Cat Toy: Kong Tropics Fish

I like buying fun toys for the cats, generally the cats ignore them and I have a whole 35 litre box of rather underloved toys so now I try only to buy fun toys

So when I saw an advert for the Kong branded Tropics fish they looked perfect – huge big feather tails and a reputable brand – so worth the £5 cost

 

Due to a lack of local pet shops I had to order online and eagerly awaited the post – however the tail was less impressive that I’d been lead to expect so that was disappointing.

Naturally the cats have ignored it, they are currently favouring a 99  flamingo toy so hideous that I bought it purely for laughs and with no expectations

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Nails: Fire

I’m not saying that fire is the answer, however in certain situations it might fleetingly seem therapeutic – at least until the consequences are fully considered…

With that in mind I will endeavour to not bring actual fire to work…

(Photo from Pinterest)

no matter how much it might seem a good idea at the time

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Film: The Mummy (2017) – “It’s not an exact science, this business”

Any remake runs the risk of struggling under the weight of expectations set by the original, this felt very apparent in the Tom Cruise version of ‘The Mummy‘

The main reason that I had any interest in seeing this film was because of the unintentionally funny version of the trailer that was put online with most of the sound effects missing – leaving the random grunting and screaming to take centre stage.

Watching the finished film is a fairly similar experience, there are monsters and special effects however it feels like something fundamental is missing. Tom Cruise plays his usual barely two-dimensional self – which works for the first half of the film as the audience is meant to think that he’s a self-serving jerk, however it doesn’t make him believably redeemable

The plot is predictable enough to be light entertainment if you detach your brain there are various action scenes however there is no real sense of peril and the acting deserves special mention for being rubbish – even for a big budget action film

Russell Crowe as Dr Henry Jekyll, yes THAT Jerkyll, is utterly awful and feels shoe-horned in, however at least he got a central role; poor Sofia Boutella plays the title character yet is very much not the focus of the film (that would be Tom).

The best actor – and indeed character, in the film was Jake Johnson who plays Cruise’s semi-hallucination very dead sidekick, he was a less OTT version of Beni from the 1999 version of The Mummy

If you can watch this film very very cheaply and have very very low standards then it might be largely unintentionally funny enough to bother

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Book: Melissa F. Olson’s ‘Sell-By Date’ – “Honestly, who goes to a bar to cry alone?”

‘Sell-By Date’ is a short story that starts before the first Scarlett Bernard trilogy (the Boundary Magic trilogy), Scarlett is an ok character and certainly her story was readable enough

However I really read the books for Molly, who was turned into a vampire about 90 years ago when she was 17 and is finding that being permanently stuck at that age is a bit vexing in the modern world; for example constantly being carded in bars and never being taken seriously by building contractors

If you’ve read the Boundary Magic trilogy – and you should, then you know that Scarlett and Molly end up as roommates; ‘Sell-By Date’ is the slightly more detailed version of how

It’s very short, however it’s fun hearing the story from Molly’s Point of View and it did encourage me to check out the new trilogy featuring Scarlett

I’m trying something a little new and actually including links – Sell-By Date

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Rant: Everything and Nothing

This November isn’t feeling a fun month, it’s not one big thing just lots of little ones that are driving me around the bend

From the top:

On the 1st November I sat a stupid exam at the end of a stupid course on System Modelling – the course hadn’t been good and the exam was a bit grim even before I noticed the first question (out of three) asked for us to use a specific form of notation for our dodgy wonky diagrams; this form of notation hadn’t been taught on the course…

So now I get to wait eight weeks for the result, I am really hoping that I scrape a pass as I really don’t want to do that rubbish again

The weekend of bonfire night we always get a lot of fireworks where I live – although I am increasingly wondering what exactly we are celebrating on Guy Fawkes, neither cat is a fan of fireworks. Yet due to scheduling issues for the second year running I had to look after them solo as my spouse was away for the entire weekend

Not that my spouse was necessarily having fun, they were rear-ended by some prats in a van on the Friday when they were minutes away from their Northerly destination. Then the weekend transpired to have been rather rigged through abuse of the stupid Favourite Game system – don’t ask.

