This city’s made us crazy and we must get out

A short flash fiction, completely not based on current resentments towards work and the village I live in.

“Same shit, different day” was a phrase often uttered by those who were happy to go through the same rigmarole all the time, as a way to ease their own life passing them by.

It was also what David thought as he started to get changed for work. He pulled on his black work trousers and mumbled to himself. He stumbled towards the kitchen and grabbed the silver flask on the worktop and took a swig of whatever it was he’d put in there.

“Tastes like limes” he noted to himself. He managed to get to the kitchen, and looked out at the street he’d known for almost 10 years. 10 years in the same job, promoted just the once. He knew it was going nowhere. Briefly he looked at his pitiful bank balance online, despite only having recently been paid, and it simply depressed him further.

He walked out of the door, with his rucksack of regular clothes and laptop in, walked by the same buildings that he was sick of seeing and walked by the same unknown people, who still gave him a greeting each morning, despite him not knowing their names or anything about them outside of their shopping habits.

As he walked up to the entranceway to what would be eight hours of stupid customers, incompetent staff and a stressful day, his mind urged him to simply walk on. So he did without hesitation.

He carried on to find his car in the car park of his workplace, got in and saw a colleague headed to work.

“What time do you start?” piqued the small black haired girl.
”I’m finished actually” stated David, matter-of-factly and drove out of the car park. He was done with this part of his life and the same people day in, day out.

Some hours later, David would be in France, going under the name James Harbour and with a whole new backstory for himself. As far as he was concerned, when burning his passport, David had died.

A friend in need is a friend indeed

I’d say I’m a good friend to all who know me, though I may be a little unreliable and temporarily steal your stuff from time to time, I’d like to think I’m always there to at least be a sounding board for people. Wherein I’m excellent at listening, but my advice is mediocre at best.

However, this week I was able to help two of my friends, though I suppose one is more of a work acquaintance than a friend most times.

Let us begin the first of these stories:

I’m 22 now, so I’ve ended up making a few good contacts via Fanpop, Twitter and friend through friend etc. and a co-worker who plans to study criminology has mentioned it to me many a time, yet I for some reason hadn’t thought of putting her in contact with a retired shrink/criminologist I know so she could ask her about any thing she was unsure of. That was done, so now it’s up to her to pursue these things.

I’ve helped set up the connection though and that made me feel good. On to the second tale now.

I was in my early teens when my parents finally broke apart their troublesome and violent marriage, so evidently this makes me an expert on dealing with divorce? One of my friends parents have grown apart, and now they’re getting separated, so I took a night time stroll with the aforementioned friend and discussed a multitude of things with him, despite not getting to bed until 2am, then having work at 6am, but that’s just what you do for your friends. It seemed to qualm some of his fears on it at least.

FlashFכrward Preview

In a few hours, I’ll be ready to flash forward when the show begins over here and I could not be more excited for it. It’s being branded as “the next Lost” and certainly contains enough similar elements to Lost, and even some former stars and a great cast.

John Cho (well known for minor American Pie appearances and Harold & Kumar films) is an actor who I hadn’t known was in previously and is great in his appearances. Sonya Walger is also appearing as a main character which is cool.

The basic story of FlashFכward is that the whole world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds during which time they see glimpses of their future, April 29th 2010 to be exact and some characters experience good futures that they don’t want to mess up, some experience horrible futures that they will try and circumvent and some seem to have no future at all and fear they will wind up dead.

It’s going to be a fantastic show, so get ready to Flash Forward at 9pm tonight, Channel 5!

Blinkered Season Two Preview

In case you missed the season one review there it was. Now, some trailers have come out on YouTube and I have been asked to give my opinions.

The comical Jimbo abuse continues (that’s him on the floor by the way) and Big Al seems to have a bit more of a central role. Some characters looks (such as Dennis) have changed a bit between seasons and I know for one scene Joshua Knight (who plays Jimbo) needed his hair as shaggy as possible for some reason. No sign of Richard in the trailers alas, but in that vein one of my issues with characters was addressed;

Yes, the Blinkered office is no longer a sausage fest! There’s at least one (currently unnamed) female character and the trailers promise “new characters" so hopefully we can expect some more.

