Righteous Kill. There’s a twist. You’ll see it coming. You’ll cringe at the cliches. This would be utterly pointless were it not for De Niro’s and Pacino’s (surprisingly restrained) performances. As it is it is merely thoroughly disappointing.

Babylon AD. It’s like a worse version of Children of Men with a much bigger budget. Children of Men is better directed. It’s better acted. It’s better written. It is, in short, much better.

I found a half written post. I have no idea what it was going to be about. I posted it anyway.

The financial system may be melting down, it could just be a sudden contraction caused by the realisation there wasn’t the liquidity in the system that it appeared. Billions in borrowed and lent money has vanished, never having actually existed anywhere apart from on balance sheets. The housing market is duly contracting and businesses with real assets and inventories gain and lose ridiculous amounts of perceived value on an hourly basis. Against this backdrop the media knows something is happening and scares us all, but how much it will actually affect any of us is hard to say. The Mirror (in particular)’s craven headlines have annoyed me greatly.

One thing it has done has buggered McCain even more than Palin opening her mouth ever could. The week of his convention he looked like he was on course for the White House. George Bush interfering with the markets and he is on the receiving end of a landslide . . .
He’s even started pulling staff from what were quite winnable states.

Igor. Igor is very, very funny. Spiritually (and visually) it is very similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s also not for young children. One of the main characters is an immortal bunny rabbit with his brain pan exposed and a death wish. There’s a recurring joke involving a dismembered limb. And idiots take their children to see it without noticing what rating it has.

Speed Racer (I know, I know, but I only just saw it) is visually super saturated and probably features lots of things never before seen. It’s also insipid. See it once to marvel at the sheer brilliance of the effects. And then never see it again.

Sweeney Todd. I found myself skipping the musical bits. It’s not quite as comedic as I expected. The cast are all brilliant. Some of the visuals are quite lovely. I still got very bored.

Love Guru. But for the toilet humour a truly funny and enjoyable film. Far better than I expected it to be.

21. Lawrence Fishbourne has put on weight. Kevin Spacey is great in everything he does. The book (hell, even the half written articles on the internet) is much better.

Tropic Thunder. First half brilliant, Robert Downey Jr is great. But there aren’t quiet enough jokes to sustain it and (barring Tom Cruise’s frankly incredibly cameo) there is too much sentimentality creeps in.

No Heroics is quite funny when it is on narcissism and the peculiarity of fame. But there is too much comfort and familiarity. It’s best when it is savage and when it’s something you have seen before you just feel underwhelmed.

Gordon Brown has brought Peter Mandelson back. I know nothing can really revive his premiership, but even on that basis it is an utterly peculiar move. Is he just trying to remind us of the worst parts of Tony Blair in an effort to make us appreciate him more?
Or does he think he will be helped by negative headlines every morning?

Ian Blair has resigned. Jacqui Smith has rushed to defend and laud him. That tells you everything you need to know about both of them. He has tried blaming Boris Johnson for his removal (which rather endears the fop to me) but I think the corruption allegations (two batches), incompetent operations in which innocent men have been shot (does anyone remember the Asian gentleman they decided were terrorists and could find nothing on save the fact they hoarded money and perhaps had an indecent photo or two?) and absolute PR disasters also played their part in his removal. He’s the first public servant I have ever hated with as much venom, and as much as I take pleasure in his removal I would rather he was punished and humiliated.

We had the hottest, sunniest day of Summer for months. Seeing as it is now effectively autumn and no one can hope to benefit from it. I heard a radio advert the other day saying (and I am paraphrasing here) “If there is global warming, then why is it so cold? If it is a seller’s market, why can’t you sell your house?” and then something else. Truly, truly awful. And displays a singular lack of understanding, hugely poor timing and, in so far as I can’t remember what the advert was for, fails on every level. But, yes: global warming. Wet summer. Cold weather. Desalination of the oceans causing undersea currents to shift, changing the climate. Increased water levels causing increased rain. Oh, and the housing market at its lowest ebb since well before I was born.

I saw The Dark Knight. I loved it. It made me cry.

