#oneaday, Day 294: Filthy Rogue

The roguelike genre is one I only discovered relatively recently. In fact, I was a relative latecomer to the whole RPG genre, only getting to grips with it for the first time with Final Fantasy VII. As such, for a good few years, I felt that RPGs were all about strong stories, interesting (and sometimes clichéd) characters, a buildup to an epic final conflict and some of the best music you'll ever hear.

As such, when I played an RPG that wasn't so strong on the story and focused more on loot-whoring or level-grinding, I found myself losing interest quickly. It was long after its release that I finally beat Diablo II and, to this date, I've never beaten it on anything other than the normal difficulty level.

That changed when I came across Angband, though. Angband looks like the sort of game you used to play on Teletext. Sure, there are graphical tilesets you can customise it with. But at its heart, it's a text-based game with about a bajillion keyboard commands.

But you know what? The kind of emergent narrative that came out of several intense Angband sessions rivalled any pre-scripted tales that Squeenix have ever come out with. Largely because it was so unpredictable, and that any screw-ups were inevitably your fault for failing to prepare adequately, rather than the fault of the game mechanics itself.

Take the time my oil lamp ran out on the fifth level of the dungeon. This meant, in gameplay terms, that I couldn't "see" new passageways ahead of me—namely, they weren't revealed on the map—unless I banged into a wall, which then helpfully revealed said wall on the map for me. My first reaction in this instant was, of course, to panic. Death in Angband doesn't mean restoring a saved game. Oh no. Death in Angband means your save game getting deleted and you having to start all over again. This adds an enormous amount of pressure on you, the player, to get it right. And it also makes you kick yourself when you realise that you didn't bring enough oil to fuel your lamp.

So off I went, slowly "feeling" my way along the walls of the corridors in an attempt to find the stairs up… for five floors. This sounds like an impossible task. But after a fairly lengthy period of methodical, careful searching (and a few terrifying combats in the pitch darkness) I finally managed to emerge victorious to town level, stock up on oil and provisions and jump back into the dungeon with renewed fervour.

Of course, I promptly got twatted by an Ogre, making all that work utterly meaningless. But it didn't matter—it was a fun experience unlike anything I'd experienced in a game before. And I've struggled to repeat it with any game since then.

Not through lack of trying, though. There are some great roguelikes out there, many of which are a lot more accessible than Angband. I have three favourites I'd like to share with you right now, one of which is, of all things, a board game. The other two are iPhone games.

Sword of Fargoal is actually a remake of an old Commodore 64-era title which didn't look like the picture above. No, it looked like this:

The best thing about Sword of Fargoal is its simplicity coupled with a surprising amount of hidden depth. While Angband is rather intimidating to get started with, with pretty much every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) mapped to something, Fargoal simply requires that you get to grips with moving and using a context-sensitive button in the top-right corner. And keeping an eye on the text display at the top of the screen for hints and cues, too. Combat is a case of running into an enemy—the player and monster will then take turns bashing each other until one or the other falls over or one runs away. Gold is collected to sacrifice at altars throughout the dungeon for experience point bonuses. And the rest is left to the player to discover. The more you play, the more you start to notice little graphical details and cues tipping you off to the location of traps or treasure.

And it's challenging, too. There are 15 levels to explore, all of which are sprawling monstrosities with several areas. And when you make it to the bottom to recover the titular blade, you then have to escape again. I haven't even made it to the bottom yet. It's a lengthy, challenging quest. And despite the fact that death is permanent, it's addictive and easy to return to.

Then we have 100 Rogues, which takes a slightly different approach to that of Sword of Fargoal. While Fargoal's quest is lengthy, 100 Rogues can potentially be beaten in one sitting. Key word here being "potentially". 100 Rogues is particularly brutal, fond of surrounding the player and battering them to a pulp. Fortunately, the player also has a Diablo-style skill tree at their disposal, including a number of attacks that can beat back several enemies at the same time.

It's very difficult, though, and the descriptions of the game on the App Store don't even try and hide the fact that you will die. A lot. In fact, there's even a Game Center Achievement for having sent the titular 100 rogues to their eventual demise.

