Yippiekayayen Motherfuckeren!

SPOILEREN ALERTEN!

So last night I had the pleasure of going to the cinema in Stjørdal to see Die Hard 4: Die Hardererer With A Vengeancer. Two hours of absolute ridiculousness that I grudgingly have to admit was really good fun and was only enhanced by amusing Norwegian translations of swear words in the subtitles (“shit”, “asshole”, “data-jerkoff” and so on). I would’ve taken photos of them so that I could practice and learn them, but that would be considered an attempt to breach copyright, which could result in the entire movie industry losing their jobs. Not to mention the fact that I’d be supporting the very terrorists that Bruce Willis was trying to beat.

Casting was generic-action-movie-tastic, right down to the two NSA guys (one of whom was the Vulcan-who-was-much-lamer-than-Spock-and-the-hot-Vulcan-girl-in-Enterprise from Star Trek: Voyager) who fulfilled the here-to-walk-all-over-your-jurisdiction roles as well as any schmo from Division in 24. Kevin Smith even got to be the generic-computer-nerd-still-living-in-his-mother’s-basement character, who went by the call sign “Warl0ck”. Very l33t. Also, complete tangent, but I appear to be overly enthusiastically using a hyphonate-everything-together-to-make-a-big-long-description style of writing. Suggestions for what other literary devices might suit my verbose-but-amusing thought pattern will be gladly received.

Favourite moments:

• When Bruce Willis drives a car up a home made ramp and through a helicopter that’s a good 20 metres up in the air in order to take out some bad guys.
• When Bruce Willis surfs off the top of a stealth fighter jet and down a collapsing bridge so that he can chase after some bad guys.
• When Bruce Willis is thrown through a glass pane, falls down several storeys of a building, lands in the underground parking lot and then drives an SUV back up to the room he was thrown out of so that he can drive into the bad guy who threw him through the glass pane at high speed and crush them at the bottom of an elevator shaft by parking the SUV on top of them.

Lessons learned:

• If your mobile stops working, modify it to use the special backup satellites that apparently even the US secret services don’t know about. Even though they probably put them there.
• You can hack into anything that looks vaguely like a computer by hooking it up to what looks like the rubber keyboard off of an old Spectrum.
• I should probably stop writing blog posts when I’m tired because they tend to tail off towards the end as my mind starts wondering and I think about other things like what I’m going to have for lunch and whether or not I should have a coffee or what happened in the whole of the last series of The Apprentice because I missed most of it or whether or not I’ll accidentally watch Big Brother one night and get hooked or whether my expenses have come through yet or whether Aberdeen will suffer really badly following the departure of Russell Anderson or whether I’ll be able to get a seat right up the front of the plane when I fly home later or… you get the idea.

Update (30 Jun 07): I forgot to give the film a score.  I’ve decided to give it a rather impressive 4 big fuck off explosions that still somehow leave our hero unhurt out of 5.

I’m funnier than Chris Rock

Not only that, I’m funnier than Jim Belushi, Rosanne Barr, Tim Allen, Ray Romano and Freddie Prinze Jr. My jokes are certainly funnier than the ones Jerry Seinfeld told in the “Jerry at work” bits of Seinfeld. So why is it that all of these people have got their own comedy shows where they get to play characters named after themselves? I don’t know how many of you will have seen Freddie, but my God it’s bad.

Therefore, I’m pitching my claim for a piece of the comedy pie. I’m going to star as Graham van Heuygen, a struggling musician living in New York City with his identical twin brother, Graham2 and their Latino house cleaner (played by Jessica Alba) with hilarious consequences. Graham2 is going to be played by Chris Tucker. I’m thinking I’ll call it one of:

• “Everybody Loves Graham”
• “All About Graham”
• “According to Graham”
• or simply, “Graham”

I’m probably going to get John to play my flustered George Costanza character who all the really funny unfortunate stuff happens to. Anyone wishing to contribute ideas for episodes is welcome to post them as comments. It’ll be just like Everybody Loves Eric Raymond but much, much, much less geeky.

Stalk Idiot Stalk

I’m a nosey bastard. That’s why I seem to particularly like the looking-at-people’s-photos-on-Bebo-without-them-knowing school of thought. However, my recent attempt at celebrity stalking by becoming Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s friend on Facebook got me thinking: do celebrities do exactly the same thing? I mean, I can go onto Bebo and find any number of footballers*, soap stars and (until the Sun tried to have him chemically castrated for treason) celebrity prisoners, but do they trawl through the pages of the legions of the great unwashed? Or are they too busy living the dream and getting off their mash on ecstasy pipes to care?

On the off-chance that any of my 4 or so daily readers are celebrities, feel free to leave a comment to show that you guys can stalk too. John: I’ll know if it’s you so don’t even bother

Oh, and for the record, Krishnan hasn’t accepted my friendship invitation yet. I even added Channel 4 News to my favourite TV shows in a vain attempt to help.

*Bootnote: In the loosest possible sense of the word in some cases.

Ok, seriously: wtf is wrong with you people?!?

