Drawing and Magazine

I went out to a shopping mall with my Dad. We started off at Starbucks, and I had a mocha and a chocolate swirl. I got a drawing pad, a notebook and a copy of Neo magazine (a magazine that specialises in reviews and features about manga, anime and related subjects).

We went along to my parent's house. The weather was so good today that we were able to go and sit outside for most of the afternoon.

Good Intentions

I went out to the comic book store today and bought Harrow County issue 15, Batmanissue 5, and the book John Constantine, Hellblazer: Good Intentions by Brian Azzarello, Richard Corben, Marcelo Frusin and Steve Dillon. I went along to KFC and had a Zinger Tower Burger meal, and walked around in the, very rare, warm sunlight.

Heatwave

It was really hot today. Apparently it's the hottest day of the year so far. 

On my way into work I was listening to Chilling Tales: The Podcast which was doing the concluding part of their "Summer of Love-Craft" show, with the second part of a reading of the H.P. Lovecraft story "The Dunwich Horror". It was pretty good. It was another long day in the office. I heard an episode of Within the Wires a new science-fiction podcast from the creators of Welcome to Night Vale.

I was glad to get back home, I just felt really exhausted today.

Millennium

Last night I was watching the first episode of Millennium from 1996.  It was a TV show created by Chris Carter (who came up with The X-Files) and it starred Lance Henricksen as a retired FBI profiler who has a unique ability to get inside the heads of serial killers, and he moves back to the suburbs of Seattle and becomes a consultant for a strange organisation called The Millennium Group.  It's a strange show, very much of it's time, and it lasted for three seasons, and totally changed each season.  The first one is extremely bleak and quite intense horror, the second went into bizarre fantasy-horror, and in the third it became an X-Files clone, and there was actually an X-Files / Millennium cross-over episode.  I still think Millennium is an underrated show.  It's dated, but it is still surprisingly disturbing for a mainstream network TV show.

Also last night I downloaded The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson on to my Kindle Fire.

It was a pretty long day at work.  I listened to This American Life about getting your money's worth, which told a short story from the point of view of a condom.  I also heard Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, which is basically an analysis of the whole history of the X-Men comics and their many, many spin-offs.  I heard Comedy of the Week (presenting a sketch comedy show called Daphne Sounds Expensive), Happy Sad Confused (which interviewed Tom Hiddleston and Nicholas Hoult) and one of my favourite podcasts You Must Remember This, about the "secrets and / or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century".

It was really hot today, surprisingly so.  The problem is that it's been really cold recently, and it often gets very cold at work, and so I was wearing my thick woolen top and thick jacket.  When I got home I was absolutely exhausted with heat.

Wind and Rain

Last night was pretty quiet again. I was watching TV and reading pretty much most of the time.

Today was another slow day at work. The wind was really heavy on the way home and the rain was bad as well. It was actually difficult to stand upright and I had to walk with my hat in my hand so it didn't blow away.

On the way home I stopped off and bought a copy of Empire magazine. The main features this month were about the upcoming Captain America movie, a rumoured Alien prequel, movies that copied Star Wars and the behind the scenes story of the Michael Jackson movie Moonwalker.

I've got the day off tomorrow, and I'll be going up to get some new comic-books, but aside from that I don't know what I'll be doing.

House of Mystery

Last night I was reading my new comics, and the graphic novel of House of Mystery: Room & Boredom written by Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham and illustrated by Luca Rossi. The story revolves around the House of Mystery, which sits at the crossroads of many different realities, and where customers have to pay for their food and drinks in the bar with a story. A young architecture student from Texas finds her way to the House after being pursued by a ghostly couple, but is unable to leave. It's a pretty good story, and is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

The snow fell again overnight and it was really thick this morning, so I couldn't go along to my parent's house. Instead we went up to Cafe Rouge, a French restaurant, and I had some bread and olives to start, with a minute steak and fries with garlic butter as the main course and a hot chocolate and walnut brownie topped with vanilla ice cream for dessert and a pint of Stella Artois beer. It was really nice. Afterwards I looked around the shops for a bit, but didn't buy anything.

Assassin's Creed II

Last night I decorated my Christmas tree, and it does look pretty nice. I'll try and remember and take a picture at some time. I also played about an hour of Assassin's Creed II which is a really fun game, with an interesting storyline.

It was another very quiet and dull day at work. Not much happened. Most of the ice and snow has melted now, although when I left work it was really freezing cold. On my way home I got a steak pie supper to eat.

Disturbing Behavior

Last night was pretty quiet again. I watched a funny episode of The Big Bang Theory, and the rest of the evening I spent watching other fairly random stuff on TV.

I had another half day today, which was good. In the afternoon I watched the 1998 movie Disturbing Behavior which stars James Marsden, Katie Holmes and Nick Stahl, and tells the story of a new student at a seemingly quiet high-school, who discovers that a group of seemingly perfect students have been brainwashed. It was fairly average, but not bad. The film is reviewed at Permanently Weird.