I only picked this up recently, but it's immensely appealing due to its 16-bit graphics and soundtrack. It looks and plays like a Genesis/Mega Drive game, in a good way. It's a bit buggy in places but the author appears to be committed to regular updates.

Finally, one of my favourite roguelikes of all time is Warhammer Quest, a game that involves you having people you actually don't mind being in the same room with. Featuring all the genre staples—a randomly generated dungeon, permadeath, brutal difficulty, vast amounts of phat lewt—it's very much the board game equivalent of Rogue et al. Even better, everyone gets to join in on the fun—there's no need for a Game Master player (unless you really want to use one) as the rules cater fully for monster "behaviour".

Couple that with the game's immense customisability (it's a word) thanks to its use of Games Workshop Citadel Miniatures line of figures and you have a game with limitless potential. And hundreds—hundreds—of tiny pieces of card and plastic.

So there you go. A whistlestop tour of the roguelike genre. And I didn't even mention Moria or NetHack once.

#oneaday, Day 293: The Internet Will Make You Gay

When you're young, being labelled as "gay" is the ultimate stigma, regardless of what your sexuality actually is. Anything bad is labelled "gay" and anyone who is not one of the cool kids is labelled "gay", "gaylord", "queer" or all manner of other things. This is not terribly sexually enlightened, of course, and is one of the things that leads to homosexual teens feeling stigmatised and terrified of their own sexual identity—to the extent that they'll take their lives in some cases. This is, of course, a terrible thing, and we shouldn't make light of this issue. Go support the It Gets Better project, and feel good about yourself. Then we can start taking the piss out of something else gay-related.

Done that? Good.

What I would like to make light of, though, is the inexplicable ability for Twitter, Facebook and indeed the whole Internet to turn the hairiest and burliest of men into gibbering, mincing queens. I've only really noticed it in the last couple of years or so. But something, somewhere, has snapped and deemed it okay for men to be outrageously flirtatious (and, at times, downright filthy) with one another, all in jest. Say some of the things which regularly grace my Twitter feed (occasionally from my own typing fingers) in high school and you'd have got a one-way ticket to Wedgie City, population: your head and a toilet bowl.

I won't give examples, to spare the blushes of those who have made said comments in the past. But I actually find it pretty interesting that this sort of thing seems to be more and more common. It's not done with any form of sexual intent in mind, though the content of the comments may well be sexual in nature. It's more a form of light-hearted banter that is possibly an ironic response to those men with an overabundance of testosterone—the kind who barely disguise their erections in the street any time a vaguely attractive girl walks past, and the kind who like to shout outside pubs and anyone, everything and, often, nothing or no-one at all.

Perhaps it's the long-distance, semi-anonymous nature of communication on the Internet that makes this sort of thing happen more often. After all, if someone misinterprets a flirtatious gay comment and either takes offence (or indeed becomes rather more amorous than you were expecting) you can always hide behind the "ah, well, you can't tell tone of voice in text, can you… ahahahaha" defence.

Still. Perhaps this is a sign that the online world is, on the whole, more comfortable with a broad spectrum of sexual identities rather than simple "straights over there, gays over there, and then there are bisexuals, but some just say they're kidding themselves" terms.

Or perhaps it's just a sign that Spider-Man has, in fact, now made everyone on the Internet gay.

#oneaday, Day 292: TV Get Bent

Most times I watch TV, I'm reminded why I don't watch TV any more, besides the occasional isolated incident of The Apprentice (which I can't really be bothered with this year, anyway). And the reason for that is that 99.87% (approximately) of it is complete, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks, and the rest are reruns of old, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks.

Now I understand and appreciate that some people enjoy zoning out in front of the TV and enjoy having things that they don't have to think about. I do the same with video games. But at least I'm interacting with video games, and even the most mindless, dumbest video game requires at least a bit of co-ordination and use of your reflexes. Unless it's Farmville, in which case you just require to be non-vegetative enough to click a mouse a few thousand times. But even that demands more brainpower than staring at the TV.

