Terminator Salvation looks like a good film from the trailer. Christian Bale has yet to turn in a bad performance (although he has been in some bad films) and the special effects look incredible. What I can glean of the plot is promising too. And yet. And yet it is a McG film. And he is one of those rare people with a reverse Midas touch. I’d say he is the anti-Christ of American cinema but that is unfair: the anti-Christ could at least blame his upbringing and parental pressure . . .

The Sunday Express has a headline screaming (I am paraphrasing) “Gordon Brown least popular PM since polling began – Worse than Michael Foot.” Now, I am confused. I know I was but a small child but I am sure I would remember Michael Foot’s triumphant victory following the Falklands War and headlines such as “Incontinent PM soils himself at peace summit” and “The wheelchair’s not for turning.”

The Inbetweeners finished a triumphant second series in the week. Not the saccharin ending of the first series, a savage and very funny look at exams and heartbreak instead. Often intermingled. Quite simply this series has been one of the funniest things ever broadcast and I would recommend everyone seek it out and hunt it down.

I didn’t go swimming this morning, I appear to have broken Wayne using the medium of water.

Wolverine is apparently doing quite respectably for a leaked, poorly reviewed film with bad word of mouth. Fox are not so much happy as breathing a huge sigh of relief. Or, at least, until nest week when the new Star Trek comes out and Wolverine loses over 60% of its sales.

South Park seems to be on summer hiatus without having delivered any truly great episodes. Stewart Lee has finished and The Inbetweeners is already on the penultimate episode of the series. The Inbetweeners may be the biggest loss, the new episode is brilliant and the series has been consistently better than the last one.

Swine Flu, luckily is the new SARS rather than the new Spanish Flu. The media reported it in hysterical terms, then reported on the panic and hysteria they created, and are begrudgingly reporting how it isn’t that dangerous really while trying to suggest everyone got it wrong but them. All the while I stood wondering what the big deal was, only for the thing I was wondering about to be in a constant state of flux, just not my reaction to it.

Gordon Brown is being rallied around. At the moment there seems little going round to rally round him because of, which either means it is pre emptive or the leading lights of the Labour party (a phrase chosen for alliterative value rather than any semblance of accuracy) are so used to him needing their collective support that they just do it out of habit.

A guy I work with was apparently resident at Bradford City’s Valley Parade ground the day it caught fire. It’s one of those things I understand as an abstract but never really had any first hand appreciation of. Shocking, really, considering I live in the city that it happened in.

I got a book on Escher, all the things I remember as being examples of his great use of perspective are, in fact, isometrics. All the things I thought looked a bit odd are examples of perspective. It’s a funny old world and I don’t know how to draw any of it.

Last weekend, through poor planning and a lack of foresight, I found myself at Asda in Shipley of a mid morning on a Saturday. It was horrendously busy and full of people ambling along with trolleys they periodically abandoned on the aisles as they browsed and couldn’t find what they wanted. “Never again” I said to myself, and promptly forgot about it. This morning I found myself in an identical situation some 10 minutes later than the week previous. I really have to keep the promises I make myself, or at least remember them.

Bradford Town Hall Clock has now been corrected. The morning it was telling the right time for the first time I sauntered, knowing I was very early and was in fact merely on time as a result. However, if I need that blast of incorrect time keeping in my life there is always the clock on Bradford Cathedral, which runs about five minutes fast and caused some concern having been around Forster Square.

It’s been a week of little sleep as well as incorrect clocks. One night I went to bed at about ten thirty only to get a call at ten to eleven. a text at half eleven and then three phone calls from a drunk with the wrong number at around two. The following night one of the neighbours decided to set off a whole battery of loud and bright fireworks between about one and one thirty. I spent the following morning with the idea of reporting them for child abuse, drugs offences and benefit fraud they almost certainly not commited keeping me warm and awake. I also toyed with the idea of using a window trembler alarm through their letterbox as a more directed way of letting them know how not fun being woken in the middle of the night is. They’re late risers, I could do it on my way to work.

