World Cup
June 12th, 2006 at 23:59

Hooray! Another blog entry proving how dynamic, up-to-date and “web 2.0″ the “blogosphere” is!

I’m quite an upbeat person – and something of an optimist. You could spend a year giving me bad news, or dropping massive hints that suggest a bad outcome, yet I’d be none-the-wiser. My ignorant optimism will keep my spirits high.

For example, I used to think that the Liberal Democrats were alright, 100% of the time- ignoring the fact that the there’s a large faction to the right of the party (“Orange bookers“), and the old leader ate (ie: drank) children (ie: alcohol) for breakfast (ie: breakfast).

Football is a completely different matter. Unlike the rest of the country, I can clearly see that we don’t have a chance in hell of winning the world cup. The signs are all there:

• The star player has an injury
• The use of the word “we” when describing the team suggests that I had a hand in picking and training the team… and I don’t know anything about football
• England are rubbish at football

I’m one of those fickle people who only become interested in football for two weeks every two years- much like how I’ll be interested in tennis for approximately an hour before Tim Henman loses at Wimbledon again. This said, for my two weeks of “slight interest in football”, I’ve really tried to enter into the spirit of things: I’ve downloaded and printed out a “World Cup Wall Chart“, so I can chart the progress of the England team, and I’ve cut out the sections for the semi-finals and final, so not to delude myself.

I’m not comfortable with patriotic aspects of football supporting- I’ve nothing but contempt for people who hang England flags outside their house. I hate being English, as not only do we have a history of oppression and colonialism, we have a rubbish flag (that you can’t even hang upside down to dissent, because of its rotational symmetry).

The worst thing is that the two weeks of patriotism every two years is just a hint at what will happen when the Queen dies, when we’ll be required by law to be patriotic. It’s almost like a dress rehearsal- everyone has flags and there’s inevitably a massive national depression. The whole nation will be dusting down their England flags for non-football reasons, and painting over the name of the local football club written on the middle stripe (“LUTON TOWN” might appear to be a bit poor-taste), and we’ll be forced to endure non-critical tributes and changes in schedule to the advertised programmes.

My money’s on the Czech Republic to win, because I like the obvious WWII references- especially if they play Germany in the final and Germany occupy their half for most of the game.

Comments(4)

Best of all the animals!
June 11th, 2006 at 16:08

I’ve had the most unusual morning… I’ve had a lesson in horse riding. Above you can see a photo of me sitting on Patch.

I was a bit worried on the way there, as I was expecting the instructor to be really middle class. I was wearing my “Hated by the Daily Mail” t-shirt, and I’d bought my monocle with me. Thankfully, JD and Charlie persuaded me to leave the monocle in the car, and the horse woman (technical term) only seemed to glare at my t-shirt whilst she read the slogan.

It was slighly unsettling to have to fill in a form absolving responsibility for any injuries I might recieve- although it was more unsettling when I realised I might have to dress up like a ponce on a horse. In the end, I only had to wear the riding shoes and a hat… and thankfully it was more like a bicycle helmet than a aristocrat’s brimmed ponce hat.

As I climbed on to my horse (or “saddled up” as they say in films), I was lead to a sort of “yard” area- with a horse underneath me doing the leg work, obviously. I was having enough trouble staying afloat. I looked back to see JD and Charlie coping slightly better than I was… despite Charlie being sat on top of a horse that was at least two feet taller than Patch.

We each had a handler (horsemonkey?) to keep an eye on us, and instruct us on a one to one basis. What this essentially meant that the horse was on a rope (technical term) and made to walk in circles, with me nervously sitting on top. Clearly horseplay was going to be trickier than I thought.

I kept being asked if I had any questions- I didn’t really, as their teaching was quite accurate. However, in a bid to make it look like I was paying attention, I thought I’d better ask at least one or two questions. “How many gears does a horse have?” got a surprisingly thoughtful answer. Apparently the answer is “four” (walk, trot, canter, and gallop- I’ve been learning!). Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to ask how many horse-power a horse was (I think the answer is “one”). Or how to control the radio and air conditioning. I considered asking about how much memory a horse has, or how powerful its processor is, before realising that this would be stupid.

“That sideways walking they do during horse dancing during the olympics… what’s the deal?”, I asked in what was almost a question. Apparently it is an advanced maneuvour – probably the equivilent to a parallel park. It has a technical name that escapes me, although I was reminded that I’d have the opportunity to learn how to do it should I continue with lessons.

Not having any points of horse-reference, I found myself thinking of cars quite a bit- the horsemonkey looking after me told me in no uncertain terms that “it’s not a bike”, when I nearly made my horse do a wheely (and described it as such).

My horsemonkey’s instructions and encouragement were a bit odd. As she was in charge of both me and a horse, it got quite confusing at times who she was talking to. “C’mon, you can do it! Good lad!” she said a few times- I didn’t know whether she was talking to me, or the horse. It got worse when she posed a question, “are you okay?”… as that could be something you say to a horse to calm it down… although it turned out she was asking me.

