Just an MRI scan away... pt 1

With my ongoing battle against the bouts of my swollen Parotid glands to contend with on a much more regular basis (from a manageable bulging every other month to an annoying almost daily flaring) my outpatient treatment has now started to appear slightly more worrying, to say the least. My latest hospital appointment was at the end of March, which is a full two years on from my last check-up due to yet another cancellation - see “Bad letter day“ for more details - and so during this interim period, I’d been allocated a new and younger Consultant. With this fresh pair of hands and eyes assessing my jaw line, a dynamic shift in my future medical reviews had begun in earnest as soon as I was seated (un)comfortably in his surgery...

eBay, cameras & numpty-headed c*nts

Recently, I have made a decision to spend more and more of my time in the photographic stratum of eBay and as a result, I am feeling a little stress-induced to say the least. I say stress-induced because of the many bad experiences I’ve had to endure - as a buyer and seller alike - and that’s basically down to the absolute cretinism a fair few eBayers show once they’re hidden behind their online monikers, regardless of whether their actions are deemed right or wrong.

Skyrim Fanfic: a prison cell in Riften jail...

(Here is a short(ish) Skyrim-related story about someone languishing in Riften jail, for an unknown crime.)

‘I’m innocent I tell you!’ left my mouth and chased the guard along the dungeon corridor, as I stood rattling the riveted bars of my cell in frustration. I watched him reach the outer dungeon door leading back to Mistveil Keep, swing it open and as he stepped through, call back in response with a cackle, ‘We’ll see, but what you’ve done is a little more serious than just stealing a Giant’s Mammoth cheese butty...’

Zelda: Skyward Sword & EDGE Magazine's Review - a perfect 10 in Onanism

(c) Future Publishing

I have been an avid follower of Nintendo’s Zelda series of video games for the last twenty years or so - from the SNES’s A Link to the Past, through the majestical The Ocarina of Time and its multi-layered follow-up Majora’s Mask on the N64, on past the much-maligned Gamecube’s cell-shaded The Wind Waker, to the current Wii generation’s latest reiteration, Twilight Princess - so I felt my heart skip a beat with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword just last month.

All the gaming magazines’ reviews were unanimous in their adulation for the big N’s newest addition to their action-adventure RPG world, awarding the type of near-perfect scores video games can only dream of in the world of mediocre titles and lacklustre design. So I knew there was just one place to go for final clarification of Skyward Sword’s supposed brilliance and that was Future Publishing’s pre-eminent videogames magazine, EDGE: lo and behold, the latest Zelda title had been awarded the perfect 10-out-of-10 score...

The freezing cold Tea bag tester

Some days are sent to test our resolve, sanity and basic human emotions, of this I have no doubt and I can attest to sampling many of these challenges over my life so far. I usually have a bad March and then a bad October, which being almost equidistant to one another means I can shore up the defences when the individual months mentioned above are approaching: this means cancelling any non-essential trips or appointments, ensuring I have some pittance saved to one side for emergencies that are bound to arise and trying to remain calm and collected in the face of an insurmountable Fate intent on disrupting everything around me.

Gaming the light fandango... pt 1

I am a moron. There, I’ve said it now. In fact I’m going to go a step further and state that I’m not only a moron but an ape, an arse, a clown, a cretin, a tool and ultimately, a twat. Indeed, there are many negative terms I could relate to myself without even becoming abashed at the brevity such monikers instill within our society because I accept that I am nothing more than an absolute pillock. And why, may you ask, am I reducing my very existence to the lowest of common denominators? Well it’s all because a life-long, crippling addiction - controlled for years via private solitude and introverted withdrawal - has suddenly raised its wanton head into my life again and in doing so, now appears to have cost me immeasurably.

GTA V Trailer: Read It and Weep!

The first look at Rockstar Game's newest GTA Sandbox world has finally arrived, so click the link above, jump inside and sample the pixel shaded trailer Elysium that is GTA V (that's 'Grand Theft Auto Five' to all non-gamers out there), which by a stroke of genius is accompanied by the opening instrumental music from the 1968 Small Faces song, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake! Surely 'tis a beast...

A neighbourhood in waiting... pt 2

As the din continued underneath, I stood listening for a few minutes frozen behind my front door, safe in knowledge that my unlit vestibule and the coats draped across its security glass camouflaged me from the noise-inducing cretins below. The same loud thudding that had awoken me seemed a little louder now that it had less brickwork to dampen its echo and through the wired glass I caught a few murky, distorted shapes moving around in the stairwell beyond: actual morons were in my midst.

A neighbourhood in waiting... pt 1

It was a low and dull distant thud that initially brought me out of my early morning slumber, where I was partly protected from the outside world’s intrusion by the yellow foam earplugs snugly fitted into my aural canals. I blinked once and then squinted at a point on my nearest bedroom wall, feeling the relaxation of the last eight hours of sleep rapidly dissipate as I awaited the arrival of another muffled bang.

Tick-Tock Tattoo and a case for wearing glasses

Every two weeks on the Friday, I’ve got the unenviable task of signing-on at my local Job Centre. It’s a place governed by streams of Liberalised red tape and populated with unemployed cretins and employed denizens who have an inability to crack a smile: if you attempt to lighten the mood with a little banter, they’ll glower at you as if you’ve just spat out a hate-filled Bernard Manning joke, regardless of whether you’re just someone trying to earn their next Job Seekers giro or you’re actually an out-of work comedian trying to get a laugh.