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I’ve been unsure this weekend as to whether I should go and see Hot Fuzz or get The Fratellis album, Costello Music. Luckily I was able to resolve this dilemma by getting the Hot Fuzz soundtrack (which has two Fratellis tracks on it anyway, so hooray for compromise!)

I can tell you now that it is amazing. I’ve brought some good albums recently, but for pure unfiltered enjoyment and rocking out, this has to be one of my favourites, despite the fact I’ve not even seen the film yet. Really excellent.

I also got my phone upgraded this week. It’s not much of an upgrade, but it works well enough, and it has a radio, which is always good to have. The only thing wrong with it is that in order to listen you have to plug in the headphones – the phone lets you listen through the speaker if you want, but you need the headphones plugged in to do it. It just seems a bit pointless.

I’m hoping on Wednesday to have a rendezvous with the Fuzz. It should be great.

I’ve discovered the problem of having two blogs – there’s no way to decide what should go where. Initially my LJ account was supposed to be for the more spontaneous stuff whereas this was supposed to be for more prepared stuff. I’m not sure that’s what happened in the end, so I’m sort of going by the distinction that Surreality is for everything involving me and the rest of the world and Contextuality is going to be for all the stuff about me exclusively. So if you have a particular interest in what I’m doing outside of being an obsessive Madness fan, check it out.

I’ve been working a lot this week, so I’m hoping to enjoy my weekend off – well, barring some Java work. (As you can see I’m quite clearly breaking my own rule here, but it’s my blog so I can get away with it.) As such I’m trying to debate whether there is anything particularly special I could do for a minor celebration. It’s currently a toss up between a trip to see Hot Fuzz and picking up a new Wii game.

I have some very mundane dilemmas, but that’s part of the fun, I guess.

I know this because I actually searched the net just so I could listen to the theme tune from Dragon’s Den. It’s called “The Dragon’s Tail”, and here it is.

I’ve always liked film and TV soundtracks, but trying to find a theme tune based on a program about venture capitalism is a little strange by my own admission. But it is a nice track.

Work’s been getting me down again, though it’s been getting better now that I’ve actually started. This is the big problem with any project that I end up doing – starting. And finishing for that matter, but starting is definitely hard. Luckily I should be done for Friday, if it all goes to plan.

Other than that, it’s pretty much business as usual. I’ve been watching the new series of Life On Mars, which remains awesome, and keeping up with Never Mind The Buzzcocks, including Preston’s walkout. I’m still not quite sure what to make of “the incident” itself, but I do know there was much hilarity afterwards. And we got to see the soon-to-be host of DIY SOS.

So life goes on, and I’m still here…unlike some people.

I know I’ve already talked about video games in the last post, but I couldn’t ignore this. Apperently the Wii is now corrupting kids by deluding them into thinking they can play real tennis.

The argument seems to revolve around the idea that if a kid gets interested in tennis because of the Wii, they’ll only end up hating it because it’s not as easy as the game. I can’t help thinking this is a little insulting to the kids – kids usually understand the difference between fiction and reality a lot more than we give them credit for. Based on the same logic, touch rugby is bad because kids will think they’ll never get tackled or injured.

As Ars Technica points out, the people who are likely to quit at the first hurdle are more than likely going to do that anyway. Surely the fact that they are interested in sports at all is a good thing?

But of course it’s all Nintendo’s fault of course. The idea that they might have made tennis fun and accessible to everyone is terrible.

Sometimes it’s the little things. I’ve just seen this article on the BBC about playground contact games being banned. I’ll leave whether thats a sensible decision up to you, but I have to comment of the first line of the article.

A Lincolnshire school has banned physical playground games because pupils were copying violent computer games, making playtime too rough.

Perhaps I’m reading to much into this, but that statement changes the focus of the story somewhat. To be fair, the articles does quote the head as including television and films in the same category, but for some reason computer games are somehow more threatening that they get included in the secondary headline as being the cause of it all.

In some ways this is the real PR problem games have. It is somehow now a universal “truth” in the media that games are either played by kids or the socially inept with nothing better to do, and it’s not a good image to have.

There are other things as well – little things, but stuff I find annoying. Like the fact that whenever soap characters play video games, they invariably sounds like something off an Atari (peow-peow-peow BOOOOMMMM). The idea a game may have realistic sound effects is apparently too hard to imagine.

I dunno quite why video games are somehow seen as somehow more damaging than a film, or how they can be simultaneously both being shallow unintellectual garbage and insanely addicting Child Catchers. I just get the feeling that the media needs to wake up to the idea that you can have games that don’t fall into “super happy funland” and “murder simulator”, and can actually be as interesting as any good book or film.

Things have been…bad…recently. Not so much in that there’s been big terrible events happening (although they have, but it’s something I want to keep to myself for the moment.) In some ways things have been really good as well, which just makes everything confusing.

I always told myself I’d never do any sort of post which involved me telling the world my life sucks, at least not to the general public. It’s not the sort of thing I like to write, and it always seemed to me like some sort of emotional blackmail – I don’t want anyone reading this to feel a particular way because I told them to or gave them a story. If, by chance, some random stranger finds this LJ, I’d like them to leave their opinion, not what they think I want to hear.

Sometimes, however…it’s hard to keep it up. Sometimes you do want people to say you’re fine, you’ll be OK, or whatever.

If you don’t like rants, I apologise. I don’t particular like them either, but sometimes they’re necessary..

A combination of doughnuts and muffins. Yet another word I’m hoping to get into popular usage.

Have I told you about Something Happens? If I have, I’ll apologise, but it’s worth mentioning again, because it’s a very good webcomic. It’s got a slightly surreal vibe to it – sort of “it’s not real but it very easily could be” type of thing, and is very funny.

Favourite comics so far include Etch-A-Sketch, Virtual Reality, Kyle, You, Awesome, Waiting, and The Zednoughts. They should give you a good idea of what the strip is about. Today’s strip involves squirrels as well, which are always good to have in any comic.

On a personal note, I do have pictures from Castleton, but I’ll talk about that later. And in other news, I also finally got hold of a Wii! I’m having trouble getting it on the internet though, but hopefully that will get sorted soon, so life is going OK.