Happy Fokker

Just back from the glorious Netherlands at the weekend. Roadburn Festival 2009, what a blast, absolutely the best rock festival I have ever been to, just wonderful in every way, from the weather to the venue to the vodka to the bands to the t-shirts to the talent to the heroic facial hair. Clearly such a fantastic country as well, 'tis a total pisser that I've eventually had to return...

I'm not going to waffle on as I'm getting a bit cheesed off with the whole blog update thingy, too bloody busy doing a billion other things. Don't know how those bastiches on Twatter have the patience to update the planet on the intricacies of their bowel movements when I can't be arsed filing a brief status report every coupla months. Anyhoo, here are my semi-salient recent observations...

• KLM's aeroplane of choice for GLA - AMS was a lovely little Fokker. No, Boardman, keep away, keep away !!! I'm so glad I finally got that DS. Big Bang Mini, World Championship Poker, and Tetris DS made the journey(s) mercifully quick.
  

• Holland is like some parallel alternate Scotland where the streets are clean, public transport is both utterly reliable and plentifully available, and the town centres seemingly aren't chock full of either gormless fucking automatons or vicious, sub-human chavscum. Cyclists are still ignorant, reckless cnuts (sic), though at least they are confined to their own specialist (as in special school) lanes where they can, in theory, only injure each other. Generally a wonderful place, I do so want to move there, really. Shame it'll be under the North Sea by 2030, niet goed.

• I spoke as much (little) Dutch as I dared but they are all so damned multi-lingual over there that they can't help but interrupt your struggle through Nederlands and happily continue on in English of a standard way more intelligible than that of 95% of the populace of Greater Glasgow. Indeed, I stopped all the spreekt u Engels stuff whenever I struggled as most folk I talked to looked offended at the thought that they might not speak English.

• Roadburn represents the boutique festival concept done right. Indoors, in a lovely venue like a three way between the Barras, the ABC and Embra Playhoose, well organised, safe and well catered, despite being totally sold out, there were no queues for the bars or the toilets, plenty of space to chill out for watching bands like Amon Duul II or Mono from a prostrate position (as directed by your general practitioner). I've wanted to go to it for years and now I want to go back every year. Bloomin' heck, Cathedral and Saint Vitus on the same bill, one after the other, where else is such a thing even possible ? Only way they could top that would be getting Trouble and Sabbath together - hey, a chap can dream, can't he ???
  

Righty ho, that's me shot my bolt (figuratively speaking) for now. Might be back for an update in three months. Or maybe not.

Mad Mental Mario

In a belated follow-up to that wee video of Monty Mole that I linked to a long while back, I thought I would post something utterly fantastic that I stumbled across the other day...



By jiminy, there is clearly nowhere near enough of that kind of thing being made in the world today, something that I intend to redress imminently with my own re-creation of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Naked German Art Students. You have been warned !

Oh...my...goodness...OH...MY...GOODNESS!!!

As another wonderful year draws stealthily to a close, the big man has mostly been watching sport, as usual, and the PDC World Darts Championship in particular. Magnificent arrows all round this week as we close in on The Power picking up his inevitable 14th (yes, fourteenth!) world title (a seemingly miserly 11/4 on with SkyBet... but I am feckin' telling you, it's like buying money, buying bleedin' money, weigh in, weigh right in!!!)



Ahem, anyways, one of the guaranteed highlights of the coverage is always Mister Sidney Waddell and his bewildering array of beer bellied bon mots affectionately aimed at the tungsten tossers and their barmy army of acolytes. The enthusiasm of the Geordie genius is infectious but not hard to understand as, unlike the often turgid fitba (especially the weekly manure served up here), the darts never seems to let you down on the entertainment front. Not ever. The vid on show is the golden voice talking in the golden arm doing the first live 9 dart telly finish - about 0.50 odd is the point where Sid starts getting somewhat emotional... what else can you say except magic darts!

...and, another thing...

While I'm in the mood for posting piccy's that have tickled me, I thought I'd dig out my favourite LOLCat LOLDog of the past year. 

Oh, and my favourite LOLBear, too. I've got a feeling that I recognise the little bugger as well... 

Well that makes two of us...

Not a great past few days here in the fortress of bolloxchewed, what with Oliver Postgate joining the ranks of the dearly departed as well as the sainted Accies getting scudded 7 - 1 by the Boche (tho', thankfully not in our own midden this time) and dropping back to the foot of the EssPeeEll, I've not been filled with much good cheer. Until I saw the accompanying picture. A brammer, I'd say.

Give generously, dirt worshipping heathens!

Feckin' hell ! The last post was on August 11th ?! WTF is going on in here ?!?!? Not going to give the full rundown on my whereabouts over the past couple of months but I have been rather busy over the past wee while, honestly. Hmmm...

