Month: January 2011

#oneaday, Day 31: Looking Back Through a Lens

I love photos. In one of my many houses at university, I had a whole corridor whose walls were papered with photographs I’d taken throughout the course of the previous year. It may well have looked a bit serial killer-ish, but I liked it (until I took them all down shortly before moving out and discovered the wall behind was actually damp and mouldy—thanks a lot, scumbag landlord) and it provided a nice visual record of what had gone on.

This was in the days before digital cameras were particularly widespread, of course, so these were actual photos on actual paper. I took a lot of photos, but there was still no way it’d be possible to take as many as you can with today’s cameras. That meant that each captured memory had to be just so, and there was no going back to try again; you caught it, or you missed it. Simple as that.

Of course, nowadays, it’s much easier to capture and keep a memory, assuming you don’t do something ridiculous to your computer like take it into the bath with you. But that doesn’t mean photos lose any of their impact, or the memories contained therein. I’ll bet I can take a random selection of photos from my iPhoto library and be able to explain each and every one of them.

In fact, let’s do just that. I’ll give you ten, just so we’re not here all night. Hold on, I’ll be right back.

So without further ado, here we go.

Would you look at that? We went and got a nice one to begin with. This is the wedding day (obviously) of my friends Rob and Rachel. Instead of confetti, they had bubbles. It was awesome, and we all ate a lot of food and got quite drunk. Fact: Rob and Rachel were one of the first couples I knew who got together at university and are still going strong today. I salute you, you lovely pair.

Aha. There are actually two separate stories behind this one. The guy in white makeup is, I believe, a chap called James Gaynor, who was starring alongside me in a production of Marivaux’s L’Epreuve, also known as A Test of Character. He was playing a character called Frontin, I was playing a character called Lucidor. Lucidor was in love with a girl called Angelique, who was played by a most lovely lady named Sarah, but there was a long and complicated plot involving Frontin pretending to court her on Lucidor’s behalf and it all got a bit French.

As for the mobile phone and the text on it: the mobile phone was mine at the time (Nokia REPRESENT), “sonicfunkstars” was the name of the fake band I made music under (using Sony’s ACID Music software and approximately 24 CDs of samples, most of which I probably never used) and “txtr’s thumb” was the name of my second album. Interestingly (not really), “sonicfunkstars” is still my Xbox LIVE ID, and it’s one of the only places on the Internet where I’m not “angryjedi” or some variant thereof. The other is YouTube.

(Exclusive: I found the title track from said album. It used to irritate the fuck out of anyone with a Nokia phone. You’ll see why.)

Ah yes. I can tell you exactly what is going on here. This is during my second year at university. The location is my friend Chris’ bedroom. Under the desk is Sam, who is drunk, and spent most of the night seeing what tiny spaces he could contort himself into.

Lying on the floor is Steph, who is reading a book—possibly Bridget Jones’ Diary. In the background is her erstwhile boyfriend Brett, my most enduring memory of whom is when he burst in the front door of Steph’s house, furious that “someone’s drawn knobs all over my car”. Someone had indeed drawn knobs in the snow that was all over his car, and Sam and I naturally knew absolutely nothing about it.

But that was not the occasion in this photo. No. This was simply a social gathering at Chris’ house—Sam, Steph and I were all flatmates in the first year, so we often took the opportunity to hang out together. We’d “lost” a couple of flatmates along the way to other social groups, but we’d stuck together for a lot of the time.

One of whom was the rather magnificent Beki, seen pictured here with Sam, again. This photo was taken on our hall of residence bar’s “70s Night”, a night where only the six of us from Flat A33, Hartley Grove Halls, Southampton, made the effort to dress up. Sam is wearing a woman’s shirt.

Whizz forward to last year, and we have a picture of a game of Scotland Yard in progress, one of the very few games I’m aware of that provide you with a hat as part of its components. Pictured is Tom. Not pictured is Sam. And me. Obviously.

This Post-It space invader adorned the front wall of Ruffian Games’ studios in Dundee. Obviously a little light relief after getting Crackdown 2 out the door.

Back in time to the first year at university again, we see here the midst of Operation Shopping Trolley, our attempts to stealthily remove the shopping trolley that had inexplicably appeared in our flat overnight. “Inexplicably” as in for once it wasn’t one of us who had brought it up. Notice the cunning ninja disguises Sam and I have adopted.

This is Dungeonquest, one of either the best or worst games ever created depending on your outlook. It’s a game where you have an approximately 23% chance of survival (they tell you this in the instruction booklet), and is almost completely determined by blind luck. Combat is resolved almost literally by rock-paper-scissors… except here it’s slash-mighty blow-leap aside. I was astonished to discover that they have actually remade this monstrosity. I was also quite tempted to pick up a copy, but that would be a very silly idea.

