So I watched cloverfield last night.
I have to say I'm really rather impressed. At first, it didn't really grab me - the twenty-somethings at a party bit just seemed to... I dunno, soap opera-ish, and even by the end with their "love story" aspect I wasn't particularly into that, but the whole concept of the movie, filmed hand-held by a guy who just happened to be there at the time had so much going for it and was so well done it truly won me over.
I also remembered what yesterdays post was meant to be all about. I knew it was meant to be something about traffic, but as mentioned couldn't pin it down when actually writing it.
Basically, what happened was that when I was coming home the night before there was a traffic jam. It was at a choke point where a dual carriageway goes down to single lane and occasionally you do get jams there if there's been an accident or similar.
However, as we came round the corner, it turned out the jam was because the police had set up one of those stop and search things. This pissed me off no end. I mean, being held up for an accident is one thing, but having 25 minutes added to my journey home because of some fucking police stop and search ting is just fucking ridiculous.
Needless to say I swore quite a bit at them as I was driving the last part home.
Friday, 27 June 2008
Thursday, 26 June 2008
sir random of shizzle
Something a little weird happens when I write these blog posts. Normally, during the day I'll encounter one or two things where I think to myself - "Hey, I should blog about that tomorrow."
However, when I then come to write the post, I just end up writing a random shizzle post about whatever pops into my brain at the time I'm writing.
It's like today - I had something planned about how I really enjoy driving, but hate sitting in jams and this was going to lead onto some of the more bizarre "long-cuts" I've taken to avoid areas where I think there might be a jam.
However, when I started writing, all I could initially think about was how I've actually done some scanning and scanned in a newtype over the last couple of evenings. Also, I watched some Persona: Trinity Soul.
I tend to watch fansubs while I'm scanning - it's a convenient convergence. Scans take a while to do and involve lots of stopping and starting and waiting for stuff to happen, so watching the TV is difficult as you need to keep looking away and pausing, which is where fansubs are great. It also makes the time feel a bit more useful.
On the whole, I only watch fansubs to make an assessment of the series. Although I do dl all the eps (or as many as are done before licensing), I'll only actually watch the first three or four. This is about 1 DVDs worth and lets me assess the show.
I group things into four categories:
Perhaps this was due to me judging more harshly as a knock-on effect of the previous two seasons. 12 months before (in October 2006) Gode Geass had started and 6 months before, Gurren Lagann had started, so maybe I had been a bit spoiled, but still it seemed to be a distinctly lacklustre season.
Maybe that's why I've been so reluctcant with the new season's shows (the ones that started this April).
You see what I mean? I always seem to get stuck in the trivial stuff, rather than post anything properly interesting or insightful.
Such is the way of blogging, I guess.
However, when I then come to write the post, I just end up writing a random shizzle post about whatever pops into my brain at the time I'm writing.
It's like today - I had something planned about how I really enjoy driving, but hate sitting in jams and this was going to lead onto some of the more bizarre "long-cuts" I've taken to avoid areas where I think there might be a jam.
However, when I started writing, all I could initially think about was how I've actually done some scanning and scanned in a newtype over the last couple of evenings. Also, I watched some Persona: Trinity Soul.
I tend to watch fansubs while I'm scanning - it's a convenient convergence. Scans take a while to do and involve lots of stopping and starting and waiting for stuff to happen, so watching the TV is difficult as you need to keep looking away and pausing, which is where fansubs are great. It also makes the time feel a bit more useful.
On the whole, I only watch fansubs to make an assessment of the series. Although I do dl all the eps (or as many as are done before licensing), I'll only actually watch the first three or four. This is about 1 DVDs worth and lets me assess the show.
I group things into four categories:
- "awful" are the shows I'd rather scrape my eyes out than continue watching.
- "poor" are shows that I could watch to pass the time, but would probably only buy if they were in some super-cheap boxset.
- "good" are shows that are probably worthy of a purchase, though maybe wait to see if there's a thinpack release or similar.
