Goddamn Sexual Tyrannosaurus.

Good old Blain from 'Predator'. In his stetson hat and with his face cancer inducing chewing tobacco habit, he gave us one of the most awesome moments in cinema history. 'Payback time!' Yes, the ace gatling gun bit. I was thinking of that bit while sitting in my car waiting for the lights at some lovely new road works.

It's not much fun driving to work as it is, a series of queues, punctuated by short bursts of moving. The kids are back at school, so the phalanxes of armoured infant carriers are back too, ponderously wobbling from one lane to another, in an attempt to get their kids off their hands one or two seconds quicker. Little tip: PUT THEM ON THE FUCKING BUS, THEY'LL BE ALRIGHT IN THE RAIN, THEY'RE WATERPROOF. That way, the rest of us miserable road users might at least be able to see how far the traffic queue stretches, instead of looking at the fat arse of your car. And oh yes, that gent in the Lotus Elise who thinks it's alright to pull out from the bus stop without looking every single morning; I BEEPED MY HORN AT YOU BECAUSE YOU WERE IN THE WRONG AND YOU KNEW IT, SO THAT TORRENT OF V-SIGNS YOU LAUNCHED JUST MADE YOU LOOK EVEN MORE OF AN ARSE. Lucky I wasn't driving a bus or your lovely roadster would probably be flapping round in one of the wheel arches. As it was I practically had to stand on the brake not to run into you.

But that was just small potatoes. What really had me reaching for the chewing tobacco was the cavalcade of bastards who thought it okay to ignore the temporary traffic lights (where they're currently working on the gas main) and just carried on sailing through a full thirty seconds after the lights changed. This happens a lot. When did it suddenly become okay to just drive through red lights like they're a piece of casual advice? And why are people in such a desparate rush to get to work anyway? Why risk killing yourself and others getting to work?

Some useful hints for drivers.

1: Never trust anyone behind the wheel. Ever. Especially Monday mornings.

2: If you must drive your kids to school, buy a bus and DRIVE THEM ALL.

3: Don't listen to techno, drum and bass or indeed anything fast when you're stuck in traffic. It doesn't help.

4: Red traffic lights mean STOP.

5: Get stuck on that yellow, hatched box across the junction and everyone will think you're a bloody idiot. Especially if you then stop other road users from crossing the junction. If they beep their horn at you, remember it's your own fault. All of it is due to people like you that can't follow simple instructions.

6: Just because taxi drivers and delivery men drive a lot, doesn't make them good at it.

7: Be nice. Don't beep when someone lets a car into the traffic.

8: Shortcuts around side streets just upset the locals and make it unsafe for kids playing out when you whiz down the street at 40 mph. Plus it's cheating. Join the queue and take it like a man.

A note to cyclists, stop being such self righteous bastards. I don't want to ruin my paintwork running over you when you suddenly veer out in front of me. Yes, I know about grids. Stop treating the road like you own it, don't ride side by side and use the bloody lanes the council put there. And get some lights.

A note to scooter riders under the age of eighteen, male, yes, you know who you are. Everyone hates you. Everyone.

Phew! Good job we don't have guns over here, eh?

Blackpool Illuminations

Blackpool Illuminations
Originally uploaded by Smallbrainfield.

We took the kids to see Blackpool illuminations on Tuesday night. It was just as I remembered it as a kid, apart from the bit about having to drive and not run into the car in front. Three and a half hours it took; my clutch leg is twitching at the memory. Some of the designs have been there since I was a kid. The nursery rhymes designs are still there. And the illuminated trams were running, though I didn't see the 'rocket' or the 'train'.

The phenomenal economic waste aside, it's magic for the kids. They get to stay up late, see something at once creative, astoundingly complicated and extravagant and go to Blackpool, which is an amazing place. There's so many sides to it. The stag do's and sordid lapdance bars, as much crappy food as you can eat, booze, carry on style sauciness, Norbreck Castle, 3 piers, the Winter Gardens, the beach, the Pleasure beach, trams and the tower. And don't forget there's the wild architecture, the Vegas on the cheap that is the golden mile.

