Reason not to watch: The last series of Torchwood was fucking awful.
Reason to watch: They killed off the twomost annoying characters.

Reason not to watch: Russell T Davies has rarely written a three quarter of an hour epsiode of Torchwood or Who that hasn't been mediocre at best and awful at worst.
Reason to watch: He might have gotten Moffat to rewrite the script first.

Reason not to watch: The trailer implies it's about creepy children on the week that we're meeting out own child so it might not be the best of subjects for calming me down.
Reason to watch: Ianto is very cute and he might get nekkid.

Reason not to watch: Captain Jack/John Barrowman is getting increasingly annoying.
Reason to watch: If there's nothing on later this week it'll give me something to watch.

Reason not to watch: It clashes with Supersizers which has Sue Perkins, Giles Coren (who is very cute and might get nekkid) and consistently makes me cry laughing.
Reason to watch: ermm.... no, run out of reasons to watch when I can stillthink of loads of ones why not to watch it.

So, Supersizers it is then....

(I just know it's going to be one of the most awesome pieces of television ever now and I'll have missed out. Eh, never mind....) 

I've just been watching High Anxiety and was once again reminded quite how fabulous Madeline Kahn was and quite how great a comic actress she was. She could steal an entire scene just by standing in the background not doing anything, but doing it *very funnily*.

She also was on Sesame Street singing with Grover. Now if that's not an almost perfect combination I don't know what is.


And then of course there's my personal highlight from Blazing Saddles (the camp fire one doesn;t do it for me at all)

OK, I know the Literal Video thing is so last week and I'm not the first person to post this on LJ but this just nearly made me pee myself laughing.


 It's a very obvious video to literal video, but it's one of the best ones I've seen. Even if only for the zombie bit towards then end when the male singer is surprised.

If you want waste a small part of your life there's a (supposedly) complete collection of literal videos here. They're very much of varyong qualities, but the utterly inane silliness of the entire concept amuses me hugely. Or at least it will until I tire of it in... oooh... five minutes or so. 

After about two hours of inking in slightly uncomfortable mugginess I have admitted defeat. There are only so many ink blobs and smudges and stuff you can cover with a tattoo or a background figure or something. So I have stopped now, but I still inked the best part of a page (just the main characters, the background stuff will take about as long again because there's a fair bit of building and people.

Knowing a fair few teachers (and being married to one, obviously) I can full imagine the levels of rage across the country that Ed Bollocks has caused today with the governments utterly stupid ideas for a 'licence' to teach. It won't acheive anything, doesn't serve a purpose and will just create more pointless work for everyone involved. Then there's the fact that the little tit (Ed Balls gets all the blame for this in my book largely because he'sa hateful little fucker with no discernable talents of skills) said that they'll mean that teaching will become a Masters level position while also still pushing the idea that absolutely anyone can teach and you don't need qualifications to do it. Ans on top of all that there's the idea that parents can take schools to court if they don't think their child is performing to their best ability. Erm.... yeah. So who is going to decide if they're performing well enough or not and is the apparent right to now sue schools if you can't deal with your child not being bright soimething that anyone actually thinks might be a good idea? Surely the tests and appraisals and Ofsted and all that stuff should be doing that already?

Grrr. It's utter rubbish, it really is.

It's funny, isn't it? I don't get cross about my own job but knowing teachers, dentists and social workers means that I end up getting fuming almost constantly because of the stupid stuff that is constantly going on with them...

I have been into town this morning to do birthday shopping (I have taken the day off work because I think it is very rude to have to work on your birthday) with my Waterstones and HMV vouchers. I didn;t actually end up buying anything in Waterstones because although there were things that I would sort of like they were things that I'd just be buying for the sake of it so I decided to save them up for when I do actually want something. I did however spend my HMV vouchers on Tales Of A Librarian (the Tori Amos sort of Best Of/sort of remix album) and Tombraider: Underworld which I have been wanting to get for ages but haven't really been able to justify the expenses.

