I used to know someone who variously described natured as “untarmacced state” and “green is the colour of mould”. I was never quite so strident, but I do like the trappings of civilization. I like technology. I like engineering. Big machines fascinate me. And I get hayfever.

Today I was in an edifice dedicated to consumerist excess. Minding my own business, travelling down the escalator. I felt something on my neck, a tickle. I thought it may be a stray hair and moved my hand to brush it off. Searing pain in my finger and some form of yellow and black striped insect dropping to the ground.

My finger felt like it was on fire and swelled up. The pain eased some but is still there now (some seven hours later) and, at one point, my hand had pretty much swollen up and gone mottled. At one point the pain was bad enough to cause me to pass out. I think it is safe to say I am allergic to bee stings. I’m working on the assumption it was a bee because wasps have never had this effect on me.

I saw The Surrogates on Friday. It touched on similar themes to Gamer but was much more even and considerably slicker. The direction wasn’t nauseating and there wasn’t the feeling there were 3 or 4 competing films vying for screen time. It did, however, share a problem with Hostage: it veers into routine Bruce Willis saves the day with a gun territory rather than following the more interesting premise of the film to conclusion. It’s also too short to properly ruminate on some of its themes. It is visually consistent and features some neat touches and competent special effects.

Kanye West has become an internet meme. The basic joke is that you place him in a photo of an event and paraphrase his invasion of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to include details relevant to the photograph. For instance, you would have a photo of Kanye West invading Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech and have Kanye West at the side saying “Yo, Kanye, Imma happy for you and I’ll let you finish but I have to say that Jarvis Cocker wrecking Michael Jackson’s performance at the Brits is the best musical award show invasion of all time. of all time.” and the meme will have successfully eaten its own tail.

Speaking of which, I am sure he had a point. On the other hand, he was there in the first place which is a tacit acceptance of the rules and ridiculousness of the whole event so perhaps he should have held his tongue?
I have no strong opinion, I find it all faintly ridiculous these days.

David Cameron has been accused of being a con artist by Nick Clegg. Who reminds me nothing so much as David Cameron. David Cameron has also realigned his party away from the centre left in the European parliament and alongside lunatics from Poland. Who wouldn’t even be in the European parliament if it weren’t for the federalists. I am sure the irony is lost upon him.

I went and saw Gamer last night. It is a watchable and sporadically entertaining film that is, to say the least, confused. There feels to be 3 films merged clumsily into one and the crediting of two directors goes some way to explaining the schizophrenic nature of the film. Gerard Butler is largely under utilised as the growling bloke and the lead from Dexter given too little screen time as the main villain. But he is genuinely unsettling, which is a nice touch. Visually it is sometimes great and sometimes nauseating and does have some interesting points to make about online gaming. And also makes me glad I re positioned myself as a more hardcore gamer after years of fluffy mainstream play.

Before Gamer was a trailer for Ninja Assassin. This is from the creative team behind V for Vendetta and has been delayed by nearly a year. Normally a delay of that magnitude is worrying (to say the least) but it looks absolutely incredible. Probably going to be a very nice surprise to end the year on.

Oh, and I start evening class on Tuesday. With a second to follow soon on Wednesdays. So I think I will be online less and possibly less social.

Michael Jackson died. I know: there was nothing about it on the news or radio and you could quite easily have let such a happening pass you by. Even serious minded newspapers devoted days and days of front page coverage to his passing and I do wonder if he is the new Diana in so much as the Daily Mail and Express now have someone else to talk about. For the next ten years.

Bobby Robson has also died. It’s weird how some deaths affect you and some you care nothing about. Bobby Robson always struck me as thoroughly decent, honourable and kindly. A genial grandfather. Not my own, but someone else’s who you always felt had got some great family.

I saw GI Joe last night. GI Joe joins a rarefied pantheon of films that are so bad they’re eminently watchable in a sort of “I can’t believe they made this” way. It’s worse than Ghost Rider. It has special effects that look more akin to the place holders in the leaked Wolverine release than the actual finished article and features scenes so incredibly stupid that people were actually laughing at them. When they weren’t intended to be funny. One of the climatic moments of the film was actually lifted from a joke in Team America and several scenes only served to remind you how much better directed they were in the film that they originally appeared in. It is, in short, an abomination that seemingly exists only to make Transformers look like high art.