One of the few TV shows I watch, and the only one I watch as it airs rather than using BBC iplayer (or other means) is The Apprentice. It was the first week I picked both the losing team and the person who would be fired. I don’t know if that means it was more obvious this week (it did seem singularly obvious, but I have been wrong on that before) or I am just getting better at working out what is fair representation and what is a swerve to make the boardroom scenes more dramatic at the end. It’s well orchestrated television, but I don’t think it represents anything like business reality, especially in the current climate.

I also saw the new The Inbetweeners, South Park and Stewart Lee. The Inbetweeners suffers only in that it came off the back of a truly excellent episode and doesn’t compare. By any normal standards it is brilliant. South Park is amusing but rarely laugh out loud funny and feels oddly slack, I expected more ferocity and a greater density of jokes. I don’t know if Stewart Lee suffers in the editing, but his timing seems off and he sometimes comes across as bitter without being venomous. He’s funny, but sometimes he’s too deconstructionist and he wants you to intellectually appreciate the artificiality of it all, the construction and craft, rather than the humour.

I am slowly reverting back to the sleep pattern I had when I worked at the bakery, short hours during the week and catching up at the weekend. Three and four hours a night Sunday to Thursday and Friday as a decadent excess, burrowing into my mattress and getting eight or more hours.

I have a new job which involves working in the largest office I have ever worked in. The office is so large that different areas have distinct temperatures. Fortunately I am located at the cool end, which I find to be merely too warm rather than stifling. I sit opposite a girl in a shirt. And jumper. And fleece. Who complains it is too cold.

The office is largely full of (mainly girls) teenagers and the middle aged, with me being one of the two in that odd middle ground of old enough to shave but too young to shop in Greenwoods. The other is a woman who is a year older than I am but looks like she is in her mid forties having had a largely disappointing life (remember this, it is important). Anyway, apparently people have been guessing how old I am. And, for the first time in my life, they have got the age wrong by guessing too young! Apart from the woman who looks to be in her forties, who thought I was about her age.

Going to work, of a morning, I pass Bradford Town Hall. On Bradford Town Hall is Bradford Town Hall Tower. And in Bradford Town Hall Tower is Bradford Town Hall Tower Clock. Which is eight minutes fast. And causes me to hurry to work only to find out that the clock is in fact fast. Every single morning.

Today I went shopping in Asda. Now, when I shop in the supermarket, I carry a large sports bag on my shoulder to put things in. This is not so much to reduce my carbon footprint by using fewer carrier bags but rather because I find it easier to carry things like that. Today, in Asda, there were some form of scouts packing bags at the checkout with large buckets in which they hoped to receive a donation for doing so. Having had a bad experience a decade hence with a boyscout deciding eggs were a suitable foundation on which to throw tins of vegetables I don’t let any of them near my goods. So I told the girl I wasn’t interested and she went and stood to one side to talk to her friend on the next line and I packed my bag. Now, when my bag is packed I sling it over my shoulder with an expansive swinging motion. This is normally safe to do at the end of a checkout because no one is stood next to you. You know, talking to their friend or anything. So not only did I not give any money to the scouts, I also hit one of their number. That is how much I don’t want any of you dib dib dabbers packing my bags.

The new episode of The Inbetweeners is uproariously funny. Funnier than anything I have seen on television since the best moments of Father Ted. Better than anything this decade. It is cring inducing, embarrassing, crass and hilarious.

The new South Park had a really funny South Park joke and some good moments, but couldn’t really compete.

I finally watched Death Proof and Planet Terror. Assuming you’re even further behind with films to watch than I am, may I just offer the following advice?
Watch Planet Terror but not Death Proof.

In Bradford City Centre there is a bin designated for used chewing gum. Which is a great idea. On the bin is a sign saying “recycle your gum here.” Which is a truly disgusting idea. What is recycled gum used for?