All very lovely, good prices, la la la, on my way home happy. Only when I tried to open the Tombraider box it had one of those stupid red tag button things on it that supposed to stop people nicking the CD from the box in the shop. That's fair enough I guess, only when it stops you getting into the fucking box when you've bought the sodding thing then it's not so good. I managed to get into the box eventually without destroying the box too much but it did involve a knife, a pair of heavy duty scissors and a great deal of brute force. Stupid bloody thing.

I'm in now though, and am listening to the current Pink album very loudly and am going to go and do some baking in a minute. It's all a very civilised way to spend the first day of my 33rd year. :)

We've just got back from a weekend down in Cardiff, which was jolly nice. We went down  on Friday night and had the whole day in Cardiff and then came back up today, coming up via Caerphilly castle.



It's actually been about four orf five years since we were last in Cardiff, but it's a city I really like. Last time we were down though we didn't end up getting down to the Bay so we didn't see the centre and all the new development down there. The Assembly wasn't actually finished either so all of it was new to me. It's very nice and there was loads of stuff going on while we were there, including some incredible roller blading trick lads who were pretty amazing.

The waterfall-fountain-sculpture thing is pretty awesome and very pretty, although looks very different on Torchwood.



(That's me and Chris reflected in the surface, obviously). The Welsh Assembly is actually quite small and is unbelievably pretty compared to the humungeous and over the top mess that is the Scottish Parliament. It also has a completely fabulous roof that I could have taken a squillion pictures of.



On the other hand last time we were down Cardiff castle was free to go in apart from the main hall. Now though, much to our chagrin, you have to pay £14 each just to get in. Phtbt, not doing that. It's a nice castle, but not that nice. The animals on the walls outside are cool though. I don't understand why they haven't fixed the one with a broken nose though.





On the other hand Caerphilly castle is fucking awesome. I know a lot of it is 'restored' (ie. completely rebuilt) but I don't really care, since it's still an absolutely incredible place. It sort of sneaks up on you as you come round the corner despite the fact that it's huge.



I didn't see the Green Lady though and she's not suddenly appeared on any of the photos either so she must have been hiding.



As per usual many many photos over on flickr for you to trawl though.

Found my brushes. They were somewhere they shouldn't have been but actually were and as soon as I thought about where they were there they were. Yay!

OCD moment done now.

I've been doing some Journal tonight and suddenly noticed a black area on a previously finished page that I've not filled in with black so knowing it would take all of twenty seconds to correct I put aside the pencil for a minute to ink it. But then I couldn't find my inking brushes. I have brushes for acrylics, brushes for watercolours, brushes for coloured inks and brushes for black ink. All the other ones I could find, but could I find my inking brushes? Could I buggery. I emptied every single draw (a coupleof them at least three times), looked everywhere they might be a quite a lot of places I knew they wouldn't (because, you know, even though I knew they wouldn't be there they might be) and I still couldn't find them.

Nearly twenty minutes I spent looking for the bloody things. I finally gave in and had to admit I'm going to have to buy more (knowing full well that as soon as I do I'll find the old ones) but I'm still kind of fretting about not being able to find them.

I should point out that I know full well that I'm *not* actually OCD, but my goodness somtimes I find myself doing things that really, really borders on it (this whole incident is nothing compared to my coloured pencils in the wrong order issues). 

Absolutely no reason for posting this, other than the fact that it's fucking genius.

Tonight saw the return of two great programmes,one on the radio one on the TV.

The radio show, as ane fule kno, is I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. Obviously sadly now without Humph and instead with rotating chairpersons (that in itself is surely a Clue joke waiting to happen...), this series being Stephen Fry, Jack Dee and Rob Brydon. The usual panellists of TBT, Graeme Garden and that old bloke who has evaded the nurses again and Colin Sell on the piano were back(plus Sven making a welcome return) and joined by Victoria Wood (for the first time). And was it as good? Weee....eeeellll. Actually, mostly yes. Fry was a good host, although possibly a bit knowing about some of the jokes which were clearlt written very much for Humph when maybe they should be tailored a bit more for the current host. Brydon and Dee I suspectmight have the deadpan delivery a bit better. I would like to hear Jarvis Cocker guest hosting though, I suspect he'd fit right in. Fry was best with hsi ad-libs and asides (as you'd expect really) but he could certainly grow into a very good Clue host if given a chance. Victoria Wood could also grow into a very good panellist too. Her Uxbridge definitions were very clever and just as near the knuckle as Graeme's, and she and Barry during Just A Minim were comedy gold.

