I didn't quite catch that...

Today, I woke up refreshed, content and happy with the world. Why for?

Simple reason. British Summer Time has ended, which means that we all turn the clocks back to GMT. An extra hour in bed, with no cost, no loss, and no worries.

Simple. And yet this effect is felt nation wide.

There are two reasons why I oppose the imposition of British Standard Time. One is simple: it’s a RoSPA idea, and therefore stinks of cotton wool and interference. The second is much more abstract: the bitching at the loss of an hour in spring is muted (because it’s spring, and therefore it’s all good), while the feeling of nationwide contentment today is worth it all.

Yes, this sounds like god-damn hippy claptrap. But I’m working out all my aggression on the playstation, so I’m all angry-ed out.

Actually, two finallys.

1. Finally, a post on this blog that isn’t about GTA (which is definately worth the price of a PS2). Oh poo. Now it is a post that is at least a bit about GTA. Oh well.
2. Finally, after over eight months at the part time job, I get one of the casual t-shirts. Which means no more of the crappy black shirt/black tie combo that is so annoying.

And so, to beer bed.

I’m in fairly good shape, here. Bench pressing 320, doing 5k on a bike daily, as a 2k run. I’m eating salads and sensible food. Not adverse to swimming in open water either, just to build up the stamina.

Of course, if this was in the real world, and not in GTA, it would be a lot more impressive. But there you go. As some have noted, the websurfing may be on hold for a bit while I become more adjusted to having this addictive game about.

Congratulations on being the creator of a new
Evil Plan ™!

Your objective is simple: World Domination.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: To show them all

Stage One
To begin your plan, you must first incapacitate a military general. This will cause the world to give one another worried looks, terrified by your arrival. Who is this ripe bastard? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in a corporate suit?

Stage Two
Next, you must destroy United Nations. This will all be done from a underground secret headquarters of doom, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will die in a way you just don’t want to think about, as countless hordes of winged monkeys hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three
Finally, you must send forth your armies of destruction, bringing about horrors beyond man’s comprehension. Your name shall become synonymous with nightmares, and no man will ever again dare sabotage your music career. Everyone will bow before your cunning intelligence, and the world will have no choice but to give you control of the planet.

Who told them? Huh? The evil winged monkeys will be unleashed upon all those who squealed…

It has landed. GTA SA is here. Sure, I’m still at work, and bringing the PS2 in is frowned on, so the countdown is on until I can actually play it.

I’ve had a look at the manual and the map, obviously. It’s huge. Looks like three times the size of VC. There’s a big military base, a no fly zone, a aircraft graveyard. Three airports. Shit, the thing’s got geography. Proper mountains, everything.

Hmm. What little remained of my social life seems to be hurtling out of the window…

Don’t sign it. Don’t sign it. Don’t sign it.

This is a personal message to Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland:
Don’t sign it.

This is a personal message to Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland:
Don’t sign it.

I’m assuming that people get the general gist of this post? No explaination needed? Excellent.

The F/A-22 Raptor is finally rolling off the production lines.

Sure, it’s stupidly expensive. Sure, it’s overkill compared to any other fighter (real or envisioned) in the world.

But it’s so good looking. And it’s the US paying for it, so I don’t really worry about the expense.

It’s so good looking that I have it as my desktop background. Specificially, a better quality copy of the above image. Where you can see the tail number of the plane. It starts with ED. Yes. I’m a geek. And this is bad forwhy?

We’ve all had that feeling: it’s a Wednesday night; what to do, what to do…

Personally, I decided to watch the Bond movie on ITV, but then I’m a little easy to keep entertained, so that explains that. Some people aren’t as easily entertained. Which explains why there are bars, and cinemas, and restaurants, etc. in the world.

Doesn’t really explain why someone would want to shoot up my local police station. Or take hostages along the way.

