movies

Movies I’m interested in or have watched.

Lazy bones

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In more ways than one. Nearly 2 weeks since I went running and I haven’t done much other exercise. I can feel the flab and shame creeping up on me.

My excuse is that I’ve been entertaining guests and Marika. What a good person I am. It’s also still too windy for a little boy like me to be charging around and letting my hair get all frizzled.

We’ve been having nice folks staying with us lately and shitloads are from Australia, of course. It’s a much nicer environment in the hostel without all these big fucking groups that stick to themselves.

Drunk staff members help with the fun, too.

I’ve been thinking for quite some time about writing a book about my time in the hostel, the people I’ve met and the funny stories that come along with it. Just for fun. Unfortunately I don’t really (or at least haven’t yet) take any notes, so if I do ever end up putting something out there it could very likely be considered semi-fictional. That’s alright though, since it feels like my life here is anyway.

palmy wants me to make a blog on his site for his girlfriend. I’m doing it because I like configuring things from scratch. I could be doing something else, like kicking the arse of 5 countries at the same time in Medieval 2: Total War but this will do for now.  She even wants the same theme I use! Jesus.

They’re coming over to visit in July, apparently. Hmm.

I saw Indiana Jones 4 the other day. It was alright. Not brilliant, but fun enough. I won’t go into any kind of review because there’s already shitloads out there. Ford looks in pretty good shape for his age, I have to admit.

So, time for coffee with Pilly.

Juno is shitty and beyond overrated

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Really. It is. Why are so many people so far up its arse?

Apparently these are the only reviewers with any sort of sense.

Sure, it had funny parts but it really does try too hard. Read the reviews above, they sum up what I think.

Also, while I’m on it, I Am Legend was actually decent until the fucking woman and kid turned up, even if it did drift a mile from the book of the same name (which I enjoyed, by the way).

Lastly, Starship Troopers (the book) was interesting, if somewhat hollow. Bugger the movie.

Yes, I do read!

Animal testing is hilarious

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I mean, have a look at this fella:

The horror.

Poor guy. Actually he doesn’t look too bad. Won’t be long now until we can all be cyborgs or have behavioural implants! Read about it here.

Apart from that. Not a lot to report. Viru’s rooms just got a major clean out yesterday so now we’re feeling rather dominant over the whole building. Well, this part of it at least. We even got to design the colour schemes for each room so that they look pretty. Aw.

I’ve been feeling pretty tired lately. Not sure why. Maybe I’m just lazy. Not as lazy as palmy, but still. I can’t even be motivated to cut my fingernails, for example.

I think I’ll watch Labyrinth tonight.

Galleries and CSS

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I’ve spent the last 16 hours or so mucking around with my gallery‘s theme. I didn’t like the way the dev-testing theme looked which is fair enough since it’s designed for experimentation rather than aesthetics.

I think it looks rather spiffy at the moment. Nearly seamless, you might say. I’ve barely slept since I started hacking away at it last night. The individual picture pages haven’t been touched yet, so ignore their look for now.

On the hostel front, it looks like we’ll be living in the Viru rooms for at least the next 2 months. I had a feeling we’d end up in here for a while anyway so it came as no surprise when Hugo mentioned it. He’s going back to Holland on the 11th so then there’ll only be four of us looking after both these places now that Valerie’s back.  Well, Ben will be around too, I guess.

I haven’t been to the gym since Tuesday. We were meant to go today but it doesn’t look likely. Not with me feeling buggered from last night and Emily having been fast asleep on the bed for the last hour or two. Damn it, I really could use a shower and a good old scrub of the teeth. What a mess.

Today I caught up with Swedish Martin. He wanted me to see if there was any free WiFi signals that could be detected from his flat in the old town. The building is fantastic, a real Soviet style, scungy dump with dark, narrow hallways and toilets comparable to the one from Trainspotting. His room was freezing as well, I can only imagine how horrible it’d be inside during winter. He shares it with Tambet, an Estonian guy who works in Levist and plays in a relatively famous local rock band. Apparently Tambet has been living there for about seven years. Hardcore.

There were only secure wireless networks available so I was unable to help Martin out. Instead we had a beer and listened to some music while he told me some of his crazy stories. It would have been nice to kick back and relax for a few hours but I had to get back and clean the toilets.

Shaping up

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It’s been about a week-and-a-half since we joined the gym. I’m starting to feel a bit of muscle growing back, albeit ever so slowly. Hopefully I can bulk up a bit just so I look nicer in my Spider-Man t-shirts when the weather warms up again.

