Best Ninty news ever

So, been bemoaning the state of Nintendo releases recently? Kept yourself going with Wii Shop and repeat visits to Animal Crossing DS? Even been contemplating grabbing a new PSP slim and and XBox 360 to keep you ticking over? Well STOP! Release dates are in and they make a man (child), very happy indeed.

Metroid Prime 3 – November 8
Super Mario Galaxy – November 29
Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles – December 13
Zak & Wiki – Mid December

+ this Smash Bros gossip and of course Zelda DS – Oct 11. It doesn’t get much better in terms of games line ups than that (unless you’re about to pick up a 360 on the sly and get some Halo 3 in your area as well… it’s a hard life).

Bite me

Yesterday I discovered my new favourite website – the annually update list of the World’s Best Restaurants. If ever you’re having a bad day / feeling a bit peckish / are in need of some serious mental pampering, then taking a virtual tour through this mouth-watering website pushes all the right tastebuds.

Currently I can only lay claim to having visited two and have a reservation for 1 more, but I am deadly serious in my quest to knock off the top ten (if not the whole list) before I come in spitting distance of middle age… one a year sounds more than doable, don’t you think?

Heston Blumental & Golden Snippers

All of the top ten get me going, but the 360 degree tour of Louis XV – where the meal is ended by a waiter cutting you a length of freshly made marshmallow with a pair of golden scissors – is a definite highlight, as is the following description of scientist / chef / eccentric Heston Blumenthal’s newest additions for the menu of the Fat Duck… love it.

“So what are his latest brainwaves? A new seafood dish, Sound of the Sea, is joining the tasting menu. Presented in a glass-topped wooden box containing an edible seascape made up of abalone, razor clams, shrimps and oysters, it is served with an iPod so diners can listen to marine sound effects while they eat.

Meanwhile, the Maître d’ has been trained by a magician to turn a rose petal into an egg at the table, which he then whips up into the famous egg and bacon ice cream.”

Desperation / Despair / Depravity

Sun is shining, weather is sweet – etc…. but everything else is a steaming pile of puckacka. It’s a little hard to explain, so I won’t. Instead I’ll talk about Nintendo because that makes me happy. Let’s see – Super Metroid Prime thingy coming in a couple of months; Super Paper Mario right around the corner; new Zelda game on DS any time now (how good does it look? very good indeed); new Treasure games to download on virtual console (if my totally crap-ass, slow-as-hell, over priced internet service lets me online); new Zelda mini shooting game to come packaged with Wii Zapper on release; still haven’t picked up Resident Evil 4 Wii edition, Link to the Past, Super Mario 4 or bomber man; hot new 3rd party titles like Zak & Wiki and Dewey’s Adventure coming soon and getting great previews… great stuff!

Zak & Wiki: will be wicked

Only one slight problem, none of them are out yet and I have nothing to play bar Mario Strikers which is proving to be punishingly hard on the final cup level. Good job I’m scoring a 360 soon so I can raid other people’s games libraries and indulge myself this summer…. or I could just go outside and play frisbee in my new, fitted, overpriced Italian shorts. Maybe I’ll just do that.

PS – Sorry for the lack of entries of late, Fingers. Consider me back in black.

He really talks like that…

It’s true.

Oh no you di’nt

Weird Science

So, I walked outside just now and I’m not kidding when I say: the MOON was RED! The moon is supposed to be WHITE, like this:

But it wasn’t white, it was red. Like this:

How embarrassing. To think, we’re THIS close > < to finding a cure for cancer, and we can’t even prevent the moon from turning red. I’d really like to know what ‘scientists’ actually do all day. I mean, it’s not like this would have been a big surprise. They’ve had plenty of time to work something out, but obviously were too busy playing foosball and electrocuting frogs to be bothered to formulate a solution for red moon. That’s why most scientists look like this:

(*Artist rendition of a scientist, not a ‘real’ scientist)

Here’s what’s ruling my world…

Two things currently owning Drink City Two Millzzzz:

1) The Noisettes	2) Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
Don’t Give Up (audio) Sister Rosetta (YouTube video)	Lazy Horse Dr Steve Brule for your health

Please note that the volume of text in this entry gives no credit to the amount of time I spent fucking around trying to make it look pretty. And it still doesn’t look that pretty. So, enjoy the content knowing that I’ve spent 30 minutes of my Saturday formatting a blog entry – and that’s 30 minutes I’ll never get back. Not even if Einstein was right about wormholes and such.

Wrong Music

Coffee either brings out either the best our worst in me, but no matter which state of mind bubbles up through the murk of my brain pan, I always crave the same type of music to soundtrack it to – wrong, bad, dirty noises.

I don’t like music journalism or the egos and crap beer that go with it (friends and colleagues excepted), but I do like digging around in obscure places for a new noise to shudder my synapses with. 50′s Jazz, Afro-beat, Studio One dubs – there’s a place in my heart and an inch in my crate for all of that stuff, but when a double espresso is starting to percolate in my arteries it’s pure digital filth that I need to get by.