Actually the character above is named Wendy Joelseph played by Lauren Knust.

Whether this is a prop choice, or simply Apple’s brilliance showing through everything, it seems that most of the Blinkered office (the company name hasn’t been mentioned from what I recall) have iPhones save Jimbo, who picks up his 90’s-esque phone when Big Al is attempting to find him.

It prompted some good laughs from me, especially in the initial trailer: New Shirt. It’s going to be great, and it’s going to be coming to http://www.nudia.tv come October 7th, but for now, watch all the trailers below.

Hopefully Joel (Dennis) or Joshua (Jimbo) will slide me an early episode one so I can have a review ready for the day it goes up to the public, and I hope you’re all watching. It’s genius.

Blinkered Season One Review

Watch it here

Blinkered is advertised by it’s creators @comeuppence & @joshuaknight as “The Office” meets “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”. Now I really dislike The (US) Office, but do like what little I’ve seen of It’s Always Sunny so was apprehensive towards it at first, but I ended up really liking it. Five sections scored out 10 for an overall 100% score here.

Characters/Cast

Blinkered only has a small cast of characters, consisting of Big Al, Brian (frequently called Jimbo on and off set), Dennis (who manages the hapless lot), Kyle Laws (whose character name I can’t recall) and Richard (as seen above)

There is also a great recurring guest character named Billy Lightfoot who is constantly mocked by the rest of the cast and I’d love to see him become a series regular for season two.

Character with the least character development? Got to be Big Al, the cocky self-know-it-all and self proclaimed best buddy to everyone.this season seemed to focus on Jimbo being the audience proxy, as odd as it seems in an Office-y show.

Sets

Nice and easy set up for a show based in an office (though I don’t think it was stated what they did) it relates to people who spend a lot of their time in their own cubicles and get pissed off with co-workers. I can only relate to the latter, but still find the set for it to be very good. It’s what I imagine having your own little self-depressing world stuffed in to a cube would be.

However, there’s also this large mostly unused area which seems like it would be great for an office chair race for a promotion or something. It was used later on in the season, but still not a whole lot.

Comedy

Richard for me was the run away funny man of the series between stalking Big Al and appearing naked at his house and his dog, it’s very comical.

Lots of comedic value in taunting Jimbo too, especially by Dennis (whereas these are the two creators of the show and are good friends in the real world) and situations that you would never imagine in a work place (Big Al cutting off Dennis’ pony tail for example) akin to The Office.

Soundtrack

Unfortunately this is where Blinkered falls flat on it’s face. The intro song is…bland to say the least and there’s not much of a soundtrack within the show, despite Dennis never removing his ear buds. It might be a good idea for season two if we could faintly hear what he was listening to when he was in a scene to provide a base soundtrack.

Plot

Though it is in it mostly for the comedy, Blinkered does feature some well thought out storylines such as Jimbo’s fake family and Richard’s nigh-on homosexual obsession with Big Al, which he simply sees as normal. I’m not sure where the overall show is going, but I think the next step would be to introduce a female character in to the show, and use her to disrupt the work place. Blinkered has been an interesting watch and I hope they keep up the quality.

Characters/Cast: 7.3/10
Sets: 7/10
Comedy: 8.4/10
Soundtrack: 4/10
Plot: 8/10

69.40%

• 0 – 19% Unwatchable - why the hell did I even watch this?
• 20 – 49% Poor – Certain elements of the show hold it back
• 50 – 69% Average – More good than bad, but you might need to be a fan to really get in to it.
• 70 – 84% Good – This is what you’ll be talking about with people in the office the next day.
• 85 – 89% Excellent – This is what you’ll be talking about for the next month.
• 90 – 100% Fucking Excellent – This is the best TV show ever, therefore going by Josh Whedon logic, it will soon be cancelled.

Thanks to Joel for providing all the Blinkered images used within this review. Cheers man.

