Tricky, yes?

2008 says hi.

2008-12-29T14:03:00.003Z

Poor neglected blog. Sitting here feeling unfulfilled and and a failure like a mother who gave her career, and her kids turned out to be shit.

One day you will be used again. One day shall you see light of day at the top of people's 'Updated blogs' list, something that every blog yearns for; attention, attention, I have new things on me.

And so the year is going to end with a post on this blog to make it seem active, while in reality Tricky, yes has been dying slowly for about 3 months now. It needs some urgent care and attention, care and attention which I really hope I can give to it but probably won't, as I am distracted by my other blog project, which seemed to be forgotten over Christmas.

Never fear though, for the New Year brings resolutions which must be kept to or the whole world will go tits up; dogs will be eaten by kittens, chewing gum will become currency and The Feeling will actually become good.

So here's to 2009.

What say ye?

Slight hiatus...

2008-11-12T20:32:00.001Z

There's been a dawdling by me in updating this blog.

It will remains irregular from now on as most efforts have been diverted to She Bangs The Eardrums, as well as uni magazine and radio station. The new music blog site is in it's infancy but give it a look, it will go from strength to strength over the next few months.

I will not forget this blog though and it will be updated here and there when I want to post about something non-media related. Or just want to rant.

P.S You look grand today.

WWWWWday #3 - Marnie Stern

2008-10-22T13:59:00.004+01:00

Who: Marnie Stern

What: Female solo artist with guitar with a technical nous.

Where: New York, USA

Why: Smart lyrics, smart guitar skills (she's a fan of the 'finger tap') and boy can she shred. That last phrase sounds a teensy bit odd. I hate generalising with a passion, but in general, shredding skills are more evident amongst the male music population (I'm not saying females can't, but there isn't as much evidence about, that's all). But Miss Stern has the skills to rival some of the best.

Songwise, Transformer stands out from her latest release. Quick, heavy and yet exuding something that resembles bubbly with ease, while Ruler and Vault also stand out, the latter especially for its ability to turn something dull, tried and tested into a rallying call that'll stick with you.

Variety fans, look away now. Marnie exhibits her evident guitar skills. A lot. And the overall album could have been better if she'd put the guitar down for maybe one or two of them. But this is a solitary drawback. And you'll most likely be drawn in by her talent you won't even notice

When: Well, if you live in the US, Marnie's currently on tour there, you lucky lucky people. No news on live dates for Ol' Blighty though.

Her new album This Is It And I Am It And You Are It And So Is That And He Is It And She Is It And It Is It And That Is That is out now.

Rating: Keeps Hunger locked up 'til lunch using its layer upon layer of vocal talent and guitar skills.

(If I'm going to do a Shreddies comparison, I am not going to reference those blasted nanas...)

Marnie Stern on myspace

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been lax lately with the blog, which I apologise for. Side projects and such have been getting in the way. Normal service has now resumed.

In other news, Those Dancing Days last night was cheery, fun stuff. I was more enthralled with the support though; Sky Larkin, who may appear in this feature next week and who I haven't seen for a good 18 months were very impressive.

WWWWWday #2

2008-10-15T20:33:00.003+01:00

Who: Those Dancing Days

What: All-female Swedish pop group with a strong Northern Soul influence, with, surprisingly for a Swedish indie band, no links to peter Bjorn and John. Would probably taste good in a rich soup.

Where: Stockholm, Sweden

Why: They're fun. Oh so very fun. Sure, a lot of the songs may have a similar tune, style and sometimes even lyrics, but that's not what you're listening out for with this sort of band. You want energy. And this has it in spades. Those Dancing Days and Hitten, two obvious selections being that they are the singles from their forthcoming album, show it in abundance, and even in fringe songs, such as partial title track Space Hero Suits, have more elements of fun in them than any gig involving The *muffled curse* Feeling can ever muster up. One minor criticism is that for all the cited and much bandied about proclamation of Northern Soul influence, there may not be enough there to fully justify it. I mean, it can be seen that is *has* influenced them, but maybe not to the extent they think it has. And it's hard to listen to any form of twee without going slightly insane after the first half hour if you haven't got dancing to distract you.

On another note, their cover of Toxic is amazing and comes highly recommended

When: In Our Space Hero Suits is out on Witchita now. TDD are also playing UK gigs between 21-23rd October and 23rd-30th November

Those Dancing Days on myspace

Rating: Eating a toffee apple in the park on the 21st June. Sticky, sweet, but you'll throw up if you try to eat it all at once. You'll still want more afterwards though. Recommended.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have spent the day playing with music copyrighting. Song by song. It has made me realise there are some awful awful song titles out there. And some amazing ones. Like Fluffy I Want You. More songs should have an endearing and cutesy word in.

Less songs should abbreviate to to 2 and you to U though.

Elevator? Escalator? Nope, just stairs...

2008-10-13T19:12:00.003+01:00

I can describe today in two words; Ow, stairs.

Why do places I have to go to in the afternoon be up and down so many flights of stairs with lifts that are slower than a lead character in a computer game when I'm injured and quads that burn with pain everytime I even try to lift them? Ok, it's possibly my fault for running to fast in a half marathon yesterday, but they should cater for people (read: idiots) like me.

Tomorrow, unfortunately, means more stairs. And more ow.

And probably more preparation for a blog entry. Nevermind.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday's blog title was Bob Dylan - Orange Blossom Special, as always answers in the comments.

It's the orange soda special...

2008-10-10T20:02:00.005+01:00

This is where the long post will go next week.

For now, this post is reserved for my amazement that at the school I was working at today there were two children in the same class called Kenan and Kel.

And that there was one child called Anabelle Dixon in another.

Things like this aren't supposed to happen in real life...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answer to Monday's title guessing game was Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time.

Hopefully this one will be tougher for you.

Who, What, Where, Why, When-sday #1

2008-10-08T10:02:00.010+01:00

Who: Delorean Drivers

What: 80s electropop, powerpop and string influenced 6-piece named after that car from Back to the Future

Where: Leeds, UK

Why: Of the songs currently available on their myspace, you'll want to listen to all of them on repeat for at least a couple of times. This is not to say that they're growers (not all of them at least, though The Girl With A Fire In Her Heart did take me a few listens to realise just how good it was), but that they'll echo some of the best bits of contemporary indie/electro bands and combine it seamlessly with work from 60s-80s icons. And you'll want to hear it again as if you didn't believe it the first time.

The influences are everywhere; their use of strings immediately places The Arcade Fire and Guillemots in your mind, while you can definitely hear a 60s powerpop inspired section halfway through The Girl With... for instance. And in all the good ways. There are a couple of niggles with the songs; perhaps the range of both singers could be tested and harmonised at the other end of the vocal spectrum more, but these are asides.

Oh, and the strings are amazing.

When: Currently no news on releases or live dates

Delorean Drivers on Myspace

Rating: A hot roast dinner on a cold Sunday; will warm you up and satisfy you for at least half a day until you just want more.

------------------------------------------------------------------

'Name the song' post titles is on hold on Wednesdays. Answer to last post and new blog title to guess on Friday.

Do you remember the first time(table)?

2008-10-06T17:30:00.005+01:00

There is not much of note in this here post. Have been very busy with editorial and secretarial matters for both the magazine and radio the past week, hence the lack of anything for a bit.

Anyway, on to the only matter of interest. I need to keep this regular. So I've devised a little weekly schedule to keep me going.

Monday - 'The Monday Lite' - The short post.

Wednesday - 'Who? What? Where? Why? When-nesday?' - Each week I plan to profile someone or something. Could be a band, could be a comedian, could be a TV show, could be a golf umbrella, I just don't know yet.

Friday - 'TFI Friday' - The long post

Saturday/Sunday - 'The Weekender' - Weekend musings. Heralds the return of Tricky's weekly round up.

Right, schedule in place. What shall I profile for Wednesday? Ideas welcome, whether I use them or not is another matter.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last post's song was 4 Minute Warning - Radiohead, and not Four Minute Warning by Mark Owen. The clue is in the name, or in last post's case, number.

45 minute warning...

2008-09-24T09:46:00.011+01:00

Today, I may discuss Boris Johnson's plans to make his own island.

But that just seems a bit too newsworthy for a blog like this. So instead I'm going to discuss a Guardian bloggers opinion that no gig should last over 45 minutes.

Miss Sullivan's point about Razorlight is as valid as any could be. No Razorlight gig should exist, let alone be made to be 45 minutes and destroy any glimmer of hope for decent music in the ears of the gig-goer. And I should really applaud any idea that will curb the behaviour of The *muffled curse* Feeling. But then she goes on. And my does it sound a ridiculous argument. Think of your favourite artists. I shall use the top three in my last.fm as an example; Guillemots, Super Furry Animals and Sigur Ros. I shall use all three of the acts to demonstrate as to why Miss Sullivan is just plain wrong.

Guillemots: A relatively new band by all accounts, true, but just look at their back catalogue; five singles, very well known to most people who will attend these gigs. But these are the short songs. They don't make the gig what it has the potential should be. Ten minutes in Guillemots gigs alone goes towards Sao Paulo, an epic song that deserves that allocated time. Guillemots' songs are long, but long for a reason. They're there to attack the senses (in a good way) and make you want to long for more.

Super Furry Animals: I have two words for Miss Sullivan; back catalogue. 8 albums, over 25 singles, and tons of extra album tracks which work so well live, but wouldn't work as a single, She's Got Spies springing directly into mind. And then there's the gig period over which they launched their 22 minute epic; The Man Don't Give A Fuck. From all accounts and the single of it released, I can tell it probably an experience to see and one I'm sure a lot of people there would not trade for 45 minutes of 'the hits'.

Finally, Sigur Ros. Take the impact that Guillemots long songs have and treble it, and take the back catalogue (not as extensive, maybe, but just as important) argument from SFA and you have Sigur Ros. These gigs deserve to be long. If they weren't I'd be left feeling short changed.

I think she sums up her own argument at the start of the last paragraph:

"I know what you're thinking. I'm a rock critic who receives free tickets, so getting my money's worth isn't an issue. Well, before I did this job I paid for gigs, and even then, I felt exactly the same"

It looks to me as if Miss Sullivan is a touch jaded with her own career path and is tired of going to gigs. It speaks volumes that she has brought this point up herself, she already finding excuses for her own loss of interest in the live music scene.

I also know no avid gig-goer or music lover who would feel that bands should be limited to certain time frame for live performances. If she does feel this, then why did she go into music journalism in the first place?

It's true that studio albums can make a band. However, live sets can make a band legendary.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm still unsure about iTunes new Genius function. Sometimes it works magnificently. But then sometimes it has paired Johnny Cash singing Hurt with Steps doing 5, 6, 7, 8.

There are valid reasons why Steps are on my iTunes.

Answer to last post's title reference was indeed Average White Band - Pick up the Pieces

Answers to this one in the comments as always

I would also like to champion Delorean Drivers as a band for the future. There's only one song up the moment, but it has some great moments in it. You can definitely hear influences from Arcade Fire and Of Montreal in there (I'd be very surprised if not one or more of the band wasn't up to date with the canadian music scene), and the male vocalist has a definite Neil Hannon twang to his voice. Recommended.

Pick up the pieces (of eight)

2008-09-22T09:04:00.003+01:00

Avast ye! Shiver me timbers! Etceterarrrr, etceterarrrr!

Yes, Talk Like A Pirate day is the topic of this blog (three days late, but then I was never one to use a calender). All a bit of fun, but this coupled with Facebook's addition of 'English (pirate)' as a language option on the site has got me thinking a bit; is the fad wearing thing?

I remember the heady days of Year 8, when I first found out there was an vicious feud between ninjas and pirates, and thinking 'Well, obviously pirates would win; they have guns. I took this as red after watching that Indiana Jones scene. I never really got that whole pirate vs ninja dealy anyway. It seemed too simple. And as shown, it was.

But talking like a pirate would never get old (even if at times I go Geordie, Liverpudlian and West Country all at once because my head doesn't hold accents as a sacred art, alas). And to be fair, on Friday it didn't get old but that's possibly because I decided to rejig it. I decided to talk like a 'Space Pirate'. If you don't understand, I was being the voice of 'Captain DJ', (a pirate radio broadcaster. In space), so I had something else to do other than 'Walk tha plank, landlubber, blah blah blah, yackety schmackety'.

I had to change it because normal pirate talk is just too rife on what started as a niche 'Ooo, isn't that a bit odd' day, and now everyone knows about it. I hate to be one of those people who hates things because they get famous or well-known, but with some things, it pays for them to be more underground than mainstream, and Friday was one of them. Too many people know. To me, it was time to abandon ship. Or at least jump onto another one.

So, what do you think? Do pirates deserve a special day to celebrate their speech? How must the ninjas feel? And do you ever go a bit 'Am-bro-zee-arrr' when you're mean to just be 'arrrrr'ing?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last night I finally watched the finale of series 2 of Heroes.

I also won a race in karting.

I saw a man taking a cat for a walk on a lead.

And fed margarine to a spaniel.

One of these may not be true.

Finally. the answer to last post's thread title reference was Ben Kweller - Make It Up. Answers for this one in my comments.

Have you (re)made it up?

2008-09-19T13:01:00.003+01:00

I've never liked blogging about emotion. It's one of my least favourite topics to discuss; it involves going deep down inside yourself, extraditing the information from a pool of thoughts which may or may not have tangental links attached to them linking to anything from the anger I feel when listening to The Feeling or the joy I experience when I find a penny, even though it makes me no wealthier. It's complicated, messy and much like a spaghetti being fed to a baby, will land on the dog, cause him to run into the washing machine, which'll close it, set the laundry off 3 hours early, the noise wakes the cat up who screeches at the dog, a chase ensues resulting in the cat getting run over and dog looking confused and fluffy after the chase.

Ok, maybe that's just me.

The important thing is, I hate blogging about emotions, as it just gets in the way and will annoy me to the very core.

So I won't.

I'll talk about Worzel Gummidge instead.

Recently, it came to my attention that Rentaghost and Worzel Gummidge are set to make a comeback to our TV screens in new remakes. My first thought was that they're just balancing out the fears children have; knife crime in the city, creepy homeless scarecrows in the countryside. This way, rural children don't feel left out from all the anxiety and panic of urban street crime. Although if they wanted to achieve that, they could have just done an Eastenders in the countryside episode again. Or if they just wanted to scare the bejesus out the kids, just make them watch Emmerdale to see where their country life might get them.

But my overriding thought was this: why? Why not just show the originals? I'm not entirely sure how you can update a homeless scarecrow with a west country accent, other than to maybe have him decrying the economic recession and how it's affected the turnip harvest. Scarecrows don't get updated. They're straw. Straw will still be straw in 100 years time. And if it isn't, well, I'll be dead by then, so ha.

I generally dislike remakes in all their forms. What they did to Mr. Men was just disgraceful, The Italian Job wasn't even set in Italy, The Omen was just laughable and don't even get me started on what they did to Thunderbirds. They're meant to be puppets for Christ's sake!

Sure, there have been good ones. The stage show of the Producers was a joy, John Carpenter's The Thing was what the original aspired to be and The Fly just made more sense. I mean, what was the likelihood of just the heads switching when he entered the matter machine...

But these good ones are few and far between. I hope I'm made to look silly and it turns out to be grand, but I'm sure someone said that about the remake of The Wicker Man...

-----------------------------------------------------------

1) I would like to start a game. The person who guesses the name of the film/song/thing I'm referencing in the titles of my posts shall win a cookie. By email.

I will reveal the answer next post

2) Also, while I'm here, I'd like to point that either I can predict the future, or Jamie Murray reads my blog. I mentioned his hair in a blog a few months ago I completely forgot I'd wrote that, and so when I next wrote the blog I didn't notice what had happened, but he SHAVED HIS HAIR!

Following on from this, I would like to tell Dan Gillespe Sells (I'm not surprised he has such a pretentious name) to jump off a pier.

There.

Doing the write thing

2008-09-11T10:47:00.003+01:00

I am currently finding getting back into the flow of writing very tricky indeed. Which is a pain as this is what I want to continue to do as a profession of some sort. I have had plans of re-writing an article previously planned to be in the next issue of the student magazine, attempting to get an interview lined up and questions prepared, write a review of two recent festivals I've been to and more from there.

Unfortunately, I can't quite get myself motivated enough to get on with it. Writer's block? I don't think so. Laziness? Not that either, says I. I think I am slightly ill and am definitely lacking in levels of mental stability I was enjoying all but a few months ago, mainly due to inability to sleep properly and utter exhaustion.

But this isn't an excuse. If I want to pursue things, I have to work at it through thick and thin. And this is what this is an attempt to do; to spur me on, actually get finger to keyboard and generally get on with it, even if it does affect other plans.

No risk, no reward.

I'm back(ish)

2008-09-02T21:29:00.003+01:00

Hello.

I'll be back to my regular irregular schedule of updating (so 2 or 3 or 4 times a week then) in the next few days.

Summer has been full. I may talk about that at some point.

My next post, though, will discuss Pingu and the Russian Revolution of 1905. Or it may not.

Tune in to find out.

Those rose tinted glasses aren't all they're cracked up to be

2008-06-29T15:25:00.003+01:00

Sight is tricky.

It should be simple. Open your eyes: wow, things! (Unless you're blind, of course, but I'm assuming you're not because you're reading this). For some reason, though, genetics and nature have decided to play around with the gift of sight.

For example, everything, to me, seems to have a pink tint surrounding it at the minute. And my eyes hurt.

My normal port of call is to close my eyes, but they start to burn more if I do this. Naturally my next decision is to drink some water. Unfortunately, water doesn't have the same properties in real life as it does in adventure games and things are still the same. I check my eye reflection in a cd to see if it's grown a mini pink eye-tutu, but I can't see much. Then I remember I have a mirror and look in that. Nope, looks like my normal eye; big, brown and with normal looking white stuff.

I eventually cave in and decided to see if my glasses might help me see better, using them for their designed purpose and not as a really useless paperweight. In the fridge. Yes, after spending nearly half an hour trying to find my glasses, I find I'm hungry from the searching and go to eat some of the provisions I was plied with upon my trip home yesterday and lo and behold, there they are, on the bread. The fridge is very useful storage actually. The glasses look much cleaner than they have done for the past 6 months.

Anyway, the glasses don't take my tint or burning away. So I'm left confused. What have I done to my eye? Have I got permanent sunglass imprints on my pupil from yesterday's day of the sunglass (unlikely considering my eyes were fine this morning), or is everything just slightly more pink than it used to be.

I'm not sure how Lily Allen's hair will cope...

Working to work...

2008-06-27T21:02:00.004+01:00

Finally, gainful employment!

This does, however, mean my days of sitting in front of the computer/TV/giant hand residing in the living room have come to an end. No more living off cereal for two meals because I can't afford two proper meals in a day, no more watching The Hoobs all day on DVD feeling down because I can't even afford 8p 'chicken flavour' noodles so am relying on wet bread and out of date biscuits. Though those biscuits were nice.

This is a good thing. I suppose you were expecting me to say I was missing it in some sort of strange way, but I don't. I don't miss feeling pointless or lost or generally rubbish for not earning my keep and not being able to afford to leave the house or travel any distance without walking 6 miles to Farringdon in as-hot-as-London-will-probably-get-this-summer heat (Well, actually that's a lie, I may have to do that again depending on situation until the latest of next Friday, but that's a small point).

