Category: Not Games

#oneaday, Day 38: Angry Jedi

In an attempt to stem the tide of people asking one of the most common questions on the Internet—"how did you get your username?"—I shall set out the story forthwith.

I'm a trained teacher, as some of you may know. This meant I spent an extra year at university following my practically useless but enjoyable English and Music degree studying a PGCE (a PostGraduate Certificate of Education, for those who like to know what their acronyms mean). It was an enjoyable but stressful time, and I was happy to make some good friends during that time, one of whom was my placement buddy for my second in-school assignment.

His name was Owen, and he was a good man that I've sadly fallen out of touch with in recent years, but we had some excellent times. He was also convinced that we were Jay and Silent Bob, an observation that was pretty accurate on so many levels. But that's beside the point: the point is, Owen and I were the original source of Angry Jedi.

You see, sometimes when you get home from teaching practice all you really want to do is get absolutely trashed on cheap rosé and make music from approximately 48 CDs worth of samples. So that's what we regularly did, with extremely entertaining results. We decided that we needed a name for our makeshift band, and decided that the oxymoron "Angry Jedi" was a fitting summation of our respective personalities and the bizarre music we created. Ever since that time, I've taken to using "Angry Jedi" or some variant thereof as my username, as it's 1) a reminder of some very fond memories and 2) a name that no-one else ever appears to have thought of on the Internet… except someone on Xbox LIVE.

On Xbox LIVE, I'm called "sonicfunkstars", which I believe we discussed the other day. "sonicfunkstars" (all lower case, that's important) was a previous makeshift band that consisted of me and, occasionally, my good friends Sam and Edd. There was also a brief dalliance with being "Captain Gaspard and the Snarfriders", but tracks under that name are all on a MiniDisc somewhere (yes! MiniDisc!) and I have no idea where. If I ever find them, you'll be the first to know.

But you don't care about personal history. You want to hear the ridiculous sounds we came out with, of course. All right. Here's a selection of some of our finest moments. iPhone users, as ever, click on the song titles to listen. Everyone else, use the fancypants WordPress flash player thingy.

Bad Influence

This track was composed for two reasons: firstly, to have an excuse to use as many Harry Potter quotes as possible, including the titular "Bad Influence" extract. Secondly, we put it together while we were teaching a unit on "fusion" music at school. As such, there are some fairly diverse ethnic influences throughout the track. It also contains the line "It's knowledge. It's power. It's not a fucking tractor." And, as I recall, we used to find the "ta ta tippy tippy tum na" guy hilarious, though that may have had something to do with the amount of wine consumed.

Baching Mad

When creating this track, we decided it would be amusing to imagine what it would be like if J.S. Bach were having a piano lesson and doing very badly—so badly, in fact, that he ended up breaking his piano. (Let's leave aside the historical inaccuracy of J.S. Bach playing a piano for a moment.) We then followed this by attempting to mix together as many inappropriate pieces of "classical" music as possible with some kickin' beats. See how many you can spot. This is, to date, one of my favourite aural monstrosities. Particularly the key change partway through.

Kick the Dog

I honestly can't remember what twisted path of logic led to the decision that we should create a track based on abusing small yapper-type dogs with a variety of increasingly-gruesome implements punctuated by drum fills performed by chickens. But I'm glad we followed it. Owen's performance of all the verbs he wanted to do to annoying rat-like dogs took several takes, as I recall. There's also a nice bit of Nirvana mixed in there, too. No actual dogs were harmed during the course of this track.

The Guff Rap

No explanation required.

Get Off My Ship Original Mix and Ultimate Mix

These two tracks performed two important functions: firstly, to provide a showcase for PATRICK STEWART, and secondly, to demonstrate the concept of remixing to impressionable sixth formers. Captain Picard gets increasingly frustrated at the people who keep invading his bridge and politely requests they vacate the premises.

The Judas Joint

Our crowning glory: mixing, if I recall correctly, five Judas Priest tracks together and including a break for Meg Ryan to have an orgasm. The evil laugh in this is performed by me. I was pretty impressed with myself.

There are other tracks, some of which don't appear to have survived the move between computers and through time. The most notable absence is a brilliant song called "Today Fucking Sucked", which I don't believe needs any further explanation.

