Lars and Alisa after Lars shoved the ironing board into her back.
Tekken. Where else can you play as a tree with mammary glands, a panda that feels more like you’re playing a balloon, or, new to Tekken 6, as someone that can throw their own face? This installment includes over 40 astonishingly well-balanced fighters, but Tekken 6 is surprisingly simple to pick up and play.
If you’re already a fan, most of your favourites are present, as well as six new characters including Zafina, an attractive cultist who moves like something out of the Exorcist, the aforementioned face-thrower, Alisa, a cute robot with deadly chainsaw arms that I inexplicably want to hug, and relatively bland rebel soldier Lars, for some unknown reason the character chosen to be the star of the new Scenario mode.
Essentially an expanded Tekken Force mode, in Scenario mode you work your way through the levels punching generic hoodlums until you get to the boss at the end. Needless to say, this gets repetitive, especially as there is no co-op option. You can play this mode as any character you’ve unlocked, but frustratingly the lengthy cut scenes between the levels still think you’re playing as dull-as-dishwater Lars. However, you’re rewarded with customization options that you can use in the other modes of play, such as the wonderful Arcade, Versus and Ghost Battle modes.
Ghost Battle is extremely clever, this mode stores the fighting styles of real players and pits you against an AI version of them offline. Versus mode is a joy as ever, with its wonderful animation and welcoming gameplay.
Overall as a game, Tekken 6 doesn’t disappoint. It is an enjoyable game packed with content for beat’em up fans, and it’s easy to jump into for newcomers to the genre. It’s full of nonsensical fun and has lot of charm, but ultimately needs polish.
Warhammer. Chess for the nerds that are too nerdy to stop at chess. Everyone knows of it, at least of the pallid beings who dwell in the mysterious Games Workshop shops in the city centre, whatever they are. You build your miniature soldiers, paint them, then send them into war. I say war, I mean you place them on a long table behind some polystyrene rocks and send them off across the other side of the table to the other lot of plastic miniatures. For some inexplicable reason it’s a great deal of fun. Apart from when you’re playing Space Hulk for the first time and you choose to be the Spacemarine with the arm that keeps falling off as you assume he’s the runt of the litter and therefore will be perfectly unimportant, but then you find looks can be deceiving and you are punished for being such a shallow individual because he is actually the one character that needs to be alive to win the game.
Ouch.
I felt much more at home playing the Warhammer 40000 : Dawn of War 2 PC game than I was with the tabletop version. Noone cares apart from your poor, abused keyboard if you mess up.
Dawn of War II is very different from its older brother. In the original, and in most RTS (real time strategy) games in fact, you choose an army, build your base, build your army and then go fight. This game is different because you start off with your Force Commander only, and pick up squads along the way as you progress through the campaign. In the missions you can only use 4 squads at a time, including your Force Commander.
Brave move perhaps, for Relic Entertainment and THQ to take on all the RTS purist fanboys, but the result is rewarding. There is less faffing about with bases, so everything feels more fast-paced and exciting. Most of the cover is destructible, which you can strategically use to your advantage. Unfortunately in single player everything is so fast-paced that you never get to really play with it, but the multiplayer allows this opportunity.
Only being able to use four squads at a time could all be too simple and boring, but in this game the squad gets to loot er, loot. Equippable loot, like rally flags for your Force Commander that allows him to boost and heal the squad's stats just he should be able to do. Teleport packs. Bubble shields. Cool stuff. The variety of the items you pick up along the way, and the squads you choose to bring along means you can tailor your squads to the way you like to play your RTS games. You also gain levels yourself, your rank and title as a Force Commander goes up depending on how many bases you defend, and how many attacks you successfully perform. This and the level system for individual squads brings an MMORPG element into the game which I personally really enjoyed, being a reformed MMO recluse and everything. Prepare to do a little pee of joy when you get your first set of Terminator armour and start smashing your way through walls with your nipples.
In the campaign you have no option but to play as the Space Marines, a force of surgically and mentally enhanced humans covered in heaving armour that pour liquid steroids over their Coco Pops in the morning. Think Terran. Your enemies are the elitist, technologically advanced, xenophobic Eldar. Think Protoss. The fugly, all talons, tongues and teeth Tyranids. Think Zerg. The dumb but lovable green barbarians that are the Orcs (think, uh, orks) also make an appearance. I'm sorry, I don't mean that, but I'd be very surprised if the development team wasn't a fan of Blizzard games. Yes, I know Warhammer came first, but the combination of races and the fact the loot is colour-coded white, green and blue based on how 'special' it is just as in a certain Blizzard MMO has me reminiscing. Even the combat feels a bit Diablo-esque, not that that's a bad thing.
