Tag: oneaday

#oneaday Day 963: Being an Attempt to Rescue the English Language from the Imbeciles who Pervert it So

I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this post, as I know for a fact that most of the people who follow this blog, whether they're regular commenters or not, are literate and perfectly capable of using the English language correctly. I just thought it would be fun to have a whinge about some of my pet peeves with regard to English usage… or lack thereof.

I'm not entirely sure what it is about the Internet that makes people's English usage so much worse. The world has plenty of intelligent people in it, yet if you were to go solely by Internet comment sections it would be hard to believe that. I know intelligence is a much more complicated equation than simple spelling, punctuation and grammar — and there are specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia to bear in mind — but the fact is, technology should make it easier than ever to write things technically perfectly. So why do people not bother?

Laziness, usually, or a desire to get whatever is in their head out into the digital domain as quickly as possible. Most people would be quick to blame social media for this one, with the presence of "Like" and "Comment" buttons on pretty much everything these days encouraging people to spew their facile musings all over things they really have no knowledge of whatsoever. But it's actually a much older problem that, most likely, stems from more real-time forms of communication such as chatrooms. "a/s/l" is a linguistic object of ridicule these days, but in the early days of Internet communication it was an essential part of the "introductions" process when entering a new chatroom. (For those who don't actually know what it stands for, it's asking everyone present what their age, sex and location is.)

Chatrooms often got very busy, and it thus became important for people to be able to make themselves heard as quickly as possible. Consequently, a lot of the abbreviations we use (and/or ridicule) regularly today entered popular usage. Some had been around for a while; others had changed their usage significantly, occasionally leading to comic misunderstandings when one speaker thinks that "LOL" means "lots of love" and the other thinks it means "laughing out loud".

This is no excuse, though! Proper English usage when addressing another person online is, to me, a sign of respect. If you don't take the care to spell and punctuate correctly when addressing someone, to me that says that you don't think they're worth more than the bare minimum amount of time it takes to bang out a furious, cackhanded message and then switch to another tab to, I don't know, watch some porn or play FarmVille or something. (Or both. The mind boggles at that possibility.)

Anyway, rambling explanation over, allow me to present the crimes against the English language that irritate me the most at present. If you are guilty of any of these, please stop being guilty of them, because they all make you look like a bit of a tool.

(Oh, before I go on, my day job requires me to write in American English so I am not going to cover any of the silly things they do with English, such as misusing the words "momentarily", "solicitor" and "patronise".)

1. "LOL" is not a substitute for punctuation.

I've lost the original Facebook post (not by me, I hasten to add) where I first became aware of this obnoxious usage of "lol", but it happens all too frequently, particularly in comment sections. "LOL" is not a substitute for a comma, full stop, semicolon or indeed any punctuation mark.

To judge whether or not using "LOL" is appropriate, read the thing you have just typed out loud. Did you laugh out loud when you got to the "LOL"? If not, remove it and replace it with an appropriate punctuation mark. In fact, even if you did laugh out loud, please remove it and replace it with an appropriate punctuation mark.

2. It's "definitely", not "definately" or "defiantly".

Definitely. Definitely. It's not that difficult a word to spell. It's no "accommodation" or "antidisestablishmentarianism" and it's certainly no "floccinaucinihilipilification". So stop fucking it up.

Also, every time you use "defiantly" instead of "definitely", you are significantly changing the meaning of your sentence. Compare and contrast the sentences "I will definitely do the chores" to "I will defiantly do the chores". One is a nice assurance that you will do the things expected of you; the other suggests that you are going to be an arse about it.

3. Games (and drugs) are "addictive", not "addicting".

"Addicting" is a word, but not in the way you think it is used. Angry Birds is not "addicting", it is "addictive". "Addicting" is a verb. "Addictive" is an adjective. Observe:

"I am addicting my little sister to Angry Birds because it is better than crack. She finds crack worryingly addictive."

(Note: I do not have a little sister, and no-one I know is addicted or in the process of being addicted to crack. Also, Angry Birds is shit and I would rather my hypothetical little sister were addicted to crack than play that bollocks.*)

In fact, no. The word "addicting" is a surprisingly difficult verb to put into a sentence without it sounding stupid. So just stop using it. Addictive. Addictive. Got it?

4. When you write in lower case, you look like an imbecile.

I know professional writers who write everything — blog posts, status updates, comments, even their own name — in lower case when they're "off duty". It makes them look like imbeciles. I don't think I need to say anything more than that. The Shift key is right there. Your little finger is probably hovering over it anyway as you type, so stop being so fucking lazy and use it.

