bust out into full playtesting from now! We'll be handing things over to the team and instead frantically doing our Errata'ing and tweaking whilst they get the fun of playing the game ;)

And what fun it is! The game is seriously a joy to play now that we've ironed out most of its issues.

I've been spending a lot of time on the #snr channel of irc.stratics.com with Kev, Beth, Reflaxion (asmo) and Bob. Good laughs and nice folk :D

Right.. I'm going to go back to Conrad and our final run of editing (just adding rarities for card distribution)

Later

John

Savaaaaage

Savaaaaage

Currently Listening To: Satellites from the album "Sugar Ray" by Sugar Ray

Conrad and I got onto some playtesting last night online. We tackled a lot of important issues before the game hit the team. Such as this one:

John: Lol Veltorian Golem turn 2
John: :D
Conrad: u w0t?
Conrad: oh you and your fricking Summon
John: hahahha
Conrad: s'a bloody joke
John: hey my hand got totally raped ;)
Conrad: and that like, so matters :P
John: hahha
Conrad: *spots a nerf baton on the horizon*
John: lol
Conrad: I knew summon was savagely broken
John: rofl

Summon allows you do discard cards from your hand in order to knock mana off the cost of a creature. Its blatantly broken when your starting mage is a Tier 1 with Summon allowing you to drop vast creatures on the first turn. I have since changed said mage so he no longer does that :)

Speaking of playtesting, that first run was done using Apprentice online, which really sucks for a game like Alchevien Struggle. However the full playtests will be done using the physical prints. I noticed a few days ago that I had failed to template the cards to the correct size so I had to retemplate them all. It wasn't fun but they're finally done.

Its really hard to build a deck when you can't see the cards infront of you or at least know what they all do.

Also the mana system - which is piss easy using tokens in Real life, is hampered by Apprentice's clumsy counter system.

Anyhow I get to actually play against conrad today! Hurrah!

Later

John

Whehey!

Whehey!

Currently Listening To: Lifted from the album "Ocean Drive" by Lighthouse Family

My new keyboard arrived today! Its one of the white pro-keyboards. However having used the tiny keyboard that came with the old G4 for so long my shift finger is seriously out of place.

To be honest I had no idea that it looked like this, or felt like this. Its a really odd design. Its like a tray with the keyboard sat inside it. There's easy access to the underside of the keys (you can see them in face if you tilt it a certain way) which I presume results in greater ease of hoovering but overal I have to say I prefer the old design. The way the black pro keyboard looked was also far cooler :)

It also puts pay to my "I'll just swap in my black keys" plan because a lot of the keys are a different shape and there is some seriously interesting keyboard contouring (its like a sort of sine wave running from top to bottom 360 degrees).

News on the house front appears mixed with some reports that we will be going to stay at the farm *gag*! The plan on that side appears to be that the property will be purchased from my grandparents by my father and put in a trust for myself and my siblings so my father isn't a landowner here. There are a couple of sucky things with this plan so let me point them out Dad:

1) Granny
2) Farm
3) Trust

Yeah I think I'll take the time to go through them.

Granny

Yeah... Ok we all can't stand her. The thought of living with her will probably drive my mother to stab the midget to death with a pointy knife of some description.

Farm

Dad the farm will always be granny's no matter what because she feels a certain way about it. It fucking sucks.

Trust

See there we go with the whole 'providing for the kids future'. Sorry Dad but we both know that's bullshit mate. We won't be able to touch that tasty property as irrespective of how good a law student I might be we aren't exactly a match for the best barrister of his age in. See if I could I'd be all like:

"Ka-ching! Legal property owner putting that bitch on the market and fucking accepting offers"

and then I'd be all

"Yo Granny! Howsa bout some state funded retirement housing. Yeaaaaaah you know the deal Yoda, now pack your bags and I'll slip the warden a Fiver so you get extra rice pudding."

