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Today in work I went upstairs to give someone a coffee and there were two young boys (I’d guess them to be 12 or 13) eating Greggs and drinking some sort of energy drink. Now that’s obviously not ok, you can’t just sit in and drink and eat your own things. We aren’t a youth club. Most people would know that right?

Anyway I say to the boys that if they want to stay they have to put it away or else leave. One of them gets up to start to leave and the other one starts up a conversation with me that went like this:

Him: I can’t leave till I’ve finished this cos I need my hands to put my bag on
Me: You can put it back in it’s wrapper
Him: It’s dirty now (It wasn’t, he’d been sitting the pie on it when I came up)
Me: That’s not really my problem
Him: Yes it is
Me: It’s really not, so put it in the wrapper or the bin and leave
Him: Oh, ok

So I turn and leave them to it and come downstairs irate and start telling Abby what the little brat had said and as I was telling her they came down the stairs and headed out the door. But then the one that’d talked back to me stopped and walked up to the till.

Me: Can I help you?
Him: We’ve left our rubbish upstairs so go and clean it up, there’s a good Beanscene boy

Then he turned and walked away. I looked at Abby and she was like “Did he really just say that?”. To say I was ragin’ would be an understatement.

Unfortunately for the little runt I remember exactly what he looks like and he won’t be getting to sit in while I’m working again until he’s learned some manners. Which let’s face it, if he hasn’t learned by now he isn’t ever gonna is he?

Heavy Rain released last week to loving reviews and big sales, but that wasn’t the only ‘big’ thing about it.

Over the weekend somebody delved into the source files and discovered a way to play the original shower scenes in the game, which feature both male and female full frontal nudity.

I think it’s interesting that they did them and then censored them, whether by their own choice or being made to by the ratings boards. Somebody obviously put a lot of time and effort into making these so it’s good to see them getting…..appreciated.

Clicking the picture below will open the uncensored version. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I just phoned up to get my Barclaycard card activated cos I got a new one (why do you have to do that now?) and of course they went on to try and sell me something. This time it was protection against identity fraud, apparently it’s increased 40% in the last year. They also can apparently get your name from the electoral roll? So if they can do that, and don’t even need my credit card details, what exactly can Barclaycard do to stop them? I didn’t find out cos I was phoning from my iPhone so the freephone call wasn’t free so I told her no and she activated my card for me. She didn’t sound amused that I cut her off, oopsie.

I was walking home from work today and as I passed the delicatessen just up the road from my work, Eat, I happened to notice their sign outside. It was informing the general public of the soups of their day which were “Scotch Broth” and “Bacon and Lentil”. The funny part of the sign, and the point of this post, is that at the bottom it added “served with nice bread”. Do they have days where they serve it with crap bread? Silly signwriter.

However they do make yummy, yummy cakes.

Games
This month started off with me playing a game that released at the end of January, Mass Effect 2, and what a game it was! Definitely my game of the year so far and one of my most enjoyable game experiences in a long time. It looks lovely, it plays brilliant, it has an epic story that continues from ME1 and sets up the inevitable ME3 beautifully.

After just finishing up Mass Effect 2, along came another sequel to a brilliant game, Bioshock 2. From outer space to under water in the time it takes to change discs. Bioshock 2 while not as good as Mass Effect 2 was still a fun game. It was a bit hard to get into but after a couple hours the story finally decided what it wanted to do and got on with it. I’ve not had a go at the multiplayer yet but I will at some point I’m sure.

Once I’d blasted my way through hordes of Geth and Big Sisters I got a bit ADD in my gaming. I went back to a couple of old titles that I’d either not completed fully or missed out on completely. I never got around to the Fallout 3 DLC so that was first on my list. I played through the Mothership Zeta content first and to be honest, it was pretty horrible. I moved onto Point Lookout next but never got very far in that because I kept dying. So I gave up on Fallout 3 and moved to Dragon Age: Origins which I missed out on because it released five days before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I’d played a little bit but never got into it before MW2 arrived so I thought I’d give it another go. I played a couple hours of it but it just didn’t grab me so I gave up on that too.

Next on the pile was Borderlands which I’d never finished cos Callum borrowed it. I’m still playing through it cos it’s a huge game but I think I need to play it on co-op to enjoy it more.

Since I knocked my rental games down to only one at a time the only rental game I’ve played this month is Darksiders: Wrath of War. It’s an alright game and I was starting to really enjoy it when it did something I really hate: had an unkillable boss. I tried four or five times to beat this boss and couldn’t so the games going back.