The Inbetweeners is back, and is very good. Again. Astonishingly the entirety of the cast seem to be back also, which, when you consider it is an ensemble piece and many are just in cameos and that a year has passed, is quite an achievement.

Stewart Lee is as provincial and urban as any other comedian in the country. His jokes are largely routed in city living, especially London. I like him, but I think he could be better and find myself longing for Rob Newman.

Red Dwarf has a new set of episodes airing over the Easter Weekend. Is it possible to go home again?

The new South Park series is uneven. Sometimes funny, sometimes mildly amusing. When it comes back for the second half of the series it will probably revert to multiple part stories to stretch out what material they have remaining. It isn’t great but even when it isn’t great it’s better than most things out there.

Jaqui Smith has turned into a huge source of amusement. Firstly, she seems confused as to where she lives. Secondly, she seems to think that the taxpayer should pay for her and her family’s TV. Thirdly, she employs her husband (looking something like a cross between a sex offender and trendy college lecturer) to work for her which categorically isn’t nepotism. Fourthly, most amusingly, her husband watches porn on her expense account. That she is borderline incompetent isn’t the issue here, nor is it the corruption and stench of her dealings, it’s how funny and ludicrous she now appears. This one will run and run.

Stewart Lee’s comedy vehicle was plodding along as an exercise in mediocrity until this latest episode. The latest one is VERY funny. Even the linking sketches are far better than normal and there is a pleasant sense of absurdity running through that was missing in the two previous episodes.

The new South Park is also good. The global economic downturn seen in purely biblical terms. Only just not how you thought it might be. When South Park is good, it is very, very good. And makes comparisons that seem utterly ridiculous at first but are so well done they become obvious by the end of the show.

And this marks my 200th post, apparently.

Watchmen has been released after months of hype and years of expectation. It cost $150million to make, required an unprecedented deal between Warners and Fox and has beaten many producers and screen writers. It opened below expectation and declined precipitously in the second week of release. This saddens me, but I am not sure how much it surprises me. Watchmen is a good film. It may even be a great film. It is not, however, a blockbuster. Too many threads are left unresolved, good does not conquer all and there is no final act of revenge, redemption and resolution. Not a crowd pleasing one.

In many ways the ending is that of the middle film of a trilogy, the sense that the real struggle is just beginning and that the heroes can still triumph. Unfortunately, that is not to be (and on the box office numbers we can at least feel confident that there wont be a sequel) and many viewers may leave feeling cheated. It’s also a long film that has to move at breakneck speed to get everything that needs to be in covered. It’s sumptuous and I think would reward repeated viewings. I await the DVD excitedly.

There is a new South park. It echoes what I feel about Disney and manufactured pop music perfectly. It is also as vicious as it has ever been. And probably disgusts and offends far more people that it entertains.

Stewart Lee has a new tv show. He was young and represented the shock of the new when I was growing up. Now he is overweight in too tight a suit and has white hair at his temples. His targets are deserving but obvious and he sounds snobbish throughout. I feel the same sort of sadness as I do at realising that no new pop act is ever as old as I am: I grow old and my future never came to be.

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.

Currently I am in the process of trying to learn Spanish. Learnt one to a hundred, got a few dictionaries and pore over magazine and newspaper articles, deciphering them slowly. For whatever reason I have always been better at written communication than spoken. Partially the language seems so fast, partially the accent subtly different from my references and partially I am nothing like a natrual mimic. However, I recommend learning the following phrases if planning to travel to Spain:

“No, it only looks like I am staring at your wife. Whilst drooling.”
“I have a glass eye and would not even consider staring at your daughter.”
“However did you guess I am English speaking from my red skin and strange dress sense?”
“No, I don´t want to go to an Irish themed pub.” (Actually, that can usually be said in English.)
“I would like one of those small semi-baguettes rather than a large bag I am forced to buy due to my inability to communicate this to you.”
“I am not a drunken thug, this is just my acent.”

