Talking to the kids...

This is actually (possibly) my favourite Smiths song. I know, right. Nobody picks this one. It’s not Panic, or How Soon Is Now? or Bigmouth or The Queen Is Dead. It’s not even Frankly, Mr. Shankly. But nobody really ever cites this song as a classic of theirs. It so rarely gets a mention. It was even a pointless answer when Pointless did Smiths singles as a final question a few weeks ago (I got two pointless answers, for those keeping score). But anyway, I myself love this song. I love everything about it. I think it’s the little “urrrgh” noises Morrissey does that seal it for me. I like joining in with them when I listen to it.

So, late to the party, but having finally watched The Artist, I feel it necessary to say that I think it deserved the praise and the Oscars, and in particular the Best Actor Oscar. However, the wrong actor got the award. The Oscar should have gone to the dog. Not to take anything away from Jean Dujardin who got the trophy, but damn man, that dog totally stole the show. Sort it out, Hollywood. I want a “Best Dog” award at the next ceremony.

So, late to the party, but having finally watched The Artist, I feel it necessary to say that I think it deserved the praise and the Oscars, and in particular the Best Actor Oscar. However, the wrong actor got the award. The Oscar should have gone to the dog. Not to take anything away from Jean Dujardin who got the trophy, but damn man, that dog totally stole the show. Sort it out, Hollywood. I want a “Best Dog” award at the next ceremony.

This is the second cover of this song I’ve posted on here (the QueenAdreena version was posted a while back) and I think this might be my favourite. I can feel a White Stripes binge coming on.

I think Tyrion Lannister might just be my favourite character in anything.

I think Tyrion Lannister might just be my favourite character in anything.

Reality: The thin line between hero and villain…

Just walked into an old mans house. He’s sat contemplating the perils and pitfalls of his life in a run down hamlet. I don’t bother talking to him because I don’t want to hear his craic. I casually saunter past him with my mates, open his kitchen drawer, and half inch all of his coin before nonchalantly walking out of the door.

In real life I’d be sub-human scum. In Final Fantasy VII I’m saving the world.

HEROIC NEWS: We can now buy Pokemon onesies…

It's like an elaborate game of rock scissor paper.

Yes. Yes yes yes. YES.

Pokemon onesies. How many times have you been sat around the house, in your pants, watching Jeremy Kyle with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, thinking, “The only thing that could make this better is if I was dressed like a Snorlax”?

Yeah, I know. All the time, right? Well, thanks to the good people at Kotaku, I have just learned that some genius has started making Pokemon onesies for grown ups like you and me. No more trying to squeeze into kids costumes, or glueing feathers to yourself and holding a leek in Tesco shouting “Farfetch’d!”.

Heroic merchant Allforonesies is selling these things at a somewhat eyebrow raising £45, but I guess they’re all custom made, and you know, you can’t put a price on looking good, can you?

Bitch please. I'm Snivy.

I’m simply going to have to get myself a Snivy onesie at some point. I mean look at him. He knows he’s a lord. And being dressed like him is that double edged sword of smug, self-superiority counteracted by the fact that you’re sat in what is essentially an overgrown romper suit while real men are out fighting wars and fucking broads. But fuck them, I’m a Snivy.

So. Which one are you getting?

I eat too much to die,
And not enough to stay alive.
I’m sitting in the middle waiting

Days since I last pissed,
Cheeks sunken and despaired.
So gorgeous sunk to six stone,
Lose my only remaining home.

See my third rib appear,
A week later all my flesh disappears.
Stretching taut, cling-film on bone,
I’m getting better.

Karen says I’ve reached my target weight,
Kate and Emma and Kristin know it’s fake.
Problem is diet’s not a big enough word,
I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view.

I want to walk in the snow,
And not leave a footprint.
I want to walk in the snow,
And not soil its purity.

