K8 the GR8

It started with games like Batty, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum. Then, when Tandems arrived it was all about flight simulators, Indiana Jones/The Hobbit adventure games and Rogue. Sure, they took an age to load, but by the time came to start playing it was all so worth it! How simple our needs were back then.

A college buddy of mine then introduced me to console gaming. Many late night MarioKart contests were held in the bloke’s living quarters including me, the novelty girly gamer.

Most of my courtship with The Accidental Terrorist involved a PlayStation. In fact, it was how he used to lure me into his room. Wanna play the playstation? Works far better for me than something cheesy like; Shall we take this upstairs? (I know - yes I am a serious geek.) We played Crash Bandicoot, Worms and Micro Maniacs ’till our fingers bled, and had many sessions involving blokes coming over with beer for Gran Turismo races. I was referred to as ‘One of the Lads’, which was nice. It’s a rare doorway into the world of men and their true colours, it really is. As for trouncing them at Tekken?! Now that’s a moment to be proud of.

Then came the gaming revolution. Vice City. The Godfather. Scarface. You get the choice to walk around or hope on a bike. You can even steal a car and start riots if you like. You can conduct forceful negotiations with shop owners to win turf, or just go around lobbing hand-grenades onto beaches full of Americans. (Introducing this concept to my dad might at least keep him off the streets?) Then there’s Splinter Cellwith it’s gizmets and gadgos. I’m currently taking pot-shots at Germans in ‘Medal of Honour’, but if the game gets much harder, I’ll be winding that one up. I hate repetition.

In Canis Canem Edit, you get to re-live your school days. Health is gained from kissing girls, who will only put out if you buy them flowers or beat up the leader of a rival gang. You get to flush cherry bombs in the toilet and shoot rats with a slingshot. You also have to sit through class and complete puzzles to graduate -it is most definately my favourite game so far.

Console gaming is a wonderful, consequence free world. It also improves hand-eye co-ordination and bladder control. Everyone should have one.

The real shame is that gaming itself is such a male dominated activity. It’s not the fault of the game makers.. they tried to appeal to the girlies with games like The Sims, Wii, and of course BUZZ, but whenever I’m invited to a girly session in someones house and suggest I bring the Playstation, I get comments like; Sure! If you want to BORE us to death! I ask you though… how exciting is it really, to hear about the cost of hair-doos or discuss new shopping centers?

I would have lost faith in the whole matter if it weren’t for my discovering Cat’s Blog, I tell you.

Why aren’t there more of us out there?

I’m finding myself with spare time suddenly but with nothing much to say.  Then I decided that it is very rare for a blogger to post a post and use all of their tags at once (Bloggers such as Brian F and Stupid Irish Daddy are disqualified for lack of imagination of course).  This is my challenge,  and I’m giving myself an award for it.  You can have one too if you can do it.

What is both strange and unusual is that marijuana is illegal.  This subject is taboo, but it’s just something to think about.  Once one partakes in the activity of having a spliff, one is immediately part of the chain.  One is working hand in hand with the drug-lord and his artillery, and my philosophy is that this is unfair burden on us stoners.  It’s a little known fact that weed is quite benign, that it’s worst effects are the munchies and diminished brain capacity, but we accept this, and we take responsibility for it quietly and with a few giggles thrown in. 

Working the daily job is not easy.  Neither is dealing with the family and it’s shortcomings.  My weakness is that I would like to sit back and be able to put up with the tripe on the box and find it humourarse.  Sometimes it’s nice to listen to music or glance at the uncategorised pleasures of this life and be inspired to write new poems and things.  Contrary to public rantings, weed does not generally make us want to take up smack or turn bi-polar.

That’s all I’m saying because this is supposed to be a quickie.

Here’s my award.

Do you want it?  I’d offer it up for general grabs but seeing as memememe is one of my tags, I have to name names.

Me aul’ f’la

Irish Flirty Something

Scribbles by Hanulf

(You know you want it)

While still giving Baino’s meme serious consideration (I can’t wait to pass this doozy on, you’ll curse me from a height, you lucky unsuspecting few…) I thought I’d just go off on a bit of a rant.  Don’t mind me.