Then the week after that there were hiccups and general f**kery at Spouse’s work, bad traffic all week, failed car MOT, whiplash aftermath, my work deciding that I need to go to Liverpool again and trying to dictate when that will be, the postroom doing stupid things with my post – I admit that it wasn’t labelled well however it really shouldn’t be that complicated given how ‘unique’ my name spelling is

Add in that my normal annoyance outlet is not available as my long-term gym is closed for at least two weeks due t some dubious claim about needing to “monitor the underwater water supply with a view to possibly relocating the route of the incoming electrical supply” and I am feeling anger rising far too easily of late

Even stupid things like the binmen putting my emptied bin outside of a random house three doors down is enough to currently making my blood boil

I am really hoping that things calm down a smidge and that the gym reopens soon

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Food: Star Wars Pasta Shapes

There is something simultaneously fun and horrifying about the tie-in items that accompany film releases.

Porgs are probably going to be unmissable in coming weeks as the new Star Wars film approaches, however I was relieved to see that they didn’t feature in the Heinz Star Wars Pasta Shapes that I found in the shops this week

Thank goodness that Disney are unlikely to go down the same path as KISS, making Porg condoms and coffins unlikely – those would be most disturbing

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Nails: Cats

It’s been a bad week or two and I wanted something fuzzy to hug; attempts to hug either cat is not generally well received. For some reason they seem to view hugs as impeding their ability to wander and cause trouble

(Photo from Pinterest)

Maybe if I bribe them they will accept a little hug with a healthy escape route gap left

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Film: Django Unchained – “I don’t know what positive means”

As with most aspects of modern pop culture Quentin Tarantino can be rather divisive; some people are very enthusiastic about this work, others are less so.

Personally I liked the overdose of pop cultural irrelevance mixed with artfully stylised violence of ‘Reservoir Dogs’, ‘True Romance’ and ‘Natural Born Killers’. Even ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ had a disposable watchability about it

However I find that I’m increasingly indifferent to his later output, with ‘Django Unchained’ being a good example of why; almost of the characters outside of the two leads lack depth or any sense of real dimension, the dialogue feels like it was written purely to be performed – it doesn’t tell you much of value and it’s hard to imagine natural conversation flowing in the way that Tarantino seems to think it does.

Some people have hailed ‘Django Unchained’ as being a powerful piece of cinema that showcases the brutality of slavery – I was pretty happy in the knowledge that slavery was bad before I watched the film so maybe I wasn’t the target audience.

Watching the film did permit me to see Tarantino’s usual mix of unpleasant scenes, emotional set pieces (generally from underwritten female roles) and lots of dead people. The ridiculous overuse of squibs in the final act was noteworthy and probably meant to be humorous, however it got to the point of feeling overblown and silly.

However it was a lot better than ‘Death Proof’

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Book: Bobby Adair’s ‘Black Rust’ – “I think my batteries are dead”

‘Black Rust’ is set in a post-apocalyptic world with zombies that aren’t really zombies and then opts to ignore them almost entirely  to instead focus on the mild struggles of Christian Black – who almost incidentally earns a living by killing the non-zombie-zombies.

Black is ok enough as a bland male lead with a mysterious past that slowly is drawn out as the book proceeds.

There are a few other characters, most of whom a pretty bland and blank too and there is a plot – it’s just a bit bland and the book seems to go on forever.

Nothing is fundamentally wrong with this book I just found Black a bit dull, the world a bit dull and limited in scope, and then everything that happens in the book is basically to set up the ‘twist’ at the end that sets the scene for the second book.

It’s fine, a lot of authors seem to do that these days, in particular when they can start the first book in the series with a low price and increase it for the sequels; however it does make me thankful that this was a borrowed read on a free trial of Kindle Unlimited as oppose to a book that I actually paid real money for.

And I won’t bother reading the sequel even if I can get it free

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Health: Too Much Info?

I am aware that this could count as too much info, however being stuck in a major city on a stupid stupid course for three days meant that I had to buy lunch – and indeed dinner.

Despite trying to buy wisely my stomach decided to be upset at any change to what it considers normal food, which is a dreadful bother and reached the point where I was vexed enough to ask the internet

Apparently there is something called BRAT which is meant to be good for upset stomaches – and such a fun name. BRAT stands for bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast – the applesauce does rather give away it’s American origins, however as a theory it seems sound

With some modification to allow for things I actually have in the house this turned into oatcakes and bananas, somewhat of an odd combination however desperate times call for desperate measures

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