Strange things put me in a good mood

I caught this story on the news this morning and its put me in a good mood today.

Not because I'm hoping to subscribe to sports channels though. As anyone who knows me will attest, I can't tell a tennis stick from a rugby net. And there are some negative points to the story in regards to the investment in certain sports that Sky represent. While football can sometimes seem to have outrageous amounts of money being tossed around in it, it's actually restricted to a minority amount of clubs, with many others struggling to turn profit. And sports like rugby see a lot less currency.

But what really makes me a happy Rickleton about this story is that Sky have been challenged. I don't particularly like Sky, and this is mainly personal reasons, but I don't like them. A lot of it is association, the fact that they're a branch of Rupert Murdoch's empire is my main reasoning, and it associates them with everything I see as wrong with today's media. But now is not the time for that rant!

Now is the time for me to bask in the knowledge that although the PCC won't regulate our tabloid press in any discernible fashion, at least there is a body looking at the current TV market and saying, 'hey, why should people have to go to Sky for all this? What about giving people a bit of choice?' and that gives me a warm feeling. Sky will appeal this decision, and it may be overturned, given the sporting bodies that are backing them. (It's a little disheartening that most of these bodies feel that consumer choice is secondary to the money pouring in, but as I say, there's financial difficulties all around so it might not be as greedy a choice as a measure to preseve some clubs.) If so, then so be it. I'm still not convinced one way or the other as to the the ramifications of the move but the fact that there's been moves made against Sky like this is a good thing to me.

Weekend away

To come to terms with my depressing realisation that I may never now have a robot sidekick, me and my wonderful fiancee took a trip down to Norfolk for the weekend. We have some relatives there, so we decided to take a tour of the county stopping in on people fortunate enough to be family!

Though I favoured the suprise element of the trip, we did warn these family members first.

There are few things as pleasant as a road trip with a loved one, especially when the weather’s reasonable. Though we had our share of difficulties.

For instance, first thing I decided before we set off I’ll check my oil and water levels. They were fine, so I decided to check the cars as well, knowing I was defintely low on the water. But the damn bonnet was stuck. Literally stuck, I’d pull the lever and the engine lid remained steadfast. It was not budging. Now this was not the time to be able to investigate this problem. We had to be going fairly soon after. So we had to get into Faye’s car for this trip.

So off we went. We made an early stop for supplies, we got some jelly babies and a rock anthems cd set, which were awesome. By lunchtime we’d got to the tiny village of Acle, where we stopped for lunch. I thought I’d have a cheeky beer with my meal.

£3.00!!

That’s 2 disasters today! A stuck bonnet and a £3.00 pint!

Anyway, the sandwich was ample at least, so once the appetites were sated, we continued down the road a few more miles to Hemsby. We stopped there to visit my grandmother. Once we’d done that we went a few more miles down the road to Great Yarmouth. Is it as great as the name suggests?

Well it’s not a fair test if you turn up to a seaside town in March is it? Needless to say, it wasn’t looking great, but it was a Friday afternoon in winter. Still, the arcades were open so we lost a few pounds to some slot machines for a while. And at least the sun was out, even thought the breeze was pretty harsh.

By this time it was getting to late afternoon, so we decided to head onwards to get to Faye’s cousins house. Found the town of Taverham reasonably quickly (despite a jam on the A47) and knocked at the door. No answer. Odd, she said she’d be in. Something’s not quite right here.

A phone call soon reveals that our address book needs updating. Faye’s cousin has not lived here for 12 years.

Disaster 3!

Fortunately she’d not moved far, so we’re soon on our way again. Though the Sat Nav is struggling to find the exact road. Knowing we’re in the vicinity, I consult Google maps on Faye’s iPhone. I find the street, so now we just look for the turn off to get there. I wonder if it’s far? Wait, what’s that blue pulsating dot on the map? It’s moving? Wow! It’s us! Not only is the phone showing me the streets, it’s showing me us moving along them! Brilliant! It’s a marvellous future we live in!

