Heed The Call

"I am a soldier. I am a mean machine. This is my joypad. There are many others like it, but this one is mine."

I am starting to fear that Call Of Duty 4 is in fact using subliminal messaging to keep me playing. There has to be something going on for it still sucking the hours out of the day

Something more than just the compulsion to gun down people with an array of meticulously reproduced weaponry whilst mentally shouting "Oh-rah!" or "Jihad!" teams depending.
Something more than joy of the Russian anthem playing when you and your comrades succeeding in blowing up a collection of green boxes. Surely there is something.

Or maybe, just, maybe there is something deeply satisfying about the thought of someone in a different timezone throwing down their pad in frustration as your grenade loops through air and gently falls into their back pocket.

Today's Burning Questions

So I'm wondering: if a skin-job Cylon masturbates furiously enough, could it use its spine as a strobe-light? And if three of them did it whilst wrapped in various colours of Quality Street wrappers, would anybody go to the disco that resulted?

Admittedly A Week Late

How that conversation in the TARDIS should have ended.

Donna: Hang about, why would people still be reading books in the year five billion? Shouldn't this be on a computer pad, or beamed into my brain, or something? At the very least the cover should be, like, a magic eye picture, surely.
Doctor: Well, if you assume constant technological progress, maybe. But there's been plenty of set-backs along the way. Ice ages. Dalek invasions. Uprisings of vicious yet firmly-toned homosexuals.
Donna: Oh, you're kidding!
Doctor: Well, about the last one, yeah. Be good, though, wouldn't it?
Donna: You've been referencing gay culture a lot recently.
Doctor: Doesn't male a lot of sense, does it?
Donna: Not really, no. Leastways, not with your faintly suspicious obsession with nubile young women.
Doctor: I picked you up, didn't I?
Donna: I don't count; I'm famous. As I was saying: why do you have a book from a year in which by rights we should all be faintly unconvincing and ludicrously overused wibbly-wobbly special effects? Wouldn't all those disasters make it a bit tricky to keep Waterstones ticking over.
Doctor: Well, I like to think I play my part. Useful things, time machines. A book here, a book there, eventually you get all the classics back into circulation.
Donna: Classic? It's not even one of her better books. It just happens to have a wasp on the cover, which now I think about it is a hell of a coincidence.
Doctor: You don't think I should be seeding the ruins of post-apocalyptic Earth with mediocre offerings from fairly well-known writers?
Donna: Oh, no; I'm sure they'd definitely prefer that to fridges and penicillin. Did you make sure they got ahold of Digital Fortress, too?
Doctor: Digital what?
Donna: Thank you; my point exactly.

Pause.

Doctor: Ah, Sycorax and Shadow Proclamation, I remember when the one-dimensional, bolshy, middle-class-vision-of-what-the-working-class-are-like were actually attractive. Rather than just picked arbitrarily from a pool of one-trick ponies who are temporary household names?
Donna: Am I bovvered?
Doctor: Thank you; my point exactly.

Finis.

Televison from the land of "Waaa?"

Well, an interesting conversation with the boys in blue later and the family over the road are no longer convinced I'm related to Mr Kruger. Still, probably best turn to the television even if it's like over a day later than promised. (Or maybe it's a day early and I'm living in a different time stream to everyone else, ohhh, no probably just been watching to much 'Lost')

What I actually intend to write about is ,and it's something that means the opening paragraph is vaguely relevant, it's : To Catch A Predator (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10912603/)

Yes, the world's most disturbing reality TV show is coming to Britain! That's right now you too can marvel and wonder at grown men perving over young girls all in the name of serious journalistic programming. There is no exploitation or uncomfortable sensationalism here, oh no!

Oh, wait. There is.

Seriously when you first come across this thing if you first reaction isn't, "Wa, what the..(expletive of personal choice)", than good god, what do you normally watch?

Ok, ok I did quite like that Swag show that ridiculed and harassed petty scouse thieves (don't you just love stereotypes) but this does seem a bit, well, hmm, you know, just that little bit, "Er Tv exec man are you sure this is a good idea?" But what really strikes the fear of be'jesus into hearts here is the thought of the Celebrity Spin-Off Edition.

Just think you could go either way ; entrap a poor fading celeb and relaunch their career through the following criminal prosecution or up your chances of catching as many wrong 'uns as possible by baiting your trap with Dakota Fanning or perhaps more believably Miley Cyrus.

