jeff leopard

a swing and a miss I know this is a crap jokes thread and call me pc Thought Police, but jokes about 'thick paddies', almost a decade in to the 21st Century? I appreciate these are probably still hot currency in the armed forces, but we have more sophisticated tastes in the real world, don't we? Surely this kind of thing seemed old a good 20 or 30 years ago. If I'm wrong and people are still perfectly happy kicking around such cheap and lazy stereotypes then I'll shut up and go back to reading the Guardian on-line and listening to Swedish prog-rock. But come on...

I went to see my doctor the other day and after a couple of minutes he looked quite concerned and said, 'Look, there's no easy way to say this so I'm just going to come out with it. You have to stop masturbating'. Shocked and appalled, I asked him 'What on earth are you on about?' And he replied, 'I'm trying to examine you'. wow, a 'thick Paddy' joke, still being used in 2009 these defence cuts are really biting hard, aren't they?

Yes indeed, in the 1980s when he was committing acts of genocide. But the thing is that in the 80s he was in the pay and employment of the US/UK in order to keep Iran under control. We knew he was gassing the Kurds, because we gave him satellite photo's and the technology necessary to gas the Kurds. It was only when he started biting the hands that fed him in the 90s that the west labelled him as a threat. So that argument holds no water what-so-ever. And if a coalition of nations has the right to identify a threat to peace and act against them in illegal and immoral actions and in opposition to the UN, I look forward to the rest of the middle east kicking Israel's arse out of the occupied territories, and making the world a much safer place. Blaire/Bush had absolutely no right (moral/legal/political) to remove Saddam when they did.

I watched Westworld on Saturday, well, I got up to the point that the robots start killing people and the DVD started skipping and making very unsettling noises. Freaky or what? I'd forgotten just how good the pre-killing-spree stuff is (which is the vast majority of the film), James Brolin makes a great unlikely hero and wears a 'tash like the best of them. Oldboy rocks, I've only watched it the once and I'm looking forward to giving it another crack. Lady Vengeance is probably the best revenge film I've ever seen, and I've only seen Mr Vengeance once and...well....let's just say it goes a bit weird and I think I went a bit insane. I'd be quite interested in seeing this. Unfortunately, the phrase... makes me vomit blood'n'excrement out of my eyes and my arse at the same time. Has anyone got a bucket and a sponge?

After conceding a goal softer than a pillow-case full of kitten's sighs in the third minute, the mound went on to win 7-1 and take our first league title. Even sweeter was the fact my front two were joint top scorers in the league, earning me a cool €20,000. The league V team I've been paired off with for the play-off look ridiculously good though. Fair play TG, is this your first bite at V.5 (I'm assuming that’s the league you've gone up to)? thats a ******** **** mother-******* shame I'm planning on taking the 'build up the stadium, spend all my cash on a decent trainer' route. After the home leg of the play-off I'll have a million in the bank and I'm keeping an eye on transfer prices just in case I swerve off and decide to blow the lot on players. I'd want to get 2 or 3 players who can regularly get 5 star ratings but it seems a million quid won't go that far in the transfer market. so my plan is - 1. get a solid trainer 2. then maybe get a player or two 3. then upgrade the ground so I can get £250,000 per home game (I'm guessing that will be a capacity of 35,000ish). if all goes well, this could all be done by the end of next season. 4. and then start saving to upgrade the trainer again

Good luck to everyone with championship deciders today. After last week's 'blip' I'm feeling very confident of wrapping things up with a home game against a rubbish human-team. Huge crowds have gathered and can be heard singing... 'we're gonna win the league, we're gonna win the league, but then we'll get dicked in the play-offs, but then we'll get dicked in the play-offs, but then we'll get dicked in the play---offs, but at least we'll win the league'. bless the fans.

Deadwood is ****-sucking, mother-phuqing amazing. Some people have said that whilst series one is enjoyable, there's not much to keep you hooked. Series two is much better and ends brilliantly, can't wait to watch the third and final season.

Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference (my motto for posting on this place) Discharge your pipe, then have a wipe. (my motto for work)

Buy this for Xmas, all money goes to feeding poor folks in the territory where the record was bought. it may appalled you at first, but hey, it’s the one and only bobby d. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVs6X9yIM_k

