Month: September 2014

I see lots of funny pictures coming my way over the net.

It’s been a while since I posted any ! So here goes. First up. I’m a dragon fan. I like dragons. They have power. Or they are hypercute. My current twitter avatar is :

My twitter avatar is the one that tends to change at will these days, although I’ve been diving back into the Facebook archives to get pictures for it.

Dragons aren’t real though (Honest!). Unless :

Yes. I have a dragon in the kitchen. He is guarding the front door from atop the fridge-freezer.

Guess who wants a new camera 😉

We were talking movies the other day weren’t we ?

Must watch 2001 again. Must acquire 2010. 2001 was a masterpiece of cinematography with special effects that were miles ahead of their time. But … it was boring ! 2010 had more excitement, although a lot was sliced out of the book. Talking of books :

I have a very good friend called Cyberkitten who absolutely devours books. Reads them too occasionally

Oh – did I mention cameras earlier ?

Definitely. Although :

There seems to be a gap in movies at the moment. Perhaps they’re all struggling to measure up to :

Love that film. And its music. But especially Groot. I suspect Groot models will be a favourite gift this Xmas.

I get identified as a pooter geek fairly often and it happened again today. But. Please :

Last one :

I think I’ve scared some of the Okcupid people away by being too honest. But – I believe that honesty is the best policy. I am suffering from a long term health condition, although it relented enough today to let me leg it around the Mall. I’m a little bit broken but no way near being an invalid. I won’t pretend to be a paragon of health, cos I’m not and never was. But …

I’ll continue to face the world with a massive grin, I’ll continue to fight the problems. Some people don’t seem to like that ! I see it more as owning the problem instead of being owned by it. However, sometimes it does feel a bit like :

Cya ! I think that’s enough piccys for today. Maybe …

Minions are awesome.

I say a lot about the music I love to listen to here. But I’m also a dedicated follower of … (not fashion, definitely not fashion) movies.

So what are my favourites ? I’ll keep it down cos you know what I’m like with that Wall Of Text tendency. But before I start, the catalyst for this one is that darling little lady Kim who has put a couple of “… is the most perfect movie ever. THERE IS NO DISCUSSION!” on her twitter. And I’d agree with the picks too. Cos I like them too.

I’ll put them first. But before, check out her channel to get an idea of why I’m so fascinated. There’s a definite sense of FUN, FUN, FUN, mischief that comes over during the gameplay that’s matched with an enchanting mix of crazy and professional. She can do both when she wants/needs to. I’d recommend the Vlog playlist and most definitely the Last Of Us playthrough which won my heart.

To the movies !

First up and last night’s perfect movie – Terminator 2. I’d go further and name the whole series. It’s rare that a series maintains its quality over even 2 films, let alone 4. Hopefully there will be more. They got the best they could out of the technology available at the time and matched that to decent stories too. I think when I clear the unwatched blurays, I’ll queue up the Terminator movies again.

Anyway – Terminator. Well realised stories, great acting, fantastic effects. Some of the best scifi ever made ?

Tonight’s perfect movie – The Fifth Element. This takes the viewer on a helter skelter trip through Luc Besson’s vision of the future, 400 years away. It’s a colourful riot that draws you in, keeps you guessing and most definitely has you entertained. And it has that opera singer dance …. The music lover in me definitely approves.

For my third, I’ll pick Moon. Scifi again. This tells the story of an astronaut on the moon who is there to keep the Helium mining operation going. But then accidents happen … I especially like his caregiver monitor robot which expresses pseudofeeling through smileys.

Number 4 has to be Episode 4. I was hesitant about putting a Star Wars or a Star Trek in but you can’t deny this movie its place here. Scifi again, set in a unique and fresh world. It changed scifi forever and for the better too. I wanted to be an XWing pilot, although I missed that game and went fighting rebels in Tie Fighters instead.

Number 5 is alive ! (Nah – I’m not picking Short Circuit, lots of 80s movies like that had charm but were … real bad). Time for a disaster movie. I dunno why but I keep going back to The Day After Tomorrow. It has nothing really that makes it better than movies like 2012 but … I kinda like it. It ends with a feely good type message. It has a disaster set up that I think may actually be plausible. And we even saw a little bit of it with last year’s polar vortex … Scary huh ?

Back to animation – Pixar have come out with some amazing movies but I’ll actually go to Bolt. It’s a movie about a SuperDog who isn’t. He just thinks he is but is just having the effects added in around him. But the important thing is that he believes. Until he gets lost that is … This is a truly magic movie and the burning building scene is another that gets the emotions going.

