What’re those small, round, brown things running loose at the back of the fridge behind the leftovers from yesterday’s fishy pie?

Oh! They’re chocolate coated coffee beans! Score!! We are so pleased!

OM NOM NOM.

Looking at the half inch of frost outside, caused by the haar freezing, I think it’s definitely time to consider the ice tyres.

Good job I fetched them from my parents’ house then.

Frood recently received a phonecall from the BT Broadband people — them wot are responsible for providing the blinky thing over by the wall that allows this computer to contact the outside world. BT won’t ever talk to me, only to Frood, even though the payment comes out of an account that is in my name. I’ve never understood that. I know that he’s the account holder, but I bloody pay for it.

Anyway, the phone call was to offer us free BT Vision, as we pay a not insignificant quantity each month for unlimited broadband, therefore entitling us to a free box and a month of free watch what you like. BT Vision, if you can’t be arsed clicking on the link, is basically the same as TiVo or Sky Plus, only it’s advertised by that blonde laddie who used to play the layabout son in My Family.

Magic box for free. Yes, we’ll have one of those thank you please. Even though it’s silver and doesn’t match the sleek, black and sexy look of the rest of our entertainment equipment.

After a week of Frood becoming ever more impatient, to the point where even the giant radioactive ants wouldn’t help and his only solace was continual wittering about huge hats, said box arrived on Saturday morning (getting me out of bed, I hasten to add). For once I let the man of the house deal with setting up the new gadgetry, even though it was going to take him three times as long as it would have taken me. Have to let him feel useful sometimes.

It’s not a bad piece of kit, although the channels are limited. I have been able to catch an episode of Venture Brothers, and to be honest it’s not a patch on Sealab 2021, despite Samson’s best efforts. We recorded My Neighbour Totoro at the touch of a button, meaning I could go out for a nice long run (my feet now hate me). Magic box indeed.

All of which AA Gill style meandering brings me to the film we watched last night.

We had considered picking up The Illusionist on a couple of previous occasions, as Edward Norton is usually pretty good and it looked interesting. There was a slim chance that it might be better than The Prestige, for which I harbour faint sentiment if only because it had David Bowie playing Tesla and doing a pretty damn fine job of it; and it’s umpteen times better than the book, which was melodramatic, implausible, poorly written and tedious.

Brief synopsis, and I’m not including spoiler warnings for the reasons I shall go into below.

During the time of the Crown Prince Leopold of Austria, young cabinet maker’s son discovers magic and illusion, as certain boys are wont to do. He becomes obsessed by it and one day impresses the young duchess. They fall in love, plan to run away together and are cruelly separated by the aristocracy refusing to see past class boundaries.

Young lad embarks on travelling the world, and fifteen years later he is the world’s greatest illusionist (AKA Edward Norton) — so great some even say he even has supernatural powers! He comes to perform in Vienna and meets the duchess again (now played by Jessica Biel with a suitably dodgy accent), only to find that she is engaged to the Crown Prince. Crown Prince is an intellectual, fancies himself something of a genius, and likes beating his girlfriends into the bargain; occasionally to death.

Duchess and illusionist recognise each other and realise they still want to be together. However, Crown Prince needs to wed the duchess to secure Hungary, and as long as he knows she is alive he will hunt them down.

OK. So. Can you see where this is going, boys and girls?

My major issue with this film was how GODSDAMNED OBVIOUS it was. I can’t decide whether the people responsible thought that they were being really clever and we would all be “Oooooh, gasp, gosh, really?!” at the end even though it’s quite clear what’s going to happen almost from the first kiss, given the name of the film; whether they wanted us to feel smug and superior about having worked it out despite the Chief of Police and all the other major players apparently being completely lost; or whether everyone in the world but me got to enjoy the “subtle twist” at the end.

Still. It was made much less painful by only having spent £3 to download it through the magic box. So that’s a bonus.

Other than that, it was a generally good-looking period piece and Norton did a fine job, as usual. Jessica Biel did her best, bless her, but she should stick to wearing skimpy outfits and mixing Ipod playlists in Marvel films. Even if she can’t shoot a bow for shit. I couldn’t help but feel there was something rather too action heroine about the girl that made the character of Duchess Sophie unbelievable.

There was a brief, last ditch glimpse of the Prince’s motivations right at the very end, but it was far too late to bring any depth to what had been a Dick Dastardly level of two-dimensional characterisation, and I was past caring. The film as a whole was a tragic transporter accident between Derren Brown and Penelope Pitstop, set in a period of European history that provided good — but not too lavish — costume opportunity.

My advice? Wait until it comes on standard telly.

I’m desperate for a copy of Katamari Damacy — the first one. We’ve completed We ♥ Katamari — apart from the roses (well, duh, because who has time for that?) — and we want MORE.

