Category: Not Games

1680: Prologue

It’s strange to think that I’ll be “going to work” tomorrow like a normal person. It’s been around four years now that I’ve been working from home — longer still if you count the brief, dark period in which I did supply teaching, a period I am keen to never, ever return to ever again — and thus the prospect of having to get up and actually go out to work every morning fills me with mixed emotions.

I’m not relishing the prospect of actually having to get up at a sensible time (likely 7am), of course, but it will probably be good for me in the long run to get into some better habits. For the last few months in particular, it’s been all too easy to lie in bed until the middle of the day, largely because I haven’t had a whole lot to actually get up for, and that, in itself, is somewhat depressing. Now that I have something to actually do every day — something that requires me to get out of the house and interact with other people — I’m hoping I can get my daily routine back into something at least vaguely resembling normality, because things have been messed up on that front for a good while now — though not, at least, as bad as it was shortly after my ex-wife left (I can actually say “ex-wife” now, which is kind of nice in a horrible sort of way) and I was staying up until 5am, then waking up at 5 in the afternoon.

This aspect of getting out, doing stuff and meeting people is appealing, though. There’s every possibility the people I will be working with are a bunch of jerks, of course, but I doubt that will actually happen — largely because I’ve already met several of them throughout the interview process, and they all seemed to be thoroughly nice people. I won’t deny it will probably be an adjustment for me — being in an environment where people are actually doing things together and talking to one another is a stark contrast to sitting on your own at home, not saying anything out loud literally all day in some cases — but, again, it will be a positive one.

Mostly, though, I’m just happy at the sensation of forward movement after feeling like I’ve been somewhat stagnating for the last four years. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been grateful for the opportunities I’ve had from GamePro, Inside Network and USgamer and feel I’ve gained some valuable experience as a result. I will not, however, miss the feeling of instability: the knowledge that one day, you might wake up and your job just isn’t there any more; likewise, I will not miss the perpetual air of aggression and drama that surrounds my former occupation these days.

And, most importantly, I will not miss the feeling that there’s “nowhere to go” — no way to progress; no way to move upwards because all the slots “above” me are already taken, and once people find a comfortable position, they tend to stay in it for a good long while. I don’t begrudge those people those positions, of course, but it does tend to lead to a somewhat stagnant industry with a limited number of voices. It’s for this reason that I’m particularly sad about my departure from USgamer; I was just starting to make a name for myself as a specialist in Japanese games, and lots of people were appreciating that fact. Still, I plan on keeping that up on the side thanks to MoeGamer — we’ll have to see how practical it is to keep that up and running and updated while I’m working a full-time job. I’m sure it can be done — it’ll be a hobby now, rather than an obligation, and that means I can enjoy being passionate about it rather than churning out clickbait bullshit. (I’m spending a whole week talking about Tales of Xillia 2 at the time of writing; professional games sites can’t enjoy the luxury of doing that, least of all for a game like Xillia 2.)

Anyway. I should probably stop waffling on because it’s starting to get late, and I need a shower and some beauty sleep, in that order. Think of me starting my new job tomorrow — feels kind of like the first day at a new school at this point — and here’s hoping I’ll have positive things to say when I return in the afternoon.

1679: Countdown

Tomorrow is a bank holiday here in the UK — a public holiday to you Americans; I’m not entirely sure why we place so much emphasis on the “bank” part, aside from the fact that it means the banks are usually shut — and also my last day of “freedom” before I become a cog in the corporate machine.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m actually quite looking forward to starting my new job. It’s a daunting prospect, of course — it’s a new place of work, new people to work alongside, a new role and a whole new industry to be a part of — but it’s something that I’m eagerly anticipating, rather than dreading. Why? Well, partly because it’s something new to do, and something that will help me feel like I’m leading a more “normal” existence — as pleasant as the freedom of working from home can be, it’s a lonely existence that can become surprisingly stressful and trying after a while, particularly when you have no-one around you to bounce ideas off or just vent a bit of stress — and actually building a career rather than just constantly treading water.

