Thoughts and experiences from this simple creature, called Chris. How well do you know him? Do you even care? Probably less so, after reading this:

Sunday, June 17

Commando - best lines.

Just watched Arnie in Commando.
Good stuff.
I made a small compilation of some of his best lines:

It's my first time using some simple software, but it came out not so bad. Not great, but then I'm not going for any awards (not gonna get any, either).

I'd like to do a long compilation of all his great one liners in all his movies.
Will get that done someday.

Pressure activated floor alarm - Arnie tested

The newest thing in floor alarms.
Consider this:
You own a guns and ammo store.
You have steel bars protecting agianst intruders and thieves. But what about determined action stars, who do not know the boundaries of normal behaviour or the limitations of an ordinary life, devoid of stunt doubles, props or special effects (not to mention a 200million dollar budget)?
Until now, there was nothing to stop them.
But wait! Now there is a new weapon to fight these marauding ego-inflated maniacs.

The pressure sensitive action star activated musical floor alarm.

This alarm is activated, the moment an action star puts pressure on one of the many touch sensitive pads placed around the boundaries of the property. As soon as your Schwarzennegger or Stallone sets one foot on the pads, the action themed music is set off.



Here is one of the pads.








You can adjust the pressure required to set off the alarm to one of any of the modern day action stars, ranging from a veritable lightwieght 'Jackie' or 'Willis', all the way through to a hefty 500kg 'Seagal'. We give the full range of pressures.


This music is designed to appeal specifically to the big action superstars.
It makes them believe that they are in an action scene and they are lulled into a false sense of security.

Meanwhile, unkown to them, the police are on their way.

As soon as the police arrive, the music stops and the action star realises that what he thought was his action packed high adventure life was just a movie and he snaps back to reality, feeling a total idiot.

Here are the touch sensitive action themed pads in action:

(Not available in the shops.)

Saturday, June 16

Waiting for the New Harry Enfield series:


2007.

Tone deaf - but only in English

Don't call us...

The orange juice sketch:

Saturday, June 9

Hey guys, BBQ at Stuart's!!!!!



Yes, the time of the year is here and Stuart the wily Kiwi baaaaaaahst@rd is holding another one of his infamous baaaaaaahrbecues.







I remember one of the last ones where I sat on the barbecue by mistake and griddled my ass.





Also I remember somehow, that a certian someone (we shall call him Ronnie) left a squeezable bottle of mayonnaise on the table. Well, amongst drunken idiots, that's just asking for trouble.
All I remembered was the next day, Ronnie was scraping off the dried mayonnaise from all over his fridge. apprently, some drunken cahoon was squirting the stuff all over the place and laughing hysterically.
I can't think what came over me (I hope it was mayonnaise - I REALLY hope it was mayonnaise).I also have this photo to consider:I admit, it looks dodgy.
However, I was actually about 3 feet from Neil's face at the time and did not actually make lip contact (or any other contact, for that matter). But it looks sooooo dodgy. Poor Neil.

This time I'm sure it will be fun.

Dave and Craig will be there:
"Got any whisky?"

"Kill me now!"

Let's see how it turns out.
I bought steaks and I'm marinating them in salt, pepper and chilli powder.
Should turn out nice.
I will take my fantastic awesome sweet bicycle and ride to Stuart's.
I shall come back and add to this post as a report of the day's proceedings.
I think sometime later tonight I will also join my friends from the North as they rampage through Tokyo on a weekend down from Fukushima.

p.s. just ehard that neither Dave, Eamon nor Craig will actually be there (all far too drunk from last night), so it's gonna be another lonely sausage outing for poor Stuart.

Labels:

Patrasche, The Grafton plus another karaoke disaster (boring videos)

I went out on my bicycle to the Kawasaki region to check out recycle shops.
I got lost.
I left at about 5pm.
I came back at about 11pm.
I was doing 20minute circles on my bike in the Kawasaki city area - I passed the damn New York love hotel with it's 30m replica of the statue of libery 3 times and went down a very long, narrow dark alley twice. I was going crazy.

