Happy times

click the pic:



I just saw this this morning, and i thought it was cute. so im linking it. what? what more reason do i need?

also there's a video here, but dont get to excited, like.

I'll be back to post something less simple minded and braindead later.



Btw: if you're on the "latest exciting new internet thing" - Twitter- you should come find me. Then you can get exciting daily updates, such as info on what i was trimming yesterday (no it wasn't that); or how long i've been waiting at the bus stop for, as if to show off how i've got twitter on my super duper brand new i phone what i bet you all dont have (ha, dont worry, im kidding!) and it'll all be great fun like as if we've just found lasting happiness!

guy writes about a road, no-one cares

A while back i included a guest rant from luckyno4. After seeing the fame thrust upon him in my last blog, he's given me another new rant to publish!
Why the hell you not get your own blog, Mr 4! and btw the title was his idea- im not that harsh a bitch!

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There is a place where time is irrelevant, a place where thousands of Cambridgeshire people spend a large chunk of their lives, Its not in their homes, comfortable, in front of the TV with drinks and a 5p adventure DVD (who says i never read). Its on the A10 on the way to Cambridge in the morning in their cars.


The A10 is a long and winding road (literally, not in the poetic sense) that leads from Ely and beyond, to Cambridge. On a good day the trip from Ely to Cambridge takes 20 minutes. In fact on several occasions ive been early for things as i seem to have teleported through “the twilight zone” to the outskirts of Cambridge without noticing. Yet the very next day, or even later in the same day, i have been known to sit in a queue of seemingly endless cars waiting to move. The biggest problem with this is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to judge which journey you will be taking on any given day. Although i have discovered one technique that has come close. Take a coin, and flip it, its better than wasting your time on formula's.


This on its own is frustrating enough, but its the road users themselves that tend to cause the problems..... There's a line from the Dark Knight that sums up some peoples mentalities towards driving, which ill put into context afterwards: “If i say a truck full of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, but when i say one little mayor will die, well then everyone loses their MINDS!” Basically, if you say there will be roadworks, nobody panics, but ONE DROP OF RAIN, or a slight fog, people lose all their ability to drive. A speck of rain is a powerful thing it can slow a car from 60mph to 30 or possibly lower in about 1 second! Im not saying im a boy racer who recklessly darts about changing lanes to overtake people to gain 2 “positions” on the road, quite the opposite, but there is NOTHING more frustrating that driving in a 60mph zone at 30 stuck behind a car. Its these sort of people who can cause tailbacks for no reason, picking their nose while tuning the radio and in some cases doing their makeup, who then look up at the road (funny concept that, looking where youre going) and have to slam on their brakes as the arctic infront of them has jackknifed to avoid the old dear who couldnt see over her steering wheel to see the cyclist she swerved at the last minute to avoid. The A10 is officially the twilight zone of roads, where things are never as they seem, and the unexpected (or in most cases the expected delays) are just around the corner.


Thanks to: LuckyNo4

Rant: What is the point of a consumerist society that only opens shops when everybody's working?

This only happens because my unemployment buddy has finally got a job :( well, yay for him ^ ^ but boo for me.
Anyway, he had to set his alarm for 6:00. he then explains to me the 20 minute journey will take an hour at that time.. thus unwittingly launching me into a bitter rant about the pathetic state of affairs when it comes to our society's badly thought out time table.

It's something I've often thought about before i got a 9 - 5 job. But since most people just seemed to accept it, I assumed it wasnt as bad as i thought. Then i got a 9- 5 job, and remembered that the people of britain have an infamous tendancy to shut up and tolerate- sometimes even defend- ridiculous traditions that clearly cause them much stress.

basically, why must everything start at the same time. It generates brain numbing traffic.. people who live 20 minutes away have to waste an extra 40 minutes every day. Whats the point? Do offices really need to be open at the same time as shops and schools? Would it kill anyone if they started their days an hour or so later.. seriously, how is photocopying or data entry actually affected by that?? C'mon office owner people. Is your choice to start work at the same time as everything else in town just a childish fear of not fitting in, or do you just want to make it harder for employees to get in on time so you've got more on your side when you fire them?

