At last!!

For the last two years I have been waiting to get Garth Marenghi's Darkplace on DVD. It was one of the funniest things I have had the fortune to see.

Five minutes ago I found out it was coming out on DVD on the 29th Jan 2007. This has completely made my day. I LOVE this show.

...Five months though. Damn, that's a long time.

Red shoes and Steve Buscemi

I fell in love with a pair of shoes the other day. I got this email (entitled 'oooooo') and when I opened it I saw a pair of sparkly red mary janes. To say I drooled would be an understatement. I even went to the shop to try a pair on. I did bottle it at the last second and try the black version on. I did The Pook's trick of wearing pop socks under my usual socks so that I was not at the mercy of the pop sock the shop assistant always produces. The one that smells like something died in it. Well I tried the shoes on and I couldn't get the buckle across the foot done up. Damn my huge feet. Well, I got one done up but I felt a bit like one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters and couldn't just give it a good yank in case I broke them. I could have cried. I managed not to, even though I was sure everyone was watching me make a monumental twat of myself.

Once again I am the reluctant victim of Imelda Marcos's shoe obession and The Incredible Hulk's feet. It's just not a combination that works. I returned from this shopping trip with virtually nothing except a DVD that I could have got cheaper almost anywhere else. (Con Air - my purse is repeatedly battered by a combination of my great love for films with Steve Buscemi in and my desire to cheer myself up by spending money.) Stupid HMV. I had a voucher for the place and they didn't have Con Air in, but they could order it for me for £10. Piss off!! I had to go to Virgin Megastore which had it, but was about a half mile away from HMV. Thank goodness I wasn't wearing sparkly red mary janes...

I got back from Brighton yesterday. Which I love hugely. I lived there for four years when I was at uni and there's nowhere else like it. I feel like I've come home when I'm there. I went to see one of my friends who teaches there. After a brilliant couple of days there I popped into town before catching the train back to London. I even went to HMV and bought a copy of Fargo with my voucher (more Steve Buscemi. Hurrah!) and as it was cheap I could also get this week's Indiana Jones celebratory Empire magazine. I knew the shop that sold the red shoes was there and I hadn't been able to get them out of my mind. (In fact I'm beginning to suspect they have some kind of magical properties.) While I was shopping I happened across this other pair of back shoes, which I rather liked and I ended up buying them. They're a bit tight across the toe, but I can't help thinking that they might be second best. Have I bought these shoes because the red ones are too flashy for me? Will I always be the woman in the sensible shoes? The thing is... I have a cheque in my bag from my dad for £50 for my birthday. The red shoes are £39.

The grant funding for my job runs out soon, and I won't be able to spend money so frivilously anymore. I can't really go around splashing money out on shoes I'll probably never wear and probably won't be able to do up and I bet they'll hurt like the devil. But they were just so pretty... It would be nice to be Cinderella for once. Wouldn't it?

...but is it art?

I'm not really an advocate of graffiti. For the most part it is ugly and disfiguring. I appreciate the stuff that people seem to have put some time or thought into. No one gives a monkeys if Sharon loves Kevin '4 eva' in a public toilet. In fact, I'd rather not know. I do have rather a lot of respect for 'DEAN' whoever he may be. His name features regularly on the track side of the train journey from Victoria Station to Brighton Station. Usually in some bizarre death-defying location and once, to my delight, on a massive metal box on top of a hill in a field in the middle of darkest Sussex.

I saw the best piece of graffiti yesterday in the park. There's a little canal thing that the path crosses over several times. On one of the bridges someone had chalked, "TROLL UNDERNEATH - BEWARE!" I thought that was brilliant, and it wasn't even disgustingly rude. (The type that usually amuses me!) Seeing the phrase "I shat in your mum's mouth" on the back of the chair in front of me on the train once made me laugh so much that the people around me were staring. Horribly rude, I know. But a 'your mum' insult amuses me to start with and this was the creme de la creme...

