G-Boys 4 eva

I had a very brief look at Now and Then, Here and There before deleting its punk ass off my machine. It may be highly acclaimed but with artwork that cheap and old the story would have to be fucking ground breaking to make up for it, and I am pretty sure it's not that good.

I've started working my way through the films on my list of things to watch, as opposed to spending most of my time trawling through series. I always want to find the next really epic series to get into and absolutely lose myself in, but the problem is that these series are few and far between. Titles with the quality of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Haruhi Suzumiya are rare to say the least, for the most part anime series have relatively low production costs and are just cashing in on a successful manga series. Films on the other hand are only an hour or two long, so have much improved animation and direction with none of the filler used to pad things out in between.

The night before last Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade took the stage, and I'd say it was alright. It felt rather reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell, with the heavy political discourse broken up by the odd action scene. Of course it's nowhere near the level of excellence that GitS stands atop, and is not particularly a film I can see myself going back to watch any time soon, but it was still enjoyable.

Last night I sat down to The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which was pretty damn good. I'd describe it as kinda like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya on ritalin, in being a pleasant slice of life comedy with sci-fi undertones. The characters were rather generic with routine plot development, but for something as banal as it was there wasn't much fault to find in it other than its mundanity. A quality film overall, enjoyable viewing for all audiences.

I also finished watching Ikebukuro West Gate Park the night before last, which had manly tears streaming down my face, so epic. I seriously love this series, not just for the fact that it has some absolutely fantastic characters, but for the sort of curt realism in which each episode doesn't end happily ever after, but also doesn't purposefully go out of its way to be overly morbid. It's definitely one of those sort of great series that doesn't simply fit into any genre, and I am sad to see it end. Hell, I'd go as far as buying it on DVD if it was subbed and released over here, not that it ever will be, crime.

I finished My Boss, My Hero today, it really milked the feel-good ending for all it was worth, but that's what the whole series was all about, a silly happy-go-lucky series made to put a smile on your face. And that's exactly what it did, lovable characters where everything turns out alright in the end and leaves you all cheered up. A frivolous comedy, good times.

On a completely unrelated note, you know what's an awesome word?
Mega.
After seeing a picture of Mega Blocks on 4chan it's made me realize how underused that word is, you only ever hear it in product names like Mega Blocks and Mega Man. Is it even possible to use it in a sentence as anything but the prefix to a noun?
"Hey, check out that 4X4, that is mega."
Hell yeah, that's a word I'm totally going to have to use more often.

School killings to school lunches

I finished watching the Mexican rally yesterday, just in time for the Argentinian rally this weekend.
It was heartbreaking to see Latvala fall back and lose to Loeb due to turbo problems after leading through the first day, a double win would've been absurdly awesome, but at least he walked away with a third place podium finish. I would've usually preferred to see him only come second to Hirvonen, but being pushed down to third by Atkinson is alright as the wacky Australian has got some serious skills, but always fails to hit the big points because of some stupid little mistake, so it's pretty cool to see him get some winning done.
In the end I would've just wanted Hirvonen to come first, but considering the amount of punctures he suffered he's lucky he managed to hold fourth place and walk away with the points that he did, securing him first place in the '08 rally overall, albeit by one point. As narrow a lead as he may have over the world champ, the Argentinian stages should be in the Finnish favour, so I'm really hoping to see some excellent driving to widen the gap before Loeb dominates all the tarmac stages.

I also finally got around to finishing off School Days yesterday, after not having sat down to it for quite a while I ended up watching the last six episodes over a couple of days. While I just about enjoyed it, I wouldn't call it pleasant viewing.
At first I was desperate to get to the drama, really looking forward to it, but when it finally came I was quite taken aback. As should've been expected from that sort of heartbreak it just ended up being really sad, and quite uncomfortably familiar at certain points. Then I just wanted Makoto dead, I honestly couldn't wait for his ass to get iced for all the bastardly thing he's done, but when he did get knifed up I just found myself thinking 'This isn't any better, this is just terrible!'
So it was a bit of a downer overall, still glad I watched it of course.

