1594: The Changing Times, As Seen Through the Lens of Challenge TV

Challenge, for those of you not in the UK, is a digital television channel whose programming consists almost entirely of gameshow reruns from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. There’s the odd bit of original programming and occasional repeats of more recent stuff, but for the most part it’s about enjoying old gameshows.

One of the most interesting things about rewatching old gameshows in 2014 is pondering the sort of people who are on them — specifically, their jobs. In the older stuff you get on Challenge — stuff like Blankety Blank, 321 and any number of other shows with wobbly cardboard sets and LCD readouts of the participants’ scores — people tend to have very straightforward jobs. “I’m a plumber,” one contestant will say. “I work in a shop,” another will say. “I’m a newsagent,” another will say.

Compare and contrast with the sort of contestants you get on today’s shows — best exemplified by Challenge’s repeats of shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Catch Phrase and The Chase — and it’s a very different situation. “I’m a management consultant,” one will say. “I’m a business development manager,” another will say. (Andie informs me that this is the new name for what we used to know as “salesmen”.) “I’m an information technology technician in an educational establishment, specialising in campus-wide distributed network solutions,” another will say. (I made the last one up. Sounds convincing, though, doesn’t it?)

Notice the difference? That’s right, modern jobs all have utterly meaningless titles. Rather than being a straightforward description of what the person actually does, modern job titles obfuscate the person’s true purpose behind layers of doublespeak, presumably in an attempt to make everyone seem more important than they actually are. It’s probably the same reason that Asda has a “Colleagues Entrance” instead of a “Staff Entrance”, and why Waitrose employs “partners” instead of, you know, people who work in a supermarket.

It’s a trend that’s grown over the last ten or twenty years in particular, and it’s not a particularly positive change for the use of clear English. There seems to be a mistaken assumption that using the longest, most complicated and fiddly words possible to describe something makes it sound more “formal” and “intelligent” — it’s the same reason why people in suits incorrectly use “myself” instead of “me” when they’re trying to impress clients or superiors — but I’m pretty sure that most of us are wise to this little trick by now. Any time someone starts “myself”-ing at me, I just want to shake them and say “speak like a normal person! Do you talk to your friends like that?”

Actually, talking about this conjures up a number of fairly amusing mental images, the first one of which that sprang to mind was — don’t judge me — a management consultant having sex and breathlessly gasping that “the copulation between myself and yourself is approaching its conclusion, please prepare the personal cleanliness solutions for the removal of errant ejaculate from those areas in which it was unintended to fall”, by which point he would have probably already jizzed all over her tits anyway, rendering the entire statement moot and the pair of them sitting in slightly uncomfortable silence, both wondering why he can’t just say “I’m gonna cum” or “unnnnnggggghhhh” like a normal person.

[glances back at how this post started and where it ended up.]

I, uh… sorry, I don’t know what happened there. That sort of escalated quickly, didn’t it? Oh well. It’s late, all right? My brain is wandering to weird places and I apparently need to get some sleep.

1593: Niche Gaming’s Struggle for Coverage

A blog post by the inimitable Mr James Mielke really resonated with me earlier today, because it touches on something that regular readers will know I feel particularly strongly about: the lack of coverage for interesting, niche games on mainstream, large-scale, commercial gaming sites.

Mielke’s piece focuses on the growing Japanese doujin (indie) scene and the excellent games that are emerging from it — titles like, as Mielke mentioend, the joyfully retro Kero Blaster, the smashing mech shooter Armored Hunter Gunhound EX and Edelweiss’ spectacular shmup Astebreed, and a list to which I’d also add intriguing, enjoyable titles like Croixleur, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, Gundemonium, Exceed and numerous others — but it’s a problem with niche games in general. These days, if you’re not a triple-A game with an astronomical marketing budget and a PR team working overtime to ensure at least ten trailers are released every week, you’ll struggle to even get noticed by the big hitters in the industry.

Why is this? Well, there are lots of reasons at play. A huge consideration for many sites these days is determining what’s going to pull in traffic. Since we’re still not in a position where people will pay for quality content on the Web — and frankly, I don’t see that changing any time soon, unfortunately — most sites still make use of an advertising-based revenue model, which is largely reliant on ensuring that eyeballs are directed on pages which, as well as interesting content, feature advertising in noticeable, prominent locations. Some sites are more obtrusive than others when it comes to advertising, but one thing all commercial gaming sites have in common is a reliance on advertising for revenue.

