A new low

When the post arrived this morning, it included several items that I had been waiting for. This was a good thing, since all I had received all week was a pile of junk mail (which I took reasonable pleasure in feeding to the shredder, but which was still annoying).

Except of course that, this being Sunday, this wasn't the mail delivery this week, but rather my neighbours re-delivering the pile of things that had been sent to the wrong address. Score one for Royal Mail!

But the best item of the lot was a card reading "Sorry, you were out" (which I was), "the packet was too big for your letterbox". Unfortunately, I know the item in question, it being a monthly delivery, and it is not too big for my letterbox. If they'd delivered it to the right address, I would have it by now, and not be set up for another exciting opportunity to pay £1.70 for 7 minutes of parking again.

Yay!

Ouch

Yesterday, I burned the back of my wrist in a lasagne-related over glove malfunction. This was not a good thing.

It hurts like crazy. I'm given to believe that this is actually a good thing - 'tis only a flesh wound.

Of course, the one thing has nothing to do with the other

Contrary to Captain Ric's assertions, I do count. In fact, I have elected to start counting in hexadecimal, casting off the shackles of the outmoded base-10 system in favour of a more logical and altogether more elegant method.

In unrelated news, it is my birthday soon. I'm looking forward to turning 20.

Only 50% psychic

Yesterday I arrived at band to find that the Pipe Major had called an emergency meeting. "Oh hell," I thought, "he's going to quit." I looked around the room at the assembled band members, and concluded that there was no-one in the band who was likely to take over.

Right then. Time to plan how I'm going to take the band forward. What should be the short-term plans, the medium-term plans, and the long-term plans?

The meeting began, and sure enough, the Pipe Major had decided to step down. He had a new job, which would take him away for too much time, and anyway things hadn't really been going to plan.

However... he'd found his successor. One of his friends, a Grade One piper, and a guy who had come to help us tune up at several competitions in the last year, had agreed to take over, if this was acceptable to the rest of the band.

So, I dodged a bullet there. I feel almost Neo-like in my mad skillz.

And now we wait and see: where will the new guy take us from here?

The sweet smell of success

It's always nice successfully completing a task that was right on the edge of your capabilities. It's even nicer when you do this about an hour before you stop for the weekend.

They didn't tell us about the need for hats

In church today, we were given a task. The command was simple: invent an extravagant greeting to use.

But, as we all know, true extravagance needs hats. The taller the better? How could we invent a truly extravagant greeting without a ready supply of comedy headwear?

And, of course, there's the moustaches. Clearly, no-one was prepared with a suitably twirly moustache for extravagant hatted greeting use. (Obviously, that's one for the Men in the congregation. As we all know from the "Spongebob Squarepants" movie, only Men are entitled to twirly moustaches, and the ability to grow a twirly moustache is the true indication of Manhood.)

Honestly, why don't they tell us these things in advance?

I must confess...

Euro 2008 is a whole lot less interesting without England in there.

On the other hand, watching it is a whole lot more pleasant without the commentators and analysts constantly diverting off at tangents to talk about England's chances, to bring us the latest 'news' from the England camp, and crowing about how England were surely the favourites to win the tournament. Followed, of course, by the unpleasant sense of schaudenfruede that comes when they inevitably get knocked out by Portugal or Germany (or Argentina, in the World Cup) on penalties. (To my English readers: I'm sorry, but I really hate your presenters.)

(It's also unfortunate that Scotland aren't there. However, given that Italy and France got drawn together again, and with Holland this time, I'm not sure we would have been in it for long. And, given our qualifying group for the World Cup, the fact that Holland trouced Italy was more than a little disconcerting.)

Oh, before I go, my prediction for the tournament: although the best teams I've seen so far have been Spain and Holland (I haven't seen Portugal, but I heard they were very good yesterday), I'm going to go for Germany as the eventual winners. Spain have a habit of imploding at key points, while Holland may well find the effort involved in qualifying from an Italy/France group tires them too much for the later stages.

Random Thoughts

I'm extremely tired. I don't think I should be so tired.

The Fratellis' second album is... okay. It's about as good as their first album, with the exception of "Chelsea Dagger" - the new offering doesn't have anything that comes close.

Tesco's "Ridge" crisps are a low-fat clone of McCoys, which they didn't have in stock. Despite tasting much the same, and having the same sort of texture to them, they are strangely unsatisfying.

