I got this one from BB’s private lockable friends-only LiveJournal – so there’s no point linking back to it! Answer it by copying/pasting it into the comments and popping an “X” between the brackets nect to the statements that count. Or emailing it to me! And of course, feel free to rip it and put it on your own blog so I can embarrass myself by going there and answering it!
Do you want to…
[] Push me into a wall and kiss me?
[] Come To My House To Do Nothing But Chill?
[] Slap Me?
[] Have Sex With Me?
[] Slap Me If I Asked You To?
[] Lick/Suck My Neck?
[] Let Me Lick/Suck Your Neck?
[] Watch A Movie With Me?
[] Take Me Out To Dinner?
[] Take A Shower With Me?
[] Take Me Home For The Night?
[] Let Me Sleep In Your Bed?
[] Let Me Sleep In Your Bed (With You)?
[] Take Me Anywhere With You?
[] Repost This For Me To Answer Your Questions?
[] Lock Me In Your room And Take Advantage Of Me?
[] Let me lock you in your room and Take Advantage of you?
[] Make me breakfast?
[] Tickle Me?
[] Let Me Tickle You?
[] Stick Up For Me If Someone Was Being Mean to Me?
[] Instant Message Me?
[] Greet Me In Public?
[] Hang Out With Me?
[] Hold my waist from behind while we are out?
[] Bring Me Around Your Friends?
Do You…
[] Miss Me?
[] Love Me?
[] Think I’m Hot?
[] Think I’m Cute?
[] Think I’m Ok?
[] Think I’m Ugly?
[] Want To Kiss Me?
[] Want To Cuddle With Me?
[] Want To Date Me?
[] Want To Love Me?
Am I…
[] Sweet?
[] Funny?
[] Cool?
[] lovable?
[] Adorable?
[] Great To Be With?
[] Attractive?
[] Mean?
Have You Ever…
[] Thought About Hooking Up With Me?
[] Found Yourself Wanting To Kiss Me?
[] Wished I Were There?
[] Had A Crush On Me?
[] Wanted My Number?
[] Had A Dream About Me?
[] Been Distracted By Me?
[] Thought About having Sex with Me?
Are You…
[] Happy You Know Me?
[] Thinking About Me?
[] My Friend
I’m staying with relatives for a couple of weeks and they’ve just had broadband installed. They decided on BT‘s Option 2 which has a 4.5Mb connection (I think) and a limit of 15Gb per month which should be fine given that it’s predominantly for my little cousin to access CBeebies and the folks to go on eBay.
BT’s policy if you go over this limit is also pretty fair, in my opinion:
If you exceed your monthly usage allowance your service won’t stop working; advisory emails will be sent to your BT primary email address if you reach 80 per cent of your usage allowance each month and further notification if you then exceed your allowance in a particular month. If you exceed your usage allowance for two months in a row, we’ll charge you £1 for each extra GB you use (rounded up to the nearest GB) starting from the second month you exceed your allowance. We’ll continue charging if you keep exceeding your allowance in the following months. These charges will appear on your BT bill.
So you actually get a “free” couple of GB as long as you don’t take the piss, the additional charges aren’t excessive and they do warn you in advance when you’re approaching the limit. Can’t complain about that.
Only there’s still one major issue. How do you know how much data you’ve downloaded at any one point in time? This can’t be difficult and BT obviously have a per-customer record of this that’s constantly updated. How else could they inform you of when you’ve gone over it?
To put this in context, I have my mobile from 3. I don’t have an internet usage limit on it, but I so have a certain number of calls and texts I can use before I get charged. At any time I can go online, either via my phone or elsewhere, and get an up-to-the-second list of every category of phone call and text (and internet, though it’s not relevant to me) used. That way I know as I approach the end of my billing month how much I have to burn through, or whether I need to throttle back.
BT do not do this. There is no way to find out how much data you’ve shifted. Their advice:
To monitor your usage, you can use a search engine to find and download an online-usage meter; search for ‘internet usage meter’. You may wish to try several until you find one that meets your needs.
In a word: pathetic.
They’re pushing wi-fi routers these days, the idea of which is that multiple devices can be connected at any time. A family may have a desktop and two laptops. One of the parents could have work laptop they’re not allowed to install software onto so that scuppers the idea. Then you have to go around all of the devices and total up the data used all the time.
What happens if a friend comes over, or you want to surf the net on your mobile? The 3G signal here is pants so I connect my phone to the wi-fi instead. There’s no such program for the Nokia E71 that I’m aware of and it would be pointless anyway as I’d only want to use it when I’m here. Likewise, if you pop a monitor onto a laptop, you have to ensure it’s only measuring data flow when you’re connected to the home network and nowhere else.
Essentially it’s completely unreliable and useless unless you have one solitary PC hardwired to the internet connection. If a mobile company can manage it, then why can’t BT? All they need is a “customer information” web page you log into which tells you. Easy as. If such a page does exist then they need to tell people about it.
