Day 337: The Czech is in the post

I have watched a number of films since I last gave some film opinions on this blog, so here comes a much needed update.

Open Water: This is simply the worst film that I have ever seen ever. This was in the DVD charts in Asda which meant people had actually gone out an bought it - how they must have regretted it later. I am glad I only rented it. The only reson it gets a 15 certificate is because of the nudity near the beginning and there was absolutely no other reson for it being there. Apart from that nothing happens apart from 2 people being in the water for a while. What a boring film.

The Village: I really enjoyed this film and I am glad I bought it rather than rented it. I pretty much got the twist early on, as I also did with "The Others", but it didn't detract from the enjoyment at all. When I watched the 6th sense I didn't get it until right at the very end and promptly had to watch the film over again right away. I would like to live in some sort of village like that (but in Sweden).

The Bourne Supremacy: The reason I ended up renting Open Water was because my local video shop was all out of this film. The following weekend I tried to rent this again but they were still all out. There was nothing else worth renting so I ended up buying it, and fortunately it was very enjoyable. I had rented the first film in this set, but can't remember much about it, so I'll probably need to go out and buy that too.

Gorky Park: This film is one of my all time favourates of all time - I may have even mentioned this fact to a few people before. Apart from the fact that it is really good, it is even better because some of it is set (and filmed) in Sweden. In fact some of the bits that are set in Russia where also filmed in Sweden. When Adrian and I went to see Sting play at Skansen a few years ago we went to Sturebadet for a sauna and a massage on the Sunday. Adrian commented that it was one of the nicest health spas he had been to. One of the stiking featutes was the main room which contained a swimming pool. Some years after this I bought the DVD of Gorky Park (which I had first seen in the ABC cinema in Harrogate with Adrian and a few other friends) and on watching it I noticed that the scenes set in the Russian health Spa looked very familiar to me. So the next moring I had a look at the Sturebadet website and low and behold that was where they had filmed those scenes. I wonder wether we will get chance to pay a visit again on our next trip in may.

While typing this post Al mentioned that he had a friend from Prague and added that he was his Czech mate, but I said "no you've got that wrong, don't you mean flat mate?"

A brief history of time

I've been thinking. Not very hard or anything, I've got a hangover to
support after all.
While reading a random blog entry somewhere, there was something in it
about checking out and old school website. This set me thinking about
my old schools. These didn't have any of those new fangled website
gizmos, and both primary and secondary school have been demolished in
the last few years to make space for houses. I finished both primary
and secondary school as dux, which didn't really
mean anything to me at the time, being used to such plaudits. Now,
however, it seems that I'd left my mark (albeit simply my name and a
date on a board in the assembly hall) and now that it's gone, it
actually saddens me a little.

ps This posting is by "The Mighty Al^TM", but he had problems posting it due to him being an iknternet light weight (as mentioned in a previous posting of mine) - so I had to post it on his behalf.

gmail

I seem to have the proverbial 'hunners' of gmail invites, if there's
anyone out there still looking.....

auto erotic fixations

I'm looking for a new car. Oh wait, the first thing is - Dom has been
moaning at me for not putting anything up here. It's not been a lack
of interest, honestly, it's just been a busy old time and I'm a bit
tired and lazy. Right, the options appear to be -
Mazda RX-8
Audi A4 S-line
Jaguar X-Type
These are very different cars, so I chose them specifically to get a
feel for what I felt was important to me in a car. Only thing I
learned after a weekend of dealers was that I amd tired and lazy. So
there.

I've been watching the news a bit recently. It's mainly been arguments
about what constitutes genecide and whether it'll hurt someone's
feelings if you accuse them of genocide and, in actual fact, they're
only guilty of mass murder. I remember I was once in trouble for being
in a fight when I had actually just been bullying the boy and kicked
his head in for no reason. I would have termed that as assault, rather
than a fight, and I was hurt by the implication.*
* none of that was true, obviously, just an anecdote to help the point get over.

Our good friend Air disappeared from the project a month back. He's
left a gap and I'd hoped to catch up with him at the weekend, but he's
off skiing. I'm really busy for the next few weeks too, so it'll be a
while. I need to spend more time catching up with friends, I know
that, but I just don't have the time/energy.

So, that's why I haven't been writing, dear reader. It's not you, it's
me, I just need a bit of space...

