The Cheerful News Bulletin

You may remember I posted a couple of months ago about a good friend of mine who had been diagnosed with something terminal. Well as part of his campaign to raise awareness of the problems with the organ donor procedures in this country (that results in around 1,000 people a year dying while waiting for a transplant), he agreed to a centre page spread in the News Of The World yesterday (the biggest selling Sunday newspaper here, that just so happens to be on my work's internet banned list as being 'Tasteless and Obscene').

You can read the story and/or watch the video here.

Also, if you're in the UK and are not currently on the organ donor list, then please consider doing so here.




Also, RIP Edd - who died suddenly yesterday on his 28th birthday. A tragic loss to everyone who knew him. My thoughts go out to his family.



It seems that the old saying 'Only the good die young' is particularly apt this year.

My favourite clip of Edd is one of him and a friend playing a piano placed at Liverpool Street station for anyone passing to play.

Hokey Cokey...

Mrs RS has been in and out of hospital and/or doctors for most of the last fortnight so I've kind of been away from the internet for a while. I'll try and catch up and comment and stuff over the weekend.

She was getting better, but today the 'nice' nurses that come in to administer her IV drugs managed to collapse a vein, so we have to go back to the hospital tomorrow to get another IV put in. Hopefully a final ten days of meds and then we'll both stop looking like zombies (neither of us are sleeping at the moment).

Thankfully any overnight stays on ward have been avoided, although we've spent many hours sitting on uncomfortable chairs/beds surrounded by sweaty, dying people and a cacophony of beeps from various devices that conspire to sound almost like Belgian techno without quite managing it. In many respects it like being in a massive microwave with an out-of-date Findus crispy pancake, or possibly even the least healthy McDonalds kitchen where no-one's bothered to take the fries out of the fryers.

Either way, hospital clearly makes you ill. Mrs RS shamelessly cried to get out of it, so we get home nurses now.

Anyway, I did discover that the Bristol Royal Infirmary has one of these:



A department of Gadgetology? I wanna work there.

Red Squirrel's Film Reviews. Parts 4 and 5.

This week's double special is:

The Ghost

Review:

Forgive me for a departure in my usual style, but we actually saw this film a few weeks ago at my suggestion. Based on the novel by Robert Harris (although I believe it goes by the name 'The Ghostwriter' in the US because apparently people there are considered too thick by the studios to not accidentally turn up to a horror film) of the same name, it's a taut political thriller.

I've always been a fan of Harris' written work (particularly Fatherland and Pompeii) but at times his adaptations have veered significantly from the essence of the source material (Enigma, for example) and sadly the same is true with The Ghost.

The final twist is subverted and made into a ridiculously over-the-top dramatic invention for no real reason - because frankly if you hadn't worked out the 'twist' by then due to some serious over-acting by certain cast members then you were a bit dim. The 'reveal' scene is faithfully done from the book but lacks any reason for the main character's motivation due to the acting of Ewan McGregor who does a fantastic 'puzzled and baffled' but that's about it. He's our Ben Affleck, if you will.

The film was shot against the backdrop of the director's impending extradition to the US, and despite being supportive of many of his previous works (films this is, not the forced sodomy of 13 year old girls), this one seemed lazy. For example, every shot in London featured an old Routemaster double-decker bus. Now they run on two heritage routes only and have done for years, so to use them smacked of bored corner cutting. They may as well have just done a stock photo of Big Ben with 'London, England' captioned underneath it.

Overall, disappointing.


Four Lions

Review:

A film that will almost certainly never be released in the US, it is nonetheless the funniest film I've seen in the last ten years. Scripted in part by Chris Morris (author of the fabulous satire Brass Eye with its Paedogeddon special) it's a brilliant film about four wanna-be suicide bombers from Sheffield.

Part pant-wettingly hilarious comedy, it's also deeply moving and touching in places. If you don't think there's comedy to be had in terrorism then this film isn't for you, but if you appreciate cynical, dry humour then you'll have an absolute hoot.

Don't watch the trailer btw, as it gives too much away. Instead, here's a clip that gives you some idea of the tone. I can honestly say that if you miss this film, you miss a small sliver of joy and happiness in this otherwise deeply crap world.

Dreamposting

I've discovered another ever-so-tiny flaw in my otherwise perfect existence - the realistic nature of my dreams.

Some people have fantastical dreams and wake up breathlessly exclaiming about being chased down their old school corridor by a unicorn carrying the co-joined twins of Margaret Thatcher and Sting. I envy those people in some way because my dreams are exactly like real life. Exactly.

