Arthur has spent some time updating his Pocky pictures and reviews as he had got seriosuly behind in keeping them up to date; he still has some more reviews and photos to do and also has a cupboard full of yet more chocolate to test but he is going to make an effort to get these done soon, especially as he has just ordered even more Pocky from Japan which wil be arring in the next week or so (Hmmmmm.. Cookie Crunch Pocky....)
Arthur also updated how Pocky are displayed. Now, whenever a flavour of Pocky (or other japanese snack) is updated, it is moved to the top of the list. That way you can easily see what Arthur has been saying recently about each snack. Arthur`s Pocky Page >>
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Hooray! Arthur has picked up a cyber stalker on the Eurosquad Day of Defeat (Dod) server! Some guy (or possibly Gal) playing under the name os Superman (although judging by his pitiful score he was anything but) took offence at a genuinely accidental team killing by Arthur and proceeded to deliberatley kill or wound Arthur, block narrow doorways and generally follow him around to make playing the game as unenjoyable as possible. And as soon as Arthur suggested kicking him that would only upset him further and unleash even more stalking and knifing. He was even doing it to other players too (he had quite a busy night). This person was either a gaming troll who was just out to ruin the game or some retarded 8 year old who just couldn`t understand the concept of "an accident". Arthur ended up leaving the game happy that he had the top score on 2 maps despite Superman`s best efforts.
However, whilst on the subject of Dod, Arthur is going to have a quick rant. Recently the game seems to resemble a parade of Easter bunnies rather than a WW2 battlefield. This is because of the number of people who have taken to bunnyhopping to make themsleves harder to hit. Instead of running rouund corners the enemy come bouncing round, flying though the air. And when you start shooting at someone, their first reaction isn`t to duck for cover or shoot back; instead they start jumping around!
This really pisses Arthur off as it is essentially cheating - taking adavantage of flaws in the game to give yourself an adavntage. Arthur thinks it is just like exploiting bugs in maps and should not be done. The sooner the game is updated and jumping is made less effective (tiring you out more and increasing the amount of time it takes to draw and steady your gun afterwards would be good) the better.
Arthur`s eBay near miss has turned out to be a success, as this morning his missing Tales from Earthsea poster arrived safely. This is all the more impressive as it was only sent from Japan 4 days ago! (deliveries *within* the UK can take longer than that!)
Arthur thinks that this situation is a good example of good customer service even though the transaction didn`t go according to plan. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time and this should not be taken as a sign of poor service (unless the same mistakes happen again and again and the person or company hasn`t learnt from their previous errors). Arthur defines service as how a person or compnay handles a situation when things do go wrong. Most UK companies will do their best to worm their way out of any responsibility but good service happens when a company admits they made a mistake and makes an effort to solve the problem to the satisfaction of the customer. And this is what happended in Arthur`s recent eBay near miss. The seller payed extra postage to get the poster to the UK as it was their mistake and the poster was treated with just as much care as the previous delivery (it was very well packaged).
Thus Arthur now trusts that this is a reliable seller. The unfortunate downside to this is that Arthur now has no excuse not to spend loads more money buying other Studio Ghibli posters from this particular seller; it`s going to be another expensive month.
Arthur`s video recorder has finally packed up completely. After failing to recognise the year 2006 9 months ago, now it refuses to do anything and just displays weird error codes on the display.
Arthur has been looking for a DVD/HDD (hard disk drive) recorder for some time but hasn`t been able to fond one he likes. Indeed Artbur has already begun getting rid of his old videos by taking them to the charity shop (although Arthur isn`t quite sure where he`s going to get rid his unrated, pre-BBFC tapes like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as shops won`t take them due to stupid laws on selling such things even though the films are available in exactly the same versions in shops the length and breadth of the country). Unfortunately this latest turn of events makes finding one even more of a priority; missing an episode of Neighbours could be disastrous!
Arthur has recently considerd a new model by Sony but has been put off by reports of problems recording in widescreen and the record quality mode being set incorrectly, to which Sony have simply responded "Other customers are perfectly happy so we aren`t going to do anything to fix your problem" - what fantastic customer service...
Arthur suspects he is just going to have to take the plunge, buy one and hope for the best; the world of AV is becoming ever more complex and fraught with problems as TV`s and digitial recorders are essentially just stripped down PCs complete with all the associated bugs, which really isn`t what`s needed for a consumer item that should just "work"...
In his second food related post in as many days, Arthur had a craving for Apple Cruble today. A quick hunt on the interent revealed a suitable recipe (crumble isn`t difficult - Arthur could pretty much remember the recipe from school cookery lessons) but he just needed to check the quantities/ratios of flour, sugar and butter.
A quick trip to Morissons and he had all the ingredients plus some vamilla ice cream (Arthur is of the school of thought that hot apple cruble goes well with cold ice cream and cold crumble goes well with hot custard). Ironically there were ready made crumbles on a buy-one-get-one-free special offer but Arthur stuck with his home made variety. Arthur was a little surprised at the high cost of Bramley apples but for crumble as good as this it was worth it. Slightly annoyingly Arthur will pop round his parents house tomorrow where he will doubltess be offered vast quantities of apples from their garden for free...
Anyway, a few minutes mixing everything together and 40 minutes in the oven and the crumble was ready to go. And very nice it was too. It`s a good thing there are still 4 servings left!
And in other less tasty news, Arthur finally got round to adding a new DVD review last night for the Thai/Hong Kong horror film Re-Cycle.
Arthur hasn`t posted about food for some time but after breakfast the past couple of mornings he feels the need for a quick rant.
