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Recommended Viewing

• 300†
  Does exactly what it says on the (comic book) tin. Loved it.
• Little Miss Sunshine†
  Very funny, disturbing (the beauty pageant) and completely messed up -- but in a good way.
• Laputa: Castle in the Sky†
  Story great, characterization a little on the weak side -- though the big robots are cool.
• Porco Rosso†
  Stylish, funny, exciting.
• Grave of the Fireflies†
  Very sad, which was a little unexpected since I didn't know much about it before watching it. Can be a little too slow in places though, otherwise it's very good.
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind†
  The story can get a little dense at times what with the various factions, but still really enjoyable, inventive and engaging.
• X-Men: The Last Stand†
  Opportunity, talent, money - all blown. Over 3 films X-Men has hinted of something great that could have been, this last one says "No, sorry - not going to happen". Bah.

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The heart is deceitful above all things

I have this friend who was on the recieving end of a spot of bad news tonight, not the worst kind of news but not the best either. My friend split up with this girl a long time ago, but intruth he never really got over her - which is sad on so many levels, pathetic sad right the way up to romantic sad. My friend has never really formed a proper lasting relationship with any other woman since he split up with her and, well, to be honest he’s been a bit of a bore to be around at times. These two star crossed lovers were still in touch until Christmas last year and since then he hasn’t heard from her, but he’s thought of her often. Anyway, tonight the poor fellow learned that the one he could never quite forget about is getting married in January.

It’s tough on the old boy because he finds himself entering his 30s with close friends scattered to the four winds and he’s no-one to call round with and share how he feels about all this. I think he realises now he maybe should have tried a bit harder and stopped clinging to the past all these years. I think this news will be good for him in the long run. But still, I get the impression he’s feeling a little adrift, that his last connection to that other world has been severed. (My friend isn’t as melodramatic as me, I like to dramatise this little scene with some flowery imagery.)

Anyway, my friend as almost reached the half way stage of his life and when he looks around he sees his friends happily married, some with children some without and equally happy. I think he wants to find some meaning in why he’s where he is but I don’t think he’ll find it - it just is what it is, somethings have no meaning and working that out is as important as it is with those things that do.

…

(Has the music faded out yet? I can’t pad any more.)

0 CommentsNovember 29, 2005

My Work

Millions of you have written in to ask what it is I do in my secret government web design job. While it probably contravenes some guidlines about something or other I will attempt to give a brief outline of what we do here. Our offices are only accessible by the Old Belfast Underground. “Ah” says you, “Belfast doesn’t have an underground old or new”; well doesn’t that just show how little you know?
Once you arrive at the offices you could be mistaken for thinking you have arrived at a pub, this won’t be your first mistake believe me. Inside exists what can only be described as a cathedral of technology which I’ll maybe describe some other day.

To the point, what do we do? We write weblogs, fake weblogs. We write weblogs for various purposes according to Her Majesty’s plans, we have weblogs for pacifying the middle classes, we have weblogs for flushing out the radicals we even have weblogs for creating radicals. which weblogs are which I’m not going to reveal but I will take this opportunity to state for the record that Slugger O’Toole is not one of ours. Slugger is actually the work of the Danes, part of their strategy to take back Rockall by raising an army of trolls. Crude but effective.

So that’s what I do, it’s both financially and spiritually rewarding as I’m sure you’ll appreciate and isn’t without it’s own little challenges. I will now take questions from the floor.

3 CommentsNovember 29, 2005

Tales of the Obvious: Toe Tags

In the top secret government research bunker where I work there was a problem. Documentation from the big brains on floor 101 was slow in making it’s way down to the organ banks from sector 7-G, this bottle neck was having a catastrophic effect on the work flow and all sorts of Management Consultancy types applied their big brains to the problem, to little or no effect.
Then one fateful day while I was walking past the mortuary beside the canteen I noticed something that set in motion a chain of events so fabulous and extraordinary that words cannot express. (If they could, I would surely have used them.) Toe tags, simple little brown notes tied to the toe of a body mark the first and most important part of documenting bodies through the mortuary — these deadly tags of joy would be the salvation of us all! Soon we had developed a robot to take the toe tags from the big brains on floor 101 and build the neccessary Subversion, Trac and development hosts for our projects, soon we were dancing in our clogs, soon we were as happy as little clog wearing government sponsored top secret web designers could be.

