#oneaday, Day 15: Regression

I'm of the firm belief that you should never apologise for something you've written, particularly during something like a #oneaday challenge, because it comes from the heart. It comes from within you, reflects what you're actually feeling or thinking about and is, basically, something that shows who you are and what you're thinking. That sort of makes sense.

To clarify: I have been drinking quite a bit and as such this post may not be the most coherent thing in the world. But I make not apologies for this as drinking is fun, in moderation.

To whit, I went out with an old friend tonight; my friend Woody, who is someone I went to school with. I didn't get to know him, really, until I got into Sixth Form, when we spent a lot of time each lunchtime playing Uno, eating cheese and bacon baguettes and playing a bit more Uno. But since that time, we've stayed in touch and occasionally gone out to get a bit drunk.

Tonight was one such occasion. I haven't had the opportunity to go out and get pissed for quite some time. Actually, that's not quite accurate. The last time I went out to get pissed was New Year's Eve, during which time I managed to drink a lot and somehow spectacularly failed to get drunk whatsoever. This may have been something to do with the amount of Kinect gaming that took place during that time. Dance Central, it seems, is a suitable antidote to drinking.

Tonight, though, was another matter. Plied with Sambuca and beer prior to going out to the delightful pubs of Cambourne (imaginatively named due to its geographical proximity to both Cambridge and Bourne), we drank quite a bit and reminisced about the good old days.

As you get older, the opportunities to do something along these lines get more and more infrequent, so it's worth taking them when you can. Because sometimes, there's nothing better than sitting down with a good friend, chatting about days gone by, remembering times you'd got intoxicated on substances of your choice and the silly things that had occurred as a result of said intoxication.

Woody, incidentally, is someone who has managed to remain all but invisible to the Internet, which is something of an achievement in this day and age. But you might say that makes the memories I have with him all the more precious, as the only record of his existence I have these days are the few photos I have of him now. Most of which involve being drunk.

The UK has a drinking problem, it's clear from just walking down any big city high street on a Friday night. But sometimes, just sometimes, it's nice to spend some time with a friend getting off your tits and having a good laugh about days gone by.

That's what happened tonight. And I hope it happens more often.

#oneaday, Day 14: Is A Tardy Person Called A "Tard"?

Some people are habitually late for everything they do. Some more so than others. Some of them justify it under the guise of being "fashionably late", that obnoxious concept where people, for some inexplicable reason, believe that the time on an invitation is open to negotiation, particularly if the event in question doesn't involve people talking, singing, dancing or stripping (forget that last one) for your pleasure on a stage.

Where has this concept come from, though? eHow gives a frankly unnecessarily detailed five-step guide of how to be fashionably late. Urban Dictionary defines it as anywhere between 5 and 45 minutes depending on the event. But then they also define it as "showing up 5 minutes late with a supermodel on your cock", so perhaps take their word with a grain or two of salt. The ever-reliable Ask Yahoo! fails to come up with any conclusive answers whatsoever. And no-one seems to be able to quote a reputable source pointing out where this concept came from in the first place, besides something vague about "rich and famous people at parties".

So why do people do it, and where are they taught to be this way? I'm typically on time for things, unless it's something REALLY IMPORTANT, in which case I will usually arrive three hours early, get bored, go and find somewhere that sells sandwiches, eat them, realise I'm going to be late if I don't hurry the fuck up and end up rushing to get to the place at which I arrived exceedingly early in the first place. But social occasions? If I say I'll be there at 8pm, I'll be there at 8pm.

Many embittered experiences and mournful tweets from a lonely booth in the corner of a bar haven't taught me my lesson yet. I turned up on time for my own stag night and my guests waltzed in the door approximately two hours later. I'd been having some fun on Twitter in the meantime, of course, but that meant by the time we were all drunk enough to collectively pretend we were a hot 18-year old virgin on Omegle my phone battery was almost flat. We went on to have an awesome night, incidentally, but it could have been two hours longer had people showed up when I'd asked them to.