Anyhow. I hope you've enjoyed this window into the life of a trainee teacher, circa 2002-2003. And now you know why I'm called Angry Jedi. It is not because of the somewhat more offensive meaning of the phrase which my friend Amy discovered last year.

If you want to know that one, you can Google it yourself. (It's quite amusing. And/or disgusting. I forget which.)

#oneaday, Day 37: Sportyballs

I don't get sport. I never have, and I suspect I never will.

This is not through lack of trying. I used to play football (soccer, for our American readers) with my local Cub Scout pack when I was a kid. We were sponsored by a scrapyard and our best result was 1-0 to us. Our worst result was 21-0 to them. This convinced me that football (soccer) was Not My Game.

Early in my #oneaday career, I decided I was going to attempt to get into Formula 1. Cars racing around tracks is more appealing to me than sweaty men running up and down a pitch. But I found myself not caring enough to keep up to date with it. And forgetting that races were happening. And finding myself thinking there were many, many things I would rather do than sit passively in front of the TV for hours at a time. (One of which was sitting in front of the TV with a controller in my hand, which at least is a bit more "active" entertainment.)

My wife enjoyed football (soccer), so back when we were still together, I picked up a copy of FIFA 10 in an attempt to try to understand what was so appealing about it. I played it a bit, got destroyed 21-0 in an online game and was convinced for the second time in my life that football (soccer) was Not My Game.

I find myself perpetually bewildered by people who discuss the sports team they support as if they have anything to do with it. "We bought that striker person for a bajillion pounds," they say, substituting "that striker person" and "a bajillion pounds" with an actual player's name and an actual amount of money respectively. "We had an amazing result," "We're top of the league". I just don't get it. I don't even show that much loyalty to my RPG characters. They're still "they" to me.

And today, apparently, is something to do with a superb owl. (Thank you to whoever posted that joke in my Twitter feed while I was writing this.) There seems to be an assumption that everyone will be supporting either the Packers or the Steelers, which may be true if you're an American, but I have no idea who either of those teams are or where they're from. I could Google them, but to be honest, I really couldn't care less.

I guess it's just a different form of nerdery; one that is more "accepted" (for want of a better word—perhaps "embraced" is more appropriate) by society at large than video gamery and gadget-joy. I can talk for hours about my character builds in Final Fantasy XII and the makeup of my team of Personae from Persona 4 but I wouldn't know where to begin if someone started a conversation on the batting average innings goal difference of the Packersteelers bowling out for a duck's ludicrous display.

Each to their own, I guess. Just don't expect me to even try a little bit to join in with such a conversation. I'll see you at the bar.

#oneaday, Day 36: School Bands

The delectable and sexy Mr Alex Cronk-Young came out with this little nugget on Twitter earlier:

(in other news, great job on that Twitter integration, WordPress. Love it. But I digress.)

Ahem. Anyway. Following that statement, I decided it would be a good idea to go back and investigate if the music I listened to back at school actually was shit. Well, actually, I know for a fact that some of it was shit, even back then, but I'm interested to see how it compares to the shit we have today, if you see what I mean.

I've carefully selected ten tracks for your delectation. Those of you who have Spotify can clicky-click the titles to hear them if you've never heard them or can't remember what they sound like.

So here goes! Let's jump in.

Oasis: Rocking Chair

Oasis were huge while I was at school. It was the height of the "Oasis vs Blur" nonsense, which I never quite understood because they were two completely different bands with very different sounds from one another.

Within the Oasis fans, though, there were a few subsets; the people who just bought the albums and listened to their stuff on the radio, and those who thought they were "hardcore" because they'd bought all the singles and thus had access to all the B-sides.

The thing is, though, most of Oasis' B-sides and album tracks were considerably better than the singles they put out. For starters, they didn't always stick to the standard "guitar, bass, drums, vocals" combo that most of their singles did. This track, for instance, includes a bit of subtle organ work (easy there) in the background and as such has a very different sound from a lot of their other work.

Most of the B-sides were just plain better tunes, too. Rocking Chair perhaps wasn't the best of them, but it's certainly one that I'm fond of, and less well-known than the now overly-played The Masterplan.