The 4th Edition of "Dungeons & Dragons" isn't as bad as I'd feared. More on this at a later date.

"Sunshine", the film by Danny Boyle about a mission to re-ignite the sun is awful. Avoid like the plague.

Similarly, although I haven't seen it, I'm going to confidently predict that "Species IV" is awful.

LOLcats are funny.

The government's latest antic, to give false terror suspects £3,000 compensation for each day they are wrongly held without charge beyond the present 28-day limit (this being a bribe to persuade rebel MPs to vote for this atrocity), would leave me fizzing with anger, if the concept of making a decent living in this way didn't cause me to giggle with Doctor Evil-esque glee.

Isn't it odd that some words are just funny, in and of themselves?

Chunky Monkey ice cream is an odd thing, although not an unpleasant one. I'm not sure about the walnuts, though.

Which is better, candy floss or a sledgehammer?

£1.50 for seven minutes of parking?

It frequently seems like many of the services that exist in this world are specifically designed so that people who work can't take advantage of them. Need your gas meter read? Well, the guy only works 9-5 on weekdays. Need to visit the doctor or dentist? Well,they're open 9-5 on weekdays (maybe).

And then there's the postal service. Now, these guys are fine, provided you're only ever receiving junk mail and bank statements. However, the moment you need to have a parcel delivered... you get a little card saying "Sorry, you were out", as if that comes as a surprise to them. (Perhaps it does - I've noticed that the delivery is getting later and later in the day.)

Still, that would be fine. All you have to do is go and pick it up at the collection centre, which is only a couple of miles away. And which is only open... Actually, that's not true. It opens at 7:30 and stays open until lunchtime, six days a week. So, it's a hassle to go during the week, but it is possible. And it's also possible to go on a Saturday, which is nice.

Or it would be, if there were any parking nearby. But no! There are various supermarkets around, but they are for customers only, and you can't get out without either buying something or paying for the parking. And then there are the pay-and-display car parks.

So, I went to one of those, intending to pay for the smallest possible length of time, get in, and get out again. Of course, the smallest possible length of time is 2 hours, at a cost of £1.50, and the total length of time it took me to get my parcel was seven minutes. (Of course, the pay and display charges start at exactly the same time as the collection centre opens. Anything else wouldn't be sporting.)

I'm not terribly happy about that. I'm just hoping that the parcel with the other half of my delivery is thin enough to fit through my door.

In pursuit of spectacular mediocrity

We entered our second competition of the season on Sunday. It would be an understatement to say it was a somewhat disappointing day.

The seeds for the disaster to come were sown last week, when I switched on the TV to watch something (possibly "Pushing Daisies", or perhaps "Blade Runner") to find "The One Show" doing a feature on sublock, and how it just wasn't as effective as the bottles claimed. Of particular note was their assertion that a person was supposed to put on a full sixth of a bottle every two hours. This came as something of a surprise.

Now, I loathe sunblock. Truly, it is just awful. It's slimy, and sticky, and unpleasant, and if I wear it with my contact lenses in, I have to wash my hands immediately after putting it on, or else be blinded by my own sunblock. And, of course, it's waterproof, so the washing of the hands is something of an ordeal in itself when on a beach with plenty of water but no soap around.

So, I try hard to avoid situations where I might have to wear it, either by hiding indoors when the sun is about, or by wearing black from head to foot, thus not having to wear it. But, as we know, at the last competition I got badly sunburnt.

(Keen readers of this blog will have noted a comment in an earlier post about a "The One Show"/sunblock rant. That was it there.)

Anyway, Saturday was a gloriously sunny day, which I therefore spent indoors, venturing out only twice, to wash the car and to mow the lawn. (I would have been meeting friends for WFRP, but that got cancelled.)

Sunday downed bright and sunny, and I woke early to get ready for the competition. After my morning shower, I proceeded to apply a sixth of a bottle of suncream to face, neck, shoulders, arms and knees. Then I thoroughly washed my hands (on account of having contacts in), and put my uniform on. I packed a bag for the day, and left the house (cunningly leaving my wallet behind, but in the event I didn't need any money, so that was okay).

En route to the bus, I met a guy who lives across the road, who commented that it was a nice day for it. Anyone care to guess what happened next?