More animation – and I can’t believe I’ve not watched this one since originally seeing it. Spirited Away will be a legendary movie for a long time. It’s about a little girl who gets lost in an alternate, magical world. Her parents have been turned into pigpeople and she needs to figure out how to get them back. Cue a trip through this alternate world as the little girl struggles to first come to terms with the alternate reality and then fights to come out on top with mom and dad. Amazing movie.

8 are the two Sherlock movies with Robert Downey Junior. They’re pure anarchy. And pretty brilliantly acted too. I’ll keep going back to these for sure.

And talking Robert Downey Jr, I can’t leave out Iron Man. Not so sure about the follow up movies (although Avengers was incredible) but the first was an excellent origins series. And that music showed off the sheer joy of his ability to create from technology.

Number 10 ? I’ll pick another unusual one. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon wasn’t the best (I think House of Flying Daggers) foreign language eastern themed film to come out but it was the first and allowed the rest of these fantastic movies to come through. This had ninjas having incredible fights while jumping, flying over buildings. It had several love stories running throughout. It had epic struggle. Outstanding stuff.

I’ll end with a Number 11. And this is for the last Doctor Who. There’s few times when I get emotionally choked up when watching stuff (Bolt is one) but Matt Smith drew that out of me a few times in his times as Doctor. So while they weren’t cinema films, more TV movie, I’ll add in his last two appearances The Day Of The Doctor and The Time Of The Doctor. Cos they hit me in the heart.

I’ll leave it there but if you have some I’ve missed (so many movies, so few evenings !), please drop a comment.

And check out the wonderful Kim too.

Thank you both !

I have to admit with the picture, I'd just spent an hour and a half under a helmet keeping wicket. So I was gasping for a drink and a lie down !

Nice story!
~

A truly dear story. Great smiley face under your pink hat!

Sometimes I leave lots of days between posts. Sometimes that’s cos I want to give certain people a chance to read the post. Sometimes it’s because I like the top post so much.

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed writing the last post. Enjoy is the wrong word for something that gets close to bringing out the waterworks. But – when a post feels very, very right ? Yeah. I like to leave those as top posts.

But … I like my music posts too and we’re overdue the rest of the L post. (I’m almost into N albums). Where were we ? Ah ha ! Last album was the Lily Was Here soundtrack.

Did I include Norah Jones’ Little Broken Hearts in the L part 1 post ? This one is her latest. Norah’s moving to a more poppy style, which is not a bad thing. She’s still cranking out some cracking tunes. Happy Pills is no exception.

One of my earliest album buys and one of the best was Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos. This one has a wide array of varied and incredible songs. My favourite from this album is Happy Phantom although the wonderful Silent All These Years comes close. My voice is nowhere near the quality of this amazing angel of vocals but you can bet I’m belting out the words along with Madame Tori.

Mansun come in with their Little Kix album. Not bad. Bit samey.

If Tori Amos was one of my first albums, All About Eve were the first. And they’ve been a prized part of the collection ever since. They come into L with the Live & Electric album. AAE have had their back catalogue well and truly raided over the years as the label seemed to want to get every last penny out of spanking this horse. Live & Electric is good but there’s not much here that isn’t on the albums. That said, I’ll always stop and listen to tracks like Martha’s Harbour.

My sister has sent me a few highlight tracks from the Radio 1 Live Lounge albums. These have tracks being performed live by assorted artists. These have led to me buying everything that certain artists have come out with. But which artists and which songs ?

Ting Tings – Standing in the way of control
The Hoosiers – Lovestoned (ok, these guys have gone off but this cover is sublime)
Paramore – Love’s Not A Competition
Goldfrapp – It’s Not Over Yet (this song is so good !)
Bat For Lashes – Sweet Dreams

You got it – listing all those was pure excuse for listening to them again !

Next ! I heard about Rodrigo Y Gabriela through their tracks on the Puss In Boots soundtrack (will mention those at P!). Their self titled album is well worth a listen for chilled out rhythm guitar based sounds.

What did Mark Knopfler do after Dire Straits ? Movie soundtracks ! Well, this one actually came early. It’s the magic Local Hero soundtrack and this is the closing theme. It’s a movie about a city boy come to check out a remote Scottish town for oil. And he falls in love with the place and its people. Must watch it again.

EXCITED ! Next up, possibly the best album in my collection. Oh wait, that might be Super Extra Gravity.

It’s the Cardigans … with Long Gone Before Daylight. This album is magic. It’s full of wonderful anthemic songs that you can sing along to quite happily. (Well – maybe if some of them weren’t about domestic abuse!). I think I’ve linked everything here at some point, maybe not Feathers And Down …

Soundtracks – you know they were coming. I have two Lord of the Rings soundtracks, Fellowship and Return of the King. They’re both excellent soundtracks that fit and set the mood of the films perfectly.

Clannad are in here again with Lore. I dunno, it’s a good close eyes + relax album but I’m not sure about highlights from it.