I then watched Blood: The Last Vampire, quite a short film at only 45 minutes long. Set on an American military base on Japan there was more spoken English than Japanese, but it really wasn't very enjoyable as they all speak very slowly and decisively, like they sourced the voice actors straight out of a language tape. A really stupid move on the producers part, they should either have Japanese subtitles or have them speak in Japanese, having them speak as they were could have arguably ruined the film, as the voice actors are of course one of the deciding factors in any animated media's quality.
The rest of the film was alright, despite my general dislike of these kind of fantasy films. The animation had a decent budget and looked pretty good, and they didn't try to go over the top with big crazy spells and all that stupid crap, which is so often the crux of the genre.
In all, interesting enough.

With all this death and despair I decided I really needed to get into some of the more upbeat titles on my list of things to watch.

First off was Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! The easy going, slice-of-life comedy is exactly what I was looking for, with cute characters, charming animation and all that heart warming razzmatazz, I'm sure it'll keep me amused for a good while.

I've also started watching Moyashimon, a series about a first year university student that can see and communicate with microbes. I'm watching this one because not only is it a lighthearted comedy, but it propagates the idea that agricultural students are all hot and sexy raging lesbians, so good times are sure to be had.
It's proving itself to be one of those anime titles that I'll actually learn something from too, with each of the bacteria and micro-organisms that are mentioned notes are provided giving brief information on them, much of which you wouldn't even understand the jokes that are being made without.
So this seems to be an alright series. It's not actually all that funny and I really don't like the main characters, but I'm gonna have to stick with it for the lesbian love triangles and crazy uni drama further down the line.

Call it

I finally got round to watching No Country For Old Men a couple of days ago, I just had to after hearing everyone rave about it so much. It was alright, but once again I would not consider it anywhere near deserving of the praise it received. Javier Bardem was especially cool chips, and pretty much the sole reason it is as popular as it is, while Tommy Lee Jones did the same character he's done for the last thirty seven years. What really let it down was the ending, of which two out of three parts it consisted of were complete failures, while one part was actually pretty cool, but still nowhere near enough to redeem the film as a whole.

I sat down to Freeway the next day, which was rather enjoyable. It's one of those good old fashioned straight forward films with plot development that wouldn't have flunked you out of film school, as opposed to the 'I'm going to conclude the film by telling you about my dream which is completely unrelated to anything you've sat through for the last hundred and twenty minutes because that's DEEP and MEANINGFUL.' like some other such films...
Kiefer Sutherland gave another creepy-awesome performance, much like his Lost Boys, Dark City, Phone Booth days, with Reese Witherspoon showing that some women can find a productive place in our society outside of the kitchen if they really wish it hard enough.

Spending all my requisition

After 13 hours of waking torment I had a chat with some people and cheered the fuck up, so things haven't been so bad after the last few days.

I've been playing The Orange Box quite a bit this week, I got over the loss of keyboard and mouse on Half-Life 2 and Portal pretty quickly, and while the graphics aren't as good on Half-Life 2 as they are on my PC I've gotten used to it and can't really notice the difference anymore.
Team Fortress however, is mightily affected by the 360. The lack of accuracy with keyboard and mouse make spray&pray classes like the heavy and pyro, and splash damage classes like the Soldier and Demoman much more favorable, as getting a kill with any normal weapon is next to impossible. Also, the lack of dedicated servers really stings, a majority of the few servers there are at any one time are hosted by idiots whose connections can't manage more than eight players, which is bloody ridiculous on a game like TF2 where the optimal amount is at least double that.
Mostly I've enjoyed playing through Half-Life again, the achievements are absolutely brilliant for my completionist attitude, so I've been happily immersing myself in it, trawling through and completing each task.

I was all set and ready to install everything on my new hard drive this weekend, I had my list of programs to download and everything tidied up and organized ready to copy over. But as I plug in my 'new' HDD I find XP already installed on it, and as it tries to boot it simply fails and restarts every time I turn my computer on. I am mightily angry at ebuyer for sending me their used shit and am going to call them up tomorrow demanding not only a replacement, but compensation. I'm seriously pissed off about this and am not going to walk away from this empty handed.