The other reason is something that’s become readily apparent since I stepped back from the games industry. In fact, it was already becoming apparent when I was still involved with it. And that “something” is the confrontation that seems to be at the heart of the various parts of the industry’s interactions with one another on a daily basis.

Frankly I don’t want to get into a discussion of what’s been going on recently because it’s all been done to death elsewhere, and it tends to lead to frayed tempers on all sides. If you’re that curious, I’ll point out that it started here, passed through here and will hopefully end here and leave you to make your own mind up, perhaps with some of your own research filling in the blanks. If you’re shocked at what you read — if indeed you can be bothered to read all of it, since there’s a whole lot there — then good, you should be; there are plenty of things under discussion that need examining without one side complaining about “social justice warriors” and the other complaining about “neckbeards”. But unfortunately that’s never going to happen because the games industry has a collective mental age of about 14 — and yes, I count all sides of the debacle in this group in this instance — and is thus unable to discuss anything reasonably or rationally without immediately jumping to the most extreme viewpoints possible.

I’m happy to be out of it, frankly. My new job may be in a somewhat more stereotypically “boring” sector — utilities — but I can pretty much guarantee that said “boringness” (and I use that term relative to the dynamism of the games industry) will bring with it a lovely atmosphere of calm in which people don’t feel the need to aggressively state and restate their views on a daily basis; in which Internet hate mobs aren’t dispatched to harass and belittle other people; in which I can just get on with my work, come home in the evening, switch off and just enjoy some video games.

Two more days to go then. Hopefully my posts towards the end of this week will continue with a positive outlook!

 

1676: Cleaning Up

Following yesterday’s post, I’ve been having a social media cleanup. This started with the unfollowing of about a hundred people last night — some of which I felt a bit guilty about, as I’d previously considered them friends; in other cases, they were former colleagues that I’d thought I might stay in touch with. That already helped a great deal, but there was still some unwanted noise on my feed, largely through retweets and Twitter’s irritating new habit of adding other people’s favourites and random tweets from other people’s followers to your timeline. Those people were swiftly blocked so hopefully I will never have to encounter them ever again.

All this may seem somewhat harsh, particularly for a platform as open and public as Twitter is. But some reflection has revealed to me that it’s really the only way to handle it and stay sane. And it’s not, in fact, all that harsh at all, really, when you compare it to real life: after all, we carefully cultivate our real-life friendship groups and, over time, tend to whittle them down to groups of people that we particularly like, enjoy spending time with and have something in common with. We — well, I — don’t try to be friends with people just because I feel that I “should” be friends with this person. That’s high school stuff, trying to get “in” with the gang of cool kids; that way lies only madness, or at the very least a life where you’re unwilling to be able to just be yourself with confidence.

And so Twitter is the same for me, now, particularly now I don’t “need” it for industry networking and the like. My Following list has been whittled down to the people I actually enjoy interacting with — a healthy mix of game enthusiasts, game developers whom I have some sort of personal connection with (even if that’s just having met them and enjoyed a chat with them), anime fans, and a few people I know in “real life”. I’m no longer following people I feel “obliged” to follow — people who are often held up on a pedestal as being “important” to some cause or another — and I’m not following any celebrities. Insufferable arseholes who get retweeted into my feed are quickly blocked without mercy — no sense feeling guilty about it, since I probably wouldn’t want to follow them anyway — and those who do nothing but indulge in lame hashtag games for hours on end are also swiftly removed from my following list, at least temporarily; permanently if I haven’t actually spoken to them for a while.

It’s kind of sad that we’ve got to the stage where this level of “friendship curation” is necessary, but it’s a side-effect of the social media age and the fact that the Internet has brought us in touch with far more people than we’d ever be able to have met in reality. I’m pretty sure there’s an “optimum” number of friends or acquaintances for a person to have, and over and above that level everything just starts contributing to an overall, growing amount of white noise — noise that occasionally becomes intolerable. I’m gradually — hopefully, anyway — finding a good balance that hopefully won’t drive me mental, and which hopefully won’t necessitate me abandoning the genuine friends I have managed to make via Twitter.