And why do all shops need to be open at 9:30 am anyway? Who needs to buy a dvd, a new dress, or stuffed bear at 9:30am on a tuesday, because it just cant wait til 10:30 am? are there really such people?

and when i think about it, how exactly does consumer business benefit from opening when everyone goes into work, and then closing as soon as they all get out again? what, dont you want people to be able to come to your shop?

No, of course you dont.. you want 90% of the population to only visit your shop on one day of the week: Saturday. You have decided to designate this day as consumer hell day. People still have to get up at 6am just to park, wait hours in queues at every single shop, barging through, and being served by, other pissed off nonces suffering your stupid system. This is the way we reward the hardworking, employed population.

I mean i seem to remember in a lot of other countries ive been to, the shops were open later on in the day. In japan for example, it seemed pretty normal for shops to be open til 8 or 9pm every day of the week- so open when people have finished work. Whoa! shit! did i just say something utterly crazy? no, i dont think i did actually.. i think that just made sense.

In fact, the more i think about it, why does ANYONE have to start the day before 10am? what, worried that your employees might leave the house after the frost has melted and the air has warmed up a bit? well wouldn't that just be so terrible. Paranoid that employees who cycle in will not be exposed to the risks of icey roads and school-run mums? I'd love to say i understand your concerns, but i don't, even slightly.
Ok, so theres farmers and pickers who genuinely need to get to work at first light.. fair enough you guys. Also, small kids have a habit of waking up 7am sharpish, so it kinda makes sense that schools start early too. But the book store? the map company? whats your excuse?

Well, i could go on and on. It's better that i stop here and now before it ends up somewhere like me bantering on about the justice system, or globalisation & multiculturalism or various such other nonsense, 'while i'm at it'. No one needs to hear that shit at 1am, Issi..

(..be thankful for what you've just been spared, readers!)

Subject XS2Y-356, You have not submitted any new reports for 10 days. Please report immediately. Failure to do so will break our agreement. As we have discussed, you would not like us to break the agreement..


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Er hey guys ^^ all is well ^^ :D :D

Sorry i havent reported in for a while! my life hasnt really been happy fun land lately. More like crappy anxiety and worry land :( but, over this week, a number of things have finally been resolved and my life is looking relatively stable for the first time in a couple of months; and i have taken a few days to relax. lucky me! but also bad me too, because i shouldn't really be taking time off still.

Any way i'm making it up to you! 4 blogs today.. omg! :D ok this one maybe doesn't count as a proper blog, but ffs.. y'know!

Also i have been working on my portfolio. here it is! please, if you have any thoughts on it at all.. please let me know! even if you think its shit and i should screw it up and start over.. i mean better to tell me sooner rather than later, right!?

Well, i guess that's all for now! *ergh, still gotta think of a title!* too many exclamations!! hooray, im going to back to hibernating again now :s :(

Conspiracy Guy speaks..

If i ever get this bad, please. do me a favour and shoot me.




"for some reason", i have this image of the speaker wearing a tin foil hat, sitting on his sofa surrounded by heaps of fast food packaging because he has been too scared to leave his room for the last 3 years.

if you're going to spend your time finding crappy subliminal messages in shit, do it like this.

Your eyes will turn square

I managed to get a lot of things resolved yesterday, so when i got home i treated myself to a nap and then watched old time cartoons all night.

Overwhelmed with the need to show everybody, i put my favourite up on here for both your, and my, future enjoyment. I've also opted to write a little in between, so that you cant brand me a total copy-n-paste youtube junky! although you can if you like, cuz its kinda true.

The 1940s cartoons are particularly cute, with their hideously gaudy eyes and incomprensible squeaking ^^

Probably my favourite cartoon was this betty boop one, because it just sums up all a girl could wish to be..



What makes it especially cute, is this was 1935- and we all know what happened next!