Stomach collapsed at five,
Lift up my skirt my sex is gone.
Naked and lovely and 5st. 2,
May I bud and never flower.

My vision’s getting blurred,
But I can see my ribs and I feel fine.
My hands are trembling stalks,
And I can feel my breasts are sinking.

Mother trys to choke me with roast beef,
And sits savouring her sole Ryvita.
That’s the way you’re built my father said,
But I can change, my cocoon shedding.

I want to walk in the snow,
And not leave a footprint.
I want to walk in the snow,
And not soil its purity.

Kate and Kristin and Kit Kat,
All things I like looking at.
Too weak to fuss, too weak to die,
Choice is skeletal in everybody’s life.

I choose my choice, I starve to frenzy,
Hunger soon passes and sickness soon tires.
Legs bend, stockinged I am Twiggy,
And I don’t mind the horror that surrounds me.

Self-worth scatters, self-esteem’s a bore,
I long since moved to a higher plateau.
This discipline’s so rare so please applaud,
Just look at the fat scum who pamper me so.

Yeah 4st. 7, an epilogue of youth,
Such beautiful dignity in self-abuse.
I’ve finally come to understand life,
Through staring blankly at my navel.

4st. 7lbs

The Holy Bible was the first album I listened to that made me see lyrics as something important rather than just something to sing along with. It feels like you’re doing it an injustice if you’re not reading the lyrics sheet while you listen to the album. Not much of a party record though. It’s one of the bleakest albums I’ve ever heard.

Nobody fucks with the Jesus.

Nobody fucks with the Jesus.

Your father can be surprisingly sensitive. Remember when I giggled at his Sherlock Holmes hat? He sulked for a week and then closed his detective agency.
Marge Simpson and my favourite ever Simpsons quote.
Four of the worst movie monsters…

I remember the first time I played Silent Hill on my Playstation. It was an American import that my dad got me off a friend at work, and about two hours into it I felt something that I’d never experienced while playing a video game; genuine, gut-churning terror. There’s a part close to the beginning when you’re out looking for your daughter, and it takes you to a school. So you’re chillin’ in the school, looking for clues, and suddenly your radio starts kicking out static (usually a sure sign that something nefarious is coming to get you). The tension is rising. It’s dark and your torch is flickering. The corridors are narrow and hard to negotiate. And then you see the cause of the static; a little ghostly child that wanders around, trips up, makes crying noises, and the fades away.

Just when your heart is calming down, and your breathing starts to Yeah, go away knife brat.regulate, and you feel like you can stop gripping your teddy bear, BAM! the radio goes haywire, and four or five mutant children with switchblades start stabbing at your knees. It’s pretty fucked up, and none of the other Silent Hill games ever managed to recapture that feeling of dread that I felt walking around the school, just knowing that around the next corner could be another of those motherfucker children waiting to shiv me. It was grim.

Silent Hill, as a general rule, has had pretty well designed monsters. From variations on dogs, to the harpies, to the zombie nurses who gain a bra size with each sequel, our old pal Pyramid Head and his rapey ways,  and even those things that looked like they had dildos for arms in Silent Hill 3. The majority of creatures devised in Silent Hill were wonderfully gruesome, even if none managed to upset me quite like the knife wielding school kids did. I guess that’s always been a reason why I preferred Silent Hill to, say, Resident Evil. It wasn’t just the increasingly batshit story that Resident Evil had going on. No, Silent Hill always felt more disturbing because of the quality of the creatures. They got that absolutely right and the series benefited because of it.

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So I finished Mass Effect 3…

Great job on the ending, guys!

I fully expect to find out in the coming weeks that on the day Bioware were scheduled to talk about the ending, they all went out to lunch to brainstorm, and while they were gone a caretaker finished the story off for them. A drunk caretaker. Who didn’t know anything about the games. Or storytelling. Or common sense. And he was working as a caretaker only to fund his crack cocaine habit.