It seems like the snow and ice is finally beginning to melt. Although there is still a lot of ice on the ground.

Baguette Run

Last night was pretty quiet. I watched the latest episode of The Apprentice which was very funny, and a couple of episodes of the Steve Carrell version of The Office, which I really enjoyed. I think that show is often funnier than the Ricky Gervais show. Then I watched a hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Penguins won five to two.

It was a fairly average day at work. There was a baguette run today and I had a panini with roast beef, brie, jalapeno peppers and English mustard. It was really good. The weather is starting to warm up a bit now and the ice is finally starting to thaw.

Falling Again

Last night was pretty quiet. I went over to Maria's place for a couple of hours and we watched the last hour and a half of Transformers and an episode of South Park. It's kind of a strange situation with Maria. I'm very cautious about this friendship because it ended badly last time, although that was three years ago now. So I don't know. We'll see what happens.

Today it was a pretty quiet day at work. There hadn't been any new snow but the streets were really icy, and I did fall over once again and I nearly fell a few times.

Totally Freezing

Last night was pretty quiet. I watched an episode of NHL on the Fly, which is like an ice hockey review show, and a couple of episodes of The IT Crowd.

There wasn't any new snow tonight but the temperatures were well below freezing and all the pavements were covered with ice. On my way into work I fell on the ice and coming home I almost fell several times, but I managed not to.

It was a pretty quiet day at work. Most people managed to be in today after all the chaos yesterday and also most people stayed for the full day.

Big Freeze

Last night was pretty quiet. I spent most of the time sitting watching repeats of comedy shows on TV.

This morning the snow was really thick everywhere. It was several inches thick and it was still falling when I trudged into work. It was snowing pretty much all day. It was so bad that the buses stopped running at one point and people were told that if they lived in an outlying region and were genuinely worried about getting home, then they could leave early and their time would not be affected. I left fairly early myself, although my walk to work is only twenty to twenty-five minutes on a good day. The reason I left was because I wanted to get back while it was still light, because the snow had been falling on ice and I didn't want to fall. It was actually starting to thaw as I left work, and there were some very deep and freezing cold patches of water.

Dante's Inferno

Last night I was playing on my two new PlayStation 3 games which I got yesterday. Dante's Inferno was a kind of action horror game which was very, very loosely based on the first part of The Divine Comedy a poem by Dante Alighieri. In the poem, the poet Dante is taken on a tour through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven to find his beloved Beatrice. In the game, Beatrice is captured by infernal forces and Dante, now a Crusader, has to fight his way through Hell in order to rescue her, with the help of Death's magical scythe and various magical powers to fight his way through the nine circles of Hell, fighting monsters and jumping over pits and other traps. It is a really fun game, with some really spectacular graphics. It probably also enjoys the distinction of being one of the very few action video games to be based on 14th century Italian poetry.

The other game, Heavy Rain, was really different. It was really a role-playing mystery thriller, where you have to search a rain-soaked American city for a serial killer, "The Origami Killer", before he kills his latest victim. The game got a lot of attention for it's very innovative control system where you can interact with a lot of your environment, and also hear what your character is thinking at various points in the game. The decisions that you make in the course of the game can really affect the outcome, so it's one of those games that you can play a number of times and not play the same game twice. Again it is a really amazing looking game. Two very different games, but both really good in their own ways.

Today was the start of a new week at work, and once more it was very slow, with a lot of admittedly minor but very annoying irritations. I decided to take a half day on Tuesday and a day off on Wednesday, so that should be fun. There's no real reason for the time off, I just thought that it would be a nice change. The weather was really warm and sunny again today, and I hope that it continues like that for the rest of the week.

Dawn of the Dead

Last night I was watching the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero, on DVD. It was the second of the Dead series of zombie films, following Night of the Living Dead, and takes place sometime after the first film where the zombie plague has become much, much worse. The story tells of two news reporters who have been trying to keep the station on the air as long as possible, and two members of a SWAT team who team up together and use a helicopter to fly out of the city and find some safety. However, due to lack of fuel, they are forced down at a large shopping mall, where they have to hole up and survive constant attacks from the flesh-eating zombies. It's a much bigger movie than the previous one with a lot of gruesome, action set-pieces. It is pretty good, although it does lack the intensity of the first film. It was fairly successfully remade in 2004.

It was freezing cold outside again today, although I know that if I get to Canada I'll have to get used to it being much colder. I only went out once today and that was to get my groceries for the week. The rest of the day I spent cleaning at home.