To this date, this is still the most literary piece of graffiti I’ve ever seen, found on the back of the cubicle door in the gents’ toilets in The Hobbit pub, Southampton. The whole door was something to behold; there were full-on conversations and slagging matches going on between various wall-writers, an excerpt of which you can see here. Theatre Studies was repeatedly accused of gayness. A bit rich coming from people hanging out in gents’ toilets.

And why don’t we end with this one, then? This offensive masterpiece was produced by the cast of Southampton “Rattlesnake!” Theatre Group’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Round and Round The Garden whilst finishing off rehearsals prior to taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe. We’d all gone a little bit stir crazy by then, and so we took to lite-vandalising the whiteboards in the lecture theatre where we’d been rehearsing. (“Lite” because you could just rub it off. But we did leave it there for the lecturer to discover in the morning.)

Look closely and you’ll see a selection of details; Pac-Man re-imagined to become Sonic the Hedgehog eating shit, some stickpeople having a threesome, some anagrams, a victim’s eye view of the Ku Klux Klan looking down on someone they’ve just thrown down a well, an out-of-context stage direction from the play made to sound dirty just by the simple addition of “just the way I like it” and my excellent drawing of the entire cast of the show, except me, because while I was quite happy to draw all the others I didn’t feel confident drawing myself. Also, BUTTOCKS.

There you go. Proof that I have an incredible memory for silly crap. And proof that even if you’ve forgotten me, I probably haven’t forgotten you.

#oneaday, Day 30: Julia

The Internet is a curious thing, as we all know. It’s given us LOLcats, cakefarts, puddingfarts (so I’m told… I haven’t dared look that one up yet), Twitter, Rickrolling, gayrolling, that kid throwing a WoW-related (fake) strop and jamming a controller up his arse, porn, dancing chicken man, leekspinning and all manner of other things besides.

The other thing it gives you is people.

As a kid at school, I often wondered what it would be like to meet people outside the local community where I lived. I grew up in a small village in the countryside that had a pretty close-knit community. You could probably name most of the local “characters” off the top of your head if you had a good think… largely because pretty much everyone got involved with everything. And, just to add to every country stereotype ever, there was even a semi-regular “village show” which was inevitably filled with middle-aged men and women making jokes that were smutty and/or at the local vicar’s expense. It’s pretty neat to see a close-knit community like that, actually, though I question how much it actually happens these days. It probably does, though I doubt to the same degree.

I remember when the Internet came to town, though. Or, more specifically, in the form of CompuServe, which wasn’t the “proper” Internet—that was a mysterious and difficult thing that no-one quite understood at the time. CompuServe was a window onto the rest of the world; people who were potentially far away that we all had access to for the first time.

CompuServe had one of the earliest chatrooms around—this was so long ago that the term “chat” hadn’t taken on the widespread meaning it had today. No, in keeping with the times (or possibly not), CompuServe elected to call their chatroom facility the “CB Simulator”. You know, because it was like CB radio in that you could talk to random strangers. Only it was completely different because you were just typing things.

I remember “meeting” a few people through this facility, with one in particular springing to mind. Her name was Julia, and she was from somewhere near Manchester. We got chatting and hit it off pretty quickly, and thus began a long campaign of emailing each other back and forth. I can’t remember any of the things we talked about—the usual teenage things, I imagine—but I remember that we were getting on well and it felt like we were pretty “close”.

So eventually, we had the opportunity to meet. She was going to Alton Towers with her friends, and as it happened, my friends and I were planning a similar trip. So we decided to make our trips coincide. I was pretty excited about the whole thing. She’d sent me a couple of (clean!) photos which seem to have managed to travel from computer to computer with me completely unintentionally, and she hadn’t promptly cut off all contact when I sent her a photo of myself looking slightly uncomfortable in a dinner jacket on prom night. Which was a good sign.

I’m not sure what happened. Perhaps it was shyness, perhaps it was the presence of all our other friends “cramping our style”, perhaps it was the fact that one of my friends was hitting on one of her friends (and doing quite well, from what I could tell), perhaps I wasn’t what she’d expected or hoped for (she totally was what I was hoping for, she was a hottie)… but we found it pretty difficult to talk to each other in “real life”. It was weird; we’d told each other lots of things, including plenty of “secrets”, but as soon as we were faced with one another it was suddenly like starting over… and it became a missed opportunity, sadly. We drifted off and lost contact after that. There was no “breakup” or words spoken in anger; things just… “stopped”.