Other possible spin-offs include : To Release A Predator (sponsored by Group 4), Predator Vs. Predator (where those caught are thrown into a pit with a hungry Tiger), Aliens Vs Predator (illegal immigrants are pitted against the sexually deviant for the entertainment of all and the right to not go to that special holiday camp in Cuba) and To Catch A Predator : The Movie ( a children's movie!)

But, seriously, the mind just boggles.

Today, outside the window...

Frankly the suburban scene outside Our Front Room's window is just too, well, normal and really quite dull. (Apart from the time there were three emergency vehicles parked outside but that is a whole different story).

So, from time to time I like to imagine various differing views outside the window, often matched to suit mood. Anything from marching herds of dinosaurs with the bands to go with to the lost city of hotties with the giant chocolate waterfall.

Today it's a bit Dante's fiery sweetie circle of hell. Which, I know doesn't really make any kind of sense but then I find that's quite a rare occurrence, people who stay too long in Our Front Room often end up slightly, er , off kilter reality wise.

Stay tuned as I'm sure some kind of television will be ranted on later, it's only so long you can stare out of the front window before the family across street starts to worry about their daughter's safety.

Well if Star Wars is pulpy fiction...

Why not make it 'Pulp Fiction'? Mace Windu struggles to clear up the streets of Sourthern California; taking on the drug dealers, the gun runners, the corrupt boxers. Life is complicated when a force accident whilst driving sees the Jedi's friend meet a tragic destiny. Will Mace be tempted by the darkside and move to take over Marcel's Empire or will he follow the path of justice and walk the earth, you know, just like David Carradine

Thinking Long-Term

Three intrepid adventurers set out one lunch-time to search for a Christening present.

Danny: I don't even want to be a bloody god-parent.
J-Dawg: Why?
Danny: Because if his parent's cop it I'll have to look after the little brat. And given Daddy Dearest's alcohol intake, it's only a matter of time before his liver explodes.
SS: Surely this nipper in question has other family members? A mother, for example.
J-Dawg: I'd imagine you'd have to scythe through a good many relatives to get to you.
Danny: It could happen.
SS: How, exactly? What kind of family-centric apocalypse are you imagining that this apparently indestructible child can crawl away from?
Danny: They could all die in a plane crash.
J-Dawg: Having left you with the toddler?
Danny: Yeah. And then he'll be bound to get hold of a copy of Jumanji, and it'll be rhinos in the sodding living room.
J-Dawg: Your worst-case scenario is that the child gets hold of a magic board game?
Danny: As a statistician I am highly trained in the field of long term prediction.
SS: Why not just tell your mate the truth? You don't want to commit yourself to his ankle-biter for fear of magical rampaging ungulates.
Danny: It's not just the rhinos. There's also the giant bastard mosquitoes.
SS: Man, I hear you.
Danny: And the massive spiders.
SS: Well, that could go either way. What else is going to take out the over-sized bugs?
Danny: I could attack them using the kiddie as a swatter.
SS: I think nets and sprays are the traditional methods for combating mosquitoes. Rather than, y'know, the child who is now legally your son.
J-Dawg: I'm still confused as to where this enterprising tot has got hold of a fictional board game.
Danny: You saw the film! They threw it in a river!
SS: Not the Wear, though, surely.
J-Dawg: Presumably somewhere in America.
Danny: Fine! New scenario: the whole family get on a plane to the States, which crashes on landing, so we have to go to the funeral there.
SS: Taking the child, too.
Danny: Yes, and possibly having a holiday. You wouldn't pass up a chance like that.
SS: A chance thrown up by the horrific deaths of your closest friend as his entire family save one mystically-attuned prepubescent. I would point out that you keep taking subsets of your previous worse-case scenarios, but then since we're already in the subset where magic exists, what'd be the point?
J-Dawg: You need to stop working on set theory. Or just keep quiet, whatever.
Danny: And then while we're there, he finds the game, and those drums go BOM BOM BOBBABOBBA BOM!
SS: Just so you know, you have a problem with percussion that will cost a fortune in psychiatric bills to correct.
Danny: Then before we know it we've got sociopaths chasing us around the house with automatic weapons.
SS: Isn't that a risk during any trip to the States?
J-Dawg: Political comedy with SpaceSquid.
Danny: We're not actually any closer to deciding what to get, present-wise.
SS: Given the current topic of conversation I'd suggest implanting a bomb inside Junior's torso that detonates the moment his father snuffs it.
J-Dawg: Tricky to wrap.
Danny: We'd need a trigger, too.
SS: The trigger's no problem, we just hand it to the proud father inside a pint of beer.
Danny: And the bomb?
SS: Similarly hidden within, erm, alcoholic breast milk?
J-Dawg: Alcoholic breast-milk? How the Hell would we even-
Danny: SOLD!

