Computer and video games with my wife: part 1

My wife has never been a game player but because she loves me, she has consented to me trying to find something she enjoys. Here's the first results

fusion frenzy - xbox: meh, just about tolerates sumo, but too many different things going on

Mario Kart - Wii: wife approved. Simple controls, fun gameplay, sensible learning curve, co-op mode

Micro machines - PlayStation: the fact that the car turns when the camera doesn't, so that left can be right or up or anything at any moment makes this quite confusing

Tekken 3 - PlayStation: the Tekken ball volley ball sub game is very much wife approved. Simple controls, not too difficult (if I play as gon) contains farting dinosaur and allows wife to kick husband in the face

Upon discovering that Spotify interrupts your music listening with adverts

NO NO FUCKING NO!!!!!!!!!!
ADVERTISING IS A FUCKING CURSE, A FUCKING POX.
I don't listen to local radio, I listen to my music because I fucking hate adverts, I don't watch sky, I downloadtv or watch it on iplayer or 4player because I fucking hate adverts, I use adblock on my interwebs because I FUCKING HATE ADVERTS

if you were in the bath and suddenly your soap started singing "buy wonder bacon, it's the best bacon in the world!" would you just accept it and say "oh, you get used to it after a while"? NO YOU FUCKING WOULDN'T! you'd throw that fucking singing soap in the fire and complain about the manufacturers that have invaded your personal space (and your sre, because I know how you like to wash you filthy mare) with their filthy stinking corporate whoring money loving shilling bastarding noise

and that's how all advertising should be treated.

If I want to buy something, I'll fucking buy it.
If I need to figure out which toothpaste is best for my teeth, I'll figure it out somehow, using science or by talking to people whose opinions I fucking trust, I don't need fake real people fake telling me that they think their fake teeth are fake brilliant OR a more likely scenario is that I won't give a shit what sort of toothpaste I use and I'll just buy the cheapest crap I can find

AND THAT'S EXACTLY HOW IT SHOULD BE

products should stand on their own merits, not on the basis of wether some spotty cokehead in a suit can think of a clever way to make the product look like it'll get you access to Kate Moss's clunge

AN EXCITING HISTORY OF SPOONS

The history of the spoon is a wild and varied one, let us start before the beginning..

PREHISTORIC SPOONS

In the caveman days nobody used spoons because they didn't have anything to eat with spoons, just leg of Wildebeest, and if they wanted to drink some water, they just stuck their head in the nearest lake.
It wasn't until after the invention of FIRE that someone invented STEW by putting vegetables, water and bits of leftover meat into a stone bowl and heating it up a bit. The cavemen thought that this was yummy but was yummier when it was hot, but it burnt their fingers, so one of them got a bit of bark and used it to eat the stew. This was the first spoon, after a while they figured out that a curved bit of bark from a branch could hold more stew and this sufficed for many years until the invention of :
SOUP
Soup was invented by a tribe of people who had travelled north to Scandinavia. When they first settled their they started making stew, but because it was winter they had few vegetables and even less meat, so one of the more imaginative tribespeople suggested using some of this white stuff that was lying about, so they put lots of snow in the stew and as we all know, snow is really just water, and as we also know, soup is just stew with more water and less meat and vegetables and so SOUP was invented. But when they tribe tried eating it with their curved bark then it spilt everywhere and they were distraught so they prayed to the gods and half an hour later someone found a bit of wood from a tree that had been splintered by lightning, this bit of wood had been attached to a branch and had a depression in it which was ideal for holding a small amount of soup, and the people wee joyous and they all carved these bits of wood and ate soup.
The Bronze Age
these primitive spoons spread throughout the world and many years later when people figured out how to cast metal the first things they made were not axes but spoons that wouldn't leave splinters in your mouth and so the modern spoon was born.

MODERN SPOONS
The basic design of spoons has not changed since the bronze age except for the materials used, today steel and plastic are the most common. Although in the same way that all dogs come from wolves, spoons have diversified into many different "breeds", such as the tea spoon the dessert spoon, the wooden spoon, the soup spoon, the ladle, the ice cream scoop, the sieve, and even the exotic Arabian throwing spoon. the most famous spoon of all time is probably the George Washington spoon , which was used by the USA's first president to cross the Delaware because he didn't have any oars. It is now housed in the Smithsonian institute

Spoonish Things

MR SPOON: Popular character from children's TV program button moon, he had wooden spoons for arms and legs, a dashing hat and a space rocket made from a washing up liquid bottle, it took off whenever he pressed the ROUND GREEN BUTTON, he had a greenhouse and made regular trip to button moon,which was a large button.

SPOON MAN: Track from the album Super Unknown by Sound Garden (probably most famous for Black Hole sun, from the same album) lead singer Chris Novaselik once said "Pass me a spoon please"

SPOON HEADS: Nick name for the Cardassians from Star Trek (DS9 in particular) given to them by the Bajoran people because of the spoon like things on their foreheads

Mr Spooner: Lecturer at Oxford or Cambridge who was famous for his "Spoonerisms"because he kept getting words mixed up like
"lets salute our queer dean"
"you have hissed all my mystery lessons and tasted the whole worm"

NEW SINS!!!!!!!!!!

