Hiatus. Or “How I’m learning to live without the internet”

Long story short – Virgin Media realised they hadn’t shut our internet off when we told them to and had effectively been giving us free internet for a year or so.

So, while we sort out internet and reorganize our finances to afford it, this blog is on hiatus. Until then, please enjoy a few filler strips and such like that I write in the spare moments I have time. They likely won’t be about anything much, but hey, it’s content, and content is king. Or something.

This is going to be pinned until the hiatus is broken. To see if there are any new updates, please see below.

Horror Movies That Aren’t

Anyone who knows me will know I don’t like horror movies.

On one hand there’s the probability that you won’t be scared. Horror movies run on an amazingly large list of clichés and tropes. It’s now at the point where you not only have to put up with clichéd stereotypes, but you also get insulted by the poor quality of writing.

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a ‘twist’ ending that you didn’t see coming?

On the other hand there’s the possibility that you’ll actually be scared. This is a phenomenon I don’t quite understand. If I’m going to pay money to watch something I’d rather be made to laugh. I don’t understand the logic behind people watching a film just to be scared.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people do things that can genuinely scare them. I just don’t see how you can get the same experience from watching TV.

So, in mock-celebration of the genre, I present to you 10 HORROR MOVIES THAT AREN’T ACTUALLY HORROR MOVIES.

Some will say I’m ripping off Mock The Week, some will say I’m ripping off Blamamations. I am still, as ever, completely ripping off Lee And Herring. Because if they’re not going to do this stuff, someone should be.

For previous entries of this type, you should check out my musical acts as well as my TV show post. Actually, you can probably skip the TV show post, I wasn’t that impressed with myself at the time and I’m fairly sure that I won’t be now.

If it’s any consolation, I think I’m getting better.

The House Of No Return
One man investigates a house which stands alone on top of a hill on the outskirts of town. People have been seen entering it for over fifty years but no one has ever returned to tell the story. Eventually our hero decides he has to risk his own life and enter the house himself in order to discover the true mystery. It turns out it’s a friendly community for agoraphobics.

The Avon Massacre
The heartwarming story of an Avon lady who attempts to better herself when she recognizes that her dyslexia is causing problems with her orders for mascara. Straight to DVD.

The Waking Dead
One evil mega-global-corporation attempts to turn the entire population into braindead zombies simply to increase their own already wealthy bank accounts. Our hero tries in vain to stop them, but undeterred, Blizzard release World of Warcraft anyway.

The House of Shadows
A man creeps around a strange house late at night, desperately searching for the one thing he instinctively knows will solve all of his problems. A light switch.

The Day of the Dead Train
A woman lets out a bloodcurdling scream of terror as ghosts appear from all directions. She turns the corner to see a Vampire who cackles evilly and lunges for her neck. Suddenly the lights go on because the ride has broken down. A light-hearted romp about the trials and tribulations of owning fairground attractions.

Rise of The Damned
A controversial look at the English Punk rockers and their influence on modern music.

The House That Didn’t Exist
A man comes home one day to find all of his utilities cut off. When he complains to the town hall, they tell him that the house has been erased from the records due to a technical error and as such never existed. The film details his tediously long legal battle to get the town to recognise that his house clearly physically exists.

Silence of the Lost
The past continuously haunts one woman as she starts seeing the same person following her around the town. In desperation she begins to run, only to notice that her pursuer begins running after her. After a thrilling chase lasting several hours, the man finally catches her and explains that she dropped her purse. He’d have said so earlier, but he’s quite shy and was working up the courage to talk to her.

Terror at 50,000 Feet
A documentary looking at people who have a phobia of feet, and their attempts at rehabilitation by forcing themselves to stand in a room with 25,000 people who are all barefoot. The documentary captures their terrified reactions in exceptional close up detail.

Look Who’s Coming For Breakfasts
A serial killer who literally destroys cereal. A-maize-ingly corn-y and barley worth watching.

Create a new law that will make the world a more fun place

The good thing about WordPress is that it gives you things to write about if you’re not sure. This is one of them, but it’s quite a tricky one.

You see, if I had control of the entire world to the point where I was making laws, I’m not entirely sure a new law would be necessary.

I mean, I somehow gained control of the entire world, right? Any set of laws that clearly recognised the many good qualities I have and allowed me to gain control over the whole world would be nearly perfect as they are.

