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26th February Lots to catch up on. It is easy to slag off Ben Elton - the once radical enemy of all that was cosy and middle class and vaguely Toryish has become safe, middle of the road writer of musicals for Andrew Lloyd Webber. One only has to look at "Blessed" to see how soft and feeble his writing has become. But he still writes fantastic books. "Past Mortem" is the second of his murder mysteries I've read (the first being "Dead Famous") and it is brilliant. Funny, shocking, clever and impossible to put down until you've just read one more chapter. So Ben Elton has still got it when he wants to. We went out for a curry on Friday night. I believe the part of the Manchester we went to is famous for being "curry mile". I've never had curry before. It just hasn't ever been anything that has come up. Even my Indian sister in law hasn't tried to get me to eat curry. Well, m'colleagues are obviously more persuasive. It was so much better than I was expecting. Ok, the menus were useless as I had to rely on AussieGuy for advice. But what came - a vegetarian korma - was good. And how refreshing to see a British restaurant which serves decent sized cokes. I was dreading the night out - partly for obvious reasons and partly because I am full of whatever is going round and can barely walk in a straight line. I was pleased that it went as well as it did and that everyone enjoyed it. But not too much as we - The Three - were in work yesterday to give the once over to the latest upgrade. One day they're going to let me choose the code name. Towns in New Zealand are all fine and large (though they've done A to D now and may struggle as New Zealand isn't a big place) but I want something cooler. Or less boring anyway. Up in North Britain they have a project called "Irn Bru". No joke. If our Scotch colleagues can be so foolish then so can I. My eighties kick continues - I'm part way through Dempsey and Makepeace as I write this. I remember finding a couple of videos in September of 1995 and loving the show. I can be that precise as it was the end of the summer hols between first and second year at uni. I recall sitting alone and freezing cold in our student house (I arrived not only before everyone else but before the central heating engineers) watching the pilot movie. I even remember watching it when it was first on. That would've been dangerously exciting stuff for a nine year old. My video software finally arrived yesterday morning and I spent what must've been ten straight hours putting my first proper video together. I had bits and bobs from last weekend's demo but I had to start from scratch as the two apps weren't willing to share. I think its turned out quite well. Windows Media is a remarkable format - the file sizes are way smaller than I was expecting. The soundtrack isn't as good quality as I would've liked but it isn't worth uploading an MPEG with better audio and comparable picture because it would be over 150Mb and that's not really acceptable. Click here for the downloads page.
22nd February One of the many things I learned about Samuel Johnson from reading Henry Hitching's book about the man and his dictionary is that he was regularly bled to ease his ailments. The drawing of blood was the answer to most medical conundrums in those primitive times and to our sophisticated eyes it seems barbaric and weird. Can you even imagine that there were people, three hundred years ago, who believed that cutting someone open and letting blood trickle out was any sort of cure for anything? You can probably guess where this is going. Elsewhere, the only amusing thing that happened today was when Twat stumped over, bowed in a really strange way and, in the booming, nasal voice which he thinks is amusing, announced "Boys... girl..." and made a request of us. He then added "I know my name must be 'mud' around here". "No - actually it's 'Twat'" I wanted to say. But I didn't. So it was only amusing to me. Last night I watched the pilot episode of The A Team. Nostalgiatastic. It was weird because it was like every single episode of The A Team I've ever seen rolled into one. I seem to remember the show as a work of genius but I might be overlooking the reality that they had one storyline which they used every week. Maybe the pilot seemed familiar because almost all the iconic bits from the opening titles were taken from the movie. Mr T smashing through that door, him turning round in the car and snarling, Hannibal dressed as a sea monster or jumping out of a helicopter, Murdoch flying that old plane and singing something operatic. All that was missing was Dirk Benedict because there was another guy playing Face. He was sacked for being too tall and not being Dirk Benedict. The whole first season was £9.97 and the pilot was worth that on its own. And just when I thought I couldn't be more eighties I get an email from Benson's World saying that the Dempsey and Makepeace boxed set that I ordered months ago and had forgotten about was posted today. Fantastic. What hasn't been posted yet is the video editing software I ordered on Sunday. The thing that pissed me off most about Amazon is that they say something will ship within 24 hours but if you choose free shipping (a service they plug at least once on every page) they put the order into "dispatching soon" and leave it there for days. I want to finish "My Sacrifice" before my enthusiasm dies on me. Dammit.
