Shite Comedy Films

Name me a good comedy film from the last few years and I will show you a comedy where cunts and idiots get their way for no apparent reason.  This only really became obvious when I was watching the movie Due Date; this was simply a vessel for which two actors to act like fannies (without any reproach) for the sake of comedy.  I hated both characters, so when they both need up royally fucked for breaking international laws (crossing the order in Mexico with drugs, for example) I was happy and hoped they got locked up for good.  Obviously, this didn't happen, and I wondered why I was supposed to care that it didn't.

It happened again when watching Hall Pass - two unattractive wankers getting some maddening free time from their attractive and, to be honest, out of their league women, who they had somehow tricked into marrying them.  Who, in their right mind, would even consider such a conceit in a relationship, never mind what type of guy who even fucking consider that in his marriage. Surely it is on the same level of the "seeing other people" break some marriages end in.  The two characters in this film dream of nothing else than to pump some random bird.

Stop Looking at This Now.

This is a worrying trend for the mainstream film and I concede it is related to the lack of redemption.  The whole idea of the Hangover is that these guys fuck up royally and get their arises handed to them in a series of ridiculous but stupid events but, in the end, they redeem themselves - the one that hates his wife leaves her, the one that was doubting his family kinda comes clean (but is still a wank, natch) and the weird one realizes it's cool to be weird anyway.  Good! The whole thing is undone with a sequel that essentially drops all this progression for the same plot, which means that the same journey is going to take place anyway.  It's to do with the male getting their fantasy at the expense of artful witty and clever comedy; instead we are treated to gross out filth driven Youtube-able versions of the same storyline.  

Imagine trying to make Airplane! now - instead of the Jive-talking Homies you'd get some referential bullshit to Glee and some jokes about how Ted Striker was a total jerk, instead of having some "drinking problems".  Where has the subtly gone? Where has the visual joke gone?  All that we would need to do to make them even more obnoxious is add a Two and a Half Men laughter track to the fucking mix.

It pisses me off - look at some classic comedy films and you'll see they are quite similar, but differ in such a base way it's shocking that people are getting away with it - let's take Groundhog Day, and Phil Connors, the total bampot cunt, and his journey. He gets stuck in the one daythat is the most cuntish and then has to figure a way out of by becoming a better person and finding love.  It's called REDEMPTION.

Liar Liar is the same arc, as is a multitude of good comedy films, with added Jim Carrey-ish nature of Jim Carrey.  But there's REDEMPTION. Even the good ones this year ignore this void - the best being Paul, a perfect pitch to a clever story road trip with likable characters and the film soars against its competition because of it.  Bridesmaids, PRed as the female Hangover, has like real characters that feel real, even if they are maddeningly fucking border line retarded when it comes to men.

Where are the films that have real comedy with real people, not utter assholes?  Where? They are nowhere to be seen because The Hangover 2 ripped a billion dollars in 4 hours. It what the masses want. It's what the writers have the most experience in writing, and the actors enjoy making them.

We are screwed.

Distance and Temperature Continued: Latitude and Longitude

When discussing distance, or temperature, you forget that there is a very good reason for the particulars of the differences in scale and size of the parts of the world that I compare; the position of them.  The world is a complex place, and in looking at these differences an interesting tidbit of information came to my head.  When I was in Canada at Christmas doing great things I stumbled, to my surprise, upon a strange fact - Connie's home town of Parry Sound, ON is actually further South than my home of Glasgow, Scotland.  By quite some distance.  In fact, you can measure the distance technically, by using the lines of Latitude, as created by in essence by Ptolemy and envisioned by Mercator.

The two lines across the Atlantic.

Parry Sound is at 45° 20′ 0″ N and Glasgow is at 55° 51′ 44.86″ N or around 10° Latitude different.  In real terms (or distance as we know it) it's around 701 miles (with a fair amount of margin for error).


This distance doesn't fully explain the discrepancy in the temperatures because Parry Sound is further South or in better terms, closer to the equator, which means in theory, it should be warmer.  See the differences between Texas, and Alberta, or Glasgow and London for that matter.  The answer lies more in the actual position - the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift does something marvelous.

Weather like this in Blackpool, for example.

 

It pushes the warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up towards my puny little island and gives us an incredibly temperate climate when compared to somewhere on our line of Latitude - say, for example, Wabowden, Manitoba, 54° 54′ 32″ N, which reaches a average low of -26'C in December! 