The key focus of the lesson lesson was being able to practically stand up whilst on a horse (!). I didn’t realise I was quite advanced enough for tricks. It turns out that in order to “trot”, you need to be able to lift yourself up off of the saddle, whilst impossibly, also keeping your knees, feet and legs in the same position. And you needed to be able to move forwards without leaning forwards. It was difficult. Apparently you do this in time with the horse bouncing around a bit- when the scientist within me questioned whether it’s to be done in time with the horse, or inversely in time with the horse (so you cancel out the effects of the horse moving up and down) was met with blank looks.

As the lesson neared its end, I realised that the “jockey” (I was actually referred to as this) also needs to be fit… and not just the horse, as it was surprisingly tiring.

So to sum up, I refer you to a well known song (speakers on for the link):

I love horses? They’re not bad.

Best of all the animals? Perhaps.

They’re my friends? Patch was alright… although he had a tendancy to do that terrifying stamping his feet and expelling air through a closed mouth causing his mouth to wobble (you know what I mean).

Comments(8)

I love horses?
June 10th, 2006 at 15:02

JD and Charlie dropped a rather horse-shaped bombshell on me the other day. It turns out that on Sunday morning, I am going horse riding. Seriously. Horse riding.

It’s costing me £18 for a half hour “lesson” in “horse riding”- that’s sixty pence a minute, so I’m hoping that the odds of winning big riding a horse outweigh that of phoning up Deal or No Deal 30 times.

I can’t believe I’m going to ride a horse either.

Scarily, the term “lesson” has been used a lot when describing this. This means that rather than piss about riding a horse, taking various “comedy” photos of myself, I’ll actually have to learn about horses. I’ve been told I’ll have to take it “seriously”, so they’ll be no cowboy hats or making jokes about the undoubtably posh instructor.

The worst thing is, apparently JD and Charlie have done it before, with JD specifically telling the person when booking that I’d never ridden a horse before. I imagine this will mean whilst I’m being lead around on a string (to demonstrate what it’s like being a horse), they’ll be literally galloping away jousting or whatever. I blame my working class parents who never had the decency to take me on even just one fox hunt.

I “can’t wait”! Tune in tomorrow for the full story (and photos)

Comments(2)

More invigilating
June 8th, 2006 at 20:35

I like invigilating. It’s the easiest job in the world, short of being the sort of celebrity who gets paid just for standing next to a product, or perhaps some sort of assassin (it’s not like you can kill someone too much afterall).

The following takes place between June 6th and June 8th, on the days of the GCSE English examinations. My name is James O’Malley, and this is going to be the easiest job in my life. Tick, tock, tick, tock, etc.

Picture the scene: hundreds of kids working hard on the most important exams of their lives, scribbling away in the insane summer heat. With me standing at the side of the room looking bored. Oddly, it wasn’t as involved as I thought it would be, as only a handful of people have needed my expert help. In three days of invigilating, I have done the following:

• Escourted two people to the toilets, and humorously exclaiming “I can’t see any answerbooks in there”. Both times.
• Got someone a tissue.
• Got someone some extra paper.
• Found out the candidate number of a student.
• Tried to look important and like I was doing something to earn the silly money I’m being paid when the head teacher unexpectedly came into the hall.

Yeah, it’s a thrilling job. And no doubt the following exciting anecdotes will make it seem even more thrilling.

Today there was a girl who looked like she was a bit worried and had her hand up. I sauntered over prepared to tackle questions about the paper reference, when she simply did a sort of “whispering scream” at me- y’know what I mean, like when someone whispers, but manipulates their voice as if they were shouting. “Spider! … SPIDER!”, she said, before I grasped what she was trying to tell me. I had to go beyond the call of duty and capture a spider that was on the corner of her desk, and escourt it outside. As I was carrying it out, another invigilator (covigilator?) asked me why I hadn’t killed it. It was because of reasons I gave you the gist of the other day. I went rogue, and I was breaking protocol. I took the hostile (aka ’spider’) outside of the building, myself having to leave the building to do this, breaking every rule in the book.

During exams yesterday, I was in the main assembly hall, which aside from hosting exams, had hosted the end of year “prom” a few weeks (days?) earlier. As the exam got started, a helium-filled, star-shaped, mirrored-silver balloon slowly fell from the ceiling and on to the desk of a student. The student looked slightly bemused, to say the least.

Other than that, literally nothing has happend. I literally got paid yesterday for having a nice sit down for two hours. For a few minutes I attempted to look busy, by standing up and moving my head in a security-camera fashion, but gave up and slacked when I noticed the other invigilators sitting down.