I adore watching films.  It’s one of my favourite past-times, and I’d consider myself having a pretty open mind.  The carpet at the shelves of my local video-store is threadbare from me pacing up and down.  There is however, one genre which I hate with a passion, and that is experimentative film.  Basically, if you’re looking at the dust cover and you see ‘WINNER - Cannes film festival’ or ‘NOMINATED - Sun-dance film festival’ emblazoned at the top, you’re guaranteed it’ll be a great waste of your hard-earned bucks.

Take Gus Van Sant’s ‘Elephant’, a film about the Columbine high-school shootings, or ‘Last days’, about the legend that was Kurt Kobain.  Both have the potential to be enthralling films, but they really aren’t.  Mostly you’re watching some half-assed acting (heavily abusing the ’smell the fart’ technique) and very long and boring shots of people not doing anything at all really.  It makes me want to pull my eyeballs out with a rusty six-inch nail.  There are people out there who love this tripe, and I just don’t get it.  They use words like ‘Directorial Triumph’ and ‘Infuriating Impenatribility’, when ‘Pure Shite’ would clearly suffice.

I brought back a film yesterday named ‘Inland Empire’, directed by David Lynch of ‘Mullholland Drive’ fame, though I didn’t notice that when I rented it.

Me: “Can I have my money back?  I couldn’t watch this.”

Video rental man: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.  It must be scratched.”

Me: “No no, it’s fine.  I just couldn’t bear wasting any more than fifteen minutes of my life watching it.  It’s crap.  It made me want to kill myself.”

Video rental man: “Ummm, really can’t help you there I’m afraid.”

You see films like ‘Sin City’ are surrealist in my view, but a fifteen minute long black and white shoot of a girl with a mascara streaked face staring at a dead TV screen and imagining people with rabbit heads on a stage doing nothing but spouting irrelevant statements is just a gratuitous glimpse into some oddball’s crazy mind.  Films like these should be restricted in availability only to those who use words like ‘Soupçon’ on a daily basis.

I watched those first few minutes of the film anxiously reassuring TAT that the madness would stop shortly and an interesting plot would ensue.  Less like watching a car-crash, more like watching maggots on a dead rat.  We felt a horrified boredom, an awareness that we had been duped, and above all, fury that such crud finds it’s way to the shelves of XtraVision. 

Yes, I’m shackled with the need to be entertained.  I want blood, explosions, unrequited love, conspiracy theories, back-stabbing, a twisted plot and mind-blowing music.  It’s not my fault I’m spoiled that way. 

Atmospheric genius? Avant-garde? An exercise in voyeurism?

Spare me.

Had another heated debate with TAT last night while watching Boston Legal (Why did Uhura cry?  Because William Shatner!) over the efforts of the main character to win over both his girlfriend and his manhood.  We had to agree to disagree in the end, but I’d love to hear your opinions on this…

-o-

Alan Shore, a high rolling solicitor is in a bar with his rather fetching girlfriend.  They agree to dabble in a little roleplay.  She decides to go and sit by the bar, requesting that Alan should approach her as a perfect stranger and chat her up.

So, off she toddles and parks herself on an empty stool only to be noticed straight away by a random baldy ‘built-like-a-brick-shithouse’ bloke who immediately approaches her with an increadibly cheesy line.  Alan Shore then comes over and announces himself as the competition.  The two men begin to snarl at each other (Alan using his usual smarm and quick wit) leading to the large bloke smacking Alan in the jaw.

Alan backs off and quickly manages to solicit a bunch of large men to help him out.

“I’ll give you 200 dollars to hit that man over there, and another 100 if you manage to floor him.” says he.

Large man approaches big bald man and hits him, instantly flooring him.  Bald man’s friend then hits solicited man.  A bar brawl ensues with Alan Shore randomly handing out 100 dollar notes to anyone who wishes to join in on his behalf.  Which they do.

-o-

As he watches this, TAT is roaring with laughter and yells- ‘HA!  Fair play to ‘im!!!  Wouldn’t you love to be able t’do that?!?’