This means that sites have a perceived obligation to serve up content that will “sell” — i.e. stuff that will guarantee eyes on pages and, by extension, ads. This means covering the latest hotness at any point — the Grand Theft Autos, the Mass Effects, the Watch Dogs…es of the world. And covering them as much as possible. Previews. Reviews. Guides. News stories. Everything you can possibly think of until there’s nothing more that can possibly milked out of the latest big triple-A release, at which point you then proceed to do the same thing with the next one.

Depending on the size of your staff at a publication, this then doesn’t leave all that much time for coverage of other stuff — whether it’s a Japanese doujin project put together by a single dude in his bedroom or a sprawling grand strategy extravaganza that may well be one of the most fascinating, ambitious games ever created. There is still time to cover these things to a certain extent, but a whole lot of stuff has to fall by the wayside. I regularly felt enormously guilty when I simply had to ignore a lot of stuff coming into my inbox on a regular basis because I was obliged to cover certain things in favour of others. It made me enormously sad to see hard-working pros like Tom Ohle of Evolve PR continuously bang their heads against a brick wall in an attempt to get the smaller — yet, in many cases, considerably more interesting — projects even considered by your average outlet. There simply isn’t the manpower to do so.

And it’s doing the audience a disservice, too. When there’s nothing to choose between all the big sites’ almost-identical coverage of Watch Dogs, Call of Duty or whatever is big this month, there’s little reason for people to look around for interesting takes. Sites could benefit hugely from specialising in particular areas — or simply making more of an effort to not cover exactly the same things all the time at the behest of the most powerful triple-A PR representatives.

I made a point of covering niche games when I had the opportunity. I reviewed the games that no-one else would look at — and often in more depth than when other sites acknowledged their existence. I celebrated interesting games through my weekly columns. And here I am, staring down redundancy at the end of next month. So that worked, then.

As the overused cliché goes, games journalism is broken. And I wish I knew how to fix it.

1592: Funnymen

I really enjoy a good bit of stand-up comedy — emphasis on the good — and so it was with some delight that I recently discovered the work of Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. is someone whom I’d heard mentioned before — mostly by my American friends — but I’d never checked out his material before. I’m always oddly wary of American stand-up — I think it’s because I’m conscious that a number of stand-ups from the British Isles have struggled to make an impact in the States, so I find myself wondering if the reverse is true, too. Past experience — the best example I can think of being Bill Hicks — has demonstrated that good American comedy can very much still be funny on this side of the Atlantic, though, so I’m aware I’m being irrational; it’s just one of those things.

Anyway, Louis C.K. is extremely funny. I’ve watched two of his stand-up shows on Netflix and the first episode of his TV show Louie to date, and all of them have had me properly laughing out loud. He seems to strike a good balance between shocking — his discussion of the words “faggot” and “cunt” during the opening section of one of his shows is a particularly good example of this — and witty, intelligent, observational comedy with just a touch of cynicism. Meanwhile, Louie appears to show that he’s a good character actor, too, with some wonderfully deadpan scenes throughout — my favourite being “…can you stop smiling exactly the same way at me every time I look at you?” “…No.” — coupled with just the occasional dip into absurdity. I’ll have more to say about that when I’ve watched a few more episodes, I’m sure.

The reason why discovering Louis C.K. is such a pleasure is because I feel UK comedy isn’t in a particularly good place right now — at least not the stuff you generally see on TV. There’s still stuff like Dara O’Briain and Russell Howard being shown on repeat-centric channels such as Dave, of course, but the main face of British comedy right now appears to be Russell Kane, whom I just simply don’t find particularly funny. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or simply because I don’t like his style, but I find the show he comperes — BBC Three’s Live at the Electric — fairly excruciating to watch, not only for Kane’s sequences, which are by far the strongest element of the show (which isn’t saying much) but for the truly dreadful, painfully unfunny sketches and skits that punctuate the format.

