Hey hey and a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me! Yep I’m one of the few staffers young enough to look forward to my birthday and that’s despite everyone going on about how I look five years older (at least!!!). Anyway, welcome to this special birthday edition of the Thursday Daily Pulse as I talk about something other than politics (yes I a know I’m as shocked as you). Hopefully that’ll shut up all those who are calling for me to talk about something other than politics.
However before all that, let’s plug baby!
The Plug Section
Normally I start this with a moan about the state of video gaming but not this week! Instead I implore, beg and beseech you to go and read Bebito and friends’ column on the Sega Dreamcast and feel all those warm thoughts about video gaming that you thought you’d never think again. I actually fished out my Dreamcast and had a great weekend playing it again especially Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and Sonic Adventure. Great, great column”¦maybe the best thing I’ve ever read on insidepulse/411mania.
You may have heard there was a wrestling PPV this week”¦I didn’t watch it because its not really worth watching WWE PPVs for free nowadays but Ben did and he gives you the Mean view of this controversial PPV.
Btw, little wrestling rant-how f*cking stupid is the current Billy Kidman angle? I hate angles where they have a babyface feel guilt for actually injuring an opponent for one reason. That reason is the simple fact that the whole storyline point of wrestling is to INJURE YOUR OPPONENT!!! I mean when Kidman kicks and punches someone why is he doing that other than to hurt his opponent? Then you take it a step further and you realise that someone of Kidman’s body mass could only pin say Bubba Dudley by knocking him out cold”¦I really could go on and on but screw it, let the WWE writers have their self-indulgent shoot storylines that ignore coherence and logic so they can jerk off the smarks.
Coach Coogan needs his head checked out! Homer Simpsons at number 4!?! No place for any of the Friends cast? What about Jack and Karen from Will & Grace or Charlotte from Sex and the City? Outside of comedy what about Romano or Weaver from ER or”¦
Okay I’ll stop. Seriously it’s a very good column(s) and you should go and read it (just don’t believe a word he says).
Oh and Michael Matthew rather kindly pimped last week’s column”¦what a nice man.
This Week
And now let’s start talking about my week!!! Four major things have happened to me this week, three are happy and I’ll talk to you about them and one is sad so I won’t. Okay happy thing number 1 is the 24hour party!
Okay that makes it sound crazier than it was. Basically me and some of my mates have a tradition that when one of ou’s parents go away for a holiday we pile in for a house party with plenty of food and beer”¦and coke cola for me as I don’t drink. Now in addition to this tradition has become that we will have a barbeque with the meat supplied free of charge by my dear old Dad. So that’s what we did. So we piled into my mate Spea’s house and proceeded to from 4 o’clock Tuesday afternoon to 4 o’clock Wednesday afternoon basically pig out on barbeque food, play video games especially Sega’s (something) Monkey Ball, take the piss out of each other, drink alcohol (well except me”¦I’m a good boy) and watch movies and comedy videos. Of course there were many great moments such as when my mate got jealous of his girlfriend cuddling me”¦when we were talking about my boyfriend. Then there was me taking the piss out Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube as being all mouth no trousers and then Wiggins (whose game it was) showing me who was the daddy by smashing our previous high score on Monkey Ball not once but TWICE. Of course I’m shite at the game so I didn’t care but I did like playing Soul Calibar 2 and by playing I mean button bashing whilst woof-woofing at the some of the more attractive male characters and taking the piss out of Lizardman, who walks like he’s just been buggered by a sledgehammer. However, there were two moments that stand out as too bloody great for words.
Okay the first was breakfast”¦I work up at 9.30 on less than three hours sleep and felt bloody hungry (it’s a gift I have) so what did me and my mate Dan do? Way fire up the barbeque of course! Even better everyone else was obsessing about Eternal Darkness so you had the two of us standing over the barbeque, talking shit and getting through about 8 rashes of bacon and 12 sausages before looking at the four burnt rashes of bacon and the 10 uncooked sausages and laughing our heads off!!!
The second was an early birthday present. You see my mate Dan is going to Uni so of course he’s skint so instead of buying me a present he’s giving me some mix tapes (well CDs really) for my birthday. And he gave me the first at this barbeque-All Hail The Kings of Rock & Roll and we put it on to give us something to do other than take the piss out of Eternal Darkness. And f*ck me its great! Honestly so many classics, We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place, House Of The Rising Sun, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, four Beach Boys songs including I Get Around and Good Vibrations, three Roy Orbinson songs including Pretty Woman and Crying, SEVEN Elvis songs including perhaps my favourite of his non-ballads Devil in Disguise and best of all Jolene by Dolly Parton. What was cool about this was that whilst we were listening to it he told me, oh by the way there’s some country on there and my first thought was “I wonder if Jolene is on there” and it was! Its just a gorgeous song, just a beautiful song. Another cool moment was when Build Me Up”¦ by The Foundations came on, making for a beautiful jutxapostion with Eternal Darkness.
Overall a great day had by all, which wasn’t ruined in the slightest by afterwards going to see another disappointing England performance in a barely interested pub. What did slightly ruin it was my mate’s keep slipping back into use puff or gay as insults (i.e. substituting gay for bad), which personally I find totally and utterly offensive. No ironic or meaning independent crap is good enough, such insults are a manifestation of anti-gay prejudice and should be unacceptable. No one would dream of saying in front of a black person (or write on this here website) that something was “so black” or insult his readers as a bunch of “coons” because they don’t immediately agree with his point of view and I don’t see why the equivalent insults for gay people should be tolerated.