I hope they don't just flatten the place and build casinos over it, because horrible as it is, it's still an amazing place to go.

Pork Crackling.

I cooked Sunday lunch yesterday, and on a whim, bought a joint of pork.(that's pig meat. It always stikes me as odd that we call it 'beef' or 'pork' instead of cow or pig. We don't seem to have that problem with lamb or chicken).

There was pork crackling. For the uninitiated, this is pork rind, roasted to a kind of kevlar hardness, and is considered by some a delicacy. Tasty, but I feared for my fillings, it was so crunchy. Better were the roast parsnips and a first for me, roast carrots, all done in the fat from the pork joint. Fantastic, especially with 99p cherry pie with cream for afters and copius quantities of wine to wash the whole lot down. It went some way
to softening the blow of spending £170 on shopping the day before.

How this happened I know not. I can only put it down to the childlike glee to spend that a new supermarket affords. Yes, we went to the new two storey Asda at Rawtenstall and my wage slipped away like soil from David McCallums' pockets in 'The Great Escape.' Upstairs is the standard fruit-veg-meat-cold stuff-tinned stuff-bread-eggs-booze-detergent-cat food-till experience of any Asda. Downstairs is the Joy of George, big tellies and toys. Plus a few lamps and stuff that constitutes the 'home' section. Walking past the big tellies is always a depressing experience. Like being East German and watching over the wall as the West Berliners take the piss throwing out consumer goods.

I want a big telly, but not enough to risk my mortgage like some folk do. I can't understand how people can subsist on credit. Looking at you Brighthouse. Sign up for 29.9% interest on repayments on your big telly? Don't worry! Have it now and pay later and we'll have your house if you miss a payment. It's bloody evil, and yet when I walked past the shop on Saturday it was full of people signing their houses away for a big telly. It scares the shit out of me. I can only conclude that people are happy to party like it's 1999, and stuff the consequences. How did we get like this in my lifetime? Credit used to be a dirty word. Now from the moment we enroll in college, we're in debt, but we're told it doesn't matter, we can pay it off later. It's either all Princes' fault, or the plot of 'They Live' was true and the film was made as a cunning double bluff to make us less likely to work it all out. This theory would mean John Carpenter is in the pay of the aliens and David Icke was probably right. *

Just remember, if Rowdy Roddy Piper wants you to wear sunglasses, it's probably for the right reasons. If it means I spend less as Asda too, that can only be a bonus, right?

*Not about wearing aquamarine tracksuits, obviously.

What is mouse for, Kemosabe?

The scene; a dimly lit forensics lab, somewhere in the United States.
An imaging specialist sits at a screen, whilst behind him stands our hero, a CSI, a federal agent, a detective doctor, Tonto out of the Lone Ranger, it doesn't matter. The words he or she will utter are:

"Zoom in on that part, there."

And he or she will point to the screen.

And the imaging specialist leans across the desk and… starts typing.

Hang on. What is he typing? Z-O-O-M I-N O-N T-H-A-T P-A-R-T, T-H-E-R-E, possibly, or an urgent e-mail to his girlfriend asking her to pop round to his flat and put the cat out? Anyone anywhere that uses any sort of image manipulation software, like Adobe Photoshop, or Corel Draw or even Microsoft Paint, knows that you use a mouse for pretty much everything. And then, once you've zoomed in, you need to T-I-D-Y U-P T-H-E I-M-A-G-E. Generally this is an 800 x 600 pixel still from a security camera, and will normally involve reading the license plate of a car reflected in someone's sunglasses.

You try it.

Surely some of the designers who work on these shows have pointed out to the directors that people don't generally type stuff when they're working with images. You can imagine the scene…

Director: I need a graphic for a show I'm working on.

Graphics person: Okay, how about one of these?

Director: Great. Hey, can you zoom in on that one, that looks cool.

Graphics person: Sure.

Director: Whoa, hold on there a minute! How in sam hill did you do that without touching the keyboard!? And why is it all blocky when you
zoom right in, can't you clean it up a bit?

