Yeah, looks like I forgot I had a website. Again. No promises I’m going to regularly update, or indeed update at all, but that good old unemployment might as well get channelled into something productive.

Right, lets see, what been down with the site then? Lets see…

Last time I updated, it was when I went to see Pendulum in London with the lads. In true musical elitist form, I’m going to have to say that seeing them in Brixton Academy was not as good as seeing them in a small club in Hull. Altho I feel that may have been related to the mass of ecstacy I had before the small club. And all the bellends in Brixton starting a mosh pit. Do I remember someone trying to start a circle pit? You can’t have a circle pit at a drum’n'bass gig.

And what have people been commenting on? I did a rant about Salamanders (not the amphibians, the Space Marines), and that’s had lots of people commenting on it, not realising I hadn’t updated in over a year. Well, I’ll catch up with them in a bit, and possibly do a sequal. Or not. There’s not a lot to follow up “they nerfed my favourite Space Marine chapter, boo hoo”.

And what have I done with my time?

Erm…

I’ve been playing lots of Kingdom of Loathing over the last year. Seriously loads. Like, everyones getting sick of me going on about it, and I’m minding other peoples accounts for them, and I’m basically running my clan, loads. And the only thing stopping me writing Greasemonkey scripts for it, is hating the shit out of Javascript.

Employment? Really? Would love some. Hit me up with an email if you’re some loony who wants to give me a job, based on this one update. Seriously, the only reason I’m not trying male prositution is a lack of positions available for male prositutions. Definatly not my standards, oh no.

That’ll do for now. Hope that this tiny stone gathers some moss and I start writing awesome content, don’t expect it.

I love horror, me. Nothing more wonderful than seeing people getting ripped to pieces, terrified out of their minds, by everything from supernatural monstrosities to simply being in the wrong place with the wrong people. Even wonderfully horrible 80s horror works fine by me, although I’d quite like to hang with the script writer for the original Hallowe’en, since he must be about five by now.

However, as most people with eyes and a working cerebellum can tell you, you try wanking off a successful franchise of anything, especially horror in this case, and you end up with a pile of wank and not much else. Although in this scenario, we’re imagining a load of wank coming from wanking off a franchise is a bad thing. My metaphors have been terrible lately. As is any attempt to keep a horror franchise alive. Freddy and Jason only managed to get to Freddy And Jason by sheer virtue of it beiing a big crossover thingy such as it was.

I think I’ve wandered a bit then, so lets return to my premise: make too many sequals of a film results in the last ones being horrible, and dragging down the awesome earlier films with it. Think Freddy, think Jason in space, think those Leprecaun films that nobody paid attention to after Jennifer Aniston ran off and joined a sitcom. Exactly.

But, as you may ahve expected from my long rambling intro, this isn’t a problem that’s staying in the past. Look at… well, every film in the cinema right about… NOW! LOOK NOW, YOU’LL MISS IT! FOR THE LOVE OF JESUS CHECK THE FILM LISTINGS!!!

Lots of sequals, right? Lots of crap as well? Exactly.

Now, to my point. Saw 5 is being advertised in those popup things in MSN Messanger. Saw Five. And while its saying its the last one, like fuck it is. For what was a very good reason. The first Saw was awesomely terrifying. A wonderfully twisted new antagonist, operating behind the scenes, setting horrifying traps to test his victims. And the traps themselves! Fuck me. Add to that, how they had all the subplots tying into, reinforcing, the main story of the two guys locked up in the bathroom. And the twist! It was so obvious in hindsight, yet so cleverly woven in there. When that fucking film came out, I was being dragged into girls bedrooms to check for axe murderers! I’m never dragged into girls bedrooms! Not even the girls who want me in there in the first place!

No I didn’t get booty in exchange for murderer hunting, you think I actually understand women?

