The News

Good evening. I'm Ron Burgundy and here's whats happening in your world tonight. been happening with Will for the past six weeks.

Wednesday 20th June: Went to the barracks in Cardiff to go on the advance party for OTC summer camp. Due to a cockup and there still being a United States Army artillery unit in our accomodation, we didn't leave until...

Friday 22nd June: Arrived Knook Camp, Salisbury Plain. Unpacked kit ready for...

Saturday 23rd June: Summer Camp began. 1920's Gangster Social.

Sunday 24th June: Deployed 'into the field' in the evening. Everyone else by bus or army truck. Those being hardcore and doing Cambrian Patrol training/selection did it on foot, 12km in full gear, like real manly men. Wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have the radio as well...

Monday 25th June: Lessons on military stuff, night navigation exercise.

Tuesday 26th June: More lessons, night patrol being ambushed and freezing in the light of far too many flares, etc etc. Also falling over Scott while re-orging and cutting my leg on the sights of his LSW. Oops.

Wednesday 27th June: More lessons. Saw paras drop onto the DZ a couple of hundred metres from our wood. Agreed to tell everyone else it was us in the photos we took. Departed for a new wood further away from the mockup village everyone else was living and learning how to fight in. Night time CTR (Close Target Reconnaissance) of the village. You drop a fireteam off in cover, then move in, leave a close support pair and recce with just the section commander and scout. I was in the close support, which was still pretty awesome, but the recce pair got into the HQ building (Bangalore Primary School) and sat in the room next door to the radio post listening to one of the staff brushing his teeth. Awesome. One of the other sections was ambushed just ahead of us on the way back and we counterattacked the ambushers. Later found out they pegged it for 2km still wearing all the fleeces, gloves, waterproofs etc they'd been lying waiting for us in. I'm sure that warmed the poor dears up wonderfully.

Thursday 28th June: Moved into the village. Watched demonstrations by various visiting units. Had annual photograph. Set up barriers and defences in Shrewton street. Prepared to defend it against the horde. Was found asleep on my feet standing next to my sleeping bag, still wearing webbing and holding my rifle, by the guy who was supposed to wake me for sentry duty.

Friday 29th June: The battle of Shrewton Street, where the few shall stand against the many and numbers count for nothing. No really, we were outnumbered at least 6-1 but had bottlenecked the street so well with wire that we were told to counterattack and die gloriously rather than let them take another hour to fight through it. Packed up and marched all the way back to camp. The disorganised main body (everyone else) took another two hours to get their act together and passed us in buses about 1km from the camp. Slackers. Had a BBQ in the evening. Ate a Basra Badger's weight in meat.

Saturday 30th June: Sports day, during which plenty of examples of the Cambrian shuffle (like limping, but with both legs) could be seen. In the evening was the formal dinner, at which I got excessively ratarsed, but at least wasn't the one who threw up all over the table and himself as the top table were just standing up to leave. That was my truly inspirational section commander.

Sunday 1st July: Was hungover.

Monday 2nd to Wednesday 4th July: Section Competition over 3 days. In the order we did them: Navigation; Stands (observation, casualty evacuation, command tasks including driving a Landrover blindfolded); March and Shoot. Cambrian sections, being the elite (and half the size of everyone else's) didn't count in the official rankings, but unofficially we came second of the three Cambrian sections, which beat the rest easily. We also had the fastest time in the march and shoot by nearly a minute (18:53 to 19:40 from 2 Section, 21+ from 1 Section and 23+ from the best of the main body). Our shooting was crap though.

Thursday 5th July: Corps visits: I went to the Royal Armoured Corps, played on a tank gunner arcade simulator with 5 other guys, had a curry buffet lunch and rode in a Challenger 2. Very civilised. Was stuck on guard duty while the band of the Royal Welsh beat the retreat (including a suite from Last of the Mohicans) at sunset, which was quite cool.

Friday 6th July: Had the final parade with promotions, awards etc. Found out I was chosen as best first year from Cardiff Company, although the guy from Aber got it overall along with a huge cup. A worrying lack of judgement from my superiors anyway! Packed up and prepared for the evening's entertainment: skits. Got pumped up on a lethal mixture of neat spirits in a massive vodka bottle being passed around while we skulked around the back of the mess in costume, before performing a special Cambrian version of the 300 in a uniform of helmets, webbing, bedsheet cloaks, flipflops and sock-stuffed boxers, wielding cardboard shields and broomstick handles. Fortunately I got to wear my black rowing techtop underneath, in order to double up as a Sergeant Major/black clad Immortal. The other skits, done by normal company divisions (Aber, Bangor, Cardiff and finally Swansea) were around 5 or 10 minutes. Ours was 13 in the one read through rehearsal and a staggering, cross dressing, bulge flaunting nigh on half hour in performance. Wasn't it lovely, boys and girls?!