I am lobster red, after the carboot yesterday. The day started off hazy, but turned hot and then hotter. Wandering around the carboot I stood on a hill and saw a literal mile of cars, vans and people. Heat shimmer and the promise of sweat, yapping dogs and screaming kids. But it was a good day.

The guy next to us had a nightmare day. He was getting a table out of his car when he clipped the window. Now, the table was a softish plastic and caught the window with no force, but it exploded outwards in shards of blue tinged glass. Then, as he was setting up and distracted by a customer, his partner sold the Playstation 3 he was hoping to get £160 for for £20. It was very hard not to laugh.

Last time I wrote I compared Gordon Brown to John Major and noted how he had no civil war in his party. I’m unsure whether that was prophetic or not. Apparently Jack Straw (a stalking horse if ever there was one, the man has no core within the party) is mooted as his replacement. Can he be as bad?
Gordon Brown has resorted to pandering to his core, instead of completely failing to understand the whims of the majority. If ever there was a lame duck leader, this is it.

Barack Obama has been on a tour of Europe, looking like a president in waiting and concentrating one one of his two perceived weaknesses (the other is Militarily). McCain’s initial stunt of eating a sausage with some people of Bavarian descent looked cheap and utterly pathetic. Like much of his campaign. Getting some traction from Obama’s refusal to visit injured soldiers was actually brilliant campaigning. Unfortunately I fear the former will be typical of the coming months.

I have over 11 thousand comments on Greatwhitehype to screen. Yuck.

Work is one continuous stream of hair dryers, fans that would sell if only there were two hot days threaded together, kettles and dealing with people who tell you how much they’re worth and then pay you with the copper from down their sofas. I spent three days dealing with Nigerians trying to sell fans and, after conversing with one repeatedly, got a firm order for 32 of them. Fantastic, now if only I could sell the other 2 thousand or so . . .

I don’t want anyone to spoil the Dark Knight for me. I shall ignore more and more people until I get to see it for myself, finally escaping my self imposed coccoon of interaction deprivation.

Gordon Brown. He’s like John Major without the defining catastrophic failure of policy and leadership and without the open civil war within his party. But make no mistake, he is as unpopular, as reactionary and as clueless.

I don’t come here for a while and it is overgrown with the weeds of spam. Clarkkent wants to show me fake breasts. A woman in India thinks I have a great site. And no one says one real thing or one genuine thought.

Barack Obama. His funding has slowed but he really is running a good campaign. McCain has occassional moments of lucidity but I get the feeling his nurses don’t wake him from his afternoon naps often enough.

David Davis I have belatedly decided I like. I agree with him on something he feels strongly about. And he seems genuinely principled.

Michael Turner died. I was surprised and then discovered I didn’t really care.

Hellboy 2 is very good, but loses steam towards the end. Wall-E is probably a great technical achievement but I got really bored and gave up. Hancock is better than I thought but loses it’s way after the first half.

Don’t Mess With The Zohan is very, very funny. Politically reprehensible, peurile and in the worst possible taste. It’s just what the world needs.

Kung Fu Panda is beautifully done and obviously a labour of love but forgot to pack any jokes. And the plot is paper-thin. Unlike it’s star or star’s voice.

Obama won the nomination, the Democrat Party rigged it beautifully. Ted Kennedy is apparently braindead after pushing him. Some would argue he was before. As of now Obama is showing as ahead of McCain in the popular vote and likely next incumbent of the White House. So, here goes some rash predictions:
McCain is going to win Michigan. I suspect he is going to win Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin and New Mexico regardless of what the polls say. McCain by about 295 Electoral Votes to Obama’s 241. The Democrats will win both houses.

Last year I got my sister the domain LeedsUnitedGoingDown.Com which she never used but I loved the idea of. This year I have offered to get her LeedsUnitedStayingDown.Com. Because Leeds just got beaten by the colossus of Doncaster. And, in the top flight, Hull is the sole representative of Yorkshire. Leeds United fans must be seething. Good.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has a clunky title. Like the Phantom Menace. It has unnecessary aliens. Like the Phantom Menace. it dances on the celluloid graves of its predecessors. Like the Phantom Menace. In many ways it is the Phantom Menace of the Indiana Jones films. It has some great period moments early on (despite borrowing the start of The Rock but doing it less well) but goes seriously wrong soon after Harrison Ford proves himself to be indestructable. There is no real sense of there being a quest, no tension and the settings all seem suspiciously studio-y. But the lack of Judaeo myth, the baddies not being obviously bad and the ending being incredibly stupid made me want to cry. And not in the good way.

