So, it seems it's been over a year since I posted on here.

Am I too grumpy to even use a blog I helped to create?

Possibly. However, It's probably more likely I've got grumpy-block….

So, the normally socially inadequate me actually went out on Friday night.

With people from work, to celebrate a few combined birthdays.

Went to a few trendy bars and drank fairly large amounts of cider

(well, fairly large for me, lightweight that I am)

And even though it was all horribly normal and trendy, good fun was had. And photos were taken.

(But not by me for once since my lomo bit the dust and hasn't been replaced yet. )

So, come monday morning, chatting with folks about the fun that had been had, ask about who was taking pics and where they may have uploaded them?

Facebook.

Sodding facebook. Great. Marvellous.

"Super. Smashing. Lovely. Great." I might say, if I were a sarcastic Jim Bowen.

So, you're saying you went to all the 'trouble' of taking pics, downloading them from your camera/phone, cropping/cleaning them, and uploading them to the net, only to fail miserably in the last step by uploading them to somewhere that only allows people to view them if they're a member? FFS what has the internet turned into? Whatever hapened to "Information longs to be free"? I thought these sodding walled gardens went out of fashion in the 90's?

It's the internet, it's designed for the easy sharing of information (and pr0n, obviously) - you want to send me a message you can email me. You could IM me if I bothered with messaging systems these days. You could send me a message on my mobile or my 360.

Or, hey, here's an old fashioned thought, I also have a phone number you can ring or -heaven forbid- an actual address you could write to…

Now, with these fairly accepted methods of communication I get a fair amount of spam and junk mail already. Nothing I can't deal with at present but I'm happy enough with that amount and don't want more. You want me to sign up to something that then gives anyother way for spam to get to me? No thanks, I already read everybody elses at work, I don't want to see it all again.

You want to show me some pics, stick em up on a website or if that's too tricky, use flickr or fotopic or one of the multitude of image hosting sites. Don't stick them up on somewhere like facebook, that's just bloody annoying. You've gone through all that trouble of uploading your pics so you can do what with them? Show them to people on facebook and only facebook? Bravo. At least if you upload pics to an open site you can use them elsewhere, but facebook? Gaaaah.

And hey, let's not forget the whole point of facebook, the social networking side of things - now I can sign up for yet another way for people who I may not want to be in touch with to get in touch with me. I've already got friendsreunited for that - That gets me all the messages from Ex's and people I knew from uni that I need, thanks. I don't really want to go through the rigmarole of signing up to yet another service so I can show people that I know:

a) Some of my own relatives

b) My boss, and quite probably my boss's boss's boss.

c) People I know from work but wouldn't necessarily call 'friends'

d) People I knew at School/University/previous jobs but haven't seen or spoken to in 10-20 years

e) A few people from such-and-such mailing list/forum/clan

This all has, of course, nothing to do with the prospect of only having 5 'friends' and everyone else in the world having eleventy billion. If I cared about that then this site would be up on blogger or some such popular site, wouldn't it? Somewhere were it might gather some hits rather than sulking in this quiet little corner of the internet by itself…

Having said all that, I think Virb looks a bit more interesting than most, if only because it's got last.fm style music tracking.

Unfortunately, at a glance, it only appears to be for iTunes and I'm still a staunch Winamp/Media Player Classic user…and I'm already on last.fm anyway, so what's the point?

Bah. I'm going back to being a hermit again, it's easier and just generally less wanky.

If I DO go out again, I shall just have to get my lomo fixed beforehand and then not show anyone the pics. That'll teach em.

So many months, so few posts, and now…what on earth could drag me back to the keyboard to rant after so many other things have been and gone and been left uncommented?

How about Hayden Christensen being mooted as playing Case in the film version of Neuromancer? 

No.

Please no.

He didn't single-handedly ruin the star wars prequels he was in but he certainly didn't help matters.

Jumper looks like it could've been an interesting film (and I was looking forward to plenty of poor B3ta spinoffs like Cardigan or Sweater) but I've not yet seen a single good review of that. I've certainly not seen anything that would give the impression he's a good actor let down by a poor film, so I'm assuming he's as bad in that as he was in Star Wars. Anyone who knows me will know that that doesn't necessarily mean I won't watch Jumper anyway though - There's many a bad film I actually enjoy, and it might be the good kind of bad - i.e. Mortal Kombat 1 rather than Mortal Kombat 2. Resident Evil rather than Resident Evil Apocalypse. And getting back to the William Gibson/Sprawl side of things, I'll include Johnny Mnemonic in my list of poor films that I "don't actually mind".

Did I just admit that to the net? Hmmm. Ok, I'm sorry. I know it's shockingly awful and dated and corny and every criticism you may throw at it is probably entirely correct and justified but still…it's Johnny Mnemonic! It's almost there! /Izzard "In my miiiiiind!"

And Keanu, ok so he's just a great big dumb plank in the film but I could live with that, I could see Johnny being like that.