People don't change easily, so there's no real sense complaining about this in the long run, though. So with that in mind, I think I'll just keep on being the barfly for two lonely, Twitter-filled hours while I wait for people to show up. And the rest of you can take your time washing your balls, applying supposedly-attractive smelly liquids, polishing your shoes, swearing at holes in your trousers/pants/tights, realising that your boots don't fit any more, finishing watching that hilarious series of 200 cat videos on YouTube or having a nervous breakdown in the meantime.

I'll see you at the bar! (And just because I got there first does not mean I will be getting the first round in, just so you know. Actually, it does. I will have got the first round in. A round of one drink. For me. Yeah.)

#oneaday, Day 13: My Name Is Wicka Wicka Slim Shady

Anyone who's had any kind of interaction with any kind of online community and wanted to take your relationship with the people you know to the "next level" will have dealt with the situation above at some point or another in their life. You're sure you recognise someone from their avatar, but you're not quite sure if you should go over and say hello to them or not, even though you might have been exchanging filthy penis anecdotes online for the last two years. (Filthy anecdotes about penises. Not anecdotes about filthy—oh, you know.)

Then, once you finally do summon up the courage to walk over and say hello to this person that you might have thought you were quite close to until you were faced with the terror of spending time in physical proximity to them, you are faced with a very difficult question, and one which has baffled philosophers throughout the years.

"Who am I?"

There's a moment of silence when time seems to freeze. It occurs right after you say the words "Hello, I'm" and is a moment that seems to last forever. You have an important decision to make at this point—a decision which will determine your conversational partner's immediate reaction to you.

That decision is whether to introduce yourself as your username or your actual name. For people whose usernames are their real names, this isn't an issue (though it does often prompt the overly-formal seeming "introduction using both first and last names, occasionally including middle initials" situation rather than the more casual "Hey. I'm Pete.") but for those of us who picked ridiculous usernames and are now stuck with them, known better as our self-appointed, perfectly-justifiable-to-ourselves-but-harder-to-explain-to-others monikers than our actual names? It's a difficult decision to make.

"Hello, I'm Pete," assumes that your conversational partner has paid attention to your profile (assuming you put your real name on it, which some people don't) and carries the risk of them looking at you blankly and going "Who?" while walking up to someone and cheerfully announcing that "I'm angryjedi!" could simply prompt a look of bewilderment, a cry of "No, I'm angryjedi!" to start echoing around the room or someone laughing in your face.

In my experience, it's often best to do both. "Hello, I'm Pete—@angryjedi from Twitter." This is usually followed by a "Well, you don't look very angry to me!" (obviously they haven't read this blog enough) which we all have a good titter about and then move on to actual proper grown-up conversation. Or possibly shouting "COCK!" at each other, depending on the appropriateness of doing so in the context.

Last night, I attended an event at which a number of people I knew from Twitter, including several other One A Day Project bloggers, were in attendance. It was probably the smoothest this particular exchange has ever gone, with the possible exception of PAX East last year, an environment that positively embraces nerdism and encourages you to cry "I am xXSanguine-Warrior69Xx!" from the rooftops.

I was actually surprised at myself. Confronted with a room full of those that I see as SUPA IMPOARTANNT PEEPLE FOR MUCH RESTECP (including Ian Livingstone, Jon Hare, Richard Wilson of TIGA, Andy Payne of UKIE, a whole mess of MPs and a variety of journo types) I was expecting to freeze up and/or drink myself into oblivion with the graciously-provided free refreshments. It was not to be, though. I schmoozed with the best of them, got some great interviews (the iPhone is fantastic as a portable recorder, if you've never tried it, incidentally) and had a brilliant time.

I came out of the whole thing thinking "Yeah. This is something I want to do." Which is nice.

Now to get on that.

#oneaday, Day 12: Welcome Home

[Disregard the above. It is nothing to do with the below. This is a short piece of fiction that I promised I'd write. It is late and I have been out all evening. But this is no excuse to not write something. So here is… something. I feel I should not have bothered with this disclaimer as it probably diminshes the atmosphere. Still, it separates the prose below from the cartoon about a man getting his penis out above. Which is, I suppose, a good thing. Now. Shut up and read.]

He sat in the chair by the big windows that looked out over the pristine courtyard below. The chair was comfy, his apartment was immaculate and the lush foliage down below looked completely perfect. If there were such a thing as Paradise, this planet was surely as close to it as Man was ever supposed to get.

