RE: Pudding

This article has had a lot of interest since its posting.

Interestingly, not because people are interested in how much I like Christmas Pudding but actually because of the link to a Ninja Panda. 

Thanks to the power of WordPress stats, I know that the highest search term to link to my blog is ‘dougie poynter’ with, at the time of writing, 475 views. Behind that is ‘badass’ with 180 odd and then, amusingly, ‘ninja panda’ with a solid 90, of course ‘panda ninja’ also has 45 so collectively I put that at 135. Other amusing (but less linked) terms are ‘christmas jumper’, ‘evil panda’, ‘my vajayjay is painin’ and ‘midget pun’.

There is a reason for me to bring up this amusing (pointless) fact, however, because today I took a trip down to the corner shop near uni and, amongst the sweets, gossip magazines and inane collection of household items you might want in an apocalypse there was a ninja panda.

That’s right. For £1.99 I could be the proud owner of an awesome ninja panda toy, an offer I couldn’t refuse! I gave up my lunch for this strange hybrid of Kung-Fu Panda, Bruce Lee and Wolverine! That’s how dedicated I am to the cause, folks, all I had left was 16 pence for a Chuba Chup!

Anyway I have run out of interesting things to say so bugger off.

It’s so wrong…

That I have had 73 links to my blog from the tag ‘Children’s Porn’.

That is all. =<

Comparitive Thinking

Today, I am going to talk about comparative thinking, and the dangers of it.

As you may well know, comparative thinking is that logical process that often, illogically, convinces you to believe that the grass is greener on the other side. The trouble being, that quite regularly, the grass is greener on the other side… it’s just chemically enhanced and will slowly build up inside the gut of your stomach if you eat it… and of course to get to the other side you have to cross a bridge under which a troll lives who will eat your soul, or in the very least shank you and take your wallet.

So why does it still hang around? Why do we still encourage compatitive thinking to come with us on dates, go through everyone’s monthly paychecks and secretly glance sideways in the changing room at the leisure park? Why don’t we just obliterate this thought process entirely and all feel better in the knowledge that, compared to when we were comparing things all the time, we’re much more mature and rounded people. Well, aside from the obvious point of impossibility, it’s never going to be as simple as wiping this nature out from out collective psyche with a brillo pad, but the analagy perserveres and I’ll endeavour to provide some clearer reasoning with a little bit more rambling.

There are some positives you can glean from comparitive thinking, but you do have to be made aware of the problems, the slip holes of logic that you’re likely to find while navigating my minefield of visual metaphores. Logic isn’t taken as a class in school, this point made abundantly clear if you take a glance at…

Logic is one of those strange self imposed developments. It’s something we’re expected to have, and only a few people I know are abundantly wealthy in. So here I am, saving all of you the trouble of learning from your mistakes by learning from mine, if you’re engaged and receptive at least. If not, this might still prove and entertaining for couple of minutes at least.

Comparative thinking also breeds the shared guilt logic that so horrified

Comparative thinking can be a positive thing, of course, when you think about how much better off you are compared to all those hungry orphans stuck in Oxfam adverts, but in the greater part it seems to be used in a negative, jealous manner.

Reals

Another annoyingly watchable advertisement from Xbox Live. Well done Microsoft, well done, your powers of marketing are, as expected, deviously evil.

Link!

Bond, James Bond

I have always appreciated the bond movies, always, even the bad ones that people don’t like to talk about I find appealing in a gloriously watchable manner. There are many different parts to the big James Bond pie; spy intrigue, action, overblown travel expenses, gadgets, suits, gambling, pretty girls, undercover action… er, I might just stop before my pedantry gets the better of me…

I recently picked up Quantum of Solace on DVD, which is not exactly a format that gives it justice and, frankly, this one could use all the help it could get. The story for Quantum is killed most, not by anything it does, but by it’s inability to match up to it’s predecessor. The great big shadow that the near-perfect Casino Royale casts upon this small tale of revenge and gratuitous action sequences makes Quantum feel a bit like a regression, though not towards the back catalogue of previous Bond movies, more towards the influences our new Bond has… To be fair, when I say influences what I mean is influence, singular, Bourneular.

My post today, however, is not about the film itself but in fact another of the many slices: the songs. You see, all day today I have had a single beat stuck in my head, which I have only recently figured out as the intro piece to the new Bond theme by Jack White and that keyboard woman.

As far as I can tell, the Bond franchise stands fairly alone with the music included as a large part of the marketing. Music and films are brilliantly merged, sure, but not many people go out and buy each new variation of the Harry Potter theme. I’m not entirely sure what side of the fence I stand on this nowadays, there have been some truly amazing tracks produced under the James Bond banner (I am a particular fan of the Duran Duran one) and even recently with the Casino Royale intro music and this new rendition I have nothing I can really find fault in… no, no that is not true! I’m pretty good at finding faults in things, and I’ve got just the one for you, in the form of a question:

Why have all the Bond themes been produced by American artists?