Dungeons & Discourse – Character Creation:Report

So, as you may know, this was the first D&D session that I’ve run (I have played in the past, but never DMed, and had also never played fourth edition prior to this), but I don’t intend it to be the last. I’m going to do these “reports” after each one so I can try and dispense advice to anyone else doing the same and anyone that’s got advice to give, please do so.

Some background first of all. This game was actually the one that’s in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Manual and is 4th Edition, meant to introduce the players and the DM to the game and is called “Kobold Hall”.

I’d drawn some maps on graph paper, had miniatures ready, had snacks, drinks and pizza menu at the ready and sorted out whatever chairs I had for people to sit on.

ArrivalsPeople started arriving around an hour prior to the start of the game. Eventually when everyone was there we had: myself, Ben, Callum, Chris, Keith Tom & Will which made for quite a good campaign. They started off making characters and Will had brought a variety of good information with him.

Character Creation

Ah yes, this is where it started to go askew. I know the old character creation way of roll six lots of six sided dice four times, (known as 4d6 in the game) take away the lowest number from a set of four, add the other three together and that’s a stat. Turns out people were confused and I only had one Player’s Handbook to pass around when people wanted to see abilities and the like. Will & Callum had pre-generated characters whereas everyone else carried on with the misshapen things they had created including a Dragonborn named Tits McGee.

Hook & Adventuring

So I had taken the base adventure of Kobold Hall from the DM’s Guide to get myself used to DMing and the players used to playing. The guide provided a few great hooks, but somehow it was decided (by my players) that the group had gone off on a stag do, and had drunkenly stumbled in to the cave and decided upon genocide of the Kobolds within.

One player got bored and intentionally fell in to the slime pit (later discovered to be Kobold leavings) and was disbanded for the rest of the game. The players triggered a few traps as they eventually sobered up on their travel in to the large hall. A few odd things happened that I wasn’t ready for before the players accomplished the mission.

• A drake killed more than one player due to some natural 20s on my side, but I let it slide for the first game
• The party decided it would be a good idea to capture and interrogate a Kobold, which I was very unprepared for, but managed to fumble through and convince them (in-character) to release him. What a mistake guys…
• A player came up with a novel idea to trap an annoying drake in the newly acquired bag of holding and leave it in there until it died…
• They ran away from the dragon initially, then chose to drag down a Kobold corpse for it to eat…

The dragon was of course, the main boss of this mini-adventure, and though it had some devastating attacks the players knocked it down quickly and then one player gutted it for all it was worth. Tail, heart, teeth, lungs, scales, everything.

The campaign ended there, and next up we have: Nurion’s Treasure.

Letters from America

So, this is actually the third blog I’ve had, with the others run by my immature self. Whilst maintaining the first I went away to America and decided to write a letter to my friends back in the UK when I was there. Here’s the letter, in it’s horrible unedited glory so you can see what I got up to there briefly before a big blog post about it. Notes about it will be written in italics as I’m sure there’s some things I need to explain within this originally handwritten letter.

Heylo Benjoelpaul (smooshed their names together, how clever of me),

How are things over thar? I mentioned in my last email to Ben that I might write/type up a letter along with Christmas presents to be sent. Everything here is going well; still going to the gym pretty much every day (except for the days I don’t wake up in time) so my gut is slowly receding which is all well and good.

Managed to bust my dragon ring whilst I was working, so that’s a job for the guy in the Berber shop. Abbelina (someone at work) was talking to me about how much she misses her home in Mexico, and I agreed and remembered quite a few things that I miss (one of them being you guys of course), so that made me a little depressed until Ina started barking orders at me and then I realised I was at work.

I have quite a good set-up here, I have my own room (Tennyson has to share with Sam now, so I feel a little guilty sometimes) and it’s great to look straight outside when it snows. I have to take another opportunity to mention how great having a British accent is over here.