He stood and walked solemnly up to the window pane, gently sliding it open with his free hand and letting the cool, clean air of this new world flow in through the gap, filling his lungs with purity.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. This was a far cry from the overcrowded, polluted atmosphere that was the Earth he left behind. For a brief moment, he wondered what state the planet was in after their long voyage, but the image soon faded, and the darkness started closing in. He opened his eyes to escape it, if only for a moment.

I should be happy, he thought. This should be the happiest moment of my life. I am part of history. Never again will anyone get the chance to do what I am doing right now. A virgin world that was ripe for colonisation, prepared for Man's arrival by the machines and now inhabited by the first humans ever to step forward and volunteer themselves to live permanently away from Mother Earth? There are people who would kill for that opportunity—there were people who killed for that opportunity—but there was no happiness here, no pride. Nothing could erase the pain he felt.

Everyone knew the risks when they signed up. The stasis chambers had been successful in small-scale, short-term laboratory tests, but all the colonists knew that they were really test subjects for use of the chambers on a voyage of many years in length. The potential rewards outweighed the risks for many participants in the program, most of whom were unemployed, or living in the dirtiest, most run-down areas of the cramped, overcrowded cities. The chance of a new life on a virgin Utopia was too good to pass up, even if it meant relying on an unproven technology.

He recalled the last time he had seen her before the voyage began. As husband and wife, their pods had been next to each other, so they had the chance to be together right up until the last moment.

"Sweet dreams," she had said to him, kissing him lightly on the lips and touching his nose playfully with her fingertip. "We'll be in our new home before you know it."

He had smiled at her, held her close and kissed her back, and gazed into her eyes as she lay back into her pod, the Space Corps officer closing the lid, ready for her journey into the unknown. She had blown him a kiss just before the lid had clicked shut.

Smiling, he lay back into his own pod, closing his eyes and picturing her face. The sight of her always brought him comfort. He knew that wherever she was, that was home. And the thought of starting a new life with her on this exciting, unknown new world that they'd heard so much about on the NewsWire—that was a thought that had kept him going. The knowledge that they'd be escaping the constant struggle to survive in post-War London. The fact that they'd be able to start a family without having to deal with the bureaucracy of the Overpopulation Act of 2342. It felt like their life was starting again, like they were being given a second chance, and one which wasn't doomed from the outset.

He felt the cool air of the pod bay stop caressing his face, and he heard the "click" of the lid closing. He opened his eyes, and all was darkness. It was beginning, and he knew that this would be the last memory he would be having for a while. He closed his eyes again and pictured her face smiling at him; those beautiful blue eyes, those luscious, kissable lips that he could never resist, the cute dimples on her cheeks when she grinned.

Then, nothingness, like a sudden and involuntary sleep. He had no idea how much time passed between the complete loss of all his senses and the moment he became aware again, hearing the "click" of the pod unlocking and seeing the lid open into the darkened bay.

He had known as soon as he saw the face of the Space Corps officer opening his lid that something was wrong.

"What is it?" he said, his voice croaking. "What is it?" he said again, louder this time. The officer said nothing, but clearly looked worried.

He braced himself against the sides of the pod and hauled himself to his feet. The lights of the bay had been lowered so as not to dazzle the awakening colonists, but he still felt the need to squint as he stepped out into the cold air. The officer offered him help in getting to his feet, but he brushed it aside, looking over to that all important pod next to his own. Her pod.

It was still closed. The lid was still firmly atop it, even though it seemed that most of the other colonists were now waking up, starting to mill about and speak to one another hesitantly. He knew that something was very wrong, and he turned to the officer again.

"Tell me," he hissed. "Why haven't you woken her up?"

Footsteps behind him. The sound of his approach—the man who would say the words that would change his life forever. The sound of the shoes clanking on the metal floor got closer and closer, then stopped.

"I'm afraid we have some bad news," came a voice from behind him. He felt a hand on his shoulder, but he was already starting to feel dizzy, nauseous and afraid. He turned around to face the source of the voice and found himself looking at a short man in a white lab coat, a messy mop of grey hair atop his head, a grim expression on his face.

He could barely form words. He didn't want to ask the question, but it came out almost involuntarily.