In the meantime, I’m trying my best to migrate a lot of gaming discussion over to the Squadron of Shame forums, which you can find here. While the Squadron of Shame was originally a group of people who came together on the 1up forums, I know I for one would be very happy to see some new blood over there, too — particularly if you are, like me, the sort of person who’d rather have a lengthy, wordy discussion about a favourite, underappreciated game than think that “lol” or “cool story bro” is in any way a valid contribution to a debate.

Hopefully I won’t have to write about this sort of thing again for a while.

1675: Two Negatives Make Even More Negatives

Today has been one of those days where I’ve been considering jacking Twitter in altogether. What was once a friendly, fun, enjoyable place to hang out — and a place where I’ve been able to make a lot of friends I otherwise would never have come into contact with — is rapidly becoming an echo chamber filled with people that I don’t particularly want to associate with. It’s becoming somewhere where I don’t feel particularly welcome.

I shan’t get into details as the latest spate of Twitter outrage is plastered all over the Internet and really doesn’t need any more publicity, but I will say that, as usual, both sides of the argument in question are acting like complete tools. There’s the aggressive, unpleasant, filthy undercurrent of the Internet supposedly harassing people for their beliefs and supposed transgressions, and on the other side, the people defending themselves and their friends often stoop to personal insults, hypocrisy and outright ranting. Anyone left in the middle, wanting to take a rational viewpoint on the whole thing, is left branded as an awful person regardless of how much sense they’re actually speaking — if you don’t stand on the side of the group that has painted themselves as the “good guys” then you’re worthless human garbage, no better than those that are supposedly sending “death threats”. (And don’t even get me started on the semantics of how that term is liberally misapplied.)

At the core of this never-ending parade of outrage, argument and public shaming is a group of people who claim to believe in “social justice”. Who wouldn’t want to stand up for social justice, right? The trouble is that the term “social justice warrior” has picked up severely negative connotations owing to the behaviour of some of these people supposedly fighting on the side of equality, freedom, all that good stuff. Which is daft, when you think about it — as previously noted, who would say they were against social justice?

And yet the criticisms of many of these “social justice warriors” and the way they go about their business are often valid. They use aggression, harassment, sweeping generalisations, public shaming — many (though, it must be said, not all) of the tactics they are quick to condemn the seedy underbelly of the Internet for — to get what they want. Disagree with the way they do things and you’re “tone policing”. Disagree with some of things they are saying and you are a misogynist, sexist, transphobic, terrible person who should be hounded until the end of time until you apologise, and then hounded further when you are forced into an apology because it somehow wasn’t good enough. The people involved make this group huge, influential — and quite often in possession of a really quite unpleasant mob mentality.

I’m utterly sick of it. I don’t care. It sets me on edge. It makes me anxious. I’m nervous about even posting this in case one of these armchair activists gets hold of it and decides to twist my words into something that doesn’t even resemble what I originally said — as happened to YouTube personality “TotalBiscuit” earlier today.

This surely isn’t what these people want. This surely isn’t a good way to go about raising awareness of social issues. Certain quarters of Twitter now scare me and make me feel like I can’t talk about certain things for fear of reprisals — from the side that paints themselves as the forces of Good. I’ve done my best to ignore, unfollow and even block the people who are most unpleasant about all this, but it’s still not the friendly, welcoming place to hang out that it once was. And that really, really sucks.

I’ve culled my Following list by a hundred people this evening. If that doesn’t filter out this never-ending, anxiety-inducing noise, I’m setting my account to private. If that doesn’t work, then it’s time to say goodbye to Twitter — for good this time. I wouldn’t be the first from among my group of friends to do so — for these exact reasons — and I probably won’t be the last.

1673: Customer Service Done Right

The Internet is full of people bitching and complaining about poor service — usually with a pointed passive-aggressive (or just outright aggressive) tweet — “Hey, @virginmedia, our service has been down for 6 hours, you bunch of fucking assholes”, that sort of thing — so I feel it’s important to mention and celebrate the places that do things right and provide a good experience for the customer.