Without spoiling too much, the general plot is that a Tyranid infestation is munching their way through multiple planets. You, being the honourable Space Marines, are attempting to cull these overgrown lobsters. Three planets are playable, Calderis, Typhon Primaris, and Meridian. The aim of the game is to stop these planets being overwhelmed, flitting from planet to planet to keep them under control. The constant stream of enemies to fight in this non-linear campaign gives a fun element of panic and chaos when everything gets overwhelming, but after a while it just feels like you are juggling everything until you get to the next milestone mission with a bit of story that is something out of the ordinary. Juggling would have been more fun if there was more variety, but it just gets old when you fly to the other end of the universe to fight a small pocket of Tyranids. Again.
One of the reasons to stick with the game is the story and the character development. For once the marines aren’t all just cigar chomping meatheads that crush beer cans on their foreheads. Well, maybe Thaddeus. Yee-haw and all that. There are real, human conversations about fear, the meaning of life, and views on why chainswords are better at killing people than anything with ammunition. Yeah, that might have been Thaddeus. There is a real sense that these guys aren’t completely numbed by war, that they are brothers in arms. Cyrus being the emo little brother with the floppy hairstyle and too many sad questions. You can just imagine him writing poetry to himself with black crayon in candlelight. The writing in the dialogues is a really nice touch, it adds a lot of charm to the game. It made me smile a great deal, which is an achievement in itself.
Speaking of achievements, Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 has the magic "Games for Windows - Live" on the box. Cue boos and hisses from certain parts of the gamer community, but I had a really positive experience with it. The achievement points were welcome as a boost to my paltry gamerscore, and being able to access Xbox Live and talk to my friends through my PC was fun. The only thing that irked me was that only the host receives achievement points if you’re doing co-operative campaign. I’m just as special as them, damnit.
In multiplayer you can choose to be any of the races and take on each other with whatever units you decide to warp in. The maps centre around capturing strategic points, which works well with the limited units you get. I did worry about the lack of variation of units interfering with the opportunity for really good players to truly shine, but there are enough unique skills available to gain an advantage over someone that’s not using them well. I miss building hordes of units to go and swarm the enemy, but this is a feature of Dawn of War 2 I’m sure a lot of players are happy about. My main complaint was that the maps were too open, especially when cover was destroyed. It would have been fun to have corridors a squad could defend, but maybe I’m just being picky.
Unfortunately, by the end of the campaign I found myself using the same loot over and over again, just because the fights were all really similar. There were a few missions in which I needed to equip anti-vehicle weapons, but altogether a combination of lots of healing items, the armour with the best averaged stats and the highest DPS weapons were the most efficient plan. I found myself utilising Cyrus a lot, just for the reason that he is the unit with the most varied skill set, stealth, support, and DPS. The boss fights were very repetitive, particularly on 'defend' missions. There was a very nice use of the destructible scenery for one skittish Tyranid boss, but my enthusiasm was dampened when it was recycled again and again. This is not to say the game isn't fun, it is, and is strangely addictive. Sometimes it just feels like it was rushed, as in the final mission, which I didn't even realise was the final mission until I got half way through. By the time I realized new things were happening the credits rolled and it was definitely the end of the game. Mildly disappointing for a final level, I thought, but sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.
8.7/10
The Last Stand Mini Review
The Last Stand is the first game mode to be released for Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 via means of downloadable content. Firstly, it was free. Good start.
With this mode you are dumped into an arena with two other players and waves of enemies of in increasing toughness are thrown at you. You can choose from three classes, the Eldar farseer (the nuker), Ork Mekboy (support), and Space Marine Captain (tank). As with the campaign, you acquire more gear and experience as you defeat more games. The first problem I found with this, is that it is an online mode. When you are level 1 with only a loincloth covering the essentials, people inevitably call you shit, or tell you to leave. Not fun.
As we all know, survival modes are the new hula-hoop, Rubik’s cube, Pogs, whatever. They are being implemented left, right and centre, but I’m not complaining, when done well, they are fun. This mode is done fairly well, the mobs seem to increase in difficulty in fair increments on the whole.
I would have liked to have a choice of more than three units to lessen the chance of getting an all-Farseer group, but apparently my gaming prayers have been answered and Tyranid and Chaos heroes are on the way, perhaps with the upcoming expansion, “Chaos Rising”. As for having three players in the ring, at first I thought this was too small a number, but it really does make you stop and think about what skills you need to use depending on how the other players play. There’s not many people to pick up the pieces of a mistake someone makes, which makes for an intense experience.
