Little/Big

I have discovered a new half hour lump of televised marvellousness. In an earlier post i complained that the BBC had stopped making decent kid's programmes but at 10:15 this morning, my fears were dispelled when i clapped my eyes on BBC2 and discovered Little Howard's Big Question.
The basic premise is that there is Big Howard and Little Howard who live together in London. Big Howard is a real guy called Howard and Little Howard is an animated kid with a strangely adult voice. Each episode starts with Little Howard asking Big Howard a 'Big Question' and thus the entire episode is based around the question.
The entire thing is bizarre. Big Howard's mother is a computer screen with a scarf and a wig on. There is the klaxon which is blown when Little Horward asks the 'Big Question' and there is a raft of weird supporting characters and ludicrious nusical numbers about monkeys, giant bed bugs and dinosaurs. But amongst all this odd behaviour and weird entities, there is some genuine educational things going on.
Unfortunately BBCiplayer only has one episode available because they are rubbish. This episode is about dinosaurs. I urge to you to watch and appreciate the brilliance.

My new favourite programme: Little Howard's Big Question!!

Whine, whine, whine.

Too much ranting and apathy in the last blog i feel. If i could be bothered I would try and lighten the mood with some witty and quickly created fart jokes or just bash David Cameron to kingdom come. But alas, I cannot be bothered with such things. So i will just leave you with an amusing video of a dad walking in on his son crying on his youtube channel.
Dad in this video = massive win.
via videogum

I Dip My Toe

I'm not going to pretend to be some sort of political oracle or a person who knows the exact in and outs of being an MP within the British political system. Sure I did do a A-Level in politics but that pretty much consisted of me, and the other seven gullable beings who took it, sitting in a grimly decorated classroom observing like guppies as the teacher wafted his pen around the whiteboard, manoeuvring lines and constituencies around in a blur of colour. Occasionally we were treated to the American political system, a system more foul smelling and fucked up than our own, and we would compare the two and go "Oh gosh. How frightfully strange? They use college votes and we don't." *guffaw guffaw*

After being bombarded, molested, and downright raped by the excessive coverage of the whole MP expenses row on both the TV and in the newspapers, I thought I might as well wade in with my view on the debacle. Although being a student (nearly ex-student) my opinion is about as valid as a Michael Barrymore's view on pool safety i.e. not very. Who cares though? Nobody ever reads most of the crap on here anyway.

First off.....bravo to the MPs for proving to us that we were right the entire time. Politics stinks like an old tramp's leather boot. Power corrupts and all that shit. We all knew it deep down in our hearts but we never wanted to admit it. We wanted to live in the blissful ignorance that what the MPs did in their spare time didn't affect us directly. But now we have confirmation....it does! If we were a church congregation the MPs would be the ones on the front, sliding a few pennies off the charity plate into their pocket that the people in the back put on first. We know the absolute truth. Every MP has twelve homes, all of which have butlers and cheesemakers and our hard earned cash is being used and abused by many (not all) to pay for the boons. Now everyone officially hates MPs.

People are unsurprisingly shocked, disgusted and appalled. I fall into the middle category. I was not in the slightest bit shocked as we've had MP based scandals before. Not a month goes by without hearing something about some MP banging a coffee shop worker on an illegal visa or using their powers to get 50% at Debenhams to buy his male mistress some sexy lingerie. So why are we so shocked now?

I was not and I'm still not appalled by the situation. It happens all the time down in the real world. People claim benefits and they don't really need them. You get people claiming disability benefits when they are down the gym pumping iron; others claim unemployment benefit and then work for cash in hand on the side. It happens. But because now it has transpired MPs are doing everyone is getting their huge granny pants/boxer shorts in a twist. MPs are hardly role models to society no matter how much people claim that they should be. I've heard of less debauchery in a Dutch brothel.