I think about Julia every so often and wonder what she’s doing with her life. I hope she’s happy, wherever she is.

#oneaday, Day 29: Dedicated to Dedication

It’s hard to talk about your own good qualities without appearing conceited and self-obsessed. But I think we know each other well enough by now for you to be aware that I’m normally one for focusing on the negative things about myself. As such, a rare celebration of Something That I Am Good At should be applauded.

Go on, applaud. (You don’t have to applaud. But good on you if you genuinely started applauding there.)

I have absolutely no hesitation in my mind when someone asks me what my best quality is. Without a doubt, it’s my dedication. If I start something, by God I’m going to finish it come hell or high water. It may take a long time, it may take lots of swearing, but I am going to do it.

This blog is perhaps the most immediate example of this, now a year and ten days of daily posts strong, but there’s plenty of other instances in which this characteristic of myself shows itself. Let’s take today, for example, I woke up in a foul mood and decided after a bit of moping around, a bacon sandwich and two cups of coffee that I was going to go out for a walk in an attempt to clear my head a bit. And it was going to be a “long” walk.

I didn’t have a particular route in mind, nor did I have a particular distance planned. I just set off, pointed in a particular direction and started walking. I reached the next village over from where I live—always a strangely satisfying thing to do, like you’ve made some sort of epic journey—and turned back. I eventually came to a crossroads where I had three choices; go back the way I came (the “short” way), turn right and do a big “loop” around the other next village over (the “moderate” way) or turn left and do an unnecessarily massive “loop” (the “long” way). Guess which way I picked?

That’s right. The long way. I realised shortly into my journey up the long way that the long way was, in fact, considerably longer than I had anticipated, and the fact that I was wearing twice the number of layers on my top half than on my bottom half meant that my torso and head were lovely and toasty, while my testicles were slowly turning into ice blocks. It would have been easy to turn back from the long way and head back via the short way—I hadn’t got that far. But no; I decided I was going to stick out this journey however long it eventually ended up being. (A total of 12.5km altogether, if you were wondering.)

Some may call that stubbornness. Some may call it bloody-mindedness. Some may call it stupidity. I call it dedication to see something through once you start it. And it’s something that’s a regular part of my life. I like that about myself, and it’s not often I get to say that.

#oneaday, Day 28: He Seems Nice

Fellow #oneadayer @Bungiesgirl wrote an excellent post the other day about “The Curse of Mr Nice Guy“. She hit the nail bang on the head; there are times when it almost seems that it doesn’t pay to be a nice person, for a guy at least.

Thinking about it, I’m not actually sure I’ve ever known anyone who’s used the oft-quoted “I love bad boys” line. But I certainly know a couple of people who have consistently ended up with people who make them miserable when it may be that there is, in fact, someone standing right in front of them who would provide them with what they want out of a relationship. Only, because they’re one of the proverbial “Mr Nice Guys”, they’re not even in the running for that person’s affections. At least, not in the “anything more than friendship” sort of case.

Some people call this “friend-zoning”, where Mr Nice Guy has become too good a friend to even be considered relationship material. I’m not sure where this phenomenon or the term to describe it originally came from, but it happens all the time, and adds an interesting twist to the age-old question of whether or not men and women can possibly be friends with each other without the desire to insert parts of each other into various orifices getting in the way.

The simple answer to said age-old question is, of course “Yes, don’t be silly”. Take stock of your friends for a moment and there’s probably a good balance of both boys and girls there. And there are probably some people of the opposite sex (assuming heterosexuality for the purposes of this argument) that you don’t want to jump at the first opportunity. Even when drunk. The reasons for this could be many; maybe you don’t fancy them, maybe you value your friendship too much, maybe you’ve even had a relationship with them in the past. But the fact is, opposite-sex friendships can and do happen.

It’s when they’re a little lop-sided that difficulties happen, and such is often the case with Mr Nice Guy.

Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Ms Ladygirl is having a tough time of it. Her partner, Mr Wrong, isn’t what she wants, but she doesn’t want to leave him—either she doesn’t want to be alone or she has somehow convinced herself that she “loves” him. She confides in Mr Nice Guy, who 1) fancies her and 2) thinks it’s blindingly obvious that he could do a better job of providing her with happiness, cake and orgasms than Mr Wrong could ever do. Mr Nice Guy, being a decent, upstanding sort of chap, though, also generally does not like to exacerbate situations where emotions run high by throwing his own, possibly unexpected, feelings into the mix. So he listens to Ms Ladygirl, offers her support, takes care of her, holds her hair out of her face when she’s sick, carries her home when she gets wasted and then leaves her to sleep while he walks home to go and have a biiiig wank and cry into his pillow.

