Friday, June 09, 2006

You need another element...

...You need it right away

I've just been to watch Germany - Costa Rica and Poland - Ecuador in the garden of a pub in Osnabruck. It was rather good. We got given free horns, whistles, flags and t-shirts. Would a similar thing be done in England? Probably not. Still, I'm off to Hamburg tomorrow. Hopefully I won't get confused as a hooligan and arrested.

Steve Beale - suited up - How I Met Your Mother
Every summer I appear to go on a magazine buying spree. I try to find a magazine that speaks out to me and manages to be entertaining yet also educational (or I think I'm learning from it anyway). I think the order went:
  • Your Sinclair
  • Amiga Power
  • Loaded
  • Esquire
  • Possibly back to Loaded
  • Total Film
  • SFX
  • Hotdog
  • Word

Part way between SFX and Hotdog I started buying Arena. It was witty, amusing, had people like Kevin Smith writing for it and had pictures of Eliza Dushku in it. It was most enjoyable.

Then Steve Beale started writing for it.

His first article was him having plastic surgery. Mostly to get rid of his bitch tits. His conclusion was 'if you have poor self esteem, having plastic surgery could make you feel better'.

Then he 'gave up' hash. Again his conclusion was the pretty much obvious 'I felt more alert, didn't laze about so much & was more effective with my time'. However despite the benefits he found from giving up weed he still started smoking it by the end of the article.

When he started shagging ladyboys for the purposes for an article I started going off Arena's idea of a black collar worker (which I think is pretty much a guy in a suit, but a bit more independent than usual). In fact I stopped buying Arena completely. If any cute girls are in there (like Linda Cardellini) then I simply download the scans from the internet.

I think it's a bit bad that one guy managed to stop me buying one magazine, but it's that Steve Beale appeared to be considered to be the kind of man that Arena readers should look up to. And I just couldn't do that. Perhaps I'm too middle class for that kind of stuff.

However, since I stopped reading Arena I have actually started 'dressing up' for work as Arena would've wanted and worn a suit to work. For the first few days I got the jibes of "Are you going to a funeral/interview?" but I also got compliments - and mostly from girls!

Wearing a suit has made me feel more confident at work and I think people have altered how they deal with me accordingly. What a difference a tie makes.

But what made me wear a tie I hear you ask? It was Barney from How I Met Your Mother.

For those of you who don't know How I Met Your Mother is a sitcom with less of a standard sitcom way of going about things. It stars Nick from Freaks & Geeks, Doogie Howser MD and Willow from Buffy so already has my seal of approval for the casting alone.

It also gets further approval for having Doogie as a suit-wearing Quip-genius. Because of how Doogie is on the show is the only reason why I've started wearing a suit to work.

I recommend you watch it. Apart from the last two episodes in the first series, which have far too much plot and not enough comedy for my liking.

DS lite
My attempts at getting the frag dolls and readers of this blog to make me buy either an Xbox 360 or a DS lite were a bit crap. The frag dolls just sat on the fence and said "what you want is best for you". God I just wanted an answer either way!

Anyway, when I found out that the DS Lite was being released at the end of June I decided to pre-order one. This is the first time I will ever get a console on its release date. Except the DS has been out for about a year already.

I shall be getting Mario Kart, Animal Crossing and Brain Training before I even have a DS. This is kind of strange, but I think I'll like it.

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