19th February I went out this morning and bought eight pizzas. They were BOGOF. I went out for lunch with the family and was flumoxed to be invited out next Sunday to meet her brother for the first time. They must've thought me rude when I was startled. I went and fed ducks with lil nephew. He hit one right in the face and landed bread on the back of a goose's neck. I came home and did some tidying up. Apparently I have blue carpet underneath. And I fucked around with a video editor for a while and made this (**file no longer available - full version coming very soon**). It isn't very long - the real thing will be about three times the length - this was just a mess around while I took my first few steps into editing. The software was only a demo (hence the irritating logos) and the clips all come from one DVD (except one which had to be elsewise). But when the proper kit arrives I should be able to do it properly. Try it - it might not be eye-bleedingly bad.
18th February This website will be awesome one day. Right now it is merely fantastic but it has the potential to be the greatest thing since Symphony. I am the cause of phone based stupidity this evening. I called my credit card people because I didn't know my PIN. It wasn't that I'd forgotten it - just that PIN meant cash point back in the olden days and I had no intention of ever using the extortionate cash facility offered by the good people at [insert name of credit card firm]. So I rang them at 9pm and was surprised to be quickly answered by a helpful chap with a Scotch accent. I wasn't prepared for this. I asked for my "PIN number". Argh. I hate that. I also hate losing to Liverpool but I find myself not caring this time. What happened to Alan Smith makes the whole match redundant. I saw players go over to have a look and come away looking sick. The replay (there were more but I could only watch the one) reminded me of the time Sid Vicious broke his leg on PPV and it flapped about like two halves of a cucumber in a sock. I also couldn't stop thinking about Kerry Von Erich who broke his ankle so badly that he had to have his foot amputated. What does a game matter? I had a weird conversation with Weird Ian this afternoon. I mentioned to him that there was a pay per view on Sunday night. He corrected me - he said it was actually Monday morning. He explained, as though talking to a puppy, that 1am was actually one o'clock on Monday morning. Like I didn't know that. But for people who work - and he is surprised every time I speak to him that I've got a job - it is Sunday night because that's when normal people set their videos and special people have a nice word with TiVo. It's also an American show and in America it is on Sunday night. I told him that he had neglected to explain to me that the show was on Sky Sports One and not Sky Box Office and therefore wasn't a "pay per view". His wife was shouting in the background - she that was happy Kurt Angle had suffered yet another serious neck injury because she doesn't like him - and it struck me that the two of them might be the only people on the planet who actually care that there is a pay per view tomorrow night. I sure as hell don't. The monthly UFC show (if there is one) has long since surpassed the WWE offering as the thing to note in the diary. The conversation wasn't entirely without merit though - we were talking about how Vince McMahon could die at any moment because his mind has gone, his body is freakish and his face is almost always purple, and I said "Maybe he already died but is just refusing to sell it." I think I could be on to something there.
