Twilight

Oh dear god. What have I done? I've started a blog post about the movie Twilight. Kill me know.

My flatmate, the sweet thing she is, convinced me to go see the newest movie in the 'saga', called New Moon, with her last night. I reluctantly agreed, and was looking forward to at least attending the movies, which I haven't done in ages.

Many of you LOVE the books/movies. And by LOVE, I mean LOVE. LOVE in capital, bold-faced, italicized font. LOVE in 72pt font. I got it. It's okay. I have that kind of love for other things in life... Twilight, I fear, holds no love for me. The first movie was painful. The acting was painful and the story felt juvenile to me.

I'm happy to report that even though this new movie contained all the poor acting and angst-ridden teenage drama that I'm sad to admit I don't relate to anymore (BUT I DON'T WANT TO GROW UP!), it was more action packed and had a larger budget, which was more pleasing to the eye.

Why is this relevant, you ask? Well, the point of all those well-thought-out paragraphs above was to get to this point. Sitting through the movie and eating an entire bag of candy from Poundland was so that I could direct you to this video:

What is this, a TWILIGHT video? Well... sort of.

Remember Mystery Science Theatre 300? If you don't, SHAME ON YOU! If you do, then there's no further explanation required. The lovely minds/voices from the original series (some of them), have reformed to make Rifftrax, which do the same thing MST3K did with old, crappy movies, but to current, crappy movies. And above is a taste of what they've done to the first Twilight movie. It's pretty humorous. And I think you should watch it.

I won't, however, encourage you to see Twilight: New Moon. I'll leave that life-altering decision up to you.

SkiFree

Many of you read XCKD and love it as much as I do. Many of you don't read it and you should. Go here and read it. Many others don't read it and really then, 99% of it will be irrelevant. Either way, seeing as I clocked many an hour playing SkiFree as a child, I enjoyed their comic strip.

I also remember, as many of you will, the sheer terror that was that %*&#!@ abominable snow monster that got you EVERY TIME!

I never know about hitting "F" until I downloaded it many months ago. Now I always beat the snowman.

If you would like to either catch up on a childhood game or learn a new game, go here and download SkiFree. Many many hours of wasted time await you.

P.S. Season premiere of QI last night was awesome. Everything I wanted it to be. Now if I could only get some tickets to see it live my life would be complete. I'll settle on the BBC iplayer for now to keep me afloat.

QI

In celebration of a new series of QI (Series G), I offer you this preview of the new series:

OMFG. Can't wait another 2 hours for this show to start. Time. Fly. By. FASTER!
In the meantime, enjoy some other QI clips I pulled off of YouTube:

Walking in the Park

Even though the weather turned lovely this morning and made me feel utterly guilty about wanting to sleep in and stay indoors, I pretty much did just that.

I took one small detour down to the park to feed the birds. While the weather looked lovely, the wind whipping off the lake was quite cold, so I didn't last very long. It was quite windy, too, blowing the pigeons around and such.

I'm back at work again tomorrow, for the long stretch, so this will be it for "taken by Leanna" photos for another week or so. Although I will continue to post other things as I find them.

Enjoy.

Snow

I just giggled to myself at the following information:

The average temperature in London, England, for the month of December is between 2 and 6. The record low is -6.

...

-6.

Record.

To compare... the record low in Calgary for any January is -46.

...

And the average daily temperature is between -4 and -16.

Giggle.

More fun posts later, just had to share this fun fact.

Randoms

Well, as I've been working quite steadily over the past week, I don't have much to share with you. Instead, I thought I'd share the following:

First, a funny clip from "Whose Line is it Anyway" from back in the day that I find so very very amusing:

And second, a quote from the show the IT Crowd, which I fully intend to try to work into a conversation in the near future. Bonus points if it's with a customer who has no idea what I'm talking about:

Mos said it, from what I remember, in terms of people having no faith in his new invention:

"Well, prepare to put mustard on those words, for you will soon be consuming them, along with this slice of humble pie that comes direct from the oven of shame, set at gas mark egg on your face."

Best. Quote. Ever. I love the "Gas Mark egg-on-your-face". Just love it.

I picked up a shift tomorrow, so I fear I won't have interesting things to post until Wednesday, but stay tuned!

Hugh Dennis

The man on the left (in the giant, yellow, circle) is Hugh Dennis. He's on a funny show called Mock the Week with Dara O'Briain, as well as a comdey called Outnumbered, which I've never seen.

How is this relevant, you ask?

Well, I'll tell you..

HE WAS IN MY HMV TODAY!!! SHOPPING AND BUYING THINGS!!!

And where was I, you ask?

.... on my lunch break, in the back room.