Alanis Morissette: You Oughta Know

Jagged Little Pill was the second ever album I bought. I'm not entirely sure why I bought it, because Alanis Morissette was on local radio on the school bus pretty much every single day and I wasn't entirely sure that I liked her voice.

I was pleasantly surprised by the album, though. There was a lot of very obvious angst throughout, particularly in this track. She swore, too, which made it A Bit Rebellious.

Now obviously I wasn't an angry young Canadian woman in my teens, so I perhaps couldn't relate to this album on a particularly personal level. But she wrote some decent tunes and had a distinctive sound of her own. More to the point, these songs still hold up pretty well today.

The Verve: Lucky Man

The Verve were one of those groups that I picked up the album for after much deliberation. I wasn't entirely convinced that the singles I'd heard on the radio were quite what I was looking for, and once I'd picked up the album I still wasn't convinced that they were actually any good.

This track stuck out, though. It may have been due to my friend Craig's incessant insistence that we try and learn how to play it in the school's music practice rooms every lunchtime—that and most of Oasis' B-sides, some of which we actually did a respectable job of—but, besides the over-over-overplayed Bitter Sweet Symphony (which still gets rolled out on TV promos today) this was one that seemed to be tuneful and memorable.

Listening to it now, it's a bit dull and morose, but it is better than the rest of the album.

Spice Girls: 2 Become 1

Too many guitars! Need more crap and cheese! (That sounds like the worst party ever.)

The Spice Girls were overproduced rubbish who couldn't sing live. They were supposedly "hot", but I found their aesthetic appeal somewhat questionable. Victoria Adams (now Beckham, of course) was too skinny and moody-looking. Emma Bunton looked a bit… I don't know, odd. It was unfashionable to find Mel C attractive and she had pikey trousers (but would go on to be by far the best solo artist) and Mel B was just too frightening and weird to find in any way hot.

That left Geri, of course, who was ginger at the time, and thus made anyone judging her to be the "hottest" feel a little conflicted thanks to the age-old ginger stigma—something else I never quite understood.

Also, this song made us giggle at the time when we all determined that it was about fucking. It's really not subtle. At all.

The Cardigans: Sick & Tired

I actually didn't own a Cardigans album until much, much later, but this track was on a dodgy compilation CD called "Essential Indie" (the rest of which was utter shit, as I recall) which I got free with my Discman. I remember thinking that I liked the combination of Nina Persson's sweet, girly voice and the unusual inclusion of flute and bassoon in the backing instruments.

Turns out I still do like all those things. What do you know.

Bernard Butler: Not Alone

Bernard Butler's People Move On is another album that I don't remember why I bought. I also remember thinking that the vast majority of it was dirge-like, boring crap. This track, though, had energy and "power" behind it, and I enjoyed listening to it, even if the rest of the album was dirge-like boring crap.

Still sounds all right today. I like the strings. I'm a big fan of string parts in guitar bands generally.

James: Laid

Ah, actually, I think this one was also on "Essential Indie". It's also another song about fucking.

I was a bit torn on whether I liked James or not; "Sit Down" was one of those tracks that was played so often on the radio and TV that you felt a bit dirty liking anything that was associated with it. But this was a decent enough song, even though it doesn't really go anywhere and has way too much falsetto.

No, actually, it's not that great at all. Fuck James.

Britney Spears: I Will Be There

Time for more cheesy crap! Britney hit the bigtime while we were still at school and I found myself liking her cheesy bullshit despite myself—even without taking that video (which, for the record, no-one was quite sure if they were supposed to find sexy or pervy) into account.

I've chosen this track to prove that I have indeed listened to her whole album. I also quite liked the fact that Metropolis Street Racer spoofed this particular song quite nicely on its excellent, completely original soundtrack.

Mansun: Stripper Vicar

Mansun were weird. Their album Attack of the Grey Lantern appeared to contain some sort of rudimentary conceptual storyline, until the bonus track told everyone otherwise.

This track pretty much summed it up. A song about a vicar who wears plastic trousers and gets away with stripping, who then dies.

It's still pretty bewildering to listen to today, to be honest. Decent album, though—worth a listen.