Louis C.K., meanwhile, has a style that I very much like. There’s an air of seemingly defeated cynicism about a lot of it, with occasional crescendos into furious anger about something or other. He never seems to take it too far, though; the rants tend to stop before they become too preachy, and any tension built up through the yelling is usually defused nicely by a pithy comment or a reminder of what he was talking about beforehand. It’s a style I really like.

Anyway, if you’ve never checked out the comedy of Louis C.K. and you’ve been meaning to, I’d encourage you to do so at the next opportunity. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen, and I hope there’s more material out there to discover. In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying the Louie series.

1591: Beat It

I beat the “bad” ending of The Witch and the Hundred Knight this evening. I’m not going to talk about that right now, though, because I feel there’s at least one MoeGamer post in that game and its interesting story. What I instead wanted to talk about was the idea of “beating” games.

I love finishing games. I love the satisfaction of fighting the final boss — usually, if the game’s sound team has any sense, accompanied by the best piece of music in the game — followed by the story’s conclusion and the credits roll. Well-designed games feature satisfying conclusions that wrap everything up nicely, but at the same time leave you a little sad that you’ll be leaving the main cast behind. Even poorly designed games can give a palpable sense of relief once they’re all over.

Interestingly, though, I don’t seem to see an awful lot of people talking about beating games. There’s occasional talk of scoring a Platinum trophy — usually from trophy whores who make a point of earning Platinum trophies on even games they don’t particularly like — but I very rarely see people publicly expressing satisfaction that they’ve completed a game, seen its end sequence and have finally achieved some closure.

I wonder why that is? Perhaps it’s to do with the excessive spoilerphobia we have on the Internet these days. You can’t mention a single plot point from recent popular media — be it games, movies or TV — without someone complaining about spoilers. It’s a fair concern, if we’re being honest; it’s always nice to have a few surprises in an unfamiliar story. But it does make talking about interesting stories extremely challenging at times. How can you talk about School Days without talking about the ending where Kotonoha kills Sekai? How can you talk about Nier without mentioning the bit where it deletes your save file piece by piece in front of you as your character is erased from existence? What discussion of Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory is complete without mentioning the fact that the main villain is a disgruntled, embittered Atari? (Okay, maybe it’s just me who cares about that last one.)

Or perhaps people simply don’t finish games as much as they used to. And if so, that’s rather sad: all those dangling plot threads, ever to be unresolved; all those final bosses, waiting to show you their awesome piece of battle music, ever to remain unfought; all those 20-minute staff rolls left unread.

I’m actually the opposite; I finish a whole lot more games these days than I used to. I remember one of the first games I ever beat — Super Mario World on the Super NES — and it being a huge deal. It was an even bigger deal when I got that magic “96” on the main menu: the 16-bit equivalent of earning a Platinum trophy. Despite the fantastic feeling that came from beating that game once and for all, it would be quite some time before I’d beat any others, though by the time I started getting into point-and-click adventures you couldn’t stop me from reaching the end credits of even the most stubborn games (hello, Discworld) if you tried.

I’d be interested to see the statistics for how many people beat particular games. It sort of is possible to get a general idea these days by looking at achievements — the cynical (or observant) might suggest that achievements are more a means of metrics-tracking for developers than an actual reward mechanism for the player, anyway — but it’s not always easy to get the global picture using these. I have a strange feeling that a lot of games might get started but never finished by a lot of people, and this can be at least partly attributed to the ridiculous pace with which things come out these days. In some cases, you’re barely out of the tutorial levels of one game before the Next Big Thing comes along vying for your attention, and the natural thing to do is to want to try out that Next Big Thing, which leaves the Last Big Thing languishing.

I’ve had to discipline myself pretty ruthlessly to avoid this going on. Once I start something, I try and finish it — unless I’m really not enjoying myself, in which case I’ll abandon it. Spanners have occasionally been thrown in the works by review obligations, but after the end of June I won’t have to worry about those any more, meaning I can concentrate on clearing my ample backlog. (And purchasing all the titles I mentioned yesterday, of course, along with a couple of others I’d forgotten about — Mind Zero and Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection). For the most part, this strategy works well; I’m in the good habit of playing a game as much as I find enjoyable, then setting it aside once I’m done, perhaps to be replayed at some time in the future. For games I particularly enjoy or want to show my appreciation to, I make an effort to obtain that Platinum trophy; not only is it satisfying to know I’ve been rewarded for everything the game is offering rewards for, it also provides the aforementioned feedback to developers that someone, somewhere out there enjoyed their game enough to want to see everything it had to offer.