So, yes, it's not really Clue without Humph (even more so than it not being Clue after Willie Rushton died), but it's still very, very funny and worth listening to if you missed it before.

And then later on we had Supersizers Eat... (aka Giles Coren and Sue Perkins eat rubbish and get pissed for a week) with them going back to the 80s and.....eating rubbish and getting pissed for a week. There is a vague pretence at some kind of social and culinary history in the programme (some episodes more than others it has to be said) which is sometimes very interesting, but mostly it's worth watching just for Coren and Perkins pissing about. I have admitted before that I have a bit of a think for Giles Coren  and that's only getting worse with him looking like he's lost a bit of weight and is starting to get a bit salt and pepper in his hair (plus taking his top off more often. What? I can letch middle aged men, I'm nearly one myself), and I would also go lesbian for Perkins, but there's something about their relationship and the way they egg each other on to eat more and more horrible things that is hugely entertaining. The highlight of this week's epsiode was clearly the cocktails, culminating in the 'Concrete Mixer' which was a shot of Baileys and then a shot of lemon juice both swilled around the mouth at the same time so they curdeled. Yes. Not something I would drink voluntarilly (Oh that's so not how you spell that, but I can;t work out how it should be spelt. Or possibly can't be arsed. Both, even).

So again, a very welcome return and much more hilarity to follow no doubt. It probably means there's sod all on for the rest of the week though...

(PS. If you try either of those links outside the US they won't workI'm afraid since they're on BBC iPlayer which only works in the UK. And only till next week as well when they'll be replaced by next weeks' epsiodes, so even though they'll be funny they won't actually be the ones I'm talking about so it'll be horribly confusing)

I've not posted much recently have I? Work blocking LJ seems to have had more of an impact than I thought...

I don't actually have anything to say really, other than there's nothing on TV tonight and it's quite hard to type while having a cat happy feeting on your stomach. I might go and play Civ instead...

I can hear the bass from the sodding Oasis concert three miles away more clearly then I can hear the bass from the stereo about three feet away. That's really fucking stupid. The only reason I can't tell you what song they're 'singing' is because I don't know the names of their songs. Apparently they're now talking about Madonna or the Stones doing similar open air gigs at Heaton Park but I really, really hope they don't. I'm seriously considering putting in a complaint about the noise so god alone knows how the people actually living near the park are feeling. 

The Yes/No meme, nicked from rivers_bend  but about twnety million other people too 

1. You can ONLY answer 'Yes' or 'No'.

2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks.

