Check out these prospective In-laws!

I've got a busy day of revision today ahead of my final exam tomorrow, so I've just enough time to post this fabulous clip from Smith and Jones (Mel Smith & Griff Rhys Jones), a UK comedy duo, who were big in the 80's. They started off on Not the Nine O'Clock News together, with Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson, before becoming a dedicated duo. This particular sketch demonstrates how they perfected the art of being funny without the use of smutty material. Pure natural comic ability.

I was a Roman Standard Bearer!

Dealing with less weighty issues than gaming and comedy classics today! Is there life after death? and is reincarnation real?

Two questions any individual has asked themselves many a time, and may well have discussed with others occasionally, but it's a personal matter really, a matter of faith, not in the Christian sense of the word, as we're leaning more towards Buddhist concepts here, but; you hear stuff, you read stuff, you enquire and you assimilate that knowledge to form your own opinions on what life is really about.

From a personal point of view, I think life is too short to spend it worrying about what comes next (I know people who do though). I've been fed a few Buddhist tidbits over the years and they do tend to make sense, but I'm neither a Buddhist or a Christian, because I don't believe Jesus was the son of God, nor that he actually died on the cross. I suspect that to have been the single biggest con job in history (I refer interested readers to the book "The Messianic Legacy" for detailed clarification).

Where am I going here then, oh yes, re-incarnation. I believe in reincarnation, not because I remember past lives, and I've never been hypnotically regressed (although I fancy it), but I once had the most vivid dream ever, in which I was a Roman Standard Bearer. In the dream I had the full regalia, I was holding the eagle standard, and I was descending a snow-covered mountain, in thick mist, with other soldiers seen dimly at either side. This was followed by a sort of recce-mission sounding out an enemy fort on a hill-top, in the snow, at night, with a clear sky. I can't really emphasise how vivd this dream was, I'm totally convinced that what I dreamt really happened, and I was there.

Anyone has the right to punch holes in my merry tale, but just like any good religious person, I can believe what I like and no-one will convince me otherwise. At least I wasn't Alexander the Great's Chief Eunuch!

Back to Black!

Not necessarily my favourite game of all time, but definitely one of my recent faves, Black lets you unleash awesome fire-power with the added bonus that virtually everything in the game has a propensity to blow-up! Stuff actually begs to be blown-up. One of the best things about the game though, is the way the difficulty cranks up sharply from one level to the next, and it just gets extremely intense.

So, when you find yourself pinned-down under heavy fire, with no ammo and very little health, you have no option but to make a run for it. back where you've come from, scouring for missed items. It's just an awesome game!

A Demonstration In Artifical Intelligence!

So, this morning I had my Intelligent Internet Applications exam, although it's actually Artificial Intelligence, I have no idea why they named it so. It was 2 hrs 15 mins long, 3 questions from 5, and it was very hard. We were prepared for that however, because out tutor had seen the paper a few weeks ago and her exact words were "I'm glad you're sitting this paper and not me, I wouldn't like to be in your shoes!" That put my mind at ease, not! Needless to say, she never really conveyed just how hard it really was.

Anyway, it's also a really good film, A.I. quite long but sentimental enough to make grown men cry (possibly) and that's quite hard to achieve though the medium of television, although not for weak minded women who cry at at even the most pathetic soap-death. I should know, I've seen it happen many a time. Usually, I need to consume a considerable amount of alcohol before I can be made tearsome by something which would normally barely register emotionally.

Now, I only have the Network Systems exam on Thursday to negotiate, then the guys at College and myself are going out for a little drink to commemorate the end of our degree course, following which I'll most likely have to spend an hour or 2 on the phone to Job Centre staff, explaining that I'm no longer a student, but once again a filthy unemployed person, not worthy to receive their pity nor disdain! I look forward to that!

The Rimmer Song!

The Rimmer Song from Red Dwarf, possibly my all-time favourite comedy series!

The Puma's Mouth - Sacsayhuaman!

You have to admit, that's a pretty impressive wall them savages built there at Sacsayhuaman in Bolivia, with blocks weighing up to 300 tons. The joints are not only intricate, but are the reason the wall is till standing, because the area is geologically unstable and highly prone to earthquakes. It's apparent that the builders took account of that in their construction. You can't even slide a sheet of paper between those blocks so precise is the fitting, although we are told to accept that the barbarians who built this structure did not possess metal tools, and they didn't use mortar either (like the Egyptians) because they didn't need it. The walls were originally even higher, but the top rows were peeled off from the back (the ground is level with the top of the wall there) and used to build Spanish churches in the area.

No-one knows exactly when these walls were constructed or who built them, but they are further testimony to the skills possessed by races we know very little or nothing about, peoples who have long since passed into the mists of time. Hopefully, we will be able someday to open the lid on the metaphorical jar of history, and peer inside to see what mysteries the past contains.