5. This review is "biased", not "bias".

I'll grant that speaking like a twat is something of a meme on the Internet, but any time you accuse something you read of "being bias", you look like a complete cock. An article exhibits bias if it is biased. Not the other way round. Or any other arrangement.

If you can't remember the difference, how about you just say you disagree with what you have read rather than accusing it of "being bias"? Or, better yet, just close that webpage before clicking the "comment" button?

6. Apostrophes denote possession, not plurals.

CDs. GCSEs. Sofas. Not CD's, GCSE's and sofa's. Under no circumstances are you to use an apostrophe to denote something is a plural. Why? Because it's wrong, that's why. Even when using an abbreviation. And even when the word you are pluralising ends with a vowel, which appears to be when this issue more commonly raises its ugly head.

Related note: "it's" is short for "it is", while "its" means "belonging to it". This is, I'll admit, a particularly stupid rule, since it breaks the "apostrophes denote possession" rule by overruling it with the "apostrophes also denote missing letters" rule. Stupid language.

7. If you're going to swear, just swear.

You're not protecting anyone's innocence by writing "f**k". Everyone knows you mean "fuck". If you're going to censor naughty language, censor it completely. If you're going to make it clear what all the words you've asterisked out are, then you may as well just type them all out properly, you f**king c**t-faced w**ksplat, you t*sser, you kn*bjockey, you complete twunting sh*tbag b*****d. ("Twunting" is not a swear, despite it sounding like it should be.)

8. You're a twat if your knowledge of "your" and "you're" is poor.

As Ross from Friends put it so succinctly: "Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E means 'you are'. Y-O-U-R means 'your'!"

Read your sentence out loud. Could one of your "yours" be replaced by the words "you are"? If so, you should be using "you're" instead.

Here's an exercise. See if you can spot which ones are correct and which ones are not.

1. You're mum's face smells of poo.
2. Your not very good at this, are you?
3. You're defiantly going to get some of these wrong.
4. Get you're f**king words right lol
5. You're very brave if you successfully managed to navigate your way through those monstrosities.

9. Have fun!

Above all, have fun with language!

Actually, no, bollocks to that. Learn to write properly first, then have fun with it.

(Author's note: Any indication that I am a pompous grammar Nazi in this post is entirely intentional and mostly played for comedy value. Mostly. Comments that do not follow the above rules will be printed out and fired into the sun, then deleted.*)

* not really

#oneaday Day 962: Signal to Noise

We're reaching saturation point with social media. In fact, I think we got past that point a long time ago, meaning that we're at the "completely sodden and dribbling all over the carpet" stage.

There is too much social media. There are too many possible places for people to share things that nobody cares about with people they don't know. And it seems that every day some bright-eyed startup CEO decides that what we really need is yet another social network service of some description.

I've indulged in a few of these superfluous social networks over the years. GetGlue was a bit of fun, allowing you to "check in" to movies, books, games and even "topics" that you were interested in, leave comments and discuss things with other community members. This was at the height of the "gamification" craze, so there were plenty of achievements to collect, and you could even get some real-life physical stickers sent to you if you collected enough achievements.

Similarly, Foursquare and the now-defunct Gowalla proved fun for a little while. During the period of time when I was unemployed and quite spectacularly depressed, I made extensive use of Gowalla to "tag" various places around Southampton and assist with building up a crowdsourced map of places of interest. I even made some actual real-life friends through it, but since then location check-ins have lost their lustre — what's the point, really?

Then I tried Path, which promised to be a high-quality mobile-focused social network. But since you can access Facebook, Twitter and Google+ — the biggest social networks in the world — via your mobile phone, why on Earth would you need a mobile-specific one? Sure, Path had a lovely interface and the bizarre ability to track when you woke up and went to sleep, but it was ultimately pointless.

Today, I reviewed an app/social network whose purpose remained completely obtuse to me even as I made use of it — and even as an employee of the company frantically tried to convince me that the service was worthwhile via both Twitter and the service itself. (I'm not going to name it as I really can't be bothered to be chased further — I gave it a fair shot, I explored it, I found it to be a complete waste of time. Sorry.)

The service in question allows users to, like GetGlue, "Like" things. Any things. Like cake? Then "Like" cake. Like Tori Amos? Then "Like" Tori Amos. Not sure whether you like broccoli and stilton soup? Then add it to your "To-Do" list, then "Like" it if you like it. Great. Sure. Fine. One question: why?