It does sound like I am defending MPs doesn't it? Well I am not. What they have done is inherently wrong and they should be named, money should be given back and, in the worst cases, they should be prosecuted if there is overwhelmingly evidence of fraud. But the huge blanket coverage is in danger of turning the public away into denial. I know that I am sick of seeing the maudlin faces of middle aged politicians on my screen and on the front of the tabloids/broadsheets that I buy every day. I don't want to hear it anymore. I don't want to drown in the miserable nature of it all and I am sure in this particular time of miserableness, others don't want to be head-dunked into a vat of viscous despairing liquid. Many times this week I have turned on the news and been faced with Mark Austin/Alistair Stewart telling me that our political system is rotten to the core, that the youth of today are all ferile yobs that go round glassing old ladies and burning dogs, and that were all just a expanding swell of evil thoughts and actions. I can't take it anymore.

The television switches straight over if MP expenses are mentioned. I know the score, I've been told it enough bloody times in the past few weeks. My mind has been dulled by the constant barrage of accusations. Some old guy claimed for a mortgage he paid off, some guy claimed for a tin of Ronseal, some guy claimed for his wife's shackles. Why must we be fed this unrelenting diet of despair and corruption? Can just one news programme not mention the entire thing for five minutes?

'But we have a right to know!' I hear you implore. Yes, yes you do but the majority of people are just sick of the whole thing. Sick of seeing the same thing day after day. It's depressing and we don't need depressing at the moment. There should be one massive supplement in the Daily Telegraph naming all the MPs who have claimed wrongly, instead of the drip-drip information which comes out everyday. Do it in one! Get it over with! So we can all go back to eating our Bran Flakes without having to groan everytime the paper is slapped down on the table and another picture of a wrinkly moron looking sheepish greets us in the morning.

Best case scenario: Parliament becomes Woolworths and is put in administration after a vote of confidence overrules the borad (the speaker/PM). Then there is a massive clearout. 75% off everything. Then buy up the empty building and vote our choices back in. Hopefully Lib Dems get the majority and Nick Clegg becomes PM.

Unfortunately this probably won't happen as Nick Clegg seems to have been in hibernation through this whole thing until yesterday and people don't have the belief that the Lib Dems are a strong enough choice. Everyone who hates Labour will vote Conservative and the horrible snake that is David Cameron will weedle his way to becoming PM by a startling combination of Labour's ineptitude, his own modelling on Tony Blair, the way he speaks ONLY in soundbites and his ability to jump on bandwagons at just the right moment.

Quite frankly, it's a lose-lose situation for me. Have either a mildly corrupt Parliament or Conservative government? Or are those the same thing? Who knows?

Who needs a drink?

On The Horizon...

Yes children. My alliance has switched. Goodbye Matt Parkman from Heroes and James Wilson from House, my new bit of televisual based stuff is the inexplicably good looking Chris Pine from the new Star Trek film. The reason i don't call him just Kirk is because I don't want to be accused or mocked of fancying William 'Shat-Attack' Shatner.
As you may have guessed, I have seen the Star Trek film and in my humble opinion it was bloody fantastic. Gripping, brilliantly acted (Bones being my favourite of the lot), the CGI was amazing, good plot and narrative, well directed and well paced. I couldn't find anything of note to fault about it, well, maybe apart from the fact Uhura's neck was scarily thin.
My dear friend Jen was there to watch the marvellous Zachary Quinto and his eyebrows in action while I swooned away everytime Captain Kirk came on screen. The perfect balance I hope you will agree.

Let's again observe the hotness for all time's sake.
Mmmm. That's really something isn't it? *swoons*

Earbashing

Telemarketers have a shit job, I think we are all aware of that. They are mocked, abused, ignored and shouted at by disgruntled memebers of the public. But this...... this takes it to a whole new level.
Very amusing but you have to feel sorry for the poor telemarketr guy.


via Why That's Delightful

Why?

Why did they only make one series of this marvellous piece of British television? Channel 4 you officially failed in your duty to provide a decent service.
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace: possibly one of the most original and brilliant things ever.

Time Wasted?