Spanish magazines and the press cost next to nothing. The English speaking press cost an absolute fortune. Marvel Spotlight retails for 6 Euros an issue. The Sunday Times is five.

We may have one of the cherry contracts formerly operated by Inox. This is, unreservedly, very good news for us.

Gordon Brown appears to now have a fairly unassailable lead over David Cameron. I have no idea how slick little Tory boy has managed to drop the ball quite as badly as he has. It´s silly season, he could issue a press release every couple of days and keep the government on the back foot. Instead he seems to be oscillating between traditional Tory and very, very odd.

The Sunday Times had a piece on Madeline McGann´s parents being monstered by the Portugese press and the internet. As part of a forum on the cutting edge of the monstering I feel no shame. And maybe pride.

Mike Weiringo has died. He had the misfortune to never actually draw something I really wanted to read and, whilst an attractive artist, never struck me as excellent. He was, however, clearly a very nice man and technically incompetent. It has caused ripples in the Super Hero community in a way that Mike Parobeck and Seth Fisher´s passing never seemed to.

There is a girl who made the news the other day overdosing on Espresso. I passed a link to Wayne and he dismissively called her a rank amateur.

The IT Crowd starts again on the 24th. It is the only television that I can imagine myself regretting missing. Ah well, Channel 4 were very good about providing the series online last time round.

Tottenham may be in the process of getting rid of their manager and failing spectacularly this season. This will please my father immensely as it will have my grandad spnning in his grave.

The latest Doctor Who, like the couple of episodes that preceded it, is significantly less good than the bulk of the series. Russell Davies seems to have a problem with tone and doesn’t keep things to a semi realistic and unsettling level. He’s garish colours and pantomime villains with stakes that the special effects can’t convey compared to unsettling horror and character studies.

Die Hard 4 is missing tension. Any tension. It’s more open and sprawling than 3, and the set pieces are all fairly silly. So far there have been disappointingly few enjoyable films this year, with most of the sequels being among the worst offenders.

School for Scoundrels is fairly far from the British original, apart from lifting one scene and making it crasser and more obvious. It is fairly funny, but overly sentimental and John Leder has been far funnier.

Oh, and there is a Diana is still dead concert going on. Ding, Dong, the Witch is still gone, seat belts should still be worn and Mohammed Al Fayed is still an annoyance. And Prince Charles probably hasn’t smiled since the funeral.

Sometimes, when I come out of work, I have my chin up and my eyes are alive with vitality. Not too often, usually I am hunched and slumped like an exhausted and broken thing. But sometimes, just sometimes, I look to the horizon. And when I do I catch the utterly incongruous sight of a church tower amongst the corrugated metal roofs and chimney stacks. That little bit of history and design amongst industry and purpose. And it is so infrequent it always causes me to stop for a second.

This week’s Doctor Who was, to put it bluntly, brilliant. A great idea with excellent execution and sparkling dialogue. Whoever thought someone being chased by a stationary stone statue could be quite so scary?

Ocean’s 13 is quite enjoyable and entertaining, much like Ocean’s 11 and nothing like as anti climatic as Ocean’s 12. And features far less Julia Roberts. No Julia Roberts should be one of the main tests film-makers subject their films to. She is a pox on the otherwise unblemished celluloid visage of Oceany goodness in the previous films.

Adrian has kicked into high selling mode. This could be the year we stop getting by and look to getting rich. I have a list of frivolous buys lined up in my head, with a view to getting things I want and stopping sacrificing.

I seem to be alliterating like a good one. It isn’t intentional. Probably a result of reading too many Stan Lee comics as a child.

Hostel 2 is a retread of Hostel 1. It relies on you knowing the form of the film and is even less inventive than the first. Where it tries fleshing out characters they just seem one note and the sequences smack of padding. It is not even as enjoyable as the first film. And the first film was a disappointment.

Barclays are not as efficient as we once hoped. And their technical support would be funny if it wasn’t preventing us getting hold of thousands of pounds. However, they do try and they are at least based in this country and understand us even as we understand them. Little things, but so many banks and businesses don’t even offer that anymore.