I finally got back after stopping at 3 places to have a beer or two (of course - cycling is thirsty work).

One place I found which was relatively new was this Belgian bar in the centre of Kawasaki, near the station.
It's called Patrasche.

It's on the 4th floor (see it?).
It's not cheap (hey, it's a Belgian bar, in Japan).
Here's the entrance, a little closer:
And inside:
Example of beer prices: Leffe, Orval 1,100yen. Duvel 1,300yen. Stella 900yen. Ouch.

Another place I found by accident was the GGC in Tsurumi. The Great German Cook was the Tsurumi German Beer bar. Great!
A good selection of beer and at least one weissen on tap (Erdinger - standard). Also a nice selection of bottled beer at normal high prices. I would like to go there. The menu is quite extensive. They had a nice crowd in there when I was there. Didn't drink, just stopped to check it out. Apprently they've been there 20years. News to me.

Next up was the Kirin Beer Villlage at nearby Nama Mugi. Here's a shot of the seasonal beer at the Beer Villlage at Kirin's Nama mugi beer plant:

Looks good. Great head. Nice smell, but metallic taste.
The service was terrible.
They had at least 4 people working there.
I ordered my beer within 2 seconds of seeing the choice and waited more than 5 minutes for the waiter to bring me my beer.The barman was not busy. Ridiculous. Plus, I'm pretty sure he started pouring my drink then stopped and maybe changed a barrel then a long time later just topped the glass up. That's not the way to pour a beer. I had to order a second beer to take away the nasty tinny taste from the first one.
I watched the barman. He did the same again! WTF?
I tried to tell the waiter but he had no idea what I was on about.
I thought I used Japanese and English simple enough for a 2 year old but I forget that 2 year olds have open minds whereas adults do not. I gave up and sent him back to the smiling barman and manager. Idiots. I couldn't finish my weissen, because it was so metallic. They are lucky my Japanese is atrocious, o rI would have given them a piece of my mind and explained to them how to pour a beer. Idiots. Plus its always too damn cold. Rant,rant, rant.
It took me an hour to eventually find the place so I expected nice beer. Phooey! So there.

After getting lost many times in Kawasaki, I came home at about 11pm. Had a shower and got changed and I headed back out to check out an Irish bar called The Grafton, in Gotanda.


I got to the bar at about 11:40pm.
I went to the basement bar and discovered it to be completely full. No problem, as I don't have any friends.
I found a small area standing around an upturned barrel near the centre of the bar and joined three Sony engineers for a drink.
They were nice guys and didn't mind me taking a shot of my pint:

They even took one themselves (but the guy is using a Canon camera! - I used my Sony!).
The beer selection here is not bad.
I had a Swan Lake porter. It was nicely poured, but, as with most bars in Japan, it was just too damn cold. I had to drink slowly and try to warm the beer with my hands.
It got better eventually.
They had the standard Guinness and Kilkenny plus Tokoy black and the other Yonayona pale ale, lowenbrau and leffe on tap. They also ahd a nice selection of bottles. Not a bad place. Cosy.
Here's another shot of the inside:


After that I took several crowded trains and went to karoke in my local town.

Here are three terrible mess ups of otherwise good songs:

Carry on my wayward son - Kansas:

Fake Plastic Trees- Radiohead:

More than a feeling - Boston:

Apologies. Drunk again.

Friday, June 8

I'm now relaxing with a banana...

I just pimped my ride.
I got an old wire coathanger and fashioned myself a PET bottle holder.

See for yourself!

Here's a close up of my design.
Doubt if it will wind many awards, but it's functional.

And it works!!!!
I even tried it out whilst doing cool wheelies and endos and a few sweet jumps.



"Awesome!!"


I'm off out now to ride around near Kawasaki and check out the recycle stores (I'm a cheap b*st*rd).

Tuesday, June 5

Why stop now? - I bought a mini stepper thingy

What the heck...I went and bought something else.
It was just 850yen!
It's a mini stepper, twisty, stretchy, bandy, side-steppy, thingy.