There was an interesting thing on radio 4 last night, here's the iplayer link - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p6t26/The_Report_10_12_2009/ It looked at what was actually said in those hacked emails from East Anglia Uni and found that, contrary to the Fox News take on it, this isn't the smoking gun that reveals climate change to be a nasty conspiracy by those evil commie tree-huggers, it doesn't even give the sceptics much to crow over apart from a few things - Over a 1,000 emails were hacked, but only 20 or so contain anything contentious. The Uni destroyed some raw data concerning climate change in the 80s due to lack of storage, in the scientific world, this is a big no-no. The scientists do squabble amongst themselves and question each other's findings in the emails, surely perfectly natural behaviour for scientists. Scientists, like a lot of very intelligent people, are capable of being outrageously stupid. Realising that any freedom of information requests would include personal emails, they emailed each other saying 'delete any emails you don't want seen by the outside world', instead of doing the rationale thing and communicating this via the phone or face to face. Imagine that your boss came in today and requested the last 100 emails you sent to be held up for public scrutiny, I'm sure most of us would have something to hide which wouldn't necessarily reveal us as frauds. The scientific community which study climate change may well have been guilty of forming a cartel, basically getting all their colleges to sing from the same hymn-sheet. This is more evidence of the scientists getting very defensive and forming their wagons in a circle than constructing a conspiracy. Considering the attack they've been under from Bush's cronies and the right-wing media, these con-indated defensive tactics are hardly surprising. And it goes on in this vein. The scientists which believe in climate change are not by any means perfect, mistakes have been made along the way and will be made again, no doubt. But nothing in these emails questions or challenges the basic principle that mankind is raising the earth's climate. The reason the sceptics grabbed upon these emails is simply because they have nothing substantial to back up their argument.

rumour has it that crazy frog spent all his cash on a recording studio and intends to take us all back to year zero with nose-flutes and ghosts.

Damn my eyes but I'm going to swerve off-topic very briefly as there isn't a general TV shows/dvd boxsets thread that covers British TV shows. I just finished I Claudius, the BBC epic from 1976 (a good year) all about several generations of sex, drugs and baby-killing obsessed Roman emporers. Absolutely brilliant stuff with an all star cast - a young and unbearded Brian Blessed as Augustus, John Hurt as Caligula, Patrick Stewart as a wonderfully evil head of security/thought control, Christopher Biggins as Nero (!) and Derek Jacobi as Claudius, all in sublime form. The perfect tale of absolute power with lashings of blood, nudity and incest, what more can you want?

Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden First time I've heard this in years, absolutely gorgeous stuff. In general, pop bands would be a much more palatable bunch if they all grew up to produce avant-guard post-rock masterpieces. My overwhelming thought is what a huge influence it must have had on Ladies and Gentleman… by Spiritualized.

That's OK then, you basically just missed the end credits. They all drove off, and then there was a title card saying that his Canadian mate was shot during a hold-up about a year later (after he and Mesrine went their separate ways) and that the high security prisons were closed down after an enquiry that looked into the attack. I'm glad you didn't miss their attempt to free the prisoners as it would have sounded really far fetched, but incredibly it all happened. I personally think part 2 is slightly better, the first half hour or so is just non-stop action. the first 20 minutes or so is a real slog, but if you make it through, its a fascinating film, but it will mentally scar you that's a shame as i remember it being brilliant and the special effects being amazing. i think it was one of the first films to use cgi. still, its a really good premise for a kiddy sci-fi adventure.

As you and stain stated about Keanu, quite often films call for main characters that are blank slates (like the recent batman films), and Keanu does this better than most. He's great as the new-age dentist in Thumbsucker, which is a more "acting required" role. ******SPOLIERS A-PLENTY FOR NO COUNTRY AND BURN AFTER READING!!****** The ending of No Country is really interesting, the way the narrative suddenly switches away from the main character as he meets the siren by the pool and his messy comeupence. It sounds like that was a plot device used in the book, but the Coens then use it again for Burn After Reading, where we suddenly leave John Malkovich's character just before he goes axe-happy and gets shot. Its brave and innovative touches like this that makes the Coens so special in the world of Hollywood. Fargo is still my fave film of theirs, whilst Barton Fink holds a special place just by being so damn weird and spooky.

'No Country For Old Men' is great, very violent, even for a Coen brother's film. There's a real change in pace and style at the end which people either love or hate, personally, i think it takes it up to another level. :confused: Tommy Lee Jones is brilliant in it, with his bone dry sense of humour.

i've not seen it for years and my initial reaction was 'i bet its aged really badly', but due to the fact it doesn't star danny dire, it isn't about football hooligans and it wasn't made by guy 'swept away' richie, i imagine its worth a squirt still (for a low-budget british film anyway). I watched Total Recall for the first time in at least a decade and whilst the special effects look none-too-special, the story line and arnie's performance are both well above average (lets face it, all arnie has to do is look blank and confused, but hey, keanu reeves has made a career out of it). and in true paul verhoven style, its hilariously shockingly violent the ending is terrible though, apart from the line 'in 30 seconds you'll be dead, and i'll blow this place up and be back home in time for corn flakes'.