- "awesome" are the unmissable shows I'm salivating at the bit to purchase.
Perhaps this was due to me judging more harshly as a knock-on effect of the previous two seasons. 12 months before (in October 2006) Gode Geass had started and 6 months before, Gurren Lagann had started, so maybe I had been a bit spoiled, but still it seemed to be a distinctly lacklustre season.
Maybe that's why I've been so reluctcant with the new season's shows (the ones that started this April).
You see what I mean? I always seem to get stuck in the trivial stuff, rather than post anything properly interesting or insightful.
Such is the way of blogging, I guess.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
One of those days
I'm having one of those days where I can't quite seem to get started on anything and stick with it.
It's a bit like a cross between boredom and listlessness.
I keep saying, "I know, I'll work on that!" And then I either open the file and instantly go "Nah, can't be arsed with that... I wonder if anything new has been posted on the forums?" or, worse, I don't even open the file up.
And this also applies to the distractions I use to clear my head as well. Often times at work I'll do something completely non-work related for quarter of an hour or so to help clear my brain of clag. It's a bit like distracting myself with something that's actually interesting.
But today I can't even focus on these. It was even difficult coming up with anything to put in the old bloggage.
It's a bit like a cross between boredom and listlessness.
I keep saying, "I know, I'll work on that!" And then I either open the file and instantly go "Nah, can't be arsed with that... I wonder if anything new has been posted on the forums?" or, worse, I don't even open the file up.
And this also applies to the distractions I use to clear my head as well. Often times at work I'll do something completely non-work related for quarter of an hour or so to help clear my brain of clag. It's a bit like distracting myself with something that's actually interesting.
But today I can't even focus on these. It was even difficult coming up with anything to put in the old bloggage.
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
mmm, yoko
Great news!
Just received an e-mail saying that my copy of the first English language release of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is in the post.
This show is awesome and I will definitely clear some space at the week-end to give the disks a bit of a watch.
I'm just waiting for Geass to get itself released and I'll be like a monkey with a banana - no, make that a crate of bananas.
Huzzah!
Just received an e-mail saying that my copy of the first English language release of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is in the post.
This show is awesome and I will definitely clear some space at the week-end to give the disks a bit of a watch.
I'm just waiting for Geass to get itself released and I'll be like a monkey with a banana - no, make that a crate of bananas.
Huzzah!
moptop
I'm in desperate need of a haircut.
The excuse I've been using to avoid getting one is that the weather's so damnably changeable at the moment, I could find myself with a short summer cut when it's snowing outside. However, the real reason I'm avoiding it is I just plain don't like having my hair cut.
I've never been able to fully pin down why this is, but I think there are several factors. Firstly is the whole idea of a stranger with a sharp object very close to my head. That's never good.
Then there's the invasion of personal space issue to go along with that. I'm not good with that sort of thing.
Plus I always think I look really daft with a fresh haircut. It seems to take a while for the do to "bed in" as it were.
But I think one of the main reasons is that my mum used to cut my hair. Now this wasn't some random mum haircut thing - my mum used to be a hairdresser, so she knew what she was doing. But it did mean I hadn't ever had a haircut at a Barbers until my mum died a few years back.
So, in other words, it's not something I'm really used to in the way most people are, having not grown up with people cutting my hair.
The excuse I've been using to avoid getting one is that the weather's so damnably changeable at the moment, I could find myself with a short summer cut when it's snowing outside. However, the real reason I'm avoiding it is I just plain don't like having my hair cut.
I've never been able to fully pin down why this is, but I think there are several factors. Firstly is the whole idea of a stranger with a sharp object very close to my head. That's never good.
Then there's the invasion of personal space issue to go along with that. I'm not good with that sort of thing.
Plus I always think I look really daft with a fresh haircut. It seems to take a while for the do to "bed in" as it were.
But I think one of the main reasons is that my mum used to cut my hair. Now this wasn't some random mum haircut thing - my mum used to be a hairdresser, so she knew what she was doing. But it did mean I hadn't ever had a haircut at a Barbers until my mum died a few years back.