One rather mega win this weekend was the acquisition of a Nintendo DS from my brother. He's given me his almost unused black Lite with a browser, so I got straight online and ordered a flash cart for £25, which is an absolutely fantastic total price when everything I'll have in the end will be worth about 10 times that. The problem is that while I'm sitting here with the DS in front of me, and an awesome list of games for it on my computer, I have to wait 14 to 28 days for it to arrive from Hong Kong. It's absolute heartbreak as I've got really excited about it and want to play it now.
Despite the long wait for that, it should be just in time for my trip to Blackpool. I was good to go for next week, but as Dad's using the car for what could be the next three weeks, I've got a long wait for that too. But at least when I do go I'll have plenty to occupy myself with when I'm not driving.

Day 101

Birthday yesterday.
Got a bunch of books that I asked for and a new 500GB SATA hard drive.
I'll probably be spending this extended weekend setting up a new system. I'll plug the hard drive I'm using now into my old computer (which is just without a disc drive, keyboard and mouse), plug the new one into this computer, and spend the silly amount of time it takes to install Windows and all the other shit I need.

I was going to go into a long 19 years old speech, sharing all my thoughts on my past, present and future. But today I found out that Nicola's seeing some 21 year old dude.
I don't really need to explain how that is affecting me, so I'll just go onto the next bit:
She then comes online and starts giving me shit, just like on Sunday, thankfully I've got more than a 160 per text message word limit and can say everything I want to. I manage to convey just how I've felt over the last few days and weeks, because of what she said on Sunday and after we broke up. It turns out she seems to think that I wasn't talking to her because I'd moved on, which of course couldn't be further from the truth. I think I've managed to get on good terms with her, which is at least a good thing, but she still seems rather prone to lashing out at me, which cuts through me like a god damned guillotine every time she does.
The worst part is that now I have some hope. Even while I am absurdly aware of the fact she's seeing some 21 year old guy and I basically know this is going to end with nothing other than more heartbreak for me, I still have a tiny, minute, minuscule and pitiful shimmer of hope burning away in the bombed out ruins of what was once the optimism district. Because of that I don't doubt that how ever ridiculously, she (and he) will dominate my mind all that much more, and when it comes to the showdown it just means all that much more torment for me.

The cake is a lie

Yesterday I went into London with Paul to take part in Project Chanology, we met up with Haku at Monument before hopping a couple of stops to Blackfriars and hitting the Scientology HQ. I knew it was awesome time when I saw a guy standing on a street corner, casually leaning against the wall, smoking while wearing a long black coat and a Guy Fawkes mask. Rounding the corner we met the main protest, hundreds of people with an impressive assortment of signs stood behind a police barricade. As I walked through the crowd I was offered cake every couple of steps, as it was L. Ron Hubbard's birthday people had really gone all the way, there was even a table with more homemade and store bought cakes than I could count piled on top of eachother.
Things went pretty well there, and after a couple of hours we began the mass exodus to Goodge Street to visit the walk-in branch. The pilgrimage did the protest a lot of good, we got a lot of interest and smiles, and it really helped loosen up Anonymous. By the time we had got to the second location everyone was a lot more enthusiastic, and there was a pretty steady stream of chants and slogans being shouted across the road at the Scifags. It was pretty awesome to be able to shout out in the middle of a busy London street, "Anonymous, what is your profession?!" and have well over a thousand people boom back "AROOUGH! AROOUGH! AROOUGH!"
We bounced out at about 1600 and headed over to Wagamama for some eats.

After that we headed for Aldgate to visit a manga cafe I'd read about in an issue of NEO a long time ago. Walking down a very long road we descended into the absolute lower class London, it was quite an interesting experience just walking down that road as it felt as if we were in an entirely different world, like some Eastern European war zone from a film or something.
We found the cafe, which was quite nice in itself, but taking the stairs down into the basement we found the small library of manga, and a line of extremely comfortable reclining leather chairs. For £4 we had the library completely to ourselves for an hour, and as many free drinks as we wanted. The manga may have all been original Japanese imports, but we had quite a laugh describing to eachother what we could make of the plot. Most of all it was just awesome to be able to kick back in some excellent chairs after having stood and walked around all day, a book in one hand, hot chocolate in the other, awesome music playing quietly in the background, plenty of privacy, it was a brilliant spot that I'm sure we'll be visiting again soon.