But if I HAD to make one law…

It’s tricky, should I do something to eliminate world hunger? There’s a lot of excess food that goes to waste, surely there could be a law that leverages the worlds resources to greater effect?

Or how about finally ending all wars by getting rid of all weapons. All weapons could be melted down and we could use it to build starships and finally travel the galaxy properly and meet aliens and see binary sunrises and worlds where the sea is fire and the trees are made of water.

What?

Or should I be funny? Should I think of something so mindboggingly stupid that people just have no option but to do it and amuse me. Maybe A Stand On Your Head Day? Maybe an entire day devoted to gender swapping in order to promote awareness of how much it can suck to be the opposite gender and finally end the debate over whether men or women are more downtrodden?

I am fairly sure that whichever gender you are, it would suck to be the opposite. For better or worse, you’ve learned how to deal with being the gender you are, I’m fairly sure experiencing the bad things of the opposite gender far outweigh any perks you may gain, and is why I promote a full and complete endorsement of the word ‘equality’.

Maybe I could put the entire world into one single currency? And make it something incredibly unwieldy. VHS tapes are growing increasingly useless, let’s use them. And for higher denominations we can swap to Betamax. Or even laser discs.

Or how about solving immigration by abolishing all countries. Immigration would then consist of people trying to leave and enter Earth and would therefore be far more easily controllable.

But what I think would amuse me most, as well as making the world a better place, is not allowing anybody to make any decisions until people fill out a risk assessment detailing all the pros and cons that they can think of, just to prove that they’ve thought about it.

No more awkward moments with your friends, because they’d know that you’d made the right decision based on the available evidence and so they don’t blame you for anything you did. Of course, you wouldn’t be doing much, since you’d realise how many of your day-to-day actions are actually bad ideas.

Take aways? Nope, none of them. Everyone would end up being healthier. Because everyone would have to realise that exercise is the best option.

No more one night stands, because reducing the process to a logical decision would defeat the object. Of course, there’d be less people wanting one night stands, since alcohol would be less freely available. How do you expect to fill a form out when you’ve drank too much?

Sure, people would say that the world would be much less fun, but this is what it’s like living in my head EVERY SINGLE DAY. So screw all y’all, I’m taking you down with me.

idols/legends/obsessions #13 – Jesse Lacey

In a series that is finally about a person rather than a band, I realise that all I’ve actually managed to do is pick the lead singer of a band.

The following was written 17/2/12 and will be posted as a filler post some point in the future. But it’s still good. Honest.

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For those of you who don’t know, Jesse Lacey is the lead singer and front man of the band Brand New. In addition to this, he also briefly played for Taking Back Sunday back in the day.

Since I don’t know when this will be posted, I feel I should point out that I watched Brand New play the O2 Academy in Newcastle 24 hours ago. It was very very good, as fans will expect, but it is the first time I had a revelation.

At one point during the set (I think it may have been the solo version of ‘Soco Amaretto Lime’) I turned to my friend Michael, and said, “he doesn’t actually need a band, does he?”

It’s entirely true.

The first time I heard them would have been in 2003 when they released The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows, which was a song I was heavily obsessed by for quite a long time.

The whole album was good. It was one of those albums that remains good without ever getting boring. I even went back and listened to the first album, but never liked that one as much.

And… that could have been it.

But then they were announced for Glastonbury. I got stupidly excited about this to the point that they pretty much eclipsed every other band that was booked. For reference, this is the same year that Blur were also booked to headline. I cared far less about Blur.

And from that simple booking I realised that there had been a third album released a couple of years ago entitled The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me and that there was a fourth album scheduled for release soon too.

Good times.

Glastonbury was good, but it didn’t quite work. The problem with having a band that is entirely fuelled by angst and atmosphere is that a performance on an outdoor stage at 3pm on a sunny afternoon isn’t going to quite work. Especially not at Glastonbury where the preference is for indie or pop artists.

Even then Jesse stood out. The set closed with him performing a solo acoustic cover of O Comely by Neutral Milk Hotel which ended with him screaming the last few lines with such power and passion that even the poor reviews of the set had to mention how intense and powerful his vocal performance was.

When Daisy was released I was one of the few people who seemed to love it instantly. From the moment Vices fully kicked in and nearly scared me to death to the reprise of the intro at the end, I loved every second. I once said that I think it will eventually be the standard bearer for a lot of bands and I still believe that to an extent. It perfectly blends the softer moments with the loud moments and showcases Jesse’s ability to go from a seductive murmur to screaming his heart out in the blink of an eye.