However it does mean I can just tell it to my grandmother like it is ;)

In other news Chiara has a friend coming to stay for the weekend. Her name's Steph and she was her friend in Hong Kong. Sadly her mother refuses to let her get on a train alone so Chiara has to go to London to pick her up and then immediately ride back down. I've done that sort of thing before at 12am on the tube when my friend Alex came to stay with me and it sucks. But you see with Alex he couldn't have found my house but this Steph girl is perfectly capable of catching a frikkin train to Colchester :D There's like 1 every 20 minutes. Cuuuuuurses :) Sure the UK isn't a touch on HK safety (really low crime rate there, so low you can walk around central at god-awful hours and not see a soul nor be threatened at knife-point) but its catching a train from a main station with loads of other people.

Ahh! Did you hear that sound? that was the sound of the return key getting hit and its now frikkin' massive. Well its actually back to industry standard size. Admittedly I didn't need a huge return key, I got on fine with my smaller sized one on the black keyboard but its cool to have a larger one again. Oh and the Esc key on this keyboard is much bigger too. Albeit without the level of seperation it has from the rest of the keys on the Black one.

Ah seems my hands have adjusted again as I haven't hit the... Holy crap!
I've just found out why I was hitting a ' `' when I hit shift, its because the shift key has been decreased in size and has had a new key (`) placed after it so instead of it being [shift] [z] [x]... its now [shift] [`] [z] [x]. Really odd. Although its good to have the mirrored command keys on the bottom left and right (either side of the spacebar) so thats now [crtl] [alt] [cmd] [space] [cmd] [alt] [ctrl]. And full sized arrow keys again - huzzah.

The good thing is that the keyboard has a nice springy quality to it. I might still prefer the black one's tension but this dude will probably be better for my typing in the longer run as it's pressure prevents too much feedback when you reach the end of the key travel - its like an airbag.

Man I'm writing a lot about my keyboard. Thats probably because I'm too pissed off with other stuff to write about it. All I can say is that there sure as fuck better be money for my next year of university or I'll be kicking some ass :)

I made my bed really nicely today and my brother has proceeded to sit on it as usual. Its like Thomas and Francesca spend half their day in my room :) God knows why as all I really do is sit at my computer talking to friends, listening to music and doing some work. I think it might have something to do with my room having the only real access to the river-view and the river-breeze. That and my bed is fantastically comfy as a sofa.

Right I think I best get onto templating some cards for playtesting of Alchevien Struggle. We've had a really strong response from potential playtesters so things are really looking good for us.

Later

John

Fun

Fun

Currently Listening To: Political Science from the album "The Best Of Randy Newman" by Randy Newman

I finished the second chapter of my novel. It was a long slog (over a week) because I had put it off alot. What's more I need to write an article for kebeol.net. I also have templated all the cards at my disposal for Alchevien Struggle which is on the very brink of completion. Of course the coolest thing about this is that soon we'll be able to playtest and indeed - play the game :)

Pirates of the Caribbean is perhaps the best damn movie of the whole year. I haven't seen Finding Nemo yet, despite being a big ol' Pixar fanboy but Pirates is bloody excellent. Its a brilliant romp and the characters such as the bohemian and wickedly funny captain Jack Sparrow (brought to life by the exquisite Jonny Depp) really make the film superb. I also enjoyed the many british actor cameos - such as the dude who plays Steve from Coupling playing the naval commodore and the blond haired guy from The Office playing one of the pirates. It was a film which wasn't just very funny but was also damn entertaining.

What's more; Keira Nightly.... Rrrrrrrr ;)

However I have more to say about American Pie 3. I didn't like a few things about it.

First of all the cinematography really failed to capture what I loved about the other films. There wasn't any of the 'coming of age' atmosphere of the first film which was achieved using wider angles to accentuate the size of the outside world. Stiffler was often given moments where he was left totally alone in shot. The whole appeal of the 2nd film was watching him bounce of fthe other characters and if you watch the films you will see that 20% of the shots are reaction shots (well acted no less) of the group of guys whilst others are talking or stiffler is cracking a joke. It was the way the cinematography played on the group dynamic which made the 2nd film so great and it is sorely lacking in the 3rd film.