That's really quite depressing isn't it? I've even had arguments with people about things we discussed in a work meeting the previous week, only to discover that I dreamt the entire meeting and then remembered it like it happened in real life. That's quite fucked up.

The reason I mention it is because it appears I've been dreamposting again. There's at least three posts that I could've sworn I wrote in the last month or so that don't exist anywhere, and now I think about it they were far too funny to have been real. Anyway, one that I'm going to have to post again because it deserves to be aired concerns the artery clogging magnificence that is the KFC Double Down:



You've probably seen it on the internet already. Well imagine you hadn't and this was the first time you saw it, because it would've been when I posted this the first time (um, on a technicality).

We're not allowed this amazing piece of food technology here, so I decided to make my own. Firstly I pan fried some breaded chicken breasts:



Until they were a lovely golden brown:



Next, the tortilla wrap was mayo-ed up:



The first chicken breast lovingly laid out:



Bacon was then added. Proper bacon, may I add:



Then grated mature cheddar:



Before the second chicken breast was placed in its true home:



Here's a side-on view so you can fully appreciate it:



And finally, the second tortilla is wrapped over (I needed bigger ones really):





I didn't eat for two days after that :)

Experimental cooking is where it's at, baby.

I feel like god just shat in my head...

After a quiet start to the beginning of the year, a combination of a hectic period of work and a thrilling but emotionally draining climax to the football season (for a Spurs fan anyway) has resulted in me having a few drinks recently; culminating in an Alabama 3 gig in Bristol last night.

Great gig. Great night. Great company. With just the one slight problem.

My hangover right now.

Time for a short break from the beers methinks. Well, at least none tonight anyway.

Talking of Spurs - much to my surprise we held our nerve to finish fourth and have a qualifier in August for entry to the Champion's League (and more importantly a possible £30m of extra cash to help take the team up a level). It's been a strange season - landmark victories against the hated Arsenal, double-winners Chelsea and Liverpool were interspersed with losing home and away to newly-promoted Wolves and losing at home to Stoke. It's also been a nerve-wracking last few months with the team having to win ten of their last twelve games to clinch the final qualifying spot from a Manchester City team that's spent over £200m on players in the last year or so.

Even if you don't like football, I'd urge you to watch the following amazing video as it captures some fantastic moments of last season - Danny Rose's 30-yard volley against Arsenal in his first ever game, Niko Kranjcar's goals against Stoke and Man City, Huddlestone's missile against Bolton into the top corner (right in front of Mrs RS and I!), Benny's first ever goal against Liverpool in the opening match of the season - I could go on, or you could just watch it :)

Red Squirrel's Film Reviews. Part 3.

This week:

Kick Ass

Review:

Ass-kickingly awesome.

It's only a game...

In the not-at-all-nervous countdown to the Champion's League shoot-out tonight, I thought I'd pop in and say 'Hi! I am alive, but I am lazy, busy and pretty content with life so haven't been online that much.'

So without further ado:

Hi! I am alive, but I am lazy, busy and pretty content with life so haven't been online that much.

With that out of the way, does anyone remember Donald Rumsfeld? He was the evil warmongering mini-Bush who looked like Skeletor (as opposed to Dick Cheney - the evil warmongering mini-Bush who looked like Harold from Neighbours, or Paul Wolfowitz - the evil warmongering mini-Bush who looked like Kermit the Frog).

Old Rummy (as he liked to be known) made a very famous speech once regarding not knowing what the fuck he was talking about. It went like this;

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

You may remember it.

I was reminded of this speech the other day when my computer helpfully presented me with the following message;

Clearly it was expecting a known unknown, but was presented with an unknown unknown. No wonder it crashed, the poor thing.

At least we know where Rummy's been working these last few years.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Talking of things that have been away for a while, one of our senior managers has been out all day at 'Absence Management Training', a course designed to minimise your staff's time off from work through a combination of incentives and threats of casual violence (probably).

Number of staff that this senior manager manages?

Zero.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

And finally, it's back on youtube - the finest film ever made! Go watch it, butthorns!

I'd just like to say...

Spurs 2
Arsenal 1

After 20 games without beating them in the league, and in the context of our challenge for fourth spot, please forgive me for suggesting that we;

GET THE FUCK IN!!!

And on the other hand...

...you've got to laugh or you'd cry, right?

