#oneaday Day 768: Sketchin'

I've been meaning to get back to doing stupid little doodles on posts for ages, but have just never… well, to be honest, I just haven't really been bothered to. Best to be honest about these things, and it's been nice seeing the stock images that kind and talented people from around the world have made freely available on Pexels, which you can access right from WordPress. But today, I thought I might as well actually use the fancy S-Pen that is stuck in the bottom of my phone, and so I did a tiny bit of research, found an actually pretty good-seeming free drawing app for Android (no more leeching off ClipStudio Paint's free trial) and just doodled a very quick thing for today.

Yeah, I know. Hardly worth making a big song and dance about, is it. But I tried to analyse why I fell off doing doodles on this site in the first place, and it was because I think I was trying to do a bit too much too soon. I thought that if I got a fancy graphics tablet and started faffing around with a fancy piece of software, then some sort of latent artistic ability would suddenly emerge and I would be able to produce something truly amazing, immediately.

Of course, it doesn't work like that. Not only does producing things that are genuinely amazing take time and effort, everyone also has their own distinct ways of working that they find most comfortable. For me, that has always been stupid little stickmen with oddly expressive faces. And so, I think for the immediate future at least, the stupid little stickmen with oddly expressive faces are back for now.

The thing I've always liked about doing the stupid little stickmen with oddly expressive faces in the past is that they make me think a little bit about what I've just written. I wouldn't go so far as to say sketching a companion doodle for a post makes me really reflect on things in any great depth, but it does at least make me think about how — and if — it would be possible to get the general vibe of the post across using a quick and dirty doodle.

Often that takes the form of a stupid joke. Back when I did three-panel comics on this blog — which I know at least one person enjoyed, but no-one else ever mentioned, so I stopped doing them just in case I was actually embarrassing myself with them — there were even some running storylines that went along with the blog posts, and sometimes the blog posts and the comic storylines would feed off one another in various ways. That was always pretty fun, actually, but like I say, outside of one once-regular commenter who I haven't seen for a long time (I hope you're well, Jud!) and my wife Andie, who bought me a large canvas print of one of my comics that still hangs above our bed, no-one ever really mentioned them, and I had no great designs of being "a webcomic" or anything anyway; it just seemed like a fun thing to do, and I had a copy of Comic Life on my Mac, so things just sort of went from there.

When you have your own site, though, I think it's important to make your own little mark on it somehow. I mean, obviously you already do that if you're writing things on it, but we are creatures that respond well to obvious visual stimuli, so if the overall look of the site helps get someone's personality across, so much the better, I say. I have tried to do this to a certain degree with the use of the Atari ST's system font for headlines — I tried putting the whole site in it once, but several commenters said it was difficult to read, and it probably was — but nothing beats a bit of scrappy artwork from someone who doesn't really do visual arts.

I've told the story of why I like drawing expressive stickmen many times before on this blog, but for the benefit of those disinclined to go searching through the archives, it stems from, as so many things do, my time at school.

I did pretty well for myself at secondary school. What eventually turned out to be an autistic spectrum condition (though I wouldn't know that until several decades later) meant that I kind of thrived in the structured environment where I was always learning things. But I wasn't, like, the school swot or anything. I had a mischievous streak, which was brought out of me by my friends — and particularly my good friend Edd, who I sat with in many different lessons.

Edd and I liked to doodle. We would doodle all sorts of things, all the time. It was one of our favourite activities — though we knew not to do it anywhere that we might get in vaguely "serious" trouble for. No drawing on desks, no defacing school property, and no doodling on our exercise books that the teacher would mark. (I must confess, however, that during one especially memorable Year 7 Humanities class, my other friend Daniel Blyth and I went through an entire History textbook and drew at least one dick on every single page. My favourite was the one that was poking out of a Roman water gourd, inexplicably shouting "I SCREAM!")

No, Edd and I would doodle on paper that we would specifically bring in for that purpose, or our "Rough Books", which I know I have talked about multiple times on this very site, so I won't tell that specific story again. But anyway. Given the opportunity to doodle, we would take it. And one of the things that we loved doodling was stickmen doing stupid things.

One of the earliest things we did with stickmen began in German lessons, which were so boring we eventually came to the conclusion that was some sort of temporal disruption around the Modern Languages department. (I successfully freaked several of my friends out by using the "countdown timer" feature on my snazzy Casio digital watch to make it look as if time was indeed running backwards.) We livened things up with "The German Stickmen", which was a four-panel comic in which two people would argue about something really stupid in German in the first frame, the second frame would devolve into them yelling "Nein!" "Ja!" at one another multiple times, the third frame would always be one of them shouting "ACHTUNG!" (like in Wolfenstein 3-D, see) and drawing some form of (usually explosive) weapon, and the final frame would inevitably involve some form of extreme violence or, most commonly, a mushroom cloud.

