Happy St George's day

I would just like to wish those that care a happy St Georges day. I have my flag flying(which was considered illegal until recently, I love being a little subversive) and some bottles of English ale sat in the fridge to toast the day when I get home from work, assuming it’s safe to drink them on top of the painkillers I am using to suppress a killer tooth ache.
Here’s a little something I found on Youtube a while back, I really think this should be used as the official English national anthem(seeing as we don’t have one, god save the queen is in fact the British anthem and that’s an entirely different animal (and a crap song)).

Saturday night in

While developing a passing interest in the origins of English, or should I say Anglo Saxon culture (beyond drinking tea and talking about the weather), I thought I would give the film Beowulf ago (I really wanted to rent I am Legend from the shop but it was out). I had read a translation of the poem years ago about the same time I was reading the Saga of Asgard and some Celtic legends too. I have always found any film-involving Ray Winston as amusing but probably not in the way intended but at least with this film, I did not have to look at him. His character (Beowulf) looked more like Sean Bean (another actor I have mixed feelings about). Another thing I noticed was all the characters eyes seemed to close together, I don’t know why but this bothered me. I found the animation style slightly irritating and on further reading discovered the story deviated considerably from the original, which always pisses me off (even though I can understand why it’s done).

You can see the link with Tolkien though but he never made a secret of using Beowulf as an inspiration. That was another film, or series of films that pissed me off, while everybody else was saying how fantastic Lord of the Rings was there was me being totally nerdy and listing all the things wrong with it.

At least ive got the four DVD boxed set of the Tremors series to watch that my son has just ordered on Amazon, that should cover a few Saturday nights.

nightwish - dark passion play

It’s taken a long time to get round to this but I can be a bit slow on the uptake at times. After seeing one of their videos on some music channel my daughter was watching I thought I would give it a go. I have read about them, seen pictures and known there was a scene and had it described to me by a radion dj, but to honest, it just went over my head and away into the subconscious. Symphonic metal sounds so …… cheesy.
Dark passion play by Nightwish is cheesy,pompous over the top nonsense, I love it. You can cook to it; not as good as a really good cooking album but it gets 7/10. You can cycle to it, though I had to work this one out on numerous short trips but I’ll give it 9/10. Moreover, you can listen to it while the little one nods off, a good 8/10 for that. You can also read (sci fi/fantasy) to it and bath to it.
Despite Anette Olzon looking like she should be working in a chip shop and for some reason reminding me of Abba crossed with Led Zeppelin ,Iron Maiden ,Sisters of Mercy and Clanned they are well worth listening and very very fun.

8/10

"vinegar with that love?"