And God said: Let There Be Flushes

Got home last night, ran upstairs, hit the flush and there it was. I feel like I'm back in the 20th Century. Not 21st, not yet as it's not clean enough to clean my teeth with yet. But we're getting there.

Hopefully the cinemas will be open soon so I can go to see Transformers before the weekend.

Fingers crossed!

Okay, so I lied

Still in Bristol, still getting free buffets. The mini Cornish pasties are still absent but can't complain considering the water will be back on soon. Imagine that. Flushing toilets.

I'll be living the dream.

No free buffet. Boo.

I've just noticed that the phones in this different office aaaaaalmost sounds like the ones in 24. Not quite, but close enough for me to imagine myself as Jack Bauer. Like I said, almost.

Gloucester-mageddon 2007 continues

Or does it? News 24 has dropped us off the top of the news thanks to some new terrorist laws. Also, now the floods have hit Gloucester we're old news. No more presenters hosting the news from our streets, oh no, they've left us, going back to their flushable toilets.

Not that I'm too bitter. I've been in the work's backup office in Bristol today: taps that work! Water that flushes! FREE BUFFET!

It's almost like heaven.

Almost.

The Phil Doyle Electricity Supply: Zero Defects

Still rocking on with power but no water. Would I give up the internet for a flushable toilet? Tricky. At least I don't have to wash up.

This is two mintues away from the town centre:



My bus into work each day goes near there. Not looking great but it's slowly getting better. Now, all I need to to find one of those bowsers. I tell you, if it hasn't got a green spikey shell I'm going to be very disapointed.

We're back

Lost power for a while there this afternoon. Ended up playing draughts (checkers, for those of you from distant shores) with my good lady wife until the power came on during a game I was actually winning. She tried to stop the game as a draw. Typical.

The water is still out. We've got emergency water supplies around the area now but the only thing is they're called bowsers.

How a I supposed to trust my emergency water supply to Mario's greatest nemises?

I've walked round there

They let us out: ooooooh yeah. Home, with power but no water. And another crazy video:



Now that is a lot of water.

Goddamnit

Work is open. Nightmare. At least I can flush the toilet here. That's always a bonus.

My mum works near there

Here's a crazy video for you:



Walked round there loads of times. Drove past it during my last driving lesson.

Ah, crap

So, as if the floods and the water supply running out wasn't enough, let's chuck a power cut into the mix as well. Great.

I tell you, if my workplace is open tomorrow I am going to be so pissed off.

It's not raining any more

But it ain't dry.

Where I live is expected to turn into Waterworld pretty much anytime now but, don't forget the irony, because the tap water is about to run out.

I just caught the BBC News 24 channel with some guy flying over the water treament works in a helicopter saying it might not be that bad but then a Severn Trent Water spokesman came on saying it was bad.

So, fun weekend so far.

It's raining

And I mean honking it down. We've already had some storm in the UK a few weeks ago, now some more. It's been raining all day. Aaaaaall day. And I just got soaked, thanks to my boy not wanting to get out his car seat. Right down my back. Then my umbrella turned inside out.

And you know what the really annoying thing is? Just typing umbrella has put that annoying Rhianna song back in my head.

God I hate that song.

An almost topical, relevant blog

So, according to some MPs the age you can learn to drive should be raised to 18. Isn't, like, the age 17? So how is increasing it by 1 year going to make any difference?

People should do what I did: get your provisional licence when you're 17, lose it, put off driving till the year after then nearly ten years later after getting married and having a child decide to learn to drive then. Simple.

Nothing but a stupid tax

Thanks to my fancy dan BBC News Alert email service, just got an email confirming that the BBC is to suspend all phone and interactive competitions after further serious editorial breaches are found. Having never entered one of these phone contests I feel quite smug.

This of course follows the Big Brother furore which means that at the end of each show you now get a five minute spiel about the money goes to charity and if you have a complaint go here and blah blah blah. And the ITV problems.