Over time, our ambitions for the stickmen became more elaborate. We'd already "created" (and I use the term loosely) the characters Edlock Holmes and Watson as a result of our shared enjoyment over the point-and-click adventure games The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and when we went on holiday to Gran Canaria together, we produced an epic-length stickman comic, drawn in extreme haste and with no real care, called Fate of Thingy. This thing took on a life of its own and was rewritten multiple times, and I still have it somewhere — though I think it's missing one or two pages. The intent, you see, was to do a "rough" version of the comic using stickmen, then when we got home we'd do a "proper" one. I did, indeed, start doing a "proper" version, at one point, but we both decided we liked the stickmen so much they would become the canonical versions of Edlock Holmes and Watson. As Fate of Thingy continued to expand across multiple parts, all further development was in stickman form — and continued to be on the bright yellow legal pad Edd had acquired from his mother's workplace, until we ran out of that and had to start using bog-standard notebook paper.

So yeah. Stickmen are important to me, as ridiculous as that might sound. I have an intense, nostalgic and emotional attachment to them. And thus I think they should continue to be an important part of this blog. I will, therefore, from hereon, endeavour to provide you with a stupid little doodle to accompany each post (except when I really can't be bothered). Is that enough of a commitment for you? Well, tough shit, because it's all you're getting.

Nein!
Ja!
Nein!
Ja!
ACHTUNG!

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#oneaday Day 992: Making Excuses

It came to my attention last night that some people were missing the stickmen cartoons. This was nice to know, as I'd always wondered if anyone actually found them entertaining or not and occasionally found myself suffering from a bit of a "crisis of confidence", thinking they were crap, not funny or whatever. I'm usually fairly confident in my creative work, but I think at the back of my mind was the knowledge that bad webcomics often get ridiculed, and I really don't like being ridiculed. Call me irrational like that.

Of course, the pretty limited audience this blog has probably means that the vast majority of the Internet had no idea of the existence of that cartoons, so there's that.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the cartoons, if I'm honest. I genuinely love the characters I've created, even if they're silly, stereotypical and don't have any really meaningful depth. It's also nice to occasionally drop in a guest character based on someone I know — that has never been received negatively, even though I spend much too long worrying about whether their stickmen representation actually looks anything like them. (note to self: they're stickmen. If you think you're going to make them realistic, you are Doing It Wrong.)

At the same time, it adds a bunch of extra work to my daily blog posts (you'd be surprised how much I agonise over getting those crap drawings just right) and also means that if I'm away from my Mac — which has the software I use to make the comic layouts — I can't do them easily. It irks me somewhat if I've started doing them daily again and then suddenly have to leave a gap. Sometimes I end up not starting again after said gap, which I think is probably what happened last time. Or possibly just laziness and/or starting to write when I just really wanted to go to bed.

I also get a bit hung up on trying to tie the strip and the blog post together, and sometimes there's nothing funny in the post I can spin out into a comic. In particular if I'm writing about something personal or upsetting, cracking a joke about it can feel a little flippant or insensitive. (Can you be insensitive towards yourself? I guess so.) The solution to this is, of course, simply to not be too attached to the concept of the strip and the post having anything to do with one another, and dealing with situations where penis jokes might not be appropriate as they arise.

So there you are. Those are the things that go through my head regarding the stickmen, and the reasons why sometimes I stop for a little while. Since they apparently have a small but dedicated following, however, I will certainly do my best from this point on to keep them coming! (hurr hurr, you said "coming" — Phillipe)

#oneaday Day 695: Where Are They?

Longtime viewers of this blog are probably wondering where my cast of stickmen characters has got to (besides the top of the page and the sidebar, obviously). Newer visitors are probably wondering why on Earth there is a parade of stickmen at the top of the page and in the sidebar.

You'll be pleased (or disappointed) to know that I will be resurrecting the stickmen images for posts starting in the New Year. I haven't yet decided if I'll do a comic every day or only on certain days, or if I'll simply use individual images. I've tried both over the course of the last while, and both have their pros and cons.

I'm not going to make any excuses as to why I'm not doing them at the moment — they may not look like very much, but those images and comic strips take a surprising amount of time to put together, and since getting a lot busier I just didn't have the energy to keep up with doing them and a blog post every day, to be frank. To put it in a simpler, arguably more honest way, I couldn't be arsed.

Now, however, I'm twiddling my thumbs in anticipation of potential new work which may be coming my way from several sources from the New Year onwards. As such, it's got me thinking about flexing my creative muscles a bit more. I've already mentioned that half-finished novel sitting in Google Docs waiting for me to 1) figure out where it's going and 2) finish it. And indeed I've been doing sporadic bits of work on that — though haven't yet got into the "habit" of working on it regularly. Alongside this, I've been experimenting with making YouTube videos of bullet hell shooters — fun, though I anticipate my audience being somewhat limited! And, since I invested a fair amount of my own time, effort and soul into those silly little characters you see at the top of the page, I figured it's time to bring them back.

