John Walker's Electronic House

Someone anonymously sent me this via Formspring, and it’s made my day.

Click it for a bigger version.

Excuse the brevity in describing episode 45 of Rum Doings, but in an episode in which we don’t discuss the abolishing of the pocket calculator (for children), we do discuss some subjects at length, and sometimes quite seriously.

There are a lot of thoughts on the coalition government, for which you’ll need this as a primer:

Then Banksy and the Simpsons opening:

And then the issues with Art With A Capital A.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e45.mp3]

Here’s two new pictures of Dexter, because people keep asking for them. I realise that I’m a person blogging pictures of his cat, but it’s everyone else’s fault. Click on them for big versions.

First, this is from yesterday. I was playing [unreleased game – Censorship Ed] and finding it rather dull. Dex curling up on the desk between my arms on the mouse/keyboard made it a lot more fun.

Dexter likes to sleep on clothes. Given an entire duvet, he’ll sleep on the dropped t-shirt or trousers. In fact, occasionally he’ll jump up on my bed and let loose an enormous, disgusted MEOW if he can find no clothes to curl up on. Pointing out to him that the entire duvet cover is essentially a giant piece of material has no effect. He especially likes to sleep on clean clothes, in order that they can quickly become clothes covered in cat hair and whatever lifeforms he’s brought in with him. His will to find clean clothes to sleep on was taken to a new level today:

A few more at other angles below.

(continue reading…)

In the fourtiforth episode of Rum Doings we don’t discuss the recovery of the ozone layer. But we do discuss the share value of Stephen Fry. And the peculiarity of Hugh Laurie’s history.

Chatting briefly about Nurse Jackie brings us to United States Of Tara, and thus dissociative identity disorder. And Dexter. The TV show.

There’s comments on Formspring, Homicide: Life On The Streets, and suddenly why does John live in Britain? Is he proud or something?! We turn into the world’s oldest men and complain about cinema prices, and then the horror of plastic packaging.

Somehow chat about films takes us to Nick telling John off for Vince Cable. And then scientific funding. Next, we ask those big impossible questions, like… oh, they’re really simple. Find out why the sky’s blue. And what we’d take from our burning houses.

But the main reason for listening to today’s episode is to find out whether Nick can get into the plastic packaging with only his fingers and teeth.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e44.mp3]

This week on Rum Doings, episode 43, we don’t discuss whether it’s time to abolish the metric system. Instead we discuss John’s adventures in France, and Nick’s adventures in complaining about John.

We talk about angry listeners, read French labels, and driving 1 litre cars with cup holders. And John makes a bold declaration: no more anecdotes. In an attempt to stop repeating anecdotes.

Our French theme continues with recalling French lessons at school, then bad teachers, big vases, and exponentially expanding biscuits.

There’s an attempt to identify what fills Victoria Wood’s bilious bag, confederate flags on British cars, and Nick teaches us Chinese. Then we handle the tragic death of Jimmy Heselden with extreme sensitivity. This takes us onto discussing those who were killed by inventions they were closely associated to. Then, as you’d expect, an exploration of the Chinese Five Pains Method.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e43.mp3]

Fear not.

New Rum Doings will appear tomorrow.

Today Kieron leaves Rock, Paper, Shotgun, on his 35th birthday. Because games journalists aren’t allowed to be 35. This means he has to fall back on his fledgling comic book writing hobby.

The last thing I imagine KG wants is sycophantic tributes, because he’s a terrible man who doesn’t deserve them. But I still feel compelled to at least say:

He’s the reason I’m in this job. Which is either a massive compliment or insult, depending upon how you view getting to do your great loves (writing, gaming) as a career, getting paid almost no money and living on scraps. While he wasn’t the member of PCG staff who gave me my break (that was Mark Donald, who I think genuinely regretted it for the rest of his time on the magazine), he was the man at the mag who fought for me when I messed up, and put special effort into making me a better writer. Also, he was the reason I wanted to write for them in the first place. It was, as I’ve said far too many times, his Descent 3 review (as the tip of a mountain of KG pieces – he was the writer in the mag whose pieces I’d read just because his name was on them) that made me want to do the same job. Two issues later I was published in the magazine.

And now he’s dead. Dead to me, at least, because who cares about stupid comic books, right?

Despite everything, it’s been something approaching a pleasure to work with him for the last, oh good grief, twelve years. And especially in creating Rock, Paper, Shotgun over the last three. He leaves us in a position where we’re finally about to maybe actually make some money after three years of work, making him both a generous soul, and an extraordinarily inept businessman.

Kieron’s goodbye post is here, with further thoughts here.

But that’s it, apart from when it isn’t, for his games journalism career. He’ll be fondly remembered, that Keiran Gillan.

Oh, Thursday. You and your sick sense of humour. Or perhaps it’s pure malice.

Today was framed to suck from the start. Last night my problematic tooth became intolerably problematic, a root filling seeming to have not done the trick to prevent its misbehaving, and most peculiarly it was gradually changing my bite until I couldn’t bring my front teeth together.

I could have made another emergency appointment with a local NHS dentist, but I’m still feeling stung (literally) from the last time two weeks ago. My regular dentist is two hours’ drive away in Guildford, in the form of my dad. But he was on holiday two weeks back, so I had no choice. Unfortunately, the dentist I got managed to not only fail to remove all the nerve from the tooth in two attempts in two consecutive days (the first attempt made things enormously worse, once the 900 gallons of anaesthetic that had made my nose go numb finally wore off), but worse, she had injected anaesthetic directly into the muscle in my jaw, which apparently caused a blood clot to form around the wound, which is why it still hurts to open and close my mouth.

My dad undid her mess and did a splendid root canal filling, which looked pristine on the x-ray. But a week later the pain was returning. Which is odd, for a tooth from which he’d removed the remaining nerve completely. Since I’m away on holiday on Monday, and away this weekend too, there was no other time than Thursday lunchtime. An uneventful drive down to Guildford got me to the surgery in just over two hours, and quickly my dad was trying to diagnose what was going on.

(continue reading…)

As you may have noticed, there was no Rum Doings this week. Nor last week. And nor will there be one next week.

This is all Nick’s fault. He selfishly went on holiday last week, and now he’s selfishly forcing me to go on holiday next week. I can’t apologise for Nick, but I can at least join you in your abject rage and unending disappointment with him.

He is unrepentant, naturally. But then, sociopaths tend to be that way. Again, I just wish I could tell you better news, but that’s the way he’s forcing things to be.

Rum Doings Episode 42 begins with a story. A very special story which you can buy here.

What we’re not discussing this week is: how do we get Britain’s heathen backside heaved back onto a Christian pew? In an attempt to avoid the topic, we drink some Rum & Raisin non-alcoholic sadness.

Naturally we discuss blocked ears, botched nose operations, dancing, the self-consciousness of theatre, and torrenting. We ponder ad-busting, last names, and green visa-waiver forms. And telephone scams! And John’s accident heroics.

Tweet it, Facebook it, do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e42.mp3]