We had a day off today. We can deal with rain, but the idea of losing all our stock in a gust of wind to a muddy swamp of a field didn’t appeal. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow.

We did Bilston Market yesterday. I did the morning and Adrian did the afternoon. The people on Bilston market are odd. Probably odder than Wolverhampton. We don’t have the drunks but we have the druggies and the bail hostelees around the place. I saw two men in flipflops, one with shorts on, umpteen t shirts and one guy who shuffled like a zombie. His head lolled to one side and drool was dripping from his mouth. Sadly I hope it is a disorder, if I find it to have been the effects of something self inflicted like drugs it’d make me worry about what people are doing to themselves.

There is another Wordpress version available. I think they update it more than I do the webpage I run using it. Which probably shows how much I neglect this place.

New South Park: absurdist and very funny in places. Cartman and Butters play off each other wonderfully. Stan does the incredulity thing.

Son of Rambow is dire and unwatchable. The Cottage is ok but never as good as it thinks it is.

I made tea for Adrian and his family. Charlotte refused to touch it but Dan ate no problem. Which shows some traction, hopefully.

Ladytron have a new album. I couldn’t listen to it all the way through. They have gone from being a jolt of something new and jagged to sounding a lot like other people. It’s all got a bit serious and musically accomplished but considerably less weird. A lot of people put out music I like and then move in a way that I don’t care much for, very few actually come back stronger. Armand Van Helden. Miss Kittin. Primal Scream. Everyone else just sort of fades away.

Miss Kittin has a new album. I like it.

New South Park! It’s spot on as satire and quite funny. But it isn’t great. It has laugh out loud moments, but not throughout.

I was walking behind a woman the other day. Well, she crossed over the road in front of me. So I am walking there already and she cuts me up and has me behind her. Now we continue walking and I am walking on my normal route home. Which is clearly her route too as she turns round and looks at me fearfully as I take the same turnings as her. Granted, I looked like a mad axe man but she crossed out in front of me. If that makes me a stalker, that makes her the metaphorical equivalent of William Tell’s son jumping round with a target on her. Or something.

Leeds station is clearly intended as a fiendish maze from which travellers must never, ever escape. It isn’t enough for them to give the wrong list of destinations for a train. Or the wrong departure time. Or the wrong platform. No, they have to do all three. I dare say if I had managed to catch it there would have been someone stood just inside the door to push me off for my temerity.

Congratulations to Labour rebels for finally working out the ten percent tax abolition is a bad thing. Next up: Murder is . . . wrong. Idiots.

Wordpress has been updated. The number made it look like a point release but the under the hood stuff is pretty drastic (at least cosmetically). I’m not sure how much I like it or what benefits it bestows on me, but I am convinced I need to rework my theme to work in IE (boo, hiss) and to take advantage of widgets.

I’m going home this weekend. It’s only been four months. Based on the usual changes I see every time I go home the entire of the city centre will be rubble and the remaining shops will all be pound bargain land or Eastern European.

Jo Whiley is kind of creepy. She’s doing the down with the younglings thing that Janet Street Porter is now not allowed to do since she picked up her bus pass and it’s as embarrassing as your dad trying to be cool and using slang. Old crones shouldn’t pretend to know what is fashionable or where the emerging trends are. She’s been ancient ever since I was young enough to care and I am much too old to have a clue what people like, want to look like or listen to anymore. And I wear slippers around the house.

We’re doing markets again. Bilston Market on a Saturday morning to be precise. It’s populated by thieving chavs, the elderly and the toothless. It’s also surprisingly lucrative. After Wolverhampton in the run up to Christmas I never wanted to do a market again. Doing one once a week where you can make reasonable money seems a good trade off. Trying to make one a cornerstone of your business is pretty much locking into this country’s dying independent retail sector at the worst time in the worst way.

I’m babysitting at the moment. The kids are behaving themselves and I am catching up on email, the ebay for the business and taking the opportunity to update my webpage. My typing has deteriorated slightly from not being something I get to do much anymore.

