Curious: Yoga Spider Halloween napkins

I rarely pay full price for silly napkins, however these were too weird not to:

The spider seems to be in a yoga style pose whilst surrounded by body parts. Which is just scary.

I need to go back to Waitrose post-Halloween to try to find some more in the sale!

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Food: Berry White – Not as funny a name as they think it is

Recently was given a free sample of a Berry White drink, apparently its Unique Selling Point is that it is an organic soft drink.

It is ok, the strongest taste is of peach even though peach puree makes up around 1% of it, that is probably because the grape flavour just gets mentally filed under “refreshing”.

The bottle is very chunky and would probably squash anything that it was packed with – so not great for packed lunches or picnics!

I wouldn’t bother buying it, but it was a nice thing to try free!

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Nails: Day of the Dead – “I’m not wasting no more time, Don’t think I could believe you”

Technically it is too early for Day of the Dead, Día de Muertos, however I’ve had the Robin Schulz remix of Lilly Wood and the Prick’s ‘Prayer in C’ stuck solidly in my head for the past week, also thinking about the prospect of having a proper garden has made me remember how much I like marigolds

(Photo from Pinterest)

My understanding is that my grandmother is still in a Tupperware in my uncle’s garage, either way not wasting any food offers or flowers on her, I wonder if I can borrow some else’s dead grandmother…

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Film: ‘Rollerball’ (2002) – “And the other rules, well, the other rules are Russian and complicated.”

Remakes aren’t always dire, but remakes that miss the entire point of the original and bring nothing new to the table are a travesty.

The 1970s version of ‘Rollerball’ had a point, it had some interesting social-political messages and it was a decent vision of a worryingly plausible dystopian future.

The 2002 film is aimed at young teen males at the point where nu-metal’s popularity had waned enough that Pink could be stuck on big screens a couple of times and it only seem mostly ridiculous to be in the same film as Slipknot. That and the Rob Zombie tracks that cropped up twice during the film were cr&p enough to date the film badly.

There are silly sound effects, very faux-injuries, bad acting and random female breasts. In short this film has no point, no deeper message or even any real sense of where it is going for the mere 90 minutes running time.

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Book: Laurell K Hamilton’s ‘Guilty Pleasures’ (Anita Blake 1) – “An atheist waving a cross at a vampire was a truly pitiful sight”

It’s been ages since I read any of the Anita Blake series, I am not even completely up to date as I’ve only read up to book 20, ‘Kiss the Dead’, I actually read it twice as I completely forgot that I had done so – the plot was *that* good.

I own books 1 to 9 and I am going to reread them back to back to see if a) my memory blocked out certain aspects of the books and b) the future books leak through and cause inadvertent amusement.

For those who wonder, the book titles some from a location used in the book, the following may also contain spoilers – although the main spoiler that I could possibly impart about this series is that Anita doesn’t start shagging everything that moves until book 10 onwards.

‘Guilty Pleasures’ is the first book in the series; I really hadn’t consciously known that it was published in 1993 and I haven’t remembered that we were in a vampire strip club by page 14. I’d forgotten about poor Phillip the blood whore and perpetual victim, that whole plot line is a little disturbing on rereading!

Plotwise there aren’t as many zombies as you’d expect from a book where the main character’s day job is a zombie animator; it more police procedure with some minor supernatural elements – mostly vampires as Anita gets uncomfortably close to Jean-Claude… uncomfortable for her that is. However at this stage Anita is very aware of being a good Christian and feels that vampires are monsters.

I don’t feel that “the sisterhood” binds all women automatically purely based on gender, but it isn’t a fab sign when someone female seems to have massive issues with other women with little reason – although Anita tries to justify it in this book under the banner of disliking anyone who sells out humans to the monsters.

On the plus side we get to meet Edward – aka Death. Edward is less fun that I remembered in this book, but still fantastically scary.

To sum up it is an OK book but fundamentally acts as light scene setting for the other books – it mostly acts to reinforce that these vampires don’t sparkle or want to be your friend. Overall the book featured more inappropriate sexual situations than I remembered so I don’t feel comfortable giving it to anyone I know.

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Food: Coldpress Raspberry, Pear & Apple Smoothie – Not meant to be green…

Until the other day Coldpress smoothies had been one of the more successful random juices that I’ve bought as part of the juice experiment – specifically the Coldpress Raspberry, Pear & Apple Smoothie.

It is 65% Apple Juice, 20% Pear Puree and 15% Raspberry Puree, they are also not pasteurised in the traditional sense (i.e. using heat) instead they use a process called High Pressure Processing (HPP), which is a cold pasteurization technique.