Graphics person: *MURNS!!*

If it was me it would no doubt be the straw that broke the camels back. By the way, I didn't type this post, I copy pasted it all from previous posts using my mouse.*

*May be a lie

Darth Vader. Dead at forty.

I had a thought last night which I can't get out of my head.

How old was Luke Skywalker supposed to be in Star Wars, A New Hope? 17, 18, 20?

Whatever age him and Princess Leia were supposed to be, that makes Darth Vader about 40. Even if you put a couple of years between the events of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, he can't be more than 45 tops when he pops his clogs.

You could argue that the stresses of such a high pressure job were to blame. It's a sobering thought for those of us who grew up on the original films and are now rapidly approaching that age. If only he'd calmed down, let some of the other suits have a bit of the glory (I'm thinking of Don Henderson here) perhaps it wouldn't have all gone pear shaped the way it did.

The magic all goes the older you get. When you start realising just how much raw material a Death Star would take. And the cost! They don't grow on trees you know. And they build two! It would have been
cheaper and far simpler to just lob a couple of big asteroids at Alderaan, but I suppose that lacks finesse.

Anyway, Darh Vader, dead at forty, full of self loathing, doing a high pressure job he hated. There's a moral in there somewhere, but I haven't got a clue what it is.

Hanging ten on the A56

Some mornings, you're driving to work through impassable walls of four wheel drive behemoths piloted by apparently tiny people and their microscopic infants, buried somewhere in the incredibly padded interiors, and you hit the perfect lane.

It's a lane of traffic, not necessarily travelling fast, but moving steadily, no, smoothly. Everything feels right. The car deigns not to judder unexpectedly because you're pushing it in too high a gear, and instead creeps gracefully up to 30 mph. You lean back in the seat, drink in the weak rays of the sun, enjoy whatever your preference on the stereo happens to be, and best of all, your lane is going just a bit faster than all the others. You look far up ahead and see that it shows no sign of slowing. Life is good, just for that perfect instant,
and infinitely better for just realising that fact.

It must be how surfers feel when they catch a bit of the perfect wave. That moment that makes you remember why you took your driving test.

Finally you reach the traffic lights and have to stop, but it doesn't matter, because just for a moment that morning you drove the perfect lane.

For the record, the perfect lane for me this morning was the outside lane approaching Bury from Brandlesholme. It lasted from B&Q to the traffic lights by the town hall.

Laters, dudes.

In the future...

giant badgers will roam post-apocalpytic Britain.
Click to see full image in 1280 x 1024 glory.
Not sure where this came from, but I think it's all the talking about nukes bringing the old eighties cold war paranoia out in me. Even though radiation wouldn't create mutant badgers, according to a recent Horizon programme ( you Google for it, if you're that interested ). Apparently, low doses of radiation aren't as bad for us as was previously thought, and giant mutant hedgrow creatures will only ever happen in the sick minds of their creators.

Cake or dentistry

I keep noticing my Google Ads are usually for either cake or
dentistry. I'm sure I'm not helping them by writing about it here, but
I suppose at least if you're a cake lover concerned about your teeth,
this may very well be the blog for you.

Pretend Eating

It's generally small things that drive me nuts.

One thing currently driving me to distraction is the McDonalds Big
Tasty advert showing at the moment, where the bloke isn't listening to his girlfriend 'cos he's enjoying his Big Tasty too much. Except he isn't, 'cos he isn't eating it. In fact he fails to bite it about 3 or 4 times. This little slice of fictional life, this vignette onto a fragile human relationship, about to possibly be dashed by the poor male's inability to concentrate on more than one thing at once and he isn't even eating the burger. I've eaten one or two Big Tastys and they are not bad, if a little Whopperish. But here he is, ignoring his girlfriend as she pours her hopes and dreams out to him, fixated by this char grilled reformatted meat disk slathered in mayo and sauce, cheese and crisp, sliced lettuce between a sesame bun. And he's faking it.