Creating characters is an odd experience. When you create a character, whether it's a comic book stick figure, a character in a novel, a roleplaying character in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign or any other persona, you can't help thinking of them as your own "children" in a way. You become attached to them — though not necessarily to the degree that you want them to always succeed, particularly in the case of novel characters prone to attracting disastrous situations — and you feel like you "know" them.

Such is the case with the stick figures. There's obviously me, though my abstract representation resembles me in the most superficial manner possible my emphasising what I consider to be my most prominent characteristic — my beard. And from there the others sort of took on a life of their own.

Alex didn't originally have a name and existed purely because I wanted to put a redhead in there. She's often there to provide a splash of colour to an otherwise monochrome scene. Her name came from me asking on Twitter what I should call her, and a (male) friend named Alex politely requesting she be named after him. Alex is relatively normal, though the character trait that she only reads Grazia, not books, was set relatively early in the characters' lifespan as "speaking parts".

Lucy, first seen in this post, originally had black hair, but her overexcitable nature was present and correct. She didn't show up with her blonde hair until considerably later. (I think. I admit I didn't look that hard. But after a cursory glance, that appeared to be the first time Blonde Lucy showed up.) From this we could arguably deduce that one of those is not her natural hair colour. That or I simply decided she'd look better as a blonde, particularly as her dizziness as a character conforms to the "blonde stereotype". (Note: I don't actually believe the blonde stereotype. But Lucy does, and is happy to conform to it.)

Phillipe (don't you dare call him Philippe or he'll hurt you) was an odd one. His distinctive, fixed facial expression came about from how my buddy Edd and I used to draw stickman characters shouting, screaming or generally being noisy back when we were at secondary school. The idea to have him permanently stuck like that coupled with a predilection for getting his knob out at every opportunity was alarmingly quick to occur to me. He's generally used to say things that are a bit closer to the bone (no pun intended) than the other characters might. His name is the result of another Twitter poll, and privately amusing because his personality is pretty much the exact opposite of the person he's named after.

Those four are the main cast who have been present in pretty much every crude drawing on this blog in one form or another. Other recurring characters such as the Money-Bot (originally introduced as a pun on the term "monetization") and Des (whose existence is explained in great detail here) have come and gone and, like the "core four", have taken on something of a life of their own.

So yes, they will be back. As I slowly piece my brain back into some semblance of order — not particularly helped by recent setbacks relating to employment — these facets of my personality (because that's what they are, let's face it) will be making a resurgence. Because for all the pain in the arse it is to draw them every day, having them there is oddly comforting; creating them strangely cathartic.

#oneaday, Day 1: Dawn of the First Day

I am aware of the factual inaccuracies in the title of this post. It is neither my first day writing #oneaday blogs, nor is it dawn. However, there are two reasons for naming it as I have: firstly, any excuse to get in a Zelda: Majora's Mask reference, and secondly, since the other members of the 2011 One A Day Project have all started today at number 1, I thought I would join them so as not to look too much like the grizzled old veteran that I am. Rest assured, there will be celebrations when I reach the end of my first year, though. Assuming I remember. (19th of January. Remind me.)

As it's a new year, a new beginning and a shiny new number "1" at the top of this post, I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce myself to those new readers that the One A Day Project has hopefully brought to my blog. Those of you I already know, bear with me for today and I'll get back to slagging things off tomorrow.

I'm Pete. I'm 29, and unemployed. 2010 was the worst year of my life, taking in the end of my employment, the end of my marriage, the end of my finances and the end of my independent status as Someone Who Does Not Live With Their Parents. All of the above are related to one another, at least in passing.

But as 2010 was a year of endings, January 1st 2011 seems like a good time to think about new beginnings. And what better way to consider new beginnings than with some new year's resolutions? Here goes, then.