Big Brother has once again started. So I shall be avoiding tabloid news and the TV for a while. Not that I wouldn’t anyway.

Oh, and Pirates 3 is just as good the second and third times.

The BBC has an article on tests administered to prospective Chinese University students and existing English University students. The one for existing English students I can do. And it is on trigonometry. I hated trigonometry at school and it was the portion of my maths GCSE that I failed. It’s shockingly simple.

I am adopting a siege mentality to the phones. I have had incessant (and thoroughly stupid) phone calls all morning. One in particular stands out. This is someone who asked me how much stock he could load onto a container. I told him the rough quantity in terms of pallets and supplied him several sample pallet listings so he could get a feel for how pallets varied massively in terms of quantity. He has repeatedly asked me how much stock he could get on a container and I have repeatedly directed him to the emails, each time more exasperatingly imaptient. He finally asked me how many units and I told him it was an idiot question and gave him an example where the quantity could vary by a factor of 8. If he calls again I may just take to openly calling him “moron.” Wayne would.

Someone I sacked for costing the company (so, myself and Adrian) thousands and being dangerously incompetent rang me to ask for a reference yesterday. She stated she should get a good one. I resisted the urge to laugh openly at her and told her to get her prospective employers to give us a call or write to us. Seeing as she can’t remember the name of our company anyway, I may not get the chance to write the most negative and comprehensive explanation of why hiring a single person can send your company to the wall in the history of mankind. I can but hope.

Astronomers have discovered a planet they believe may be Earth like. It’s a massive distance so any colonisation would mean stasis of some kind or a crew that understands they are not coming back. And some way of recycling oxygen (algae). And probably masses of honeybees. And a huge food supply. And, and, and.

Manchester United won against Milan last night, but I can’t help but think that conceding two goals have done for them in Europe. I hope I am wrong, but it will take several players coming back healthy for me to stop worrying. And even then I will still have my doubts.

The new Doctor Who series is actually not bad. Cheesy, oddly inappropriate choiral music, not frightening and building on past missteps in the franchise, but massively enjoyable. Nothing that made me cringe for too long and nothing I am ashamed to say I managed to watch the entirety of.

Doktor Sleepless looks like it will be interesting new noise. The Nightly News is just wrapping up and excellent. DMZ (from a quick sampling) is not particularly groundbreaking or savage and the mainstream (such as it is) looks stangnant and on the great exodus inwards. It’s time to find new comics or to make them.

The new issue of Batman seems to be getting rocky reviews. I can’t really see why. It’s Morrison doing what he did on X-Men: taking the character’s tropes and slightly spinning them for a new audience. Kubert is not a great artist by any stretch but the story is enjoyable and does what it set out to. For Morrison doing superlative work you look to All Star Superman, where I think his confidence in his artist’s abilities and freer rein allows him to do magical, timeless things.

The new issue of Fables is, sadly, the worst to date. Not bad by any stretch, but massively inconsequential. It doesn’t feel even vaguely necessary.

The new issue of Daredevil is extremely solid. Lark seems to have added dynamic perspective to his usual raft of tricks and you have interesting and dramatic posing and angles coupled with his very realistic feeling use of shadow. Bruebaker knows where to let it shine, but I do feel that it is an excellent first chapter of something that will end up being slightly underwhelming.

The new episode of Doctor Who is actually very good. It mixes the mundane with the absurd and incredible very well and there is one of those moments which is actually exciting. And the cast actually seem to be hamming it up and loving it in just the right way. Having seen none of the last series I was very pleasantly surprised.

I had to sack someone on Friday and felt no remorse and no vindication, it was a purely business decision and it felt slightly odd to sit there with a sense of detachment. I just said what had to be said and did not offer any apologies or seek to explain this was punishment for past indiscretion and gross incompetence. I may have finally arrived at the adult notion of proportional response.