Crazily enough, I was talking online to Ellie (the person I met through 4chan that went to MCM) last night, and it just so happens that she went to the protests too! So not only did I walk right past her at MCM, but I would've been within meters of her for about three hours yesterday.

I texted Nicola to see how she was doing on Friday, as of course a day hasn't passed since I last saw her in which I haven't thought about her, and have missed her dearly. She texted back an incredibly short message when I was on the train into London on Saturday, but I decided to leave replying and going into that until after the events of the day, and that has to be the single best decision I have ever made in my entire life. To cut a long story short, she absolutely bit my head off and acted like a complete bitch for utterly no reason, completely unprovoked, she was nothing but immature and spiteful when all I wanted to do was chat and catch up.
I've been on a bit of a downer over the last week or so, and her unjustifiably acting like a complete fucking bitch when I had done nothing to deserve it has obviously made me feel like shit.
Just in time for my birthday, thanks.

I r learn

I tried playing Touhou yesterday, as it is revered as some sort of holy grail among otaku, but just like Fate/Stay Night I really do not see what all the fuss is about. It was never going to get off to a great start seeing as I don't exactly have a brilliant history with vertical shooters, I shouldn't have expected as much as I did from this manic/bullet-hell shooter superstar.
I simply found it boring. That being the beginning and end of it, I found it boring.

I downloaded Brain Challenge on the 360 Arcade yesterday, and after trying the demo I quickly bought the full version. It's basically another Brain Trainer rip off, but as I don't have a DS I'll go for what I can get.
I've been interested in getting a game like this for quite a long time, as I saw a thing about them on TV showing how they do sharpen you up absolutely brilliantly, far more than a simple game. I've been especially focused on improving my mental arithmetic, as in the last three years since I had to use it I've always gone straight to the calculator whenever challenged with any maths (not 'math' you grammatically incorrect bastards), not even bothering to try and figure it out myself. Just like my handwriting, which is a constant embarrassment, I may have been able to touch type at ridiculous speeds for most of my life, but if you give me a piece of paper and a pen I'll scrawl like a 12 year old.
I had a game online today, and one of the guys I played was amazing smart, he was answering absurd calculations faster than I could read them, I found it to be a rather inspirational sight.

I watched the first episode of the suggested Hana Yori Dango today, another J-Drama, but deleted the entire batch torrent after half an hour of the atrocity. It turns out the series is based on a shoujo manga, so as you can imagine it's basically a chick-flick. The main antagonists of the series are these four rich kids that basically run the school, and while it may suck pretty bad the leader of these rich fags looks exactly like Prince, which made me laugh mightily every time I saw him poncing around trying to act cool.
Other than that I've been spending a lot of my time watching stuff, IWGP has been most interesting, along with four backed up episodes of Lost and Jericho to get through, I've had no shortage of things too keep me occupied.

Otaku, not weeaboo

I finished watching Akihabara@Deep a couple of days ago, and found it did get considerably better. I don't know if was because it relaxed and stopped trying too hard or because I got used to it, or a combination of the two, but I'm glad I stuck with it as it was amusing enough throughout. I got to really like the characters of the series, and it did have a few bits that had me absolutely cracking up, so despite its initial bizarreness I did come to quite enjoy it.
/jp/ helpfully threw some suggestions my way for what to watch next, with My Boss, My Hero and Ikebukuro West Gate Park being the two that interested me most, and both coincidentally having the same lead actor.
My Boss has proven itself to be both highly amusing and quite touching, as it follows an incredibly stupid 27 year old yakuza whom is told if he doesn't go back school and graduate he'll be disowned. The obvious comedy comes from all the wacky situations he gets himself into, but it is also rather emotional to watch him struggle through situations in which for the first time in his life he can't resolve with violence. It's quite a simple premise with the obligatory love interest and nerdy sidekick, but it makes me smile, so I'll be sticking with it.
IWGP has absolutely grabbed me, it's a much more serious series which candidly follows a group of friends as one of them is killed in a string of murders, it shows the life of an area rife with gangs and delinquents as they lose faith in the police and try to take down the perpetrator themselves. It doesn't follow the obvious episodic development of most dramas and seems to have some interesting lead characters, along with an interesting story and unique setting I'll definitely be sticking with this.