Arhtur`s Weetabix has been contaminated with lots of hard lumps, probably of unprocessed grain or overcooked bits of wheat, that make eating his morning cereal virtually impossible. Arthur even abandoned his bowl half way through this mormning and threw it in the bin, something previously unheard of. Arthur will now have to ship the whole lot back to Weetabix (not cheap considering it is a box of 72!) or take his chances at Morrisons where they may or may not exchange them for a new box.
Arhtur has consumed 3 Weetabix every morning for the past 15 years (and on and off in the years before that) and aside from the odd batch that tasted more like shops own brad wheat biscs, he has never had such a problem. The nasty, evil lumps are all the more noticeable to Arthur as he likes to eat his Weetabix by crumbling them up and adding just enough milk to make them into a soggy mush that kind of resembles baby food (One day Arthur will add a page to his site details how to make the perfect bowl of Weetabix mush with the right sahpe of bowl and size of spoon for the time of day - yes it does make a difference).
Arthur has had plenty more Studio Ghibli stuff arrive over the past few days inclusing little books of postcatds and some books from Whisper of the Heart. One thing Arthur was particualry looking forward to receving were his posters from Tales from Earthsea.
The tube of posters finally arrived all the way from Japan but rather annoyingly one of the posters he had bought was missing. Arthur tried to contact the seller through eBay but got no reply. Although Arthur was annoyed at having lost his money he was actually more pissed off that this particular seller had loads of other posters Arthur wanted and now he`d have to find somehwere else to buy them.
This was Arthur`s first negative experience of eBay (he has never even had to contemplate leaving negative feedback before) but fortunatley, just as Arthur was about to give up and make a complaint to eBay, the seller sprung back to life and is supposedly sending the missing poster any day now.
Arthur went to see the film A Scanner Darkly last night. This film hasn`t had a particualrly good reception and hasn`t received a very wide release either. So much so that it wasn`t showing at Arthur`s local Vue cinema and instead he had to travel about 40 miles to visit a friend in Ealing where it was actually showing at the Vue in Shepherds Bush nearby (it was showing near Arthur at his local Showcase cinema but he refuses to go there due to really bad customer service and presentation in the past).
Unfortuantely Arthur got caught up in one of his least favourite activities, driving in London. There were plenty of drivers barging their way around just to gain a few extra seconds, signposts were non-existant just when they were really needed and most annoyingly, parking was not exactly obvious. The cinema`s website said they had 200 parking spaces but failed to mention that this was in a public car park. Arthur tried to use this aforementioned car park but there were no price lists displayed until it was too late to get out again. And Arthur was not happy to see that they were charging 80 pence for 20 minutes! Arthur just took a ticket and drove straight back out again. Fortunately the barrier had the sense to work out that Arthur hadn`t actually parked there and just let him straight out. Arhtur would probably have snapped the barrier off in a fit of anger had it not let him through!
A parking spot was eventually found but Arthur thought he was going to be late for the film. However upon arriving at the cinema he discovered the time had changed to 20 minutes later which in the circumstances was rather fortunate. Quite why the time had changed Arthur had no idea. It was especially weird as the time had already been shifted back by 30 minutes earlier in the week. Is it really that difficult to schedule a cinema and strick to that timetable?
Oh and the film was OK. Rather slow and sometimes a bit dull, but funny in places and the cel-shaded look of the animation (which to be honest was the main reason to see this film) was well done.
Whilst Arthur`s cold continues to cause much woe, his life has been brightened slightly by the increased growth of his Studio Ghibli collection. The past few days have seen the arrival of many packages from the far east bearing goodies such as the Tales from Earthsea "Art Of..." book and soundtrack, plus some new programmes (Princess Mononoke, The Cat Returns and Pom Poko) and original posters for Spirited Away, Totoro and Howls Moving Castle.
Arthur is particularly pleased with the Pom Poko cinema programme as, for some reason, there isn`t any merchandise from this great film currently available although flicking through the programme itself, there are a number of raccoon cuddly toys, keyrings, postcard sets etc. that were available at the time of the films release.
Arthur also ventured to his local comic shop and bought some new picture frames which they`d recently strated selling and were just the right size for Japanese film posters. These frames are natural wood (Arthur isn`t quite sure what wood but importantly they aren`t pine as Arthur loathes pine) with glass fronts (as opposed to acrylic) and nifty clip-in-place back boards.
Unfortunately Arthur hadn`t anticipated just how heavy and awkward they`d be to carry and his hands almost seized up trying to grip 2 frames on his 5 minute walk back to his car. Still, now that his Howls Moving Castle posters are nicely framed they look great and Arthur will be getting at least four more of these frames for other posters that will be arriving soon.
Arthur has a stinky cold which has left him feeling rather tired most of the time as well as giving him a splitting headache every morning. Also the floors in most rooms in his house have a sizable covering of used tissues just waiting to be reused (Arthur tends to use kitchen roll instead of ordinary tissues as even Kleenex mansize tissues tend to instantly disintergrate under the extreme pressure and quantities of snot from Arthur`s nose). Rather embarassingly Arthur got home from the supermarket the other day only to discover he had large quantities of gooey green snot all down his front that had obviously missed the tissue. Small children will now know Arthur as the snotty Morrisons man...
Still, Arthur has discovered that Cardburys mini rolls offer marvellous medicinal qualities and he is taking two every four hours to help keep his strength up. This came in particularly useful for popping to the cinema (Arthur drove as cycling was too much effort given the fact he couldn`t really breathe properly) to see the wondeful film Crank.
The film stars British action B movie actor Jason Staham as a man who is injected with a poison that will kill him unless he keeps his adrenaline levels up by engaging in ever more dangerous and exciting activities. The film is pure junk but it is hugely entertaining and funny junk, providing sick and twisted black humour is your thing . Arthur still laughs out loud when mentioning the following keywords/phrases: exploding budgie, Al Qaeda, hospital gown, artists impression... the list goes on and on! Just watch it. Very funny indeed.