Exeunt our heroes, searching for drunken students in the early stages of post-natal depression.

Inappropriate Merchandise No. 1

Having spent so much time yesterday deconstructing the myriad ways in which Monopoly is completely without merit, and why its legion of fans are entirely devoid of critical faculties, I began to consider how one might go about fractionally decreasing the games level of total worthlessness. Several attempts have been made over the years to repackage the game in an attempt to fool people into believing it has ceased to be a foul-smelling bubo of a pastime. Some are merely cosmetic, with alternate locations (my parents decision to buy me the Middlesbrough version of the game is probably the greatest unexplained event since the Tunguska Blast, if I ever get the urge to buy up Teesside University it will only be so I can burn it to the ground), others make fractional changes to the rules (special congratulations are in order when you can make building Star Destroyers boring as all hell). All were uniformly guff-filled, pestilent abominations masquerading as entertainment.

As far as I can see, there’s only one way to transform this catastrophic non-event of a game into something halfway decent, and that’s to set it in Baltimore.

Think about the possibilities! Instead of properties, you have corners. You still get houses, of course, but run-down ones which may or may not have bodies stashed in there by that bounder Marlowe. Instead of those boring Community Chest (“Also known as your mother!”) spaces, you could be required to draw special Clay Davis “Shhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit” cards which crush your spirit with unreasonable demands from City Hall (all the Chance cards involve your mates getting shot, or stabbed, or addicted to heroin, obviously). When the cops send you randomly to jail, it will no longer seem like an arbitrary game mechanic and more like a biting satire of a corrupt system (obviously you have a dangerously high chance of being strangled in the big house before you have time to role a double). We can replace some of the less relevant playing pieces with a broken soldier and hooker-packed cargo container. And lastly, each time you pass Go, you lose $200 as Omar pops up to brutally shaft you (if you’ll pardon the expression). The damn thing still won’t end, obviously, but this is no longer bad game design, this is a poignant commentary on the hopelessness of life in Baltimore. After all, the game never ends, aight?

Authors note: we recommend you play the game heavily drunk, and settle all disputes with extreme physical violence. Buy now and receive a complementary McNulty curly-pube wig.

(Oh, and anyone claiming Baltimore Monopoly and Middlesbrough Monopoly are the same thing can piss off right now. Baltimore is in the grip of a heroin epidemic, whereas Middlesbrough is all about the child prostitution).

(Picture courtesy of Senior Spielbergo).

Tonight's Viewing

Lost : minor spoilers possible

This just gets stranger and stranger plus the conjecture that answers are coming is a total bold faced lie. That or the answers have come and gone leaving behind the mental equivalent of a house trashed by a hundred unwanted house guests.

Anyway in this installment we focus on Davy Crockett gone mad Locke, the inexplicably large Hurley and Skynet in human form Ben as they look for the mysterious Jacob and his holiday cabin.

Now, they do find a cabin, it does not contain Jacob but does have Claire sulking around in the corner and at no point is any evidence provided that this whole Jacob thing isn't some kind of group jungle fever session brought on by eating a few two many over-ripe pineapples.

Elsewhere life on the boat goes from bad to worse for everyone. The marine have been savaged by Smokie Boy, Michael is locked in his room (surely not helping him to fix the engine anytime soon), the Captain finally has a fatal failure in his chain of command (well for him anyway) and the poor doctor gets a throat-ectemy largely because fate has already confusingly declared him dead two weeks ago.

Still as Ben says Fate is a fickle bitch and as the ship's doc will attest so are those writers.

Next week : Nothing will be resolved, not a thing, nothing will gone to end except perhaps the viewers patience.

Liking This Makes You An Idiot No.1: Monopoly

It is, I think, a fundamental rule of the universe that you shouldn’t create board games based around professions. You cannot make a board game that is more interesting than the occupation it’s based upon. Can’t be done. Not without a fairly extensive degree of tarting up, at least. Archaeology got a lot more attractive once Lost Valley Of The Dinosaurs threw erupting volcanoes and easily disturbed swamp monsters into the mix, for example. A game in which players complete to be the first to secure the right to dig in Giza, then roll dice to discover exactly which pieces of Third Dynasty pottery are sifted from the sand is unlikely to be a hot-seller. Similarly, Escape From Atlantis was a hit because sea monsters were forever ruining your shit, not because the logistics of evacuating an island population are particularly gripping.