A while back I complained about an advert with a faux American accent promising that a sale was strictly limited. This was then superseded with an advert using that same irritating voiceman but saying that the sale (while extended) would still end soon. This, duly, ran forever. And made an enemy for me of the store that it was advertising. Thankfully this run has finally ended. To be replaced by yet another advert with the same incredibly bloody annoying voice. So it shall come to pass: when he flies into a rage his enemies shall be struck dumb by his anger. And possibly incontinent.

Speaking of mad regimes, I felt proud to be British for the first time in a good long while yesterday. Too long, truth be told. The Ayatollah (I don’t know how to write or pronounce his last name, but it is not dissimilar to “ham and cheese”) has singled out Britain for particular scorn in a speech he made about how his country men should all stand behind his good buddy the mad holocaust denier in the cheap suit. You can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. Or country.

Bradford’s town hall clock continues to be a source of particularly inaccurate time. This week it was wrong on three of the mornings I went into work, stopped at midnight and two in the morning (or possibly afternoon). I live in a city where the council doesn’t even know what time it is. And possibly run by people so ugly their faces can stop clocks.

Up is bloody brilliant. Not as good as the Incredibles or Wall-E, but head and shoulders above most films. It’s genuinely touching, depressing and uplifting, beautifully animated and terse and pacy. Once again Pixar have opened up a gap on their competitors when it comes to quality of animation, knowing when to hit us with incredibly detailed textures and polygon rich scenes, and when to use the simple quality of their design. More than ever they seem to perfectly realise their vision, and their only limitation if their (very high) standard of writing.

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.

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.

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.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not a short film. It clocks in at something approaching 3 hours, and there is a suspicion it would have benefited from extra editing. It is not a film with a particularly happy ending, although there are moments of sentimentality and happiness throughout the film. It is, in places, extremely funny. The framing technique seems unnecessary initially and jarring in places. It is, however, a beautiful and interesting film.

The special effects are consistently excellent. We know that Benjamin Button has to be the product of special effects in early sequences, and him walking on crutches is incongruous and my brain had trouble processing it, but I am not sure that that wasn’t the desired effect. The man child is rendered believable, whether it is the result of CGI or make up or both. There are also special effects that don’t even occur to you: tracking shots that are impossible, the seamless recreations of long since destroyed vistas of period America, sea effects and animals that were never there.

Visually the film is remarkably consistent, wonderfully assured and of a piece. The framing scenes have a different palette and lighting to differentiate them and the main story is subtly sepia but warm and inviting. Fincher has become a wonderfully versatile director, but he hasn’t lost his eye for dressing or lighting a scene.

Brad Pitt is eminently believable, but also appropriately blank. His character is that of an everyman with a singularly unusual affliction. He is not fantastic in any other way and Pitt keeps someone who is nigh impossible to relate to human and easy to empathise with. Cate Blanchett is also brilliant as the proud and strong love of Button’s life. The supporting cast are good, with none being annoying nor obviously solely as comic relief.

Benjamin Button is a triumph of vision and a brave film, considering. It is, also, not quite as brilliant as it could have been.

Apparently, as soon as the US government acknowledged there was a recession, consumer confidence there dropped measurably. In this country companies are going bust left, right and centre. These are the end times.

Apart from they’re not: Barack Obama gets sworn in inside a month and, at some point, the economy will cease contracting. One thing that cheered me up more than it should is a list of billionaires who have lost significant quantities of their paper fortunes to the global recession. Paper fortunes could be the key words here, with the whole thing brought about my 63 trillion dollars that never existed vanishing. Part of me feels that a similar sized contraction has to occur, but the whole recession is about confidence and perceived worth rather than anything more tangible.

Comics wise I have no idea how the year has been. Both Marvel and DC are doing huge crossovers and steeping their books in inter-connectivity and continuity. This doesn’t interest me and a lack of time and money means I haven’t been following them as I may have otherwise.