Not all TV is rubbish of course. But I find myself picking up favourite TV shows on DVD rather than watching them when they air. There are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, being tied down to a schedule at the behest of an inanimate object is a pain that I can do without. Secondly, if I really get into a show, it's nice to be able to watch several episodes of it in succession to get a greater sense of "coherence" than watching a one-off. Try watching a season of 24 when it airs on TV as opposed to being able to watch several in a row on DVD and you'll see what I mean. Not that I ever got into Lost (the TV schedule thing meant I lost—no pun intended—interest about halfway through the first season) but I imagine that, with all its confusion, would be much the same.

The kind of TV that doesn't lend itself to a sense of "coherence"—random quiz shows and reality TV—doesn't particularly interest me anyway. So everyone's a winner, then. TV can keep its dross, its reruns, its uninspired crap and endless repetitions of Alexander the fucking Meerkat adverts. I'll stick to my DVDs, iPlayer and 4OD, thanks.

Will we eventually reach a stage where the concept of traditional TV broadcasting itself is obsolete? Thanks to services like those I've just mentioned, it's entirely possible to have a completely personalised staring-at-the-gogglebox experience consisting entirely of programmes you actually enjoy. And with services like Netflix, LoveFilm and MUBI offering a variety of niche as well as mainstream content, you can even populate your own personal TV and movie playlist with things that would never have been on TV in the first place.

Also there is no need to wait for Alexander the fucking Meerkat to come on screen to go and have a toilet break, either.

The more I think about it, the more this concept sounds very appealing. But will the TV studios ever go for it? The concept of "primetime" is still very firmly in the heads of most broadcasters, and so it's likely that scheduled programming will continue for at least a little while yet. But as time goes on? Who knows. Perhaps one day TV will move to an exclusively on-demand system.

I look forward to that day immensely.

#oneaday, Day 291: Final Lap

As the year starts to draw to a close—seriously, how the fuck did it get to be November already?—lots of "projects" or long-term goals are starting to eventually come together and come to fruition. Unfortunately, none of said long-term goals will result in financial gain for myself (unless you want to sponsor any of them, which you're very welcome to do) but they will result in a sense of long-term satisfaction.

This blog thing, for example. It's become part of my daily routine now. I love writing something every day. And it's interesting to look back at how the year (a pretty shitty one, by all accounts) has gone, how it's changed and, more to the point, how it's changed me. I'm a different person to the one I was five months ago. I'm a different person again to the one I was eleven months ago. I'd like to think that these changes are mostly for the better, and there are a few people out there who can probably back me up on this one. That's not a request for ego-massaging comments, incidentally, though those are, as ever, welcome.

And then there's the running thing, too. Tonight I completed Week 6 of the 9-week Couch To 5K programme. Tonight's run was 25 minutes of non-stop running, bookended by 5-minute walks for warm-up and cool-down purposes. And it was… I hesitate to say "easy", but certainly well within my abilities. I feel like my speed is increasing, too, though my average speed readout from RunKeeper (awesome app, by the way, and free for iOS and Android) seems fairly constant at just under 4mph. Not very fast, I know, but considering that nearly seven weeks ago I was struggling to run for a minute at a time, I think it's pretty clear that I've made awesome progress. And I feel good about that and have absolutely no problem publicly displaying a bit of pride about it. So there.

I have blown the right headphone earbud on my iPhone though. Guess the thumping bass and drums of the Split/Second soundtrack finally proved too much for them. That or Apple make shitty headphones. Given that exactly the same also happened to the right earbud of the headphones on my old 20GB iPod, I'm inclined to think it's the latter. Fuck you, Apple, and your shitty headphones. But not too much. I like the iPhone just fine, thanks.

So here are the "deadlines", for want of a better word: By the 25th of November, I should be running for 30 minutes at a time comfortably, and presumably able to run the titular 5K in that time. And by the 19th of January 2011, I'll have completed a year of continuous non-stop blogging. Will I have a decent job by then? Given that I have an exciting and mysterious job interview next Thursday, I might.