Saw 2, not too shabby. Basically, Saw, only a bit grander in scope, and a bit less awesome. Not bad by any stretch, but certainly not its predecessor. Only I didn’t see the twist coming from a mile off. The traps were a bit less imaginative. The first one being a gun mounted in a door. A gun. That’s just lazy.

Saw 3, and by this point we can see the franchise wobbling quite badly. The twist was seen from miles away, almost paraded around on a stick. and while the traps were awesome, they didn’t feel as well explained as the last two films. They were just gory and elaborate. And for good measure, they decided to kill off all the antagonists. No Jigsaw, no Cutting Girl, just dead. And I haven’t seen Saw 4, but I can imagine the only way it can have gone without starting to parody itself would be carrying on the third film as if Jigsaw had planned he was going to be killed. Otherwise, its ridiculous.

Even with that, there’s no ground for a fifth Saw film to cover, save “bring people into cinema”. They’ve done it all. All. Far as I can see, some guys wearing Jigsaws skin as a mask. Imagine how you’d have felt if they released a Friday the 13th film if someone had just taken Jason’s mask and pretended to be him killing people. Then wish Bon Jovi would go back to the big hair again, and wonder what that sad sounding grunge music is.

I think I had a point there, but nobody needs a fifth Saw film, especially not the people who make Saw.

On reflection, Twitter may well be more useful than a sack of sycamore leaves in a toaster, based on some Canadian-based commentry I recieved. I still maintain, however, that a guy who’s already shackled up to a computer 20/6 an doesn’t do anything intersting doesn’t need it.

Now, onto the main item of business. Half of you who used to read this will have vacationed here from Night Life, and will know that once in a blue moon, I stick up an article in their Crappy News section. Basically, the idea was that once a day, a bizarre news article from somewhere gets stuck up and critiqued. Nowadays, its mostly just stuff in the news that pisses Barend off, but I do throw my hat in there. So an article I found was about to go up there, but I decided to see if I can get a full days ranting out of it myself.

Just for the record, this is the article in question. The short summery is that British nursery groups are being told to keep an eye out for pre-school kids making racist comments. A fine idea, until you actually read the article, wherein you discover that “this could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.”

Now, I’m well aware there is a conspiracy theory that the world is being run by a race of lizard creatures, and I’m now quite sure the National Childrens Bureau haven’t actually interacted with any kids longer than to try and devour them whole. But kids that small are honest, but essentially stupid. Yes, they’re quite prepared to turn up their nose at something they don’t like. They’re kids! Its hard enough to get them to eat a spoonful of peas if they don’t want to, let alone the goddamn tandoori chicken they’re evidently trying to stuff down these kids. But what gormless twunt thinks a small child is going to think “this food doesn’t taste good BECAUSE A PAKI MADE IT”? They wouldn’t even know who cooked it without ten minutes sitting in the kitchen being told in the first place. They simply don’t know any better, and they’re going to spit it out because they don’t like anything but Willy Wonkas Sugar Coated Mega Chocolate Whizz Puffs for breakfast, no matter how many overpaid white men in suits are wetting their pants over what we laughingly call “racism”.

Now I’m not gormless enough to say “racism doesn’t exist anymore”. I spent an entire year with two delightful Mancunians (or is it Mancurians? Or does anyone really care?) who spent the entire year complaining about Pakis taking everyones jobs, in between berating everyone from the South. I know racism exists. I know that in most cases, and definatly if there isn’t a reason, its wrong. I don’t think, however, that panicking about every time someone alludes to the fact that someones a slightly different colour is terribly constructive. Same thing as the gender inequality thing – while I don’t agree with men royally stomping all over women, neither do I like everyone pussyfooting around while the ladies stomp on our goolies. It’d be quite nice if we tried that wonderful “understanding each other and working together as equals” things rather than “oooh nooo they’ll sueeeee” nonsense we seem to have inherited from America.

Sorry, seem to have gone off on one there. So yeah, perhaps we shouldn’t be tearing our hair out because a small child with delicate tastebuds doesn’t like a big bowl of curry, and perhaps I should get a job.