Well, as I’m writing this letter over the course of a few days, I’ve now come back. Busy day yesterday at work. 267 people in one room and I was working on an open bar…(made $115 in tips though, and cashed my first pay check for two weeks of $345) met Brian’s cousin, Rickie (who is female before you laugh) and she’s quite nice. Also met Robyn whose brother decided to hang himself in the early hours of this morning, which isn’t exactly going to make her Christmas great.

Erm…I’m 131 Pokémon away from completing my Pokédex, which is rather good. On a Poké-related note, I had a strange dream where Diamond & Pearl had come out and all of us were already trading starters around at a house unfamiliar to me, maybe our future flat, oh well only a dream. Need to go into Wal-Mart tomorrow to pick up your presents; you should get them before Christmas. Saw CivIV yesterday whilst we were at Best Buy but decided against getting it, if I do eventually get it somewhere I’ll get it at GAME. I should come back over there with a good amount of money.

I’m on $588 (made a little Excel spreadsheet to keep track) at the moment and December has only just begun. Just to let you know as well, I have decided not to fly back out here, I think three months will be enough and it’s been a great experience but I will need to get a job sorted as soon as I get back.

I think I’ll try the usual thing of apply everywhere I want to work and if no-one new wants to hire me, I suppose I could always re-apply at Somerfield, someone will have been 86ed by the time I return. Oh yeah, if someone is 86ed, it means fired. Restaurant lingo. We (Cliff, Matt, Crystal, Cody, Emily and myself) stayed at the restaurant after it had closed until 5am. We normally close at 11pm. So, I managed to cram quite a few JD & Pepsi’s down my gullet before we went and I left feeling light-headed but not much else. I don’t think I’m in work today, weekdays are very slow, and we only usually get about 80 people in. A good day is at least 180. When I had to work with UB (stands for Ultimate Bitch apparently, she doesn’t like people to know her real name.) at the bar, she entrusted me with keys to the beer/wine/hard liquor storage room. My god is that small room magical. 6 bottles of Jack Daniels, 12 cases of every (important) beer I can think of (except Stella Artois) so yes it was awesome. If you guys are still thinking about coming over, then call me up about it, or I’ll call you guys when I get a chance.

Found some more awesome gaming things to sell on eBay. Cliff has a strange attitude to video games, he doesn’t like people to play them, and doesn’t know much about them (for example he asked me a few days ago after hearing the word on the radio what Tetris was.) but at the same time, he doesn’t mind me playing them as long as I still help him out when he needs help and do the washing/ironing/drying/wood-bringing-in and such. I’ve also been able to read through the whole Harry Potter series so far and all of the Discworld books that Cliff has (about 18). There are so many Mexicans here; it’s astonishing. I know four at work, and the whole kitchen (minus Ronnie & Jerry) is all Latinos. I may have seen like three in my whole life before now.

I discovered something else, which is related to Pokémon Emerald, Juan’s name should be pronounced wan, not Jew-wan, as a Mexican guy I work with is called Juan. We went sledding the other day down a place called Johnson’s Mound. Massive, steep hill. It was so much fun, admittedly my hands are full of cuts and a few of my bones ache because of crashes and the fact I wasn’t wearing any gloves. We were there for about three hours, having occasional races (2 of which I managed to win) and then just having a laugh. Received my presents from my Mum & Den yesterday and impressed the US postman because it was sent via Royal Mail.

I’ve had little time for TV; so don’t expect me to tell you what will happen in Lost or anything like that. I still have plenty of apprentices to send back to you though, as I’m sure you do to me. Matt was discussing with me the other day that he really wants to come to England, so I’ve said that when we have a flat or whatever sorted we’ll be more than happy to let him stay with us for a week or two of drinking and such. Speaking of Latinos, I now know how to start learning Spanish, and Abbey, Juan & Roaul have said they’ll help me too. [Common sienta se en Espanol]?