Films-wise it hasn’t been spectacular and, again, time and funds have conspired to make sure I didn’t venture to the cinema often. The Day the Earth Stood Still is a mixed bag of a film with great sequences and large swathes that just don’t work. The Dark Knight is very good indeed, but is less good when you actually ruminate on it. What else was there?
Tropic Thunder isn’t as funny as one would hope.
Jumper was a special effect stretched into a movie.
Wanted was wrecked by being utterly stupid.
Iron Man wasn’t bad, actually.
Speed Racer looks fantastic but it is aimed at kids and not for adult consumption.
Indiana Jones 4 is the continued rape of childhood by George Lucas.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is really funny, and quite brave for a mainstream sex comedy.
Righteous Kill is singularly disappointing but doesn’t allow Pacino to be as awful as normal.
The Hulk is ok, but pales in comparison to other superhero films this year.
Get Smart isn’t funny and is too obvious.
The Love Guru I seem to be the only person alive who likes.
Wall-E is brilliant, daring and beautiful.
Hancock has the beginning of a much better film and a fairly awful ending around a standard middle.
Hellboy 2 is visually great, but the tension seems missing.
How to lose friends and alienate people is good for 20 minutes. Then an insipid romantic comedy.
Quantum of Solace is like a tacked on sequel to the previous James Bond film without being a James Bond film. Some of the action sequences are a bit shaky, but I actually prefer it to Casino Royale.
Zack and Miri make a porno isn’t very funny.

Still, to 2009 and all the promise I will bemoan squandering in 12 months’ time.

A member of the opposition Conservative party has been arrested under anti terrorism laws for daring to hold the government to account. Earlier this year Icelandic assets were seized under anti terrorism laws. Ian Blair stood down not because of his force’s shooting of innocent men under anti terrorism initiatives but because Boris Johnson forced him out. And then called for it to be made impossible for that to happen again. Something has gone seriously wrong and the state of the economy means that the government is not being held to account.

In America there is an air of optimism that will probably translate into perceived security when Obama comes to power and starts his infrastructure plan. Here we have the same old incompetents arguing amongst themselves while knocking 2.5% off (the already too high) VAT. Which will likely achieve precisely nothing. The country has a huge pile of debt carried over from the boom years which means there is nothing to spend now we need to. We need a change and some new policies. As much as I would love Vince Cable to steer the economy (because I believe he says sensible things) it looks like it will be the Tories and not till 2010. Which means we’re relying on everyone else getting better before we do to give us even a slim chance.

I’ve tweaked the site slightly, and made it look less good in both chrome and firefox in the process. But it now works nearly as it should in IE.

Wall-E is better than I gave it any credit for. Or than it should be. It’s beautifully rendered and very, very touching. Even with a minimum of dialogue.

Madagascar 2 is funny, but I think I blinked and missed the plot. And it leaves everything wide open for the sequel. On the plus side the giraffe and hippo are marginalised early on.

The second half of the South Park season was largely underwhelming, as it has been the past few years. Hopefully it will come back better in the spring.

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.

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.

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.

This week has been fairly awful. As a business we’re still dealing with the fall out of someone committing himself to buying several pallets of vacuum cleaners from us and then reneging, which caused problems for our cashflow. We’re strong through this month but we need extra work for next month that we haven’t pinned down yet.

We’ve been without net due to a mess caused by either BT or our ISP that both of them blame the other for. Them blaming one another and playing dumb cost us several days on sorting the problem out, and it wont be fixed properly until the middle of next week.

I am flying out to Spain on Wednesday. Our bank and th postal strike are making certain things that should be sorted out skin of the teeth stuff for then.

The Simpsons movie is like several new episodes shuffled together, the narrative is disjointed and scene transitions and events wholly illogical. A lot of the humour is a good fit for Family Guy, a program I have never really come to terms with.

It is obvious to me now how to curb truancy and force parents to look after their children and be aware of where they are at any given time: feral paedophiles loosed onto the streets between the hours of nine and three, picking up truants and taking them back to their lairs.

ID Tech 5 looks truly incredible. A new computer beckons.

It is a source of amusement to people that I would make a crap tramp. Apparently the reasons for this are the fact I don’t drink (so would not spend my time drinking awful and cheap alcohol) and that I am very quiet (so could not rant at passers by). I am not quite sure why people find it as funny as they clearly do.

Diet Coke with Lime tastes like metallic water. In fact it is metallic water. Avoid unless you really need a conductive brown liquid.

Oasis apple and blackcurrant tastes like wood foliage landing in your mouth from a branch hitting you in the face. More flavourful but also to be avoided.

theuksource.com continue to be horrendous. The mobile phone battery they sent me (specifically listed as fitting my phone) does not fit my phone. They have nothing listed about returns and the package came without indication of who the sender was to return the item.

Zodiac is quite good but has a flabby sequence entering the final third. I still dread the Simpsons movie.