@iamOlly Love all these @dontflop battles you keep linking to. Good work!
At some point during the night of the 13th of April, iPhone app kings Tapbots launched their long-awaited twitter client, Tweetbot. Having purchased other apps by Tapbots (Calcbot and Convertbot) and been more than a little bit satisfied, I downloaded Tweetbot first thing Thursday morning and removed Twitter for iPhone from my home screen. What follows are my initial thoughts after using the app for a day.
Well maybe book is a bit ambitious. Perhaps one day it could become a book but for now I’d settle for any kind of published media. I could do it on this blog but I’d like to keep this focused on movies and some tech. Also once it’s finished I don’t want it to become buried in other content as and when I publish it. So maybe a new website all together…
Last night Nat and I went out for dinner. We went to a place that I haven’t been to in well over a year, something I felt great shame for. You see, since my first visit when I was about 16 this place has been the be all and end all when it comes to proper food as far as I’m concerned. Half way through yesterday I craved steak and I knew some reheated, overcooked excuse for a steak from Wetherspoons was never going to cut the mustard. I needed a proper steak, a 24oz beast, cooked to perfection. I needed Denby Lodge Steak House.
So I’ve decided to embark on a mammoth enterprise. I’m planning on watching every episode of The X Files from “Pilot” to “The Truth“. That’s nine seasons of between 19 and 24 episodes each episode being 45 minutes long. I looked at my collection on the shelf and realised I had never watched all the episodes close enough together to be able to put the story together properly. I mean, I know roughly the whole conspiracy plot and who did what and why, but There are elements of the main arc that I still don’t quite know. For example, I’m a little fuzzy on the whole involvement of Alex Krycek and the well manicured man.
Good news everyone! One of my personal heroes, Henry Rollins is coming to the UK doing a spoken word tour. Monday the 28th of January he’s appearing at the Wulfrun Hall in Wolverhampton and tickets are a snip at £17.50, even more of a snip seeing as Mother is buying mine for part of my Xmas present! 
continue reading I can’t get behind that!!
Weren’t the 80′s fucking amazing? I remember that in the 90′s we hated the 80′s and the style and still to this day I think a lot of the 80′s style still sucks a fat one. However, how awesome was it living back then. I was born in ’83 so was only really conscious of the last half of the great decade but what a decade!! Let’s first talk about the TV shows… You have your obvious ones… Ghostbusters, Transformers, He-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but if I think back there were some really great obscure ones too. I’m talking about M.A.S.K, Dino-Riders and Captain Power. These made up my after-school viewing and made me the uber-geek I am today! I’m not just talking about cartoons either. What about Doogie Howser MD and The Twilight Zone… All great stuff. continue reading Illusion is the ultimate weapon!
It’s cost about £340,000,000 (yes that’s three hundred and forty million pounds) and has turned the centre of Derby into the most dangerous driving area outside of Iraq but on Tuesday the new Westfield Shopping Centre opened it’s doors to the public. continue reading Derby Wastfield – Aladdin’s (rather shiny) Cave.
Saturday I went for a much needed haircut and after, for conveniences sake, I went to McDonalds for lunch. So I’m sat in my car finishing my Oreo McFlurry (very nice but didn’t taste like Oreos) and on the radio they’ve got people calling in talking about how addicted they are to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. As sad as it is, I am addicted to both of them, the fomer more than the latter, so I start to listen. Basically in last week’s show they told some people to try and go a week without signing into any social networking sites. continue reading Cold Turkey – A week without social networking.
This morning Timmo posted on flashmosh about a film he’d watched online called zeitgeist. I thought I’d give it a watch and see what all the fuss was about. At first I was kinda confused. It seemed like an arty type thing with not much production value. You know, the type of thing you watch while stoned and go “Wooooah mannn, I’m freakin out right now!” But about 5 minutes in it had me… and didn’t let go for 2 hours!
Put simply, the film talks about how the government, rich elite and mass media (yeah, they are all one and the same pretty much) control us in three different ways. They control our hearts thorugh religion, our minds though the creation of a perpetual enemy and our wallets through central banking systems. The film is in three parts each detailing one of these.
