Homo Stultus Vulgaris

Last weekend I went on a night out into the great city of Manchester, something I rarely do considering it’s ridiculously expensive and heavily over-rated but nevertheless it happened.

The night itself wasn’t too bad and was largely enjoyable, however there is always a problem with going out on these excursions: transport.

Getting there is easy enough, you simply go to the train station and get on a train. Sure they’re packed out to the point where if there were a fire everyone would die a horrible horrible death as they scrambled around trampling people underfoot, but they get you from A to B fairly quickly and cheaply.

Colin

With Summer near enough over the movies started to slowly dry up. All that remained was the remnants of the Summer blockbusters and of course The Inbetweeners Movie, and I didn’t really fancy that due to the fact I’m 25 years old.

I’m fairly sure there are plenty of people out there who like The Inbetweeners, well I’m definitely sure, I have Facebook, it‘s the only thing people spoke about for about seven weeks. I’ve never got into the hit E4 show, from the stuff I’ve seen it’s okay, crude but it has it’s moments. These moments aren’t laugh out loud, but they raise a smile.

Hail Caesar.

As the Summer blockbuster season drew to a close it dawned on my that it had been largely underwhelming. It all kicked off with Pirates of the Caribbean 4 which was average, had sprinkles of mediocre with Cars 2 and The Green Lantern, and a large dollop of boredom with Transformers 3.

It’s no surprise then that I didn’t walk into Rise of the Planet of the Apes with high hopes, and yet I walked out pleasantly surprised by it.

The movie is obviously a prequel to the movie: Planet of the Apes, I don’t think it matters if it’s Burton’s version or Schaffner’s. It starts off with a scientist called Will Rodman, played by James Franco, who is working on medication that will treat, and possibly cure Alzheimer’s. His father has the illness and so this motivates him to carry on his work.

Why the long face?

I saw in the news yesterday that jockey, Richard Hughes, has effectively retired by giving up his riding licence. He’s done this in protest to a new rule that limits the amount of time a rider can whip his horse.

Apparently the new limit is seven times in a flat race and eight in a jumping race with an additional five in the final furlong or something. This has Richard Hughes up in arms, claiming it hinders the riders.

Like ET, only slightly bigger.

It hasn’t exactly been the greatest Summer of all time for movies, but nonetheless it has provided some good ones. And one of the best has to be J.J. Abrams’ science fiction thriller Super 8.

Set in the 1980s (well, 1979 actually), Super 8 focuses on a young boy who, with his friends, comes across an alien who is trying to get back to his homeworld. Yeah, it isn’t difficult to see where the comparisons to ET came from is it? It’s even produced by Steven Spielberg himself. Of course being likened to one of the best science fiction movies of all time is hardly a bad thing, and in fairness it is different enough to stand on its own two feet.

The man who put a ding in the universe.

The world was saddened on Wednesday night to hear that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at the young age of just 56.

He was a visionary businessman who turned his small computer company into a market-leader and changed the world with his vision, innovative ideas and uncanny attention to detail. The man in the black-shirt and denim jeans did this by finding out what consumers wanted before they even knew they wanted it.

Twitter Etiquette

I joined Twitter at the beginning of this year to see what all the fuss was about and it didn’t take long for me to see just what I‘d been missing. All this tweeting, following, and hash-tagging has gotten me fairly addicted a mere nine months into my Twitter career.

I quickly learned that this thing was much better than Facebook. Since having Twitter my status updates have dropped by around 50%. I sometimes don’t even log in at all. For a start, with Twitter you follow people who are interesting, you don’t have to put up with that guy you went to school with who you barely spoke to then let alone now.