I'm such an Apple bitch lol.
I have a 16gb iPhone 5s, a 128gb iPod touch, a 120gb iPod classic and an 8gb iPad Nano.
I gave my son my new windows laptop when I upgraded to the 15" MacBook Pro 256gb.
I find their products so user friendly...they have it all sewn up man.
I currently use a 64gb iPad Air everyday, and with over 700,000 apps for it, it's amazing. It's no surprise Apple have sold over 225,000,000.
My son Connor is a whiz on the iPad, so i have bought him an iPad mini for his Christmas, and I chose a 64gb one for him as he is forever downloading games on mine and now he can download loads of games on his own. I also got him his own iPod touch...it's so great to see his collection of music....he has great taste!!!!
So this takes me to Apple's 16th October announcement of the new iPad Air 2.....yep you guessed it I had to order one. I went for the largest 128gb this time, in white for a change with the gold back. Ordered direct from Apple and should have by Wednesday.
No I'm not getting paid from Apple for this. Yeah the products are expensive, but are trouble free and there is always a premium to be paid for this and the convenience of use. This is a company that does everything right....never cease to amaze me.
Sunday, 26 October 2014
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
Tuesday 22nd July - diet consumption
It's official....I cannot stand Avacado....yuck!!!!
So I'm sticking to this diet, so far it's easier than what I thought, but much more costly than I envisioned. So today I ate....
Breakfast:
2 x slices dry toasted gluten free bread (still tastes like tusks)
1 x cup of tea with almond milk
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Lunch:
4 x rice crackers
1 x bowl of strawberries, red raspberries
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Dinner:
1 x tin of tuna fish
1 x salad consisting of parsley, kale, Beetroot, lettuce, carrots, green peas, cabbage, cucumber, walnuts, honey peanue
1 x fruit salad consisting of black raspberries, red grapes, mango, melon, oranges, strawberries, kiwi, Avacado
2 x 500ml bottles of water
Snack:
1 x bowl of dried nuts & raisins, pumpkin seeds
Much more energy for exercise.
So I'm sticking to this diet, so far it's easier than what I thought, but much more costly than I envisioned. So today I ate....
Breakfast:
2 x slices dry toasted gluten free bread (still tastes like tusks)
1 x cup of tea with almond milk
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Lunch:
4 x rice crackers
1 x bowl of strawberries, red raspberries
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Dinner:
1 x tin of tuna fish
1 x salad consisting of parsley, kale, Beetroot, lettuce, carrots, green peas, cabbage, cucumber, walnuts, honey peanue
1 x fruit salad consisting of black raspberries, red grapes, mango, melon, oranges, strawberries, kiwi, Avacado
2 x 500ml bottles of water
Snack:
1 x bowl of dried nuts & raisins, pumpkin seeds
Much more energy for exercise.
Monday 21st July - diet consumption
Well I'm going for it to the letter, even though I badly crave McDonalds, I am never left hungry. So this what I ate today...all these foods feed your brain cells.
Breakfast:
2 x slices of dry toasted gluten free bread (tastes like a rusk)
1 x cup of tea with almond milk
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Lunch:
1 x tin tuna fish in oil
1 x salad consisting of carrots, red peppers, purple cabbage, kale
1 x fruit salad consisting of strawberries, red raspberries, mango
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Dinner:
1 x grass fed steak
1 x salad consisting of kale, celery, asparagus, tomatoe, garlic, peppers, spring onion
1 x fruit salad consisting of kiwis, strawberries, oranges, red raspberries, mango
2 x 500ml bottles of water
Daily routine of exercises, mainly concentrating on upper strength.
Breakfast:
2 x slices of dry toasted gluten free bread (tastes like a rusk)
1 x cup of tea with almond milk
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Lunch:
1 x tin tuna fish in oil
1 x salad consisting of carrots, red peppers, purple cabbage, kale
1 x fruit salad consisting of strawberries, red raspberries, mango
1 x 500ml bottle of water
Dinner:
1 x grass fed steak
1 x salad consisting of kale, celery, asparagus, tomatoe, garlic, peppers, spring onion
1 x fruit salad consisting of kiwis, strawberries, oranges, red raspberries, mango
2 x 500ml bottles of water
Daily routine of exercises, mainly concentrating on upper strength.
Monday, 21 July 2014
So they say diets are good for you.
So I was munching on a stick of celery on Saturday when it caused me to crack a tooth...it could only happen to me!!!
My diet.
So I'm wishing I started and stuck with Dr Wahls diet a long time ago. I'm noticing big improvements, it's amazing. I won't lie and say I'm loving it, but needs must right.
So my latest shopping list included:
Kale, Lettuce, Peppers, Beetroot, Cauliflower, Spring Onion, Asparagus, Brussels, Collard, Chard, Green Beans, Tomatoes, Radishes, Onions, Garlic, Parsley, Spinach, Cabbage, Cucumber, Sweet Potatoes.
Green & Red Grapes, Oranges, Peaches, Lemons, Raspberries Red & Black, Kiwi, Strawberries, Blueberries, Blackberries, Rhubarb.
Tuna, Salmon, Liver, Steak.
Gluten Free Bread, Almond Milk, Soy Milk, Pumpkin Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Raisins, Honey
Peanuts.
