Today's Review: Hay Fever

Summer is definitely here. I know this because my summer sense is tingling, and by that I mean my entire face is tingling. Also streaming, and itching. I have hay fever.

I never used to get hay fever. My summers were full of carefree, childish joy, skipping through fields and burying my face in wild flowers. Well, not quite, but I certainly could have done that. But over the past few years my face has managed to become itchy and swollen at the mere waft of pollen. I don't even have to go outside for my eyes to start itching like hell.

But there's nothing I can do about it. I take tablets every day, which certainly takes the edge off, but I still find myself walking around looking like I've been sobbing in a corner somewhere, sneezing at the most inappropriate moments. Hay fever is awful, so awful that it makes me dislike summer. No one should dislike summer.

My rating: 0/5

Today's Review: The Blogger App's Ability To Publish Posts

I got home from a long day at work yesterday, and was about ready to get some instant shut eye. But I still had my review to write, and since the computer was taken, I wrote the review on my phone, using the Blogger app.

The first thing I noticed is that the app now adds my pictures into the body of text for me to write around, instead of tacking them on at the end. This is pretty useful, as I don't have to go back and edit the review on the computer to get it right. Well, I assume it turns out alright, I won't know this time because the damn app didn't publish my review when I told it to.

It's happened before, I've pushed the "publish" button to be greeted with a nice error message. No biggie, hitting "retry" normally does the trick. But my eyes were so heavy last night that I assumed that perhaps the app would do what I told it to without further errors or delays. I guess I was wrong, because now there's a day's gap in my currently unbroken review streak. Or is there...?

Either way, I still attest that the Blogger app is pretty rubbish. Be it with picture problems or the fact that whole posts just don't get published, it's not a very nice thing to work with.

My rating: 1/5

Today's Review: Tomorrow

I come bearing news of the future, because I have invented time travel, not because I'm writing today's review on the wrong day thanks to shitty app performance. But I digress. Here is a completely accurate review of tomorrow.

I think the most important thing to mention is that the world doesn't end, I know that's a worry for a lot of people. But there are no meteorites  nuclear weapons or solar flares. Life carries on as normal. No world peace declaration either guys, sorry.

As for where I live, the sun will shine all day, and I will go for a picnic in the park, which is very pleasant. Then I'll have to leave early to go to work, which is not pleasant. Thankfully I will not be involved in any accidents, like the explosion of a train in Canada, or the crash landing of a Boeing 777 that will take place tomorrow.

So overall, tomorrow will be so so. Sunny and only slightly boring for me, and the rest of the world will probably yo yo between inspring and horrific events, as always. Just another average day. But hey, at least we won't all become extinct.

My rating: 3/5

Today's Review: Despicable Me 2

Yes, Gru is back, but more importantly, so are his Minions, because they're the real money maker in this franchise, the most annoying plentiful, popular secondary characters since Rayman's Rabbids. Shudder.

Gru (Steve Carell) and his girls are living the good life now that he has given up villainy to focus on being a father. While searching for legitimate business options, he is abruptly pulled into the headquarters of the Anti-Villain League by secret agent Lucy (Kristen Wiig). A dangerous serum is on the loose, and the League need the help of a man who can think like a villain. Will Gru accept the task and become a true hero?

Well, of course, there wouldn't be much of a movie if he didn't. But for some reason we're then treated to a large segment of the movie taking place in a mall, among various other set pieces that appear to be there for no other reason than to inflate the flimsy plot. Of course, there are segments containing Minions doing their funny slapstick stuff at regular intervals, enough to distract away from the lack of substance the rest of the movie has, and for the most part the Minions don't do a bad job of creating comedy. They were certainly getting some big laughs in the cinema. It just seems like Despicable Me 2 is completely saturated in them, when I was really looking forward to seeing our hero and the girls in action.

