| (no subject) |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|11:44 pm] |
My word, it's been a busy weekend by my standards. And so, when I should be sleeping at the end of it, I'm typing on Livejournal. Which I haven't updated in about 4 months.
Anyway, starting on Friday night, a few of us went to see New Moon in an ironic hipster like way. They're good comedy films, as long as you shut down your brain enough.
In this movie, Edward (the vampire) decides it's too dangerous for him to be around Bella (the main character), so leaves. Bella cries and mopes and generally overreacts way too much, but then finds solace in the arms of Jacob (the buff one who takes his clothes off every ten minutes). Then Jacob turns into a werewolf. And then some vampires come back because Edward is trying to commit suicide by walking into sunlight. Not because it kills him, but because then he'll sparkle so much that even the vampire council will decide that god damn this sparkle shit is stupid and kill him. Or something. Oh, and Bella dumps Jacob because he isn't Edward. Or maybe she's just not into furries.
On Saturday, I then went to the Skunk Anansie gig. Because my favourite band have reformed after 8 years. It was excellent, and I shall be going again next time they play Leeds.
On Sunday, films again. This time, good ones.
At the film festival they showed Summer Wars and Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.
Both films were excellent.
I don't think Summer Wars has overtaken The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in my mental ranking of movies, but it was pretty solid, and managed to stay interesting for the full two hours.
Ponyo was a fun take on The Little Mermaid by Studio Ghibli, and I think it's one of their better ones.
Maybe more detailed reviews later, but it's nearly midnight. |
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| New Laptop, MUCH BETTER than the old laptop |
[Jul. 21st, 2009|12:14 pm] |
So on the recent payday I took my money and went down to PC World (boo hiss) to buy a new computer. An hour later I walked out with a new laptop under my arm. The screen, being 16:9, is a bit shorter than my old one, but much wider, which works out better for watching stuff in widescreen i.e. most of what I use it for.
And now, after being several months without a proper working computer, I'm remembering the joys and boredoms. The internet is largely bland and dead, I use it for webcomics and a bit of news on games and films and the like.
On the other hand, I'm reverting back to my anime-watching ways. I suspect I've watched more anime in the past week than in the previous 6 months, and enjoyed most of it. Mostly sequels (Tower of Druaga 2, Spice and Wolf 2, Haruhi 2, Higurashi Rei) but also a couple of episodes of new things (Canaan was generic, Needless was terrible AND had Takehito Koyasu as the main character) and moeblobs (K-On! is pretty damn moeblobby).
But I'm enjoying watching anime again, so that's always good.
Although I will say this: Damn You Endless Eight!! I like that one of the people involved has apologised for it, even if he doesn't work for KyoAni any more and can say what he wants.
Also, playing video games. I now live in a house with an XBox 360, and it has to be said there's just more games I'm playing on it than on the PS3. Prototype was great misanthropic fun, but Lost Odyssey is an exercise in grinding. IOnline Settlers is always good, though, except when dice screw kills you. Although I will admit that one of those games is Street Fighter 4.
The new house goes well, I have space to do baking now, so I'll be making all sorts of delicious things, eating them, and getting fatter, I'm sure. |
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| Zombunnies |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|09:26 am] |
Time for another poster. Alas, when I went back to get a photo of this one, it had been taken down, presumably because it had been scrawled on and vandalised. Philistines.
The poster, however, was very simple, just plain black text on a white background. So far, so good. Points for a simple, easy to comprehend aesthetic. It read:
Christians – The Easter Bunny Didn’t Come Back From The Dead
I’ll let that sink in for a moment. The Easter Bunny Didn’t Come Back From The Dead. I’m more than happy for Churches to try and remind people that a holiday has religious significance (although we could easily get into a discussion about how most Christian holidays are in fact altered pagan festivals), but this feels like it’s gone a little too far.
Normally these posters promote Christianity as a place of love and understanding. The message this time, however, comes across as “Ha ha, the bunny is dead. Now come worship Jesus.”
Were I a child or, indeed, a parent, I would decry such a message with every fibre of my being. Talking about dead bunnies is no way to encourage children to go to church. And the smug satisfaction radiating from this poster is certainly off-putting. The Easter Bunny is a nice bonus for children, like Santa at Christmas, and if handled properly can be a wonderful part of Easter.