This questionable usefulness was only further obscured by the fact that the app also, for some utterly unfathomable reason, allows its users to "plant" "Likes" at actual physical locations, meaning you can claim to have hidden, say, an iPhone 5 in your local McDonalds, or Jedward in your local sewage works. Fun for about five minutes again, sure — and a means of seeing who lives vaguely near you and likes Jedward — but again… why?

There's too much noise and not enough signal in social media these days, in short, and this fact is a big part of why I stripped back on all "non-essential" social apps a while back. I keep Facebook, Twitter and G+ around because there are people I regularly speak to on all of those, but outside of those "big three"? There's really very little reason for a lot of these services and apps to exist, but the amount of money being thrown at them by venture capitalists is terrifying.

Kind of makes me think that I should come up with an "innovative" idea for a mobile social network in order to attract several million dollars' worth of funding.

Okay… give me a minute.

Thinking.

Eureka! I got it. Everyone likes taking Instagram photos of food, right? Well, I propose a social photography network that is nothing but pictures of food with a selection of retro filters (some of which are available via in-app purchase). You can "check in" to the food you're eating, discuss it with other people and share photographs of your lunchbox. It'll be a big hit. I'll call it "füd", all in lower case, naturally.

That'll be two million dollars, please, Mr Venture Capitalist. KTHX.

#oneaday Day 961: I am Thou

I wrote a piece about Persona 3 over on Games Are Evil earlier today. Go read it, please.

I have, as you may have guessed from the fact I chose to write about Persona 3 today, been playing Persona 3. I have been meaning to play the extended FES version for many, many years now and have started several times. This time I intend to finish it, including battling my way through The Answer, which I understand is a bit of an ordeal. Then, if I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I will proceed to play Persona 3 Portable as the female protagonist.

I fucking love Persona 3 and 4. They are still my favourite games of all time. I own the first two for PSP/Vita, too, but found the first one a little hard to follow plot-wise and haven't delved particularly deeply into 2 yet. Fortunately, each one stands quite nicely by itself — though 3 and 4 are nicely interconnected, even if certain aspects clash (why do the kids in P3 need Evokers to summon their Personas, but the ones in P4 don't?).

My love for these games stems primarily from the fact that they push all my gaming happy buttons. I love JRPGs and I love visual novels, and Persona 3 and 4 combine the best bits of both genres. You have a simple-to-understand, hard-to-master combat and character development system; you have an in-depth storyline tackling very "human" issues. You have "saving the world" drama; you have characters dealing with personal crises that can, at times, seem more important than impending disaster. Somehow the game manages to avoid pretty much every cliché that critics of JRPGs hate to create an emotional, mature experience with an absolutely badass soundtrack.

The highlight is, of course, the cast of characters throughout. And as I said in my piece over on Games Are Evil, the interesting thing about Persona is that it's not only the heroes and villains who "matter" in the grand scheme of things. The "Social Link" mini-stories that arise as the protagonist gets to know his new school friends and people in the community are fascinating plotlines to follow through in their own right, and help to lend a greater sense of poignancy to the overarching narrative of the Persona-users attempting to Sort Shit Out. In other words, everyone has their own demons to deal with — sometimes these are literal demons, others they are the barriers we create for ourselves: fear, anxiety, shyness, a lack of self-belief. Watching the protagonist touch the lives of these people and be there with them as they come to terms with their own issues gives the small game world a much greater feeling of "life" than almost any other RPG I've played.

It also, once again, highlights the difference between Eastern and Western game design philosophy. When it comes to RPGs, I am firmly in the Eastern camp. I am yet to come across a Western RPG that has captivated me in the same way as the Persona series. You can rant and rave all you like about the beautifully-rendered worlds of Bethesda adventures or BioWare's (increasingly questionable) storytelling chops, but, for me anyway, no-one has the Japanese beat when it comes to interpersonal relationships and a sense of "human" drama amid supernatural chaos.

#oneaday Day 960: Moe Moe Kawaii... Wait, What Are You Doing...?!

Where do you draw the line between art, entertainment, sexist nonsense and porn? It is a rather fine and difficult line to walk, particularly when the definitions of all of those terms vary enormously from person to person according to their open-mindedness, experience with various works, gender and general social attitudes. It's a particularly pertinent question with regard to the genre of games that I seem to be spending a fair amount of time with at present — the ol' visual novel.