Overall, The Last Stand is a nicely thought-out game mode, and is a welcome addition to an already brilliant game.
This week I've been trying to rule the world. Not in real life, oh no. I'm too lame, shy and perpetually beered-up for that. ONLIIIIINEEE. I've put down the Xbox this week and been making use of the PC I built. It came from me. It's part Borg, part Matrix, and it's cost me about a grand now over the years. Shit. I patch up it's boo-boos quicker than I would for any child, I love it.
I have been playing The Sims 3, Dawn of War 2, and Demigod. I was going to write a little something about all of them here, but that would mean a much bigger read than my already gargantuan blogs.
I'm not entirely sure why I feel dirty when I admit I've been playing a Sims game. Maybe because it has to be admitted rather than said. It's a well known fact that only teenage girls are allowed to say they've been playing with their Sims. The logical conclusion I came to to overcome this blanket of shame that seeped into my pores was not to name my Sims Casey, Lori, Amber and Josh, and to instead name them Mistah J, TwoFace, Harley, PoisonIvy and Zatanna, in anticipation of the new REAL game, Batman: Arkham Asylum.
\,,/.
I figured I'd leave Batman out of it because I decided terrorising the Sims' town would be more fun and make me sound cooler than if I had to write about the good-natured Batman emptying the bins and cleaning up dirty plates all the time, making sure the house was comfortable for everyone. In this household he is instead a goldfish.
The first thing I enjoyed about the new Sims was setting their personality traits and life goals. You begin with setting five personality traits, their favourite music, food and colour, and then a life goal.
Poison Ivy's traits were:
Flirty Loves the Outdoors Great Kisser Perfectionist Hot headed.
Sure enough, true to Ivy, she likes to try and chat up the next door neighbour even though she already has her fingers in many pies, Zatanna's and Harley's to be exact. Her life goal was to be the girlfriend of the whole neighbourhood at the same time. I, for one, was rather happy about this, as it actually gave me an excuse for her to take multiple people of all sexes and age to bed for some 'Woohoo'. Oh come on, we all do it. For some reason, she also derives fun out of wiping the counter tops clean. Harley's traits means she enjoys pulling faces in the mirror and fishing in swimming pools. The Joker enjoys seeing people suffer, and stealing candy from a baby. Literally. He actually found a baby in the city and stole its lolly. Awesome. Two Face for some reason like to put eggs in his pockets and has a nervous breakdown everytime he sees a dirty bathtub. Oh boo hoo. Grow up, you're supposed to be a supervillain. I always knew he was the crap one.
Nutjob much?
The great thing about this installment of the Sims is that it's not confined to one house, you can roam anywhere. You can let your Sim run down to the gym in order to get fit for when the real Batman decides to strike, or go to the park to dance with strangers until they hate you and your wiggling buttocks. There is much more freedom, I took Two-Face for a jog all around the city just to see what was in there, but it was so large I forgot about all the other Sims. I half expected the Grim Reaper to be there ready and waiting for poor little Zatanna, but she was looking after herself very well, and had even fed little Batman as well as making pancakes without burning the house down. Keeping the autonomy level high-ish means these Sims have ideas of their own and seem to cope quite adequately without the player, which is nice. They can look after their own bladders just fine without pissing all over the floor and crying with shame, but they don't seem to do very well in the career stakes unless they get a kick up the bum from God. That's me, by the way.
Yeah, you can watch the Joker have an evil poo. Damn right that's not hygienic nor social.
You can now colour customise everything in the house, even the shitty beds. There is a fair selection of house items to get by on, but it seems that most of the extra items have to be acquired online. The only problem with that is we aren't talking with paying Simoleans for them anymore, we're talking pounds, dollars, shekels. That makes me a little disgruntled. There's nothing wrong with trying to make money from a game, but The Sims surely already has enough from shitty expansions to add in more free items for it's new installment and not get off on the wrong foot with a reputation as a cash cow. I'd be less angry if I could have a decent purple carpet and a better choice of high-end WOW, WHY DOES THIS 500000 SIMOLEAN TV HAVE LASERS COMING FROM IT items.
And how come you can go into the gym just fine, but the restaurants and shops are off-limits? It would be great to wander around a supermarket and pick up the items you want, rather than picking from a floating list.
I suppose I could go food shopping in real life, but this isn't the point. I am god, I should be able to make men buy tampons if I want.
In some respects it feels like a half-finished game, all they've really done is taken the previous games and added bits on here and there wherever they felt like it. Yes, you can name your fish. No, you can't have a bloody dog. Yes, you can go inside the gym. No, you can't build a functional roof without a load of hassle. Yes, you can go for a wander in the park. No, you can't have any kind of interactive worklife at all (bar selecting whether they work hard or slack off), even though it takes up most of their life.