As I sit here lamenting the impending conclusion of my university education, I wonder whether it really has been worth it at all. Was it worth the £10,000+ that i borrowed off the government, ultimately saddling myself for most of my young adult with a sizeable amount of debt? Was it worth the three years of hard slog learning many things that I will probably never use again, unless I go to an inexplicably niche dinner party where word order in Early English and syntax in generative grammar are the topics on discussion, and have my brain stuffed full of intelligent but ultimately useless information?

My timing hasn't helepd my situation either. I arrived at university being one of the first years to pay the top-up fees and I leave in the year where we find ourselves in one of the worst recession in recent memory, with two million or so people unemployment, an over-saturated job market where 20 or so graduates go for a basic shelf stacking job at Morrisons just to pay the bills, less and less gradute employment schemes are out there as companies cut their costs and cast out their driftwood. Bollocks is all I can think.

I have many talented and intelligent friends, most of whom attended university, who are either in unemployment, temping or are in a job that isn't stimulating and they are unsatisfied. I don't have any particular strengths in any particular area, well maybe apart from being able to ramble off some random shite at any moment that pleases me and I also have a party trick of been able to bend my finger all the way back so it touches the back of my hand, but apart from that I got nothing. I am a strictly average 2:2/2:1 student. So what hope do I have of finding a decent paid, somewhat stimulating job in a market where even the better than average students are having problems getting on the bottom rung of the career ladder?

I'm not asking for some sort of high powered position at some faceless IT firm, I wouldn't mind a job in a shop for god's sake. I applied for such a job at a well-known high street store late last year and found that over 50 people had applied for two (that's TWO) positions. I got past the first stage but not the last and thus I remained (and still do) an unemployed student bum.

I look at the past three years and feel nothing. No sense of achievement, no sense of victory, just an overwhelming sense of apathy and a feeling that maybe all this wasn't worth the effort. I should have just took my engineering GCSE (and the rest of course) and ran with it. If i had done that then maybe I would have better prospects than being one of the endless numbers of young adults coming off the university conveyor belt with their average degrees in non-specific subjects. I have learned that when most people discover you are doing an English degree they assume you want to be a teacher. I never wanted to be a teacher. The idea of conducting a class of small/medium/giant children is my idea of torture. I just wanted to do a degree that I would enjoy and would give me skills I could use in other areas and that it has, but I now have nowhere to use them.

What is worrying me the most is the inevitable snowball effect this will have graduate jobs in the future. All those this year who didn't get jobs will, if my assumption is correct, go for the jobs next year along with those who will graduate next year and so on and so forth, creating a graduate jobs market that will be overwhelmed as more and more people go to university.

I have no hope. God this is depressing.

On the dole I will inevitably go. I'll grab my coat.

This is why....

It is precisely articles like THIS that make The Guardian a decent source of some sort of intelligent journalism.
Although a big thanks to the local Metro paper which made me choke on a piece of bread this morning with their cover picture of John Prescott imitating Gordon Brown's smile. The poor Scotsman doesn't get a bloody break does he?

Driven To Despair

I've been recently drawn into reading Videogum's Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time, where every Monday one of the chief bloggers choses a movie and rips it apart. It's throughly entertaining BUT....BUT when you read one of the aforementioned it makes you want to see the film all over again just to see what he was on about. So far I have inexplicably subjected myself to Pay It Forward (awful Hallmark-esque lump of film), Bicentennial Man (Person fucking a robot who is Robin Williams, wtf?), Ultraviolet (a MTV-ish movie straight out of the mind of a sugar addicted 7 year old boy complete with PVC outfits), Crash (how that film won Oscars I will never know) and some others that are too numerous to mention.
Sure there are some i don't agree with. I for one quite enjoyed Mr Brooks and Dan In Real Life was a couple of hours well spent. But the majority are indeed shit. But one film in particular stood out as it stars one of my favourite actors. When it came to his first scene in the film my heart sank. The perfectly reasonable question of 'What the fuck are you doing in this steaming pile of guff?' sprang into my mind. What he was doing in that shit i will never know but i feel i need to talk about it just to relax myself.

