Strange things I feel guilty about

I just put my organic vegetable box delivery on hold until I get back from the US. This is not the thing I feel guilty about. The thing I feel guilty about is asking the nice man not to send any more carrots. I shouldn't be picking and choosing - I should be making something with everything. But I'm so sick of carrots.

And damsons.

But I've kept the damsons. I will eat the damsons. In penance.

Corporate woes

Yesterday, in a meeting with a particularly frustrating person, I broke my pen in annoyance (it's a branded pen, and has this little lip that used to be good for flicking back and forth).


My boss just reported that another colleague of ours had a meeting with same frustrating person this morning and broke her branded pen, in exactly the same place.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Here's a question - is there a name or subgenre for slacker type movies? You know the kind - they narrate everything, they state the obvious with undercurrents of irony, they have great soundtracks and characters wearing hoodies and tshirts with movie slogans or 80s video game characters on them. I'm just going to call them Slacker Flicks, and as Slacker Flicks go, Scott Pilgrim vs The World is mind-blowingly awesome.

Based on graphic novel by the same name, the general gist is that Scott Pilgrim - unemployed, plays in a band, kind of an arsehole when it comes to girls - meets a girl at a party and must have her. But as soon as he begins to make a move, the League of Evil Exes, an organisation made of all her previous boyfriends and a girlfriend, challenge him to duels and feats of strength.

It's excellent, really excellent. The dialogue is funny and intelligent, the plot moves quickly without losing you or suffering from endless amounts of exposition. The League of Evil Exes is brilliantly crafted.

The beauty of this movie, and probably why I enjoyed it so much, is that it's structured like a classic platform video game. Scott has to move through all the levels until he final meets the Big Baddie, who he must defeat. This opens it up for tons of little visual gags - all the bad guys turn into a shower of Super Mario coins when Scott dispatches them, the little 1up button appears when he collects enough coins.

Between that, the funny dialogue, the soundtrack and the wonderful characters, I can't stress enough how awesome this movie is.

But seriously, is there a name for this genre? There really should be.

Roadtrip!

When The Mother, The Sister and I all get together, insane laughter usually follows. When we play boardgames with my dad, he spends most of his time telling us to stop laughing, then gets fed up and leaves the game. So we're containing our glee in a car and driving up to Aberdeen for my cousin's wedding and none of the male members of our family (all three of them) are invited. It's going to be the Ride of Valkyries.

Now we are 29

I've been 29 for three days. I always expect to feel different, to feel a year older, but really all that happens is that I imagine the day I was born, and I wonder about what it was like being born, and then I get back to normal.

And this year, everything is hopeful. Can't get much better than that.