Another obvious point to make is that the Easter Bunny, to my knowledge, isn’t dead anyway, so certainly can’t be said to have risen from its grave. Unless the Pope put out a hit on this dirty pagan icon. Who knows what sort of sick mind could think about killing a Bunny whose only job is to promote obesity and tooth decay. I mean chocolate. Maybe the Bunny committed Suicide.
All this talk of dead Easter Bunnies (if there can be more than one) leads to an even more disturbing train of thought. If the Easter Bunny is dead, but still moving, then surely it is, in fact, Undead (OooOOOooo). What form it takes is unknown. Zombie Easter Bunny, Vampire Easter Bunny, or even Mummy Easter Bunny.
Maybe that’s its second job. Provider of sweet treats in April, and, six months later, provider of sweet treats with a spooky premise during Halloween. Like opposite sides of the same chocolate coin.
Overall, I think this poster has abjectly failed at its attempt to get people into church, so it receives a failing grade.
Overall rating: F-
The minus is for bunnicide. |
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| Energizer Bunny, Duracell Bunny, Jesus Bunny? |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|03:36 pm] |
If your batteries need re-charging, Jesus is ever ready!
Or so the poster says. Not much of an interesting picture on this one (not that I managed to get one, being on a bus), but it did have little lightning bolts going everywhere and jagged writing, presumably to emphasise the electrical nature of Jesus's powers.
I know the poster is entirely metaphorical, but taking it literally produces eerie results. Humans are actually a race of sentient robots running on battery power, and Jesus is the local technician who recharges us. How does he recharge us? With jumper cables, or godly thunderbolts? Actually, godly thunderbolts would be pretty cool, and invokes a classic Zeus type aspect to Christianity.
As a metaphor, though, I'm reasonably happy with this poster. Feeling down? Pop in for a quick pick-me-up, it implies, giving hope of a brief respite from the woes of the world. Most people would get that, and so the message is clear and hopeful.
Aesthetically, it suffers from being a cheap two-tone poster, but I can see the designer worked with what he had available.
Overall rating: B+
(A picture of Jesus throwing a thunderbolt would have moved it into solid A territory.) |
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| Ben Reviews Posters so you don't have to go to Church. |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|11:21 am] |
I think I will start a new, intermittent blog project. A review of church posters.
Although I have admired and raged at posters outside churches for years, the sign that started me off on this idea was glimpsed briefly during a bus journey from Pudsey. Pictures will come, I promise.
The sign features an image of Mario as envisaged during Super Mario Bros in all his 8-bit glory, leaping towards a block. The block is somewhat smaller than a regular Mario block, and features an S on it.
The caption reads: Church is your save point.
Now, I’m not entirely sure who this poster is aimed at. It has a very confused message. The caption, “Church is your save point”, makes little to no sense. For those of us who understand computer games and how they work, a save point is a section of a game where you can save your progress, so that you can come back to it to undo mistakes, or to start again if you die. Perhaps the poster is trying to use the term as “Church is a place where you will be saved”, thus totally confusing the term save point. The image of an 8-bit Mario doesn’t help, either. No-one under the age of around 20 will be likely to have played that version, and so will possibly be totally confused by who this jumping man is. But anyone who does recognise him, more than likely from playing the original games, will be confused by the existence of a save block. There were no save points, least of all save blocks. Although Save blocks did exist in Paper Mario, interestingly enough.
Anyone who likes computer games is likely to be turned off by the complete lack of comprehension of how computer games work, while anyone who doesn’t understand them will be fearful of this incomprehensible poster.
Overall, a marked failure of a poster, although I appreciate the concept.
Grade: D
There is another poster I would have liked to have photographed, but unfortunately had not had this idea at the time, and the poster has since been replaced with a rather boring one. The poster simply had a caption saying “God is the original recycler!”.
On its surface this is a fine message, tapping in to the collective idea that recycling is a Good Thing, and since God recycles, clearly there’s something to all this church stuff after all, eh? However, thinking about it for more than a second produces the following questions. Exactly what did God recycle? And when? And come to think of it, why would God recycle? God is supposed to be an omnipotent being. There’s no need to recycle if you’re omnipotent, you can simply will things in and out of existence. It’s possible that the poster is referring to Jesus, who in Christian mythology rose from his grave after three days. Referring to this as recycling seems in poor taste to me, and I’m not even Christian.
Another possible interpretation that, frankly, goes completely against Christianity is that God is recycling souls i.e. the concept of reincarnation. Reincarnation is nothing to do with Christianity, so this would be a very silly message.