Saturday 7th July: Coach back to Cardiff, Pizza Hut, Die Hard 4.0, slept in the barracks.

Sunday 8th to Friday 13th July: Adventure training in Pembrokeshire. Kitesurfing, walking, climbing, land yachting, clay pigeon shooting and kayaking. Also tried wakeboarding instead of kitesurfing when the wind was too light. I was crap, but had great fun steering the Gemini rib (an inflatable tube on each side of a flat board, with an engine on the back) while the instructor did a demonstration, on the basis that I'd "steered boats before". Yeah... canal boats and a dinghy in Scotland that goes about 10 knots (nautical miles per hour, a bit faster than mph). The Gemini does up to 46 knots. Schweeet.

Saturday 14th July: Got back at 1.30am, stayed up til about 5 emptying my camera onto my laptop, faffing on Facebook etc and went paintballing for Jim's birthday at too early o'clock. Will T claimed the credit for letting them know it was Jim's birthday, so he got the honourary 'best man' positition - joining Jim and a stag weekend pair in dresses, being told they were invulnerable and were out of the last game only when they couldn't take the pain anymore. Having admired their bruises and driven home we broke into my house for my swimming stuff by lifting Jim up to the open bathroom window. Chez Jim for swimming and more admiring of bruises, then I fell asleep while the others played Wii.

Sunday 15th to Friday 20th July: Mountain Leader Training in Snowdonia (while based on Anglesey). Walked up several mountains including Snowdon. Ended up spending Friday night at a random party in a house full of OTC people that we (myself and Gaz, also from Cardiff, also on the MLT course) saw from the pub in Bangor we were meeting his Pembrokeshire dalliance in on Tuesday night. Recipe for a good party: a giant space hopper, persuading a random girl to go buy sambuca from the offie up the road, shooting the empties with airguns in the alley behind the house, trying to handcuff people to the bannister, going out to a pound a pint (on a FRIDAY) dive, going back to a pub behind the house that someone's friend was meant to have closed up hours ago, falling asleep in a chair, going back to the house and climbing in the kitchen window in order to fall asleep on the sofa with a Finding Nemo turtle cushion for a pillow. Amazingly I managed to get up in the morning for...

Saturday 21st June to Thursday 26th July: Coillighillie. Got on the train at 8am, got off the bus that replaced the train to Strathcarron from Inverness due to rockfalls on the track at 8.30pm, having joined up with Tamsin who'd got a flight to Inverness. Bangor - Crewe - Glasgow - Perth - Inverness - (Achnasheen) - Strathcarron. Five changes of train plus a bonus one onto the bus at Achnasheen. Crazy. Did the Coillieghillie boat-rowing seal-spotting sandcastle-building hill-climbing Potter-reading thing. Returned on Thursday to make sure Sarah had time to prepare for flying out on holiday on the Saturday.

Friday 27th July: Went to Freeport and dragged Tamsin to Transformers.

Saturday 28th July: Packed Tamsin off home. Started reading Harry Potter again from the first book. Continued from where I started just before summer camp, conquering Europe on Medieval Total War (the original, of course).

Sunday 29th July: Went to The Simpsons Movie with Will.

Wednesday 1st August: Started on the great project: Clearing my room of lingering toys, school folders, old clothes, worn out shoes and assorted other mathoms.

Thursday 2nd August: Felt proud for using the word mathom.

And that's the news. You stay classy, San Diego. I'm Ron Burgundy.

The Cure

Apparently there could be a hormone treatment for baldness in the pipeline, but why worry when you can look like this?

I did, on emerging from the gym on Saturday. Bulging Vin Diesel/Jimmy-in-a-giggling-fit veins standing out on my overexposed head. Sexy.

Spiderman 3

***SPOILER ALERT***

Prill doesn't think it's worth watching. I disagree.

Spiderman 3 was the funniest film I've seen in ages. It beat Blades of Glory, despite none of the outfits matching the peacock costume. It also contained the most important scientific revelation of the decade: What turns people emo.