This isn’t a hard thing to do. Literally anybody could do that. The reason Jesse stands out is because he knows exactly when to make it count. He delivers each song as a performance of itself and doesn’t keep it the same. He makes up his own melodies during live performances, he switches his harmonies around, he is completely performing the song the way he feels at that point, it really is remarkable.

And I still think that solo performance of Soco Amaretto Lime will be one of my favourite memories from any gig I will ever see. Even better than the entire crowd singing the backing vocals for Sic Transit Gloria. Or doing the backing vocals for Soco Amaretto Lime.

But I think the thing which demonstrates the sheer level of power in his vocals is this live acoustic performance of Degausser. A Degausser obviously being a device used to strip objects of their magnetic attraction. Obviously.

Oh yeah, he’s good.

Could you paint a picture, cause I won’t remember

Still on hiatus.

That said, I’ve just had a cyst removed from my head, which means I have 2.5 inches of stitches in my head and I’m quite bored. So I’ve been typing stuff up. I might set some of these up to post for a couple of weeks. I’ve mostly been finishing off old articles anyway.

Although, one of them was one I started about two months ago about politics. After the elections over the last couple of days, it no longer seems anywhere near as controversial. It would come across as a knee jerk reaction.

That’s the problem I guess. I mean today (6/5/12) is free comic book day. Normally I’d have done something about that, but there’d be no point, since it’ll be outdated by the time I post this. Although, I could just keep typing and post it tomorrow…

Hmm.

Let’s do this and see how we go.

Comic books are awesome. If you disagree you are, in fact, completely incorrect and your opinion is therefore much easier to avoid.

I used to think the opposite when I was younger. I hated films of books, because films were inevitably cut down to the point where all my favourite parts of the book were removed for the main plot. I don’t read books for the main plot, I read books for phrases and nuances of language. I like how words can create an image in your mind that you can then toy around with as appropriate. I like the way that reversing words or altering single letters can completely alter the whole meaning of a sentence.

I could do something.
I would do something.
I should do something.

Three incredibly similar sentences, but the meanings are completely different. It’s almost obsessive, but that’s what I like about books. Sometimes I’m not even sure what I’ve stolen from other sources.

I remember an English exam that I’d taken just after reading the 5th Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy book entitled ‘Mostly Harmless’. I was obsessed about the simple sentence “‘Mmm,’ ate Arthur” because the idea you could actually use speechmarks to describe eating was incredibly exciting to me as a 14 year old boy obsessed with books.

And so I resisted comics for years. I hated films because they stripped the language of its subtlety and forced their ideas of what the language meant upon you. To this day the only film I like better than the book is Fight Club.

Eventually, I gave in and started reading comic books. I’d always read comic strips growing up, so it’s not that different, but there are two I remember as starting it massively for me.

The first was the first time I read the Sandman serial The Dolls House. The whole Sandman series is full of fantastic ideas and brilliant storytelling (the series was written by Neil Gaiman and I’m firmly convinced the man is some sort of writing deity) but there’s a moment towards the end of that serial where the worlds between dreams start to crack and shatter, and the way that is portrayed in the comic could not be done in any other format. It was the first time I read a comic book and viewed it as a medium in its own right.

The second? Mat bought Jen the special collectors edition of the Batman serial Hush. I’ve no idea if she ever read it, but I certainly did. Hey, if I got nothing else from that whole situation then I rediscovered how much I liked Batman. It was the best present she got for Christmas, and I include all the things I bought her.

So, today (well, yesterday by the time you read this) is (was) Free Comic Book Day. This is always referenced as a positive thing for comics, because it means people might actually want to buy things in the future. This isn’t a bad idea, but… really. One day?

It seems to have escaped the attention of the major publishers, but there’s this wonderful thing called the internet and some people have decided to use it to post their own comics for years. Some of them have even managed to make money from giving stuff away for free on the grounds that people will look after you if they like what you do.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that every webcomic is great. But there are some that I follow religiously, as well as some that are now sadly ended. So, since they give you free comics every day and not just today (yesterday), I thought I may try and throw some in your direction and see what you think.

Yup, it’s a top ten list.

