Birthday the Third

Oh Christ, is it really three years ago today that I created this blog? When I first started The Crusades of a Critic I was unemployed and masturbating three times a day. I'd always enjoyed writing, though my earlier stuff is now looking a bit rough around the edges. Back in 2009 I used to write this blog out on paper then transfer it to computer. Good times.

I know I've drifted away from this blog of late. It's like the blog is my lover but my flawed personality won't let us be together. Like something out of a D. H. Lawrence novel. 2012 is a year of transition for me, however (not that kind of transition). As my metal music 'zine, Denim and Leather, goes from strength to strength, and I look to start university (probably next year now). But don't worry, I'll still be here. I just wrote my favourite ever review (I Am Alive) a mere couple of months ago. Let's look to 2014, the blog's fifth anniversary and then it's tenth in 2019.

Navigating my early twenties has been rough going so far: stuck in a crappy job with no hope of getting a better one any time soon. But things, in particular on the writing front, are looking up at least.

Anyway, last year I presented you with some of the best lines from my reviews. This year, you're getting the best of the off-cuts (i.e. lines which never made it into anything). Enjoy.

• Frankly, that’s the type of shit that’d get you over your dad’s knee, so he can pretend to audition for the One-Armed Bongo Players band, back in the nineties. (Eclipse, abandoned review)

• Tolkien was bold enough to write sprawling epics about swords, magic rings, and talking trees in an era when stuffy men likely thought an 'elf' was another term for a poof. Hugo Dyson was all "not another fucking elf. It's like that strange theatre near my house." (I don't know what this was from)
• The fact that Crazy Frog briefly enjoyed popularity is the reason why I'm taking delight in the Western World's current grim decline. (I don't know what this was from)
• I hope the good guys like boots, because they’re about to spend more time being trampled over than randy businessman with a stiletto fetish on a trip to Thailand. (Hunger Games abandoned review)

• Now Alien films are consistently bad, like a naughty dog caught in a time warp. (Alien, abandoned review)
• There's only one present I'm giving out this year, and it's this fucking lotion. Now put the fucking lotion on the skin or it gets the hose again. (From a planned Xmas piece)