No, I love doing menial tasks like data entry and filing and dealing with people who dislike dust from construction sites, even though that complaint isn't in our remit and even when we tell them that they'll have to go to the council, they start sulking. They're like big human shaped Tweenies. And don't say that Tweenies are basically human because they act like they are and have the same anatomy (probably, anyway. I don't want to know in detail thanks), because I challenge you to find anyone with as big a had as they seem to have. And anyone who lives a healthy, fun life being blue. And a talking dog.

Regardless, these people can be really annoying, but I don't care, as I don't have to look at them, so I can sound nice, but my face is telling them they're retards (speaking of retards, I became one again about half an hour ago; I managed to concoct chicken flavoured Weetabix). Also, that part of the job is so small that I don't really have to care. There is no customer, so they're not always right. They are very often wrong. Half an hour to an hour a day talking on the phone to the public is a godsend compared to being stuck behind a false smile and thoughts of the best ways to use supermarket shopping items to maul, trap or generally disparage the lives of customers.

Anyway, job is being what is it, a job, unlike what the above was, which was something akin to purgatory, or being subjected to a seventeen hour session of Craig David covering The Feeling and The View.

I classed it as a complete success the minute I left the building today (5pm sharp. I may like the job, doesn't mean I want to stay any longer than I have to) when I realised that I didn't want to stab any of my colleagues. And that, I think, is what I like most about having a proper job and not working for a blood sucking supermarket.

That and the fact I look good in a suit.

--------------------------------------------------------

In other news, we seem to be rubbish at Tennis. Except for those Murray chaps. But they have too much frizzy hair to be likeable. I mean, there's nothing wrong with frizz, but please don't go all wafro on us boys. I'm talking specifically to you, Jamie. Have you never heard of product?

A step too far behind

2008-06-10T13:35:00.002+01:00

I've been a teeny tiny bit lax with my blog as of late.

I keep being distracted by things ranging from cushion skating to job hunting. Which means I've had a ton of spare time but not thought to update my blog. Well, that's a lie. I did think about it but, my, that programme/shape pattern on the floor mad my shoes and light/inflatable parrot looks interesting (delete as appropriate).

This has got me thinking a tad. Why, in our spare time, do we (possibly just me) get so little of what we want to get done done. Over my uni exam period, for instance, my posts were barren and uninteresting, much like Sue Barker. I made a promise to get more active with my posts when I had free time and wasn't revising/building a turret/losing the will to live. And I did for a bit. But then I just came to a sudden halt. It was like that episode of Thomas the Tank when Percy was running away from something and crashed into a pile of dirt conveniently placed on the lines of Sodor.

Now, while Percy wanted to be taken out of the dirt, I found the prospect quite attractive. Not that I found the dirt pretty (although I swear it winked at me) But I found just stopping everything of any importance such a fun and relaxing prospect. I have since realised that I need to get things done, and suddenly I want to write again. This explains why I haven't written anything. When I had stopped, I, nor my brain, was doing anything. Sure I had conversations, went out a few times, but this blog isn't a diary, it's a platform. Hopefully one that Percy will stop at in the near future to let me back on, and then we'll speed off into the distance until we crash into something.

Probably Gordon. He was always slow.

Trying (and failing) to get by without a little help from my friends

2008-05-31T12:25:00.003+01:00

I'm fiercely independent. Well, at least I want to be anyway. If I were to be stuck inside an industrial thresher about to be, uh, threshed into itty bitty pieces and I had a choice of guaranteed escape by having someone help me, or have half that chance of escape on my own, I'd either be more emotionally damaged than before, having come face to face with my own mortality, or I'd be a tasty breakfast cereal.

As we can guess from this post, seeing as it's quite short so far and I haven't really reached a key point yet, there is more to this. I'm bad a asking for help. At anything. Be it simple or not, it makes my brain feel like I'm a weak person if I even try to seek out advice.

There are things that have happened to me over the years that I probably won't relay to anyone for a while due to this. I want to show people can deal with whatever comes my way, and letting them have an insight into the social side of my existence back in the day wouldn't try to press home that image.

All this has meant that I generally keep all major and even most minor problems to myself. I might allude to a situation not being grand, but I'll always tell people 'I can deal with it', 'I'll live' and 'Forget about that. I'm hungry, can have some toast?'. But truth be told, and as you can probably guess from the tone of this entry (I should really do things more subtly than a brick does. The loud mouthing bastard), I'm bad at dealing with things.

I put all the problems I have away into a clutter of a mess in my head. That clutter becomes a pile. Then a mound. Then a full scale rubbish tip. So I decide to bury it under the town in my head. But then more comes along. I bury that too. But there's no room. And before you know it, I'm yellow and bald, being shouted at for being a rubbish sanitation commissioner (boom-boom) and having to move head towns, leaving the Cherokee tow natives to deal with the problems. And probably commit suicide. Poor Wild Horse.

And then one day, once all these towns have been vacated, there'll be a hue emotional outburst.These don't come frequently. I have in fact only cried twice in the past 6 years. This is not something I'm proud of; quite the opposite in fact. People need to cry. Even us manly men. Pent up frustration, emotion, sadness, bitterness and sorrow is not good and needs frequent spring cleaning and irrigation. But most of all, people need to take the helping hand that's being offered. It's one thing allowing yourself to show emotion, it's entirely another to do it around people. But most of the time, that's what you need the most; someone to help you through it. They wouldn't be offering their help if the didn't care after all, so it's very doubtful they'd judge you. Unless you like The Feeling, anyway.

I always find it odd that I'm like this at accepting help, especially when I'm active in trying to do my best to help other people when I can. I know the benefits, but I just go blind to them when it's me on the receiving end.

Whether this post will teach me much about myself is debatable. I already know I should be slightly more open to help already, but it's hard to change. But at least it's out in the open.

Unlike that story about Ringo Starr, the Dalai Lama and a golfing umbrella. Eating them up inside, that.

If I could see all my friends tonight...

2008-05-29T09:25:00.004+01:00

I don't know what I'd say to them. Well, that's possibly not the bit to worry about. I wouldn't be able to feed them or get them many drinks. If facebook is anything to go by, then there are about 400 I'd need to talk to in the night. Assuming normal party rules of about 8pm until 3 in the morning, that's 7 hours (420 minutes) to talk to them all, so that's a teensy tiny bit over a minute per friend. And that's without gaps for bathroom visits, drinking, getting food etc.

Luckily for me, of my facebook friends, there are some that I wouldn't even want at a party or to even talk to; they stay on my facebook for the reason that one day I may need to or be interested enough in them to talk to them at any length. As we all know, it's useful to have contacts and all that.

So, of my friends that I would want to see, there'd be roughly a fifth who could probably make it for a night at such short notice. They'd mainly be the ones in the London area who I've spoken to in the last 6 months. so of the 400, that's about 50. Suddenly the numbers are getting better. There'd be some that couldn't come due to prior commitments, so I'd say about 30. Sudden;y this hypothetical party looks doable. Well, it would be if I had more than £25 spare.

Anyway, I've fallen ever so slightly off my intended point; what would I do if I saw 'all my friends' tonight? And before anyone points it out, I realise the song I'm referring to mentions 'seeing' rather than actually doing anything with them, but seeing them would be like spying if I couldn't talk and they couldn't talk back.

Back to the point. I'd certainly talk to some more than others. I'd hug some more than others. 'd be more wary of some than others.

If I could say anything to some of them it'd be that I don't see them as much I should do while to some others there'd be unspoken connections and would therefore have a ball with them

However, to some of these people, I wouldn't be so kind. Assuming I have free rein to say anything to them without consequence it'd be that they treated me badly, even though they were my friends; that they'd taken advantage of me (not in that way), that some treated me like I was three and that some of them take jokes far too far and that it's hard to say anything to them when they are doing it because they're in a big group of people and it's hard not to sound like you're just whining for attention.

Given all these points, I now know what I'd do if I saw all my friends tonight. I could be with some, shoe off others for a while if they got tiresome and take some aside to talk at intervals. Plus they cold pay for themselves.

I'd take them bowling.

The pills won't help you now

2008-05-23T21:52:00.003+01:00

Drugs.

They're bad, apparently. Politicians say it, independent advisory councils say some drugs are less harmful than we think but politicians don't listen to them and continue to say they're all bad. Policing is good, but I feel everything's gone a bit Mr. Mackay on us.

Of course, us being intelligent folk who don't listen to soundbites all day and actually agree with all of them actually know that a lot of drugs are helpful while some just have no effect at all. Like placebos. Which didn't feature in my exam earlier this week when we were hinted that they might. So consequently I failed. I know this because I started writing a story. We all know each drug is different, etc. etc. blah bah blah, yackety schmackety.

We also know that they're rife in the world of competition amongst those who usually aren't *quite* good enough, but that extra kick will get them over some sort of line in front of other competitors. This is fought against by random drug tests for banned substances that'll enhance our performance. So they're bad in the sense that while actually making us better (less side effects of gaining/losing breasts), they make you a bad person. Which is good.

I've rambled on about drugs for a bit now because of an article I saw in Thursday's Guardian; apparently, 'mind-enhancing' drugs are on the rise and government advisors want children at schools at people in universities and workplaces to take urine tests following tests and exams.

Now, being a university student myself and knowing some of the sort of people who have cheated on exams, I've never been aware of this sort of thing. Apparently, people use prescribed medicine for those with dementia, schizophrenia and even ADHD, originally prescribed in order to improve patient concentration and to try to help memory retention (especially in the former case), themselves in order to boost their minds and cognition.

There are obviously ethical qualms about random drug tests for children and all that jazz, and while it is an issue, it isn't the one that bothers me. Well, it isn't one of the two.

The first issue stems from testing children who actually have ADHD. Ritalin is commonly used in order to keep ADHD under some sort of control by, as stated above, improving concentration. If the government advisory committee wants to carry out these random tests on children, and the one they select happens to have ADHD and is on Ritalin, what happens then? It is obvious that they don't want people to have a higher than natural intelligence, so do they conduct the test, find the person guilty and disqualify them, or do they give the sufferers of ADHD different goalposts for their urine tests, which I can say straight away that tabloids would pick up on? It's a tough situation.

The other qualm I have is this; they have mentioned Ritalin as an example of the sorts of drug they want to act against which aids concentration, making the patient more attentive and responsive. There are ways to boost your attentiveness temporarily in the form of caffeine drinks, which would aid mental cognition; these are not natural drinks, but are available far more widely. Surely if you were to fight against these prescription drugs being used by people without prescriptions (which is a good thing, I hasten to add), you'd have to draw a line somewhere. But where is the question. With Red Bull? Pro-Plus? Tesco brand taurine-caffeine drink?

This is an intriguing area and I'm glad that the advisory panel has suggested a lot of research into the long term effects of prescription drugs on non-patients. Just so long as they don't put forward these urine tests until after I finish university. This sounds a foolproof technique.

Unless of course you didn't revise the material in the first place. I guess I'm the bigger fool.

Out of the window

2008-05-09T09:20:00.005+01:00

A cat;
A pigeon.
They fight.

One of them ends up devoured.

Luckily, it was the cat doing the devouring and not some crazy ass deformed and mutated giant pigeon. Though that could be fun.

21st century paradise traveller

2008-05-03T22:05:00.000+01:00

If only...

I hate people who travel. Just in general. And I'm only guessing, but I don't think they like me all that much either.

I've been shouted at on a coach for kicking the person in front's seat when in actuality, it's the the person next to me sprawling their legs all over the place because they can't get comfortable in their own allotted space and decided sprawl out all over the seat and move their legs a lot as if they had crabs. Also, because the person next to me was a rude, arrogant bastard who kept elbowing me for trying to move from my seated coffin to get something from my bag on the floor and when trying to read a paper.

On another occasion, which happened to be the same day as the previous account, and coincidentally on the same day as today, I've had a half eaten chocolate bar and a packet of crisp crumbs thrown at me while the person was clearing the seat nearby. When I made an undignified response in the shape of a simple 'Thanks...", I get shouted at for being a yob and that I had all my stuff over the seats which could for all I know, apparently, be covered in dog excrement (words used here may be less expletive, I just hate typing swear words) and that I was a delusional jump start who 'deserved to be in a natural disaster'. And this from a family consisting of an approximately 40 year old woman, her teenage son and her parents. Horrible horrible people.

I've never been sworn at by a granny before. I've also never been tempted to punch one either.

A tale of two cities

2008-05-02T07:32:00.000+01:00

Events yesterday that weren't social sucked. So I'm out of London for a couple of days to see friends in Leeds. Then I'm coming back later tomorrow. What I'm gonna do for the evening is unknown yet. Might go home, might see a couple of friends at a sci-fi film festival. Undecided yet. Either way, I have to wait an extra day for Doctor Who.

And that's a tale that'll go down through the generations.

Ok, not much of a tale. Or even a tail. More of a stump. Can you pass stumps through generations?

School's out on the broken social scene

2008-05-01T18:49:00.000+01:00

I know many teachers.

Whether this is a good or bad thing, I'm yet to be decided upon. Possibly leaning towards the bad, if only because I have two dictatorial teachers for sisters (I'm assuming dictatorial, mainly because they've never taught me, but bring out their 'teacher voice' when they're annoyed with me, and it sounds very much like Stalin would have. If he were a teacher. And English.)

Anyway, what's evident from these teacher's is that they're not easily fazed. I guess dealing with spotty oiks (or prepubescent oiks, as my older-but-not-quite oldest sister deals with) hardens the skin with regards to events which may occur there. Well, most events. One thing teacher's don't like, pretty much across the board, is Ofsted. As you probably know, Ofsted is the official body when it comes to school inspections, even though the body actually has no legal existence, which I find very odd. Something to do with them belonging to the queen, like her own little game of 'Sims go to School'. Does that one exist yet?

Anyway, generally teachers and schools don't like Oofsted inspectors as they're generally harsh and very strict. From what I've heard anyway. I know they have no sense of humour or even compassion from when they visited my school about 5 years back. The words face, slapped and arse come to mind. The fact that schools are judged publicly on these criteria from a technically invisible body by a grown up moody teenager who's primary concern is their paycheck and the dreaded 'target' is indeed not helpful to the school.

The reason I'm bringing this up now is because of news that appeared in the papers yesterday; apparently, Ofsted reports are now planning to include 18 'social targets' in their inspections.

'But Steve', I hear you cry in a querying tone, 'what do you mean by 'social target'?'

These targets include, and are not limited to: teenage pregnancy rates, drug problems, bullying, neglect and what happens to a child when they do finally leave school.

Now reading those, I've found one, possibly two which come under the jurisdiciton of the school; bullying, which is perhaps the most clear cut of the targets that the school has responsibility for, and maybe neglect, depending on what they mean by neglect. Context and meaning of multiple meaning words is tricky.

The other three examples given though, no way should they be a basis for judging a school. Especially not the 'what the child does when they leave school'. As you can be sure that influence outside of school won't be taken into account at all when these figures are drawn up. The same can be said about drugs and pregnancy. No matter how much education is given to the children, accidents happen and children experiment. It's life. But from what can be seen, each and every case will be shown to the public so the school can be belittle and chastised for pupils who are a bit more adventurous.

In effect, what the government is trying to do here is mould a scapegoat for current social issues that are pulling us down compared to other countries. The government has more than enough power and weight to outlaw things, start campaigns, but if it goes wrong, it'll be their fault. Now if the pupils are on drugs due to pressures outside of school or get pregnant because of a 98 in 100 chance went against them, it's the school's fault for not educating them enough and another mark against them in the Ofsted report.

Teenage pregnancy and drugs should have no place in an Ofsted report. The school cannot control what happens outside of it. Do that, and we'll have another dictatorial establishment on our hands.

Though I'm sure at least one of my sisters would be in their element if that happened.

If at first you don't choose right, choose again...

2008-05-01T05:53:00.000+01:00

Ok blog readers, I need your help.

Currently, the student magazine have decided to put me forward to enter The Guardian Student Media Awards in the 'Student Columnist of the Year' category. As such, I need to supply the judges three separate pieces of my work that has appeared in published ISM magazines from September '07 to June '08

Problem is, I've written five pieces for the magazine, so I'd like you, my faithful/new/non readers to help me choose. Here are the options:

1) Lies, Damn Lies and Landlords
2) Daydream believer
3) Out of routine
4) Eggo and the Bunnyman
5) Let the soup do the talking

So yes, that's about it. Leave me your comments in a er... comment.

Good.

London mayor, London mayor...

2008-04-30T17:50:00.000+01:00

...riding past Big Ben;
London mayor, London mayor;
Boris or Red Ken?

Of course there's Sian and Brian too;
But do we really care?
London mayor, London mayor, London mayor.

Slash dot dash dot

2008-04-23T14:14:00.000+01:00

Writing is fun. I love writing I do. I get to write and stuff.

Ok, my reasoning and writing for that was very simplistic (though accurate), but poorly executed. Much like when executioners used the wrong end of the axe and began bashing their victim with the handle back in the olden days. Or like someone did during our year 3 play on the Tudors. The person playing the victim ran away crying because the handle was actually metal and the axey bit was sponge. But hey, kids will be really dumb kids.

However, that sentence could have been made at least 100,017 times worse by the addition of a single character, probably placed at the end of the first mini-sentence (or if you're an absolute idiot or get really excited by 'stuff', at the end of the last mini-sentence).

I am of course talking about the exclamation mark, or '!' to the lay folk out there. And I bloody hate it.

Well, 'bloody hate it' is perhaps a bit strong, maybe just 'hate' will suffice. But the fact remains, it's not anywhere near my top 5 punctuation characters of all time (which are, from 1st to 5th, ; ' ( ) and ,). And it's because it just makes the piece of writing it's attached to seem very amateurish. It reminds me of textspeak ('LOLZ!, OMFGZ!, etc.), which makes me think of a 13 year old trying to be funny and adding exclamation marks because they think it's the only way to emphasise things.

Now don't get me wrong. Exclamation marks have their uses. When suggesting something has been or should be shouted out loud, a '!' at the end of the sentence is needed. In surprise, when used with a '?', it's perfect. But that's it. Well, barring band names, but they're a special case.

Use italics, inverted commas, triple dots, something other than a '!'. It makes writing look horrible when it's used wrongly. Plus it draws attention to the (usually) really awful attempt to be funny written just before it. You may as well have written the joke in electric pink, bold and in size 58 font, it's as ugly a thing to do.

But hey, that's my opinion of them. Yours may be different, and I respect that, no matter how wrong you are.

Anyway, I'm going '!' hunting with my friends, the italic brothers and triple dot. Which come to think of it are really awful names for some rap bands. I wonder if I could sell them!

Sigh.

Fuzzy logic...

2008-04-22T22:23:00.000+01:00

Everything's a little bit fuzzy wuzzy in my mind/head/eyes roundabout now. And it's not my hair doing the fuzzy wuzzying today. It's actually quite well tamed. I'm proud hair, you haven't reverted to being the lost member of the Hair Bear Bunch just yet.

No, I blame a long, tiring raggedy day where much was done and many promises made and not kept by other people and much effort made in the process as well as having to attend 101,000 meetings (well, 3 really, but 101,000 sounds like loads more), and then the meeting's not concluding well because the people we need to be there to talk about what we need to discuss isn't there.

I also blame me forgetting to take my glasses to uni with me today and not being able to find them right now when typing, which isn't helpful.