I will blog every day from January 1st, 2011 until December 31st, 2011 (and possibly beyond) come rain, come shine, come sickness, come health, come on holiday, come in a sock (sorry), come not really having any time or being really drunk of an evening. I've kept up this daily blog since January 19th last year and I have no intention of stopping now.
I will go for a run three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday where possible. Those of you who have been following me for a while will know that towards the end of the year I successfully completed the Couch 2 5K programme, which turned me from a fat bastard into a fat bastard who can run for up to 30 minutes non-stop, albeit quite slowly.
I will embark on a wide array of erotic adventures with a bevy of voluptuous redheads, all of whom either are or at least vaguely resemble Christina Hendricks.*
~~I will fuck up the tax man good and proper.~~ I will attempt to figure out why the taxman still thinks I am self-employed despite having gone from full-time employment to unemployment in the last few years. Then I will fuck him up good and proper.**
I will get a job.***
I will earn enough money to get somewhere to live that has a living room big enough for a Kinect and Dance Central.****
I will speak my mind and not bottle stuff up like a +5 Cauldron of Resentment.
I will complete Final Fantasy XII.
I will make a sizable dent in my gaming Pile of Shame.*****
I will not play World of Warcraft.
I will actually finish writing the story I've had stuck in my head for the last ten years and which has gone through more rewrites than an aborted metaphor involving something that gets rewritten a lot. (12,000 words so far. On the story, not the metaphor. That would be a metaphor of Dickensian proportions.)
I will have no shame in my diverse, occasionally cheesy, occasionally really really gay musical tastes.******
I will stop being so gay on Twitter.*******

I think that's quite enough to be getting on with, and all of them are totally achievable. Setting yourself realistic targets is the key.

So, now that you know a little bit about me (and will undoubtedly learn more either by reading back over my past entries, which I promise I will do a "Best Of" one day when I can be bothered) you're probably confused by that comic strip at the top of each post. Spoiler: I am also a little confused by the comic strip at the top of each post. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I think it's Allie Brosh's fault. That minx. But suffice to say, yes, I have made the questionable decision to accompany every blog post with a silly little cartoon drawn in the Mac equivalent of MS Paint and laid out with frankly unnecessary care and attention using Comic Life Magiq.

You'll notice a few recurring faces in these strips. Here are the most common ones:

Pete

Pete is a 29-year old unemployed ~~bum~~ ~~geek~~ writer aiming to make his way in the world. He lives in a featureless apartment of indeterminate size with several other peculiar characters and seems to attract surreal situations to himself like moths to a Dali-esque flame.

Alex

Alex believes herself to be "the sensible one", despite having a boy's name. However, Pete isn't convinced that she is as sensible as she likes to make out due to two fact: firstly, she reads Grazia magazine, and secondly, she has slept with Phillipe on more than one occasion.

Phillipe

Phillipe gets terribly upset when people spell his name wrong, but it's often difficult to tell due to his odd facial expression, acquired when he discovered that the stories your parents tell you about "sticking like it" are all true. He is also a massive pervert, and gets his penis out at every opportunity.

Lucy

Lucy hates blonde stereotypes but unfortunately conforms to every single one of them. She is not terribly bright and occasionally descends into saying text-speak out loud. She is, however, a cheerful soul and is rarely seen without a smile on her face. She likes coffee and kittens. Not together.

Des

The personification of Pete's "black cloud of despair" which he felt on numerous occasions throughout the last year. Des eventually became his own independent entity and made friends with Alex over a cup of tea. Pete has defeated him once, but he occasionally pops in for a social visit.

The MoneyBot

The MoneyBot's sole purpose is to monetize everything. Unfortunately, a glitch in his programming means that he only ever attempts to monetize people—a process which he carries out by shooting people in their genitals with a green Monetizing Ray. The process is reversible, and he may be a dream.

There. Consider yourself primed for the year ahead. Good luck to my fellow One A Day Project bloggers. And readers? Don't forget to pay the official site a visit and donate either your time or money to Cancer Research UK or To Write Love On Her Arms to show your appreciation for everyone's awesome creativity.

Thank you!

* A guy can dream, huh.

** Note to overzealous policemen: I will not actually fuck up "the taxman" because I am aware the Inland Revenue employs many people from diverse cultures who could probably take me in a fight if they all teamed up and formed a Constructocon.

*** Subject to the "job market", or whatever people blame the lack of jobs on.

**** It's wrong that I'm a little too enamoured with Dance Central, I know. But honey, I got rhythm that I haven't used yet.

***** Subject to Anything Really Good coming out.

****** Already achieved. I am listening to Ke$ha while writing this post.

******* I make no promises as to being able to fulfil this one, particularly while @acronkyoung and @NintendoTheory are around. No homo.

#oneaday, Day 215: Who?

Front page of ever-reliable rag The Sun today bore a story about David and Victoria Beckham sacking fourteen members of their staff. That's a whole third of their staff! Disasteriffic! How terrible! How awful! How nightmarish! It must be so tough for them!

Bollocks, of course, and certainly not front-page newsworthy. The thing that comes to mind any time I hear any kind of celebrity gossip is one of those awkward conversations you have with your parents where they tell you all about someone whose name you've never heard before but you're apparently supposed to know everything about, including their medical history, any past indiscretions, marital status and whether or not they or anyone close to them has died recently.

It's easy to do, of course. We all do it. We all talk about our friends to other people as if they know them. Because we know them, we refer to them with a comfortable familiarity. It sometimes doesn't cross our mind that certain people in one group of friends might not know who "Jeff" or "Calin" from another group of friends are.