On the other hand, I found Lene Marlin through the Sitting Down Here single and have continued to pick up her albums. She has a delightful Norwegian tinged voice that couples with excellent songs like How Would It Be from the Lost In A Moment album.

Aimee Mann is another with an excellent voice, her Lost In Space album has highlights like Invisible Ink.

Another live album, this time from Neil Diamond with Love At The Greek. Honestly ? Leave this one on the shelf and pick up Hot August Night instead. It has a better collection of songs and is performed better.

Last but definitely not least is Love Over Gold by Dire Straits. This is only 5 tracks but they’re all pretty decent, showing off the skills of each member of the band pretty well when they go into instrumental mode.

That’s it for L ! I’m off to listen to Cardigans songs 🙂

Thank you Michèle !

Bob – you wouldn't believe how long it took me to find something suitably pink. Even though there are events like the Pink Tests in Australia, no one seemed to want to sell me pink gear. Weird !!!

And the breast cancer supporters always wear pink – not just a cricket.

Lovely story and truly "in the Pink" . Thank you.

This post has two parents … Or sources of inspiration for it.

The first is Mr Carmi Levy’s Thematic Photographic series, the latest is In The Pink. Here’s mine ! I’ve only really got one Pink themed picture and people who have been here for a while will know what it is.

But … there’s another inspiration, Twitter has taken me to numerous people, one of whom is the wonderful Nika Harper aka Nikasaur. Here’s a link to her Youtube channel where she posts Wordplay challenges. I thought – I can do one of those ! My problem is a lack of creative inspiration. I’m very definitely an engineer type who Does Things. Sometimes I do them in an unorthodox fashion but it’s usually in response to a task. Thinking up the task is another thing entirely.

However – I thought I could tell the story of the Pink Hat. Hopefully it fits the theme of Exposition !

There it is – the infamous Pink Hat. And the Smiling Person beneath just happens to be … me ! On to the story :

There was a boy who was not quite a boy any more. Years had taken their toll. Friends had moved on. Situations had evolved. People and their teams came and went. But the boy could always remember being young through sheer joy of Running. That’s running very fast. And he could run, fast enough that the wind whistled through his ears.

The boy’s usual excuse for running very fast was that a cricket match just happened to be breaking out at the same time.

However, the boy knew that his time when he could run very fast was coming to a close. The years were drawing on. Injuries were comparing notes and conspiring to make him slow. But the boy thought he could give something back.

But how ? He could run very fast but not for very long. He knew that typically, giving something back through running meant running a long way, which wasn’t his strength. Cricket was his game, because cricket rewarded that warp speed running but also allowed a chance to recover.

And then he thought of the Pink Hat. Wherever he could, he would wear gear with a Pink theme. And that took some finding ! Eventually, he found the Pink Hat of legend. But why Pink ? Because of the Rose.

The Rose joined the boy’s team quite late. She was part of another group who were added to the boy’s team. She was perfect. She was tall but not stretched. She had an easy elegance and an understated beauty. She had a little smile that positively glowed. She was a genuinely nice, lovely person. And it was all taken from her by the ravages of breast cancer. Although the boy didn’t let anyone see, he was devastated inside. How could someone so amazing be lost so young ?

And so he chose to wear Pink, not so much for raising funds. He didn’t feel comfortable asking people for money. But definitely for awareness. Whenever anyone would mention the Pink Hat during or after a game, the boy would tell them about the Rose.

Sometimes there were tears. Sometimes the boy was combative in defending his Pink Hat. But everyone who saw it knew the reason for it. And so the boy achieved his objective of making people aware of that cruel illness and they took away a memory of that impossibly perfect Rose.

And it inspired the boy too. Whereas he would have acceded to the whims of a body which was struggling to run quicker than the wind, he continued to play. He only played 8 games that year but helped his teams to many wins, all in honour of the Rose.

The boy hasn’t played much since that last year. But the boy, who struggles to show how sad he can be, was glad for a chance to show his feelings through the Pink Hat. And he’s remembering now, the lady with the little smile framed by blonde hair typically drawn back in office friendly tails.

And that’s what he’d like you to do. To remember. Remembering everybody who is lost is too much. However. Remember those close. We have all lost people like that. Remember them at their best. As I remember the Rose. As I remember my grandfather who was lost to prostate cancer. As I remember my nan.

Remember.

The End !

(back to blog mode)

Gosh writing that has awoken some feels. I can feel a tear or two choking up inside. But I can also remember that wonderful face of The Rose as she caught my Grin and answered with that little smile of her own. I think it made her feel welcome in the team her group had been parachuted into. They felt rather isolated at first having been mashed into one of the most integrated and tight knit teams around. I hope my Grins made things easier for them.