Imagine that: corporations trying to squeeze every pound out of you by whatever means necessary. There's a surprise.

Isn't the 21st Centaury great?

Found out I can email in blogs to my blog. From work. So, technically, I'm getting paid for this blog.

Sorry it's not about anything interesting. Just, you know, thought I should send in something.

DVD Review: Clerks II

Clerks II @ IMDB

Blimey, it can't be that long since Clerks came out? Really? Blimey.

The story goes that Kevin Smith promised his real life friend Jason Mewes that if he stayed of drugs he oculd play Jay again in Clerks II.

So here we are, on DVD.

After the Quick Stop burns down, Dante and his eternal sidekick Randal are working at a fast food restaurant. It is Dante's last day before he moves to Florida with his fiancee. Nothing could go wrong, right?

Kevin Smith's films always seem like attempts to mix the lowest of the low brow with heart felt sentimentality. But in a good way, not the John Hughes sickly sweet kind of way. So we get racial slurs, bizzare sex practices, drug taking all before the half way point. And funny it is too. It's strange seeing these characters after so long but also comforting. It complements and expands on the original which makes it, in my book, a great sequal but one that can stand on it's own.

And a guy has sex with a donkey in it. How can you turn that down?

This being a Kevin Smith DVD, the disc is packed with extras. But surprisingly, they've made it to the European disc. Normally we get nothing. You get commentaries, deleted scenes, a full 90 documentary about the film, the works. Well worth it.

Have to give this film a big bag full of ninja stars. Don't know why, I guess because Randal can throw them whilst making sarcastic comments.

Film Review: Die Hard 4.0

Die Hard 4.0 IMDB

Who doesn't love the Die Hard trilogy? Seriously? Even that ropey second one. The first defined the modern action film genre, the second was ropey but the third was a great film.

So now, time has passed and John Mclane is back. And fighting cyber terrorists.

What is it with Hollywood and hackers? When will they realise they hacking never translates well to the screen? That it always kills the pace and that someone typing on a keyboard just doesn't look that interesting. And how can a mobile phone access any computer with no problems?

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Mclane is sent to pick up a witness who may be at the centre of a terrorist attack on America's computer network that is bringing the East Coast to it's knees. Someone is, yet again, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The main thing you need to consider with a Die Hard film is this: is the action good? And the answer is yes. Things go boom, bad guys get shot, people fight and everything looks great. So in that respect, the film is a success.

But. It is getting a bit over the top. In an effort to out-do the previous films John Mclane is starting to look like Neo in The Matrix. He, and a few of the villains, seem almost indestructible. This might sound strange, but it doesn't seem as believable as some of the previous films. Yes, there were over the top stunts but you could always see that it was a stunt man doing them so you could believe it. Here, you get a few CGed bits that tips it a bit too far the other way.

And not all the script holds up: Mclane's daughter is a bit tacked on and her character changes too quickly and for no reason. Mclane's sidekick is okay, but everything just feels sketched in. The support isn't as good as in Die Hard With A Vengeance.

But, it's a Die Hard film. Bruce Willis kills people, cracks some jokes and saves the day. That's what you wanted, isn't it?

Do ninja's have guns? Because that's the only weapon this film can have: a big shiny gun that holds a lot of bullets.

Film review: Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever @ IMDB

What? You thought all these reviews were going to be of current films? I haven't seen this film before. And anyway, with the recent release of Hostel Part II it's almost topical.

So. Group of teenagers go into woods, get some flesh eating virus, bad things happen to them. Same old, same old.

My problem with this film: it goes to the throat too quickly. There's no real tension, no sense of claustrophobia. The characters are annoying at best. Yeah, it's nice and gory but that only gets you so far. I don't know. Maybe if I haven't seen films like The Evil Dead before then I would have thought this was great.

This, frankly, should be a modern interpretation of The Thing. But it isn't. It's empty. It's just a string of "oh, wouldn't this be gross" scenes with nothing holding it together.

The best weapon for this film is a shovel. If you've seen it you'll know.