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All cisterns go

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All cisterns go

This is venturing into the realms of TMI, but it’s too ghastyly/funny not to share.

I just went to the loo (yeah, all good anecdotes start that way, don’t they?) and noticed that there was a small pool of water at the foot of the… whatever that bit is called.  The bit you sit on.  Anyway, it wasn’t, like, toilet bowl water it was clean so I assume there’s a bit of leakage from the cistern.  Unperturbed by this, I wiped it away with a few of the paper handtowels, figuring that, like most leaks of this type, it’d take ages to come back.  Comfortable with this conclusion, I used the toilet.

Can you guess where this is going?  Yep, when I stood up – big ol’ wet patch on the back of my trousers.  Soaked.  I guess the cistern is leaking quite heavily.  What does one do?  A quick application of handtowels proved ineffective so the only option was the most risky one – drying my trousers under the electric hand-dryer.

How best to do it?  Remove one’s trousers and dry them directly while standing around in one’s underpants?  Oh, but no.  What if someone walks in?  Act casual?  "Hi, yeah, just soaked my trousers.  It’s cool, it’s only water.  Why’s it on the ass?  Uh, well, look…" and then you have to kill them.  So I took option b, which was to stand with my back to the dryer, arse stuck out like a pole dancer, hoping that no-one comes in.  I guess I could just snap round and pretend I was drying my hands, but then they’d see the wet patch.  And I’m not that quick.

There is, alas, no punchline.  I dried my seat to the best of my abilities without being disturbed.  No-one had to witness me, sans trous, struggling with an automatic hand-dryer.  But still.  Not a good thing to happen.  My only comfort is that it could, even now, be happening to someone I don’t like very much in this office.

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Rain, unexpectedly

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Rain, unexpectedly

Well, who would have guessed that July would be rainy?  I thought we’d got that out of our system – where’s your global warming now, Al Gore?  I joke, of course, but seriously.  I’d like to not carry my umbrella round all the time in the middle of summer.  Not true, either: I love my umbrella.

Apparently this post is just a tissue of lies, much as the last one was.  I ought to break this habit.  truths:  I love my wife.  Timothy Spall is not the new Doctor.  My job is ever so slightly too dull.  The Asus eeepc is the coolest computer in the world.  I have a yucca plant on my desk which I have named "Jeremy". 

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I wrote a whole post

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I wrote a whole post

I did.  It was about Big Brother, but the last time I did that I said that Pete chuffing Bennett was a really jolly nice chap and should win, which turned out to be WRONG and MISGUIDED, the Gamelan-paddling twat.

So I shall refrain from discussing any of the freaks-to-be-poked in the house this year, unless something happens which means I simply have to comment.  Like, as with the post I didn’t use, Alex being chucked out.  But what did I have to say?  Nothing.  There’s nothing sensible to be said, not by me anyway, and any comment will inevitably be banal.

In other news, I’m really coming round to Lego Indy and am starting to think I may have been a bit harsh.  It’s no Star Wars, true, but it has its own joy.  The extra characters are still uninspiring, though.  Who honestly wants to play as Some Nazi Truck-driving Guy?  He’s no Walrus-face.

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You can’t afford the drumkit

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You can’t afford the drumkit

Though I can’t approve of the price-point (£150 for a videogame?  Sure, you could just buy it without the instruments but by the same token you could also buy a Wii and throw away the remote), I have to say that Rock Band does get some points for using Suffragette City on its adverts.  In your face, Guitar Hero III!  Velvet Revolver?  I mean, honestly, who gives a shit?

Still.  The whole thing is getting out of hand.  Rhythm action games – does anyone still call them Bemani?  I think they probably don’t – are, at best, a charming novelty.  Donkey Konga was great fun for a few days and now we have a pair of plastic bongos gathering dust.  They’re quantatively better when you’re not very good at them, because, you know, what’s funnier than someone flailing madly at a pair of comedy bongos in vague time to a cover of Don’t Stop Me Now?  Not much.  A nun falling over, maybe.  Alistair Darling being appointed Chancellor.  An elephant in flip-flops.

So, yeah, the idea of buying a game for £50+ and then honing your fake guitar skillz until you’re standing in front of your TV, your plastic axe strapped round your neck, brow furrowed, playing along, note-perfect, to Velvet Revolver… Is it any worse than flailing about with the Wii remote, pretending to play tennis?  Well, I think it might be a bit.  At least you’re not thinking "Yes.  I am bringing the rock" while you’re playing Wii Sports.  Adding in friends on drums and vocals?  You’re multiplying the uncool, but at least you’re probably going to have some fun.  Still, that’s another £100, just for a videogame!  The madness must end, before we’re buying specialist peripherals for every two-bit music game that comes along.  Mind you, I’d be prepared to fork out as much as they dared charge for Glockenspiel Hero.

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L’egoist

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So, Lego Indiana Jones. Is it as good as Lego Star Wars? Is it as good as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even?
Well, no and yes. I mean, I liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (except for the end bit, which killed me to death), but I loooooved Lego Star Wars. I’m getting ahead of myself.