"What… what happened?" he asked, his voice quavering. The extremities of his vision seemed to blur, and his head was pounding. He couldn't take not knowing any more, whatever this bad news was.

"I'm sorry," said the grey-haired man. "But your wife… she didn't survive the voyage."

He let out a loud cry, the support of his legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees. He stared straight ahead, the man's words echoing around his mind, over and over again. "She didn't survive the voyage." So cold. So clinical. And over there, in the pod that had become her coffin, there she was.

There was a long silence. The other colonists milling around the bay had stopped, watching this strange scene unfold in front of them. A few of them looked like they'd figured out what was happening, some of them gesturing to the closed pod and whispering to one another, but the low buzz of conversation seemed to have ceased.

He closed his eyes, tears running silently down his cheeks, and he breathed deeply in a vain attempt to compose himself. Opening his eyes again and looking to the grey-haired man through his distorted, tear-filled vision, he spoke uneasily.

"Can… Can I… see…"

The grey-haired man stroked his chin and looked solemnly at him.

"If you wish," he said. "However, I feel I should warn you that the contents of that pod… may not be how you wish to remember your wife."

He staggered to his feet, tears still running down his face, and walked slowly over to the pod.

"Show me," he growled. The grey-haired man nodded to the officer, who looked very uncomfortable, but silently walked over to the side of the pod, pressed a button and started to open the lid.

Instantly, he knew that his wife was gone. He turned away in disgust at that which he had but glimpsed. She had clearly been dead for a very long time, and that was not how he wanted to remember her. The grey-haired man had been right. He couldn't sully the memory of her beautiful face with what she had become thanks to the failure of technology.

But it was too late. It had been but a glimpse, but it was already seared into his memory. And even now, standing here, breathing in the crisp, cool air of this virgin planet, he could not be happy. His new beginning had been cut short by cruel Fate.

As he raised the barrel of the gun to his temple, he closed his eyes and whispered one simple phrase, one which he had hoped he would be saying for the rest of his life.

"I love you."

#oneaday, Day 11: Aim Lower

To quote Mr Bill Bailey, I am English, and as such, I crave disappointment. Well, "crave" might not be the right word. "Expect" is probably closer to the truth. A series of crushing disappointments have led me to lower my expectations accordingly, and as such I find myself in a state where even the smallest victories will probably feel like I just single-handedly ice-skated across the Channel with no arms, only one leg and an inability to smell. (Some may argue that an inability to smell may actually make crossing the Channel on ice-skates easier.)

It's vaguely depressing when you consider that your life aspirations gradually get lower (or "more realistic", as you justify it to yourself) as you get older, but it's true.

Right now, the one thing that will tell me that I have Made It And Am In A Good Place will be the day that I'm able to buy a new car. Not "a different car", a new car. A brand new one. The ones that you see on the television with prices that always begin with "starting from". That would be lovely. Then I could have a car that works all the time instead of one with "personality". Cars with "personality" make for amusing stories, but can be a pain in the arse at times. I won't complain about my personality-filled car too much since I didn't pay anything for it (I was given it, I didn't steal it) and it does at least perform the car's primary function which is to carry you from point A to point B considerably faster than walking.

I will, however, share some of my car's little quirks with you as I'm sure they're familiar to any of you who own or have owned a vehicle that's getting a little long in the tooth.

First up is the "What The Fuck Now?" light, otherwise known as the Engine Management Light. This came on for a while last year and promptly stayed on, apparently due to a shitty catalytic converter or something. The car got serviced, the light went out. Job's a good 'un.

Came back from a few weeks in America and got in my car for the first time, started driving it, and sure enough, the What The Fuck Now? light came on. And stayed on. I was annoyed. The car seemed to be running fine, but when random warning lights come on in a vehicle made of things that can explode and/or catch fire, you get a little nervous. I decided to risk it, and drove the 120 miles to Southampton. Three-quarters (ish) of the way there, I stopped at Fleet Services for a drink and a piss. When I started the car up again, the What The Fuck Now? light had gone off. Apparently the car had been feeling neglected and was now satisfied that I'd given it enough attention. It didn't bother me again.

