Transformovie.

I saw Transformers with Adrian, Craig, Ted, Damo, and Adrian's non-nerd boytoy (who looked slightly uncomfortable with all the geekery).

WOW!

Very glad I saw it on the big screen. Big with the action. It was the first film I've seen where people spontaneouesly cheered at several points throughout the film (main title, Optimus Prime's first sighting in truck mode, and Megatron's ass-kicking first line "I...am Megatron!")

THE GOOD:

[-] Heavy on the robo-action. Thank fuck.

[-] Heavy on the feeling, depsite the slight cheesiness of the writing. For example, when one of the Autobots (won't say who) is killed (and when I say killed, I mean grabbed by arms and legs and ripped in fucking half.) my jaw dropped and I gasped loudly exactly as I did when I was 5, seeing Brawn shot by Megatron in the first TF movie. I turned to Adrian and saw the exact same look on his face. Whoa.

[-] "One shall stand, one shall fall." GOOSEBUMPS.

[-] Frenzy! Despite his slightly alien look and wierd, Ewok-like speech, the little bugger kicked a ridiculous amount of ass and had the highest bodycount of all the Decepticons bar Megatron. Oh, and for those of you who aren't Adrian or me, here's the difference:

Old Frenzy

New Frenzy

[-] Bumblebee as Camero worked surprisingly well. I didn't miss the Vee-Dub at all.

[-] "It seems you have failed me again, Starscream." Bwa ha ha ha.

[-] Geeking out with Craig and Adrian afterwards.

[-] Lots of other stuff too.

THE BAD

[-] The amount of moving parts of the robot forms (most of which were steel grey), made it hard to distinguish an detail when two of the robots were fighting. They're just a smush of blurred motion.

[-] The pigeon-holing of African-American-street-culture-through-the-filter-of-white-suburban-writers grated on me. For example, instead of Jazz using outdated, near-beatnik phrasing as he did in the show, he talked like Fifty-Cent. Despite it being a funny scene, I could have lived the rest of my life without have heard Optimus Prime say "My bad."

[-] So much military stock footage. It seemed the first half of the movie was tanks, planes and jeeps driving and flying around.

[-] Decepticons, for the most part, looked great, but went down like pussies in three seconds. Except Starscream. Who disappeared for 20-minute stretches, then showed up, then disappeared again.

Oh, and the Simpsons trailer. Gotta see that. Go Spider-Pig!

Inspiration Blogging.

Found the sheet with all the things on it. In no particular order:

:: Our cat is a heater whore. She flattens out, pancake like in from of it. It's embarrassing.

:: I actually used the phrase "Out on the piss" in casual conversation. I'm being influenced by Aussies, damn it!

:: The Holiday:
-->Halfway through the film "The Holiday" I suddenly and shockingly wanted pub-style fish and chips.
--> Jem (the singer from the Holiday soundtrack, not the cartoon from the 80s) has purchasing influence. I can recall having that album playing for two weeks at Borders, at the end of which, the entire female population of the shop staff bought a copy of the CD. Uncanny.
-->Awww. In "The Holiday", there's a hobbit gate. We don't have a hobbit gate! I want a Hobbit gate.
-->Jude Law is a young Michael Caine. And Jack Black is adorable (and loves Ennio Morricone).
--> "Why do I always go for the bad girl!"
"You didn't know she was bad."
"I knew she wasn't good!"

:: Custard and Almond together taste of butter. I'm not sure why.

:: We bought a dining table from IKEA. I guess that makes us grown-ups now. We still haven't used it yet.

:: Cheat codes in video games. I don't like them. I might use them once, for about two minutes, but I never save a game with them on. I burned myself out with the DULLARD code for Mortal Combat II.

:: Australian and English children articulate a ridiculous amount more than their parents do. It's astounding.

:: Magazines. I buy them and rarely finish them. Nor do I ever like them that much either. And yet I buy them. The music and video game ones are all about things I can't own, and the movie ones are 90% speculation and the rest snarky reviews. If I want snarky, I'll ask Adrian.

And that's it.

This is what I get for planning ahead.

Ok, I have a long post to make when I get home (I even made notes on a pad about what I wanted to blog about, then left the pad on my desk. So I'll do it later.

