"Beg Broother Dyeh Fooer"

I'm not the biggest (ha!) fan of the British version of Big Brother, and I know it's not the original version of the show either, but after seeing a couple of episodes of the American version (by accident, of course), I've come to realise that it doesn't matter how good your production values are, or how entertaining your housemates are, because your particular version of Big Brother is ultimately worthless if it doesn't have Marcus Bentley doing the narration...
Of course, Big Brother is by default shite, but we're talking in relative terms here.
Trip photos will be uploaded at some point soon, but I'm going to stick them on a webpage rather than put them here, so I'm spending some time getting reacquainted with HTML.

Out Of Office Reply

We're going away for a few days. It's Meg's birthday on the 24th, and so we're zipping up north to some spooky cabin in the woods for a little holiday. Blogger seems to be adding new features every day, so there's probably some function to have automatic postings while you're away, but I can't be bothered to find it. Instead, I'll leave you with this.

Take Me Out To The (Foot)Ball Game

I got hold of some free tickets to go and see the local footie team playing at the Metrodome, and never one to pass up a freebie, we went along to see how the Americans play The Beautiful Game. It was a fourth round cup match between our lot and the LA Galaxy, who are a proper Major League Soccer (euch) team, and thus technically superior to the Thunder, who are in the next division down (the approximate equivalent of the first division...sorry, the "Championship"). The Minnesotans have proven to be quite handy (well, not literally, obviously) at football and were the runners-up in the league last season, so it shouldn't have been a total rout.

But it was. Just not in the direction we'd expected.

Minnesota were all over the Californians in the first half, and held them to a stalemate in the second. It was in that first half that Minnesota scored the only goal of the game, but the one that gave them their first victory ever over a Major League (euch) team, and that puts them through to the next round. Minnesota were firmly in control, much to the obvious frustration of the Californians, as they began a series of dirty fouls, even punching the Minnesotan goalie in the throat at one point. It didn't help that the referee was completely incompetent, veering from oversensitivity to apparent blindness at random. But at the end of the day, Minnesota were the better team and they deserved to win.I could certainly do without the music played throughout the game, however. It may be necessary during the suicidal tedium that is baseball, but it's a bit intrusive when there's actually stuff going on. Less of the music thanks. And drop that national anthem rubbish too. For international games, it's fine, but it's getting in the way here.

The strangest part of the evening came when I glanced through the match programme, looking at the player profiles, only to find this image. Allegedly, this is Minnesota Thunder player Brent Jacquette, but it looks more to me like a certain Mr Patrick Booth of the city of London. I'd been told that he'd moved to Liverpool to study archaeology, but on the basis of this evidence, I'm not so sure that that's the truth after all...

Vampiric Comicery

Two new comic pages up at Skimble's fine Brad The Vampire site here and here. They're part of an ongoing storyline that I'm doing for Skimble, the first two parts of which can be seen here and here.

IKEAn't Believe It!

An enormous new Ikea superstore opens tomorrow opposite the Mall Of America. Meg had heard on the news today that people had been camping out since yesterday, so we went to have a look:



These people are camping outside the store to try and get the chance to be one of the first one hundred customers, all of whom will win a chair worth around $80.

They're taking at least two days off of work in order to get an $80 chair.
The minimum hourly wage in the US is $5.15.
You work it out.

The Lovely Sir Ian McKellen

"What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he's just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear at this time."

Great interview with magician and comics writer Grant Morrison here. The interviewer comes across as a pretentious wanker in his attempt to make Morrison like him, but Morrison's responses make up for it.

Brainiversary!

Brainsplurge! is a year old today. I wish I had something more interesting to report, but that's it!

Knee High By The Fourth Of July

Happy Birthday America! Now if only you'd act your age...