It’s a difficult (and, I hasten to add, completely hypothetical) situation. But what should Mr Nice Guy do? If he says nothing, then obviously nothing will happen for him. If he says something, though, Ms Ladygirl may interpret it as a selfish act—”I want you. So get rid of him.”—whereas he in fact meant it more as “You’re not happy. I want to see if I can make you happier than he does.”

Of course, there’s always the chance that Ms Ladygirl would correctly interpret his advances, cast aside Mr Wrong and happily live forever after with Mr Nice Guy. But due to the nature of your average Mr Nice Guy, that doesn’t happen that often.

Which is a pity, really, because Mr Nice Guys, as their name suggests, are in fact very nice guys. They’re not boring, they’re not clingy, they’re not any of the assumptions you might care to make about them. They’re people too; people who like helping others and hope that one day their caring, considerate, compassionate nature will bring them a partner who truly deserves their attention.

So if you’re a Ms Ladygirl and you’re clearly dating a Mr Wrong, I’d strongly urge to to pay attention to those non-spoken, non-obvious telepathic signals that the Mr Nice Guy you inevitably know is highly likely sending you.

Do the guy a favour. Grab him by his lapels and kiss him. Neither of you will regret it.

#oneaday, Day 27: To Whom It May Concern

Dear God/Cthulhu/Nyx/Nicola from Girls Aloud/Kefka/Des/Mr Denton/GLaDOS/G-Man/Bhaal/Fate/whoever is actually in charge of everything,

I’m not a praying man. You know that. I’m not even a religious man. But I’m asking for a favour. One little favour. That surely won’t be much for someone of Your calibre of magnificence/horror/weirdness/hotness/badassness/system specifications.

Said favour will only take up one day. One day. 24 hours on this Earth. You can spare a day, right? I don’t mind what You do on the day after. You can rain down locusts, devour the planet, send forth Your spawn into the wilds, ruin the world, remake it in Your own image or hire a guy with a crowbar to kick some ass. I don’t care.

All I ask is that for one solitary day, all of the Nice People get to have a Good Day. A Good Day together that they can all enjoy at the same time. Maybe down the pub. Because inevitably, what happens right now is that Person A has a Bad Day, Person B has a Fucking Terrible Day, Person C has a Great Day and Person D is “meh” about the whole thing. Person B is thrust into the very depths of depression. Person A moans about their day, but then feels guilty as soon as they come across Person B’s problems, which are clearly worse than their own. Person C wants to celebrate their Great Day but doesn’t want to make Person A and B feel bad or envious, while Person D gets all the shit from the other three lumped on them as they all vent their frustrations on the one truly neutral party in the whole debacle. And then no-one wants to go down the pub.

This is clearly a Very Silly Situation. Now, Your own personal ideology may not be particularly compatible with the concept of a Good Day. But look at it this way: if You’re the type to go devouring worlds, covering them with fire and/or making things “fall into shadow” (whatever that means—surely you can just turn on a light) then surely won’t it hurt more if You fuck shit up immediately after everyone has had a Good Day? Yeah. Now we’re talking, right?

If, on the other hand, You’re the benevolent type, then think how much good spiritual-currency-of-your-choice You’ll acquire from the provision of a universally Good Day. People will be happy and they’ll be inclined to thank You for said provision. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? I played Populous. I remember how it works. More mana means MOAR VOLCANOES. You know You want to.

Now, there are, of course, some flaws in this plan: namely, that one person’s Good Day may well cause someone else to have a Bad or even a Fucking Terrible Day. But I trust that You, in your infinite wisdom, will be able to sort something out. If it helps, You can limit the Universally Good Day to people that are “nice”, haven’t pissed me off recently and aren’t likely to. Or just my friends. I’m cool with that.

Basically, what I’m saying is: sucky things keep happening to Good People. Please, for one day, stop it and let people just enjoy life for once. I know that I’d be very grateful. And I know there are plenty of others out there who would too.

So at least think about it, huh?

Amen/Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!/May you always draw the right cards/You are well sexy/Synthesised laughs are the best/You’re a twat but I like you despite yourself/I like your sunglasses/This was a triumph/May you always be a Free-Man/FACE ME FACE THE NEW LORD OF MURDER/Korah matah korah rahtahmah/Yours faithfully,

Pete

#oneaday, Day 26: On Culture, and Farting on Things

The other night, I posted a question on Formspring. I thought I sent it to just a couple of friends but apparently somehow shared it with the entire Internet, as a lot of people, some of whom I hadn’t come across on Formspring before, appeared to be very enthusiastic to answer it. I was somewhat surprised at the amount of depth people were putting into their answers, because it was, after all, a somewhat flippant question that I wasn’t expecting people to take seriously at all. How wrong I was.