However, perhaps the main reason why everything is fuzzy wuzzy at the minute is due to the fact that while searching for my glasses and checking they weren't on my face, I poked myself in the eye quite hard.

Yeah, that'd be a contributing factor I'd say.

Come back to what you know

2008-04-19T07:40:00.000+01:00

What is the art of a good comedian?

I could just tell you straight out, but I'll make sure I go through the stereotypical writer's route of coming up with examples which may or may not seem likely and then startle you by saying 'no!' and reveal that it's something linked to the title which it almost invariably is. And this is no exception. So what comedian stereotypes can I think of? Is it the ability to make someone laugh? I think not. 'WHAT!', I assume you cry; 'a comedian isn't funny if he can't make someone laugh'. True, but I didn't ask that. I asked for the art, and that's not an art, that's more of a paintbrush. A very funny paintbrush.

Ok, so what about stage presence? It's good, but it's not the one. Roy Walker would be proud of you, mind. Did I say you, I meant me. He loves his phrases being uttered. He's a very shallow man.

We shall head forth now to the correct answer and, indeed, the subject of this blog; linking things back. Comedians do this amazingly well at times. Their stage shows are geared towards the ability to start with a main joke, divert attention away from the first joke and then right at the end usually, or maybe sometimes throughout, refer back to the big joke at the start that got laughs, so they achieve a huge amounts of laughter and end the night on a huge buzz. Job's a good'un. This also happens a lot in sitcoms to a similar standing effect.

What we don't possibly tend to immediately realise is that linking back happens pretty much all the time in our lives and to a hugely variable extent. Very simple link backs occur when you see something in the shops what you've seen in an advert, and so remember the advert, no matter how awful it is and whether or not you nearly scooped your eyeballs out of their sockets through having to endure the image of Howard the Halifax man another bloody time and having this picture scarred on not only your handheld retinas but also the back of your mind where the knife cannot go without severe death.

As I mentioned, that is a case of simple (and tragic) link back. The more complex and regular you can make it, the better things can be for everyone concerned (to an extent mind, do it too much and people will think you're trying to be Chandler from Friends and will possibly want to scoop your eyeballs from their sockets).

But the mark of a good friendship is the ability to link back in a interesting and intriguing manner, to a regular enough extent and finally (and this is the most key aspect) to be able to do it in a subtle manner. You have to imagine you are, in fact, in a scripted comedy show and that the link back you make can't be seen as too obvious or the joke won't work, people will leave the audience, your show will be cancelled and before you know it you're selling olives and feta cheese from a market stall in Hull.

Of course linking back doesn't always have to be funny, in fact trying to be too funny in a link back is generally frowned upon. Well, in real life anyway. It can strengthen and maintain the friendship to a very healthy level. You may at times encounter the risk of going in everlasting cycles of linking back and never doing anything new, but that'll only happen if you're very boring people who spend their time watching TV repeats or listening to the same cheap, tacky radio 1 playlist songs over and over. But then you people probably don't have many friends anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it too much about it.

A tip for you all: If you want to ruin a comedian's show, stay one step ahead of him and heckle them with a link back to the first joke. If you dislike them, you may want to make it a witty heckle and so get a ton of laughs yourself, that'll really disparage them. Either way, it'll ruin their train of thought, they'll lose their prestigious West End run and end up in the East End selling clothes from a van.

Alan Carr, you have been warned.

*For all I know, Roy Walker could be the most upstanding man in society, I have never met the bloke. He is, though, affiliated with Chris Moyles and that just invited ridicule.

Headers and footers

2008-04-17T20:46:00.000+01:00

As I've mentioned, my mind has recently become defunct. I can't spell my name, the days are a bigger puzzle than mortgage rates to me and spelling is the equivalent of quarks. I keep seeing things, then fuzziness, then seeing again, the seeing different things and I don't think this is healthy.

I'll give it a week, and if I'm still seeing phantom crowds and giant dogs running past me I'm gonna see a shrink.

In other news, my feet no longer feel like I've run a marathon.

Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!

2008-04-15T16:14:00.000+01:00

I've never been very good at rest, and it's all Channel 5's fault. Well, mostly...

Right now I should be taking a nap, lying down. In fact, I should have done that yesterday. To be brutally honest, I should have done that on Sunday night after actually running. My legs hurt, my Achilles tendons were just in massive amounts of pain and I could hardly walk. But I wanted to run it again. I didn't mind that I'd probably lose a limb or two or have to face hail pelting down on my very sore hands.

The reasons for my feelings at the end of the marathon can be boiled down to two key issues. The first is where Channel 5 comes in.

When I was in the depths of GCSE, staying up until God knows what hour making board games which made no sense (the playing pieces were a shoe, a spoon, a ratboy and a clown, the die was lop-sided, the board made of paper and the instructions had written on them in a large font 'Use your imagination') and writing essays about why Hitler liked art in Poland on windy days, I was forsaking sleep. No odd thing there. The problem came when I'd finished the work and I was free to go to bed and prepare for the next day. I was bloody knackered and the last thing I needed was to fall asleep in French, be drawn on by the expletive beside me and then drenched in sweat when being shouted at for failing to stay awake during a monologue of epically dull proportions.

Only I didn't do that. I'd had Channel 5 late night films leading to a whole menagerie of sport on in the background while working. And I'd gotten hooked.

I couldn't sleep, I wanted to see the big fight in the ice hockey and whether Dutch footballers still had the same hair as in the 80s (apparently, they don't, I'm quite disappointed). It was entertaining stuff. I attribute my new found fan-dom of NFL to them and everything. But it broke me inside. For now, whenever I finish something gruelling or tiring, I just don't want to sleep. It's as if I feel like I'd be missing something like I did when I fell asleep during PSV vs Feyenoord back in the 2003 season (which I did, there was a cracking goal scored by the only mullet wearing Dutchman I've seen for a long time). I'd set my mind to stay alert even if my body wasn't.

The other reason is unfortunately linked to this, and that's my inability to cave in. I like battling on. So when my muscles say "no no no, sit down, sleep, relax, or I swear next time we're going to literally explode", my mind's saying "but you can do it! You can carry on!". This probably didn't help during the marathon when I was in a battered way and I risked severe injury by running even faster than I had while hobbling very badly for the last mile and a half after speaking to a talking dog. But that's a different story entirely.

I need people to tell me to slow down. I need them to force the point home to me and make sure my mind doesn't take over when I'm about to collapse. I don't like being ill/injured/distraught at all, and so will try to battle through at all times, and this is usually good, but sometimes I just need to cave in and stop, but I'll never tell myself to do so. That's why I need people around me to help me rebuild, restore and reconsider what's happening and what I'm doing. Sufjan teaches me lots of things.

Otherwise BANG; there's bits of muscle everywhere. And not the tasty kind.

Fox on the run

2008-04-12T19:25:00.000+01:00

Nothing to do, sigh.

I guess I'll run a marathon or something.

Let the soup do the talking…

2008-04-12T02:58:00.000+01:00

(Here's an article written for ISM recently about celebrity. It's the theme this time, see. So I had to theme it up et al. etc. yada yada).

Why art is to blame for the Cult of Celebrity

Artists annoy me.

Now, this isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thought that’ll last for a day or two like a leftover pizza and then be forgotten, only to be found 4 months later when you realise that there’s now an actual colony of minute beings living on the crust, worshipping you as the creator; no, this is something different. It’s more of a continuous grudge against them. Much like the one I have against The Feeling.

Let’s be clear here, I have nothing against their art (that’s the artist’s art, not The Feeling’s; they should have all peripheral limbs removed for their musical travesties). Be it a can of soup, an unmade bed or a light switching on and off, causing some mild cases of epilepsy at the same time, it’s their art and they created it and it has been revered. Nothing wrong with that. The problem’s stem from when artists start talking. Tracey Emin, as nutty as she is (and I do love a good speech from a nutter), shouldn’t have been granted a voice box, the amount of drivel that spews forthwith.

My main case of argument, however, lies with Andy Warhol, the creator of pop art. He has ruined the modern day world. He gave people ideas. Terrible, terrible ideas with just an itty bitty sound bite that he decided to spout out one day; “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” (just to note that he never actually said the phrase “15 minutes of fame”, but that’s the general gist).

It may not have done much as a phrase back in 1968, but by golly did it ruin society eventually; it led to the beginning of the “Cult of Celebrity”.

Now, you must understand here that I’m not against celebrities. Well, not ones who deserve that name and status for their achievements anyway. David Beckham, his missus, even Tony Blackburn have done something to warrant their celebrity moniker. Whether it be football, attempting to sing and being an alleged fashion icon or attempting to spin the decks, people recognise them for that.

No, my issue lies elsewhere. It started with Big Brother, when some Dutch la-di-da decided it’s be a fantastic idea to put a load of ordinary people into a house together and watch the results on TV. It was as if they’d just read what Mr. Warhol said 30 years beforehand and decided it could be a huge money spinner, without thinking of the consequences. Much like a certain Mr. Thomas Austin who took 24 rabbits to Australia with him and in doing so removed a large proportion of the grassland there. Whoops would be the summarising word, methinks.

Indirectly, Warhol gave us Jade Goody, famous for snorting like a pig and getting naked in a game of strip poker on TV. Classy.

It didn’t stop with her either, oh no. The fad of IT girls hasn’t helped matters; “Oh look at us, we’re posh and can afford loads of designer gear, we’re obviously the cream of the fashionistas, but unfortunately our faces look like slapped arses”. If you don’t believe me on that, just look at Tara Palmer Tompkinson.

Oh how I wish it had stopped there, but no, there was no end in sight, the most recent recipient of my rage are those that are famous for being famous, with Berlin Radisson, sorry, Paris Hilton and her other friends getting in on the act. Who cares if you’re an heiress to some hotel chain or go clubbing commando? I certainly don’t. What I do care about, though, is that your fame, sorry, your ‘infamy’ has led to other, more startling and depressing things. Yes, that’s right, more depressing than the remake of The Wicker Man.

You managed to get a leading role in a film which cinemas actually show. You eat nothing to stay thin and cause young girls to do the same because for some reason they think you’re worth listening to and idolizing, ‘because you is famous, like’. You get let off the majority of a prison sentence because you cry at being locked up for something the law deemed you deserving to be locked up for. I’m surprised you haven’t written an autobiography yet, but I’ll be there to slate it when you do.

As you can see, I’m not a fan. I don’t reckon even Andy Warhol would be a fan, but he’s to blame. He decided to come up with a chillingly premonition-laden phrase for the future. The bastard. This is why artists shouldn’t prattle on and should instead stick to what they’re good at; art.

Paris should also stick to what she’s good at; being a city.

The big 5-0

2008-04-10T11:34:00.000+01:00

I've reached a milestone. The 50th post.

This is special, apparently. As are all numbers that are multiples of 50 (up to 1000 anyway). I feel that this is an insult to the other numbers.

By gadgery do they try; the number 37, for instance, sent me some me a letter the other week asking to be recognised as an important post, but i discarded it and went to eat some toast. 13 asked to be included, but wrote a diatribe about superstition, which normally wouldn't affect me, but I had just trod on a black cat under a ladder while my bag swung wildly into the mirror hovering next to me, so I just got worries

Am I discriminating against it because I can't divide it by any number other than 1 and itself? Have I become a number Nazi? What does this do to my statutory rights? Are the BNP going to be knocking on my door to try to recruit me into the party because of my actions?

I feel as if my morals have disintegrated and that I'm no better as a person than Joseph Stalin, the members of The Feeling or Richard Littlejohn.

On second thoughts, I am better than them. I don't make people's souls try to leave this world when playing music or kill people who stop clapping for me too early. Plus I'm not Richard Littlejohn. These are all good things. I think I'm safe from the BNP.

Thank you nos. 13 and 37, you have made me a better person. I salute you both.

Better living through chemistry

2008-04-06T16:14:00.000+01:00

I miss chemistry lessons. By far and away the best science available, what with Physics teaching you things that are proved wrong every year you progress in the subject and Biology trying to make you care about plants. Chemistry was the good one, the one were you got to watch explosions, fire and, in our case, a slightly manic teacher trying to gas you alive by accident. Those were the days.

Amongst the learning and work (it had to happen at some point), came entire workbenches set alight, people being knocked out by ether (ahem), people accidentally setting limbs on fire, knocking over a beaker of concentrated hydrochloric acid and leaning in it for 5 minutes before starting to notice a burning sensation (ahem again) and valentine's poem to the depressingly awful member of staff ("Acids are salmon pink / alkalis are blue / I'd love to spill my universal indicator all over you." Classic stuff, I think you'll agree).

As I mentioned, explosions and fire and the whole reactions malarkey was always the best bit. Caesium in a glass dish of water, classic. This reaction, even more so. Even things with a colour changes could be fun. So long as there was some form of fizzing and/or dangerous liquid/gas involved, we were happy.

So it's not really a surprise for all these manner of terms in the chemical world to be related to relationships, though I'm left wondering where the actual explosions are and why no-one has been knocked out by the 'fumes of love'? Some people use 'chemistry' to describe a budding romantic relationship, others relate it to friendship while the rest stick with it purely at a physical level and leave the next morning after the reaction has occurred with a satisfying 'squeaky pop' having occurred.

There is, however, a problem with this; there is a lot of chemistry. Just what actual reactions/elements/compounds/bonding patterns etc. are actually occurring for which type of interpersonal chemistry? This is where I come in.

Friendships
Simple friendships: Chlorine. Simple bond between the two, common shared interest, bond can be broken far easier than a friendship with more bonds present.
Stronger friendships: Oxygen. More bonds between friends. Potential for spark between the two.
Strongest friendships: Nitrogen. More shared interests between the two, leading to a stronger bond between the two people, takes a lot to sever it. Spark potential reduced to a minimum.

Romantic relationships
One night stands: Sparklers (combustion of magnesium nitrate): Bright spark, burns for a few minutes before the flame is extinguished and they fall asleep. Then the walk of shame occurs.
One night stands that go badly: Combustion of magnesium metal. Bright spark, ends up in a limp looking pale white substance within seconds
Serious relationships: Combustion of an long chain alcohol in oxygen. Pure and simple, continuous fires burning. Easy.
Dominating/submissive relationships: Sodium Chloride. One member of the relationship takes advantage of the other by taking something away from the other (dignity, maybe) and the submissive partner (sodium) giving in very easily.
Predatory love: Iron + Copper Sulphate. Comes swooping in, removes the bind between the couple and run off with the target of their affections.

Other:
Old women with cats - Helium. Nonreactive and made fun of by teenagers.

Chemistry is fun.

Hey hey, it's Saturday

2008-04-05T17:11:00.000+01:00

It is you know.

Word.

Jump up, jump up and get down.

2008-04-03T11:45:00.000+01:00

So the drudgery of another Thursday has hit us. Seems so close to the weekend, but we still have one more day before we can eat malteasers in our underwear in front of Football Focus. Not that I do that. For a start I'm more of a twix man and I haven't watched Football Focus for about three years. But I do know someone who does this religiously.

I'm in the sort of mood one would possibly describe as schizophrenic. They would say this because they don't actually know what schizophrenic means.

I'd use a different descriptive. Possibly akin to a kangaroo on a pogo stick jumping on a trampoline in an enclose bouncy castle. But not that exactly. Because that'd be far more fun. Plus there's definite money spinner potential in that.

In other news, regularly drinking water in a day now has no scientific benefit. Hoorah for useless old wives tales. I'll go back to my old daily method of putting 17 cane toads on my feet and doing body pops with honey on my neck.

I just don't know what to do with myself...

2008-04-02T14:00:00.000+01:00

Today, I should be very happy.

I got five parcels in the post, two of them unexpected, I've managed to run 7 and a half minutes a mile in my long run for the marathon this month and I'm generally in a good place.

However, a looming dampener, much like the news that you cat has run off with your favourite CD to continue their budding relationship and have said they'd never see you again because they've suddenly grown mouths and voice boxes and the fact that placing the CD in a draw has stopped the couple from progressing to the next level. It's that exact sort of feeling.

Problem is, I can't attribute it to anything. Nothing concrete anyway. Unfortunately, this is usually always the way with those feelings you can't shake. It's like someone without any limbs being given a swingball set; pointless and frustrating. And as such, my day has come to a complete halt and I just don't feel like doing anything. I feel down in the dumps without actually being down or ever having visited a dump. And when you get these feelings you can't talk about it with people because there's nothing to talk about. They can offer only peripheral advice, mainly because they have real problems to deal with and your wasting your time being depressed over a lost CD. And a cat. Not that I've actually lost either. I don't even have a cat.

The way forward? People say to give it time and you'll feel right as rain again (I never understood this phrase. What exactly is so right about rain? Does this mean the sun is wrong? or is it because the rain feels good, which is odd because it's falling down from the sky to it's death on the cold hard ground?), and they're probably right but it's not very helpful. In fact, it's quite a lazy way of comforting someone really; because it's a reply you can give to any problem and it looks like you've been listening to them the whole way through, when instead you've been counting how many fuzzy little squares you can see on the TV when it's one and you stare really hard at it.

This isn't really a rant at anything or anyone in particular, just at the general method of sympathy giving. Either don't give it at all or actually put some effort in.

Now this is possibly a very spur of the moment feeling I have and probably won't affect me in a few hours, definitely not by tomorrow, mainly because I tend to distract myself and bounce straight out of the problems (maybe a good way to deal with things, maybe not). But because it's not a real problem and pales in comparison to others there's no point telling anyone in particular. So I'll post it here.

Well, that's taken up 20 minutes of my day. And I'm stuck again on things to do.
Maybe the world needs a new superhero?. Or I can forge relationships between other inanimate objects in my room? Or, you know, I could do something worthwhile.

Effort is for the weak.

2008-03-28T14:24:00.000Z

I'm taking a break from my weekly round-ups (Mainly because last week I was in Nottingham and there's nothing interesting enough to write about for this one).

I have nothing concrete to replace it with.

So I won't.

For this week, I'll allude to some witty event and leave you all with a content chuckle. That's what all the best do, right?

Now here is (the middle of) nowhere...

2008-03-27T21:11:00.000Z

Happy birthday to me. Well for yesterday anyway. I am now a man. Well, possibly...

After 7 long, long years I have finally moulded myself into a well-rounded, polysyllabic phrased person as I leave my teenage and become a..., er... what is the general word used for 20-year olds? I'm certainly not a teenager, but not quite yet a twentysomething. Much like a square peg in a round hole, an elephant in a refrigerator or Michelle McManus walking through a doorway, I just don't seem to fit.

I've been plunged into no-man's land. No-one quite knows what to expect from a 20-year old. Sure, it sounds better than being 19 (which'll be very useful when coming for applying for spare rooms), but I'm still the same person. If anything, as well, being 20 sounds better than being 21. People tend to associate 21 with drinking, being wild, the best years of your life, whereas being 20 sounds more solid, more tidy and, ironically, more grown up.

This in itself is confusing. I keep forgetting how old I am, so I tend to act more like an 80-year old trying to remember their postal address and who the Prime Minister is. Not that they care that much, all they want is some cheaper stamps.

In the past week I've believed I was every age inclusive of 17 and 21. This may have more to do with my usually strong maths ability disintegrating like wet cake as it usually does at the start of a new year for me or even the world (years are tricky come January, this one turned into 2011 on one of my exam papers), but the reason I'm possibly confused is that I exhibit a lot of the tendencies shown by all the age groups mentioned. I'd maybe even include a 7 year old's mind in there just so I could explain my relentless positivity, but fear this may be stretching the envelope too far.

