NOVEMBER 30: THE "OH CRAP, I FORGOT TO UPLOAD THIS LAST NIGHT" UPDATE

SPOTTED this blast from the past in Target's car park today:

AND, sticking with the general car theme, in honour of Michael "you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" Caine revealing the solution to the cliff-hanger at the end of 1969's The Italian Job, here's the famous car chase starring three Minis, several Fiats and quite a lot of Turin.

NOVEMBER 29

SWEDISH movie Let The Right One In has to be one of the best films I've ever seen. Starring two 12 year olds, it's the story of Oskar and Eli who meet in the suburbs of Stockholm and slowly fall in love. Oskar is quiet, vulnerable and bullied at school; Eli is pale, never seen in daylight and seems a lot older than 12. At the same time adults are going missing, other weird stuff is happening and slowly Oskar puts two and two together.

The film is superbly shot around a couple of locations - the apartment complex where Oskar and Eli live, a cafe, a school. The snow-covered scenery and stark night shots make for some eerie moments and when Eli lets herself go it's a shocker. It has its violent and gory moments but most of all Let The Right One In is a sweet and smart love story, one that's touching and well told. Do yourselves a favour and see it before Hollywood ruins it with a remake.

NOVEMBER 28: A LOAD OF PHOTOS AND A RANT? IT MUST BE YOUR LUCKY DAY!

ANOTHER last Thursday of November means my fourth Thanksgiving. I have basically given up trying to make the connection between being grateful, turkeys and genocide so this time I just stuffed my face and headed to the office. When I got back we went out to do some more night photography, this time around the Naples area.

Part of the Sushi of Naples sign.

The fountain near where we parked.

For once a lens flare I like. This is the sign for the Rivo Alto Canal.

Underwater lights on a boat dock.

Trails of light left by a boat as it passed the camera.

A shot from one of the bridges. I think I'm getting the hang of this exposure lark. Click the pic for a large version.

A typical Naples alley. This strip of concrete is probably worth about $10 million.

AFTER we got home Ev put the telly on and settled in to watch Celebrity Rehab 2 while I did my best not to lose my rag with the collection of nobodies and morons who make up the intake. Just to give you an idea of how loosely the word "celebrity" is defined by VH1, one of the celebs is Rod Stewart's son. "Who's that?" I hear you ask. Well he's some spiky-haired Scottish guy who had a couple of hits 33 years ago but hasn't been relevant since the mid-70s... oh wait, you meant who's his son? Exactly.

I do admit to watching Celebrity Rehab even though my loathing for so-called "reality" TV knows no bounds. (Ev, on the other hand, loves reality TV.) The first series was worth a look just to laugh at Jeff Conaway and his gold-digging girlfriend and Daniel Baldwin's ability to shove his head up his arse more frequently than coke up his nose. It was also thoroughly enjoyable to see a member of that shitty Crazy Town band - the ones who foisted that God-awful "Butterfly" song on the world - crushed by addiction to crack cocaine. Serves him right if you ask me.

The second season has roped in all-round utter nutter Gary Busey, Rodney King, some nobody who was kicked off American Idol, an "actress" and a "model" (i.e. porn stars) and as a sure-fire ratings-puller, Jeff Conaway. Ol' Shakey is looking frail but I think I'm going to lose my bet that he snuffs it before Christmas.

The show is hosted by "Dr" Drew Pinsky, a bloke whose main aim in life appears to be getting his face on TV as much as possible and maintaining the weird orange skin tint that qualifies as a tan in Southern California. Part of my animosity towards "Dr" Drew comes from the fact that he continually refers to his junkie drugged-up loser alcoholic "celebrity" patients as people whose addiction is a disease and who are in need of understanding, sympathy, care and support.

Now forgive me for going off on one, but as someone who smoked for 25 years my addiction was never termed a "disease" and I sure as shit wasn't treated with understanding, sympathy, care and support. I was, however, treated with scorn, disdain, verbal abuse, physical abuse (as part of Dr Flynn's "aversion therapy"), yelled at, informed that I stank, smelled like an ashtray, was endangering other people's health and generally regarded as a pariah. And for some reason I'm supposed to feel sorry for a crack addict? Piss off!