Which means, “What is this in Spanish?” and then I should be able to learn a few things. Also, I learnt the Spanish word for thingamajig/ doodad/ whatchamacallit, it’s “Chingilairas” so I’ll be incorporating that word into our conversations. Okay, I’m going now, got to take Cappuccino and Frangelico for a walk. Well, that was certainly cold, my hands are slowly warming up, Nan is getting some work things sorted, she’s now a Deli manager at a supermarket so she has a lot to do and she got a little stressed out the other day. So we all pitched in to tidy the house, cook a nice beef tail stew and rented War Of The Worlds.

Matt and then later Cliff said that during January they’d take me into the city so I can see everything so that’ll be quite good. I’d have to say I’ve adjusted quite well to a completely different place, but I have taken a lot of home with me, such as my laptop, my DS, my clothes from home and my laptop bag. So it’s sort of like it’s just a different town. A few things I want/need/require when I return though: a Chinese takeaway/all you can eat, Pokémon XD, Lasagne, white bread toast with some lame butter substitute and the love of a good young Asian girl…there’s none here. I get 0% chance to be, well me, in the presence of Asian girls. It sucks. Oh and fish and chips, the chip shop still there? So not an extensive list, I’ll probably crave more things when I return.

Have I missed out on much on EWB? I haven’t been able to read CAD, Nuklear Power or anything recently. I suppose I’ll catch up when I get back. I had a quick look at Serebii the other day to see if any new Diamond/Pearl information had cropped up, but alas nay. When I come back I will spend the day back (January 25/26^th) with family and then we can go cinema or whatever on Thursday and Friday and I’ll apply for jobs in Leicester & Loughborough. That’s something I am missing for sure, is going to the cinema or even just around town with you guys, I hope the cinema staff have asked where your other friend is.

Tell Jim at GAME (I miss GAME too) that I say “Merry Christmas” and that I’ll spend plenty to make up for their three months of no money due to me being gone. I also expect a Mario Party session when I return too (ooh and I’m going to have to buy some Jacob’s crackers as well). Well, I know I’m giving one of you guys this letter after Christmas and after the new year, I’m thoroughly looking forward to coming home as I type this up though.

Learnt a few more Spanish words and some of the language rules, it’s similar to French because you say the word first, such as ‘bason’ which is glass and then describe it afterwards, but both languages are derived from Latin, so it’s not that surprising, also plural words are similar to ours, usually it’s just adding an s on the end. So I’m slowly getting to grips with Spanish, just like people at work are getting used to all the English type things that I say, like cheers for thanks and pinch for steal, which apparently don’t get used over here. Had a mini-disaster the other day when I thought the touch screen on my DS was broken. It wouldn’t function at all and I assumed that someone had pressed down too hard on it and I would need to get a new one, but it seemed to be as right as rain in the morning so I thought no more of it.

Grabbed a Dilbert calendar for mine self a while ago, I never seem to have a calendar when I need one. Started to read books by a banned author (over here anyway) named Tom Sharpe, good book so far, different to what I would normally read but it is still good. Got into some trouble at work, because Cher mentioned to Cliff that I’m a bad busser, so I don’t know how much longer I will be able to stay at the restaurant, I need to talk to Cher and get things between us sorted so I can find out what I am doing wrong and correct it.

Well, hopefully I can still maintain my job at the restaurant, if not I’ll have to find things to do around the house and hope that Nan & Cliff pay me a little money that way. I’m up to about $900, which is quite good, managed to bust my wallet though because of all the notes. If I do keep working, I might leave with about $1,800 that would be good. Anyways, enough about me working or not working, it’s depressing me a little.

Mountain Dew is awesome as one of you said; it’s almost like Dr. Pepper. I keep getting little bouts of homesickness, nothing to break down and cry about even when I think an eight-hour flight separates me from my country, and all the people I know. Well, 16 days left and I have some more news, I am going out with a 20 year old very hot girl on Wednesday to see the Blue Man Group and see Navy Pier and go out for dinner and such and damn, by the time we get finished it’ll be too late to get home so we’ll just have to stay overnight at a hotel. We went to a Chinese restaurant the other day to eat, my god I love all that Asians do, and we even had a nice looking Asian girl come into work, to eat and I was bussing the table, so that was great. Hey, about me mentioning Jack Daniels earlier, I might try and come back with a full bottle for each of you. As Cliff says he’s got too much of it anyway. There is a whole box that he got for free but I won’t be able to fit that into my suitcase, so never mind. Well, hopefully I’ll be up at about 6am tomorrow, being able to sort everything out with Ashley for Wednesday (It’s Sunday now). She rang a few hours ago, but we were out, I guess she wanted to ring before she fell asleep so I’ll try her again in the morning anyways. Then I should also try and get something sorted out with Erin & Jackie too.