I was talking to the pope just there now (bastard owes me money)
and he kept trying to change the subject and gave me a list of 7 new deadly sins, he didn't tell me if they are replacing the old ones or if these are additional sins because I had just nutted him and told him to have the wodge ready by friday or he's getting his knees done

anyway, NEW SINS!!!!!!!!!

1. ``Bioethical' violations such as birth control

2. ``Morally dubious'' experiments such as stem cell research

3. Drug abuse

4. Polluting the environment

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

6. Excessive wealth

7. Creating poverty

a few points, I'm not sure if I like these new ones, they're not exactly in touch with "the common man" are they? I mean, I've been guilty of all 7 old sins and at this moment am currently guilty of at least 5, but these new ones? Maybe 3 on a busy day. You average punter isn't going to be able to perform "morally dubious" experiments are they?

other points, what right does a celibate man have to tell people not to practice birth control? surely celibacy is the ULTIMATE birth control?

aren't 5,6 and 7 more or less the same thing?

excessive wealth is a sin? this coming from a man who lives in a gold fucking house?

what exactly constitutes drug "abuse" ? what about tobacco and booze? communion wine?

anyways, what would you chose to be new sins for the new millenium?

I'd nominate "phoning call centres while on speaker phone" "adverts that pretend to have real people but they're actually actors" and "being a stupid wanker"

Dancing Davros

So I decided I wanted to get my friend something a bit special this christmas as she's helped out a lot over the past year. Now she has a collection of bears so I considered getting her a fancy bear, but she's got loads of those. Then I remembered that she's also a Dr Who fan and that I had one of these Daleks in the attic.

So a quick rummage around and I also find one of these bad boys, a genuine dancing hamster

A flurry of further rummaging procured me quite a stash of junk

First things first, skin the hamster and see how it holds together.

Not a pretty sight, but at least that carapace comes off easily enough. Now in these hamsters, the speaker and the batteries are all in the yellow base and there's a cam shaft that connects the body to the base so it rocks from side to side but we couldn't have that as it would make the thing too unstable, plus I was too lazy to work out how to secure it properly.

So I yoinked the wires, fed them through a hole in the dalek skirt, reconnected them and shoved everything under the skirt, classy.
Quickly stuffing the skin back on I notice a problem, even with it's belly taped the hamster head a lot of padding and is much too big for the base.

More foraging produces a small bear which I quickly slice down and tape in place, retaining the original hamster hands as the bear didn't have any, it's arms just abruptly stopped. Note the paint job, had to be done before the fur went on.

Then I was wondering how to attach the jacket, I tried using an old vinyl calculator case and supergluing it but that ended horribly, so I went and bought something I've been meaning to get for years, a GLUE GUN! Gods gift to lazy arts and crafts.

Through a combination of glue gun, insulation tape and black plastic bag I make little Dav a jacket and also the glue gun comes in handy for holding him in place on his chair.

The back plate is made from silver card, a beer can and a pci slot cover. The under carriage is made from parts of old scalextric cars and unscrews to change the batteries.

The chinese have an expression, "If you keep a thing for seven years, you will find a use for it"
If you look at davros' head, you'll see he has a bracket holding it in place, I made mine from the legs of one of these fellas.

All that was left was to attach the bumper and paint his balls, I used silver nail poilsh as anything else would have involved me going into town to the model shop and probably would have needed two coats.

And there you have it, Davros, creator of the evil Daleks, in bear form. Oh actually, there is one more thing, check out the video to see him in action.

The adventures of emo cowboy

Click for bigger

The come back kids

Take that reforming? eh alright then. Spice girls? MEH! Boyzone? Didn't they only split up last week? fuck off, what's next? B*witched? Cleopatra? Comin' atcha?

But cynical cash in come backs are nothing new. In the late 80s and early 90s there was a mexican boy band known as Magneto (obviously huge x-men fans) They were pretty popular, over 40 gold discs, platinum and diamond as well, a film or two and loads of screaming groupies.
Then after a few years they got tired of it, or the constant bickering drove them all apart and they split up.
Same old story

Of course a few more years down the line and the money has run out, so the lads decide to get back together and put out a few more albums, except there had been too much bickering and they couldn't all reconcile. They were one member short.
So they recruited young Ricardo Guillermo Abarca, at 18 years old he was very much the baby of the group, a bit of eye candy to draw in the younger crowd.
Young Ricky thought he'd won the lottery, the sexy lottery that is. Here he was in the middle of a band that were already huge stars, he was singing on stage, he was a star, he was the man. The others in the band were gettting a bit wrinkly so Ricky had first pick, he had hot and cold running groupies all over the place.
One day as they're landing at a gig in Guatemala, they step out of the helicopter and Ricky spots a couple of particularly nice young ladies that he'd like to spend some time in deep conversation with, he gives them a wink and a wave and......


Aid workers managed to recover his fingers and they were successfully reattached at a local hospital.
Ricky is currently appearing in a soap opera called "time of victory" and has learned a lesson about keeping his hands to himself