Until I didn't drive it for a few days, went out and the What The Fuck Now? light came back on again. Hopefully it will stop whining and complaining when the weather heats up a bit, which it looks like it's just starting to do.

The What The Fuck Now? light isn't the only quirky little personality trait my car has, though. No, there's the "occasionally turn on the windscreen wipers when you clearly haven't hit the switch" thing, the "gradually fade in the left indicator light on the dashboard when you press the brake pedal while in reverse gear" thing and the "curious rattling noise (that didn't show up in the MOT or service) when you turn left whilst travelling at 15-20mph, but not when turning right or travelling at speeds greater or less than 15-20mph" quirk.

The Little Blue Car That Could has been a faithful companion for quite some time now. But seriously. I can't wait for the day I can go and pick up a shiny, brand new car and enjoy driving without wondering if anything's about to fall off it. (For a little while, at least.)

#oneaday, Day 10: Wordplay

[Before we start and descend headlong into depravity, let me give those of you who don't follow me on Twitter a bit of context. I asked for a word to blog about. I was immediately bombarded with lots of them. So I've decided to attempt to insert all of them into a piece of creative writing that makes at least some degree of sense.

I have hyperlinked each word used to the original tweet that mentioned it.

Given the nature of the words that have been incoming while I'm writing this, the following piece of prose may not be suitable for anyone those under the age of the age of majority in the region where you are reading this. Also, hearty apologies to any Jamaican readers and ting.]

Feena awoke, sat up groggily, brushed the hair out of her face and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She blinked a few times and looked around her, mouth hanging slightly open, as she tried to recall exactly what had transpired.

Last night had been filled with silliness, for sure. There had been copious drinking and outrageous dancing at the pub, much to the delight of the elderly regulars. The girls had picked the pub specifically because it was a place that wouldn't be filled with the sort of Ben Sherman-wearing, aftershave-drenched creep that tended to latch on to a group of pretty girls and proceed to harass then throughout the course of the evening. The old men had come out with a few cheeky wolf-whistles and saucy comments, but it was all good-natured and the girls had enjoyed themselves.

She swung her legs down off the bed and let her bare feet drop to the wooden floor, wincing slightly at how cold it was. Evidently she'd forgotten to put the heating on when she'd got in, which wasn't surprising. She shivered a little, but stood up, intending to make for the kitchen and make herself a nice hot pot of coffee.

The pub hadn't been the end of the night, of course. Feena couldn't remember who had suggested moving on to the nightclub, but she sincerely hoped it wasn't her, considering the things that were flooding back into her mind, faster and faster now.

The club, Jokers, was a regular student haunt and seemed to constantly have a background scent of stale flatulence. This was partly due to the fact that the toilets were pretty much constantly out of order, though that didn't stop people pissing, shitting and vomiting into them, the fragrant effluvia occasionally spilling out of the toilet block into the laughably-named "beer garden" and, on one memorable occasion, onto the dance floor.

It wouldn't have been so bad if Jokers served normal drinks, thought Feena. Jokers was the only place in the city you could get a can of Clamweiser, though. And by the time people were drunk enough to end up in Jokers, they were drunk enough to consume a beverage made of a mixture of gassy American beer and clam juice. She shuddered as she remembered the last memory she had of the night: the fetid stench of the drink being poured into the glass in front of her.

She retched slightly at the thought. It was markedly worse than the previous Most Disgusting Experience of her life, the time where as a teen she had caught her brother at the tail-end of an apparently-epic masturbation session, his computer screen filled with boobies, dripping cock clenched in his hand while their mother's bra's clasp pinged open and fell off his chest. She shivered; it was an image which would have been enormously amusing had it not been quite so horrifying.

She rummaged around in the fridge blindly, the light stinging her hungover eyes, and finally withdrew two slices of bread. A piece of toast will sort me right out, she thought. She popped the two slices into the toaster and pressed the lever down.

Suddenly, there was a noise. It sounded like a toilet flushing. Feena froze in her tracks. Was there someone else here?

The answer to her question came in short measure, as a Jamaican man with long dreadlocks wandered into her kitchen, naked as the day he was born, and gave her a polite nod.

"I use de last of ye bumbaclot," he said, gesturing towards her bathroom and scratching his testicles nonchalantly. "Hoap ye don' mind."