It is fun to play, but nothing groundbreaking. Controlling a horde of Batman villains was good, and I applaud the makers for letting you have that freedom to customise, but I think that's where half of my fun came from. If you like The Sims, you'll like it. If you don't, it's basically the other Sims games with a sparkly bow tie on, shiny on the outside, but flawed in the brain to wear one.
Got to Corfu airport, I say airport, it was more like a domestic garage, to pick up our car. I say car, it was more like a robot's discarded chewing gum, all crumpled up and shit. We tried our best to drive to our villa. I say villa, we took a wrong turning within literally five minutes into a port. It was lovely, a policeman tapped his gun on our window and pointed angrily to the way out. Behind him were other police with guns, and a lot of immigrants lined up in a row, one on his stomach with his face in the dirt. Welcome to Corfu everyone!
Oh, look at me being a negative nadface. It was actually very lovely, we stayed in the posh bit away from all the riff-raff, there was a tortoise in our garden that I named Raphael, there was an awesome view, and it was hot. It is my fault, and my fault alone, that I fail at sunbathing, which made me grumpy throughout the rest of the holiday. I was in the sun for 45 minutes, but in that time managed to slow-roast my legs, and fell asleep on the lounger while not laying on a towel, bursting some blood vessels on my cheekbone where there was no flesh to act as padding which created a perfect red fine lattice on my face. It didn't go away all week. I am not used to sun, being both English and a semi-recluse I have no idea how to deal with it. I have a network of brown, red and white lines on my legs from where I had tried and failed to put sunscreen on every inch of skin, leaving finger streaks of white. I look like neopolitan icecream dropped on crazy paving. It was worth every second of seething pain however, as I got some sun and everyone left behind didn't.
Nyaaah.
Back into reality I came, and slipped right back into the cushioned world of nerddom again as soon as I switched on the pc. Geek season is well underway, what with San Diego Comic Con (aka Whatevermediawantstoshowatyourconnotnecessarilyhavinganythingtodowithcomics Con), having been and gone, Blizzcon on the way, and plenty more in between.
I love it when big groups of geeks get together, the atmosphere is electric. I've been bullied for my love of lightsabers, you've been pushed into puddles because you fancy Pikachu a little bit. We're all on the same level, let's make friends. I've been to a few conventions, and each time come away with a few more friends to watch episodes of Spaced with. Nerds are great when they get together, it's like a whole other world. For instance, at Defcon recently, criminals tried to run an ATM scam. I don't think they realised it was a hacking conference full of genius geeks that are mainly computer security professionals and probably perform much more sophisticated scams than that all the time. The plan was foiled quicker than a Christmas turkey that you thought only had to be cooked for three hours, but in fact had to be cooked for five. Only one thing to say. Owned.
The cosplayers are always a highlight.
Cosplayers definition : People that never had a dressing-up box in their room as a kiddywink, and are now making up for that loss and their boring monotonous adult lives by dressing up as their favourite characters in media rather than taking psychotherapy.
Before you start, I'm one of them. I own a Star Wars X-Wing Pilot costume, and also a rather embarrassing Star Wars "Twi'Lek Sith" costume which involves the use of latex tentacles. He who is without sin cast the first stone, and all that. I was unfortunate enough to have to catch a tube in London fully clad in tentacles and functional lightsabers at the last major geek convention I went to. I tried my hardest to pretend to look out of the window, but unfortunately this just thrust the back of my orange-penised head further into the drunk 'cool' gang's vision. After much leering and jeering I turned around to politely tell them to shut the FUCKING HELL UP, I was met with stunned silence.
"Wow, it's a chick".
Turns out that there are closest nerds within even the chavviest of us. They were actually really nice, apologised for being pricks, said they wouldn't have done it if they knew I wasn't a man (charming), said they loved my saber and thought it was really cool that a girl dressed up in Star Wars stuff, and wished me on my way.
Unfortunately, we were also followed by some less friendly chavs with knives back to our hotel. Fortunately we hurried back to our hotel, and watched as a gang of Jedi screamed at the top of lungs and chased them away with their blue lightsabers glowing in the dark. Freaking awesome. Cosplay brings out the best in people, cosplayer + cosplayer = automatic friends, and whoever does it is a very brave person.
Which is why I am about to thoroughly take the piss out of the following brave people that appeared at San Diego Comic Con this year.
There are certain types of cosplayers at conventions. Let me enlighten you to the breeds.
