100% Homegrown Yorkshire Miserable Bugger. Est. 1987

What do you feel your weaknesses are?

2011-09-26T09:02:00.010+01:00

Wow, I really don't update this shit often do I? (...and how many millions of blogs start like that?)

Today I have a job interview. I have read many articles in the past where the writer is exalted to be able to shout from the mountain tops that they have a job interview. To them it is a sign of the final hurdle approaching. To them it is. To me, not so much.

Do not get me wrong, I am happy to have made it to the job interview stage, but it never gets any further for me. Never in my life have I ever passed a job interview. Not once. This is not to say I have never been employed. One does not mean the other, but in general, a job interview tends not to lead to employment for me.

Of course that is all my fault...

Er...why exactly?

I will not deny that there is a high level of responsibility on my half of the deal. I have to be pushing all the time. I have to want to get a job. I have to have a career in mind.

Okay, okay. Again, these are not immensely life changing things, but I have to do all this, and quite honestly, there's no real hint of being met half way. I am signed up with various job agencies, all of whom read through my CV, and decide that my employment history in retail and office administration posts means I should be perfect for selling things down the phone to people.

Sorry...

...what?!

If there's one single thing on this planet I hate more than anything else, it's people. I have read my CV forwards, backwards, sidewards, inside out, hell, probably even inter-dimensionally. I'm yet to see where it says on there that I'm more than comfortable trying to crowbar an opinion on a product into another person's head.

What my CV says, is that I'll process the shit out of whatever your various technical... uhh... processes are. You point me at a process, and I'll learn it and do it repeatedly until you pay me for it, then we'll do it all again for the next month.

Once upon a time, I worked for a large financial company. I started as a temp, so no interview was involved. It was a case of "Here, you can do this. You start Monday".
"Sweet!" I thought, and I worked my ass off for 6 months, thus proving that I am a hard worker. After that 6 months, I was offered a permanent contract, which I accepted and continued to work for three years, until I was made redundant by said financial company. (I am no longer murderously bitter about this)

At some point in the past three or so years, the arse has fallen out of the way businesses are run. I won't go into details, but it's always eluded to as "...in times like these" and "during the current climate".

What, fucking temperate!? Yawny-fuckety-yawn.

Clearly when there's an economic downturn, it makes sense to limit your workforce to those who can adequately show proficiency in feeding you endless bullshit in their job interview. Oh yeah, sorry, didn't you realise? The person you interview isn't going to be the person who shows up for work on the first day when you give them the job, they're only playing the game. Hell, the job agency even gives me a website to look at in order to learn exactly what the employer wants to hear, so I can feed them what they need in order to get through the door.

For fuck's sake. How can they sit wanting honest employees and then hunt for them using a system which requires an awe-inspiring level of bullshittery before a candidate is even considered for the role?

I get that it's a game, but quite frankly, it seems like a fucking monumental waste of time and effort.

"yes, sir."

"no, sir."

"three fucking bags full, sir."

I am happy sat in front of a PC processing processes. I know it's going to be in an office, so I understand that there will be a required level of social interaction. Upon leaving the house, I accept a required level of social interaction. I shouldn't have to pour upon my CV trying to think of times during my employment when I "showed great customer service". How does "I did that fucking shit for three years" grab you? Fuck, I worked in retail for about four years too. You're expecting me to remember a specific time when I "showed great customer service"? Sorry, I was too busy doing the actual job to sit and write notes in case some braces wearing, pinstripe mother fucker can quiz me on it in a decade's time.

I would probably not be quite as cynical if I hadn't already worked in an office. What we're saying is, I have to sit in front of the people who I will potentially be working with/for, and lie through my teeth about being a shining beacon of officedom, without whom the business is sure to fail?

Let us take a flight into fantasy and assume I actually make it through the interview. Am I to assume that on my first day, I will be surrounded by nothing but highly motivated go-getters who will stop at nothing to get that last sale nailed for the team?

Fuck. Straight. Off.

As I am interviewing for the "shop floor" pay grade, I will be surrounded by people who just want a fucking job. I'd say that perhaps 20% of the team I would end up on have any kind of delusions of a career in the office. I can't think of anywhere more soul-crushing and tedious than a career in an office.

Of course I can't show this. I've got to want a career in their business otherwise I'm nothing short of the dirt on their shoes. Not everybody wants to work in a fucking office for years on end. There's a whole world out there, and you're telling me I can't see it without wanting a career in a fucking office?!

What cunt wrote these rules? I will personally pull out their fucking larynx.

I want to work, this does not in turn mean I want a career doing that work. Tell me how I'm supposed to afford to pay my rent and live each month? It's not through wanting a career. It's through wanting to work. There is a subtle difference, and nobody seems to fucking get it any more.

It's a shame I can do office work like a boss, because I'm clearly not the kind of person the infallible lords of officedom deem worthy of such a position.

Furthermore, I find it nothing short of insulting that I get the amazing opportunity to sit in a pool of my own sweat (hopefully it's sweat) dreaming up ways I would treat customers fairly if I'm deemed worthy of access to said customers, yet when it comes to an employer treating potential employees fairly?

"Meh, fuck it. They don't have actual lives outside of wanting to work for us. We won't tell them if they haven't got the job, why would they ever need to know that frankly useful information?"

If only they paid me to put up with all the shit I have to put with whilst job hunting.

Oh wait, the government does. Assuming I apply for the roles they find me, regardless of whether I can actually do the job or get to the premises. Not to sound ungrateful, but threatening someone into a job isn't any more fun. It's just harder to complain because the you've got me hanging over a pit of relentless shittyness I don't even care to think about.

Oh well, enough ranting I guess. I'd best go try write down what I think this guy wants to hear so that I can be told I will hear from them "either way", and then just go straight back to job hunting to skip past the tedious inevitability of another endless silence.

Rinse.

Repeat.

I am make noise.

2010-12-12T10:59:00.004Z

This is the chase, I shall now cut to it.

Recently I have been focussing on my band, because it's the only thing I can do with any level of competence which I can also say I thoroughly enjoy. I am not wired to work in an office; fact.

Thursday & Friday were the two official first gigs for my band, and I believe they went extremely well. Thursday's gig involved us being host band for a local Jam Night. A half hour set followed by whoever else wanted to play. We rounded the night off with a cover of System of a Down's "Chop Suey" and what has now become the traditional final song Rage against the Machine's "Killing in the Name". Well, it is a christmas song after all...

Friday's gig was initially supposed to be a half hour support set for another band. They had to drop out, which meant we got the opportunity to play an hour and a half set and also to be paid for the privilege.

Pooling our material and furiously learning a couple of covers to pad out the remaining ten minutes was quite exciting.

I wouldn't say we went down a storm, as we don't exactly play "pub rock" - mainly because it's unconditionally fucking boring, but there's something quite fun about unleashing a nine minute post-rock epic complete with prog breakdown on an unsuspecting pub full of slack-jawed inbred freaks wanting oasis covers. We definitely turned heads, and we could see more than a decent handful of people were willing to give us the time of day.

All I ask from any gig I play is that just one person hears us for the first time and just feels a pang of "yeah, not too bad that". Even if they don't stick around - that's one person who ends the day with more musical knowledge than they had at the start.

Anyway, y'fucks; I'm still breathing...

In a bit...

Papal Preposterousness

2010-09-16T10:17:00.004+01:00

So I went to see Muse at Wembley stadium last Saturday. It was okay. They know a few decent songs.

I'm still in London, and was looking forward to perhaps going into the city on Saturday and doing some Londony things. This was of course until I discovered last night that the Pope is gracing these humble shores with his unwanted and unneeded presence. The whole fucking city will no doubt grind to a halt because this pajama-wearing, kiddie-fiddling fuckwit decides it's his job to go sticking his fucking nose in where it isn't wanted.

After one of his snivelling entourage described this country as third-world, does he really expect much of a warm welcome? Well, maybe from those who have the same imaginary sky daddy as him, but not me. I think with the country in the state of financial turmoil that it is, it seems utterly fucking retarded to spend the no-doubt millions of pounds on laying on extra security for this obvious criminal. Why bother with security? He's the pope! If someone's going to try to assassinate him, let the lord herself step into the fray...

Ah, your faith isn't that strong then, sir?

Now now, we have to be courteous to him, he's the pope.

Sorry, let me just take a chemical bath to rid myself of the hidiousness of that statement.

So fucking what if he's the Pope? Exactly what is it that he does which makes him so fucking important? He's the voice of God on earth?

Really...

So who decided he should be the one to take on this role? I severely doubt you just pop into the Vatican because they've put a sign up in the window. "Scapegoat needed, apply within". I think not. No, he is elected by a vote from his peers... his law-abiding, level-headed and conscientious peers...

I cannot deny that the idea of a God works, and that it gives people something to have faith in. Faith is a strong emotion, a true human emotion which can been proven. A combination of determination and bravery. If people are at their lowest ebb and need something to grasp, there's always the faith in the lord. Why'd you think so many people find their Godly faith during their tenure in the prison system? Sure beats enjoying the embuggerment of anal rape I guess. Kids make up imaginary friends too, when they need someone to confide in but are too socially inept to do it properly. Sarcasm aside, this is the good side of the idea, and it works. Every religion appears to be built on the foundation of a decent set of morals. The original idea just seems to have been corrupted in the millenia-long game of chinese whispers that would have had to occour before the invention of the written word.

The bad side is that God is not the one in charge. God will end up doing exactly what the beurocracy of man will have him do. Religion works on democratic vote; i.e. if enough people believe something enough, then it literally becomes gospel. Just look at the bible. They didn't write that all in one go did they. Writes, rewrites, translations, ommissions, additions. They're still changing it today. The word of the lord indeed. For someone who supposedly created the heavens and the earth, she's an undecicive motherfucker.

So, it turns out that God does exist - but only as a construct of the human condition. The human character of fearing that which it cannot comprehend. After all, why bother learning and discovering about the reality we live in based on fact, when it's easier and cheaper to be told with no shadow of a doubt by someone who read about it in a tome of dubious origin?

All religions have their origins centuries and millenia ago, when we, as a species, were a lot simpler than we are today. Well... some of us... I digress. If someone were to go back in time with something as simple as a flashlight and show it to someone, depending on how far back they went they'd either be bludgeoned to shit for performing witchcraft or somesuch, or raised up high as a deity. It's simpler and easier to put something down to magic when you know no better.

I'm still not saying that religion is a bad thing, by no means at all am I suggesting it be stricken from existence. What I am saying is that in the age of man in which we live, it seems pretty arcaic to still be tip-toeing around various cliques incase we annoy someone or other's God. Basing our lives around these various clubs, in which an ever increasing shitload of people want no part. I would like to go to the Vatican, get laced on cheap vodka and slash my name up the side of St Peter's Square, but I won't out of simple respect for my fellow man. So how about you don't force your fucking doctrines on me, and let me live my own life in the fucking peace it was in before you decided to go on a world tour of busybodying? I'm not hurting you am I?

Besides, when the rapture comes, you won't have to bother with me anymore because I used a condom that time...

In short; Fuck the pope, I wanted to go to London.

We'll destroy this world for you

2010-08-11T08:19:00.004+01:00

In a few weeks, I will be travelling down to London to see Muse perform at Wembley Stadium. One might assume that I'd be completely over the moon about such an event, after all; it's not every day you get to see one of your favourite bands up close doing what they do best. I am very much looking forward to it, partly because it'll be a nice break from spending all day trying to remind job agencies that I still exist, but mostly because I can only assume it's going to be a hell of a show from a damn talented bunch of guys.

Now, pay special attention to the last part of that paragraph. Contrary to apparent popular belief, Muse is just three (four if you want to get dickish about it) human beings doing what they do best. The reason there is a hint of apprehension in the back of my mind about this Wembley gig is that not only will there be people who enjoy Muse's music present, but there will also be Muse fans in attendance. These two cliques are not one and the same.

I can get along with people who can appreciate the talent of the musicians, and the atmosphere of the live event, and just know how to rock the fuck out. What I can't get along with is people who believe that Muse was created soley for their entertainment alone, and that anyone else who likes Muse cannot like them anywhere near as much as they do. They will assure you that any fact you might know about the band, they knew first. Despite the fact they're most likely a teenybopping pubertal fuckwit, they were totally there at their first battle of the bands, and that they know the guitarist. It might be through some contrived dragged-out-of-their-ass reasoning, but they know her.

From my experience of Muse fans (or any band's fan for that matter) If you first heard the band after their third or fourth album, then you don't even deserve to walk the earth beneath your feet. It's the tape recorded in the guitarist's garage in the school summer holidays, or nothing. The logical rebuttal to such a snotty comment should be a swift headbutt, but given that we live in a 'civilised' society one must grin and bear such fucktardedness.

The fact of the matter is, a band that has five studio albums has probably picked up a few fans along the way. You can't cling to a band in such a manner, it's a very unhealthy obsession. If you're going to be obsessed with something, make it something useful like... breathing with your mouth closed.

Fortunately, the one weakness to freaks such as these is the simple act of trolling. if you find yourself near one in the crowd, sing the wrong words. Get the names of the band members mixed up. Make facts up.

You will be scoffed at for turning up at this intimate gig organised at a 105,000 capacity stadium for them personally. How very dare you sing along.

Are you... wait... stop enjoying it!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Getting fucked off by such things should only be reserved for the mentally ill, and it's hella fun to poke fun at them too... wait... too far?

Another group of fanatics closely related to that of Muse fans are the Dr Who fans. I like Dr. Who. There I said it. I like Dr. Who, but I also know that he doesn't piss champagne, bow ties are pretty much an average-to-meh kinda cool, and that it's a fucking TV show.

Dr. Who fans seem to be a lot more volatile than Muse fans, and predominantly seem very preoccupied with Mr David Tennant. This is of course in relation to the newer series, anyone who can appreciate the originals must already have the capacity to use their imagination a bit more. Ask a younger Dr. Who fan who their favourite doctor is, and I'd wager the majority vote falls in the court of Mr Tennant. Of course it's got nothing to do with the fact that the other two actors have only had one season each in the role compared to Tennant's four.

Anywhere there's an article about Dr. Who, there'll be some ballpiece comment along the lines of "I hate Matt Smith, They should bring back David Tennant" it's almost as if they're scared of change. It's shock horror that an actor might not want to become typecast in a role? How dare an actor wish to flex their acting muscle upon a different role. Playing Dr. Who is a very dangerous thing to do. Tom Baker is a shining example of such type-casting. I for one was infused with intrigue when they announced the next Doctor as Matt Smith. I'd never seen him before, and this gave me the opportunity to see something new! This excited me.

I fuck you not, there were actually people commenting on Matt Smith's ability to play the character based solely upon his looks.

...right...

There's an argument grounded firmly in reality! Turns out, looking at other franchises which turn out to be comprised entirely of pretty boys and girls pouting into the screen, naming no names, you can't judge an actor's performance on their looks alone.

Having said that, I always knew Karen Gillan would do well...

I'd also wager that these fanatical freaks wouldn't be able to admit that there are plenty of unabashedly shit episodes of Dr. Who. I'm looking at you Peter Kay! Yes that episode was utter gash, but at least they were willing to try something new. New; new is good. New is an experiment. New is interesting. David Tennant in the role of Dr. Who is not new. That ship has rather impressively sailed into Dr. Who canon. To truly appreciate something, you must not only see the brilliance, but also the flaws. Otherwise you're doing nothing but selling yourself short.