The current game I'm playing is called My Girlfriend is the President. I will refrain from talking about it in too much detail as 1) I haven't yet finished it and 2) I will be doing a READ . ME column on the subject for Games Are Evil this Sunday. Suffice to say, however, it is utterly bananas — and yet, there is a slight sense of discomfort while playing. Not enough to prevent me from enjoying it, but just enough to make me think that it might, in fact, be deliberate.

The tension stems from the game's protagonist, whom in TV Tropes terms is probably best described as a Chivalrous Pervert. He openly admits to sexually harassing women and getting turned on by ogling his female peers in a less than honourable fashion. He takes every opportunity to make a smutty comment just to "try his luck". And he's a peeping tom. In short, he should be an immensely dislikeable dick whom any self-respecting player wouldn't want to spend any time inside the head of whatsoever.

And yet he's not. At least part of his perpetual horniness can be attributed to the fact that he is a teenage boy, and consequently subject to the same hormonal urges that all teenage boys find themselves afflicted with. His supposed sexual harassment never leads anywhere, as his female peers are all well aware of the fact that he is a wannabe pervert and thus make sure he doesn't have the opportunity to do anything truly inappropriate — not that he actually would given the opportunity. Several of them even take every chance they get to toy with him, making him more and more wound up and frustrated while at the same time making it clear that they are the ones with the true power in their relationship.

And alongside all this perversion comes the fact that, at heart, he doesn't want anything bad to happen to these girls. He takes every opportunity to attempt to prove his "manliness" and "protect" them, even if they don't really need protecting. He gets embarrassed, flustered and overexcited if anything actually does happen, and when it comes to his adorable childhood friend (the titular President) he is — for the most part, anyway — respectful and sweet.

It puts the player in something of a quandary. Since the game takes place from the perspective of this horny young gentleman, we're frequently subjected to his male gaze sizing up the bodies of the people he's with and pondering what's under their clothes. If he thinks there's the chance he'll see something naughty and the girls in question aren't in any actual physical danger, he'll stand by and watch rather than preventing something embarrassing happening to them. But when the chips are down and Bad Things are happening, he's the first to spring into action in an (often misguided) attempt to keep them safe — usually with hilarious slapstick results.

So what does all this mean? Is the game itself sexist, or is it simply putting the player inside the head of a protagonist with definite sexist tendencies? Or is it somewhere in between?

I don't know for sure. Whatever it is, My Girlfriend is the President is most certainly a gloriously guilty pleasure that I have absolutely no shame in saying that I am enjoying a great deal right now!

#oneaday Day 958: Gratuitous Self-Promotion (And Promotion of Others, Too)

Hello! How are you? Great!/Sorry to hear that! (delete as applicable)

I have something to share with you that I've been working on recently. Some of you may have already seen what I've been up to; it may be news to some of you. I thought I'd share it here, though, in the hope that I can get more people looking at it.

I'm talking about the website Games Are Evil. I was a contributor there a while back in the post-Kombo years, but was then lucky enough to score my gig at the late GamePro. I kept abreast of what the team was up to during and after my time at GamePro, and always felt a certain degree of "attachment" towards it, even during the times when I wasn't actively involved.

So when it became apparent that the site was in need of a bit of a "reboot" and resuscitation, I was keen to step forward while I had a bit of free time on my hands. I'm lucky enough to have a flexible (and well-paid) enough day job that I have time to take on a "pet project" like this as well as fulfilling my other responsibilities, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to gain some experience in running a site as well as experimenting with some "alternative" directions and content strategies.

That "alternative" thing is key. Having had some interesting conversations with a couple of my friends in the PR industry in recent months, it became clear that a lot of representatives were becoming frustrated that the vast majority of gaming sites focused on the upcoming blockbusters, while "B-tier" titles (for want of a better term — I'm not saying their quality is lower, only their profile) went forgotten, or were barely acknowledged with a somewhat dismissive news story. As such, I felt that there was clearly a gap in the market for a site to cater to the "niche". Since Games Are Evil was not particularly beholden to advertisers or investors, the time was ripe to launch something of an experiment — a video games site that deliberately eschews stories regarding things like the Call of Duties and the Mass Effects of this world in favour of smaller-scale titles and interesting stories from around gaming culture. My original manifesto from when I took over can be found here, if you're curious.