A fan that genuinely loves a character so much, that they will spend the ten dollars they had saved for lunch at the show on fabric to make their own costume. Geeks find them endearing (and quirkily cute in the case of the Dalek). Outsiders find them worrying when they pass them on their way to work.
The Self-Aware -
A fan that wants to show their appreciation, but does so by going mildly comedic, therefore avoiding any potential threats or dents to their self-esteem by having the get-out clause, "I was only doing it for a laugh." They then sob into their Pokemon pillow.
The "I know I look good. Who am I again?"s -
These are the cosplayers that everyone stops and gawks at. Usually dressed as Princess Leia, Powergirl, or Cammy, these are the girls that every other tomboy girl is mildly jealous of. Said tomboy girl has no need to worry, because these girls are either paid to be there, or have no idea who they are dressed up as because someone just told them to do it, reassuring them they'll look cool. Suicide Girls dressed as coming from Star Trek? Paid. Psylocke and Elektra over there? Damn. What on earth are they doing at a comic convention when they should be modelling. Evil girl wouldn't really read comics to you at bedtime, she'd rip you apart. Stick to the girlies dressed up as Ghostbusters, boys.
The Epic Win -
The cosplayers that have spent approximately 11.4% of their entire life making this costume. The envy of many. The ones that get out-loud "Whoa"s, and know at that moment that it was worth every sleepless night, broke weekends, and blood, sweat and tears.
Unfortunately, not all people at conventions can be cosplayers, let alone Epic Wins, let's face it, the small minority always take it too far. The ones that argue with the comic publishers about why their favourite character shouldn't have died. The ones that openly grope the Leia's bums. The ones that pick out flaws in a cosplayer's costume, as it is not 'historically accurate to the timeline'. The ones like this kid.
"We were shocked when one day we found out the boy drank half a bottle of gasoline from our motorcycle," the father said.
"Since my son started drink gasoline, his intelligence dropped sharply.
"Before that, he was a very smart boy, and he could even repair the television. But now he does not know the answer of seven plus 17."
Riiiiight. He was very smart before he started to drink the gasoline? So, at what point when he was smart, did he take the decision to drink gasoline? It defies all logic, unless of course, the first tasting happened solely because a freak accident took place where he was eating his Weetabix or whatever smart people eat for breakfast, and he was late for school, and the car jumped through the window and leaked into his mouth because it was that disgusted at his tardiness.
Maybe he was slowly driven insane because he was forced into fixing the god damn television, having to stare daytime tv in the grimy face one too many times.
"Doctors said the boy had mental disorders and a strong "gasoline dependence".
Damn right he does, he's been turned into motherfucking Optimus Prime now, because of all this pressure of adding, multiplication, television fixing and Weetabix eating on demand. Jeez. Some people never take the blame.
Why hello there. This'll be a quick one as I write this with various shoes and shirts strewn around my feet, for this afternoon I will be off to Corfu. Ooh. Get me. I haven't written much recently as I've been out and about recently much more than is digestible for a pale, seething misanthrope whose only form of tan is a retinal tan from her computer monitor. This is in part due to the fact that I recently had my 22nd birthday, and apparently celebrating it is the done thing. I've been dragged all kinds of places. Never mind that it was my 21st last year and I did NOTHING. Hm, maybe that's why.
I've been in London to see Derren Brown live. I actually instigated this, which shows how good he is. Derren Brown. Pulls hermits out of the moss.
I can't decide whether or not I love or hate London. There's so much to do there, much more than just laughing at mobility scooters going by with rollcages on as you have to do in my home town. There's an arcade underground in Piccadilly (the Trocadero) which I completely didn't know until my man showed me.
You kinda go in thinking it's going to be a scummy pierside arcade with small annoying children hogging the 2p machines, but it turned out to be pretty epic. The best escalators you have ever seen. A HMV with a LAN arena. A Japanese shop that makes you want to scream KAWAAIIII. Small annoying children hogging the Guitar Hero and Street Fighter 4 machines. Actually, that's probably for the best, as freaking out big style in public and smashing the machine because I've lost to Rufus again might get me locked away.
London is full of surprises. I had Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper there. WHAT!? Surely a sensory overloading taste sensation with so many flavours packed into one drink, and yet it actually tasted milder. Amazing. It wasn't fun having my face in someone's armpit in a tube carriage in 45 degrees, but it was a small price to pay. Unlike paying 30p to go to the toilet in Liverpool Street station. Come on now, in Essex I got paid 10 pounds worth of Odeon vouchers in the doctors for a small vial of my pee. London is a rip off.