Overall, a decent poster at first glance, but a bit of a failure in the end.
Grade: C-
And so that concludes the first instalment of Church Sign Review. Hopefully I will find more interesting church posters to talk about in the future. |
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| TERMINATOR |
[Jun. 6th, 2009|08:54 am] |
My word, LJ is telling me I haven't updated in 2 weeks. Better make a pithy post about a movie review.
Terminator Salvation is a fun movie. Featuring explosions, bullets, a ton of references to Terminator 1 and 2, a nonsensical plot and explosions. It certainly feels like a film attempting to make reparations for the third one (although I should point out I haven't seen that), but that's ok, because it's just so much fun. The time travel plot is involved in an interesting way, as the film timeline now approaches the other side of the journey made in the original Terminator film, and only John Connor knows what is going to happen. This leads to a plot where Mr Connor is trying to keep the timeline as intact as much as possible. Oh, and there's a guy who's obviously a terminator in disguise (especially if you watched the trailer where they gave that away) that is attempting to live his life as a human. Because, you know, he actually is. Aside from a few nonsensical plot points, the film is a perfectly good way to go and spend a couple of hours just sitting back and enjoying the special effects. In my opinion, not as good as the first two, but still a solid film worth the price of entry.
Also, there was a trailer for an upcoimng Bruce Willis film called Surrogates. At first it looked like it could be a cool Philip K. Dick-esque film about people using robot bodies to live their lives, but then apparently it's actually just Die Hard with robots. Either way, I'll be going to see that. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|12:17 pm] |
So my manager has just come to me and said, and I quote: "We have no plans to get rid of you". That's one big worry off my mind, especially since I was worried about becoming unemployed on 1st April, and already looking at my bank balance to figure out what to do to survive past that. By living frugally I think I could have survived until the end of May, including putting a deposit down on a house for next year, by which point I would have hopefully had another job or (worst case) been claiming benefits. But now it's all good, although I still won't be splashing out on a PS3 any time soon.
Apart from that, life continues on in the same old fashion. I game, I watch movies. Last night Phil and I watched the Matrix, with the added RiffTrax commentary. RiffTrax is one of the two successors to MST3K, where they mock movies. Traditionally they did bad movies, but now they release audio tracks that synch up to more well-known movies, so you can pop in a dvd and play the mp3 at the same time for fun. It was pretty good stuff, and I'll be looking into getting hold of other movies to match them up to the RiffTrax commentaries.
Recently I picked up Chrono Trigger DS. I love Chrono Trigger, it's always been one of my favourite SNES games, and now it's one of my favourite DS games as well. The added dungeons were quite impressive, if I did have to run up and down one particular mountain a few too many times for my liking, and it's always nice to see the return of the Time Devourer. However, the increased links to Chrono Cross have made me want to play thta again, and since it was never released in Europe, this will be hard to do. To be honest, I should just try and pick up a chipped PS2, since I have a few games I want to play now which need foreign consoles.
I went to see Watchmen a while ago and was fairly impressed by the adaptaion to the silver screen. A bunch of stuff had to be cut out, sure, and the pace was upped considerably to fit everything in, and everyone was suddenly a kung fu genius, but apart from all that it did a fairly good and faithful job of adapting the story.
The real bonus of going to see that though was the ludicrous number of film trailers I was interested in. Star Trek, Wolverine, Terminator 4, Transformers 2, Monsters vs Aliens, Lesbian Vampire Killers. Maybe not all of these things had trailers, but many of them did, and they all look entertaining in their own ways.
Also, I should be running a quick Feng Shui adventure tonight for our roleplay group. Good old Feng Shui. |
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| New Year, same as the Old Year |
[Jan. 7th, 2009|01:10 pm] |
It’s the new year, and I can’t seem to think of anything interesting (even by moy low standards) to write.
I’m trying to get a new laptop, but it’s causing me enough troubles that I’m just going to wait a month or two until I can pay fully, in cash (or, more likely, on my debit card).
I’m a little low on cash, after making the decision to pay off the council tax bill early, but it does mean increased cash flow for the next few months. Also my house mates currently owe me a bit of money for recent bills, but I’m sitting on enough to get by until payday, so no real worries right now.
Work is back to normal as the school term starts again and people return from Christmas leave.