I say that they’re silly buggers for several reasons:

1. Four shots. At night. From a stolen van. At a rural police station. Wow. Fight the power, man. Does that make you feel big and powerful?
2. Holding hostages seems to be the way forward here these days. Want to steal a truckload of cigarrettes? Take a warehouse manager hostage. Want to stage a silly stunt outside a cop stop? Take five hostages. Money running low on the electricity meter? Take a hostage? Wednesday night and nothing to do? Take a hostage.
3. YOU’RE MORONS! That station is a full on bunker, with it’s own air circulation systems, pressure doors, armoured to the balls. The gate is thick steel. And you thought that four shows was making a point.

Well, here’s a suggestion. Instead of using those four bullets* on the bunker, how’s about four of you shoot themselves in the head, and leave the other one unarmed and ready for a shoeing.

Just a suggestion.

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* – My thinking is that that’s all they had. If they had had a full clip, they would have emptied it in a dramatic gesture. Or some such ballacks.

You probably won’t have noticed, but there’s some kind of voting malarkey going on Stateside.

And some fo the locals made a song about it and everything. I like the socially responsible “Don’t forget to vote” message stuck on at the end of the merry slander directed at both candidates. Very sensible.

And, of course, no stolen linkage would be complete without a tip o’the hat to whomsoever I stole it from. So hats off to SarahK. Much obliged.

36.5 hours. Just got a phone call saying that GTA would be available for pickup from midnight tomorrow. Which is all good.

Not that I’ll be one of the saddos that will be waiting at 11.55 to pick it up. Oh no. I’ll be out in t’country at that time. So I’ll pick it up on the way to work on Friday morning. Which is not at all sad or obsessive. Honest guv’nor.

So, the Black Watch battle group is on the move. As they should be, with the whole point of a reserve force being that it there if needed, and it is needed.

But what really annoy me is the media’s attitude to this move. They were dead set against it. And now they’re basicially doing a step by step guide to attacking the convoy. First, there’s the heads up: Force will move in the next day. Then there’s pictures of what the convoy looks like. Now, there’s the “Oh, my, the convoy has left. Just this minute.” Being a cynical bastard, I’m expecting that the BBC has already got their “Convoy ambushed en route; many casulties” story half written, and only needing the exact time and number of dead to complete it.

But then, I am a cynic.

Excuse the country, it appears to be undergoing a spectacular Jill Dando/Princess Di outpouring of grief for the unexpected death of a much loved celeb.

Of course, the thing is that most people who are currently doing the outpouring will have just listened to Peel when the radio was on, not people who were hooked on his every word. I know that that’s the case for me. But that will not stop the continuing outpouring.

Only a week after Boris fluffed the issue of oversentimentality, it’s still here, haunting us.

That said, RIP John Peel. Obviously.

I was sat at the pc earlier, with a bit of Faithless on in the background. And someone stated, matter-of-factly, that I listened to some really spidey shite.

Ex-squeeze me? Yes, there is some spidey shite in my collection, but if you’re trying to connect the Faithless to the spidey, then, whoa there, that is not kosher.

Faithless are a superbly talented group, with the best in DJing and producing talent in the genre at their disposal. Their lyrics are quick, witty, intelligent and flow like nothing else in the charts. Sure, their politics are absolutly screwed*, but they’re fervent about it, as they are with their music.

Spidey music is created by ripping off other people’s stuff and putting it to a beat.

N’ere the twain shall meet. Nor shall they be further compared.

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* – Yes, they are. Completely pacifist, with no grasp of economic realities or human nature. But still good.

P.S. Oh, and their website, as linked to above, is one of the best I’ve seen. Ever.

Well, I’m a bit shattered at the minute. I think that last night gets the award for “most disturbed sleep, 2004″.