I also enjoy a good 'grubby white van' graffiti, especially as it is non-permanent and the person driving the van is for the most part unaware of it. "I thought I was white" and "I wish my wife was this dirty!" are two of the classics of this style. When I was driving up to Scotland, I saw one that rather flew in the face of all the dirt-based humour that seem to form the basis of white van graffiti. It proclaimed "I DO BUMS, I DO" and this mix of simplicity, rural dialect and randomness cracked all of us in the car up horribly to the extent of losing control of the wheel and endangering our lives. It would have been a good way to go though.

Are 'POO' and 'ASS' taken?

I am the last person in the world to be talking about gaming. I have never shown an interest in video games since the sad vanishing of those little watch battery operated hand held plastic games, with the direction buttons and the A and B button. There was a limit to how much you could do in a game where you could only move from left to right. And occasionally shoot something. That's part of the reason I loved them. I had one with a turtle that transported lemmings backwards and forwards across a river. Dubious animal behaviour aside, it was pretty fun.

My loss of interest in games came with Nintendo and a certain moustachioed generic Italian plumber. I just couldn't work the damn controller and seemingly without heeding any of my frantic button pressing, Mario would hurtle down every waterfall and stand oblivious in the path of every fire-breathing whatever that came his way. Stupid Mario. There then followed a series of pointless failed attempts to have a go at the variety of new games that were thrust upon us during the 80s and 90s. I never again enjoyed a single game. Some misguided fool even bought me a gameboy for Christmas in 1994ish. I played Tetris about 20 times and then gently put it away.

Why am I recounting this long and boring history of my lack of interest in games? Well, when I was about 17, I happened to encounter this random thing called a playstation and this one game called Tekken III. My world was never the same.

People like me go about every day. Getting pissed off on a daily basis. Having people get on your nerves and generally treat you like crap, or worse, as if you don't exist at all. And we just take it. Well, there's something about playing Tekken that brings out the person in me that I sometimes wish I was. So what if that person happens to be a violent maniac? The best thing about it is that you can play it without knowing what any of the buttons do. You can just press them all randomly and frantically and stuff will happen. I don't think I've ever enjoyed anything so much in my life. I had a whole glorious week of stabbing buttons and yelling abuse with The Pook and then it was gone from my life forever to be replaced by boys playing stupid role playing soldier games involving the shouting of war slogans and rivers of blood. Yawn.

Just this last week when I returned from my very exciting holiday I received a phone call from The Pook which went along these lines. Except obviously The Pook is not sad enough to call her boyfriend The Boyf. That was my doing.

The Pook: (in mysterious voice) Guess what?
The Stoat: Snot!
The Pook: No. The Boyf has said I can have his old playstation. Guess what I bought on Ebay and have been playing all week.
The Stoat: That gay old game with the gun and all the ducks and dartboards?
The Pook: Well, yes, but WHAT ELSE?
The Stoat: Is it... Is it...Tekken III??!!
The Pook: Yep.
The Stoat: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Basically I have been playing it so much that I swear I dreamed about it the last few nights. My hands were probably twitching in the 'controller' position. I have Tekken thumb. (Which is along the lines of housemaid's knee and tennis elbow.) I am hoarse from shouting and laughing and I have 'bitch slapped' my way into the high scorers in the 'survivor' section, where I dutifully recorded my name as 'ASS'. (It's that or 'POO' obviously.) And I have even branched into playing some other games with much delight. It's a little bit late in coming and I'm currently working about 11 years behind, but...

Gamers of the world. I have arrived. And I'm here to KICK SOME ASS!!!!



In other news, why the HELL haven't I seen 'Snakes on a Plane' yet? No good reason, I tells ya.

The Stoat returns...

Got back from a brief holiday to Broadstairs, where contrary to popular opinion I was able to get a tan and run into people I haven't seen for ages. And eat. And paddle, and eat some more. I will be farting around with my diary to select the most interesting (or perhaps, least boring) bits to recount before I vanish off for another week on the 12th. Nice to be home though. I rather missed the internet. How sad.