So I eat 9 large stuffed cups of vegetables a day and 3 cups of fruit everyday, also wild fish and grass fed or organ meat. I have also dropped all gluten as well as dairy. If your going to do it, you gotta do it right.
But I would love a kebab lol
So my latest shopping list included:
Kale, Lettuce, Peppers, Beetroot, Cauliflower, Spring Onion, Asparagus, Brussels, Collard, Chard, Green Beans, Tomatoes, Radishes, Onions, Garlic, Parsley, Spinach, Cabbage, Cucumber, Sweet Potatoes.
Green & Red Grapes, Oranges, Peaches, Lemons, Raspberries Red & Black, Kiwi, Strawberries, Blueberries, Blackberries, Rhubarb.
Tuna, Salmon, Liver, Steak.
Gluten Free Bread, Almond Milk, Soy Milk, Pumpkin Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Raisins, Honey
Peanuts.
So I eat 9 large stuffed cups of vegetables a day and 3 cups of fruit everyday, also wild fish and grass fed or organ meat. I have also dropped all gluten as well as dairy. If your going to do it, you gotta do it right.
But I would love a kebab lol
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
Amazed at my 7yo sons music knowledge
So I was updating Connors iPod whilst he asked for songs by name or by singing a bit lol, even asked for the entire greatest hits by The Eagles. He has in excess of 1400 songs on their but is very capable not to duplicate by memory. He also introduced me to a few songs that I hadn't heard before, one such example is a song by Ella Henderson - Ghost.
Monday, 14 July 2014
Bronson - Movie review
Michael Peterson tells us he was born into a normal middle-class family. He does not blame his childhood or anything else for the way he turned out, and neither does this film. It regards him as a natural history exhibit. No more would we blame him on his childhood than we would blame a venomous snake for its behavior. It is their nature to behave as they do.
At an early age, after seeing 'Death Wish' young Michael took the name of Charles Bronson. And as Bronson, he has become the U.K.'s most famous prisoner and without any doubt, its most violent. With a shaved head and a comic moustache , he likes to strip naked and grease himself before going into action.
His favourite pastime is taking a hostage and then engaging in a bloody battle with the guards who charge to the rescue, swinging clubs and beating him into submission. He has triggered this scenario many times, perhaps because he enjoys it so much. Originally sentenced to seven years ("You'll be out in three," his mother calls to him in the courtroom), he has now served 34 uninterrupted years, 30 of them in solitary confinement.
Why? We don't know. The movie doesn't know. If Bronson knows, he's not telling. The movie takes on a fearsome purity, refusing to find reasons, indifferent to motives, not even finding causes and effects. It is 92 minutes of rage, acted by Tom Hardy. This is a versatile actor. Hardy brings a raw physicality to the role, leaping naked about his cell, jumping from tables, hurtling himself into half a dozen guards, heedless of pain or harm. It must hurt him, because it makes us wince to watch. The word is animalistic.
They say one definition of insanity is when you repeat the same action expecting a different result. Bronson must therefore not be insane. He repeats the same actions expecting the same results. He goes out of his way to avoid different outcomes. During one stretch of comparative passivity, he's allowed to go to the prison art room and work with an instructor. He enjoys this, I think. He isn't a bad artist. When it appears he may be showing progress, what does he do? He takes the instructor hostage and is beaten senseless by guards.
"I showed magic in there!" he shouts after one brawl, bleeding in triumph. How's that? Magic, like in opening night? Does he expect a standing ovation? I believe most of us, no matter how self-destructive, expect some sort of reward for our behavior. It may not be some people's idea of a reward, but it's ours. Is Bronson then an extreme masochist, who only wants to be hurt? They say there are masochists like that, but surely there's a limit. What kind of passionate dementia does it require to want to be beaten bloody for 34 straight years?
I suppose, after all, Nicolas Winding Refn, the director and co-writer of "Bronson," was wise to leave out any sort of an explanation. Can you imagine how you'd cringe if the film ended in a flashback of little Mickey undergoing childhood trauma? There is some human behavior beyond our ability to comprehend. I was reading a theory the other day that a few people just happen to be pure evil. I'm afraid I believe it. They lack any conscience, any sense of pity or empathy for their victims. But Bronson is his own victim.
At an early age, after seeing 'Death Wish' young Michael took the name of Charles Bronson. And as Bronson, he has become the U.K.'s most famous prisoner and without any doubt, its most violent. With a shaved head and a comic moustache , he likes to strip naked and grease himself before going into action.
His favourite pastime is taking a hostage and then engaging in a bloody battle with the guards who charge to the rescue, swinging clubs and beating him into submission. He has triggered this scenario many times, perhaps because he enjoys it so much. Originally sentenced to seven years ("You'll be out in three," his mother calls to him in the courtroom), he has now served 34 uninterrupted years, 30 of them in solitary confinement.
Why? We don't know. The movie doesn't know. If Bronson knows, he's not telling. The movie takes on a fearsome purity, refusing to find reasons, indifferent to motives, not even finding causes and effects. It is 92 minutes of rage, acted by Tom Hardy. This is a versatile actor. Hardy brings a raw physicality to the role, leaping naked about his cell, jumping from tables, hurtling himself into half a dozen guards, heedless of pain or harm. It must hurt him, because it makes us wince to watch. The word is animalistic.