I can be sensible. A surprising amount of the time actually, whenever needs must and all that. But I also have that childish streak that even those at the higher end of teenage have. If 20 is that crossover period between childish and sensible, I've been bridging that gap for years now. And will probably continue to do so until I hit 30. And God knows that you class a 30-year old as. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Anyway, I'm just annoyed I didn't even get a birthday cake this year.

Also, where do you get stretchy envelopes?

No need to cry...

2008-03-24T17:53:00.000Z

Emotion. It's hard to show even at the best of times. Happiness you can exude with a smile and some jumping but people think you're a loon. Confusion, surprise and concern all have similar expressions to them (especially from me) and are often, coincidentally, confused with each other. Thinking about it, the only emotion that can truly be shown and properly understood that that is the case is sadness. And that's because of the big wet things that appear from your eyes.

And yes, you may say 'well, you can cry with happiness', to which I would say 'you know what I mean you pedantic bastard'. But then after this weekend I'm not even so sure myself.

I've never really been the teary sort myself. Even when my chin had a gaping hole in it and I was four (witness the account of the carnage here), sure there were a couple of tears from shock, but bar that nothing at all. Well, from me at least, my sister nearly flooded the car. Not a big fan of blood, see. This has been a constant source of joy for me .

In fact, I only recall a couple of occasions in the past 10 years where I've had a good proper cry. Once was in 2002 after a very very very bad term at school, mainly through negative attitudes and all the negativity leading to myself not feeling good about myself and others highlighting this and using it to torment me even more because that's what 13/14 year olds do.

The other time was this very Saturday. And while the reasons for crying beforehand seemed quite straightforward and in line with the emotion of sadness, these tears seemed to appear as a huge combination of effects. Yes, I had managed to achieve (if that's the right word) the elusive 'tired and emotional' state.

It had been a long weekend. There had been japes, clubbing, pubbing, talking, footballing, running and fort building; all very fun but very tiring mini-events. Now, I had managed to injure myself and was in quite some pain when we got back top the pub after the most important football match of the year; Team North vs Team South (which, of course, the north won 4-1), but wasn't feeling sad at all. I was quite happy.

That was until about 15 minutes after sitting down in the pub where I felt myself welling up. This was a strange feeling for me and not one I'm used to at all. I think I knew tears were forthcoming but I really can't explain why they arrived. The best I can come up with was a combination of three things; i) my feet, ankles and legs were all in a lot of pain; ii) I was worried and very distressed that these injuries may have a detrimental effect on running the marathon on three weeks time; and iii) because I was around caring people who were actively looking out for me and were actually worried about my well being.

It was (iii) which really confused me. Not because I was crying due to being happy as I knew this is a regular occurrence (I've caught enough/too many soap scenes in my time) but because of what the third reason entailed. People caring about me properly. This was new. Especially the quantity and indeed quality in which it was occurring at. I just hadn't received anything like that in my life. And it was brilliant.

Well, apart from the fact that it completely screwed up my interpretation of emotion. Perhaps it isn't that sadness is the only emotion that can be properly shown, but that crying is the only true way you can properly show emotion.

This is too deep for me. I'm going to play with some Lego.

Look at me, look at me!

2008-03-19T03:08:00.000Z

As we all know, life is generally tricky.

People encounter problems here and there all the time. As an example, just today I encountered the problem of no food to eat in the house, slipping down my ever so slidey stairs and breaking a hula girl in half. Life threw me the problems and I dealt with them as best I could; I went to the shops, I got up off the floor and vowed to be more careful next time (though I know I just won't) and I got the extra hula girl I have hidden in the closet and replaced the old one.

This is fine and normal (as normal as keeping a spare hula girl knowing you'd ruin the first one is anyway), mainly because these are small problems. Sometime we get bigger problems thrown at us;

"I feel down, my girlfriend dumped me"
"My brother's seriously ill"
"Oh dear, I appear to be missing some limbs"

Issues arise, however, when the type of problem is confused. Or, more accurately, when the person with the problem is far far more upset by the fact that they're going to have to continuously go to the hospital, spend a fortune on hospital parking and breathe in that godawful hospital ward smell rather than spending time with a family member before they croak.

Unfortunately, I seem to have been littered with a lot of these people in my life. Thankfully, most have since moved on or been left behind somewhere (usually Clacton, the poor, backward souls), but a couple remain. And the worst thing is that if they do have a problem, even the itty bitty ones they've made more of rainforest out of a shrubbery over, dear God do they let you know about it. Well, more specifically, me.

I seem to have a face for people to open up to. Whether they see me more of a conveniently placed toilet for the overdrunk than a giant ear is unknown, but quite frankly I couldn't care less. Usually because their problems are so inane and petty.

What's worse, though, is that when there is what they see as a 'major problem' (usually tends to be a an argument with another friend about some form of thunderthigh), they expect you (again, me) to agree completely with them and take their side. Going even further along the scale, somewhere between falling off a cliff and spending a day with Gillian McKeith, we find the people who have a go at you for making suggestions to solve their problems because nothing can be done to solve them. Then why did you tell me them in the first place?!

The answer is simple, it's pure attention seeking. And I do not care for attention seekers.

Seriously, they aggravate me so much. They just want the spotlight to be on them and all their 'problems', but they crave the spotlight (much like a moth addicted to lanterns) and so when you try to offer a reasonable solution they close all their ears and either refute the advice saying it won't help or just don't listen for fear that it might help and their problem might be dealt with.

I like helping people out. But when they act like that, I really can't do much for them. The same can be said for hula girls in two parts really...

Tricky's weekly round-up #7

2008-03-14T23:07:00.000Z

Yup, it's that time of the week again...

Jerk it out - The first of this week's stories is an oddball. Apparently Irish sperm banks were running low on supplies. So low, in fact, that they were offering a free festival ticket to any festival in Europe for some donations. Only now it's been stated by the people behind the site that it was a 'pilot scheme'. Which screams hoax to just about anyone.

Yes, Dave Clayton's been at it again. The guy behind Area52 and attempts to create blue bananas (how useful, this can be used to combat HIV/cancer/insert currently incurable disease here...) has created a PR stunt, getting people to divulge names, addresses and phone numbers by lying. Sounds like politics to me. They go well together really. Tossers.

Losing their religion - Wrath, envy, lust and and pride are all now allowed by Catholicism. That is according to the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti (such a long name for a guy in charge of a seminar). Included in the new sins are 'accumulating excessive wealth', which kind of buggers up every billionaire there is including the catholic church themselves and 'inflicting poverty'. Now what could the Catholic church do with the billions upon billions...

But then Greed was in the original seven anyway. The main point in this is that we're now allowed to wield machetes and maim people (without murdering, of course), stare in awe and picture ourselves with objects of our desire (male, female or indeed toasters), pride ourselves on this basis and then envy everyone with more money than us. And we'll still get to heaven. Result!

If you don't want me to destroy it - ...then tough. The Astoria's stay of execution is officially over after Red Ken finally confirmed that it will be demolished to make way for the Tottenham Court Road part of Crossrail. The date for closure has not been announced but it's likely to be by the end of the year.

Ken described the venue as lacking the 'cutting edge of comfort' and that a new, more plush venue will be built along with the Crossrail construction. I must say here that Ken is correct; the venue was dirty, sticky and grimey, but using that as part of an explanation is not going to placate many gig-goers and is certainly not a valid reason. It remains, for now at least, the only mid-sized venue in central London which relates a huge step from the usual 1,000 capacity to 4,000 capacity for gigs. Do we really want to see little bands at Shepherd's Bush Empire with only 1,500 of the tickets sold? Where would be the atmosphere? Though i suppose if it's a band like The Enemy I wouldn't really care. I'd be more worried about protecting my ears and worrying for my sanity that I've gone an The Enemy gig...

However, though, times change and there's no point dwelling on the point. Enjoy the Astoria while you can, guys and gals.

Ego tripping at the gates of hell

2008-03-13T20:42:00.000Z

And so the Beeb's "Wonderland" series has ended.

The culmination of this part intriguing, part farcical series took place in 2006 Frinton, when the battle to "save the gates" began. As a background, Frinton has had railway gates manned by a very lonely guy since at least the inception of the Sunshine Coastline. In 2006, plans were unveiled by Network Rail to remove the gates and replace them with an automated barrier controlled in Colchester. This has angered residents in Frinton. And strangely enough it's the people on the 1920s style beach side that are protesting. Shock and indeed horror.

The railway gates have often been referred to as a status divide in Frinton, and as a former resident of 16 years, I can completely agree. However, that's what someone located outside the gates would say. We didn't own shoes and paid for our food with siblings (I miss Benny especially). Put simply, the people inside the gates turned their noses up at you if you lived outside. And they did, and it seems still do. The real reason the residents of Greensward Frinton want their gates kept is to keep the riff-raff out. But saying that out loud would be a tremendous faux-pas.

I've been critical of the series, annoyed at the amount of sensationalisation which has occurred. I'm thinking particularly of the programmes featuring man who ate roadkill and second life. However, this time round it was spot on. People really are that strange inside the gates and I can assuredly say that they probably picked on some of the more normal people there.

Well, except maybe the owner of The Curiosity Store. I always remember walking past that store when having to traverse inside the hallowed grounds inside the gates and thinking that a hermit must live there as the same items that had been on sale when I was 4 were still there when left the town 12 years later. How does she make a living? I reckon it occurs when a poor unfortunate tourist enters the shop and they are 'treated' to a nude tribal dance and then burnt. Yes, all that went through my head when I saw that woman was "I wonder where Edward is...".

Viewers would also have noticed the senile old lady waiting for her sister to appear through the gates. Only we assume it was her sister, because she mentioned at least four different relations. And the fact that there was a doctor's surgery down the road at least thrice.

This is typical of Frinton. The proportion of over-50s to under 20s in 3 to 1, so no wonder the youth there feel ostracised. So much so they didn't even appear in the documentary.

I'd like to applaud the director in getting the tone of the film spot on and having enough sense not to bias the viewer by adding his own narration. And the haunting music just confirmed what i already knew about Frinton; Once you enter, very rarely shall thee escape.

Otherwise you're placed inside a giant man made of wicker...

Monday, monday...

2008-03-11T22:26:00.000Z

Today is Tuesday.

When I was but a wee lad I used to think it was called "Chewsday", because that's the day you chew your food. Which means the other days I must have either swallowed things whole or spent ages cutting things up.

If you think about it, there are possibly literal interpretation for all but one of the days;

Tuesday - Chewsday (a day to chew)
Wednesday - Weddingday (a day to get married)
Thursday - Fursday (a day to wear fur)
Friday - Fryday (a day to fry your food)
Saturday - Sittingday (a day to sit down)
Sunday - Sunday (A day for, well, sun)

The only one that doesn't fit the pattern is Monday. What are they for? Should they even exist? The calendar says so, but who is he to speak when he has to change every four years because he couldn't count properly?

Everyone hates mondays, so I suggest we claim these "mondays" as "Mydays" and do stuff we want to do on them. This will eradicate the hatred of the day as the start of the working week as you won't be working on it.

I'm a genius, me.

Well, until next tuesday when beginning of the week hatred starts again anyway.

Tricky's weekly round-up #6

2008-03-06T22:48:00.000Z

They are night zombies... - It's been a confusing week in the papers. 24 hour drinking has been criticised for the increase in binge drinking in some of them, whilst others suggest that binge drinking has actually dropped in a lot of areas and only increased in a small amount. We all know that there are lies, damn lies and statistics and that with the latter of these you can prove anything, but you can't talk about 24 hour drinking being a contributing cause to the degradation of society when the statistics given are pretty much exactly the same as two years ago.

But of course, each paper have their own agenda. And people usually have their own chosen paper and usually for a reason (most commonly their political persuasion), so their going to agree with what the papers say. Especially Daily Mail readers. So people aren't going to question it, and take the paper's line. Damn flock society...

She's hearing voices. And ringing. And then, nothing - Do you trust students? I don't, and I'm one of them. So god knows why a leading charity has asked some to design some 'cool' earplugs for gig-goers. If you didn't know, some genius has worked out that very loud noises can cause hearing damage. It has been said that just one night out can damage the hearing of 9 out of 10 of us and the research results have targeted gigs as his main port of call for criticism. Now forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't pneumatic drills louder? So why haven't they been criticised for searing my ears when they've been digging up the pavement outside?

Anyway, I think this calls not for the widespread introduction of ear plugs, but instead we should go back to ear muffs, they deserve a run out.

I can't be bothered to write three stories worth today. I'm tired and want to kip.

I shall leave you all with a nice little link to I Guess I'm Floating and recommend especially Wilco's cover of Thirteen.

And the award goes to... My Hero-in

2008-03-05T15:57:00.000Z

I hate musical awards ceremonies. With a passion.

Yet I'm still somehow compelled to find out who's been nominated for what and who wins. I shouldn't do this, as it's an unhealthy combination of lost limbs and incurable syphilis for my already battered musical taste, when artists I like aren't even nominated for anything when I know they're far, far better than anyone else mentioned. For example, my artists of 2007 included people such as Radiohead, Field Music and !!!, yet these were highly underrepresented in both of the recent major industry events (The Brits and the NME Awards).

I shall reiterate that I know I shouldn't care, but I do. Most of these awards shows are generated for the masses; they'll choose someone popular to win to boost their sales from a pre-arranged agreement between record label and corporate whores, or they'll choose someone obvious who won't be questioned by the mass populace (Arctic Monkeys, anyone?). But the positive little Steve inside me still believes there's an inch of credibility involved somewhere; that cases are put forward for the truly good artists out there.

Unfortunately, this years awards, so far anyway, have blown little positive Steve to smithereens, and he now sits there, lifeless and incredibly depressed, much like a Vietnam war veteran.

And the worrying thing is, is that little positive Steve has been destroyed by such a trivial award. Pathetic in fact; NME's hero of the year.

The award went, somehow, to one Mr. Doherty, whilst his smack addicted female counterpart Amy Winehouse received the villain of the year award. From where I'm standing, the cases are pretty much the same, but the readership of NME is so idiotic that it believes someone like Doherty when he says he's coming off the drugs. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and he'll be back in the papers. Probably with a hooker in each hand, Kate Moss on his shoulders and a muzzle of heroin.

What are the chances these easily swayed, publicity led readers are ever going to get to know smaller bands without huge backing, or even vote for exceptionally popular ones without a label?

So from now on, I officially do not care. Unless, of course, someone I like wins. Then I'll say it's all changed. And the next year it'll be back to this.

Life can be so predictable at times.

There's a lot going on in my mind right now...

2008-03-02T18:57:00.000Z

The mind is tricky. You go for a run to clear your head (while absolutely by coincidence training for a marathon you happen to be running in 42 days) and you end up with more thoughts in it than when you came back;

'What shall I write about next?'

'Where are my keys? Ah, they're in my back pocket. Wait, I have no pockets. Ah yes, they're in my socks. I reckon sock pockets could really catch on'

'Damn, I forgot the Vaseline. No wonder my nipples are achey. How did they come up with the word 'nipples'? I don't remember reading it in Ecce Romani.'

'Ooo, a squirrel. I wonder if it's collecting nuts for his famished family who are destitute and had to move to Bangor in order to pay the rent due to their spiralling mortgage costs in their old house here in Colchester. I've heard the wife's cheating on him too, with a shrew of all creatures. Not even something with as bushy a tail, like a raccoon...'

'What do ghosts do when they get a bit horny?'

Clearly, fresh air contains some form of opium.

Tricky's weekly round-up #5

2008-02-29T22:39:00.000Z

This living hand - The Irish are great. They gave us Father Ted, Guinness and a whole set of three men in a bar jokes to work from. This time round, though, they've trumped themselves. The record winners of Eurovision (that's 7 wins, but none since their run of three in a row '93-'95) have entered a puppet into Eurovision for May. And it's not just any puppet, no no, this puppet is of a quintessentially Irish animal, a turkey. Apparently, he's also a friend of Zig and Zag, Bob Geldof and Chris De Burgh. The poor turkey...

Yes, the Irish believe this is their best chance of winning this year. If it's even vaguely close to My Lovely Horse, It'll be my favourite Eurovision song of all time. But then us Brits know all about novelty acts and how well they fare; Scooch, Jemini... oh, they were actually trying to be serious artists, weren't they...

Boom! Shake the... er, Lincoln - Yes, as usual us Brits are rubbish at something else. Not football, not cricket, or even a bit of snow this time round (though we're all still bloody awful at them), no, we as a nation are awful at natural disasters. And I say 'disaster' in the loosest sense of the word.

Apparently, there was an earthquake (centered around Lincoln), which was only 5.2 on the Richter Scale, slept through by over half the population and caused absolutely no fatalities with just a solitary injury, yet you'd think we'd leapt back to 1900s San Francisco the way the news stations reported the news. However, there was bugger all to report in the end bar a couple of broken floors and windows.

You know a story's run out of mileage when The Sun print on the front page on Thursday a random couple from thought they were having an even more glorious romp in the dark which culminated in them telling a story about how they guy asked if he made her world move. There was laughter the next morning when it turned out that yes, the world had in fact moved for her. Ho ho ho.

The calendar hung itself... - So we come to the last of the trinity this week with Leap Day. As we all know (I assume all, anyway), it's February 29th today and it won't be like this again until 4 years time. So the calendar has to always catch up and will never win the race against time with the prize of all existence at stake. All because people couldn't do simple mathematics and construct minutes in an hour properly.

People always say they feel sorry for people born on that day as they only get one birthday every 4 years, but I don't. It's their own fault for being so inconsiderate to leave the womb at that point in time. Did they not have calendars in there like I did?

There's also another ridiculous ritual for this day and that is that it's the only day that's socially acceptable for women to ask men to marry them. And to add more ridicule to it, if we say no, we have to buy them a gift. The leeching sodettes.

I like to ride my bicycle...

2008-02-28T22:04:00.000Z

For as long as I can remember, I've been a walking catastrophe. Now, I don't mean that in the figurative or metaphorical sense that my life is awful, my kittens left me for another owner and Thomas the Tank is laughing behind my back about being unemployed, homeless and a little bit deranged (well, maybe the last one is true). No, I actually mean it entirely literally. On the surface, it seems a bad thing. And it is, but not as bad as you'd expect.

My first memorable occurrence with unluck in the calamity department came when I was barely 5 years old. In fact, I was probably 4. I was still riding my bike with the training wheels (or 'treels') on and I was generally in a good mood. Then my friend over the road proposed a race. he could ride his bike, him being a year older or something like that, and wanted to test who was quicker. I was intrigued. The idea of direct competition with a friend is something I strangely enjoy, even to this day. But this had added intrigue as I was the underdog. The underdog is my favourite of all competitive people, for they are expected to lose and anything that isn't last place is a bonus for them. He was expecting to whoop me, I was just hoping to maybe finish a close-ish second. It's how underdogs work.

Anyway, we set our course out. Quite simple, a few gradients here and there, sharp corners, long corners and a chicane. For a 4 and a 5 year old we were quite adept at track design, better than that Tilke fellow the FIA are using in any case.

We employed his sister to operate the chequered flag as mine was being lazy. We were on the (albeit very small and probably not an actual) grid, about o answer the eternal question; Which is faster, boy with 2 wheels or boy with 4 wheels when there should be two?

