Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

Seriously awesome?

Monday, March 14, 2011 at 11:27 pm Comments Off on Seriously awesome?

Father roped me into watching A Serious Man. I sat through it to the end, and was able to wriggle my way out of stating what I thought by scoring it an interrobang out of ten, sending him rummaging through dictionaries to identify the word.

It’s an interesting film. I will wholeheartedly give it that.

It is not the kind of movie one wants to watch when you’re feeling unwell and just want to see a simple everything-makes-sense comedy where, I don’t know, people fall into bathtubs or something. When I’m unwell, I’m not exactly in the mood to watch a film exploring the injustices and justices of the world and how simple actions can warp the moral fabric of the universe and screw everyone over.

Maybe sometime I’ll be willing to analyse it, but at the moment I’d just like to go to bed each night knowing that I have something worth contributing to the cosmos around me.

I’m all alone (more or less)

Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 10:36 pm Comments (5)

Watched Aliens. I’d caught the final half hour of it while on holiday about five or six years ago, but otherwise can’t remember much about it. I know James Cameron did the directing and writing this time around, and I was curious to see how it would impact upon the style and setting. I still remember watching Rambo II; the first one was a fantastic movie that I still love, but as soon as I saw his credit during the opening of the sequel I knew that this time it’d just be a heartless action movie. I was right. Fun action movie, but no real soul to it, unlike the first one. Thankfully, Aliens is just as good as the original, in its own way.
(CONTINUED)

Ash is a goddamn robot!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 11:35 pm Comments (1)

I watched Alien five days ago. Yeah, I’m really dropping the ball on punctual blog entries these days.

Mind you, what is there to say that more professional, more qualified and more verbose people haven’t already said? It’s insanely atmospheric and lonely, and I love it. The first hour very much reminded me of Life Force (which you may recall me gushing about two years ago), with its very cold and lonely exploration of an alien ship, though Alien came first, of course. In a way I was almost disappointed when the alien started killing dudes full-time, not because it wasn’t entertaining, but because it had less time to explore the dank and desolate environment of space. I’m a total sucker for that kind of stuff.

I also watched The Hudsucker Proxy… half a month ago? Yeah, it was part of a Coen Brothers boxset and was one of the only two movies I was vaguely familiar with (the other being The Big Lebowski). I only became aware of the film through Platypus Comix’s very entertaining synopsis of the film with comments and other titbits of information – it’s a very good read. Also, hey, have I plugged the site before? I probably should!
(CONTINUED)

My curly moustache is in the making

Friday, February 25, 2011 at 12:28 am Comments (5)

I got vouchers for Xtravision around Christmas, and thought I’d be worthwhile actually making use of them, preferably to try other games that I’m interested in but unsure of buying, but hey, trying out movies I wouldn’t bother buying can’t hurt either. … can it?

We watched Outcast. I didn’t even read the blurb in detail, all I saw was a neat lookin’ Resident Evil style claw on the box along with a couple of beardy Irish actors on the images on the back, and I thought, “sold!” Having watched it, I can say it isn’t really my thing.

A mother and son move from their caravan to the inner city slums. The boy happens to turn into a monster at night. There’s two folks from a strange cult out to find the two and kill them. There’s a romance between the boy and a local girl. The mother is frighteningly overbearing. Misery ensues.
(CONTINUED)

THE FUTURE OF ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION IS NOW

Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 11:51 pm Comments Off on THE FUTURE OF ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION IS NOW

Today’s observation: I now know there is a site called Awkward Boners. Thank you, Google AutoComplete. If it weren’t for you, I would’ve been spared that knowledge.

(let’s see how long it takes before I get even more penile-related spam email!)

“You, go to hell. Here’s your ticket!”

Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 9:51 pm Comments Off on “You, go to hell. Here’s your ticket!”

Watched Bio Hunter. This was one of the many anime VHS tapes we had years and years ago (the batch of tapes that made my brother and I major fans of Ultimate Teacher and Cyber City Oedo 808, and also exposed us to the incredibly corny English dub of Laughing Target), but I’d never watched it properly until now. I caught the first scene when ripping it from VHS before I got rid of it, and it’s hardly something you forget – a chick and a dude are having sex, and then the woman gets the munchies, so her breasts turn into mouths and chew his arm off. It’s the very first scene you see, so you know it’s gonna leave an impact.
(CONTINUED)

“Do you have any more skeleton pirates?”

Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 9:44 pm Comments (8)

Pictured: The aftermath of having to babysit a ten-year-old whose family don’t believe in video games.

This must be the Site B laboratory.

Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 10:08 am Comments (1)

Possibly due to his new-found love for OutRun 2, my brother has had arcades on the mind lately, and this morning we decided to head over to Yorkgate and check out its sorely neglected arcade and bingo hall. We weren’t expecting much at all; we were well-prepared to just mosey around it for two minutes to gaze over the wares, inevitably see nothing of interest, and then just go home. One game shoved away in the corner gave us good reason to hang around. Why?

Because it was THE LOST WORLD ARCADE GAME

YYYYEEEESSSS

In the off-chance I’ve never stated it, I have very, very fond memories of playing this game back in Spain about thirteen years ago. The arcade in Porta Ventura back then had this game (and Puzzle Bobble but dude you can buy the PC version for £1 in Toys R Us, it ain’t got obscurity value) and my brother and I would go out of our way to play it every day  we were there. We sunk so much Spanish currency into that thing. Quite justifiably, because it’s a pretty rockin’ lightgun game with some great intense sequences and a few elements that just mix things up a little. We watched a few clips of it on YouTube a few weeks ago (because that’s precisely the sort of boring things we get up to) and couldn’t help but be a little wistful. The game is nearly fifteen years old, has never had a home port and the chances of it receiving one now are very unlikely. Would we ever play the game again?

And then, holy shit, there it is in Yorkgate. That’s not far at all! Heck, it’s my usual movie-going spot. I would ask myself how on earth I could’ve missed it for so long, but given how modern arcades never exactly have much to offer, I think that speaks for itself.
(CONTINUED)

Just a collection of antiques and curios

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 4:16 pm Comments (6)

My brother is moving away soonish (I’ll miss you!) and thus has burdened me with looking after his SNES and Dreamcast. It seems to be a trait in my family (well, probably just my father’s side) that we hate throwing out old rubbish; sometimes it is literally rubbish (why the hell do I still haven the broken-off zips from old coats?), but the SNES is a valuable piece of nostalgia for us. It was our first proper games console (if we pretend that people used the ZX Spectrum for office tools and whatnot), signalling both the start of our love for video games, but also our totally irrational bias towards Nintendo. Yeah, we can play all the games we want on the Wii or the PC, complete with a close-enough imitation of the SNES controller, but my brother still has a fondness for playing stuff on the original hardware. In theory I’m the same, but in practise… hmm.

I recently picked up an AV cable for the SNES, partly so I don’t have to muck about with the aerial cable every time I want to use it and partly on request by my brother. It’s quite a sight to see the ol’ games played off their original cartridge again and without a hilariously bad RF reception. It’s, uh, not so fun realising that all my controllers are kind of busted.
(CONTINUED)

You can take the panda out of the jungle…

Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 11:51 pm Comments (1)

It’s headlines like this that make me pay attention to the world around me. Thank you, Yahoo! News.

I wonder if I should ever bother with those “what have I been up to?” summaries when there’s a new entry after some absence, because lately it boils down to “bog all.” I’ve been playing Castlevania HD, Left 4 Dead, Pocket Bomberman, Doritos Crash Course, Panic Bomber and several other games. Yeah, but have I done anything productive? Well, er…

That reminds me, I did start work on two blog entries that didn’t go anywhere. I still have that unfinished Zebraman review sitting around (where I compare it to Jingle All The Way. It’ll all make sense when it’s published!) and I wrote a bit of a ramble on Pokémon Rumble, a strangely intriguing WiiWare game that’s probably just the way I want the series to be, if it weren’t for a number of letdowns and limitations (which I’ll probably write up as a General Writing sometime). I’m mostly spending my time redesigning and gathering resources for the Bomberman Shrine Place, which I hope will really expand the site in terms of gloriously nerdy information. I want it to be so nerdy that you start to feel embarrassed for me. If the redesigned Bomberman site doesn’t make you weep for the man who’s wasting his life researching obscure elements of the Bomberman mythos, then I’m doing it wrong.

Let me know if my attempt at hyping it up is working or not.
(CONTINUED)