Also it took itself too seriously. I don't know how that's possible with a film featuring what appeared to be rampant dog/human sex, but it did. I didn't want to have Stiffler put into situations in which he couldn't be the Stiffmiester. Do you know how many parties there were in that film? None. Zippo. The theme of the film seemed to be that the adult world was there just to put restraints on the fun had by the guys. Admittedly it was a wedding but I really didn't want to watch a film about a bunch of 20 something year olds being 30 year olds. American pie is about a load of guys dealing with issues relevant to their age group. The 3rd film clumsily grappled with the issue of young marraige and Steven's relative immaturity leaving a thin venir of comedy material with which to develop the classic gags that made the American Pie series so side-splittingly funny. It was almost as if the film producers felt they needed to "Move the film along a bit", but they did so at the expense of the whole experience. Ultimately if Sean William Scott wasn't so gosh darned great that film might well have sucked.

I also reserve a parting note: Script Writers - Paul Finch is the most annoying pompous psuedo intellectual character ever devised. If you include him of a reasonable facsimile of his character in your script he is to be ridiculed and must come out on the bottom of the heap in the end. What an arrogant prick. His character pulled the film down considerably by being put in an environment where he had power. American Pie 3 is a poor shadow of American Pie 1 not to mention 2.

Later

John

w00tage

w00tage

Currently Listening To: Sorry Now from the album "Sugar Ray" by Sugar Ray

American Pie 3 was superb. That was one advance screening I was really happy I got to see.

Stiffler got a whole lot more lines and they really delved into his character - he after all hadn't really 'moved on' in terms of lifestyle and character. But in AP3 he pretty much steals the show. Although once again Finch gets the one up in the end... Ass. Did I mention that I hate Finch? I'm more like him than Stiffler but he's an arrogant prick of a character :D

Of substantial importance is John (the chinese dude) who gets even more camera time. People all said they loved him and his friend in AP1 (They brought the word "Milf" to the mainstream) and then they slayed them all in AP2 with the immortal line "holy shit dude if I didn't have to hold my dick because I gotta piss so bad I'd shake your hand" and in AP3 they get a number of excellent cameos including the classic American Pie film ender - Stifflers mom/Finch.

In other news I orderd my new keyboard online (again) from Apple but they only confirm it when they ship - namely monday. I've given up on fixing the membrane without conductive paint and my employer has hinted at me getting reimbursed for it. Nice :D

Right time for some more sitting around :D

Later

John

Hell Yeah

Hell Yeah

Currently Watching: American Pie 2 again

Just organized tonight's entertainment - Richard, Matt, Ben and I are going to watch American Pie 3: Fan-smegging-tastic!

Problem is that the Odeon site isn't standards compatible and hence I have to not only use Internet Explorer but I have to boot into Virtual PC Windows 98 in order to use that Internet Explorer to access the site. Thats just shitty programming.

More American Pie 2 quotation: "holy shit dude if I didn't have to hold my dick cause I gotta piss so bad I'd shake your hand"

That line is perhaps the best delivered piece of comedy in the whole movie. In fact the pair of dudes who do that whole thing in the first and second movies kick so much ass that they'd better be in the third movie too :D

The best thing about the second movie was the the main protagonist Jim realized how much his father was there for him. That and the music :) watching it again you realize that most of the soundtrack is just quality summer fare.

Right time for a nice drink :)

Later

John

Seventies

Seventies

Currently Listening To: Janie Runaway from the album "Two Against Nature" by Steely Dan

"9 songs about dysfunctional freaks, losers, loners, perverts, hookers, substance abusers - hey, must be the new Steely Dan album! "

Dunno how the hell that one slipped through the net! Both my father and I had no idea about it. In fact he still has no idea by virtue of his being asleep. However after a quick visit to steelydan.com to find out "what those dudes had been up to," I discovered there was a new album called Everything Must Go. This quite clearly must be bought because Steely Dan are just cool.

I mean these guys produce music today which is indistinguishable from the stuff they were doing in the 70's. They literally took a 20 year haitus before releasing Two Against Nature and still put out an album which sounded identical to their old stuff! In fact if you mix up the playlists you can't tell when what was written or produced.