Today, I bit the bullet and went to the “fat man’s clothes shop” here in Southampton. Dubbed High and Mighty (a polite way of saying “Tall or Fat”), I originally thought this place was a small, local establishment but have since discovered it’s a nationwide chain. Anyway, regardless of how big it is (no pun intended), I’d never actually been in there, but a cursory examination of their website the other day revealed that it might be a good place to go to get myself a new suit. I need a new suit, you see, because while the one I have technically fits, it’s designed in such a way — “slim fit”, I believe is the term, an altogether unfortunate use of the word “slim” when applied to jackets and trousers of this size — that it’s almost impossible to move your arms, legs and shoulders more than a few centimetres in any direction, and things like bending over to tie up shoelaces are particularly troublesome.

So I decided to go along and get a new suit. Despite being out of work for a bit, a pleasant windfall a while back allowed me to get a new TV (bought almost immediately before I lost my job, as Sod’s Law tends to go), a new car, today’s suit and a few miscellaneous sundries while still having some left over for a rainy day. As such, I figured it was worth spending the additional money on something that would actually fit and — hopefully, anyway — look something akin to “nice” atop my horrible, fat-ass frame. (I do not like my body, if that was not already clear.) Even if it transpires that I don’t need to wear a suit for my new job on a daily basis, I figure it certainly doesn’t hurt to look presentable on the first day at least, and there are also things like weddings and stuff coming up that I’ll need a suit for, so it’s worth having anyway.

So where does the customer service come in? Well, I wandered into the aforementioned shop and was immediately greeted by the sole inhabitant, who, it turns out, was the assistant manager, manning the shop on a Monday lunchtime. He politely asked me if he could help me with anything — without being pushy — and, after a moment of considering saying that I was just looking, I instead decided to say that I was looking for a suit, and could he help me out?

“Of course!” he said enthusiastically, coming out from behind the counter. He asked me what sort of style I was looking for — I didn’t really know, but I wanted it for work and possible other occasions, so he suggested something plain and neutral — and what my sizes were. I didn’t really know, so he took a look at me, estimated my chest size (accurately) and measured my waist before giving me a few jackets to try on. I found one I liked, but the sleeves were too long, so he pinned them back to give me an idea of what they’d look like with adjustments. Then he found me some trousers, which I took into the changing rooms to try on, and he provided me with a pair of shoes to try with them for a better idea of how they’d fit with smart shoes on rather than the trainers I was wearing. Eventually I emerged with a pair of trousers that were comfortable, that fit and that allowed for freedom of movement, and paired them with one of the jackets I’d tried earlier. Then I happily handed over £250 — more than I think I’ve ever paid for clothes in my life — and agreed to come back when the adjustments had been made, which should be later this week.

All through my time in the store, I felt comfortable and at ease, which is something I don’t feel at all when shopping in stores full of “normal” size clothes, which often don’t quite go big enough for me. (Even were I to shed my gut, I’m still quite broad-shouldered anyway, too.) I felt like my size was just that — a size — rather than something abnormal and disgusting. (I still feel that about myself in private, but it was nice to be in an environment where other people didn’t treat me that way.) I walked away feeling happy with my purchase, and keen to return to the shop the next time I needed some decent clothes in an appropriate size for me.

That’s exemplary customer service, and how to get a glowing recommendation from me. Nice one, High and Mighty; I’ll be back.

1671: Whoopsy

The astute among you will have noticed that there was no post yesterday — or at least, there didn’t appear to be. In fact, what happened was that I wrote the post, saved it as a draft, went to do something else — possibly eat dinner, have a poo or go to bed — then promptly forgot to publish the bloody thing. Whoops. Oh well. “Caught up” now — not that the original “rules” of #oneaday really matter now that it’s just me still beavering away at this blog every day.