The original mickey mouse ones are incredibly surreal, which came into being late 1920's, When ladies wore bold new fashions and art deco was exciting shit. This was my favourite:


They really made me think.. I've heard people claim that the discovery of psychedelic drugs, like LSD, changed the way people thought and opened their minds and all that stuff, but these cartoons imply otherwise.. they predate the drug by a few decades, and suggest society was already quite open minded, and if anything, their work was more 'whacked out' then than we are now.

Also i was really surprised by Minnie Mouse. We like to criticise the past as being judgemental and oppressive to women, but minnie comes off as pretty human and normal. She allows humourously undignifying things to happen to her, like being being picked up on a crane by the pants. She has a normal sense of humour and gets up to all the same things with mickey. She even has a non-gender-specfic hobby, playing the violin! it just really struck me how she makes many female cartoon characters today seem inhumanly over-feminised..

Perhaps i'll be branded an evil feminist for saying this, but it seems an indication that although there were much lower expectations of women back then, especially financially, they were, at least, left alone to be human.


I'm afraid ill also have to include this- partly because it's another favourite character's first appearance, and also because it has an absolutely fantastic ending!




As you may know she used to be a dog (no you know what i mean) and in this episode (excellently titled) you can see her nose fluctuates between being a human and a dog one!

Another thing that fascinates me is how many old cartoons are now banned on the grounds of racism and drug abuse. A lot of the racism ones are quite controversial, all being personal interpretation, so i wont even go there. But some of the 'drug abuse' episodes actually confound me. In this episode for example, the 'drug' being used is laughing gas at a dentists, and the weirdness that follows still just seems like pretty normal 1930's cartooniness. Also, 1934 is still nine years before the discovery of acid, and still another couple of decades before it was used in america..


Furthermore even smoking is potential grounds for censorship too. Is it just me or, if cartoon influence is a real threat, surely that particular cartoon is responsible for a lot worse?

I also had a look to see the oldest cartoon i could find, and all i got was this lousy guy. there were others, groundbreaking in their day.. but frankly too incomprendible to mean anything :s Then i was pleased to find my favourite silent-era character, (ok how many are there to choose from??) from 1919!! 90 years old and a silent film:


felix was the first animated star, popular enough for more animations of him to be commissioned and merchandising to be sold. Mickey Mouse/ Oswald was allegedly inspired by him. cheats! here he is called 'master tom'- he was renamed after the film's success.
It has a pretty sad ending :( These films weren't made with kids in mind! its sad, but as he points out he's got 8 more.


Ok.. one more video.. pleeeeaaaaaasse! This ones from japan, 1933. Pre-WW2 Japan was still very traditional, if you've seen memoirs of a geisha (surprisingly good film) then i guess about that time. I just think it's interesting that it looks so american, unlike japanese anime today.


It's worth bearing in mind that in japanese myth, foxes can shape shift and use magic, as can tanuki, these raccoon-type-creatures. i think the other creature is a raccoon, although it can be mistaken for a felix-clone with round ears!
Also, remember that piece of ww2 american propaganda featuring popeye with the japs i linked to earlier? Well here is a japanese animation also from the war- and people in the comments are debating over whether or not it's japanese propoganda. I have no idea either way, since there's no translation it's a bit of a blind argument.. but its cute none the less.

Well, i best give it a rest there before i do any damage to myself. I might, y'know, start smoking. Or even start inhaling laughing gas!

Adventures for 5p

Now before you accuse me of wasting my time writing long blogs, i'd like to defend myself by quoting that guy that did a quote about writing a letter, but i dont remember who it was or how the quote went, so i'll just paraphrase it by saying this blog is only so long because i havent got time to shorten it.

Me and a friend went shopping recently, and discovered that the awesome CeX has upgraded to a big, double floored store in one of the malls. The store is always packed, even at 11am on a wednesday.. yeh i know. Anyway we went to go check it out, and found ourselves some excellent bargains like half life for £2, what an amazing £2 it was too. We then headed upstairs to check out the immense DVD bargains, which included cheap prices of brand new special edition dark knight (presumeably stolen off the back of a truck?) and shelves upon shelves of other discounted dvds. Seriously, where the fuck does all this stock come from??? I guess these guys are either shady gits or were good mates with the folks at woolworths. Probably both.