Playing the Role of a Beer-swilling Heavy Metal Wizard!

Here's a picture from the very first Lone Wolf book "Fire on the Water" by Joe Dever, illustrated by Gary Chalk. I used to be a big fan of Gary Chalk's work, but must admit I preferred the work of John Blanche (Illustrator of the Sorcery Series), going as far as to buy a White Dwarf magazine on one occasion, becuase the cover had a wonderful piece of work by him, on it!

I would say that my mates and I made fairly strange teens, back in the late 1980's. We used to play MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing), which a lot of people would have called nerdy, but we didn't really play it in the traditional style, we would have a piss-up, and listen to heavy metal at the same time. That added an extra dimension to game-play, because you would start killing your mates game characters systematically after several beers. Characters which they had fostered for months, and which had gathered lots of goodies over that time. That was just a bonus, you could kill their character, really pissing them off in the process, and then take all their characters possessions too. Yes, it did come to blows on several occasions!

The connection is, I guess, that my mates and I, we mainly got together in our Higher Art class, we had similar tastes in music, books etc. About half-a-dozen of us, and all great guys, although globally dispersed now. The most hilarious thing about the class, revolved around a guy who failed the exam badly (no names mentioned). So we all left school, got jobs and so on. I heard that this guy had gone to college in Dundee to do his Art Higher again, and ended up working as a graphic artist, on huge money. Such irony, the one guy who truly demonstrated no artistic talent, became an artist. Life can be so odd sometimes can't it?

The Last Great Cavalry Charge!

This is my Great Grandfather, Alexander Wilson in his uniform. He was in the 7th (Princess Royals) Dragoon Guards. He fought in the Somme, at Ypres I think. Him and his mates had the unenviable task of charging at the German Machine-guns, on horse-back (see his spurs?), and although you may find this difficult to believe, they were armed primarily with lances. Such was the incompetence of the British high-command, and in particular Earl Douglas Haig (in whose memory Poppy day is held), who thought that Cavalry still had a part to play in modern warfare. Of course they were slaughtered wholesale, Alex only survived because his horse got shot, he got knocked-out and ended-up trapped beneath the horse. He landed in hospital with dysentry eventually. They never had much in the way of food, so he'd had to eat raw flesh from his dead horse (horses are very clean animals), because someone stole his ration-pack when he was out-cold beneath the horse.

My Father said that he didn't talk much about the war, even though he kept asking him as a child. He must have seen some terrible stuff though. He did recount one story about seeing a soldier who was leading a donkey laden with ammo up to the frontline, falling into a mud-filled shell-hole. The donkey and the soldier just disappeared, never to be seen again. Everyone just carried on, death was meaningless to them. And to think, all those young men thought that they were heading off on some great adventure, and the ones who came back would never be able to convey how terrible it really was, so they kept it to themselves mainly.

Have Your Cake and Eat It!

As a diversionary tactic, here's another Big Train clip, featuring the talent that is Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). If you're familiar with what we in the UK call "sayings", then you'll truly appreciate this!

My Ancestors Built Newgrange!

Continuing from yesterdays megalithic coverage, the image shows the Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange in Knowth, Ireland. My parents went to the site 2 years ago, on a holiday in Ireland, but it was raining so they stayed in the nearby Bru na Boinne visitor centre, something for which I roundly chastised them, knowing as I do a little bit about the significance of the place.

Anyone who's read "Uriel's Machine", will no doubt hold the same fascination with the location as I do, enhanced in my case, because my ancestors lived in the vicinity, certainly at Ardee and Drogheda (5 miles away), and for all I know may even have numbered among the builders.

The site is especially significant as, being built (allegedly) around 3200 BC, Newgrange is older than the Great Pyramid (600 years older), although there are no signs of a large community ever having lived there, perhaps never more than 300. We're speaking about a period in which the average life expectancy was 25 and metal tools were non-existent (again allegedly). That shows how commited they must have been, and over generations. Consider that another 2 ruinous mounds of similar dimensions lie in the vicinity also. Like the pyramids and other ancient structures, Newgrange was previously considered to be a burial mound, but it was plainly a religious structure, like the pyramids, with corpses being added later, when the religious significance had been long forgotten.

The roof space of the passage is grooved so as to make it water-proof, and the passage is lined up diretctly with the Winter solstice. These guys who built it weren't stupid cavemen. The fact that megalithic cultures rose up independently of each other, all over the World, surely testifies to the fact that all of them were somehow connected to each other. It's almost as if they were part of one ancient race, which had been scattered across the face of the Earth, by some global catastrophe, and wherever the survivors found themselves, they sought to recreate what they had known before. Am I talking about Atlantis? Figuratively, yes! Call it what you like, but an ancient race with advanced technology clearly existed, and it's only a matter of time before conclusive proof of that fact comes to light. the truth can't be hidden forever!