...way out on the corner of fucked up and evil...

So I finally got around to watching the director's cut of Watchmen. OH! Oh Rorschach! Oh Super-Raoul! Oh everyone! It was totally worth paying the ridiculously inflated price for the blu-ray simply for that bit where Dan beats the shit out of that dude in the pub and Rorschach - Rorschach! - has to tell him to calm the fuck down, and he's like, "Daniel! Not in front of the civilians!" OH MY GOD. I am in love with this movie all over again, but in a slightly less Daddy Winchester-focused direction.

Sadly, they did not include that hilarious bit in the comic where Rorschach tries to make Dan feel better about dead!Hollis Mason* by suggesting they just carry on with their investigation because then they can catch the person who started all the hysteria that led to Hollis' death, and Dan's like, "Who in their right mind would be comforted by... oh... I mean, thanks."

Also, I love Bill and Ted. I love Constantine too. This is kind of spilling over into reviving the crush my ten-year-old self had on Keanu Reeves, which is painful because it makes me want to watch other stuff that Keanu Reeves has done, and then I am reminded that he sucks and I feel inexplicably betrayed, like somehow he led me on by being in these three movies that I love.

My relationship with Keanu Reeves is very complicated.

*Dudes, I am totally not cutting that for spoilers, so don't even bother to ask me. It's a twenty-year-old comic, stop crying.

So, where I live looks right out over the bay, and every year around Easter time the village commisioners put this raft out - it's wooden and it has raised benches and a little well for your feet and it floats because there are giant blue barrels underneath it, and it's anchored about twenty feet into the sand so it can't float away.

It went out on Monday, and I have been DYING for a nice enough day to go for a ride on it - before school gets out and it's overrun with little kids.

Today was that day. It was GREAT, you guys - I timed it just right, when the tide was coming in, so I only had to wade a few feet to get to it and then I just sat there and jumped off and jumped on and jumped off and sunbathed and read my book and watched the world go by while the tide came in around me and then came out again. I left my shoes on the beach and nobody even stole them while I was messing around either.

Afterwards I walked to the next village to get fish and chips from this awesome shack - I don't mean the shack is awesome, because it's a shack, but damn, they are good fish and chips! I got straight out of the water and started walking, and it was warm and breezy enough that my clothes just dried on me before I was even half-way there.

Next time I think I'll listen to Buzz when he says to wear a wetsuit though - I didn't see any jellyfish, but some seaweed brushed against my leg while I was in the water and I wigged. Jellyfish suck, dudes. What is the point of them?

Also, I've been reading those books I was talking about before with the Hellblazer/Dresden lovebaby. They're great, and that description is pretty much dead-on. I'm going to take the fifth one to bed with me now. Night all!

Ow, dudes. Just ow.

Got back from my walk about 9pm. When I walked in the door I was absolutely fine - legs were sort of shakey and stretched-feeling, but in a good, excercisey way. However, after I got up to make a cup of tea after a watching the first few minutes of this week's Boardwalk Empire, I was suddenly the Mayor of Stifftown. Stiff as in muscles, not as in zombies or erections, I hasten to add.

Anyway, it was loads of fun - I did the coastal walk to Port Erin, and even though I wasn't wearing a pinstripe suit or carrying a Tommy gun, all the fucking cows RECOGNISED and kept their distance anyway. Then I walked up through this glen that we always used to walk as kids, and it was actually pretty easy - I remember it being an all-day thing and that we were all knackered when we got home, but it took maybe an hour to get up to the Tower.

I guess now that I'm not ten any more, my legs are a lot longer and can cope with the hills better. Also, back in the day I was usually in charge of Prawn and he never walks, he runs, jumps, climbs and bounces, so I had to keep up with him, and from an early age he clearly decided that paths were for sissies and that real men make their own trails, even if that involves gorse bushes and the occaisonal sheer rock face.

While I was in Port Erin, picked up a few things for Mothers Day - charm bracelet, card, couple of books, little trinket box with a necklace. Signed everything from all of us, because although Johnny sometimes remembers this stuff, the twins never do.

Anyway, after that I tried taking Rad Y Toor back home, but I must have gotten off the footpath too late or something because I wound up at Tom the Dippers, and from there it was easier to just head downhill to Castletown and slingshot back around the coastline to home.

Just got out of a hot bath and feeling better now - can climb the stairs at about two-thirds of my usual speed as opposed to "slower than old replacement-hips lady", which is what I was clocking when I first got back - so I'm going to take my Dresden/Constantine hybrid book and go to bed so Johnny can have the lounge to himself, either to make up with his girlfriend or seduce the latest female beast-creature he's cheating on her with. I'm just sayin', being cheated on hurts, but being cheated on with some of these mutants he brings home must hurt even worse.

So, yesterday I was introduced to a new book series with the following description:

"The main guy in it is like if Harry Dresden and Constantine met and had a baby. A snarky, ghost-busting, English baby."

If there is a more perfect strategy out there aimed at getting my undivided attention, I have yet to witness it.

However, today is the first lovely day we've had since I got Prawned on Monday, so I'm going out to tackle that coastal route in broad daylight and face down the Cow Mafia. Black-and-white four-legged bitches think they can tell me where I can and can't walk.

Misty and grey today. Will take advantage of the not-very-nice weather and go sort out my season pass for the steam train (yes, we have buses on the Rock, but they are slow, stinky and full of filthy flipperhanded monstrosities, much like buses in England, so if I want to go anywhere and it doesn't matter what time I arrive, I take the steam train instead) then perhaps home to light the fire in the playroom and finish up Summer Knight. Or maybe rewatch Constantine, who knows?

Good thing about the gloomy weather is that I have an excuse to wear my Frog Brothers t-shirt, which a) proclaims my greatness to the world at large for having such taste and b) hides my embarrassingly stripey sunburn from said world.

Well dudes, that's it. I am officially leaving the House of Gas. I'm going back to the Rock tomorrow, emailing in my resignation, and getting signed off sick for my four-week notice period. And if they don't like it, they can fucking well fire me, except, OH WAIT, I will already have quit.

2011 has been a fucking nightmare for me where my job is concerned.

First of all, I had to change from a shift where I worked Monday to Thursday, 10 til 8, to a shift where I worked Monday to Friday, 11.30 til 8. And in case you're wondering how I managed to have any kind of social life during that time, the answer is that I didn't.

More annoying is the fact that I was forced to change shifts to provide support for a manager with a new team, despite the fact that I already had a team doing the same shift as me, because the only advocate who didn't have a team is shit at his job and can't be trusted to look after new starters. So he gets rewarded for being rubbish with a three-day weekend, and I get a piece-of-crap five-day shift with an 8pm finish as punishment for my ability to not suck.

Because all my holidays for this year had been booked on the assumption that I wouldn't be working Fridays, I didn't bother booking these off as holiday. When I told our call centre manager that, she told me, to my face, that it wouldn't be a problem to get those booked off for me. I even put it in writing and got the response back agreeing that she would sort it.

January rolls around, and oh wait, we're predicted to be busy on those Fridays, so suddenly I can't have them off. I point out that a) I changed shifts to be flexible and accomodate the needs of the business, b) she promised me at the end of 2010 that it wouldn't be an issue, and c) I arranged these holidays in early 2010 and all my plans are already in place, and suddenly it's my fault because I "shouldn't book holidays that far in advance." Yes, she really said that to me, and no, I did not give in to the urge to spit in her face.

February rolls around, and oh joy, Ear Thing pops up again. I spend Friday afternoon in agony, but still finish up my shift, and of course I can't get an appointment over the weekend and the walk-in clinic closes at 7pm on Friday so thanks to my shitty working pattern, I end up going three days without seeing a doctor and without getting more than twenty minutes of sleep at a time.

Monday morning, I call in sick, and get my managers ansaphone. I leave a message explaining that I won't be in, and call the duty manager phone, since we're supposed to make sure we talk to a real person rather than leaving voicemails. Two hours later and I'm getting a bollocking for calling in too early and rining the DMs phone as well as my managers.