Talk about moving the goal posts. That ending sits as well with the series as a baseball cap on a sculpture of Lord Horatio Nelson. Or a tap dance routine at the end of Schindler’s List. Imagine that. Liam Neeson knocking out a bit of tap after he’s saved some Jews. I mean, he might well have felt like slipping his dancing shoes on and going hell for leather in real life, but this was a serious piece of film. It was black and white and everything. There’s no place for frivolities in that sort of picture. And that’s how the ending to Mass Effect 3 felt. Totally out of place. At odds with everything that had come before.

What were they thinking? There were so many ludicrous plot holes. So many gaps in logic. So many inconsistencies with their own established lore. And all that pseudo-philosophical bullshit at the end with that daft space boy. Jesus H. I think they were going for a chin stroker but they ended up with an eyebrow raiser. For shame, Bioware.

Hopefully this “Extended Cut DLC” will sort the absurd, out of place, and frankly nonsensical ending out, but until then, fully expect a bile-spewing “Top ten things I hate about Mass Effect 3” post in the near future.

I’m pretty sure that Doolittle is the only album I’ve listened to since Friday last week.

I have no issues with this arrangement.

Faux pas of the day

I decided to go to Topman on my way home on the basis that buying new clothes was easier than washing and ironing clothes I already own. I stroll in, iPod on, and look around at the wares. I’ve only recently started shopping at Topman again; I fell out with them during that ill-fated nu-rave period a few years back when all the clothes they sold were neon and looked like something Mr Motivator would have worn twenty years ago. But after a visit on a whim over Christmas I decided they’d got back to normality and they’re in my good books again.

Anyway, so I get there, and I’m looking around and I’m not happy. All these clothes were exceptionally gay. Now, I have nothing against people of the homosexual persuasion, but I don’t see any point in dressing like I’ve just walked out of a San Fransisco tanning salon. It’s the same as white people dressing like Fifty Cent. You can’t pull it off. And so like we call those people wiggers, I’m guessing the equivalent for my predicament was, I dunno, hays: heterosexual people trying to look gay.

I’m thinking, “Well, some of these shirts aren’t what I would normally wear, but I dunno, maybe I could try them on and see how I look”. I’m looking around for a medium, while a member of staff looks at me with an odd facial expression and starts to walk my way. I’ve seen that walk. It’s the “I’m about to come over and ask if you need any help so turn your iPod off” walk. I reach instinctively for my iPod, and then as I look back up, I see jeans and shirts down the other end of the shop. It’s in this moment I realise that Topman has swapped around, and what used to be the Topman end of the shop is now Topshop, and I’ve been browsing through girls shirts for the last five minutes.

I casually put the Pixies back on and saunter majestically to the other end of the shop, all the while the staff were probably chuckling about the boy who didn’t know he was planning on trying on some girls shirts.

Drawception

I’ve kinda been addicted to Drawsomething for the last week or so. It’s a time-sink. Watching your friends sometimes appalling, sometimes brilliant, but more often than not amusing attempts at drawings simple words for you has a certain charm to it that I just can’t place. There’s something satisfying about watching somebody work out that the mass of multi-coloured wavy lines you sent them was supposed to represent Mahatma Gandhi.

It was only a matter of time until more games in a similar style started showing up, and so enter Drawception. I’m plugging this game to you good people because I looked at it and had two or three genuine laugh out loud moments.

The concept is simple; you are given a phrase, and you have to attempt to draw it. Once it’s drawn, somebody else is sent your picture and they have to guess what phrase it represents, and their guess in turn is passed to someone else who has to draw that phrase. This goes on until twelve people have been involved. And then all parties involved are sent a link to the whole sequence to see where it all went wrong.

Personal favourites so far include:

Sharply-dressed man scoffs at Ewoks

Sonic The Hedgehog riding a dinosaur

Glorious PC gaming master-race

A blind man fighting a dog

Get yourself over to Drawception.com and get involved.