Night of the Living Dead

Last night I was watching the movie Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A Romero, which was first released in 1968. In the movie, the bodies of the recently dead have started to walk around with a single-minded hunger for living human flesh. Anyone who is killed becomes one of the walking dead. The only way to kill them is to either destroy or sever the brain from the body. The story focuses on a small group of survivors who hole up in a deserted farmhouse and basically have to stay alive long enough to either summon help or figure out a way to escape. The film was made on a very low-budget in black and white by Romero and a group of his friends with the help of the Romero's employers at the time, a Pittsburgh TV advertising company. The story was basically written as something that could be shot very cheaply with the limited resources they had available. The film has become one of the all-time cult classics and has been copied, parodied, mocked and referenced countless times. It has also been remade at least twice with another one the way. However the movie remains extremely effective, in a way because it is so stripped down basically to it's essentials, and because it takes place almost entirely in the farmhouse with the cameras almost pressed up to the actor's faces, it is genuinely claustrophobic. By modern standards, the film is relatively tame in regards to violence, with much of it taking place off-screen, although there are still plenty of shocking moments. The movie was the first of Romero's Dead series, which continued with Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and the upcoming Survival of the Dead.

It was another freezing cold day with the streets covered in ice. Work was really dull as usual, and I was glad to get home. I bought a fish supper on my way back. It has felt like a really long week.

Good Omens

Last night I finished reading the book Good Omens written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The book was first published in 1990 and is kind of a mix of comedy, fantasy and horror. Basically it opens a few days before the End of the World, as the armies of Heaven and Hell gather for their final battle, however, due to a mix-up at the hospital, the Antichrist has been sent to the wrong parents and instead of being raised by the American Ambassador to Britain, has been raised by an ordinary couple in a small town in rural England, completely unaware of his true identity. As the situation for the world grows increasingly desperate, an angel and a demon, who realise that they prefer the world as it is, decide to join forces in an attempt to stop the apocalypse. However the only person who truly seems to know what's happening is a long-dead witch who wrote a book called "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch", the world's only truly reliable book of prophecy. It is a very funny book and the combination of the styles of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman works realy well. The movie director Terry Gilliam is a huge fan of the book and has been trying to get a film made of it for a number of years.

The streets were really icy outside today. Really icy. It was actually quite treacherous walking about. It was another very busy but very dull day at work. Already it feels as if the two week Christmas holiday never happened.

Blake's 7

Last night was pretty quiet. I was watching a number of episodes of Blake's 7 from the DVD that I got on Wednesday. It was a really good show. It was a British science-fiction show that ran from about 1977 to 1981 and was like a kind of combination of Star Trek and Star Wars, but it was much darker and grittier than those two. Basically, it was set in the future and was about a group of disperate rebels and criminals who use this advanced alien spaceship to fight against a tyrannical federation. The show was often pretty bleak, and even the "good" characters barely tolerated each other and were usually very cynical and miserable. Especially the character Avon (played by Paul Darrow), who became the lead in the later seasons, who always gave the impression of being quite willing to kill anyone if it in any way suited his purposes. The show did suffer from spaceships that looked like they were made from a child's model kit and the fact that the scenes on alen worlds all looked like they were filmed in the same quarry, but it was very well written and it also had a very strong vein of dark humour.

Today I stayed in all day. It's freezing cold and there is snow and ice all over the place outside.

Psychoville

Last night I was watching the latest episode of That Mitchell and Webb Look, which was pretty funny especially the post-apocalyptic game show sketch, and the latest episode of Psychoville, which is probably the worst show ever to watch if you're at all scared of clowns. Later on and it was the last of this week's episodes of The Wire. It's about half way through season three at the moment.

Today was a really quiet day at work, and as always for a Friday the office almost completely emptied by lunchtime. Most people, understandably, want to leave early on Friday so they can get a longer weekend. I got into work later than I had planned, due to sleeping in, so I didn't manage to leave early and had to leave home without any breakfast, so I was kind of hungry all morning. During my breaks I was reading The Russia House by John le Carre, which is quite good.

It wasn't quite as hot today as it has been, but it was quite humid. Also it was pouring with rain for most of the afternoon. I'm glad it's the weekend now, anyway!

In regards to the Canada move, I'm still researching things and still trying to figure out an action plan.

Hot Day

Last night I watched an episode of The Wire, which was really good. It's one of those shows which never became really popular but was very highly acclaimed. It's often been called the best TV series ever made. That's kind of a bold statement, but I definitely think it's the best crime and police show ever made. Over in the UK it's being shown three days a week on BBC2 at twenty past eleven at night, which is kind of a difficult time for most potential viewers.

On my way in to work I stopped off and renewed my bus pass for the next month. It is kind of expensive, so it isn't a great thing when I'm trying to save money. It was another really quiet and dull day at work, as it usually is.

The weather is really hot today. It is definitely the hottest day of the year so far. I personally prefer the cooler weather, because I tend to find that when it's colder it's easy enough to warm up but when it's hot it's a lot more difficult to cool down.

Wet Friday

Last night was pretty quiet. I did some writing and watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory, which I think is a really funny show.

Work was almost empty today, as it almost always is on Fridays. I got a half day off booked for next Friday. The reason being that I volunteered to go on a half day training course next Friday morning. However, they don't know whether they'll be holding it or not. It depends on how many people want to do it on that day.

I left work at around half past five this afternoon. The weather was absolutely terrible, pouring with rain pretty much all afternoon and really cloudy and dull.