Speaking of weather, it’s actually snowing again today! Yay. The snowflakes are rather large at the moment. I can see their shapes and patterns with relative ease. Tallinn looks so nice when it’s covered in white. I’m sure it looks nice when it’s bright and sunny too, I either just can’t remember or came here too late. Summer will return soon enough.

The worst thing about actually exercising regularly now is that I seem to be eating a lot more. It kind of defeats the purpose in a way but I’m not really eating too badly, either, so hopefully I’m still shedding a little bit more day by day. Except for today. I had popcorn. A whole bag. To myself. It was good.

I watched Ghost Rider last night. It wasn’t as bad as I expected. Sure, there were a few cheesy lines (ok, awful) and Cage looks really strange when he points but it was still fun. I don’t know a whole lot about the character but he seemed pretty cool in the movie, plus his bike looked funky.

Time’s going quite fast these days. I don’t feel like I’m doing a whole lot but I somehow seem to be. It’s hard to work out. It’ll be no time before the 12 bottle of juice we bought in a crate runs out. We thought they were on special for 70 EEK. Turns out they were actually going at 200 EEK instead. Whoops. We were too embarrassed to take them back from the register when we discovered the truth after it was swiped. Never mind.

I’ve started reading The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. I’m only a few chapters in but it’s enjoyable so far. Unfortunately it’s an old, paperback edition that is literally falling apart. If I speed read it might completely disintegrate. Wish me luck.

Movie marathon

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I’ve been gathering a decent little collection of movies these last few days. It’s beginning to get quite a lot colder and combining that with the lack of daylight makes a big incentive to stay inside.

Since we’re all lazy we just watch films on the projector, in between foosball matches and maybe the odd gin and tonic.

I’ve been re-educating myself about Dirty Harry and its sequels; modernising the vigilante in The Punisher; trying to share the beauty that is the Evil Dead; finding new perverted cult films like Frankenhooker and reliving the glory of the 80s with The Goonies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and of course, Ghostbusters.

The cool part? Dirty Harry the video game.

The scary part? Dirty Harry would have been the lamest character ever if this happened: The first choice for director was between Irvin Kershner or Sydney Pollack. Kershner ended up getting the job, only to be let go after Frank Sinatra declined the role of Harry Callahan.

Korean layover

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So, I made it to South Korea even though the pilot made a bumpy mess of the landing. The pricks played “Failure to Launch” as one of the in-flight movies. What a smart choice.

I wasn’t sure if I was meant to collect my bag or not seein as I didn’t really understand what the lady said when I checked in at Sydney. I wasted about 40 minutes at the carousel just to find out it indeed had gone through into a waiting area to fly out to Paris the next afternoon.

I had to declare the jerky palmy bought me when I went through customs. I got it through without too much trouble but the official had to run around double checking that dried emu meat was permissible (it tastes horrible, by the way).

Working out how to get to the hotel was a bitch at first but I eventually made it onto the shuttle and queued for a while to check in. Boy was my showering refreshing. Unfortunately, I was too far away from town to explore (seeing as I was in a hotel next to the airport) so I read my books and wrote in my journal after eating my complimentary dinner.

This entry is backdated, by the way. I managed to get online at an Internet kiosk at the airport again before I flew to Paris but didn’t have time to write much up.

Incheon airport is massive. 3 stories with 50 gates and a lot of football advertising hanging off the walls and ceilings. They’re soccer-mad there and are undoubtedly hoping to reach the semi-finals of the world cup or better for the second time in a row.

Tick.

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It’s almost time.

Almost.

Fucking Visas. Fucking UK faggot fucks. Bah.

I have a strong coffee here. Mmm.

I finished working at SDS! How dramatic. On my Wednesday night shift we had some cake and I got a card along with a Lonely Planet city guide to London and a travel journal about some guy’s journey from Bombay to Beijing by bicycle. An odd choice considering my destination but an interesting read nonetheless, I’m sure.

On the Friday I got another little card from the people that I didn’t see on Wednesday and a packet of Big Red chewing gum. I’ve got a hankering for some right now, in fact.

Em and I went to see X-Men 3 last Thursday. The critic’s consensus on Rotten Tomatoes is 53%. That’s probably a little lower than I’d give it. It’s certainly more shallow in regards to plot and character development than the previous two films. It seems like they’ve used the last film as an excuse to slap in as many characters as they can without making them interesting at all. Anyway, read the site if you give more than 3 sentences worth of a shit.

My folks had a going away party for me on the weekend, too. How nice. I ate a lot of food and enjoyed a tasty banana cake. I also took a lot of photos with my new camera.