Will I be in a position to say "yes, this is where I want my life to be" by then? Possibly not. But things are definitely on that upwards slope. Time passes. Things happen. And when you look back, it's difficult to imagine being where you are now, then. If that makes sense.

I know what I mean, even if you don't.

#oneaday, Day 290: Ever Onward

Something that someone told me recently (yay for specifics) has stuck with me. That something was the phrase "you don't stop knowing someone when you're not with them any more". Those perhaps weren't the exact words, but the sentiment stands. And it's true, whatever the context of you not being with that person any more is. It doesn't have to be a romantic thing. It could simply be a friendship thing.

I have two examples in mind here. Just recently, I had the good fortune to be reunited with a buddy from school with whom I'd kept in idle contact with—the occasional Facebook comment or tweet—but hadn't seen face-to-face since the time he visited me during my first year of university, got roaringly drunk with me and then proceeded to assist me in the consumption of a pound of Tesco Value mild cheddar cheese at about 3 in the morning. Actually, there was an incident subsequent to that which involved several people vomiting out of the window of a house onto the corrugated plastic roof of what passed for a "conservatory" in student accommodation. But the cheese incident is the one that remains fresh in my memory.

Said incident was at least ten years ago now, but when we met up in the village pub for a pint and a chat it was like that time had ceased to exist—or at least didn't matter. We hadn't seen each other for ages, and yet suddenly we were back to talking about the word "COCK!", driving in search of "old man pubs" and ending up in the local Tesco garage's forecourt at 2 in the morning eating pre-packed sandwiches because the nearest club (15 miles away) was shit and/or full, and the old man pubs in question were either shut or had vanished into some sort of rural space-time anomaly. It was, to say the least, awesome. Not all reunions go this way, and I'm sure there are plenty of people I was at school with who are completely different people now. But then I have no idea where they are now, so a reunion is unlikely anyway.

The other example I have in mind is something I wrote about way back on Day 106; the idea of crystallised memories. I probably didn't coin this term but it's one I'm particularly fond of: the idea that inanimate objects can possess memories and trigger powerful emotional responses simply by their presence. A crystallised memory can be a tiny thing, like a dirty penny you find in the depths of your coat pocket. Perhaps you remember how it got so dirty. Or where you found it. Or what you were doing when you dropped it into your pocket.

Alternatively, as the case may be, a crystallised memory could be a whole city. Cities are places that are full of life, constantly on the move, changing, morphing, filling with people during the day and evaporating them in the dead of night. But some things don't change amidst all the chaos—pretty amazing in itself, when you think about it—and those are the things which hold powerful emotional responses, powerful memories, senses of nostalgia, whatever it is you want to call it.

Sometimes, these things which have remained constant amidst the chaos of the daily tsunami of people that pass by them are enough to remind you of something or someone important, something that is, at times, long-forgotten. Tiny little memories which, at the time, seemed inconsequential, unimportant. And yet they are the ones which remained most vivid. A river that you once saw a hundred rubber ducks racing along. A swinging teashop sign and the delicious delights found within. The low beam that you bang your head on as you clamber into an "authentic" old pub.

Sometimes you see all those things again and they cause you pain. They remind you of what once was and what is now no longer.

And sometimes you see all those things again and they bring comfort. They still remind you of what once was and what is now no longer. But something, somewhere, causes the negativity and the pain to slip away and you're left with those things that you should cling onto, the crystals that shine the brightest, the ones which glitter eternally.

Time heals all wounds, they say. But the good stuff that all the blood and pus and "discharge" from the wounds hides? (That was gross. Sorry.) That sticks around a whole lot longer.

#oneaday, Day 289: Autumn Days When The Grass Is Green

I can't remember the last time I was as acutely aware of the arrival of autumn as I have been this year. Much of the weather of our green and pleasant land falls into the "grey and overcast" category, which is why the sun shining is usually a trigger for wide-ranging sensationalist journalism. "HEAT WAVE!!" "HOSEPIPE BAN!!" "TROPICAL TEMPERATURES!!" And of course, the inevitable knowing winks towards global warming.