So, an open question to anyone reading and comment-inclined: how often do you beat games? Do you tend to focus on a single game and play it to completion, or juggle lots of games at the same time? How do you keep track of them all, if so?

1590: Deluge

Why is it that the moment you know you’re not going to have very much money on hand — like, say, when you lose your job — that all the awesome things suddenly come out and vie for your hard-earned?

Sod’s law, I guess.

Considering a lot of people seem to consider gaming is going through a bit of a “dry spell” at the moment, there sure is one hell of a lot of things that I want to play that have either come out recently or are about to come out.

One of the chief games I’m interested in is Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8, which is looking like a stonker, if you’ll pardon the ’90s parlance. I haven’t loved the last few Mario Karts — though granted, I didn’t play the 3DS one — and have instead preferred the company of games like Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, which is a truly excellent game filled with Sega fanservice. Mario Kart 8, meanwhile, is looking like it will be a return to form for the series — from my perspective, anyway — with some creative tracks, some astonishingly good music, all recorded with live instruments, and the usual array of multiplayer funtimes. I’m looking forward to getting together with friends and having an evening of throwing shells at one another.

Aside from that, though, there’s a glut of great RPGs that are dropping around the same time. On Vita, there’s Conception II, which I’d very much like to play at some point but haven’t downloaded yet, plus Demon Gaze, which I’ve been loving. On PS3, there’s Drakengard 3, which is next on the list after I finish with The Witch and the Hundred Knight and Demon Gaze, and which I’m rather excited about as it’s from the same people who did Nier, one of my favourite games of all time. I already have a copy of that ready to go and it’s taking all my willpower to not just shove it in the PlayStation right now and start playing. But I am waiting until it can have my full attention.

Then there’s Monster Monpiece, the fun-looking card-battling game for Vita that features the notorious “rubbing” minigame in which you power up your monster girl cards by rubbing your Vita until… well, there’s no two ways about it: some of their clothes fall off. Aside from the pervy aspect — which, to be perfectly and unabashedly blunt, has me intrigued — the card battling gameplay looks solid and interesting, and a friend of mine who played the Japanese version seemed to have a lot of fun with it, so I’m definitely interested in giving it some time.

I’m sure there’s more I haven’t thought of, and this isn’t even considering the most recent big triple-A release Watch Dogs, which sounds like it has ended up slightly disappointing a few people. I probably wasn’t going to pick it up anyway, but it’s a bit of a shame to see a game that’s been hyped to absolute buggery for the last fuck-knows-how-long turn out to be received in a rather more lukewarm manner than its developers and publishers intended.

Well, with all this gaming goodness dropping now, I know at least I won’t be bored while I’m twiddling my thumbs in my house waiting to hear back from all the jobs I’ve applied for…

1589: The Digital Future

I was a bit surprised to read this piece from GamesRadar today. For those of you who can’t be bothered to click the link, it’s a piece decrying the fact that 73% of UK-based console gamers still exclusively buy boxed copies of games on disc, without ever purchasing any digital download titles. The article then goes on to pontificate as to how this can be “fixed”.

My immediate response was “why does this need to be fixed”?

The piece does make some good points. Digital distribution cuts down on a considerable number of overheads and organisational considerations when compared with physical distribution — particularly on console platforms, where the platform holders still have very tight control over what can and cannot be released and sold in a box. Digital distribution allows smaller developers to release games to the public without having to worry about these overheads and organisational consideration — or even working with a publisher in some cases. It is ideally suited to the indie movement, in other words, though the article appears to espouse a philosophy of “all digital, all the time” being the way forward for interactive entertainment.

I’m not resistant to the idea of digitally distributed titles being available. The vast majority of my PC game collection is digital, and in fact I threw out a whole bunch of physical PC games when we moved this time — largely because they were old copies of games that no longer run on modern systems, and in most cases there are downloadable modernised versions that will happily run on newer hardware and operating systems. Similarly, if the only way to acquire a particular game on console or handheld is to download it, I will happily hand over my money and download it.