I finally get to the doctor, he loads me up with antibiotics and ear drops and pain killers and writes me a note saying I won't be in for the rest of the week. I call my manager to explain this, and she tells me that the House of Gas doesn't accept doctors notes and that a doctor cannot advise me when I'm too sick to go to work. Incidentally, if any of you are studying medicine, you should just drop out of school right now, since apparently you don't need years of training to tell if people are ill, you just need to be a manager at the House of Gas.

In March, it emerges that we are to be honoured with a visit from King Gas Himself. He wants to see how our team is responding to a new billing system. Of course, He will only be present from 9 til 10 that morning, and we don't start til 11.30, so now we have to come in three hours early. It's not all bad though - we don't get to leave three hours early, so instead we get the unearthly delight of finishing at 8pm the day before, then coming to work at 8.30 the following day and working an eleven-and-a-half-hour shift. And for this treat, the call centre manager tells us, we will be paid time-and-a-quarter and given an extra fifteen minute break.

Wednesday dawns, and 8.30 finds us all at our desks, all dressed in bright blue House of Gas slave tunics specially handed out to us for the event, lest King Gas be confused into thinking of us as human beings rather than an anonymous mass of lowly peons who labour for His enrichment.

And King Gas doesn't even come over to us. Not a single one of us is blessed enough to hear a word that utters from His holy mouth. And for added glory, we don't get our extra fifteen minute break. When we challenge our call centre manager on this, she tells us dismissively that we will "get it next time". I don't know when "next time" is. Perhaps it is when King Gas will descend from on high and sweep us away in the Rapture, possibly sporting a new set of colour-co-ordinated manacles to go with our slave tunics. I can but dream.

Last Monday, our team has a supposedly-daily performance review, our first one in weeks. Our manager asks how we coped while she was on holiday for two days. A particularly slow-witted and rancid hag takes the opportunity to lambaste me, in front of our manager and the rest of the team, because I had the audacity to ask her to get the details of a newly-installed meter before she passed it to me to update said installation. The sheer nerve of me, asking her to tell me what it was the customer needed updating before I updated it!

And my manager says nothing. My team say nothing. I am alone with the shame of having asked someone to do her fucking job instead of doing it for her and perhaps wiping her arse at the same time.

So yes, I quit. Fuck you, 8pm finish. From now on, when 8pm rolls around, I'll already be at home watching Supernatural reruns or writing a script for a second Constantine movie.

Fuck you, shitty advocate. Enjoy your three-day weekend while you can, because someone is going to have to take my place.

Fuck you, predicted-to-be-busy Fridays. I hope the call queues stretch for hours and every customer who gets through spends twenty minutes bitching about the wait time. I'll be on my holidays that I selfishly booked over a year in advance.

Fuck you, managers-who-apparently-are-better-than-doctors. I will never again plague you by phoning in too early or ringing another number in order to comply with our sickness reporting policy. You will be so relieved to be rid of me and my moronic assumption that a trained health care professional knows more about what's wrong with my body than you do.

Fuck you, King Gas. Keep your fucking time-and-a-quarter and your shitty slave tunic. You can build the Great Pyramids of Gas without my help, you twat.

Fuck you, call centre manager. When the Rapture comes, I'll be taking my fifteen minute break on another fucking continent.

Fuck you, rancid hag. You will never again need to take a customers meter details, because there'll be nobody there to update them for you.

Fuck you all, House of Gas. I hope you fall into the fucking sea.

Okay dudes, googlebrat has come up with the awesome concept of the Anti-Wishlist. No, it's not a list of things that are shit that I do not want you to buy for me. These are beautiful things that I already own, that I think other people should also own. Because they are beautiful.

In the grand tradition of all the best memes, once you have read my Anti-Wishlist and been overwhelmed by my good taste and encyclopedic knowledge of everything that is good ever, you have to write your own Anti-Wishlist. Be it games, music, books, films, TV shows, whatever, make a list of ten things you think other people should want for Christmas, and why.