A quick list of those things that conspired to let me have about 70 seconds sleep during the night:

1. Ten minutes after going to bed, one of the neighbours had a kerb/hubcap meeting that resulted in said hubcap flying off the car and hitting my gate with an almighty clang. Being the sensible sort, I had to have a wee look see to see what was happening before heading back to bed.
2. Just after two, someone phones. Our phone is very annoying. Louder than the average wailing child. And much more irritating. And the wee fucker on the other end insists that I’m covering for somebody called Gary who lives in the house. Before I hang up.
3. Item 2 repeats.
4. Item 2 repeats.
5. Item 2 attempts to repeat before the phone is sent to silicon hell to annoy the denziens of said locale. (Or is pulled from the wall.)
6. Loud crashing noise, such as might be made by a large vehicle crushing a rigid plastic object. Considering that this noise came from the vicinity of my car, which is essentially surrounded by rigid plastic, this was cause for concern. Luckily, it turned out to be the hubcap from Item 1 being sent on to a better place by some delivery van.
7. Next door. Radio. Loud. Stupid o’clock in the am. Lather, rinse, repeat.
8. Early flights. The first time that they’ve annoyed me, but, boy, did they make up for lost time.

So now, I’m a bit like this:

As some of you may know, there is a gradual shift in parts of West Belfast towards having bi-lingual signs. Now, this is somewhat confusing to outsiders, since there are very, very few people in the north of Ireland who speak Irish and not English, but it’s a political football, so we’ll ignore the reasons for it, and deal with some of the effects.

I noticed one of these today. The Safeway in the Kennedy Centre has a big bilingual sign in the car park. The whole “Welcome to Safeway / Fáilte go Safeway” effort. And in the spirit of tokenism, it also lists its facilities in both languages: Cash Dispensers, Coffee Shop, Creché.

Then, in big ass capitals, at the bottom, in english only:

BEERS WINES AND SPIRITS

Because they’re smart and cheeky enough to say, outright, that, sure, bilingualism is all well and good, but they know fine rightly that people don’t care how their alcohol is presented as long as it is presented.

T-104 hours. And counting.

Getting exciting here people. And, yes, it is sad that I’m this keen for the next GTA. So sue me.

If Grand Theft Auto isn’t mankind’s greatest invention, I don’t know what is.
I just flew around the city in an Apache attack helicopter firing missiles and random cars. And when I got bored of that, I stole some guys motorcycle, rode 120mph across town to a nightclub, where I picked up $10,000, walked inside, and fired a minigun into the crowd, liquifying everyone inside.
And then I picked up a new suit and went home and called it a day.
i love how accurate its portrayal of the 1980s night-life is

I wants! Now!

Whinge, whinge, whinge.

Poor little Arsene… someone can’t accept that the better team won on the day. And throwing food at Ferguson is just childish. Just who has a bowl of pea soup waiting for them in the tunnel anyway? “Oh, I’ve just had two goals put past me, and I’ve been standing in the rain for 90 minutes. Best have a bowl of pea soup, that’s exactly what I need right now…” Freak.

Seldo has created a masterpiece: Sky Captain and the Spitfire of Prodigy. Prodigy’s Spitfire put over a series of shots from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. And it’s good: Spitfire playing while a fictional Spitfire fights.

Very very good. Sure, it’s 26 meg, but it’s worth it.

Wanted: One person to reset the “unbeaten run” counter in Highbury.

Salary: generous.

Employer: Man U.

Mwhahahahahahaha. Sorry, Arseholes, but you’ll have to start from zero again. Yes, there is justice in the world, and United just delivered two lots of it to yous.

Right, I’ve had to say this to too many people over the weeks. So I’m putting it in writing here.

I. Want. George. Bush. To. Win. The. Election.

I don’t much like the man. I don’t much like most of his policies. I don’t give an airbourne sexual encounter about his domestic policies. I do, however, think that he is better suited to ensuring the safety of the free world than is John Kerry.

Negative campaigning? Sure. But I don’t trust Kerry, I don’t like what I’ve seen of his record. I think that Bush is stupid, but is smart enough to realise that and have smart people to cover for him. Most of all, I believe that he has the balls to see throught the situation in Iraq. Whatever your position on the original invasion*, you have to realise that the only possible positive outcome is if the US stays in-country long enough to put a sustainable democracy in place. Otherwise we will end up worse than we were before. Kerry probably knows this, and is still discounting it to try and pick up votes. Which makes him unworthy of earning any votes.

Oh, and Bush cuts taxes. If our politicians were to do that, then I’d be a happier person.

Drunk blogging. It’s the way forward. Honest.
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* – Eleven years too late, would be my opinion.