In summary, it's absolutely fine to enjoy something like a band, or a TV program, but don't let it be the only thing you enjoy! I'm sure Matt Bellamy and Steven Moffat are very happy that you appreciate what they've created, but they'd want you to have your own life as well!

Live a little!

Painless?

2010-08-06T12:23:00.007+01:00

So, I was thinking; I could just neck a whole bottle of paracetamol! Cheap, easy - almost comes naturally! Wait, what's this about multiple organ failure over a matter of days? Aw, I can't be chewed waiting that long. Sound like a lot of effort too.

I could gas myself! We've got a gas oven, it'd be a piece of cake! (heh... puns) It'd be just like gracefully falling asleep, Lord knows I've not managed that for a while. Aw, but wait; Who'd turn off the gas? Don't wanna trash the whole house out.

Okay, lets think about this. I could hook a hosepipe up to the car's exhaust pipe and idle myself into the next life! Only minor drawback being I don't have a car. Parents' is a diesel, hardly a graceful end.

Who said it had to be graceful? I could get a hold of that blank firing Glock Jeff has and ventilate the ol' skullbone! Ah, but blank firing is just such a bitch way to go out. I'd want to paint the wall black with arterial spray, not messily lobotomise myself. Besides, imagine if it didn't work first time; I'd look like such a dick.

There is a train line over yonder, complete with a convenient footbridge! I'm good at climbing, I could just drop in front of the 13:04 to Scarborough! Bit harsh on the driver though... I could phone ahead? Bah, they'd only try and stop me I suppose.

Hanging! There's an oldschool no nonsense way to go! Aw, I don't have any fuckin' rope.

Mains electricity! I've got a GCSE in electronics, surely I could frazz myself to bits competently? Having said that, the part about the air in your joints explosively expanding fills me with a little apprehension... Would look totally cool though, shame my eyeballs would be too busy boiling in their sockets to appreciate such wonder. Besides, thanks to Mythbusters, I now know it's more trouble than it's worth to take a bath with a toaster. Fuck you science and reasoning!

Couldn't ever throw myself off a building. Apart from the fact that anything tall in this city incurs an entrance fee, I'd enjoy climbing up there too much; and imagine the view once you'd reached the top!

Then there's the note. You gotta have a note. I've seen crime dramas: It's only officially declared a suicide if there's a note. The death of one is a tragedy, the death of one with Post-Its is a statistic. I'd probably fuck that up. I'd leave someone out, forget to mention some shmuck who'd take umbridge. There's always some cunt like that.

*sigh*

Seems like I've only really got one decent way of shuffling off. Just gonna have to wait for it to happen. At least that's one thing I can do as well as everyone else - there's some optimism for you.

I have a dream...

2010-05-31T11:31:00.005+01:00

^{...that one day this world will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all filetypes are created equal."}

I'm fairly good with computers. If When something stops working, I can usually apply some thought and logic to the situation and work out how to fix it. This for me seems more fun than cramming my brain so full of technical bullshit that there's no room left for the finer aspects of social capability.

This weekend I thought I'd have a bash at streaming media from my laptop to the Xbox 360 over our wireless network. I first attempted to use the software dedicated solely to sharing media across a home network; Windows Media Centre. As I predicted, trying to use this software was on par with the flossing of one's butt-crevice with electrified barbed wire.

After a bit of browsing around the internet, it turns out there's a whole bunch of different ways of getting this to work. All seem to be a fucktonne easier than using the apparent 'user-friendly' software kindly donated by Microsoft. Getting the Xbox and the Laptop to see eye to eye was actually a lot easier than I'd imagined, after setting up media sharing in Windows Media Player, the laptop began to shake itself to bits with the excitement of finding a new Xbox 360 on the network. Not being one to deny the poor frail little thing of it's fun, I linked them up.

I think they like each other.

Now I had a new tech toy to play with, I decided to see what it could do. I placed one of my legitimately aquired visual entertainment pieces into the shared folder as an experiment, and fired up the Xbox. Against all my better cynical judgement, the Xbox found the folders and even found the files within said folders! I couldn't believe my luck.

Of course, with every silver lining, there comes a fucking great cloud. The Xbox would see the filetype, it would show a thumbnail of the video, but it wouldn't play said video because it's not 'supported'

Not supported?

What the fuck is this bullshit?

Checked out the filetype, and it's an .AVI file. (Audio Video Interleave) Fairly common filetype in the world of visual media. I'd go out on a whim and say it's probably only second to DivX for decent quality video. So, it makes sense that the Xbox wouldn't play it. Why would I want an overpriced, immensely buggy, contraption plugged into my 32" widescreen TV that would play a high quality video for me?

After a six hour conversion from AVI to WMV (Windows Media Video) I was able to watch my movie with no problems. A fine work around if you've got the six hours and hard drive space to spare. A normal person would see this as somewhat of a fucking chore of course.

This morning I thought I would address another issue I'd found as a result of my foray into media networking. The problem at hand? Why isn't all my music showing up in the Windows Media Player library? After a bit of poking around, it dawned on me that the only music missing was the music I copied from my father after my external HDD and subsequently my entire music collection decided to corrupt. Probably sneezed too close to the damn thing or something. My father is the begrudgingly proud owner of an Apple iPod, and as a result has ripped his entire music collection as .M4A files. Windows Media Player will play these files without so much as a virtually batted eyelid, but to add them to the media library for sharing over the network is to ask too much.

This apartheid of filetypes is probably the biggest dick-move in information technology in recent years. Basically Microsoft have stood up proudly and declared to have created a 'Media Center' version of windows, but it'll only let you play with filetypes it's friends with. If I'm using what is described as a media player, I kinda expect it to be able to play fucking media. Too much to ask?

Hey Xbox, why won't you play .AVI files? Did they call your mother a whore at the last christmas party?

Hey, Windows Media Player, what's wrong with .M4A files? One slept with your sister and didn't call her back?

To quote one of the finest men who ever lived*, "It's all bullshit, and it's bad for you." It even goes right up to the top of the Apple ladder, with Steve Jobs' unrequited hatred of Adobe Flash. As business models go, releasing an overpriced gimmicky platform with which you can surf the internet and which consequently doesn't support Flash is a complete cunt-move.

Flash is pretty much the backbone of the world wide web, and to deny support for such an integral system is like taking your balls and slapping them on the Queen's face. Sure, it might seem like a good idea in principal, but it's pretty fucking idiotic and you're going to piss off a lot of people.

What we're now learning is that those in the position to light their stogies with $50 bills were the snot-bubble blowing, eye-patched, limpy freak kids from school. Simple minds with even simpler morals. Who gives a fuck what your personal preferences are, you're supposed to be developing user-friendly software, not software which you have to either rip apart and modify, or use in conjunction with third party software in order to make do what it should be doing anyway.

Perhaps the next generation of technology CEOs will learn from this bunch of slack-jawed fuckwits, but I severely doubt it. Not when there's so many zeros involved.

^{*George Carlin}

Digitally Darwinian

2010-01-31T23:08:00.013Z

^{Because you just can't quite get this sort of stuff across in tweets. (@wellmetalginge)}

So, if you've managed to plumb the depths of the Internet to the degree where you've actually started reading this fucking thing, then you're probably aware of a game from a few years back called "Portal". I'm going out on a limb here and assuming this from the get go, mainly because it will save on a shit-load of time!

So picture the scene; you're lying there amongst the burning wreckage of the computer formerly known as GLaDOS. Amongst the thoughts bouncing around your already confused mind, there must be one who's sole purpose is dedicating itself to finding out what the Jesusfuck had just transpired.

It would only be sane, right?

Well; of course, this is Portal, so what's deemed sane to you and me, may not quite be what's deemed sane to the guys at Valve.

What if;

The test-run made in the storyline of Portal is just one of hundreds, maybe thousands of possible routes through a test created by a computer? A test which will keep the computer's AI constantly up to date with the latest evolutionary advances in humans. Because there are literally millions of combinations imaginable, each test could be almost like a digital version of the Theory of Evolution.

At the conclusion of each test; the mind of the test subject is scanned, and their psyche is digitally mapped into programming code. the whole psyche of the test subject is taken on, (within a certain few controlling parameters... wait... I'd buy that for a dollar!) thus forcing the former 'student' to become the 'teacher' character. Their emotional response to being immediately forced into the opposite role would mean that; due to the 'analogue' nature of a 'biological' Human Being every digitally run single test is completely unique. (interesting note: digitally run, not necessarily digitally concocted)

The psyches of the test subjects who die during the tests are not scanned, so GLaDOS can be sure it is getting only the crème de la crème of Human balls-to-the-wall mental brilliance. Otherwise known as, Survival of the Fittest.

For me, this image evokes the question; assuming that Humans are still living on,(or maybe even just kept alive ala The "Smarm... woah!" Matrix) will there at one point, be just one proto-human state of being? One mixture of thoughts which, when all the extra crap around the outside has been shaved off over the millenia/eons of test subjects, embodies the whole of Humankind at their most perfectly benevolent peak? We reach somewhat of a fork in the road...

Would the first conclusion we as a race of animals jump to, be that this line of zeros and ones could be perceived to be "He who is called 'I Am!'"? Or would reaching that conclusion involve having millennia to become so complacent with one's own self that one deems themselves to be made in the image of this spark of pant-wettingly fucktastic brilliance? On a more ironic and not quite so militantly atheist standpoint, perhaps using characters we can relate to in our stories helps us enjoy them more...

Because close to any mention of organised religion (oxymoron?) brings me out in an itchy case of the atheisms, I'd go with the more philosophical (read pretentious) and scientific reasoning. The proto-human thought would need so much memory to hold, that GlaDOS itself would need to grow exponentially to be able to store it. There would reach a point where the gravitational forces involved would be so much so that GLaDOS would collapse in on itself and create a fucking massively huge-off black hole. (One up on Matt Bellamy - fuck yea!)The proto-human thought, but more realistically simply that of the spark of Life itself is simply this; Continue the species.

With this one ~~all-~~ proto-spark; The digital key to life, if you will...

*twirls imaginary moustache*

...comes one final act of defiance in the face of the computer formally known as GLaDOS. Self destruction, and the scattering of billions of trillions of lumps of matter and sparkageness (official scientific term) get thrown out into... whatever there might be outside of every piece of everything, ever, being suddenly and violently shat into existence. Probably a good curry.

For even more pretentious points: Even complete nothingness contains the will for the existence of something. Which is probably up there on the paradox stakes with the likes of taking a certain Sports Almanac to somewhere it doesn't belong.

Furthermore, if this theory were true, it would place a very interesting perspective on the actions of the player during Portal. By overthrowing and ultimately destroying GLaDOS, has the player doomed the Human race to never fulfil life's great big plan? Or are Ian Malcolm's "Life will find a way" chaos theory ramblings correct? After all, is spending your life indoctrinated within parameters set out by those with a higher social status really a life at all?

Perhaps the GLaDOS encountered in the game is one of many data collection hubs for a CPU unit situated elsewhere? It would not only mean the AI has an extra level of protection against bad eggs like Chell, or as she appears in this theory, a biological rebellion; a computer virus.

Reading further into it shows that I should sometimes probably just know when a game is a game. It's probably just as simple as...

ohh... I dunno...

GLaDOS glitches in the first scene of the game, and subsequently becomes one evil psycho-computer biznitch all due to the local power surge I can only imagine must have happened when bumbling ol' Gordon Freeman ripped existence a new one over at Black Mesa, by parking "I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-it-is-so-poke-it-with-electricity"....nium, into a microwave big enough to instantly fricassee a whole farmyard.

That's just one of a whole bunch of absurd, but definitely intriguing, ideas I've had whilst playing Portal, and as such is probably why it's still such a brilliant game. In turn, probably behind the reason I'm able to safely assume you know what the fuck any of what you've just read was about.

Ask not what your country can do for you...

2010-01-28T01:04:00.009Z

^{The following events take place between you declaring "tl;dr" and me hunting your lazy fucking ass down and sterilising you with a rusty iron blade.}

Hi, my name is Fernando Del Ronaldotino.

Every morning I have to begrudgingly drag myself out of my king sized bed full of sleeping naked celestial beings (who I may or may not have raped, the papers will decide that one). I slunk into the kitchen where I stroll into (yes, into) my fridge to grab my protein shake breakfast. Sucking down my breakfast I stroll past my 30 foot flat screen high-definition TV complete with a one off clone of Stephen Spielberg to help me choose what I should be watching to make sure I'm still cool.

I jump into the limo and get driven along the scenic route to one of my many garages where I spend twenty minutes deciding exactly which of my Bugatti Veyrons I will drive to the tennis courts to meet my team mate Ronaldo Del Fernandotino for a quick game.

After the game I am driven back to whichever one of my many mansions is closest in order to grab another protein shake before getting into my second limo to take me to the ground.

At the ground I have to get myself (I know, right?) changed into my football kit before walking all the way to the pitch to kick a football around for a few hours before retiring back to the jacuzzi where the whole team and I huddle up and swap anecdotes/bodily fluids in a completely non-gay way.

--

Hi, my name is John Smith.

I have to get up at the crack of shit to go on patrol in the hostile-ass pitch-black dark with my two mates. Non of us know whether we will make it back from this patrol outside of a body bag because we don't actually have enough batteries between us to work all of our night-vision goggles at once.

Jeff is currently walking around the desert in forest camouflage because that's the bag of kit he was unlucky enough to be issued with. Sucks to be him right?

Well... It would do if we could see the poor bastard.

The simplified description of what we have to do to earn our keep is to walk out into the territory of a very armed enemy who couldn't give a flying fucksauce if they get killed, because they are all under the assumption that once they make it to their version of the afterlife they will be garnished with as many virgins as they can care to shake an underused penis towards.

In every 'war' previous to this, we had the overbearing cloud of 'Mutually Assured Destruction' on our side. Basically - nobody would really pull out the big guns because the retaliation would involve an even bigger gun. This would continue exponentially until the whole planet was a spinning cloud of shitty dust floating through space. The Americans knew it, the Russians knew it. Lets face it, at the end of the day, any civilised nation knew that at some point they'd have to draw the line somewhere...

What we've got on our plate now is an adversary who doesn't even come close to believing this is a problem. Not only that, but if we go ahead and kill a fucktonne of these motherfuckers up in this country, they've got believers all over the fucking planet who are willing to blow their silly fucking selves up in the name of something they have little to no fucking idea about.

Now you read all of that again. You go ahead and you read everything that has been written already, and you tell me, that the footballer deserves to be paid more than the soldier on the front line.

You tell me.

Now.

You can't can you?

You can't justify those closet-gay over-paid long-haired-pansy fuckslice pricks being paid in one week more than one soldier is paid in a fucking year.

Some cunt needs to sort this shit out, and fast.

A useful fact. The Americans have recently deployed more troops (for some reason with full combat ready gear) to the atrocities in Haiti than the UK Army has in any current theatre of combat. The shit-ridden pricks amongst you may sign this off to the UK having a shit army, but this is because you are shit-ridden pricks, and nothing less. Do try to keep up 007.

Think about this. Why don't we have enough troops?

Is it perhaps because we, as a nation, would rather focus on a bunch of eleven over-paid bell-end sucking, placenta replacements kicking a pig's bladder around a field, than the thousands of men and woman who have devoted themselves to safeguarding the security and freedom* of the very country that we take for granted?

We would rather declare our national sport to be that of a game at which we absolutely suck-ass at? C'mon, we still desperately cling to the last time we won the World Cup in 1966. This was forty four fucking years ago for fuck's sake! Forty Four!