But with celebrity, it's a different matter. People who are into that sort of thing talk about celebrities as if they are their friends. They excitedly talk about their idols on a first-name basis, assuming you know who on earth they're blathering on about. Worse, sometimes they use nicknames dreamed up by tabloids that make it even more difficult to work out who it is they're on about. If they're involved in football, it'll probably be the first syllable of their surname followed by either "-o" or "-s". Sometimes, it's a reference to pop culture long forgotten, or never known about at all by some people. Does Victoria Beckham still get called "Posh"? I bet she does by someone out there.

I still find it difficult to understand the fascination with the minutiae of these people's lives, though. Fair enough if you want to follow the career of someone who is interesting, or does something that you find particularly stimulating. But these people are not, in most cases, close personal friends. How is the fact that poor old Posh 'n' Becks are having to sack a whole third of their staff to "save money" newsworthy? What are we supposed to get out of that story? Envy? Because that's a Deadly Sin, I believe. Are we supposed to feel compassion or empathy for them? Because the vast majority of us don't have one person to sack, let alone fourteen. Let alone fourteen people being only a third of our "staff".

David Beckham doing something exciting and footbally. That might be newsworthy. On the sports pages, not the front page. Victoria Beckham doing something exciting and pop-starry. That, too, might be newsworthy. On the entertainment pages, not the front page.

Also in the news today: A man saved his daughter from a bear pit. That's pretty heroic. Why isn't that on the front page of The Sun? Because people are more interested in the life and times of poor little rich kids.

#oneaday, Day 211: The Only Art Lesson You Will Ever Need

"I can't draw!" I hear you cry, assuming you're shouting about not being able to draw at this exact moment, which you probably aren't. But no matter! Help is at hand. You don't have to be an excellent artist to be able to draw things that are distinctive and interesting. I'm going to let you into the secrets of my own craft which you have doubtless seen throughout this blog. The art of the stickman.

I'll tell you a secret: I can draw. Sort of. Not great, and I've never studied it or had any particularly formal training. But I can sort of draw. I just choose not to when it comes to the pictures on this blog, because ever since secondary school when my good buddy Ed "Roth Dog" Padgett and I discovered that stickmen are actually the most expressive things in the universe, we've often chosen to stick to stickmen, no pun intended. On a side note, Roth actually can draw, as you'll see here.

But anyway. Let's begin.

Step 1: Pose

When you're drawing a stick person, the first thing you need to consider is what they're going to be doing. Since the body is very simple and you're going to spend most of the time on the face, this is a simple matter of making a quick decision. Most people stick to the traditional model (figure 1, but you can get stick figures doing all manner of weird and wonderful things (figure 2) even before you've put a face on them. Remember to add feet. Feet make poses more versatile. Adding feet to your stickmen is the difference between standing casually and tapping its foot impatiently.

Step 2a: Normal faces

The next step, which a lot of people leave out, stopping at step 1, is to add a face to your stickman. You only need three lines to put a face on a stickman. Two vertical lines for eyes, and one horizontal or curvy line for a mouth. These lines can be modified to produce a variety of expressions (figure 3).

Fig. 3: Possible stickman facial expressions.

Step 2b: Open-mouthed faces

If one of the closed-mouth expressions just isn't expressing things expressively enough for you, then you may wish to consider opening your stickman's mouth. What you put inside your stickman's mouth can make a large amount of difference to what the expression means (figure 4).

Step 2c: Exaggerated faces

If none of the above faces are quite getting across what you are trying to say with your stickman, then simply throw any semblance of realism out of the window and do something ridiculous. These are stickmen, after all. They can do whatever the hell you damn well want (figure 5).

Step 3: Detail

Once you've come up with a pose and a face, all you need to do is add some individuality to the stickman by adding some detail. This is normally done via the medium of hair. Creating different stickman characters is a simple matter of giving them different hairstyles. No-one will ever notice that they have the same faces and poses. You can even change a stick person's gender at the drop of a hat simply by changing the hairstyle (figure 6).

And with just those three steps, you are officially done! You have created your own unique character. Congratulations. You're a cartoonist.

#oneaday, Day 204: Inconveniences of the Modern Age

It's difficult to argue with the fact that, on the whole, life is somewhat better now than it was in, say, the Middle Ages. People live longer, we have more things to do, we are healthier, we have things to keep us entertained and we can travel around pretty much the whole world on a whim.

So, unlike the Middle Ages, where inconveniences tended to be along the lines of "Agatha has consumption" (whatever that is) or "My liege! Thy oxen have run riot throughout the city streets!" or "My, verily that courtesan was riddled with the plague! Farewell, my sweet!", we now have our own set of things to grind our teeth about. It's something of a sign of the times. And living in the first world.