The lights went out. I say lights, I obviously mean that his sister shouted 'Go!', and we were off. He took an early lead, but I clawed it back at the chicane. it was neck and neck after the first lap, but I was gradually pulling away. Maybe I would win, maybe the whole of history would change and people would use training wheels in competitions around the country, motorbikes would have optional attachments to placate the fellows who couldn't balance properly and perhaps I'd go down as the most famous four-year old in history. Or perhaps not.

As you'd probably expect, something didn't quite go right.

I was coming up to the second to last corner, leading by a considerable margin. I knew I was going to win, I was becoming sloppy with my driving. I overshot the corner and went horribly wide into the road. My friend was using this opportunity to reel me in, to steal the victory. I navigated myself around and was perpendicular to the pavement track. My only chance was to get back onto the pavement and through the last slow corner at the end. And coming off the road gave me a chance to power it through without having to brake.

Now, as you are well aware, there is a drop from a pavement to the road where there is no driveway in evidence nearby. I was at such a place. I hadn't reasoned that while coming off the pavement, there was nothing to stop my wheel from going on the road, coming back onto the pavement would be a different story...

BLAM!

My bike stopped momentarily. I, however, didn't. I went over the handlebars face first into the pavement. This quite hurt my chin, which had a gaping hole in the bottom (the scar can still be found with enough searching today). This wasn't the end of the ordeal though; I wondered where my bike was. At which point things become foggy. The bike had flown in the air after I'd fallen off it and only just landed and decided to knock me out a bit and I make me feel ever so groggy.

We went back to my house to asses the damage. My sister answered the door and screamed. Apparently, she doesn't like blood, especially not in the huge quantities at which it was coming out of my chin.

I don't remember the trip to the hospital, but I do remember my sister crying a hell of a lot more than me, the one in actual pain, and the nurses being hugely patronising. I didn't even get any stitches, just a ridiculous mass of steristrips.

The killer blow, though? I lost the race and the chance to be famous. And he gloated. The sod.

Eggo and the Bunny Man

2008-02-23T10:19:00.000Z

I’ve never really understood Easter. Sure, there’s a huge symbolism thing going on about a guy dying and three days later (apparently, anyway. I always thought the gap between Friday and Sunday was just two days, but I suppose counting was different back then) he comes back to life but in a sort of ghostlike wispy way, much like a ghost in fact, but after that, it just gets a tad unbelievable.

For a start, each year it is said to have happened on a different two days. Compare this to Christmas, for example, which is always on the same day each year. The latter makes sense; we celebrate the religious festival of Santa’s birthday on his birthday, but for some reason, some sort of time-space continuum breach allows the date of the not-so-baby Jesus’ death happen on a different day each year. Either someone is very bad at history or has selective date amnesia and is unable to look at a calendar to check when last year’s event was.

Surely the Easter marketing department should look for a more reliable and less brain damaged historian, for it’s not just the calendars that suffer. Schools are having to root a ‘Spring Break’ type holiday into their internal calendars to sort out this mess. It got to such a point a few years ago that in a local comprehensive in Essex, Christmas was being celebrated in mid-October, Hallowe’en was in July and May Day appeared in a parallel dimension and tried to mate with Pingu’s love child. But then, this is Essex we’re talking about. No county can mix such ‘classy’ people with seaside graveyards for the old in the way Essex can, where you get murderous gangs of 79-year olds standing on the local green smoking and taking drugs while the teens sit there shaking their fist behind closed doors as they watch Countdown lamenting at how neither Des can pull it off the same way Mr. Whitely could. And no, that is not a euphemism you dirty, dirty soul.

But yes, what were we talking about? Ah yes, Easter. Being stuck in Essex for 19 years has a strange effect on people. Especially me.

However, now we get to the nitty-gritty of the situation, the thing that riles me up to such an extent that my blood is boiling and would be useful to make you a cup of tea if you liked having blood in your tea; the Easter Bunny.

What is his purpose? How oh how does he (or she, I’m not a bunny fascist) represent the event which we get two weeks taken out of our educational year for? The only possible explanation I can think of is that some bunnies were trapped in the tomb for those apparent three days and when the body did happen to arise, the bunnies took time out of their game of Battleships (possibly what woke Jesus up, we just don’t know) and helped him move the rock. They’re surprisingly strong critters those rabbits, virtually unable to be killed in any computer game.

But even then, where does the basket of eggs the Easter Bunny is carrying come from. I’m pretty sure they weren’t making an omelette when Battleships was available. And why are they chocolate eggs? Sure, they taste far better than real eggs, and I can’t imagine people being as excited to receive 12 of Bessie the hen’s best as they could be when they receive a ton of additive filled chocolate versions without any of that very pointless egg white stuff. And to those of you saying, ‘Ah, but what about eggy soldiers’, I retort back to you that chocolate tastes better and can be part of a nutritional breakfast, or so Nestlé (other, less evil brands of chocolate are available) say anyway.

Of course, I know that the eggs and bunny thing are all a very clever marketing scheme which I myself fell for until I was at least 18 (so last year in fact). But I feel that other holidays should be treated the same. There should be an official Christmas animal that’s really careless and loses their completely disassociated chocolate version of their selected food product each year, sometimes on the 25^th, the 8^th or the 31^st of January, just to add some variation. Perhaps a chaffinch and his chocolate caviar, or an evil clown and a bunch of chocolate beef burgers. I’m sure on of them seems quite familiar. Oh that’s it; the chaffinch is used for Lent, it’ll need replacing.

Each to their own, I guess. I may sound flippant with my remarks about the meaning of Easter, but I respect that some people really do believe these events happened. I’d just like them to settle on a date for them and not have the Easter Bunny cavorting around with eggs each year whenever they feel like it. He’s a menace, you know…

Tricky's weekly round-up #4

2008-02-22T22:59:00.000Z

You've got it in your pocket... - So, the famous (not that I'd really heard of him myself) DJ Grooverider has been given the minimum 4 year sentence that drug posession leads to in Dubai. Yes, the laws are draconian (the guy who got 4 years for 3 opium containg poppy seeds from a bread roll he'd bought on a flight springs to mind. Whoever thoguth opium in seeds was a good idea needs to rethink everything else he's done. Yes, 'God', i'm looking at you), but I don't feel that sorry for him. For a start, everyone knows that the laws are that bad, and secondly because of his very very weak excuse, possibly written for him by a 12 year old who forgot his homework.

To paraphrase, he said he didn't realise they were still in there and that it was an old batch which must have been in his jeans for a long time. In other news, we have learnt that DJs don't wash their clothes much.

Under the G-spotlight - The fabled member of the 'rule of three' (that's clitoris, g-spot and iris. And no, by iris they do not mean the one in your eye as I may have thought when quite drunk in a bar listening to a guy talking about the Princess Diana assasination inquest board game) has finally had some light shed on it, and not via a particularyl rauncy page 3 shot, no no, this was a broadsheet doohickey.

Apparently, the prescence of a thicker area of tissue somewhere down there allows for some women to gain more than just the 25% of orgasms acheived by woman via the vaginal tissue.
For the easily confused, this is about women.

Oh you got to kick a bucket or two - Another week, another famous death. This time, though, it's not an eventual bastardised Scouse/London hybrid school or the elder statesman of hidden camera shows, but instead the humble Polaroid is to cease to exist this year. Which is a tragic shame really, as Polaroids are (well, now more of a 'were') quite fantastic little pieces of photo stuff, but to be fair there's no way they were going to survive for long in the current climate of digi-age going on.

However, it will stop wannabe cool/indie/scene kids from buying them and taking photos with them because they think they're retro, whipping it out at every opportunity to such an extent you wish to carry around a couple of heavy fire extinguishers to smash the camera and then consequently them in the face just for being so ridiculously up themselves. Maybe I'm just bitter...

Tricky's weekly round-up #3

2008-02-15T15:39:00.000Z

Sporting Farces -A day hasn't gone by this week without one farcical sporting story being highlighted on the back (and front) pages. If it's not about the proposed additional 39th game to the Premier League, it's something to do with Dwain Chambers. They're pretty open shut cases but have been drawn out to such an extent that it makes you want to hit everyone involved, even people on your side.

To clarify, the correct positions on these stories are 'no, what a ridiculous idea you money grabbing bastard' and 'he's a drugs cheat, screw him, or at least place him in a similar scenario to the druggie person in Saw II'. Any other opinion on the matter is wrong. Fact.

Can they work it out? – This week, the divorce settlement case of Macca and Mucca went to court, with the judge calling for no crawling to the newspapers to sell their story during, otherwise he’d hold them in contempt of court. I wonder who that was mainly directed at…

I feel people jump on the bandwagon and make too many jokes regarding Heather Mills and her missing leg, after all, it’s not her fault she lost it (careless really, I bet it’s behind the money grabbing bint’s sofa). It’s a shame really; all the leg talk takes away from the real fact that she’s a complete and utter psycho. Allegedly, of course, though anyone who speaks at a frequency only cats and teenagers can hear obviously has something wrong with them. Speaking of which…

Watch out, mosquito's about - This week's fina story revolves around new suggestions to use a noise created specifically for teenagers against them. Alas, some groups of people defending children and the little blighters themselves have been criticisng the scheme. To start with, children should be seen and not heard, so shut up, secondly, stop hanging around outside the local shop swigging the tramp you just beaten up's whcikey out of a carrier bag so as not to be potted by police.

There are more important and interesting thing to worry about. Like the colour beige.

Power out...

2008-02-12T11:01:00.000Z

It's strange what being in the dark can do to you. Some get scared, some paranoid, while others just tend to doze off because hey, it's dark.

Myself, I tend to go for hyperactivity. I'm definitely more of a social and upbeat person in the evenings (even if right now I have no get up go at all...) mainly because people can't really see you properly when you're grinning inanely and when you think you're being drunk under a table by Alan Shearer while in reality it's the moosehead on the bar wall. Though the resemblance is quite uncanny.

So, when yesterday the road workers decided once more to drill their way through another set of power cables, I felt an urge, an excitement inside me. I'd had a pretty dull weekend, and a pathetic but easy Monday morning, so this was a welcome change from the norm. Well, I say change from the norm, as I said, this wasn't the first time this has happened. Around 3 years ago, they'd be able to cut the power off (probably after they were kicking their helmet's around and knocked an axe into the power lines. I know not why they had an axe, as they weren't lumberjacks, but don't ruin my imagination) every Saturday morning for about 5 weeks while I was trying to enjoy my dose of kid's TV. Inconsiderate bastards.

I arrived home at about 4 and the power was still out. This was going to be fun, cooking in the dark, getting to feel like an adventurer. Well, an adventurer in my own home, but with cooking equipment, food and power enough to use the internet on my laptop for four hours. Not exactly Ray Mears, but the closest I'd get that night.

7.30pm arrived and still no light. I saw candles in other windows, so I assumed we were in for the long haul. No-one ever lights a candle when there's power, that's just plain dozey. Unless, of course, you're Scrooge and you only have candles. But that's another story for another time. Halloween or something like that. I started cooking. I had pasta, a knife, vegetables and a lighter. Oh, and a gas cooker, which was handy.

My is cooking in the dark hard. Cutting things is russian roulette for your fingers each time and checking to see if the veg had boiled is just foolhardy, and the bringer of many a scold. Well, one, but that's still one too many.

Then the lights came on.

I had managed to put cucumber in my vegetable selection thinking it was a courgette and had actually cut the power lead to the kettle clean through, which I only noticed when I noticed an hour later the kettle hadn't boiled.

Apparently though, the power had been back on for half an hour. And it had. I just hadn't noticed the lights turning on in other houses as I started cooking. My sister turned on the light to my night-cooking, shook her head and walked off.

I didn't mind. I felt as if I could survive in the bush now. Well, if I didn'thave to put up a tent, had access to a lot of channeled gas and had plenty of food. And shelter. And warmth.

Easy.

---------------------------------------------------

I've added a couple of links to my page. The first new one is to goodbye, foom, the inspiration for my drawing style and general humouress cartoons. The second is to one of the inspirations of this blog, Scaryduck. Enjoy both.

Out of routine...

2008-02-10T23:42:00.000Z

About 17 years ago a small frog told me, via the medium of television and song, a combination which can never be beaten, forgotten or indeed forgiven, that being the colour he was, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. ‘Not easy’, was the phrase he used, in fact.

The frog in question has since been murdered off screen after being sat on by an abnormally giant yellow bird, but his words have stayed with me and it has got me thinking. Can it really be that hard to be green? Of course it is, you might say. And that would be correct if I were talking about it literally, but I’m not. For a start, I’m waiting until my mid-40s and have really bad anger issues before that happens. I might even buy some ripped purple shorts. But secondly and more importantly, it’s because I’m talking more of the environmentally friendly side of the word. Can living a ‘green’, environmentally friendly lifestyle really be that hard? Now, again, you may deem this to be as easy as the local bike, but you may be in for a surprise. Let’s find out anyway.

I decided that for one day last week, I’d try to have a completely green day, though without any basket cases or American idiots. Not that that’s a bad thing, quite the opposite, I can’t stand the blighters. And yes, I did just say ‘blighters’ because I am, it seems, meant to be from the 1950s.

I started the day with a flourish and immediately committed my first green crime of the day without even realising. My hi-fi had turned onto standby following its alarm to wake me up and has remained so ever since. When I did wake up, I still couldn’t see, so I went to turn on the light. Bam! I was quickly becoming the OJ Simpson of Green when the light flickered on with its immediate non-energy saving glow. I then left the room to go and have a shower. ‘Ha ha’, I thought, it’s 2-1 now, showers are better than baths. But alas, the lead was re-established when I realised I’d left my light on in my room. Not even awake for 10 minutes and already three crimes committed.

This continued all day pretty much. I went for some driving practice, left all my appliances on standby completely accidentally, had a second shower after forgetting I’d had my first after going out for a run, getting the bus to town rather than walking, forgetting that I could recycle things when clearing out my room rather than chucking it all in a black bag and creating the world’s most uncomfortable and sharpest glass containing beanbag (I break things a lot) and used the dishwasher rather than hand wash. By the end of the day, the score resembled that of a cricket match, or what should have happened when Liverpool met Havant and Waterlooville. I had lost.

But the most annoying thing was that I was trying. I turned every light off when I left the room, I turned off (well, standby-ed) all my electrical things when I’d finished with them, I even turned my laptop off continuous charge, which in retrospect was a stupid thing to do as I ran out of battery and lost all of what I was writing.

The problem is that we’re reliant in our daily lives on electricity and we’re stuck in routine. We constantly charge our phones, out generic mp3 players, our laptops, use our computers, televisions and music systems, while being stuck in the same routine of throwing everything that we don’t want, including, the broken glass, the cardboard boxes, and that sandwich maker we bought thinking we’d use them all the time when in reality, you used it once, it burnt the bread and gave you salmonella, tetanus and chlamydia all at the same time.

And the fact that people keep going on about how we have to change and about how simple it can be just plain irritates me. For a start, all the folk who do say these things either want to be elected to become Prime Minister or want a bit of publicity for their latest autobiography/film/album (delete as appropriate). Then there’s the teeny tiny little detail that after their green publicity story, they’re off in their private jets to whore themselves out at the next location.

Even the ones who genuinely care have more money than most and can afford more environmentally friendly products. Lay folk can’t consistently afford it.

As much as those celebrity type people prattle on about how good and easy it is to live a green lifestyle, the amount of effort required to carry it out is a lot of hassle. This isn’t to say I’m against a changing people’s attitudes regarding green issues, not at all. I’m just pointing out exactly how tricky it can be when there are obstacles like price, routine and perhaps most importantly, reliance in the way.

It’s strange how wise young frogs can be, even if they have managed to get a hand stuck up their backside…

Tricky's weekly round-up #2

2008-02-08T20:39:00.000Z

Grange Hill kops it - Yep, another celebrity has passed away this week. This one contained hundreds of children, moved from East London to Liverpool, and whose former headmaster was Adolf Hitler. It was killed off on its 30th birthday, the Beeb saying that it didn't tackle real issues anymore. Hopefully, this'll be the beginning of the end for the most ironically titled programme in the history of the BBC, Chucklevision.

Still, I'm not so sad to see it go. I was always more of a Byker Grove fan. At least it knew it was northern.

How very unpatriotic - It was Superbowl day on Sunday. I may have damaged my body clock at eyes while watching it (I've lost my glasses), but it was worth it to see the Patriots crumble under the pressure of a perfect season. Not that I like the Giants. Quite the opposite, they knocked out the Packers in the NFC final, but anyone who can wipe the smug smile off the Patriots face are praiseworthy for at least a week. It has been 5 days so far.

Opinions Aloud - Apparently, Girls Aloud are making a dig at 'indie kids' in their latest B-side, attacking indie clones and how they all sound the same. Now, this is nothing new and to be highly expected of a pop band wanting to make a couple of headlines. But then it's also quite a true a true statement.

Now, there is an undeniable ironic and obvious part to sounding exactly like everything else of the same genre which you can probably guess, so I won't point it out. My point comes from them saying that all indie kids are clones. I mentioned it was quite true, but not true enough. There are too many different colours of converse available for them all to be truly the same...

I could while away the hours...

2008-02-03T21:49:00.000Z

My Hourly Comic, at my new sister site, Tricky Drawings, yes?

Night.

Tricky's weekly round-up #1

2008-02-01T17:28:00.000Z

50 years of Lego - The humble Lego brick turned 50 this week. I must admit the first I heard of it was when I turned on the computer and the Google logo had turned into Lego. So it must have been some sort of celebration, or I was going mad and seeing Lego in objects again.

But yes, a worthwhile celebration this. Millions of scores of children have enjoyed and are enjoying Lego, probably building either what they see on the packet, a big tower of stuff (my specialty that) or some monstrous Lego world. Lego brick, I salute you.

Jeremy Beadle kops it - The leading line may seem a bit blasé, which is quite unfortunate really as 'Jeremiah Beetle', as I used to affectionately call him in my youth (I had many great names for everything. Mr. Penguin was the name of my penguin, Puppy Dog was the name of my toy dog, and I called my slippers 'tiddlers', for no known reason. I was possibly drunk), was a good guy. A patron for practical jokes and latterly for Children with Leukaemia, for which he raised £13 million. Which is quite a lot.

Unfortunatley, the grandfather of hidden camera shows and Punk'd will probably be remembered for his disfigurement. All these jokes are just getting out of hand. RIP Mr. Beetle, RIP.

Asda adverts - So, Asda's new advertising campaign. For a start, it's copying the idea that Tesco had about a year ago about comparing prices (for which it later had to apologise because as all good foreign owned supermarkets do, it was lying), and they're also using the music from Dad's Army to compare and contrast the prices between supermarkets. So, if you shop at Tesco of Morrison's, you're now a Nazi. You may argue, but if a multi-comglomorate organisation such as WalMart says you are, then, well, you are.

Or you could just ignore the adverts and shop somewhere good. Like Sainsbury's, for which I show no bias whatsoever, apart from the fact that they employ me when I need money in the cold or in the hot.

Good weekend, folks.

A design for life

2008-02-01T01:38:00.000Z

Life is tricky. You're born, you play, you grow up, you go to work, you eat, you work some more, you eat, you live in a house with your money being frittered away on rent, then mortgages, then children and mortgages, then grandchildren and mortgages, then on food and outstanding mortgage payments. Doesn't sound so fun. That's where it's important to have some form of escapism in-built into your life so it doesn't all overwhelm you. Which is where 'Second Life' comes in.

