WHAT?! No riots in Oldham you say?!

Yes if anybody has been asleep or not on this planet for the last few days then you won't know about the current state of England an' all the feckin riots that are going on in pretty much all of the major cities.

Now I've been joining a few groups on Facebook which are updated frequently with up to the minute photo's an' updates of certain areas where the riots have hit or are suspected to hit.

Of course I'm interested in Oldham. It's me hometown an' am proud of that, but not so proud of the fact that it's had more than it's fair share of shit over the years. An' tonight it's peaked me interest even more with all the riots going on all about the place. Possibly even more interest I took to when they knocked me precious Mumps Bridge down a few months back. That bloody devastated me that did. :'(

Yes it does say "Seton welcome you to Oldham home of the Tubular Bandage" on it. Provided me with many a giggle when I was younger an' still does. In fact it was always a reference for people who couldn't remember where I come from so they'd Google "Home of the Tubular Bandage" an' find out I come from Oldham. I guess they could still do that but now I just tell 'em I come from the same place Mark Owen does. O_o

Either way. Yes, riots. Lots of 'em. By stupid little teenage chavs who have absolutely no drive to get what they're fighting for. Which they say is a future. Jobs an' steady incomes an' money to buy things. So what do they go an' do? They go riot, lay the place to waste like, get the stuff they want now then blame it on society an' the Government for making them that way. Yeah they could do summat about their future. It's called going to school, getting yer head down an' studying so you have what you need behind you to actually get a bloody job. But no, they're too bloody bone idle is what they are to even think about doing a bit of work at school an' making themselves a decent future.

That's what I think it is at th'end of the day, sheer bone idleness an' pure unabashed greed. Yes you can make a future for yourself, but it ain't getting handed to you on a plate just 'cause you threw yer toys outta the pram an' had the mother of all paddys. You want a job? Fine. There are jobs about, you just gotta work toward it an' that prepares you for it.

But back to Oldham. I have to applaud a chap whos Facebook page I liked earlier called "I Love Royton." This fella's (Well I think it's a fella!) has been driving around taking photos of Royton, Oldham town centre an' other surrounding areas quashing rumors that Asda is in bits or Tesco has been looted an' so on.

I'll tell you now it's so odd seeing Oldham as quiet as it is at the moment. An' I believe we're doing ourselves proud so far by NOT having some mad riot for a change. If you want to go further in to that, I suggest you Google the 2001 Oldham Race Riots. Sure there has been the odd brick gone through a window but that's just Oldham. A regular occurance.

An' let me leave you wi' one of Mister. I Love Royton's earlier updates from about half an hour ago.

Asda rochdale NOT on fire. No smoke. No fire engines. The worst thing I've seen all night is a police car do an illegal u-turn where it said "no u-turns". Oh and a pregnant lady smoking a fag outside the pub.

Rugby World Cup Ahoy! An apparently New Zealand own the colour black...

(First of all, what the hell is wrong wi' Blogger not posting any of me blogs properly eh? It's doing me head in big time.)

Anyway. It's the Rugby World Cup in around 40-ish days or so. This time it's in New Zealand. But the Prime Minister of New Zealand an' one of the All-Blacks most recognisable retired players; Jonah Lomu aren't happy about the colour of the England teams Away strip.

It's all-black.

So according to them two, apparently black is owned by the NZ team an' England should ALWAYS play in white. But what about when you face another team who's away strip is white? There are rules that have to be followed. England have a test match again Wales this Satday who are playing at home, so their colour is red. England have however got their new strips sorted. Home is all-white like usual and the new away strip is all-black. It's not just a descision made for the RWC but if I remember correctly, this colour choice will also go through next year, namely the 6 Nations. Earlier this year the away strip was of the same design as the home strip, but in navy blue and grey accents down the sides.

But you see the thing is; as you will see Jonah Lomu himself here wearing a predominantly white an' black strip. If England's colour is WHITE then shouldn't we get uppity when other teams wear what is supposed to be "our colour?" No. Why? Because we're not petty like that. In previous years, our away strip has also been red and blue, the same colour as Wales an' France respectively. Did they have a go? No they didn't. 'Cause we seem to understand that you can't have two teams wearing the same colours.