Something in my mind keeps telling me "Just imagine how kickass it would be if it was good!" and I keep watching…

But Hayden Christensen as Case? No. Just no. Please somebody stop this sick joke now. I'd rather they didn't make the film at all. I'd rather it stayed as a dream in my head, rather it remained only as a book, a series of mp3s for long car journeys and a dated old game on my c64 I'll never play again.

Neuromancer > Blade Runner in my mind and casting this charisma-bypass of an 'actor' in the lead role is just absolute heresy.

It'd be like Blade Runner remade as an action movie starring Vin Diesel, retiring replicants left right and centre.

It'd be like a Hanna-Barbera or Filmation version of Ghost in the Shell

It'd be like taking a classic Asimov book and turning it into a Will Smith action movie complete with kickass motorbike chase sequence.

Oh, wait.

Oh Frak.

Well, as we suspected, that was a bloody shambles wasn't it?

Fairly suprised by the end result tho, found the mix of music this year quite varied but hadn't rated Serbias entry at all. Nothing really jumped out at me as being the winner, there were just differing levels of awfulness.

Nice to see some countries had taken note of Lordi winning last year though, so we at least had a few songs that were more guitar-heavy than usual, even if they did sound like Evanescance b-sides. And there was still plenty of variety with blues, jazz and even 70's Glam-rock (wtf!?) represented alongside the usual borat-sings-ricky-martin efforts.

Even with the extra variety livening things up however, I didn't think the quality of the singing was up to much, in particular;

Bulgaria (nice entry, and sung ok, but I think her vocal range needed to be a bit (?) longer? wider? taller? not sure of the correct terminology, but it just seemed a bit flat)

and Ireland (who only just stopped short of dressing as drunken, Guinness-swigging Leprechauns, kissing the blarney stone and singing about their lucky charms. Ah begorrah.)

Speaking of which, Terry's commentary was top class as usual, like a favourite uncle half-cut on cheap sherry - I dread to think who they'll get in to replace him when he finally decides to hand the gig over to someone else. Eddie Izzard or Bill Bailey would be good, but I'm scared they'll get some irritating twunt like Graham Norton to do it instead…Still, only criticism I can give poor old Tel would be about him constantly harping on about the rampant block-voting that goes on - He didn't seem to complain when Ireland and Malta gave us points, and they certainly weren't for the quality of our song was it?

(12 points Malta? Are you all on crack or what? We you listening to the same song as the rest of us?)

Unfortunately, due to these sympathy votes, we actually end up with 19 ill-gotten points, rather than the nul points we so obviously deserved for foisting Scooch upon Europe. So, now europe has something else to add to their list of the dross to come from Britain - a lack of mixer taps, football hooligans, (supposedly) awful cuisine and now music in Eurovision so bad it relys on sympathy votes to be rated equal to France (who haven't won since '77 fact fans)…

And what was with the smutty remarks about 'salted nuts sir?' and 'something to suck on for landing, sir?' during the song? Was that honestly meant to be funny? If it was at least funny it would have been something but it was as painful to watch as the mad Finnish bint dressed in pink trying to pretend she'd won the chance to present and that's why her presenting skills were so godawful.

And speaking of godawful (but wanting to not carry on about scooch), Lets have a quick reminder of the Ukraine's entry.

Right. Well, ok, that's to be expected each year at Eurovision really isn't it?

But, 2nd place? You what?

Have to admit though, that one really did throw a spanner in the works of my thinking how it was going to work this year. There I was, quite logically (I assumed), thinking that we'd have some credible music this year, and it'd should show the idots who gave scooch the job that decent artists and decent music was the way to go rather than the usual tacky eurotrash-end-credits rejects. And then ukraines entry romped up the scoreboard and came second…so much for my theory.

What're the odds we'll put forward the same old tat again next year, the logic being that if the Ukraine could do it, so can we? Ignoring the fact that

a) The Ukraine didn't actually win, it was an odd looking woman singing a rather dull song, and

b) We've done shit music the past few years and have failed miserably every time…time for a change methinks.

Yup, it's the 2-pound shop, 2 months later…

So, Only2 lasted Only2 months then? How apt.

(that is of course assuming that when I first saw it it had only just opened and in the picture above it had only just closed down. And as the name seems to fit so well for this purpose, that's exactly what I shall be assuming. ;Þ Thpppt. )

I notice the To Let sign states that they 'may divide' - Is that an option you can take or a warning it may happen regardless? One minute you're standing in 1 large shop, the next it's split into into 2 x 1 pound shops? 4 x 50p shops? Could be the amoeba of the retail sector, slowly getting larger and larger, but the profits halving each time?