Fela Kuti & DJ Scotchegg

Most of the day my headphones are hardwired in to the listen again service of the brilliant BBC Radio Player (try Radio 1′s Rob da Bank, Mary Anne Hobbes, Giles Peterson and Fabio & Grooverider or Radio 4′s Gardener’s Question Time), but the real wrong sounds are a little harder to unearth. If you want to start at the deep end, head over to Wong Music or Cock Rock Disco to see what Ladyscraper, DJ Scotchegg and Ebola are cooking up in the world of 8-bit micro music, shitcore and the like. Want to sample a real breakcore mix but don’t know where to start? Here’s a freebie from DJ Poingi – She Loves Breakcore But She Has No Legs. Nice. Want to soften the pace and start with some straight up Dubstep business? Skream’s Myspace is currently streaming Chestboxin and the mighty Midnight Request Line – go and have a listen!

I’ve just downloaded a couple of the free mp3 albums from Cock Rock Disco and they’re suitably screwed in a ‘I wish someone would come and ask me what I’m listening to right now just so I could play them this and see the look on their face’ type of way. That said, a number of the tracks are genuinely enjoyable. Ladyscrapers Gabba mash up If it’s Going to be That Type of Party… is just awesome and Track 7 on the Cock Rock Disco 2006 Compilation is currently pleasing me no end. If you need a little eye-porn with your aural pleasure, take a look at this You Tube video mash of some of the Cock Rock tracks. You can watch the hi-res here or download the whole album and other stuff for free right here… bad music never sounded so good.

Halt! Liberwagon coming through

I had prepared a monumentous literary masterpiece for your reading enjoyment today, but then two things crossed my desk upon firing up for the day which have caused me to literally drop everything (bar my pants, which I save for special occasions) in absolute astonishment.

Item 1:

Item 2:

http://kevin07.com/

Item 1 needs no further explanation, but Item 2 begs the question: have we become so accustomed to taking the piss that a contender for the leader of this country, a person who will be visible on a global scale, and will frequently, as part of that position, be required to represent us in times of need, that we have overlooked the fact that a) his name is Kevin and b) he decided to emphasise this fact by starting an electoral website called “Kevin07″.

In an aborted attempt to get ‘down with the kids’ he’s also included links to such bastions of the modern day as MySpace, YouTube AAAAAAND Facebook. I’m adding him as a Facebook friend as we speak, simply because an opportunity to post on Kevin07′s Facebook wall is an opportunity that will soon pass once Kevin07 realises that he’s getting owned by 15 year old kids.

Honestly, if he wins an election, purely on the basis that he started that site, I’m moving to New Zealand. And that’s saying a lot because I hate that place.

Old News

The death of history and the Disneyfication of fact is old news. It’s also not particularly interesting and I don’t want to become known as the dull digit of our opposable blogging crew… but for all that, I do think it’s important to supplement your internet intake with a small dish of lightly steamed facts whenever possible.

Traditional alpine peasant & Walt Disney

I like to be entertained and often in the most inane way possible, but I get as much if not more pleasure from unearthing a nugget of knowledge so exciting or random that all other thoughts and ideas are driven from my brain. This is why most information should be absorbed sitting down – imagine abseiling down a building and suddenly learning almost 2,000,000 people died in Ireland during the Famine of 1845-49: you would plummet to your death in a hail of confusion and frayed rope.

Or how about practicing tricks on your mountain bike whilst your mate recites Josephus’ account of women eating their own babies during the horrendous siege and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem in AD70? A result like this would be getting off lightly.

I would genuinely love to compile a montage of people in horrendous accidents caused by the sudden absorption of too much knowledge, but would anyone stop watching Chocolate Rain remixes long enough to watch it?

PS If a sun-dappled, mid-winter luncheon isn’t the perfect occasion for a glass of chilly pink, I don’t know when is.

The best and the worst thing about Fingers is his undying (and completely unrealistic) belief in ‘history’. Despite the fact that he called me a bald-faced, misogynistic liar two posts ago (read between the lines), I know that in all reality all Fingers is trying to do is maintain somewhat of a social fabric which otherwise is slowly being torn apart by ‘science’ and ‘astrology’ (it won’t be long until both fall under the same banner, forming a new HSC subject: astro-science).

But enough on Fingers and his love of Rosé, a wine that can’t decide whether it’s white or red, left or right wing, coming or going, emo or punk. It actually says a lot about Fingers that he quaffs the most fence-sitting of all wines as a first preference on a dinner date. This fact promulgates the air of mystery about him. Usually it’s easy to bookmark someone based on their wine selection at dinner, especially if only meeting them for the first time. The number of first dates Thumbs has had to abort prematurely due to an inappropriate wine selection is now bordering on ridiculous. Or, let’s be honest, an excrutiatingly incorrect pronunciation of Cabernet Sauvignon, followed by a coy giggle. No, that’s not cute, that’s just displaying a lack of cultural grace.

This, however, is cute:

And is slightly less lame than this: