I'm Spartacus!

Today work once again outdid itself, being the most boring day yet. By just before six o clock, we were standing there with not a single customer in the store. It had been very quiet all day, but this was a new low. It never picked up either, with no more than a single customer in at a time until closing at 8. I'm also pretty dismayed with work just now because a new rota system has been introduced which automatically writes out a timetable rather than the manager sitting there scratching his head to figure out the sudoku puzzle every week. I love the idea, but a test run for the current week churned out a 20 hour week for me: the bare minimum of my contract, where I usually end up working 35 hours a week. Also me and a couple of other people who started around the same time as myself discovered that the promised pay rise after 6 months of employment was completely inaccurate, and that any chance of a pay rise won't be until the reviews due around November. At this point, it is up to the manager to send down some names and figures and see what Head Office think about us being paid more. All in all I am gutted about this, and unless I can sort something out for my hours, I shall be investigating alternative employment in the coming weeks.

This massive downer means that I am looking forward to my weekend in Edinburgh even more, as it will be a fantastic escape from the crap that's happening.

Tonight I saw Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I don't have a clue what to think of it so far: the visuals are pretty impressive, how they've gone all out in making it look like a real-life cartoon; I especially liked the scene where the spartan-esque guys are leaving their village in the sunlight, with the green scenery all tinted to look like a painting, and golden leaves falling all around. The plot is fairly basic thus far; nothing new, but nothing too annoyingly cliched. The script is the source of a massive amount of unintentional comedy, with foul language being rife in their vocabulary: "Where the fuck are the Romans?" a soldier cries mid-battle; and a commander hears of enemy troops getting past them, to which he dethrones them as "slippery cunts"; my particular favourite was the general's description of the enemy land as "the land of piss and shit". On this basis, surely it's not a great place to conquer? The script is not helped by the assortment of accents displayed in the cast; some characters even manage to change accent halfway through a scene which can be disorientating and annoying. However, the true importance lies in the fights, which are pretty damn good; blood and limbs everywhere, 300 style speed changes, and ridiculous leaping and such. All considered, it's a trashy comedy of a drama series, but a lot of fun. It goes noway near filling the void left by Lost's departure, but entertains nonetheless.

A pretty dire day has been had; I'm not in too much of a bad mood after Spartacus, so at least it's not ending on bad terms.