Anyway, the trip to Markinch was okay but rather uncomfortable. Bus trips are never nice when it's too hot. We got there, hung around for a while, and then left the bus to go to the tuning area.

At this point, it started to rain, lightly at first and then heavily. Oh, yes, having gone to the trouble of applying sunblock, I proceeded to get rained on.

But the story gets even more amusing. See, rain not being an unknown phenomenon in Scotland, we have invested in long waterproof capes. These are highly effective at keeping the rain off. And, having had it drilled into me quite thoroughly when I was ten, I take the cape with me whenever I'm out at the band, even if the sun is blazing. So, I had packed the cape in my bag in the morning. Huzzah!

It was back in the bus.

We took cover under a passing tree, and completed tuning up. We were ready.

The band went on to perform really badly, rather worse than the previous competition in Dunbar. Basically, we started far too quickly, and although the rest of the tune was then played correctly, it was just far too fast, and there was nothing we could do to fix that. There was additionally the 'bad blowing' problem that has been our bane for years, which occurs when people don't keep sufficient pressure on the bag, causing notes to drift up and down.

So, we came off the park, and the pipe major gathered the band, livid at the performance. He proceeded to enquire just what we were playing at (not in quite those words, right enough). We then returned to the bus, and an uncomfortable wait for the march-past, and the results ceremony. (We came last of course. That's not really a factor in the rest of the story.)

A couple of hours later, the rain having ceased, I went for a wander. On returning to the bus, I found the pipe major standing just outside the bus talking to the mother of one of our pipers. I found this most curious, since said mother had not actually travelled with us. Something was going on.

Still, not wanting to be nosy, I proceeded into the bus, to hear the speculations.

In the event, it turned out that my first instinct was correct. The girl in question (or perhaps her brother) had taken exception to the pipe major's comments, and called her mother. Said parent proceeded to drive up to Markinch to collect her children, and to tell the pipe major just what she thought of him. At this time, it seems likely that the girl will be leaving the band as a consequence of this. (There is some speculation that the mother wanted her to leave anyway, in order to move her to a bigger/more successful band. This may be true, but begs the question: why not just go? It's not like we have any hold on her.)

So, thoughts...

1. I'm still not sure whether it is better to play your very best, and still come last, or whether it's better to play far worse than you'd hoped, and thus let yourself down.
   
2. I still really hate pipe band politics. They're killing this band.
   
3. I agree with what the pipe major said, and the terms in which he said it. I perhaps would have waited until tonight, however. I'm also not sure how much longer he's going to be able to continue in the role - things just don't seem to be going right.
   
4. Spare me psycho mothers.
   

The next competition isn't for six weeks. I don't think I care.

Odd...

Many moons ago, I commented in a blog post about the "five-a-day" thing for vegetables, and about how spinach contains very different nutrients from sweetcorn. Really, I did, back in 2006, in a post entitled "Something that has been bothering me for some time".

Anyway, a few weeks ago, one of the supermarkets started a series of adverts about fruit and veg, claiming that not only should you eat five-a-day, but you should also try to vary the colours of the fruit and veg.

The pseudo-science behind this is that the colour of fruit and veg is determined by the chemical composition, so choosing a wide range of colours, is a quick shorthand for eating a wide variety of nutrients.

My reaction to these adverts was, "Oh come on! Suddenly, it's not enough that we eat the mandated five, but now we have to vary the colours too?"

Then I found myself checking the history of my blog to cull any 'draft' posts, only to discover that I had made note of this need two years ago. Oops.

Ouch

For the past couple of weeks, my typing has been suffering from an unusually high rate of typos and other errors. Plus, the rate has slowed considerably, and the whole experience has become rather frustrating. The reason for this is that the ring finger on my left hand has started to cramp up quite badly.

This is almost certainly a mild RSI, and should be easy enough to remedy by resting the finger for a couple of weeks.

What isn't quite so good is that the band have their second competition of the season on Sunday, and so there is no resting of the finger until after that.

All in all, the timing is rather unfortunate.

Grumpy Old Man

Paramount Comedy 2 seem to own the rights to a whole bunch of old BBC shows which they have placed on permanent rotation. And so it was that yesterday they started showing a repeat of "Grumpy Old Men" that I recorded and have just watched.