But it was not to be. Character development is very thin on the ground. Gru's turn from bad to good in the first instalment was wonderfully done, but now he's taken on the daddy role everything feels quite comfortable. There's certainly a new dynamic in the introduction of Lucy, but a lot of the time Gru is just wandering around stressing out about the kids, which also has no real bearing on the main story. Don't get me wrong, the performances are all fantastic. Carell brings great life to the role as before, and Wiig is fantastic, especially as she seems to be pretty much playing herself. It's just that these actors really don't have much to work with, most of the time only squeezing in a few lines before the next Minion sequence.

Still, Despicable Me 2 is certainly not awful. It looks good, and there are some genuinely funny slapstick moments and some nice action sequences that pull it all together. It just lacks the heart of the first one, and seems a lot more like a shameless cash in to sell more Minion shaped merchandise. Hey, it could be worse, they could just make a movie all about the Minions. Oh, wait...

My rating: 3/5

Today's Review: The Smurfs Haribo

Hey, it's summer, time to release all the kids movies and tie in as much sugary, furry and noisy merchandise as possible. So here we have a bag of Haribo Smurfs, plastered with a sticker telling all the hyper kids that the new movie is out soon. But what are these Haribo Smurfs? Well, they're all blue, but there are three different hat colours to choose from. Also head colours, because apparently it's hard to just colour the hats on gummy sweets. There's white for your regular Smurfs, red for Papa Smurf, and Smurfette's luscious golden locks.

Not that my taste buds could tell the difference between the three. Sure, they have different colours, but they all taste blue to me. The sweets are certainly nice, but I'm used to my Haribo bags having a bit more variety, especially in the case of Starmix and Tangfastics. Still, I knew what I was buying, thanks to the handy little window on the front, so I can't really complain that there's only one kind of sweet. I just wish the flavours were a bit more distinguishable. 

My rating: 4/5

Today's Review: Dairy Milk Strawberries & Creme

It's summer time, Wimbledon time more specifically, and nothing screams British and tennis than a lovely helping of strawberries and cream. Cadbury have obviously noticed this trend, hence the appearance of this limited edition strawberries and creme flavour. I assume it's creme because putting double cream in the middle of your chocolate would be quite messy.

Anyway, nothing surprising here, given the flavour. It's your standard Dairy Milk bar, but filled with a nice creamy filling and strawberry flavoured syrup type stuff. It's certainly quite a smooth and creamy flavour, but the downfall with this bar is with the strawberry stuff. It's just a little too heavy for my liking, leaning almost towards the consistency of a Cadbury Caramel. As such, the flavour is somewhat overwhelming too, so while the chocolate and cream portions are just right, the strawberry makes it taste just a little bit sickly. Make no mistake, I still polished off the whole bar in a short time, but it's certainly not the nicest variety I've tried. So give it a go while it's still around, in the few days of summer we might have left.

My rating: 4/5

Today's Review: White Clothing

There are many different colours of clothing, but only one that contains all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum. White clothes are bright, dazzling in the sun, and they'll pretty much go with anything. Put on a white t-shirt and you'll be laughing all the way to the well stocked rainbow chinos aisle.

But white clothes are not for me. I never used to wear white tops, as darker clothes concealed my rotund figure. If you have man boobs in a white top, they're definitely gonna show. But now my body mass has decreased to a reasonable size, I have found my other main gripe with white clothes - stains.

Stains aren't good on any kind of clothes, I know, but at least dark colours let them blend in for a while. When you get a stain on some white clothes, be it food, mud, grass, blood(?), it is going to be severely noticeable right away. I bought a white t-shirt the other week, and during my second time wearing it today, I managed to drop a tiny piece of food. In normal circumstances it would be fine, barely noticeable. But now this shirt has to be scrubbed until the stain is all gone. A few years ago I bought a pure white jacket for the princely sum of £40. How many times did I get to wear it before stains ruined its dry clean only surface forever? Twice. I don't even know why they bother giving school children white shirts to wear. The amount and frequency of stains that appear, all schools should probably just use dirt brown and lawn green for their official colours. 

White clothes suck. Though they may make choosing an outfit easier, you can be sure they'll show off your unflattering figure, before latching onto anything nearby that will leave any kind of embarrassing stain. I think I'll stick with the blues and blacks, thank you very much.

My rating: 1/5