My new phone has also arrived, I’m going to transfer the data across from the one I’m using now. They’re the same model but the one palmy gave me drains the battery in under 24 hours from virtually no usage. Oh well.

I’ve bought an exercise book to write in while I’m away. I’ll publish the good bits online along with the other crap I get up to. Whee.

Summary.

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Here’s the weekly wrap-up for all you go-getters looking for the down-low:

Tuesday:

No valentines for me (aww) and I didn’t give any out (haa), apart from those silly ones that people do when they have no one else to pretend with. I had about 27 of those. Mostly with men.It was also my mum’s birthday, so I gave her a call and did all that “good son” stuff. Well, some of it. I guess. I don’t know. I said happy birthday over the phone and had a chat for a while. That seemed good enough to me.

That night palmy and I met up with Emma and Kat at Zanzibar after work at around 12 (yes, for drinks). The two of us got drunk (again) and managed to chomp down on some free savoury finger food that was placed conveniently next to our table. We only started eating it when it was a fresh platter that hadn’t been soiled by the hands of other dirty patrons, of course.

We decided we’d go visit the bakery afterwards for a roll or two and on the way ran into a shitload of police all surrounding one of the buildings that’s being constructed up the road. They were all around the sides and even one cop was on the roof with a torch wandering around the scaffolding. No idea what had happened and they didn’t want to spill any details. I heard some man who was being questioned mention something about something. The details are hazy. I was drunk, ok?

Turned out the bakery was shut, so we went to the 7-11 and I ate my first ever Traveller pie. Delightful, I must say. I’ll do one again sometime.

On the way back home we decided we’d make the obiligatory visit to the Townie and scrounged up enough change to buy a few more drinks there and even have a slight flutter on the poker machines. We won nothing and the only thing of note that palmy earned was a big wet patch on his pants after spilling some of his beer. When we sat down again at the main bar we were unfortunate enough to enter a conversation with an old guy who was missing his middle and ring finger on his right hand so that he looked he was constantly “throwing up the horns”. He kept going on (tongue-in-cheek) about how metal he was because of it and explained that he had them chopped off from a metal press. Everything about this guy was clearly hardcore, so we tried to get him to leave us alone as soon as possible.

Somehow we started mucking around and abusing another woman sitting a few tables away for being soft, right before they turned the lights on and kicked us out. Nothing much of interest occurred in the dialogue, just a lot of name calling, so I don’t recall much of it.

Having decided that the night had not been random enough to qualify as a “Good Random Night” we jumped the fence of the local church and found a hole in the back fence which allowed us to slide down into the schoolgrounds. Fortunately we managed to get under this fence without ripping the living shit out of our clothes or faces. It was kind of fun, pretending we were commandos as we stalked around and trespassed. There was one staircase we jumped off for fun as it was easier than climbing the fence next to it. The drop was about 3 metres but there was a nice, soft flowerbed underneath for us to fall into. So comfy.

As we walked out to the back streets behind the school we found a playground, full of swings and see-saws and slides. This is one of the best things you could ever find at 4am when you’re drunk. We spent some time in there giggling like schoolgirls and having the time of our lives until we began singing Bohemian Rhapsody (since we couldn’t think of any other song that we’d know the words to) whilst bouncing on the see-saw and someone screamed from their front door “SHUT THE FUCK UP”. In horror, we tried to bolt back up the road. Instead, palmy stacked it and ripped his pants along with the skin on his elbow and knee. It was funny.

It was only a few more fence hops to get home but thankfully I got to demonstrate my resourcefulness by using a stray iron bar as a support in order to jump over a barbed wire fence. I think we fell asleep around 5:30am. No, not together. Valentine’s day was over.

Wednesday:

I went to work then went home.

Thursday:

I was booked in to help out Benecke’s mum with the Ravenswood girls again for this website project they’d been working on. I managed to get it finished for them, with their help of course. It was six girls from year six all writing a little piece on new technologies and how they can be utilised as learning tools. They also drew cute little pictures to accompany each page. It was nice to help them all out and it reminded me a little of when I was doing kindergarten teaching for work experience in year 10.Doing something charitable wasn’t the only reason I felt good that day. Mrs Benecke gave me a bottle of wine and Kahlua as a thank you, too. What a nice lady.

That afternoon Lloyd came around and we hit up the white russians, drinking them out of pint glasses. We watched Alien vs Predator and then Cube immediately afterwards as I knew he’d love it (which he did). We spent the rest of the evening just chilling out and webcamming to everyone that would bother watching drunk people act like idiots.