Here’s the thing the article is missing, though: some people are collectors. I consider myself a collector of games, and I display my shelf of PC, PS1, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, PSP, Vita, DS and 3DS games with a great deal of pride. I like being able to look at that shelf, think “oh, I used to enjoy that game”, pull it down, pop it into a console and be playing it again a moment later. With the increasing speed of broadband these days — particularly if you’re lucky enough to have fibre-optic like us — it doesn’t take very long to download an older game, but there’s still something very pleasant about seeing that box art, holding the box in your hands and putting the disc into the device. And for newer games — particularly with the excruciatingly slow speeds the PS3 downloads from PSN — I’d much rather just put in a disc and play than wait for 10GB or more to download.

The other consideration, of course, is that console online stores are closed ecosystems that theoretically could close down at any time, denying you access to content you’ve purchased a license to. Note: purchased a license to, not purchased. That license can be revoked at any time, meaning that there’s always the risk that, having deleted a game to make space on your hard drive at some point in the past, you might not be able to get it back ever again at some point in the future. This issue is hopefully a way off for now, but it will become a problem in a few years, I imagine.

The newer consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, have another problem, and that is the size of the downloads for newer games. Many new “next-gen” games are weighing in at 40 or 50 GB each, and with both consoles only coming with a 500GB hard drive as standard, that’s only ten games you can have installed before you have to start deleting things. Granted, most gamers will probably only have one or two games on the go at once, but then there’s that old concern again: what if, for some reason, you’re suddenly no longer able to download something you paid £40 for? That sucks, and it does happen, even well before the whole store closes — recently, Europe saw the removal of Persona 4 Arena from the PlayStation 3’s PSN without explanation.

Ultimately what is needed in this regard is not someone slamming down a gavel and saying “The Digital Future begins now!” — what is needed is the acknowledgement that consumers like choice. Collectors like myself who value games as cultural artifacts to be displayed with as much pride as books should continue to have the opportunity to add to their collection, while those who prefer to declutter and have their digital entertainment on tap — or who perhaps see games as a more “disposable” form of entertainment — should also have the opportunity to enjoy their games without acquiring things to find a home for in their house. Small developers should continue to have the opportunity to release their games as digital-only releases, with the most successful ones — see titles like Journey and its ilk — eventually making it to a physical release if the demand is there.

In other words, so far as I can see, pretty much the ideal situation is what we’ve got now. So why is that a problem that needs “fixing”?

1588: 33 Bloke LFG

Ahh, I’m jobhunting again. Goody. It’s always so much fun to do this.

Actually, though, this time around I don’t feel quite as despondent about the process as I have done in the past. I am feeling pretty despondent about my impending unemployment, of course, but the timely acquisition of a new job will hopefully fend that off before things get too difficult to deal with — either mentally or financially.

When I’ve been in this position in the past, the main source of my despondency was due to the fact that, despite having both qualifications and experience, I wasn’t really sure what I should be looking for. The reason for this is that both my qualifications and experience are quite specialist, with the possible exception of my degree — I have a PGCE, which is a teaching qualification, which naturally suggests a career in teaching, and I have experience with teaching, working in retail as both a salesman and a personal software trainer, and I also have experience at quickly and efficiently churning out content that people might actually want to read for specialist websites.

The challenge now is in applying that knowledge and experience and being able to position my qualifications and skills as being suitable for… something else. There is absolutely no way I am ever going back into teaching, largely for the sake of my own mental health. I am also rapidly coming to the conclusion that I no longer wish to work in games journalism — I think there’s a whole post in my reasons for doing that, so I’ll save that for another day.

So what, then?

Answering this question is where I’ve stumbled before. When confronted with a website promising literally thousands of available jobs, where on Earth do you begin looking?

Well, this time around I quickly found some suitable positions to delve into, largely in the web content editing and/or internal communications fields. Both types of position are directly relevant to my past experience, albeit from a different angle, and both types of position are something I could absolutely, positively do right now without requiring any additional training. For the most part, too, both types of position offer a salary that is at least competitive with what I’ve been earning at Gamer Network, and with the prospect of future promotions and actual career development — something that simply wasn’t there with any of the games journalism positions I’ve held in the last few years — I might actually finally be able to get my hypothetical income graph heading back upwards instead of, as it’s been doing for the last few years, downwards.