Day 329: A temple in the sky to climb up to

Adrian and I booked a holiday to Crete. I think we tried to get a few more people interested, but it ended up with just the two of us going. We got a special deal whereby we knew we were going to Crete, but didn't know whereabouts in Crete it would be. We tried to get an even more special deal whereby we wouldn't even know what country we would be going to, but they wouldn't let us as we would have been able to find out what country it was once they gave us the flight number.
We arrived at the airport and got onto a coach. It drove around for a bit and then dropped us off outside a hotel. It was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It had a shop next door a beach over the road and an oil refinery on the beach. About 10 to 15 minutes walk down the road there was a restaurant. It was all a long time ago so the following will be full of inaccuracies, but rather than speculate I will tell it as I think it happened:
- On the first day we went swimming in the sea which was rather rough. We swam out a little way and then tried to swim back to shore. It took about 3 minutes to swim out and about and hour or so to swim back. The first one back had to help the other to make the final bit. We were completely exhausted.
- It didnt take us long to spot a couple of very fine looking German girls so we hung around a bit near them in the hope we might be able to get chatting with them, but our hopes were dashed when one night walking back from the restaurant we saw them walking together hand in hand.
- One day we rented a moped, only they had run out of mopeds so we rented a motor bike instead (Adrian tried to negotiate us getting it for the same price as a moped would have been). We took it in turns to drive and went to visit the palace at knossos which was half way around the island. We had a real laugh walking around that place and taking amusing photos.
- On the way back from Knossos we saw a dead bulldog in the road. It was upside down with its legs sticking straight up the air and it looked like it had been inflated to quite a high pressure.
- We sent a few postcards to people that were hilarious, or at least we thought they were (can't remember what we put in them though).
- Adrian took a photo of me by the water and I had my special swimming trunks on.
- I decided I wanted to by some local cigarettes (because I always think it is cool to get things that you can't get back home). I went up to the kiosk and said please can I have some Greek cigarettes. They didn't speak god English and wanted more info from me. I said I want a mild sort of local cigarette. They perked up at this point and presented me with a packet of cigarettes proadly baring the name "Milde Sorte".
Needless to say they tasted foul. I ended up smoking HB soft pack for the remainder of the holiday. They were cool for the following reasons:
1. you couldn't get them back home
2. they were in a soft pack
3. they actually tasted pretty good
and of course all this meant I was pretty cool too. (..and to all you kiddies out there "Smoking is not good and not cool. It used to be cool when I smoked, but it stopped being cool around 10 years ago when I gave up". So don't try it at home.)

The rest of the holiday remains a mystery. I can't even remember what the inside of my room looked like or whether we had seperate rooms or shared.

Day 328: Crete it was then....

Adrian and I have been on 2 trips to Greece together. The first one was a school trip to Athens. I don't remember too much about it, although Adrian's comment follwing my previous post has brought quite a few bits back to me. The main things I remember are as follows:
- Yes I may have bought a watch on the plane on the way out there (I remember thinking about buying it, but I had an idea that I was talked out of buying it at the last moment as I think it would have cost me all the spending money I had on me plus I would have needed to borrow some off Adrian - but that could all be nonesense as it was a very long time ago and my memory is not what it used to be).
- It was very hot in Athens and a great deal of money needed to be spent buying drinks.
- We went to see the Temple of Poseidon which pleased me as I had an album called "In the Wake of Poseidon" by King Crimson and that produced some sort of link. I have realised over the last few years that I really like it when things link up like that. It could be because I am bad at making decisions so the process becomes so much easier if the choice can be linked into something I already like.
- I had a jacket that was a quite striking shade of green and some sunglasses with blue lenses.
- I bought a number of records (including Vital by VDGG and Music for Films by Brian Eno).
- Instead of sleeping in rooms in our hotel we had camp beds at the ends of corridors, but they still had doors that could be shut.
- One night I got so fed up of being bitten by mosquitos that I got my pillow and started hitting it against the walls to try and kill as many of the little buggers as I could. Next morning the walls were coverred in red splodges and so was my pillow case.
- I think we went on some sort of boat trip.
- We found out that a British 2p coin could be used in the space invaders and night driver machines.
- At some point we ended up on a coach with a school trip of Welsh teenagers who kept singing the sames song over and over again. The song went along the lines that every where they went people wanted to know who they are, so they told them they were welsh, and went on to add that in actual fact they were very very welsh and found that every where they went people wanted to know who they were etc etc... After a few hours of this Adrian sang a version of the song with slightly different lyrics and was promply punched in the shoulder by the welsh girl sitting behind him (she obviously fancied him).
- On the flight home we had the whole plane to ourselves so we could lift up the chair arms and sleep lying accross the 3 seats and also eay as many breakfasts as we wanted. I ate several.

In the next thrilling installment I will tell the tale of the Cretan mission as remembered by Björk Bjiggler.

Day 41: A desert full of sand

In case you are wondering who that sylph-like figure is on the front cover of the cloudhands website, I can confirm that it is me. I think the photo was either taken in Crete or Athens, but more likely in Athens. If it was the Athens trip, then this was the very first time I drank Sprite and it is where I bought my first Van der Graaf Generator LP (Vital). It is strange to think that the picture was taken in a certain time and space and here I am now in this time and space. If I went back to that time and place and did it all again it is highly unlikely that I would end up here now. But would things be better now or worse? There is no way of knowing. All I know is the here and now. If I take a certain path then I know what happens after I take that path, but I can never know what might have happened if I had taken a different path. I can certainly speculate on it, but I can never know for sure.

Shortly after I started writing this entry my good friend and collegue Al announced that he couldn't get onto blogger.com it was being blocked. I smuggly replied that I had got onto it ok so he must be some sort of light weight when it came to using the inter web. Once I have was happy with my opus I hit the "publish and be damned" button and got the same fecking message as him. I hit the back button and there was a blank form staring back at me. So, some jobsworth had been and implemented a block on blogger.com just after I had logged in! I quickly booted up my PowerBook in the hope that I would be able to remember what I put if I could get typing quickly enough, but as expected I could only remember the rough outline of what I put. This may have been the best bit of prose I had ever written and that was it gone into the ether (with Augustus John).

If anyone out there can tell me how I might be able to get my original text back from the firefox cache of oblivion please let me know in the comments for this post and I will see if I can resurrect it and replace this with the post it should have been.