Look Out He's Got a Gun and the Crushing Weight of the World on His Trigger Finger!

I have just been hit with crisis. I have realised that a lot of people who are talented and famous are the same age or even, god forbid, younger than me. No longer can I use the excuse that they have had longer to get talented, because I have had just as long. It is highly unlikely I am ever going to gain any skills in music, acting or even learning to draw. This has nothing to do with the rest of the post.

Today I have been forced into a life of crime. I have not yet committed this crime but it is bound to happen and purely to blame is our consumer culture and the nature of the retail industry in Great Britain. As you may be aware I am a fan of the finer, some crass individuals would say nerdier, things in life namely video games. Today whilst out and about in Swansea I spent a bit of time looking round shops selling these items (because there is bugger all else to do in Swansea other than sit on the beach, drink and drink whilst sitting on the beach) when I found a game I hadn't played for years: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Now it's a good game and one I don't own for some reason or another BUT it's old and I wasn't willing to pay a fiver for it. So the only other legal option was to take advantage of the 3 for £10 offer on certain games which would have meant the game only cost like 3 quid. But for some stupid reason all the other games on offer were either rubbish or I didn't want them.

And so with that in mind the only reasonable option I have left is to either download it or see if a friend has it lying around and burn a copy of it which of course is tantamount to the totally illegal crime of PIRACY. So there you have it the offers provided by our retail gaming outlets as well as the innate materialism driven into me by SOCIETY threaten to turn me into an outlaw, and in a world where pirates are snipered the hell out of by US special forces this is not a situation I want to find myself in. But what else can I do? As I said SOCIETY has put me into this position and who am I to argue against society? It is is bigger and older than I am. I only hope the judges and/or snipers will be able to see my point.

updates on other stuff: this week I have mostly been discovering the joys of last.fm and buying and reading yet another volume of Scott Pilgrim which are both awesome but make me feel completely inadequate for not being a musician, a cartoonist or Canadian. Also I sat on a beach and then drank. I have not been learning Dutch.

Is my life to boring or am I just lazy?

Its the laziness one actually, I've been up to rather a lot of interesting stuff WHICH THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW!

First off Belgium (and I'll make this quick). Belgium is awesome. Belgium has a bar which has 900 different types of beer, and I assume as it had 900 in just one bar there are a fair few more to try as well. The fact that I sampled a wide selection of these beers may have coloured my view of Belgium I admit but I still maintain that it is frickin awesome. It looks beautiful, the people are great, the food and drink is fantastic and it has my new favourite beer, Ichtegem's Oud Bruin. So having enjoyed both the Netherlands and Flanders I have resolved to learn Dutch somehow. Maybe I will keep you updated on my progress (though if it goes well it suggests I'm not lazy and was wrong so I'm not sure.

And yes I ate tapas in Belgium, it was well good.

Now for the other major thing that has happened recently to me: my brother got married last weekend. Seeing as the trip to Belgium was for my Brother's stag do I guess my life has been a bit my-brother-centric recently, but that's okay, he's an awesome guy. I was given some duties for the wedding, which was nice, I was an usher and, exploiting the fact that I am big fat loudmouth, also did the reading at the service and was master of ceremonies at the reception afterwards. Now all in all this was not much responsibility but I was stupidly nervous, however everyone said it didn't show so I guess I have discovered a new talent: I do not show fear. I consider this a pretty badass ability to have and look forward to new excuses to use it.

Wait where was I? Oh yeah my Brother got married. It's sort of weird to be honest because him and Sam have been together for years so I didn't really think it would be much of a big deal, but it actually was in a way that's pretty hard to explain. I will admit I nearly cried during the service which was a bit unexpected. But that's the way these sort of things are I suppose, you can never predict how you're going to feel about something until it actually happens. Well enough of this pointless rambling. Good luck David and Sam, I hope India is treating you well (they went to India on their honeymoon! lucky...)

Oh before I go yesterday I bought Scott Pilgrim volume 1 and a Leslie Nielson box set, both of which are awesome and worthwhile things.

Who the hell goes to Belgium?

I'm going for tapas later (bear with me I'll get back to the title in a bit). Now there's something about tapas I can't quite put my finger on. I mean on the face of it there is nothing bad about tapas, it's tasty, I don't mind eating with my hands and no matter what any other European country might say Spain has the best sausages and hams in the world (chorizo is the way of the future). However I kind of feel bad for going out for tapas because it seems sort of... posh. Tapas is what people in London eat. Someone asked me why I was eating tapas tonight and my only excuse was that it was half price. Well that and that I have no food to cook and there's no point buying any if I'm going to Belgium tomorrow (see I said I'd get back to that).

Yes tomorrow I am off on way to Belgium, by way of Leeds and Wild Beasts, for my Brother's stag weekend. I am missing quite a lot of stuff for this so I have had to explain to a lot of people where I was going. "I'm off to Belgium for a few days" I say. "Who the hell goes to Belgium?" they incredulously reply. I sort of link that back to my first thing about tapas. There is nothing all that wrong with Belgium, you could object to it being an artificial construct of 19th century diplomacy I suppose, but lets be honest that's a fairly abstract point to make and I think most of the 10,666,866 Belgians are fairly happy with Belgium so why shouldn't I be?

But much like tapas I can't just say: well why not go to Belgium? I come up with excuses. "Well it's my Brother's stag do" I say, "I have to go to Belgium". Or I say "Belgium is famous for it's beer and well you know how much I like beer!" I honestly have no idea why I do this. Why is there a stigma attached to Belgium? Well no more! I'm going to prove you all wrong, I am going to go to Belgium and I am going to enjoy it and I will tell you all how great it is. I will restore Belgium's position as a place that it is alright to go to, and maybe I will eat some tapas while I am there.

P.S. My Grandad lived in Belgium when he was a kid and he turned out alright.

Blog is an entirely uncalled for word

So here I am "blogging". I'm under the vague impression that already "blogged" once before but forgot my password and the address of my "blog" before I was able to subject anyone to my inane ramblings. Right that’s the last time I'm using that word, the b one. It's horrid. I know English is a fluid language and all and it probably benefits from that but honestly there was no call for the b word and I intend to never use it again.

So why am I hear again typing out my thoughts to the world? Hard to say really I just feel I should, maybe it's a human need to have people give a damn about you, maybe it's because I realised considering the amount of facebook status changes I was doing suggested I had a fair amount to write. Also it's partially because Thuy told me I should (check out her blog, it's pretty funny and is probably worthwhile reading if you ever need to get into the mindset of Vietnamese girl: http://thuydeepie.blogspot.com/).

So what about me then? Well to be honest if you are reading this I imagine you already know me so probably don't need to know much more but here we go anyway. I'm Geraint, yes that name is a bit weird, it's Welsh. You might not guess I'm Welsh unless I tell you because I really don't sound it, the reason for that is that I didn't live in Wales for a fair bit of my childhood and also my family don't really sound all that Welsh either (exactly why that is I'm not sure). To be honest I'm also a good mix of everything with a bit of Irish, English and Scottish thrown into the mix for good measure, so I guess I'm really British more than anything. Why didn't I live in Wales as a kid? I'm from a family which likes to wonder basically, I'll probably leave that for now because I figure I can stretch all that out over a few posts.

Well I think leave it at that for now and come up with something better later. Oh and by the way "I'm a man with a fork in a world of soup" is a really good line from a song by a really good Swedish band called Caesars (or Caesars Palace or Twelve Caesars depending on who you ask) who are sadly overlooked but at least give me an obscure favourite band.

p.s. I edited this slightly after greg pointed out it made my family sound like they were gypsies.