Firstly, religion. Zeitgeist suggests that most modern religions and specifically Christianity are derived from one common doctrine, Astrology. Jesus is the sun and his 12 desciples are the 12 signs of the zodiac. The cross is not a christian symbol but a pagan symbol representing the sodiac. Jesus was born, died, stayed dead for three days and then was resurrected and ascended to the heavens in much the same way the sun sits lower and lower in the sky through the year before seemingly staying still for THREE DAYS and then beginning to sit higher in the sky again.
The film draws countless similarities between Christ and the Egyptian sun god Horus (and other religious figures from various points through history). Both were born of a virgin, both on the 25th of december, both signified by a bright star in the east which lead three wise men to the birth, both were sold out and crucified and both were resurrected after three days.
Basically the film is showing how the vast majority of organised religions are simply a re-branding of astrology as done by the ancient Egyptians, pre-dating both Christianity and Judaism.
Next, war. The film focuses first on what happened on September 11th 2001. The Jury’s still out for me on this one but they make some extremely valid arguments to suggest that the events of September 11th were an “inside job” The fact that all three buildings WTC 1,2 and 7 all collapsed in a way that fits perfectly the model of a controlled demolition, the fact that on certain films you can see small (what seem to be) charges detonating down the buildings fractions of a second before the main collapse, and let’s not forget the occurence of 2 plane crashes that seemed to involve no planes.
And why? Simple. To justify the United Stated occupying countries of vast financial importance because of their natural resources. In a word, oil. But not only Oil, oh no… there is a lot of money to be made in war. From both sides. And that is why, the film shows, that the United States’ involvement in WW1, WW2, Vietnam and now the middle east was, in fact, Self Justified. Pearl Harbour was forseen weeks in advance but was allowed to happen to make the country do a 180 over night from 80 odd percent of the country opposed to involvment in the war one day to over 1 million men volenteering to fight the next. Sound shocking… well something worse happened in Vietnam. A US destroyer was sunk by 2 NVA PT boats which kickstarted America’s entry into Vietnam. Only problem is, that event never acually happened. It was a total fabrication. In fact if the events of 9/11 were a genuine terrorist attack, it would be the first time in about 100 years that the United states had a genuine reason to enter a major international conflict.
And finally, money. The film went into the role of central banks and corporations screw us by borrowing and borrowing and then kindly handing the debt on to us in the form of income tax. I’ll have to watch this part again cos not all of it made sense but it was pretty shocking. Talking about how the major FatCats, the Rockefeller’s and Rothchild’s etc could send the country into depression with a simple roumor and would do so to recoup cash if needed. It was crazy. It showed how the federal reserve bank made it so that money was litterelly not worth the paper it was printed on. Whereas before it was worth a value in gold bullion, now was simply called Legal Tender.
I suppose what I’m saying is. Watch this film! But try and keep an open mind while watching it because as with the material of Michael Moore and Jon Stewart it is easy to be drawn into believing it through shock tactics.
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/Â
Please, watch it and comment me, let me know what you think.
Dan.
Ok…. so, last night Me and Nat went to see The Simpsons Movie in Mansfield… All well and good. So, I go to meet Nat at the BP garage and fill up while I’m there… I go inside to pay and the woman behind the counter fucks up somehow and basically she needed to use one of those retro card machines with a roller that prints the card onto paper… but that thing then proceeds to chew my card up and crack it right across the bloody chip!! At this point I was furious! And to make it worse the woman was so damn myopic she couldn’t see that I may in fact want to use my card for something other than petrol that evening. In the end It transpired that the cash machine accepted my and I was able to pay for the petrol. But I was still furious…. I hate violence towards women… I think men who raise their hands to women are fucking cowards who are only one rung higher on the ladder than a rapist. But I tell you what. I wasn’t half tempted to give that stupid bag a slap!!
Anyway, I go get changed and we set off. I get to mansfield to discover that they had removed Initial D from the arcade bit! This night just keeps getting better. So I text Nate Dogg an tell him and he replies that I should kill some fools! I’m inclined to agree.