Anyway we came to the bargain shelf. Most dvds in the store were priced around £3 average, but these were a special class, the shit no one wanted, and they were priced at.. 10p. Ten motherfucking pee!!! wow. Sadly though there was still nothing there worth my 10p. So it was a miss. Then, we looked a little further to the left, and to our horror/ joy, you could go one further. That's right people.. there were dvds on sale for 5p.

The box art was naff, probably an MS paint job. The picture was 2 cartoon cowboys, presumeably, a comedy double act. At least that's what we thought, until we read the back, and discovered it wasn't a comedy, but a comdey. It featured 5 episodes, including 'peral diving perils' thus marking the level of quality you should expect for your 5p.

But when i looked even further left, something special (in the non sarcastic sense) did catch my eye. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes the cover alone is worth it - well for 5p. It's hard for me to explain exactly why i fell in love with this image. It comes from another age, that was in awe of space and approached it with childlike naivety and imagination. It reminds me of 2001 space odyssey. His suit, it looks like reptillian skin, the elaborate gun, and this robot, moving along some kind of track? What was going on in this strange, drugged out world elsewhere in the galaxy? I was utterly compelled. It was one of the most strange looking dvds in the shop, and this was after checking out a horror film about a girl with teeth in her vagina.

(I apologise for not taking it out of the plastic cover, I, y'know.. I have things to do in my life)



'Get it!' urges James. 'I mean, its 5p!' very true, it certainly is. So i picked it up and along with my first installment of gordon freemaness, i went and queued for HALF A FRICKIN HOUR at the till.

I appreciate many of you will, quite rightly, have problems believing the 5p thing. im annoyed at myself for tearing off the sticker, but not to worry, i have the receipt!



After having the box on the floor by my bed for a week or so, where i have been admiring the image, i finally thought.. ive paid five whole pence for this dvd, i should certainly get round to watching it pretty soon! Being in a mood for pretty much anything right then i decided to give it ago. I honestly had no idea what to expect. Would it be live action? animation? even, i dunno, jackanory? I couldnt wait!

I had a quick flick through the dvd before i watched from the beginning, just to get an idea of what to get ready for. turns out its some horridly cheap, 80's anime! Intrigued, i googled it immediately. i found a review, in which he/she explains that it's actually a sci-fi retelling of Monkey: journey to the west! how does everything in my life join up like this?? It's hilariously wierd!

Notice on the back of the box it says: 'The image on the sleeve may not necessarily correspond with the film' ...You're damn right the image doesn't have ANYTHING to do with film!! in fact i dont think it was even drawn in the same decade.. where the hell did it come from?? and why did anyone imagine it was relevant??

I'd love to sit down and give a proper review, but this person beat me to it and did a much, much better job than i ever could, So please, go read his excellent page instead of my shit. His is the vhs version, which he explains was found in a bargain bin or something. He also explains the "productions" history- we now know why it's a knock off piece of crap. Apparently the channel 4 news would pop up at some point as well, which i was really looking forward to, but unfortunately it turns out my version didn't include this feature :( Still for five pence, you get what you pay for. He was good enough to review that as well though, so it was nice to know what i was missing.

Among my own favourite highlights, was realising that the blue guy wasnt meant to be a droid despite the voice acting (so i just imagined some bored guy in a room whenever he spoke. it made it more bearable), hearing the genuine use of 'fiddlesticks!' for the first time in 10 years, and the amazing line: 'We'll defeat him with our superior reasoning powers!!' oh and also (as the above reviewer explains) the middle of the episode, i.e. the cheap join between two completely seperate episodes, fucked up my dvd player for a couple of seconds.. hence one of the characters that decided to stay on his home planet magically reappeared on the ship again. Whether this was explained in those missing seconds or if it just kinda happened i'll never know- niether answer surprises me really.

Anyway, why are you still reading this? i gave you the link to the good review! i'm off to write more lengthy blogs, k..