Now, the first season of "Grumpy Old Men" was rather enjoyable, because the format was new, the complaints were uncomfortably accurate, and the whole thing was funny. For the second season, it just wasn't as good; too often it just felt that they were moaning about things for the hell of it. This was the third season, which appears to have improved a great deal, but haven't they run out of things to talk about by now?

(There is also a spin-off, "Grumpy Old Women", but it is completely worthless, being filled with inane blatherings about nothing. Apparently, they don't like going to gym because their full of people who are working out... Shock! Horror!)

Anyway, I was watching the show with some amusement, when halfway through the first of the two episodes I'd recorded, they went into a big rant about going to the cinema. And, in particular, the fact that you have to sit through half an hour of adverts before the film even starts!

Oh dear.

I was later chilled further, when halfway through the second episode the narrator commented "but somehow, we can't seem to avoid the horror that is filling the car with petrol..."

I have therefore decided to accede to the inevitable. I have therefore donned pipe and slippers, and shouted at some random teens to get off my lawn. As they were walking down the street at the time, this caused some small confusion.

(Oh, and absolutely the best thing about the show: five minutes from the end, the phone rang. It was a telemarketer, trying to definately not sell me anything, but could she assume I was the owner of the property? That would definately be worth a rant or two, if it wasn't quite so obvious.)

Coming soon: a rant about "The One Show", and their special on sunblock.

Unsustainable

I have just filled my car with petrol. Given that it was essentially running of fumes, this meant I bought a full tank. Which cost £47.19.

I'll say that again, since it is outrageous enough to require repetition: £47.19.

Now, a tank of petrol will last me exactly a week, which means that, at the current price, it will cost me £2,453.88 in petrol over the next year, assuming the price of oil doesn't go up (yeah, right), and assuming the government doesn't raise fuel duty (yeah, right).

£2,453.88 per year.

And note that my car is relatively fuel-efficient (albeit being ten years old, so not the most efficient car on the road), and my commute is fairly light.

Furthermore, since rises in the price of fuel push the price of everything else up as well (since it all needs delivered to the supermarket), this means a higher weekly shopping bill. And gas and electricity have been going up, fast...

This is, quite simply, unsustainable. Something must be done. And yet... petrol will never again be as cheap as it is right now. Houston, I think we have a problem.

In which "Legacy of the Force" annoys me

We all know that setting up secret police forces, internment of various broad groups, and indefinate inprisonment of suspects without charge are bad things.

Now, imagine you're Luke Skywalker, Jedi Grand Master and the head of the New Jedi Order. One of the members of your order has gone dark, and started instituting all of the above. Due to the nature of Force-users, and the power of this individual, only your order are equipped to deal with him. Do you

(A) stand by impotently while he leads the galaxy into darkness, occasionally asking him nicely to come back to the light, and generally not to be nasty because "totalitarianism is bad, m'kay"? Or do you

(B) Remove him from public life, by force if necessary, so that through isolation you can attempt to detox him from the Dark Side, and so that in any case he cannot institute a tyranny over the lives of trillions of citizens?

See, I would have thought (B) was the obvious answer, because even if the rogue Jedi was doing what he was doing because he sincerely thought it was the right thing to do, he remains a dangerous threat to everyone else in the galaxy. However, if you guessed (A)...

And so it is with the "Legacy of the Force" series. It seems to be a sequence of moronic decisions from the good guys, while all the time the bad guys go about their agendas unchecked. Of course, if the good guys had done the sensible thing at the start, there would be no story.

Still, it's reached a point where I'm now rooting for the bad guy, because at least he actually understands how to achieve things:

1) Decide what you want
2) Make a plan to achieve what you want
3) Execute the plan to achieve what you want
4) Profit

Although, I'm also thinking that if I were a non-Force-user in the Star Wars universe, I would now be at the point of thinking that our "guardians of peace and justice" just create much more trouble than they stop. I mean, seriously, I would be considering finding a way to eliminate Force-users entirely.

Of course, it's worth noting that "Legacy of the Force" isn't the only instance of Jedi who are too dumb to live. The best example comes with "Attack of the Clones", in which none of the Jedi think to remark, "Gosh, wasn't it lucky that someone placed an illegal order for a clone army ten years ago, so they'd conveniently be ready just when Palpatine declared he would set up his Grand Army? (and, coincidentally, so they'd be ready just when we need them)", or perhaps, "Isn't it a bit odd that all our clones are copies of that bounty hunter who was fighting alongside that Sith Lord we've just discovered?" (Still, even that's not as silly as having a mixed-sex educational facility for young Jedi, and expecting them to be celibate... Have I mentioned that I don't really like the prequels?)