I thought it best to follow up both of those previous posts with this addendum.

Peter Devenney Shields (1932 - 2011)

On Friday the 3rd June, my father's father, my grandfather, Peter Devenney Shields passed away.  He was 79 years old, having been born on the 4th April 1932

I had thought long and hard about what I wanted to write as a post here but I found it hard to come up with the right words that would honour the man in his life in the correct way.  Not because I couldn't think of them, but I just couldn't grasp what an important man he had been in my life, and in my family. I decided that I would write what I felt, what I remembered.

There is one thing though that strikes me as incredible about the man, and that is his life.  Being born in 1932, he lived before the second world war, living through the war as a child, and then having to live through the terrible slum conditions of Glasgow that was left in wake of the bombings and war effort.  He later worked as an electrician for the great Glaswegian business empire of Shipbuilding - something that I am extremely proud to have had family connections in.  He once, when I was very young, took me on an open day to a ship that had recently been built on the Clyde.  I remember vague, blurred, clouded memories of finding the ship small, tight, and grey, but there's a memory there.

I also have memories of going to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery with him, going to see a movie in the ABC cinema with him as a child, and also the attempt to go and see Armageddon at the old Muirend Cinema and getting to the trailers before the projector broke.  I remember his old car, a Ford Orion, and his later car, a Nissan Bluebird.  I am not sure if he had beaded seat covers, but I remember and link them to his car.

I remember the black drink he used gulp down at Christmases - it was in a black can, and then a red can.  The two drinks were Guiness and McEwan's Export, two drinks that for the rest of my life will always make me smile as I think of the man who drank them for as long as I can remember there being a drink called beer.

In recent years though, a strange thing had happened - at the age of 79, he was active on the Internet.  When he grew up, in 1932, the BBC television channel didn't exist.  It came into being in 1936, when he was aged 4.  At his death, I could have video chatted with him on the other side of the world (indeed, if I had been in space, we could've video chatted from low earth orbit).  He had a Facebook page, replied to emails (albeit putting full messages in the subject) and played online computer games with his friends.  He had made a remarkable attempt to keep up to date and despite he inexplicably breaking his Windows computer almost on a monthly basis, he was tech-savvy.  And it amazes me.

He grew up during the telehone becoming household, the TV becoming the world medium, colour TV, the Cold War, the advent of the Hippy Movement.  He lived through the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Punk, Prog Rock, Metal, and later, Hip Hop.  He grew up in the most incredibly tumultuous century our civilsation has ever known, and lived over into another century.  He lived such an incredible life during such an incredible time.

But that's not the most important thing; not by a long shot.  The man, from a large family, met a woman, Marion Kavanagh, from a similarly big family, and they fell in love.  They married, in 1958 and gave birth to my father in 1959.  He raised my father in the way that he knew, and my father later fell in love with a woman, my mother, and later, in 1985, I appeared, his first grandson.  In 2010, his two eldest grandchildren would move away to America and Germany after one of them graduating from University, the other in the middle of her studies, and he would remark to my father that he couldn't believe that was possible.  An electrician by trade, later a taxi driver, who had been born in Anderston and later grew up in Yoker, was a rich man in love and life.  Under his Glaswegian brogue and stern opinions, he was a romantic: in an incredible moment, my father and my uncle uncovered cards from his 50th Wedding Anniversary in the most interesting of places -  in The Briefcase, where he kept everything important to him: bank details, shares, financial details.  And my gran had no idea they were there.

My children will know about my grandfather, and that's the most important thing I can give him.

The Other Glasgow

I was born in "the City of Glasgow", and lived a short part of my life in the city limits, before moving south of the city and technically growing up in the area known as Greater Glasgow.  The city limit was a 10 minute walk from my house as a child, but it's not where you grew up that defines you, it's how you associate your self in that place, and I think of my self as a Glaswegian; I mean, I am one.  I read a while ago that I am a member of a group that they called the 'new Glaswegian' meaning that there is a difference between the Glaswegian that my parents grew up having to distinguish them selves from, the No Mean City outlook, whereas I grew up with Glasgow's Miles Better, and this wee guy proudly adorned my bedroom window.