*Facepalm*

What a shame. I don't think any of my work-friends spoke to him in terms of "Hi, you're famous", although he did buy something and then the loss-prevention guys looked at him from the security cameras in the back. We're such pervs.

Bummer. My first non-Stephen Fry, non-event famous person sighting and I wasn't even present! Oh well.

I have, however, reminded Ali, one of our loss-prevention peeps, who also shares my love for Stephen Fry, that if he should ever come into the store, she had better call me out onto the shop floor!

What a day.

A Mash-Up of Things for You

Hello one and hello all. Welcome back. Now that I'm only getting out of the house maybe 1 day a week, I haven't many interesting things to tell/show you. Other than, of course, my new TOP GEAR advent calender, about which I know you are all anxiously waiting for the beginning of December for me to unveil the first "Some Say..." fact about the Stig.

In the meantime, please enjoy this gathering of videos and images for your enjoyment:

Eddie Izzard has a new DVD out on Monday, and I'm hella excited about it! You can never go wrong with Eddie Izzard, and his website has released this short clip in anticipation of the DVD.

Click on this link here to watch the clip, and I hope that it works for you.

It's Christmas-time, people! And in celebration of that, I have tried my first-ever mince-meat pie, which, yes, I know, doesn't contain any meat. Above, again, if it works for you, is this years version of the famous M&S Christmas Ad. And, if it helps, this year features one of my favourite Brits. :)

One of my other favourite comedians, Michael McIntyre, also released a DVD last week. It's a real laugh, although not as much as his first DVD.
Unfortunately I have no links for this DVD, although I'm sure eventually bits will show up on YouTube. Still damn funny.



Speaking of Stephen Fry, he has finally acheived one million followers on Twitter. If you don't know what twitter is, go here and find out.
In celebration of having one million followers, Stephen Fry released the above video on his website. It's very strange and rather amusing and very strange again. This video comes from the future, apparently, and this future version of Stephen Fry gives the following (highly amusing) predictions about the future:

• Cold fusion is achieved and the energy problems of the world are over.
• Food problems are solved and poverty is over.
• Substance Energy Congruency Beams allow the transportation and replication of all molecular matter.
• The iPhone is still not flash enabled.
• The President of the United States is Zac Efron.
• The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is Robert Pattinson. Praise be to Robert Pattinson.
• Norwich City achieved the double five times in a row.
• The words moon and spoon no longer rhyme.
• All inner thighs are called Godfrey.
• All left nipples are called Miriam and all right nipples are called Shane.
• A new molecular structure of carbon allows for exciting developments in cake and biscuit manufacture.
• Basketball is outlawed.
• Trousers demand independence.
• Humans no longer need to go to the lavatory. They go now just for pleasure.
• Peace is given a chance.
• The official marker pen of the future is the Sharpie.
• That is all you need to know.
• Oh, give Windows 8 a miss.

In particular, I am looking forward to the words "moon" and "spoon" no longer rhyming and will definitely give Windows 8 a miss. Either way, have a look and have a giggle.
And last, but not least, I've discovered another wicked British program called the IT Crowd. It's awesome. And funny. And all things British, which means sometimes it's dead awkward to watch.
I'd like to embed a video here for you to watch, but embedding is disabled, so click on this link and watch this clip in particular.

I hope you enjoyed this small glimpse into my British life. Most evenings are really spent in front of my computer and watching clips, or chatting with my flatmates, or, as it was the case tonight, grilling the best portobello mushrooms to put in pasta. Yum Yum!

Good night. I'm eating mince pies in your honour. They are tasty, but not the best pies I've ever eaten.

Some say...

... that I'm more excited about my new Top Gear advent calender than I should be, and that most of you won't know why I just wrote a sentence like that. It's okay.

Yes, I have a Top Gear advent calender. It's okay, mock me all you want, you know you want a new Stig fun-fact AND a chocolate daily AND a special prize on Dec 24th!

Yes, today was one of my two days off this week. Tomorrow is the other one, and that's a good thing, since it's currently past 1 a.m. and I would be seriously screwed if I had to get up tomorrow. But I don't. Tomorrow is reserved for laundry and cleaning and all the other unpleasantness of being a "grown-up". But I balance it out nicely with things like my advent calender and chocolate biscuits.

Other than whatever I wrote in the blog posts that follow this one (which I am rapidly forgetting given the hour and my current state of alertness), I didn't do a whole lot this week. No more shoplifters, thank goodness, and no more monsoons like we had this past weekend.

