Ahoy! Me Hearties!

Ahoy, ye scurvy dogs!

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day, which means poor English grammar and syntax, arrrr...

So, a quick lesson:

Ahoy! - "Yo!"
Avast! - "Check it out!"
Aye! - "Yes."
Arrr! - "That's right!" (often confused with arrrgh...)
Arrrgh! - "I'm VERY miffed."

Pirates drink tankards of ayel (ale) or rum, eat without using cutlery, don't brush their teeth (they rinse with the aforementioned ale or rum, and use dirks or boucans as dental floss) and personal hygiene is a personal choice rarely taken - unless tossed overboard, and few pirates could actually swim.

As a bit o' history, the pirate speech may have been heavily influenced by Cornish and the West Country dialects. Like a lot of dialects, distance and time changed the language

ITLAPD was created in 1996 by Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket, alias, John Baur and Mark Summers.

Go and check out the ten top pick up lines on ITLAPD for inspiration.

Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Couch potato

I spent most of yesterday on the couch - and enjoyed it.

The morning was for Anime - Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon and Blood Plus - but the afternoon? Oh, yeah, baby! A Battlestar Galactica marathon that went into the night and finished with the direct-via-satellite final movie-length episode.

I freely confess I watched the original series as a kid and to see Richard Hatch as a... well, was he a villain, or was he simply representing a lot of people in the fleet? Sure, his methods sucked and he was a master manipulator, but he'd fought the Cylons for a long time. I guess what mattered was the way in which he tried to enforce his ideology. With Zarek and Adama so set in their ways, conflict - major conflict - was bound to happen and end with one of them dead.

What I liked about the series was the continuity in the personalities. Not one deviated. Action, reaction. They were who they were. Some characters grew, some did not - just like real life.

And the end suited the series: well planned in advance and a well executed finish. No, oh-the-series-is-ending-we-must-think-of-something! The seeds were well sown in the previous series.

I'm gonna hafta watch it again.

So. Say. We. All.

Um... No.

I unashamedly love my superheroes.

As a kid, I'd sneak my brothers Batman and Superman. They were so cool!

Once I could afford them, I'd buy X-men, Justice League with the occasional Avengers thrown in if the cover or series appealed to me.

There's something about them that interests me. On an intellectual level, you could look at the good versus evil, of people trying to accept they are different and fit in, or that the world simply needs heroes, to know that someone extraordinary is looking out for them.

Or it could be I just love the anatomically incorrect drawings of buff men and overly endowed women... Nah.

So. I've been buying comics for years. When the movies came along, I, with other fans, awaited the casting of them. And approved. Except for one.

I loved the Spiderman movies, the original Superman flicks and yes, Supergirl though the effects were a little dodgy. The first two X-men were great, the third veered so far away from the comics that I've yet to convince myself to buy it. Fantastic Four is up there, though Daredevil and Electra were meh.

Now I've just seen Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr. is terrific but there's a problem. No, it's not Gwennie Paltrow - though she could have put a little more emotion into the piece - it's the very end.

I admire Samuel L. Jackson and I love his movies but there is no way, not now, not ever, I will every think of him as Nick Fury. No. Nick is a white dude, with grey sideburns, a buzz cut and rrriiipppling pectorals (he also looks tasty in a skin suit). He's a testament to middle-aged buffity-buffness; he's not Sammy L.

If there's going to be an Iron Man 2, someone is going to have to rethink that little piece of casting nonsense.

Last play

Don't bother me: Omega Games turned up a coupla days early with Gale Force.

Huzzah!!

I'll let you know what I think...

Housewife 49

I saw the most amazing drama last night, called Housewife 49. It's based on the Second World War diaries of Nella Last, the wife of a terse, insensitive man and mother to two, less than ideal sons; one, just as carelessly cruel as his father, the other who shuns her after his 'friend' is killed during the war.

Victoria Wood - better known for her comic roles - stars as Nella Last and is brilliant in the role. Nella begins writing for the Mass-Observation, a project that examined the lives of 'ordinary' people and finds an outlet for expressing the feelings she can't share with her husband.

The astonishing thing about this movie is that you never see a war reel, never see anything of the war really, only the consequences; in lives lost suddenly and more importantly, how the war affected those who survived, in particular, Nella's favoured son, Cliff.

Victoria Wood goes from a woman who is lost within the confines of her marriage and the times, to someone filled with energy and hope as she helps with the local branch of the Women's Voluntary Service. She is no longer alone, no longer isolated in her marriage. As a glimpse into the ordinary lives of people in England during the war, it's a real eye-opener.

I didn't think I'd like it much, but I was riveted from the beginning; by Woods and by the storyline. The stoicism, the grief and the inability of John to communicate effectively with Nella is perfectly played, especially as the film goes on, you see him struggling to come to terms with his wife's new found independence. The world has changed and he doesn't know how to deal with it.

Stephanie Cole as Mrs Waite, head of the Women's Voluntary Service, is as formidable as she is progressive. It's easy to see the genesis of the 'liberation' of women in Housewife 49, and if you get the chance to see it, it's worth a look.

Orright then?

So I went off and saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix today.

Unlike the critics, I enjoyed it, and I must note, that a lot of the reviewers confessed to not having read the book. My question is: why did they review the movie, if they had no idea about the nuances, or the subplots, or the clues?

This is why I rarely read reviews or take their comments under advisement.

Although... after watching the film, I wondered how the series would fair as movies under the guidance of Peter Jackson. Hmmm? But that's another argument.

With all the films, a lot had to be cut; otherwise they'd be four or more hours long. I have no problem with the lengths as they stand.

Yes, it's a darker film, but so is the book. Yes, it's filled with angst, but so are most teenagers and it pisses me off that so many reviewers failed to get those points - probably because they haven't read the damn book and they don't have teenagers.

I, like the rest of JK Rowlings fans, am waiting with anticipation for the final book released on Saturday. It's gonna be a bunfight to get the book, I just know it, but I'm sharpening up the elbows to forge my way through the crowds.

If you want something extra, go here. It will give you something to think about.