Autumn, on the other hand, arrives with little to no fanfare. It gets a bit colder. Some people (usually at the elderly end of the spectrum) take this as a cue to say out loud things like "ooh, feels like Autumn's here". But there's never sensationalist journalism. "TREEPOCALYPSE!!" "OMG LEAVES!!" "MILD HURRICANES SWEEP NATION!!" I don't think so.

But during a long drive tonight, it was very apparent that autumn is indeed in full swing. The thing which means I can say this with absolute authority? The amount of leaves blowing around. They were everywhere, sweeping through the air like their own weird little weather system. Even the motorways, concrete slabs of greyness that are about as far from Mother Nature as you can get, had leaves swirling above them and fluttering across the road like a pixie dropping a large pile of correspondence.

This became even more pronounced once I hit the country lanes close to home. Leaves lined the roads, breaking up the monotonous greyness of the Tarmac surface with colourful patterns, swept up by cars as they sped by and tumbling back to the ground like a "wake" for the passing vehicles.

Perhaps it's just that I spent the best part of ten years living in an urban environment where one season looks much like another. For the moment, I live in the countryside. So maybe I genuinely am seeing it more.

Whatever the cause, autumn is here. So wrap up warm, go outside and go jump in some piles of crisp, crunchy brown leaves.

#oneaday, Day 288: Where's The UK's Netflix?

So the new Xbox Dashboard went live today. Pretty neat, isn't it? Lots of new sound effects, a clean white aesthetic, Kinect compatibility and all manner of other goodies. In fact, let's take a look at the list of new features, shall we?

Kinect Integration
ESPN on Xbox LIVE
Zune Music
Netflix Search
Improved voice chat quality
Improved Gamertag creation
Streamlined virtual keyboard
Improved wireless networking
Improved family settings

Pretty nice, I'm sure you'll agree. Particularly if you're an American, because here's the list of new features I got in the email today:

Kinect Integration
Zune Music

Granted, some of the features that weren't mentioned were fairly minor ones. But it's still pretty clear that if you're a European Xbox gamer, you're missing out quite a bit on some of the things that make the Xbox and its LIVE service particularly appealing.

One of the biggest things us poor Europeans are missing out on is Netflix. I don't watch many movies and thus feel rather ill-equipped to contribute to conversations that start with the words "Have you seen…". The reason I don't watch that many movies is that I have it in my mind that buying DVDs with movies on is a bit more of a waste of money than buying box sets of TV series that I'm more likely to watch several times. Once I've seen a movie, I tend not to watch it again unless I really, really loved it. As such, I don't own many movies on DVD or Blu-Ray, and I rarely remember to get to the cinema in time to see movies while they're on the big screen.

If I had access to a service like Netflix, however, I'd be more inclined to watch more movies, since paying a monthly fee for access to whatever I wanted seems like less like a waste of money than purchasing a DVD or Blu-Ray I might never watch ever again.

So then, Points of View, I ask why oh why oh why don't we have a Netflix-like service here in the UK? The company LOVEFiLM (or however the hell they capitalise it) already offer a similar DVD rental-by-post system, as well as a streaming service via web browser. So isn't it about time they pulled their fingers out of their celluloid arseholes and got on with integrating their service with the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii? A huge number of households now have one or more of these devices hooked up to their fancy-pants HDTVs. So LoVeFILm would probably stand to make an absolute fortune from new subscriptions if they got on with integrating their service with various devices.

I'd go off on a similar rant about ESPN's lack of appearance on the 360 in the UK too, but for me watching sport on TV is an experience only mildly less appealing than having my eyes pulled out through my bellend.

So… Netflix-or-UK-equivalent YES PLZ. I'm sure it'll happen. Eventually. It's just a shame we get it years behind you pesky Americans. YES, YOU. You are pesky. You may gloat in the fact that while we have the greatest condiment in the world (HP Sauce) you have an awesome streaming movie service available via your Xbox.

Hmm. I'm actually not sure which one I'd rather have, thinking about it…

#oneaday, Day 287: Light To Medium Showers

As human beings, we like to think that we separate ourselves from the animal kingdom via the means of civilisation. One of the characteristics of civilisation is, for many, the ability to clean ourselves using a wide variety of chemical products which smell like natural things but actually contain ingredients with unpronounceable and unspellable names like guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride.

