This week - no money, digibox thingy broke half way through Planet Earth, cheapo meals, stone cold sober (and I've got another week of this), but I've enjoyed myself for some reason - good books, getting some writing done, plenty to look forward to.

In the future

It's my sisters wedding the weekend after this. This should be very, very cool. Apart from her being my sister and getting married to an upstanding bloke who I get on with like a house on fire, there will be much wine and food, and the following day a hired hall with one Sheffield's finest house DJs.

I have money squirreled away for the proceedings, train tickets and hotel booked, so there's nothing left to fret about on my side of things - oh, apart from the fact that I've been asked to do the photos as apparently I know my way round a camera. Thing is, I don't really. I have already voiced the disclaimer that "they might turn out crap". This was met with a "whatever, have a go".

Saturday I'm off up west to buy a new pair of trousers and a shirt for the proceedings. I have roped Alison to come along as she's a girl and good at that sort of stuff. Trouble is she has loads of vouchers to spend in clothes shops and I'll have to go along with her. Think of it - Going round clothes shops with a girl who has to spend a lot of money but doesn't know what she wants to buy. Jesus.

After that though we'll hopefully be retiring back to hers to play Shadow of the Colossus. Cool.

Books

Finished "I Am Alive And You Are Dead: A Journey Into the Mind of Philip K Dick" last night. I learnt a lot about the man and his work, but the journey into his confused psyche in the last few chapters of the book was like stepping inside a schizophrenics thoughts - rambling, incomprehensible and ultimately very grey and dull. It was an effort to finish it. The critique of Ubik in the earlier chapters was worth the price of the book alone though, gave me loads of ideas.

Thought I'd put a bit more effort into The Metaphysical Poets, the idea being if I try to understand really hard poetry, any poetry I read afterwards will be dead easy.

I'm getting to grips with it. Most of the poems seem to be about death in one way or another. There was a really cool one by John Donne (wish I could remember what it was called) about dying and parting from a loved one for the last time that I found quite moving. I had to read it about five times before I understood it, but that's what it's all about apparently, getting across deep concepts in a few short lines. It's good stuff, I'm enjoying it.

Also book related - there was an interesting interview with Alan Moore on The Culture Show on BBC2 last night. You can watch it here. The more I know about the bloke the more impressed I am. I think I might try Voice of the Fire, his trippy book about Northampton. I'd like to see what his non-comic book stuff is like.

Films

Watched Sin City last night, and realised how long  it's been since I've seen a film that genuinely confounded me. I didn't know what to think afterwards. This is a good thing.

It was sharp and original, and I think the only time I've seen the comic book (in general, I haven't read any Sin City) transferred to the big screen effectively. The extreme cartoon violence worked well, but I'm not sure about the misogyny - the context of the world it's set in sort of makes it OK, but it's done with relish and made me feel uneasy.

Sexism aside, the intertwined plot was so bad it could have been from a video game, and I found parts of it strangely boring and unengaging, especially the first half hour or so. Small criticism of such a brave film though.