it's no secret that our world is in darkness tonight

hi there

well, actually, it isn't in darkness. at least mine is not, for i have at least two lightbulbs on at home at the moment, and they provide sufficient lighting for it not to be darkness, look you see. there was, however, enough of a moment of darkness last night to warrant, or if you will justify, the U2 reference in the title of this post.

but first, a moment of being impressed with our youngest son. he has one of them tablet like computer things, so he does. it has, of course, the "child settings" on, but we don't have the timer on. no, we, as in my (considerably) better half and i, would rather parent that that trust it to a machine. i have seen what happens when one trusts the machines, and i have no wish for a somewhat prejudicial and certainly prone to violence naked Austrian robot travelling through time just to get all Australian with us.

that we did not have a timer on it is of relevance here. we were somewhat surprised to see that the device had locked itself, for the number of hours of use for the week was "exceeded". observe.

yes. even in the lack of clarity in the above picture, i believe you can see that this device believes, and be mindful that this was around noon, that it had been used for a somewhat substantial 9008 hours and 37 minutes today alone, but who is counting the minutes. that is some fancy clock this device has, that.

i am assuming that the device has an app or two running on it that William might not have shut down properly, and they just sat dancing away, clocking up all them minutes. no matter, the problem was resolved by simply creating a new profile for him.

right, that whole power and darkness equation. last night, ladies and gents, we had a power cut. no, no, i am still very much at home in England. they have power cuts around the world, look you see. they just happen to get managed and sorted a lot better everywhere else than what one experiences in South Africa.

this, which i have edited a bit but all the same pass on my thanks to they who shared  it on the face of book, is something that South Africa could learn a lot from. it is called "information".

the biggest source of frustration, a frustration which causes people to get very angry and indeed violent in SA about these power cuts, is the fact that there is no information. when the power goes off there, as it so very frequently does, you rarely get hold of a single person at the power people to get information. when you do, you get to listen to an idiot and be treated like an idiot, and seldom if ever get any useful information.

look at this. simples, in a like totes sense. power off, we know, we are working on it, here is the latest estimated time we have for it being back on, this is the time we last updated it, thank you for your patience and we hope to have it back on soon. it is genuinely the case that you see something like this and say "well, OK then, fair enough" and get on with it, even if getting on with it is sharing some quality time with your (considerably) better half taking turns to cover up the alarm that went off as a consequence of the power and cannot, for the life of you or for the moment, work out how to switch off.

the only problem with implementing this simple and very effective means of updating people on power outages in South Africa is, of course, the small matter of the people in charge of the leccy being complete and utter self-serving f*****g morons who do not know their arse from their elbow. their approach to resolving the chronic problems with electricity in the country is to deny that there is a problem or, if pressed on the matter by one who begs to differ, suggest that some white bloke over 20 years ago is to blame. which could well be the case, but does not really explain why it has not been fixed by anyone of any colour in the 20 years after that.

anyway, the darkness allowed my (considerably) better half and i to remember those wild days of life in Johannesburg, where power and electricity were randoms never to be taken for granted. we took a selfie to show off all of them happy memories.

how long was the power off? some twenty minutes or so, i believe, and not the 2 - 3 days we are rather more used to experiencing. also, it was all due to the really challenging weather conditions we have here at the moment, and not general levels of incompetence.

here are some very smart socks that someone sent me a picture of. they presumably sent them to me as they feature that gay English robot out of Star Trek, who is my all time favourite in that series of books.

i saw these myself in a shop and picked them up. i put them straight back down when i saw that the price they were asking, with a straight face, was considerably north of double the amount i was prepared to pay for socks. if you own some of these, then i can only assume you consider your feet more luxurious than mine, or just that you wish to show off your love of Battlestar Galactica or whatever a good deal more than i would.

the power failure, or if you like outage, did not disrupt my evening entertainment. far from it, as point of fact. i had just finished watching a film, which we shall get to later, when it went off, so i had no accidental cliffhanger created for me. what was the film? Grudge Match, since i seem to need a little bit more text to go around this picture and make it look all nice and neat here on this blog as i have always expressed a preference for it appearing, look you see. yes, i know, you have probably seen poor reviews for Grudge Match, but trust me, they are wrong. very wrong. it's an excellent film.

before i watched that film, however, a particularly exceptional Christmas charity edition of Bullseye. there is a case, of course, to suggest that on account of the fact that Jim Bowen got paid for each episode that in fact every episode of the show was in fact a charity one, but it is not a case that interests me.

here, marvel at this, and indeed if you so wish revel in the awesome ways of it.

yes, that's right, that is Jim Bowen, Phil "the power" Taylor and Steve Wright off of Steve Wright In The Afternoon When Radio One Was Decent all together. that's awesome, man. that is one of them combinations that is not supposed to happen, ever, for it would be so cool that nothing else would ever seem cool again because it is not that which is cool.

unless you are my mate Payney, of course. Payney got upset with the above picture, and got rude about Steve Wright. a lot rude, calling him a very naughty word and suggesting he would hit him with some sort of aquatic based life if he ever saw him.

so, leaving that aside, on to Grudge Match. it was a film that was released in 2013, that i had sort of heard of, that i had heard poor reviews of and so ignored. it, however, was on offer for basically £2.50. i figured even if Stallone and De Niro are at their worst ever in this, it has Alan Arkin, and he is never bad. he alone, i was confident, would be worth £2.50.

as it turns out he, and everyone else, was worth that, and probably a lot more. this is a superb film, and it is a great shame that it was not a success.

critics, as i recall, suggested that the two lead actors were simply doing the parody thing of famous roles they had as boxers in years gone by. those critics, i would argue, had either not seen Rocky or Raging Bull, or simply just assumed that was what would go on here and didn't bother to watch before reviewing.

both actors are brilliant. Stallone gives a subtle, distinguished performance, whereas De Niro puts more effort and passion into this than you, i or anyone else has seen for somewhere near a decade. and i do not mean just the boxing, the acting performances are what is so superb. yes, indeed, Alan Arkin is brilliant in this, pretty much playing "standard Alan Arkin" for everyone to appreciate. that is the name of Ms Basinger you can see on the cover, and she is also outstanding.

i wish to say no more on the film at all, except to say i wholeheartedly encourage you to give it a try. it was wonderfully funny, highly engaging, and one that i will most certainly watch again.

yes indeed, that's two films i have watched in 2015; somewhat more than i probably managed during the last six months of 2014. nice one me, and hopefully this trend continues.

that will do for now. i hope you have all had a most splendid and wonderful weekend!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!