15th February A couple of weeks ago I found a tape with some old Sky Sports compilations of classic ITV wrestling footage. Hosted by the infamous Jeff Stelling, they took a themed look at thirty three years of televised action. While copying them to DVD I had the odd thought "if one of those legendary figures died, would anyone still care?" By legendary I pretty much meant McManus, Pallo and Kendo Nagasaki since Daddy and Haystacks are long gone and one of the factors which killed the business in this country is that thirty-three years produced exactly five true superstars. Well, today we found out. Dave Meltzer reported that Jackie Pallo had died, aged 80, of cancer. The news was on the BBC website but it wasn't visible and could only be accessed by a Google News search. I guess a few people care and it will filter through into the obituary pages of the broadsheets (because their readers will remember him) but he was a big star for a long time and it seems somehow out of character for him to go out so quietly. I hold in my mental hands the means of
making ITguy cry. I honestly believe I could make him sink his
slender head onto the table and weep tears of despair. I would've tested
the theory but it was quarter to five and I'm not that stupid. Anymore. He
conceived, many summers ago, a means of passing work tasks around which
was entirely browser based and required no knowledge to use. As long as
you can understand the basic words the caller uses you can create work
items which are automatically assigned to the correct part of the
business. They can then accept those tasks, online, and be presented with
all the prompts, letters and information they need to complete that task.
So almost no knowledge needed at that end either. Every step of the way
generates statistical information and it forms an important part of
ITguy's plan for Working with HalfPastThree is certainly educational. Every night I go home thinking "that's taught me a lesson". He is a decent enough old stick - and he retires later this year, lucky thing - but he can veer from one extreme to the other in a heartbeat. Witness, Him: Me sister and I are identical twins even though she's fifteen years older. Me: Does she have a comb-over too? Him: No - actually she died of cancer not long ago. Silence.
11th February Things I don't get - Why Honky Tonk Man wouldn't take money to do something on TV because it would hurt his drawing power but would show how little he does in indie matches? The first two Honky Tonk Man shoot interviews were great - he's got a lot to say and he says it well. He told us that he refused to do an angle for WWE on TV because getting laid out by Randy Orton would make him look bad and cost him money. But now, on his third DVD, we go backstage at an independent booking and hear him discussing the evening's match with his opponent. "Don't even try and lift me off my feet cuz I'm not going" he says in all seriousness. So we know that HTM won't take bumps. We know he won't do jobs and we know that in his prime his main assets were (a) the gimmick, (b) that he always looked like he was going to get beaten and (c) he sold for everyone and made them look good. He's still got the gimmick - twenty years after it was first over - but the rest is history. The DVD even contains the match they laid out minutes before. It sucked because HTM did exactly what he said he'd do - nothing. And we could see that there were a couple of hundred people there (tops) so the legend of him being a draw has gone too. I bet RF Video offered him less for this than WWE did for their angle and for anyone who saw this disc it did a lot more harm than taking the RKO would've done. But I still like Honky - he's a bitter old man but he can be funny. Why there are so many crap managers at work but I've only ever worked for good ones? I was thinking about this yesterday and it's true - my former managers in my old job were both good (in different ways), my current line/project manager is really good and the head of our department seems extremely sharp and supportive. Maybe this is just me getting something back after three and a half years under the poisonous leadership of Piglet at the Old Place. The only possible exception is that, technically, for part of last year we were under Angel and he's taken a strong dislike to me for some reason. Even going so far as to get AussieGuy a promotion in the middle of last year and not do the same for me. We two were at a lower grade than Mr Shirts and The Artist because we were newer to the company. So Angel promotes one and not the other. Since then he doesn't even acknowledge me if we pass in a corridor. Why do I keep calling it "The IT Guys" when it is so obviously "The IT Crowd"? It's the best new sitcom in years and I can't get the fucking name right. Maybe I have a subconscious desire to put ITguy into a sitcom even though that would be utterly impossible. No one - not me, not someone good - could translate his being into sit com format. But even he is losing his ethereal glow of late. He keeps initiating things and then stepping back when it gets complicated and telling us he "doesn't want to get involved". He seems more patronising whenever he's explaining anything. Having worked with this application since October 2004 I really don't need him to tell him to click the green button to advance to the next screen. I also don't like how he gives us a job to do which he's too busy for (which is fine, which is fair enough, which is good) but only gives us the access rights to solve the absolutely simplest of scenarios. Its fairly obvious he doesn't trust us with anything and that, by extension, he still sees us as nothing more than customer service monkeys with ideas above their station. Why I am increasingly feeling like Dan Ashcroft whenever I spend any time at my preferred message board? That isn't a good thing - Ashcroft is the true loser in Nathan Barley because he hates the world he lives in but he stays there because the people in every other world he's ever tried hate him. He's also apathetic and simply pathetic. There are plenty of people there that I like but there is a Nathan and there is a Sugar Ape. If there was an arrogant, illiterate, patronising tory boy in Nathan Barley the comparison would be complete. Why am I spending ages googling good things to overdose on? Probably because I haven't found one yet.