Well, I must admit that I worked terribly the other day because I spent a large majority of my time thinking about Ashley, and Robin (her mother) said she trusted me with her timid daughter. She knows not of my plans, you should ask Mark about it as I do have the time, but can’t be bothered so. My past week has been going well, with the next week bringing only greater things. I think it was all inspired by my fortune cookie at East China Inn, which said I’d be successful through innovation and determination.

I also seem to have built up more confidence, so much so that I was plotting how to take over Neville’s (my old boss) job. I figure I could do it in a year, maybe two, as a 19-year-old running a shop might make the company apprehensive to give me the position. If I don’t get that, then I am going to aim for some kind of management, just so that when we open the store, we have at least some experience. A relief moment for me today was advising my apprentice with the phrase:

WROAAAARR! LET’S TAKE IT OUTSIDE BROTHER

He was a guitarist and it just made me laugh after I thought of it. A disconcerting apprentice phrase for a Gentleman that I did was:

I WILL POUND MY SECRET PLACE

Which was also a great phrase I thought, but with getting everything sorted out with Ashley & Erin, I’ve had little time for everything else. I went on MSN the other day and Ben, you were on, but didn’t respond, but Mark was on and I had possibly the best talk to him I’ve ever had. So that was grand, oh yeah, I’ve been providing a few people with my e-mail, to keep in contact when I leave. We have to come back here when we’re 21, and can drink.

I was thinking that if Matt comes over we should take two weeks off and go up to London and everything, which is actually what I might want to do for my 19^th birthday, either Monopoly pub walk, or just trying our luck in bars and getting hotel rooms. Although, we don’t want them for $7/£7, Cliff was telling me a little story about cockroaches being on his face when he stayed in a hotel at that price. So I shall decide closer to the time what I actually want to do, but with

As you may have noticed, I’ve finally decided to properly take my jackass of a father’s name from my name, if he doesn’t want anything to do with me, then same here and that includes my name. I do want four names still, but I may make Robert my third, and have something else for my second, I don’t know, but I think I need to go and officially get it done. Then I shall write a final letter of contact to my dad, expressing everything and telling him that I am henceforth ceasing all contact with him. I’m tired of having him there in the back of my head thinking that I should send him a Christmas/birthday card, but fuck it.

That’s part of my three-year plan, and my reward at the end is a two-week vacation to America. Of course, I may, depending on my progress grant myself the privilege of a short trip to Japan too. My three-year plan may extend into a five-year plan, or it may fuck up utterly. If it fucks up, then I’ll make a new plan, but for now it is fine. I should probably get to sleep, but I’m in such a writing mood, and I only need to be up in 5 hours which is plenty of sleep, especially as I didn’t work today and yet I find myself yawning. Hopefully I haven’t missed anything interesting or intriguing, I haven’t heard much about what you’ve been up to Paul, but I’ve had e-mails from Ben & Joel saying how much they all miss me and Den was telling me that not much had changed.

You know what, I never got before when people would call their stepfather or someone similar by their first name and not call them Dad, but now I understand, Den is Den. He’s not my father. Now it may be awkward for the others if they still have contact with Dad, when it gets to things like Father’s Day, but as far as I’m concerned the only thing I have to be appreciative to my Dad about is for helping to get me into this world, but otherwise Den has done a lot more parenting, and a lot more effective parenting than my Dad ever did.