A couple of days ago I decided to try out the highly acclaimed Kaiji, after constantly hearing it praised as an inspirational and uplifting anime, similar to the effects of Gurren Lagann, I got a bit pumped and wanted to join in the fun. I was motivated to download a few episodes after I was told about how Kaiji cuts off his own ear with a shard of glass after losing a bet, and entertains other such manly pursuits throughout the series as he gambles to remove his debt with the mob. Unfortunately the production costs are far too low, and with so many other good shows on the run I really don't have any motivation to force myself through it, so it was binned.

The night before last I watched There Will Be Blood, vaguely boring for a little bit too much of it. It simply struck me as one of those movies that gets embellished at film festivals so that pompous rich assholes can hand eachother a plethora of awards and pat themselves on the back.
Daniel Day-Lewis, however, did put forth a rather good performance, and I certainly enjoyed the development enough to sit it out. But regardless of any redeeming qualities the film may have, I would say that it remains to be yet another entirely unnecessary adaptation of what is most probably a reasonable novel.

Yesterday I did my annual mass clothes shopping, I was motivated to get to it after reading chapter 25 of Genshiken, as Saki convinces Madarame and Ogiue to buy some new threads. I burned through a little too much of my earnings over the last couple of weeks on it, but I got some pretty cool stuff, and now that I have a decent income I don't feel too bad about it.

I believe

I had a fun driving lesson earlier today, taking the Hertford route to Ware and back with my brother, the fact it was a twilight drive on the return made it especially interesting, as I took country roads I could see literally nothing unless I had full beams on, which made for some exciting high speed corners.

As for the rest of my time, I've had a bit of a Matrix weekend. I downloaded the trilogy as it's been a while since I've seen it, and I think I've only seen the sequels once.
The first film is still fantastic, simply a brilliantly told science fiction story, also very well directed, even if it is laughably obvious how influenced by certain anime titles it is.
The second two films, not so much, especially the third one. I hate it when people absolutely slam them simply because they were expecting something as revolutionary as the first again, as that was obviously never going to happen. But they do seem to leave out almost everything that made the first film what it was, and the third film is so painfully contrived it did make me wince a little.
Still, you've got to love it all if only for the fact it gave birth to The Animatrix, a testament to film making. If you watch either Beyond, A Detective Story, Kid's Story, Program or The Second Renaissance and don't appreciate any of the them for the incredible works of art, direction, cinematography and storytelling that they are, then you might as well kill yourself right now, because your life has no purpose.

Party time once again

Pubbing & clubbing was pretty good, especially as the latter was in a rather awesome mansion-turned-club. I even had a random group of girls come up and ask to have their picture taken with me, which was good for moderate lulz.
We didn't go back to Bertie's place afterwards though, Emma decided to steal away Andrew, because apparently seeing him every day before and after that isn't enough. But it's not so bad, as we were absolutely shattered anyway doing anything but getting a good night's sleep in our own beds would've been pretty horrible.
Gaming today was good, a good long CoD4 session with a Tesco run in the middle.
Heading off to Tesco got me really pumped about driving, and especially about getting my own wheels. As it was so sunny and warm it could've almost passed for a summer drive, and that is exactly what I am looking forward to the most this year.

Before and after gaming today I've been making my own epic wall. First I had to rearrange posters to make a massive space on my wall, I then used Rasterbator to print out a pretty big picture of a couple of random Japanese schoolgirls over twenty one A4 pages, it was a timely process cutting off all the boarders, but the end result is absolutely awesome. The only problem is that there are so many pictures and pieces of artwork I want to use, I'm going to have to make a new one every couple of months, it's just so good.