It was all very tasty at first and I was cheerfully drinking the stuff for several weeks working on the assumption that it was healthier than ‘normal’ juice.

Then I opened a bottle to find the inside of the lid covered in mould and the juice completely off – I rashly tried some and nearly threw up. I didn’t bother complaining to the manufacturer as nothing they could say would repair that kind of broken trust, I am going to call the juice experiment over – from here on out it is back to the major brands who can cope with proper pasteurisation techniques and longer term I’m getting a proper juicer.

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Food: Black Forest Trifle is essential?!

In these times of austerity most supermarkets have expanded their own brand ranges to lure shoppers into spending less but buying more.

However some of these basic essentials are a little odd, specifically Waitrose who have a Black Forest Trifle in their essential range.

I hadn’t ever considered a Black Forest Trifle existing, let alone being essential.

It was however on sale, which is why I bought it and it was pretty good – in a custardy sort of way. But now I really want to see what other weird stuff is considered essential! What an excuse to go shopping!

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Nails: The Nightmare Before Christmas – “That’s twice this month you’ve slipped deadly nightshade into my tea and run off. “

I’m still waiting for work to confirm what their plan is, I suspect that they actually don’t have one and are just reacting in spasms & twitches – much like a fish who has swallowed the hook only to realise that this might be a dumb idea.

In the meantime I am twisting the lyrics to all sorts of things to fit my mood, ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ has lots of wonderful opportunities for this, for example “Kidnap the Sandy Claws, beat him with a stick, lock him up for ninety years, see what makes him tick” sounds a wonderful thing to do to my CEO.

(Photo from Pinterest)

There are lots of Nightmare inspired nails lurking on the internet, although not *that* many which feature Jack looking like he has been repeatedly hit with the aforementioned stick…

(Photo from Pinterest)

Poor old Jack.

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Film: Assassins – “the moral of the story is this: everyone who craps on you is not necessarily your enemy, and everyone who gets you out of crap is not necessarily your friend, and if you’re warm and happy no matter where you are you should just keep your big mouth shut”

‘Assassins’ was released in the mid 1990 when Sylvester Stallone was in his difficult period and involved in some rather iffy films – for example ‘Daylight’ and ‘Stop! Or my Mom will shoot’. ‘Demolition Man’ was also in this time frame but is in a different league altogether.

I think I may have watched it before but not in the last 7 years, making it an obvious target to watch prior to moving house.

Things do not go well, I’m not even 15 minutes in and we’ve experienced one finger typing, crude instant messenger, $200,000 being decent money for a contract kill and an ancient printer… oh dear this film hasn’t aged well. Antonia Banderas doesn’t look right as a human, he makes a better Puss In Boots.

Stallone has stole a taxi and is cruising around hoping to get Banderas as a fare… the odds of that working are pretty minimal and then the dvd player crashed.

I will never know if Stallone gets lucky or if this film stops being so horribly dated, instead I take the hint and put the film in the charity shop pile.

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Book: Lee Carroll’s ‘Black Swan Rising’ – “Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on”

This book does not come from a single mind, Lee Carroll is a pseudonym for Carol Goodman and her husband Lee Slonimsky.

Slonimsky is a poet and a hedge fund manager, a combination that potentially sounds like a hallmark of a total w***er – it seems that the world’s economic issues and the role of bankers & speculative funds in this have left its mark on my view of the world.

‘Black Swan Rising’ is the first in a trilogy, I read it when it came out and remembered it being very descriptive and painting beautiful visuals, so I had high hopes when I went to reread it.

My memory wasn’t entirely accurate, the book is descriptively pretty but far bleaker than I remembered. The economic downturn is the driver and mood setter for the books events, fundamentally no one is happy and there is a scene which could be a trigger for some people.

Plotwise, Garet James lives in New York and designs jewellery for a living – her father owns an art gallery and neither of them seem to have recovered from the death of her mother several years previously.

Garet and her father are enjoying the Western World’s economic downturn as much as every other ordinary person, so she jumps at the chance to open a vintage silver box in return for a large sum of money despite the shopkeeper offering the money seeming a bit odd. It helps that the box bears the same swan symbol as is on her mother’s ring.

Naturally opening the box means that bad and weird things happen – goodness knows how Garet has missed hearing about Pandora’s box or having even a passing awareness of the plot of ‘Hellraiser’.

(Nothing to do with the book, I just needed a laugh after reading it)

The supernatural elements of the book – excluding Will the vampire, were interesting and done rather well, but Garet was very dull and two-dimensional.

Failing to care about the main character does make me wondering why I am reading the book and the descriptions weren’t pretty enough to make up for this void.

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