They say one definition of insanity is when you repeat the same action expecting a different result. Bronson must therefore not be insane. He repeats the same actions expecting the same results. He goes out of his way to avoid different outcomes. During one stretch of comparative passivity, he's allowed to go to the prison art room and work with an instructor. He enjoys this, I think. He isn't a bad artist. When it appears he may be showing progress, what does he do? He takes the instructor hostage and is beaten senseless by guards.
"I showed magic in there!" he shouts after one brawl, bleeding in triumph. How's that? Magic, like in opening night? Does he expect a standing ovation? I believe most of us, no matter how self-destructive, expect some sort of reward for our behavior. It may not be some people's idea of a reward, but it's ours. Is Bronson then an extreme masochist, who only wants to be hurt? They say there are masochists like that, but surely there's a limit. What kind of passionate dementia does it require to want to be beaten bloody for 34 straight years?
I suppose, after all, Nicolas Winding Refn, the director and co-writer of "Bronson," was wise to leave out any sort of an explanation. Can you imagine how you'd cringe if the film ended in a flashback of little Mickey undergoing childhood trauma? There is some human behavior beyond our ability to comprehend. I was reading a theory the other day that a few people just happen to be pure evil. I'm afraid I believe it. They lack any conscience, any sense of pity or empathy for their victims. But Bronson is his own victim.
Friday, 11 July 2014
Twitter questions with Dr Terry Wahls
I am following and being followed on Twitter by Dr Terry Wahls.
She was very helpful in answering my questions and gave me a number of hints & tips. Very nice and pleasant woman.
She was very helpful in answering my questions and gave me a number of hints & tips. Very nice and pleasant woman.
Oldboy - Movie Review
This American version of Park Chan-Wook's Korean thriller is Lee's most exciting movie since "Inside Man"—not a masterpiece by any stretch, but a lively commercial genre picture with a hypnotic, obsessive quality, and an utter indifference to being liked, much less approved of. The studio that released 'Oldboy' doesn't seem to like the movie any more than critics: it stifled pre-release and forced Lee to shorten an apparently much longer director's cut. So barring a miracle, this film is doomed.
Like Park's version, 'Oldboy' tells of a drunken, abusive lout named Joe Doucette (Josh Brolin) who's imprisoned for a long time (20 years!!) by a mysterious jailer. He gets clean in prison, then escapes to learn the identity of his tormentor and punish him. Like Park's version, its all violence and sex and fear and revenge and crying and screaming. The lighting is dark but the colors are supersaturated, especially in scenes with a lot of blood, neon, or wet pavement. The camera goes much lower or much higher than you expect it to, and peers at the characters from disorienting angles.
As Joe, the alcoholic ad executive, Brolin is a raw nerve at first, a bloated and haggard man whose smile and laugh are false. From certain angles he looks and sounds like the young Nick Nolte: a brutish alpha male gone to seed, but not without a certain tenderness. Drink is ruining his life and estranging him from his wife and newborn daughter. We sense that his alcoholism is a symptom of long-held guilt that will be explained as the tale unfolds, and we're more right than we could imagine. Joe finds himself trapped in a jail cell made up to look like a hotel suite, getting mysterious updates on the room's TV about the life of the daughter that he never got to know. He stays there for twenty years (five more than in Park's version). After seeming eons of self-pity capped by a suicide attempt, he starts a Travis Bickle-like regimen of Spartan self-improvement, down into a lean, mean killer, and finally to seek vengeance against his tormentor.
Where the film's first half is a fable of guilt and punishment, the second is a riff on the criminal revenge flick, with Joe working his way through the underbelly of a New York City that's been reimagined as a landscape of the mind. He joins up with a drug clinic worker played by Elizabeth Olsen and slowly begins piecing together the identity of his jailer: a rich and rather effective sadist who knew Joe a long time ago, and who now lives like a drug dealer from an '80s cop thriller.
Lee restages some famous (or infamous) moments from the original, including the hammer fight, as a more elaborately choreographed scene that unfolds over two levels of a warehouse populated by criminals and ruled by a glowering boss played by Samuel L. Jackson (seemingly channeling his character from 'Unbreakable'). In other cases, the film changes small details (including specific violent acts and lines of dialogue) or else jokingly acknowledges places where even it won't go (the scene in the original in which the hero devours a live octopus is thrown away by having Joe glance at one in a restaurant fishtank). It all leads to a climactic revelation identical to the one in Park's movie, though key details of the back story have been changed, and the denouement is more harsh and sad. If you haven't seen the original 'Oldboy' which provided the template for most of this one, I won't spoil it here. Suffice to say that Lee and his screenwriter Mark Protosevich do a good job of keeping their cards close to their chest, and when they finally play them, the result has a sick, powerful charge.
It's worth pointing out here that Park's film is not an original story, but an adaptation of a Japanese comic book of the same name. Both versions find ways to visually suggest that you're reading a big-screen graphic novel with pages that come to life. The compositions in Lee's movie have such a painterly or illustrated quality that they might as well have thick black lines marking off the edges of the frame. At no point does the film try to be realistic, except when it comes to the strong, simple emotions that its characters feel. Lee's 'Oldboy' like Park's, obeys its own illogical logic (a hotel room hallucination starring Lee's brother Cinque has the goofy randomness of a joke in a David Lynch movie). The whole thing flows as dreams flow, linking situations to other situations and images to other images.