Still, if you are hell-bent on representing an occupation through the medium of plastic counters without having the common courtesy to chuck in rampaging lizards, you at least have to make that occupation of passing interest in itself. Cluedo just about gets by on the fact that generations of exposure to Agatha Christie has left us intrigued by murder mystery at the genetic level. Risk works fine because it simulates the invasion of France without all the myriad difficulties such an act would require in the real world (how do you scrape together the money to get you, four mates, and your butter knives on the Eurostar to Paris?). I still wouldn’t object to either game including zombie hordes or alien space-fleets (“Overlord Zog in the Torment Zone with the Quartellian Doom Ray”), but all that death and violence and discussions in ballrooms is just about sufficient to hold my attention.

But how did 750 million people get suckered into thinking landlords are a good basis for a board game? As an actual career it must be bad enough, the constant cycle of buy house, spruce up house, lend out house, repair house seems so mind-numbingly tedious that treating your tenants as barely hominid lab experiments is probably the only upside. Certainly all of my landlords have taken this approach, and yet it is baffling excluded from Monopoly. Instead your greatest triumph comes from discovering that the game has arbitrarily decided it’s your birthday. This sudden revelation of your own date of birth is the single high-point of the entire experience, unless you get a strange kick out of a “justice” system that comes straight from Franco’s Spain: arrested at whim, then randomly either allowed to leave or forced to bribe the officials. Kafka would be proud, although he might never got any writing done at all if he’d happen to land on the wrong square and forced to sit out eternity waiting to roll a double.

All of which is fine, in theory. Board games are often played due to a sense of duty rather than an expectation of enjoyment (every Christmas my family resolves to grind through Pictionary in the certain knowledge that my brother will accuse everyone of cheating and that my father will be too drunk to hold a pencil, though not to drunk to call all and sundry a bunch of pricks). Monopoly might not be quite so bad if there was any ever suggestion that the damn thing might end. I have never finished a game of Monopoly once. Not ever (well, once, but only because I was banker and deliberately funnelling spare funds to one player in order to expedite his crushing victory; I didn‘t get invited back again). We always just essentially gave up when enough people had quit the board in order to return to their lives. Victory was inevitably claimed by whomever happened to be the last one at the table, which makes the game at least tangentially related to Russian Roulette, though if De Niro and Walken had been forced into rounds of Monopoly in that POW camp they would all have been desperate to get into the underwater cage just so that they could escape the wretched game (though in fairness if the VC had replaced the “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards with “Rot Here Forever, Filthy Americans”, it would finally squash the idea that the Commies didn’t have a sense of humour). Even when someone finally began to skirt the edge of bankruptcy, some generous colleague would swoop in with extra dough, purely to “keep the game going”. It was like watching Estragon and Vladimir decide that it would take Godot even longer to find them if they were to hide in a goddamn tree. I would have thought it fairly axiomatic that any activity, no matter how pleasant, has to end at some point. If that’s true of awesome films or energetic sex, then surely it must be the case for pretending to own a hotel on Old Kent Road. In other words, not only is the game unrelentingly dull and of potential use as an alternative to water-boarding, but the people it attracts are idiots unable to grasp even the most basic elements of human psychology. When I’m finally sent screaming to Hell, it will be to find Satan himself waiting for me with a Monopoly board and an infinite pile of childish fake money, grinning like a loon as we play and shouting out "Also known as your mother" each time I have to take a Community Chest card.

I bet he won’t even let me be the car.

Make Morris Mayor!

Arkham is a city under siege. Mayor Peabody would have you believe that street theft, burglaries, and mysterious disappearances have been reduced. Yet the Arkham Advertiser tells a different story. How can we enjoy our peaceful lives when at any time we may be jostled by uncouth adolescents, or disembowelled by a Dimensional Shambler? Every late-night bus trip could become a journey into terror when your driver attacks you with a enchanted blade, or turns out to be a Deep One, or something.