Mr Happy.  Taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/ under the Creative Commons License

But, there's another Glasgow, and one that I forget.  Sometimes, you are proud that the city still has a dreadful image, when some mentions that Glasgow's hard, when in fact it's more like London or Paris in it's cosmopolitan nature, but never really consider what this side of Glasgow is like.

I grew up with it on a daily basis, at High School, and you can see it every weekend in the city centre; the wrong Glasgow, the dark side, the difficult to admit to but impossible to ignore side.

The Dark Side, if you will - those who are affiliated in the wrong way with the two sides of the Green and Blue divide.  On a recent trip back to Houston, I travelled on a direct flight from Glasgow to Philadelphia.  It was full of idiots.  Idiots from the green side of the divide; note that they exist on both sides.  These idiots decided that drinking, singing, acting like utter children, and then one literally threatening Connie and I with physical violence, and then you being to wonder what I am labelling myself as when I call myself Glaswegian.

It is easy to forget, however, that I grew up amongst this type of behaviour, the type that makes me really disgusted that I can be guilty by association with these cretins.  They argument that "They were just having a good time" or "They were on Holiday" is as backwards as it is fundamentally scary to even think that these pardon people from being civilised.  In my life I've met these people all the time (see my ancient series on Neds for context: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) and I have learned how to deal with them in a way that I am happy with - condescension, mirth, pity sometimes.  They missed an important lesson.

That lesson is that whilst they were growing up, the Other Glasgow was ruled by fights, hitting and berating those you don't understand.  In their circle of friends that might still be the case, but My Glasgow, the New Glasgow, this doesn't happen.

The Bruins are awesome, I'm told.

It embarrassed me.  A lot of the people on the plan were embarrassed too, fellow Glaswegians.  And just like Connie being enraged by the recent rioting in Vancouver after their Stanley Cup Final loss (to the Majestic Boston Bruins, no less) you have to remember that the other people who come from where you are don't define you, and neither does where you come from, but how you represent where you come from is important.  And if I chuckle with people in the UK about how Glasgow's a nightmare sometimes, then maybe that's reinforcing a stereotype that isn't true, but it's hard to argue against it sometimes when you encounter such madness as we did on that flight from Glasgow.

We will be traveling First Class next time.

Stylistic Changes

If you have been a keen reader for around a year, or more, I am very grateful for you sticking around.  You might have noticed that I have changed my style over the last few months to include less verbose paragraphs, and introduce more images and strangely coloured text.

Hot.

I at least hope you have noticed.  The reason for this slow change is that I am becoming more and more certain that I will likely keep blogging for a long time to come, and it's getting a bit ridiculous to consider my self a 'writer' and more an 'idiot' and as such, I am going to take posts a little less seriously in their style from now on.

Or at least try to.

Finding the BBC

I have lived in the US for around 10 months now, and it has only been in the last two weeks that I have finally found something that I wish I had known existed for a long time.  Well, you see I knew it existed, but I hadn't realised that I could get it on my car radio.  It's called NPR, or Public Radio, which is essentailly listener funded radio - Radio that plays without the advertisments that I so readily derised when I heard them day in and day out.

To call it like the BBC is close, because the channel, KUHF, or NPR for Houston, is essentailly BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3.  The first station, 88.7FM, is a news station for the times that I drive to and from work - in the morning they have opinion pieces, news reports, traffic and editorials akin to that of the morning commute on BBC Radio 4, and in the evening they have a similar program.  During the day, they also play the BBC World Service, with World Have Your Say and The World Today appearing on the station - very welcome to hear when driving around the town.  On 91.7FM they play classical music that is a quiet respite from the Rock and Country stations on the other frequencies.

The advantage that these stations have over the others is that they seem unbiased to my European ears, and remind of an American-accented version of the BBC Stations that I love, and I wish that I could get.  See, you can get BBC Radio here, and it's time shifted too, which means that if I wanted to listen to Chris Moyles in my car at 8am in the morning, I could - I wouldn't, of course, be listening to that odious idiot.  But my car doesn't have satellite radio at all (it barely has FM).  So I have to make do with the NPR which sounds like the radio I want, and does it in the way that I want it - commercial free.

