Riddick and Malaysian Idol

That faint wailing sound you hear is my bank account going banshee on me.

Yes folks, I have finally grown enough cojones (look it up, wontcha) to put a stop to my heat infested apartment once and for all. Seriously, all drama-comedy tricks aside I've suffered major monetary damage today as I (thank God) found someone able to come to my apartment and fix the bloody electricals that have been haywire for the past couple of months (white lie). It's been a festering sore in my side, this seeming inability for almost everyone I call to actually come over and fix things (for money!). However, the elusive and expensive silver lining in this cloud finally appeared and I have now an official handyfixit company.

Never mind that it took a big chunk out of this month's rent money. Note to self: speak to landlord about this.

Mm. On another note, it seems everyone and their cockroach wants in on the slice of reality pie. Akademi Fantasia is on its second leg with a special concert tour by our very own multitasking-non-English-speaking diva (no points for guessing), ntv7 has Audition and finally Malaysian Idol begins screening. Whether it's a last ditch effort by the stations to boost viewership and ratings or another symptom of our "let's jump on the bandwagon-lemming" disease, by now most everyone will have a favourite show and a cause to donate their hard earned text credits (50 sen, sir at least) to. More power to the people, I say. And IMHO, Roslan Aziz is one mean bugger, which probably suits him.

Which brings me to my next most favourite thing on the earth (whoever guesses what the first one is gets a mystery prize): movies! Now that the blasted school hols are finally over (did anyone keep count how many bleeding times I bleeding used finally) I can finally make plans to venture out to the cinemas and partake of 2004's summer offerings. In no particular order, I haven't watched Shrek 2, Day After Tomorrow, Harry Potter or the Punisher. Strangely though, what I am rather excited about watching is a little summer action flick called The Chronicles of Riddick, due to begin screening on the 17th of June. A prequel (of sorts) to 1999's sci-fi/horror fest Pitch Black, it features Vin Diesel reprising his role of galactic antihero Riddick in another adventure that promises lots of bald, growling action.

The reason behind this sudden interest is that in the past two days (as part of a de-stressing program) I've started playing The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay on my Xbox. I'll just say this about the game: it's probably the best movie tie-in video game I've seen in a decade. And it kicks arse on almost every level. The fact that Diesel's own development company, Tigon Studios had a hand it its inception is just an added bonus, and puts him next to Ben Affleck on the geeky celebs list. I won't bore everyone on how good the game is, I'll leave it to anyone interested to read for themselves.

Anyway, tomorrow's a new week and I'm meeting the new batch of vict- er, students in the afternoon. Wish me luck as I battle time in a race to complete various jobs I've had to put on hold due to pure laziness and the fact that I was in Perak for one whole week.

Cheers, people.