1. How To Rob A Bank
   
   Dudes, it totally offends me that more of you are not talking about the greatness of this movie. It basically starts with Nick Stahl (aka Ben Hawkins from Carnivale) ranting about bank surcharges while trapped in a bank vault, then moves to him ripping the duct-tape off the mouth of Jessica, a saucy librarian type (saucy librarians are my favourite kind of librarian, FYI) who proceeds to verbally abuse him, which prompts him to snap "Whoa there, Skippy. If I wanted more verbal abuse, I would just call some customer service centre somewhere." She mutters something behind the gag, and Ben (he will henceforth be refered to as Ben) asks sarcastically, "What was that? Was that 'Sorry for being a bitch'? 'I'll be nicer now?'" Anyway, Ben goes on to get into a snarking match via mobile phone with Balthazar from Constantine, who is there trying to rob the vault, and is cranky because Ben has ruined his plan by getting stuck in there when he ran for cover during the robbery and the door closed behind him. There's a lot of completely genius moments, but my personal favourites are the scene where Ben gets Balthazar and the hostage negotiator, Officer Degepse, on a conference call and cons Balthazar into apologising to Degepse and Degepse into accepting the apology, before being distracted by Jessica and hanging up after telling them to "talk among yourselves," and the moment when Balthazar's 'phone battery dies, prompting him to walk out of the bank, hurl his mobile at the SWAT officers surrounding him, hitting Degepse in the head, and then staring at them for a long moment before walking calmly back inside.
   
   
2. Carnivale
   
   Seriously guys, why have more of you not watched this yet? If you liked Twin Peaks, American Gothic or Eerie Indiana, you should be watching Carnivale. Beautiful Nick Stahl takes time out from screwing up bank robberies in order to play the worlds unhappiest Avatar of Light. Ben wanders around looking miserable and confused, pausing occaisonally to shag Clea Duvall and Adrienne Barbeau, pretty much making him my hero for life. Meanwhile, Clancy Brown proves his evilness by making a mean paedophile dude kill himself (what?) and totally wanting his sister, while Cynthia Ettinger and Tim DeKay have pretty much the hottest on-screen romance that I have ever seen, ever. This is basically Twin Peaks if it was on HBO and took place in a travelling circus with strippers. It's awesome, and you should all be ashamed for not loving it like I do.
   
   
3. The 4400
   
   I have pimped this in way more detail here, but this is basically Heroes if Heroes had a cast where everybody could act instead of leaving the beautiful Pasdar to struggle on alone, and the characterization, dialogue and plotting didn't totally fucking suck. In brief, a giant ball of light appears over Seattle, and from it emerges a whole mess of people who have disappeared over the last 60 years. They haven't aged a day, and some of them have come back with magical powers. A beautiful, earnest government agent dude with a penchant for being in a shower whenever an important plot point comes up investigates. There are flavours of man-hottness to suit every palette, and oh, it's quite a good show too.
   
   
4. Profit
   
   Speaking of the beautiful Pasdar... this is pretty much him wandering around naked, with messy hair and too much eyeliner, while being evil in a variety of ways and narrating about how evil he is. Oh, and sleeping with his mum. AWESOME! My favourite bits are when he persuades a woman to go back to her estranged husband, even though he knows that the dude is a total psycho who will probably kill her, because it's the only way the husband will sign a deal that means more monies for the Pasdar, and the part where he deliberately traps another character alone with the uncle who molested her when she was thirteen, and then is totally smug and gleeful about it in the voice-over. That's some cold shit, the Pasdar. And I love it.
   
   
5. Wasting Away
   
   You guys, this is simply the best zombie movie EVER. Yes, better than Dawn of the Dead. Yes, better than Shaun of the Dead. Yes, better even than if they made a movie of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and somehow were able to travel back in time and get thirty-year-old Colin Firth to star in it. The premise is that a bunch of people get infected with Zombie, except they don;t know that they're zombies and they think everyone else is all crazy and high-pitched and runs around really fast. They meet this other dude who tells them that they're super-soldiers, except it turns out he's just this zombie caretaker dude and then he goes crazy and does a dance. Wendall from Bones and the guy from Tigerland who isn't Colin Farrell star. It's marvellous. Why aren't you watching it right now? In fact, why aren't I?! Fuck this list, I'll finish it later.

