It seems Square Enix have revealed the actual Final Fantasy XIII box art. Here it is:

My…God. That…that’s something. I like it much better than the Barbie’s Horse Adventures cover or any other pointless artwork though.

Other Stuff

• Disappointing that Rachel went (The X Factor) instead of that Welsh boy, who looks like a melted Cloud. His rendition of I Kissed A Girl was nerve shattering. That said, she was annoying, and none of them have any talent so it’s all academic. I hope John & Edward win, therefore making a mockery of the show. They aren’t even particularly likeable, but they need to win in order to make a strike at the entertainment industry. But my realistic prediction is that Lucie will win.
• Gran Turismo 5 may have a track editor. International Man Of Mystery Kazunori Yamauchi meanwhile has cast doubt on whether there’ll be changing weather effects. In other news, Forza 3 came out…it’s really lit up the media hasn’t it? I can barely escape from hearing about it. This is worse than Crazy Frog. Sarcasm.
• I haven’t been given predicted grades for some reason. Universitiy now wants predicted grades. God damn.
• I have mini sparklers for Thursday. I…don’t have any fireworks, just mini sparklers. I was gonna do a Bouncy Buddies special where Marmite accidentally sets Dewey on fire with a mini sparkler..but I can’t be bothered.
• Due to the postal strike, LoveFilm has given me two extra weeks of rentals. I’ll be watching Pixar’s Cars tonight.
• All details of Hikki’s US/UK tour have been wiped from the Internet. I also don’t know if there’ll be exams on the day (probably not), she’s touring with some DJ (oh great), she’ll probably get ill and cancel anyway, and if she doesn’t then she’ll have some sort of massive throat infection. Plus, she’ll almost definitely just be singing Utada songs, not Utada Hikaru songs. Then there’s the expense of going into the heart of England.
• Katy Perry’s making a new album. Remember my prediction: she’ll try to make more mature songs, and fail, or she’ll try to make wacky strange songs, and fail.
• YouTube is fail. If I use the timeline bar (the red bar) to skip ahead the video usually ends up pausing. Let’s all use DailyMotion instead.
• Now, I get an awful lot of mail asking me “Brian, what on EARTH does a fine chap with exquisite taste like yourself have as a desktop background?!” Well, your questions are finally answered below. If you can’t see these pictures because they wander off to the right, save them, and make them your own desktop background. I guarantee they’re better than the crap you probably have now. Edit: oh, it seems they appear much smaller than intended. Oh well – buy a smaller monitor.

Song Of The Day: Namie Amuro – WHAT A FEELING

Song Of The Day II: Kim Ah Joong – Ave Maria

You were the chosen ones! It was said that you would destroy autotune, not join it! Bring balance to the British music industry, not leave it in darkness! You were my brothers! I loved you!

In actual fact it’s slightly better than the crap that’s been gracing the upper end of the charts for the past forever. Cheryl herself is even a liekable person. I was unfortunate enough to view the first 5 minutes of Piers Morgan interviewing Katherine Jenkins, who hates Pepsi if you catch my drift. She made alusions to how beautiful she is, which in my opinion she isn’t, acted dim, and then I changed the channel. Cheryl’s never done any of that so she must ergo be a better human being.

Other Stuff

• Fight For This Love has been playing on repeat in the background as I’ve been writing this.
• For some reason having a new PSP means I lose my Gran Turismo save data. Other games aren’t affected. What a stupid…thing.
• What the hell happened to XKCD? Or is this some sort of joke that will amuse those old and sad enough to remember when the comic first hit the netwaves? Also, the joke of the most recent comic seems to revolve around a toaster (or something) messing with somebody’s wifi. Any more of this crap and I may well remove it from my blogroll. Yes.
• I’ve preordered the 4-hour long Japanese extravaganza Love Exposure and the 2-disc special edition version of Kamikaze Girls from HMV.
• A mistake on my part has led to LoveFilm not sending X-Men Origins: Wolverine as my final free DVD rental. No, instead, they’re sending me Fine, Totally Fine: “Teruo, the eldest son of a used bookstore owner has a dream: to build the world scariest haunted house. About to reach his 30th birthday, Teruo is still idling away his life. One day, through the introduction of childhood friend Hisanobu, an extremely clumsy painter/artist comes to work at the bookstore. Meet Akari. A cute, attractive girl that both Teruo and Hisanobu soon fall for. This small bookstore could be in any town and becomes a refuge for these individuals that have fallen out of the mainstream society. ‘Fine, Totally Fine’ is an eagerly awaited hilarious film that portrays an easy-going, comical and heat-warming story that unfolds in a bookstore.” Yes, it’s a “heat-warming story”.
• Chungking Express is spelt “Chunking” Express on it’s own DVD.
• Cereal update: Tesco Honey Nut Cornflakes – a Crunchy Nut rip-off, and you can tell – these are much harder and much less ludicrously tasty than the genuine stuff.
• Listen to The Hooting Yard On Air podcast. No, really.
• Robert Benfer/Knox has been secretly making a feature length sock puppet movie which is due for release on DVD soon. It looks devastatingly awesome.

So, here in Britland UK, there has been some controversy over the decision to start trials of a new type of airport scanner that creates a picture of people naked, this allows them to see if you have guns on your ugly, pasty, naked body. In my opinion this is a lot more preferable to a strip/full cavity search, however some people don’t want other people to see them naked. I remember hearing about this scanner ages ago, I’m not sure why it took so long to become used.

Here is a quote from the head of “customer experience” at the airport: “The images are not erotic or pornographic and they cannot be stored or captured in any way,”

The name of the company that produces the scanners is “RapiScan Systems”. That’s right. RAPE-Y-SCAN. Make your own minds up about this, but I think there may possibly be some ulterior motive for this new scanner.

Here is the news story on the bbc: ‘Naked’ scanner in airport trial

Spiderpig out.

Blog Updates

• The sidebar on the right now features my last 4 Twitter posts, an image of a cat with a watermelon on its head, an ever-popular tag cloud and many more links to interesting places.
• As is tradition, I’ve deleted all the posts.
• The ‘Things’ page has been cleared of the mess that occupied it. It may be deleted later.