Anyway, that’s the situation right now. My Bank Holiday Monday is likely to be spent looking for and applying for more and more jobs. Hopefully one of them at least will come to something, as having dealt with long-term unemployment on one occasion in my life I’m in absolutely no hurry to return to that situation — particularly now Andie and I are safely in our new house.

1587: The Most Important Part of Moving

Unpacking shit, painting and hammering nails into walls are all very important parts of moving house, but by far the most important thing to do is to determine whether or not your local takeaways are any good. The prime time to do this is immediately after you’ve moved, when you almost certainly don’t have anything good in the fridge or freezer. And we’ve been doing just that.

Last night we tried the local chippy, which is just over the road from us. It seemed pretty good — as good as a chippy ever is, anyway — and was noteworthy for having absolutely astronomical portions. The definition of a “large” chips varies enormously from chip shop to chip shop, and it seems that this place errs on the side of “large” meaning “enough to feed at least four people”. Hard to beat value like that.

Tonight, on the other hand, we gave the local Indian takeaway a go. This, too, is just across the road from us, and appears to have some involvement with one of the best curry houses in Southampton: Kuti’s Brasserie on Oxford Street. We popped in yesterday to grab a menu and have a quick look and it smelled amazing, so after receiving a generous cash gift from my grandmother in the post today, we thought we’d give it a go to see what it was like.

Turns out it was delicious, and again, very good value for money. Andie and I bought a couple of mains, a couple of starters, a couple of rices and a couple of bready things for a little under £30 and all that was clearly enough for about four people instead of just the two of us; consequently, a hefty chunk of it has gone into the fridge for warming up as leftovers at some point.

One of my favourite Indian takeaways was in the Sholing area of Southampton when I used to live there. The building where my flat was located was attached to a small block of little shops and offices, and among the shops on the ground floor was an Indian takeaway, the name of which I’ve since forgotten. I have vivid memories of going in there, however, because the guy who owned it had obviously seen us moving all our stuff in: the night we moved in and wanted nothing more than to simply stuff our faces with delicious food we didn’t have to cook ourselves, I was greeted by the gentleman in question standing behind the counter of his takeaway, arms splayed wide as if he was about to embrace me, bellowing “Welcome to the Sholing!” (The takeaway was not, I don’t believe, called “The Sholing”; his greeting was simply a slightly broken English welcome to the area, which was simply called “Sholing” rather than “The Sholing”.)

Our experience with Kuti’s Express this evening wasn’t quite as heartwarming as that particular incident, but the food was good and you can order online to collect about 30 minutes later, so that’s all good. And I’m almost certain we’ll be heading back there — particularly with my board gaming friends’ affinity for the spicy side of cuisine.

1586: pkunzip -d house.zip

The unpacking is done! I think. Unless there’s a secret box hiding somewhere, just waiting to taunt me with its meaningless contents. If there is a secret box hiding somewhere, just waiting to taunt me with its meaningless contents, my response to it right now would almost certainly be to simply empty its meaningless contents straight into the bin. The house is full; there’s no more room for crap.

That’s not entirely true, of course — though I’ve had to find some creative storage solutions in my study — but this place most certainly now looks “lived in”, in a good way. We have Things on Shelves in a vaguely organised fashion — the shelves in the living room are the best example of this, while the rickety bookcase in my study shouldn’t be examined too closely lest one of the two loose shelves come crashing down, bringing a ton of heavy books with them — and there are places to sit. (We have two sofas in our living room, but that’s largely because we had to buy a second one in the previous place because our nice leather sofabed wouldn’t go up the damn stairs. Here, meanwhile, it came through the door without a single issue — and thankfully without any damage from having been kept in the garage for a year and a half.)

We even have a spare bedroom, which is a first for me. (Second bedrooms in places I’ve lived have tended to end up converted to office/study space — here, we not only have a spare bedroom, but a study each.) Said spare bedroom had a bit of a paint accident earlier, leading to an ugly bare patch in the middle of the wall, but that was the one room we haven’t yet redecorated anyway. I guess now there’s an incentive to get it done, huh?