I’m glad I still do, though, for numerous reasons. For one, it’s satisfying to see that number at the start of each post, and to think that I have been writing something of varying quality every day for nearly 1,700 days in succession. Over the course of those 1,700 days, my life has been through some significant changes. I’ve held several jobs, moved house several times, just about lived through the end of a marriage and the total collapse of my life that resulted from it — seriously, make sure you marry the right person and avoid all that shit happening to you — and now find myself pondering what might happen in the next 1,700 days.

For starters, I have not just a new job but a new career ahead of me — ten days from now, I’ll be starting my new position that I secured a while back. I’m hesitant to go into too many public details at present — never sure why this is the norm, but I’ll go with it for now — but suffice to say that it’s a position that will actually make use of the skills and experience I’ve built up over the past few years, even if it isn’t precisely what I pictured myself doing a few years back. Still, as I noted around the time my position on USgamer came to a close, I’ve come to the conclusion that pursuing your “dream job” is an exercise in frustration that only, in very rare cases, leads to something stable you can do for years to come. Much better to nail down something that you know you can do well, and that will still have a chair ready for you each morning rather than unceremoniously dumping you at a moment’s notice. (At least I hope that’s what I’m going to get with this new position!)

I have a new car, too, but I’m sure that will be the subject of a whole other post some day in the not too distant future. All I’ll say for now is that I like it very much, and hopefully it will be a suitable means of conveying my person from my house to my place of employment on a daily basis, starting ten days from now.

Aside from that, there isn’t really that much interesting going on in my life at present. Which, to be honest, I’m kind of cool with. While “interesting” periods of your life can certainly provoke plenty of interesting things to talk and write about, they’re also exhausting, both mentally and physically. At present, I’m quite enjoying the feeling of “nothing” — the fact that things are slowly falling into place, and I don’t need to do anything else for now. I can just sit back, relax and enjoy myself for a few days — and I think I’ve earned that.

1667: Depression’s a Bitch

I’m conscious of adding to the noise surrounding this topic at the moment, but given, well, the nature of the topic, I felt it important to speak about it.

On the off-chance you’ve missed the news, it seems that beloved comedy actor Robin Williams was found dead recently in what appeared to be a suicide. The star had been struggling with depression for some time, and the conclusion to his life story is an all too common tale for those who suffer under the weight of the Black Dog’s attention.

I have written about depression numerous times on this blog, but at times like this it pays to re-explain some things to those who have never encountered it or do not know what it is like to be plunged into that particular world of darkness. I have no shame in saying that I have suffered because of it, and it has helped define the person I am today, both for better and for worse.

Depression is something that is difficult to define, because it changes its own manifestation so frequently, and seemingly at random. On some days, it can make you want to not get up, not get dressed, not leave the house. On others, it can make you want to go and look at things that make you sad, pondering what might have been. On others still, it can make you have strongly emotional reactions to the slightest stimulus. It beats and pounds on your brain; it makes you think you’re stupid, worthless, ugly, fat, disgusting, useless, incapable of doing anything worthwhile, doomed to failure; it makes you think nobody loves you, nobody cares about you, nobody would even notice if you were just to die here and now; it makes you wonder if life is even worth persevering with if all each new day brings is more pain.

It doesn’t strike every day, either. A depressed person is not perpetually down or sad. On some days, they can go about their business perfectly normally, as if nothing is wrong. Sometimes, a poorly timed comment or a badly phrased joke can bring the Black Dog back at a second’s notice; others, it is banished to a cage in a far-off corner of the mind. But it always breaks out again eventually.

There is no “cure”. There is no magic bullet. You can learn to cope with it, but it never truly goes away. And on days when just everything seems to be getting worse and worse, the temptation can be to want to escape from it through the only means seemingly available: to escape this world altogether, in the hope that the next, whatever that might be, is more hospitable. I’ve only come close to contemplating this during one period in my life — the time when my marriage fell apart is when I felt lower than I’ve ever felt in my life, and on more than one occasion I wondered if it would really matter, if anyone would really care if I were to just end it all and leave the world behind me. Obviously I didn’t do that, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this now, and I’m glad I didn’t; while I wouldn’t say my life is perfect just yet, it’s certainly been making slow but steady progress back into a territory I would describe as “on track”.

And yet here’s the thing: I still get depressed. I live in a house that I own along with a wonderful partner whom I love very much. I’m soon to start a new job that should be a good fit for my skills and experience. I’ve bought a new car that I like a lot. I’m in a position where I don’t have to panic too much about money. I have most of the things I want in life, and the means to acquire those that I don’t. And I still have my health, all my limbs and my mental faculties. I count these blessings — and plenty of others besides — every day, and yet still there are some days where the darkness is inescapable; some days that just lay you low, unable to do anything, unable to define exactly “what’s wrong”.

That’s what depression is. It can strike anyone, anywhere, any time. It doesn’t make any distinctions based on any of the labels we humans like to ascribe to one another. At best, it’s an inconvenience. At worst, it’s a killer.

Should any of the above seem familiar to you, I’d encourage you to talk about it when you can. Don’t be afraid of judgement or negativity; reach out to those you know and trust — or a professional trained in such things if there is no-one in your personal life that you trust enough with this — and speak up. Don’t suffer in silence. You matter, even if there may be days when it doesn’t feel like it. The world would be a worse place without you in it.

Most of all: good luck. The battle against depression is a tough, never-ending fight that can never truly be won, but, as we so regrettably saw with Williams, it sure can be lost. Hold your head high, stand up to that Black Dog and tell it to fuck off. You’ll be surprised how many other voices you’ll hear; you are not alone.

1666: You’re Never Finished

Occasionally, my mind gets into an almost comatose loop, and I find myself going round and round the same websites, over and over again. I hate the loop — and I’m growing to hate the websites and all that they stand for in 2014 — but still I do it compulsively, habitually, regularly.

First I’ll check Twitter. Then I’ll check Facebook. Then I’ll check Google+. Occasionally I’ll poke my head in the sites for my Final Fantasy XIV guild or the Squadron of Shame, but more often than not, it’s just those three sites. And there’s rarely anything interesting to see on any of them — but still I feel compelled to do it, particularly if there’s a little red number at the top of the page.

The same is true on my phone. I’ll check it every few minutes, looking for little icons across the status bar and hoping that something interesting might have happened. But it rarely does, and still I do it.

I’m talking about “notifications”, one of my least favourite developments in modern technology. Turns out I have the sort of brain that gets extremely uncomfortable if something is left “unfinished”; if a little red number is there, suggesting that there’s something that requires your attention.

Trouble is, most notifications these days aren’t necessary. On Google+, since the Squadron of Shame moved its base of operations to its own site, the only notifications I get are from people who gave a comment I left on a YouTube video six months ago a “+1”, saying that they “liked” what I said without actually having to interact directly with me. On Facebook, where I rarely post any more, my only notifications come from replies to a comment thread I long since lost interest in. And Twitter’s 2014 incarnation sees fit to notify you not only when someone replies to you, but also when they “favourite” or retweet something you posted — or, in comedically ridiculous levels of Inception-style madness, when someone retweets something you retweeted.

The provocation of this sort of compulsive behaviour is entirely deliberate, of course; these sites’ use of notifications — and mobile app developers’ use of notifications, too, for that matter — is designed to get you doing exactly what I’m doing, which is visiting the sites or booting up the apps several times a day just to see if the notifications are anything useful. They inevitably aren’t, but there’s always the hope.

Provoking this sort of behaviour can’t be healthy. It doubtless plays havoc with people who already have more obsessive compulsive tendencies than I do, but just from a user experience perspective it’s frustrating to never feel like you’re “free” — there’s always something out there demanding your attention. Look at me, that little red number says. I’m important.

It’s because of all this that I find myself considering daily whether or not I should nuke my social media presence altogether and simply interact with people through more private channels — email, blog comments, chat messages, the Squad forum. Every day it gets more and more tempting to do so, so one of these days soon I might just do it — and this time for good. This isn’t what I signed up for at the dawn of the social media revolution.