As you may well know I include magic and hypnotism within my hobbies, but seeing Mr Brown made me want to quit. I'll never even come close to what he can do, the furthest I've gone is hypnotising someone to get their hands stuck on a table. After the initial 'oh shit, it worked', the fear of triggering an epileptic fit or a court case followed. I love card tricks, but my banana fingers would never allow me to be as graceful and smooth with cards as Derren Brown. I don't think anyone I know of in the UK comes close to him in terms of finesse, which is another reason people should go and see him.
Firstly, his poster for the show is creepily cool, has an air of Terminator about it. Good on him. The poster art hails back to a time when magician posters were always a bit scary. They always used to be hand painted, and portrayed something inhuman to prepare you for the fact that you weren't about to see something that was run of the mill. Sorry magicians, a picture of you with nothing but a paedosmile and a fan of cards and/or a crystal ball just doesn't cut it anymore.
I don't really want to give anything away about the show as it's still going on. What I will say is that it was a lot more segmented and choppy than some of his other live performances. We were delighted to see that the method of randomly picking people to come up on stage was still the method of decapitating frisbee throws. The first half mainly consisted of tried and tested 'tricks' rather than the more convoluted performances he is known for, but that's not to say they were any less enjoyable. A game of 'Guess Whom' (he admits that he even called it that back then in the playground, his main rival of the game being someone that now works in Curry's, while he now has a Bafta) using pictures of members of the audience played just through Derren apparently reading body language, was good fun. It's not about what he does, it's how he does it. The tricks may be old and worn, but Brown performs them in such a way that they are truly an experience for the audience. He nearly brought the whole room to tears with a certain truly touching effect involving a deceased grandparent.
The second half was certainly much darker and applied to my taste perfectly. An attempt to put the whole room into a sleepwalking trance went almost too well. I decided to not attempt to succumb to the trance both times to watch what happened, and I'm sure that I got a better show than everyone else. Watching people slump into their seats and then rise like something in a zombie film filled me with awe. Not only is he brilliant with cards, he is a brilliant hypnotist too, and as my friend put it, "a seriously underrated comedian". Aside from the show, he's also a brilliant artist. What a bastard. Observing a girl under the trance wandering around the audience in an old-fashioned smock, hair draped over her face, was like being in a real life nightmare. Very surreal. Especially when on the second date the cutest Asian girl ever woke up from her trip around the audience not knowing where she was. She then proceeded to be amazed and proclaimed 'hello everybody' about ten million times, then asked Derren for a hug. She'd turned from the scariest thing to the cutest thing within a split second I think even Mr Brown was touched. Aside from all this fluffiness, there were also effects involving a spirit cabinet, and children's spirits too, which put everyone around me on edge.
Unfortunately for me, having more than a fleeting interest in magic could have spoilt the show for me completely. All the way through I was watching intently, attempting to silently figure out how everything was done. The first time, nothing. I had no idea what had just happened, the show was flawless, and I shared in the amazement. The second night however seemed to be a frustratingly unfortunate night for Mr Brown and seeing a few slip-ups and what was the same and what was different on both nights did allow me to figure a few things out. Far from respecting him less, it made me respect him more, as he has the finesse, charm, cheekiness and pure balls to turn the most simple lies into something very special. He looked after anyone who came on stage really well and in the most charming manner to make them feel at ease. He reminded me of a stern but kind teacher I used to have at secondary school when people started giggling at a hypnotised girl on stage flopping over constantly. "Is something amusing over there? Sorry, just thought I might be missing out on something." He made everyone feel at home, yet controlled the room perfectly. He was stern but friendly, performed what were portrayed to be inhuman feats yet stayed real and self-depreciating. A lovely, genuine man despite the hype that surrounds him. Excellent stuff to see.
Good on him, and on his team, I don't have a bad word to say about it apart from the god damn expensive bottles of drink, but that really wasn't their fault.
In fact, I'd like to thank him and his team for what a girly friend called 'the best night ever', and for putting them into a gobsmacked state of awe. There's not many things that can demand that state of wonder anymore, bar travelling thousands of miles to see one of the seven wonders or something. This was much cheaper. Congratulations on putting on such a classy show. I'll definitely go next year if you come back despite all the haters that loved exclaiming how everything was done all the way through and how they could do it better. Gits.
I actually felt intense jealousy that my girl friends believed everything that they saw, and didn't even question how it happened. To them it was pure magic. What an amazing experience to have.