The list goes back a whole long way, there hasn’t been an English performer involved in over two decades worth of films; Gladys Knight, Tina Turner, Sheryl Crow, Garbage, Madonna, Chris Connol, Jack White and Alicia Keys? I can’t really complain about these American artists (well, I can.) because some of their songs are not terrible at all. And the latest? It might surprise some to know that, in fact, I’m a big fan of the music, er, just not the annoying whiny singing.

And I love the Casino Royale theme, though I don’t think it’s brilliantly Bond-like it’s pretty awesome (and it comes with the greatest bit of motion graphics I’ve seen). I just want to see something British in there, do people relate to that? What is wrong with our music industry that we can’t even pick a
thematic song from our own shores… or has Bond become so truly
American (that bastard) that slowly we’re willing to hand him over to
the butchery of Hollywood… Or perhaps I’m deluded, and he’s always
been part of the butchery of Hollywood? I’m not sure, but if Casino Royale was about cutting away the build up of faff from Bond, then I’d like to see this new direction take a moment of nostalgic thought and consider bringing in something actually English. For a change.

Also, why is this video not available in England, where it was made…

Pikeya

Today, I am going to talk about something that angers me… No, not my Daily Booth picture, which is at the time of writing, plastered to the front page of my blog like a poster for abortion, I speak of another ailment to my psyche; Ikea.

The multi-national company have recently made their mark in Southampton, which has duly enraged me enough to write a very aggravated blog article! Yes, I talk of the store made infamous by providing massive amounts of modern (well, by modern I mean almost entirely fake pine) Swedish furniture, keeping what we assume to be affordable prices and, perhaps their greatest achievement of all, the pioneering of the do-it-yourself generation (of which I rather begrudgingly know no other, past the occasional glimpse at a off-pink lounge set in the occasional charity shop).

The new Ikea store is reported to be the biggest in the south, and as far as I can tell they aren’t kidding. The building itself has been placed rather strategically next to West Quay and the Leisure Centre, in amongst a collective of other superstores, a commercial gold mine that’s a mere 5 minute walk from the train station. The problem I have with it, however, is how grotesquely imperious it is.
Have a look:

Christ… Ikea? More like Isore. Towering over Borders and Tesco like some giant, inordinate beast readying to swallow the entirety of the Southampton shopping district, the new Ikea is absurdly large and visible from almost every point within a 5 mile radius. A garish blue and yellow icon now marks it’s territory like a gargantuan tom cat pissing in the middle of our town centre.

For a company renowned for it’s innovation in space saving, they could have made a better effort to, say, flat-pack the building down a bit. Was there any real need to go so far up? As far as I know, there isn’t a massive market for 20 foot tall, fabricated shelving.

What a horrible image to be greeted with as you leave Southampton Central, as if the terrible tile montage in the train station itself isn’t bad enough, now I feel as if the entirety of my home city has been branded by the bloody Swedish. I’m sorry, that’s not fair, we have a higher count of Polish people last I heard. Where is our BATA ZAOPATRZYĆ, eh? WHERE IS IT?

That’s it, I’m done here, if you could just imagine me, now having gotten bored of pestering you, rambling off into another room accompanied by the crazed mumbling of a drunken history teacher.

To Do

1. Turn the microwave into a time machine.
2. Grow my beard longer than my own height.
3. Run over Andrew Lloyd Webber with a transsexual train.
4. Write a musical about it.
5. Write a feature film about writing a musical about transsexual trains.
6. Kill off one of the cast so it gets big press.
7. Buy a cat.
8. Take lots of pictures and subtitle them all with moronic language.
9. Shave the cat.
10. Get plastic surgery to look like the queen.
11. Become a master of evil and spread pestilence across the country.
12. Rick roll Rick Astley.
13. Tube roll Rick Astley.
14. Sausage roll Rick Astley.
15. Mmm… Sausage.
16. Destroy the one ring in the fires of Mound Doom.
17. Wear a cup on my head for an entire month.
18. Polish the table in the kitchen.

Boom, Skateboard

Check this out! I mean… what is going on? Did UNKLE just decide to blow up a load of skaters? Is this even real, these people have balls.

On the blog front, I have removed the entirely banal ‘recent posts’ widget, which merely saved you the trouble of scrolling down the website a little bit. I’ve also added my Twitter updates widget, so if you have a quick glance you can see those juicy clips of prose I tend to make daily.

Huzzah

Rejoice, for now you can do two amazing things at once! Check out my blog and also check out my DailyBooth picture! You see, I have cleverly stuck my latest DailyBooth picture (which is subject to change, rather curiously, daily) as the first post, where it will likely stay for a while until I get enough complaints or my own face eventually becomes tiresome to me.

Which is probably never.

DailyBooth

today's picture