Since taking over the reins at GrE, I've launched a series of regular columns from a range of talented and enthusiastic writers keen to write about their passions. These columns are becoming the main focus of the site, supported by a few daily news stories and occasional reviews when we have code to hand. Each column has a tight, narrow focus and  concentrates on a specific genre or aspect of gaming culture, meaning that readers of Games Are Evil will be able to follow their favourite niche and get to know the writer of said column in the process rather than having to scroll through page after page of news which might not be relevant to them. The model which I wanted to follow with this was the way old-school 1up used to work — people came for the personalities rather than necessarily the specific content of the articles. It's too early to determine whether or not this has been successful or not so far, but I am very proud of what the team has achieved to date — we've seen some great columns ranging from comprehensive roundups of Minecraft news to in-depth explorations of obscure strategy games.

Here's some handy links for you to find your favourite column and follow it:

  • Distant Worlds — a weekly roundup of news from the MMO sector. What's new, what's hot, what's not.
  • FreePlay — a weekly delve into free-to-play and freeware games to sort out the "must plays" from the microtransaction-riddled crapfests.
  • Insert Coin — a weekly exploration of arcade machines, arcade restoration and arcade culture.
  • READ.ME — a weekly foray into the world of visual novels (I do this one!)
  • Swords & Zippers — a weekly roam through the colourful worlds of Japanese role-playing games (I do this one too!)
  • Tactical Tuesday — a bi-monthly deep dive into some of the most obscure, underappreciated and fascinating strategy games available for PC.
  • The Craft — a weekly roundup of what's new in the world of Minecraft.
  • The Vault — a weekly dive into the annals of history to rescue underappreciated or forgotten classics from obscurity. Fans of the Squadron of Shame will be right at home here.

It's early days for the site's new direction as yet, but things are starting to come together nicely. If you've been reading the daily new content, thanks! If you haven't, please feel free to check it out. Leave a comment on articles you'd like to discuss. And please, please share anything you happen to read that you find interesting, entertaining or just plain awesome. With your help, we can make Games Are Evil into the go-to destination for "alternative gaming".

Gratuitous self-promotion (and promotion of others) now over. Normal business will resume tomorrow.

#oneaday Day 957: Too Tired to Think of a Good Title

EHMAGERD. So tired. SO tired. I'm at that stage of tired where you can barely keep your eyes open, and yet here I am blogging, showing frankly admirable commitment to a cause that all but one other daily blogger (to my knowledge) had abandoned.

I apologise in advance for what is doubtless about to become a purely "filler" entry, its word count padded out with overly flowery language and unnecessarily complex descriptions of things that probably don't need to be described or discussed in the first place. But it's 2am and I've just got back from a two hour drive having spent all day playing board games, so… meh. My blog, my rules. (If you're a new reader, though, sorry. Seriously. I'm usually much more coherent than this. I think.)

So what board games have I been playing? Well, the vast majority of the day ended up being monopolised (no pun intended) by the official board game adaptation of Blizzard's Starcraft. This game comes in a hefty box with hundreds of cool pieces, and is quite complex. I've had a copy for some time now but for various reasons we had managed to play it precisely three quarters of a time prior to today. And that was so long ago that we had all forgotten all the rules.

Our board gaming group is somewhat loose in terms of "discipline", for want of a better word. Gaming night is a social occasion primarily, though the games themselves of course play a prominent role. What this means in practice is that we spend a lot of time talking, looking at Cassetteboy videos on the Internet and drinking coffee when we "should" be playing. By extension, this means that a game that should take a few hours tops takes all day.

Starcraft is a prime example. The box claims 3-4 hours, which is already hefty, but throw in time for consulting the rule book and various interruptions — including a friend popping by to demonstrate the Airsoft guns we're going to be using for one of our number's upcoming stag do — and it's easy to see why it took us from 3.30 to well after 10pm to finish up a single game.

Actually, it doesn't quite explain it. Time, as the cliché goes, tends to pass incredibly quickly when you're doing something entertaining, particularly with friends, and the experience is over all too quickly. It's a stark reminder of the fact that we are all, in fact, adults, and consequently should probably manage our free time a little better than we sometimes do.

Still, I'm pleased to report that we did, in fact, manage to complete a game of Starcraft, and it was fun. We all understood the mechanics by the end — no thanks to the rule book, which is incredibly poorly organised, though this is not really anything new for Fantasy Flight games — and were in a position where we could take a turn without having to continually refer to step by step instructions. Which is nice.

Whether or not Starcraft will make another appearance at the table remains to be seen — games that take a very long time often tend to be bumped in favour of several shorter ones — but I enjoyed it and would certainly be up for playing it again, preferably while the rules are still fresh in my head.

But anyway. I am about to collapse from exhaustion so I am going to leave that there and go to bed before I fall asleep on my keyboard.