Citizens of Arkham : the time to fight back is now! A vote for me is an endorsement of my four point plan for reclaiming the streets! I shall:

• Work with members of the local community to achieve a 40% reduction in SAN loss, along with a corresponding 20% drop in random monster attacks and ritual organ-removal.
• Introduce tougher immigration policies for the following groups:
  i) mind-controlling insects;
  ii) time-travelling killer dogs;
  iii) troublesome colours. By which I mean those “out of space”, rather than the blacks;
  iv) the blacks.
• Overhaul city education, ending our over-reliance on the soft subjects such as English and Maths, and instead concentrating on vital life skills, including Spot Hidden, Library Use, and Not Splitting Up To Search Old Man Bishop’s Eighteenth-Century Lair.
• Lower taxes to stimulate the economy, therefore protecting the livelihood of valuable local businesses, such as sanitariums, funeral homes, and the purveyors of Elder Signs.
  

Ignore your lying incumbent (even though he is not a Serpent Person from ancient Valusia... as far as I know)! Deny his lick-spittle officials! Angrily wave away any statistics you might find that disagree with your own prejudices! Only I, Morris Smithson, can save you now!

A young Smithson, with fellow members of the Arkham Historical Society. Of those photographed, four were tortured into madness by Moon beasts, two ended up trapped on the hideous Plateau of Leng, “Stiffy” Williams was murdered by a hyper-intelligent obtuse angle from the Andromeda Spiral, and the man at the top left was lynched after we discovered his grandpa was a Mexican.

Here come the rants

Ok for the first in a series of rantings and ravings on what bugs us in the world of Our Front Room prepare for some geekery, Yes that's right the first installment is Trek based but I'm sure something else will be along soon for all the cool kids.


Those who of you who haven't seen the Enterprise episode featuring the Borg and care enough to have it spoilered look away ....now!

Yes the Borg turn in Enterprise, not just any Borg, but Borg from the future, Borg more advanced than any others we've seen. Said Borg get onto the ship and set about doing what they do best, assimilating the crap out of everything.

Now what annoys about the episode is the 'low-tech' Enterprise crew manage not only to quickly develop phasers that counter act the Borg ability to adapt (remember you used to be only to get any with shooting these guys once before you weapon was less use than a stick, however I remember drones falling down all over the shop)

But also Phlox (is that how you spell it) actually comes up with a cure for assimilation! (I shall be silent on how dumb that is)

Then after the Borg decide they are apparently no match for the Enterprise gang (after signally the collective by the way) they flee back home but back to this era home not the era they actually come from, so surely they advance the progress of the Borg collective by hundreds of years.

Anyway we get to the end and I think this has been absolute guff but one line about classifying the story might go some to saving it, but no. Nothing. Absolutely no explanation as to why Picard and his cronies have no idea what's hit them when the have a tete-a-tete with the Borg down the line. It seems no-one bothered to keep a record of this incredibly dangerous enemy at all.

Also how come the collective does not appear to know who the Feds are? They after downloaded the history of mankind like two hundreds years ago. The federation forgetful maybe I can buy just a tiny, little bit. The Borg as absent minded air-heads, hhmm don't think so.

The spoilerphobic can look again and just rest assured that I think the Enterprise Borg episodes is one of Trek's most shamefully inept and downright pathetic moments as they once again make a mockery of one the fan favourite species. I am done. For now.

An Assassain, His Victim, His Master And Their Excuses

I've recently been playing through the interactive-media entertainment Assassin's Creed and I have a few observations.

Each time you off a target you are thrown into a thrilling roof-top chase across the city to avoid the guards whose boss you've just introduced to the after-life. Now, I say thrown into a chase what I mean is your are gently pushed.

That is because you first undertake a moral debate with the unfortunate recipient of the pointy end of your sword/dagger/knife. They will claim they were only trying to do good, they are no different from you, they are simply misunderstood - a bit like when Tony Blair left office. These discussions often drag on and leave you wishing there was a 'Smother' button but just when you are really getting a little bored of these, about halfway through the game you are thrown a curve ball. Yes, that's right, one of the targets admits he had it coming. All the others try to reason the fact they are Mother Teresa with Goebbels's PR but this guy, this guy simply states he was an utter twonk and frankly needed his limbs forcibly rearranged.
So taken aback by this I forgotten to run when he finally sprung his mortal coil. Three sharp prods from the city guard later however and I was back to my deadly ways.

Another thing I find a little bit odd is I repeatedly told that I shouldn't be killing people who have nothing to do with my mission but the Assassin brotherhood is more than happy for me to butcher my way through twenty dozen soldiers and guards (who are just doing their job) if I manager to save one lousy common thief. You begin to wonder if you are on the right side of homicidal lunatic as you stare down at the remains of the district sheriff's department as the lowlife you've just saved from a trip to prison thanks you by providing a bunch of lawless thugs to berate people in the street.