CHRIS’S TOP TEN WEBCOMICS IN A RANDOM ORDER

1). Penny Arcade

May as well get the obvious one out of the way. Penny Arcade has grown from a foulmouthed comic about videogames to set up its own charity in Child’s Play, its own biannual expo, a series of web original videos… oh, and they still make foulmouthed comics about videogames. Although it has mellowed considerably.

I was first introduced to the site by my friend Duncan back when I was trying to pass University the first time which would put it probably 2002. The first strip I saw featured a guy trying to think of things to sell to afford a game, and an offpanel voice advising him to sell things, ending with the punchline of selling his sister to this person he just realises he doesn’t even know. I describe it badly, but without fail, Duncan will repeat the punchline to it every time I see him “Why don’t you sell me your sister? She’s like a beautiful porcelain doll.” Genius.

2). Checkerboard Nightmare

A comic strip about a comic strip. Seriously, the level of meta humour in this strip is incredible. It’s written by Kris Straub, who will show up again on this list, since he’s pretty damn awesome. Even then, you can tell the points he was fed up of writing this strip, have a read through the archives and see if you can spot those moments yourself. Clue: it’s probably one of the fifteen million storylines at the end of the strip where the potential outcome was the end of the strip.

3). Starslip

This is the second Kris Straub strip, but it is my favourite. Set on a spaceship which is an art museum, but somehow still a warship and hijinks ensue. The strip quickly moved on from an opportunity to just make pop culture references from a future perspective and actually developed some serious storytelling and character development. The strip is just about to finish up, so if you decide to go back through the archives, you’ll probably catch up to the end before long.

Fun fact: I referenced this strip in a blog for my degree for the storyline where Kris switched up his art and the strip as an example of storytelling being different for every medium. Fair enough, it wasn’t journalism based, but it made my point for me.

4). Girls With Slingshots

GWS is written by Danielle Corsetto and features the love lives of BFF’s Hazel and Jamie, although the cast has expanded incredibly quickly past the original two girls. It’s definitely not for the prudes (bad language and sex jokes), but it is incredibly funny and still remains touching. The characters always behave true to themselves, and so even when you want to reach out and slap them, it’s because you want them to do well as opposed to the bad writing.

5). Ozy and Milly

I don’t know why I liked Ozy and Millie so much when it was around. It’s still one of the finished strips I go back and check through from time to time and lose a couple of hours without realising.

It features two young foxes dealing with growing up, school, parents and… well, it’s incredible. It’s the intergender friendship you had at that age before you lost your innocence, and that’s what makes this strip so incredible. It literally glows with innocence. And yet, still features some of the best political satire I’ve ever read.

6). Anders Loves Maria

Fair warning, if you’re going to read this, you need to read it from the beginning. Asides from anything else, it’s got the downer ending to beat all downer endings which literally left me looking on my monitor openmouthed and having to read the last few strips again to see if I’d actually read everything correctly.

The title is fairly self-explanatory. You are reading about the relationship of Anders and Maria and all the twists and turns that they take. And there are many many twists and turns. Possibly too many. But when the story picks up speed to the resolution it features some of the best writing I’ve ever seen.

7). Queen Of Wands

Queen Of Wands is the best actual writing from start to finish in any online comic I’ve ever seen. When I finished reading it, I realised that the writer/artist Aeire had uploaded them all again with comments explaining each strip and so I immediately read them all AGAIN.

The interesting thing is that the strip felt real, and that’s partly because a lot of it seems to have been pretty much used in place of a blog, and yet for all the unhappy moments and awful backstories and flashback sequences, it’s still funny. Not all the time, not sparingly, but… well, it’s real life. It’s whatever it is at the time. It always seems appropriate and it’s brilliant.

8). Something Positive

The first ever S*P strip is simultaneously the most shockingly disgustingly hilarious joke I have ever read. If you’re easily offended, I wouldn’t advise reading it. Some of the jokes are downright unnecessary, but that just makes them funnier.

In the olden days the strip dealt with Davan, Aubrey and PeeJee living in Boston and their friends. With ten years of strips the cast has grown and now features a cast in Texas as well as Boston with people switching between the two occasionally. It also features a pink cat that has rubber skin. And a sex midget named Pepito. And still features some of the most emotional comics on the internet. It’s weird. But it works very well.

9). Sinfest

Sinfest has updated pretty much every day since January 2000 with only a few gaps of missed absence, and none in recent years. It’s quite hard to describe , but it began with Slick trying to be ‘a playa’ so that Monique would like him. Twelve years on and they still haven’t got together.