Peculiar Bureaucracy

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy," said Oscar Wilde and possibly some other people as well. And indeed it appears to be true. When it is impossible to cancel one's broadband contract in advance because "policy states" that they have a 14-day notice period, one naturally points out that it is well above 14 days before one will be leaving one's property. But no, "policy states" that a 14-day notice period means exactly that: they will turn it off after exactly 14 days. And not only that, they will charge £26 for the privilege of a man flipping a switch.

This is Orange Home, incidentally. Don't use them. They're rubbish. And they have stupid policies. To put this in some context, I phoned BT to cancel my phone line the same day and they were quite happy to cancel it more than 14 days in advance.

Companies That Still Use Fax Machines

We're in the 21st century! We have email on our phones! We have constantly-on Internet connections! We have printers! So why the bloody hell do I need to use a fax machine in order to send a timesheet to you? You know a scanned copy actually looks better than a faxed copy, right? And you can print it out and everything!

My Battery Is Dead

Have you noticed as phones have got more useful and multi-functional that their daily lifespan has shortened significantly? I remember having a shitty old Motorola brick that sent text messages and made phone calls and that was about it—this was pre-Snake days, even—and it would last about five years before needing a charge. Now? I have to budget my battery life.

Hai! This Costs Money!

Remember when stuff used to be free? You used to be able to get extra bits and pieces for games online courtesy of developers and mod communities. (I know you still can.) Now you have to pay to read The Times online.

There are some areas in which this is a good thing. Online journalists should be paid for their work, and if the stuff's out there for free, then it's not going to be easy for companies to pay them. But at the same time, that stuff which you pay for needs to be worthwhile.

When you have to pay an extra 50p to pay by card in the Chinese restaurant, or pay 30p to use the toilets at a railway station, you know something's wrong somewhere.

We Will Get Back To You

Remember when email was mooted as the simple, almost-instant communication method of the future? Have you tried sending an email to your local council recently? "We will get back to you within 10 days."

That's a long time. I could have actually gone into the council offices several times during that time period. At least ten times, in fact. Given that my query wasn't an especially complicated one, would it kill them to quickly turn around a reply? And not a copy-and-paste form response, an actual reply? Even if it's just "Yes". I'd be more than happy with that. (Assuming "Yes" was the answer I wanted.)

#oneaday, Day 203: Things To Do Instead Of Tidying Your House

Your house is a mess! It's a disgrace. And yet somehow you don't feel that now is the correct time to do anything about it. There are far more important things to be doing or thinking about. Such as the following:

Going for a walk

You haven't been outside all day! And it's, what, lunchtime? You need some Fresh Air. Your mum and dad always told you that Fresh Air was good for you when you were little, so therefore it must still be good for you right now. So why not go outside and get some of that Fresh Air? It's super-fresh! Mmm! Feel the freshness invigorating your lungs and spirit! Don't you feel just a little bit more alive, especially now the stale odour of last night's curry isn't infiltrating your nostrils? Why not stay out for an hour or two? Go to the park! Sit and stare into space for a while. Fresh Air is good! The more of it you get, the better!

Going shopping

This is an even more fantastic idea! Not only will you get Fresh Air on the journey to the shops, but you'll also get Stuff once you arrive at the shops! That means once you arrive back home, you'll have Stuff to find homes for! If you want to go shopping on the pretence of doing something useful for the somewhat medieval state of your hovel, then you could always buy one or more cleaning products while you're out! Fresh Air and Stuff! Awesome.

Phoning all your friends

You don't generally like talking on the phone. In fact, you talk on the phone so little that your BT phone bill is perpetually in credit, meaning that they constantly owe you money. So why not use some of that credit and phone those people that you haven't spoken to or seen for a while? I bet they have lots of awesome news to tell you! And you can joke about how untidy your house is. Plus, you never know, they might actually want to come over. And that will give you an actual reason to tidy your house. Because there's no point tidying up without a reason now, is there?

Seeing all your friends

Perhaps one of the friends you phoned is having a bad time and wants to rant over a coffee. Perhaps someone who is always busy is having a rare day off and wants to see you. Perhaps you feel like getting some Fresh Air, and conveniently there's a friend you haven't seen for ages. So why not get some of that awesome Fresh Air and see your awesome friend? Yeah.

Turning on the television and staring at it

It doesn't matter what's on, because you won't really be watching it. It could be Jeremy Kyle. It could be Ben 10. It could be Last of the Summer Wine. If the last channel you left your TV on was Dave, it's probably Top Gear. Why not sit yourself down on your couch and enjoy some mindless entertainment? It doesn't matter if you don't normally watch the programme in question. It's on. And you owe it to yourself and to Culture to find out what all the fuss is about.

