Category: Uncategorised

I’m away all week with work, folks. I should have email and web access but I’m not sure exactly how much or how often. I’ll do my bestest to put some kind of crap up here. For those with a déjà vu feeling, yes the two following posts are from the archive. Each has a new addition to the list.

I have to go crash now to prevent me crashing on the way down to East Lincs tomorrow…

The Man Behind The Bar asked a simple question:

How could this happen?

Because under US law, marines discharged for having severe personality orders and other mental illnesses can still own handguns.

I only found out a day or so ago who it was who was shot. I heard brief references on the news on the day, but I didn’t recognise the name of Dime’s new band so didn’t think twice. Then I found out… Jeez.

I met him once. Outside the City Hall in Newcastle after a gig that was cancelled halfway through due to sound problems. He was wasted. Absolutely shitfaced. And a ******* right laugh. I have one photo of me with him, and one picture he took (a blurred one of my camera strap and the road – I told you he was pissed).

This is a guy who ******* loved every moment of his professional career. For whom life was one whacking big party. He made himself happy making other people happy.

Fear Factory devoted the track “Martyr” to him at Nottingham last night. The entire crowd were chanting “Dimebag! Dimebag!”.

He will be remembered. Talent… genius like that never dies.

More tributes on the Damage Plan web page.

Just for a change, this isn’t a rant about the arseholes who talk during a film (I’m sure I’ve had a go about them before and anyone who’d been in the cinema with me knows I’m not averse to taking action). It’s about the cinemas themselves and their scheduling in particular.

Like most people, if I’m office-based then I’ll finish work at around 5:00 – 5:30 of an evening. Sometimes I’ll want to catch a film on the way home. Check your local cinema. See what time the films start in the evening. I’ll put money on the fact that the vast majority start so close to 5:00 you’d not make it there, or well after 7:00 so you may as well head home first… and then turn right round to head out. Too long to grab a quick meal, too short to allow you to relax. Also, once I’m home I usually can’t be bothered getting back in the car again.

Why aren’t there any performances centred at 6:00? Anyone finishing between 5:00 and 5:30 would have enough time to be delayed leaving work, travel there, grab a quick burger if required (and if not, it’s not that long to wait for the film) and enjoy it.

Is it just me or is that just so obvious? Or am I centering too much on my own daily schedules?

I was lucky yesterday as a very local site visit cropped up at lunchtime which I grabbed at. I was done by mid-afternoon so I had time to get home, wolf some lunch, get changed and leisurely drive out for the 5:15 performance of Blade Trinity.

Very enjoyable it was, too. Blade is the best thing in leather since… well, some porn flick I downloaded a while back. Probably the coolest character in cinema, and he makes Batman look like am amateur with gadgets made from plastic Meccano and PlayDoh. The film’s still not as good as the first one, but it takes a rare action movie to reach those heights. Great effects and a cracking “comic relief” character who was genuinely funny. Recommended.

Oh, but take ear plugs especially if you go to the Vue in Leeds. Probably the loudest film I’ve seen all year.

OK, I’ll give you all a moment to get your minds out of the gutter.

Right. Done? Good.

My cat’s mental. And vindictive. She’s taken to chewing everything. The aerial on the cordless phones, the VGA cable on my monitor, the power cable on the paper shredder, the locking nut things on her carry-box… Oh, and she likes shiny things as evidenced by her quest to pick up screws in her paws and then attempt to eat them.

She has also decided that I can only get a certain amount of sleep at night. On Wednesday I was shattered so I went to bed an hour earlier than normal. Zonked out. All was fine until the cat woke me as usual.

At 6:30am. An hour before she normally starts clawing at my face. I don’t know about anyone else, but that close to the alarm going off anyway and I just can’t get back to sleep.

Does anyone know if I can buy a wristwatch for a cat and, more importantly, teach her to read the ******* thing?

This numpty (apologies if the link dies – it’s on eBay) is trying to sell Star Wars: The Phantom Menace on VHS… for £30. For those unaware, it can’t have cost much more than a third of that when it came out maybe 3 years ago.

Today, you can buy the same film on DVD and buy a DVD player to play it on for around £30. Who on earth would pay that much (plus postage) for it?

eBay is full of such stuff. Buyers are no better than the hopeful sellers. As some of you may be aware, I recently shifted my Region 1 copy of Buffy season 4 for a reasonable £20. I’ve got the rest of the series in Region 2 and just wanted the packaging to all be the same when they’re on the shelf, plus my new DVD player’s not that keen on R1 discs.

So, off I plod on eBay to try and get a cheap-ish second hand copy of season 4 on R2. Can I heckers like. Every single one is going for around the £30 mark. Plus postage. I’ve had the quickest of searches on the web and found half a dozen places charging this much – including delivery – for a brand new copy. Why pay the same or more for second hand?

Answer: people are stupid. It just pisses me off cos I want to pay about half price for a second hand copy, which seems reasonable. But other people’s bloody stupidity is making that near impossible!

Apologies for a rant with hardly any humour, sex or vomit in it. I’ll get over it and start being a sick **** again soon.