Kissed any one of your LiveJournal friends? — No
Been arrested? — No
Kissed someone you didn't like? — Yes
Slept in until 5 PM? — Yes
Fallen asleep at work/school? — Yes
Held a snake? — Yes
Ran a red light? — No
Been suspended from school? — No
Experienced love at first sight? — No
Totaled your car in an accident? — No
Been fired from a job? — No
Fired somebody? — No
Sung karaoke? — Yes
Pointed a gun at someone? — No
Did something you told yourself you wouldn't? — Yes
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? — Yes
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? — Yes
Kissed in the rain? — Yes
Had a close brush with death (your own)? — No
Saw someone die? — No
Played Spin-the-Bottle? — Yes
Smoked a cigar? — Yes
Sat on a rooftop? — Yes
Smuggled something into another country? — No
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes? — No
Broken a bone? — No
Skipped school? — Yes
Eaten a bug? — No
Sleepwalked? — No
Walked on a moonlit beach? — Yes
Ridden a motorcycle? — No
Dumped someone? — No
Forgotten your anniversary? — No
Lied to avoid a ticket? — No
Ridden in a helicopter? —No
Shaved your head? — Yes
Blacked out from drinking? — No
Played a prank on someone? — Yes
Hit a home run? — No
Felt like killing someone? — Yes
Cross-dressed? — Yes
Been falling-down drunk? — Yes
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? — Yes
Eaten snake? — No
Marched/Protested? — Yes
Had Mexican jumping beans for pets? — Yes
Puked on an amusement ride? — No
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? — Yes
Been in a band? — No
Knitted? — Yes
Been on TV? — No
Shot a gun? — No
Skinny-dipped? — No
Given someone stitches? — No
Eaten a whole habenero pepper? — No
Ridden a surfboard? — Yes
Drunk straight from a liquor bottle? — Yes
Had surgery? — No
Streaked? No
Been taken by ambulance to a hospital? — No
Tripped on mushrooms? —No
Passed out when NOT drinking? — Yes
Peed on a bush? — Yes
Donated Blood? — No
Grabbed electric fence? — No
Eaten alligator meat? — No
Eaten cheesecake? — Yes
Eaten your kids' Halloween candy? — No
Killed an animal when not hunting? — Yes
Peed your pants in public? — No
Snuck into a movie without paying? — Yes
Written graffiti? — No
Still love someone you shouldn't? — No
Think about the future? — Yes
Been in handcuffs? — Yes
Believe in love? — Yes
Sleep on a certain side of the bed? — Yes

Hmmm. I'm surprised I'm not a lot more on the left and much higher up into the authoritarian side of things.

This is the view over our back garden fence:



(complete with George on the fence). It's lots of trees and greeness but with a big warehouse at the bottom and lots of rubbish and stuff in the woods. Not horrible, but not exactly the middle of the green wilderness either. Manchester city centre is literally five minutes down the road. So you can imagine that I was a little surprised when I looked out of the window at about half nine and saw this:

 

A full grown male roe deer (not this actual one, obviously, since it's not male or in my back garden) merrily strolling along at the back of the fence. The woods aren't exactly unlikely habitat for deer but they're not terribly big so it still surprised me. Foxes and badgers and stuff I've seen a fair bit in the city, but nothing any bigger before so it was pretty exciting.

Well that goes to show that just occassionally actual tanlent wins out over the hype. Top three *should* have been Stavros Flatley, Diversity and... Aiden doo-dah I think. The Boyle was good but not actual the best singer and the saxophone man was good but kind of pointless.

Diversity are awesome though. Funny, clever, visually stunning and technically brilliant. I also like the fact that each time they've performed they did something completely different. Plus the two kids are awesome, being (literally) thrown around the stage like that. On a slightly more wanky note,  I also think what they stand for is great. The mix of ages and backgrounds shows that it doesn't matter who or what you are, if you put your mind to something then you can acheive a huge amount.

Chris and I have just got back from watching Star Trek (yes, I know, we've been busy up till now) and I am quite happy to agree with everyone else that it is utterly, utterly made of awesome. I'm not a Trekkie by a long shot but I do like the Tv series and the previous films, but this one is just fabulous. The ensemble cast are all absolutely note perfect, the script is funny and clever and doesn't flag at any point, the acton is great, the jokes are funny and it's all just generally really rather marvellous. I loved the fact that they played with the cliches so blatantly (the Redshirt, the green skinned woman, all that stuff) without it feeling forced or silly and the subtle playing with continuity, and why playing with the continuity worked, was great. It's not the original Star Trek, but it also is. I'm very, very pleased they managed to make such a good film and hope they carry on with them.

Oh, and it has to be said that much as I liked Kirk and Spock and Uhura and Bones, it has to be said that Sulu, Chekov and (especially) Scotty stole every scene they were in. Simon Pegg had just the right balance of comedy and actually knowing what he was doing. I am also a little bit in love with Anton Yelchin. He is *very* young, but the film would have worked for me with just him doing his announcement about Wulcan. :)

Hot sunshine outside, Julie London on the stero, me with pork pie and potato salad and a cup of tea. I'm am porpely content today, of yes I am. :)