7th February There are two things which always can be relied upon to make me cross. One is driving anywhere and the other is my parents. But this ridiculous affair of the Danish cartoons is really bringing out my angry side. There was a story yesterday that several protesters had been killed. I'm sorry if this offends anyone but good. I'm glad they died. I'm glad that half a dozen people who are stupid enough to attack buildings, start fires and engage in full scale riots over a cartoon in a Danish newspaper are no longer alive. The human race is better off without them. We're better off because half a dozen examples of retarded DNA are no longer in danger of being passed to another generation. If the violence continues I hope more of them die because they are not good people and every single one of them does more to harm their faith than they will ever do to help it. Muslims often complain that the West has a distorted view of their religion. Is it any wonder? A cartoon appears in a Danish newspaper and all hell breaks loose. Then we have the story about the British protester who was on parole following a conviction for selling crack. So his fucked up world view is that it is fine to sell crack to people but if anyone says anything about Islam, he's going to protest about it. Where does Islam say that selling crack and ruining peoples lives is ok? When will the world realise that faith doesn't live in the tiny, arbitrary details but in the morality that governs your every day life? These Islamic hypocrites are every bit as bad as the Christian fundamentalists who do so much damage in America and beyond, and the Israeli factions who stir up so much hatred in the Middle East. Sooner or later we have to accept that the radical wings of all religions are solely political movements (akin to communism or fascism) and stop treating them with the respect that sincere faith deserves. Maybe by separating the politics and the faith we can make "Christian" and "Muslim" into positive terms again rather than the current image of a creationist, a Republican or a terrorist. Naturally, my parents could be relied upon to annoy me in regards to the story about the Finsbury Park mosque being a haven for terrorists. The news report said they had evidence going abck to the late 90s about undesirables using the mosque for criminal purposes. Mother: Why did the police do anything sooner? Then a prominent Muslim is interviewed and he asked why the police hadn't acted sooner. Mother: Typical - he has to blame the police... On a brighter note, I was 3 and 2 with my UFC predictions. Only Frank Mir and Randy Couture let me down by getting their asses handed to them. Still, not had considering my criteria for picking winners were not at all scientific. It was a cross between Mrs Temple's intuition and dumb guesswork. I say roll on UFC 58 and give Jeff Monson a shot at Andrei Arlovski. He won't win and it isn't a main event fight but it would be a solid under card match and he'll put up a damn site better show than the unskilled tough-man fighters that Arlovski's been facing of late. On an even brighter note, "The IT Crowd" is fucking brilliant. I wasn't expecting much - at best a Nathan Barley style grower - but it was hilarious right from the off. The best new comedy since Coupling (better even than Peep Show) and surely destined to be axed by Channel 4 at the end of its current run because its good and they axe good comedies. Like Peep Show. And on an even brighter note still, my current wallpaper is this artistically filtered picture of Claire Ashcroft from Nathan Barley.