Feena blinked, but said nothing. All was silent for a moment. Then, as if finding the silence unbearable, the toaster flung the two hot, crisp pieces of bread high into the air. They seemed to spin in slow motion, rising to the zenith of their flight before gravity took hold and they accelerated inexorably towards the floor, where they plopped unceremoniously, immediately forgotten.

"Did you…" Feena stammered, not sure what she wanted to ask this strange naked man who was now looking at her quizzically. "Did you… Did we…?"

"What?" he asked, smiling slightly.

"Did you… Did you invade my coochie snorcher?" she babbled. She didn't know why her brain had chosen that particular moment to resurrect a euphemism she hadn't uttered aloud for at least ten years, but she figured this situation couldn't get any more embarrassing.

The man chuckled.

"No," he said. "Some ras-clart try to start dis ting in de club. Saw him off too, noat before me mandible were dislocated, though. Ye help me oot, done fix me up good and ting, Miss Nursey, an' ye let me sleep here."

"Oh," said Feena, still a little bewildered by the whole situation.

"Ye want ye' toast?" asked the man, picking up the discarded slices from the floor, a thin dusting of brown crumbs remaining on the tiles.

"No," said Feena absently. "No, I think I just want to go back to bed."

#oneaday, Day 9: Mild Irritations: aolsystemmsg

The trouble with mild irritations is they have a habit of repeating themselves. And the more they repeat themselves, the greater the effect they have on you.

Such is the case with instant communication's best friend, "aolsystemmsg".

If you're unfamiliar with this robotic twat (ably played with aplomb by Money-Bot above), let me educate you.

If you use instant messaging services like AIM, Skype, MSN, Google Talk or Yahoo! Messenger these days, you're undoubtedly delighted by the fact it's possible to stay in touch with your friends/colleagues/people you fancy wherever you are thanks to the wonders of smartphones. And sure enough, it's great to be able to sit in Starbucks, or indeed the middle of a field, and chat with someone who might be thousands of miles away.

If you've popped out and left your computer on, however, there's a chance you may have left your instant messaging client of choice switched on back home. No big deal, you might think. And, if you're using Google Talk, it is indeed no big deal whatsoever. If you're using MSN or Yahoo! Messenger, then it's a mildly bigger deal; they insist that you can only be logged in on one device at a time, and so they log your other device back home out automatically. Fair enough—it's a simple matter to log back in later.

AOL Instant Messenger, though, does not like this at all and gets very jealous of your other devices. Dare to log into another device while your first one is still logged in and you'll be bombarded with IMs from the mysterious "aolsystemmsg" helpfully informing you that you're logged on in two different locations, and that if you'd like to log the others out then would you be kind enough to type the number "1" now, please.

Well, all right, "bombarded" is perhaps a little strong. You get one IM. But you get this one IM every single time you change devices. If you're like me and you hop back and forth between desktop computer, netbook and iPhone quite a bit, this can become extremely frustrating very, very quickly. "aolsystemmsg" takes on its own personality in your mind, a robot sitting there copy-pasting the same message to you over and over, cackling maniacally at your growing annoyance because he's not actually causing you any harm and therefore isn't breaking Asimov's First Law of Robotics.

He's still a complete cock, though. And there is no way to turn him off. At least, I'm not aware of any way to do so. Short of throwing your phone down the toilet. Which will make it ultimately quite useless as a means of communication for the sake of dealing with what is, essentially, a minor annoyance.

So, there's a lesson to be learned here then, perhaps. Use Google Talk. Don't let the robots win. Because we all know what happens when the robots win.

That's right. Eternal servitude in salt mines. And you don't want that, do you?

#oneaday, Day 8: Film Illiterate

I am woefully film-illiterate, as becomes painfully apparent the moment anyone uses the tried-and-tested icebreaker "Have you seen [insert movie that everyone has seen here]?"

I just don't watch that many movies. It's as simple as that. When given the option between spending nearly two hours watching a movie passively or interacting actively with a video game, nine times out of ten I'll pick the video game, particularly if I'm by myself. This is inclined to change if I'm with other people, though, since unless you're sitting with another gamer (or at least someone who's invested in the story, characters, gameplay and/or your progress in the game) then sitting watching someone else play a game is no fun. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course; titles like Heavy Rain spring immediately to mind.)

