kingandy | UPDATEN

New Special School! Today's has less of a punchline, and more of a ... thing. Twist ending. Or something.

I promise, joke on Friday. Not necessarily a good one, but definitely a joke.

So, the weekend in review. Saturday was fairly quiet until the evening; I spent the day mostly playing Warcraft. I also dug out Knights of the Old Republic and continued an old save game, and confirmed that yes, I think I do enjoy single-player games more than MORGs. Maybe I just have to get more actual roleplaying done. Anyway, then, in the evening, I was dragged out to Sin City. Which despite its name is not a fetish night, but rather a small club in the basement of a pub. Like a single room of Rock World, perhaps slightly friendlier for its small size.

Oh, also on Saturday, of course, was the latest Doctor Who episode: DALEK. Reasonably good, they did a nice job of making the thing scary again, successfully portraying the amusing giant pepperpot as an unstoppable ruthless killing machine. Except the plot then required introducing ruths. It was a nice idea, but some of the dialogue really belaboured the idea. The viewer should be left to draw parallels between the Doctor and his nemesis themselves, instead of being told within the first ten minutes "WE ARE THE SAME" - it rather weakened the later "YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK" declaration, which was probably meant to shock. Overall, though, a nice episode, if a bit Emo. I think my favourite moment is when the Dalek first recognises the Doctor, triggering its standing orders to EXTERMINATE - only to find its death ray inoperative. The operator managed to get a startling amount of physical comedy out of this expressionless juggernaut peering quizzically at its gun-arm. I could almost see it blinking.

So then came Sunday. Again, mostly spent with WoW, but in the evening Mr

batelf came around to watch DVDs as advertised. King Solomon's Mines was excellent, Lost City of Gold less so - it was alright up to the last half hour, when things just went sharply downhill. Low point was Quatermain striking an axe against a giant gold lion's head, causing it to melt. I don't know if the axe was made of a special metal, or if he was utilising some hokey scientific principle ("If I strike the molecules of the gold head hard enough, I can excite them and cause them to separate from one another!") - it was never explained. Perhaps it was detailed in the book and they just didn't think to add explanatory dialogue.

Finished off the evening watching Justice League: Starcrossed, which I still think is pretty nifty.

Yesterday (Monday) was pretty quiet as well, though in the afternoon

stsquad had a barbecue. I socialised a bit but had to leave in order to cook for people in Bolton. (It's a regular meal, we take turns cooking. The idea of having it in Stretford when it's my turn to cook has been met with some disdain. I may have to bow out until I'm employed again, petrol is not cheap.) I cooked a pasta carbonara, it seemed to come out quite well.

[EDIT: Passage removed because it was, on reflection, much too harsh, and far too easy to misinterpret.]