The area that probably needs the most work at present is the dining room, which is in the small extension on the back of the house. Right now, we have a half-full shelf of board games — the other half of the board games are proudly displayed in the living room — and some display cabinets that Andie is yet to put her ample Lego collection in. Sitting in the centre of the room and looking rather lonely is the dining table and chairs I inherited from my former housemate Claire; the chairs are old and faded and the table is far too small for the space it occupies. At the very least, the table will be replaced with something much bigger at some point: the aim is for the dining room to become a suitable space for playing sprawling board games in. The room is certainly big enough; we just need a nice flat surface to put all those bits of card, wood and plastic on.

Anyway. I’m aware I’m becoming a house bore. This is probably the last “yay house” post for a while yet, since most of the major things — unpacking, mainly — are done. There’s a minor bit of decorating to do here and there still, and I’m sure we’ll find some “projects” we want to work on in the near future. But what was an empty, slightly grubby house a few days ago is now very much a place where we live.

And Andie and I have both agreed that we are not moving again, ever.

Uh-huh. Sure.

1585: Taxing Polls

Did you vote today? I did, and so did Andie. I don’t actually really care all that much whether or not you did — I’m guessing you didn’t if you’re reading this from outside the UK — but it seems to be “the done thing” to ask today.

For those reading from outside the UK, it was a combination of local elections and European elections today. I don’t follow politics with any great interest, so I’m not really 100% sure what both of these elections will decide in the long term, but I do know that a significant proportion of people on the Internet were absolutely adamant that we must not vote for UKIP.

UKIP, for the uninitiated, are a party led by a sour-faced trout called Nigel Farage who are strongly in favour of, among other things, the UK’s independence from the rest of Europe. They’ve also garnered something of a reputation in recent weeks in particular for being possibly a little bit racist, maybe. Not quite as flagrantly, unashamedly racist as the British National Party (BNP), mind, but still enough to give people pause, especially if they are a member of an ethnic minority group or an immigrant themselves.

Before we go any further, I’ll note up front that I didn’t vote UKIP. I disagree with what I know of their policies, I don’t like racist attitudes and I think Nigel Farage is a twat. This site also suggested that I fundamentally disagreed with UKIP on all but three of the thirty different policies and opinions it tested, and had the greatest affinity with the Green Party, most closely followed by the Lib Dems, then after a bit of a gap, Labour and the Conservatives. I didn’t have any particularly strong feelings before taking the test, so I voted Green today. They’re one of those parties that are pretty unlikely to ever have any real power, but the way democracy is supposed to work is through you voting for the party that most closely aligns with your beliefs, right?

Anyway. Now I’ve said that, I feel I can say that the run-up to this election has been absolutely insufferable largely due to the number of smug people pointing out with great delight how they’re not going to be voting for UKIP. I saw the same “hilarious” Twitter messages that “Farage hates” being retweeted time and time again; the same Stewart Lee speech shared over and over again; the same people congratulating one another on how awesomely politically switched-on they were.

Trouble is, the stated (or implied) intent in what these people were doing — to convince other people that voting UKIP would be a bad idea — was somewhat flawed. When it comes to political views, people are pretty ill-informed (I’m a fine example) and yet pretty stubborn when it comes to which party they choose to attach themselves to. (I am less of a fine example of this latter aspect.) This means that when you proudly declare how awful UKIP are and how you wouldn’t possibly vote for them ever, and how nobody else should vote for them ever, you’re not changing anyone’s mind. If anything, all you’re doing is reinforcing your own beliefs — and those of people you know already agree with you — and causing those people who do claim to support UKIP to dig their heels in and be more determined to vote for this party you detest and despise. Meanwhile, you end up irritating the fuck out of the people who don’t feel particularly strongly one way or the other and who wish the Internet would go back to arguing about whether 1080p and 60 frames per second really matters.

I suppose I can’t really fault people for at least appearing to stand up for what they believe in — particularly in these increasingly apathetic times. I simply don’t feel that the way people have chosen to express themselves in this instance — as with so many topics that people get passionate about on the Internet — has been particularly helpful or productive.

I guess we’ll find out when we hear the results of the elections, won’t we?