Driven (Aha see the title, I surprise myself sometimes you know) is that very film. I didn't have high hopes as i sat down to waste a couple of hours of my life. The review on Videogum had prepared me for something very long and very bizarre and i wasn't disappointed in the slightest. Ugh but it's a film with cars in and you're a girl I can here you utter in the back. But i like boy films. My top five films all have guns, death and cool action scenes in them. I am no normal chick-flick loving female. I want stunts, action, Bruce Willis sweating in a white vest, cars and copious amounts of swearing.

Driven involves cars if you hadn't already gathered. The plot was.......erm.... something about Burt Reyonlds (Yeah Burt bloody Reynolds... that should have set alarm bells straight away really) who, as Videogum pointed out, was for some unexplained reason in a wheelchair, wanted to help some awesome driver guy who wasn't that good anymore. Apparently Sylvester Stallone was the man to help (You must be really fucked if you need his help) but he was busy or retired or something. But as usual he is coaxed and this poor driver starts winning. But then there is some rivalry between him and this other driver guy who has a girl's name and looks like he has been chisselled out of granite. Then the granite guy's girlfriend is stolen by the driver who has got his mojo back and that intensifies their rivalry (apparently). Then there is the obligatory 'one last shot at winning' and obviously our hero (the mojo guy) wins in dramatic fashion.

It sounds crap doesn't it? And it you would be right to say that. You know a film has little chance when Stallone and Reynolds are its two heavy hitters. Stallone has the charisma and acting ability of a breezeblock and Reynold's face has been pulled back into another dimension so it is impossible to see what his face is meant to convey. Then there are the two main drivers who are a couple of blonde twenty-something nonentities that probably haven't worked since this film due to the sheer awfulness of their acting. Granite Face Man offends the worst with his completely emotionless (i.e. granite) face. Ever try to watch a bollard act?? Well watch this guy and then you will know what it feels like. Mojo Driver man isn't much better. He just tends to flop his hair around and gawp with his mouth open a lot. If that was acting then I could have been famous years ago.

Another thing about this film that depressed me even more was a fact that alluded to previously. Robert Sean Leonard was in it and I love him. He was in Dead Poet's Society (A guilty pleasure of mine I shamefully admit to). He was in Much Ado About Nothing which is by far my favourite Shakespeare adaptation. He was also in Tape which I love but nobody else seems to have seen (brilliant film it is by the way). Just the sheer depressing thought that he actually agreed to do this film made the experience all the more horrible. There is nothing worse then watching one of your favourite actors in a really really shit film. You feel almost embarrassed for them. The thing is he wasn't even bad is this film. In his own part he was really good, it was just everything else around him. Oh the pain.

Moral of this story is..... Unless you're both blind and deaf or in a coma DO NOT watch this film. It's shite. I will go to my grave/urn knowning that I spent two hours of my life watching this and that saddens me.

Stupid Post For The Day

I am too busy watching Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace to post something deep and meaningful (like i ever do anyway) so I am going to post something which just randomly popped into my head while I was sitting watching Dr Rick Dagless get chased by a telekentic powered whisk.
How would you deal with a evil telekentic powered whisk that was aiming for your jugular? Would you stand back and let telekensis take its toll? Would you get on your knees and pray for an end to the kitchen utensil torture? Or would you stand up to the beastly whisk and defeat it forthwith?
Hopefully these simple solutions will help you when you encounter such a problem.

So here are my five easy tips for dealing with such an instance:

1. Chuck Norris style
This one should be obvious. You look the whisk squarely in the err… whisk bits and tell it that it is wrong to mess with you. That you will never be defeated, that you are the star of Delta Force and Walker, Texas Ranger (you have to get in the Chuck mindset you see), that your beard has stopped traffic, that you have the manliest name in all of the world, and then you (in one swift movement) swing your leg round and whack the aforementioned evil whisk in the whisk bits. The whisk then bends and falls to the floor twitching, as you survey your surroundings with a cold steely look of determination. That my friends, is a roundhouse kick and that is how you do it Chuck Norris style. No mess, no fuss.