Making an overelaborate sandwich

Your kitchen is messy, but you're hungry. What to do? What to do? Make a sandwich! Rummage through your fridge and cupboards for the most disparate luncheon products you can find, slap them all together between two pieces of bread that you don't think is mouldy, add at least one condiment or sauce, place it on a plate (or, if all your plates are dirty, in a bowl; if all your bowls are dirty, in a frying pan; if all your pans are dirty, in a bit of kitchen roll; if you have no kitchen roll, just pick the damn thing up) and then retire to your couch (where you may optionally turn on the TV and stare at it) and enjoy your creation before realising that your bizarre combination of cooked meats, chilli sauce, some unidentifiable fruits and vegetables you found in the baskets at the bottom of your fridge and mayonnaise doesn't really go. But you've made it now; so you're damn well going to eat the whole thing if only to be able to tell people about your magnificent creation.

By now it must be bedtime. So go to bed satisfied in the knowledge that you couldn't have possibly had a nicer day, and of course all the tidying up can wait until tomorrow. When you'll go through this whole process again.

#oneaday, Day 196: Things The World Needs Significantly Less Of

The world is full of "stuff". Some of it is good. Examples of good stuff include trifle, Spotify, refrigerators, kung po chicken, those marker pens that smell of fruit, pianos (so long as they are in tune), friends, hot chocolate with whipped cream, people who are nice, digital cameras, the Squadron of Shame, Civilization IV, headphones with comfortable earpieces, that Original Mint Source shower gel (so long as you don't get it on your bellend or up your arse), lamb tikka dhansak, Twitter, gin and tonic and, of course, the music from Space Channel 5.

But there are just as many—if not more—things that the world really doesn't need any more of. In fact, some of these things I'd argue the world doesn't really need at all. Because, in many cases, we got along just fine without them before they were invented.

Here is a selection of things the world could do with significantly less of.

1. Redundant information signs on motorways

"QUEUE CAUTION," says the ungrammatical sign in bold, orange, backlit capital letters. Your car is not moving. Not because you stopped to read the sign. No, your car is stopped because it's in a queue. You were aware of the fact your car was in a queue long before a sign informed you of this fact. As it happens, since the sign informing you that yes, you are in a queue appeared approximately two miles after the queue started, it feels somewhat like it's mocking you. As such, you decide to shout at the sign.

The sign does not respond.

2. Suit jackets with fake pockets

Clothes either have pockets or they don't. If you're a girl and you like wearing pretty dresses, chances are you don't have pockets very often. As such, you may well carry a handbag for the express purpose of carrying around your "stuff". Said pretty dresses don't tend to have pretend pockets for some unspecified purpose.

Gentlemen, on the other hand, are used to having pockets. The typical gentleman's attire features pockets on the trousers at the very least, and jackets usually have pockets as well. So when a suit that looks like it has pockets but doesn't comes along, that's a sure-fire ticket to frustration city. Particularly when you try and put something in the jacket pocket instead of the trouser pocket because when you put things in your trouser pockets your trousers fall down because you forgot to bring a belt and you can't put anything in the jacket pocket because it isn't actually a pocket despite looking like one and ARRRGH HOLD THIS FOR A MINUTE WILL YOU?

3. People who talk about fashion as if it's a science

Shut up. Just stop talking bollocks. People can wear whatever they want. Most people have a pretty good idea that wearing something in a fluorescent colour is probably going to make you stand out a bit, and wearing strappy shoes with big heels may well make you 1) fall over and 2) have hurty feet. When some jumped-up hussy comes on TV explaining to everyone that the particular shade of brown you see in front of you is the "perfect shade for summer" (despite it being purple last year, and yellow the year before) everyone should yell, as one, "FUCK OFF".

Fashion is not a science. You know what is a science? Science.

4. The adjectival phrase "must-have"

If you took the term "must-have" at face value and immediately purchased everything described as such, you would be very poor indeed. "Must-have" items often tend to be expensive and/or pointless, and there is some crossover with the world of people who talk about fashion as if it's a science.

No, that handbag is not a "must-have" item. It is something that someone rich who likes gaudy silver handbags might enjoy purchasing.

Genuinely "must-have" items for acceptable functioning in modern society include: water, underpants, trousers/skirts, shirts/blouses/t-shirts, shoes, a toilet (arguable, given the stench coming from some doorways in Southampton on a Friday night), soap, deodorant, food of some description.

5. Extremism

If you are a terrorist, you are quite possibly an extremist. You hold an extreme viewpoint, and in your case, you're prepared to die for it.

But extremism isn't just about terrorism. It's also about the people who bring out the tired old "Britain is full!" line when talking about immigration. The people who believe that all Muslims are terrorists. The people who use the phrase "YOU'RE IN ENGLAND, SPEAK ENGLISH". And on the other end of the spectrum, people who describe anyone with an opposing viewpoint to their own as a "Nazi". People who go on a march for a cause which isn't entirely clear to anyone except themselves. People who protest for the sake of protesting, rather than actually having something worthwhile to protest about.

