Well, I am back to work on Monday which sucks, but had a good time off, if a little stressful with the move, but this was cancelled out by my weekend at the Big Chill. Check out my review here.

Peace

GI

Appologies for not blogging for a sooner but things are a bit hectic at the mo.

Guy has now officially left Cassa Del Edge and taking up residency at “The Pimphouse” Suite of his new HQ. So am currently back in the dark ages of communciation (pre INTERWEB) and am writing this from Dusky’s pad as we get ready to head to The Big Chill festival tomorrow down in Malvern. I am sooooooo looking forward to it as I have wanted to attend for 6 years now and the line up is sooooo impressive that I had to go!!!!!!!

Needless to say I will have plenty of pics and maybe even the odd video to share upon my return.

Once the flat is fully operstional I will send out a SUMMONS for a Moose housewarming.

PEACE

GI

This is quite a Personal Blog for me, and although I have published it, it is more for me to look back at later time, but please feel free to read.

I am just back from Rye. I wish my journey to see my family down there was for happier reasons, but sadly Patricia Scott, my Dads partner and mother of my half-sisters down there died on Saturday 7th July. It put things in perspective for me, I mean I am busy stressing about moving house and my dad has had to deal with losing a second partner and my sister are having to deal with losing there mum to cancer. (Don’t know about anyone else, but it freaks me out the number of folk I know that have either had cancer or cancer has affected their lives in some way). At the service it brought back memories of my own mothers funeral which was 10 years ago this October, yet it doesn’t seem that long ago, don’t get me wrong I am glad that my dad found Pat again after my mums passing, it give him a life back that he would not have had if he remained in Scotland and it gave me a chance to get to know my sisters down there, you just need to read my Aviemore blogs to see what a great thing that is to me but, I dunno, I guess with the whole house move and what happened at the weekend I am just reminissing too much, so many chapters coming to a close at one and I am left feeling that I can’t wait until this month is over.

So here’s to Pat, the woman that gave my dad a second shot at life. I know you will be missed by all those that knew you.

GI

I will be back to my usual self next blog. Actually, quick rant. I stopped at a couple of service stations on the way down and back up to rest, grab something to eat and strech my legs. I noticed that in each of the stops, they had a couple of Coin-op arcade games in the terminal. I kind of chuckled when I saw this as they were all driving games!! Come on, what were they thinking “hmm yes, after having been driving for X amount of hours, how can we help our customer’s relax?….. I know lets install a driving game in our arcade bit, that would help”" DOH!!

Orange walks, when will we ever get over them? 1690 was a long time ago and who really gives a shit anyway? Yet once more we are subjected to this traffic jam causing, violence advocating, small minded nonsence so that people can be proud of a victory at a battle over 300 years ago.

First point, I am a tax payer and I am outraged that the police are used to oversee these marches. Secondly when I see all the children taking part I am disgusted. Children are too young to fully comprehend what they are marching for and are more likely doing it to please their parent, thus another generation of our youth is inducted into this catholic/protestant bullshit that keeps Scotland that little bit stuck in the dark ages.

You can argue the whole freedom to march thing at me to you are blue in the face. I don’t care. We would not tolerate the KKK marching through our streets basically promoting hatred of another human being, so why do we let the Orange Lodge do the same. Time to wake up Scotland, the March serves no point and only leads to troubles and hatred amonst fellow human beings.

On a side note, I was hanging out with Big Al today and we ran in to one of the “marchers” who was obviously out his tree either on drink or drugs or a mixture of both. This rather narrow minded young person was obviously wanting to start a fight with someone as he accused me and Al of “laffin at {him} coz he woz havin’ truble lightin his fag”. Actually me and Al were in fact laughing at the poster for some Vampire/Rock musical that is showing at the Royal concert hall, (but had we known that the young chap was have difficulty alighting his cancer stick, we actually probably would have laughed) but thats beside the point and lucky for him Al was in a mellow mood as I am pretty sure the big guy would have swiftly dealt with this young urchin, actually in his “oot his face” state I could have probaly decked him. However we did note that he seemed to go into his pocket when he started trying to goad us in to a fight, possibly had some sort of stabbing implement in his pocket, and was there a police man in sight? No they were to busy off guarding another feckin march!!! Still the situation passed without incident, but I don’t think I need pyschic powers to see that the young man will probably end up in a fight at some point tonight.

