The Unending Battle versus Cats

As I might have mentioned before I have a problem with neighbourhood cats seemingly congregating in my flowerbeds for the purposes of defecation. Why in fucks name the cannot shit in their own gardens I do not know, but I am forever having to dig crap out of mine.

So I have for a while been trying various methods of dissuading them (I was persuaded not to use a pellet gun) with differing degrees of success. Coffee grounds and orange peel seemed to work alright, although both have to be refreshed regularly to keep the pungency that the buggers don't like to the max. Also jeyes fluid around the borders seemed to work well for a while. But any remedy only seemed to work for a short period of time. Cats seem to be like bacteria in that regard. They build up immunity.

Watching Braveheart I got me an idea which so far seems to be the best of all. Spears, lots of them. I bought a load of bamboo canes, cut them into six inch lengths and staked out the beds like some bronze age earthen defence works. And it seems to be working. With little room between each stake I reckon the cats find it hard to get a comfortable spot and move on. The can;t bury the shit like they want to and if they shit at all they just leave it on the surface which means no nasty surprises when gardening and also I can remove it quickly so the spot doesn't become their regular (which they seem to do).

Plus the idea of getting one up on the feline fucks makes me feel happy inside. I am a crazy man.

No TV

I came home from work last night and while I was having my food, I sat down to watch an episode of "House". The screen kept jumping, freezing and the soundtrack kept skipping, just like a pirated or dirty (as in smudged) DVD. I tried a few other channels and things seemed ok. I though nothing of it, must have been the recent weather, although the worst of the wind was last weekend and it was fine after that. I then left TV for a bit to piss about on the computer, playing some online poker (took some bad beats but still up overall) and checking out Twenty's revitalised blog. Before I went to bed I switched off the TV which still seemed ok.

This morning I came downstairs, made some coffee and toast and switched on the box. No satellite signal. Bit strange but ties in with last night. Tried a few things, changed and reset factory settings, switched it off and on again (always first port of call) checked all scart, phone and dish connections. No joy. Then I rang the folks at Sky and then he went through a few other technical checks and resets and still nothing. So now I have to wait for one of their engineers to come out to check the dish. I could get a ladder and have a look myself but I don't want to end up like Rod Hull. So now I am left with no TV until I don't know when.

The thing is this does not upset me like I thought it would. The only thing I might miss that would in anyway piss me off is the rugby at the weekend and I could always go out for that. I have a box set of the The Wire (Season 4) to make my way through plus the aforementioned online gambling. I have a pile of books by my bed and an itunes menu of songs that I need to revisit.

Do I really need the TV. Should I cancel my Sky subscription. This is something I think is well worth considering over the coming days.

Christmas Entertainment roundup

Back in work this week after a two week break, which seemed a lot longer than it actually was. Our Christmas break was comprised of long stretches of indolence, punctuated by short busts of intense activity, with excessive amounts of eating in between.  A very restful, rejuvenating, enjoyable break.

In between all the scrabble, ice-skating, small amounts of hiking and eating, we also found the time to see several movies, including:

• Slumdog Millionaire: Transcendent, fantastic.
  
• Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Also fantastic
• Marley and Me: Ehm..Ok for a Christmas puppy movie.  This was cut mercifully short by Conor bolting to the theater bathroom to throw up, not because of the saccharine content of the movie - stomach bug
• The Tale of Despereaux: Insanely complicated for an animated film, but very beautiful to look at
• Quantum of Solace: A third rate Bourne knockoff, a major disappointment after Casino Royale, also had the weakest, most boring, least threatening Bond villain in the history of the franchise -  Was Pee-Wee Herman unavailable? 

Played plenty of video games, all Xbox360:

• Prince Of Persia: The best game I played this year, I absolutely loved it.  Beautiful art, fun, deceptively simple gameplay.  Definitely surprised me.  Only drawback was that Conor won't let me have a turn and he is way better at it than me (a topic worthy of it's own post some time is how depressing it is to play video games against a 10 year old..no activity is more certain to confirm that you are on the downward slope of the curve and that entropy is taking hold)
• Assassin's Creed: Took me a long time to get round to this one, but it was worth the wait.  What a gorgeous looking game, which holds up admirably despite being over a year old.  There are small problems with it; The combat is less stealthy and interesting than the title and subject matter might lead you to believe and the sci-fi story angle feels unnecessary and slows the action down a lot. Still, love this one.
  
• Call Of Duty World At War:  This also took a while to warm up to. I like COD4 a lot, but COD-WaW initially felt a bit...samey.  It is the same old thing as COD4, set in the late stages of the Allied campaign in WWII, a series of battles and missions strung together by little story vignettes.  Once I got into it though, the tactile authenticity of the terrain and the hardware really started to add up to something:  COD4 is all ultra-modern, night-vision goggles and laser guided warfare, World At War has more grit and rust, a bit more bolt-action and bayonets.  The look and feel reminds me of the Commando comics my Granddad used to buy me when I was a kid:
  

Needless to say, the multiplayer is great.  We had a Stephens' Day tournament on Xbox Live, where Marie played against Christine.  It was a bit like watching two blind people in a maze, trying to kill each other with  pick-axes (see pic below):

• Fallout 3: I really wanted to love this game and was excited about playing it, but haven't been able to get into it yet.  So many people have recommended it to me, but I just haven't been that charmed by it.  I like the open world and the game looks great, but I think I have a deep seated loathing for games where you interact with characters by picking your response from a multiple choice list, grrr.  Still, I have barely scratched the surface on FO3 and plan to give it a chance.

Also got some great books, but maybe later for those..