I’ve finally managed to settle on a game that I’ll be playing for a while tho: Eternal Sonata. It’s a beautiful game that’s easy to play and I should be able to get a fair few hours out of it.

There’s been some games I really want to play released in the past couple weeks and March just sees more added to that list. Battlefield: Bad Company 2, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Dante’s Inferno, Echoshift, Command & Conquer 4, Final Fantasy 13, Metro 2033, Just Cause 2, Mafia 2, and Resonance of Fate. I think I’m gonna have to increase my rental number again!

On my iPhone I’ve been playing a bit of Cogs, a little Marple and some Final Fantasy. I love how good the iPhone is for bite-sized gaming.

TV
February has been pretty quiet for TV shows since the Olympics have been on. Lost started back and has been completely confusing as always, I caught up with Supernatural and cannot wait for that to start up again and finish the story arc, I finally started to watch Weeds season 5 and only have a few episodes to go, Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters are finally jettisoning the crappier storylines and sticking to the ones I’ve been enjoying, I gave up on Heroes as it was just too crap and that’s about it. March should hopefully be better with the Olympics out of the way.

Books
I’ve read four books this month: Doctor Who: Shining Darkness which was pretty dull, The Mirrored Heavens which was a good sci-fi romp, Peter & Max which was my favourite of the lot and a highly enjoyable read, and The Medici Curse which was a nice romance novel. I think I enjoyed The Medici Curse more because it was set in the same time period as Assassins Creed 2 and I recognised events that were taking place.

Movies
I think the only new movie I watched this month was Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs which I saw with Paula and Kirstin. It was alright, not as funny as the Disney Pixar movies but it was cute. I also watched the Directors Cut of Watchmen which I really enjoyed.

Music
The Courteneers debut album would have to be my favourite of this month, I don’t know why but it reminds me of Glasvegas a lot. I also can’t stop listening to Lady Gaga’s Dance in the Dark and Timbaland’s If We Ever Meet Again since I heard them in Polo. I think I enjoyed myself more than I think I did. Next month sees the release of Amy MacDonald’s second album so look for my review of that next month.

I have to say I’m really liking The Courteneers debut album Falcon. It sort of reminds me of Glasvegas but English-er.

Elie Goulding’s album is alright, quite chirpy. Her accent is kind of annoying me tho…

Next week sees the release of Amy MacDonald’s sophomore album and I’m really excited about that. So much so that I’m gonna actually buy it!

Brilliant concert, Jared Leto has an amazing energy live and seemed to really enjoy himself. There were a few too many scene kids for my liking tho and some of them act as if they’re in the presence of God with the way they’re screaming and panting.

Just a wee update to let everyone know the wedding isn’t 100% definitely postponed which is why I’ve only posted about it on Facebook. When it’s 100% we’ll send out a letter/notice of some sort to everyone with the reason why and when it’s being postponed until.

If you want to contact me you can email me at madboarder@gmail.com or phone my mobile. I’m not posting my number here cos I did that with my last number and ended up with spam calls galore, however you can get the number from my Facebook page. Alternatively you can phone my Mum’s house and ask to speak to me or leave a message for me and I’ll phone you back.

I finished my latest book The Mirrored Heavens last night, it was given to me for Christmas by Arlene & Harry (Tim’s Mom and Dad) and I’m not sure where they got it from as I don’t think it was on my wish list.

However I really enjoyed the book, it’s a sci-fi novel set in the not too distant future where there’s now only two superpowers: The US and the Eurasian Coalition. They’ve engaged in a second cold war and are very close to all out war so when the Space Elevator they’ve jointly built is blown up by terrorists, it doesn’t exactly relive the tension.

The story is seen from three different perspectives and that was one of the negatives of the book for me as I often got confused who the current segment was about, especially when it’s just from character to character within lines of each other rather than pages.

That being said it was a good book and it’s a bit too close to how our own future might turn out. It’s the author’s first novel and when I Amazon searched him I discovered that he’s since released another book which is part two to this book in what’s going to be a trilogy. So I’ll pick that up at some point in the future.

For now I’m reading Peter & Max: A Fables Novel which is another Christmas present, this time from my Grandparents. It’s set within the Fables universe which is a series of comics I read and love. The book itself is beautiful with the page edges not lining up properly to give the book an antique feel. The paper is also thicker than regular paper and there’s illustrations on most of the pages. All in all it’s a gorgeous book that I can’t wait to read.

My Iron Mac sticker finally arrived today, I’m pretty chuffed with it! My only annoyance is a couple airbubbles I couldn’t get out. I hate airbubbles.