Friday 30 November 2007

On......seven 5s

5 most versatile actors alive
Daniel Day-Lewis
Johnny Depp
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Forest Whitaker
Sean Penn

Top 5 movies that I have seen this year
Ratatouille
Lions for Lambs
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3:10 to Yuma
The Bourne Ultimatum

Honourable mentions for Atonement and American Gangster.

Top 5 best things currently on TV (excluding any reality TV)

The Wire (arguably the best TV show ever made along with The Sopranos)
Entourage - Funniest thing on TV bar none
Heroes - Sort out Hiro's storyline sha it is a bit wack right now.
Grey's Anatomy (although this has slipped a bit this season and I may replace with Lost which is slowly getting back into my good books)
CSI - Consistently brilliant

Special mention goes to 24 which would have made the list if not for the debacle that was Season 6.

Top 5 people that may one day drive me to murder
- Middle lane drivers on motorways
- Malnourished, council estate women, who smoke outside bingo halls and wear leggings.
- People who wear fucking hats in the gym. WHY?
- Twats who use an ATM machine for anything else other than withdrawing cash. There are people behind you! Also those that use multiple cards
- Babangida. The man that made corruption okay in Nigeria.

Top 5 books that I have read this year
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid (Sweet sweet prose)
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (Simple. Concise. A master at the top of his game)
The Gift Of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (The best postcolonial novel I have read in a long long time and I include Half of a Yellow Sun in that assessment)
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (This is a translation from Norwegian. You may not read a better novella on the overwhelming feeling of loneliness and solitude)
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin (if you are married, read it. Nuff said)


5 babes that I could gaze at all day
Paula Patton
Kelis
Scarlett Johansson
Norah Jones
Pam Grier (even till today the ultimate MILF)

Special shout out to Jessica Biel and Rihanna for the sheer beauty of their bodies. Unfortunately their faces did not allow them to make the final cut.

Top 5 attacking footballers in the world
1. Lionel Messi
2. Cristiano Ronaldo
3. Kaka
4. Cesc Fabregas
5. Ronaldinho

Tuesday 20 November 2007

On......my recent journey to the Edge of Reason


What a complete and utter waste of time that was! Well for the most part anyway. I have been meaning to take the journey for a while now but time was always an obstacle. It was only meant to be a quick trip and I hoped to be back in time for the Arsenal – Man Utd match. Fat chance! I underestimated the journey time to Reason and was caught in Limbo on the Friday before the big game. Fortunately you can get Sky Sports in Limbo so I was able to catch the second half.

SO what exactly was the point of this trip I hear you ask? Well for a while now I have been questioning my very existence and wondering whether or not everything that I thought was real is in fact just a figment of my imagination. I wanted to find out more about meta-epistemology and the canard of unromantic love. The only way I could find the answer to these great uncertainties was to take a trip to the Edge of Reason; you know the place that shares a border with the Land of Craze-Madness. The Guardian advised me that I had to tread very carefully because the border between the two domains is inconspicuous and one could easily find oneself in the Land of Craze-Madness before one realised the difference. That was one place I did not want to end up The Guardian advised.

I had hoped that the journey would be a profound one and that I would return with life-altering titbits that might revolutionise your thinking. Sadly I learnt very little. I have come back with an awareness that my Edge is self -defined and very different from yours. We have all visited Reason at some point but my Edge began where many others had ended long ago. The entire domain of Reason was not as big as I had imagined and I must confess that Craze-madness land looked considerably bigger (not to mention more fun!).

All the locals in Reason were stony faced, hard-nosed and pragmatic. They rarely spoke and they didn’t even answer me when I asked where the nearest McDonalds was! The food was nourishing without being enlivening and their idea of fun was Scrabble parties and Su-Doku nightclubbing. I did meet a nice girl at one of the Su-Doku nightclubs but she told me later (over a bowl of Tofu) that she was not really an indigene of Reason and had crossed the border from Craze-Madness for the sake of a night out. I asked her to tell me more about her land and she said it was a place completely devoid of accountability and rational thought. She hated it she said and escaped to Reason whenever she had the chance. This sparked my curiosity somewhat because a place where accountability lies dormant is surely a male paradise. Just imagine…….I could fuck around as much as I wanted and not have to answer to anyone. Paradise I tell you. But wait….a lack of rational thought as well. Does that not mean that some girl I had two-timed could shoot me without her batting an eyelid? Hmmmmmm…. the land of Craze-Madness. I guess there is a clue in the name. I remembered the warnings of The Guardian and eradicated any thoughts I had of crossing the border.

My subsequent days in Reason were spent with the beautiful Osite of Craze-Madness and we killed many hours playing reverse chess and solving quintic and polynomial equations. We did not make love because despite our intense chemistry I was aware that she was little more than the fabrication of a dichotomised mind. I was not quite prepared to discover the epistemological ramifications of fucking a figment of my imagination.

Anyhooo….. I’m back in the land of Free Will now and as I already mentioned my trip was without fruit. Cogito ergo sum I guess. It appears though that I have acquired some soothsaying abilities during the journey and I can now see into the future. Go back to the first line of this post and I predicted exactly what you are thinking right now.