I checked it before I bought it and it works fine (unlike the other one that was in the third floor, that was going for 1800yen!). I also found similar items, but boxed for around 3000 or 4000yen.
It seemed like a good deal (and maybe soon, when I walk down the street, people will turn their heads and say "Hey, that's a great ass!"), so I bought it.

I found it online, for about 14000yen!!!! Yowza!


Seems like it was famous. As seen on TV!
Unfortunately, this lady didn't come with the machine
(the same with my sit up bench, more's the pity).





However, after watching the exercise routine on the VCD,
It's not such a bad thing.
White girl got no rhythm.









The machine did come with extras, however!
I got the power cords and the computer machine thingy included, plus an instruction manual and the vcd with exercise routines (which I'm not gonna use).

This baby is feature packed!
  • adjustable speed control (I like big, solid, adjustable knobs)
  • built in computer
  • stretchy bungy strappy straps to use to work out the shoulders and uppper body (aerobically)
Sweet.

_____________________________________________

Postscript: This is me, after just 10minutes on my ab bench and my mini stepper!

Wow!! What a transformation!

Got my bench...eventually.

As some of you may know, I often visit used goods or recycle stores. I come across the occasional bargain.
Hopefully, I've found another one.
It wasn't the one I thought I had originally, but I still got one in the end (ooh, that sounds bad - and very, very painfull).
I found three sit up benches in two different places, about 4 or 5 km apart.
I've been drinking a lot of beer lately and not doing much exercise, so I figured something to help me lose those extra few hundred kilos would be a good thing.
This was the bench I wanted:
It was solid, it was long enough not to bang my head on the floor and it enabled me to use it to exercise my spinus erectus (no, I'm not talking dirty again) - the long muscle running up the back.

This was another bench at the nearer of the stores:
It was softer than the other one and a little flimsier. This bench was lacking a lock for the legs, but it did allow me to exercise my spinus erectio-I mean erectus.
"Lemme get a little stretch!"

This one was 1500yen. A little expensive for a less quality bench. Obviously, this was not my frist choice.

There was another one at the further store. This was also around 1000yen.
It seemed pretty good:
"Uh...need a little help...anyone?"

As you can see, this baby has a lock for the legs but no position to exercise my spinus erectus. no problem, I just want to exercise, not make myself go blind.
This would be my 2nd choice.

Well, what happened was that I went for the number one choice (of course), the fighting bench thing. The guys there lost a nut for the foot rest, so they said they would find it by Tuesday (it was Sunday at the time). They let me reserve the bench and they said they would deliver it to the nearer of the two stores to me and I could pick it up on Tuesday. Cool.
Sounded good.


Well, what happened was...


...I arrived on Tuesday and looked for my bench.
All I could find was the last choice bench, propped up in the entrance to the recycle store. I couldn't find the one I wanted.
I then noticed that my name was stuck on the bench.
I asked the guys at the store and they told me that they couldn't fix the first choice bench and so they threw it away in the rubbish and instead reserved the last choice bench for me.
Nuts.
Well, I told them thanks but no thanks.
I then cycled to the other shop (again) and checked out what was there.
Luckily I found the second choice bench and bought it for 980yen.
I carried it the 6km or so to my home on my bicycle (which had a slow puncture in the back wheel) and up the 3 flights of stairs to my humble abode.

It works.

Here's a picture of me, working out:
I'm sorry, I cut myself, shaving my armpits.

Actually, this is the bench I bought.
I found it online for about 4600yen!

Unfortunately, this young woman wasn't included.
Although I think I would have stretched it to 1500yen if she was.
Possibly 2000yen.

The things you find in Japanese recycle stores - sexist mousepad

How can I sum up attitudes towards women in Japan?
Take a look at this mousepad with 'special' padded areas.
It's either very offensive or hilarious (possible both?), depending on your sensitivities.

Here's what happens when you play with the nipples (this was why I was pressing her nipples, not because I found the sound by accident, while I was playing with the nipples):

Apologies to the ladies (especially those with English accents).
Some woman allowed her voice to be used for it. Either that or the samples were recorded live...