2. John Wayne/cowboy style
No, you don’t scare the whisk with your terrible acting skills reminscent of John Wayne. This is cowboy style with a few scary John Wayne impressions thrown in to give the whisk the message. First off you need to find a toothpick pretty swiftly. Snap it in half, put it half in your mouth and chew. Squint your eyes and put and then, with your best cowboy drawl, declare to the whisk that ‘this town aint big enough for the both of us’. Draw out your imaginary guns and ‘bang bang!’ Hopefully this will scare the not too clever whisk into thinking it has just been shot and thusly it will collapse in a mechanical heap on the floor.
If that doesn’t work then don an eyepatch and grab a bottle of whisky and and slur (alá John Wayne in True Grit) your way towards the whisk. If this doesn’t scare the whisk off then i am afraid nothing will and your pretty much fucked.

3. Jackie Chan/Bruce Lee style
Or just generally martial art style. You need to be a person of decent dexterity to carry this one off. This style also means you have to meet the whisk face to erm.. face kind of thing. Take your shirt off first then take many deep breaths, be as one with your body and all that shit. Then walk towards the whisk until you are face to face. Then with your lightning hand speed (which has miraculously come out of nowhere) twist and bend the whisk until it is knotted in on itself. Also make sure you haven’t managed to knot your fingers into the whisk otherwise your fingers are pretty buggered. Then release the whisk from your tiger like grip and watch it fall to the floor in a hail of twisted metal. Satisfying isn’t it?

4. Joan Rivers style
This one is pretty easy. Obviously if you had all the surgery then this style would be a lot more effective but we don’t have time for that, we have a telekentic powered whisk heading towards our jugular. All this style really needs is you shouting sarcastic, soul destroying, caustic remarks at the whisk in a low gravelly tone. Eventually this tirade of evil heckling at the whisk will destroy it’s confidence. Making it believe that it is not powerful enough to compete with you, that it won’t hit your jugular because its aim is too rubbish, that it should go off hide in a darkened room and that it should be ashamed to call itself a whisk.
If you are not very good at cutting remarks and making people feel shit about themselves then this style is not for you. But managers should have no problem with this one.

5. Miley Cyrus style
This is the most effective if carried out properly. It is also a prety basic set up. Grab a shitty looking blonde wig and screech out a Hannah Montana song at the top of your voice. If this doesn’t work then remove the wig and sing a Miley Cyrus song at the top of your voice. If this STILL doesn’t work, then rope in Billy Ray Cyrus and do a father-daughter rendition of Achy Breaky Heart.
By now the whisk should at least be spluttering and wheezing in the air. If so, then repeat the process. By the second rendition of Achy Breaky Heart not only will the whisk be rendered completely paralysed but every other human and machine will have also collapsed and been paralysed due to the sheer awfulness of what has been performed before them.

If neither of these five solutions work for you, then i am afraid your jugular is very much at a whisk risk. So good luck with that.

Blue....

This has probably been posted numerous times over a numerous amount of blogs but it never fails to make me howl with laughter. Takes a while to get into it but stick with it, its so worth it.

Down At The Bottom Of The Garden

When children’s television was actually half decent and not full of PC claptrap. CreePea, PCPea, HaPea, Black Eyed Pea all made my early formative years easier with their blend of insane antics and dodgy moralising.

Three cheers for the Poddington Peas and shame on the BBC for cancelling it after one series.

5 Things That Continue To Scare Me

They always have and probably always will. Also many would say that talking about them will make it all better, I doubt it highly. But i thought i would share or as BT used to say ‘It’s Good To Talk.’ (Although they made profit out of other people talking)

But yes, anyway. Some may seem plausable, others childish and weak. They all have one thing in common, they scare the shit out of me.