George, George, George...

Exactly twice, I have sat in a cinema and felt a tingly sense of anticipation at the start of the film. The first time was the long awaited "The Phantom Menace", and the second was "Superman Returns". It was a glorious sensation, but one that can lead to the bitterest of disappointments. "The Phantom Menace" was just dire (although I take the near-heretical view that it was the best (okay, least worst) of the three prequels), and although I initially enjoyed "Superman Returns" a great deal, on subsequent viewings it has become clear to me that it just isn't a very good film.

I exercised a certain amount of self-discipline last year, steadfastly refusing to raise my expectations for "Transformers", despite being a massive Transformers fan. The name "Michael Bay" is something to conjure with - I have really enjoyed some of his films, and really hated others, and so refused to walk blindly into disaster with this one (and a good thing, too). And, after "The Phantom Menace", the same was true of the other Lucasfilm triumph, "Howard the Duck II".

No, wait, that's not right. I meant, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

(Incidentally, there are no spoilers in this blog post, so feel free to read on.)

This proved to be a really wise move, because it's really bad. Seriously, worse than "Temple of Doom" by a long way. (It is, however, significantly better than any of the Star Wars prequels, not that that's saying much.)

The problem with this film, fundamentally, is a problem with too many modern films. Basically, we have reached a point where special effects can do absolutely anything that the producers and directors want, provided they have enough money, and it will fit seamlessly. Indeed, TV series such as "Battlestar Galactica" now boast special effects that put then ground-breaking films like "Return of the Jedi" to shame.

But the problem is that too many directors are building action scenes for the spectacle, and then filling in the film around those. So, we have "Attack of the Clones" coming to the climactic battle between Yoda and Dooku, not because that makes for a good story, but because we can make pretty cartoons. It's a very pervasive problem, it's really not good for film, and it's getting very annoying.

And, incidentally, it's worth calling out those films that buck the trend. See, some films use the technology differently, producing a good story first, and then making it pretty. The "Lord of the Rings" films are a great example of this (whereas "King Kong" from the same director is not), and anything by Pixar is almost guaranteed to be good ("Toy Story" still holds up today, despite the then-cutting-edge CGI being badly dated).

Unfortunately, "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" is hurt really badly by the overuse of special effects to the detriment of the story. It doesn't look or feel like any of the previous films, but rather feels like a cartoon-esque larger than life version of the same.

Honestly, I think the absolute best thing they could have done with this film would have been to leave the CGI at home. Build the SFX using traditional methods, and if something couldn't be done with a stuntman and some cleverness, it shouldn't be done at all. Instead, we see another opportunity wasted.

Very, very disappointed.

(Oh, and 30 minutes of adverts beforehand, by the way. Not too impressed with that, either.)

Writer's Block

My current task at work is to write a document, the contents of which I won't even hint at here. Anyway, I'm finding it all rather difficult. Although I know what wants to go into the document in broad terms, actually transforming that into words, sentences and paragraphs on the page is proving something of a challenge.

Much the same is true of the blog recently. Although various days have passed, with all their accompanying delights and distractions, nothing has really leapt out at me as being particularly blog-worthy. And even when I have found something that seemed worth mentioning, the task of actually writing the post proved to be taxing.

All being well, I'm going to see "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" tomorrow. Perhaps that will provoke comment?

Sometimes, the weekend sucks

The highlight of my weekend was watching "Doctor Who" on Saturday. Unfortunately, "Doctor Who" was bad this week. Very very bad. Oh dear, was it awful.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing nothing, with a side-order of nothing, on Friday and Saturday, and dealing with first hymn technical difficulties on Sunday. Oh, and I watched "Blood Diamond", which is a surprisingly good film, and "Employee of the Month", which is an unsurprisingly awful film.

So, the weekend was not exactly a triumph. Surely it's a bad sign when you're glad that Monday has arrived so you can go back to work?

Disaster!

It has been a bad weekend.

As should have been evident from my previous post on the topic, I went into the competition yesterday expecting a disaster. So, you would think the outcome couldn't depress me, right?