Why? Why not at it? He's a small time actor, not Ross Kemp, so cash and therefore food must be scarce. At the very least he may not know where his next pretend meal might be coming from. It's not like they wouldn't do another take if he accidentally had a strip of lettuce hanging out of his mouth or a blob of special sauce on the end of his nose. Has it gone cold? It never stopped me eating a burger. Perhaps they've sprayed it with Cillit Bang or Pledge to make it look more appetising. (I've heard photographers do some pretty odd things to food when they photograph it, to make it look good.) Is he vegetarian? Anti-capitalist? Does eating burger break some religious law for this man? Perhaps there are guidelines against biting meat on television, like there are about selling alcohol. Is he so middle
class he can't bring himself to bite a foodstuff clearly aimed at people wearing tracksuits and Argos jewellery?

He's not the only one either. I've seen the same thing on Burger King adverts and KFC, too. Why? If someone in advertising stumbles across this rant, I'd love to know the answer.

Sky biddies

Sky biddies
Originally uploaded by Smallbrainfield.

Elsie squadron take to the wing over Kent.

Ford Granada Estate

Ford Granada Estate
Originally uploaded by Smallbrainfield.

One of the highlights of going on holiday to Malta is the cars. You get a clue as you leave the airport. Nearly every other shop is a garage, and when you walk about you see why.

The climate is very kind to automobiles, and they fall apart less readily than they do here. So it isn't unusual to come across a 30 year old car in almost uncannily good condition.

The Granada was a particular treat. A proper working automobile, (the boot was full of breeze blocks ) it probably rolled off the production line some time in the late seventies/early eighties. A time when cars seemed oilier, more mechanical and regularly being fixed by sweating husbands with socket set and Haynes manual spread out on the pavements as I rode past on my Raleigh Viking 5 speed racer. This car reminds me of that time, not necessarily a better time, just a car I liked the look of as a kid, and still do. It has a no messing look about it.

If you click on the pic, it'll take you to my Flickr page, where there are a few other cars I saw while I was in Malta. My family were very patient with me whilst I took pictures of old cars, but I got the feeling I'd crossed some line with them after a few days and stopped.

Teeth marks

Teeth marks
Originally uploaded by Smallbrainfield.

People say that computer and video games don't cause violent behaviour. I'm inclined to agree. However, they do cause frustration, as evidenced by the corner of this Game Boy Advance.

Yes, they are teeth marks. The perpetrator has a maximum of four hours access to the Game Boy at weekends, with no more than one and a half hours at any one session. And yet Pokemon Emerald drove him to this. Some might say four hours of Pokemon would drive anyone to a biting frenzy, which is a shame, because it all looks so fluffy when you see the cartoons (if a bit sick making, the Pokemon vs Pokemon clone fight at the end of The First Movie is nauseating beyond belief. If you don't want to steamroller the TV whilst watching, you're either a: a bit young, b: soppy beyond belief or, c: don't know what a steamroller is. Given that the UKTV history channel shows Fred Dibnah documentaries on constant rotation, I find this unlikely).

It does drive the obsession, though, and little kids love collecting, especially boys. The other big obsession in our house is Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. (I think the exclamation mark is obligatory.)

My friend Lee from Tokyo Times very kindly sent my son a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from Japan. Even though he can't read the kanji script, junior already knew the western names for about 80% of the cards. Now that's devotion, but understandable to someone who still remembers most of the room names from Jet Set Willy. You can see how stuff like this gets labelled as 'evil' or 'wrong' when it's all they talk about at school. But it's just kids. If they weren't collecting Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, it would be football cards (somehow seen as more healthy, as opposed to actually playing the game, which they could be doing instead of hunched in a corner of the playground haggling over a foil Wayne Rooney*), or, pogs, Top Trumps, or whatever comes along next.

Speaking of which, Autumn is here, so they've all ditched their card collections and are hoovering up all the conkers in the local wood. So all the talk is of sixers, twentyers and soaking in vinegar versus leaving on the windowsill pre-string as the best hardness technique.

Some things never change.


*At one stage I have it on good authority the foil Wayne Rooney was worth an 1-Pod Shuffle (about 45 dinner tickets in old money).