Bleed With Me

Quote of the moment:
"Freedom!" - You know exactly where it comes from.

I have just finished watching all four hours of The 100 Greatest Tearjerkers. Phew! [Wipes brow]

Of my favourites, Gladiator snuck in at 98, which I have let a tear out for every time I see it. Sad, but true. Not at the end since viewing one, but at the bit when he arrives at his burnt-out farm to find the charred corpses of his family... Fair enough, no?

Next was Shane at 87, an all time classic where the lone gunslinger saves the day and rides away at the end, leaving the little boy whose family he saved behind. Perhaps it was just that I was the same age as the little boy when I saw it, but it's cool.

Spartacus managed 81 for the classic "I'm Spartacus!" bit, Inspector Morse's death made 75 (but I couldn't help remembering the awesome cast-only ending that we got shown in a scholar's meeting by the composer, Barrington Phelong, where Kevin Whateley (Sergeant Lewis) comes out of the morgue and leaps in the air yelling "YES!") and Rocky was at 70.

Jerry Maguire had me at hello (56), Steve Redgrave's 5th gold floated in at 55, the original Railway Children steamed in at 53, and Gallipoli doesn't get any daft puns at 45.

The Snowman at 28 and Four Weddings and a Funeral at 26 are solid contenders. Inside the top twenty: Dead Poets Society (20), Stand By Me (17), Watership Down (15), Blackadder's final WWI episode (13) and Forrest Gump (11).

In the top ten, the ones to my liking were The Champ, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. E.T. won. Meh.

My main objection to the programme was that in Braveheart, at 21, Wallace's death was assumed to be the tearjerker. The first time around, sure, but the best bit for me is always at the very end, (after the annoyingly bad "You're about to have your arse kissed by a king" line) when Robert the Bruce finally steps up to his legacy. When he takes out the embroidered (by Wallace's wife) handkerchief that Wallace drops when he's decapitated. When he says to the Scottish army the killer line:

"You have bled with Wallace. Now bleed with me!"

If I was Podgy, I would eloquently explain how the way they charged against heavy odds, ready to die for that highly prized freedom rather than submit, to swear their fealty in blood, was poetically magnificent. As I lack that capability, I'll just say that it's brilliant. As am I for taking nearly 3 hours to write that and you if you read all of it. Thanks :D

Poindextrose

Quote of the moment:
I have isolated the chemical which is emitted by every geek, dork, and four-eyes. I call it "poindextrose." - Lisa Simpson in Bye Bye Nerdie.

To summarise what I said last night, my family residence will be moving from Essex to near Margate in north-east Kent. This will take place at some point during the summer holidays while I'm in the USA. It's about 2 hours drive from here and Sarah will still be going to Felsted until she's done her A-levels, so I won't be disappearing from around here completely yet. Shame, I'm sure you're saying!

England lost to France 18-17 in the Six Nations Rugby. That puts them jointly at the bottom of the table! [Sighs]

Wellesley House

Quotes of the moment:
Plans to introduce a zoo's suspected homosexual penguins to a group of females has(sic) angered gay and lesbian groups. Bremerhaven Zoo in Germany denied it was "trying to break up same sex pairs by force". - The Daily Express.

So you're for gay marriage? I'll tell you why you're wrong. Gay marriage will lead to gay divorce, and that will be BITCHY! - Jimmy Carr, The Friday Night Project.

My dad has a job! Hurrah! It's at Wellesley House (as in Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, defeater of Napolean) in Kent. North-East Kent, to be precise. A little bit out of the way, but it is apparently a 'proper' prep school like Felsted Prep used to be, back in the good old days of Mr Pomphrey. Except its more posh.

He's become a maths teacher, since the extra hassle of acting as technician as well as science teacher (and HoD responsible for all the PE teachers etc teaching a few lessons of science without knowing how) was why he left in the first place. Apparently being off the London commuter routes means we can have a bigger house too :D

On the downside, it's even further from Cardiff than we are now. Ditto Leeds and Birmingham, Vicky's two remaining medicine schools, since Nottingham and Southampton rejected her. But meh... Apparently the housemastership of the junior boarding house is also up for offer from September, and my parents (as a pair) are under consideration for that too! Which would mean they wouldn't need to buy a house there for a few years, which could mean that they might need to invest in one in Cardiff... Mwahahaha! :D

Schemes for world domination aside, my lazy bum of a dad has a job! Hurrah! Perhaps now he'll get on with all the work he was supposed to be doing on the house so that we can sell it and move before September!

Camp Maps

Quotes of the moment:
Prillo talking about Greenday:
"Hmm... s'a bit too happy for me :p"
Prillo talking about Busted:
"What I go to school for? Dr Dave ;)"

Just for pictorial interest, since there's nothing interesting to look at on here at the moment and I happened to be browsing:

The area where my camp (Camp Westmont) is:


The camp map:


Nice and colourful. Or even colorful. [Rolls eyes]

Hellish Hogwarts

Quote of the moment:
"And Harry Potter and all his wizard friends went straight to hell for practising witchcraft!" - Ned Flanders, reading to Todd.