Massively impressed by this display of modern technology, I’m raving about this feature for hours after, no doubt boring the members of Faye’s family we’re visiting.

We stay over that night and go into Norwich for some shopping the next day. I manage to procure an rather awesome stormtrooper t shirt quite early on. We stop for a coffee, and unfortunately I lose the decision of venue and we go to Starbucks, depriving me of a further stamp on my cafe nero card.

The deliciousness of my chocolate muffin does little to lessen the sting of this missed stamp.

We also go searching for a comic shop. We evenutally find one tucked away from the main shopping area in a street filled with awesome little independant shops. There we buy Faye the Demo TPB. I um and ah about a new Green Lantern book for a while but ultimately leave it. I’ve been trying to select a comic for Faye for weeks now, and it’s difficult. I know that most of what I read is a little too continuity heavy for her as a new reader and I’d also like to find her something suitable to her preferred area of reading matter. I hope Demo is appropriate, we shall see as she reads it.

Norwich is definitely better stocked for toy shops than Lincoln. Though sadly the best one I found has a serious overpricing policy, so ultimately I didn’t treat myself to a Batman figure.

Generally as a city Norwich is pretty nice, though I didn’t get to see a huge amount of it. We did mistake the library for a shopping centre. I also contemplated going to the football game, though we didn’t in the end. Shame, as Norwich won, though I would have had to wait 89 minutes for that.

We ate at an Australian restaurant that night, seems to be a favourite with Faye’s aunt. Nice place, but a bit paralysing on the choices, I was torn between trying new things and just having a good old steak. In the end I went for the steak with some massive prawns, and will always wonder how good the crocodile or the kangaroo could have been. I tried some of Faye’s ostrich though and that was good.

The following morning we set off to the little village of Trunch to see my Uncle for lunch. Given our propensity for disasters, I did think it wise to phone first to check both that we were all on the right day and also that I had the right address! Thankfully we did so had a pleasant lunch before the long drive back to Lincoln.

So hopefully now Faye has gone round her family showing off her Nerd Boyfriend they’re still all ok about her marrying me! I think I reined in the nerdiness, so hopefully they’ll not know. Well, as long as Faye doesn’t start a blog about how nerdy I am. Imagine that!

The Robot that never was

I was thinking this morning about my unfulfilled dream of having a robot sidekick. I’d always assumed it would have happened by the time I was 30 you see and unfortunately so far, it hasn’t. Which is a bit of a shame.

I’d envisioned a slightly battered old thing with some exposed circuitry and a few rough additions wired onto his casing. He’d have legs, so he’d be a walking robot. I think 4 arms, two about human arm length with 3 prong gripping hands and 2 shorter arms with interchangeable tool ends. No proper neck, his torso would just form a bump at the top middle that shaped like a head. 1 long illuminated eye and a flashing mouthpiece when he talks. And his name would be Kenneth. He is perpetually confused by humans, not understanding social conventions, sarcasm, emotion or anything like that. Though obviously he’s super intelligent!

But, thanks to a botched attempt to install some additional personality subroutines, he has developed a second personality that on occasion overwhelms ‘Kenneth’ and comes to the fore. Jed is his name then and he is sarcastic and mean. He’s also a little crazy and keeps attempting sexual interaction with just about anything.

Oh the hilarious hi-jinks that would ensue when me and Kenneth were on the scene! I imagine that we’d get caught up in solving various mysteries that it seems unbelievable that we could have gotten involved with and our prowess makes the police look completely incompetent.

Also, there’d probably be a really exciting adventure where we attempted to download the Jed personality into a separate body. But then he goes on a rampage! Oh no! And ultimately we have to put Jed back into the same body as Kenneth...to save humanity!!

If my life that didn’t work out as I’d assumed, were a TV show, that would have been a two parter!