I was visibly shocked.  I told TAT that if he ever did that, I’d drop him like a hot snot, that only a wanker with too much money would do that, which is, let’s face it, exactly what this character Alan Shore is.  I told him that women wanted to see their men defend themselves proudly, to go down fighting… not to wuss out and pay someone else to do the dirty work.  TAT in return is equally shocked. 

“But sure if he’s able to pay someone else to fight, then he can walk away unharmed and everyone’s happy!”

I retorted that most women were more turned on by balls than money, that if a man should engage in a fist fight in order to win a girl, he wouldn’t have to make much more of an effort to get into her knickers afterwards.  I then pointed out the scowl on the actress’ face and smugly said - “SEE?!”

“You’re not listening.  You don’t understand.”  he said.

I flipped him the birdie which is a good indication that the conversation is over.  The weird thing is that I know TAT would never pull this sort of stint and loves a good excuse for a brawl, so I’m pretty confused right here…

So my question to you men is… if you were minted and contesting for a beautiful woman, would you do the same thing, or fight man to man?

And to you women… which is a bigger turn on, man with money, or man with a full set of hairy cojones?

Yeah so it’s 3am or so in the morning.  Insomnia rocks my world. 

So I watched this film tonight over some leftover wine and othersuch intoxitating substances with TAT called ‘Idiocracy‘.  It’s the sort of film who’s box you’d pass in the videoshop many times, thinking… yeah, I’ll wait ’till it appears on TV…  but something pushed me towards it out of the blue so I splurged.

You’re probably never going to watch it, so I’m going to tell you what it’s about.

This guy (played by Luke Wilson), middle aged, middle height, middle weight, mediocracy. He works for the military.  He’s chosen to participate in a military operation to be frozen, and to be defrosted in times of war when able bodied men are needed most.  He has no family so he figures; Hey! Why not?!

Included in this experiment is a prostitute.  For the craic.

There is, however, a terrible incident where this particular sector of the military is destroyed, thus leaving both freezer-capsules to be lost and forgotten…

…for 500 years.

Our hero wakes up as a result of a garbage avalanche which is a result of mankind’s total deterioration.

You see the theory behind the film is that evolution doesn’t depend on the smartest or the fittest.  It depends on fertility.  All those crackheads you see on the Jerry Springer show - trailer park U.S.A. - are producing the future.  The surgeons and physicists of our age are too busy to have children.

Think about it.

So anyway… our hero wakes up to a thick nation.  He gets arrested for talkin’ queer.  The world is based on commercialism and gatorade, so he gets nowhere near a fair trial…hey I’m giving away too much of the film so I’ll leave you with a quote from it. 

(Our hero is in coversation with the prostitute, his only companion from 500 years ago.  He has just been told by the President of the United States that he’s the most intelligent person in the world.  Giving his surrounding company, he doesn’t need much convincing, but has been faced with the dilemma of fixing the chaos that surrounds him, caused by generations of sheer stupidity.  He’s overwhelmed with the fact that he, an average Joe who has nothing special to offer, is now the cleverest person in the world.)

The prostitute says: “You think Einstein walked around thinkin’ everyone was a bunch of dumb shits?”

Joe stops and thinks.  “Yeah, hadn’t thought of that.”

She replies: “Now you know why he built that bomb.”

Visual bubblegum with a bite!

The latest rented box-set we’re renting (kudos to Xtravision for that idea!) is called The Unit.  It is a very excellent, highly addictive series, produced by the same dude that wrote The Shield.  You won’t recognise many heads in it, apart from Dennis Haysbert who played Robert Palmer, the first black president of the U.S. in ‘24′ of Jack Bauer fame. 

Just thought I’d share a joke from one of the episodes…

A man rests his spoon on a napkin beside a large bowl of chili.  A collegue walks over, sees the man not eating, and asks - “Are you done with that?”  The bowl is pushed over, and the collegue tucks in, until he finds that at the bottom of the bowl is a dead rat.  He throws up everything he’s eaten back into the bowl, and the other guy says;

“Yeah, that’s about as far as I got, too..”