Lee's direction reminded me of Brian DePalma or John Carpenter in nightmare mode, or Alfred Hitchcock when he seemed possessed by whatever horrible muses drove him. It's purely intuitive, at times musical, direction. The lack of a political dimension seems to have freed Lee to be looser and more (cruelly) playful than usual. There's news footage on Joe's hotel room TV, but when we see, for instance, scenes from 9/11 or the Iraq war, it's not meant to drive home anything but the passage of time and its effect on Joe's psyche. The performances are all over the map. Some actors give fairly naturalistic performances (Brolin and Olsen) while others (Jackson and Copley) chew the scenery into fine shreds and then pluck them from their shiny teeth. Lee presides over the madness with a droll serenity that says, "This is the movie; deal with it."
The big problem with Lee's 'Oldboy' is that for all its dark confidence, it doesn't reimagine the original boldly enough. This isn't like Martin Scorsese's 'Cape Fear'.
That's not a bad thing, though, when you consider the current climate for mainstream American films. For people who haven't seen the original 'Oldboy' or anything like it, this will be a rare studio release that feels shocking and abrasive and perverse and in some way new. I'd love to sit through Lee's movie again in a theater with newbies who came to see a straightforward revenge picture starring a guy who's been locked up for a long time and have no idea what they're actually in for. Few American auteurs are making mainstream studio movies in the vein of Spike Lee's 'Oldboy', hardcore genre pictures that aren't afraid to treat sex and violence as colours on a palette, and get nasty and raw, in that seventies-movie way. Park's 'Oldboy' was no skip through the daisy field, but this one is even harder to watch, sometimes indulging in savagery that blurs the line between Old Testament morality play and straight-up exploitation.The filmmakers seem obsessed with making everything as extreme as possible, replacing, for example, a bruising bit of hammer torture with a prolonged sequence in which the hero uses a knife to slice a dotted-line-shaped pattern into a former jailer's throat.
Park's film came out ten years ago, and things have only gotten more restrictive since then. Plenty of international filmmakers are working in this mode, but not too many English-language directors, aside from Quentin Tarantino and sometimes Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg used to make this sort of picture all the time, but haven't in a while, perhaps because it's just too much for some people, and "just too much" movies tend not to get made at a major studio level because the financial stakes are too grave. I don't like or approve of everything in 'Oldboy' but I'm glad it exists. The cinemasare filled with 15 cert movies that should have been 18 cert movies, released by studios that don't make adults-only genre films anymore. This is one such film, starring a real actor, directed by a real director. It deserves to be seen and argued about.
Oldboy - Trailer
Like Park's version, 'Oldboy' tells of a drunken, abusive lout named Joe Doucette (Josh Brolin) who's imprisoned for a long time (20 years!!) by a mysterious jailer. He gets clean in prison, then escapes to learn the identity of his tormentor and punish him. Like Park's version, its all violence and sex and fear and revenge and crying and screaming. The lighting is dark but the colors are supersaturated, especially in scenes with a lot of blood, neon, or wet pavement. The camera goes much lower or much higher than you expect it to, and peers at the characters from disorienting angles.
As Joe, the alcoholic ad executive, Brolin is a raw nerve at first, a bloated and haggard man whose smile and laugh are false. From certain angles he looks and sounds like the young Nick Nolte: a brutish alpha male gone to seed, but not without a certain tenderness. Drink is ruining his life and estranging him from his wife and newborn daughter. We sense that his alcoholism is a symptom of long-held guilt that will be explained as the tale unfolds, and we're more right than we could imagine. Joe finds himself trapped in a jail cell made up to look like a hotel suite, getting mysterious updates on the room's TV about the life of the daughter that he never got to know. He stays there for twenty years (five more than in Park's version). After seeming eons of self-pity capped by a suicide attempt, he starts a Travis Bickle-like regimen of Spartan self-improvement, down into a lean, mean killer, and finally to seek vengeance against his tormentor.
Where the film's first half is a fable of guilt and punishment, the second is a riff on the criminal revenge flick, with Joe working his way through the underbelly of a New York City that's been reimagined as a landscape of the mind. He joins up with a drug clinic worker played by Elizabeth Olsen and slowly begins piecing together the identity of his jailer: a rich and rather effective sadist who knew Joe a long time ago, and who now lives like a drug dealer from an '80s cop thriller.
Lee restages some famous (or infamous) moments from the original, including the hammer fight, as a more elaborately choreographed scene that unfolds over two levels of a warehouse populated by criminals and ruled by a glowering boss played by Samuel L. Jackson (seemingly channeling his character from 'Unbreakable'). In other cases, the film changes small details (including specific violent acts and lines of dialogue) or else jokingly acknowledges places where even it won't go (the scene in the original in which the hero devours a live octopus is thrown away by having Joe glance at one in a restaurant fishtank). It all leads to a climactic revelation identical to the one in Park's movie, though key details of the back story have been changed, and the denouement is more harsh and sad. If you haven't seen the original 'Oldboy' which provided the template for most of this one, I won't spoil it here. Suffice to say that Lee and his screenwriter Mark Protosevich do a good job of keeping their cards close to their chest, and when they finally play them, the result has a sick, powerful charge.