Second Life is a glorified chatroom, but it's so glorified to the extent that you build your own house, live where you want to, create characters to represent you and in extreme circumstances, can get married. It's like The Sims, with ropey graphics and all, but all of the characters are controlled by people around the world.

Last night, as part of BBC2's 'Wonderland' series, a programme was shown which focused on one of these Second Lifers, Carolyn.

Carolyn's an American, with a loving, devoted husband named Lee and four kids. She doesn't work (Lee provides all the money, food and accommodation), and stays around being the typical housewife. Well, she would do if the typical housewife spent 14 hours a day at the computer screen and ignored her children to the extent that the eldest of them recognises the fact that "if he wasn't born, mum'd be happier". Which is always a concerting thing to come from your own child.

Carolyn is obsessed with the 'game' and forsakes her own children, her own looks and even her own marriage to carry on with her habit, like digital heroin.

Let me say now that Second Life isn't all bad. It's an intriguing piece of computer programming with benefits, as is shown with the other couple they focus on who met online while in failing relationships. They commend Second Life for helping to rebuild their characters and in the end find love and get married. So good things can come from it. And from the sounds of their former relationships, they seemed destined to end from both parties anyway.

Carolyn's situation was a bit different though. She had fallen in 'virtual love' with another character, London residing Elliot. You can imagine what this was doing to Lee. Or can you? Would you have to sleep on your own sofa because your wife was online all night talking to a guy from across the pond all night? Would you have to look after your kids because your wife's life was being taken up by her scantily clad avatar fondling and simulating sex with someone else's from another country?

Carolyn decided that she had to meet her online 'lover', after it came to light that Elliot didn't want to get involved with it. So she headed over to England. It seemed obvious what she wanted to happen and that fact wasn't lost on Lee; "You don't travel to meet a guy in another country to trade baking secrets or play croquet".

However, luckily for Lee, there's a definite sense of awkwardness between the pair, even though they say it's like they've known each other for years.

And so ended the tale, nothing happened between Carolyn and Elliot, she returned to Lee and they're apparently trying to sort out their marriage. I felt sorry for Lee, he was the innocent party in his wife's online obsession and he seemed to do all he could to placate her and even to sort things out. He relates his story to Forrest Gump where he is the Forrest and he's always there for 'his Jenny', no matter what happens.

But should he have to be? His seems to have the underlying belief that the grass is always greener on the other side, rather than being happy with a loving wife and four children. She seemed selfish and after her own needs while not listening to her family and how they felt about the situation. I related this to some form of cyber heroin earlier, and I think the drug analogy rings true. If you get too addicted, you push those you love away and concentrate on getting your 14 hour fix daily.

Of course, the documentary was there to sensationalise as is the norm with the BBC. I am sure there are normal people who use Second Life and don't act like Carolyn, but punters going into Second Life don't seem to realise it's really just a glorified chatroom. This sort of thing has been an issue for as long as the internet has been around and you've been able to contact and talk to people online who you've never met.

This is just an extreme case of an overriding personality problem of those who get a bit too carried away, not something of 'wonder'.

People already getting the wrong McIdea...

2008-01-29T13:03:00.000Z

The Student Room.

One of the most ignorant corners of the student community. For those of you who don't know, "The Student Room" is a popular online forum or students. Sounds a simple enough premise. However, it is full of student's who's academic background typically goes;

Private Primary --> Grammar School ---> Top 5 University.

Now, I have nothing against this route or people at any of these institutions per se, not when they're sane, down-to-earth individuals who don't rely on the Bank of Mum and Dad for their life. Unfortunately, they are the complete opposite. They're elitist, they ridicule any other university that doesn't fit into their mould, they ridicule the people who go to the university, openly discuss how intelligent they are compared to the rest of the world and are usually Conservative folk. Again, nothing against Conservatives, everyone's entitles to their opinion, no matter how wrong or right (though in this case more the former than the latter). Just so you know, I'm politically apathetic, believing that they're all as bad as each other, but that doesn't mean I don't listen, understand, agree or disagree with what they say.

You may think I'm just generalising. And I'd retort by saying yes, I am. Sure, there are probably normal people there and indeed, there are, but the main and most outspoken voice of the forums comes from those who I've described.

I bring this up now, because on hearing the news about McDonalds, Flybe and Network Rail offering nationally recognised qualifications, I thought it would be an entertaining read (and ammunition for me) to read their insights. and I must say that some of them seem to have grasped the concept, rather than sensationalise the concept like others on the site and even the BBC did...

McDiploma was the word being touted everywhere, with many suggestions that you'd get an A-level for flipping burgers. It was treated as a joke from most corners. Indeed, this is a quote from 'englishstudent' from The Student Rooms.

"Yeah it's a ****ing great idea! Who doesn't want a McJob? No, it's a wonderful idea because it made me laugh. "So, what were your A Levels?" "Oh.. English, History and McDonalds." Sweet"

However, as usual facts have been mislaid or just omitted to make a better story. For a start, the other two companies, Flybe and Network rail, who are offering the same thing as McDonald's are are being forgotten. All the concentration is on the fact McDonalds have taken up the opportunity, and the jokes levelled at it show that many people are mocking it straight away without even looking into the concept.

Also, the benefit is being ignored. There are those people who don't pass their GCSEs, while there are also those getting grades below Cs for English and Maths. Now, in order to get a respectable job, many employers require knowledge of numeracy and literacy, and as such ask for C grade minimums at GCSE level. Offering this as the first level of qualification in these three companies, especially for McDonalds, gives the employee another chance to gain the grades while earning money.

Also, people seem to think that the NVQs offered will actually be A-levels, much like englishstudent did. However, NVQs are used as A-level equivalents, and none of the NVQs will ask employees to flip burgers or ask if people 'want fries with that'. Sure, maybe some employers may rebuke these qualifications, but some might not. It's a start, at least.

It's also a convenient loophole to allow 16-18 year olds to be in work and not in school education when school until 18 becomes compulsory.

I'm not a Labour fan, far from it, but this isn't a bad idea and it's getting a bad press just because it's an easy target.

Luckily, it seems rationality has taken over in the discussion on the subject over at The Student Rooms for now, but it won't be long before something else comes along and is ridiculed to high heaven.

In it for the money...

2008-01-26T11:46:00.000Z

Just when you thought The Sun couldn't get any more farcical, they manage to come up with an idea so ridiculous that it's almost genius. Unfortunately it's not.

The idea? "The 25k debt factor"

The premise? Well, 8 families have for some unbeknownst reason written to The Sun for help with their debt which in itself beggars belief, but anyway. So the newspaper in what they feel is a stroke of genius has decided to run a public competetion to determine which of the 8 families is most deserving of the money to help out with their debts.

Only it's not as simple as that.

For a start, each family gets money, so while it's good for them, the whole competetion element is nonsensical. One of the chosen 8 families will get £10k, 2 of them will get £5k and the other 5 will get £1k. Now, while this may seem kind to the families, what if you don't want a family to get any money? What if they look like mass murderers or people who might come at you with a steak knife and napkin if you came close? Also, in a more real intonation, one of the people there is 79 years old. Now, no offence to old people, but he's more than likely to pop his clogs sometime soon. He's surpassed the average lifetime expectancy and who's to say that his son, who he's pictured with and seems to talk for the OAP, won't slip his dad one too many sleeping pills and run off with the money? It would be a very Sun thing to do...

Secondly, I begrudge letting families who are in this amount of debt due to their ability to breed like bunnies being able to win. I can probably guesstimate that at least half of the debt you have is due to the fact you couldn't seem to be bothered to buy even Tesco value condoms for your love sessions. And you may say, yes, but they may have got pregnant by mistake. And I shall retort by saying thatgetting pregnant by accident once is a mistake. Twice is misfortune. Four times 'by accident' is jsut asking for child benefits.

This whole situation particularly gets my goat as it affects people close to me and they got no help whatsoever.

I too will be in debt in the not too distant future (in fact, I'm already £9,000 in, and that'll probably be £27,000 at least in a year and a half), but this is all due to the spiralling costs of education (I mean £3,000+ a year, seriously? Who do the government think they're kidding?) plus maintenance loans for living, travelling and eating. And I too will get no help.

So why should these Sun reading ingrates be deserving of any money to help them? In my opinion, if I'll have to get out of the situation myself, so should they. They shouldn't be thrown lifelines as they won't learn their lessons that way.

I'm going (well, went) MIA...

2008-01-21T23:18:00.000Z

And I intend to stay that way until Thursday.

The reason being that while I've been in the grime and mire of exams last week and this one, my usual procrastination seems to have been replaced. And yes, faithful reader, that does indeed mean that the fort is no more. It had a good lifespan, but it may have distracted me jsut a little bit too much. As did making my Pingu and Mr. Bump toys have an earnest discussion about life. Yes, I'm a 19 year old guy with plush toys in my room which I anthropomorphise. That's completely normal. even if I get completely and unneccessarily wound up by people anthropomorphising things. I'm a hypocrite.

There shall be more informed blog things when I get back to the thing properly, for now now though it's sporadic mind bleeds which you have the choice of either dealing or not dealing with. May I suggest the former. Unless you have vampiric tendencies, in which case stop stalking me and don't send me pale, toothy nude pictures anymore.

Choose again...

2008-01-14T22:07:00.000Z

The ultimate question. Do I...?

Revise for an exam that actually counts towards your degree on a subject you don't have much residual knowledge to get by on?

or

Build a fort?

I think you can guess what my choice was.
I may not have common sense, but i do have a fort.

And that's what everyone wants really, isn't it?

Shakermaker

2008-01-11T13:24:00.000Z

I went to see Heima last night.

I now want to make instruments out of rhubarb. Perhaps I could use this skill to start a new band.

Surprisingly, being a maracarer doesn't guarentee success. And there I was thinking we were at the same level as tambourinists.

Obviously not.

I think I'm dreaming...

2008-01-10T10:24:00.000Z

Otherwise the fact that I'm riding my crimesolving whale across the ocean to defeat a woman on a levitating fruit basket is a bit disconcerting, not only to my currently disappaiting sanity but also to fruit baskets everywhere.

I'm no stranger to dreams of the unique. In fact a lot of the time they're quite fun and rival real life for entertaininment purposes. My only query is where on earth I manage to concoct such elaborate and confusing dreams,such as being cheased down a hallway in a hotel (that about minutes previous was an industrial space station) by a gun toting lobster cowboy with the power of instant ingestion through his somewhat tentacally face.

Now, i'm pretty sure I've never encountered a lobster dressed as a cowboy, neither in real life nor even in cartoon form, so at what point did my brain decide to combine the two. Perhaps I have a hidden phobia of lobsters. And cowboys. So hidden in fact that when i've encountered either of them I've not noticed and wanted to stroke the nice lobster and feed the cowboy some indians (that's native americans, not actual indians, mind. Yes, that makes the sentence far more understandable...).

In some cases, these dreams can seem the most real thing I've ever experienced, and this gets odd when they invovle escaping from a burning house under siege from vampires using a skateboard, then walking 20 miles, forgetting why I left, turning round to go back and being followed by a giant tip-toeing behind me.

As we all know, the belief that cheese before bedtime causes this surreal nature of dreams is an urban myth. There are theories it involves increased hormone activity, and another that it's your own mind releasing your subconcious fears. The former is possible, the latter extremely unlikely. As full of lobsters, giants and vampires my dreams have been, I don't remember feeling a sense of fear in the dream.

This can also be quashed by the following weird dream. I dreamt I was going on an exchange trip to another school to experience another culture and way of life. he other culture turned out to be bolton. Where people flew and they had monorails.

Now I know Bolton is a terrifiying place, but this was just ridiuclous.

If anything, I believe dreams are jsut the result of your brain putting together every possibility it could conjure up, combining anything with everythin else to form either something realisitc or surreal, yet feeling very realisitic.

This would explain the robocop-tiger from last night.

Time to call the health visitor...

2008-01-09T10:39:00.000Z

I created an entire battlefield using kitchen condiments this morning while making breakfast.

Genereal Spoon wasn't tentative and happy that Private Pepper and Sergeant Salt were attacking Weetabix Hill. And his fears were realised when First Officer Fork sent his squadron of tins and cartons in a counter attack. General Spoon rallied his troops of fruit and veg and ordered them to attack.

There were many casualties.

The main one, I fear, was my sanity.

Motivation, such an aggravation...

2008-01-07T23:46:00.000Z

The enemy sits across from me. We eye each other up, looking for just that solitary sign of weakness that will make the other cave, granting them victory in battle and a statue in Trafalgar Square. It's a tense time, neither of us wants to give in, doing so would mean going against all our morals and disappointing so many.

An arm twitches, suddenly a body rises and runs to the kitchen to make a sandwich. At two-thirty in the morning. I have been defeated by the auld enemy, procrastination.

But what got me to such a state? The answer lies in motivation*.

Put simply, I have none. Not when it involves things I have to get done, anyway. Essays and coursework, for example, just aren't my thing, even if it's about something I find interesting. I'll always want to do something I want to do first. In that respect, I'm much like a 4 year old eating his dinner. It's what us adults would call a succulent and delicious roast; a yorkshire pudding, some meat, stuffing, roast potatoes, carrots, roast parsnips and, of you're that way inclined, brussel sprouts. To a child, everything but the yorkshire and meat are the equivalent of coursework. So they'll eat them first, and avoid the inevitable face wretching of sprouts for as long as they can.

So am I saying I have the same mindset as a four year old? Those who know me might tend to agree, but there is one key difference. The children think that they'll get away without eating all the chaff, whereas I know it has to be done. Even though I know it won;t go away or won't get any easier.

Some people say they work better under pressure (and I've been one of them), but I think that's just a pack of lies, any excuse to put off the inevitable.

It's just all rather confusing, much like a belly dancer coming up to a group of people at her chosen establishment of empolyment and posing the question 'Why?', and bringing out a whiteboard complete with markers to give us a lecture on a possible answer while at the same time wrestling a panda.

Then I guess if it was understood, I'd still be hungry in the wee hours of the morning and panda would have been shot by now.

*As an interesting aside, the whole theory of motivation and how it works is still very much up in air. It could be goal based, need based, or just whether the little purple creature who lives in your brain is having a lazy day or not.

Reach for the stars...

2008-01-05T17:41:00.000Z

Setting yourself goals is healthy, it is said.

There are those who want to do less of something, whether that be eating, smoking or being an arse, and those who want to do more of something, like exercise, healthy eating, care in the community and in some cases being an arse. New year is an especially popular time for this, but is not exclusive to such, as it happens around Lent, when people realise they've been rubbish with their New year's resolutions, then over Summer when people remember they forgot to give something up so they have an attack of guilt, but then the festival season arrives, soon to washed away by rain, floods, sun and more floods then before you know it it's December and things have begun to orbit you.

However, this is not about failures or even about New Year's resolutions (that was just a a handy and timely comparison). Instead, I'm talking about my training for the marathon.

As you may recall (or not), I'm running the London Marathon in April.

I have run the marathon once before, back in the heady days of the upper sixth, when we were expecting England to win the World Cup (again), the missing canoeist was still missing and Tony Blair still lived at number 10. Well, number 11 really, but that's just me being pedantic. Anyway, I applied only on a whim and somehow got in through my chosen charity. I knew it'd be 26.2 miles, I knew it'd be tough going, but I thought I could handle it. This, however, didn't stop me from being a lazy arse and doing a pathetic amount of training and then suddenly it was my birthday and raceday was a month away. So I went all gung-ho in training and, in retrospect, was lucky that the only injury i incurred was on mile 20 the following month when my Achilles gave way. Cue a 5 and a half hour time which I wasn't very proud of. Even if i did beat Steve Redgrave and was on TV overtaking a Blue Peter presenter.

So this time round, I've decided to take it far more seriously. Obviously, I had to get Christmas out of the way first before I could start anything serious, so it conveniently all started on the 2nd January. You could say it was a New Year's resolution, but you'd be very wrong and the £250,000 box has vanished from your game board. It was purely just the luck of the draw, much the same sort of thing as Chelsea seem to get in the FA Cup.

So the running begun in earnest again. I'd been out 3 or 4 times pre christmas and it seemed to be quite easy. Did a bit of fartlek, a bit of sustained and steady running, all healthy, all to my targets for the week. Then today came a nice swim.

Now, I used to be a whizz at swimming (as long as it wasn't backstroke or skulling). I had badges here and there and everywhere and was quite fast. Then I got podgy at secondary school and I never really did anything with it. However, the last time I ran, I decided to bring it back, so I thought the same would work this time round and in doing so I've decided I'm a fast swimmer. Which is fine, except that I set myself ridiculous targets. We have a 25m olympic standard swimming pool where I live, and I decided it'd be very sensible to aim for 50 lengths in half an hour.

Before I go on, there are more things to factor in here. In the past 9 months, I've been swimming once. And on the one occasion I tried to do 40 lenghts of the same pool in the same amount of time. When I tried to stand after getting out of the pool, my legs crumbled and I fell back in. I tried again, this time with success and made my way to get changed. I started to black out and was lucky I was next to somewhere to sit. It took me two full Lucozades to feel like i wasn't going to fall over, even though my legs felt as if someone had removed my shins.

So 50 lengths in half an hour was a ridiculous, ridiculous target to set myself in reality. But i'd conveniently forgotten about the last time and blindly kicked and pulled my way through 50 lengths.

As you'd imagine, I didn't acheive my target time, failing by 6 minutes.
And again, as you'd imagine, I wasn't feeling too great upon finishing.

In fact, I managed to navigate getting out of the pool, getting changed and the huge body temperature shifts the different rooms and corridors had to offer. No, it wasn't until I reached the stairs where things began to fall apart.

The first set were ok, leading to a plataeu before the main descent. If memory serves, I got the first two steps fine. Then my left leg gave way. Then my knee thwacked one of the middle steps. And I fell, just like a raggydoll to the bottom, nearly knocking over both an elderly man and a small child. I stood up, quite dazed and seeing stars. I was laughed at.

I bought a Lion Bar and lucozade, then left.

Targets are good things. Human brains, or more specifically mine, are not.

My fake, pointless baby...

2008-01-03T16:51:00.000Z

January 3rd, another ordinary day where nothing so much as unusual occurs. Wake up, go to work, cook food, remove baby limbs from the oven...

No, I talk not of the latest in cannibal delicatessen, but instead of Jamie Eaton, the creator of 'Reborns', an apparently realistic doll version of a newborn child moulded from the images of them given to her from clients. I say apparently realistic mainly because I have never seen real life newborn babies with such ugly faces. And I should know, I was blue and was the epitome of grotesque for a baby. Until now, anyway.

I'll give the woman her due, she's found a niche market and she's making money from it, but it's all a bit strange, isn't it?

No, not so much that she sometimes cries a little each time she gives a baby away to their new 'mothers'. Real artists and even normal people become attached to things they have created. And neither am I that shocked to see her own 4 children playing with the unfinished dolls limbs. I myself have a mannequin hand which I frequently use to freak people out.

The bit that gets me is her explanation of why she was doing it all. A little of her background; each of her four children were delivered via c-section, the last of which caused irreparable damage to her uterus leaving her unable to have any more children. She states that she is making these dolls because it's the closest she'll ever get to having another.