Speaking of leave, I’ve stuck my last week in on the 16th-20th of February, which just so happens to fall on payday. And, apparently, half term. I’ll try and go home for a proper visit for the week.
I’ve read Ultimate Spiderman recently, start to finish. It’s good stuff, and frankly the only thing of worth to come out of the Ultimate universe so far. All the villains appear to be ramped up a little, though, having greater powers than their 616 counterparts. Now that that’s done, I should really try and get a proper start on the book club book. It’s quite naff so far, but I’ll try and get it read to show willing.
Another thing I was recently invited into was a Facebook group. Exciting stuff, this. It’s a group about Quaker Youth Writing or something, and it’s made me feel like writing a brief piece on my faith and how I follow it. So, I’ll be doing that sometime soon. |
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| Worst time of year |
[Dec. 21st, 2008|02:22 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  sad | ] |
I've bought all my presents, but I can't talk about them |
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| The IT Crowd |
[Nov. 27th, 2008|10:55 am] |
I see a third series of the IT Crowd has started, and I was pleasd with the first episode.
I wasn't too impressed by series 2, so here's hoping they can stay entertaining for the rest of this series. |
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| The Global Elders |
[Nov. 24th, 2008|03:04 pm] |
Recently I found out about an international group called The Global Elders.
Founded by Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel, this is a special council of noted old men and women who specialise in solving humanitarian crises.
Current members include Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, and Nelson Mandela.
This is the most awesome thing I have ever found out about. |
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| Hands: The Hands of Fate |
[Nov. 19th, 2008|03:17 pm] |
Last night we watched Manos (the MST3K version), and I was reminded just how utterly bad it is. I often refer to Bram Stoker's Legend of the Mummy 2 as the worst film I've ever seen, but that's only because it didn't have a hilarious commentary provided for me. Manos truly is an appalling film.
Great swathes of the movie are made up of sections where the actors stand there NOT DOING ANYTHING. The acting is pretty bad, the editing is appalling, they forgot to add the opening credits, and there's a a bunch of sequences with two teenagers making out in a car that has nothing to do with the main plot.
Occasionally some cops show up and seem like they're going to do something, but then go away again, with lines like "That sounded like gunfire". "Yeah, but sound travels. It's probably from Mexico."
When the characters do things, they're interminably slow and useless. Torgo spends minutes crossing rooms, and when The Master orders his wives to beat him to death, they just kind of ineffectually play-slap his face.
Basically OH GOD THIS FILM IS AWFUL. I MEAN REALLY REALLY BAD.
But the MST3K commentary is very well done. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 19th, 2008|09:08 am] |
I recently came to the end of the plot-based schenanigans in Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
A fascinating game, it's a mix of adventure game and puzzle game, but not in the traditional Monkey Island sense. You travel around a village, talking to people and picking up clues, and along the way you solve puzzles. Endless, endless puzzles involving working out the area of a shape or moving matchsticks to change a picture.
( Spoilers for those who might actually care. )
The puzzles are, for the most part, fairly simple, but the game has a nice little hint system. Around the village you will come across 'hint coins', which can be cashed in to buy hints for any particular puzzle. But there are a limited number of coins (about 100), and with 3 hints per puzzle and over 130 puzzles, there's no way to use the hint coins recklessly. I have had to use hint coins on occasion for some particularly hard puzzles, and some easy puzzles that I just couldn't figure out for one reason or another.
Anyway, having solved all the main puzzles, I'm on to the bonus sections. The stupidly hard bonus sections. My word, these puzzles are hard. After that, I will start looking into the wireless download puzzles, which I hear tell are sufficiently puzzling to provide real challenges.
But this turned out to be a fantastic game that appeals to my love of brain-teasers and adds a nice little plot to make it fun. |
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| Roleplaying |
[Nov. 18th, 2008|03:04 pm] |
After my Saturday evening out, I met a bunch of friends who I normally roleplay with, and was berated for not having been to a session in months. This prompted a return to monday night gaming, which has moved on to a new game.
The current game is a Call of Cthulu game, set in 1921. We consist of members and hangers-on of the English Cricket squad, travelling around Africa and playing cricket. Until we were captured by Deep Ones.
Now we're trying to escape, and, as is par the course with our group, we're proving hilariously incompetent at inopportune moments.