We fucking suck at our 'National Sport', fact. I suppose most of you hadn't realised that though. Too busy watching the 'Beautiful Game' Tell me exactly which part of the racist-brewing, violence-gathering, fuck-head inciting game is the beautiful part?

Is it the part that condones that which any normal person would be locked up for, be it aggravated assault, or casual date-rape, like it was a harmless school-yard prank?

Perhaps it's the part that condones the national deficit of a small country being paid weekly to these 'hard-working' individuals to spend their time and effort kicking an inflatable fucking ball around a fucking field every few days.

This is all glossing over the hard work and effort they put into having their photo taken in order to ensure that all parents are out of their hard-earned cash before it is even earned, just so their child can keep up with the trend of coolness dictated by these 'athletes'.

So I once again say to you, Can you justify the Footballer being paid more than the Soldier?

You may read this and notice that there is a considerable amount of spin towards that of the soldier. You would be right. You know why? Because the Soldier is unappreciated, and needs their corner fighting while they go to the shitty cock-ridden arsehole of the world and fight yours.

You may also read this and notice a lot of disdain towards Football. I want it to be made clear that I don't hate football, or football fans, just the huge amount of freakshow cunt-hats who decided to make a complete prick of themselves while they play the fucking game.

Yes, you're right, I'm just lashing out at that which I don't understand in true lameoid bullshit fashion. Daddy never loved me, I never learned to read, whatever you want to blame it on, I just never really properly got Football. Yes it's fun to play, and I'll even admit that in the right company and circumstances, it can be quite fun to watch - you can hang my whole argument from this noose, I'm well aware of this. Read my whole blog, it's all of the same crappy calibre. Context wise, though I really do feel like I've got something to go off.

I was 'lucky' enough to witness a 'protest' in my local town. This protest was against troops being deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. I had to leave before I said something I may have outwardly regretted, but inwardly been very fucking proud of. I was very close to stepping up to these lettuce-chomping fuckholes and saying "Yes, okay... lets withdraw all our troops from wherever they may be stationed. Then we'll see exactly who's shitter the world is flushed down"

For fuck's sake, don't leave the world in the hands of the Americans.

These are the prickholes who 'liberated' Iraq with an invasion force. These are the clown-shoes who recently turned up to an aid operation packing a fully locked and loaded combat load out.

Jesusfuck don't leave the world in the hands of those inbred fucktards.

I digress, I don't want to get into how fucked up the state of America is, because I actually need to get some sleep before 2012... after all - some bunch of prick ends have decided this is when the world, which has been spinning about it's axis for the past billionty trillionty McFuck-loads of years, is going to decide "you know what... fuck it, I'm done now". All because a big magic book of Chinese Whispers may have had it's bullshit misconstrued.

Woah...

On that note, I should wind this motherfucker to a close. I like America, and I like the decent amount of Americans who go about their daily business like normal folk. Earning their money, paying their taxes, spelling their names correctly... you know, the normal ones! It's the ones who have three mums, two of which are their brothers, that I worry about. Seems to me these are the ones manning their armed forces.

Once again, I digress.

At the end of the day, can you really justify our troops being given little to no incentive to give a flying fucksauce about the country they, for some reason seem to give a flying fucksauce about?

Hey, they're out there dying on their arses for you, at least turn the fucking football off and donate to Help for Heroes.

It's the least you can do.

Laters, x

^{*Nyehehe... made you look...}

Focussed Antipathy

2009-03-12T19:24:00.003Z

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls; we live in an age of great technological advancement. We are advancing at such a rate that we now take for granted that which only five years ago would have been deemed unthinkable. In the last century, we put men on the Moon, we charted the deepest oceans, we fought diseases to extinction, and yet – some people are still incapable of realising that in the grand scheme of things; they’re bested by the amoeba special school’s reserve kitchen staff when it comes to cognitive capacity.

I’d wager that you bastards are entirely oblivious to the fact that with every single act of gratuitous idiocy, you send me further into a tunnel-vision journey of wholesome rage fuelled imagination. If we’d reached the level of technology available to the pre-crime cops in Minority Report, I’d be doing life. There should be awards for the creativity I put into thinking of ways in which to abruptly end your stupidity.

But do you know what?

Fuck it.

Do what the fuck you want, I’m utterly tired of giving a shit.

If you want to do the work, do the work. If you want to sit around on your fat worthless arse talking about the profound ins and outs of exactly fuck all, be my guest; just be sure to do it at such a volume that doesn’t provoke a hell-scream fuelled flying machete strike from the shittiest depths of my uncontrolled consciousness. If you had an ounce of sense about you, you’d know you’ve already been enormously warned. Working in this place has pretty much taken what little cheery sections of my soul existed, donkey punched them directly in the area most akin to the bollocks, and thrown them off a cliff into the black void.

It’ll be over in three months… except it fully won’t; we’ve just gone full circle. It may look like a genius solution to you, but down here on the front lines, down here it’s blindingly obvious that all you’ve really done is place yourself three years into the past, with a whole new set of retards at the helm. Fucking quality business management there, absolutely loving it.

A good friend once told me that working here is a good place to start off, but not to make a career of it, as I would learn very quickly exactly how not to run a business. How right he was. Of course most of it is common sense. For instance, if you pay idiots peanuts, you’re going to get the most counter-productive workforce ever. In fact what you’re going to end up with is a glorified coffee lounge full of motor-mouthed gossip machines more content to discuss what item of physics-defying clothing they’re going to ram their horrendously corpulent carcass into. Maybe it’d make more sense to capitalise on this ‘clean’ slate you’ve provided yourself with an upgrade to trained monkeys instead?

No matter how much you sugar-coat it with charity events, support groups and team building bullshit, the foul stench of the effluence below still powers through. As the saying goes, you can’t polish a turd!

Nowhere is that more true than this place.

Fuck it.

Flawed Integrity

2009-01-28T09:03:00.002Z

"Where's my fucking chair?!"

"What the fuck is this shit all over my desk?!"

Stop gawping at me with half a sandwich hanging out of your gormless face, and shut your stupid mouth before I staple your flapping lip to the fucking desk.

You'd think working in an office, there'd be a ratio of useless wankers to fairly normal people weighted towards the latter. Well, if you thought that, you'd be naive my friend; offices are full of dirty, lazy, slovenly cunts. My office in particular is full of employees who come to work every day under the premise that they might not be working the following week. This is because the company I work for has decided it’d be great to cut me and 750 of my colleagues loose into a financial maelstrom. Cheers, you inconsiderate fucks!

Despite this hindrance, I still don’t believe that it’s any excuse to drop the level of effort that you put into your job. After all, they’re still paying you the wage they’ve been paying you for the past three years – it’d be more than thoughtful to carry on with the same level of work.

Oh wait… you are.

I forgot that this company had to make the best part of 800 people redundant because it was losing money and customers. Taking a look around at the frontline level, I can easily tell you why you’ve lost this money. You employ empty-headed knuckle-dragging fucktards! As I survey the office, there are about 2 in every 10 team members actually doing work. The rest are sat in a mother’s meeting, discussing the internal politics of Big Brother, and how Coronation St is better than Eastenders. Here’s a quick answer for you. They’re both as backwards as each other, written by Sun readers, for Sun readers, and as such, I’ve blown more compelling storylines out of my arse.

Apparently the art of giving a fuck is all but lost. Yes it’s just a chair, but it was my bastard chair. Yes it’s just crap on my desk, but its crap on my bastard desk. Some twatmunch has taken it upon themselves to rob my chair and shower my desk in shitty detritus because they’ve moved onto my team. People should watch whose toes they step on round here, as I’m pretty much one step away from being the loosest cannon on this deck. I truly don’t get this attitude. If I can’t take pride in my work, then I’m just as bad as the rest of the tongue-chewing knuckle-draggers around here. I will never stoop as low as that.

You can take my job and give it to those jocko twats. I can sit and watch as they screw it up and constantly come crawling back to me as I appear to be one of about four people in the whole country who know what the fucking crack is. You can do this as I have no say in what happens – I’m just an employee, you own my contract, and therefore my job. What you can’t do is sit idly on your ass while there’s flagrant indolence happening throughout your shitty business.

It’s time to wake up and smell what you’re shovelling, as there’s been three years of this shit, and now you’re barely dealing with the consequences of what could have been easily avoided if you’d have even just walked past and glanced through the window of business management school.

Fuck the idiotic bureaucracy; I hope you’re happy sat on your piles of dwindling cash surveying all you’ve helped destroy.

That orange glow in the distance? That’s the dissatisfied customers, the discontented employees and the disgruntled workers. I hope you’ve settled all your affairs, as its hunting season, and you’re top of the fucking list.

Inexorable Reckoning

2009-01-21T16:34:00.003Z

Their anonymous name is dropped through the sands of time; our minds are poised to receive their awe-inspiring belief. The belief that nothing less than purely the best that we can offer will do. There is simply no reserve, no alternative, and no single substitution.
If our all is the entirety of what we can give, then our all is what shall be given; as untainted gratification is mined from the deepest depths of the mental torture we put ourselves through.
At points we will lose the faith, we will falter, and we will question our own morals, but we will never relent, we will never yield, and we will certainly never cross over.
We hold our middle finger proudly aloft at the neurotic bureaucracy, and shout a defiant "Fuck You!" in the name of wholesome awe.
Life, in what ever physical, metaphysical, or psychological light you see it in, is placed here to have the most made of it, and we will not sit idly and let it sail beyond our grasp.
We will eventually drift into the sands, and they will become the ragged band that follows in our footsteps. They will never stop, and like us, they will prevail.

Cheap Lousy Faggot

2008-12-12T13:06:00.003Z

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I can't be arsed. Interesting really, when you consider the fact that I did just begin to tell you how much I can't be arsed. Furthermore Susan, I'm going to continue to tell you how much I can't be arsed, thus negating the existence of this whole paragraph. Yet here it is, flagrantly staring non-existance in the face, and slapping it's sweaty balls across it's face.

Do paragraphs have balls... and if so, would they sweat?

I digress.

Fuck Christmas. Call me Scrooge, but fuck christmas right in it's shitty arse. I'm not even gonna take the religous slant on it. Christmas can suck directly on my gigantic rusty plums.

If I hear one more time exactly how many fucking days it is till Christmas, I'm gonna start dezzing some faces. I know how fucking long it is till Christmas, it's the same fucking day every fucking year. I swear to fuck that we're just going to be living in a perpetual state of "yay it's fucking Christmas"; the decorations go up earlier every year! The only decoration I've done is to change the theme on my xbox, I don't get paid nearly enough to adorn my house with shitty tat for a month before launching it in the attic to forget about for a year.

Christmas songs can fuck directly off too. I nearly, nearly made it through without hearing the fucking Fairytale of fucking New York. Jesus H Fucksauce, it's not even about Christmas! How merry and joyus is a song about a drunken crack-bitch singing about his whore?! So far, this christmas has been sans Noddy Holder, but time will tell on that one.

Christmas shopping. Fuck. The only day of the week I can get into town, is also the only day of the week everyone else can get into town, but they all seem to have rammed their sense of urgency up their anus. Milling around and gawping at overpriced bullshit that won't last past the end of Boxing Day isn't Christmas Shopping. Christmas Shopping is taking a list. Buying the items on that list, and fucking straight off back home.

Bunch of savages in this town.

So, I cannot be arsed.

Merry fucking Christmas yo!

This blog is brought to you, in part, by the word Fuck!

How's That For A Slice of Fried Gold!?

2008-11-05T18:31:00.003Z

A guy walked into a pub, and strolled confidently up to the bar. He enquired to the barkeep about their finest real ale. The barkeeper kindly obliged the friendly patron’s request and pulled him a nice dark pint of their best ale.

“This’ll see you through squire” the barkeeper said with a smile “That’ll be £2.50 please” The guy handed over his pennies, and took a nice big sup of the fabulous brew. With a gracious nod to the barkeeper he took his pint and sat down at a table, burying his interest in his newspaper.

A second guy who was perched on a stool at the bar had been rather taken by the prospect of a nice smooth pint of bitchin real ale, and so asked the barkeeper for a pint of the same. Once again, the barkeeper pulled a smooth pint of the same beer. The customer’s eyes lit up at the prospect of sampling this most venerable beverage.

“That’ll be £5.40 please” he said happily. There was a pause.

“I’m sorry, what?!” asked the now confused second customer.

“£5.40 please” The barkeeper repeated jovially.

“Umm… Sorry if I seem a bit twatty or anything, but you charged that dude over there £2.50 for the same drink…” The first customer dipped his newspaper slightly and poked an eye over the top at the proceedings.

“Ahh” exclaimed the barkeeper “His is in a different glass!”

The second customer was left literally speechless. Seeing the customer’s confusion, the barkeeper tried to explain further.

“You see…” He said, as he began to polish the bar top “His glass was made by Theakston’s, this one of yours here by John Smith’s”

The second customer still had absolutely nothing. After a few moments of thought, he constructed a sentence from the heap of bewilderment in his head.

“So… If I may just straighten this out, what you’re trying to tell me is… that you charge for beer… based on what type of glass it’s in…?”

“That’s absolutely right” replied the barkeeper merrily.

Does this seem absurd to you? It should, because it fucking well is!

Juxtapose this situation into the world of computer games. Let us assume I want to buy Fallout 3 for my PS3, it is going to set me back close to half a ton. Fifty of my hard earned English fucking pounds. However, if I was the proud owner of an Xbox 360, I would only have to take a mortgage out to the value of £40 for this game. PC owners have it comparatively easy at about £30 for the game, but they do need to spend around about the national deficit of Africa in order to get their beloved box of tricks to play the damned thing.

Assuming we ignore the fuggly buggly Nintendo freaks who have sold out to the crinkly masses with their fairytale bullshit engine the ‘Wii’, the general target audience of computer games is kids, teenagers and young adults. Targeting your games at this market, whilst simultaneously forcing them to pay through the arse for the privilege is daylight fucking robbery. I for one use gaming as an escape from the increasingly more shitty reality that we live in today. Why it is that the gaming industry feels the need to summon the catch-22 situation wherein I have to spend more shitty hours at work in order to afford to play a game to chill out after spending too many shitty hours at work?

Even if the industry halved the prices, that’d probably be all it’d take. This would bring about the dream-like situation where you could stroll down the high street, eyeball a new release in a shop window, and not have to spend a week trying to fit the purchase into your yearly budget somehow, before buying it anyway and going hungry for the rest of the month. Addiction I hear you cry? Fuck right off – I get paid a quarter of what I should get paid for my vocation. You can suck directly on my rusty plums if you think I’m going to survive on that pay packet without an endless hoard of high definition gore to satisfy what I would get arrested for doing at work. Incidently, November brings a plethora of kickass games – way too many for my pay packet to stretch to. November also brings about my manager finally noticing I’m perpetually fucked off at work. Coincidence? Probably, but it’s an interesting idea.