But then it started examining the idea of good vs evil, and so we have the devil and god as characters, as well as a chinese dragon, and death, and Buddha, and devil and god fanboys, and devil girls, and hell zombies and… well, you get the idea. In recent years it’s become more about love and relationships, a devil girl attempting to reform and so on. As an example of interpersonal relationships, it’s unparalleled.

10). PVP

I haven’t actually been that bothered about PVP so much recently, but there was a time that it was my favourite thing to read. It began in 1998 meaning it’s now been around for FOURTEEN YEARS. I think I can forgive it losing a little bit of its sheen.

PVP is the name of a magazine which stands for Player Vs Player. The early strips revolve around jokes about videogames because that’s what people did back then. The magazine kinda gets lost in the shuffle most of the time, although in recent times it has been put back to the fore in storylines. Either way, anything that’s been around for this length of time and which is still being funny does deserve a mention.

Have you ever tried to scream underwater? You’ll choke.

This blog is still on hiatus. The following is posted because I’m stuck in a house with an internet connection for at least half an hour.

Aren’t you lucky?

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I don’t like Harry Redknapp.

I say that in advance of my actual point, because any Spurs fan who criticizes him lately is accused of being fickle based on the current run of results that the team have received.

Much is made of him leading Spurs to a top four finish. It is a remarkable achievement, but it’s one that Martin Jol would also have achieved had it not been for a bout of food poisoning that most of the first team went down with on the last day of the season.

It should also be pointed out that the Spurs squad is relatively similar. We still have Dawson, King, Ekotto, Bale, Lennon, Modric, Defoe who play regularly. There are others around the fringes of the squad who are still around too.

So what exactly has Redknapp achieved whilst at Spurs? A top four finish with a squad similar to one that only narrowly lost out on fourth previously?

Yes, Spurs were in a perilous position when he took over, but it’s an old cliche that teams are too good to go down, and Spurs were in a far worse position than the quality in that team would suggest. I honestly believe that any competent manager would have rescued the team in a similar fashion.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Redknapp is a very competent manager. My issues with him aren’t over his abilities on match day. I also genuinely believe he would be a decent England manager, or as decent a manager as England could get or deserve.

But we’ve needed a top quality striker since we sold Berbatov. Defoe is not good enough. Van der Vaart was an excellent signing, but he’s not a striker. He scored so many because Crouch knocked the ball down for him, but then we sold Crouch on. We’ve bought Adebayor on loan, and who isn’t a permanent option. We got Saha in January, a player renowned for being fragile, and then Redknapp complains about not having any fit strikers.

The popular notion is that having their manager linked with the England job has unsettled the players. I will remind everyone that when that speculation began, the response of the players was to go out and destroy Newcastle 5-0. I don’t believe that is the problem.

I believe it goes back to the game against Manchester City. A game in which Spurs fought back from two goals down to equalize, and then could have won the game in the last minute if Defoe had just managed to get his toe on the ball. What happened next was that Manchester City went straight up the other end of the pitch, won a penalty, converted it, and won the game themselves.

I believe this is the moment the players believed they weren’t good enough. It also coincided with a period where we played the other big teams. We managed to go 2-0 up against Arsenal and the players still didn’t look like they thought they’d win, and were proven right when Arsenal went on to score five in response.

You look at the last two Spurs managers, and the same pattern presents itself. Martin Jol was undermined by the board, Spurs lost a few games, and he left with Spurs in the relegation zone. Juande Ramos won Spurs a trophy, defeating Chelsea in the League Cup final. Despite this, the players massively under-performed the following season and recorded two points from eight games. Ramos left with Spurs in the relegation zone.

And the players seem to no longer believe in Harry Redknapp. So, based on the last two Spurs managers, if he is still in charge for the start of the season, how do you think the season would start?

But I don’t think that’s necessarily his fault. After all, it’s still a very similar squad.

Hiatus

This blog is on hiatus until further notice.

I’d have posted this yesterday, but it was April 1st so I thought the chances of being believed were slim.

The fact is that I have no Internet at home at the moment and I have no laptop available to me at my parents house. And I’m not posting things from my phone, this one is bad enough.

Damn autocorrect.

Anyway, hopefully this is sorted out soon. Look for updates on twitter @minnellium