It's worth pointing out here that Park's film is not an original story, but an adaptation of a Japanese comic book of the same name. Both versions find ways to visually suggest that you're reading a big-screen graphic novel with pages that come to life. The compositions in Lee's movie have such a painterly or illustrated quality that they might as well have thick black lines marking off the edges of the frame. At no point does the film try to be realistic, except when it comes to the strong, simple emotions that its characters feel. Lee's 'Oldboy' like Park's, obeys its own illogical logic (a hotel room hallucination starring Lee's brother Cinque has the goofy randomness of a joke in a David Lynch movie). The whole thing flows as dreams flow, linking situations to other situations and images to other images.
Lee's direction reminded me of Brian DePalma or John Carpenter in nightmare mode, or Alfred Hitchcock when he seemed possessed by whatever horrible muses drove him. It's purely intuitive, at times musical, direction. The lack of a political dimension seems to have freed Lee to be looser and more (cruelly) playful than usual. There's news footage on Joe's hotel room TV, but when we see, for instance, scenes from 9/11 or the Iraq war, it's not meant to drive home anything but the passage of time and its effect on Joe's psyche. The performances are all over the map. Some actors give fairly naturalistic performances (Brolin and Olsen) while others (Jackson and Copley) chew the scenery into fine shreds and then pluck them from their shiny teeth. Lee presides over the madness with a droll serenity that says, "This is the movie; deal with it."
The big problem with Lee's 'Oldboy' is that for all its dark confidence, it doesn't reimagine the original boldly enough. This isn't like Martin Scorsese's 'Cape Fear'.
That's not a bad thing, though, when you consider the current climate for mainstream American films. For people who haven't seen the original 'Oldboy' or anything like it, this will be a rare studio release that feels shocking and abrasive and perverse and in some way new. I'd love to sit through Lee's movie again in a theater with newbies who came to see a straightforward revenge picture starring a guy who's been locked up for a long time and have no idea what they're actually in for. Few American auteurs are making mainstream studio movies in the vein of Spike Lee's 'Oldboy', hardcore genre pictures that aren't afraid to treat sex and violence as colours on a palette, and get nasty and raw, in that seventies-movie way. Park's 'Oldboy' was no skip through the daisy field, but this one is even harder to watch, sometimes indulging in savagery that blurs the line between Old Testament morality play and straight-up exploitation.The filmmakers seem obsessed with making everything as extreme as possible, replacing, for example, a bruising bit of hammer torture with a prolonged sequence in which the hero uses a knife to slice a dotted-line-shaped pattern into a former jailer's throat.
Park's film came out ten years ago, and things have only gotten more restrictive since then. Plenty of international filmmakers are working in this mode, but not too many English-language directors, aside from Quentin Tarantino and sometimes Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg used to make this sort of picture all the time, but haven't in a while, perhaps because it's just too much for some people, and "just too much" movies tend not to get made at a major studio level because the financial stakes are too grave. I don't like or approve of everything in 'Oldboy' but I'm glad it exists. The cinemasare filled with 15 cert movies that should have been 18 cert movies, released by studios that don't make adults-only genre films anymore. This is one such film, starring a real actor, directed by a real director. It deserves to be seen and argued about.
Oldboy - Trailer
Thursday, 10 July 2014
Let Me Blow Ya Mind: Eve ft Gwen Stefani - Song Meaning
One of the best things about this track is Gwen. It was Gwen's big 'comeback' after the low sales of no Doubt's 'Return to Saturn', people seen it as a failure due to the fact that it didn't sell as much as the previous record. I think the part Gwen sings is about her not caring what the haters say and doing what she wants. When she says "Now I got my foot through the door and I ain't going no where." She's saying that even though her record with No Doubt might have not done as well, she's not going anywhere. So for all the haters of Gwen out there, let me just say, no matter what you say you won't bring her down. She's been in music since her teens and she's staying in music! Suck on that!
Let Me Blow Ya Mind - Eve ft Gwen Stefani
Let Me Blow Ya Mind - Eve ft Gwen Stefani
Lana Del Ray: Summertime Sadness - Song Meaning
Total obsessional love, the Lana Del Rey all-in masochistic approach to relationships.
Her guy leaves her as the Summer begins. Since she's addicted to him like a drug, her Summer (which should be a good time of year) isn't. She sings "I think I'll miss you forever." She will never get over him. With him, she could die happy. Without him, she just wants to die. That's her summertime sadness.
Lana Del Ray - Summertime Sadness
Her guy leaves her as the Summer begins. Since she's addicted to him like a drug, her Summer (which should be a good time of year) isn't. She sings "I think I'll miss you forever." She will never get over him. With him, she could die happy. Without him, she just wants to die. That's her summertime sadness.
Lana Del Ray - Summertime Sadness
Messages re song meanings & movie reviews.
So I was really happy to find messages from people regarding my blog. It seems my movie reviews and song meanings are missed lol...this is crazy but thank you.
I am going to post a batch of song meanings now, I'm going to chill out with my iPod on shuffle playing loudly. I'm going to do a song meaning for each song that comes on...apologies now for the dodgy ones.
I am going to post a batch of song meanings now, I'm going to chill out with my iPod on shuffle playing loudly. I'm going to do a song meaning for each song that comes on...apologies now for the dodgy ones.
Wednesday, 9 July 2014
Feeling benefits of diet.