I mean, these are people who've had fame and money. They've had their chance at life so why give 'em another one? One of the patients is Steve Adler, the original drummer with Guns N' Roses who was kicked out of the band for his heroin addiction. Exactly how bad does your addiction have to be to get you kicked out of Guns N' Roses, for Christ's sake? That would be like being kicked out of Auschwitz for being cruel, or booted from the KKK for being racist. And I'm supposed to pity him?

Know what kind of therapy I'd like to see these wastes of skin try? A trip to a cancer ward. Or a nursing home for people with Alzheimer's disease. Or maybe a trip to Darfur or a Chinese sweatshop. You know, people who really are in shit, who really are suffering, and who aren't a bunch of self-centered moping useless bloody "celebrities" who are for some reason looked upon as entertainment instead of, say, being rounded up and taken to a field in the middle of the night to be shot, burned and buried. Rant over - I'm off to bed.

NOVEMBER 23: ANOTHER LOAD OF PHOTOS

SOME macro shots I took tonight:

A crab shell we found on the beach yesterday.

Same shell, inverted.

One of my Doc Martens.

Ev's grandad's lens.

Ev's grandad's blower brush.

A mussel shell from yesterday's trip to the beach.

Some bloke called Washington.

Ev's grandad's other lens.

Two crab shells from the beach. The shells aren't much thicker than paper - a third shell disintegrated on the way home.

NOVEMBER 22

AND so the Great Mini Shell-Out of 2008 continues with another $550 gone on a set of shiny new Continental tyres. The old ones had 60,000 miles on them so at least they'll last a decent time. Our original plan for the afternoon was to take photos of the Long Beach skyline from some of the bridges over Shoreline Drive, but a thick mist meant that was out so we just went for a wander down the beach instead.

IN MOVIE news we still haven't got around to seeing Quantum of Solace, which I very much want to see after being blown away by Casino Royale and Daniel Craig's portrayal of Bond. But I did finally watch 30 Days of Night on cable and was relieved that I didn't spend money going to see it in the cinema. It had its moments — the long aerial shot over the town as the vampires went on the rampage was particularly cool — but on the whole I found myself wondering how seven or eight adults managed to hide in a relatively small attic for two weeks, and how a bloke who'd been a vampire for about 16 seconds was able to kill the bloodsuckers' leader. Oh, and why do the vampires seem to be wearing street clothes?

And speaking of vampires, if I have to pass another poster for the epic of shittiness that is Twilight I'll puke. It's now impossible to go into any bookstore without having to fight your way past stupid tweenage girls and fat single women lining up to buy the book. As the movie is getting slated, hopefully this won't become the next Harry Potter-type annual event.

The other film was The Last Winter, a sort of ecological horror story set in a remote part of Alaska where a team of engineers is attempting to build an ice road so equipment can be brought in to drill for oil. It has a good cast (Ron Perlman rules no matter what he's in) and an interesting plot. One of the team members becomes convinced the land is trying to stop them working and is fighting back. An engineer is found frozen to death next to the capped test well and from then on they all begin to slowly go nuts. It's a pretty decent film with good performances and a tense atmosphere as you're never sure if what's happening is real or imagined. Filmed on a budget of fifty grand it's a far better movie than 30 Days of Night (budget: $32,000,000).

COMING SOON:

NOVEMBER 20

A BIT of a mixed bag tonight. First, my sis sent over some more photos of baby Siân.

According to my dad she's "a lovely little thing" and according to my sister she's "a little bugger". So she should fit right into the family.

For some reason this photo was included in the email:

Either dad messed it up or he's been commissioned to shoot the cover art for the next Nine Inch Nails CD.

I had a result at one of the used bookstores in Glendale:

Finding Travels With My Aunt was good enough, but I can't just buy one book when four will do. I've been wanting to give Wodehouse a try for ages - I love the ITV adaptations of the Jeeves & Wooster stories - so picking up Carry On, Jeeves was a no-brainer. (On an aside, Dreamweaver's spellcheck didn't know the word "Wodehouse" and suggested replacing it with "whorehouse"). Then I spied the Tom Sharpe novels and grabbed two that I'm missing from my collection - Vintage Stuff and The Great Pursuit. I've had no luck in finding Sharpe's books over here and had to stock up in Hay on Wye back in March so these two were a godsend.