Radiohead: Exit Music (For A Film)

This is the most depressing piece of music of all time, without question. It's not as if OK Computer was a particularly uplifting album at the best of times, but for this track to show its miserable, suicidal face just four songs into the disc pretty much made it clear that if you were going to listen to this album all the way through, you were in for a Rough Ride.

It's still a profoundly affecting track today, full of whiny miserable emotion and dodgy vocal synthesis in the backing. It's difficult to know what is the "right mood" to listen to this track, because if you listen to it while feeling miserable, it sure isn't going to help. But this song could bring a candy convention in Happyland to its knees, too.

Basically, it's a great song but no-one should listen to it if they want to smile ever again.

There you go. A super-uplifting playlist for your Saturday night, circa 1999. Enjoy.

#oneaday, Day 34: #whatstigma?

Comedienne Rebecca Front posted the following tweet yesterday, and was somewhat surprised at the level of response it got:

It was a bold move, particularly for a public figure, but in doing so she inspired a veritable plethora of people to "come out of the closet", as it were, and admit that they had suffered mental health issues, be they depression, anxiety, panic attacks, OCD or any number of others.

Front's aim with the original tweet was to encourage people to talk openly about the things they felt without feeling a stigma attached to it—hence the hashtag. And it was genuinely touching to see the number of people who latched on to this topic, confessing how they suffered from numerous "hidden" ailments in their mind whilst going about what otherwise seemed to be perfectly "normal" lives.

In fact, Front conjectured that some form of mental illness affected almost everyone. That may appear to be an exaggeration, but the number of people responding to her original tweet, coupled with the fact that #whatstigma became the top non-promoted trending topic in the UK for a good few hours yesterday, made it clear that there were plenty of people out there who do suffer from these things and perhaps haven't had the opportunity to talk about them, or don't feel comfortable talking about them.

It's no surprise, really, that there's a perceived stigma surrounding mental illness, however. Back in last May, Janet Street-Porter made some ill-advised comments suggesting that depression was being used as a fashion accessory—that people were just saying they were suffering because it was the "in" ailment to have.

There may well be some people who deliberately exaggerate their feelings of "being down" into "depression"—if there are, then they really should find better things to do with their lives. But these people aside, people do genuinely suffer. And it's not just a case of "snapping out of it", of "cheering up", of saying "chin up" enough times. It doesn't just go away; it sticks around, for years sometimes. Like anything, there are peaks and troughs; the peaks can feel like you've escaped it, finally, that you're in the clear, that you can get on with enjoying your life. But then a trough comes along, plunges you deep into the darkness and the long climb back out begins again.

I've felt this way—I still do. And I know many, many other people—some in person, some via the Internet—who also do. I didn't recognise my depression for what it was until I spent some time with someone who explained it to me at university. I recognised the feelings she described and knew that I'd felt them myself, too. It wasn't just a case of feeling "a bit sad". It was a variety of factors piling up in such a way that made it very difficult to deal with life's trials, whatever they might be.

And I hate it. The feeling of helplessness that comes with it; of having days when you just don't want to get out of bed; of times when nothing can stop you from feeling regrets, anger, fear, shame; of wondering if it'll ever end. For some people, it becomes just something about you—something you deal with. For others, it's an acute condition which can be treated. But for most people, there are underlying causes that need to be dealt with rather than attacked with "quick fixes".

In my case, these underlying causes are well-documented, and I'm doing what I can to fix them. This makes me feel a little better most of the time—knowing that I'm making the effort to do something about these underlying causes is good motivation to keep doing what I do. But there are still days when I find myself wondering if it's worth it, if anything is ever going to come of all these efforts that I'm making.

I won't know unless I keep trying, I guess.

My feelings on this made clear, now, here's the shameless plugging. In May, I'll be running the BUPA 10K with a couple of very lovely friends I've met via the One A Day Project. All three of us will be running in aid of the mental health charity "Mind". I'd certainly appreciate it a great deal if you can spare a bit of virtual loose change to fling my way via my fundraising page. Every little bit will help people to get the help they need to overcome these difficulties.

Thanks for reading this; thanks for your help; and thanks for your support.

