girlofprey

Things I didn't know before now:

• So You Think You Can Dance? has been axed, and The Voice, which is on at the moment, has taken it's spot. So much for finding out when it starts again this year.



• I never really thought Duncan Bannatyne was a nice guy, but trying to find out when Dragon's Den is on again this year led me to find out that he's kind of racist (he said fellow Dragon James Caan had an 'unfair advantage' because being born in Pakistan meant he had a tax break, which is apparently part of the reason why James Caan left the show), and a little bit misogynistic - he criticised a woman who tricked a fellow contestant out of his share of their gameshow winnings (which was part of the gameshow), and apparently said "she took the money because she is a woman". Which is lovely. It's always nice when people turn out to be jerks, isn't it?

Anyway. Other than that I have mostly been a) playing computer games, and b) not watching things on TV. I missed Monday's Coronation Street because there was some sort of football game on, and haven't caught up, which is making it a little awkward to watch the new episodes. Should do that over the weekend I guess. Also, I mostly haven't been watching snooker, even though I do quite love it. I am happy for Ali Carter and Matthew Stevens. Also I have seen Matthew Stevens for the first time, except for vaguely in icons. He looks almost exactly like I thought he would, and I can't tell whether that's because I'm very good at picking out which icons are him and what his face would look like bigger, or because I'm psychic. Either way, hurrah.

Saints Row 2 is going well. I kind of wish you could just stay a scuzzy low-life criminal forever. But then you don't get the respect you deserve. So you have to be a psycho instead. And [spoilers]. Sob. Also I am really enjoying Shadows Of The Damned, but I'm finding it slightly frustrating as well. It's probably the first game I've ever played that is SO combat heavy, and not open world with it. Even in The Darkness, you got to run around doing side-quests, and in Wet, you got the occasional break to just sort of do a puzzle to work out how to get from one area to the next. In Shadows Of The Damned you literally have to do a lot of often pretty difficult combat challenges just to get from one area to the next, and to progress at all. Which can be a little annoying. But it's also the point of the game. And I am enjoying it. So yeah.

Also I went to see Lockout, that film I've been banging on about. I LOVE PETER STORMARE. And Guy Pearce was kind of amazing. I really did enjoy it, it felt quite old-fashioned and sort of B-movie-ish. Which didn't always work, but mostly it was pretty fun. But they did do one thing I didn't like, which I can't even really complain about, because if you watch the film at all it will probably be a spoiler. It was unexpected (for me)! But not that great really. But yeah. Mostly, I liked it.

Oh, also I think I may be a bit in love with Tom from The Apprentice. Everything makes him sad. And none of his team leaders are really good enough for him. I am not expecting this feeling to last, and am mostly expecting him to go next week probably. Although perhaps he will continue to be underappreciated and then exonerated for many more weeks to come. Who knows.

Also Death Valley is on the UK MTV channels (every night at 11pm, weirdly), and I really feel like I should give it a watch, to show there is an audience here and encourage a Region 2 DVD release. Watching recordings off Sky count as ratings, right? But it's sort of hard enough to watch things I've recorded off Sky most of the time anyway. Never mind something I've already seen, and can sort of see again whenever I like. Sigh.

Also it seems like I am, on the other hand, quite enjoying children's programming at the moment. I've been watching Deadly 60 for a while - it is nice, and Steve Backshall is quite nice and enthusiastic - but recently, I've been catching Lockie Leonard after it on CBBC. Which I'm quite enjoying. It's weirdly quite funny and grown-up (some of the time) for a children's programme, although that might say more about my assumptions than it does about the show really. Also, I quite fancy the dad in it. There, I admitted it. I still haven't caught up with Horrible Histories this series though. Missed the beginning while I was at Eastercon, and never watched the shows I recorded of it. Shame.

( Further thoughts on Coronation Street )

Well. I've pretty much enjoyed this week of Coronation Street, even with it's occasional lows, anyway.

Also, some Emmerdale news! ( Possible future Emmerdale casting/return spoiler )

Also, I'd like to tell you that in the end I just gave up and decided to open the MP3 player and start using it. I've been gearing up to buy it for a while, and the one from the website wouldn't come for at least 3-5 days, and I'm going on holiday in two weeks, so I don't really want to be messing about or possibly missing the return date. And it's only £10, and I didn't go to the cinema this week, so it probably evens out. I'll probably be annoyed if I have to pay for another customs charge on some Threadless t-shirts though. Growl.

The only problem now is that I've plugged it in to charge, and the only user's manual I got is a tiny booklet that explains what the buttons are for, so I'm not really sure how I'll be able to tell when it's charged. Hmm.

I want to go check if So You Think You Can Dance is on now. I don't think I ever said how sad I was about Charlotte going last week. It's really kind of a shame that the first week she wasn't with Matt, she got pretty bad comments for pretty much all her dances, and then got sent home. But I could kind of see some shortfalls in her dances compared to some of the other girl's dances. I have decided that Matt is my favourite now. Especially after that boys' group dance. With Kirsty coming in probably second. And Lee B probably in third. Ironically, I decided I quite liked Bethany Rose last week, for the first time, while she was doing her hip-hop dance, which the judges hated. I get the feeling Katie will win though. Partly because she's a really good dancer, partly because she's quite pretty, and partly because she's been pretty popular all the way through. I'll still probably be watching until the end though (or until all my favourites go, if that happens, I guess).

