sin city

I love going into a movie and not knowing what to expect. This happened yesterday afternoon with Sin City.

It's basically a film version of 3 graphic novels from the early 90's and looks exactly as you'd expect. Batman and Spiderman have both successfully been adapted for the big screen, but Sin City hasn't been adapted at all. It's been totally enlarged.
Each scene looks like it's jumped right out of a comic, which makes sense, as the director used the original comics as the storyboard.
It was shot in black and white, with splashes of colour, so most of the blood is either black, white or yellow (...it makes sense when you see it), and there's enough violence to satisfy anyone's inner sadist. My favourite scene has to be where a big dude (Mickey Rourke) is driving down the road with his door open, dragging another guy along the ashphalt by his face. Here's the original comic. The film scene looks the same, but it's moving :)

The whole thing was shot in front of green screens, so every background was added in later. The black and white is stunning, and any scene with a moving car looks incredible.

Verdict: You're not going to get a better big screen version of a comic. It's just not possible.

eat the pudding

Sometimes it's nice to do something a little special. Occasionally you'll buy Crown Cola instead of Coke. You might get imported olive oil instead of the local stuff, or get meat from the butchers, not the pre-packaged stuff from th supermarket.
Last night, instead of getting takeaway curry, or eating at a $5 Chinese buffet, Deb and I partook of a little eight course fine dining.
(The following is ripped from their website, so it may be an ingredient or two out)

1. Freshly Baked White & Wholemeal Breads With Two Butters
2. Organic Duck Noodle Soup
3. Pickled Vegetable & Rice Noodle Salad, Asian Pesto Yoghurt
4. Wok Tossed Queensland Bug Meat, Green Papaya, Spanish Onion, Chilli Salad, Passionfruit Mirin Dressing
5. Crispy Fried Milawa Free Range Chicken & Country Tender Eye Fillet Salad, Watercress, Mint, Peanuts, Shallots, Creamy Coconut Dressing
6. Cajun Spiced Lamb Fillet, Roasted Sweet Potato & Pumpkin Mash, Minted Tamarind Jelly
7. Dessert Plate – Belgium Orange Chocolate Semi Fredo, Plum Pudding & PX Ice Cream & Cone, Mango Agar Jelly, Wild Fig Honeycomb Mascarpone Meringue, Vanilla Bean, Vodka, Choc Mousse, Maraschino Choc Cherry Souffle
8. Gravity Organic 100% Arabica Coffee OR Tease Tea Served With Petit Fours

So basically, we got to try loads of food, a number of different wines and went home totally satisfied.

Take that Colonel Sanders

because there's not mushroom inside

The UK has just reclassified magic mushrooms as Class A Drugs (note the capital D).
BBC News

I can't wait to see the Columbians rip out all of their coca crops and replace them with humidity controlled fungus sheds.
I realise that a few people who are susceptible to schizophrenia may be adversely affected, but it's not like the other 99.5% of shroomers are ruining their lives. The only reason that psychedelic drugs are illegal is because governments know that their mental health care systems are not up to scratch. Mushrooms may help bring on people's psychological problems, but at least it gets it out in the open instead of leaving their mental illness to fester untreated.

Also, making stuff illegal only makes it more attractive to young people. The same people that the law is looking to protect. I'm not saying to scrap the law, but just realise that a lot of people are going to try drugs at some point and there's no sense in making them deal with criminals to get them.

Verdict: Standard government knee jerk reaction to a crying parent

apple earstones

I bought myself an iPod a few months ago.
It wasn't the cheapest thing I've ever bought... in fact I could've flown from here to Dunedin and back (and then back to Dunedin again) for what it cost me. That said, I'm really happy with it, but I just want to ask Steve Jobs one question:
"What the hell is with those crappy fucking earphones you get with them?!"
If you're reading this and think that I'm over-reacting, I can safely assume that you've never had the pleasure of trying to jam the damn things in your ears! I challenge you to buy a pair (or borrow some. I have a pair you can have) stick them in your ears and tell me that they
a) are comfortable
b) don't leak noise in or out, and
c) sound better than elevator music when heard from three floors away.

Seriously, if you can answer in the affirmative to any of these, you
a) have the weirdest shaped ear holes
b) don't sit near anyone when you listen to your music, and
c) listen to Country & Western, where the further away you get, the better it sounds

As far as I'm concerned, it's like a Mercedes coming with go kart wheels as standard.
What's the point in marketing this great (expensive) music player, if the first thing people hear out of it is the equivalent of trying to force a cow's fart out of a mouse's butt?