1665: Shock Value

I’m pretty open-minded, as longtime readers will already be aware. But last night I, for pretty much the first time I can remember, found myself genuinely shocked by something that had been not only allowed on TV in the first place, but deemed worthy of repeating on one of those “nothing but repeats” digital channels — in this case, quiz show specialist channel Challenge.

There were two shows broadcast last night, neither of which I’d ever heard of prior to seeing them. And, having seen them for the first time last night, I’m now in no hurry to do so again.

I lump them both together like this because they both approached the same subject matter from a slightly different angle — the concept of humiliating contestants, causing them physical and mental discomfort and even inflicting pain in some cases. The shows in question? Distraction and Killer Karaoke. Both parts of the episode of Distraction in question are embedded in this post; watch at your own risk!

Distraction first. This was a Channel 4 show hosted by Jimmy Carr, who I’ve always interpreted as “cheeky” and occasionally a little bit risque, but never outright mean. Distraction turned that perception on its head — but more on that in a moment.

Distraction was first broadcast in 2003 and continued until 2004, so it had a relatively short life compared to some other gameshows. The concept of the game was twofold: in the initial elimination stage of the game, four contestants would compete against one another to answer insultingly easy question (in the episode I saw last night, all of the questions were from Key Stage 1 junior school material) while being distracted through various means. In the second stage of the game, the last remaining player would be presented with their prize, which would be damaged in some way if they answered any of their final questions incorrectly. The grand prize would either be a car — which would have parts of it smashed or defaced for an incorrect answer — or a pile of money, which would be destroyed piece by piece somehow with every incorrect answer.

The twist was the distractions themselves: these weren’t simple things like someone buzzing in your ear. In the episode I saw last night, the very first game saw all four contestants sitting in toilet cubicles, with the only means of them “buzzing in” to answer a question being to do a piss, which would cause a light to go on above their stall. Later stages saw the contestants being thrown around and pummelled by professional wrestlers while answering questions, and in the final pre-prize stage, getting piercings with every correct answer, causing them to suffer more and more pain and discomfort the more questions they got right.

Killer Karaoke, meanwhile, operated on a similar premise. Hosted by Steve-O, of Jackass fame — which should probably tell you something about what to expect — the show challenged contestants to sing their way through popular songs while being, there’s no two ways about this, abused in various painful ways. One contestant was on a swing and was unpredictably “dipped” into a tank full of snakes over the course of her song. Another was forced to wear vision-impairing goggles and walk barefoot through a cactus-strewn obstacle course while singing. Another still was strapped into a suit with a dancer “puppetmaster”, who pushed her around as she sang, smashed a bottle over her head, rubbed a raw eel over her face and finished the song by slamming her face into a cake.

I had exactly the same reaction to both shows: initial surprise and laughter at the seemingly slapstick nature of it, gradually giving way to feelings of unease, horror and even disgust at the fact that people were genuinely being hurt — both physically and psychologically — in the name of entertainment. Slapstick comedy is nothing new, but both of these shows felt like they crossed a line somewhat: that not everyone was “in on the joke” as a willing participant. In Distraction in particular, Carr’s appallingly written material — at least I hope it was written and not delivered ad lib — didn’t come across as the usual cheeky, light-hearted jabs you hear him making on shows like 8 Out of 10 Cats and its ilk: it came across as just plain mean.

It was pretty telling that we didn’t see or hear most of the participants’ reactions to his spiteful comments; one contestant — a woman named Gabriela Blandy, whom it just so happens that I was at university with, and who decided to chronicle her experience in this beautifully written blog post — just looked plain miserable; the very picture of despair. (“I finally realise how shameful all this is,” writes Blandy, reliving the experience, “and why I was never able to tell them I wanted to be an actress. I would have been admitting I was prepared to do anything to make it. There’s no Steven Spielberg, sitting in the audience, thinking: wow, that girl has talent! Besides, the talented ones are at home, learning monologues, putting genuine work in.”)

Both shows were certainly effective in their shock tactics and I don’t doubt that I’ll be remembering them both for some time to come — likely when I least want to. But, on reflection, even admitting the fact that both made me genuinely laugh several times, I don’t think I ever want to see them — or anything like them — ever again. And it’s not very often I say that.