OK, folks. Here is a chance to own a very exclusive Real Betis Vietnam football shirt as worn by the amazing kids at the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. There were never many of these shirts and BDCF are looking for new sponsors so there simply will not be any more of this particular design.
Featuring the Real Betis badge and name, BDCF logo and Catholic Relief Services on the sleeve, the shirt has a large number 7 on the back along with the charity URL. It’s lightweight material with “breathable” fabric under the arms and down the sides. It is brand new – I’ve worn it once to check it for size and fit.
The size is “XL” and this is a western XL by my judgement, not a Vietnamese one. The V-collar means it hangs off me. I’m an average size for a 35 year-old white guy.
Back of shirt
So here’s how it works. I will cover all costs involved in this little raffle including postage to wherever the lucky winner resides. Hopefully we’ll raise more than the overheads! “Tickets” are one Australian Dollar each and you “buy” them by making a donation to Blue Dragon via PayPal. When you donate, please leave a comment here (or if you’d rather not make it public, contact me directly) and tell me how much you donated and therefore how many times your name will be popped into the hat.
We’ll say the deadline is October 15th 2009 which gives you the thick end of a month to save up. I’ll pick the winner at random then and get in touch with them via email, so please include a valid mail address on your comment. Don’t worry – nobody can see your email address except me and I promise with hand on heart that I will only use said address to let you know if you’ve won and to get a mailing address from you.
A bumper crop this week as I managed to cram in four films today. I’m certainly getting my moneys-worth out of this cinema pass! As I’m not a student (though still don’t have a flipping union card – it should be in the post shortly) I have to increase the number of films I catch each month to make the card pay for itself. What a shame!
First film of the day was this new coming-of-age teen drama comedy thing. Greg Mottolla wrote and directed Superbad which, for some reason, was a huge hit despite being rubbish. This is similarly themed, but thankfully much better.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Boy wants to go on holiday and to college. Dad loses job. Boy must get dead-end summer job in amusement park. Boy “grows up” over summer.
The cast are really good and the comedy kept at a much lower tone than in Superbad, both factors that make this film far more watchable and believable. There is the inevitable character who you’d just want to punch in the face if you knew him in real life, but unlike the earlier movie he’s one of the supporting cast rather than a major piece.
It’s quite a gentle film, but you can generally see where it’s going from beginning to end so no major surprises. However, it’s good fun and has a few genuinely funny moments. It would actually make a good date movie.
From one easy-going comedy to a road trip bad-taste-a-thon. It’s not had great reviews, but if you can drop your mind down to gutter level I think you’ll enjoy it.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Nice guy is ready to sleep with his girlfriend on prom night. Loser/idiot friend gets him drunk. Nice guy falls down stairs and is in coma for four years, wakes up and finds his other half is now a Playboy model. The guys go on a road trip to find her.
I don’t understand why so many films pair up a sensible character with one who’s such a moron. The aforementioned Superbad was guilty of it and the same relationship ruined Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. You just don’t get relationships like that in real life. If the smart guy’s so smart, he’d ditch the idiot after the first time he almost gets killed, maimed, loses a girl, has his house burned down or whatever.
Anyway.
I kinda of enjoyed this one. Maybe I was in the right frame of mind, but it had some decent silly scenes. The “idiot” guy (played by Trevor Moore) definitely seems to be trying to be a young Jim Carrey, though. Same floppy hair and Ace Ventura style Hawaiian shirts.
If you’re after something in pretty bad taste, with some grim visuals, silly story, cringe-making slapstick and a really bad cameo by Hugh Hefner then this is worth a watch.
Gamer
This was my big film of the day, one I’d been looking forward to since I saw the trailers full of amazing action sequences.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Prisoners on death row get conscripted into a televised war game where they are controlled by remote “gamers”. If they survive 30 matches, they get freed. Only there’s something dodgy going on…
So far, so Death Race. It is a little different, but borrows heavily from the premise of the older film as well as utilising a high gore content like the remake. Gerard Butler is suitably buff as Kable, the central character while Michael C. Hall (from TV’s Dexter) is superb as Castle, the mega-rich madman behind everything.
Sadly, though, the plot’s a bit naff. The way the film’s cut is also very MTV with some sequences almost triggering epilepsy due to the speed with which cuts are performed. There are only a couple of action sequences and a lot of the best footage has been seen in the trailers already. I was really hoping for a massive amount of action and a bit of plot, but the balance isn’t quite right.
It’s also a little hard to follow, I found. Or maybe that was due to the (I forget how many) pints I had the night before. From the off, you’re dropped into this new world and it’s almost like you’re expected to know all about it already. Things are referred to as if they have already been explained.
A shame as Butler is good and the action sequences lovely and bloodthirsty. Like Quantum of Solace,though, spoiled by an over-zealous director and editor. Too many camera tricks and cuts.