Oh, and the hilarity of my early dates with my fiancée if I’d had Kenneth trying to help me! Hm, actually it’d be best if we didn’t mess with that, I’m damn lucky that worked out as it is...

Decorating

My fiance is a genius. Maybe an evil genius, but definitely a genius. This weekend she went for a weekend break at CenterParcs. And while she was away, I agreed to spend my weekend decorating the bathroom.

See? Genius!

Ok, I wasn't going to be decorating for the entire weekend. Just the daylight portions really. And by decorate, it was more a case of prepare the room for decorating. So I had to drain the heating system, remove the radiator, strip paint off of the walls, apply plaster and/or filler where needed, sand down and apply paint to the area behind the radiator. Replace the radiator and restart the heating system. Then strip the rest of the paint along with filling and sanding where needed. Whew!

Needless to say, I failed. I FAILED DISMALLY!! I am not blessed with abilities in this arena if I'm brutally honest.

Actually, FAILED DISMALLY is probably a bit harsh on myself. I managed to do the radiator bit. However, that took the bulk of the weekend. That paint is a lot harder to strip off than you'd imagine. Certainly harder than I imagined. Ultimately I managed to get the wall behind the radiator painted. I managed to completely strip paint from one wall of the three. Not the biggest of the three, but not the smallest. And large chunks of paint stripped off the biggest wall.

But I was using a heat gun! It's pretty fun! When you fire that baby at some skirting board you literally see the paint start bubbling up. Not so much on the water based wall paint, but careful use did soften the paint up enough to make scraping it off the wall a lot easier.

However, that middle wall took some time and effort with the heat gun and scraper. I blistered the palm of my hand with the scraper. Yep actual blisters, the sure sign of rare manual labour on unmanly hands! And of course when you use the heat gun on the paint before you scrape it, the natural result is that you end up scraping a cloud of superheated paint flakes that then fall back over you hand and drift over into your face. Superheated. In your face. Or in my face in this case. Right into my beautiful face. Thankfully my visage remained un-marred by the small particles of paint-lava but after 6+ hours of this happening the novelty wears off.

Now I don't really wish to portray my lovely fiancée as the type who swans off to resorts leaving me tasks that to be quite frank are some way beyond the physical capabilities of un-manly nerds such as myself. She is now remaining home doing the painting. And I mainly had to do the paint stripping to avoid paying a professional to do it. The cheek of these professionals wanting money for their work! Why can't they make their money by sitting around using big words to pretend they know how to work computers like I do? Anyway, the upshot is she has now been painting my hard stripped patches of walls and it's looking pretty good. Thankfully due to her possessing some taste, we got a really good colour for it and there's a good feeling when you see it coming along so nicely thanks to our own efforts.

Though I'm sorry if your a decorating professional who is suffering in the current economic climate and our bathroom could have been the job that saved your business. Um, yeah, sorry.

Hitler Moustache

Richard Herring came back to Lincoln last week! Yep, despite my previous offers for him to stay at my house, though I was a stranger and the further suggestion that he could use his stay at my house to bum his colleague, he still came back to this city! Which suggests to me that deep down he wants to sodomise Andrew Collins in my spare room. As it were.

However, this visit, he forgot to bring Andrew Collins! He also forgot to stay in my spare room. He pretty much messed up the whole situation for achieving his dream!

Instead of this, he performed his show, ' Hitler Moustache' at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. I thought I'd go along for various reasons. Didn't have much to do that night. Richard Herring is fucking hilarious! The LPAC is just down the road from me. He's also very intelligent and raises brilliant points.

My fiancée was somewhat disappointed that Andrew Collins wasn't going to be at this show (she seemed to be quite taken with him when we went to see their live podcast last year) but was still keen to go to the show. I'd found a bit of a discrepancy early in the day with the LPAC website giving the start time as 7 but other sources at 8, so I twitter Mr Herring asking which time it would be. I know, I could have called the venue or something, bothering the performer is probably bad form or something, but bless him he very promptly replied to me, which is nice. The man does appreciate his fans, though I'd already figured that from the fact he replied to my email last year offering him the spare room. He politely replied despite the fact I was clearly some sort of weirdo.