#oneaday Day 956: Knope

The great thing about Netflix — and the reason I was immensely joyful when it finally made its way to the UK — is that you can "take a chance" on TV shows you've never seen before without having to shell out for a DVD box set. (I realised the other day that I can't remember the last time I bought a DVD. I'm not sure I will ever again, to be honest.) Trying out a new show is a simple matter of spotting it, clicking on it and giving it a shot for a few episodes to see if you like it.

So it was that I found myself starting to watch Parks & Recreation. I knew literally nothing about this show before I started watching it, so it was with total beginner's mind that I jumped in.

Initially, I wasn't quite sure what to think. It had that slightly awkward "comedy drama" feeling about it where you're not quite sure if you're supposed to laugh or not. I'm not a massive fan of laugh tracks these days — it's funny to think that they used to be a fixture on popular shows — but sometimes it's nice to have a cue as to when it's "okay" to laugh.

After a little while, though, I started to "get" what the show was doing. I was supposed to feel awkward and uncomfortable. I hadn't immediately twigged that the show was going for a The Office sort of vibe, but when I started watching it in that mindset, it became immediately a whole lot better. Since the first season, the show has seemingly successfully distinguished itself from The Office despite retaining the "docudrama" format. What this means in practice is that the characters in the show are free to break the fourth wall, address the camera and do lots of things that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do in a more traditionally-shot show. At the same time, though, the format is somewhat subverted on occasion by characters doing "talking head" shots explaining what's really going on in a scene and then being lambasted by another character who can hear what they're going on about.

The show's biggest strength is in these characters. Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope is a strong lead, and her straight-laced nature is the perfect foil to the colourful, exaggerated characters that are her colleagues in the Parks and Rec department. It also means that when she does do something amusing, it has more impact.

Highlight of the show is clearly Ron-freakin'-Swanson, a mustachio'd gent who hired sullen summer intern April not for her secretarial skills, but for her total incompetence at dealing with other people, meaning that he never has to do any work. Frequently, we'll see Ron in his office carving wood, weaving baskets or, in one memorable scene, using a typewriter he restored to "type every word I know". Anything but work.

Not all of the characters are exaggerated caricatures, however. Rashida Jones' Ann is another character whose understated, human performance inspires viewers to relate to and empathise with her. The way she uses casual idioms like "Dude…!" when talking to people gives her a very "real" feel, and her relative normality actually makes her stand out amid the rest of the cast.

To cut a long story short, despite thinking I was probably only going to watch a few episodes of the show, I'm now halfway through the third season with no intention of stopping. I've enjoyed it a great deal so far, and am looking forward to seeing more. If you haven't checked it out before and are a fan of the awkward, slightly cringeworthy comedy of shows like The Office (particularly the original Ricky Gervais version) then you'll find it an absolute hoot, I'm sure.

#oneaday Day 955: Ten Signs You've Been Working From Home for Too Long

I've been working from home ever since I decided that teaching was Not The Career For Me, and I like it a lot. I never really enjoyed the office environment of "traditional" jobs, and in the time-sensitive environment of a school you never have a moment to sit back and relax or, as is more commonly needed, sit with your head in your hands crying profusely. Freelancing affords one the luxury of flexibility at the expense of security, though I've been pretty lucky in my last couple of gigs to find myself with stable, predictable income each month. Okay, I had almost a year where I was pulling in a couple of hundred dollars a month and sometimes nothing at all. But things are, touch wood, now Going Well.

Working from home comes with its own pitfalls, however. Naturally, I haven't fallen prey to any of what I am about to describe; this post simply serves as a warning to those of you made of less stern stuff than I am.

Without further messing around, then, let's jump right into ten things that might make you feel like getting a "real" job might not be such a terrible idea after all.

You stop dressing for success. Or indeed at all.

If you can work in your pants, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to get dressed in order to do your work, right? Well, no, unless you're participating in some sort of webcam conference, and even then you only really need to be "all business" up top.

Still, specifically getting dressed — even if it's only throwing on a stinky t-shirt — helps get you in the mindset that Now Is Work Time. You can always take your trousers off again later.

Having a poo with the door open becomes default behaviour.

You might think that settling down for a long dump while leaving the door open so you can still hear your music/see the TV is a great idea if there's no-one in the house. And indeed it is one of life's great pleasures to do so.

But when this becomes default behaviour — when you start leaving the door open even for music you don't really like or for, say X-Factor on TV, then you may have a problem.

