What about if you have two eyes?

We are now going to turn our attention to the 15-16th Century Philosopher Desiderius Erasmus. He is responsible for many quotes, some of which are really quite famous. Like:

'Prevention is better than cure'
'In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king'
'Women, can't live with them, can't live without them'

He also had views on:
Nature
'This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.'
'Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of anothers.'

Insanity
There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.
I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.

Fools
Fools are without number.

Parties
Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly

Books
Your library is your paradise
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Babies
Everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age?

Doctors
'The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes.'

Right I'm off to be ignorant, reckless and thoughtless...

Oh, we swim from here to there, And it doesn't matter where

Hello everyone/anyone, I'm back. Well at least for now. This is my picture of the week. I was curious as to whether or not elephants can swim, and it turns out they can. So there you go. I wasn't sure whether or not they would keep their trunks out of the water and use them as a snorkle, not in this case anyway.

It looks happy, can't really be the best swimming animal. But it's the happiness in trying that is the most important thing. I wonder if Dumbo was a good swimmer. Would the ears have been a help or a hindrance? Who knows?

So next time you're in a good bit of watery difficulty then just remember the swimming elephant and think to yourself, "If a elephant can swim and be happy about it, then so can I"

(Would elephants make good life-guards? Curious)

Coming Soon

Just to give you a quick list of films you may want to go and see

14th October - The Wallace & Gromit Movie: The Curse Of The Were Rabbit
9th December - The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe (looks quite good, but it's got a very high level to live up to
- March Of The Penguins (looks really good. French film with Morgan Freeman narrating, which is always as good thing)
16th December - King Kong (Peter Jackson's directing,trailers don't look to great, very much hit or miss)

Those are the main ones. There's loads of sequels coming out, Harry Potter 4, X-men 3, Pirates of the Carribean 2, Garfield 2 (great!), mask of zorro 2, a superman film (Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor so it might not be too bad), James Bond film eventually, Mission Impossible 3, Scary Movie 4 (there's 3 already? How?), Saw 2, The Transporter 2, Underworld 2, Final Destination 3, Cars 2, Sin City 2, Ice Age 2 (I quite liked the first one), Basic Instinct 2, Pink Panther remake and Big Momma's House 2 (?). (NB that's 19 in total, plus about 5 or 6 other remakes of things) Not much orginal stuff happening. Sequels are sometimes ok but as long as there's good films that are orginal and interesting. My big tip for a really good film is the March of the Penguins. It looks really well done.

A definite film not to see is Domino. It's an action film with Kiera Knightly and it looks awful, really awful. She's incredibly annoying. I think she's meant to be an assassin who's really tough and goes around killing who ever she likes but we all know that she's just a very small, feeble looking, annoying English girl with an annoying accent. Well I'll give her 7 for effort. I suppose she wants to get away from being a one-role-wonder, well good luck with that.

Film review over

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brake....skid....crash

This is not about an accident I had over the summer, I may rant about that another time, but instead it's about the film Crash. The film stars Don Cheadle (as seen in Ocean's 11 and 12, Hotel Rwanda (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000332/)) and George of the Jungle (aka Brendan Fraser), Sandra Bullock, Carter's French ex-girlfriend from ER, and several other people you might recognise from different places. It's one of those magnolia, snatch kind of story lines where there's lots of different things going on, different story-lines that end-up meeting with one-another. I wasn't sure what to expect, I had been told by reliable sources that it was very good. I thought it was going to be one of these racial-divides type films that explores that difficults that people have in relating to people of different races. I guess it did do some of that but I was pleasantly surprised that there was a lot more to it than that.

I was going to try and explain the story but I can't so I'll let Prof. Martin Lewison do it:-
"Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters: a black police detective with a drugged out mother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the distracted district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful black Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more." I especially like the last bit, 'and more!" it sounds like an Argos sale.

Basically go and watch the film if you haven't already, it'll be well worth it. I think it has entered my top 10 films of all time. I'm not sure exactly where on the list it is or indeed any of the other films on it. I may go away and have a wee think about it and get back to you.

GO WATCH THE FILM!

Further Up and Further In

I'll just finished the Chronicles of Narina, well at 2 in the morning (it now being 10.31). It has taken me well over a year to get through them, not because I'm an incredibly slow reading (which I am) or because I didn't enjoy it but because I have a tendency to read a bit and then not have time, or indeed make time, to read more for ages. So when I eventually get back to reading it I've forgotten everything that's already happened in the book. For example, before I start reading last night there was a book-mark at the start of chapter 4 of the last book, the Last Battle. Unfortunantly the content of chapters 1-3 had been long since forgotten about so reading began at chapter 1. Thankfully most of it came back to me.

If you haven't read the chronicles of narina, do it now! It's really not worth waiting for. They are up there in terms of the best book ever. I don't want to slag the JK Rowling books off too much because they are very good for what they are but they are nowhere near CS Lewis' standard, in fact they're not even close to being nowhere near. Without doubt CS Lewis is one of the best things to come out of Belfast, possibly the best. I really felt that the way the he narrates the book shows how much he involved himself in it. Actually I can't adequate describe what I'm trying to say so I'm not going to even bother.

If you haven't read it and you're going to you might not what to read this next paragraph, I'll not give a way any of the story but I might give away a few clues and it annoys me when I get clues about stuff because then I concentrate on things I expect to happen rather than the story.
I really, really like the few chapters. I really like Aslan's last words, "The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning." Heaven's going to be like the start of the holidays but infinitely more amazing. And the last sentence; 'All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on Earth has read: in which every chapter is better than the one before.'

Pretty exciting.

Welcome All

This is the beginning of an adventure in the world of the opinionated, with possibly a bit of bad spelling thrown in. At the moment I'm not entire sure what I'll write on this, suggestions that my brain has provided include:
1. Write a story over a long period of time
2. Try and sound like you have long and very well thought-out opinions about a lot of stuff
3. Ignore it and hope it writes itself

A guess only time will tell