Where the Grass is Greener

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    26 March 2009

    When do you show your hand?

    Ah the trickery and game play that is house buying. We've found a little house. It is:
    1. Little.
    2. Semi-detached (shares a wall with the neighbours).
    3. Quite well maintained.
    4. New(ish) bathroom.
    5. Big yard (yay for doggies).
    6. We can afford it.
    7. Mum assures me she will still love me even if we do live in Reservoir.

    It is being auctioned in a few weeks but we're keen to make an offer. Problem is, I don't know how much one should offer. If I show too much interest they know I'm going to be willing to pay more. Clearly the price has been understated on their advertising but if I offer too much they know how high I'm willing to go and will push up the price at auction automatically. Basically, I feel like to buy a house you have to show complete indifference whilst still bargaining.

    I told the guy a price we'd be happy to start from (which is more than their advertised price) and he said it was probably too low. Which we thought it would be, but we felt on the whole it was good to start too low so that he doesn't have very high expectations, yet it shows we are still interested and want to be kept in the loop. But if we make a good offer it could be too high but enough to take it off the market - alternatively it could just make the vendor think there's lots of interest out there and wait till auction and drive the price up.

    So why to they always advertise such a low price range? Why does this all have to be such a bloody game? When you are bidding at auction everyone is straight faced. No one is bidding until they know it is on the market. It all just seems so fake. There are all these unwritten rules that you have to learn to play properly. Of course, if it was me selling I'd be wanting to get the most I could but it irritates me that the advertised price brackets never seem to encompass the sale price.

    Why can't I just meet the owners and charm them into selling to us? That would be much better. We are fabulous and lovely and really just the perfect people to leave their old mum's home to. We'll have lovely little babies that will grow up and enjoy the lovely little house and wouldn't it be nice if you could sell it to us? We just love the roses and we'd fit in so well! Can you see my puppy dog eyes? No? Let me introduce your to our dog Buster then...

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      06 March 2009

      Who Watches the Watchmen?

      Turns out I do!

      We went to the opening night for The Watchmen at IMAX as someone at work had organised a group booking. Being based on a comic I'd never read I had no idea what to expect. This probably was for the best as one is rarely impressed with transition from page to screen.

      It was a lot gorier than I expected (lots of hands covering my eyes moments) and there was an awful lot of penis on show (mutant human who is all blue and glowey so that makes it OK to show apparently...?) but all in all I quite enjoyed the story line. I liked that the superheroes weren't always very good in the sense of 'do the right thing' (yes, he's a kidnapper and murder, slice his head open with a cleaver, that seems reasonable) and did bad things in the name of justice. They were also very fucked up individuals.

      I'm starting to develop a theory that you need to be the product of bad parenting or be orphaned to become a superhero or villain (Harry Potter, Voldemort, Batman, Spiderman). Bad luck for me then. Turns out I'm not the first to notice - someone at WiseGeek had the same idea.

      The movie did prompt me to want someone (not me) to write a little paper on why alternate/futuristic realities always seem to have bloody zeppelins in the sky. So impractical! They don't strike me as being very responsive to steering, they are also slow and full of (one assumes) flammable gas. None of the characters actaully got around in one, they just kind of floated aorund the city. But what happens if it flies into a building? Do they have some sort of traffic control? Do you log your flight path? Are there air-roads? It came to mind during the movie because the Doctor Who episode this week was full of them (and they were in an alternate reality).


      On the topic of page to screen, I must say I am looking forward to the 2011 Tintin movie (apologies for the shite looking website, couldn't find a better one to link to) as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are playing Thomson and Thompson.