To rid yourself of this issue, reach an agreement with your partner/housemate/parents (delete as applicable) that at least once per week, they will come home at an unexpected time. You'll soon learn to be ashamed of your body and the things it does again.

Every time you see the postman, he apologises for waking you.

Related to the first point above, if you answer the door to the postman in a dressing gown, he will probably assume he has woken you, even if it's lunchtime. Avoid this misunderstanding by putting some clothes on before answering the door.

If you are worried that you won't be able to dress yourself before he puts one of those "sorry we missed you" cards through the door, keep a cache of "emergency clothes" handy near the door that are easy to put on — tracksuit bottoms and some sort of zip-up jacket or shirt are a good idea. They don't have to match.

Your masturbation-to-work ratio gets rather lop-sided.

If you're spending more time wanking than doing something useful, you aren't working hard enough. Very simple.

Coffee consumption goes through the roof.

If you're getting through a packet/tin/jar of coffee in less than a week, you're probably drinking too much. I know you need to stay on top of your game and churn out those 15,000 words you promised by yesterday, but man, seriously. Imbibing so much caffeine that you can feel your heart going "OH MY GOD STOP STOP NOW" is not the way forward.

You start exhibiting behaviours typically reserved for the clinically insane.

Are you walking around your house mumbling obscenities over and over again because they "sound funny"? Are you dancing naked to the theme tune of your favourite TV show? Do you spend hours staring at a wall in the hope it will do something interesting? You need to get a proper job before the wall does start doing something interesting and you start having conversations with yourself.

You start experimenting with cheese on toast.

Cheese on toast is a simple and effective meal. The moment you start fucking around with it, though, you're on a downward spiral. As soon as you start carefully layering various luncheon meats beneath the cheese, then seasoning with cajun spice mix and drawing aesthetically-pleasing patterns in tomato ketchup on top, it's time to go and work somewhere with a proper canteen.

Actually, scratch that one. Deluxe cheese on toast is awesome.

You get really good at Countdown.

If you have reached a stage where you're really good at both the letters and the numbers rounds of Countdown, you really need to get out and get a job. Possibly in Accounts. Or the Conundrum Department.

Your attention span diminishes.

You start some sort of creative project such as a list of ten signs you've been working from home for too long and then lo

#oneaday Day 954: I Love Cock

"Cock" is possibly my favourite word in the entire English language. I don't care if you're using it to refer to a rooster or an erect penis (I always felt that "cock" implied "erect", as does "dong", "schlong", "wang" and numerous others; meanwhile "winky", "dick", "willy" and "tallywhacker" imply flaccidity, but I digress) — it's just a fantastically satisfying word to say.

You have to say it right for it to be satisfying though. Try it with me.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose. Now open your mouth a little as if you're going to cough up a big ol' flob and pronounce a nice, crisp, hard "C" sound. Immediately follow with a round, fruity "O", where your mouth makes the perfect shape of the letter it's pronouncing, leave a short gap, then follow up with the "CK". Ideally, you should throw back your head slightly while doing the "CO–" bit and give a pervy smile while doing the "–CK" bit. Advanced "COCK"-ers should feel free to add a crescendoing "mm" or "nn" sound beforehand for added amusement. "mmCOCK!" "nnCOCK!"

Lest you feel I've lost it here, let me explain my love for this gloriously expressive one-syllable word. It came about back in secondary school. Some friends and I were hanging out, and I, for some reason, happened to pronounce the word "cock" in the manner described above, and everyone fell about laughing. According to my friend Craig, it was hilarious because it, I quote, "sounded like a porn star saying it." (It sounds even more like a porn star saying it if you also say the word "SUCK" in the same manner as the word "COCK" described above.)

Anyhow, the word "COCK" became our go-to insult or space-filler when there was a lull in the conversation. This use of the word, completely devoid of its usual context, came to a head one summer when my parents had gone on holiday and I was left alone in the house for the first time. My friend Woody and I had recently discovered Final Fantasy VII and, having both finished it possibly several times by this point, were doing a communal playthrough together, fuelled by tequila which we had decided we would attempt to drink despite the fact that both of us felt that it tasted like what a glass of water would taste like if you dropped about fifteen cigarette butts in it. As night fell, we decided that The Thing To Do would be to switch over and play Resident Evil 2 very loud while absolutely munted off our tits. (We also left a metronome ticking outside the room our friend Ed, who had flaked out early, was sleeping in.)

