Golf

Squash has officially been relegated to a winter sport - sorry Jahangir Khan, we will always have a place in our hearts for you and your wonderful moustache. The fine weather means tennis has come back as the racquet sport replacement, but we have also brought the wonderful game of golf in to our lives ... damn, it's a good game.

For golfing tips, these two sites have loads to offer:

The BBC Golf site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/golf/skills/default.stm

Golf.com : http://www.golf.com/golf/instruction/lessonfinder/

It's important to get the basics right (grip, position, weight transfer) but beyond the basics there is just too much to remember, and it's probably more productive to keep just one or two tips in mind when playing. Indeed, when you are actually playing a shot it's all about getting to point of not thinking about technique, but about the shot itself (distance, wind etc). However, to get to this level you first have to be able to hit the ball. We are still learning. Stand back ... well back.

"FORE!"

How to leave work

This is the way to do it:

Who is this Scroobius Pip?

Here are some interesting lyrics from a track by Scroobius Pip:

Thall shalt not stop liking a band just because they’ve become popular.
Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry
Thou shalt not judge a book by it’s cover
Thou shalt not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover

Click below for the full music video.

Childhood thought: where are the bugs?

From my youth, I can remember times in the year when we would be under attack by plagues of daddy-long legs, caterpillars, and green fly. If you wore a yellow shirt in the summer and played outside, you would be a magnet for bugs.

We haven't had a plague in ages.

Not that I miss them.

Audi 80

Well, that doesn't happen too often: A couple of guys knocked on my door, asking if I wanted to sell my car. It's an Audi 80, with low mileage, and it's in pretty good nick. I fell in love with this car many years ago, along with the Mercedes 190E and BMW 316. There's another guy up the road, who has an Audi that's even older than mine, and he keeps it in pristine condition. These cars seem to have quite the following. They run well, they have a retro look about them, and they don't look out of place on the road.

I couldn't bring myself to selling my Audi, even though I know it's going to cost me an arm and a leg this year in tire replacement costs and break disc replacements. I'd be better off ditching it now and buying an equally good Audi 80 for around £1200, but I can't do it.

Bernie Mac - The Whole Truth, Nothing but the Truth, So Help Me Mac

It looks like the Mac (Bernie Mac) is hanging up his comedy stand-up shoes. He'll be giving us one more comedy film, 'The Whole Truth, Nothing but the Truth, So Help Me Mac', but that'll be it.

The UK never really got a fair slice of this American stand-up comedian, who made it big following a spot on Def Comedy Jam, and after featuring in the 'The Original Kings of Comedy' (a Spike Lee film). His jokes are too vulgar to repeat, but the guy is so funny it hurts; it's not just what he says, but how he says it, his eyes, his body language, the whole package.

A few Bernie Mac lines:

you don' understand

I ain't scared o' you ********

I'm 42 years old, I'm tired, my body weary

Goings on

I'm trying to tell ya a story

sumamama bitch

See, it ain't, it ain't, it ain't what you say, it's how you say it...it's jokes, it's fun, but it's also the truth

Whenever I see this ***** there's gonna be a misunderstanding, there's gonna be some furniture moving around this ******.

...quit crying, do some push-ups or something !

Curse of the Golden Flower is pro villainy

This sumptuous film is to be commended for one thing above all else: the reintroduction of the ninja to the big screen. Ninjas were the popular assassins of the 70s and early 80s, but these days you'd have more luck spotting a snow leopard than seeing a ninja kick ass on big or small screen. I don't know why they faded out, and I don't know if this return is a one-off, or whether it marks the beginning of a new wave, but I'll tell you one thing: ninjas still kick ass. In Curse of the Golden Flower, the ninjas possessed the ability to fly, their weapons continue to be super cool, and while they were not infallible, these ninjas could only be halted by a force much greater in number.

(spoiler follows)

The film itself was somewhere between okay and good, mixing a soap like story line that would be at home in Eastenders, with beautiful, but blood-soaked, fight scenes. The ultimate message seemed to be quite unique; that villainy rules. There was no redemption, and the ending left me wanting, but sometimes its nice to have a surprise message. After all, in real life, villains don't always get there comeuppance, and they don't always have redeeming features. Also, the film increases my admiration for film makers from the East, because I'm certain this type of ending wouldn't have made it past the focus groups in Hollywood.

Sopranos

Damn, I love this series.

Season 6 is the final season in the series, and while it has started off on a slightly weaker footing than where it left off , The Sopranos is still the best thing on the box. I've missed quite a few episodes, so I look forward to watching the series from start to end on DVD. Right now however, I'm on tenterhooks as to how the final hours of the drama are going to play out.

Maybe for the final episode I will cook some pasta with tomato and garlic sauce, finely slicing the garlic with a razor blade in homage to Goodfellas and The Sopranos.

Car wiper blade (mis)pricing

I went to an independent car parts dealer today, looking to replace three wipers blades on my mum's Nissan Micra. The shop was selling wiper blade refills for £4 each. The refill is the strip of rubber that runs across the bottom of the metal frame of the wiper - it's the bit that does the actual wiping. They were also selling entire wiper replacements - the metal frame and rubber blade together - for £5 each. Just £1 extra for the entire thing.

Either I'm missing something, or somebody has got their economics way wrong.