All I can say is sorry for gushing, and that the show is on for a couple more weeks I believe, go and see it if you can. You know me, if I'm not complaining it has to be good. Take as many laymen as possible as having a whole crowd of amazed people around you that you've brought along to have this experience is a great feeling. They couldn't thank me enough. Leave your cynicism at the door and just enjoy it how it's meant to be enjoyed. The finale is a cracker.
I've always wanted a tattoo of some sort. I envy people that have the balls to just get one if they want one. Some people are just cool enough to not worry that their portrait of a loved one will turn into Droopy Dog when time finally catches up with their toned youthful body, or that that meaningful message written in an exotic language that probably just reads 'stupid foreign cock' will someday be lost within the contours of their plump stomach one day. They are permanent. How scary is that?!
Not so scary to a lot of people, apparently. My favourite gay crush Brody Dalle just didn't care that one day when she's a sweet old pensioner, her wrinkly, frail arm will be screaming 'FUCK OFF' at the nice young man helping her across the road with her Bag for Life stuffed full with semolina.
Then again, that's the whole point of a tattoo. Isn't half the reason of getting one to mark yourself away from the mainstream population and rebel, to be non-conformist, through your looks? That's all well and good, but according to the rock-solid, infallible source that is Wikipedia, 36% of Americans ages 18–25, 40% of those 26-40 and 10% of those 41-64 have a tattoo. That's a lot of people. Surely I have a good excuse to not rebel, because rebelling seems to not be rebelling anymore. Being different is actually being the same, therefore to get a tattoo that doesn't mean anything just for the sake of getting a tattoo is pointless.
I still want one.
I'd go for it big time. Even if it makes me look like a dyke. Proper women's prison tattoos so that people either think I'm a Suicide Girl wannabe or someone that is teetering on the brink on sanity. Someone you wouldn't jump in front of in a queue at Tescos in case she shoves the bottle of whatever insane bottle of alcohol she is carrying right up your bum-bum.
You either do it or you don't, no faffing about with a small picture of a grain of sand in between my toes, not even a tramp stamp that's hidden all the time, I'd go full whack. Which is why I haven't got them.
I'm quite glad I'm a wimp really.
This one's for you Kara. You recently said that people with face tattoos are the ones that clean our streets, but I think you might want to rethink that. I'm not sure if the girl below is capable of cleaning her ears.
A Belgian teenager is attempting to sue a tattoo artist, because she now has 56 stars tattooed on her face after only asking for three.
I went to Belgium once. This story doesn't surprise me, I stayed in a youth hostel where there were wasps nesting next to what they called a bed, which was actually a ancient tiny bunkbed where instead of slats lay broken wire mesh so everytime my mate sat her bottom down on the top, she would sink all the way through and leave me with sharp shiny metal stuff near my face. Friendly. Even the girl next door's complementary coach chocolate had maggots in. Every day we went out and wandered around in the rain in the muddy trenches where all the dysentery happened and went to see how many gravestones there were for people that had died for us. Lovely place.
To cut a long and hilarious story short, she said her dad urged her to get a tattoo, as everyone in her family had one and it was part of tradition. So she logically decided to get stars on her face while her dad waited outside eating an icecream. She asked for three, fell asleep in the chair, woke up looking like the Australian flag after a breakout of acne. All apparently because the tattoo artist couldn't speak French fluently and got muddled up between 3 and 56.
There are a few fundamental flaws here.
1. Trying to look like Kat Von D is all well and good, but only Kat Von D can pull it off. It's no use realising this after a permanent tattoo and blaming the tattooist, who considering the tattoo, actually did a half-decent job. Kat Von D, Maori people, and the Zabrak race from Star Wars are the only beings that are allowed to have facial tats.
2. Why would someone fall asleep while having three tiny stars drawn on their face, surely you'd only get half an hour's worth of sleep at most. I'd rather sacrifice that half an hour to stay awake while someone was shoving needles in my face.
3. How can you sleep when someone is shoving needles in your face. Is she one of those types that can fall asleep standing in the shower?
4. How can you get 3 and 56 confused. I'd understand 3 and 53... Surely noone is that stupid.
5. That must have been a big fucking icecream.
6. Why would a successful tattooist want to bring career suicide upon himself and waste ink, resources and time by tattooing 53 extra stars on someone's face just for shits and giggles? I feel sorry for the bloke.
7. Surely there's disclaimers on some kind of form you sign for this kind of thing?!
All in all, it's probably more likely that her parents freaked out when they actually saw what tattoo she had chosen, and she tried to pass the buck onto the tattooist, or she realised she had been a stupid twat, and her self-preservation defence mechanisms kicked into gear.
Idiot.
