1) I bought Airport Express last week and installed an airport card on Saturday and it has taken me until tonight to realise that I wasn't actually connecting to my network, I was poncing off the students next door. And I hope to God they don't have a download cap as I was ahem-ing like a bastard all weekend. Still, I am all legit again now.
2) I also bought a new iPod with the video thing last weekend as well after my old iPod freaked out and lost all my music. Just deleted the whole lot. And lo, there was woe in the land, and also swearing. Fortunately anything I love is probably on the computer already, but I have gone from 45GB of music to 25GB. That tells you how much I don't listen to, ever, and don't really miss. I do love the new iPod, though I have an unhealthy addiction to playing Cubis 2 on it. It's black and sexy and encourages me to go to the gym and deal with the gym bunnies and their unfeasibly perky condescension and the way they stare as thought they'd like to introduce a law that criminalised Exercising While Fat.
Fuck off, gym bunnies. It's freakish to enjoy exercise that much. Go read a book. Watch some telly. Have a burger.
I tried to work the running machine the other weekend and fell off the end of it. Thank God it was Easter Saturday and like a sweaty-smelling morgue in there. Still, what's a little working out without looking like a ruddy-faced twat who can barely cope with the 21st century? At least I wasn't cornered by the mad aerobicizer woman who once wedged me against the changing room lockers to tell me that she admired my bravery for going on the rowing machine and gave me a lecture about the Himalayas and Tibet. Every time I backed away, she kept on going forward. Nightmare.
I am not even making this up; that's the sad thing.
What makes people ignore personal space in changing rooms? Seriously, once I have taken my kecks off, I don't want a personal bubble of space, I want a bloody 20-mile exclusion zone, patrolled by killer sharks at the very least. Under no circumstances should people say anything more complicated than "excuse me". I am iffy about even eye contact until I am securely in the giant shorts of doom and my lovely red England shirt.
Where the hell was I? Oh yes...
3) I'd rather stay away from the row about the Virginia Tech massacre but some of the comments I read on friendsfriends made me weary a bit. *Some* reporters may have behaved badly but I don't think dropping an email to someone or putting a comment on a public post of a blog, giving contact details if they want to talk about their experiences is out of order, even if you know you're one of about 100 journalists doing to same thing. That's not hounding. They will talk, or they will not talk. If you persist and they still will not talk, then that is wrong. There's a whiff of hypocrisy in complaining about the mainstream media's blanket coverage while simultaneously hoovering up every pixel of comment and reportage you can on the internet. *
Also, I will observe that Sky News' sanctimonious pondering on the (lack of) gun control in the US was revolting on two counts: a) because Sky is owned by Fox, whose US channel is probably wanking on about threats to the second amendment as we speak; and b) the tone of "of course that would never happen here because of our more rational approach to guns and life" was both unseemly and in bad taste. The US may have more of these spree shootings but Britain is nothing to write home about on the mass killing front either. When we don't have wankers strapping bombs to themselves to blow up the tube, or a culture of post-pub violence that would make the Visigoths blanch, *then* maybe we can be smug. Until then, Sky needs to stop it.
[*ETA -- re: the mood theme at present: I am not angry about *this* specifically; I am just generally hostile at the moment]
4) If you get the chance, go to see the film Sunshine, which is the latest film from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. It's about a world in which the sun is failing and the Earth is falling slowly into snowy death. In a last-ditch attempt to save humanity, a spaceship called Icarus (do you see what they did there?) is sent with a giant nuclear device to try to restart the star. It disappears, so a second and final ship, Icarus II, is sent. The second crew have been on the mission for 18 months when they find the original Icarus, and divert course to rendezvous with it. Then everything goes to hell.
The first two thirds is an intelligent amalgam of 2001 and Alien, with a dash of Armageddon but less ridiculously testosterone-poisoned. It jumps the rails and goes a bit Hollywood in the last third but remains stunning to look at throughout. The cast is interesting -- Cillian Murphy remains so beautiful that he actually looks a little weird and Chris Evans was really, really good as the engineer, who began as a hotheaded macho Hollywood stereotype but ended up impressing with his integrity and commitment to the mission.
5) Can anyone tell me the ways in which zombies are created? So far I have
i) Actual voudoun
ii) Effects of a mysterious radiation after ship returns from Venus (Night of the Living Dead)
iii) Infection through an escaped virus (28 Days Later)
Also, what do you like best about zombies?
I swear this is *for* something.