Anyhoo, I only poked my head in the door to post a link to a campaign that I very much approve of. Apologies in advance to those of my friends who are of a holy persuasion. I may have mentioned once or twice that I, um, am not that way inclined...



Tagged this one as both fun and misanthropy. Always been a winning one-two combo with the big man. Especially with Accies losing their last four straight league games...

Wii bit of light relief (!)

Hi-de-hi, campers! Haven't posted for a wii while... tee-hee, see what I did there ? Yes, I finally got around to it, I let the moths out of the old wallet and bought myself that blessed Wii white beasty just like I promised... jeepers creepers, what can I say ? It is simply wonderful. I feel like a wii kid again. It's already right up there with my beloved old cpc 464 as the best games machine I have ever had. I've only got Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Super Paper Mario but they are all more than enough for this old fella at the moment. In fact, I haven't had such strained wrists since coming across(!) that Noni / ventriloquist dummy video a few months back... Ahem



BTW, it turns out that the bad yin in the Mario game is a fella named Count Bleck... hmmm... No worries, I've dealt with plenty of bleck counts back in my Hillhoose days, another one won't be a problem... I'm fully expecting the final battle to be in an incinerator facing a housing estate...

BTW II, you ain't going to believe this but my daily Wii Fit test tells me that I have a Wii Fit age of 28 (no typo, twenty friggin' eight!) and that my BMI is 22 (!!), which is apparently absolutely bloody perfect! Who knew ? I guess being built like a rack-stretched cadaver must have been actually a good thing all along and is therefore clearly the way forward for the rest of the human race... Speaking of racks, the frisky fräulein has been absent without leave for the past month or so... I'm hoping to gawd that she's just on a summer holiday back in Deutschland (her wii car - oh bugger, pun overload malfunction, I'll have to stop right now - is still parked outside the flat). Anyhoo, suppose my poor old wrists are grateful for small mercies that they can at least get some rest now...

BTW III, that ain't me in the vid. I will be found generally wearing my beloved lime green Sabbath T-shirt or suchlike when doing the old hula hoop stuff. That's how you can tell it ain't me, right ??? Glad to clear that one up.

A Megablast from the past...

No, I can't quite believe it myself. The search, the sacred quest that I've been on for years, nay decades (-ish) is finally over. Yes, you all thought that I was just a nutter with an overactive imagination on top of a worrying fetish for ancient arcade shmups (as well as a selection of cute, furry animals but we won't go there) but I've finally cracked it. That bloody game that I told you about, the one with the uncredited rip-off of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu as part of the soundtrack. Okay, so it wasn't Thunder Cross after all, that doesn't matter (I'm 99% sure that both games were briefly in Electronic Experience together at one time). No, it was an old skool Taito belter called Megablast !!! And here's some footage (with lovely audio) to prove it...



Ah, the wonder of KLOV and an internet world chock full of sad, demented loonies interested in the same kind of obscure, ephemeral nonsense as the big fellow. YATA!!!

Made with the help of -

Autechre "Amber" - Lovely old skool experimental techno for a gnarly old skool gamer to drool over while rocking like it's 1991.

Stay on target... Stay on target !

I can't wait to see that thing flying. Don't fancy it's chances, though...

Porkins: "I've got a problem here."
Biggs: "Eject."
Porkins: "I can hold it."
Biggs: "Pull up!"
Porkins: "NO, I'm all ri--aarrggh!"


Made with the help of -

Rush "Snakes and Arrows" - Yes, I am a software developer, I am a Star Wars fan and I do listen to Rush, so that's 10,000 nerd spotting points to you and a fuck you very much.

UPDATE (08/10) : "Here goes nothing..." oh dear :-(

UPDATE II (17/10) : A-ha, the real story at last...

Quelle Frappe ! Quelle Frappe !

Countryside View (Close)

A sight to gladden one's heart... Piers Morgan riding a Segway, going arse over tit and breaking three ribs. Shame it wasn't his neck but, still, you've got to take your thrills where you can get them...


Stay tuned, folks, the much requested Simon Cowell - Bull Elephant technicolor anal violation clip will be coming along ASAP!!!

Hmm, I've had that same problem with flaps myself....

No, that isn't a pic of the latest big game I've shot hanging from the wall in the trophy room here in the fortress of bolloxtude - it's a pic of a silly big dog that got its silly big teddy bear head caught in a cat flap. I've been very remiss in posting those stories of canine stupidity that I'd previously promised my readers before so hopefully this will go some way to redressing the balance...