The Crow pose and the Emo haircut

So apparently there's some evil black symbiotic stuff that attatches itself to you and exaggerates your attributes, such as being an emo boy. Being Spidey, he also gets to dance like JT, so there's a payoff, but still, watch out for that black stuff. If you're not up to Spidey standards it can make you seriously unattractive:



For the main middle section of this film I was literally laughing out loud constantly. There's the French Maitre D', the haircut, the Adams Family Tango, the haircut, the jazz hands bit to the two chicks in the street, the haircut, the blatant reference to Piers Morgan, the haircut...

Sure, the last part of the film seems to be lacking a load of deleted scenes, for example Peter fits his Richie Rich mate, blows him up with his own goblin grenade and then reappears and he's gone straight to the cool scars and milky eye stage with no real explanation of the time interval or what happened in it. The two baddies who team up together are neither very well developed, but what the hell. After the Grierson-Rickford Aunt Sally (TM) staid, boring good little hero-boy start, this film is FUN.

"Civilian Casualties"

Yet again, coalition forces are accused of killing civilians willy-nilly. Yet again, the BBC shows its anti-American left wing core values. Yet again, the reality is probably somewhat different.

A dead civilian in Afghanistan is simply a body without a gun. Over a hundred houses were apparently destroyed. Why? This is not an Israeli firezone clearing exercise. This is not Mugabe cutting down on unemployment by bulldozing slums and turning people back out into the countryside to starve instead. This is house to house fighting. If the guys with guns run into a house and start firing from it and you've got tanks, you just flatten the place. If the women and children haven't got out, is that your fault for firing without knocking on the door and checking, or the Afghans' fault for using a house full of kids as cover?

The problem with invading Afghanistan is that it is populated by the most bloody minded stubborn bastards in the world, for whom guerilla war against the foreign invader is not just part of their history but their entire culture. They are Pratchett's D'regs. They attack at dawn because attacking at dawn is a great and glorious cultural tradition. In D'reg language, the word for "stranger" is the same as the word for "target."

Pace Gladiator:

"People should know when they're conquered."

"Would you, Quintus? Would I?"

Most Excellent!

I have an excuse... I was preparing my costume for an important event. The attack of Paint was completely necessary too...

This is Iran

Oops. Apparently the Persians, or more specifically the Iranians, are upset by 300. It's obviously an Alexander Nevsky style propaganda film aimed at building support for a US-UK invasion of Iran. Sure it is. There's a Brit in the lead role just to make sure of it. Not a film version of a cartoon version of a Greek saga at all. It's pure fallacy that Persians suck at fighting and got beaten by 300 products of the biggest homicidal cult ever. They had 700 helpers holding another pass, for one thing. Besides, in the Will Thorne (TM) ratings it must be good, it doesn't have Orlando Bloom in.

Anyone up for a holiday viewing?

[All trademarks used with flagrant disregard for the holder's likely superior knowledge of the film, the period, the politics and Rob's mum.]

Nuggets

Battlefront fans eat your heart out.

On a less savoury note, Hilary Swank and Kevin Bacon eat your heart out.

And the Winner Is...

Cool little "in pictures story" on the making of an Oscar statuette. They're pewter, plated with bronze, then nickel, then silver and finally 24 carat gold, thus neatly encompassing all three podium medals and er, nickel, because it's handy.

Tattooing

Or for trolls, engraving.

If you were to get a tattoo, what would it be?

Living is easy with eyes closed?

SPQR?

WUM?

Personally I think John 8:32. Just the reference, not the actual verse.

Incidentally, note the raspberry blowing. Also, I got 14/15 on the quiz. Damn that question about the spoon.

God Is An Englishman

I've come to realise that Catholicism may be genetic. I think there's a guilty gene that drives me to need to confess things, although not exactly to a priest. I'm using a handy churchgoer as a proxy.

In return for said usage, I went as the psuedo gay friend on a cheering-up trip to the cinema with the aforementioned young lady. The Holiday was, in the Love Actually vein, a slightly superior rom-com, mostly made so by the British-set half. Eli Wallach, best known as 'The Ugly' in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, was also kinda cool. Kate Winslet plays her character as Emma Thompson, even down to the facial expressions. The twist involving Jude Law brings in what was for me the best scene in the film, and not just for the awesome furnishings.

Overall rating: left me wanting hot chocolate, which I duly begged in exchange for being wept on for the last twenty minutes. Personally, I wasn't sufficiently moved, unlike the doorstep signs in Love Actually, which is possibly the most sickly sweet scene ever. Bless.