Interestingly, NPR is something that the US citizen doesn't really agree with - like all things in the land of the Free, if it's free they don't want to be paying for it at all, no matter the route in which it is paid for.  So, unlike in the UK where we all pay for the use of the Radio and TV via the TV License, and we are quite happy to do it (or, at least, the most of us are, especially when we see the way TV is elsewhere in the world), the Americans do not. Even when only 2% of the funding of the NPR base is from Federal Grants, people are still actively worried about the editorial content of the stations.

See, in the US, you can broadcast politically partisan shows and opinions, unlike the UK- this why Fox News is seen as Republican and can broadcast bullshit-spouters such as Bill O'Riley and Glenn Beck without recourse (News Hounds being excellent at pulling their bullshit apart) and why when I look at my Apple Genius app recommendations, Apple suggest I download the Obama 2012 app because I have the CNN app on the iPad.  So people disagree over the way the NPR is funded, even to such a small amount, and even suggest that it's too liberal, at the same time suggesting it's too conservative.  This, unfortunately, is the way the US works - everyone's biased against you, no matter which side you are on.  And it's makes me want to pull my hair out.

and I miss it terribly.

But, for the next few weeks I will be forgoing listening to 5 tracks from albums in the car, and listening to the dulcet tones of All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and be happy that I finally found a station that I can listen to, agree and disagree with, and not be berated by various adverts every 6 minutes.

I'll take it.

The Temperature

Discussing the Weather before. (Part 1, 2, 3 and 4)

Sometimes I wonder if people in the UK who ask me what it is like to live in Houston really understand the problem with the heat.  See, when back in the UK last week I was asked several questions, with one coming up all the time:

What's the weather like?

The answer to that is pretty simple - too fucking hot.  It's currently barely dropping below 75F at night which, in the good money temperature scale, is 24C.  At night.  This is the temperature that I actively avoid when I am holiday in Europe, and it's warmer than that when I get up in the morning.

Someone, I can't remember who, stated that they would just stay beside the pool in heat like this.  This is not an option for me:

- I burn like bacon on an un-oil frying pan

- I have to go to work every weekday, no matter the heat

So it's hard to live by the heat.  I knew that this was going to happen, so should I even be bothered by it?  Indeed, I did choose to live out here for a year, and I knew that the temperature was going to be high, but that's the thing - it's not the temperature that really is killing me.

It's the heat.  The mixture of high temperature, around 38C at the highest, is coupled with a ludicrous humidity.  Just look at this:

 

It's actually only 94.6 F, which is 34.78C, but it feels like 107F, or 41.67C.  Want to know what that actually is like?  You don't - it's so warm, it's prohibitive.

So when I was home last week and I tweeted this:

 I was being deadly serious - it felt great to finally have some cold temperature around me, some precipitation too.  It was lovely.  So I decided to look at the difference between the average highs and lows of three places in the world - much like I did in the Distance post a while back.  The three places in the world are

1. Houston, Texas
2. Aberdeen, Scotland
3. Barrie, Ontario

Barrie is the closest I could get to Parry Sound from my source, Wikipedia.  Trust the source.  I took the temperatures for the months, average highs, and plotted them on the same graph like a good engineer.  I'll even call them figures. Here's the graph for Highs.

Click to make larger.

So, in Aberdeen we have a nice flat curve - it barely get's above 65F in Aberdeen, on average, which is fine by me really.  As someone who doesn't want to strip off naked outside of my own bedroom, and someone who doesn't measure their holiday on the Hexcode of their tan colour, I feel that is normal.  Notice that the lowest average high in Houston doesn't even touch the highest average high in Aberdeen.  Barrie is a bit more varied, with coldest winters and positively warm summers.

How about lows, then?

Click to make Larger.

Fairly obvious, huh?  But, here's the important thing: the difference between a winter and Aberdeen's Highs and Lows are similar - around 10 to 15'C, so fair enough.  So, you'd imagine then, that say the hottest it normally is in Aberdeen, around 18'C, and add around 15'C to that, 33'C, wouldn't be that bad - I mean, the difference between 0 and 10'C isn't substatial is it?

Well, I can tell you it is quite difference.  18'C to 38'C is a ridiculous change, one I am not built for.  And the summer has only begun.

Want to know what the record high for Houston is in the summer?  It's 108F on the thermometer scale, or feels like

A Countdown.

There was once this old countdown.

The new count down is on.  Instead of thatcountdown, it's this count down.

 

This is the next countdown.  It's exciting.