From what I’ve found in my search so far, it looks like Katamari Damacy was only released on Region 1 (NTSC) PS2. At least, I’ve only been able to find Region 1 copies. Our PS2, being European, won’t play Region 1 without modding, and mods are unreliable. I know that the PS3 has been released without coding and has full backwards compatability (although N₂O looks shit), but will it ignore coding on PS2 games?

Anyone out there in my blogosphere have any idea?

Today’s mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find all the cousins we’re still missing in We ♥ Katamari.

Good luck. There are quite a few. You can start with Columbo. He’s riding an alligator somewhere.

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimers.

Dunblane Hydro is very swish and you have to tack up the hill to the front door if you’re riding a 70″ fixed.

Fly-tipping costs the taxpayer an estimated £11m/annum in Scotland alone BARE MINIMUM. Fly-tippers should be shot on sight, in my personal opinion. 78% of the wastes dumped are of the household domestic variety. I just don’t get it. They can take their rubbish to Civic Amenity sites for free. Why dump it? They still have to get in their cars and drive it out to their chosen dump site. In the middle of the night, mostly. Surely it would be easier just to take it somewhere appropriate.

My Pompino is distinctive enough that total strangers know where I work just cos they’ve seen my bike in the bike shed.

The girlie who had the trembling lip at Stirling a couple of weeks ago rode up to Bridge of Allan and got the next train. She rides a Raleigh, not a Claude Butler.

The coffee from the stall on Platform 2 at Haymarket tastes like shit all the time. It wasn’t a one-off. I will not buy from there again. I will go to the ATM just outside the station or across to Bean Scene.

And, totally unrelated, I have tomorrow and Monday off. Woohoo!

Something for your bathroom, perhaps?

Or maybe a Christmas present for Four-Handled Moss-Covered Family Gradunza?

In case you were wondering, cos I know at least one of you has been, aye it’s bloody Baltic up here.

This is my first winter bike commuting in Scotland. I’m riding the fixed because it’s got better control on slippy surfaces. Last time I moved Fingal I got the “Where have you been?!” message. I even missed his annual birthday cake 🙁

What I’m noticing most of all is the CRUNCH. At first I thought it was ice but then realised that they salt the roads so much it looks like granular snow some mornings. As I leave the house at half six, I’m out there when it’s still really cold. Down in Devon I was overheating even in winter. Up here I’m layered to buggery and really grateful for the buff. When I was riding down south the restriction on my breathing was too much of an irritation. It’s so cold here at the moment that the cold on my lungs is enough to leave me wheezing and gasping like I’ve just done a 10 mile TT at full sprint even after the quick hike to the station.

Today and tomorrow I’m commuting to our office in Perth for a training course, and I’ll be sticking with the fixed despite the long climb up Glasgow Road, because of the ice.

If it gets much worse I’ll have to consider putting the ice tyres on…

A while back I got into an argument on Munky’s LJ about humans being apes. Every so often someone rants about how stupid people are, and their inability to comprehend that we live on a closed system; or their capacity for being infected by dumbass memes like the Holocaust denial. On this particular occasion the provocation was the Oxford Union playing host to Nick Griffin of the BNP; and David Irving, proponent of aforementioned Holocaust denial.

It has been my long-held opinion, probably as a result of immersing myself in the philosophy of the sadly missed Robert Anton Wilson, that humans are just great apes.

Yes. Just great apes. I say that quite deliberately. Sure we’ve got art and science and culture, but then our particular evolutionary trick has been to develop a brain that gives us the capacity to change our environment rather than, say, being restricted to one particular niche. Everything that humans claim sets us apart from the animals is a result of that evolutionary gambit. If we fall into the trap of believing that humans are anything other than great apes, we immediately start thinking that somehow we are separate from our biology and a whole pile of shit ceases to make sense. Memes don’t exist in a vacuum: they exist in our monkey brains. Monkey brains are biological and subject to both localised current biochemical process and the neurological structure that has resulted from evolution.

Many things can be explained to at least some degree by the fact that humans are apes: from road rage to religious war to gang culture to Bush being so damn slow on the uptake with climate change. Humans are not some sort of higher spiritual being driving around in a vehicle made of meat from which they are somehow separated by virtue of their intelligence. They are apes.

To me this seems self-evident, however most people would disagree to a greater or lesser extent. Presumably they have not experienced the mood swings that come from blood sugar crash when one hits the wall, or even the slightly more prosaic post-prandial torpor that results from blood being diverted from their ape brains in order to deal with a heavy meal.

I’m not the only one to think along these lines, however. Luckily for me David Wong has addressed this with far more verve and humour than I’ve ever been arsed to over at Cracked. I seriously recommend it. Next time you find yourself wondering why in the hell that driver cut you up apparently without a second thought, just remember you’re not part of his monkeysphere.

I found Wong’s article, incidentally, after being directed by Greg Smith to the 9 Most Badass Bible Verses. I’m still chuckling over the idea of the earth saying “OM NOM NOM”.