#oneaday, Day 33: Twitter: A Skewed Window on a Weird World

Twitter is many things, as I've said a number of times on this blog before. It's arguably my primary means of communication these days, since the vast majority of my friends are quite-to-a-very long way away, and asynchronous communication is nice and convenient. It's a good source of information (in fact, Twitter themselves now describe themselves as an "information source" rather than a means of "short, timely messages" like they used to) and a good way to keep up with what people you're interested in are up to—and not just when they're having a shit.

By far the most remarkable thing it does, though, is something that it wasn't originally designed to do, but which it was always naturally going to do, given its nature. And that is the way it can give an eye-opening snapshot of "this day in history". Even when seemingly nothing is happening.

Today, there happened to be several things of (in some cases questionable) note occurring. Depending on where the tweets were coming from, it was interesting to see the differences and priorities.

By far the most horrifying tweets were emanating from the Middle East, where Egypt has been undergoing some not-inconsiderable turmoil. Today, there were violent clashes in Tahrir square, and via one Middle East-based person I follow who was RTing someone stuck in the middle of the violence and horror, it was possible to get a "first-hand" account of what was going on. It was oddly sobering to see the whole thing unfold, and although I didn't know the person being RTed in question, I was hoping that their tweets would keep coming and end on a positive note. I didn't want to think about what a sudden cessation of the "commentary" would have meant.

Elsewhere in the world, Australia was preparing for an enormous cyclone. They haven't had a great deal of luck over there recently. Due to the fact I don't think I follow anyone who actually lives in Australia, most of the reportage on the incident that I saw today was pretty cold and clinical, although this image, showing what said cyclone would look like if it were en route to the UK instead of Australia, gave pause for thought.

And then there was the curious incident of Justin Lee Collins' new girlfriend, which was reported by the Daily Mail today featuring a series of obnoxious paparazzi pictures of the couple on holiday. The article in itself was objectionable enough—as far as I'm concerned, celebrity squeezes aren't news, even if they're squeezing another celebrity—but what I found rather surprising was the reaction from quite a few (games journalist) people I knew on Twitter.

It transpires that the "mystery brunette" the Mail was referring to is actually someone who works in PR for the video games industry. I don't know the person in question and have never had any direct contact with her, so I wasn't much the wiser once people had explained the whole situation to me. But a lot of people seemed to find the whole situation hilarious—something which I found rather bewildering.

Now, granted, there's a certain element of "hey, I know that person!" if you see an acquaintance or friend in the paper. But personally speaking, whether or not the games journalism biz had "got one up on the Mail" (normally cause for celebration), if I was the woman in question, I'm not sure I'd be particularly happy about the widespread discussion amongst a number of people I may well have had direct contact with in the past. It's not her fault she got snapped by some paparazzi scumbag. Some may say it's an occupational hazard of dating a "celebrity", but that's no excuse. Her privacy has been invaded; and while the discussion of the fact "we know who she is and the Mail doesn't" hasn't been malicious in tone, it's drawn an unwarranted degree of attention to her.

In my opinion, anyway. But then I've never been one for any kind of gossip; people's relationships are their own business—not mine, not yours and certainly not the Daily fucking Mail's.

On a more uplifting note, one positive thing that came out of Twitter today was the #whatstigma hashtag started by comedienne @RebeccaFront. Via this hashtag, she was encouraging people to speak openly about mental illness, depression, anxiety and so forth, without fear of judgement or, well, stigma. It was heartening to see how many people took to it, and proof positive that there are plenty of people out there who are getting on with their lives despite struggling with difficult mental conditions. It was also, hopefully, a slap in the face to the sort of people who like to say "get over it". (Hello again, Daily Mail.) I'd actually like to write a bit more on this subject as it's one I do feel strongly about, but I think I'll save that for another day.

So, on the 2nd of February 2011, what happened? Several shit things. One invasion of privacy. And thousands of people stepping up to publicly say something about themselves without fear or shame.

While not the most positive day the world has ever seen, to say the least, it was certainly an interesting day. Will it go down in the history books? Who knows? But those of us who were here have our own personalised record of the whole thing. And that's pretty cool.

Good job, Internet.

#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