For whatever reason, during our Resident Evil 2 session — and remember we were absolutely twatted by this point — we then decided that The Thing To Do would be to turn to each other and repeatedly say the word "COCK" in the manner described above to each other while attempting to continue normal play. Normal play was already somewhat difficult due to the amount of alcohol we had imbibed coupled with Resident Evil 2's cumbersome controls, so it largely degenerated into just the shouting of the aforementioned syllable over and over and over again.

I don't know for how many hours we kept this up, but it was certainly a long time. Probably at least one hour and possibly more. I'm pretty sure that we somehow got most of the way through the game while repeatedly bellowing "COCK" at one another, because I have a vivid memory of collapsing in a drunken, exhausted heap after failing to kill the final boss and waking up the next morning in an awkward position with the PlayStation still running.

So there you go. That's how much I love cock. I'll go all night with it.

(Aside: WordPress recommended "wine tasting descriptors" as a tag for this post. I'm not sure I need to make any further comment than that.)

#oneaday Day 953: Like A Dragon

I beat Yakuza 3 tonight, which is why I'm up so late.

The Yakuza series is excellent for many reasons, chief among which is protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, who is just so effortlessly badass throughout that you can't help but admire him. And yet he somehow manages to be this way without falling into the testosterone-fuelled arsehole trap, which is good. One could argue that it's further evidence that the Japanese are actually rather good at writing strong, interesting, deep and flawed characters, while the West is often stuck in Tropesville. (This is a gross generalisation, of course, but Yakuza does provide good ammunition against anyone who says Eastern games are just about big-eyed anime girls and floppy-haired teenage protagonists.)

However, one thing was at the back of my mind while I was playing, and it relates to this (rather ranty) Eurogamer opinion piece from a week or two back, during the "girlfriend mode" scandal, also known as "Game Developer Says Something Stupid, Episode 357". The article had a point — people should speak up when misogyny and sexism rear their ugly heads — but the fact that the article specifically called out Yakuza for being sexist really bothered me.

It raised an interesting question, you see. Yakuza certainly features depictions of a particular breed of sexism and misogyny endemic to Japanese big-city life, but does that make the game, in itself, inherently sexist? Does the fact that the game allows its protagonist to visit "hostess bars" and attempt to romance the women within mean it is a sexist work? Does the fact that the game allows the protagonist to visit a poledancing club mean that it is misogynistic?

You could argue the case for "yes", clearly, but the perspective from which I approach the Yakuza series is that it provides a (mostly) realistic depiction of another culture that is relatively alien to my own. Part of that culture is sexist, and to deny that it exists causes the depiction of that culture to no longer be accurate or realistic, putting the developers in something of a quandary. Sure, we could probably do without the lengthy cutscenes depicting poledancers doing their thing just before there's a big manly fight, but for the most part, the Yakuza games depict sexism rather than actually being outright sexist. (As a matter of fact, the incidental female characters in the "hostess bars" are considerably more well-developed than any number of T&A-toting heroines from Western games in recent years. The game also passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours.)

Should we decry Yakuza as a bad thing for showing it like it is and not attempting to make a positive change in society? No, no we shouldn't. Because not all art is there to make life better. Not all art is there to make a positive change. Not all art is there to create a utopian vision of What Life Should Be Like. Some art is there to depict How Life Is, and Yakuza succeeds in that admirably.

While I do believe it is important to call out sexism and misogyny in the industry when it comes up, I don't believe the Yakuza series is the biggest problem. I don't believe it's a particular problem at all, to be honest. The writers of Yakuza create female characters who are real, interesting people rather than sex objects, and the protagonist interacts with them accordingly. Any sexism present in the game is a result of accurately depicting a sexist society — with the possible exception of the aforementioned poledancing cutscene, but one could argue that was there to establish ambience and atmosphere. And it's not as if Kazuma goes around beating or raping women, either — every antagonist in the game is male, and Kaz himself treats all the women he comes across with nothing but respect, save for the odd option to give a cheeky, innuendo-filled response to a hostess.

Were the Yakuza series to be sanitised and watered down, with anything deemed to be sexist or misogynistic stripped out, a big part of the game's authentic-feeling Japanese atmosphere would be gone. As much as we would like to believe we live in a world where there is true equality, the fact is we do not — and in many places around Japan, this is particularly obvious. To deny that this happens by whitewashing your content — particularly in a game that is aimed at adults — would just be short-sighted, and I'd argue that it's more helpful to acknowledge that all this goes on without being hysterical or sensationalist about it.

But anyway. Yakuza 3 is pretty great. You should play it.