Life Through a Pretentious Lens

My "series" of posts that just showcase photographs of things that I have seen and done have been fun for me to put up.  Recently, however, I have been taking better photos with my new DSLR Camera that can really take good photos.  I am going to get a tripod and start taking photos of the night sky, which should be excellent fun, but also to take long exposure shots and stuff of that ilk - pretentious stuff, indeed.

Also, on my iPhone I have installed a smattering of apps that allow me to fiddle with my photos taken on there.
Instagram is the best, that allows me to directly upload photos from my camera to Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, as well as my Instagram feed.  It allows for some effects to be added to the pictures as well, but mostly I use it for the sharing aspect.
Photoshop Express is amazing - it allows me to change up some details of photos taken to quite a high degree, alloqing me to straighten, clear, blur, sharpen... loads of little tools that make it worth while.
Diptic is a new one that allows me to create easily developed slide, with more than one photo on each slide, to create really nice presentations of photos.

Also used is 8mm, a kind of video version of Instagram's effects that makes video files look old, and the old Hipstamatic that created a whole host of dreadful albums on Facebook of vintage photos last year.  It's pretty good, but the menu system is clunky.

Despite my Affiliations.

The Sky at Night from the Plane

The Line on the Horizon

My Current Collections

Keep Traveling.

Here are a range of photos recently culled from my Instagram feed.

Sports: Ice Hockey 2

The Continuing Chronicles of Mark and Ice Hockey


I went to see the Houston Aeros play the Binghampton Senators at the AHL; for those who don't know, the AHL is the lower league in professional Hockey in North America, with 30 teams and the same league structure. Indeed, the AHL teams are all affilated with a NHL team. The Aeros are linked to the Minnesota Wild and the Senators are linked to the Ottawa Senators. The differences between the NHL and the AHL kind of end there, as the rules and set up are pretty much the same - think Premier League to the Championship.

It also turns out that there are shit loads of other hockey leagues in North American and they all offer something for anyone. I don't know why it hadn't dawned on me before, but it has now. It's pretty cool.

The sport was, as always, brilliant. We also got these cool thunder stic- wait!

THUNDER STICKS

They are pretty cool. You blow them up and then trash them against each other to make noise and piss off anyone sitting next to you. This is what they look like:

They make a racket. We were also sitting very close to action, which is quite different to the seats we had in the Shark Tank in San Jose - literally, the last row in the stadium, at the back. The proximity to the ice made for some hair raising moments when you momentarily forget that there is glass stopping the puck from ripping your face and beard off, and you flinch when it smacks upon it.

There was something wrong with the game though. No, it wasn't the fact that the Aeros lost (the first time I have been to a Hockey match and the team I am supporting have lost, natch) because, seeing the Texans and Dynamo fail, I wasn't expecting the Aeros to win. No, it was the lack of respect the fans had.

When the officials skated onto the ice there was suddenly booing - from all corners of the arena. They hadn't even made a decision yet! And, as the game went on, a few strange decisions that went against the Aeros meant that this inherent booing just got louder! And, from the fans sitting around us, it was clear that most of the teams' fans expect some miraculous hockey to be played by guys who, whilst playing some great hockey and what really was a pretty amazing game, can't be expected play better than the NHL teams. That's like expecting an SPL team to play Barcelona style football.

At any rate, the game was fun, and I ate a brilliant steak. So all in all it was a very good night.

Listening Woozy

Let the world take you in, wash over you, and get woozy.  It's the best thing after being alive.

Brutal Honesty

Imagine that someone who you have enjoyed talking to over some food and beer suddenly asks if you are enjoying your time in Texas.  That person is Texan.  My answer is the same no matter who it was that was asking: YES.

Yes, this time in Texas has been amazing.  Actually, it's been very hard to describe into words what it has meant to me, so that's why I've struggled to exactly 101 posts since the year away started.  The sports, the weather, the food, the people, the memories, the travelling... it's been an experience of a lifetime - quite literally.  I nod and say, "Yeap, Texas is pretty amazing".  The next question that is asked is one that maybe I should've taken a little bit more time to answer; "Would you stay if given the option?".

The answer to that question is "No".  I realised quickly that I had probably quite insulted the fellow, but it really shouldn't be insulting.  I just can't live in Texas.  The reasons are numerous (and warrant a whole post, or series of posts, most likely) but they aren't bad.  As I've already said recently, it's not you Texas, it's me.