But for the most part, because I live a long way from some of my friends and several thousand miles away from even more of my friends, watching a movie is usually a solitary experience. And if I'm going to be playing solitaire, I'd rather be, you know, playing.

That doesn't stop me thinking that there are certain movies that I "should" see, though. There are a few of the classics that I have seen—unlike Ash, who wrote about this very topic earlier today, I have seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example. (And I can't remember a bloody thing about it, leading me to believe it might not have been as good as everyone says it is.) But for the most part, if someone mentions a film that supposedly "everyone" has seen, chances are, I haven't.

Now, in an effort to rectify this, and partly in celebration of its arrival on the PS3, I signed up for a LOVEFiLM trial subscription. My thinking behind it was that I'd finally be able to jump on board with some of these supposed "classics" and catch up with what I've been missing for all these years. The first film I watched was Team America: World Police which, while probably not a "classic" in the same way as certain other films are, it's certainly one which gets quoted and referenced a lot. (And it was pretty hilarious, too. The scene with "Kim Jong-Il's panthers" had me in stitches.)

Last night, though, I jumped in at the deep end and watched one of those films that is supposedly "iconic", a quintessential snapshot of the art form at a particular moment in time. That film was Dirty Harry.

I wasn't sure what to expect, even though I've been seeing Dirty Harry references throughout literature, games and journalism for the last twenty-five years or so. But I was pleasantly surprised to find an enjoyable film that you didn't have to think about too hard, yet which still carried an underlying message that is still relevant today—that of criminals' "rights".

One thing that was particularly striking about the film was how differently it treated its antagonist to today's movies. These days, there is often some lengthy exposition detailing exactly how and why the "villain" of the piece came to be so, well, villainous. This can lead to some interesting moral ambiguity situations when you discover that sometimes a "villain" can just be someone who's doing what they think is right, or that they have underlying problems that explain their actions, however reprehensible.

There's none of that in Dirty Harry. Scorpio is a scumbag, pure and simple. He's a pure personification of "evil"—he rapes, he kills, he manipulates, he tricks, and he sure doesn't like to be brought to justice. His demonisation throughout the course of the film causes the audience to subconsciously and automatically side with Harry, as questionable as some of his methods might be. It's an effective trick, and one which makes the whole movie immensely satisfying right up to its conclusion.

So there's one I can tick off my list. Any other suggestions?

#oneaday, Day 7: Video Games: A Primer

A lot of my fellow One A Day bloggers are avid video gamers. Many of them even write words about them on a professional basis. But there are others, like Pete Fraser, who are understandably bewildered by the whole thing. Sure enough, it's a fast-moving, exciting medium which many believe is difficult to penetrate if you haven't been along for the whole ride.

To that I say: pish, pfaugh and nonsense. There's never been an easier time to get into video games and find out more about them. Let me explain why.

It's unfortunate that the early days of gaming were plagued with stereotypes (which some people, see the delightful Jeff Minter, pictured to the right, are still more than happy to live up to) and this put a lot of people off getting into the hobby. It wasn't a "cool" thing to do. It was the thing that "nerds" did, and the sort of thing that could potentially get you beaten up at school if you were in a particularly rough and less-enlightened place.

The thing is, though, at least some of the stereotypes had partial basis in fact. Early gaming demanded many things. Patience. An understanding that you were dealing with a brand new technology that wasn't particularly refined yet. In many cases, a mathematical mind. A willingness to practice things until you got better. Early games were frequently simple affairs that artificially inflated their playtime by being ludicrously difficult. This made the hardcore gamers very happy when they were able to finally beat a particularly difficult level, but for people who might be interested in passing? They didn't want to spend that much time in front of a TV listening to the whining and squeaking of a cassette deck loading games.

Over time, though, games have become more and more sophisticated, family-friendly and accessible. A big part of this movement has come via games consoles, which have actually been around almost as long as home computers. Games consoles are made to be hooked up to "the big television" of the house and, in the early days at least, were often filled with experiences made to be shared—indeed, the very first gaming machines were primitive multiplayer "tennis" affairs. Later, we got many arcade conversions, and TV advertising, particularly the cringeworthy efforts from Atari, encouraged family participation and friendly competition.

