Buffets make a good party

Unfortunately it looks like Gran Reid may be in hospital for another while yet. We were over in Hairmyres once again this evening. I took her raisins this time, but they were rejected. Lemon cakes - nope. But she did take the yakult. Never tried it yet. Considered nicking a bottle before I gave her the pack of twelve but I thought that may look slightly dodgy. She'd probably have had something to say about that. Apparently Princess Anne is visiting the hospital on Wednesday so she may get a royal visit. I'm pretty sure the Princess is not just visiting Gran Reid. She must have a ribbon to cut somewhere... but you never know. It's amazing the amount of people Gran Reid knows. A royal engagement.
Talking of engagements, Ka and myself spent our Valentines evening on Saturday at Stuart and Michelle's great wee engagement party in Blantyre. It turned out to be quite a fun wee night as Ka and myself sat and hummed and hawed over the different tunes that were played from the over enthusiastic DJ who, like the rest of his kin, had a strange inability to speak clearly into a microphone without sounding like a garbled Scottish version of Westwood (the DJ, not the East Kilbride neighbourhood where I grew up). Plus the party had a great buffet. It was especially welcome on Saturday as Ka and myself had not eaten since breakfast so as soon as the DJ gave the announcement (from which we just about made the word open out) Ka just managed to refrain me from jumping from my seat. As it happened I wouldn't have had a chance anyway as we were seated at the other end of the hall and, as we discovered, Stuart and Michelle have some very hungry relatives. As the queue shrank I did manage to venture up though a get two plates full for our table. The pakora and marshmallows were great. The buffet makes a good party. After the obligatory Loch Lomond Ka and myself headed out for the taxi home, leaving the party to the chaos that had erupted between two groups of friends and a girl collapsing from 'exhaustion' on the dancefloor.
Much to the annoyance of Ka's pal Tracey, Mr Russell Brand cancelled his scottish dates over the weekend, leaving the girls without a horribly loud, comedian to ogle over on sunday night so had to make do with a night on the tiles leaving me, alone, in blissful quiet. A quiet night infront of the box watching Lost and the first episode in the new series of Damages. Not sure if Damages needed a second series yet but time will tell...

An expert 'stuff' gatherer

Scone day once again and the weekend is here at last. Although the weather is pretty awful outside, the usual rain falling from the usual grey sky, I'm feeling optimistic for a good weekend. Will be busy tomorrow aiding my Dad in emptying a garage full of stuff. All sorts of 'stuff'. 'Stuff' that had gathered over the past year or so since the last time we emptied it of stuff. It's wonderful how 'stuff' gathers. Ka would say I'm an expert 'stuff' gatherer. All the garage stuff includes shelving, old furniture, washing machines, dish washers, kitchens and basically pretty much anything else which is preventing him for using his garage the way he would want to ie to park his car. He could always have a garage sale but I don't think he'd find a lot of people in Chapelton wanting to part cash for half an Ikea futon frame and other such treasures.
Before this my first, and probably only, sales on ebay will be ending tonight. Two seperate tickets for supposed comedian Russell Brand. One of Ka's friends asked me to sell them for her as she does not have an ebay account and presumably had no intention of opening one. It was all very new to me as I'd never sold anything before and it took more than one attempt to get right. For some reason my first attempts failed - something to do with busy servers or some such. On the last look in they each had a grand total of one bid. Well, at least I'll sell them for something... just, not a lot. But then they are Russell Brand tickets, perhaps his recent 'crisis' has had more of an effect on his gig sales than I had previously thought it would. Or maybe it's just my sales technique... I may have had more luck selling them at a garage sale.

Black and white

Weather. Always a good conversation piece for folk when your struggling for subjects to talk about. On my way to work today it very much felt like winter was most definately here. The sky was clear with only the occasional strip of cloud hiding the luminous pale blue hanging overhead. These are the kind of winter mornings I like though. Freezing, but light and clear with the sunlight streaming through the tree tops over the edge of Calderglen. The sunlight in stark contrast with the cold temperatures. It is not as cold as it will get though. Today it has been around 5 degrees celcius but tomorrow the weather report is saying it will be more in the region of 2 degrees celcius but with less cloud. It is strange how I feel more at home in the winter weather than in the sweltering heat of a good summer. Perhaps I was an eskimo in a former life... or a penguin. According to religions, such as Hinduism or Buddhism, a human is supposed to be a higher form of life than the animal which would mean I must have been a good penguin in the former life. Maybe I caught lots of fish and shared them out to all my penguin pals. Not everything's black and white though.
The BBC Trust have finally got round to giving their final decision on the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross nonsense stating there was no justification for the errors that were made in the production of the programme concerned. Really? No way! Who pays these people? Oh, yeah, that's right. US. It's been over three weeks for them to state the obvious. As the 'innocent' female concerned said on the news tonight - we are all so bored of this story. Why is it still in the news then? As I said when it first blew up in the gutter press three days after it actually happened - get over it. There are more important things to concern ourselves over. Getting Ross back on the telly! I've got to go out tonight now because there's no Jonathan Ross on!
Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe had a great ten minute piece on it, on Tuesday night, in his usual entertaining, sarcastic, indomitable way. The guy is a genius. Another guy with a similar humour is the brilliant Jack Dee whom I just happened to catch getting interviewed on This Morning yesterday. Not that I usually watch this Morning or anything... I was just finishing my breakfast tea with a bacon buttie. He was talking about his new series of Lead Balloon, his drama comedy series on BBC Two. Regretfully, I've not caught any of this series yet but it looks pretty good. May have to check it out.
The new car is flaimin' filthy. How come dirt on a car shows up more on black paintwork? You'd think it would be the opposite wouldn't you? I always thought it would be a nightmare owning a white car. JP says it's the salt on the road. Salt on the road? Haven't even seen any salt spreaders on the roads yet, firing it's load of grit at your windscreen. Soon we'll be scraping the ice off the windows and getting high on de-icers again. Could the snow be on it's way?