I Got A Job
Regular readers of my myriad of columns across The Insidepulse family will know that after finishing college last July I have been unemployed save for doing the same odd jobs for my Dad that I had for the past year . All of which boded ill for my year out before University. Well no longer because I have a job! Typically my moans against food distribution were for nothing as I have ending up shelving packed meat and fish at Sainsburys, one of the big 3 supermarkets in Britain. Worked two days so far and it seems pretty good. Obviously it’ll take a bit of getting use to i.e. working non-stop (my dad had a flexible approach to breaks) and standing up for long periods (yes I know”¦but it does hurt if you’re not use to it). What’s more the ethos is different to working at my dad’s “backstreet butchers” (his words) with such things as a company policy and brand as shown by the hilarious induction videos that seem to show a general inclination to cover the company’s ass with staff not allowed to use the internal LIFT into trained and signed off as having been so. Still it looks a good place with nice people and my job appears to be all the jobs I use to do for my dad that I enjoyed i.e. putting the stock out and organising it without the fiddly complicated jobs I hated. Of course not everything is plain sailing as I was to my horror informed that Sainsbury’s pay monthly and that last Saturday was the cut off point”¦so no money for me for a month (cue immediate email to Daron telling him that I can’t do any American comic reviews for a month).
Oh btw, did I mention did hours? Well they’re slightly insane being from 5 in the morning till lunchtime, which has forced me to record the repeats of Special Report, O’Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes and watch them when I get back. It actually improves the viewing experience because I can fast forward the boring bits and the weather (shown when American gets adverts) and get onto the good stuff. Of course if there’s one bad thing about my full time job its that my writing for insidepulse will be curtailed from its recent high of five columns a week with my planned reviews for TV killed at birth, even less REAL Football Rant and Chant and eventually less Nexus reviews. Which of course is a shame but screw it I really need the money.
MY BIRTHDAY
Okay, the big secret about my birthdays is that the day itself is usually pretty boring because my part is usually on a different day as I have it round a mate’s house because my parents won’t go away for a weekend. Plus my house isn’t practical for such parties, really you need a lounge that is fairly large and the focus of the house i.e. where the Hi Fi and consoles are but not so “fancy” that it cannot be damage. My lounge fails on all counts (white carpets are the enemy of a tears-free house parties) so it’s for the best. Of course there are the presents and this year I got the extra bonus of getting them three days early due to my parents letting me have them straight after me picking them up from the city (my mum couldn’t be bothered to get them, which was good because I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted). Okay from my parents I got:
The Right Nation: Why America Is Different by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Yep it’s a politics book, with this one about the growth of American Conservativism from Barry Goldwate’s 1964 GOP Presidential Campaign to its current dominant position in American politics as the authors argue that America is fundamentally a conservative country on the brink of a long period of Republican rule. It’s a fascinating read with some of the key chapters and players such as Nixon/Watergate, Reagan, Bush 41/Buchanan, Gingrich/Contract With America and Bush 43 all vividly and concisely explained and analysed. Even more detail is given to looking at the elements that make up the wider Conservative Movement such as the NRA, active Christians, financial and business interests. All of which is written in the moderated and balanced tone befitting two Economist journalists as they shown a non-partisan understanding of American Conservativism, praising its virtues whilst criticising its vices and drawing attention to both its strengths and weaknesses. At just over 400 pages long it’s a gripping and informative read that I finished in a day.
The West And The Rest: Globalization And The Terrorist Threat by Rodger Scrunton
Another politics/history book, this time perhaps England’s most revered conservative philosopher turning his attention at what makes the West different from the rest of the world and in particularly the Islamic world. What is about the Judeao-Christian world that permits nation states, rule of law, human rights and secularism and what is about the Islamic world that dooms to failure any attempt to impose on it liberal Democracy. It’s a short book of which I’ve read around a third and so far it looks like being quite an original and mercurial way of looking at the Clash of Civilisations. Scrunton’s writing whilst lacking some of the bite of his columns (I assume that’ll come when he moves onto Globalization) has an authorative and distinctive writing style that is very enjoyable.
Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World by Niall Ferguson
I’ve not touched this yet but greatly looking forward to reading this. It may shock you but as a patriotic Brit I am at heart an Imperialist. Not only in the sense that I cannot look at a map without dreaming of the “pink bits”, not just because I am proud of my country’s Empire and think that it improved the lot of virtually everyone it ruled but also because I believe that even in the modern world Colonial Empires on the British model should have a full role in the governing of failed and failing areas such as Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Ferguson through his TV shows has been spreading this brave and true belief and this book is what started his current rise to fame.
R-Type Final for the PS-2
I love 2D Shoot-em ups, partly because they are a throwback to the good ol’ days when games were fun and imaginative beyond how big the breasts of the heroine should be. So having read Lucard’s review for this and bearing in mind the 10 day return period I thought what the hey, let’s give it a go. I must say I haven’t played it much but from what I have I’m enjoying it thoroughly even if I am a bit shit at it at the mo. So far so good.
Royal Rumble 2004
Still haven’t watched this due to being busy reading and working but man I am looking forward to finally seeing Benoit’s winning Royal Rumble. Also whoever did the photograph for John Cena is a genius, as Cena looks bloody gorgeous in a sexy monochrome with his gorgeous biceps pumped and his limps pouting, very sexy. Such a shame they’ve turned his character into such a nasty and boring homophobe.
Well that’s all my presents, I’m going out for a meal with friends on Saturday and then I’ve got a house party next Saturday that’ll be fun.
Okay that’s it, see you same time, next week.