So, with all this in mind, and the obsession with cleanliness that modern living requires (particularly, so the stereotypes go, if you follow certain lifestyle choices), it's inexplicable that we haven't yet perfected a relatively simple device with which to facilitate said cleanliness: the humble shower.

I've just taken a shower at my friend Sam's house. Given that I had a two mile run before breakfast this morning, this was more a necessity for remaining in polite company rather than a luxury. Sam's shower is entertainingly obtuse in its functionality; firstly, it doesn't fit helpfully into a shower holder, necessitating the washee to hold the shower head in their hand whilst cleansing their bits and pieces.

However, problems arise when the washee is required to apply some manner of cleaning product to their hair, body or testicles. Holding the shower head with one hand leaves only one hand free for squirting delicately-scented products onto said appendages. If you're the sort of person (like me) who likes to apply aforementioned products to various body parts via the medium of squirting it into one's hand first, holding the shower head in one's hand is somewhat troublesome.

If you're as cack-handed as me, you have two options. Attempting to hold both the shower head and the bottle of product in one hand, which often ends in the inadvertent application of shower head to face, or putting the shower head in the bath.

The second option, then, is clearly the best one. At least it would be if the shower head in question wasn't perfectly cylindrical, meaning the moment that you let go of it, it rolls away, inevitably with the squirty bit of the shower pointing perfectly upwards, making a somewhat beautiful but somewhat messy fountain feature in one's bathroom. (Sorry, Sam.)

At least these little idiosyncracies weren't combined with some of the other perennial Greatest Hits of Mildly Inconvenient Showers. The temperature dial that has a sweet spot somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees off centre. The temperature which changes at a moment's notice without any outside intervention. The temperature which turns to scalding lava as soon as anyone in the same building flushes the toilet. The shower with insufficient pressure to wash a spider off a wall.

So, scientists, stop farting around trying to produce clever things and help us get the basics right. It'd be really nice to have a shower that stays on the wall at the right temperature and the correct pressure in order to enable myself to get clean without having to clean the bathroom afterwards, without scalding the tender skin around my bollocks or without giving me hypothermia.

I don't see it happening any time soon, sadly.

#oneaday, Day 286: Murder and Mystery

Tonight's activity was an entertaining affair–a murder mystery dinner party in celebration of my good friend Sam's 30th birthday. (Sam, incidentally, does not know anyone called either "Don Woods" or "Pook" and would like to make that fact abundantly clear.)

For those who have never attended a murder mystery party, it's an enormously fun opportunity for a bunch of people to get together, eat, drink, dress up in silly costumes and then make twats of themselves with each other. Ostensibly, it's a game where everyone is supposed to "role-play" their characters and through careful questioning, determine who the murderer was.

In practice, it's an excuse for people to talk in silly accents, overact and generally lark about. It's a pretty far cry from what tabletop enthusiasts would call "traditional" role-playing, but in actuality it's pretty close to what your common or garden D&D group gets up to. Only probably with more comedy French accents and less in the way of dice-rolling. Which is good. Because the dice-rolling bit of role-playing is often seen as the "geeky bit", whereas with a bit of encouragement, most people can enjoy a bit of impromptu improvisatory theatre, especially when their confidence glands have been appropriately lubricated via the judicious application of alcohol.

Tonight was no exception to the above rules. A diverse group of people attended and hammed it up through three acts of questioning, accusations and gradually-escalating amounts of backstabbing, espionage and clandestine affairs. As the evening went on, people gradually grew much more comfortable with the whole experience and started ad-libbing somewhat. Mostly, it has to be said, with some fairly filthy comments. But that added to the fun. Particularly as the amount of wine consumed throughout the evening meant that everyone's accents suffered somewhat.