A while back I ranted about how you were all filthy perverts who made my skin crawl. Well someone has gone and turned it up to 11. Look:

Whoever you are, what in the name of Science were you doing looking for this? And more to the point, how the hell did you find my blog with that query? The only way I could feel more ashamed right now would be if I woke up covered in kebab meat with a marker pen phallus drawn on my face

The flavour changes but the taste remains the same

I’ve just had a blackcurrant tea. It smelled fantastic but Science H Logic it tasted terrible. How is this possible?

Costa del Norge

Norway has surprised me several times over the past couple of years. Given its heady combination of excessively high beer prices, oversized bureaucracy, award-winning coastline, reindeer steaks and bilingual tramps, I guess I should be used to it by now, but these past couple of weeks have confused me even more.

Why? Because it turns out that Norway is really fecking hot. Really really fecking hot. That snow you thought you’d seen in photos? It’s all fake. It’s made by compressing the dusty remains together from the carcasses of people and animals who die in the scorching heat of Norway’s secret deserts on a daily basis. Fact. The reindeer that live here are imported from Russia. Double fact. That cold that you think you experience in the winter here? It’s actually a giant orbital refrigerator platform shooting cold rays down over the country to give the impression of changing seasons. I’m telling you, the country is run by Bond villains. It’s the only plausible explanation. Either that or the heat is causing me to hallucinate.

Update: They’re on to me!  No sooner than I had rumbled the conspiracy I find out that the people in charge have modified their environmental settings in an effort to discredit me.  As a result, Trondheim is going to be cold and wet next week…

My Life versus This Life

It occurred to me the other day that as a 20-something, I should probably compare things to what TV told me they would be like when I was a bit younger. There were a few options for me to pick from that had a nice fit with my lifestyle (Buffy, Airwolf, Blankety Blank… The list is endless). However, I decided that by far and away the best benchmark would be This Life. What with all the lawyers, sex and drugs, it may as well be my video autobiography*. To make it a fair comparison, I’ve decided to match up my friends against characters in the show and see how they’re getting on at similar stages of their lives. Which life will win?

Me

I’m going to match myself up against Egg for a variety of reasons:

• He’s the only non-lawyer in the show who isn’t gay.
• Ummm…
• …
• Well that’s about it actually

So, in the me versus Egg head-to-head I have to say that I win. I don’t work in a cafe for a living and I don’t have a wife who’s shagging her boss behind my back. Take that you stupidly-monikored McJobber!

My Life 1-0 This Life

John

John is very career focussed these days and seems to enjoy working for The Man. Also, despite loving me deep down, we spend a large amount of our time together arguing. Therefore, John is the Milly to my Egg. This is quite a tough one to call: they’re both irritating whiny bitches at times, but John wins by virtue of his superior drinking ability, the fact that he lets us draw on him/tie him to things/put things on him/put things in him when he’s asleep and because Pest is a better choice of man for spooning with than the balding middle aged lawyer Milly was banging.

My Life 2-0 This Life

Cormac

I’m putting Cormac up against Ferdy. Ferdy wins because his PhD was in homosexual bicycle courier theory instead of Cormac’s one, which is about something less good (barnacle mating habits? I don’t know).

My Life 2-1 This Life

Stuart/Dallan/Dallas

As Scott’s gay side, Stuart is going up against Warren. This is an interesting battle due to the incredible parallels that can be drawn between their lives. Both were near rock bottom, but Stuart’s attendance at a number of MozzWazz Industries self-help seminars helped rebuild his ego in a more sensible, less volatile way (“Demolish and Distribute: Life improvements through busted chops” – 2 year course available for only £9999). Since then, Stuart has gone from strength to strength, rising to the top of the Belmont food chain and spraying his creative juices all over the metaphorical face of the student show. In short, a rout for My Life.

My Life 3-1 This Life

Scott

I’m going to put Scott up against Miles on the grounds that both have an eye for the ladies and both have worked in the Caribbean (tenuous I know, but I’m really tired and trying to get this finished off so that I can go and pick up my dry cleaning. I’m beginning to sympathise with how Egg felt trying to write his new book in that God awful This Life+10 thing they did). This one is really too close to call; they both seem to drift between relationships unwilling to face up to the fact that the person they’re avoiding being with is the one they really want (Anna in Miles’ case, Guy in Scott’s). I’m going to have to call this a score draw.

My Life 3-1 This Life

Guy

As some of the sharper among will have noted from earlier, Guy is going head-to-head with Anna, given that they’re both hard drinking, chain smoking coke heads. Guy wins by virtue of the fact that he’s actually none of those things. And also because I need to pee and I’m trying to get this finished off even though I’m now not so sure if it was such as good an idea for a post as I did when I started. It’s still better than any posts you lot have made though. Except maybe Mairi, but she’s got a year of an English degree in her favour so it’s pretty much a 2 tier system between her and the rest of us.

My Life 4-1 This Life

Conclusion

I think the result speaks for itself: my life is substantially better than This Life. Fact, double fact, factical challenge and yes, clusterfact. I think we would have had a massacre on our hands if we’d gone up against Attachments.

*Bootnote: Not everything in this list is true. I don’t hang around with so many lawyers these days.