Raithe

drink induced or just general nervousness? But be grateful, Captain Darling had a tick for 6 weeks of filming ... but the actor couldn't get rid of it for another 6 months...

To add to my day.. I shall merely go with this quote: Edit: And dangit, I've just found out the US Embassy here has a Resource Center for academics to access.. but you can only phone them during 2 hours in the morning.. They take fax, they take real letters, but they don't have a bloody email...

Having that slow start to the day. Kept doing the fade in and out of consciousness for a few hours while the house was waking up before managing to force myself out of bed. Still have some of that groggy feeling lurking in the bushes. Nicely overcast day and the pooch is being all over-excitable. Hm, and I know I'm going to have to have a talk with my sister over the animals at some point. She's starting to get into the habit of getting home from work, and doing a "oh, can you just keep looking after them for a little, while i have a quick bath / get changed / eat dinner" or some such... and then not showing up for another 3 hours. Now on to see how much focus I can grab to shape my mind to some useful matters...

X-Men First Class.. A lot of mixed responses to that one. They dumped cannon out..and a lot of continuity with the previous films as well.. I mean some glaring plot holes between this and Wolverine Origins. But then they throw in Hugh Jackman for a cameo appearance and make it look like they're trying to connect it all... Some quite good actors with really itty bitty small parts as some of the background "normal" humans. If I could shut my mind from seeing all the missing cannon or earlier film continuity issues.. I'd actually say it wasn't a bad film. The story on it's own works quite nicely to develop the principle characters, although I'm not sure the short time frame really builds up the Xavier / Magneto friendship to a proper depth. Emma Frost while grabbing a chunk of screen time doesn't really show much characterisation - there to look cute in skimpy white, act as a counter to Xavier's telepathy, and do a bit of subtle right hand minion/living weapon action for the villain. The "first class" students, only Mystique and the Beast get any real dialogue or development.

Hey, I'm interested to see what sort of catfight will ensure between Ashley and Miranda...

Ah hah! I fell forward _over_ the head of my rocking horse and fractured my skull.. Walked through a doorway in perfect time to be at eye height to the cigarette in my uncles hand as he took it out of his mouth.. (and yes, the doctor refused to believe it had happened..right up until he peeled my eyelid up and found the ashcircle) And I managed to slice my palm open with a big staple. All before I turned 5. My mother was always so damn embarassed and worried that the people at A&E thought she abused her kids..

Well the weather's cleared up today. The dogs keep being playful, and the day is sliding along.. Hm, from my assorted reading I'm coming to various conclusions on my research. As a political statement as it were, and the perception to the public at large people were pretty satisfied with the whole Death of a Drug Kingpin when Pablo got whacked. However, the way the hunt for him drove the Cali Cartel deeper into columbian government, how little it actually effected the flow of drugs..and hell, the fact that over the next year the cost of drugs decreased.. pretty sure that didn't really satisfy on practical levels. Now I just have to figure out how to say that in a proper professional/academic manner whilst providing proper sources that led me to those conclusions... There's nothing like a deadline to make time slip away from you...

Gracias. Tsk.. see , now that's what I get for being so darn specific in my own approaches. I need to relearn how to be doing that google-fu to find them.

Righty-ho, as I mentioned the other day I'm currently trying to work on a research paper over the death and aftermath of Pablo Escobar using whatever open sources I can find... Now it's been awhile since I was a student who had to do regular proper research. I thought I'd take a stab at digging up related news articles of the events, but I've kind of noticed that pretty much all the newspapers don't let you search stories that are prior to 2001 (or I'm missing something really obvious). So I'm looking for any advice on the best places to go to track down such things.. before I actually try hitting the central library and seeing how their stacks of old newspapers are stored.. Since we seem to have so many studenty types here I thought people might be able to offer some suggestions.

Well it does list him as a "former marine" doesn't it.. so we have no idea if he was some prat who got thrown out or what... And to be well.. kind of fair.. he was selling them to Iran, who were then selling things on to the Taliban.. But yeah, it's not that big a logical leap to see where that sort of weapons smuggling could end up. ... and I just can't read the name "Taliban" these days without hearing that Weird Al song in my head.

I'm not sure if it's an action game or an rpg.. I will say however that it's always played like a Space Opera game.. And actually, while I'm not sure how rpg'ish ME3 is from those E3 trailers.. the action doesn't look too bad.

Ah, but they have a new version in the pipeworks. With hm, Karl Urban as Dredd if I recall my movie news correctly. Edit: Yes, indeed a late winter 2011 release. And I find it doubly amusing that Karl Urban is the actor who loathes wearing helmets. Ever since his Rider of Rohan days he continually tries to get any potential helmet off his head in movies..