It might be slightly more tolerable if they made games that lasted more than five minutes and then charged people up to the tits for them. I rented the recent EA title Dead Space last week. If you plotted the difficulty levels in this game on graph, you’d get everything ranging from a slight incline, to the fucking Matterhorn. I’ve noticed this trend in a lot of games. If you want to actually enjoy the game, especially with a lot of games having complex storylines (Bioshock, Dead Space, Halo et al) you pretty much have to play through on the easiest setting. I attempted Bioshock on the next setting up from ”Dictated by the masses, I’m a whiny pussy for playing on this setting” and I didn’t get any enjoyment from the game what-so-ever; if anything it fucked me off further. So – bang-for-the-buck wise, I feel fairly cheated by the majority of games. Pretty graphics and funky lighting go for fuck all when the game lasts either five minutes, or you’re in the same goddamn beautifully rendered room for three fucking days. (Don’t get me wrong on this, Dead Space is fucking minted, and I heartily recommend giving it a play through)

I have digressed somewhat from my main point, which is that the games industry is run by shitty-nosed money-grabbing cock-smokers who are ruled by stats and not customer satisfaction. Look at Rockstar as a game developer. What’s this I hear? Boos and hisses? Surely I can’t be having a go at the Jesus of the games industry? Well – as sure as Jesus was just the son of a fucking carpenter, Rockstar are just as bad as the rest of them. Look at GTA:IV. The media feeding frenzy and unbelievable hype surrounding the release of that game painted the picture of the game to end all games. Without this game your life will not be complete, you must own this game or else your status in human society is in peril. I saw it coming, but I still ended up being swept up in the hype. I took a week off work to play the fucking thing! (A week off work is still a week off work though)

The game is fucking beautiful. The graphics are sublime. The driving is downright pleasurable. Gunning people to bits and laughing my ginger tits off as they fall down flights of stairs is mouth-watering. Killing hookers for point is… well… what more can I say?! It’s all gravy on toast… For a day or two. The missions are repetitive, the police are a bunch of pole-greasing fuck-mongers, and don’t even get me started on the social bullshit scene they’ve programmed in. I have enough trouble holding together my own social life; I don’t want a computer game to tell me I’m shit at it too. If I was a hard-as-fucking-nails east European swanning round New York… sorry, Liberty City stealing, killing, and blowing shit up – If my podgy fucker of a cousin called up blathering on about American titties, I would explain politely that he could pig right out on the contents of my lower intestines.

What I’m getting at is, quite a lot of the time, what we’re promised, and what we’re delivered are two very different things. The Force Unleashed was supposed to be the crowning achievement of Lucasarts’ arsenal. It’s a good game, but the amount of tiny shitty things about it add up way too quickly. Once again the hype surrounding this game was unbelievable. It was slated to be the return to form for one of the greatest sagas ever written. A saga which was subsequently dryshafted by the very jowly twat who wrote it. After the hype had died down, it wasn’t really anything to write home about. It was basically another arcade platformer-cum-beat-em-up, only with a lightsabre.

Basically…

The games industry is a pile of shitty arse-on-toast…but then… you already knew that. I already knew that. You still buy the games. I still buy the games.

*sigh*

Games Industry 1 – 0 Jono.

To eat, perchance to live...

2008-10-07T12:30:00.005+01:00

The brisk wind slices across the plain as my knuckles whiten against the cold weapon in my hand. I stare down the mighty beast before me, and a foul torrent of anger besmirches my very soul. My gaze falls through the brutish creation and I begin my attack. My breathless lungs painfully force out an ungodly scream of pure hatred as I begin hacking at the body of the being.

My slashes slide harmlessly off the heavily armoured skin whilst the beast mocks me with a knowing grin. Unperturbed I drive on, endlessly slashing and ripping away at it's skin.

Suddenly I gain an upper hand. A stray blow lands with anger and slices through the seemingly indestructible membrane between the fresh air of the plains and the bloody stale innards of the beast within. A rush of musty pungency hits my face like a freight train, but I battle onwards. I shall eat today!

With one final almost surgical incision, the foul viscera of the beast are revealed to the world.

One battle to the mother fucking death.

One Chicken Caesar Salad finally opened.

...Fucks sake!

To Whom it may Concern...

2008-09-19T18:15:00.007+01:00

None of the following is fictional, the names have been omitted to protect the innocent. This was written during a time of severe mental anguish, so I’m sure you’ll forgive the colourful language. Who am I kidding, of course you fucking won’t! If by any chance you should be reading this and finding yourself cognitively decimated by an epiphany of a magnitude far greater than you ever thought possible, boo-fucking-hoo, but maybe it's time to re-assess your social precedence.

I would actually like to start this by expressing my most heartfelt gratitude and thanks. You have shown me that you never truly know a person until you have seen them from all the angles life throws at you. I once looked up to you; I raised you up on a pedestal and thought about nothing but the possibility of being with you. I blindly endangered concrete friendships forged for life as part of the chase. I now feel contaminated by the thought that I ever considered you in such a light. There ain't a disinfecting contemplation in the world that could clean that fucker out of my mind.

The cold journey of revelation can be best documented by describing the slow realisation that you actually live in a fantasy world created by your psyche as a way of dealing with a social out-casting on a biblical scale. There is a very fine line between jovial eccentricity, and apparent severe mental disorder. I began to realise that line was no longer being tread by you, as you had long since taken a swan dive into the icy black depths of socially-withdrawn fucktardism.

Every anecdote I offered had to relate back to you somehow. I am aware this is generally how conversation works in the broad sense of the word – but having an answer for everything which has to trump whatever I've plucked from my head is fairly exasperating after a while. Assuming I could get a word in edge ways; every opinion I had, no matter how trivial, was immediately countered by your own often opposite stance. To be completely honest with you, it grew rather tiresome rather quickly. When I got to the point of being able to predict the outcome of any conversation, it dawned on me that I was beginning to see you for who you really are.

The heart-rending truth is, you showed a self-confessed connection with both me and him. I extended my half of the way, but the reciprocation was never truly met, despite your feelings on the matter. I felt distanced, sidelined – something akin to being the last picked for the football on the school field. I tried, through the voices of my better judgement screaming at me from the back of my mind, I tried.

I happily welcomed you into my home so you could spend time with the man you were clearly enamoured with, my best friend and housemate. Considering the bigger picture, this was fucking psychological miracle work. I put up with your apparent attached-at-the-hip mentality, and ridiculous mile-a-minute worrisome nature. I gave you the space to hang out with this man in my own home, just to help strengthen your relationship with him. I saw how happy it made him, I saw that it was something he, and arguably you both needed. I kept myself to myself, and acted in nothing but a friendly nature towards you. When you worried if you were getting in the way; I took the spasticle's route out and re-assured you that everything was of a rose-tinted, flowery hippy-happy bullshit nature. I extended boundless freedom to you – and you have now offered me in return what I can only describe as a cold-shoulder the likes of which would take an Eskimo by surprise. I guess hindsight has taught me that a brave face was probably not the best thing to do. We’re all learning aren’t we?...

…Or not.

I certainly did not decide move into a house with him in order to sit on my ass, my sanity being constantly poked at by the foreboding desolate nature of an empty home, constantly plagued with thoughts about exactly what it was I did wrong. If there was a ransom for his freedom, I would have gladly paid it. Now however, it seems that ransom is null and void. Your indecisive nature and inability to see past the end of your own fucking nose has resulted in the apparent breakdown of what everyone went through so much to help sow the seeds of. What a fucking waste of time that all was. It would have been quicker to give the poor man a frontal lobotomy and leave him to the dogs. There is simply more to life than being an attention-seeking, vindictive bitch - spouting hippy cock-sauce to mindwash people into making you feel better about your self-indulgent socially repressed ways, but I digress. Far be it from me to deny you of your finest assets.

I also find it very troubling how you feel the need to martyr yourself to a cause you can’t mentally grasp. Don’t take the steps to presume that by banning yourself from spending time with him in his own house, that you are making me feel better. I don’t need you to make me feel better; it’s clearly obvious you have no idea how to do this by now. I couldn’t give a fuck if you want to come round to the house, just don’t expect me to register your existence whilst I’m there. I’m still scraping the barrel of my logic trying to work out what exactly is going on between you both anyway. First of all it’s all over and done with – next you’re on a date. Jesus – just make your fucking mind up! It’s not a quiz!

I was completely useless at dealing with the emotional wreck you’d left behind that night; the tattered husk of an already self-admitted unstable human being. I have no idea of magnitude of devious enchantments you laid on him the day after, but you were both back to sipping Darjeeling on your hippy fantasy cloud away from everyone who was unashamedly bothered by your antics. The ambiguous nature of your sitting-on-the-fence mentality has gotten you no-where, but everyone else is beginning to see the light.

As near as I can call it, this is now proving to be the Hiroshima of things being blown out of proportion. I just can't see why you're both feeling so hard put upon by my feelings on this matter. I've kept myself to myself in order for you to have what you want. I really can’t place the reasoning behind it, but constant pushing for an answer which you full-well already know is shameful. To call my silence a lack of courtesy is fucking repulsive. Whether you know it or not, you’ve forced me into a complete ethical black hole. Clawing my way back out is proving downright impossible, but I am determined. Thank you for the life lesson, I will never be the same person again that's for sure. Arming yourself with obvious argumentative ammunition in this manner is pure and simple malevolence. You can try as hard as you like to bother me with this, but I’ve got the moral shielding to ward off any attack you might throw at me.

You speak of this courtesy like you understand it – I can assure you, going off previous events, you have no grasp of common courtesy, you blindly steamroll through everything that is between you and what you want. You obviously didn’t notice, so I’ll reiterate. The courtesy you so desperately sought from me lied in my not replying at all. If I had, I can assure you – you would have longed for the reply to be unsaid; saving you the extra mental ordeal of knowing exactly what you’ve done. Course… that’s all a bit irrelevant now isn’t it. Maybe it was wrong to leave you adrift in your mental wonderland? Maybe it’s just down to simple pity. I have never known someone so unabashedly evil, yet so apparently ignorant to that fact!

Of course, you're most likely completely oblivious to all of this. The ostensible nonchalance of what seemed like the final hours disgusted me to my very core. You left him in a dark place with your blasé rebuttal of his feelings. That evening was hellish for the man, and due to the fact that you’ve managed to alienate nigh on all of his friends, he was left with me to offer him help. Throughout this testing of my loyalty, as much as it burns me to say - I’m beginning to show signs of losing hope. Any healthy relationship is not only built on commitment, but also compromise – you cannot spend one hundred percent of your time with each other, not this early in the proceedings, not ever! Friends exist, and always will exist, there is no logical path which suggests that by estranging your friends, or even worse – your partner’s friends, you are justified in your actions. But hey, sitting here writing this – I’m as single as they come, what the fuck do I know?

Allow me to explain…

You are both acting like a couple of whiney-bastard emo-faggot teenagers! I’m so unbelievably close to washing my hands of you both; however I don’t want to do this, as someone has to stick around for when you get another psycho episode and ditch him again. Everyone else seems to have given up, but here I am, giving a shit like I always do. You’d think I’d learn from where it lands me. It’s happened again, but I’m sticking around. Maybe this time will show me that when it comes to a relationship, you will always lose out to whoever is doing the ball moistening. I don’t want this to be true, as it’s not how it should happen, but in this case, my aces are on the table, and you’re holding a royal flush.

As I write this, contrary to the content of this wall of hatred, I'm actually feeling the happiest I've felt in a long time. I put this down to purging my conscience of every bit of shitty crap instigated by yourself that was clinging on for dear life - a mental spring cleaning if you will. Why'd you think I write these things?! I took some initiative, and interestingly, some of your own advice. I have gotten myself into a position where I don't feel the need to somehow justify your crazy idea of a 'strong' friendship between us. There was a definite point in time where my mind became clear. It was when I realised the following fact: As far as logic dictates, there is no friendship.

Friends don't blank each other for weeks at a time. Friends don't concoct some strange idea of a connection between each other and then chuck that 'friend' over to the margin of their vision just because they're now getting what they initially set out to get. Friends most certainly do not undermine friends.

A true friend knows when something is up, and once again I feel the need to offer you my most sincere gratitude, as throughout all of this absolute bullshit and mental trauma, it has been proven who my true friends are. They have supported me in their own special ways, be it social self-abuse at the hands of alcohol and tobacco, or simply just being a sponge for my hatred-filled monologues on the nature of life, the universe and everything. Friends actively do something to help sort each other out, not just brush problems under the rug to forget about because it's easier than worrying.

I had the wool pulled over my eyes, but I can now safely say without a doubt, that wool has been scorched from existence. We are not friends. We are not acquaintances. We are not even passing strangers in the street. You do not even register on my radar.

Enjoy your life.

What happens when...

2008-09-16T23:23:00.002+01:00

...a guitarist disillusioned with the workplace returns home as burned out as mentally possible without being considered catatonic?

He is suddenly hit with a metaphorical bolt of lightning, and grasps the concept of guitar scales. Not only that, but during the same evening, creates his very own bass playing exercise which manages to teach a multitude of skills vital to playing decent-ass bass.

1) Finger strength & dexterity
2) Two separate scales, Major & minor
3) The ability to seamlessly swap between these scales
4) Playing in an odd time signature

He is also filled with the feeling of enough self indulgence to post this exercise on the internet for all to see. Upon mastering this final skill, he is truly a great guitarist.

G||-------------------------------------| D||---------------------------4----6----| A||------------4----5----7--------------| E||--5----7-----------------------------| G||-------------------------------------| D||--7----5-----------------------------| A||------------8----7----5--------------| E||---------------------------8----6----| G||-------------------------------------| D||---------------------------4----6----| A||------------4----5----7--------------| E||--5----7-----------------------------| G||-------------------------------------| D||--7----5-----------------------------| A||------------8----7----5--------------| E||---------------------------8----6----| G||-------------------------------------| D||--------------------------------5----| A||-----------------5----7----8---------| E||--5----6----8------------------------| G||-------------------------------------| D||--7----6----4------------------------| A||-----------------7----5----4---------| E||--------------------------------7----| G||-------------------------------------| D||--------------------------------5----| A||-----------------5----7----8---------| E||--5----6----8------------------------| G||-------------------------------------| D||--7----6----4------------------------| A||-----------------7----5----4---------| E||--------------------------------7----|

Start the metronome at 150bpm, and work upto 300bpm. If it doesn't hurt, you're doing it wrong.

Laters x

Office Etiquette : Rule #35

2008-09-04T12:35:00.005+01:00

When you need to drop a rabid trouser badger, do so near the printer, coffee lounge, or admin support team. It's a well known fact that you don’t piss in your own swimming pool.

^{Addendum : If the resulting offence turns out to be of the “on a string” variety, the best you can do is grin and bear it as your colleagues slowly asphyxiate on the airborne defacement you have provided them with.}

Unrelenting Wanton Spackery

2008-08-12T12:43:00.005+01:00

On my way to work this morning, I was greeted with multiple sightings and assaults by of one of the single most stupid inventions known to man. I am of course talking about the Umbrella. This most nonsensical contraption holds less credibility than the Olympics being held in China.

What we’re essentially discussing here, is a technological development like no other. This most revered and admired of apparatus will effortlessly ensure that the top half of your body remains moderately dry, whilst your legs and feet are open to the elements – unless of course you are caught in that special rain which falls in that most vertical of manners.

Whilst users of the umbrella seem content in their semi-moist state, they seem completely oblivious to anything happening beyond the perimeter of the device. As a male of the six foot variety, I am left vulnerable to violent blinding, facial gores, and decapitation by the ignorant fuckbags in charge of the umbrella.

It should be taken as no surprise that the two most arse-draggingly tedious sports known to the human race have bred the evolution of the most maddening variation of umbrella. Both Golf and Fishing appear to insist that even in adverse weather, the ‘fun’ can still be found. This is all despite the fact that most people would rather cheesegrate their gooch and drag it through a whole mess of rose bushes.

For some reason, Golfers and Fishermen seem to deem themselves worthy of umbrellas which wouldn’t struggle to keep rain off the Space Shuttle. The worse culprits are the ones who stroll around busy towns brandishing these umbrellas like some kind of fucked up face-slicing weapon.