The march should be banned and if not, then I demand Police presence for my Annual March in which I intend to hold up traffic and play drums badly while walking down a nearby street to celebrate our victory over them back in the street wars of 1983.

With so many advertising campains saying Love Scotland, Hate Racism, maybe we should also be saying Love Scotland, hate Bigotry.

Peace

You know when I got in to the whole buying/selling a house, people told me that is was one of the most stressful things you can do. Pah! I thought, I can easily handle that.

Yeah, the whole have viewers in and agree a sale and look for a place and put in a bid is easy, but then comes the stress when it goes to the lawyers. In the space of 3 hours today I went from losing my sale then losing my purchase, to regaining my sale but still loosing my purchase to regaining my purchase at the 11th hour. Talk about a feckin rollercoaster of emotions and stress. Going from content, to stressed, to homicidal, to relieved then finally back to calm in such a short space of time can’t be good for anyone.

I honestly believe that if you got all the buyers and sellers in the chain together to talk, we could easily sort everything out without the middle man lawyers that take control away from everyone and causing 90% of the hassel (although I should point out that my lawyer is a diamond geezer!!)

Anyway, everything is agreed now and (hopefully) will be plain sailing from here on it.

Moving house people, ONLY do it if you have feck all other stresses in your life. That advice is free!!!

So, I haven’t poted for a while. Kinda had all systems go with the house stuff. Feels weird as everything is in the hands of the lawyers, and as I am a bit of a control freak, that bothers me!!!!!

I am just back from a week at Bolton, what a completely unexciting place that is (my appologies if any of you are from Bolton!!!) Still a weeks hotel accomodation, free breakfast and a chance to work in a really cool Crown Building that was constructed in the 40s. It was really nice, pity that the plan is to next year convert it to flats.

Anyway, this is just a quick blog, when I think of something interesting to write, I will be back on!

Feel a bit wierd. I put my house on the market on Tuesday and got an offer of what I was expecting today, so just a survey to get through and then its goodbye Cassa Del Edge. Luckily I have a new snazzy flat which I purchased (pending survey and morgage) for my new abode, but although I am certain i have done the right thing, it still feels weird.

This was may family home since 1980, nearly 27 years of my life have been spent here, thats longer than some of my readers have been on the planet! The house became mine after my mum died and my dad moved away and although the house IS mine, it never completely FELT like mine. I always thought of it as my mum and dads house.

Its weird to think that out of the first 20 houses in the street, I have been here the longest, I have seen many different neighbours, some became friends, so merely passed through and some still stay here.

I have done a lot of remanicing since I first took action to sell the place, it does seem that it was only a short time ago I would rush home from school, take my dogs out for a walk, mum would make tea, dad would come home from work and then i would go out and play with my friends, but in reality, that was probably about 16-17 years ago, where does the time go?

I am sad to leave, its sort of like the last part of my mum that I had to hold on to, but it had to be done, the house was too big for just little ol’ me and I will always have my memories. The people that have bought it seem nice and the house will be used once more for what it was supposed to, a family home.

Sooooooooooooo 31st July I move in to my new place, woo hoo!!

GI

Ok, you folk that know me, know I beleive this:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC, PHSYCHICS, ESP, UNICORNS, LEVIATION, OUTER BODY EXPERIENCES, ASTRAL PROJECTION AND OTHER SUCH CLAP TRAP!!

So why did you go see Derren Brown on Thursday night I hear you ask. Derren is different. He makes no such claims of “Weejie Wajie”. He puts his skills down to suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship. One of the earliest tricks in the night involved putting a bannana down on the stage and claining that a man in amonkey suit would walk on, take the bananna wand walk off again and only a smnall portion of the audience would see this. This did happen, and my only explantion was that it was done while Derren had everyone focused on the other side of the stage. Derren decided to repeat the trick, but this time the monkey appeared while derren was alking to the otherside of the stage, but the monkey took off his mask to reveal that it was Derren!! Misdirection big style, how did he do it? Easy, Enzo spotted it a mile off. Derren had a whiteboard on stage with him, he carried it over to the side cutrain where the bananna was and thats when he made the switch with a stoog. But as it was very quick, no interpution to his talking and the fact that the stogg was dressed the same and was in similar appearance to Derren, nobody really noticed that it was not him walking back accross the stage with the whiteboard. Clever yes, magic….. NO

I do not plan to give a blow by blow account of all the tricks. I will talk about the big one “Oracle”.

