The Museum Of Modern Thinking

Here’s an entertaining video of a Muay Thai fighter kicking an ash, then maple baseball bat, both of which require over 750lbs of force to break:

It’s a bit of a long watch at almost ten minutes, but worth it. Makes you realise that conditioning is as important as correct technique - the guy’s shins have been toughened over years of striking hard objects (mostly other people’s shins), and have hardened as a result. I’m now off to bash my shins with a glass bottle, haven’t done that for a while

It’s about damn time - now scrap the entire scheme and save upwards of £10 billion…

H/T the Daily Telegraph

Training montage from Rocky III, for when you need to get motivated:

Rocky III is, without doubt, the best Rocky, although the recent Rocky Balboa is 2nd…

Friday just gone, I decided to cheer myself up and go see The Hangover. I’d kept putting off seeing it as I’m short on funds, but I needed cheering up.

The film concerns four friends off for a bachelor night in Las Vegas, the usual thing: a suite, smart clothes, a few drinks up on the roof - and then nothing. You see nothing of the night, and when everyone finally comes round, they find one of their number is missing (the groom), and no-one can remember anything of the night.

The film then becomes a quest to find the groom, using little clues they find along the way, such as a medical bracelet on one of the character’s wrists, a baby left by a stripper, a tiger in the bathroom (”F***, I keep forgetting about the tiger”), a crazy naked chinese guy, Mike Tyson, etc.

The four main actors (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha) are absolutely fantastic, and you will feel a lot of sympathy for Ed Helms’ character Stu, and feel just, well, confused by Zach Galifianakis’ character Alan. Justin Bartha is the groom Doug, so you don’t see much of him but he’s a good solid chap, and Bradley Cooper’s (a.k.a. Will Tippen from Alias) schoolteacher Phil is just a great character: a bit amoral, but still doing the right thing for his friends and trying to get the measure of his new friend Alan (who’s so odd).

The comedy is just spot on. In my Star Trek review, I said I hadn’t been so entertained at the cinema for a long time. Well, this is a completely different film, but I can’t remember laughing so much at a film for quite some time either. Proper, laugh-out-loud laughing at that. The comedy comes from unexpected events, a bit of slapstick (oh, that poor baby), situations, and other things. To be honest, I don’t want to even explain some of the jokes, or quote some of the hilarious dialogue, as you should really watch the film

Here’s the trailer to whet your appetite, and I really recommend you see the film - I’m buying it when it’s on Blu-Ray:

Whilst I was watching the gut-bustingly funny The Hangover, I saw the trailer for Sherlock Holmes:

I was interested in the film before, but the trailer does a good job of increasing my interest - looks good, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes

It’s easy to lose almost a stone in weight! Read on for the secret technique that will have the weight dropping off!!!!

Bit further…

Carry on…

The secret is…

…get yourself made redundant!

Seriously, I’ve lost almost a stone since being made redundant, I guess it’s a mixture of more exercise, less food and stress about not having a job. Still 9lbs to lose until I’m a “normal” weight, but I’ll be happy with losing about 3 - 4lbs. It’s nice to see my abs again

I don’t expect to lose much more weight because a) I like food a lot and b) I’m putting on a bit more muscle (which weighs 18% more than fat, y’know). My body fat percentage is dropping, so that’s the main thing.

Update: Weighed myself after training, and I’m down to 12st 1lb - I celebrated by having a bacon sandwich

Today is Cost Of Government Day. Today, you finally start working for yourself as opposed to working for Gordon Brown’s inept Labour “government”. For the past six weeks, you’ve actually been working to pay fund the amount of borrowing the government is doing. Hey, up until May the 14th, you were paying for all the taxes we have to pay.

Anyway, there’s a fantastic explanation of what Cost Of Government Day is and all its ramifications at Old Holborn’s blog by a chap called Dr Eamonn Butler, the director of the Adam Smith Institute. It’s well worth a read as it explains how much debt we’re in (oddly enough, Labour is keeping some debt off the books), how the private sector is faring as opposed to the public (state) sector, etc.

H/T to Old Holborn

Here’s the trailer for Richard Kelly’s new film, The Box. In it, a couple facing financial ruin are given an opportunity to press a button and get a million dollars - at the expense of someone, somewhere dying.

Richard Kelly was responsible for Donnie Darko and Southland Tales. I loved the former (even though it took a while to work out), but have not yet seen the latter. The trailer does a great job of piqueing my interest, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing it.

H/T to FirstShowing.net

Here’s the trailer for Zombieland, from first-time director Ruben Fleischer, starring Woody Harrelson (yay!) and Jesse Eisenberg. Basically, instead of going down the tried and tested “oh no, virus, zombies, what do we do, headshot, battle for survival” route, it looks like just out and out fun

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