However, the prize for the funniest segment of the story goes to the psychologist the media talked to about what kind of mental instability the girl will have in future, you know, the life-wrecking stuff that papers love. Get ready for this, I actually lol'd.
"Jules Clocher, a Belgian psychologist, said: 'The trauma this girl must be feeling is indescribable. She feels like a circus freak - and no wonder, because she looks like one.' "
I think that deserves a golf clap. *Cue golf clap*
Good game, Mr Psychologist. You're really doing your job well mate, keep up the good work.
On a side note :
You know how I missed a big chunk of Star Trek because I really badly needed to pee? I will fear missing the destruction of Vulcan no longer!
Runpee.com is a site which tells you the optimal time within the film to go release that bucket of Fanta you shouldn't have had without missing too much. It even gives you a cue of a line someone says, just so you don't miss the minute when you're supposed to go.
I presume it says that all of The Matrix Revolutions is optimal peeing quality time, apart from that one bit when Neo looks particularly cool, but I'm too scared to look in case I burst into floods of salty tears because of what might have been.
For me, this usually means a day off, copious amounts of tea, oodles of procrastination, and until this week, The Apprentice. I have a bit more respect for Sir Alan Sugar now. I know you guys don't like him, I have people land on my page through searching keywords such as 'alan sugar is a fucking gimp', and you know he grates on me. There was just a beautiful moment in the semi-final where he actually shed a tear when firing the hilarious and lovely James 'I'm really hurt you said that, it's like my cat died' McQuillan. Wait, James 'The spine's open so the baby can jump out' McQuillan. No, we can do better than that. James 'don't suggestively lick the ice-cream lads, we're not making a porno' McQuillan. There was a true bromance going on there, but at the end of the day, who wants someone working for them who believes that 'I can bring ignorance to the table' is a good thing to say in a job interview.
More respect to Siralan for picking Yasmina to win in the end, even if she does look a little bit like a potential member of that GOD AWFUL double denim wearing, poop eating, back in the day, Irish pop band B*witched. They even have a bleeding star in their name to make them seem even more Irish and twinkly. I've got news for you loves, anyone that rapes my eardrums is no friend of mine, even if you are Irish. Despite that horrific handicap, Yasmina was an awesome, gorgeous girl, and clearly the person with the coolest scar there with her Omar from the Wire-style forehead cut. All cool people have scars. Kudos, Sugarman.
I'm sad to see it go, but not sad to see the way they used their phones go. What. The. Fuck. Could you hold a phone in a more pretentious way if you tried? They all did it too. Weirdos.
I just bought this exact same phone completely by accident, and yet I don't feel the urge to lay it down and eat it out at every opportunity. Gah, don't hide your erection with a telephone book, Howard. It's good, but it's not that good. It was cheap. Buy buy buy. Nice to see the BBC don't put their hands in our pockets too much when it comes to mobile technology.
It might have been cheap, but it's got enough shit to be confusing. I love technology, but I was skint for so long that I hadn't changed my phone in years. My previous phone could basically text and phone people. If you were lucky. It couldn't even send a picture message, even though it could take photos.
Now all of a sudden I have picture messages, internet, mp3 player, a camera nearly as good as my actual camera, games that aren't Tetris (not that there's anything wrong with Tetris), and wireless connectivity. It even makes a good torch because the screen is so fucking huge. How's that for versatility. There's no doubt that putting it in your pocket means this probably comes with a fried pancreas too, but hey, it's worth it for MyTwitFace on the move. It's not like it would fry your heart or anything important like that.
It even had the foresight to bring me this to cheer me up whilst unclogging my washing machine:
I'm sorry if this image is disturbing to you Red Squirrel, but I'd of course pick a grey one, and surely the more grey squirrels I have on my walls, the better?
Don't judge me for wanting an item of taxidermy, I'm not some weird necrophiliac uber goth that likes to have sex on gravestones and that would probably lick this ornament before going to bed. Your bum would get cold, and your tongue would get fluffy.
Oli Clarke Smith Mainly games reviews. Manages to flit from child-like innocence to nads-shooting potty-mouth explosive anger in the click of a stupid person's mouse.
AcidicPlague Nerdy genius. Fickle blogger. Catch him while you can, go comment, persuade him to stay. Top bloke.
The Japing Ape The world's foremost anthropological ape. Wisest being on Blogger. Encourager of noobs. Suave.
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I don't bite, really. I'm just a normal harmless girl. Go on. You know you want to. Oh please. Please don't go. Don't leave me here.
^ My wardrobe, 86% J!nx. ^
Where "The Cake is a Lie" comes from: Portal Buy it.
Lars and Alisa after Lars shoved the ironing board into her back.