New White Stripes cd. Awesome.

Transformers coming out this Thursday. Giddyup. Getting a nerd posse together to see it. Planning to make a shirt saying "More than meets the eye since 1984".

Put together some IKEA furniture last night. Very handy, I am.

Ugh.

I've been waking up with a headache every day this week. It's always on the left side, starting at behind my eye, travelling across my scalp and then setlling at the base of my skull. Ugh. I'm chewing through my asproclear and nurofen supplies.

On the plus side, beat Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Again.

Also, everyone go to Adrian's blog. It's in my links.

A new look. Just because.

And I borrowed 9 CDs from Ted.

And I can't find bloody t-shirts.

And a combination frustrating and good day.

The very model of a modern blogging general.

I was part of a monochromatic Abbey Road moment. This morning, wlaking to work, I was wearing black Levi's, my Docs, a black beanie, a grey hoodie and a leather jacket. Suddenly this guy starts walking in front of my. He's got the shaved head, the black biker jacket, black jeans and big-ass boots. I glance behind me. There's a guy with long hair, a black wool trenchcoat and black jeans. We walked in lock-step for like 4 blocks. A monochromatic Abbey Road. All we needed was Paul in a white suit.

Oh, and Ashleigh has joined Da Band as a singer. And she's bloody good. But she's all modest and shit. It's annoying. Practice tomorrow. We've nearly got a whole complete song! And Mel's going to do guitar stuff.

I've been watching Reboot on my iPod. It's reminding me how terrible the first season-and-a-half was (what with it's pandering to the 10 and under audience) and how kick-ass the 3rd and 4th seasons were (darker themes, mature content,and lots of CGI action).

Saturday.

"It's natural selection at work."-Me, after Tanja and I noticed a bogan child bashing itself repeatedly in the head with a water bottle.

And we did our shopping and we got a banged-up trolley. But it was more than that. It was an ex-military trolley. It was used to attach limpet mines to the hulls of enemy craft in wartime. It had an odd, glazed stare about it, like it was saying "you weren't there, man, you weren't there." And the other trolleys were giving it a hard time.
"How could you do that, man? How could you be working for the man?"
"Look, man! I'm doin' it for my kids! For the little baskets!"
"But how could you work for the man?"
"Just stop dissin' me man!"

...

Because they were 70s blaxploitation trolleys. Of course.

And we're watching GoldenEye and my brain keeps going "But that's not Severnaya! In Severnaya you start in the cells with throwing knives!"

Dr. Phil.

I just overhead Dr. Phil saying that fighting in front of kids is bad because the kid blames themselves. My parents fought and divorced, and I never blamed me. I was never that narcissistic. Stupid Dr. Phil. Seems he's he's gone to the universirty of Stands To Reason with a summer at the College of My Dad Always Said, and took an after-school job at Some Bloke In The Pub Told Me.

The Triumph of Cowardice.

I found a Rincewind-like way to beat a level on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Basically, it's one of the long scrolling levels where there are waves and waves of bad guys you're meant to clobber through (Craig, Omega Base). If you use Iceman, you can use his ice-slide to slide along the top of the screen all the way to the end of the level. Hooray for sneaky!

Also, a word on showers. You can turn on both handles equally. It'll go mega-hot. You can then increase the cold incrementally three or four time, and it'll stay mega-hot. But then if you just touch the hot tap, it'll go freezing cold. Bad design, I tells ya.

Training.

Ok, since I applied for the new trainer's position and didn't get it, they let me know that I'd be able to run a module with the latest training group. As experience, right? Sounded good. But T The Trainer (TTT from here on) said that it'd just be a powerpoint that I took them through the sign-up process. Ok. Can I get a printout? No. Can I see it before I actually do it? No. So today i come in and I get a 3 minutes rush conversation about "Make sure you get forms back from this list of people, mark the role, here's your outline. Three bullet points: Go over last week, Run Powerpoint, and test comprehesion, and then let them listen in on calls. That's meant to be 5 hours. And then TTT left.
I now have 35 minutes before I start. Fuck! I'm sure I'll be ok, but FUCK! Bad planning!