All of you, just stop it. Shut up. You both sound ridiculous. And as for you, Captain Terrorist? Attention-seeking of the highest order. Grow up.

6. Companies whose purpose their own employees can't explain

I've told this story a number of times before, but there was a time when I did some temping for a local "loss adjusting" company. On a side note, this was the only job I've had which literally bored me to tears on several occasions. And that's not an exaggeration.

Anyway, the point is this: this company dealt with issues so boring that no-one else would ever want anything to do with them, let alone have a burning desire to enter that profession. But the sheer string of companies that charged exorbitant rates per hour that their "cases" went through was ridiculous. In one case relating to tree-related subsidence on a property adjacent to a Transport For London-owned railway, the clients made a claim to the insurance company, who contacted the loss adjusters, who sent in some engineers to look at the damage, who sent in some builders to give a quote for repairs who hired some solicitors to sue Transport for London for the costs and then hired some draftsmen to write up said costs who then hired some other solicitors to recover the costs from someone else who then… I fell asleep by this point.

Ask an employee of a company like this "what do you do?" and if they spend more than three seconds thinking or going "umm", then that company doesn't really need to exist.

7. Doorstep salesmen

"Hi! Would you like to…"

"No. Goodbye."

*SLAM*

There are many, many more things the world could do with significantly less of. Evil people. Cheaters. Assholes. Murderers. Men who walk into shops with their shirts off. R&B singers. Jedward fans. Types of cigarette. Brands of bottled water. Rapists. People who flash their fullbeams at you when you're in the right-hand lane going 90+ mph overtaking people on your left. Onions. County council employees. People who use the word "fuckin'" in spoken sentences the same way people use "lol" when writing. People who use "lol" as punctuation. Aniseed.

I could go on. But I won't.

#oneaday, Day 187: Flying Solo

Ever been out on the town by yourself? It's generally a miserable experience, particularly if you're not the most sociable of people in the first place. And by that I mean the sort of person who doesn't generally talk to strangers at the best of times.

I've done it a couple of times, though not for a while. It generally goes something like this:

Step 1: Claustrophobia

You're in your house/flat/bedsit/hovel/cupboard. You have been stuck in said accommodation for some time now. By yourself. It's getting rather tiresome. Perhaps you're living by yourself. Or perhaps you live with people you don't get on with. Or perhaps you live with people who are never there. Whatever the reason, you're in by yourself, you're fed up and you feel like the walls are closing in a bit. So you decide that it would be a really great idea to go out. Even though none of your friends are free, because you only decided to go out a minute ago and when you texted them a minute ago, half of them didn't reply and the other half politely requested that you give them a bit more notice next time. So much for spontaneity.

Step 2: Confidence

You get dollied up and step out of your front door. You're going out! By yourself! Feels good, doesn't it? You're not tied to social conventions that require you to be in a group of at least 3 people (less than 3 and you're going "with" someone, which is perilously close to "date" territory)—you're doing things your way!

Step 3: Adventurousness

You're out by yourself and there's no-one with you to judge you. Perhaps you'll try something you've never done before, because there's no-one you know to mock you, laugh at you, berate you or tell you you're doing it wrong—or worse, do it better than you. Perhaps you decide to try smoking, because you've never done it before, or perhaps you talk to a random stranger in the street, or go down a road you've never been down before or—hell!—go to a pub or club you've never been to before.

Step 4: Arrival

You arrive at the place you decided to go to. You purchase yourself a drink and find yourself a good "spot" in which to observe the action. If this is a pub, this should be a table with a good view of everyone else who is there with their friends. Or possibly a stool at the bar, where you can turn your back on the rest of society. If this is a club, this should be a seat at the edge of the dance floor, where you can look longingly at the people who are probably having more fun than you.

Step 5: Realisation

"I've come out by myself. That was a really stupid thing to do."

Step 6: Depression

You stay in your spot, watching everyone around you actually having a good time—or so you believe, anyway; in actual fact they might be having a miserable time, just dancing while they do it—and slump into a bit of an alcohol-fueled depression.

Step 7: The Second Wind

You decide that no, you're not going to let this defeat you. You get up and maybe decide to try a dance by yourself.

Step 8: The Bad Idea

"That was a terrible idea. Now everyone is looking at me like I'm an idiot."

Step 9: Time To Go Home

"I hope the bouncers and the people on the door don't recognise me and realise I've only been here fifteen minutes."

Step 10: Regret

"That was the dumbest thing I've ever done. I'm never doing that again."

But you will. Just to see if it's any different next time.