Speaking of tight, little flaps with a black, furry protrusion (pah, why go for the double entendre when a single one can do so much better ?) my lovely Bavarian neighbour was nicking about in the altogether yet again this morning. Marvellous. I was down at the local library a bit later and contemplated picking up a book I spotted,"German in fifteen minutes". Fifteen minutes ??? I'd only need two minutes. At most. To paraphrase Alan B'stard - "Two minutes ? I'm not doing it twice !!!"

Made with the help of -

Robert Fripp "Exposure" - Tee hee, see what I did there ??? Anyway, far too good an album to be relegated to use as a mere pun on a throwaway blog entry...

How we used to live...

Okay, I was a wee bit late to the whole MAME party, mainly through the fact that I'd been keeping a P133 alive for the best part of ten years, a situation due in no small part to being too tight to upgrade my heartfelt concern for the environment - the old bird struggled enough emulating a PC Engine (with the sound turned off and the frame rate w-a-a-ay down) that I rightly felt it would be rather a waste of time getting it to try and crunch its way through the arcade version of Chase HQ...

However, I finally got around to getting myself up to speed the other week at long, long last and have had an absolute whale of a time gouging my way through stacks and stacks of the old classics... Out Run, Salamander, Gryzor, et cetera ... but the current favourite has to be the mighty Green Beret. I'd forgotten how good that old girl was, bringing back all those hours I'd spent down Sweaty Betty's every other weekend trying to get past the end of that second level (bah, making those lovely doggies the end of level baddies is not playing fair with the big chap, boo hiss). Anyhoo, got to be still worth a look to any discerning gamers out there... jeez, a couple of hours knifing and / or flamethrowing some pesky Russians doesn't half make a chap hungry... note to self : must remember to dig out "Raid over Moscow"...


BTW I - if anyone au fait with POW rescue behind Soviet lines is looking at this, please let me know how the hell you kill the paragliding karate bastard who parachutes in with his smart arse machine gun every so often from level 2 onwards ??? He's no danger but I keep missing the fucker with my rocket launcher and he jumps off before I can get down and knife him in the cojones...

BTW II - on a completely unrelated note, it seems the TV Cream blog bloke is an old school Genesis fan as well... nice work, fella

Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it infamy!

In tribute to my old mate iKon, who very kindly sent me a stack of Heroes episodes the other day (feckin' brilliant work, old boy, cheers!), I thought that I would post a link to something a bit obscure (and, frankly, cool as f**k) that I've stumbled across via the fabulous tv cream site, something which I'm sure will be well appreciated... Kenneth Williams presenting Wogan! No, really. Just take a look at this...

Marvellous stuff. Takes one back to the days when the old goggle box wasn't quite so dominated by gurning, talentless fuckwits of all stripes... hmm, must be showing my age :-(

You need coolin'...??? Oh Lord yeah !!!

Yes, daft as a box of frogs but pretty darn close to genius. This is top drawer canine cojones, the kind of utter gonzoid brilliance that justifies the whole mash-up shooting match in four minutes of colossal riffage...

A demented refugee from the (late) eighties writes...

I thought I'd cracked it, folks - I thought I'd finally found that old Konami arcade shooter I had played in Electronic Experience all those years ago with the beautiful rip off/homage of Chopin as the level one music - Yes, indeedy, Thunder Cross seriously, genuinely, desperately looked like it fitted the whole goddamn bill...

The look of the thing definitely rings some major bells with the old boy, especially the section with the multi-level parallax red cloud background (still a sucker for that stuff). Other wee touches like the big old metallic bosses (no, not another errant Sabs reference) are very much in the mould of the mystery game I'm thinking of... and I am still 90% sure it was published by Konami...

However, as that famed Zen master Roy Walker might have said when confronting this particular situation, "mmm...it's good...but it's not right". The dread realisation was something that I confirmed for myself first hand when I stumbled across this vid of the game being played from start to finish - it's full of standard issue late eighties synthy j-rock game music, all well done natch but nothing at all like the game music I'm hearing in my head - all upbeat, bass heavy, eminently danceable shit, no moody piano sonatas whatsoever, zero zilch zip nada. I sat through it all and watched the whole f**king thing being played to completion (yes, I am one singularly sad bas - hell, you must know that already) but, grud on a greeny, it just ain't the one... :-(((

So my (deservedly) lonely quest goes on - I move on to another place, assume another fake surname again, hope to God the folk in the next town don't make me angry (sorry, different quest, wrong meeting, erm, carry on)...anyway, I'm begging you, please, someone out there has just got to help me !!! Do I have to plough through every single friggin' japanese horizontal scrolling blaster released between 1985 and 1992 before I get any satisfaction around here ?!??!

Damn you! God damn you all to hell!

I was Monty's double...

This is utter, utter genius. Make sure you've got the sound up...

Right, that's me off to boot up the old 'strad emulator (like I really need an excuse...)