Anyway, we went down to the LPAC. I was pretty excited about this show. I read Mr Herrings blog regularly and it had been quite evident last year just how important this show was to him in terms of the subject matter and how impassioned he was about it.

Hey, you get a free programme! Awesome. It suggests a donation to Scope in return, but it's not compulsory. So I thought, fuck that! Screw that fucking charity, I got a free programme, they can kiss my hairy ass! Not really, I made a donation, it only seemed fair.

So to the actual show! I was a little disappointed by the audience, I'd expected a few more people. The podcast had enjoyed a decent turn out, but this show not so much. Though to be fair, I hadn't been too aware of promotion beyond Mr Herrings own website and podcasts. Stupid Lincoln people, you better not complain that we don't get awesome shows like this anymore cos why would they come to Lincoln if there's no audience?? Also, you missed an awesome show you fucking idiots.

Herring does a brilliant job of covering some very serious subjects without any break in the comedy. I realised I'd been lectured on the importance of using my vote and democracy under the flawless disguise of a great comedy routine. He does a marvellous job of making racism look absolutely ridiculous. I love his reasoning of wearing the moustache to take it back for comedy, Charlie Chaplin had it first and if we always think of it as 'Hitlers Moustache' then Hitler's won! He's taken a symbol of comedy and made it a symbol of evil. There's also the full tale of his life wearing a Hitler Moustache and the anecdotes from his experiences there are fantastic. I am really only just going to gush about it's brilliance, I'm loathe to describe specific lines or stories on the grounds that to be honest, everyone should go and see this show. If you're a terribly lefty woolly liberal like me or somewhat more to the centre then you should love it. If you're a mad rabid right wing racist then it might just make you think. Or feel stupid. Do go see it if it's near you. Or look for the DVD.

And afterwards everyone was given a Hitler Moustache! A little black velcro one! Brilliant. I shall be wearing mine on April 16th to mark Chaplin's birthday. I'm hoping after all the shows done there'll be quite a lot of people doing this.

And Mr Herring is a lovely enough man to sit out in the lobby and autograph programmes and chat to fans, despite the fact he was quite clearly knackered. Though this tours quite gruelling with the travelling so I can't blame him. He signed my programme and I bought a DVD of a previous show from him too.

I’ve discovered eBay!

Ok, I seem to be a bit behind everyone on this don’t I? Lotsa people discovered eBay, had a lot of fun with it, got bored and then married, had kids and got old by now! (Previous sentence may contain slight exaggeration.) But you know what? I’m my own man and I’m not jumping on no bandwagons! If I didn’t get into something before it was ‘cool’ then I’m not going to get into it once everyone has! I shall wait until it’s not cool anymore, then get into it! That’s what I did with myspace.

Anyway, enough of this how I’m so cool for not doing things when they’re cool, (there’s a Spock-like logic to that sentence. I would like to believe...) this is about the fun I had when I discovered eBay!

I can’t actually remember how it started. I did create an account a few months back to stick a bid on something my fiancée was selling to try to stimulate further interest. That backfired and I won the item. Ah the unimaginatively written farce that is the ITV sitcom of my life! Anyway, the account sat dormant since then, stirring now and again to deliver some advertising emails to me.

Until last weekend. I don’t now remember what started me looking through eBay that day, but I was doing some searching on some Star Trek items. I quickly became hooked! You can find all sorts of crazy crap on there! There’s old toys from when I was a lad and before that even. Phaser’s, tricorders and communicators. Loads of the VHS tapes. (While I can see the appeal of selling them, I think it’s a tad optimistic that you’ll find many to buy them from you!) I spotted a TNG era communicator badge with sound and phrases! Awesome! I decided to bid.