People get ratty when you swipe the umbrella from their hands whilst clutching your bleeding eyeball…

Comfortably Dumb

2008-07-26T07:27:00.004+01:00

Tapping away at these rather 21st century bluetooth keys, my head is a shed. You'd think I'd be able to come up with a better intro to a blog than describing the fact that I'm typing. You'd think it'd be blindingly obvious wouldn't you? Maybe it is, and maybe because you have been blinded by the obvious, I've put that intro there for your own benefit. Out of the goodness of my own heart! Seriously, I think only a 6ft retarded ginge would ever think to type something on a computer screen for a blind person to see. This paradox is getting out of hand...

I think the first question that would cross any one's mind if they entered the room now would probably have something to do with the kitchen roll hanging out of my right nostril. Oddly enough I've accepted the fact that for some reason, my nose likes to upchuck life juice whenever it deems fit. The question foremost in my mind at the moment is something along the lines of 'Why did I wake up on the sofa?' I think this is easily answered with 'Because I'm a drunken bastard' Upon consideration of my non-existent hang over, I can safely assume I'm still drunk. What a picture of a sound individual this blog paints!

Upon removal of the aforementioned kitchen roll from one's nose, one has been able to unroll it, and create a somewhat cool yet obviously quite messed form of art. It looks like it should be adorning the wall of a lower school classroom... had it not been for the fact that it comprises of blood, nose hairs and bogies. Actually, looking at some of the mouth-breathing alabaster retards this country is raising... never mind - It's a winning combination lets face it.

At 8:00 on a Saturday morning, I can think of better places to be than the land of the living, but for now, let us attempt to work out the discrepancies present in my short term memory. I stumbled drunkenly across York whilst making phone calls to all manner of unlucky people at God-knows what hour of the night. I don't actually remember getting to my friend's house, but logic suggests that I did get here, as I'm sat using their PC. I remember seeing the start of Futurama's "The Beast with a Billion Backs" I would recognise the start of this programme anywhere, as I have seen the first quarter of an hour of this show more times than I can count on one hand. Maybe I should just get the freakin DVD.

The past two weeks have been a mental journey of which I have never experienced the like. I'm not going into ultra detail because lets face it, you don't give a fuck. You're only reading this because you're waiting for me to get angry at someone or something. Bitterness aside, I have placed a new adjective into my vocabulary. This adjective is "Zen". The past two weeks have been a documentable zen buggering out of which I've tumbled remarkably unscathed, physically at least. If you are reading this and connecting this to why I have been an absolutely intolerable arsewpie recently, you'd probably be right to do so. Having said that, sometimes its simpler and more realistic to assume that I'm just an arsewipe. I enjoy it.

A brand new concern of mine, is that at the top of this browser lays another tab, with another website sat snugly in it's midst. This website is the most evil website known to all life in this universe. This website is eBay. A bigger concern is the confirmation of payment sitting in this browser. I have apparently come into possession of a Zvex Fuzz Factory. Damn you Matt Bellamy. Damn you John Fruciante. You're both bastards. Absolutely magnificent bastards!

Now that the inside of my head is growing larger than the outside, I believe I shall stop this deluge of incessant bullshet.

In a bit yo!

Blackout

2008-06-08T22:40:00.002+01:00

As it slices through the gritty rhythm like a knife through butter, the wah-fuelled lead line rattles around my skull. Everything but the beat and my fingers is a blur to me as my imagination takes over every inch of my soul! Every so often the beat changes, and I mercilessly stomp the delay pedal into submitting to the new direction. The only thought my head is concerned with is the next note my fingers might reach for.

Being in the position of having no discernible direction for a piece of music is pure magical excellence. It's akin to being totally in control of losing your mind.

After a few minutes of pouring my insight onto the fretboard, my eye line catches that of the drummer's and we begin bring the rhythmical journey to a close. A peculiar silence fills the practice space as I look over at the vocalist only to be met by the sight of a camera lens, and beyond that, a look of plain astonishment.

Modesty isn't really the word for it, as I realistically don't have much clue what I'm being modest about. The past five minutes are nothing but a blur. I am kindly re-assured that I have reason to be proud of what I have just helped create.

I'm typically fairly nonchalant about my guitar skills. To me, they're fairly average; a view that I've been repeatedly chastised for in the past. You'd think I'd listen wouldn't you?

To say that my musical talent confuses me would be putting rather a fine point on it. When I am in control of it, it generally leads me to a mellow serenity. The difference comes at that almost magical tipping point. The point where the rhythm stops being the beat behind whatever you are playing, and jumps inside you. At this point, I can only describe the feeling as complete cognitive tunnel vision. The only thing in the whole universe at that one point is the sounds being created by the tips of my fingers and possibly the flat of my foot should the fancy take me.

I believe this to be the most powerful drug in the whole world.

Users of this drug are separated into recreational and habitual users, and I am most definitely in possession of a habitual addiction. Finding others with the same addiction requires perseverance, but when they are brought together in the same space, it's only comparable to the definitive overdose.

I'm not going to rehab any time soon.

Dream Brother

2008-06-07T10:34:00.002+01:00

Staring through the thick head of a hangover, I batter the keys into some kind of crazy ordered sentence. It seems to make sense, but I can't be 100% sure. The sultry tones of Mr. Buckley fill the air with a sense of tranquility that eases the fact that my head feels about 12 sizes bigger than it should.

It suddenly dawns on me that whilst also oddly writing in some contrived form of third person, I'm creating what can only be described as a film noir feel to this journal. The part that really confuses me is that at present, I have no direction in which to take this, I just keep adding words in a vain attempt to add enough weight to the journal to make it look like it was worth writing.

Thoughts enter my head along the lines of "who even reads this stuff anyways", but I continue regardless as the writing staves off the ever encroaching thought that I could well still be drunk. Being drunk alongside a mild hangover is unprecedented, but not impossible. I guess the tides gotta turn at some point!

Memories of the previous night begin to enter my head, accompanied by the minor fall and the major lift of what is most probably the most beautifully performed song on my iPod. I link up the dull pain in the fingertips of my left hand to the tight feeling in the muscles of my right forearm.

I remember the events now. My guitar sits propped up against the table with a battered pick slotted between the strings. A snare drum sits atop the speakers which are so pleasantly providing the room with somber tones it so rightly deserves at this point.

Memories of the acoustic jam flood back. Memories which are indeed most pleasing! Everything clicked in the right place; cues were taken on the correct beats, things just slotted together sweetly! I can't help thinking that this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. The ironic thing is, it's been a beautiful relationship since college! Who knew?

The offer of a cup of tea sits perfectly.

Jeff's album begins to wind up, and reminds me that I should put a cap on this incessant ramble at some point.

Consider this a cap.

Was it good for you...?

2008-02-27T07:59:00.002Z

The biggest earthquake for 25 years hit England last night, and I appear to be alone in thinking it was downright bloody cool! Having never experienced an earthquake, one was quite expectedly privy to a certain amount of confusion during the proceedings, but nevertheless, did not run around bitching like the world almost ended when in reality, nothing but a few chimney pots fell off some roofs.

Naturally, the news have taken this and done a bloody marathon with it...

At the time, the newsrooms sat there and told us all a massive pile of the fucking obvious; that an earthquake had happened somewhere in Britain. No shit Sherlock! Realising that the media didn't have a fucking clue what they were doing, I went back to upstairs. It was quite interesting how I managed to find a map showing the epicentre of the earthquake, and how exactly "severe" it was (4.9 on the Richter scale if anyone is bothered) before I eventually went back to sleep. One to Jono, nil to the BBC.

I made the almost fatal mistake of watching a news report about the event this morning, and as if I could predict what was going to happen, the rage levels built. One man spoke of how he immediately thought it was a terrorist attack rather than a much more likely seismological event. I can certainly say that as I was shaken from my sleep, the first thoughts that entered my head were not "Sweet merciful ass-crackers the jihad is upon us!" they were more like "Fuck off I'm trying to sleep.... hang on... what the shit?!" followed by.. "Hehe... awesome..."

What state is the nation in when the first thing anyone ever thinks about in any given situation is terrorists?! I can just see the headlines now...
"Man's hat blows off in terrorist wind attack"

What a crock of shit. This means the terrorists have nigh on won, as the whole world now lives in a perpetual state of 'terror'.

Screw that, the earthquake quite literally rocked my world, and I'm not going to let terrorists claim responsibility for this most unique of experiences in my life.

Miserable Media Mania

2008-01-09T23:38:00.000Z

Those of you of a ~~"healthy"~~ picky disposition should probably stop reading about here...

Still here?

Well don't say you weren't warned...

I can appreciate that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Hell - I'm probably one of the single most opinionated twats I know, but for crying out loud, why must I have to adhere to this fad of looking like a model, and eating healthily forced down my throat?! (Pun very much intended!)

Every corner that I turn, I'm being told that everything I do in life is bad for me in some way or another. Don't drink alcohol, you'll get liver poisoning. Don't eat junk food, you'll get fat. Don't do that, this'll happen. Don't do this, that'll happen. I'm apparently being told to live my life to it's fullest.

I've had enough!

I'm currently living my life, to the best of my knowledge, and to be perfectly honest with you, I'll do whatever the shit I want with it thank you very much! If I feel the need to pour half a bottle of sunflower oil into a pan, and fry just about everything in the kitchen to help get rid of the hangover I gained from drinking excessively the night before, I bloody well will! No amount of would-be-scientists telling me everything that it wrong with the previous sentence will make me stop working towards it's delightfully greasy outcome.

The majority of us are seemingly governed by the perfect little world that companies like MTV has created for us. Endlessly looking in on a foreign world from afar. These companies thrive on a sea of envy and greed. This is made all the more true by the people who live their lives governed by the god damn media!

I know people who will go absolutely out of their way to calm the constantly nagging conscience which tells them that they are fat, or that their tits are too small, or that their nose is crooked, or their teeth aren't quite right. They are fully normal looking human beings with regular weight, regular tits and a regular nose, but they are constantly bludgeoned with this notion that there is something wrong with them because they don't look like the latest Slaggy McStickfigure to grace the magazine page.

It's this kind of media saturation that has helped breed a complete generation of kids with self-esteem issues that, in worst case scenarios, end up destroying their own lives because they don't adhere to the framework set out before them. Screw that I say, I build my own framework. I am a 6 foot ginger kid with big ears. I am a bully's wet dream, but I take it in my stride because I know that I don't give a shit what people think of me!

That is how you make the most of your life!

Grab life by the chuds, chin it to the end of next week, and live that following week catching it up!

Walking in a Winter Wonderland...

2008-01-03T12:58:00.000Z

As you glance out of your bedroom window, your gaze falls upon a most wondrous sight. A brilliant blanket of most magical white snow covers everything as far as the eye can see. You are filled with a warm sense of nostalgia. Your mind takes you back to your childhood when you used to build snowmen in the park and have snowball fights with your mates in the field across the street. You get some breakfast and get ready for work. As you pull your coat on, you begin to look forward to taking the day’s first step into that magical winter wonderland.

You open the door, and the sickening truth hits you in the face like a sledgehammer.

Snow is actually shit!

Snow is wet, cold, horrid, crappy weather that people die in!

With this thought now bludgeoned into your mind by the constant barrage of freezing precipitation hitting your face, you soldier on down the street. You nearly fall arse over tit on a frozen puddle covered in snow whilst narrowly avoiding the now cunningly camouflaged pile of dogshit that little runt from next door decided to leave there the night before. Reaching the zebra crossing at the end of the street, it becomes apparent that as soon as a snowflake even thinks about jumping off its little cloud, the whole country rather ironically goes into complete meltdown. All of a sudden, this most wondrous and advanced work of engineering genius known as the “automobile” apparently isn’t capable of driving at normal speeds anymore. Drivers seem to descend into almost neanderthal states, nose perched on the steering wheel as they trundle along at less than 10mph. Anyone would think we were sat in the middle of the ice age.

It's slowly beginning to dawn on you that the “magic” of snow is a complete myth. Your toes are frozen in your shoes, your ears are frozen to the point of pain. You can’t use your phone without contracting mild frostbite on your fingers, you can’t see where you’re going because you’re being constantly panned in the face with a seemingly non stop barrage of snow. Oh yes, this is a wonderland alright.

Prepare to spend the rest of the day sitting in soggy clothes surrounded by people sneezing and coughing. I guarantee you there will be one absolute twatbag who lives in some completely contrived children’s fantasy world, believing the whole affair to be a downright beautiful one. People like this are specks of shit floating on the human gene pool, and need neutering.

The simple fact is,

snow is shit

Distinct Disillusionment

2007-08-23T23:19:00.000+01:00

Well, I don't know if its my random monthly downer that I always seem to get, or if its just generally me being me, but it's come to my attention in the past few days, that this country is really going to shit!

I'm trying my best to look past the sudden morbid fascination with Princess Diana the whole country appears to be gripped by. The media keep ramming it down my throat at every possible break in programming. So she died 10 years ago... Lots of people died 10 years ago! What ever happened to Rest in Peace?

I read in the news yesterday that a 12 year old boy in Manchester has been charged and taken to court because he threw a cocktail sausage at a 74 year old bloke!

A cocktail sausage!

Hardly likely to cause massive brain trauma and leave the guy in a vegetative state is it!? The police arrested him at his house, bundled him into a police van, took his fingerprints at the station, and detained him in a cell before interviewing him. I'm not saying he should have lobbed the sausage, but c'mon... anyone would think he was a murder suspect! Unless maybe it was a terrorist-threat sausage? You know these crafty terrorists... they'll do anything to up heave western civilisation. Well.. if you believe the media hype anyway.

My Dad detoured to York Station on his way home from work today to photograph the Flying Scotsman which is making it's annual summer trips to and from the coast. He was denied access to the platform without a valid train ticket. The police had set up cordons to create some kind of contrived one way system for passengers. Apparently it's all in the name of some heightened police security malarkey. If I was a terrorist and I had to choose somewhere to make my defiant last stand against the infidels, I sure as hell wouldn't choose York Station. It's hardly up there on the list of things the western world gives a fuck about.

Could be worse though, I could be living in America, The mother of all fucked up countries!

If it's any consolation, next Thursday will mark the anniversary of my second decade on this mess we call Earth. That's right, some of you have actually managed to survive 20 years living amongst a society that harbours one of the world's most cynically miserable bastards!

Visions of Visceral Violence

2007-06-23T18:31:00.001+01:00

Fairly recently in Britain, the video game Manhunt 2 was banned outright. This means it is actually illegal for game vendors to sell it anywhere in the country. Anyone caught selling the game can face up to 6 months in prison, and a fine of up to £20,000 (approximately $40,000). As it is only illegal to sell and not own the game, it is fundamentally possible to purchase a copy from the continent, but all imports of the game face a risk of being seized by HM Customs.

The basic premise of the game is: Your character is blackmailed into killing people in an increasingly brutal manner by an unseen antagonist in order to stay alive and find out exactly what is going on. It involves the player using stealth tactics to achieve their goal, a result of which is the creation of an almost crippling sense of tension. I would like to point out that I played the first Manhunt game for about half an hour and got fairly bored of it, so it's not like this whole argument is a biased opinion based on the fact that I love the game.

The British Board of Film Classification has banned the game on the grounds that "There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.". Now I don't know about you, but if I were to dip my hand into a big basket of first-person-shooters, I'd be very likely to bring back more games than I could physically carry in which the player "casually" shoots the hell out of wave after wave of marauding bad-guys in varying guises. Apparently this is different though. Somehow this doesn't show that guns can be fun. Kind of ironic that in a country with an increasing level of gun violence, the government's "Games teach kids how to murder" policy overlook these matters. Or is it maybe that they were brought up playing Doom and Wolfenstein, and that these games are actually OK.