I can't stop watching this clip, just for the blank look on Chris Kamara's face when he's asked about a sending-off during a game - a game that 'the watching of and reporting thereon' is pretty much his entire job description.

Too fucking funny.

Everybody hurts...

And everybody dies.

As the lyrics should go.

I have a friend, a very good friend, that I've known almost from the first moment I moved back to Bristol in mid-97. He's a bit older than me - in fact he has children the same age as Mrs RS - but we've been firm friends through business and social adventures that have been hairy, scary and exhilarating. We even stayed friends throughout me having a major falling-out with his brother (over the small matter of an unpaid business debt of several thousand pounds, the one thing that will rile me. Still; fool me once, shame on me...and...well....we won't get fooled again*)

We met via the local pub, back in the days when we still had them round here. Before a bunch of people who'd never run a pub before stripped out most of the local boozers and turned them into 'gastropubs' - and then wondered where all the regulars went when times were hard. I know his family very well, I've been adopted by them for numerous Christmas lunches when they thought I shouldn't be on my own (even though deep down I did want to be on my own), I know his kids independently of him and they're all brilliant people. He was one of the first people I wanted to introduce Mrs RS to when she visited last year, because his opinion really mattered to me. We managed a football team together, we dreamt up brilliant schemes over a night's drinking (although what scheme isn't brilliant after ten pints?) and we created moments and mischief that will live long in the memory.

I found out a short while ago that he's dying.

He has something for which there is no cure and for which the chances of a transplant are minimal. I was led to believe it was a six-to-twelve month time frame, but we saw him last weekend and the summer may not be as bright as hoped for. Hell, the next couple of months may be all we have left. As a Buddhist he's rather sanguine about the whole thing and is rather typically more concerned about the effect this is having on other people - and maybe if he's determined not to be bothered about it then maybe I shouldn't be bothered about it around him. But I am bothered about it. There are a lot of people I care about who are about to lose someone very dear to them.

I've lost relatives before, family friends etc. This, I feel, will be worse. You don't choose your family but you do choose your friends. I've relatives I never see, don't have anything in common with and don't particularly like. The relatives I talk to are the ones I see as friends too. Blood is not thicker than water to me, not in the slightest. This will hurt.

Lots has gone on in the last few weeks - work issues, illness, Mrs RS collecting every cold virus known to man, a birthday in the middle there somewhere, another cold during the four-day Easter weekend and a return to drinking for the next six months - but all of that is just a minor speck in the looming shadow of something I don't want to face, yet have no choice.

So please excuse the gap in posting and the introspection, but some things in life are just more important.



*Obligatory Dubya reference on today, the anniversary of his ascension to the rank of Grand Wizard in the Order of Twats.

Red Squirrel's Film Reviews. Part 2.

This week:

Green Zone

Review:

Anger-inducingly true, even if it is (at times) like watching Poirot with rocket launchers. Excellent.

Red Squirrel's Film Reviews. Part 1.

This week:

Alice in Wonderland

Review:

Turgid.

Seamlessly blending in...

Many thanks to a work colleague for this (because frankly I wouldn't be seen dead watching the local news round here).

Yesterday's 'Points West' local BBC news report contained a short segment from a field in Gloucestershire, where lots of tubby-looking brickies are shoddily throwing together a huge new army base for the headquarters of the Nato Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (all the details are available here should you be deeply bored).

As part of the segment numerous senior army personnel were interviewed, sternly telling us all (well the 17 people watching at the time) about married couple's quarters, vehicle docking bays and single soldier's room space. There was also an excellent contribution in the new 500-seater briefing room from a Colonel Charles Turner, shown below:



That's right, you are looking at a man in a camouflage jacket.

And a high-visibility reflective jacket.

At the same time.


Um, it's either/or mate. Trust me.

One second, Mr Marketing sir....

I have a confession to make. I am the progeny of someone involved in advertising.

Please don't hit me.

In fact, not only did my father have his own successful advertising agency in London for twenty years, but my sister works high up enough in the european advertising industry that my niece was a total brand snob by the age of two.

Until you've been put down by a toddler for wearing the wrong brand of trainers then you've never lived frankly.

Anyway, the point is that I've grown up around the culture of object deification and opinion manipulation for long enough that it's all second nature to me now. This makes it all the more amusing to me when you see a real clanger.

For example (bear with me here), I was at an industry seminar yesterday on 'Enterprise Social Networking' and 'Advanced Collaboration using Cloud Computing'. I know, gringeworthy buzz-word heaven.