oh god my seniors just lost 2-1 away to a bot-team i'll just repeat that my...seniors....just....lost....to....a....bot-team nope, it doesn't sound any better the second time round. it was one of the better ones, and the pitch was a boggy marsh and my players like to play creatively, but it just sums up the the end of season slump my side has been hinting at for a while. the strange thing is that the majority of my players got good ratings, two of my defenders even managed career-best star-ratings, but they just couldn't create any chances. due to a fairly healthy goal difference, if i win my last game of the season, against a very weak human-team, then i'll get the league title (unless we scrape a win and my rivals win their last game 17 nil) but now i'm taking nothing for granted. maybe its the crisis before a storming play-off performance, but that's the longest of long shots. bring on next season where all the bots will be replaced by league 7 human teams, playing against rubbish all season has definitely made us weaker.

That's really harsh. But yeah, absolutely, let me know where you got up to and I'll fill you in on the rest. One last point and then i'll shut up. Has you seen Irreversible, the rather nasty rape-revenge film which is structured backwards like Memento? It was purposely made as the antithesis of 2001. But where as 2001 is all about mankind escaping the animalistic urges of the ape, Irreversible is all about the modern-day man being doomed to follow destructive primal urges without thinking. About 20 minutes into 2001 you have the scene where the main monkey uses the bone as a tool/weapon and suddenly kick starts the human race and technology. At the same point in Irreversible, a civilised, middle-class academic uses a fire extinguisher to bludgeon someone's head in, thus realising that despite all his graces, he is no better than a wild beast. Irreversible also ends with a star-gate sequence, where we travel into a womb to witness the very first moments of an unborn child's (very short) life. Unfortunately for 'it', its mother is the victim in the infamous ten minute rape/beating/mutilation scene. if you fancy a double bill which will fill you full of hope and then dash it all, go for 2001/Irreversible. another double-bill for only the bravest viewers out there - Schindler's List followed by Walt with Bashir. One is all about the terrible things the Jewish people suffered in WW2, the other is about how this experience enabled them to commit genocide in Palestine and the Lebanon in the years since. You'll need your blanky for it.

i thought you were talking about cricket then *phew* carry on

tell that to the paediatrician who had her house vandalised after the News of the World names and shamed the paedophiles a few years back. social justice = mob rule = end of society

If you google script for 2001, you'll find a version dominated by a voice-over explaining everything that's happening, thank god kubrick had the good sense to not go with this. one of the reasons it still fascinates audiences over 40 later is that its so ambiguous. there are just three scenes when we get plot exposition: when dr floyd gives his speech on the moon, in the shuttle going to the monolith and when HAL is disconnected, apart from these moments its up to the viewer to work it out for themselves. and picking up on another point you made, unlike 99% of sci-fi, there's no real sense of the space ship zooming along at tremendous speed. kubrick/clarke obviously worked out that when you're travelling such enormous distances, it would feel to all intense and purposes that you were hardly moving at all. thats why the very slow pace of the film is so apt, its dealing with evolution and deep space travel, two things that happen v e r y s l o w l y. I watched Silent Running the other day (for the first time in about 20 years) and its aged really badly. oh well. looking forward to seeing Moon.

A few people have written about watching the moon landings and thinking 'yes this is a momentous occasion, but it doesn't look nearly as realistic as 2001'. 2001 is my fave film by a few million light years, just consider the first few seconds, has there ever been a more powerful combination of image and music in the history of cinema, i think not. After watching the film several dozen times, the thing that hits me is that underneath the truely staggering story, is the fact that its basically a very funny and silly sex comedy. dr strangelove is all about men obsessed with a certain part of their anatomy (huge cigars, big machine guns, nuclear weapons, generals who would rather start WW3 than face their own impotence) and 2001 takes this to another level, vaginal doorways and airlocks, spaceships and air-hostesses that look like sperm, monkeys waving bones in the air. its basically 'carry on evolving' for the art house crowd. Have you seen any of Andrei Tarkovsky's films? I strongly recommend Solaris and Stalker. Both are very long but they take you places you've never been before and stay with you long after they've ended.

I just gave it a listen and it tickled me in all the right places. Jaunty like a donkey ride across a beach on some tracks, woozy and intoxicating on others. Good shout!

:confused: The point of this thread is for people to list their fave music of 2009, which people are doing. The end of year polls are a great way for people to check out weird and wonderful stuff which wasn't featured on X-factor, or used on an advert, or given a massive marketing campaign. 19C, when people list things you've not heard of, its not a slight against you. Get a spotify account and give them a listen. (BTW Ned's Atomic Dustbin are like soooooo uncool, daddio. Check out Jesus Jones, they're gonna be huge).