This was the question:

Out of The X-Factor/American Idol and equivalents; Jersey Shore; the music of Girls Aloud; the Call of Duty series; and cakefarts (don’t look it up, it’s exactly what it sounds like), which has had the most beneficial impact on society, however small?

My thinking behind it was this: here is a list of arbitrarily-chosen things that are all either irritating, disgusting, amusing or awesome depending on your outlook. Is there one that people see as significantly “better” than the others?

Turns out not, actually. Everyone had some good points to make.

@Ajguy had a short but sweet answer:

Cakefarts by far. Yes, I am familiar. And yes I’ve gotten a lot of friends with it.

It’s probably important to choose who you’re going to show Cakefarts to carefully, because after all, it is exactly what it sounds like. But it’s the sort of thing you can show to people and they certainly won’t forget it in a hurry. (If you’re not familiar, seriously, don’t look it up, especially if you’re at work; the clue’s in the name) If you are acquaintances with people who don’t “get” the Internet, you’ll be an Instant Legend.

@Cidergirli agreed with AJ, but for different reasons:

I’m going to have to go with cakefarts, purely because it’s the only one which appears to be open and honest about its use of cake. Also: cake.

@MJPilon had a thoughtful take on the issue and came out in favour of American Idol/X-Factor:

The answer I have off the top of my head is American Idol and equivalents because despite all the craziness that has sprung up around these shows, at their heart, these shows demonstrate that people should not give up on their dreams and that if they work for it, they can achieve what they desire. Anything which can still evoke these feelings and notions in people are beneficial for society.

He was concerned immediately after that he may have missed the point of the question, but I think that’s a decent answer; though personally I feel that “ambition” shouldn’t require a TV show to inspire people to reach for the stars.

@C64Glen came out in favour of Girls Aloud, though not for the reasons you might expect. Or possibly the reasons you might expect, given his username. I wasn’t familiar with the factoid he shared, though. TIL.

Girls Aloud easily, some of the tracks and production on the ‘Out of Control’ album is great. Some of it by former C64 musician Matt Gray. E.g. Untouchable (instrumental)

@Shinogu showed where his priorities lie with his response:

Jersey Shore? They were the only people of that selection at the LittleBigPlanet 2 World Record event.

@Cilllah, ably aided by @Culley25, got straight to the point of the matter:

All of them prove one very important fact – mental illness makes money.

Fair point. @Bungiesgirl then came up with an image that you will either find delicious or nightmarish depending on your opinion of two of the things mentioned in the original question:

Surely it is a combination of Girls Aloud and Cakefarts?! Girls aloud because they have a hot(ish) redhead, cakefarts just for the LOL! preferably these two things should be brought together into one super site of Girls Cakefarts Aloud.

I like the redhead in Girls Aloud. Nicola. She has a name. Nicola. I like Nicola. I understand she’s not the most popular option. That’s just fine by me.

Sorry, where was I? Oh, right. @minifig came up with some fair points in favour of Girls Aloud and Call of Duty, with a disclaimer:

Call of Duty probably wins it, since the development of the game has at least pushed a few technological boundaries a little way, and probably just enough to outweigh the huge timesink it is for the people that play it. However, I think Girls Aloud probably come second since:
1. They have a couple of songs that aren’t too offensive and
2. The amount of masturbation they’ve induced may well have had an impact to reduce the fertility of large numbers of men, thereby reducing the world’s already excessively large population.

Not that I like either CoD or Girls Aloud.

It was around this point that the answers started to gradually increase in length, depth and intensity of feeling. Here’s @docbadwrench:

Thankfully, I only know what a few of those things are. However, I think I get the general point.

Based upon the available data, I would have to conclude that Call of Duty has the most beneficial (though incredibly small) impact upon society. It encourages aiming, which is highly important if you use a gun.

In fact, if all fans of the aforementioned list could improve their aim, then they might kill one another; this could be another net gain for society. Perhaps, if we could plant subliminal messages into Call of Duty games encouraging people to buy guns. Then, extending the message further, perhaps their American Idol viewing parties would include handguns, just lying around on the table, in case there’s a conflict about whether the latest off-key primadonna is the bestest of them all.

Definitely Call of Duty.

“allpointsnorth”, whom I’m not sure I know on Twitter (apologies if I do) had this to say:

I suppose the knee jerk and natural response is that none of those programmes have any beneficial impact, but that would be a touch lazy and, not really fair.