(My favourite of the day was 'a synergy of hybrid cloud/on-premise collaboration technology'. Class.)

Cloud computing, if you don't already know (and if you don't then you read it here first and can thank me when it takes over the world in a few years), basically means using your software on-line. As in rather than having Excel installed on your computer it would be hosted somewhere else in the world and you'd interact and work using your browser with something that looks exactly like Excel. In short, you rent the software as a service. It's the future of application development and the big players have invested hundreds of millions of pounds on setting up their services.

The two biggest movers in the cloud industry are Lotus and Microsoft. Microsoft are slightly ahead having spent huge sums on their data centers around the world, and Lotus are trying hard to catch up.

The Lotus offering to the sacrificial god of The Cloud is called LotusLive and is rapidly being hammered together with a welding torch and a rivet gun. It might be ready soon. Maybe.

The Microsoft entry into The Cloud is called Windows Azure. Azure, it just slides smoothly off the tongue doesn't it? Azuuuuuuuuure. It's silky, it's classy, it's so good their marketing department has registered it as a trademark.

One small problem.

Azure means 'the colour blue of a cloudless sky'.


Marketing Men nil, Dictionary one.

I'm awake!

I am still kicking, I've just been incredibly busy recently. Mrs RS has now moved in but is rather ill (for reasons that I don't need to go in to) and will be for a couple more weeks. So my time has been spent looking after her or working.

I'll be back properly soon. Once I've read the 130+ posts in my google reader.

So probably around May then.

Anyway, one thing has been resolved - both Mrs RS and I agree that we never want children. I suspect her reasoning revolves around not pushing a watermelon down her birth canal, but mine definitely revolves around the vastly over-crowded planet we live on. I did have a nice, reasoned post about birth rates (over 300,000 babies are born every day - more than were wiped out in the horrific Haiti earthquake), total population (even if overnight the world limited each woman to just two babies then the total population will still peak at over nine billion. Imagine the current world with over two billion extra people in it - it'll happen in our lifetimes) and the impact on the planet.

And then I saw this and figured he could just say it all for me:



Frankly, how can you not love someone who's catchphrase is "I'm Doug Stanhope, and that's why I drink." :)

Validation

I recently received an email from an un-named person asking me to check out their blog and start 'following' it. I did have a read of a few posts and it is indeed quite amusing - I shall be adding it to my google reader - however I won't be 'following' it.

Because let's be honest, it's all a little bit bollocks isn't it, this following lark? It's a teeny small step away from seeing how many friends you can get on facebook ffs. I assume it came from a twitter universe, but that's something I wouldn't touch with a barge-pole - just another excuse for people to increase the mundanity of the galaxy whilst using the fewest number of actual words.

(At least I use proper words on this...)

Let alone followers, I found it hard enough to keep a blog-roll on my previous blog (you may notice that I don't keep one on this one). The politics of it got to me. If someone added you on their blog-roll then it would be rude not to add them to yours, right? Then you find yourself not reading a particular blog anymore, but if you remove them from your list then are you sparking some sort of confrontation? Will they take it personally? Would this be the start of some long-standing internet vendetta? Just in case you leave them all there, and you're suddenly left with a list of blogs you don't read that gets longer and longer. Like some sort of outcast list from hell.

Or maybe I just think about it too much.

I guess it comes down to why any of us blog in the first place. Do you blog for yourself, or do you blog to get hits or comments? Personally I write because I feel like it. If I get a comment then I get a little 'ooooh I got a comment' thrill that maybe someone either liked what I wrote or wanted to advertise soft porn in Mandarin. If I don't get any then as long as I liked what I wrote then that's cool. The moment the hits and the comments start to matter it's a short, slippery slope to targeting them and the inevitable descent into the wankfest that is the 'bloggies'.

I mean seriously, could a series of awards for blogs voted on by people who read blogs possibly be more pretentious? Well yes it could. It could be blogher - a series of conferences (conferences for christ's sake!) for women who blog. Mainly about babies, the funny things that happen with babies, waiting for a baby to be born and how sad it is to not have babies anymore. There'd never be a bloghim, because frankly what would be the fucking point? I probably have more in common with the last person I passed in the street than some random man who happens to write a blog.

