Crazy as this may sound to you..but I have been feeling a little Christmas cheer lately, not at all evident in the header of this blog being up *before* December (as it was so kindly pointed out to me thanks heh).
So I took myself and my growing Christmas cheer into town today to maybe get a few gifts down before I do my mad dash on the final night. I thought I would run errands whilst I am in town and get two birds killed with one stone or some such.
I sourced out gifts and then decided that before buying I would sort out the other, more boring stuff and come back so I don’t have to carry bags around taking out small children as I move.
It was then that I discover that although I might be trying to break my habit of being meh about the festive season the forces that be have decided that this might well be one of the signs of an impending apocalypse and so they set about trying to revert me back to my old ways by making sure that each and every single time I went to pay a bill it would double in price, all money transfers would be met with a ’sorry your card is temporarily not functioning due to network work’ and my landlord would send me a message along the lines of ‘My gift to you = Rent increase!! Wheeeeee!

But you know what..as long as I have season 2 of the Gilmore Girls loaded up in my dvd player I will not let them win (and with that little Gilmore Girls revelation you now are in possession of my deepest darkest secret, take care of it!)

Oh and you know what else is funny..seeing a Christmas stall set up with lots of super games for the kids, you know, the usual thing of hooking a floating duck onto your stick, or throwing a ball to knock over some cans to win a toy.
However this stall didn’t have oversized stuffed bears for your prize but instead offered all the young children who were gleefully lobbing balls at rusty baked bean tins a super smashing prize of…a 120 pack of cigarettes.
I resisted sticking my hair into pigtails and doubling back to test out my aim in a rare display of when my willpower actually won out over my desires and seeing as it’s all used up there is nothing to stop me eating the bazillion muffins and cakes residing in my kitchen

Everyone has a list of movies that are supposed to be awful but you kind of love anyway but how about flipping that and having a list of movies everyone raves on and on about but you personally find to be total crap.
I got into a bit of a discussion about this and found it actually quite easy to list a bunch of films that won Oscars and/or general praise but when I sat through them I felt like sticking straws in my eyes so I thought I would bring them to you here.

A Clockwork Orange – It’s iconic and creepy, I get that, but I only managed to make it though the first ten minutes of made up language before the large WTF question mark appeared above my head and I had to leave the room. To be honest I don’t think I like any of Kubrick’s films which will probably horrify you all.

The Sixth Sense Dear god I know everyone raved about it but any film directed by M.Night whateverhisnameis is going to be bad take The Village, Signs for example…

Black Dahlia I don’t think this one was praised but it had a good cast and quite a few people recommended it, I have to say it was one of the worst films I have sat through and I’ve sat through a lot.

Der Totmacher I watched this in my Criminal Behaviour seminar, basically it’s a German film about a murderer being interviewed by a Psychologist in a room. That is all that happens, they sit in a room..and talk about a lot of stuff not related to the actual case..for 140 minutes. It has the honour of being the most boring film I have ever seen, yet everyone seemed to love it.

I heart Huckabees Someone once told me that you would have to be pretty stupid not to “get” this movie. Therefore I must be stupid. I tried to watch it 3 times and I fell asleep three times.

The Hills Have Eyes I know I am not the only one to really loathe this film. Of the 107 minutes I would say that maybe only 30 of them have dialogue and the rest is a mix between screaming and grunting. Fans of the horror genre raved about it but it’s a bit too much for me.

Wes Anderson films in general I guess I just don’t get the whole Wes Anderson thing and the fact he uses Ben Stiller and the Wilson brothers over and over annoys the hell out of me.

Gladiator Seriously hyped up but I just wanted it to hurry the hell up and finish.

What about you guys? Any other films you are supposed to love but really just can’t?

Do you ever get it when you see people that just make you stop and think about how little they must have going on in their head?

Last night, as I walked past the kids play room on the Calais-Dover ferry I saw a family sat around. Mum was stood a few feet from her baby encouraging it to walk the short distance over to her. The kid, not entirely sure about it’s ability to walk on the rocking boat was stood stock still, the mum got impatient telling it to hurry the hell up and that is when a woman who was stood behind the baby (and part of the family I guess) lifted up her foot and, with quite a bit of force, kicked the kid in it’s back in an effort to make it move..cue the poor thing doing a face plant into the carpet and getting a nice graze on it’s chin to mark the occasion.

That woman was grounding for the thought that just because some people can reproduce you really hope they never chose to make that decision.