And there we go. From there the excitement of the auction, combined with the wonder at the masses of stuff! How have I not got drawn into this before?? It’s amazing!

I lost the auction. I just was not prepared to pay silly amounts for this and with an hour to go a flurry of bidding erupted. Ah well, didn’t have one before, so nothing to miss.

Hey, there’s a first season TNG DVD set for five pounds! Brilliant! No bids so I’ll start at five. Hey, there’s only seconds to go and no-one else tried for it! Hey, what? £5.20?? Dammit, I need to outbid! In 3 seconds! Noooooo!!

Apparently I could have pre-set a maximum bid so my bids would automatically have increased against the other guys.

I was hugely disappointed by this turn of events. A last second bid like that swooping in and robbing me of my DVD set. That’s it, my love affair with eBay is over! I came in late, but I’m leaving early! How can I stay around and risk getting hurt like that again??

Anyway, I was browsing eBay last night, and there’s an awfully large amount of comics up there that I wouldn’t mind getting my hands upon...

Grrr, Rick Smash!!!

I'm on the verge of transforming into the Hulk. Not actually, as I've never been exposed to the necessary radiation, but I have been enraged this week. Can you guess why? The BBC. Sorry, I didn't really give you time to guess then did I? Though I'm so enraged that I'm in no mood for guessing games! Possibly in the mood for Doctor Who Operation, but not guessing games!

You can do a quick search on the interweb and discover any number of blogs about the BBC right now. From rants to cheers to well thought opinions, and a large amount of them will be more insightful and better written than anything I'd come up with. But that doesn't dissuade me from putting opinion to keyboard!

Why?? Why BBC have you given in to the pressures of your media rivals and their political mouthpieces? Your cuts here will just open the floodgates. You scale back some activities now and soon the pressure will be on to scale more back! The constant streams of hatred aimed at BBC3 will get worse and worse until you take it off air. And in a few years you'll be down to a couple of channels which will only be allowed to show a looped tape of Rupert Murdoch dancing in a pile of money!

Whew, rant over. I give in to exaggeration a bit there, but in all seriousness I do worry that the BBC's actions here will set a dangerous precedent for the future. I also fail to see the logic in these moves.

6 music and Asian network are being shut down. This is to help commercial rivals.

Which commercial rivals offer anything like these 2 radio stations? If you want to close a radio station down that will free up viewers for commercial stations, try radio 1, which plays the same playlists as the main commercial stations.

And about this helping commercial rivals. Why? Not to be unsympathetic but lots of businesses are in serious trouble in these times but I don't see public services being cut back to help them. Should local councils scale back rubbish collections to allow commercial refuse disposal companies to start up and do some business?

Maybe some of those commercial rivals could try putting out some quality productions? Instead of reality tv shows... constant reality tv.

Oh, and what did I see on the news pages this morning? ITV posted profits again? Wow, the BBC haven't even implemented their measures yet and their biggest rival's making a profit again! Plus Sky's seen a rise in subscriptions lately. Hmm.

And what is wrong with BBC 3?? I realise there's a lot of shows on there that have not been popular. In some cases they were dire. But then there's been some absolute brilliance. Gavin & Stacey. Torchwood. Being Human. Horne & Corden. Ha! Not really, I was shitting you with that last one. But the others are good, and they wouldn't have seen the light of day if not for a channel that was prepared to act as a trial area for new ideas and shows. That's the wonderful thing about new ideas, you can't always tell if they're good or bad till they've been tried.

See, I didn't want to get to negative rants on my blog, now I've had two in a row! It's a shame as I generally find myself to be a reasonably happy fellow and I'm particularly happy after the last sunday. But the BBC thing has annoyed me and I find it's helpful to get things off my chest into a blog on occasion. I promise to do a happier one next time, maybe I'll talk about action figures.