Like most things it depends upon how you measure it. If we take beneficial to mean that more people enjoyed it so it must be more beneficial then I suppose I’d have to say Call of duty? 55 million sold worldwide. I guess Call of Duty would also fall into the ‘brought economic rewards to many’ view of beneficial too, though I’m sure that Jersey Shore brings in the cash too as will Girls Aloud.

However, I’m not really a big fan of measuring society against some sort of scale. I don’t think it really works like that. To break society down in such binary ways is tempting as it allows us to explain and comprehend the world around us so much more simply. However, society isn’t simple and what benefits one, no doubt, harms another. Even if that harm falls into a socially acceptable form of harm that we ignore.

Of the things here I’d say that Girls Aloud benefited me most as I’ve enjoyed a selection of their poptastic hits and the videos to go with them more than Jersey Shore, Call of Duty or Cakefarts – none of which I have seen. So, clearly, the music of Girls Aloud is the winner here and has done the most to benefit society at large.

Interesting point. What is “beneficial” to society? Is it something that brings economic rewards? Something that benefits art and culture? Something that makes people happy?

@planetf1 had a simple but accurate answer to my question:

I’d go for xfactor/idol simple as it’s given a lot of people pleasure, helped many with a career/breaking into the music industry, has stimulated discussion & allowed many people to share a common experience.

Discussion there certainly is; like it or hate it, during any high-profile “reality” show on TV, Twitter will be abuzz with discussion about the show in question, whether it’s in-depth debates about which floppy-haired twat is the “best” or people ranting and raving how much they don’t care about whatever programme it is.

Two more, then we’re done. @MituK had this wonderfully analytical, scientific approach to share on the subject:

Ooh, interesting. Well, let’s assume that ‘beneficial impact’ can go into negatives, and assess each accordingly.

I know that there is a difference between X-Factor-type-shows and Jersey Shore, but both seem to elevate fame for it’s own sake; even where hard work and talent are not what is being rewarded. This has led to a whole generation(s) of kids valuing fame for it’s own sake, rather than as a consequence of hard work. Definitely negative impact. We’ll give this a -5 rating for ‘beneficial impact’

Similarly, the music of girls aloud – this has created tunes I can happily bop along to when in the mood, but it’s also meant Cheryl Cole, who most little girls (according to a recent survey) would like to grow up to be, so this creates the same problem as described in the first paragraph. We’ll give this an arbitrary rating of -0.5, weighing up those two things…

The CoD series – hmm, perhaps there has been no negative impact other than the already-existing self-perpetuating desire for studios to churn out yet more of these types of games. HOWEVER, it’s existence has no doubt also inspired some of the many smart people interested in game design to want to create more interesting video game experiences (think indie scene). So, perhaps in a way this has had beneficial impact of +2 (of course I’m being idealistic here).

Cakefarts get a ‘beneficial impact’ rating of 0, because that is precisely how long I want to think about cakefarts.

So, on that scale, CoD wins, I guess!

And finally, @jennfrank shares a convincing argument in favour of Jersey Shore:

I’ve had more conversations about Jersey Shore than I’ve ever had about Idol or Talent or Call of Duty, and while these are all legitimate cultural milestones, OH MY GOD, don’t get me started on all the million reasons Jersey Shore is my heart and soul.

I love these earnest people earnestly, without a wrinkle of irony–I do!–and I love their passion for life and their perfectly foreign codes of morality and chivalry and fashion. But it’s this amazing anthropological study that no other show dares attempt, which is edgy in its way, and the cast, in turn, are these amazing actors who improvise their warts, these utterly authentic famewhores who relish in their own faults and even explain them all out, looking directly into the camera in partial states of drunkenness and undress.

Watching the show, for me, reproduces much the same crackle I felt as a tween watching early Real World, but instead of feeling a voyeur’s envious thrill at the specter of adults away from home for the first time, I instead know the envious thrill of watching kids away from home for the first time. So it’s the same, and it’s not the same.

Also, these folks are classy: Snooki is a NYT bestselling author, and Jenni “JWOWW” Farley is a spectacularly talented painter.

So there you have it. Points in favour of all of them, and proof positive that easily-derided cultural phenomena sometimes carry more significance than you might think personally.

Still hate X-Factor, though.

#oneaday, Day 25: Read This Post, It’s Shit

I started using some new toothpaste last night. It’s called “Corsodyl Daily”, and the best way to describe its taste would be to invite you to imagine that a cat had drunk an aromatherapy shop dry and then vomited copiously directly into your mouth whilst you were plucking up the courage to swallow the gob of spunk that had inexplicably appeared inside your oral cavity without, to your knowledge, anyone’s genitalia having been anywhere near your face.