Meh. Loads more piffle in the newspapers today about the forthcoming royal marriage. Some people apparently think that it's disgraceful, because Camilla Parker-Bowles broke up Prince Charles' marriage to Diana. Uhuh... Sure, they got (back) together once he and Diana had separated, having gone out together before their respective marriages, and they had never lost touch. But the royal separation happened because she was shagging half the officers mess of the household cavalry! He's by no means perfect, but Prince Charles actually has a lot higher moral standing than Diana. Dying doesn't make her an angel.

Bah humbug to all emo-chicks, sez I!

Little British Wedding

Quote of the moment:
"Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles are to marry..." - Practically every channel, in extra programs as well as filling the normal news. Enough already! It had to happen sometime, she isn't going to be queen, just Duchess of Cornwall (Charles was - and is - the Duke of Cornwall before becoming Prince of Wales) now, and Princess Consort once he's crowned. Sounds perfectly sensible to me... What's the big deal?

Haha... Robbie Williams got owned at the Brit Awards: It was announced that two ex-members of Take That were there to present his award, and he looked like he was going to do toilet on the floor, but when they came on it was Matt Lucas and David Walliams, in string-vesty Take That costumes... LOL :D

Muse got robbed of the Best British Rock Act, but at least they got Best British Live Act! Even more funny than the Little Britain thing was Mike Skinner of The Streets missing going on stage to collect his award. According to the guy who went up for him, "The last time I saw him he was in the toilets". Haha...

[Edit 00:18 - Rob sent me an awesome interactive cartoon puzzle. Go try! Also, I forgot to mention that Ellen MacArthur has been made a Dame, at only 28 years old, for breaking the round-the-world solo sailing record. Like she said: "It's not over. There are plenty of records out there." Hurrah!]

Fingers & Forms

Quote of the moment:
LUV
HAT
Tattoos on the knuckles of Sideshow Bob, archcriminal of The Simpsons(where people only have 3 fingers).

[Yawns]. I had a rather tiring day today. Went to the surgery in Felsted to hand in my army medical form to filled in by Dr Slack. Came home, had lunch, went swimming in Chelmsford, did a fair few lengths of my mongrel breaststroke-arms-only, went to the opticians to have an eyetest for my army optometry form, came home, went on a roundabout cycle ride to get a newspaper. By my lazy standards that's quite a bit! Also, while in Chelmsford I bought Comfort In Sound by Feeder, since it was only £4.99 in HMV. I'm sure Vince will be proud.

Apparently Mr Gwyther's response at the parents meeting on Sunday, when my parents told him I got placed, was "I feel sorry for the poor frightened kids". Mwahahaha!

Ban This Matt Good Filth!

Quote of the moment:
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: LISTENING TO MATTHEW GOOD COULD BE HAZADROUS TO YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.

It's true. When I asked Rob why he'd written such a depressed and emo post, he said he'd been listening to 'some early Matt stuff' and 'got thinking'. An overdose of Matt could kill!

In other news, my desktop has now got the same problem as my laptop had; it can't login to Messenger. ARSE FEZ!

[Edit 11:13 - Silly me... it was only a MSN problem that's now sorted, not the can't-log-in-to-anything-ever that I had on my laptop. Phew...]

Alternate Superbowl Perspective

Quote of the moment:
O.K. The world is a weird place when I start having lab/chemistry dreams. So I had this dream last nite where Rachel and I were going to watch the SuperBowl... the SUPERBOWL damn it!? I don't care about football AT ALL. Anyhow, so we were at the stadium and the players came out but they weren't people... they were stick figures looking something like MolyMod® models and some had like alcohol groups on them, some had oxygens or nitro groups, and others had aldehydes. But like the main body was always some kind of a benzene ring or a cyclohexane ring and you could see like every atom in their body for some reason. So when they started playing you could see like the ball being passed around and reacting differently with each player...

Now, that's not all. Further into the game, when people were singing anthems (I don't even remember which teams were playing), apparently one of the players was widely hated (sort of like A-Rod in B0st0n) and so people sang this:

Take your benzio-carbonyl,
take your benzio-carbonyl,
take your benzio-carbonyl--
and shove it up your arse!!! - The Lexcinator.

Legendary. Simply legendary.

In the ensuing discussion:
Hulk says:
I had a dream where everything was made of icecream once :p
Prillo: w00t!! I Passed!! says:
COOL!

Apparently that was a totally unintentional pun. Sigh!

Same Old Station

Quote of the moment:
"Revamp in progress" - www.t3hkr3w.blogspot.com. Coming some time soon!

Sigh! I went back to Liverpool Street today. Stepped off the train, went to the end of the platform, through the barrier, around to the next platform, back through the barrier, got my wallet from the help booth and got on to the train that left 5 minutes later. What fun!