It doesn't seem like flying to Blackpool is a viable option, so I had a brief look at trains and buses but couldn't really find anything immediately great. The main problem is that taking transport like that would require me to get there a day early and leave a day late, which would be another two nights of accommodation I would have to pay for. But my brother absolutely legendarily offered to drive me there and back, so by the looks of things I don't have too much standing in my way anymore.

Hey Vegeta...

I passed my theory, happy days. 50/50 on the questions, too. Not so great on the hazard perception, but that thing's shaky as hell anyway.
I got a bit worried on the way there as my train was twenty three minutes late, but somehow I still managed to get there five minutes early.
Also, really randomly, Lofty was getting the same train into Stevenage to just look around and do some shopping, and even happened to get the same train back, which was cool as I hardly ever see him. Strangely though he won't be coming clubbing tonight, even though he's taking loads of time off work, but oh well.

The hazard perception videos I've been watching over the last few days have made me very reminiscent of the Wales rally, as Tosh (the endless source of information) tells me the largest DSA building is in Swansea after I told him about how I recognized having driven along many of the roads. It reminded me of how good it was just driving in between everything and wandering around Swansea and Cardiff, not even thinking about any of the actual rallying. Now I can't wait until the next rally, which I'll be driving to and from, even though it's still two hundred and twenty six days away.

Speaking of my driving antics, I almost bought a car yesterday. There's a really shifty character that works in a laundrette who always makes us tea when we clean his windows, and yesterday he was trying to shift a 1.5 automatic Daewoo, which clearly hadn't been driven in months. It had some compression problems which could've been anything from spark plugs to the head gasket. But because he was selling it for £100 it was a win win situation anyway, as even if it was a complete dud we could strip it and sell the lump alone to make a profit.
If I had my licence and a driveway or garage to keep it in I would've grabbed it right there. I probably would've at least been able to rag it around a track a couple of times before having a laugh stripping it apart with Paul and Andrew and making some money on it.
Ahh well, working in a trade job I'm sure this won't be the last cheap set of wheels I'll come across.

I had a brief look at flights to Blackpool to do this intensive course yesterday, but didn't have as much luck as I'd been hoping. Half the results I got were news articles on how companies like Ryanair don't even fly up there anymore, and trains are bound to be absurdly expensive. But I'll have to have another better look soon, as there's nothing down here remotely as good as that place.

The books I'd ordered arrived over the last couple of days. I'll start reading volume five of Genshiken soon, but I'm going to save volume ten of Initial D and Welcome to the N.H.K for Blackpool.
The blurb of Welcome to portrays it as the most otaku-awesome light novel ever written, so I am very much looking forward to diving into it, I just need to sort out how I'm going to get to this promised land first.

Also, I wasn't really thinking about my gamerscore on the 360 as anything interesting until I hit the five figure mark, but today after returning home I got a gold on the last race of the Semi-Pro series on Forza, kicking up the score by 35 points to 9025. Now whenever anyone asks me what my gamerscore is I can say "It's over NINE THOUSAAAND!" and have them look at me like I'm trippin' balls.
lol internet meme

Nice boat

I started watching the ever so famous and controversial School Days yesterday, I have always been interested in checking it out, and with no other anime titles on the cards I decided it was finally time to join the collective and educate myself. I have now watched the first three episodes and am very surprised to find it to be nothing like I expected, with its infamously violent conclusion I was expecting a rather dark and foreboding series, but so far have seen nothing but a typical light hearted harem comedy. If it wasn't for the fact that I know everything's going to end in tears of blood I would probably find it rather boring, but with that knowledge in mind I am quite excited to see this frivolously delightful romance come violently crashing down in the near future.