South Park. So far half are great and half are ok. I’ll take those odds. The opening episode of the series is incredibly funny, one of the very best. The others have some good jokes and topical and gross out moments, but I am not sure how they will hold up to repeated views.

Easter came obscenely early this year. Apparently it wont happen again in my lifetime. It being as early. Not it being Easter.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one Heathrow’s terminal 5 is a mess. I read that the luggage handling system took 13 years to design and implement. This does not mean that it was thorough and every contingency prepared for, it just means it is at least 13 years out of date. It uses arrays of lasers to read barcodes on luggage when it screams out for RFID chips. They’d be more accurate and reliable and probably even cheaper in the long run.

I have worked out a slogan for politicians standing against the incumbent government: They don’t have policies, they react. They don’t have vision, they avoid oversight. You’re welcome.

Here’s how busy I have been with work: I only just discovered there is a new series of South Park started in America. I do aim to correct this shortcoming though.

We’ve had a rework of airconditioners to do at work. It wore me out completely the first day but I now feel fantastic for it. I recommend it as a workout to everyone.

If you want to give birth to a baby quickly and with a minimum of pain have Clive Owen act as a mid-wife. My extensive knowledge of everything (having seen him do it in Children of Men and Shoot Em Up) convinces me of this.

Apparently people abuse professional soldiers as protest against the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Somewhere where people wear turbans at any rate. And the government rightly admonishes the people who do this, but unfortunately on the grounds that these soldiers are defending these shores. By being in Iraq. And keeping the price of oil high. Obviously.

It’s five years since the UK went into Iraq. The army’s still in Basra. In temporary tents. And whilst politicians claim this is to bring security to the city it is really just a case of camping by the airport while “insurgents” lob shells with gay abandon.

My email is playing up. The folders are jumbled and sometimes I can’t see it at all. But when it does work it is more responsive than it has been.

I walked past two men sat on the canal bank, fishing. They had unfeasibly narrow and long rods. Too delicate for the litter and broken branches that makes up so much of the contents of his stretch of waterway; I suspect they are suitable only for minnows. But the chances of catching anything here seem slim. So they have basically decided to have a day sat in the late February sunshine on a canal bank. And they have probably been looking forward to being able to do this all winter.

The news is full of ‘orrible murders. No sooner has one depraved lunatic been found guilty than another joins him, awaiting the gallows of media assassination. Too many maniacs, the newspapers can’t wallow in the aftermath for the days they would like for fear of not giving sufficient column inches to the next madman. If the events were more media managed they would be spaced out more, no more than one a month.

Obama is, apparently, running Hillary very close in Texas. This must severely worry her. She has Ohio in the bag, and Texas would give her another couple of hundred of delegates to play with. Basically, it is the one she needs to campaign in. While the number of states may seem disparate and the popular vote tells a different story, American politics is very much regional and strong showings in key states (or just outright rigging them) can see you beat a more popular opponent.

We’ve turned so many corners and been privy to so many false dawns at work that I sometimes feel we’re walking around a circular tower in the Antarctic. But finally we have something quantititative to go with our gut feelings and outright optimism. We’re in the best position we’ve been in for months, and we’ve got fewer overheads to deal with.

Wayne, allegedly, no longer cares about building fast PCs. This is probably akin to Ferrari deciding to abandon their core market in order to make city cars or people carriers. Of no real interest to the vast majority of people, but something seismic and saddening to the few nonetheless.

It’s been a long year. I went from working in a factory and selling stuff to annoying market traders to being an ex pat to being a market trader. Spain was hot but hard to adjust to and moved at a snail’s pace. Market traders pleaded poverty and tried to squeeze prices. The general public asked idiot questions and promised to come back to make purchases and I never saw them again.

Manchester United will probably be second as the new year is rung in. Arsenal finally achieved their potential the year I stopped believing they would. Chelsea imploded. And Liverpool continued to be utterly unlikeable.