Best... Bond... Ever...

Bond is the back, reincarnated as a blue-eyed assasin and, in my opinion, better than ever. Daniel Craig actually looks like he could do the legendary Bond one-punch henchman KO... Eva Green is phwoarsome... the cold eyes are chilling... the Juggernaut moment is classy... the only downside is the ending. It's either a subtle suggestion of the unseen final violence to follow or the lead-in to another film. The latter would be immensely non-Bond and annoying. I'm hoping for the first one. Bond films should be stand-alone, apart from the possible reappearance of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, complete with grey Nehru suit and fluffy white cat.

Redneck Partay

Went to see Borat: CLOAFMBGNOK last night. See if you can find meaning in that uber version of the blogger letter jumble. In the meantime, because for some reason it wasn't in the film I saw despite it being in all the reviews, here's the classic:



Go in peace, kids, and remember to use the second best chat-up line ever:

"Very niiice. How much?"

Severance

Quote of the moment:
"I wouldn't want to be accused of not finishing him off when I had the chance." - Laura Harris in Severance.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Not only does she take a shotgun to the head of one near certain corpse, she drops a rock on the head of another, to a nice bit of ballet music. Classic moment when she first tries to lift one that's a bit too big for her, too. Best bit though was a guy trying to shoot people with a heat seeking missile, only to see it veer away from them and blow up a passing plane. Classy.

Hurrah for Jimmy's dad. He's decided to lend us his 4x4 for going to Scotland, instead of using Jimmy's hatchback. I had to go and have a driving lesson from him today to get to grips with it. To get "an easier start" than going out onto the main roads we went bumping around some byways first, which actually required far greater control and was rather new to me. Quite fun though. He also showed me and Jimmy the ridiculous amount of equipment he has stashed in its cubbies, including two tow-ropes, five tyre irons, a collapsible bucket and a foxing lamp.

Tennis this afternoon with Will was an improvement on the previous episode. I've progressed from losing 6-2, 6-1, 6-1 to 6-0, 6-1, 7-6 (7-4), mostly because Will got tired. There was an awesome game that battled back and forth for at least ten minutes of deuces and advantages, before I managed to hold serve (highly unusual) to make it 5-5... If I'd managed to hold again when I was at 6-5 then perhaps I could have forced him to stagger around for a further two sets and an epic five set victory.

Au revoir kiddies... I march to Scotland on the morrow. 6am on the morrow, to be precise.

Flixster Quizathon

Quote of the moment:
"What was the name of prince eric's dog in the film The Little Mermaid?"

My laptop is back from being repaired, complete with a new harddisk, disk drive and keyboard. I have an enter key. Miracles do happen.

I'm currently using it to play the new Flixster quiz, which is mostly trivially easy (being user compiled). However, I must still prove my geek credentials.

The answer, by the way, was Max. It was multiple choice, but I should still get kudos for getting it right having not seen the film for at least 10 years. It's not at all embarassing that I knew that. Honest.

Are You Pumped?

Quote of the moment:
"Legolas, what do your elven eyes see?"

Are you pumped for Film Four coming to Freeview? It's going to make not having a job or anything to do all summer worthwhile. Ah... films.

The week's been good. I have been occupied. It was fun, kthnx, bye.

Just for Prill's benefit, in the last week there have been:

Jim's birthday. Went to the Green Dragon for lunch with Jim, Jimmy and Harry, where the legendary Tom Fell is now working. Legendary because of the Tom Fell song. It's a great song. You just sing Tom Fell over and over again to the tune of Amazing Grace. Freestyle verses between pure Tom Fell choruses are an optional bonus. Ah, the joys of CCF camp.

Minus Harry we went to Pirates 2, where Jimmy ogled Keira Knightley, Jim eyed up the voodoo chick and I admired Stellan Skarsgard's starfish. When we got back to Jim's, after some failed bunnyhunting, we went on a cross country trek to Tescos. Jim's airrifle went with us, which meant that we got in sight of it across a field and realised we should go to my house instead. It was while looking at Tescos that I asked Jim what his elven eyes saw and Jimmy got in a huff because that made him Gimli. He does have a pot though. What larks, Pip, what larks.

When we eventually surfaced the next day we returned to Jim's for a spot of tennis and overfeeding by his mum. Bless Jim's mum. She seems to think even I need feeding up.