4th February I had been avoiding Royal Rumble news for the best part of a week (which basically meant avoiding lots of favourite websites, audio shows and even parts of Wiki) but since the piece of shit I bought the DVD from doesn't even answer emails I gave in and listened to Bryan and Vinny's verdict on the pay per view. They hated it. It sounded loathsome. The very antithesis of what was needed at this point in time. There are different degrees of booking - (a) There is booking that is good. (b) There is booking that is bad. (c) There is booking which is deliberately bad. (d) There is booking which is deliberately good only when it serves a deliberately bad agenda. (e) There is booking which is genuinely inexplicable. The Edge-Cena thing is a case of (d) - HHH wants to beat Cena at Wrestlemania. He saw that Cena was losing it, Edge was given the belt and pushed strongly. It worked - ratings went up and things looked good. But HHH still wanted to beat Cena so Cena - a mere three weeks into his rebuilding - is given the belt back, we're at square one again and all the good work that went into Edge has been pissed away. As long as WWE is booking for the sole gratification of the McMahon family they will never quite reach state (e), unlike WCW, but there is only so much McMahon masturbating that the audience can take. Vince likes humiliating people, HHH likes beating people, Vince likes people telling him he's god, HHH likes people telling him he's the greatest of all time. Those are the four main headings writers are given when they're sent off to write their scripts. Tonight (tomorrow if you're here like me) is UFC 57 - "Couture - Liddell 3" - and, while I'm looking forward to what looks like a packed show, there is no buzz about the main event. Yes, it will be good to see Chuck and Randy fighting again. Yes, there is uncertainty about who will win. Yes, it has the makings of a very good fight. Yes, they are two of the greatest 205lbs MMA fighters of all time. But unlike "Couture - Liddell 2" I'm not desperate to see it. UFC are calling it the biggest fight in history but to me it isn't close to the level of 2005's big two - the afore mentioned Couture vs Liddell and Pride's Fedor vs CroCop. I certainly won't be fast forwarding through the undercard to get to the main event. But perhaps that is a good thing - you know me and expectation. If I look forward to something being great it is always a let down. So seeing this as one big fight amongst so many (and UFC have four major events over the next four months to look forward to) is probably the best thing. For those who care, my ill-educated predictions are as follows - Chuck Liddell vs Randy Couture - I thought I would be the only person picking Randy but it turns out a lot of people think the same way. He's the bookies' underdog but you can never count him out. Nick Diaz vs Joe Riggs - Riggs is going to be motivated after his loss to Matt Hughes and that may give him the edge. Renato Babalu Sobral vs Mike Van Arsdale - I think Babalu could be the next big thing in the light heavyweight division and this will be his breakout fight. Frank Mir vs Marcio Cruz - Mir is coming off a motorbike crash which cost him 18 months and his heavyweight title. He's got more experience and he certainly used to be a top flight fighter. Brandon Vera vs Justin Eilers - There are several potentially horrible heavyweight bouts on this show but this is the one that is scheduled for the live portion of the show. Eilers just isn't very good and we have to hope Vera is at least a bit better. I don't care about this fight but I'm picking Vera because Eilers is seriously damaged goods. Weird story of the week -
2nd February I was going to recount the jollity that comes of working (for the time being) with ShirtGuy's old person. We used to compare old person stories - I had Woolly and he had HalfPastThree - and while ShirtGuy never got to work alongside Woolly, I have five more weeks of HalfPastThree. With his catchphrases - "who, boo, don't try and scare me", "half past three", "you can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead" and "what, hot, it is a bit warm in 'ere" - combined with his nonsensical banter - it is an experience to be sat with him. TheArtist is in fits pretty much all the time. HalfPastThree has another side to him - he's the union rep and has much useful knowledge to impart in hushed tones. So I might learn something as well as be amused in his old age. But then I decided to give vent to stuff that is annoying me - like road works, Air America going "premium", the site being down for several hours this morning, the strange pain in my left thigh, the indescribable pain in my right big-toe, the fact that my Royal Rumble DVD hasn't arrived despite the seller saying he'd ship it on Monday. Then I thought "why bother" because it's all just life and life is shit. But I'm too tired for any of that. I want to be unconscious and I'm going to be soon.
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