Thirteen Random Observations About Different Things

1. I saw my neighbour of two years today for the first time. He always has his blinds down and I never see him, but today he was out doing gardening! I just assumed he was a clichéd serial killer living in seclusion with an ever-growing collection of corpses filling up his garage.

2. I just watched Lars Von Trier's Idioterne. It was bizarre. I don't think I liked it.

3. I thought my computer had crashed! But it turned out it hadn't! And that was the end of that fascinating story.

4. I walked down to the shops before and someone had tied their dog to a pole so it wouldn't run away (as you do). But this dog actually looked like one of the hyenas from The Lion King. I was hoping it'd start sprouting sassy R-rated Whoopi Goldberg jokes. Alas, it merely barked at me and I scampered away because...

5. ...I hate dogs. I was chasing around one at work the other day for 30 minutes! It kept running back into the store (and I was in charge). And because we didn't have a Yellow Pages to get a number for a vet or a pound I decided to use 12456 Directory Assistance, but it turns out we can't call that from work so I had to go upstairs to use my mobile phone. The vets I contacted were closed so I rang the lost animal home and they were all "We don't collect animals" and gave me a number for the council, so I rang the council and they were closed and then I exploded into a million different pieces. That's why I like cats. Cats wouldn't do that!

6. I had a dream last night that Ja and I were having a big fight about Hostel (shocking, right?) in this 3D parallel universe and then I mysteriously jumped on the stairmachine at the gym and out popped Ja with Tori Amos. They ripped my face off. Or, a layer of face? Cause I still had my face after it. Still, Ja and Tori Amos ripping your face off? Not recommended!

7. Did I ever tell to go buy Amy Winehouse's Back to Black and Armand Van Helden's Ghettoblaster CDs? Cause you should. Ghettoblaster is the one with the most boring album sleeve in the history of music. No joke.

8. Did I also tell you about how when I went to see a movie at the cinema recently (perhaps it was... Curse of the Golden Flower? That was the last movie I saw at Village so I guess it's correct) that they showed a trailer for Half Light. If you're not aware of this movie, don't worry. It was a (supposedly) terrible Demi Moore Scotland-set thriller about a lighthouse or something. Thing is, I saw Golden Flower in April... if you click here you will notice Half Light was released here (very limited) on July 20, 2006. It was already out on DVD! That's utterly bizarre. Sort of like that time I saw the trailer for Ocean's 12 three times in a row at the same session.

9. Speaking of release dates, neither Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (formerly of Grindhouse) or David Lynch's Inland Empire have release dates. What are we? In the freakin' stone age or something?


10. For no apparent reason the other night I went through Collateral (Michael Mann's amazing movie) and took, like, 40 screecaps. Because that movie has the best cinematography of the last... well, a long bloody time! (yes, even better than Children of Men in my eyes).

11. I served this lady at work the other night that looked exactly like Jane Lynch.

12. Does America and everywhere else that isn't the UK or Australia get Parkinson? It's this British chat program from England with this old geezer (Michael Parkinson, right?) who interviews people. They're usually a load of tosh with the guy talking about how lovely the guest is. Last week they repeated an episode from a while back where he interviewed Kate Winslet and, yeah, she is the greatest woman on this planet. "Look at me now!" I love that bit that all his guests have to do when they walk out at the top of the staircase and then pause to look at the audience. I love it more when they act shocked that there's an audience. "People?! I didn't know!"

13. I'm hungry. I think there's some Shapes in the cupboard!