Well, it's not really close at all, is it? Not any closer than buying anything from Zapf creations anyway. I mean, it doesn't move, it doesn't talk, it doesn't do amusing things, it can't eat, drink, breathe (though you can indeed buy models from other doll makers which have a full working set of 'lungs') or do anything that a normal baby does, other than lie down motionless. Which never happens unless they're either dosed up to the eyeballs on Calpol or floating down the River Styx.

Jamie, though, is not the subject, nor the most interesting, confusing or fascinating thing about this documentary. These accolades goes to the two women we were introduced to.

I'll start with the most normal one (something which I'm having a lot of trouble deciding): Sue, who is basically white trash who won big at bingo.

She couldn't stand the idea of having normal children; they'd create mess, be noisy, move, be human. So instead she decided that getting 5 children conceived by elephant man and the green squishy thing from Wizadora was the perfect solution. Her husband is surprisingly supportive of her, though he does admit that he doesn't take it as seriously as she does (though when he called one of her 'babies' a doll (which it is), you could see her anger and she hastily corrected him).

And my did she take it seriously. She even created fake formula milk, which was actually fabric conditioner (more accurately, a waste of fabric conditioner). But the main event of the programme for her was the pending arrival of her newest child. She even went on a spending spree for new clothes for her. In Harrods. Totalling £300. £27 pounds of which was spent on the most pathetic looking and unnecessary piece of fabric you'll see.

However, that was nothing compared to the money she would have had to spend on the flight to and from America for her child collection (which she described as 'a long labour'). In the end, her new child, was loved for two days, then suddenly an imperfection was discovered. The love vanished as she couldn't deal with an imperfect and damaged child and sent it back while she got the plane home. Says a lot about her really.

But the star of the show was Christine. Christine's was a story which at first you thought was about losing her own son, so she sought out a replacement for him in doll form. OK, not particularly a normal way of dealing with things, but it's something you'd shake your head at more in pity than disbelief. This however, was not the case (even though she kept referring to the child in the past and in a pained tone). It turns out that Harry, the boy in question, was actually her grandson and that he had moved to New Zealand with his mum (Christine's daughter) and a new man. Something which Christine felt very bitterly about, so much so as to try and create a new Harry. Completely and utterly normal, obviously.

So she got a baby made by Jamie, which she described as beautiful and that it looked just like him, but unless he was actually a Boglin, I doubt this was really the case.

The crowning moment of the documentary arrived in the form of Christine's husband. When asked what he thought of Harry .2 (something he had no idea about what was actually going on), he said "I don’t like it Christine. It makes me think of something on a mortuary slab". Which is what 99.9% of all the viewers were thinking.

Yet she was disappointed. Though at the time, she did say she wouldn't do what a lot of people did with their dolls and take them for walks in prams and treat them like real babies. Cue the shot of her walking the doll in a pram as if it were real and talking to it as if it were actually Harry.

I must say too, that the editing was marvellous for the programme. And spooky music has never been so apt.

In the end, both women came off negatively, but they're still probably both completely oblivious to the fact that their obsession with the dolls and grandchild respectively has caused them to lose touch with reality.

Perhaps the best way to sum this all up is a line from the real Harry, one whose face hasn't been mashed up by a set of cutlery, in response to Christine showing him himself, only 33x more ugly;

"It's just a doll, you numbnut".

On 2007

2008-01-02T17:52:00.000Z

So, another year over and a new one just begun. 2007 was an interesting year. We had relative fighting over a dead souls singer's will, popstars going fruit loopy, politicians being incompetent, the plucky Brit losing and ridiculous weather. Just another humdrum year to be honest. I honestly cannot think of a major news/popular culture story that I could say 'Oh, that defines 2007 for me'. I can't think of a year since 2003 where anything really huge happened (you know the whole war thing)

However, there were still some interesting stories.

A man living in a cupboard springs to mind. where he avoided his sons, neighbours and the world and their wives (not his though), growing a beard, which is the hallmark of a perfect disguise and somehow not being recognised until he shaved it off and had his photo taken. Rookie error that. If you grow a beard, be committed, it can only lead to trouble and prison otherwise.

Although being a long running, winded and eventually dull saga, the whole phone-in scam palava was fascinating if only for the revelation that Blue Peter would not name an animal Socks, for reasons which were never actually touched upon. Possibly discriminatory to other items of clothing (how must Shirty have felt?)? Racist? Not all encompassing of food items?

In sport we worked out again that the English don't have the ability to win unless the whole competetion is under the radar, which is a shame for rugby really. But then in some cases, i'm glad the 'plucky' Brit did lose. For instance, the was Lord Smug, he over motor racing fame who beleived his own hype and ended up being parked in the gravel. Then of course there was the entire England football team who crashed and burnt so badly after being given more chances that Peter Mandelson. And it made me smile. I reckon that's down to the fact that I'm legally not allowed to be English. Instead, I have claimed the Scottish tag and supported them. But they failed too. But heroically for once.

Then there's the whole business of the Madeliene McCann story. From the purest incompetence of her parents, she goes missing while they absolve themselves of any blame whatsoever. Then a guy with one eye becomes a chief suspect. Then GMTV go overboard, then the Tapas 9 emerge, then police incompetence occurs, then GMTV go even more overboard. Yet it's the aforementioned parental incompetence which goes unnoticed and Kate and Gerry play the holier than thou character. Ok, yes, they've lost their daughter but people are feeling more sprry for them than they should. It's like a child who hurts himself while playing in the forbidden place his mum has expressley told him not to go. Some sympathy should be shown, but in the end it's their own fault for not being sensible.

Right, now that's off my chest, onto the final furlong; the olympic logo.

Which blind, deaf, dumb and generally socially inept chimp thought 'Hmm, I know, the music is all 'new-rave' at the minute and people love graffiti. Let's encompass that in a logo, forget any link to London or any basic style and pray that nothing in society changes until after 2012'.

And 22 people had epileptic fits from it.

So not a great year for 22 people with epilepsy or generally people in the public eye.
Except for me that is. I was on tv on New Year's Eve getting on a bus. And I had a hoot this year.

So with that taken into account, this is my conclusion of 2007: Brilliant.

Well, I did warn me...

2007-12-26T14:10:00.000Z

So, how was your Christmas? Fun? A right laugh? Never boring? No arguments?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you're either lying or dosed up to your eyeballs on tranqulizers.

Sure, bits may have been fun, you may have laughed when your uncle got stuck in the door due to his tremendous girth, and you may have gone a whole 3 minutes without your sister going absolutely mental at you for placing mannequin parts around her room to freak her out, but I bet, at least once during the day, you uttered the words 'Oh bloody hell' and toyed with the idea of a mass murder.

The latter occured to me just after polishing off (an actually rather delicious) Christmas dinner. For some reason, the condition of broccolli came up in conversation. And stayed there for an hour and ten minutes. I should know, I counted. What's worse was that everyone bar myself was impassioned in their arguments about which was the soggiest, which was the best, and the obligatory debate over which would give you the most wind.

It wasn't made any better by the fact that they kept trying to draw me in and make me choose a line of argument. I was tired, slightly hungover and full, so I wasn't at my peak performance for vegetable-gate. I made my excuses and went off to lie down.

As I heard the voices raising downstairs (obvisouly, my nan had decided that my sister's comment about parsnips was one too far), I slowly drifted off. I dreamt I was living in Africa. And that I'd fractured my leg. Then I turned into a robot. Then I woke up. Up to that point, it was the most fun I'd had all day.

Another Christmas Day on the verge of a another huge family feud over vegetables (amazingly, it has happened before. My dad made the mistake of saying his mother in law's sprouts were over cooked 10 years ago. It took 5 years to mend that rift), another christmas spent half asleep, bored out of my skull for all but an hour and ten minutes...

It did get better though. I got to see Doctor Who and, erm... um...

Bugger.

On ineptitude

2007-12-21T11:30:00.000Z

I'm not a happy bunny on this fine, cold and really short day.

Work in the student magazine which i've spent time and effort creating either goes uncredited or, even worse, credited to someone else. Not as if it's the first time it's happened. Well, it nearly happened last time, but only because i managed to catch it on the final proof read (the only one we were allowed to see). This time round I didn't even get to see a prototype or sample copy, so Alex Hunter gets the plaudits for my work this time round, while yours truly loses an issue to show his prospective journalistic employers. And I'm great. So Alex will probably get a job based on this. Probably.

Anyway, before I start rambling more than a scout up a hillside, it's time to jsut stop talking.

My brain has as much content as a bowl of weetabix and is probably about as soggy.

Time for bed

Tales from a different planet...

2007-12-18T20:18:00.000Z

(or 'Night Shift')

Today I qualify as an intrepid explorer.

I have seen life in one of it's most undeniably Elephant Man moments. Location, company, reasons for being there, all due to appear in next Halloween's Saw V, the one where the Jigsaw man decides he's done enough killing and goes to do his weekly shop at 4am in the morning. Box office smash in-wait.

Working 12am to 8am is never a happy thing for anyone to do. Not even vampires or badgers. They miss their coffins and sets respectively. I was missing my bed, even though i'd only left it an hour before my shift. But me and my matress, we have a connection which far surpasses that of friendship and love. If we could be siamese twins, it still wouldn't be enough. Even with this force of magnetism between us, I had to part ways and head off to the supermarket where your wills are crushed, personalities destroyed, but you can pick up two lumps of processed cheese for £1.50. Bargain or what, ey?

So I donned my adventurer's cap (which looks shocklngly like a beanie winter hat) and my adventurer's garb with my little adventurer's nametag where the left hand breast pocket should be but isn't, and I fought the swashbuckling chill of the cold outside. Would I make it to my destination, or would I perish, fall down into the abandoned sandpit and be eaten by wolves who would sink into the sand and never be seen again? (Obviously I made it, because ghosts would have a hard time typing, but bloody hell it was cold).

Inside, you could hear the wind howling and see the tumbleweed bunching and bumbling past. It was like a build up to a tornado in a deep south redneck town that never actually happened. But that wasn't the worst of it my friends, for the compnay I had to keep was small and strange. A security gurad who looked like he'd escaped from an Arthur Dent convention, and two girls who, while chatty, couldn't be able, let alone bothered to look at, let alone lift an orange. I was on my own. And the hags and misfits were fast approaching. In the land of the supermarket, we call them 'the nightshift'.

Disfigured is probably a bit over the top, but they had the social skills equilavent to that and resembled in speech an obtuse Frenchman in England refusing to say anything in his host nation's language lest he lose his identity. They kept rambling on about rollers and palettes and rolling stock and scanners and those little things you attach to the trolleys to make them easier to pull. Plus they all smelt of cheese. It's where every nightshifter eventually ends up; the dairy aisle. And nothing can prepare you for it. Luckily, I managed to avoid the trap and spent the evening watching the interesting beings roam the store hands beneath their chins, teeth out to show, looking for a morsel of fresh human blood. Or any sort of blood for that matter.

Only 7 souls from the outside world dared to enter the lair of Mr J.S. last night, and I do believe that none of their whereabouts are accounted for. A 'delicious snack for the trolley boys' is what I swear I heard one of the males say...

I myself made it out alive and still have all my limbs, give or take a finger. I'm lucky to be alive really.

Yes, last night I braved a new world, sought out and found new civilisations and I can quite confidently say that I have been where no man ever wants to go again. Although I'll have to. For four more days. Straight.

Tough this adventuring lark.

Just another brick in the wall...

2007-12-11T20:35:00.000Z

Sometimes you just have to hang your head in despair that unintentionally stalking two nuns cannot by themselves, no matter, how strange they looked (no noticeable superpowers, mind), stop your from acting out the strangulation of someone following a meeting.

I don't like meetings. No-one really wants to be there (bar the secretary, who believes they've found their calling in life) and it's all about how quickly you can get things over and done with. Much like my coursework. Usually I don't pay too much attention and phase out. It's far easier than having to listen to people spewing official lines at you and ridiculous arguments which a cheesegrater could shoot down in flames.

This time round though I was up for it.

To give a slight backstory, my university (officially worst in the country in 2003, unofficially the worst since then) doesn't have a good relationship with the Student's Union, and is doing everything it can to limit their activities. It doesn't help either that many members of the student union and the student council are more incompetent than a toaster trying to play dvds. They're just not fit for the role. They collapse so easily in financial negotiations that we're lucky we have even £20 to run the Union.

Recently, an issue cropped up over the student magazine (the Independent Student Metro) regarding a poll from the students which, shockingly, found that the majority thought the university wasn't actually welcoming at all.

The university hated reading this, and decided that they wanted to screen what was being written. Bang goes the 'Independent' bit. So they reduced the budget to the media section, tried to stop the 2nd issue of the term being printed (but failed in the end) and hired someone with the money they cut from the budget to be a 'quality control' officer.

So I was livid. This isn't Stalinist Russia, we shouldn't be censored and shot if we don't applaud the university on an awful job. The meeting was to discuss what had actually happened with the magazine, which I detailed above, and the future. Turns out, it looks kind of bleak. The budget is low, we're unlikely to get approval for things we, as students, should be writing about and my own personal voice of opinion is even more unlikely to be heard.

I want to be mad at the communications officer, because I don't think he tried hard enough to fight our corner. I want to be mad at the quality control officer, because he's there to stop us writing what we want and to try and make us tow the university line while taking away money from our budget. I want to be mad with an unamed senior figure who took umbridge with the poll and caused this aggro in the first place.

Turns out, I'm mad with all three. Hence the proposed strangulation and possible life imprisonment for me. At least I'll be able to say what I think inside. Although there's the distinct possibilty of a very harsh rogering as consequence. I'm not sure which outcome is more favourable...

7 Days

2007-12-08T10:40:00.000Z

Back in the height of summer 2000, a male in his mid-to-late twenties decided to visit one of his pals who lived pretty close to him (a couple of blocks away or so, if I recall). However, even though his friend didn't live far away, he, at one point at least, had to make use of a subway to reach his destination. On one of these subway uses, he met a young female woman of around 24 years, who asked for the time. The man in question (known as 'Mr. David') knew that it was around 3.15, but reckoned he had a chance with her, and said he'd only give her the time if she gave him her number, name and a date.

She agreed and apparently seemed rather keen at the time, though quite to the young man's annoyance, she did not disclose whether she was a cinnamon fan.

This must have happened on a Monday, as the account mentions that the next night, the oh so important first date, was a Tuesday. He was feeling socially adventurous, so he took her for a drink, presumably the bottle of champagne or two that he promised the girl when he met her. By the wednesday, there was enough of an emotional connection for them to make love for not just one day, but for the next four days, until finally on the sunday, they kicked back and probably watched Top Gear.

Later in the account, details of the first date come to light, where apparently the female was putting forth to Mr. David some kinky ideas, while he himself was slightly more besotted with her, describing that he wouldn't take her on a ride (whether he means a rollercoaster or the tea cups is left to your imagination), and that one-night stands were unfair on the fairer sex. He also mentions that he couldn't get this girl out of his mind, suggesting that it was, on his part at least, a serious relationship.

The account, however, is thrown into some confusion later on. Whether Mr. David was just overly excited regarding his week with this woman and repeatedly wrote down the week's actions over and over, or that the same things happened for four weeks solid is unclear, but we do however know that the relationship fizzled out from Mr. David's personal accounts in later months and indeed years.

The fate of the woman in question is unknown, presumbaly she's either now a pornstar or a groupie, while Mr. David has continued to rape music up to and including this day.

I see no bravery...

2007-12-05T11:37:00.000Z

Sometimes you just have to sit back and stare in amazement at something that sounds so ridiculous it makes your jaw drop and leave you speechless.

It's not about the pensioner who was banned for passing wind (I know, old people and flatulence, how disgraceful) in his local social club which appeared on the BBC website yesterday, highlighting what a slow news day this week has actually been following a week of lost discs and dodgy donations to political parties, nor is it about the woman who broke into a prison not to release her 'man inside', but to give him something special in his cell for him to think about for the rest of his sentence.

No, this is something which is even more ridiculous. A pet who saved their owner's life is to be awarded and honoured by the PDSA.

While this may seem not-so-shocking at first, I beleive that there are so many things wrong with this.

For a start, I hate that people can be so anthropomorphic about animals. They do not think like humans, unless they're characters in The Animals of Farthing Wood. So to assume that the dog barking was due to bravery is foolhardy at best. Add to this that it's apparently brave to call for help, and I think practically everyone who's survived some form of accident or disaster should be given a medal for bravery. This isn't a slight against them, I feel lucky myself to have never been in a situation akin to those described.

It's actually a slight against this overly pet-loving society. Sure, it's nice to have a distraction, it's nice to be liked and not chewed and eaten by your domesticated animals, but unless they pull you out of a burning building, there's no way they can be described as brave. A lot of real people do brave things everyday and don't get a shred of acknowledgment for it, and I think it's somewhat disgraceful that pets, who there's no real knwoledge of incetives about, can be more highly regarded in status than humans who have done the same and thought about doing it.

The other thing that really gets me is that the fact the dog led the people he attracted by his barking to the woman is neither here nor there. When I had a dog, he used to make us follow him to his latest kill, whether it was a cat or one of my nan's plush cushions. never once was it an ailing human being.

I feel as if I could be taken to be insensitive here, and would like to point out that I am glad it worked out for the best and that Mrs Wilson is alive and well today, but to award a dog for being, well, a dog, is just stupidity.

Also, if I were the dog, i'd be annoyed it'd taken two years for my acheivements to be recognised. But then, of course, none of you would understand me and would just hear "woof, growl, growl".

A weekend in the city...

2007-12-03T09:37:00.000Z

Is it possible to have the fabled 'perfect weekend'? You know, that one where absolutely everything is a positive and there's elements of fun and happiness all day and night from 5pm on a friday until the clock strikes midnight on a sunday and we all turn into pumpkins because the fiary godmother has to abide by so-called 'rules'.

Or will it always be tarred with something, like sad news, more lost CDs in the mail, the apocalypse, or perhaps even worse, the news that Cliff is going to bring out a new Christmas single?

Whichever way it all goes, I reckon I was as close as you can ever be to having everything going swimmingly. Even falling over and getting soaking wet on an ice rink three times on a bitingly cold night was fun. Commandering a stage and losing my voice while offering free hugs also claims the fun title and even more amazingly, so does my first foray into club dancing.

So I leave the city after my big weekend and a lot of alcohol, and being anyone with an inch of sense, aim to arrive home Top Gear starts at 8.

5 was the optimum time to leave my friend's house after forgetting to go home earlier in the day and being distracted by Irn Bru and being literally forced into playing their Wii ("Do you want to play on the Wii", "Yeah, sure"). Anyway, I managed to get the tube without any hassle, apart from a couple of minor delays (which in the end cost me dear), and arrived at my mainline station of choice for a nice hour-long journey home.

This is, however, where things started to go badly, no sooner had I found out i'd missed the preceeding train by 3 minutes, that I was being told there were engineering works before Colchester, meaning bus replacement services. All is not lost, i thought though, and headed to the train in the platform, only to be informed on the way that the wind had caused overhead cable damage at marks tey, meaning i;d have to get off at witham. I was coping with that well too though, and made an impromptu taxi plan (also known affectionately as 'Dad') to see me home.

However, things went realtively catastrophically bad within 5 minutes of the train's departure. We stopped just outside Bethnall Green, and sat there. We continued to sit there for an hour and a half, before being involved we were going to be a tug rope to a stricken train in front and that our train was cancelled. Lovely, I thought. We took another half an hour to get to Stratford, and then another 20 minutes in the blistering cold and wind forthe next service home. Which took double the time to get to Witham than it should.