For those of you who don't know who Steely Dan are, they are a group formed by two individuals; Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who pretty much pioneered Fusion Jazz. They have this incredible way of making music where they'll hire like 5 session musicians for each channel of a track and then pick and choose the one they like out of the vast catalogue of riffs, rides and hooks to put on the track. Some tracks have like 3 drummers in different bits :)

Anyhow.. At least I know what the album will sound like (every other Steely Dan release) and combined with Sugar Ray's new album I could really do with the cash to do some buyin' :D I will be paid £60 on monday, of which £40 is already spent on a new keyboard and the rest shall be hoarded away to pay off some more debt (mmmm.. Student Debt :D)

Newtonia

Kev was just on iChat talking about the eBook reader of his dreams. He described a piece of hardware which folded out to A5 with USB interface and PDF/TXT functionality.

eBooks are really cool and when I have a large Text story to read I like to slam it into Paperback (and application to make Newton readable eBooks) instead of just using the Newton Notepad to read it. Whilst I was in Italy I was reading Conrad's book on Denning, my Newton Messagepad 2100 and lamenting the fact that the only thing the Newton was missing was a hardware button to scroll up/down the pages.

Then I remembered that I had heard of a cool application for the newton which translated taps on the internal microphone (just tapping the little mic pit with your finger) into commands of the "page up/page down" variety. I installed it and lo and behold the little bugger worked with the Paperbook eBook format! So I now declare my Newt a pretty spiffy eBook reader among other things :D

In other news Hong Kong national Football team held Real Madrid to a 4-2 loss. Given that the squad were thrashed 6-0 by Liverpool I think HKFC deserve a round of congratulations having avoided a total raping at the hands of the team who look like the 'FIFA Allstars' squad common on the old "FIFA 9x" console football games.

Oh and I've managed to get Kev interested in Swatch Internet Time (Beats). The principle behind it is that the day is divided into 1000 beats instead of 1440 minutes and that @980 in Sweden is also @980 in America, China and India. There is only one timezone and its a system designed to allow better net-meetings and such. I really dug the idea and used it for ages but it was difficult to get others to use it. Now I'm back on it because its just so in touch with the whole Blogging dynamic.

Anyhow that is why there is now @XXX at the bottom of my blog in my Java time applet. That means its "Beat XXX" and its the same everywhere else in the world. Most swatch watches now come with the Internet Time on them as well as the normal time so I might look into buying one in the alternate reality where I have money :D

Later

John

Pondering

Pondering
Currently Listening To: Under the Sun from the album "Sugar Ray" by Sugar Ray

Having watched American Pie 2 and having just flicked on Sugar Ray (one of the coolest bands in the world, currently truly under-appreciated in the UK, most likely because their music has a very different vibe which a lot of people can't dig here) I'm feeling nostalgic. I had a kickass Summer in 2001 and so far this summer has been, well. Sort of Sucky.

We had a great holiday in Italy but what has really been missing is the whole 'hanging out at the farm' deal from 2k1. Last year was set to be a repeat of the classic previous summer but it was completely obliterated by my friend Matthew's application to join the RAF. He's pretty fucking miserable compared to the Matt I used to know. He shouldn't have taken the job but was pretty much pushed into it by his father. The unfortunate result of that was that he wasn't around for the whole of that summer. Thankfully this summer he's heading back for 2 weeks of leave. Starting on Friday no less! Admittedly we don't have the house just yet and the farm is out of the question but I would imagine we can improvise some sort of area for sitting around in.

I discovered that I can buy the new Sugar Ray album on Amazon.co.uk..... Fucking yes. ;)

I was honestly under the impression one couldn't find it here because despite their second album being a massive hit in the US (for good reason, every single song is fantastic) no-one in the UK has heard of them past their breakthrough UK hit "Every Morning" from the Album "14:59". Yeah sure that was a superb track but there are at least 5 tracks on the album; "Sugar Ray" which are better.