I have been taking a few trips up the ladders over the last couple of days of work, Tosh seems to trust me enough to start moving me on to the next phase, which will mean the next pay grade if I do well enough.
Though tomorrow will be my last day of work for this week, as I'm taking Thursday off for my midday theory test, and am taking Friday off for an epic gaming day with the lads. The plan is now to take all my gear over Bertie's on Thursday before we all head out for a drink, after which we'll all be going clubbing until some early hour at which we won't be stumbling home to crash out, but stumbling back to Bertie's to play CoD4 until we pass out on Friday. I told Tosh that I'll do an extra day of work on the weekend whenever he wants to make up for my Friday absence, but aside from that the next few days look to be alright, assuming I pass my theory first off.
Over the last couple of days I've been doing loads of last minute revision, very reminiscent of school while only being marginally more entertaining. I'm relatively confident, but it just feels like passing and being free to go off to do my intensive course would be too good to be true, I just have to see how things go.

Move over Toivonen

I've been playing a bit of Sega Rally over the last couple of days, borrowed from my brother on Friday. I grabbed it for some simple arcade racing that I don't have to pay much attention to, but the repetition of the short tracks makes it even more mindless than I had expected, quickly turning it into quite a boring affair.
I also completed Kane & Lynch yesterday, only taking another few hours from where I got to on the first day, I really liked the choice it gives you at the end, leading to two very different endings. I gave the multiplayer a bit of a spin after that, and while it has a genius system encouraging you to work together until the possibility of treachery at the end of each round, most of the time you just get idiots that start killing all the people on their team as soon as the game starts, ruining it for everyone. It's fantastic if you get a group of people that play it properly though.

I watched a couple more episodes of Akihabara@DEEP yesterday, at first I was just forcing myself through it to see what happens, but I think I've got over its extreme eccentricity now and can manage the madness. So I think I'll stick with it 'till the end now, especially as it's only 12 episodes long.

I finally got round to watching the final stage of the Swedish rally yesterday too, as rally Mexico took place this weekend and will be online soon. Fantastically Latvala and Hirvonen managed to hold their top two positions and walk away with the points.
The best part is that the victory now makes Jari-Matti Latvala the youngest ever person to win a WRC rally! It's absolutely amazing how just last season he was a surprisingly talented newcomer, and now in just the second rally of '08 he's a world record holder, putting his name down in racing history for generations to come. Or at least until I get my licence, watch out.

Tight with my jew golds

I was thinking about my expenditures at work today, and more specifically how extremely low they generally are, I started thinking about how I should actually spend more money. I always try to save as much of my gold as I can and always feel quite guilty whenever I spend any money, even if it's just on a £4 book. It makes it really strange to think about some of my friends are working more hours for more money than me and never have any money in their bank, I couldn't even begin to imagine getting to the end of a week and looking at all of my wages as spending money. But considering that I don't go out all the time pissing it away on pubs and pizzas I should be thankful for my increasingly hikikomori tendencies and spend a bit more money on books, clothes and stuff that I enjoy. Everyone I've spoken to about it says that being as sensible with my money as I am is a very good thing, and there's no argument that it isn't as it does mean I will easily have the money to buy whatever I want when it comes to it, but I work every weekday for this money so should allow myself some nice things every now and then.
As this week I have hit the 2k mark in my open account, and with my birthday approaching I've decided to loosen up with my spending and get some stuff I've been looking at. Before heading out to my brother's place today I ordered a few books, and tomorrow (or today after I've had some sleep) I'll probably look at buying some clothes and stuff.
I keep buying stuff for other people without thinking about it and unnecessarily depriving myself of the most absurdly cheap shit that'll make me happy just because I always feel like I've already spent too much money recently, but screw that, I should be able to buy whatever I want.

Driving to my brother's place with him in the passenger seat tonight was fun, as my first experience driving a car with anyone but my Dad. We picked up some people on the way, and even though I was hoping to drive to get their pizza and drop them off at the end of the night I didn't get the chance to. I still got some greatly appreciated practice, not to mention that it was of course awesome being able to relax and drive far more casually, without my Dad in the passenger seat it no longer felt as if I was with a driving instructor the whole time. Of course I still drove just as carefully, mainly because I wanted to show everyone in the car that I had some skills and wasn't a typical shitty teenage learner driver. But it was still nice having a little more free reign in a 1.6 litre turbo Focus, fun times.