Now, I can remember why I got into a lot of authors but how I ended up a Tom Sharpe fan is beyond my recollection. It was either on the recommendation of a friend or because, as one of the 17.3 people who actually liked the movie adaptation of Wilt, I bought that novel second-hand and went from there. For those of you who've never heard of him or read him, his books are great satires on education, publishing, the upper classes, South Africa and political correctness. They're also chock full of broad farce, slapstick, larger-than-life characters, swearing, shagging, mayhem, violence, bodily functions and the kind of bawdy humour that Britain seems to do best. I can't get enough of them.

I also increased my collection of James Bond novels. I could easily buy them all in one go but I'm trying to get them all in the same edition. I'm just a choosy sod when it comes to which editions of books I'll buy. It took me two years of scouring charity and second-hand shops to get hold of all the 007 books when I lived in the UK as I'd only buy the 1960s Pan editions. Look, I have to be fussy about something, right?

When I rule the world all books will have to have red edges to the pages. Why do publishers not do this any more?

And while going through a folder of Huntington Beach pics this evening I discovered photographic evidence of a woman whose arse crack starts in the middle of her back. Dress your age, love, not your bloody shoe size.

NOVEMBER 19

AND so the joy of having to use the poxy shared laundry room was hammered home once again just now. After putting the laundry in this morning I jump on the treadmill. Thanks to having Sellout on and my determination to try to do a mile in 18 minutes (I failed) I miss the alarm telling me the washing's done. I get down there about two minutes late to be confronted by some rancid old bitch who goes off on one about how there's a sign saying please don't use all the machines at once and how she's had to wait for me and how inconsiderate I am and how she hopes I'm not going to use all the dryers.

So I try to apologise but she just keeps yapping on, so I point out that the sign also says the washers are there on a first-come, first-served basis but she just talks over the top of me. And then, as I'm transferring clothes to the dryers the dried-up bag of pus stands there staring at me. WTF?

Christ. I know it's trivial but it's thoroughly pissed me off. I suppose it's lucky for her that I'm not a vindictive little shit. Wait - I am a vindictive little shit, so on my way to work I'll switch her dryers off.

NOVEMBER 15

SOMEONE call a press conference - for once we made plans for the weekend and actually managed to stick to them. We decided to head for Venice Beach as I'd never been there and Ev hasn't gone for a while. Before heading for the vendors and weirdoes Venice is known for I took some shots of people surfing. Surfing in November, for Christ's sake.

I thought I took more than that. Anyway, off towards Muscle Beach and the bits Venice is famous for.

Wait... this looks a hell of a lot like Camden Market, only tackier and closer to the sea.

The best thing about this photo is the look of utter disdain on the face of the woman on the right.

This gargoyle might be frightening if it didn't look like a) something too crap even for a Disney movie and b) like it's taking a dump. Hang on a second...

...that dragon doesn't half look familiar.

The "your name on a grain of rice" was part of Bill Bailey's Glastonbury routine on his Cosmic Jam DVD, which you can see below. The rice bit starts around the six minute 50 second mark, but the preceding six minutes and 49 seconds are superb.

Ev told me she'd seen this bloke on TV so I took his photo...

...which in the alternative reality of Venice Beach meant I owed him money. Not a dollar or two like the sand sculpture guy above, though, oh no - this one wanted $20 for a CD or T-shirt. No bloody chance.

I managed to snap this hummingbird and we headed back to the car, only to discover we'd got a $45 parking ticket. Arse. I have to admit to being underwhelmed by Venice Beach, at least the bit it's famous for. I think it's mainly because it reminded me so much not just of tourist traps like Camden Market but also tacky crapholes like Barry Island.

We drove home with the smoke from the fires in Brea, Yorba Linda, Palos Verdes and Anaheim Hills getting thicker. We know a couple who've had to evacuate their house and another whose place is threatened. I know it sounds shallow but the smoke made for a fantastic sunset so I went out on the pier to see what I could get:

The one thing I will give our area is that it's so heavily overdeveloped there's bugger all to burn.