Verdict: parp

this is getting ridiculous

There's reports of more explosions in London. Rumour has it a nail bomb was let off at Warren St, Shepherd's Bush Green is sealed off and somethings gone on at Oval as well.

it's been ten days since my last confession

So this really is hard to keep up with. In the last ten days, I've committed most of or a combination of the deadly sins. My favourite two at the moment are:
Gluttony: Me and the missus have been buying a lot of wine recently. To our credit, there's still some left, but it's really hard to have bottles sitting there unopened when you know how good it would taste with dinner.
I also had a work function last Friday with a 4 course meal and all the wine and beer you can fit. Apparantly I can fit a fair bit.
Sloth: Basically the entire Saturday after my work dinner and most evenings.

I reckon, another few weeks and I'll have collected all seven. Lucky I'm an atheist or God would be really unhappy with me.

Grooverider

The last time I heard loud music was at New Years. For those of you with poor maths skills, that's over 6 months ago! It's not that I've lost the urge to partay, it's just that it costs so damn much to have a big night out over here. Example:

London
One ticket to Fabric to see Plump DJs, Andy C, Krafty Kuts andDJ Hype on the same night: ­£11
One bottle of water: £2
err... miscellaneous: £14
Walk to catch the bus home from Oxford Circus - Free
Total £27

Melbourne
One ticket to see Grooverider and some local DJs (plus a band with a singer that you can't hear): $38
A bottle of wine, a beer, 3 bourbons and a bottle of water: $57
Cab home $20
Total: $115

Even once you've taken the exchange rate into account, it's damn expensive.
The "miscellanous" does tend to remove a whole lot of other costs, but isn't value for money what all of us are after?

Anyway, Friday night was pretty cool. It started out with John Doe and Blanco: a couple of DJs playing inoffensive, easy going DnB. A live band (Beat Smugglers) came on at 1am and played some DnB(?) and hip hop. They were ok, but the singer was totally drowned out which made everything seem incomplete. Deb spoke to the sound engineer about it, but apparantly he couldn't turn the guy up anymore because of feedback. Bugger.
Then at 2am, Grooverider came on. Maybe it was because I had a few drinks under my belt, and perhaps the long hiatus had left me wanting, but it went off. The speakers were trying to tear themselves of their mounts, and my eyeballs were doing their best not to implode under the pressure. After 2 hours of relentless, dark Drum and Bass, he moved aside and let a female DJ take over (Dust). She was hard to tell apart from Grooverider, as she was technically brilliant, and was playing from the same song book. The only way you could tell them apart is she is young, white and has boobies, whereas Grooverider is the opposite.
4.30 rolled around and it was time to go; totally drained, sore feet and ears full of clay. My ears still haven't totally recovered (It's Sunday evening and I can still hear a faint buzing noise), but I'd happily go through it all over again.

Verdict: Loud = good

London

Holy shit. I've just been absorbing all the news I can find about the bombings in London. There's nothing worse than being so far away from people you care about and having to check up on them. Everyone from the old circles is ok so far, but bloody hell.

When has terrorism EVER solved anything? The twin towers issue didn't make anyone sit up and listen! Instead it pretty much polarized the US and destroyed a couple of countries in the process!

fuckers

[update]

So there's at least two deaths and a load of serious injuries. 7 blasts that we know fo so far, and apparently al-Quaida have taken responsibility. For what? When are we going to find out what the fucking excuse is this time? It's funny that the majority of the world can get together and talk about stuff over lunch, whereas these people just blow shit up. It is never going to help your cause. Deal with it

runny noses and childbirth

At work on Thursday, there were three people in my team who were "soldiering on" through a variety of illnesses. Cold and flu symptoms were rife: you couldn't go for 2 minutes without someone sneezing, blowing their nose or complaining about the throbbing headache they had.
What really shits me is the way they all refused to go home because they've already used up their sick days for either hangovers or apathy days. Instead, the buggers come to work, full to the eyeballs with mucus, coughing clouds of virus everywhere and passing their crap onto me! I've been working on an intranet project since the start of May, and it was due to be signed off and handed over yesterday. Instead of getting kudos from the management and the satisfaction of a job well done, I spent the day at home on the sofa, under a duvet, watching TV and basically feeling sorry for myself.

Why is it that you never remember how bad it is having a cold? It's like childbirth (albeit to a lesser extent). Your brain completely blocks out the memories of having a cold. You can vaguely recall it being uncomfortable, but it's always a lot worse when it comes around again. The simple act of swallowing, for example. It's more like trying to jam a roll of sandpaper down the inside of your neck than swallowing. Same with the nose. Yeah, you remember having to blow it a lot, and you're constantly aware that it could start dripping at any time, but you always forget how nasty it is when you're trying to get to sleep! You can't lie on your back, or it pools in the back of your throat, either choking you awake, or (apparantly) making a noise like the last inch of a draining bathtub. You can't lie on your side, unless you want to wake up with your face lying in a pool of cold booger.