Oracle is based on a Magic trick done is the 70s and is like the creme de la creme of magic tricks when it works. Basically 150 people from the audience write down a question they want answered, they only put there intitials on the envelope and there row. number (not seat number). The trickster can then guess your name, tell you a little about yourself and it all looks magical.

The sacond half of the show all had a 20’s feel to it, Derren himself was dressed like a 20’s magician. Before getting in to Oracle, he did a bit of Magic involving the Ideomotor effect I described when debunking Quija Boards. MLG’s very own Jenny Wan was part of the trick, but as she was not really demonstrating the desired effect (she had to make a pendulum swing just by thinking about it, she has also read his book and is aware of the technique) she was subsitiuted for someone a little more “eagar” in terms of suseptability to continue with the trick.

Anyway during the interval 150 members of the audience did the instructions for Oracle and placed envoleps in the bowl on stage and sure enough Derren told them things about themselves. Again not magic, a mixture of suggestion, Memory, fishing, cold reading, psychology, misdirection and showmanship. It would take ages for me to explain indepth what happened. so I suggest you try and read about it elsewhere.

As amazing as all the tricks were, people need to remember that they are just that.. TRICKS. Not magic. You or I could learn to do it. It would take time, concentration and commitment, but is acheivable. I do worry that depite all Derren’s statements, people may have left the show thinking they witnessed some “weejie Wajie”

GI

There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer

Now I will admit that when I review something I am really into, it is very difficult to remain impartial, this stands true in a lot of my gig reviews and in my reviews of movies by David Fincher, the man behind one of my favorite movies of all time…. Fight Club. But lets not forget Se7en, Panic Room and The Game, + I will add Alien 3 in there as I really like the uncut version (as it makes a little more sense!), ok so he has done a couple of dodgy Music videos, but I can’t fault his movies.

Added bonus about tonight was that I got to catch up with Ajay as I ain’t seen him in a while, but back to the movie.

Excellent…. Nuff said!

Only joking, I did really enjoy it, as with all Fincher movies, it looks like it is supposed to, in the same way Se7en looked very dark, Zodiac looks like it was made in the time period that it was set.

Although Donnie Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal give a decent enough performance as does Mark Ruffalo, my money is on Robert Downey Jr for best performance ever in a movie!!!! After seeing Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and A Scanner Darkly, he is fast becoming a favorite actor of mine as his manic performance (probably just playing himself) in this flick as some light hearted humour to this pretty grim movie.

The film itself is not really about the Zodiac killer, more about how it affects the lives of people involved in the case, similar to how Summer of Sam isn’t really about on David Berkowitz, more about how his killings affect a community. But in my opinion, Zodiac far exceeds Summer of Sam. Ok, so I have a slight fascination with Serial Killers, that doesn’t make me a bad person!!!

At 158 mins, this is a long movie, but if you think your butt-cheeks can take sitting for that long, I cannot recommend this movie highly enough, deff my movie of the year (so far)

GI

‘Puters…. don’t you just hate ‘em sometimes. They hang, they crash, you have to phone help desks and speak to some smarmy git who implies that you are stupid

There is now a solution, get rid of your PC/Laptop/Mac and get an Etch-A-Sketch instead.

There are many sound reasons for doing this:

1. No boot-up problems

2. No technical glitches keeping work from being done.

3. No more wasted time reading and writing e-mails.

4. No more worries about power cuts.

5. Budget savings on upgrades unparalleled.

Frequently Asked Questions from the Etch-A-Sketch Help Desk:

Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has all of these funny little lines all over the screen.
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I turn my Etch-A-Sketch off?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: Undo?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: What is the proper procedure for rebooting my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I delete a document on my Etch-A-Sketch?
A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I save my Etch-A-Sketch document?
A: Don’t shake it.

Say no toand yes

(ok, ok, so you probably heard this joke before, it’s been a slow week!!)

GI