It plays well, definitely. The bouncy, seemingly-simple control scheme from LSW has translated well to the whip-crackin’, treasure-plunderin’, Nazi-punchin’ Indy milieu. A swing of the Wiimote and Indy’s whip is lashing at enemies or snatching up out-of-reach objects. Playing as other characters, the same action will cause them to smack someone in the face with a shovel, or crack them with a bottle. But you won’t want to play as someone else for long. It’s all about the Indy. The range of his movement far surpasses that of the Star Wars minifigs (ducking punches, slamming both-feet-first into an enemy’s chest, swinging across gaps with his whip), and his charm in the cutscenes is bountiful (thanks largely to the accuracy with which Traveller’s Tales mimic Harrison Ford in teeny-tiny plastic form… this is most evident in his College Professor incarnation).

There’s a lot to love about Lego Indiana Jones, most of it from the source material. That music kicking in when the action is at its most hectic , or the aforementioned charm of the characters.

But there is something.. wrong, somehow. I suspect it’s also due to the source. The set-pieces lack the frenetic rhythm of the films; quite rightly, of course, you’re supposed to be able to enjoy them and beat them without being perfect. The boulder escape is a classic example – the film version is over in moments, really, but it’s a huge scene. The Lego version lasts longer, giving you time to pick up extra studs and find secret passageways, but this has the side-effect of diminishing the peril. The Star Wars games got away with this because the pacing of the films tends towards the ponderous, even in the most frantic sequences. This allows the players time to wander through levels without feeling as if they really ought to be getting on with it. There’s a sense through Lego Indy that, you know, things aren’t happening quite fast enough.

Having said that, it looks great, it plays like a dream and it’s still plenty fun. I look forward to the extras I haven’t got yet, and I can see myself spending a lot of time wandering its large, rich levels.

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A week is a long time in blogging

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A week is a long time in blogging

I missed last week’s post!  Sorry, single-figure readership.  Still, you had a funny video to watch in the meantime, what’s wrong with you?

Anyway, I went back to Plymouth this weekend.  Ah, Plymouth.  City of my… uh, year-or-so of renting.  We passed through Totnes on my way, and I was very excited by it.  It was a lovely place to live, and the simple act of passing through on a train made me smile.  Plymouth, well, I smiled but I wasn’t really as happy.  I never really liked Plymouth.  Sorry, I know it’ll be devastated.

They’ve got a big-assed shiny shopping mall in there now, which for a lot of cities is a cause for concern.  The town centre might be in trouble!  But with Plymouth… it’s so bloody grim with its post-war austerity-years Albert-Speer-planning that a nice new mall is actually a good thing.  I bought jeans for the first time since I was 19!  Madness.

Anyway, other than that it’s not changed.  If you’d like to visit, I can recommend the little cafe on the cliff side near the Citadel, just between the Mayflower Steps and the Hoe.  Nice cheese ‘n’ chutney sandwiches.

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i have nothing to say

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i have nothing to say

Sorry.  You might find diversion somewhere else on the internet.  I hear there is now to be found a great variety of entertaining treats out there to be explored within your browser.

Why not try one of the many websites dedicated to the art of puppetry?  Or, in a pinch, bonsai?  I, personally, find the large number of sites dedicated to the naming and categorisation of the nation’s monkey puzzle trees to be uproariously interesting.  My favourite is Steve Palmer, a monkey puzzle tree in Leicestershire: Class 4 silencer, mildly puzzling.

Have fun!

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A vision of the future

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A vision of the future

As you may or may not know, our new Mayor has instituted a dumbass law banning the drinking of alcohol on tubes, buses, trams, overground trains, stations… basically anything that is operated by Transport for London.  How this will help I’m not sure.  Are we intimidated by open containers, I wonder?  Perhaps there is evidence of "second-hand drinking" we’ve yet to see?

Anyway, I was standing in the sun outside Liverpool Street Station the other day in a haze of cigarette smoke (I don’t smoke, btw, nor do I, for that matter, drink on public transport.  But even I think that is a stupidly restrictive policy  – I don’t care if you’re having a drink on my bus!  The only person you’re harming is you!  If you were going to get loaded and cause trouble, you’d be drunk before you got on..) and I realised how this was going to go.

You can’t smoke inside so there’s a large community of smokers who hang out around buildings.  They’re in place.  It’s a new social network, you know.  The pavements around pubs are much chattier than the tables inside and the smoking areas outside offices (well-established by now) are where departments connect in a way they don’t when they’re on different floors.

Soon the crowd outside stations will be joined by those who are having to finish their drink before they go inside.  The smokers and the drinkers will both have outcast mentalities and points upon which to bond ("Politicians, eh?  Cuh, what’ll they ban next?") so they’ll be chatting away to each other quite happily.  It’ll be a buzzy place, much more sociable than the inside of the station.

This will be fine when the drinking ban starts, in June, but as the year draws on there will be a distinct sense of discomfort which the smokers are used to but the drinkers are not.  As there are small awnings on some office buildings to keep smokers from the worst of the weather, so small shelters will probably start popping up around stations for the drinkers.

Some enterprising soul, seeing a large, untapped, captive market will no doubt move in on these shelters and start selling cans, bottles and cigarettes.  This will obviously be illegal to start with but after a while there will probably be some sort of regulation (if only so they can be taxed!) and they’ll be somewhat more legit.  Maybe the shelters will be built to include a stand for the vendor of such things.

Eventually, the shelter, the stall, the smokers, the drinkers… it will all be so settled and stationary that the shelter may as well become a building.

I suggest a name for such a building.  A "pub".