Sorry if this letter gets boring at some points, it just helps if I get everything written down that I’m feeling and you guys just happen to be my remorseful audience. Another advantage to me cutting out my Dad’s name is that it will be a later date thing to mention, as if I won’t have enough from America to discuss for a while. Weight and gym business now I think, I have still been going to the gym as much as I can, Cliff & I skipped a day last week because we both overslept due to a busy day at work. Now, however I’m 220lbs which is about 15 and ½ stone, but more of it is muscle because I’ve gone from a size 36 waist to a size 30 which is awesome really. I might be able to get it down to size 26/28 by the time I get back, which shall be tremendous. My belt on my 36 size jeans has to almost eat me to fit. Well, I actually think that’s all for now. I will come back and edit  after my date with Ashley.

Well, my date with Ashley was great. It’s 1am and we met up at 4pm so I’d say it was good. We went to see Blue Man Group, which was excellent. Ashley and me talked an awful lot about everything, weird English/American things and we stopped off for something to eat, I paid for everything gentlemanly and it was a great night, definitely going to ring her tomorrow and get something else sorted out.

Great for my first blind date. She was saying that she doesn’t date much and isn’t usually very social, which is great news for me.

Well, as I’m sure Benji hath mentioned to ye, I just called him up and spoke to him, which was good, good to hear that everyone is still alive, and in good health. What are the plans for my return then? Well, I’m going to wrap this up and send it off when next we go to the post office, see you guys in a few days I guess.

This letter was written back in the winter of 2006 over the course of a week when I first went to America, and though I haven’t been back since I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ll fill in all the little details in longer blog posts as I think on them.

Dream a little dream of me

So, the following is an odd dream I had recently, which I thought might make for a quick blog post.

"I work at an office wearing a suit and all, where there is a large desk at the head that I share with a few co-workers. We get on well, so have a few chats.

Some days pass and I have a holiday coming up, or I'm off geocaching or something. I open up the large desk and remember there is a spare drawer, and I slip some geeky things like a Rhydon sticker and dice in there and set off wherever I was going.

I get back and my co-workers are smirking and avoiding me. A new member of staff had apparently taken over the drawer my geeky things were in and someone hands them back to me, trying to avoid laughing. I stash them in my pocket and make my way back to my desk."

Yes, yes I realise that it means I should probably be more up front about the geek that I am, and was feeling bad about not being so. Perhaps this is also influenced by the little Bonsly sticker I stuck up on my current workplace's lockers, that's been there for ages.

The whole Pokémon thing seems rather foolish to people who don't play, hence why I don't include it in my introductions. If you know I play and I know you in the real world, I try and use me telling you that to say that I now trust you more than anything. I'm a rather closed off person at times, and you know as much about me as I want you to know usually.

This was a lot longer than originally intended. Never mind.
-- Posted from my iPhone

"Bump" iPhone App Review

You've probably seen Bump advertised on the iPhone ads as a way of sharing contact information, which it is certainly good for.

However it can also be used to pass along photos and other things with a single simultaneous shake or "bump" of the iPhones. I got a chance to test it with my friend's iPhone, as he deleted his own contact information, and wanted it back.




However he had to send me something too, a photo I think. There was no option of leaving one side to do an empty bump as might be required at times.

There's certainly some good ideas and it's an ambitious app but it'll take a little time and a few updates to become a neccessity for all iPhone users.

PRICE: Free
RATING: 3.7/5

Autographs & Apologies

Sorry I've not been around for about a month, but I've had no real Internet access for about that long. Instead of saying I'm sorry etc. I'll give you a few samples of what's to come but alas without the aid of rich text it's back to basics.

BLINKERED






In case you don't know, I dislike The Office, so when one of my Twitter followers asked me to watch his YouTube show resembling The Office I was skeptical, but it's been great. A full review will come soon.

FUTURAMA





I've been watching the Futurama films for the first time too so I'll be reviewing them in due course.

iPhone REVIEWS





Have been downloading a ton of new apps which need to be reviewed too.

Other things at a glance: Fanpop, sprained ankles, work sucks I know, Japan, Wiiwork and more stuff.

Should be in to proper blog writing again soon.