And don't get me started on my Master, he's clearly up to something I don't like the smell of. For a start his guards register a threat level when I stand next to them - I supposed to be on their side, I'm was forced to kill one of my home town's soldiers because he apparently objected to me riding a horse faster than a crippled old man can walk. I'm betting now if I was allowed just to quietly off my Master and go home it is going to save an awful lot of trouble further down the line.

But whilst I may moan the game itself is quite good run as you leap from roof to roof and give people interesting new holes in their bodies. It is one where you wished the designers had show a little more imagination in the missions involved in 'investigating' the targets but then it's probably that they were distracted by Jade Raymond. After all she is a girl and everthing.

See http://www.jade-raymond.com/bio.php for those of you who need to check what a 'girl' is

As for the future set sections, well, I just pretend those don't exist.

OFR vs TV No. 2

Following the inexplicable resurrection of lycra-heavy cotton bud-fest Gladiators (will the traditional Murmillo face-offs once again be replaced with bitch-fights within hamster balls, I wonder), we present suggestions for alternative combinations of light-hearted family entertainment and humanity’s blood-stained past.

Rape ‘N’ Pillage

Each week a different scenic village on the East Coast is chosen for the scene of a brutal raid by two teams of cider-addled bikers in animal skins and swaying dangerously atop hastily-constructed longboats. Points will be awarded for bloodshed, volume, and collateral damage to patios and rock fountains. In tonight’s episode one team gets off to an early lead by choosing to pillage on a street-by-street basis, but rape in alphabetical order.

Presented by: An inappropriately exuberant Brian Blessed and a heavily sweating John Leslie.

The Tenth Crusade

In which the current Knights of the British Empire are forced to sing for their supper when the BBC ships them to the Holy Land and films them attempting to sack Arsuf armed only with slippers and flasks of tea, plus OBE’s to use as throwing stars. In the first week Sir Ian McKellen meets a sticky end in a deluge of boiling tar, Sir Ben Kingsley throws a strop over a sub-standard consignment of Greek Fire, and Sir Sean Connery is drawn and quartered by whooping townsfolk.

Presented by: Sir Alan Sugar, spared from front-line duty in favour of decrying the oncoming Saracen horse-archers as “a load of old toot”.

Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Tenko

Take a trip through time to the cheeky days of Japanese forced labour camps. In each episode female members of the Great British public compete in a variety of luridly-coloured games loosely based upon railway construction and the burial of friend’s corpses. Prizes include a thimble of rice, an hour without beatings, and the desperate hope of liberation by the Allies by series’ end.

Presented by: A pair of offensively yellowed-up Geordies, who continually pull their eyes into slits as they bellow “Finish buirding bunker warrs of led foam, or I punish!”

Human Wars

OK, so the inevitable computer take-over of the planet isn’t a historical time period just yet, but if it’s good enough for Primeval, it’s good enough for us. How about we prepare for our ultimate destiny as bar-coded underlings by staging Human Wars, in which Z-list celebrities and unpopular politicians are transformed through cortical stimulation to lobotomised flesh-puppets and forced to fight to the death by a selection of computers, past and present. In the pilot episode, David Cameron and Gordon Ramsay are compelled to assault each other’s genitals with their teeth by WOPR and a Commodore 64.

Presented by: A ZX Spectrum soldered onto the bleeding stump of Craig Charles’ neck, its rubber keys twitching with sinister glee.

I'm not a crazed killer!

I've been playing GTA IV for a least a week or so now and I've not yet turned into the crazed killer of the defenceless everyday guys in the street that the main-stream media promised me I would.

The kind lady from Media March said the game was dangerously unsuitable even for grown up minds let alone the poor little kiddies who have it bought for then by grandma for their seventh birthday. But I've not yet felt a compulsion to kill a real person, well apart form those which I normally get during the course of day-to day life every day of my life.

I was promised physchosis.

I want my money back.

That or a subscription to P.A.G.A.N (I will also need some goat trousers before I attend the first meeting)

Cylons are good at football

Again the spoilerphobes should look away.But

really if you're this far behind what are you doing?

But has anyone noticed how suspiciously like Chief Tyrol, Chelsea's German midfield general Micheal Ballack looks?

The Cylons have a plan. That plan is to come to Earth and win the Champions Leaque and World Cup and to crush the spirit of humanity by never ever missing a penalty.