1) Kurgan- No idea who he is??? No?? I didn’t think so. Well you might know if you have ever watched Highlander, the semi-awful/semi-entertaining film about them immortal blokes who chop each others heads off because “there can be only one”. I have a massive soft spot for Highlander. I first saw it when I was about 8 when I had sneaked out my room to watch the television downstairs. The sight of several freaky looking grown men swishing swords at each other and then massive cracks of lightning when one died, was strangely appealing. Then when I got older I watched it again and appreciated it’s ridiculous nature (Sean Connery as an apparently Spanish Egyptian WTF???, Christopher Lambert as a Scotsman????!!!). So yes I am sad, I like this stuff. Anyway, Kurgan is damn scary bad guy out of the first one, who has a weird voice and even weirder hair by the end of it. He is the most powerful immortal of them all and the fucking scariest looking aswell. Though I must admit, his menace is somewhat dulled when you read the credits and find out the actor portraying Kurgan is called Clancy.

2) Madonna’s seemingly waxed crotch- Yeah she looks pretty good for her age, i will give her some kudos for that. But seriously the woman is 50 years old (48 in this picture), pretty much the same age as my mother and if i saw my mother parading her semi waxed fangita on international television i would be totally mortified. I’m all for her looking good, i know she has to be being in the music industry and all. But come on, a bit or demure clothing would go a long long way.Three words spring to mind: Too Much Information. It’s just wrong and…..just very very wrong.

3) Crane Flies (Daddy Long Legs)- These beastly creatures are the bain of my autumn nights. You leave your window slightly ajar for a bit of fresh air and before you know it, you are surrounded by flapping, lanky stick looking THINGS! Gaaah! I hate them and they always fly towards your face for some inexplicable reason. So you end up waving your hands around like a madman. But if you try and grab it, their legs fall off! Fall off!! Then they continue flying. Its like on Austin Powers 2 when that woman is shot, stabbed and thrown out of a building and she still won’t die! Evil creatures! Eeevil!

4) Arachnophobia- The film that is. Now I am not an arachnophobe myself. I can handle the little spiders that tend to scurry along the bathroom floor or the ones that you find in your bath. But that film. Oh my life. I think it’s the huge pulsing ball of baby spiders in Jeff Daniels’ basement that got me the most. We don’t even have a basement yet i was still worried for days after the film whether an army of spiders would burst through my floorboards. Then there was the big old hairy queen spider which seemed to be the size of a small country (say Luxembourg for arguments sake), who scuttles and scurries towards Jeff Daniels, ready to gobble him up. *Shudders* It’s a bloody Disney film, I really shouldn’t be frightened but I was and continue to be. Didn’t stop me buying the DVD like.

5) Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks attempting to ‘rap’- It is beyond painful. For some reason Tom Hanks believes that SHOUTING will make it sound better. No it doesn’t, it just makes him sound deaf. Though kudos to them for the damn funky leg shapes they are throwing.

My Theory On The Why Labour Is Failing

Because their leader looks like Droopy Dawg, that’s why!

Gordon Vs Droopy

Freakish isn’t it? The Labour Party is being led by a depressed looking hound.

But it is not just Gordon Brown who is letting the side down with his weird lookalike.
Even Jack Straw (the ex-Foreign Secretary and now Secretary for Justice (whatever that is)) has his own weird lookalike.

Straw Vs Demon

That’s right everyone. Jack Straw is in fact The Demon Headmaster
Truly frightening. It does explain a lot though. How we were convinced that there were WMD in Iraq and all that stuff.

Then we have the Secretary of State for Transport Geoff Hoon, who looks freakishly like Timothy Dalton.

Hoon Vs Dalton

As much as i love The Dalton, i don’t want his brother from another mother being responsible for how our government votes.

Then there is the added hilarity of the fact the Minister for Education is called Ed Balls!! Balls!!

Now i think this Labour Government can sort itself out by stop putting in bad celebrity lookalikes and people with ludicrious names. Then they can get round to the important job of getting their policies right and gaining the public favour back. There is nothing worse then seeing the slimy Tories worming their way back into people’s subconscious.