Another factor that leads to the banning of this game, and near banning of the previous game, is that the game was found in possession of a 17 year old boy in Leicestershire, who attacked and murdered a 14 year old with a hammer and a knife. The parents of the victim blamed the murder on fact that the defendant seemed obsessed with playing the first game. I do not agree with this accusation in the slightest!. It is not the fact that the game depicts graphic violence that gave the boy the incentive to murder, it is the simple fact that - If you have the capacity to murder, you are ever so slightly fucked up in the head, and therefore, will enjoy games with a hint of sickness about them more than anyone else. Thankfully, I believe the court saw it this way too, and this did not stand up. It did however lead to the game nearly being banned as a result of it's use in the trial.

Now the BBFC has got their greasy mitts on Manhunt 2 and have successfully banned it in this country. I believe that this is a step too far with little reasoning behind it. They claim that the game portrays graphic scenes of violence and should therefore not be on sale in Britain. However, I can think of plenty of films that show mindless violence for the sake of violence. Might I bring to light as an example, the three "Saw" films, and to a lesser, but still as gory extent, the "Final Destination" films? These are films that appear to have been written with the simple fact of the justification of the violence inherent in them, yet they are slapped with an 18 certificate, and stocked on the shelves. I believe that Manhunt 2 should also get this treatment, as it is clearly in the same vein. The only difference being, the people enjoying the game are in control of the action instead of just watching it. This fact in itself should warrant it less disturbing compared to the films, because the player has some control over what goes on, and is not forced to simply sit back and watch events unfold. Simply viewing would encourage the close watching of the violence in the films and how it is achieved. Much more dangerous than pressing a button on a controller, enjoying and almost cartoon-realism depiction of a murder, then moving onto the next 3D rendered character. I would also argue that during game play, the player is not in the correct state of mind to pick up any helpful hints on how to murder someone, because of the state of tension that is created by the game itself.

I live in a country where the laws on alcohol for under 18s are governed so well, you pretty much have to get a fake ID if you want to get served before that magical age. If they can police these laws so well, why can't they be as strict about the 18 certificates on movies and games if they believe them to be so "dangerous". This also draws up the argument concerning parents who will buy their children these games because the children are not old enough to buy them themselves. I myself received Grand Theft Auto III for the Playstation way before I was 18, but my parents made an educated decision based on what the game depicts, and who they were buying it for. They know that I am not the sort of person who would rampage around in the game, then pop out to steal myself some cars. You have to wonder if it's the parent's fault for basing the kids on a shoddy upbringing and buying them these games. If the kids don't have the fundamental knowledge of what's right and wrong known as common sense to those of us brought up properly, then how should they be expected to behave when they are faced with these fun things to do on their consoles? I believe how a person reacts to a situation is firmly based on their knowledge and their upbringing. Those who don't know better will do these stupid things. However! When it comes to things like murder, it's written deep down in the very cockles of our souls that taking another life is wrong. Unless, as I mentioned before, they're one can short of a six-pack.

Certificating the game could well prove to be a double edged sword however. On the plus side, the game would be on the shelves and available to the straight minded mature public, but it would also place the game in a certain class of "unobtainable, and therefore cool" things in a teenager's eye. To a juvenile, things like smoking and drinking are considered the height of cool, because they are prohibited in relation to their age group. As soon as you take something away from a child, they want it more than ever. Again, it's a basic human instict to crave what we do not have. Unfortunately there does appear to be no way of blunting one side this particular double edged sword because should the certificate be taken away, the children will play the game regardless. It's a computer game, it's their domain. Certificating it seems to be the best and most realistic course of action, and parents need to take heed of the somewhat obvious warnings about the content of the game.

I would say that the game depicts lessons to be learned about how blackmail and murder are bad things. It sure as hell does not glorify the murders. There is nothing bright and shiny about the atmosphere and environments in the game. If somebody plays this game, cracks a beer, sits back and thinks "Yeah, murdering people in seedy run-down back alleys in the dark is my idea of a great evening" then its generally considered that not all their dogs are barking. I would also wager that their dogs have been somewhat mute for a fair amount of time before they played the game as well. You don't watch a horror movie because you want to be invigorated by the fantastic screenplay, you watch it because you want to get away from your dreary day to day life, spend an hour and a half in another world, free from actual danger, yet somehow full of it at the same time. People like this make the mature decision to watch the movie, or not to watch the movie - and it works exactly the same with computer games. If you don't want to see graphic scenes of violence in a video game, there's a very simple solution. Don't play the videogame! The certificates and the descriptions are there for a reason! You can't claim that you stumbled into paying £40 pounds for the game, accidentally tripped and dropped it into your console, and inadvertently played it for 3 hours straight, and them came across the incredible notion that it contains graphic scenes of violence that shock the sweet bejeezus out of you. You made the decision to play the game, and you have to take the consequences that come with that decision too.

What has happened with Manhunt 2 in Britain (Ireland, and soon to be Italy too) is censorship gone off the chain. People who are old enough to play the certificated games are generally mature enough to know that it is not cool to go copy what goes on in them during their spare time. This is primarily why they play the game in the first place, because it allows a temporary escape from reality. (After all, they are a virtual reality) Another thing that is unfortunately written deep down in the very cockles of our souls is to fear what is different. When all is said and done, all this seems to boil down to the simple old story of the older generation not understanding the younger generation, and vice versa. Discouragingly, this story does not have an ending, and continues to be written as you read this...

One final unfortunate fact, is that the older generation always seems to be the one with more power...

Celebrity Contempt

2007-06-09T17:57:00.000+01:00

I'm sat at home, flicking across channels on the TV, as I quite often do, and I see "Breaking News" flash across the screen in great big bold red letters. My mind automatically starts racing. Has there been another terrorist attack somewhere in the world? Possibly a natural disaster with millions dead and missing? Perhaps the world's top scientists have found a cure for cancer?

No...

Paris Hilton is going back to prison. Now, excuse me if I’m alone in thinking this, but who cares?! Why does it make a breaking news flash that Paris Hilton is going back into prison. As disgusted as I am at the way the justice system seemed to treat her like some form of royalty when she's clearly the worlds biggest stuck-up bint, I don't really think it is worthy of being called breaking news. Its the sort of thing that a newsreader would include in the "And in other news" section.

She went to prison in the first place because she's got more money than brain cells. In all fairness, she's probably got more thumbs than brain cells! Either way, a felony is a felony, no matter who you are. I may have even considered thinking about having a micron of respect for the woman if she'd have just sucked it up and said "Yeah, I fucked up... It happens. I'll pay my penalty"; but no, It’s one rule for her, and another for everyone else. "Oh. I’m sick. I’m ill, I can't go to prison. Oh woe is me.." Get a fucking life woman! You are not what ~~your~~ daddy’s bank account says you are, you are what the way you act says you are. The way you act, Paris Hilton, is like you live every day of your life with your head so far up your own arse, that you can probably lick your own tonsils. She's named after a hotel for feck's sake. I'm sure she wouldn't have anywhere near the same amount of lavish riches had she been called "Milton Keynes Travelodge"! Celebrity status is a fucking joke!

Something else that recently happened in the "world of celebrity" was Victoria Beckham receiving not one, but two awards for "Woman of the year" and "Entrepreneur of the year". Now, you may freely correct me if I’m wrong on this, but exactly what the hell has Mrs Beckham done that would warrant such prestigious awards? Maybe it was her who found the cure for cancer? Maybe she single-handedly rescued 500 people from a burning building? No, she has a clothing line. Like every other snobbishly conceited pop prima Donna under the sun. What made her stand out of the crowd? My theory is they just pulled her name out of a hat full of every other presumptuous sally to ever grace our TV screens. "Here you are Vix, an award for being the lucky one this week"

Screw that shit. The world of celebrity can simply swivel on it for all I care. I'd rather be remembered for who I am rather than how many people know who I am.

____

Now to more down to earth, and altogether more relaxed matters. Whilst surfing the Internet, as I quite often do, I stumbled across a work of art in Liverpool that really brought a smile to my face.

Turning the Place Over by Richard Wilson

Childhood Crushing

2007-05-02T11:45:00.000+01:00

_{This journal will most likely be understood to its fullest extent by those late 80s children of the British type.}

...turns out..

The man is systematically taking my childhood, and wiping it's arse all over it! Let us take a look at these case studies...

Postman Pat

Postman Pat, a happy-go-lucky postman from Yorkshire, spends his days delivering post in his red Royal Mail van; with the companionship of his black & white cat Jess. It was no nonsense pre-school viewing. One memorable episode is the one where a magpie steals someone's shiny ring and our hero has to scale a tree to save the jewellery. Harmless fun!

3 Years ago, the man got hold of Postman Pat. He now has a wife and a kid. What will this lead to?

Logically ... The kid will go off the rails and fall into a bad crowd. After becoming addicted to crack-cocaine and heroine, he will sell Jess for scientific testing to fund his addiction. Pat's wife will become a manic-depressive and Pat will not be able to afford to fund her manic purchases on his Postman's wage. He will become more and more exhausted from working all the overtime he can get to sustain his family and his standard of customer service will suffer. Eventually he will be sacked and forced to sign on at the Greendale Jobcentre, but will remain unemployed because of lack of job opportunities in the small village.

All this because they messed with what was essentially a good, harmless program... They've even toned down Fireman Sam's welsh accent. How is he supposed to say "Great fires of London!" properly now?!

Play Mobil

That’s right, they've even got their greasy mitts on Play Mobil. Whilst in Fenwick’s toy department recently, I came across the revelation that Play Mobil has disappeared up it's own arse with no signs of a return any time soon. Take the construction themed Play Mobil. Its all very good, a crane, a digger, some workmen, but why oh why would you buy your child a Play Mobil set consisting of a Portaloo... just why!

"Happy birthday son... its a toy bog"

No thanks...

Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds was non-stop action. It defined good and evil, taught kids right and wrong and entertained them along the way.

Then along came Jonathan Frakes. What he did with the live action Thunderbirds can only be described as pure sacrilege. Quite how you can have a Thunderbirds movie, with all the principle characters incapacitated, is absolutely beyond me. And what's this?! Brains got laid?! All this is going to do is create false hope for ubergeeks around the world. Seriously though, how can you have Anthony Edwards, actor of such great characters as Nick "Goose" Bradshaw, and Dr. Mark Greene, as a character that is a desecration of the original Brains? Somehow TinTin regressed 10 years and is somehow in possession of crazy voodoo powers like The Hood. Least they had the whiny-bitch character of Alan right.

With the children's programming of today, there's no wonder why kids are becoming obese and falling behind at school. I'd sooner eat myself silly than watch some of the tripe that they force upon kids. Have you ever seen Boobah?! That’s enough to send a child into a state of mental anguish on par with a parental break-up! Those things should be Cert-18! Only for the likes of stoners and LSD addicts to watch, least they'd be able to make sense of them.

And just what the hell is Pocoyo all about?!

I think its safe to say, that the violent 80s cartoons I watched as a child had no lasting effects on me... right?

I plan to take over the world...

2007-04-01T18:09:00.000+01:00

...And I shall use iTunes!

As soon as I plug my iPod in to recharge, up pops good old ~~reliable~~ iTunes to greatly complicate the smooth running of my laptop. This time, however, it's telling me that version 7.1.1 is available for update. Correct me if i'm wrong, but last time I updated iTunes, which was nothing short of about a month ago, nothing appeared to actually update - apart from the number in the "About iTunes" section of the program.

To avoid having to close the "Download Update" (How many directions is that then?!) dialog box every time I come within 5 feet of my laptop holding an iPod, i went ahead and clicked the update button. Because it's a pretty slow kinda sunday, and because I've got nothing better to be doing, I decided I'd actually read the EULA (End User Licence Agreement). How many of you have ever actually read this thing? Its genius I tell you, sheer genius!! Here's a quote from the EULA of iTunes...

_{"You also agree that you will not use these
products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or
production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons."}

Thats right folks, for all of you who were thinking of whipping up a sneaky Thermo-Nuclear device in your potting shed using iTunes, stop in your tracks... Apple has your number!

Another part that caught my attention was this...

_{"Without limiting the foregoing, under no circumstances shall 3Com be held liable for any delay or failure in performance resulting directly or indirectly from acts of nature, forces, or causes beyond its reasonable control, including, without limitation, Internet failures, computer equipment failures, telecommunication equipment failures, other equipment failures, electrical power failures, strikes, labor disputes, riots, insurrections, civil disturbances, shortages of labor or materials, fires, floods, storms, explosions, acts of God, war, governmental actions, orders of domestic or foreign courts or tribunals, non-performance of third parties, or loss of or fluctuations in heat, light, or air conditioning."}

So... short of a guy from Apple turning up on your doorstep and twatting you upside the head with a length of two-be-four, they're pretty much not responsible if the program that they programmed, goes wrong - I like that, total diplomatic immunity! (I know a guy with a south african accent, we get him to say that.. its killer!) There's some pretty specific stuff in there too, for example - 'Air conditioning' gets its own personal mention outside of 'other equipment failures' and 'electrical power failures' This leads me to the conclusion that someone, somewhere once sued the pants off Apple on the grounds that iTunes made their air conditioning fail. No doubt american - that'd never get to court anywhere else.

Also.. what actually comes under the title of "Acts of God"?, and furthermore, should one of these "Acts of God" actually occour, who's God is responsible? There's the Christians, but they've only got the one - its far more likely to be the Hindu's they've got loads, harder to keep an eye on em all y'see! Also.. while all this is going on, do you get Bhuddists sat there keeping themselves to themselves? Why no, you don't, because Apple covered themselves against any kind of religious uprising by claiming they aren't responsible for "Forces of Nature" either. That'll keep Major Tom and his band of Scientologists happy at least.

These EULAs are brilliant in their own stupidity, but I can't fault them, for covering one's ass is the first and foremost business strategy in the book! Even if it is from every angle conceivable and unconceivable!

Laters x

_{P.s. For those skeptics amongst you who saw the date this was written, and promtly fucked off again - Take a look at this, scroll down to section 10 entitled "Export Control", and read away to your heart's content. I shit you not ladies and gentlemen, Apple actually wrote this junk!}

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue...

2007-02-14T11:55:00.000Z

...Today is just Wednesday, How about you?

When someone "Paints the Town Red", its really not supposed to be taken literally. Red heart-shaped... well.. everything adorns pretty much all of downtown York, and this can only mean one thing. Its February, its nearly the 14th, Oh yes ladies and gentlemen, its St Valentine's Day, the single most pointless act of pointlessness since Golf. Why it is that card companies need to set one day a year where they can pretty much line their back pockets with the mental anguish of millions is beyond me.

Single people feel left out, and people in a relationship feel some kind of unspoken obligation to do/buy something special for their partner. If you are in a relationship wherein you need to have one day a year set aside to do something for your partner, then I really do grieve for the future of it. Seriously, to make it special... don't do whatever it is on Valentine's Day. How is it supposed to seem "special", when every other couple on the planet (and god forbid elsewhere) are also having a "special night"?