Brand of intolerance

What a load of nonsense this whole thing with Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand is. Okay, they were being stupid, okay they shouldn't have left the daft messages on the answering machine, okay their egos may have got the better of them but is it worth all this uproar? Are they solely the ones to blame? They are both always well known for their mouthing off after all. Ross on his talk show forever making his interviewees squirm on that uncomfortable looking sofa of his and as for Brand, well, don't we all know by now what to expect from the ex drug addict, comedic nutter now? Generally I'm not that much of a fan of Russell Brand's, but I do know what happened and as far as I can tell he just pushed a joke too far, as he usually does and got caught up in the moment of supposed hilarity and garbage talking. Nothing he isn't used to, and nothing the rest of us are not used to with him. Same with Ross. Yes, they did go too far in leaving messages on, lets not forget, a comedy actor's, answering machine but they apologised and sent flowers privately soon after, before it was all picked up by the press. The mass media and press have led a witch hunt for the two of them as soon as they've all got wind of it and as usual blown it out of all proportion. It just seems that as soon as an opportunity arises to attack the good old BBC the commercial news channels and newspapers go wild with it. Losing his one or two nights on Radio 2 is no big deal to Brand. He resigned because he doesn't need the hassle not because of any guilt trip. He's never off Channel 4 and is now in pretty successful Hollywood movies for gawds sake. He doesn't even need the radio 2 gig. Ross, of course, is in a different position in that his BBC work is his life but if they were to sack him he would easily get work elsewhere and immediately pull the viewers in for some other channel. The buck should stop with the editors and producers who passed the programme in the first place. Did they not sense that the joke had went too far and needed a little tweeking on the editing table? The news report yesterday showed a crowd of protestors outside the BBC moaning, not one of them under sixty. That kind of says it all as far as I'm concerned.

Missing something

Seen Tropic Thunder today and was quite disappointed. It was enjoyable, yes, and funny at times, of course, but overall not worth the hype and fantabulous reviews it has been getting from some. Great cast, with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Junior, Steve Coogan, Nick Nolte and Tom Cruise and all very good but was hardly laugh out loud for me... Tom Cruise plays a belter and Robert Downey Junior’s Kirk Lazarus is certainly one of the best things about the movie, and one of the strangest, funniest things of any recent comedy but the rest is as patchy as most of Ben Stiller's supposed comedies. There were some great lines though and great scenes but patchy none the less. We did see a trailer for 'Quantum of Solace' before it though which looks pretty cool. Maybe I just didn't get Tropic Thunder. Maybe I just need to watch it again, I certainly missed some of what Downey Junior was saying in his strange voice.
Am I the only person in this world that dislikes Nickelback? I suspect I'm missing something there as well. I hate that Rockstar song so much that every time I hear it on that DFS sofa advert I have to walk out the room. I can't stand the sight of those old people miming to it whilst dancing and cavorting around DFS' supposedly fantastic sofa designs. Bring back Martin kemp for gawds sake! He was cheesy, yes, but safe. Nickelback are a horrendously formulaic 'rock' rip off with utter nonsense for lyrics. Purely, distinctly, average and always have been. Okay, I've not heard the latest album, All the Right Reasons, in it's entirety but the new album's singles never being off the radio and now on furniture adverts is driving me to dislike the album before I've even heard it.
Started watching Russell Brand's stand up comedy there on 4 but got bored and came through to my trusty Mac. Missing something again...

Radio ga ga

It is BBC Radio 2 week in the work this week. It's the really old stuff just now. We have a radio rota in place for the office which includes one week of Radio One, one week of Radio Clyde, one for Real radio and one for Radio 2. The two Scottish channels are, by far, the worst. When they are not playing adverts advertising tiles, they play the same songs over and over again with the most annoying Scottish people they could possibly find, as DJs. I used to dislike listening to Radio 2 in work but now I consider it heaven compared to these scottish channels. Although it does go a bit too old after seven o'clock. Up until then you have Steve Wright in the afternoon and the nutty, over enthusiastic, Chris Evans. Chris Evans is great to listen to. A lot of people do find him annoying but I would have to disagree. He's easily one of the most entertaining DJs on radio at the moment. I used to quite enjoy his tv shows and he was always a bit crazy like the moment the Big Breakfast cameras caught him snogging Kim Wilde when they came back from an ad break. It was half seven in the morning and he was on the pull already?! Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, Mark Radcliffe and Dermot O'Leary are also on 2 regularly now after the BBC obviously decided to try and raise it's popularity alongside Radio 1. Most of these guys are usually a good laugh especially Russell Brand, whose insane babblingly is always entertaining. Another one that some folk find annoying but as you may have already realised from reading this, I'm no stranger to insane babbling myself! Chris Moyles babbles on Radio 1 as well, of course, but sometimes he goes a bit too far especially with some of the folk that phone him up to play his stupid quiz, Carpark Catchphrase. He ends up being plain verbally abusive to some of them. But then if your stupid enough to phone up for a quiz with no prizes whatsoever I suppose you probably deserve some abuse. It's often half the entertainment anyway. Real Radio has the worst case of idiotic phonecallers though. A football phone in that literally makes your ears bleed. Numbskulls phoning up, shouting down the phone about football teams which they could run far better in their own, often very loud, opinions. Thankfully, it's not Real Radio week.