So it's been a few weeks now where I have followed Dr Wahls diet to the letter and I must admit to feeling the benefits almost straight away. Exercising has become easier, my mood has improved, everything has improved.
Everyone (not just MS sufferers) should search youtube for Dr Wahls videos, start eating better for your health!!!
Everyone (not just MS sufferers) should search youtube for Dr Wahls videos, start eating better for your health!!!
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Changing my blog again...
Right I have had it with typing about music and movies and because my illness is bring me down so much, it's time to get back to what is important. If you don have your health then you have truly nothing.
At 4am I typed a long email to my MS nurse begging for some help. As I am now known in the MS world as progressive, I get no medication for it, as everything medicine wise is considered hopeless at this stage.
This is my last through of the dice. I have armed myself with every book and piece of literature. I will stick to the diets 100%, will do everything in my power. I'm going down with a fight. Keep checking back to see how I'm doing.
I'm not only doing this for me but I owe it to my boy.
At 4am I typed a long email to my MS nurse begging for some help. As I am now known in the MS world as progressive, I get no medication for it, as everything medicine wise is considered hopeless at this stage.
This is my last through of the dice. I have armed myself with every book and piece of literature. I will stick to the diets 100%, will do everything in my power. I'm going down with a fight. Keep checking back to see how I'm doing.
I'm not only doing this for me but I owe it to my boy.
The All American Rejects: It Ends Tonight - Song Meaning
I really like this song, probably my favourite by The All American Rejects. Here's my take on it:
It's about being in a relationship where he realises they are both unhappy, and he is tired of playing games with her. He's tired of trying to fix the problem because it's unfixable, he just wasn't meant to be with her. He can't be happy with her, even if she does have some great qualities, and he realises he has to be miserable alone for a while in order to EVER be happy again.
"Your subtleties, they strangle me"
The little things about you, the games you play, they kill me.
"I can't explain myself at all
And all that wants and all that needs
I don't want to need at all"
I can't explain where we went wrong or exactly what is wrong with this relationship. I can however tell you that I'm tired of needing you or the things you give me, because in the end, you only make me miserable.
"The walls are breathing
My mind's unweaving
Maybe it's best you leave alone"
Things are getting intense, but you have to leave tonight. I am breaking up with you now, I need to be alone.
"A weight is lifted on this evening
I give the final blow"
I'm taking the weight of our relationship off our shoulders as I give the final blow aka break up with you, tell you it's over.
"When darkness turns to light
It ends tonight, it ends tonight"
Darnkess turning to light represents not only the night turning to day, but his life going from being dark (with her) to being light (happy again) when he's alone.
"A falling star, at least I fall alone"
It hurts to be alone, but it feels better to be alone than to be with her.
"I can't explain what you can't explain
You're finding things that you didn't know
I look at you with such disdain"
He doesn't know where they went wrong (as mentioned above). She's also finding things in him she doesn't like anymore, and when the two look at each other, they don't feel love, they feel disdain.
"Just a little insight won't make this right
It's too late to fight
It ends tonight, it ends tonight"
In relationships, usually someone will say "or we're fighting because I've been jealous lately/started my new job today/whatever", or they think one little solution will fix their problems. Here he says that nothing can fix their relationship. It's broken beyond repair. The only solution is to leave.
"Now I'm on my own side
It's better than bein' on your side"
Now he's single but it's better than being with her.
"It's my fault when you're blind
It's better that I see it through your eyes
All these thoughts locked inside
Now you're the first to know"
It's his fault for ignoring all the problems the relationship had. She maybe yelled at him and was a bitch, but it made him realize how much he didn't want to be with her. He's been keeping these feelings forever and now he's letting them out, and she's the first to hear about it.
Fathers Day
Well I got a whole half hour with my son today, on Father's Day. So it's safe to say I had a shit day filled with a whole host of emotions mainly stupidity, anger and hurt.
I am so proud of my beautiful baby boy, he is soon to be 8, very clever and talented. He excels at school, takes piano lessons and can read music. As well as being able to swim, he is also good at football.
I love you Connor McKay x
I am so proud of my beautiful baby boy, he is soon to be 8, very clever and talented. He excels at school, takes piano lessons and can read music. As well as being able to swim, he is also good at football.
I love you Connor McKay x
Coldplay: Magic - Song Meaning
It is about a couple who keep coming together and falling apart. The guy keeps swaying from breaking into two to being next to you (his Significant other). And he doesn't understand why this happens, why every time they fight, then why does he still want her only and then why they always get together again and then again fall apart. Hence, he calls this whole sequence of events as magic. With her magic she can make him or break him. It is like he doesn't exist at times. And the guy questions sometimes his love, sometimes he thinks maybe because they fight so much, maybe aren't meant for each other, and then when they do get together, he feels she is the one he wants. Hence, even though after all that he has been through, he loves her and believes such love can only be magical and hence he believes in magic.The way it means to me anyway.
Coldplay: Magic - Music Video
Coldplay: Magic - Music Video
My online horror group - All Things Horror
I created an online Facebook Group at the start of 2013 called 'All Things Horror' which quickly to over 25,000 members....if you like Horror Movies etc.. then please join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/allthingshorror1/389552691185420/?notif_t=like
I also created a website www.allthingshorror.org
I created an app too.