In a strange way though, the problem wasn't being stuck in cramped conditions or arctic platforms, nor was it down to restless passengers shouting and bangiong windows in anger (with their moaning in the cold later on, it;s probably for the best that the window didn't smash). I had jaffa cakes to tide me over, bought inadvertently wisely earlier on in the day, and I finished my book.

I was actually smiling the entirity of the way through, mainly through laughing at the rail system's incompetencies and kid's questioning the meaning of life and parents hoping the journey would just end so their young proteges don't think their creators were idiots.

In fact, barring missing Top Gear (and Long Way Down too), it was actually quite fun.

So while it is nigh on impossible to acheive that ultimate weekend, even what can at first seem a bugger can actually hold unexpected fun.

I attribute that to the Irn Bru. Orange stuff with sugar in has never been so gratefully received

Ice, ice baby

2007-11-29T19:20:00.000Z

Tomorrow, I go ice skating for the first time in two years. Now, anyone who knows me will know themselves that I have had adventures with balance. I've never learnt how to ride a bike and not through lack of trying. I once pretty much shred my shin skin to the bone, to which the dettol was brought out, and proper pain was brought into my life. The dettol appeared many times during my childhood, once after skateboarding into a wall, falling over when trying to hop-run in the playground, and when teasing my dog with malteasers.

My worst adventure in balance happened when I went head first over the top of my tricycle and smashed my chin open. I thought i was alright until my sister started crying at the sight of me. Naturally, I was fearful of the dettol and the pure pain it exhibited on my poor body, but it wasn't them I should have been afraid of. No, instead, i should have jsut been a manboy and taken the gaping hole in my chin as a man would, with a glass of whiskey and a bourbon biscuit, but no, I was whisked away in quite a different sense to the nurses at Clacton hospital where I underwent what can only be desribed as torture.

First they poked, then they prodded, then they poked again, asked me how i'd describe the pain, and with me being a wee lad of 4, i could only describe it as 'OWW!', mixed with a few tears and chokey coughs, then they poked it again.

It can be said then, on this evidence, that balance hasn't really been my friend. However, it has thrown me a few bones over the years that weren't pertruding from my broken skin, which I seem to have gratefully accepted. I can mountainboard (and how I can do that is in itself a miracle as it's basically a skateboard with really really big wheels and straps) and I can skate well too, both inline and ice. Not, however, normal skating, which brings with it the threat of dettol when I try to prove balance wrong.

So you're thinking 'Fine, yes, we know you're good at ice skating, what's the big deal?'

Well, the 'big deal' is that while i am not a danger to myself, I am to others. I've come close, on seperate occasions , to severing the fingers of one of my closest friends and a randon German. I have also accidentally knocked someone out hen I was flailing for balance (and this was from walking, rather than skating) on the ice and have broken someone's ankle when I've skated too fast into them. All in all, i'm possibly more dangerous than an English tornado.

So if you are going to the Tower of London ice rink tomorrow at 7:45pm, I advise you not to fall over, wear body protection and preferably a helmet. I'm an unintentiaonal menace.

Cold hands, frozen heart.

2007-11-26T14:11:00.000Z

I love being lazy. There's nothing better than sitting/lying down watching braindead television with braindead presenters and actors while your grey matter slowly but surely ebbs away. Sure, going out, drinking, talking to people in person and all that are fun too, but they require effort. And as any casual reader may be aware, that's where things don't really get going for me.

So it may come as a shock to you that i applied to and will be running next year's London Marathon. And it may surprise you even more (though i don't think it will as i've mentioned to everyone i've met at least twice) that it'll be my second marathon in three years. How can someone with so little energy, so little physical get-up-and-go, actually train for and run 26.2 miles?

The answer? I wish i knew, for then i'd be a very rich man, rich enough to buy Andorra or something. I honestly haven't a clue why i first thought it'd be a good idea, though i reckon some form of alcohol was involved in the decision making process. Either that or I was drugged. But then I've had many chances to pull out to say 'actually, i'm a lazy sod, someone else should run it' too. I jsut quite liked the idea of running a marathon i guess. I didn't think it'd be too much work; wake up, dawdle for a bit, run like you see everyone else do, come home, eat stuff, go to bed.

Then i realised i had (at the time) 6th form to contend with. And a social life. And that i'd have to buy all the healthy food myself as my parents, it seems, are really lazy too. However, that was time would seem a relatively easy thing to manage. No, there's something even more daunting to have to deal with. The weather. The enemy of all Brits, the entity that destroys picnics, boils albino children and chills you to the bone October through to May. It's the latter which would be the main problem, seeing as my proper training starts now, and as i can't really afford to go to the gym, it's outdoor pursuits for me. On winter mornings. With frostbite. And most probably a wolf or two. It's devastatingly painful waking up at 5 in the morning, walking out the door, having every hair stand on end, your eyes wide open from the temperature change shock and then having to run for anything from 20 minutes to an hour and a half.

Rather me than you, i bet you're thinking. and you'd be right, that bit is something i'd much rather trade for a day in the stocks in cannibal village. But then you have to weigh in the actual marathon day. People handing you slices of mars bar, bananas, jelly babies and, my personal favourite, flumps. And then they're all cheering you on. Wouldn;t trade that for the world.

So i'll endure the pain, the wolf bites, and the lost toes, all for those 5 hours of incredibly painful glee in april. You never know, it might be a nice day...

Get behind me santa...

2007-11-24T11:02:00.000Z

So, a month to go until the big day.

People running around the streets finding that perfect present, not being able to find it and instead buying you a version of trivial pursuit that you've never wanted and will never play in your life, mainly because the game firstly involves a board and game pieces, some of which will invariably be lost to the heavens a couple of minutes after you open the packaging, and secondly because the only people who like trivial pursuit are old, yet they can't answer a single question that isn't history or soap related and even then you're stuck because the Alzheimer's has set in and they think it's Easter Sunday.

But that won't even matter, for once the presents are all opened in the morning, the entirity of the christmas spirirt deteriorates faster than Michael Jackson's face. The commoradery between siblings in excitement, the expectant look on parent's faces, grandpa sleeping with a pointy hat on his face that your nephew put there to make him look like when Robin Hood dressed up as a crow all becomes mayhem once your sister treads on your lego set and breaks a vital piece, causing you to push her over onto grandpa and impale herself on the pointy hat, your nephew laughs, while your mother sits in the corner, her hair falling out through stress and your dad's gone for a cigarette so that he doesn't punch anything.

Ok, possibly jsut my house, but still, it's such an anti-climax. People say they've got you the best gifts in the world and invariably buy you socks or a woollen jumper. Christmas songs, some of which I absolutely adore, are not listenable from 00:00 on the morning of the 26th until 00:00 on the 1st of December the next year. The christmas dinner, while being the roast dinner of all roast dinners (unless your nan cooks it and it's a mountain of parsnips and cabbage covering the solitary yorkshire pudding rendering it inedible) fills you up to such an extent that movement is nigh on impossible for the next 5 days. Factor in as well that the next day you'll be celebrating the night out of all night out's (New Year, of course) and that the hangover can last for at least 3 or for days, by the time work or university comes calling early in 2008, you've had jsut 2 days out of 10 to do anything.

I sound like an old scrooge here, which i hasten to add i'm not. I'm only 19, and i don't have a top hat or a frog as an assitant you i don't pay enough for his work so he can't feed his poor family inevitably leading to the death of tiny tim. I love the run-up to christmas, the excitement, the christmas music, the trees, the lights, the people moaning about global warming from all the lights being up and all the trees being cut down, some tv specials, and most of all drinking. it's jsut that afterwards it's such a bore. You have to talk to relatives you don't even know existed, your friends are all off doing family stuff themeselves, but invariably having a better time, probably in a casino or lapland or with their own snow machine, while you're stuck listening to your nan's repeated innuendos directed solely at you causing embarassment and perhaps a vengeful streak...

So, before insanity ruins my life, and my nan is found under a patio (may i jsut add, how unoriginal was that man. Top tip: when murdering, never copy an idea of body disposal from Brookside), i'll stop my rant.

At least New Year is fun, and is in no way an anti-climax either. Oh...

Hit me, hit me, hit me, i'm already on the ground...

2007-11-21T21:24:00.001Z

I'm suddenly filled with a memory. It's a february evening. I'm at colchester town station, evening as clearly set in, with an evening streetlight orange glow giving the sky a dark mucky colour. it's 6:10pm (or there abouts)

Strange how a single song can take you back to an exact time. Well, i say single song, it's more like 3 or 4 songs.

It wasn't the best of memories to bring back mind. Quite a negative one. Not something typically associated with The Shins or Sons and Daughters, but hey, it's my own fault really.

Leaving the Goat and Boot, I trundle towards the station to mee t a friend so that she can be met and safely be taken back to the pub (quite ironic really, but i'll get to that). I put the little earphones from my iPod in my ear and set off. I feel something upbeat to take away from the cold. Stupid february.

I arrive at the station, the shins have finished, so i choose a new album. Obviously, i pick sons and daughters to listen to. Medicine first up, a good song. With quite an appropriate first line to match the situation i was about to get in, you can see it in the title of this entry actually. But i'm getting ahead of myself again.

I'm approached. Two very short haired guys, with the classical 'yoof' look abbout them. gold chains, white nickleson-esque hoodies, the works. With them, are two matching girls. Not short haired obviously, otherwise they wouldn;t be interested in the two guys in front of me and would instead be wanting to fondle each other. But i digress. I'm asked if what i have in my pocket is an mp3 player. I say yes. They say that;s nice. And now they tell me that i'm going to hand it over to them.

I was taken aback. I protested, i told them that this mp3 player was bought with my own money, that they're cheap enough to come by these days and if they saved a little bit of money, they could afford one. So they then asked me for my money so they could buy one too. So they consequently asked me for my money. Clever move boyo. I did protest once more, explaining that this was an unreasonable thing to do, and we could all sort it out over a drink. I nearly said I'd buy them a meal, but i feared that would be overstepping the mark a little bit. Though they did look a bit gaunt. Maybe they were just hungry...

Anyway, after many ignored protestations, i was edged towards the road. The girls got their mobiles out. Where they going to call their friends and tell them they were getting a round in. unfortunately not, they just held up the phones towards me. I thought this odd, until i saw a flash to my right. Luckily, i;d managed to dodge a punch by squinting to look at what they girls were doing. I told them that punching me was no way to make friends. They laughed to each other, and then the two guys made another sudden pucnhing motion towards me. A bad move by me to talk back. Though it was true. i couldn't imagine Laurel being so happy to work with Hardy had Hardy's first action upon meeting him was to punch him, spit in his face and tread on his ankle until he gave him his gramaphone. Luckily again, i managed to dodge a punch and catch one in my hand. I was begininning to think i had some sort of hidden power, that i had some sort of lightining reflexes. Maybe a life fighting crime on the streets beckoned. By tiring out my targets by dodging their punches, thenprodding them and they were kncoked out, i'd be made a hero. Statues would be constructed. I'd even have a swimming pool. Unfortunately, while i was thinking these very tangeable thoughts in my head i was actually struck in the head by the first, and most talkative guy, sort of the paul to the other other guy's barry chuckle.

I didn't fall over mind. i stood there, looking confused probably, wondering why i wans't a crumpled heap on the floor being kicked until i resembled a rabbit caught under a HGV. I saw my opportunity. I knew exactly what had to be done.

"Oh my god, look over there!" I shouted.
They all turned and looked.
I ran.

The oldest trick in the book and they fell for it. All i ahd to do now was to successfully negotiate a set of stairs leading to an underpass to the middle of the roundabout i was being backed onto jsut second earlier. I didn;t quite manage it, i tripped and fell. But then i recovered quickly and ran, never to see their faces again. I his over the other side of the roundabout until they decided to bugger off. I got a call from my friend asking where i was and that she was worried about being attacked if she walked to the pub on her own. I shook my head, told her i was coming and hung up. I met her moments later and we discussed what had happened. We discovered I had a rather large bump on my head. About the size of a plum both in diameter and in protusion.

It went down after a while, but no-one would let me drink afterwards. I wondered how it'd be different in the 50s. I;d have been given some whiskey and told stories of how Derek here took on 5 german soldiers with his bare hands, won but lost an arm, only to find it and to have it reattached within the hour.

As it was, i won the award for 'most beat up guy' at the seasonal curry, for which i got my pint, which my entire table wouldn;t let me drink.

And that's why i get an uneasy feeling when listening to the songs i've mentioned. It reminds of not of the apparent trauma of being confronted and intimidated by a gang, nor being punched in the face. No, all it reminds me of is the fact I lost out on a free pint.

Daydream Believer

2007-11-21T21:23:00.000Z

Or how to lose touch with the realities of the working world

I wanted to be a footballer once. I thought I was quite the dab hand (well, foot) at it until the time came when I tried to play in a competitive match. They put me in defence, and predictably a catastrophe of errors occurred. I fell over, skewed clearances all over the field and scored two own goals. I also played as a goalie with a bit more success, but made a few calamitous errors along the way. And I knocked myself out on the post. Twice. Besides, I was told I was too small to be any good.

My prospective career as a footballer in shatters, I decided to focus on a new dream, a new ambition to follow; something to make a career out of. My first venture was drawing cartoons (which I’m vaguely passable at), which was followed by rediscovering my childhood and get some Lego - and not just because it’s the epitome of all children’s toys – to try and make stop motion films. I’d seen Wallace and Gromit; I’d been moved when they left the robot on the cheese moon all alone and had been enthralled by the chasing of penguins on train sets. Unfortunately, neither came to fruition, mainly due to the fact that succeeding would require more effort than I was prepared to give, something which has stuck with me to this day.

In the real world, though, we find out or are told our ideas won’t work out and we should focus on trying to get a ‘proper job’ and are given various solutions, good and bad, mostly by world weary careers officers who only really care about the state of their office and whether their miniscule department at the school ha been given enough money to afford that ruler they’ve been after for two years. The idea given to me at this time was medicine, but it required phenomenal effort, something, so I trailed off the idea and into psychology, where I sit now, with no idea really of what to do after I finish.

It’s a minefield out there, and no-one particularly wants to get stuck in a dead end job being forced to do the same thing every day in order to pay for their rent in their incredibly beige flat, which was the only place they could afford the rent for, where they sit eating a cheap ready made meal because original ingredients are too expensive. I feel I’m being a little melodramatic here, but the point remains, picking the right career for you is as vital as your statistics. And it takes a lot of effort.

That’s why I’m trying to cheat and stop myself from having to make the effort when I could be doing something different instead. We all do it. That’s where all these childhood ideas come from, you know, the one’s you’ve never told anyone about; managing your team and winning the league, all because of your skill playing against your garden wall; or the huge bacon-based business empire you concocted, carefully planned and created a range of products to make you a millionaire. They’re there to try and distract from your impending future. Whether the ideas succeed or not is an other matter, though I’d by far and away agree that drawing amusing cartoons of people sailing in a little boat for a living is far more appealing than writing a presentation on the ethics of using staples as well as paperclips in the workplace in order to ensure a sense of equality and worth among all members of the company.

The problem I, and many others, have to deal with is that effort is everywhere we look and no matter how hard we try, it can’t be avoided. Whether it’s looking for a job, or drawing or writing for the university magazine, it all goes against my principle of actually doing something for recognition. Why can’t the world just love me and pay me for that? I’m sure there are many fun and easy layabout jobs out there, just waiting for people like me to snap them up and start loving my job, but they’re so few and far between to find, and it’s always the really clever ones who seem to get these jobs. Can’t they find other uses for their obvious talent? They like working, send them to offices up and down the country to work on a new version on Windows, one that doesn’t break every time you click to return to the desktop.

I do like to look for positives in things though, and there’s probably something to enjoy about the demonstrations on how to use a hole punch safely and the regulations against using a photocopier for anything other than it’s intended purpose. The weak tea from the machines or the incredibly stale biscuits on the desk next to me may even be edible, but if something actually had to be done, there’d be a person shaped hole in the door within seconds. The path of least resistance is certainly the easiest way to a cushy lifestyle. Maybe it’ll come; landing a job at a flashy newspaper writing a witty column daily about my highbrow lifestyle and how the day is spent laughing at people with caravans and conservatories; or maybe becoming a card designer with my cartoons on the front becoming family favourites and making me millions in the process. But maybe it won’t. Preparation is needed for the struggle when the time comes. Although that will require effort…

Until then, I’ll rue the day that my mother gave me her footballing abilities and my father gave me his stuttering growth pattern.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Landlords

2007-11-21T21:17:00.000Z

(Or how to drive yourself mad searching for the ‘right place’)

This is the life. Sipping tea, Super Furry Animals blasting through the stereo while lying on a comfortable couch, with toasty surroundings, well-made furniture, with the local a couple of minutes down the road, should the need for a drink suddenly overcome me. Only problem is, it’s too good. It may seem an ideal life, but it’s not the life which I want to be living at this point. It may have all the perks, but it’s not student life. Sure, I get to go out on the town, have a drink or seven here and there, enjoy all the nightlife the city has to offer, but when it comes to the end of the evening, I’m stuck all alone on a train, with various hardcore commuters giving psychedelic hellos to the unlucky soul next to them, for an hour into coastal Essex, with another lingering and dimly lit hour walk home in pitch black to look forward to, lest I fritter more of my loan away on night time daylight robbing taxis.

I’m desperate to get out of Colchester; I’ve been trying so hard over the summer to actually get my London living arrangements sorted. In fact, I’ve had them properly sorted, or so I thought, 3 times over since July, but like one of my Nan’s knitted creations (I pity my poor nephew), things have fallen apart. Personally, I blame the landlords. I don’t like that term in itself, it makes them sound better than they really are, ‘the people who own the place you happen to want to reside in but actually hate your living guts’. They’ve been the bane of my travails in getting a home, one suddenly upping the rent by £30 a week, mentioning it as an afterthought just before we were about to sign a contract, and another deciding he didn’t like students and calling the deal off at the 11^th hour, on each occasion not a slice of remorse or a speck of humility surrounding them. They remind me of those cartoon devils people sell their soul to for whimsical objects, only this time we managed to get out just in time to avoid waking up in a cold bath with a couple of scars on our back and the realisation that our urinary tract may be a tad MIA.

Even when not dealing directly with landlords, pitfalls are hurled at you like frisbees laden with poison. And that’s just not cricket. There’s Loot and Gumtree, where the quantity of listings is endless, but the quality and authenticity of around 90% of them are notable by their absence. In one case I attempted to view a room advertised as being a ‘couple of minutes’ away from Turnpike Lane tube station, which would have been fine and dandy. However, for some reason, they seemed to qualify ‘a couple of minutes’ as 15 minutes by bus and actually being in Edmunton. Either they have the combined intelligence as a chimp on a unicycle (if true, maybe a tad harsh on the chimp), or it’s another manipulation of the truth to desperately find that extra rent.

The search has gone on and on as a single housemate looking for a room for a month now, two close calls, dozens of agents disguising themselves as students in ads and scores of lies and drivel on every page I scour. It’s taken its toll so much I’m starting to see things with a slightly beige tinge and green borders. I sometimes swear I can see a little tree in the corner of my vision too…

I really need to feel my independence away from home, even if I lose all the comforts and known security, but it’s doing my head in trawling through what’s legit and what’s a cock and bull story. This is doing my head in. Time for that drink I think.