I just worry sometimes that I might be saying things that are in my opinion critiques that, in some people's eyes, might be seen as an affront to the State; they are not intended that way, I am just being honest, brutal as that may seem.

Not Working

There are many cultural differences between the UK and the US, but one sticks out like nothing else when working in the US and in the Oil Industry - the fact that no-one here takes holidays.  Not a single person here that I know of seriously plans their year around holidays or plans to travel away.  There are plans for weekends, and long weekends, and weddings, and possibly trips for business, but when I even breathe that I am considering going to take some time off to go somewhere there's a sharp intake of breath.

I took 3.5 weeks off when I drove the Road Trip and that is the longest I have ever taken off mid-year; I took approximately 4 weeks off at Christmas but we can discount that due to the fact that a) it was expected and b) that's about the only time of the year any American worker takes time off.  When I mentioned this quite large amount of leave I exepcted a reaction of "Oh, wow, where are you going?" or something along those lines, but not the "Oh man, well, we will need to see..." or "What? How can you?".

The reason I can is because I work within the EU Working regulations.  There are things written into law that state that you must take time off work; Canada has 10-15 days required, the UK has 5.6 weeks (or 28 days plus holidays), and even Iran has 4 weeks annual leave to take.  The United States of America, the leader of the world, the super power, the beacon of democracy in our world?

None.

pronoun /nən/ 

Not any
- none of you want to work
- don't use any more water, or there'll be none left for me

Not a single day legally required to be given.  Not a single hour.  The company I work for, though, in their infinite wisdom, do give you vacation days -  however, you earn that at a rate 3.5 hours of per 8 worked, which works out at a 184 hours, or 23 days year (this includes the holidays required to take for the nine office closure days on public holidays).  The interesting thing is that even after they give you this accrued vacation-leave, you can cash it in for money, rather than taking the time off work.  What's the use in that?  Why do it at all then?

There are a few problems with this.  The first is people who work are being legally obligated to not taken any days off.  What I mean is that in the same way that I have to take time off, people in the US have no reason to, and as such it hasn't appeared in their way of working ever.  So they won't, and have no reason to want to.  Secondly, the culture of the company I work for seems to be "quantatity".  I work 40 hours a week, 2.5 more than my base in the UK.  This is the base level, or lowest I can work - 4x 9 hour days plus a few on Friday to push me over the limit.  It feels okay here, because everyone is working fucking batshit hours - last week, at the afore mentioned "boil" a guy who works on my project mentions casually that he has been working 55 hour weeks since January.  This obviously is analogous to the people that I worked with when the Tales of Rock Steady were the bread and butter of my blogging subject matter - they try to outplay each other in terms of hours worked, or not slept, but to me it just seems crazy - if you can't do your job in 40 hours get someone else to help you out, or you need to work harder.  Working 55 hours a week is mental.

Or is it?  The third thing that annoys me about working in the US is that it seems to be regarded as crazy to want to not work.  I love taking time off and going travelling or just sitting about relaxing.  There's a reason why I like Thursdays and Fridays: if it was the otherway I'd be in on the weekend and pissing my self with anticipation every Sunday night - but no, no I don't.  I work to make money to then make my life the way I want it to be, not just to fill my days with shite.  I don't work for the fun of it, luckily I have a job I enjoy to a degree, but if I didn't have to work there would be no-way I'd be sitting in my window less office troubleshooting the Microsoft Excel Solver function.  Yet, here, in the States, I feel dirty, even an outcast, the moment I mention that in the UK, at my company, I get 34 days off (which, with 5 day weeks, works out at essentiall 7 weeks off work.

The work-life balance is broken, and they only have themselves to blame. 

Note: After writing the above post over 4 months (starting in February, working in various stages) I finally fact-checked some of the finer points and it dawned on me that the company that I work for actually incentivise you to not take time off.  You see, the spurious working hours that I can work are a godsend.  If you work your 40 hours a week, on any day of the week, in any lump sum, they don't really care.  So, if you wanted to work 40 hours Mon - Thursday, you can, and then work 8 hours on Friday.  Then, take the following Monday off, you can use the 8 hours "banked" to still work the Monday technically, without actually needing to come in - so the Holiday is observed, yet they've, in my eyes, tricked you into thinking it's better to work the hours rather than take them off.

Clever.