Having moved apartments this week I am still without a Tv (hopefully a situation to be rectified tonight), however I have had ‘Flight of the Conchords’ as my salvation. The series charts the exploits of two Kiwi men, as they attempt to make a success of their band in New York. Its been a great viewing experience, navigating the humour - there is a dry, muted style to the comedy of the episodes, shades of Seinfeldian, Merchant and Gervais writing and a distinct character of its own combine to great effect. The show couples outright farce and innane humour with excellently drawn characters and gorgeoulsy moments of black humour. Finally to the clip below, I’ve chosen one of the bands songs, which litter the episodes - some smartly written and great little tunes.  I haven’t seen the show in any TV listings but it is available on DVD which I am grateful for!

The No Campaign failed to make the Abortion issue a major reason to vote no. But they certainly convinced the rest of Europe again. And yet again we have another person rather then reading the Eu-barometer results but let there own bias dictate their views. Sylvie Goulard, the president of the French section of the federalist group European Movement International, ( I know I don’t know what it is either) Seemingly they are a lobby group for a United Europe and Pat Cox is president. And have a crap flag. (left below fold). Anyway Sylvie Goulard is laying the blame on the fall of the Lisbon Treaty at the governments feat.

Continue reading ‘Abortion reason for no?’

Story of the Day, read here

From Adam Smith Institute.

Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah is bringing radical change to his state next month. Currently state employees work eight hours a day, five days a week. Starting in August, they will work ten hours a day, four days a week. The idea is to help employees save on gas and to reduce the state’s energy bills. By closing hundreds of buildings for an extra day of the week, the state will save $3 million a year.

Have to say I love that Idea.

So come November 7th, Daniel Craig tackles the difficult second album, attempting to stay on form for those who were impressed by his first outing in Casino Royale. Mismatched, over rated and thuggish was my by far in the minority opinion of this debut. The trailer looks good, with some elegant looking action and exotic locations, the only flaw being the poor choice of Daniel Craig as Bond - he never gelled into the necessarily complex being of suaveness and brutality that is the spys calling card. Brutishness by far outweighed, I felt there was little to like in hsi portrayal.

Watch the trailer here.

So we’re busy men us Dossing Times posters today. In place of the usual witty posts and Top 6 Friday post you normally expect to round out your week I offer ‘Music’ by Republic of Loose, a song guaranteed to get you in the mood for the weekend.

As my girlfriend would probably attest, I don’t know much about fashion. However I do know about blogs and I would like to draw your attention to a little gem by Miss Milki called A Spoonful of Sugar.

Concerned with all things fashion it offers a plethora of style advise and tips on how to compose a complete outfit. The blog itself is laid out very cleanly and boasts lots and lots of pictures of pretty things. It’s clear that an awful lot of work goes into it.

Whilst the blog, and indeed this plug are directed at the ladies out there, guys will no doubt find it useful if you ever want to buy an item of clothing for a member of the fairer sex.

Check it out here,

http://missmilki.blogspot.com/

Bless me father, for I must have sinned. It’s been 2 months since I’ve seen something good at the cinema.

It was with great reluctance that I headed along to Cineworld on Parnell St. last evening to catch a showing of James McEvoy and Angelina Jolie’s latest offering, “Wanted”. I’m all for being open minded about movies but the various trailers had left me cold, the movie striking me as little more than mindless tripe aimed at teenage boys who would no doubt be impressed with the loud noises and pretty pictures, not to mention Angelina Jolie’s bare behind, promised by the frenzied teasers. I thought, “my cinema trips are rare these days and I don’t have time to waste on this waffle”.

For once, a Hollywood trailer has delivered fully on its promise and it took me about 5 minutes to regret relenting to my friends numerous requests to give it a chance, with the only saving grace being that Cineworlds monthly pass meant that I didn’t actually have to pay full price for the misfortune of seeing this.

In advance my friend had made several requests that I see it with him, telling me that summer 2008 had yet to give us its Die Hard 4 or Transformers, ie. dumb fun, and that Wanted looked to be it. Alas, this is not the Die Hard 4 or Transformers of 2008. Don’t get me wrong, its dumb, in fact it’s “The Transporter 2″ dumb, but imagine Die Hard 4 with a protagonist as annoying and unconvincing as Jar Jar Binks and you begin to understand the problem with Wanted.

There isn’t much to the story and it occurred to me that all those scenes shot in slow motion were purely to stretch the movie out to feature length running time. The “plot” follows the Matrix formula, almost to the letter, where our cubicle occupying protagonist struggles to fit into the mundane world that surrounds him and then a hot, badass chick (Jolie) comes along and shows him that he is infact almost super human. Instead of dodging and stopping bullets he can curve them. You even have Morpheus show up, played here by Morgan Freeman, but instead of a human Oracle you have a loom.

Yes, a loom. I kid you not.

However a ridiculous but predictable story, on its own, does not mean a movie cannot be entertaining. As I hinted above, the biggest problem with Wanted is our hero. Jame’s McEvoy’s protagonist is up there with Charlie Bartlett in this years annoyance league table right from the very first syllable he utters in his irritating American accent. This is a character bereft of charisma . Worse however is that McEvoy is just not believeable and his performance quickly descends to merely shouting and grimacing at the audience.

On this point, as the movie comes to a close it actually takes the opportunity to insult the audience. The movie appears angry at us for having seen it and we are labeled “pathetic” and asked “What the f**k have you done lately?” before the ordeal is over.

I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve just wasted the 2 hours of my life and what’s pathetic is this steaming pile is being lauded by all insundry as a thrill a minute ride.

I hated this movie.

P.S. The only enjoyment I got from the evening was getting my friend to blindly accept the dare of having to go see Adam Sandler’s Zohan later in the summer.

Revenge is sweet.

We have a 19 year old doing work experience in my office this summer - very competent, mannerly and efficient in her work, some of her remarks as well as her sunglasses being firmly affixed on her head throughout the day have given me cause to fear for the future of the country. Her largest faux pas to date, one which had me literally stopped in my tracks was her announcing to the room that she thought for a substantial period of time that the purpose of the Lisbon Treaty was to kick Lisbon out of the European Union! I was going to work my way through the insanity of such a statement – such as how you could unquestionably accept that a city could be thrown out of the EU but just letting you all know that a 1^st year college student had such a thought is worthy of a post in itself. I’m quite upset.

It is midnight and in 5 and a half hours I have to get up to get an early train to London to give a talk in London. I was all ready I did my slides. Got some nice pics. Even did some cool Flash animations. All working fine on my Office PC. Put them onto my laptop. Bang.

It does not work.

Why because I kept getting an Error saying something about not registering control. Basically my Flash movies were not loading into PowerPoint. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling alas to no avail. I tried different versions of flash and it didn’t work. Then I read that PowerPoint uses the same activeX controls as Internet Explorer. Being a firefox/opera man I didn’t have flash player installed for Internet Explorer. So I opened internet explorer and sure enough flash movies did not play. Saying plugin missing do you want to install.

And that solved the problem.

Lame now to get some sleep.