Except it didn't work like that. Instead, we went on, played really well, and came off feeling quite optimistic. Seriously, it started well, it ended well, and the bit in the middle was good. Basically, it was far better than I would have hoped for even in my wildest bouts of enthusiasm.

Now, last year we came 8th, out of 22 bands in our grade. This year, there were also 22 bands in our grade, and the feeling we should come in at roughly the same position. Which would have been ideal.

We came 21st.

But that wasn't the worst of it. I could have handled that, except that the judge's comments, which might have shed some light on what he'd felt was wrong, and that we could therefore use to fix the problems, were maddeningly vague. "Integration is slack" means what, exactly?

The pipe major of the band puts this all down to politics, which are horribly rife in the piping world. The vagueness of the commentary, and also the fact that local bands always score disproportionately well, would seem to play into this. However, I disagree. The reason local bands do better is that they play better having not had to travel for a couple of hours to get to the contest, and when they're playing in front of a local, and therefore supportive, audience. And while a judge might be somewhat influenced by his not liking the tunes chosen, or the smartness of the band's uniforms (which shouldn't be a factor... but the reality is that appearance always matters), or whatever else, I refuse to accept the notion that a judge will deliberately skew the results against a band out of malice. Perhaps that is just naive of me.

So, we probably just didn't play as well as I thought we had.

To add injury to insult, I also managed to get really badly sunburnt. The weather in Falkirk was poor, so in the morning I didn't put on any sunblock. However, I did put in contact lenses, which meant that I couldn't then put on sunblock without immediately washing my hands afterwards (since it would get into my eyes, under the contacts, and thus blind me). Of course, when stuck in a field with poor toilet facilities (and especially poor facilities in this case), that was not an option. So I'm now bright red.

Anyway, I went home after the competition, ate an absurd amount of pizza, and watched Doctor Who, which was fantastic. It's always good, but last night's episode was particularly excellent. Then I watched Pushing Daisies, which was okay, but seems to be losing its charm rather quickly.

Then today I watched "The Andromeda Strain", a new two-part adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel, which I had thought might be quite good. Oh, how wrong I was.

(There are lots of spoilers coming, so if you really want to see this abomination 'clean', stop reading now.)

The thing is, I'm quite used to Hollywood getting science completely and utterly wrong. I accept that that is just going to be the way of things. And I have even come to accept the fact that characters in TV and film are going to act in utterly stupid ways at key times. So, can just about accept the idiocy of the Staple Heroic Guy handing over his keycard to a colleague before falling to his horrific demise, even though that same colleague had explained not two days previously that the override required both his keycard and SHG's thumbprint. That's just par for the course.

But it was the blindingly obvious engineering idiocies that made me want to batter my head against the wall. Firstly, there was the emergency alert indication which, in a custom-built lab designed for a team including a guy with serious light sensitivity, included an annoying bright flashing strobe. Fantastic idea!

And then there was the emergency system itself. In the event of possible contamination, it would nuke the whole place after a fifteen minute timer. Fair enough. In order to override this failsafe, the SHG would have to enter his keycard and thumbprint at any one of the security terminals. Of course, as soon as this was mentioned, I immediately thought: "Ahah! Something is going to happen to SHG. Either he'll go insane, and try to nuke everyone, or he'll get knocked unconscious, and they'll have to drag him to a terminal."

What I didn't foresee, although I probably should have, is that in a secure environment full of compartments that would seal tightly to avoid the risk of contamination, the engineers would decide to only have one such terminal on each isolated level. Of course, this led to Light-Sensitive Guy being blinded by the strobe, falling over, and smashing the terminal to pieces. This in turn required SHG climbing to the next level (though a chute full of improbably falling objects), and consequently heroically falling to his death.

Frankly, the whole thing had been an insult to my intelligence even before that point. Once we got to this nonsense, it became embarrassing. Still, at least it didn't feature any annoying teenagers using a UNIX system to defeat evil velociraptors. Or my personal favourite - using an Apple laptop to defeat invading aliens.

Gladiators in back!!!!!!!!OneOne!!

Sky have decided to revive "Gladiators", and the first show is on Sunday.

This is great news, mostly since it has been far too long since we've been able to make jokes about giant cotton buds.

I won't actually be watching it, of course. I intend to have other plans.

Still, the excitement of it all!