Notable events since then: Will T came for a flying visit from Edinburgh and dropped in to spend more time here than with his parents. Charming young man. We were serving Pimm's though. Jim and Jimmy also came for some hardcore croquet action, which I took far too seriously and won with a complicated double croquet when all had seemed lost. I probably had the Smug Jambo Look (TM), although I think I avoided the victorious nodding.

Other than that, I have finished LOTR and the Hobbit and done very little of any use apart from a lot of dog-walking.

Pot

Quote of the moment:
Fabienne: I was looking at myself in the mirror.
Butch: Uh-huh?
Fabienne: I wish I had a pot.
Butch: You were lookin' in the mirror and you wish you had some pot?
Fabienne: A pot. A pot belly. Pot bellies are sexy.
Butch: Well you should be happy, 'cause you do.
Fabienne: Shut up, Fatso! I don't have a pot! I have a bit of a tummy, like Madonna when she did "Lucky Star," it's not the same thing.
Butch: I didn't realize there was a difference between a tummy and a pot belly.
Fabienne: The difference is huge.
Butch: You want me to have a pot?
Fabienne: No. Pot bellies make a man look either oafish, or like a gorilla. But on a woman, a pot belly is very sexy. The rest of you is normal. Normal face, normal legs, normal hips, normal ass, but with a big, perfectly round pot belly. If I had one, I'd wear a tee-shirt two sizes too small to accentuate it.

- From Pulp Fiction, just for Jimmy.

Prill m8, that should be your response when your mummy says "you should lose weight like Will"... :p

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Quote of the moment:
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late and to a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

- Sandi Thom, I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker, otherwise known as the Podgy song. Done another rejig of the links list... that and Tiggerland are my favourites. Y'know... Tiggerland... the film, with Colin Farrell as Christopher Robin, leading his toys through training for Vietnam...

Coming back to the real world for one of those annoying random point updates:

I put my sister on the train to her OTC camp on Friday. Unfortunately, Broadstairs being a minor station and stop time seemingly being minimised, by the time I got on and dropped her stuff that I was carrying, it'd already started moving. Not only was I minus a wallet, I'd walked into the (small rural) station in bare feet. Fortunately the trip back from Margate was short enough for the conductor not to reach me.

Portugal vs Holland this evening was the worst refereed World Cup game ever. 16 yellow cards, 4 reds, numerous pushings, shovings and arguments. I loved it, why aren't they all like that?!

Finally, hence the title, I had an absolutely awesome dream this morning. I was escaping from a gang in a Hong-Kong-esque city, ended up in a canal, swam a raft out past some patrol boats, through the harbour, out to a random island, up a river into the island into a kind of canal/directed river flow, past some huts very reminiscient of Apocalypse Now, got passed over by some helicopters (sadly failing to play Ride of the Valkyries), ditched my raft, was wading up the river/canal when I heard someone pushing through the trees beside me, so I ducked in under an overhanging willow-type tree and then their phone went off... which was my phone alarm waking me up. Perhaps pizza last night added to my fertile imagination (all of it was beautifully rendered, though not entirely original... some heavy Lost/Apocalypse Now/Platoon/Farcry referencing) so I shall have to purchase some cheese and see what tomorrow night brings. I refer you back to...

Sixty Lengths Worth of Distance Swum

Quote of the moment:
Forget about it is like if you agree with someone, you know, like Raquel Welch is one great piece of ass, forget about it. But then, if you disagree, like A Lincoln is better than a Cadillac? Forget about it! you know? But then, it's also like if something's the greatest thing in the world, like mingia those peppers, forget about it. But it's also like saying Go to hell! too. Like, you know, like "Hey Paulie, you got a one inch pecker?" and Paulie says "Forget about it!" Sometimes it just means forget about it."

- Johnny Depp
a.k.a. Captain Jack Sparrow
in Donnie Brascoe.

All so true, except it's spelt more like fughetaboudit. See the pronunciation scene in Mickey Blue Eyes for details, you can't be any slower on the uptake than the classic Hugh Grant bumbling twit. My camp director last year, being from Brooklyn, was highly fond of it.

Goodnight, Mister Will

Quote of the moment:
"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run..."

It's not just the twee awesomeness of Goodnight Mr Tom I'm enjoying, but the brilliant ancient advertisements. Fast-forwarding through the adverts is so not worth it, they add to the experience.

"...Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son."

Not all those who wander are lost

Quote of the moment:
'What do you fear my lady?'
'A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valour has gone beyond recall or desire.'

Things to do this summer, part XIV: read LOTR again, then follow it up with the Silmarillion.