Sorry. But it really is fucking disgusting. The thing is, though, Corsodyl are well aware that it tastes like some sort of hideous combination of essential massage oils, vomit and sperm, and they pretty much warn you of this on the back of the tube.

“It contains a special combination of plant extracts and mineral salt,” it says, “so you may find it takes a few weeks to get used to the unique taste and sensation.” I will resist the opportunity to make any obvious jokes at this juncture but I can think of at least one of you readers who are providing said joke for yourself right now. I can read your mind.

It doesn’t stop there, though. “Special combination” and “unique taste and sensation” sound quite positive, don’t they? Let’s not beat around the bush here, Corsodyl. You’d like everyone to know that your toothpaste tastes vile. So why not depict it with a handy graph—oh, you have.

Yes, that handly line graph you’re seeing right there (ignore the man behind the curtain toothpaste tube) is indeed a “product satisfaction over time” graph with no scale showing that early in your relationship with Corsodyl Daily, it will make you sadface, whereas an undisclosed amount of time down the road, you will be happyface as a direct result of using it. You’ll notice how the graph appears to operate in three dimensions, however, with the line of predicted satisfaction stretching off into the distance, leading me to wonder what the Z-axis represents. Amount of kittens you have allowed to vomit into your gullet? Number of oral sex “giving” sessions you’ve had? Quantity of pure essential oils consumed over the entire time period of you using the toothpaste?

Whatever. They have apparently proven that vomity-spunky-aromatherapypaste is worth persisting with, because they’ve proven it with SCIENCE! or possibly MATH!(S!)

The “buy this, it’s shit” approach appears to be gathering some momentum. I received a press release from an iPhone developer this morning chastising a large proportion of players for giving their game Crap of Defense the “highest rating for playability”. This in humorously broken English, too, which makes the whole thing even more enjoyable. I quote:

“We, the ifun4all team, have to communicate something very important. It is a violation of respect for us that all peples treat us like this. Our team will no longer tolerate such abuse of our game “Crap of Defense.” A large part of the population of players should be fined or even a public flogging as we do in our village. “Crap of Defense” was to be the worst game in the world, unfortunately, no one want to listen and then get the highest rating for playability. Enough of this. Our children will live with this stigma. Laszlo met a very nice girl, the daughter of a local merchant of birch syrup. The girl did not have one leg but friends says that they will have beautiful children. We decided to take the game out of the market. Hungary will win again.”

And then, of course, there’s the famous advertising campaign for Marmite, which proudly states up front that you might hate it. Ballsy. But apparently it works.

In fact, it’s the advertising equivalent of that arsehole at the bar who wanders up to the prettiest girl in the place, calls her a cunt and knocks her drink over and ends up shagging her for all eternity. In space. Surrounded by money. And more pretty girls.

I hate that guy.

#oneaday, Day 24: Your Over Their

The T-shirt in the comic above actually exists. So we’ve arrived at a situation where people don’t even proofread clothing.

Actually, I remember a friend who works in the printing business telling me a while back that it’s not the responsibility of the printing company to proofread or correct things like this; it’s the original designer’s fault. And it’s true—it is the original designer’s fault and they should be ridiculed for producing it (especially as it’s a pretty shitty design anyway), not to mention the idiots who pay money for it. I know for a fact if I was asked to print the T-shirt above I’d find it incredibly difficult to not correct it, though.

The reason? I believe in the sanctity of language. That’s a pretentious way of saying that I believe strongly that we should continue to spell things “correctly”. I know, I know, language changes over time and all that. But the reason we have certain rules in place with today’s modern form of English is to aid understanding.

Take “your” vs. “you’re”. We have two forms of “your/you’re” to prevent ambiguity. “You’re”, as everyone knows* is short for “you are”, with the apostrophe denoting that at least one letter has been removed to form a contraction. “Your”, on the other hand, is simply a possessive pronoun used as a an attributive adjective showing when something belongs to “you”. “If your single, so am I” doesn’t make any grammatical sense because, assuming that “single” is being used as a noun (which it should be if it’s following the word “your”) it needs a verb, otherwise the response to the T-shirt’s slogan is “If my single is what?”. “If you’re single, so am I” does make sense, however, because it’s saying “If you are single, so am I”. Which is a stupid and somewhat sluttish statement to make, but grammatically correct.

Unless, of course, they were going for a very heavily-buried programming joke. You know, like when you’re programming in C or something similar and instead of saying “if (single = true) { haveSexWithMe(); };” you can instead say “if (single) { haveSexWithMe(); };”. Essentially, then, suggesting that the full slogan is in fact “If your single status is firmly confirmed without any possibility of you being a cheating skank-basket, you can assume I am also single, even if I am not in reality”, but shortened to fit across someone’s boobies. I somehow think this scenario is unlikely, however.