The comics mainstream became navel gazing and all about intricacies of continuity I can’t be bothered with. Non-superhero comics were actually very good. Doktor Sleepless is a little over-familiar thus far but like hanging out with a friend and dancing to music you already know. It’s not ground breaking but it’s fun in a way you can predict beforehand. The Mouse Guard was incredibly well executed and charming although I can’t be part of the intended demographic. The Nightly News was bloody superb. The Highwaymen was fun and cut down way too soon and Fables was consistently excellent.

South Park had a run of sub-standard episodes. It’s not the beginning of the end, but it was disappointing.

I don’t even know anything about popular music anymore. I’m ten years off the pace and take pride in it. I don’t know if things are really as quantifiably worse as I think they are (that sounds incredibly clumsy) or I just lost interest the second or third time I saw the tricks they are the latest iteration of.

Films-wise I thought it was a pretty good year. 300 was violent and stupid and wonderful fun. Hot Fuzz was spectacularly funny and layered. Oceans 13 was a return to form and enjoyable. There was the dense and rewarding climax to the Pirates trilogy. Tranformers wasn’t as awful as I expected. Shoot Em Up was also violent and gloriously stupid. I didn’t bother seeing Bourne, having hated the second one. Zodiac was overlong. The Simpsons was as bad as I feared and had reviews from another film entirely. Die Hard 4.0 was the least of an already fatally wounded franchise.

And Gordon Brown went from a man of integrity to incompetent hack in less time than it takes to change a lightbulb.

Harriet Harman is “true to the spirit of the letter of the law.” This is a euphemism for “a lying toerag.” As the only member of the cabinet who Gordon Brown can not sack she is ideally placed to do his government untold damage and, were it not for a canoeist from the Labour heartland of the North East, she would be doing so. The current iteration of the failed New Labour project seems to excel only in being yet more despicable and inept with every passing week. I remember when I couldn’t imagine hating a politician more than Charles Clarke. Now I have an entire front bench in the Commons to pick from.

Asda seem to be either stuck in an era before the First World War or to have failed geography massively. When not fixing dairy prices. I was doing my weekly shop yesterday and saw “Irish Beef” proudly displaying the Union Flag. Because we still rule Ireland. And subjugate their pig farmers. And, presumably, beef farmers.

We’ve been running a market stall in the run up to Christmas in an effort to maximise our return on products as well as keep some kind of cash flow going. And the general public can be very odd. One of the most noticeable things is how gentlemen of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent (and their descendants) seemingly believe that female grooming products in bright pink are hair clippers. Because “Femme Fatale” isn’t non-masculine enough. Because “Bikini Trimmer” doesn’t suggest it isn’t designed to carefully trim around your ears. Because there is a cultural difference at work or they blatantly can’t read.

Apparently 20,000 alcoholics are long-term sick. And 50 acne sufferers. This is why we need a large migrant workforce: spotty white lightning drinkers who shirk work. It’s no longer just teenagers in parks with their friends, it can be a whole alternate career trajectory.

The second half of the latest South Park season is bitterly disappointing. It has some nice metaphors, but fails to sustain them (a 3 part joke on terrorists and intellectual mind share was clearly too much) and doesn’t really have the same incisiveness of much of the other episodes. A pity, but a handful of poor episodes is hardly indicative of a Simpsons-esque decline.

Whenever I haven’t posted in a while (which I haven’t) I find that I forget the vast bulk of what I intended to post about.

Accommodation in Wolverhampton is neither cheap nor plentiful. I believe this to be down to a number of factors:
- The university is obviously successful considering the size of the town it is situated in
- The proximity of Birmingham makes it a desirable commuter location
- The influx of economic migrants means that cheap accommodation is snapped up by them

Currently residing in a ground floor flat about a half mile from the city centre, in the quest to find a place some seriously dilapidated hovels were looked at, including a house in Wednesbury that should be raised to the ground and then stamped and urinated on. Liberally.

Menzies Campbell has resigned, upon seeing the news piece I thought he had died of old age. But the question would have to have been how anyone could tell.

Gordon Brown was out manoeuvred by David Cameron and is now in free fall in the polls. When you sell yourself on integrity and being boring but steady, being unsteady and an obvious conman will do that to you. The only problem is I don’t want a single one of them running the country at the moment.

Apparently a new report says obesity is not the fault of the very fat people suffering from it. This actually makes me very angry. Of course it is their fault. And the fact they will now have yet another reason to claim it isn’t makes me want to kill. Or poison chocolate bars.