After failing a sanity check while watching a mystic gate in space and time open up, my character went blind temporarily. Not one to let that stop him show Johnny foreigner a thing or two, he opened fire with his pistol anyway. At which point I completely cocked up the attack roll and managed to shoot another character in the back. This character, meanwhile, had also gone slightly insane, and believed there to be flying monsters where there were none. He then pointed my gun in approximately the right direction and convinced my blind character to begin shooting at the non-existent monster. So, while the other two characters were dealing with the threat at hand (a bunch of cultists and deep ones), we were shooting at the ceiling, wasting our precious ammo and generally providing no help at all.
One day we might last an entire session without someone messing up spectacularly, but I honestly don't see it happening any time soon. |
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| Shadow Hearts III |
[Nov. 17th, 2008|08:57 am] |
After playing the latest installment of this frankly bizarre series of games, I have to say this one is possibly more insane than the last, if that's possible.
Shadow Hearts Covenant was set in Europe (and later Japan), 1915, and dealt largely with various monsters and demons and multiple plots to destroy the world. It had a few quirky characters, to be sure, like a wolf, a wrestling vampire, Gepetto and Princess Anastasia Romanov, but it was made sense in its own odd way.
Shadow Hearts From The New World, by comparison, features Mao, a talking cat who masters drunken martial arts and runs Al Capone's territory for him while he's in Alcatraz. And Frank, who learned the art of ninjitsu from a secret tribe of Japanese ninjas who had been living in the Amazon basin since about 1629.
I am impressed by the addition of Professor Lovecraft of Arkham University, who summons the monsters from your memories so he can watch you fight them.
Maybe I just got used to the odities in Covenant and am now being confronted by all-new insanity, forcing me to change my view points.
Either way, it's not getting NaNo done. |
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| Shadow Hearts II |
[Nov. 16th, 2008|12:16 pm] |
I just finished Shadow Hearts Covenant. I got the good end, where the main character dies. Yes, that's the good end. Although there's an ambiguous part involving time travel that suggests he might not die after all, but in fact go back to before the first game. Fun game, if a little easy for the most part. Although I did do a lot of side quests, so I was probably stronger than I should have been.
A shame Geppetto was bloody awful in combat.
Oh well, on to the next one. |
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| And now for a Muppet Newsflash! There is no news tonight. |
[Nov. 14th, 2008|09:48 am] |
Recently I picked up (on the cheap) the first two seasons of The Muppet Show on DVD.
Now I love The Muppets. Their particular brand of terrible jokes and slapstick appeals to a very visceral sense of humour. And it's fascinating watching these characters evolve from their earliest incarnations to become fully realised individuals.
What really appeals to me is the technical skill of the performers and Muppet-crafters. The combination means these characters don't come across as pieces of cloth, but as actual characters in their own right.
This is epitomised by a story on one of the discs where Frank Oz came over to a guest during a break in filming as Fozzie Bear, and started a conversation. After about the 10-15 minutes, the guest stopped and said "What's wrong with me? I'm talking to a bear!"
Some of the guests are fantastic as well. Peter Ustinov in particular was wonderful, leading to what is possibly one of my favourite episodes so far. |
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| Glooby Room |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|12:11 pm] |
So, Ruby Gloom.
Some of you may have heard about this series (particularly those of you who put up with me on a regular basis), but it's a slightly bizarre comedy children's cartoon based on a range of gothic fashion. This is far from the first time a cartoon has spun out of a marketing character (Hello Kitty being the closest example, but toys like Transformers and He-Man having similar origins). While being ill lately, I managed to catch up and finish all the episodes produced so far.
However, Ruby Gloom quickly found a place as a show I enjoyed, mainly due to the presence of Misery. Misery is very much like Eeyore, although perhaps more extreme. She's very enthusiastic about things, but is far more likely to be randomly struck by lightning for no good reason. This makes her utterly adorable and any episode focusing on her tends to be a superior one. Yes, I'm a big girl who likes cartoons because they have adorable characters. Bite me.
Aside from that, the music is generally quite good quality, although occasionally tunes and riffs are repeated between episodes. Some episodes, though, like Hair(less): The Musical featured particularly good musical writing (in this case, as a parody/homage of the musical genre).
Some of the runing jokes can get a bit tired, particularly Skullboy's "I must come from a long line of X" schtick, but overall it works as light entertainment. This is helped by each episode featuring a short sketch at the beginning and end unrelated to the main plot. This means the episodes are somewhat shorter than other shows might be, preventing most ideas from being stretched out too far.
Anyway, I like it. And I thought I'd share my opinion. |
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