Some accuse people who get riled about this sort of thing of being snobs. And perhaps we are; but to my mind, there’s not really a good excuse for using the wrong “your”. It’s two extra keystrokes to type “you’re”, a couple more flicks of the pen. We’re taught how to use “your” and “you’re” in primary school. I know plenty of people who have difficulties such as dyslexia who still know how to use the correct form of “your” and do so.

The only explanation I can come up with, then, is either laziness, ignorance or both. In an environment such as the Internet, your (yes, YOUR) written words are how you make your first impression. In reality you don’t walk into crowded rooms shouting “HERP DERP HERP”, belming and masturbating furiously, do you? So make sure you use the right word once in a while, hmm?**

* Well… apparently not.
** I am not for a second saying that using “your” instead of “you’re” means that you’re the sort of person who enters a room belming, masturbating furiously and shouting “HERP DERP HERP”. Although you might be. In which case you quite possibly deserve everything you get.

#oneaday, Day 22: Make Love, Not Hate

On the Internet, opinions exist in a binary state for many people. There is your opinion (1), and there is everyone else’s opinion (0). Sometimes other people’s opinions coincide with your own, meaning they can join you in the happy 1 gang, while the 0-toting losers get to stand over there being Wrong.

It’s strange, though, really, isn’t it? People develop such strong feelings about particular issues, and these opinions spread virally very quickly via all forms of the media. I remember reading about this in A-level Sociology and forget all the names and dates of studies concerned, but since this isn’t an essay I’m not going to go and look them up. What I do know is that nowadays, such opinions spread far quicker than they have ever done before thanks to the immediacy of online social interactions, meaning that in some cases people may end up feeling that they should change their opinions on things in order to remain somehow “credible”.

‘Twas ever thus, of course, with the school bullies always listening to the most badass music out there whilst the flute-playing pansies amongst us voluntarily listened to—or even played—classical music. (Guess which of the two categories I was in, though I didn’t play the flute. Flutes are for girls.) One group tended to kick the shit out of the other on a fairly regular basis, and it was usually a pretty one-sided battle.

You shouldn’t start actively hating something just because other people say so, though. You should take pride in your tastes, however idiosyncratic or separate from the supposed “norm” they are.

Let’s take a few examples of Things I Like That Should Be Embarrassing To Admit But Really Aren’t, Honestly, No, Stop Looking At Me Like That And Please Don’t Unsubscribe, Think Any Less Of Me Or Be Any Less Likely To Do Nice Things For Me (Like Buy Me Cake, Give Me A Big Wet Snog Or Make Me A Delicious Roast Dinner) Should The Opportunity Come Up.

Okay. I can do this.

(takes deep breath)

I like Robbie Williams. I also enjoy the comedy of Michael McIntyre, the radio show of Chris Moyles, the bubblegum pop music of MIKA and think Ke$ha’s album is a work of quirky genius that I believe I have described as “sounding like Kelly Clarkson being forcibly inserted into a NES” on several occasions. I voluntarily bought both Dead or Alive Xtreme games and played them a lot, and not just for the bazongas involved, I enjoyed the dumbass illogical “dating sim” mechanics that were in there too. I follow Katy Perry on Twitter and find her music cheerfully uplifting. And I own two Spice Girls CDs.

Tastes change over time, of course, but who’s to say that I’m “wrong” for liking any of those things just because the popular opinion is to hate them and deride those who enjoy them? I’m just as guilty as anyone else, of course; I find myself hating shows such as The X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and the like irrationally and automatically. I loathe Call of Duty. I would rather gouge my own eyes out than watch anything involving Piers Morgan (I think we can all agree on that one, surely).

The world would undoubtedly be a nicer place where everyone could feel more confident in themselves if our personal preferences stopped being scrutinised so much, and assumptions made based on those preferences. Take the recent announcement of Final Fantasy XIII-2, for example, a sequel to one of the most controversial Final Fantasy games there has ever been. Not because of the content, but because of the gameplay, which wasn’t to everyone’s liking. There are people out there who assume that because Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t to their taste, XIII-2 is going to be shit as well. Justifications range from “Square have lost their way” (well, perhaps, but can’t they pick it up again?) to “it’s the same team, of course it’s going to be rubbish” (because everyone is always universally good or universally bad?) and it’s nonsense. Nonsense I tell you!

Basically, do your blood pressure a bit of good and start concentrating on the things you like a bit more. Tell people how much you like them, by all means. But let’s all make a pact to stop making people feel bad about things that you, personally, “hate”.

Unless it’s terrorism, AIDS or Piers Morgan. You can hate those as much as you like.