After my flatmate tried to de-ice our freezer with a knife and consequently broke it (giggle), we should be getting a new freezer by the end of the week. Which is a good thing, because I've been in the mood to eat chips (fries) and I had just bought a bag of the nice McCain's ones and then they got soggy in the inherent mess of a defrosting, broken freezer and had to be thrown away. I will purchase new ones ASAP. And they were crinkle cut, too.

I'm sure I'll come up with more interesting fun-facts later, and possibly even grace you with another blog post tomorrow, but no guarantees. We'll see how creative I'm feeling. Heh. In the meantime, enjoy the following blog posts!

Pelican

Okay, so, continuing on my DAY OF AWESOME-NESS (or whatever I called it), I decided to visit St. James Park and see how the autumn (yes, it's still autumn here) leaves were looking. However, a certain nosy pelican decided to pop his head into my photo to see what was going on...

And he was pretty friendly, so I just hung out with him (her?) for a while, snapping photos and the likes.
For such a large, intimidating bird, he didn't mind getting all that close to me. Mind the beak, though. I imagine they pack quite the snap.

I'd never seen a pelican up close before... I think. He even brought along a friend!

Eventually they gave up and retreated back to the water. I then retreated to Oxford Street to check out the Christmas lights (no pictures this time, I didn't bring my tripod), and warm up.
I do like pelicans, though.

Ghost Forest

I apologize in advance for the strange appearance of some of these photos - blogger is acting up it seems and so I'm having to host all my photos off-site at flickr and link them here. Hopefully there won't be any hiccups. (P.S. Who ever decided that "hiccup" should be spelt "hiccough" like it is here. What nonsense is that?!)

Either way, to the point. Welcome, dear reader, to my DAY OF FUN! Well, not so much day of fun as it was first day out of the house/into London since I started working. And man, was it overdue. Glad to get out, and on a lovely day like today, I couldn't exactly stay in, now could I? No. That's right. Good job.

Okay, we're in Trafalgar Square. And, as you may have noticed, it's full of trees. There is a reason for this, and you can read all about it here. Basically, if you're too lazy to click that link and read a bit, I'll sum it up for you now:

"Ghost Forest is an original and ambitious project by Angela Palmer that seeks to raise public awareness of the connections between deforestation and climate change. It involves taking a series of 10 rainforest tree stumps, most with their buttress roots still attached, from a regulated, commercially logged tropical rainforest in Ghana."

Ta-da! It's art. Art with trees. That were lugged here from Ghana. But, they are pretty sweet. And it's not every day you see huge-ass trees in the middle of Trafalgar Square.

The man in the middle is the new statue that has been placed on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square. They are done with the one-person-every-hour thing for now and have put another exhibition on. This man in particular is Sir Keith Park, and you can read about him here.

Again, if you're too lazy, here's the basics:

"Sir Keith Rodney Park GCB, KBE, MC & Bar, DFC, RAF (15 June 1892 – 6 February 1975) was a New Zealand soldier, First World War flying ace and Second World War senior Royal Air Force commander. He was in tactical command during two of the most significant air battles in the European theatre in the Second World War, the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Malta. The Germans called him "the Defender of London"

It was very cool to see all these huge trees and read about this particular project. I like how all the trees and their roots looked against the building in the square, and, of course, I could say something artsy and throw in words like "juxtaposition" and whatnot, but I won't. Just enjoy the pictures, will you?

Lest We Forget

In light of not being present at any Remembrance Day activities/ceremonies last week, I visited one of the memorials along the road between Parliament and Trafalgar Square. Snapped a couple photos of the sheer number of wreaths and letter left behind. So sad.

YouTube and Shoplifting

Now that I've started work again, and I'm working reasonably constantly, I fear I haven't been able to get out into London to do much photography lately, and as such, I have nothing to post here. So, in lack of photos I took, I share with your one of my favourite all-time out-takes of QI (above), and would like to also share these fun facts:

• New season of Top Gear starts on SUNDAY! And it's been so long since I've had new Top Gear to watch. Don't bother me on Sunday night, I won't answer.
• A new season of QI also starts Monday I believe. And it's going to be AWESOME!
• We've had three incidents with shoplifters this week at work, two of which directly involved me. Although yesterday's incident had a better outcome than Mondays, and I got a free hug from the Loss Prevention team for my efforts. Yay!
• Did you know that you can buy an alarm clock that wakes you up with the soothing voice of Stephen Fry's character from Jeeves & Wooster, where he plays a butler? I don't want the clock, but the .mp3 would be good fun.
• If you own a TomTom, you can download an Eddie Izzard character to voice you through your directions! That's reason enough for me to buy a TomTom, me thinks.
• Speaking of new things coming out, Micheal McIntyre has a new DVD coming out on Monday and I'm very keen to watch it. Love him.
• I saw a man today with a funny jacket - on his wrist he had a glass panel, where you could see through it to his wrist. It's a motorcycle jacket and the clear glass panel was there so that he could see his watch while on his bike. Coolest jacket ever.
• This evening saw "The Worst Storm This Year" in southern England. It just rained. A lot. Both Tamryn from South Africa and Amanda/Kevin from Toronto said that "this was nothing". Heh.
• Ordered Indian food with my flatmates tonight. Very yummy. Why haven't I had Indian Food here before? What a sad life I do lead.