However… the simpsons movie was pure aceness!! It could have been done in an episode… sure but this was all nicely polished and really well animated. Also… quite shockingly, you see bart’s wang! I was like 
as if you’ll ever see that in an episode!! Another funny thing is that they kill off Green Day and then Mrs. Lovejoy plays American Idiot (Funeral Version) on the organ in church! Obvously I’ll do a review of it later on…
So the film was good and the night was turning out alright… Until… Near Hilton I was aproaching a junction and looking left and right to see if I would be able to go when… SHIT THE BLOKE IN FRONT OF ME HAS STOPPED!!!! CRASH!!! and I bumped into the back of him! Fuck, shit, bugger, bollocks, cock, Barbara Striesand!!!!
So we both pull over to the side of the road to check out the damage… My bumper is cracked and theres a small dint in my bonet near the H emblem but the damage doesn’t look too bad. His car, however didn’t seem to have much of a mark on it at all… a bit of a scuff but that appeared to be it. So I say to him “I suppose you want my insurance details etc…?” and to my surprise he didn’t seem bothered and said “Well let’s just wait and see what the damage is. Give me your phone number and name.” So I though.. ooh, this might not be so bad. He either is planning on being nice if possible and not going through the insurance… orrrr… he’s not insured himself. Either way I’d be thankful. He said he’d get it looked at and call me today or tonight to let me know whats going on. So fingers crossed it’s all ok. For now it’s just not knowing that’s kinda doing my fruit in.
I just couldn’t believe I’d done it. I’m a super careful driver and people take the piss out of me all the time saying I drive like a grandad. It just goes to show. Be careful on the road guys, one momentary lapse in concentration and you end up in a right mess. I’m thinking with the minimal damage to his car combined with what a heap of junk it was… He’s not gonna bother taking it further. Of course I’d be happy to pay for a new bumper for him out of my own pocket if he needed it but like I say… I think the most it will need is some back to black. Fingers crossed.
Well, let me tell ya… I was friggin wide awake after that!! I don’t think I blinked on the way home. lol
Ta ta for now people.. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Thats right folks!! Was an ace weekend. Nat came down on Friday night and so did Brahn and Laura and I cooked my famous pasta shells.
Recipe:
Mix 2 x 250g pots of full fat ricotta chese, one bag of baby spinnach leaves (cooked and finely chopped), 10-15 green and/or black olives, 2-3 anchovy fillets and black pepper in a bowl until thouroughly mixed. This is the stuffing.
Cook a sufficient ammount of Conchiglioni (large pasta shells) to fill a casserole tray until al dente and rinse them under cold water so it is easier to handle while stuffing.
using your hands and a fork stuff the cooked shellsand arrange them in the casserole tray being careful not to overlap them. Once the tray is full pour a large jar of tomato and basil pasta sauce over the shells, evenly covering them. Use the best quality sauce you can get hold of. I use Lloyd Grossman sauce but pick one that you like best.
Finally sprinkle grated cheese over the shells and sauce and bake in the overn for 25 minutes at 180 degrees untill the cheese is melted and golden brown.
Serve with traditional garlic pizza bread.
Pasta shells with spinnach and ricotta… DONE! 
So yeah, I made those. Me and Nat had a couple of bottles of wine too and we just chilled out and it was really nice.
Saturday we got up at an obscene time and then went into alfreton to spoons and then went to Chez vegas to meet Laura and Brahn at Laura’s house before heading into town to go to Pinnochio’s, this little itallian pizza and pasta house that Laura has been going to for 20 years! Me and Dan had Calzone and it was friggin fantastic!!
It was after this that the thing I have been looking forward to all week took place. We went to see the special advance preview of the Transformers!!!
I won’t go into it too much cos I’ll do a proper review tomorrow but it was friggin mint!!!
Was really really ace to spend the whole weekend with Nat. Was just so nice and easy going. That’s what I really like
Bye for now.
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April 14th, 2011 || 