I also created a website www.allthingshorror.org
I created an app too.
Friday, 13 June 2014
Movie Review - Taxi Driver
"Are you talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here".Travis Bickle in 'Taxi Driver'
It is the last line, "Well, I'm the only one here," that never gets quoted. It is the truest line in the film. Travis Bickle exists in 'Taxi Driver' as a character with a desperate need to make some kind of contact somehow, to share or mimic the effortless social interaction he sees all around him, but does not participate in.
The film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong. He asks a girl out on a date, and takes her to a porno movie. He sucks up to a political candidate, and ends by alarming him. He tries to make small talk with a Secret Service agent. He wants to befriend a child prostitute, but scares her away. He is so lonely that when he asks, "Who you talkin' to?" he is addressing himself in a mirror.
This utter aloneness is at the centre of 'Taxi Driver', one of the best and most powerful of all films, and perhaps it is why so many people connect with it even though Travis Bickle would seem to be the most alienating of movie heroes. We have all felt as alone as Travis. Most of us are just better at dealing with it.
Martin Scorsese's 1976 film is a film that does not grow dated, or over-familiar. I have seen it dozens of times. Every time I see it, it works; I am drawn into Travis's underworld of alienation, loneliness, haplessness and anger.
In 'Taxi Driver', Travis Bickle is also a war veteran, horribly scarred in Vietnam. He encounters a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster), controlled by a pimp named Sport (Harvey Keitel). Sport wears an Indian headband. Travis determines to "rescue" Iris, and does so, in a bloodbath that is unsurpassed even in the films of Scorsese. A letter and clippings from the Steensmas, Iris' parents, thank him for saving their girl. But a crucial earlier scene between Iris and Sport suggests that she was content to be with him, and the reasons why she ran away from home are not explored.
The buried message is that an alienated man, unable to establish normal relationships, becomes a loner and wanderer, and assigns himself to rescue an innocent young girl from a life that offends his prejudices. In 'Taxi Driver', this central story is surrounded by many smaller ones, all building to the same theme. The story takes place during a political campaign, and Travis twice finds himself with the candidate, Palatine, in his cab. He goes through the motions of ingratiating flattery, but we, and Palatine, sense something wrong.
Shortly after that Travis tries to "free" one of Palatine's campaign workers, a blonde he has idealized (Cybill Shepherd), from the Palatine campaign. That goes wrong with the crazy idea of a date at a porno movie. And then, after the fearsome rehearsal in the mirror, he becomes a walking arsenal and goes to assassinate Palatine. The Palatine scenes are like dress rehearsals for the ending of the film. With both Betsy and Iris, he has a friendly conversation in a coffee shop, followed by an aborted "date", followed by attacks on the men he perceived as controlling them, he tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Palatine, and then goes gunning for Sport.
There are undercurrents in the film that you can sense without quite putting your finger on them. Travis's implied feelings about blacks, for example, which emerge in two long shots in a taxi driver's hangout, when he exchanges looks with a man who may be a drug dealer. His ambivalent feelings about sex (he lives in a world of pornography, but the sexual activity he observes in the city fills him with loathing). His hatred for the city, inhabited by "scum". His preference for working at night, and the way Scorsese's cinematographer, Michael Chapman, makes the yellow cab into a vessel by which Travis journeys the underworld, as steam escapes from vents in the streets, and the cab splashes through water from hydrants...great visuals.
The film has a certain stylistic resonance with 'Mean Streets' (1973), the first Scorsese film in which Keitel and De Niro worked together. In the earlier film Scorsese uses varying speeds of slow-motion to suggest a level of heightened observation on the part of his characters, and here that technique is developed even more dramatically, as the taxi drives through Manhattan's streets, we see it in ordinary time, but Travis's point-of-view shots are slowed down. He sees hookers and pimps on the sidewalks, and his heightened awareness is made acute through slow motion.
The technique of slow motion is familiar to audiences, who usually see it in romantic scenes, or scenes in which regret and melancholy are expressed or sometimes in scenes where a catastrophe looms, and cannot be avoided. But Scorsese was finding a personal use for it, a way to suggest a subjective state in a shot. And in scenes in a cab driver's diner, he uses closeups of observed details to show how Travis's attention is apart from the conversation, is zeroing in on a black who might be a pimp. One of the hardest things for a director to do is to suggest a character's interior state without using dialog, one of Scorsese's greatest achievements in 'Taxi Driver' is to take us inside Travis Bickle's point of view.
There are other links between 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver' that may go unnoticed. One is the overhead shots, which Scorsese has said are intended to reflect a priest looking down at the implements of the Mass on the altar. We see, through Travis's eyes, the top of a taxi dispatcher's desk, candy on a movie counter, guns on a bed, and finally, with the camera apparently seeing through the ceiling, an overhead shot of the massacre in the red-light building. This is, if you will, the final sacrifice of the Mass. And it was in 'Mean Streets' that Keitel repeatedly put his finger in the flame of a candle or a match, testing the fires of hell but here De Niro's taxi driver holds his fist above a gas flame.
There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's "heroism", and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true?
I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level character. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters. They despise themselves, they live in sin, they occupy mean streets, but they want to be forgiven and admired. Whether Travis gains that status in reality or only in his mind is not the point; throughout the film, his mental state has shaped his reality, and at last, in some way, it has brought him a kind of peace.