You may mistake it for the desperate rantings for a poor single kid, but mistake all you want; I couldn't care less about Valentine's Day. (As much as this journal contradicts that notion)

St. Valentine was a Roman Martyr that had about as much to do with flying pampers-ridden sprogs as the Pope does with downhill mountain biking¹. Being a martyr, it means he was most likely "Bludgeoned to shit by huge fucking rocks"², and most probably not in the name of people giving sick-making fluffy clap trap to their partners. Oh no, the culprit of that travesty most likely goes to one "Geoffrey Chaucer" who, even though is credited as being the father of English Literature, for reasons beyond my knowledge; decided to use our poor friend Mr Valentine as a scapegoat for vomit-inducing romantic bilge. Thus, the tradition of wasting money on plasticy mass-produced rubbish was born. (Eventually)

Today is Wednesday the 14th of February. Much the same as Wednesday the 7th of February, and to the best of my knowledge at the time, it is going to be pretty similar to Wednesday the 21st of February.

How's about this for a journal ending, you may interpret this how you will, but perhaps you should take a leaf out of the Beautiful South's book, and "Carry on regardless!"

__________

^{P.s. Upon reading this, a few people have claimed me to be wrong and that St. Valentine's day is a Pagan festival.

Actually it's not, There are many writings that point towards the Pagan festival of "Lupercalia", which was on Feb 15th, being superceded by the Roman "Feast of St. Valentine" on the 14th. However, the more commonly accepted theory is that the traditions of the modern day Valentine's Day that we know of, were first conceived in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Parliament of Foules"
__________

1. - Would be fun to see though wouldn't it?
2. - Thank you Kevin Smith for your wonderful way with words!}

I'm Not Crazy Guv...

2006-12-15T10:47:00.000Z

...Honest!

More governmental research has been dug up which strongly supports my "Theory of Toilet Relativity"

Simply put, the theory states that time inside the bathroom will always appear to move faster than that experienced by anyone outside the bathroom. This is most apparent to people whose bladders are nearing bursting point and are denied entry to said bathroom due to it being occupied.

From reading through the governments notes on their research into this phenomenon, banging on the door and shouting does not appear to help. It is apparent that this course of action runs the risk of infuriating the occupier of the bathroom, and in a couple of observations, the desperate party lost bladder concentration when knocking and shouting. The outcome was, needless to say, disastrous. This does however appear to be the worst case scenario.

Funding into the research was unfortunately pulled, but in their time on the project, scientists speculated that the differences in experiences was something to do with the substantial build up of RF energy recorded on the inside of the bathroom. RF energy, or Relaxation Field Energy, is more prominent in places of high quiescence. Pronounced levels of this energy can also be measured in bedrooms on a morning. Especially if the occupant has to be somewhere important.

Laters x

Just because you're not paranoid...

2006-09-17T16:43:00.000+01:00

...Doesn't mean they're not out to get you!

Screw pleasantries,

If I don't get this rant out I'll probably get some kinda rage-related internal dilation and plaster the walls with my very valued, yet somewhat abused internal organs.

Rant: Virus Software

I have two words that implore you to avoid when you are perusing the vastness of the net for software to use as a deterrent to "viruses". (I use the term virus in the loosest way possible, as I believe viruses are only there as a means for anti-virus software to exist, and vice-versa)

These words are "Zone" and "Alarm"

This program is one of, if not the most paranoid program I've ever seen! As soon as I logged onto the internet after it had been installed, I was greeted with what seemed like an endless flow of pop up messages telling me that certain programs were trying to access the internet. This is fair enough I guess, It'll build up a list of trusted programs eventually and it'll calm down, but I did get the feeling I wouldn't be able to take a shit without toilet.exe needing permission to access flush.dat.

Isn't this thing supposed to prevent pop ups?!

Another thing I noticed is that none of the animated gifs in my browser were actually animating...

...at all!

You may feel this is not much of a problem, but when you are one who creates the things, you would actually benefit from being able to see them! Turns out the problem is that ZoneAlarm lumps all animated gifs under the heading of "advert" Its quite fun that we are now seeing racism and discrimination between programs and file types! I am waiting with great excitement for Martin_Luther.kng to make some kind of monumental speech to end this nonsense once and for all.

Heading on over to Myspace to check out my "friends" with all their photos of themselves in their bathroom mirrors, I was greeted with not being able to see any of them! Not so much of a tragedy, but still evidence of the program taking liberties.

Also, it seems every website that has photos on it is automatically going to be porn.. I mean come on! Its obvious every photo on the internet involves lesbians somehow! I'm quite surprised I'm allowed to use blogger.com, after all, I could so easily be writing naughty words! Gasp Shock Horror! I hate the fact that because I'm nineteen, because I still have that beautiful four letter word "teen" cemented firmly on my age, I'm immediately lumped in with all the 'too-horny-for-their-own-good' thirteen year olds looking for porn all day. For god's sake, porn works like a catch-22 anyway. When you aren't old enough to buy it, its seen as the most sacred of all 'reading' materials, yet when you become old enough to legally obtain it, you can't see any logical reason behind it's sheer existence. Its things like this in the world, things that are actually brilliant in their unmitigated logic, that keep me just about smiling through.

To top off the annoyance of this most wonderful of programs, it likes to tell me that the chat window I have open in MSN is not encrypted because the person I'm talking to is not protected by "IM security" It does this via the chat window... Like I could actually care less?! When I disable IM monitoring, it then tells me that "IM monitoring is disabled"

...Yes... I know... After all.. I disabled it!

If anyone tries to send any kind of emoticon to me, all I see is a blank space where it should be... What possible conceivable reason could there possibly be for wanting to block emoticons on MSN messenger?! I can't see display pictures either. Maybe ZoneAlarm is some kinda fascist regime trying to stop out all traces of joy and humour in the world before they overthrow the whole planet. (although it looks pretty much like they've managed already)

It even had the audacity to assume I needed my internet cache cleaning out. Maybe for one minute it could have stopped to think that maybe I wanted the computer to remember the passwords to every different bloody username I have in every one of the farthest reaches of the internet. If I need something doing, I'll ask, and I sure as hell wouldn't ask ZoneAlarm to do it.

By checking out the settings of this program, you'd think the whole world was made up of viruses, hackers and malicious code that is out to get you! So much so that it blocks even your closest friends from pretty much knowing you still exist. What a brilliant invention by those guys at ZoneLabs.. I applaud you for giving people yet another way to screw their computers over once and for all.

You just can't win.

As I sit here writing this, there's one woman in London, who has been handed her life-long dream on a plate. She has won the opportunity to be in a west-end production of "The Sound of Music", not because she attended years of drama school, but because she wasn't voted out of a "reality TV show" (I use the term "reality" in the loosest way possible, as these progams ain't like any reality I've ever seen!)

Rant: Reality TV

Fundamentally, all I can really say is.. What the hell?! It seems now-a-days, nothing can be done without the whole country deciding via text message.

First came Big Brother, a novel idea.. In the sense that it was better as a novel!

Big Brother...

just..

NO!

I simply cannot find anything interesting about watching a bunch of G.C.S.E. failures sit around all day and pick their noses, arses, nits, and each other. What's more, just by being on the program, they reach some level of celebrity where they are considered a celebrity just because they are a celebrity. How in the hell does that ever make sense!? The only way you could get me to watch Big Brother is if they sealed the house and slowly filled it with chlorine gas over a matter of hours. Now that's quality viewing! I predict the dumbass blondes would go first, after all, they've got about as much going for them as a canary.

Then came Pop Idol...

Some people need to take a step back and realise they really are actually inhumanly bad at singing. The amount of money flying round backstage at that place amid cries of "There, I told you I wouldn't chicken out, where's my ÃÂ£20" must be phenomenal. What's more, what exactly did that program do for the winner? Gareth "give me the sympathy vote because I stutter" Gates. Where the hell is that gap-toothed lil runt now? Probably sat in a bar somewhere drowning his sorrows in a pint of Orange Juice.

Just when you thought it could get no worse, came along Strictly Bori... Sorry, Ballroom..Where viewers vote on who's the worst dancer. And my God they've strung this one out! One series has but finished when they are advertising the new one. Yet more reasons why Saturday nights are better spent in the pub with friends What's next? Strictly Ballroom Breakdancing?!

Rock School was just so cringeworthy it was unbelievable. I cannot believe the once mighty Gene Simmons lowered himself to this kind of pre-pubescent angst filled codswallop. (such a brilliant word!) From what I saw in that program, it was all about 13 year old kids bitching because they couldn't all play lead guitar. And what ever happened to making your own way? That's where you learn how to deal with the shit you'll encounter in a band.

You know what, I'm glad he was thrown in at the deep end, its kids like that who annoy me. Kids who are so up their own arses they'd need a perspex stomach to see where they are going. One day he's going to be slayed by an audience and he's not going to know what hit him! (assuming the audience isn't full of whiny 14 year old girls like any McFly 'gig' you ever have the mis-fortune to witness)

The only logical next step I can see is "General Election: Prime Minister Idol". Basically, viewers vote off the people they don't want to run the country, and just like any other reality TV show, the winners will be forgotten about a month later.

I really hope they start making decent TV again one day, otherwise they've pretty much lost me as a fan of telly.

In other news, the insurance claim for the stolen goods has been sent off. In a way, being robbed is kinda good. I was told to make a list of PS2 games to replace the one's I'd had nicked. The brilliant thing is, they didn't have to be the exact same ones, so I've got me a shedload of new PS2 games coming my way!

That'll do me for this post me-reckons.

As usual, I shall leave you with a riddle to resolve...

Where do itches go when you scratch them? ¹

Laters x

¹ In reply to your latest riddle, once an itch has been scratched, it submerges deeper into your body and tunnels it's way around, surfacing sometimes minutes, sometimes hours later in another part of your body. After the remedy of scratching is employed by the itchee, the process is repeated. I believe all humans are born with one itch inside their body. That same itch darts around for our entire lifespan. Then we die.
- Jonny Birkin

In This World Gone Mad...

2006-09-08T13:59:00.000+01:00

...We won't spank the Monkey, the Monkey will spank us!

Its amazing, I've actually had an uneventful week. Nothing has happened! Probably due to me getting back into the routine of waking up at the crack of noon and maybe making it downstairs by 3pm.

I spent most of the week trying to get an idea to work in Photoshop, and discovered that it isn't actually a WYSIWYG program. 'What You See' isn't necessarily 'What You Get'... Or maybe my printer is like the drunken best friend of my PC, and its just taking the piss.

I also discovered this week, that I may indeed have the power of seeing the future. In the field of consumer home entertainment anyway. Had you asked me last week if the PlayStation 3 would make it's first deadline, I would have simply replied with "Of course not, it'll be put back to about March 2007"

Lo and behold! Sony announced the release date of their latest games console is to be put forward to March 2007.

Spooky stuffs!

Anyway, here's my prediction for the future of handheld games consoles.

Back at the start of 1992, Sony introduced a "revolutionary" new media storage device known as "MiniDisc". The MiniDisc was popular for a short while, and albums were even available on them. However, it wasn't a replacement for the perfectly viable Compact Disc, so people continued to buy their albums on CD. Much like their Betamax tapes 17 years earlier, popularity of the MiniDisc in the consumer eye dwindled, and is now non-existent. MiniDisc is still a very useful storage medium for recording music due to its almost 'hard-drive' like properties.

Anyway, Sony learned the hard way that its not too easy to introduce a whole new way of doing things across the board. Nintendo seemed to do okay with their smaller sized GameCube discs, but that is because it was only used in the gaming industry. About the GameCube discs, the reasoning behind them seemed a little flawed... Supposedly the smaller discs would stop piracy of the GameCube games. It may just be me, but if the laser in the console can read it, then I'm sure its possible to copy it.

I believe Sony realised this when designing the PSP, creating a dedicated system to read their 'new fangled' media type. This is the way forward... Or is it?

Sony have seemingly hit the nail on the head with their UMD's. Many movie companies have realised the potential of being able to watch movies on the move, and have subsequently released countless numbers of films on the format. Shoppers are literally spoilt for choice as far as games are concerned.

But...

What happens when Microsoft step into the world of hand-held consoles? We've seen it before with the X-box, and how it was Sony's main rival to their PlayStation 2. The X-box, for me, was the winner between the two consoles. Offering better graphics, four controller ports from the outset (None of this multi-tap bollocks) and a built in hard drive as standard, it definitely gets the votes. (Yet I still have no X-Brick.. its main shortcoming being the sheer size of the unit) Sony may yet have the upper hand on the X-Box 360, that's still to be determined.

My theory is that Microsoft will create a portable gaming device that will use discs similar to the GameCube. Because of this, the games will be easily copyable using PC's. PC's that run Microsoft Windows. This means sales will rise, not only in the new game console's section of Microsoft, but also in the founding 'Windows section'. Not only will this pad out Mr Gates' already bulging back pocket, but will undercut the sales of Sony's UMD orientated PSP console. This is because Mr and Mr Average Gamer won't pay stupid prices for games when they can get them on the cheap. Microsoft will be making profit by seemingly making a loss, and Sony will see themselves back in the winter of 1992, staring at a seemingly good idea that was unfortunately put to waste, again.

Nintendo will no doubt show their face with yet another hand held system, but people can only have so much of Italian-American plumbers and every anime game under the sun. I'll give it to them though, they pretty much patented the idea of hand held devices.

Long live the old school Game Boy... Never before had Tetris reached the masses so freely!

To think, all that was spawned by a trip to Gamestation to buy some Ps1 games. Buy one get one free.. Can't go wrong really.

Which brings me onto my next topic of rant...

Rant : The General Public

This one's a pretty damn wide rant, but, the general public really yanks my crank!

First of all, after working at Argos behind the counter for four years, I've gained new empathy for anyone who has to spend all day dealing with the public. They can be the rudest, most obnoxious group of people anyone should have the mis-fortune to deal with. Speaking purely from a customer service desk point of view, my first point about people is that more often than not they want something for nothing.

One customer that stands out in my mind is one that was trying to return a clearly used microwave. Complete with grease and what looked like egg on the inside. (Obviously seen one too many episodes of Braniac) Apparently the microwave was like that when they bought it, and they'd never used it. Quite conveniently, they'd bought it at another Argos store. All of a sudden, it was my fault that I couldn't refund this unmistakably sub-standard microwave. Once they'd spoken to the manager and been told exactly the same by him, they accepted that they weren't going to be able to bully their way into a refund.

Also, just walking down the street, I often lose count of the amount of times I'm hit with some woman's handbag whilst she discusses "the drapes in Clara's back room" on her mobile phone, or almost lose my eyesight to some knitted tank-top wearing tosser with a golf umbrella.

Even on a clear day!! And no-one needs an umbrella that big, not even Hurley from Lost!

People walk into you because you must get out of their way. Listen, if you can't walk around someone at your age, you shouldn't be let out of the house.

Should you finally make it through the masses of unpleasantness and get to a street cafe, you sit down and try to relax - what should you find but someone's cigarette fumes drifting across your table. Oh happy day, how about a little lung cancer with your coffee sir?

Unfortunately, no matter how much I rant, people will still be bastards... its the Human psyche. You could argue I'm being exactly the same by ranting about it. You just can't win.

I'll leave you with this puzzlement to ponder...

How do stones know how to get into shoes, but never how to get out?

Laters x

Good Morning Starshine...

2006-09-02T14:54:00.000+01:00

...The Earth Says Hello!!

Crack Pot Theory #2

In addition to the government's plasto-teleportation technology, tax-payer's money has also been spent on implanting electrical cable with "learning" capabilities. At the time of manufacture, cables are programmed with a massive database of different knots. When in the "field" the cable uses this knowledge to interact with fellow members of the cable family. No matter how neat a user leaves the cable, as soon as the user turns their back, the cables will knot themselves. Quite often in simply impossible ways that would require one end of the cable to be unplugged.