I intended to buy the album (and indeed the special promo single) on the iTunes Music Store (the single was an exclusive advance launch for the iTMS no less) but I have no American Credit Card. Ass! I can't wait for the UK version. In the mean time I have to find someone (probably my sister) who is willing to buy something upwards of £13 in price so I can qualify for free Amazon.co.uk shipping (the threshold is £25 and until I get paid I'm seriously short on the ol' Cashola). A quick search of Amazon reveals the suspected - the 2nd Album wasn't even released in England. Absolute shame :(

That said I wouldn't have even heard of them but for my sister who bought the album. God bless her ;)

Her tattoo is really something so I'll plonk a little pic of it here. Seriously kickass. I have neither the inclination nor the necessary manliness to get one to be honest. If I did it would probably be something ridiculously geeky like an apple logo.

Oh man.. Between that CD and my new keyboard my first paycheck (assuming its £50 because my client is cheap - BTW that's not kris who is more my employer) is going to disappear which it really can't do.

Things are looking really good on the music front for my father's relaunched labels and EMI plans to launch Saint & Campbell's new single along with the new album in other territories leading to a probably UK release by the end of August. I have a really good feeling about the single and the album. Who knows how things will turn out? ;)

Later

John

Its Been A Good Day

Its Been A Good Day

Currently Watching: American Pie 2

Fucking hillarious. I'm watching it again in preparation for American Pie 3 (the wedding). According to the reviews it has about 70% more Stiffler than the last movie - Hell yeah! Sean William Scott is the man. Its gotta be one of those films I see with all of my mates. Our kinda flick.

"Excuse me sir are you a family member?"
"Fuck no this is just too good to miss!"

My sister got a tattoo today. Its absolutely rocking.

later

John

"Dude! This doth own!"

"Dude! This doth own most Righteously!"

Currently Listening To: #9 Dream by John Lennon

Just heard from my father that the offer has been sent. Repeat, an offer to lease the glorious house is away! Its the full asking price no less and the dude has asked to meet my dad on thursday. Can I get a 'w00t'?

" I'm gonna have a roooom! I'm gonna have a rooooom! " *does victory dance*

My current bedroom is a box which is about 10x6 and the one I slept in at Carlisle Mansions was about as far removed from being 'my' room as was possible (only my computer was added). The new one is substantially larger so I can probably fit a sofa in, perhaps some sort of rudimentary bar for gaming/drinks serving at a later date. Oh the possibilities! :D

If this place has Broadband access I'm just going to die of happy ;)

It may seem like I'm fickle if you read the massive, nay epic rant I wrote week or so ago but this really does mean that much to me =]

Later

John

Addendum

AddendumFirst Date from the album "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket" by Blink 182

New Blogger broke all decent blog apps insofar as they can't post & publish.

At the moment I have to use BlogThis!. The browser text entry fieldy thingy.

Rockin

RockinOnline Song from the album "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket" by Blink 182

(This is being posted using Kung-Log. I'm flicking through cool blogging apps)

Hello

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been working maniacally on the webdesign gig. Finally coming into the home straight.

Terminator 3 had some of the best "things get blown up" moments of any movie and along with some neat references to the previous films (look out for a certain Trauma counsellor who gets his second taste of Arnie ;) ) and Arnold's own self deprecating humor (he's never been afraid to parody himself: kindergarden cop, jingle all the way, last action hero etc) make the film a must see.

Spent the following 2 days playing Conflict: Desert Storm at Richard's house. For more on that you can check out the review I wrote of it for Kebeol.net. Speaking of which I ought to write something for them today.

Good news on the House front - it transpires that it will not be a granny house insofar as the midget won't have her name on the lease and isn't a dead certainty to stay there (wootage!) none of the granny furniture, none of the granny design. Nothing.. Fan-Fucking-Tastic :D The house is ours. I'm gonna run some roleplay there :D Can't wait to get back to living in a house of decent size. That may sound a bit pompous but I've grown up in Big houses and you kinda miss the space.

I put the reason down to my father putting up with her for 2 days whilst he stayed in London. Yep Dad, she's that bad. In fact she was far worse over the 6 months I was there from January. Kinda get the feeling my Dad might now understand better what I went through in that time ^^

Untitled

Currently Listening To:Dear Prudence (Dance Edit) by CO5

I saw Terminator 3 last night with Richard. It was absolutely hillarious and I'll write more about it later. However I'm about to head out with Richard so can't talk just now :)

Later
John