There was some girl on the local news last night complaining that the NHS wont pay for an extended stay for her in the Priory to overcome an eating disorder. Why on Earth was it paying for any stay for her at all?

DC has released their new comic lists for January. In which they continue to stripmine everything Alan Moore ever looked at, they belatedly realise that John Byrne should be inked by Mark Farmer (been saying that one for years) and they ruin the Grant Morrison run on Batman by saddling him with a resurrected Ras Al Ghul (how on Earth is that spelt?) from an obviously editorially driven crossover. How they continue to manage to drive me from their comics is a source of annoyed surprise to me. Sometimes it requires a great deal of hard work and innovation on their parts.

The Heartbreak Kid starring Ben Stiller is quite funny. It suffers in comparison (which is inevitable) to There’s Something About Mary but the characters are actually more rounded. I think there is less physical humour and Ben Stiller is a less sympathetic character this time out.

Knocked Up is surprisingly good, although the tone is inconsistent and the ending is exactly what you would predict from the start of the film. It is made by the same people as the 40 Year Old Virgin and has some of the same cast making an appearance.

Shoot Em Up is brilliant. I disagree with any negative review, as the film is inventive, very high energy and knowingly ludicrous.

There is a glut of Oscar intended films at the moment, and some that look a little more fun. I doubt I will get to see many in the coming weeks due to the hours I am doing at work, but some do look interesting.

I will be back in the UK tonight. I am actually flying out and arriving at night, which will be a first for me. I am also going into Leeds/Bradford, which I remember as being about the size of a garden shed.

I shall miss Peach Jam and Peach and White Grape Juice. Also lean pork, cheap meat that isn´t reconstituted and the man who paints mannequins. Mannequins here are all personalised.

It has been stormy the past few days, thunderstorms all night and people using umbrellas when it so much as spits with rain. The beach is a deeper brown from the weight of water it has absorbed and it feels fresher.

Oh, and I saw a woman in a motorised wheelchair pulling along a man in an automatic one. He was clinging to her handles.

I have taken to reading to fill the nights. I have found out that Brad Meltzer, in distinct contrast to their comics work, is more enjoyable novelist than Greg Rucka. Irvine Welsh likes showing how good his ear for dialogue, accent and dialect is to the point of making nigh unpenetrable books and About a Boy is actually quite funny. Also read a book called something like “The Errol Flynn Novel” which is awful. The back assures the reader how funny it is. It lies. The book has flawed internal logic, a ridiculous and unentertaining premise, no likeable or particularly believable characters and events that occur purely to sustain the plot rather than for any other purpose.

Madeline McGann´s parents have been deemed suspects by the Portugese authorities. The venom and bile that will be unleashed should they have actually killed their daughter (I have always felt they were cuplable, and long suspected they were responsible) will be inccredible. More than any other case in my lifetime, I suspect.

Tomorrow I believe will be spent swimming and walking around, as the week ahead is meant to be unsettled and cloudy, and after that I suspect the temperature will have dropped some, so it may be my last chance.

Alberto Gonzales has resigned. I can´t help but feel that this is a death knell for the current Conservative grip on American politics. Bush wont be able to get someone else so utterly wrong through again, and the Democrats should spank him mightily. Add in Karl Rove having gone and suddenly the Republicans look in utter disarray. This is not, however, to say that the Democrats are in ascendancy. They are notoriously bad at capitalising and their potential presidential front runners make me shudder.

I keep hearing Phil Collin´s desecration of “Another Day In Paradise.” I know it is awful. I know I should be replsed by it. But somehow it doesn´t seem quite so bad anymore. I know not whether I have grown old and mellowed or the standard of music is now so bad that past travesties are no longer so absolutely awful in light of new lows.

I also heard Ace of Base´s “The Sign” and Blondie´s “Atomic” today. Ace of Base always makes me think of being 13 and also of Petra. These things are not connected.

Dan Dare is being resurrected by Virgin Comics. I have decided that the only thing left for comics to do, as they seemingly eat their young and gaze ever more intently at their navels, is Zombie Pirates versus Vampire Ninjas. I expect my royalties forthwith.