Becky Mantin

For me, the most beautiful woman on British television. Something about those bonnie scottish features just really does something for me. It's not something I decided, must just be genetic attraction or something...

just blogging about her because not enough people seem to...

I guess the real way to enjoy the Becky Mantin experience is by watching a forecast:

I dare say I'd be "rattling through" quite quickly too...

The most impressive thing is that she's a Metereological Officer which means she partly controls the weather. She's probably responsible for the Jamaica...

One of the great horror movies

The chainsaw is not what is so frightening about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is the broom. It is not Leatherface. It is the hitch hiker and the Old Man. It is the fact that these are not iconic villains (TM) and that they don't appear to be played by actors. It is as if the film makers recruited these strange people, told them to "just be yourself" and pointed that handheld, heat-warped camera at them.

The reason that they are so scary is that, if we are extremely unlucky, we will meet one of them on our walk home from work tonight. The hitch hiker will smile and sidle over to us, offer to shake our hand. And if our fear of giving offense overcomes our in-built trepidation at his lank-haired, gap-toothed strangeness, if we reach out to shake his hand, we must watch his other hand very very closely. The truth is that we have met the hitch hiker before, he has recently been released from prison and has asked us for a bus fare before. We have shaken his hand, not daring to smell our palms afterwards, just washing them guiltily when we reach the safety of home.

We may have met the Old Man before two. This charming old gent who means well, who is "old school" and casually prejudiced across every conceivable dimension: gender, race, sexuality... we have heard his views expressed by uncles linked to us by uncertain family relationships, bonds, and commitments. We have bought him drinks in dark and dingy hotel bars in Liverpool. He has shown us the gap between his teeth, how he can capture our sister's nipple in there, his tongue flickering like a rattlesnake's tail.

In my opinion, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974 is one of a handful of the greatest horror movies ever made. This was just a fraction of my rationale.

Bayonetta

Finally completed Bayonetta on "hard" mode tonight, after several weeks-worth of hard struggle. This was a very difficult game, probably the most difficult one I've played in several years so it feels like quite an achievement to have finished it. It was always a challenge but each kill was very satisfying as a result.

The other great thing is that the end-of-game "reward" sequences are long and have a lot of variety, so there is a feeling of getting your just desserts in the end (I'll say no more so as not to spoil things for anyone). The only bad thing, now that I move on to God of War III is that I'm going to miss that perfect ass ;-). Heaven knows how long the developers spent working on that little number...

Hail His name, the Master of Mankind

This post is just a small nod of appreciation to the milieu created by Rick Priestley in 1988 for the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop battle game. For me, the image below is the one that best evokes this milieu.

This is not a future of bright sophistication and civilised committee meetings. This is brute force and ignorance. If a computer doesn't work, you do not open the case and carefully replace the components whilst wearing a surgical mask. You hit it as hard as you can. If that doesn't work, you call a tech priest who murmurs a litany over it. And for some reason, it works. Technology so advanced that it responds to ritual and percussion.

The weapons. Orbital bombardments, power fists, powered armour, plasma cannons, chainswords, storm bolters, frag grenades, melta-guns, melta-bombs, the manufactories on Mars, the Inquisition, Exterminatus, the bodies of a hundred youthful psykers sacrificed each day to preserve the last spark of life in the dessicated skeletal husk of the Emperor.

Brute force and ignorance. A regime of such brutality serving as humanity's final defence against damnation at the hands of the chaos gods.

Now... playing this game has never held much interest for me so I wouldn't call myself a fan of that. What I am a fan of though, is the incredibly detailed and grim universe that the Games Workshop team invented as background information to the game.

As the years since 1988 passed, a story began to emerge. I'll try to summarise what I recall of the story without looking too much up online. This is what I have in my head.

I think the main dramatic elements begin 30,000 years in the future in M31... or to use the WH40K date system, something like 1 397 452.M31, with the Horus Heresy.

Little Big Planet

The Chronicles of Doctor Who

It's great to hear that Michael Moorcock, author of fantasy books about Elric of Melnibone, Corum, Count Brass, Hawkmoon, and many others has been approached to add a Doctor Who novel to his canon. Here's hoping that at some point in the future, we will see him write an episode for this series.

At times his writing can be quite dark. I always think of two Elric novels: the first, in which Elric watches his torturer, Doctor Jest, at work with a scalpel on one helpless prisoner and another, in which Elric advises one antagonist

"you will look back on agonies presently unimaginable to you with a sense of nostalgia... as a time before the pain really began..."

Aperture

I must admit, one of the nicest experiences I think a man can have is to be caught in his girlfriends narrowed vaginal opening. That firm, implacable grip that seems to warmly tell your erection

"no... you're not going anywhere

"and you wouldn't, even if you could."

Trailer for Doctor Who

Sounds as though the new series starts in Easter.