Now home an' away strips don't really play much of a part int RWC for the main point that each team has a choice of strip to use as long as it's easily distinguishable from the other team. Argentina who we're playing first in the RWC have a white an' pale blue strip. So this is the first RWC match we will be playing in the black strip. Pretty much all of our matches after that will be played in white unless the black strip needs to be worn again. An' that's how it goes. So basically, the NZ Prime Minister an' Jonah Lomu are talking a load of shite an' they need to grow up. The England guys actually went to the NZRU (New Zealand Rugby Union) an' asked them is they had a problem with England having an all-black away strip. They said they had no problem with it, so what is the big fuckin' deal then? Lomu said it's "disrespectful." Seriously?!

Personally I wonder why the England lads haven't had a black strip before now. Black contrasts well with white. Both these colours also make the England emblem, the Red Rose more prominent.

The new strips! Left: Ben Foden. Right: Chris Ashton.

Can I also remind everyone that last week was the wedding of The Queens eldest grand-daughter Zara Philips an' massive England rugby chap Mike Tindall. His face is on back to front I know but so are the rest of the teams faces.

If you see Martin Johnson who is England's manager an' former coah an' player, you'll see his face is on back to front too. He was at the wedding obviously with his mad face.

His face ALWAYS looks like that. ALWAYS. IT NEVER CHANGES. You can tell when he's pissed off or well, more pissed off than what he normally looks 'cause the amount of lines increases on his forehead. They dissapear when he's well, not as pissed off. XD

Anyway. Despite the whole hoo-ha about the new Away strip. I will be buying it when it comes out in a few days. The authentic one not the cheaper replica. I like the fit of the authentic one as it is the one that the lad wear an' is a lot more form fitting. Which is good for me 'cause I got rather broad shoulders comapred to the rest of me. Thing is, the authentic ones are an' absolute BASTARD to get off 'cause they are so fitted an' have that mad bit of silicon lining the inside lower hem to stop the shirt from riding up. Me boyfriend will testify to that 'cause I stuck this years England shirt on him last time I was in San Francisco. Took us the best part of forever trying to peel the bloody thing off over his head damn thing got stuck. XD

I'll be in SF when the RWC starts this year. So am gonna be supporting me boys an' representing England in the way we do best. Wearing the jersey, screaming at the telly down the pub pint in hand, then bursting into a chorus of Swing Low Sweet Chariot after a few too many of said pints. :)

2011 England Home shirt. Can't wait for the new one! ^_^

Balls to Harry Potter! What about Batman?!

So there were rumors going around a short while ago that the first trailer for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" was to be shown before everybody started going mental at the last ever Harry Potter movie. Oh boo friggety hoo.

Yes I have absolutely NO INTEREST in the Harry Potter franchise what-so-ever. I never read the books when I was younger NOR did I feel the need to read them as I got older. Because it's a kids book series. It wasn't written for adults, but they did do the grown up versions of the books where basically the front cover was more grown up, the illustrations were gone and the text size was probably smaller. No, when I was around 11 when the first Harry Potter book came out I had just started high school. And with a high school library comes a nice range of good books. So I went on to what would be considered difficult or incredibly heavy reading for my age. I threw meself in to Science Fiction an' classics. Books by Philip K. Dick, J.D. Salinger, Anthony Burgess. I even read John Milton's Paradise Lost an' got bollocked by me English teacher 'cause it's a novel sized poem you study in Uni or College not in High School aged 14.

Either way, most Potter-Freaks probably won't have noticed TDKR's trailer an' if they did, probably dismissed it. But in my opinion it's an important movie 'cause Nolan has actually done something good with the Batman movie franchise. Especially after them atrocities I will not mention. Which brings me on to me next subject...

BANE

Bane is one of my favourite characters from the Batman universe, next to the Riddler, Harley Quinn an' Poison Ivy. Yes I would've put the Joker but what's the point everybody loves the Joker anyway.

What made me actually do this blog is to put some misinterpreted bits about Bane straight. 2 that stand out to me more than anything else.

Number 1, What people think about Bane: Bane is Mexican. Or South American.

