Monte Carlo

The confluence between Watergate and Linda Lovelace in early 70's political and pop cultures is lost on these youngsters.

It will be much better now it is being filmed on This Blessed Plot. After all, Hue in Full Metal Jacket was filmed in East London. The barbarians at the beginning of Gladiator were defeated in Surrey. Harry Potter, most James Bond movies and Band of Brothers were made in Hertfordshire. I'm sure NZ is utterly beautiful, it certainly looks lovely from the LotR movies. But shouty trade unionists can take the shine off of anything. The Shire is, in Tolkein's mind's eye, the English East Midlands of the early 20th Century. It is good that The Hobbit is coming home.

Maybe one day your generation will work out a way to fight a completely clean war, bereft of any human error or folly. In the meantime you can chill out in your Che Guevara T-shirts and sneer. Or perhaps you'll decide never to fight wars, whereupon you will be conquered. Am looking forward, with alacrity, to the day wikileaks finds a whistleblower from, say, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Consoles? LOL. Everythings a computer now. Phones are small computers now. One runs my car. They just come in different shapes and sizes, right?

Thanks, I was thinking of stone, but I was thinking it might have been a false friend (that's what it's called in Finnish...) FYI, in the U.S., "pit" is by far the more common term. "Stone" is still in the dictionary, but a lot of people would look at you funny if you starting talking about an "olive stone" (or cherry, peach, etc.). I blame Mister Webster, it was him what made you talk funny.

In English the middle of the olive is a stone, or a 'pit' a derivative of pip.

Bravo, these are all excellent, if not slightly disturbing, entries. Women really need to read this thread, along with forensic psychologists and magazine agony aunts.

Krezack, of course you are correct. The one thing that is occurring here is that the economic situation in the UK is keeping interest rates low, which is good news for home-owners. Home-ownership is deeply ingrained into the DNA of the UK economy, higher interest rates could seriously be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Yes still my favourite film of 2010.

You mean... There are no healing potions? :/

Off topic perhaps, but I played WoW for about a year with the director of Bio-Dome. Did he try to advocate soppy romances in WoW?

The cuts are spread over four years, a 20% cut is 5% per annum until 2014 for example. Most public spending in the UK is predicated on year-on-year increases so it's a bit of a double whammy. I'm going to be about

Move to Australia. No thanks.

I haven't even played it yet but I know I'm going to love it. That's spooky.

Hey, I'm on the record as really liking DA1 but this game isn't even on my radar for some reason.

This contradicts what you're regularly posting in the threads about Bioware games. Boo has a job to do, dangit, and it's bigger than whether a game is good or not. He is the Anti-champion of Bioware! Go, Boo, GO!

We don't march on Parliament, we write angry letters to the newspapers. I might lose my job. It's a slim chance, but it's there. What can we do? The country is stony broke and the kids in their early twenties coming up behind us deserve a chance, so do my kids. The only way to do that is to grit our teeth now and fix the economy. Of course, the hedge fund managers will still be buying Aston Martins and yachts but vive la capitalism.

Still don't have my copy. Damn the internet.

So, what's new? I've been sort of drifting in and out of this thread. Does the game still suck or has some awesomeness descended from the Bio-Dome and saved it?

As a paying student of Gorgon's Self Defence Academy I endorse this message.

For the love of god, D1ck is short for Richard. Get a grip lanuguage filter nazis.

Sorry to be hyper-critical but this game is contrary to all modern CRPG conventions. Surely all this player choice, linearity and indeed a complex matrix of in-game mechanics are anachronistic in the extreme. The game needs to centre on a pre-defined character, a buff lounge-lizard called Shepherrd. **** Shepherrd. **** is fully voiced. He has mana-based chat-up lines ("get your coat love, you've pulled" or my personal favourite, "you don't sweat much for a fat lass") and is based on an award winning novelette by one of the dev team. You can download lots of potential dates that were cut from the original and re-packaged as DLC. Please try again.

You've got two archetypical movie war veteran options, Wals. 1. Taxi Driver.You wear an old combat jacket with somebody else's name above the breast pocket and do weird, spaced out stuff. You are destined to climb a church tower with a hunting rifle during your lunch break. Your best bet at romance is the crazy letters mad women will send you whilst you stew on Death Row. 2. You are dignified but silent, and spend much time gazing into the middle distance. You have a disfiguring, but not completely unattractive, facial injury. You spend a lot of time in a bath chair, wearing neatly pressed flannel pyjamas, reading Rupert Brooke. You will never, ever, forget Ginger (your trusty wingman) doing down in the drink near Dover. All of the nurses at the convalescent facility are MADLY IN LOVE WITH YOU but you are too distressed to see it. When you finally do you will buy a jaunty Mk.IV Jag, a blazer and a Terry Thomas moustache and roger the lot of 'em. Ding dong!

Two words: The Raj. We were in India forever, it is etched on our cultural DNA. Then in the 1970's Bangladeshis arrived in the UK and brought with them their food, which is very different from traditional Indian cuisine, including southern Indian vegetarian food. As a Londoner I am therefore familiar with Nepalese curry versus Bangladeshi curry versus more traditional Indian curries from say Kashmir. Of course this is before we explore the murky Balti connection from Birmingham. Personally, I am a big fan of tandoori food and also Pakistani curry house / kebab hybrids of the type you find in East London (where the kebab and sub-continental food collide in gloriously tasty gastro-colour). The curry is a British staple - it is consistent, generally good value for money, tasty and goes well with beer. Brits love curry. I can go to a local curry house and eat great food, I can eat Michelin-starred curry. I've not even hit on Thai, Indonesian and Chinese curries either. This is a big subject.

And, I trust, BEER.