Actually, maybe that's why it's shut…The poundshop across the road is still doing ok after all, plenty of people still in there blocking the aisles and elbowing you left, right and centre. Just that one gent milling around aimlessly outside Only2…

You have to salute them though I suppose, it was a brave gamble trying to corner the 'slightly more upmarket than going down the market, errr, market' but it just didn't pay off. People obviously weren't tempted to go 'upmarket' and spend there, Poundland's posh enough thankyewverymuch, now they have unleashed their secret weapon - they have books!

Yup, books - the original non-volatile storage medium. Shit books admittedly, but proper paper ones with words 'n'everything nonetheless. No-one buying them of course, but they're there if you want them. I dunno, they'll be doing coffee in there next.

Dammit, only just noticed the a4 printouts taped  up on the pillars… Wonder what they said. Hey ho, at least it's not more flyers for unhinged shrieking Russian psychos in hats and makeup. Gotta be grateful for that at least.

Why does this make me think of the League of Gentlemen?

Tubbs: "Will Command and Conquer 3 be like Swansea?"

Edward: " Yes Tubbs. Only Bigger!" 

(Honestly, if you've seen Swansea of late, or Cardiff for that matter, you'd know that picture's not far off the mark. Minus the mechanised violence, of course, it's generally more hand-to-hand. And the buildings in the picture are in better nick too. No clown posters evident here tho, thank god)

And then, of course, the fact that most of the released pics look like this;

means I have Tubbs in my head shouting "Lines and Lines and Lines!!"

Command and Conquer meets Royston Vasey…now THAT'd be a mod and a half… 

Still, all looks very spangly and shiny and no doubt by graphics card is weeping at the prospect.

Also no doubt I'll still rather wish I was playing the original on my old 486 than playing this version but there we go. That's prolly got more to do with the high likelihood of being repeatedly and savagely beaten at it by a certain 15 yr old son who has far more time to practise it than I do, than it has to do with whether the game's poop or not. It just hasn't been as fun since you couldn't sandbag in your opponents harvesters…ahhh, halcyon days

Yup, for those aspirational-types who are bored with the delights of Poundland, want something new and are willing to spend that little bit more (well, ok 100% more), there's now 2-pound-land.

Sorry, it's "Only2 - The Original £2 Store™" isn't it? Silly me.

And where's it located? Directly across the street from Poundland of course…

And don't worry, if you have to go to Poundland because you can't afford the sky-high prices at Poundstretcher, Hyper-value or (heaven forbid!) Wilkinsons, they've got a sale on - a 1/2 price sale at that! Bargain!

So, that's the new 2-pound store "Only2", located opposite Poundland, with a half price sale on.

Word fail me. 

Seems as good a time as any fior me to test how this video embedding lark works…

Stumbled across it while rummaging for the video for Rotersand - Exterminate Annihilate Destroy, y'see… 

(edited to correctly have the vid that allows embedding, even if it's the one using early Dr Who footage instead…) 

Odd one this.

I was just having an early morning conversation in Messenger, and I linked them to this very site.

The response I got was "bookmarked, will save for later"

Does reams of text scare the youth off then? (by youth I mean 24ish) 

Maybe Grumpy Old Geeks the Comic Book is in order…. 

Wow.

www.parisexposed.com

How brilliant's that? No, not the fact that it's a site where you can get naked pictures of someone famous, gawd knows there's enough of those already. Just more like how brilliant is it that these people setup their entire business based on the sheer stupidity of empty headed 'celebrity' Paris Hilton. Good on them I say.

Not pointing it out for fwap potential as she's a horrifically skanky waste of skin, just the gossip side fit…absolutely un-fecking-believeable how stupid some of these bitches (and I use that word sparingly) are at times isn't it? And now she's trying to get the site shut down…wonder how much more this is going to cost her compared to the original 208 dollar bill? It's things like this that make me happy, when spoilt little shits like her get their come-uppance…

Y'know what would REALLY make me grin? If her dearest darling daddy saw the vids, saw her doing all those drugs and the shit she was saying, decided enough was enough, she's done enough damage to the whole Hilton brand image - when you think "Paris Hilton", do you think of a high class hotel in the French capital or a nasty ugly shallow little bimbo, the likes of which you'd generally find spilling out of any random nightclub at 2am in the morning, bacardi breezer in hand, knuckle-dragging mongoloid oaf in the other.

Paris Hilton? Would've been better off named Blackpool Hilton, it would've been more honest.

Daddy then decides to disown and dis-inherit her…all of a sudden she has to pay for her lifestyle herself, get a job, live in the realworld.

Now, THAT would be funny.

So I implore you, get hold of copies of these videos, by whatever means you can, and propagate them - give copies to friends without internet access. Hell, give copies to friends WITH internet access - show the world what a hateful vacuous trollop she is, before she can become even more of a retarded role model for the impressionable idiots of the world, and also educate her on how, once information is loose on the internet, shutting down one site is like pi$$ing in the ocean - the information is free and it's staying that way.

Next stop, Britney, Christina, Victoria 'Posh' Beckham, Kerry Katona, etc etc etc