No documented evidence exists of the knotting process, but many accounts of the insanity that goes hand-in-hand with the un-knotting procedure exist. Some believe the cables implement some form of signal jamming technology to block anyone trying to record the knotting process. Others however, have shunned this idea, comparing it to mere paranoid speculation. Needless to say - this is yet another of the government's cover-ups that needs to be more widely documented. Keep your eyes peeled. (how painful does that sound though!)

I'll leave you with another conundrum to consider...

"They get on like a house on fire..."

How many houses on fire have you struck up a meaningful relationship with?!

Laters x

Lions And Tigers And Bears...

2006-08-25T12:06:00.000+01:00

...Hell yeah!!

Whilst we're on the subject of stupidity... What the hell is up with cyclists these days?!

Rant : Cyclists

Right, first off - this is not a rant against all cyclists, because I am one. Well, used to be one - until my bike decided it'd had enough with life after the 30 mile bike ride. Anyway, this is a rant against those cyclists that feel that they follow a different highway code to everyone else on the roads! For instance, there's a road from my house to the next lil village down. Its quite a busy road, but its also quite short, so it is possible for people to use the footpaths there to walk the distance. There have been many occasions where I have been shouted at, usually by a rider who is considerably older than me, and should take only the smallest amount of their dwindling common sense to tell them they are in the wrong. More often than not, I'm verbally abused because I am in the cyclist's way on the footpath... The clue's in the name dingus! And its not just on backroads they do it either.
I can been walking through the middle of town, and some prickledick on a bike will fly past thinking he's Lance Armstrong himself, giving me an inch of leeway tops. Sometimes my arm does get a tendency to spasm right as the cyclist is next to me... I'm not sure if that's a medical condition. Maybe I should get it checked out?... nah!
What is quite fun to do is if there is a cyclist on the path coming towards you, play chicken with them. Its made a slight bit easier if you are with a friend. Spread yourselves out across the path. Its not uncommon that they will continue to cycle at you, refusing to move because you cannot possibly defy them as the measly pedestrian you are. The best part comes when you stand your ground and they have to swerve at the last minute. Me an my dad turfed a rather chavish guy on a bike into a hedge this way. Hours of mirth to be had!
Another thing that I can't seem to fathom about cyclists is their apparent colourblindness. Seemingly traffic lights don't apply to bikes. What's more, if the light is red and they do happen to see it - then its quite scarily accepted for a cyclist to mount the pavement with blatant disregard for pedestrians. Now, if the cyclist dismounts when they do this, there's no feasible problem... But I've hardly ever seen it!
Finally, why do cyclists on racing bikes feel the need to dress up like a day-glo sperm? What's it realistically going to do, get you to work that extra minute faster?! - All it really does is make you look like a prick!

I shall leave you with a point to ponder...

If a bus stops at a bus station, and a train stops at a train station... What happens at a work station?

Laters x

What's That Lassie?!...

2006-08-19T13:34:00.000+01:00

...Little Timmy's fallen down the well?!

Bollocks to him I say, it was clearly signposted!

Rant: Public Transport

Why is it so hard to get places these days?! I decided to get the bus to the station, even though I know full well its quicker to walk because of the amazing traffic in York. I was told I couldn't get a return ticket to the station because it was cheaper to get two singles, which is fair enough, I'm not disputing the fact that its cheaper. However, the single on the way there cost me £1, the single on the way back, the same distance Cost me £1:50. Oh, 50p I hear you cry? Its not the point, I can't stand the fact that every bus driver in York has their own idea of what the fares are! And the busses themselves! Would it really cost that much extra to air-condition these bad-boys?

Enough about the buses themselves, its the strange code of practice people have on busses I worry about, and I'm guilty of it too. You get on the bus, and everyone is sat in their own seat. If there's no empty double seats, your brain goes into melt down! Do you sit next to the crinkly old person who looks like they could shuffle off the mortal coil at any given moment? Do you sit next to the hot chick without worrying about if you need a shower or not? or do you dare venture up to the back of the bus... into chav territory, complete with "Gav 4 Kezza 4eva!" graffiti and most probably a few hypodermics here and there? Suddenly you think "How far is it to my stop?, Could I stand all the way?!".Then if you do decide to stand all the way, you get an inkling sense of paranoia as every person on the bus is seemingly looking at you. All that's happened is you are at the front of the bus, and that also happens to be the way all the seats face. But the inkling is still there!

Then there's the whole issue of standing up to let older passengers sit down. Now, I am a good citizen, I let old folks have a seat on the bus if there's no-where to sit. At least I did till I offered one old woman my seat and I was attacked with her walking stick and called a "Cheeky young beggar!" - You just can't win can you?! Although, I did feel a little better when I sat back down and the guy next to me muttered "Sour old bitch"

Having eventually reached the station, I strolled across the road and gave a big wave to the jolly ol' big issue seller who's always there.. He's a legend!
Standing in the queue for the tickets, I nearly managed the whole of Black Holes & Revelations by Muse on my iPod. Got to about the 9th out of 11 tracks.. What does that say about the commitment to customers that G.N.E.R. have?!

Turns out - www.nationalrail.co.uk is the biggest pile of crap this side of the pennines. They quoted the cheapest way for me to reach London for a day as being £49 for a return with a railcard. I managed to get two singles (there and back.. I checked) without a railcard for £48! That price knocked the hatred for bus travel straight outta my short term memory! Turns out trains ain't that bad after all.

As soon as I got back onto the bus that was waiting outside the station (Which for some reason didn't drive off when I was within two metres of it) my iPod froze up, and is still frozen up as we speak (read). This brought my hatred for bus travel firmly back into my short term memory!

That'll just about do it for this post ah reckon...

I shall leave you again with another breaking news story..

Two ships have just been reported as having collided in the Atlantic. The first ship was painted red, the other blue. Reports are coming in that the survivors were marooned.

Laters x

Jono's Blog...

2006-08-13T20:43:00.000+01:00

...Supplemental.

Stardate, ... umm... August I guess.

Progress report: The Produce Accelerator

Preliminary construction completed, however, field tests are still yet to be carried out. (rather rightly named because they are tests in a field) The secondary project of a home-made ~~flamethrower~~ 'fuel-injected patio heater' is still in the planning stages. A trip to B&Q/Wickes is definitely in order.

As of 3:00pm today, my holiday officially started. I am the soul inhabitant of the house for a whole fortnight! I love the independence, and the lack of hormonal brattage running around in a hissy rage. Its also the best holiday I could wish for, two weeks away from my family beats the living potatoes outta any luxury beach resort any day!

Crack Pot Theory #1

There's a secret government organisation that has created a plastic with teleportation capabilities.

...No, really - hear me out!

What do you think they use to make those bic biro's from?!

Ah-ha!... See!

When you put your pen down, it's programmed to wait until you are not looking, then it teleports to down the back of the nearest sofa. You will never see this occur, because it uses state-of-the-art plasto-teleportation technology, but it happens none-the-less.

The government have also been working on implementing this new technology into guitar picks. It is a tricky procedure because of the size of the pick, but they have somehow managed it. Picks are disappearing left right and centre. Whenever the guitarist's back is turned, the pick utilizes it's inbuilt programming, and is gone. However, unlike the pens, the picks are never found again. This leads me to the conclusion that they to teleport to another dimension. The government have never made an official statement on this matter, but a number of scientists have traced it to a bug in the programming of the picks.

We must keep a close eye on this ever present, and alarming phenomena, as it is becoming increasingly more-common!

On that note, I feel I should give the psychiatrists a rest and head off.

I leave you with news that police have been following a magic tractor driving through the back roads of central England, they lost the tractor when it turned into a field.

Laters x

We Roll Tonight...

2006-08-01T09:42:00.000+01:00

...To the guitar bite!

Its dangerous when me Dave and his brother get together. We're now in the process of designing and constructing a propane powered ~~spud cannon~~ "produce accelerator". Ah yes, Testosterone, the difference between thinking that's a dumb idea, and blowing one's limbs off for the sheer jolly of it! If the posts in this blog abruptly come to a halt in the future, its because its really hard to type with stumps, and I haven't received my typing sticks yet.

Just this morning, I was watching Kerrang and Scuzz because that's the kinda rock god I am. And I found myself sitting there becoming more and more annoyed with people trying to sell me car/house/life/pet/"whatever else its possible to insure" insurance, or flog me overpriced annoying ringtones.

Rant : TV Adverts

Dear God! Who in their right mind got paid to tell elephant.co.uk that if they stuck a guy in a huge elephant suit, it wouldn't be the most annoying thing this side of the smiley central adverts that are everywhere on the internet. Now, believe it or not, I actually have a lot of respect for the guy. His job is to come up with ideas for adverts that stick in people's minds, and he's done just that. I mean, I remembered exactly the company, and the website didn't I. Then there's Esure... Again with the annoying factor that is through the roof. I find it quite amusing how when everyone latched onto Michael Winner's catchphrase "Calm down dear, its a television commercial" they actually made more and kept the catchphrase. They obviously didn't realise that people were using the catchphrase to mock the company. Oh well, I guess even bad publicity is still publicity. I would love one day for an insurance advert to stick in my head, not because it is the most annoying thing on the whole damn planet, but because it is actually a really clever advert. (I'm not even gonna go into how much I would love to kill Sheila and slash all of her wheels!)

I would like to take this time to mention the Honda adverts, most notably "The Cog". This advert is a piece of advertising and film making genius!

If you haven't seen it, it basically consists of various parts of a Honda Accord laid out to form a domino effect of actions that ultimately results in the name of the car appearing next to it. What's even more astonishing is that it involves only one piece of CGI, and that is to merge together two different takes. (The actual seam is the point where the exhaust back-box, or muffler for you yanks, rolls) The only reason there are two different takes is because the studio simply was not big enough to fit the whole contraption in. Everything happens for real and the viewer is genuinely engrossed. Its times when you are writing an acclaiming review of a car advert that you think there is something wrong with the world.

Anyway, I'm getting slightly off topic. The other thing that annoys me about the adverts that, incidentally you only ever seem to see on music channels, is the mobile ringtone/wallpaper/"god-knows what other crap they've come up with to charge us through the nose for" adverts. These adverts with the small print at the bottom that says things like "£9 per week, minimum term four months" Its just these little crappy ways of cheating young kids who don't read the small print out of, quite frankly, too much money that get to me.What's more is, if you have a phone that can deal with these kind of downloads etc, then you will most probably have the ability to connect it to your PC, where you can put all the crap you want on your phone, and for no charge! Yet people are obviously still swayed by the flashing lights and bright colours. (Maybe there's some subliminal thing goin on there) because these companies are still going!

But no matter what I say about any of them, the adverts work, because they are in my head - andthat's what annoys me most! It must be in breach of my human rights or something! Its all a conspiracy anyway...Which leads me nicely onto the last movie I watched.

V for Vendetta

Oh man!, this is such a good film! Its based on a Graphic Novel from the 1980's and delves into what was considered as science-fiction then, but is scarily science-fact now! The fact that no matter where you go, you are being caught on some kind of CCTV camera system, or having your where abouts logged etc. It also taps into a kinda British totalitarian society that I last saw in Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Its quite a pliable subject matter, and when you have the same directors as The Matrix, you know its going to be well done! I won't go too much into storyline, because its great to let it fold out infront of you as you watch, so i'll just ask you to watch it.

I'd better wrap it up there methinks, I have got nice and carried away again! I'll leave you with the joke that made me laugh the most last week.

The toilet at the police station has been stolen, detectives have nothing to go on.

Whats even more sad than that joke is the fact that I was the one telling it when I laughed.

Laters x

Hi, my name's Jono...

2006-07-21T08:26:00.000+01:00

...And I'm an alcoholic!

First things first, when I see a sign next to a button that says do not press, two thoughts run through my mind.

Why put a button there if its not supposed to be pressed
What happens if I press this...

That'll leave you guessing...

Rant : Indie Music

No matter what anyone says to me, I simply refuse to be entertained by this somewhat recent influx of cardigan-wearing fruits that play simply the most bland music known to man.

There are rules to conform to if you want to be in an Indie band

You need to have stupid hair. I'm talking really stupid, and believe me - I know what stupid hair is! To be "Indie", you need hair that covers your ears, but goes no further. A fringe that looks like its trying to be one of those emo fringes, but it's mum just won't let it, and it needs to look like a ball on your head. Gay looking curls are a bonus.
If you wear corduroys, and a shirt with a knitted tank top over it, you are more than qualified.
You need to be able to see your belt buckle at least half a foot underneath your guitar when playing it.
If you are a drummer, you are allowed no more than a Snare, Hi-Hat, and Kick. You are allowed a Tom at a stretch, but strictly no more than one. Having drum fills that incorporate more than one Tom would make the songs too interesting to qualify for "Indie"
All Cow-bells/tambourine are to be played by the lead singer not the drummer.
Backing singers that hum tunes are a must.
Make sure you sing with a definable British accent, nothing else will work.
Write songs that have no meaning behind them, they are just songs because Jeff made up a tune on his guitar, and Terry (who's only the singer because he can't play an instrument) made up a line of words with the correct syllables to fit said tune.
Dis-jointed clean power-chords will make up the majority of your songs
Try to fit at least one dead stop into each song, filling the gap with accapella.

What really pisses me off about "Indie" music, is that it shouldn't even be a genre of music anyway. Its a basdardisation of "independent Artists", meaning that they are bands that are not signed up to one of the "Big Four" record companies (Sony, EMI, Warner, and Universal) By this logic, Guns n' Roses could be considered "Indie" because they are on Geffen Records. I'm sure if you told Axl Rose that, he would actually remove parts of your anatomy and play sports of his choice with them.

The downside to this point, is that if Indie is not a genre of its own, then that means the bands full of soap-dodging college boys have to be put into proper genres of interesting music. So they can keep their "Indie" label, and I will quiet happily continue to hate it with a passion!

Okay, breathe Jono..

Right..

I'll leave you with this conundrum to consider.

Who is Larry, and what's he got to be so happy about anyway?!

Laters x

Lightbulbs though...

2006-07-17T20:12:00.000+01:00

...Seriously!

Hah, I don't know either.. Its things like this that my tiny mind likes to create when I feed it enough alcohol!

The day started pretty much like every other Sunday, I woke up. Unlike any other Sunday however, the sole intention of today's events was to go see Superman Returns!

First of all though, I need to share with you the sheer awe, power, might and downright beauty that is the Weight Watchers Arch Enemy, or W.W.A.E for short (whey!!!) Fundamentally, its a coronary in food form. What follows is the recipe for what will undoubtedly change you life forever... If not your cholesterol level!

Begin as you do with all fry-ups. Oil, pan, no nonsense!
Whack your desired amount of bacon into the pan. For the sake of this demonstration, and to keep burns to a minimum, we'll go with two rashers.
Grab yourself a slice of bread and slice it into three strips. Lay them in the pan around the bacon in a trimangular pattern.
Fry that mess up for a while, then pour in some whisked up eggs to further the whole vomit look!
Now comes the fun part... You gotta take the sizzling mess you've created so far, and flip its ass over
Try and flip it again.. Because you most probably won't have done it first time (unless you are smart and use two fishslices ... Then all I can say is fair play to you!)
Fry that side for a bit, then serve.

Serving instructions... douse heavily in Tomato/HP/Barbecue sauce/a nice big dollop of hellman's mayonnaise (or a little squirt if you're that way inclined) then happily chow down!

Now if its done right, you should be able to feel your heart begin to struggle with the whole 'pumping blood around your body' thing that it usually so eloquently does.

Anyways, Stay tuned, and remember... Stay tuned!

Laters x