Taxi Driver - Trailer
It is the last line, "Well, I'm the only one here," that never gets quoted. It is the truest line in the film. Travis Bickle exists in 'Taxi Driver' as a character with a desperate need to make some kind of contact somehow, to share or mimic the effortless social interaction he sees all around him, but does not participate in.
The film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong. He asks a girl out on a date, and takes her to a porno movie. He sucks up to a political candidate, and ends by alarming him. He tries to make small talk with a Secret Service agent. He wants to befriend a child prostitute, but scares her away. He is so lonely that when he asks, "Who you talkin' to?" he is addressing himself in a mirror.
This utter aloneness is at the centre of 'Taxi Driver', one of the best and most powerful of all films, and perhaps it is why so many people connect with it even though Travis Bickle would seem to be the most alienating of movie heroes. We have all felt as alone as Travis. Most of us are just better at dealing with it.
Martin Scorsese's 1976 film is a film that does not grow dated, or over-familiar. I have seen it dozens of times. Every time I see it, it works; I am drawn into Travis's underworld of alienation, loneliness, haplessness and anger.
In 'Taxi Driver', Travis Bickle is also a war veteran, horribly scarred in Vietnam. He encounters a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster), controlled by a pimp named Sport (Harvey Keitel). Sport wears an Indian headband. Travis determines to "rescue" Iris, and does so, in a bloodbath that is unsurpassed even in the films of Scorsese. A letter and clippings from the Steensmas, Iris' parents, thank him for saving their girl. But a crucial earlier scene between Iris and Sport suggests that she was content to be with him, and the reasons why she ran away from home are not explored.
The buried message is that an alienated man, unable to establish normal relationships, becomes a loner and wanderer, and assigns himself to rescue an innocent young girl from a life that offends his prejudices. In 'Taxi Driver', this central story is surrounded by many smaller ones, all building to the same theme. The story takes place during a political campaign, and Travis twice finds himself with the candidate, Palatine, in his cab. He goes through the motions of ingratiating flattery, but we, and Palatine, sense something wrong.
Shortly after that Travis tries to "free" one of Palatine's campaign workers, a blonde he has idealized (Cybill Shepherd), from the Palatine campaign. That goes wrong with the crazy idea of a date at a porno movie. And then, after the fearsome rehearsal in the mirror, he becomes a walking arsenal and goes to assassinate Palatine. The Palatine scenes are like dress rehearsals for the ending of the film. With both Betsy and Iris, he has a friendly conversation in a coffee shop, followed by an aborted "date", followed by attacks on the men he perceived as controlling them, he tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Palatine, and then goes gunning for Sport.
There are undercurrents in the film that you can sense without quite putting your finger on them. Travis's implied feelings about blacks, for example, which emerge in two long shots in a taxi driver's hangout, when he exchanges looks with a man who may be a drug dealer. His ambivalent feelings about sex (he lives in a world of pornography, but the sexual activity he observes in the city fills him with loathing). His hatred for the city, inhabited by "scum". His preference for working at night, and the way Scorsese's cinematographer, Michael Chapman, makes the yellow cab into a vessel by which Travis journeys the underworld, as steam escapes from vents in the streets, and the cab splashes through water from hydrants...great visuals.
The film has a certain stylistic resonance with 'Mean Streets' (1973), the first Scorsese film in which Keitel and De Niro worked together. In the earlier film Scorsese uses varying speeds of slow-motion to suggest a level of heightened observation on the part of his characters, and here that technique is developed even more dramatically, as the taxi drives through Manhattan's streets, we see it in ordinary time, but Travis's point-of-view shots are slowed down. He sees hookers and pimps on the sidewalks, and his heightened awareness is made acute through slow motion.
The technique of slow motion is familiar to audiences, who usually see it in romantic scenes, or scenes in which regret and melancholy are expressed or sometimes in scenes where a catastrophe looms, and cannot be avoided. But Scorsese was finding a personal use for it, a way to suggest a subjective state in a shot. And in scenes in a cab driver's diner, he uses closeups of observed details to show how Travis's attention is apart from the conversation, is zeroing in on a black who might be a pimp. One of the hardest things for a director to do is to suggest a character's interior state without using dialog, one of Scorsese's greatest achievements in 'Taxi Driver' is to take us inside Travis Bickle's point of view.
There are other links between 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver' that may go unnoticed. One is the overhead shots, which Scorsese has said are intended to reflect a priest looking down at the implements of the Mass on the altar. We see, through Travis's eyes, the top of a taxi dispatcher's desk, candy on a movie counter, guns on a bed, and finally, with the camera apparently seeing through the ceiling, an overhead shot of the massacre in the red-light building. This is, if you will, the final sacrifice of the Mass. And it was in 'Mean Streets' that Keitel repeatedly put his finger in the flame of a candle or a match, testing the fires of hell but here De Niro's taxi driver holds his fist above a gas flame.
There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's "heroism", and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true?
I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level character. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters. They despise themselves, they live in sin, they occupy mean streets, but they want to be forgiven and admired. Whether Travis gains that status in reality or only in his mind is not the point; throughout the film, his mental state has shaped his reality, and at last, in some way, it has brought him a kind of peace.
Taxi Driver - Trailer
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