As consoles became more and more sophisticated, developers started experimenting with a greater focus on developing narratives throughout their games. We saw titles such as the ambitious Final Fantasy series telling surprisingly mature, sophisticated (if now clichéd) stories through the SNES and PlayStation 1 periods having graduated from their primitive roots on the original NES. Graphics improved at a rapidly-increasing rate, giving us games that wanted more and more to be like the movies. But still they were tied to arbitrary control schemes that required practice; there was still a barrier of entry: "you must be this skilful to enjoy this medium".

Until we get to this generation. This generation of gaming has exploded. We're at a stage now where gaming is accessible to pretty much anyone. We're at a stage where gaming is no longer confined to one specific demographic. We're at a stage where you don't even need a controller to work your Xbox if that's the route you want to take.

Love them or hate them, several things have done a huge amount to make gaming more accessible to the masses. The Wii and the variety of plastic-instrument music games such as Rock Band brought family-friendly, "lifestyle" and party gaming back, reminding people how much fun it was to get together with friends and play in the same room. Kinect for the Xbox provides entertaining, active games that kids and adults alike can enjoy without having to remember which button does what. Facebook games like Farmville, while shallow to people who have been playing games for years, provide bored office drones and soccer moms with fun things to do on the Internet. Call of Duty lets the frat boys (and girl-equivalents) of the world blow seven shades of shit out of each other whilst shouting racial epithets at one another. And the blossoming independent development scene sees digital artists and creative minds pushing the boundaries of what "interactive entertainment" really means.

Games may or may not be art—that's an interminable question that may never be answered conclusively. But one thing games aren't? Just for teenage boys. Give 'em a shot. You might surprise yourself.

#oneaday, Day 6: Public Service Announcement

I should stop being surprised at this, but I still am.

People on the Internet are dickholes. Well, not all of them. I know a lot of very nice people who live in the Internet. Many of them are writing blogs like this one—hello!—but then there is another breed out there—the breed who thinks it's appropriate to hurl unwarranted abuse at others. Others that they've never met or spoken to, in some cases.

Ever been on Formspring? It's pretty fun. People can submit questions to you, either anonymously or under their username, and then you can answer them. That is the sole purpose of the site. I've had a lot of fun with it, thanks mostly to my very creative friends who are excellent with coming up with bizarre, thought-provoking questions. And somehow the questions are much more fun when you're not quite sure who they're from. It becomes a game in itself to work out who submitted the bizarre question about the robots and the cabbage.

Unfortunately, as we've seen many times by now, the potential anonymity that the Internet offers causes some people to think that they can say absolutely anything. So it was earlier on when my lovely Twitter-friend @Cilllah was bombarded with violent and pretty offensive nonsense from some nutjob banging on about his "garden" and about how he was going to rape and kill her.

Now, given all the nonsense over the #TwitterJokeTrial a while back, I don't for a second believe that this moron was actually going to do these things. But how is it in any way appropriate to say things like that to someone who's just going about their business on the Internet? Hiding behind the veil of anonymity to throw out abuse to strangers? That's kind of pathetic.

This sort of thing shouldn't annoy me so much—it's been going on for years after all. It doesn't make it right, though. I've been using the Internet and related technologies since the early days—a 300 baud modem on an Atari 8-bit, then on the Atari ST, then CompuServe under Windows 3.1, up through various incarnations of the "proper" Web to the stage we're at today. And at no point have I ever felt the need to pick on some poor person and be an asshole to them.

Perhaps I'm just too nice of a person to understand why people do the things they do. But I can live with that; I'd much rather be a person that the vast majority of people like and respect (and perhaps a few assholes think is a bit of a pussy) than someone who gets their kicks from threatening rape and violence on strangers.

The joke's on them, of course. The mental image that springs to mind as soon as anyone starts trolling like that is one of a Jabba-esque freak in his (you know it's a he) piss-and-cum-stained pants, probably with their semi-erect penis clasped firmly in their left hand (right hand is for mousing) and a folder called "HOTTYZ" on his desktop containing profile pictures of all the women he's harassed.

And if you're not that person? You can feel pretty good about yourself.