Later on, Ross, Joel and palmy all turned up one way or another and we continued doing whatever we did. Ross gave me a bottle of Coke Zero. I still have it here to fawn over. Joel brought his pots and pans over and started cooking yet another curry (on our stove). It was very spicy but not particularly tasty. I still ate some of it. palmy just played soccer.

I fell asleep at about 2:30am due to exhaustion from getting up way too early that morning.

Friday:

Ross left early in the morning because he’s soft then was disappointed to find out that we were all up by 10:30am. Joel had already gone home during the night and Lloyd was fretting about getting home to do lame shit before he returned to the city to watch a Swans match. He stayed for a while before he fled to watch a couple of episodes of Prison Break while we failed multiple times to burn the episodes onto a DVD for him. After about 6 attempts we finally found out that one file was corrupted and it was completely ruining any attempt to write them onto a disc. Finally we got it happening and we were done.palmy and I walked up to Corelli’s for breakfast after Lloyd left. He paid. :D

That night I went to work and was rather bored then went home to see mum. Dad had already left for the shack with some friends for a good old boys’ weekend. Mum was glad to see me, since she’d just gotten a year older and all. We watched half of season two of Arrested Development together as she needed to catch up in order to see season 3, of course!

Mum also introduced me to the stray cat she’s taken aboard at least temporarily. A very cute young cat that had been hiding under the trailer in the front yard for a few weeks (no, not a caravan). She had named her “Lovey”. She has a microchip that we got the vet next door to scan (very convenient) and he’s going to find out who she belongs to. Mum wants to keep her and I don’t blame her. Cats rock. Even Salesi isn’t too bad around her, considering he’s never had any other cat to share his space with. Still, we’ll see.

Saturday:

I turned up late for work (again) and bummed around with palmy, whinging about how hot it was. Another lazy shift saw us return back to the flat and attempt to psyche ourselves up for going to Vortex later in the evening. Our bank accounts psyched us out, so we stayed in and got a takeaway and finished off the last of the vodka from Thursday night with (you guessed it) more white russians. It was a similar string of proceedings to those of Thursday night, except that we stood on the benches on the balcony for a while practising dance moves by the Hinoi team, to the Hinoi team.At some early morning hour we gave Heli and Krista a phone call because we were drunk enough to forget about the cost. palmy and I spent about an hour on webcam laughing as I sent the funniest/most offensive random pictures I could find from my 4chan folder across MSN. There’s nothing quite like hearing the satisfying cry of a man shrieking “what the fuck? That’s a cock!” in the background when you’re talking to people on the phone.

Sunday:

I woke up and started writing all of this as Heli demanded I have an update before 1pm. I just realised they’re an hour behind me so it makes sense that she’s not online yet at 1:23pm local time. I thought I was just getting a lucky break. Woohoo! Still, I would have preferred another hour of lying around doing nothing, as usual.Later on Kat is meant to be dropping round on her way back from wherever the hell she is down south. Speaking of down south, she had some interesting things to say on the phone earlier but there’s no need to mention anything here. Apparently a band is playing at the Sandringham tonight that another friend of ours from work is associated with (by going out with one of the members, I think), so we’ll probably check that out before netball at 8pm.

It’s weird having a day planned out like that. I’m certainly not used to it.

BAM.

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I went out with palmy, Joel, Ross, Heli and Krista last night. We did pretty well for ourselves considering we didn’t leave until 10:30pm on a Thursday. It was rather fun, including a lot of piggybacks, running arse slaps and fighting inside poker machine rooms. The major highlights included having a beef kebab from Istanbul on King (kebab run) and getting a Triple Buck on that Buck Hunter game. I was leading the scores by a big margin when somehow Joel pulled out his own Triple Buck (second one I’ve ever seen after mine) and beat me. Fucker.

We also watched Kung Fu Hustle and The Rules of Attraction. Both were fun. I’m a great reviewer.

I bought myself a Logitech Dual Action gamepad. Now I can slam dunk with the best of them in NBA 2006. It also means I’m free to swing around as Spidey whenever I feel like it. Exciting time ahead. I actually bought it last weekend but I just thought I’d mention it now as a surprise.

I hope I got paid last night. I should probably check the old Netbank. Give me a second. Yes, I did. Awesome. Now I can spend it all on my rent and bills. This is fun!

Last night we got our first noise complaint. I’m gonna blame palmy and say he had the TV up too loud. It took him less than a week. On top of that, Exetel just forwarded us an email from NBC alleging that he’s downloading a movie illegally. Strike two.

Oh boy.