I have to get up in about 7 hours, so this will be my last fun-fact:

• KIRSTEN is coming to visit me in February!! And it's going to be epic. E-PIC. Don't you miss it. (And now that I've told everyone, you're going to have to make sure to come.)

Hopefully my next two days off (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) will be more exciting. More pictures to come, and failing that, more YouTube clips to come.

Good night everyone.

All is Right in the World

Ahhh, bliss. All my photos, organised and tucked away cosily in my new hard-drive. Mmmmm.

Man, that's a lot of photos...

Canned Pumpkin

After searching high and low for canned pumpkin, and coming up empty, and buying and carving and roasting and cooking and mashing a pumpkin to make my own pie, I FINALLY FOUND CANNED PUMPKIN!!

Found it at Whole Foods. Cost a whopping 1.69 and I'm going to save it for Christmas. Not sure how long they will have it around (assuming it's a seasonal import), and I still have some frozen goo left in the freezer. It'll be interesting to find out whether I prefer the canned to the fresh stuff. Either way, well done Whole Foods.

P.S. Pardon the mess in the background. I can't be bothered to clean it up. And I'm sick, so at least I have an excuse.

Guy Fawkes Day 2009

Fireworks and bonfire from the Guy Fawkes Day 2009 at Wimbledon Park.

A Christmas Carol Movie Premiere

Last week I managed to squeeze in one last movie premiere before the ground gets too cold on to sit on top of for 7 hours. The movie was Disney's new version of A Christmas Carol, done very much in the style of The Polar Express. It starred Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Carey Ewes, Robin Wright Penn (both from The Princess Bride fame), and Bob Hoskins. Not everyone showed to the premiere, as they often don't, but Disney sure did go all out.

One of my favorite moments in QI happens when I believe it's Phil Jupitus is teasing Stephen Fry about his choice in kettle. His quote, which I love, is "We don't all live in a fluffy, duffy, Dickensian world of charm like you do."

I kept thinking of this quote this particular evening, because, apparently, while most people cannot live in this "fluffy-duffy Dickensian world of charm", if you attend one of Disney's Movie premieres, you can.

They had decorated the whole square with fake snow and fake trees and even people in proper dress! It was wonderfully fluffy and duffy.

They had this sign erected behind the stage, just to remind us where we were, in case you forgot.

On the left is my friend Chris who attended the premiere with me and our other friend, also named Cris. On the right is... Alex I think? I think he's a presenter on either Sky or ITV, but I can't remember. He was very sharply dressed and nice.

Here are some of the aforementioned Dickensian children. They were part of a choir that sang during the evening. And they were all dressed up which was wonderful.

Here is Chris again with another presenter, but I can't remember her name or where she worked. She was wearing a lovely dress, although I think she was a bit cold.

They even had a bell-ringer, who kept wishing people a Merry Christmas.

Here are some of the dozens of characters they had wandering around the square.

They were going for a Guinness World Record for the most people singing a Christmas Carol at the same time. They had Leicester Square, Oxford Circus, Regent Street, and a group at St. Paul's all singing at the same time. I believe that we did break the record.

They even brought Andrea Bocelli out to sing with the choir. He's got a wonderful voice.

And here's Jenny McCarthy, the girlfriend of Jim Carrey.

And it's Jim Carrey! Unfortunately he was moving too quickly for me to get a face-on photo, but I'm sure you'll accept this as proof enough that I saw him.

And look! It's Colin Firth!

You probably don't know her, she's a contestant on the British reality television show (The UK version of American Idol). They become really big celebrities here while they are on the show. Her name is Stacey.

And hey! It's Bob Hoskins! You probably remember him from the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?".

Here are some more contestants from the X-Factor. Jamie the afro man is on the left, while Olly is on the right. They were being screamed at by teenaged fans.

The premiere itself was really nice - a lot more happened than at most premieres - with the singing and performances and all, even if it was a bit chilly. Unfortunately Gary Oldman wasn't there, which sucks, and neither were the duo from The Princess Bride, and they would've been fun to see. Either way, a nice way to end the year, premiere-wise.