The only things I have to say at the moment seem to be about TV I have and haven't been watching. I haven't been watching much of the snooker. I don't think I really have the patience and/or stamina to watch an entire snooker match, or even session sometimes. I'm trying to build myself up, but I'm not there yet I think. Also, I didn't watch the Royal Wedding. I was thinking about it, but I got up on Wednesday to watch the snooker, and I got up on Thursday to go to my course in Wakefield, and I knew I'd be getting up on Saturday to listen to Adam and Joe, and I was really tired, so I decided to just sleep instead. I did see the dress later on though. I quite liked it, although I don't think it was very exciting. If it was me, I'd probably have had a massive train, made of gold. And possibly some chainmail. It's possibly for the good of the country that I wasn't either marrying Prince William or designing that wedding dress.

The TV I have been watching: On Thursday, Long Lost Families. Is anyone else watching this? It's a sort of reality programme about Davina McCall and Nicky someone reuniting long lost relatives, usually people who have been split up through adoption and have been searching for people for years with no luck. So it's a fairly emotional/manipulative set-up to begin with, but on Thursday I was properly bawling my eyes out. The first week was pretty sad, but this week we were following two people, and one of them was a man searching for his real father who he never knew. The man's mum and his dad had been teenagers when he was conceived, and they hadn't got married or anything. And the man didn't know why his dad hadn't stuck around and helped raise him or be part of his life, and the dad's family had a bad reputation, and the man's family had always told him his father was a bad man. But when they found his dad - who was currently working as a carer for people with autism - he'd said that basically when the man's mum had gotten pregnant, her mum came round to the house and shouted at him about it, and then told him to stay away from her daughter, and stay away from the family, and everyone he knew had told him to just forget about it and pretend he never had a son. The only time he ever saw his son was just before he was six months old, when he saw his ex-girlfriend pushing him up the high street in a pushchair, for two minutes. And then he'd left town, and never wanted to find his son because he'd never been a dad to him, so he didn't think he had any right to try to be part of his life. It was so sad.

And the other person was a woman who'd given her son up for adoption to try to save her marriage. She'd been married, also as a teenager, and had a young son by a man, and then she and her husband split up, and not long after they split up she had an affair with a black guy. A few weeks after that she found out she was pregnant, and when she told the black guy he didn't want to know. Not long after that, she ended up giving her marriage another go, and there was a chance the baby was her husband's, and she really hoped it was, because they'd already talked about having the baby put up for adoption if it wasn't his. But then she gave birth, and the doctor told her the baby was mixed race, so obviously not. And she begged her husband to just try taking the baby home and raising him like he was his, and they tried for three months, but eventually the husband just said he couldn't do it. So she gave the baby up for adoption, but she'd talked to the couple who were adopting him so they knew she didn't want to, and she gave them a letter to give to her son saying she'd always want to be part of his life, and she'd be there for him if he wanted her to be. But he hadn't gotten in touch in 30 years, so she just wanted to find him to make sure he was well, and had had a good life, and to ask him not to hate her. They found the son, and it turned out he was really well, and he'd been looking for her since he was 14 or 15. It's just REALLY HARD to find people, sometimes. So that didn't help with the not crying thing. It is quite a manipulative show in some ways, they have this thing where the people give the producers of the show letters to give to each other before they meet, and they end up reading them out on camera, as though that's a THING THEY WOULD TOTALLY DO, and they wouldn't want to READ THEM PRIVATELY OR ANYTHING. But it is quite lovely a lot of the time as well, if you like quite tear-jerking stuff.

ALSO, I watched So You Think You Can Dance again this week. It's really weird this year, I think, because in almost all the couples the girls seem to be better than the boys. Or better at performing, as well as dancing, at least. Apart from Matt, and possibly Luke this week, I can't think of one boy who stands out when they dance with their female partners. And I know they want to keep their boy/girl couples, but it just seems really sad that they'll be getting rid of a girl every week, when they could get rid of two not-great boys. Although it's weird as well, because people are getting used to their partnerships now and starting to get on well together, so it's a little sad to see couples split up as well. I'm really glad that ( Spoiler ). The dances are often really good though - a bit odd sometimes, but usually good -it's just that they are often one-person shows at the minute. Which is quite sad.

And that's it sort of. Except that I watched Vera tonight. I quite liked it, I liked Brenda Blethyn and Vera, and I like her DI and her relationship with him. And yay, Gina McKee! But some of it seemed a bit farfetched, or unexplained. Which is a bit of a shame. Hopefully it will improve a bit next week.

In non-TV news, I got a letter from Yvette Cooper, because I sent her an email from 36 Degrees about the NHS. She and other labour ministers are against changes to the NHS, for the record. And I love Dawn. And I love Charlotte. And I love Priti (ETA: I have now fixed this link so it's the right one). And I hate the people in the comments who hate Priti. FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM ENTIRELY.

Oh, also, I have been playing Folklore again, and I have pretty much finished four realms with Keats, so I have only one more to go before I can hopefully move on with Ellen again, yay! I got stuck again, at the same point I pretty much got stuck with Ellen I think, so I did the same thing as I did with Ellen, went back to the realms I'd already finished and tried to make my creatures stronger. And then I managed to finish realm 4, and nearly chapter 4. Keats still annoys me a bit, but less so now, and even less so if the story goes the way I think it will. Rah.

So. Tomorrow I'm planning on playing more Folklore, watching at least some of the World Championship snooker final, and also trying to fill in my Incapacity claim questionnaire that needs to be back in to the people who sent it to me by May 6th. Possibly forgoing either the snooker or the Folklore to try to get that questionnaire finished. Chances are.