I don't have the time or the inclination to write as frequently as I used to. The truth is that there are things in the real world that are more important to me now. I enjoy venting or trying to make people laugh when I get the chance to do so, and I don't think I've done that bad a job over the years. I'll never be as inventively profane as Veggie, nor as eloquently verbose as Mr London Street (though he seems to be quite depressed at the moment for some reason). Unless something drastic happens I'm unlikely to ever be a published author like Elle (though she changes blogs so often that may no longer be a valid link. She's also my closest blogger geographically speaking so we're practically family), or have such a consistently funny outlook on life like Pearl. I'll hopefully never be as paranoid as P, or indeed work in the same environment as Kevin (how he puts up with it I don't know). And I'll probably never be a bananas gorilla either.

I've written some good posts - my ever-so-slightly-made-up guide to speaking Bristolian has been credited with two new words in an online dictionary AND has been cited in a linguistics paper about the origins of the 'pirate accent' (leaving me with the wonderful thought that an aged Johnny Depp will be blurting out 'TUGBOAT BUSTERS!' in Pirates of the Caribbean 7) - and my brutally honest stylings have led me to Mrs RS (for we met via the comments forms on each other's blogs). Plus I must be doing something right because you're reading this, and your taste in reading is exemplary. By the way, that top really suits you. No, seriously, it matches your eyes. And have you lost weight recently? I think you have...


Anyway, you're probably expecting me to retire from this place about now after all that nonsense, but really I'm just reflecting on the news that blogging is losing the interest of teenagers everywhere. I know, shocking isn't it? I wasn't particularly bothered until I was informed that:

One student said teenagers had lost interest in blogging because they needed to type quickly and "people don't find reading that fun".

And if people don't want to read, then why do we all bother writing? Now excuse me, I'm off to stare at the TV for a few hours like a cretin. Apparently that's 'fun'.

Cooking advice...

Dear Cook-in-the-Cafe-at-work,

Things that leeks and potatoes are good in:

• soup
• stew
• the occasional pie

Things that leeks and potatoes are not good in:

• curry

Please bear this in mind the next time you make a Chicken Bhuna.

Yours in gastronomic anticipation,

Red Squirrel

Smile...

No matter what happens in my day, the best parts of it are always when people make me laugh. Maybe it's a product of growing up in England (after all, you have to have a wicked sense of humour to live here and remain vaguely sane) but genuine moments of mirth are to be treasured.

So hats of this week to a senior manager at Apple UK and a local landlord who have both amused me greatly.

The former strolled past a friend of mine last Friday about 3pm as he and a group of colleagues were idly discussing their plans for the weekend. The manager stopped, put his head around the cubicle wall and said, "Excuse me, do we pay you all a bit less on a Friday?"

Fantastic. I shall be using that one myself :)

As for my local landlord, well he's placed a sign in the window of his pub (at one end of a short strip of pubs, bars and restaurants) that reads:

'Last Pub for 22 yards'

:)

Breaking news from Apple...

They appear to have shrunk their board members for a start.

Midget Jobs struggled with his iPhone

What an utter waste of time, effort and money. I shudder to think of what they'll come up with next - the 42" version that sits on a stand in the corner of the room and is called the 'iView' perhaps?

Although I think the Daily Mash said it best.

IT DO TELLY!

I've been a bit lax at updating this recently, but I have a good excuse. Well actually I have four good excuses :-

1) Work. Lots of stuff going on that I can't talk about. Could be significant (you can take whatever implication you wish from that)
2) Tax return. I seriously dislike doing self-assessment every year. It's like doing a simple test with your gonads wired up to a car battery. It should be easy, but the thought of getting a wrong answer is enough to keep you on edge.
3) My girlfriend is moving in in just over two weeks (more on that in a later post)
4) It's cold, and therefore I'm mainly hibernating (as a good squirrel should)

All of the above has made my spare time as minimal as possible.

Talking of drinking (well, you were probably thinking of drinking), I may have made a slight miscalculation in my year of abstinence.

I forgot the World Cup.

I know! The world's biggest and most watched sports event and I totally forgot it. Of course, the last time I did a year off it was 2008 and although the European Championships were on England hadn't qualified - so it wasn't really missed. Plus drinking in the odd years means that I can drink during the Ashes tests.

It's a dilemma.

So I've come up with a solution that keeps my intake down by 50% but still allows me to enjoy those moments when having a few beers actually adds to the occasion - I'm going to do six months on and six months off. The clever part is that I'm going to do it from near the end of March (just in time for my birthday) until near the end of September, and then take winter off. A friend reckons I should extend the logic until I only drink in the first half of every hour, but come 9pm and I'd definitely forget (probably what day it is too).

So summer drinking it is, without destroying what's left of my liver :)