Next Week in Tales of the Obvious: The Master Plan to be the Ultimate Rulers of all Web Design

0 CommentsNovember 28, 2005

Miracle

0 CommentsNovember 28, 2005

If I should fall from grace again

Deanes Deli on Bedford Street (at the corner of Clarence Street and Bedford Street) — not the restaurant Deli but the deli Deli — do the best sandwich in all of Belfast. It’s the rib roast boyo, words can’t paint the nessary picture but if a sandwich could sing, this one would be Handel’s Messiah on Christmas Eve.

This week a hot girl has started getting my train, actually, she got on my train once, then I took the executive decision that getting the all stopper past Carnalea would be good for my health, nothing to do with that being her stop and my usual train flies past an 70mph. Glances have been exchanged, smiles, the usual low level public transport exchange, just enough to get you interested but not enough to convince you she just doesn’t think your hair sticky-up-bed-head-hair is funny or that she’s short-sighted and is really just smiling to herself about last night with her boyfriend (hate him already). I bet her boyfriend is some Porcshe driving Campbell bufty with the imagination of a toad. What is it with women and the men they pick? They seem to have some genetic attraction to the complete bastards of the male species, and then they spend the rest of thier lives saying all men are bastards…
Anyway, hot girl on train, I think my one chance with her has been blown, there was an opportunity to talk but I froze and the moment past. I am Mr Singularly Incapable of Carpe Diem. Robin Williams would expel me from his English class. (He’d have to, it’d be against his better judgement but he’d have to.) Imagine if she read this, I’d be cut to the onion.

One final thing… Gnarls Barklay ‘Craxy’, that’s what you’ll all be grovving to, then getting sick of, in the next year. Trust me.

2 CommentsNovember 25, 2005

from The Anniversary

  All kings, and all their favourites,
  All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The Sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now that it was
When thou and I first one another saw:
All other things to their destruction draw,
  Only our love hath no decay;
This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running it never runs from us away,
But truely keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)

0 CommentsNovember 19, 2005

Holy Sonnet

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls’ delievery.
Thou art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than they stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)

0 CommentsNovember 13, 2005

Congratulations Nelly, you win a speed boat

1 CommentsNovember 10, 2005

Judy

For as long as I can remember we have always kept Springer Spaniels. When I was about 10 we had 2, Sheba and Judy. Judy was Sheba’s pup, only a couple of years old at most and not quite trained yet. This one day I cycled down to the local shop on my BMX, down the little country road to the little country store at the end, Judy and Sheba came with me which I knew was wrong and I knew I should have made them both go back to the house but it seemed like fun and the part of me that wants to be free from rules and dog leads and choke chains… well, I was 10, that was the only part of me their really was. So down the road we all went, happy as a boy and his dogs could be wandering free.

The store sat at the end of the road, by the sea at the junction where our road meets the main road joining the two small towns nearby. Sheba was walking to heel, Judy was going near daft with excitment at the thought she might get to go play in the sea.

Judy was half across the main road before I realised and I instinctively shouted for her to come to heel, she stopped to turn and was hit by a car, killing her instantly. It happened so fast. The car never stopped. I didn’t know what to do. Judy’s white and liver coat was bloodied and she lay by the roadside motionless while I cried my eyes out.

1 CommentsNovember 7, 2005

Google Print Vanity

According to Google Print I have been quite busy over the years. Though I don’t think I ever approved of publishing my address

I already knew what my name meant (stephen, crown; stewart, guardian) but now I know that Marc is a short form of Marcus, from the latin Mars and means warlike. Hard to believe.

2 CommentsNovember 3, 2005