Whiteout
Final film of the day and one based on a comic book (or graphic novel if you want to get all anal). I’d seen a trailer for it, but other than that I hadn’t heard much about it.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Murders begin to occur at the international research station in the Antarctic. A US Marshall (with a troubled past, naturally) has to find out whodunnit while avoiding the killer’s ice axe herself.
The setting’s fairly original and the exterior shots are gorgeous. There is an opening sequence involving a plane crash which is obviously low-tech CGI, but other than that it’s visually well shot. If you like snow.
It’s not a bad film, but the plot is rather thing. The small number of characters who make any major appearance does mean it doesn’t take long to suss out who’s involved. The “troubled past” thing also flags up an obvious plot point which potentially ruins the “twist” ending. I also wasn’t too impressed with the leaps of logic the characters made when trying to piece things together. On more than one occasion I was let thinking “how did you know?”
One major highlight is the make-up and the like. The corpses and injuries are nicely gory!
Overall, not a bad way to spend ninety minutes but very much a run-of-the-mill thriller with no real surprises to offer.
Oops. I never did get round to posting this on time. Right, at present I get Thursdays as a “personal study day”. As I study over the weekend instead, I give myself this as a day off and make full use of my cinema card. Last week I managed to cram three films in around a quick lunch and a leisurely hour in McD’s using the free wifi.
First up is Kathryn Bigelow‘s newest effort. I’m amazed this isn’t on in the “smaller” Cineworld cinemas such as Dundee on the basis that it has a big budget, a name director and a recognised cast. What else do you need to not be classed as a “minority interest” film? What really annoys me is that it’s bloody brilliant and fewer people are getting a chance to see it as a result.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Men in Iraq defuse booby-trap bombs. Usually. Only you don’t know when they’ll fail, regardless of the grade of actor playing them.
Bigelow has managed to shoehorn more tension into this film than in any three modern schlock horror films. There’s enough tension to make a steel cable snap.
Not just the bomb defusing scenes are taught. There’s a superb quarter hour where our main characters (plus a couple of incidentals) are pinned down by sniper fire.
Then there’s the fact that some of the events aren’t preceded by “will-he-won’t-he” moments. They just *BAM* happen.
I can’t point you at them right now, but I read quite a few comments on reviews before I saw this. A handful were from people who’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan and they heaped praise on the realism of the film.
Highly recommended if you have the nerve to sit through it.
Being “presented by” someone – even Peter Jackson – is often a death knell for a film. Or am I just thinking of how awful the Tarantino-presented Killing Zoe was? Maybe. However, Neill Blomkamp has done a decent job on this sci-fi effort although it’s still not perfect.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Aliens arrive, seemingly by mistake, and hover over Johannesburg. They end up corralled into a slum (the titular District 9) and treated like second-class beings until something goes wrong as they’re being moved away from the city.
The cast is – as far as I can tell – pretty much made up of utter unknowns. There isn’t a bad one in the bunch, though. Obviously, focus is on the central character of Wikus Van Der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), who is very good but did bring back memories of Derek from Bad Taste.
It begins  as some kind of docu-drama but rapidly becomes a mixture of this format and regular filming which does jar somewhat. Either make it all look like it’s from news camera footage or don’t bother. To offset this, the effects are simply superb. There’s a great blending of CGI and traditional “man in a rubber suit” work for the “Prawns” which works very well.
There’s no denying the “wouldn’t be more obvious if it kicked you in the crotch” allegory of people of a different appearance being kept in shanty towns in South Africa. It’s a point that sadly still needs to be made and when you consider that the film was made in that country it’s perhaps a little brave for them to basically be pointing out their own flaws.
This aside, it’s a very entertaining sci-fi flick. It wasn’t as good as I was hoping – the plot gets rather linear after the halfway point – but you do start to care more about the Prawns once this mark is reached and you learn more about them.
Worth a watch, but don’t believe the hype. I only hope they don’t go the obvious path and release District 10 but I fear it’s inevitable.
(500) Days of Summer
Yes, a rom-com. No, I’ve not gone soft. Well. No more than usual. I had a natural aversion to the film as it features Zooey Deschanel. While I’m aware that she is bloody attractive, she was also in the atrocious Hitchiker’s Guide To the Galaxy movie and thus will be tainted evermore.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Erm. Sort of. Only it jumps back and forth like a cross between Memento, Pulp Fiction and When Harry Met Sally.
This jumping about could have been such a headache, but it’s handled superbly well with careful use of graphic set pieces and a modicum of narration.
The story itself isn’t a hugely original one. It is, however, told in a novel way and with a great line of humour running through it. I don’t want to give too much away, but the ending isn’t what you’d expect. My only problem with it was that it mirrored a very recent relationship of mine far too closely for my liking. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sue them for ripping off my life. I do believe in coincidence.
Much as I did enjoy this, more because I wasn’t expecting to, I’d still rate Bandslam as a better rom-com. And it has better music. But still – this is very entertaining and a good date movie if your other half has a sense of humour.
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