So if you're looking for an opportunity to get some people together, dress up in silly costumes and engage in a spot of light role-playing (of the non-filthy kind) then a murder mystery party is the way to go. The set we played–The Brie, The Bullet and The Black Cat–was structured pretty well, with handouts and helpful prompts for all characters, meaning that no-one was left flagging and having to come up with questions all by themselves. It worked well, even though only one amongst our number managed to correctly identify the murderers by the end of the whole experience.

It was a good laugh, though, and surely that's the point of any game when it comes down to it.

The group are now settling down to a game of Eat Poop You Cat! which I discovered the other day can be referred to as Broken Telephone in polite circles. Wine has been consumed, so I anticipate that the sentences and drawings produced throughout the course of the game will be somewhat spectacular.

It's up and out early tomorrow morning for a run, with a change of scenery for once as I'm in Winchester instead of back home. I hope it's not cold.

#oneaday, Day 285: Questions You Probably Never Wanted To Know The Answer To

[Yes, I know I forgot to rename this comic. Deal with it.]

Sometimes topics come up in conversation that make you wonder how on Earth you got onto that subject in the first place. Such was the case when I had a conversation last weekend about whether or not any of us had taken a piss in the shower.

Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, though, it's possible to get answers to these burning questions at any time. Everything from Twitter to Formspring is set up in such a way to make asking stupid questions very easy.

Sometimes, though, you can't think of a decent question. So with that in mind, I present to you the answers to five different questions which I have thought up off the top of my head. And if you'd like to ask me anything else, please feel free to do so in the comments or via the "Ask Me Anything" link at the top of the page. Or by clicking here. It's anonymous and everything.

Have you ever had a wee in the shower?

No. No I haven't. But I was alarmed to discover that quite a few of my friends – both male and female – have. One friend, who shall remain anonymous, said that "there's no reason not to, apart from the fact your shower smells a bit of piss afterwards".

Me, though, I tend to prefer bathroom activities to take place in the receptacles for which they were intended. Piss goes in the toilet. Dirt from your filth-encrusted body goes in the shower or bath.

Have you ever cross-dressed?

Yes. I made a beautiful fairy. See?

So pretty.

What is the strangest thing you have ever put in your mouth?

Deep-fried garlic at some Japanese restaurant in St Marks, New York. (I think.) And yes, deep-fried garlic is exactly what it sounds like. Take one lump of garlic. Deep-fry it. Eat. Surprisingly tasty, but definitely odd.

How many fingers am I holding up?

Four, because you're too rockin' for one hand.

Would you rather die from chronic flatulence or ebola?

Chronic flatulence. At lease you'd entertain people as you passed away. And you'd have a priceless moment of everyone you were with looking around slightly uncomfortably, not sure whether they should giggle or call an ambulance.

Of course, you wouldn't be around to see it. But the sentiment stands.

What is the most horrible noise you can think of?

I have two horrible noises that I dislike. First is that nasty sound polystyrene packaging makes when you pull it out of a box and it goes all "scrapeyscrapeyscrape" and sets your teeth on edge. Second is the sound of people chewing noisily. I know it's a natural bodily function. But it inexplicably bugs me.

Also, Tinie Tempah is pretty horrendous, too.

Where is the strangest place you have ever slept?

On my birthday during my first year at university, some friends and I went to local "wine bar" Clowns. Calling Clowns a "wine bar" is something of a stretch, as it is actually one of those places with a sticky floor and toilets which regularly leak all over the building. They were offering four-pint jugs of Juicy Lucy for £4 at the time, though, so it seemed like an excellent idea for all of us to drink as many of these as possible.

When we finally got back to our flat, one of my flatmates wore a pair of my (clean) pants on his head for some time. Then another friend who didn't live in our flat fell asleep on my bed. I fancied a nap too, so the appropriate thing to do appeared to be not to wake up the person in question, but to open up my wardrobe, use my laundry bag as a pillow and fall asleep.

A couple of hours later, the person in question sat bolt upright, walked to the kitchen, ran his head under a tap and then left.

So, to answer the question in a slightly less cumbersome manner… "my wardrobe".

Want to ask me something else? Do it! I like to think we've learned a little something about each other via this process.

Or perhaps you just learned more than you ever wanted to know about me.