1663: Freewriting

Buggered if I can think of anything to write today, so I’m going to fall back on my old “emergency stopgap” measure, which is to indulge in a spot of “freewriting”. For the uninitiated, this creative writing exercise, which I learned at university, involves setting a timer for a short period of time of your choice — I’ve gone for ten minutes — and then you just start writing and don’t stop until the time is up. In this case, I’m hoping that continuously writing for ten minutes will cause something vaguely interesting to pop out of my head. If not, then you’ll get a glimpse of how my thought processes work, because one of the key things about freewriting is that you don’t stop to edit or tweak your writing as you go along. This means you can sometimes end up with very long paragraphs like this one, so let’s nip that in the bud before it becomes too much of a problem, shall we?

Freewriting has, for me, led to a number of interesting compositions over the years. I don’t know if I still have the pieces I composed as part of my Creative Writing module at university, but they were intriguing. Some were purely fantastic. Some were reflective. Some were very literal. All of them came out of my head relatively unprompted, just by sitting down in front of a page — handwritten in this case — and writing. What I’m doing with today’s entry — and have done a couple of times in the past — is exactly the same. (Six minutes and fifty seconds to go.)

Tomorrow, I’m picking up my new car. I haven’t owned a car for a while, so it will be nice to have one again, albeit a “nice thing” that comes with a lot of expenses attached. It was pleasant to be able to go through life without worrying about the cost of car insurance and the like, so I’m not relishing the prospect of a return to that world, but I am particularly looking forward to the ability to get out and about a bit more easily when Andie isn’t here (and, by extension, has the car that we currently share between us.) I’m hoping that having easy transport — and by “easy” I mean “not the bus” — I will be more inclined to do things that involve getting out of the house, like going to the gym, going for a swim or, hell, just going to town for a wander around or something. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, spending all day every day at home can cause you to go a bit “stir crazy” after a while — I’m sure anyone who has spent any length of time either un- or self-employed will be able to empathise with this.

Four minutes thirty seconds to go and my brain is telling me I need something new to talk about. So what should it be? Umm… maybe the music I downloaded and printed recently? Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of Square Enix’s MMO Final Fantasy XIV, and I was delighted to discover that a nice chap on YouTube had done some piano arrangements of selected pieces from the soundtrack. I have a good collection of other Final Fantasy piano collection albums that I very much enjoy playing, but as far as I’m aware there’s no “official” one for XIV, so I was interested to come across this chap’s work. Turns out it’s very high quality, so I was more than happy to fling him $40 (about £25) for his hard work in arranging and transcribing 36 tracks over 140 pages of music. I shall look forward to getting stuck into learning and playing some of those in the next few days and weeks — perhaps I’ll even record some for the enjoyment of you, readers. Yes, you. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? (That wasn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but as I was typing it I realised that it probably does. Oh well. No turning back now.)

I’ve also set up the keyboard amp that my parents dumped on me last time they came. This hulking piece of extremely heavy audio equipment is something I’ve been trying to avoid coming back into possession of for a while, mostly because I didn’t really need it, but also because audio equipment scares me a bit when it makes loud popping and buzzing noises, which this amp has something of a tendency to do. However, now I’ve let it “warm up” and used it a little over the last couple of days, it seems to have calmed down a little bit, and it actually produces a somewhat more satisfying sound than my previous keyboard solution, which involved a MIDI connection to my Mac and using Logic Studio to produce the instrument sounds. Logic’s instrument sounds are high-quality, for sure, but the Mac’s speakers are a bit weedy and subsequently it wasn’t quite as impressive as it could be. (In our new house, there’s also the minor issue that the MIDI cable doesn’t reach from the keyboard to the Mac, but that doesn’t really matter now.)

Anyway. My ten minutes are up, so that’s that. Sorry for the abrupt ending. Apparently I tried to cram too much into such a short space of time, but them’s the breaks. Technically I’m breaking the rules here by going past the time limit, but whatever. Anyway. Now I’m finishing. Good night.