NOVEMBER 13: THE GRATUITOUS CAT UPDATE

First off, Iestyn gets some luuuurve:

Emric explores the windowsill — at 1.45am:

And last — and definitely least — Madoc gets it wrong again:

NOVEMBER 9

SOME more night shots:

NOVEMBER 8

EV'S DOWN in San Diego for the weekend. As the saying goes, when the cat's away the mouse will play and in this case the mouse played by getting off his fat arse and heading to Seal Beach pier to take photos of the sunset.

AND Ev is under strict orders never to buy these again:

These things are more addictive than crack cocaine. Wait, they're worse than crack cocaine because crack cocaine doesn't have 150 calories per gobful. I'm doing my best to withstand their siren song of sugary/nutty/crunchy doom but it won't be long before I'm shovelling them down my face again. Damn my lack of willpower. Damn it to hell, I say!

NOVEMBER 7

WHAT could round off a lunch of beef sarnies, and apple and a cup of tea? How about a yoghurt that resembles a pot of snot?

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Yoplait Light Key Lime Yoghurt.

It's actually pretty good. Shame it looks like snot.

IN NON-FOOD related news, I'm still walking on the treadmill every day. It's got to the point where I've even got my own headband. As I'm getting used to walking I find I'm doing longer and longer distances. One of the reasons I was able to do this was realising that listening to music on the iPod is good but watching videos is even better. So one night I watched the entirety of The Cure In Orange (all 98 minutes of it) and did almost 4.6 miles.

I hadn't seen 1987's In Orange for ages and it's even better than I remember. Filmed at the historic Théâtre antique d'Orange - hence the movie's name - it shows the band at (one of) its peaks, both commercially and creatively. Although not as good as 1993's Show, for me it tops both Trilogy and the live CDs Entreat and Paris. Unfortunately it's probably more famous for the scene where bassist Simon Gallup whips Robert Smith's fright wig off to reveal his newly-shorn hair than it is for its superb performances. So in honour of a great concert and my near-five-mile walk, here's the belipsticked one (sans hair) and the lads performing A Strange Day:

NOVEMBER 5

FOR the first time since January we went out to do some night photography, and I'm pretty happy with the results:

NOVEMBER 2

SPROG finally has a name, so it's with the greatest of pleasure that I introduce my niece Siân Rose.

NOVEMBER 1

ANYONE who's ever tried learning Welsh knows that it's a bit of a bugger. There are strange letters like dd, ff, ll, ch and the other one, and you need a pint of pleghm to pronounce many of the placenames. But spare a thought for some poor sods working for Swansea Council's roads department.

All roadsigns in Wales have to be bilingual. Swansea Council needed a translation of "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only". So they emailed their in-house translation team and got the answer: "Nid wyf yn yn swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu." Armed with this they happily made the sign and put it up in the right location.

Trouble is, "Nid wyf yn yn swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu" actually means "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated." You can read about it here. This particular cock-up even beats the classic "bladder inflammation upset". Or the "which way do I go?" one.

ON A happier note, Sprog is doing fine. According to my mother she just lies there and gurgles. But what about the baby, I hear all three of you ask? She's doing the same. The parents are posting (posting, for Christ's sake, posting) more photos to me so I'll put some up when I get them. Sprog still hasn't been named and I'm about to start a book on what the parents will eventually choose. At the moment the odds are:

Something Welsh (such as Siân): Evens

Something unbelievably Welsh (such as Addfwyn): 100/1

Named after a flower: 3/1

Named after a relative: 5/1

Named after a character on Coronation Street: 7/2

Lambert: 50/1

Butler: 60/1

Celine: 75/1

Damianette: 200/1

A'Shaunda'ya, Za'Brianna, Chamyl'leon, Tekai'Jah, La'Quavius, Demiraunna, Me'Kiara, Ra'Miyah, Cthulhu: 1,000,000/1.

Sprog might have a bit of an identity crisis anyway as her mum's Welsh, her dad's Scottish and she was born in England. Christ only knows what that makes Northern Ireland - the Fairy Godmother, I suppose. Hopefully my sister has bought her lots of red clothes and a cuddly dragon or two otherwise it could be a very interesting 2023 Six Nations.