One that always amused me was "monopoly" to refer to attractive girls you suddenly realise were not the appropriate age. Developed due to the twin universities in the city producing large amounts of pretty girls in skimpy summerwear. Which while enjoyable has the watchful eye balancing out the number of all girl schools in the area.. so whenever there was some form of half-term or so, you could never be sure if the attractive girl was another university student or some under-age girl dressed up just like the legal-age students. Also the way that a lot of nightclubs in a student heavy town don't always check id on pretty girls. There's something very disconcerting about meeting a lass in a club, drinking , sharing a few dances and then she casually mentions something about studying for her GCSE's... Hence "that girl is monopoly" - Do not pass go, do not collect 200 quid, go directly to jail.

Quote for the day : "So how's life treating you?" "Like it caught me sleeping with its wife." Tis being a somewhat grey, wet and miserable seeming day... My sister's home sick, and I took the puppy outside for some exercise, kept a careful eye on the grass to avoid any mess..and subsequently didn't notice that he'd taken a dump on the pavement which I managed to step in. Poking around on some wiki and google searches. Pondering the best approach to hunt down some decade+ old newspaper articles. Minor headache being a little distracting but not too much bother. Think I need to treat myself to a new mouse mat as well... hm, which reminds me I need to do some banking related activities at some point...

What, the BeeGees don't make you want to strut?

How much does our perception of romance and love come from story, myths, tv and trashy novels?

Homeowner Forcloses on Bank

I'm not sure if its because I'm tired or what.. but I keep fading out on what day it is. One minute I think its friday... then I'm thinking it's sunday... Still, going for a nice traditional fish and chips for ease of food tonight and seeing if I can shake some semblance of mental cognizance back into order.

Or go for the really classic..

And just how often do you get to put "shenanigans" in a sentence? I bet that's made your day just for that alone.. Well , my thought was actually that it might be easier to find a point where that core personality was established if said personality is that extreme. And its likely to be more documented in such cases. Which could then provide you with a basis for when to look at "normal" kids. With the way kids tend to cluster into cliques and social pressure to conform to groups.. it could be hard to identify specific personality traits as opposed to that general behaving according to peer pressure.

Hm, going to contrast normal childhood development with the likes of that "youngest hired killer" article? I mean, one thoughtline could be looking at those sorts of "abnormal" personalities of known and documented criminal/killers of young age and any open source material on that.. That might give you a whole "from whats known about them they were locked in this type of core personality by x age" to explore. But could probably be really depressing when you look at things like the worlds youngest serial killer and the like.. But that probably wouldn't be much help for the general "healthy" kids view...

Well one of those long drawn out nights of no real sleep..then managed some doze for a couple of hours around 6ish or so this morning. Tis a brightly sunny day.. which in my condition of kind of conscious actually comes across more as glaring then pleasant.. Pondering on when to get a thorough read through of "Killing Pablo" in... Did snap of an email to the US State Department in the vein of "I'm doing a research paper, can you send me information on x subject matter" so I'm actually curious if I'll hear anything back from that while I'm poking around with google-fu skills over the next week or so. Have the small problem that when the family were looking through some paperwork to redo the car's insurance.. we suddenly realised it's MOT was out of date.. by a month..and no-one had realised that.. It's these kinds of things..and the silly growth of expense of it all that make me glad I don't drive.

I'd almost suggest hanging an "Innocent" card on your chest, and handing out questionaires and sweeties to kids at some primary / middle schools.. but that might get you classed as a little bit creepy and suspicious... Amid that vast contact network I gather there won't be any child psychologists you could hit up.... hm, any professional shrinks that might know the best career related journals that might be available with related articles? The random thought line does have that people identify who they are early, but the whole process of growing up constantly evolves that identity. So when you say "definite" are you meaning just the "core" part of that personality, or when kids become teenagers/adults and no longer really change in that same sense?

Recent interview with Volition producer Greg Donovan where he talks about Saints Row The Third.. "We thought why give the players a baseball bat when you can make it a giant sex toy to beat people up with?" So I think we can say they're keeping to that element of being a bit silly with it...

Hm, two days away from the pc.. I got home , found an nvidia driver update that needed installing.. and then noticed that my C drive was showing 205Gigs free space... When before I left on my travels it had been around 111 Gigs of free space... and I can't find a bleeding thing thats missing from it at the moment.. It's making me a little bit paranoid.... Still, the weather is pleasant so I shall see what the day brings..