Is it just me, or does Papa Midnite have pretty much the most thankless job ever? I'm watching Constantine and seriously, it would so suck to run a bar that caters to angels and demons. I mean, it's bad enough that the angels are cheap bastards who order water and then turn it into wine, so you're not making any money off them, but then the demons are always killin' and eatin' dudes right there on your tables and you just know they never pick up after themselves.

Poor sad Papa Midnite. I feel your no-profit-making pain.

Oh my God, sometimes I just want to stab myself in the face to avoid being confronted by the fucktardery of the people around me. One of the brand-new fucktards on the team - I'll call her Pugfaced Chav, or PFC for short - actually asked me how to work out three percent of a bill. I was like, "Well, first you go back to school, in order to attain a basic fucking grasp of maths, you idiot, and then you throw yourself from a high building!"

I mean, are you fucking kidding me? The calculator on your computer even has a little percentage button! Christ, some people should never have been allowed to survive into adulthood.

Anyway, now I am watching How To Rob A Bank and it is beautiful - ninety minutes of Ben from Carnivale and Balthazar from Constantine trading insults through a bank vault door, could anything be more fun? I would totally watch a spin-off series based entirely around that concept.

Notes From This Weekend:

• Cadillac Records is fucking awesome. Also, Beyonce is totally not-fail as an actress. I wasn't even a little bit embarrassed for her at any point. Well done, Beyonce.
  
• Push is okay. It has Papa Midnite as the main baddie, and he's cool, but the main dude is like the love child of Dean Winchester and that dude who plays Dracula in Blade: Trinity. Not as hot as it sounds, guys. Also, the cast list was all, NOW WITH ADDED TOM BALDWIN! and then I watched it and Tom Baldwin was in it for like ten seconds before he died. Not cool, Push. We do not go around killing beautiful earnest Tom Baldwin.
  
• Zachary Quinto was put on this earth to torment me. They showed the trailer of the new Star Trek movie and I swear, it's like God is sitting there going, "Hey Froodle, here's a really seriously fucking hot guy for you to stare at, but the catch is, every time you see him on-screen, he's going to be playing a character that you want to kick in the nuts." Why, Zachary Quinto? Why?!
  
• There is a new Fast and Furious movie. Paul Walker was being failsome and excessively American as usual. Vin Diesel was being retardatical as usual. It was all very disgraceful.
  
• CORALINE WHY ARE YOU NOT OUT YET?
  
• Likewise, WOLVERINE MOVIE WHY ARE YOU NOT OUT YET?
  
• Mohinder, you fail at science so much. I am completely filled with distain for you. SCIENTISTS! PLEASE DO NOT INJECT YOURSELF WITH UNTESTED SHITTERY! IT NEVER ENDS WELL!
  
• I really hate Woody Allen. Honestly, I want to kick him in the nuts so badly, Zachary Quinto will probably end up playing him in the biopic. Cassandra Dreams is fucktarded beyond belief. How anyone can take Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor and turn it into a bloated, self-important, mind-numbingly dull wankfest is beyond me.
  
• Profit is beautiful. Oh Profit. You are my only friend.
  
• The fact that there is yet another Underworld movie makes me hate God.

On a totally unrelated note, the House of Gas has arranged an hour and a half lecture on the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci sequences. At work. For the workers. Except that if you're scheduled to be on the 'phones, you don't get to go, which begs the question, who the fuck is expecting a bunch of phone-monkeys to give up their free time to go to a lecture, at work, on advanced mathematical concepts? Are we going to be fighting crime with them? Will the FBI and adorkable curly-headed mathematicians be involved? No? Fuck off then. I'm just so confused by the rational behind it - most of our retardo customers can't add VAT to a fuel bill without having a meltdown - is this something King Gas thinks is going to be useful in our day to day lives? WHAT IS GOING ON?!