The Mexican thing actually come from me watching the "Bottom Half of the Internet." YouTube to be precise, after TDKR trailer was put on after some people had it in 'em to record the trailer before watching Harry whats his face. I checked out a few of the profiles of the folk putting down the Mexican comments an' most of 'em turned out to be American.

Here goes...

JUST BECAUSE SOMEBODY SOUNDS MEXICAN TO YOU DOESN'T MEAN THEY ARE!

There, I said it. I know about the whole Mexican thing. Seriously. An' just because he has that mask on which closely resembles that of a Lucha Libre wrestler which is primarily a Mexican thing; doesn't instantly make him Mexican either. Remember, it's also in other Spanish speaking countries too.

As for the South American thing, this one come from the fact that those who have seen "The movie that should not be mentioned" seem to have it ground in to them that Bane is a imprisoned serial killer from somewhere in South America. WRONG. That was part of "That movie that should not be mentioned's" storyline in order to incorporate Poison Ivy and Dr. Woodrue (aka Jason Woodrue/Floronic Man.)

Bane is actually born on a fictional Caribbean island called Santa Prisca which was colonised by the Spanish. (Think along the lines of Puerto Rico, but with a massive drug trade and violent gangs a-plenty.) Bane's father was to be arrested an' thrown in prison, but somehow managed to escape incarceration. He slept with a local rebel woman who became pregnant with Bane. A law on the island meant that Bane, had to serve his father's sentence and subsequently spent his childhood and his early adult life behind bars.

This is where it get's interesting. A lot of people are having a scream about Tom Hardy playing Bane as he is a "white guy" an' he shouldn't be playing a "Mexican." Get this, Bane's mother if you take in to consideration that Bane's mother would most likely be of Spanish descent. Bane's father meanwhile is known as Edmund Dorrence (King Snake) who was a British Mercenary working with the rebels fighting against the Santa Priscan government. So thinking about it, Bane is half Spanish, half British. But obviously being brought up on a Spanish colonial island, he speaks exactly like that.

Bane's Daddy

Number 2, What people think about Bane: Bane is a grunting caveman/wrestler/jock type guy with about half the intelligence of the above mentioned.

Bane is actually surprisingly clever. I mean REAAAAAAALLLLLL clever. During his time in prison, Bane subjected himself to various forms of body conditioning becoming super strong, well before his exposure to Venom. But he also got down to the ol' book learnin'. Reading every single book he could lay his hands on. He also found himself under tutelage of several other prison inmates who taught him anything and everything.

So even though Bane has absolutely no formal education, the amount of knowledge he accumulated over the years that stayed in his head; could to amount to several University degrees on the outside. Giving him a genius level intelligence. The man is also a walking Babelfish, got a ton of languages in that big ol' noggin' of his an' all y'know? This high level of intelligence was also the thing that let him figure out the identity of Batman an' by closely watching him over a period of time; he was able to figure out how to literally Break the Bat.

Going back to that ridiculous farce of a movie; (Thanks a lot Joel Schumacher, you shoulda just stopped at The Lost Boys you tit.) Bane would NOT have taken orders from Poison Ivy. In fact, he wouldn't have taken orders from anyone like the beefed up, stupid bulldog Schumacher made him out to be. Bane set out to become the worlds most awesome bad-ass during his time in the clink. He wouldn't take no shit from no-one! Especially some plant-lady.

Really, what Bane wants to do is punch Ivy in the face an' stand on her plants

So there you go. 2 main things that a lot of people continuously get wrong about Bane. Now I must add that this is not a complete thing I wrote here. I personally haven't read everything that Bane has been in nor have I seen everything that Bane has been in either. Think of this as more of a "Basic Stuff You Really Should Know" piece. I may have got one or two bits mixed up, it is kinda hard to figure out which story arc fits better coming from different writers an' all. That an' I have a diabolical memory right now. But I think most of it is correct from what I can actually remember.

Now let's hear it for Tom Hardy who's gained a fuckload of weight (again) to play one of Batman's most challenging enemies in the upcoming Dark Knight Rises. 

Oh, an' after a discussion wi' a friend earlier; We decided it would be pretty awesome if the Nolan Brothers had wrote Osito in to TDKR. :)

Even the big evil angry fellas have a soft side... Bless.