So, in other words, it's not something I'm really used to in the way most people are, having not grown up with people cutting my hair.
Monday, 23 June 2008
mad men
So I finished that series I'd tivo'd.
It was called Mad Men and was shown as part of the BBC's season looking at advertising. I quite liked the season and some of the documentaries in it, but knew I wasn't going to have time to watch the show, so I recorded it on my PVR.
To be honest, I probably shouldn't have bothered.
The season was about advertising, as I say, and one of the big things that came out of it was that during the late 1950's / early 1960s the creatives on Madison avenue in New York basically revolutionised the way advertising was done. They were called "Mad Men" (a phrase they themselves coined) and the show was therefore ostensibly set in that era/place.
However, and this was what disappointed me, actually it isn't. I mean, it is set in an advertising agency and the characters are Mad Men, but really, you could have set the show "last week in Birmingham" or "in 1980's Vancouver". The reason I was watching - the advertising thing - is almost incidental.
What the show is really about is the social changes that happened in the 1960s as the repressed (woman and blacks) were starting on the road to equality in the workplace and society. A big chunk is devoted to the Kennnedy/Nixon election, for example.
Now it does that pretty well, I'd say, but I dunno, it kinda left me cold.
You see, a real big part of the problem was that these people were about the most unsympathetic bunch of characters in a TV show ever.
All the men were incredibly misogynistic and racist, extremely caty, back-biting and jealous of each other... and the women weren't much better. They're all also clearly alcoholics and they smoke heavily, plus they shag each other at the merest drop of a hat.
Now, these things would kinda be all right in some degree of moderation, but they're so excessive in the show (for example, you literally never see the characters without a glass of hard liquor in their hands) it almost becomes parody. Plus it stretches the bounds of credibility - I don't care who you are, you could not consume the volumes of liquor these guys do and still function in your daily life.
I dunno, maybe as I say it's because the bit I was looking for - the advertising world and how that works - was so incidental the other aspects just ended up annoying me. I guess if I'd been less pre-expecting what the show was I would have liked it more, but in the end I just felt disappointed :(.
It was called Mad Men and was shown as part of the BBC's season looking at advertising. I quite liked the season and some of the documentaries in it, but knew I wasn't going to have time to watch the show, so I recorded it on my PVR.
To be honest, I probably shouldn't have bothered.
The season was about advertising, as I say, and one of the big things that came out of it was that during the late 1950's / early 1960s the creatives on Madison avenue in New York basically revolutionised the way advertising was done. They were called "Mad Men" (a phrase they themselves coined) and the show was therefore ostensibly set in that era/place.
However, and this was what disappointed me, actually it isn't. I mean, it is set in an advertising agency and the characters are Mad Men, but really, you could have set the show "last week in Birmingham" or "in 1980's Vancouver". The reason I was watching - the advertising thing - is almost incidental.
What the show is really about is the social changes that happened in the 1960s as the repressed (woman and blacks) were starting on the road to equality in the workplace and society. A big chunk is devoted to the Kennnedy/Nixon election, for example.
Now it does that pretty well, I'd say, but I dunno, it kinda left me cold.
You see, a real big part of the problem was that these people were about the most unsympathetic bunch of characters in a TV show ever.
All the men were incredibly misogynistic and racist, extremely caty, back-biting and jealous of each other... and the women weren't much better. They're all also clearly alcoholics and they smoke heavily, plus they shag each other at the merest drop of a hat.
Now, these things would kinda be all right in some degree of moderation, but they're so excessive in the show (for example, you literally never see the characters without a glass of hard liquor in their hands) it almost becomes parody. Plus it stretches the bounds of credibility - I don't care who you are, you could not consume the volumes of liquor these guys do and still function in your daily life.
I dunno, maybe as I say it's because the bit I was looking for - the advertising world and how that works - was so incidental the other aspects just ended up annoying me. I guess if I'd been less pre-expecting what the show was I would have liked it more, but in the end I just felt disappointed :(.
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