It’s been quite nice having some time to think over the big questions in life with few distractions. Yesterday, whilst the A-level Dance written exam was taking place, I was pondering whether persuing a pragmatic foreign policy tangibly benefits a greater number of people than one based on morals and ideology. (My conclusion was that it wouldn’t). Then I tried to think of some good fart jokes for the blog and wondered who would be kicked out of Big Brother.

Comments(1)

Captain Opportunity Strikes Again
June 7th, 2006 at 18:17

David Cameron is fast becoming one of my favourite politicans. Why? Because I appreciate his well thought out policies and the values his party stands for? Of course not! He’s a smug twunt, but I like how I don’t even have to make an effort to spot his thinly (ie: un) veiled opportunism.

It was only back in February when I was moaning about his statement of principles, but he has since topped this with the ultimate “policy”: it’s nice when everyone’s happy, like. Notice how he doesn’t suggest any ways of actually doing this- I believe he said he wouldn’t fiddle with tax or give companies incentives to make their people happy. He’d just hope and said it’d be really really nice if they made things better for employees.

He’s done much more since this (blagging his way into David Beckham’s party as a guest of the Sun editor, for one), but two things he’s done today have struck me as particularly obvious cries for help. He’s put an England flag on his famous bike- and he’s attacked Radio 1 for “encouraging knifecrime” by playing hip-hop.

What delights me about this is a letter that was published in the BBC’s ‘Magazine Monitor‘ section, looking at the lyrics of some of the “favourite bands” Dave has mentioned whilst being an opportunistic publicity whore at other times during the last six months:

• “The knife wants to slit me/Do you think you can help me?” (The Smiths – I know it’s over)
• “Look into my eyes/I’m not coming back/So knives out” (Radiohad – Knives Out)
• “I got bombs, I got guns, I got brains” (Radiohead – Phillipa Checken)

I also like how the leader of the Conservative Party’s favourite bands are the same as my dad’s. That must mean that he’s old, uncool and out of touch.

So essentially, what I’m trying to say with all of this is: POLITICIAN IN ‘HYPOCRITE’ SHOCKER!

See inside pages for “Surprise as night follows day”, and “Pigeon seen in sky as life goes on, shock”.

Comments(0)

Animal Testing
June 5th, 2006 at 23:23

My friend Charlie is one of those animal rights terrorists nutters. She’s really anti-testing on animals and it annoys me. Not because I neccessarily disagree with what she stands for, but because I don’t know where I stand on animal testing. And everyone knows my opinion on the subject is the most valid and important.

Has anyone even asked the animals if they mind being tested? Maybe if they put a little bit more effort into revision they wouldn’t worry so much about it? I wouldn’t even mind invigilating the exams.
The trouble with testing is that apart from dalmations, it’s not a black and white issue. It’s not like “war or peace?”, “freedom or slavery?”- there’s decent arguments on both sides of the argument, like “freedom and liberty or stability?”, “unemployment or inflation” and “daddy or chips?”.

I like to consider myself an animal lover: I regularly visit a guinea pig webcam, and can’t bring myself to kill spiders when they get into my house, but on the other hand, I think its nice that they’re finding cures for bad illnesses… especially ones that I have a chance of getting. That’s why I’ll only donate to charities that may one day directly benefit me… breast cancer and poor people can get lost.

To this end, I think I can summarise my opinions on animal testing to be this: I’m against testing on cute or hilarious animals, but I don’t mind testing on ugly animals.

To clarify, here is a list of animals I would not like to see testing on:

• Guinea Pigs
• Hamsters
• Kittens and Cats
• Sheep
• Scottish cows with long hair
• Shetland Ponies
• Sausage dogs
• “Scotty” dogs
• Seals
• Badgers (the famous flash film has humanised them too much)

And here is a list of animals I wouldn’t mind testing on:

• Wasps
• Ugly dogs (Greyhounds, those ones with the triangular faces and flat eyes, etc)
• Disheveled Goats
• Rats (that don’t care much for their appearance)
• Hippy animal rights terrorists (especially for the testing of deodrants)
• Richard Littlejohn

I’m glad we got this settled once and for all, readers.

Comments(6)

Has hell frozen over?
June 4th, 2006 at 18:17

A free foreigner… with the Daily Mail?!

Comments(3)

19
June 3rd, 2006 at 01:00

It’s my birthday today, hooray! And before you pedants tell me that my own birthday is in fact on June 2nd… I’m writing this after midnight.

I’m trying my best to stretch this out into a fully-fledged blog update, but this year has been much more low-key than last year. Most of the action happend last night at the [spunge] gig (see below). I’ve spent today mostly recovering for getting in so late last night (aka: this morning).

The most surprising thing today has been how on the ball my mum is with regard to presents: she got me Less Than Jake’s new album, as well as the DVD of the last Rage Against the Machine concert. Impressive. Still a dull anecdote though.

Getting old is boring now, I think. I don’t have any new powers- like being able to smoke, learn to drive, or x-ray vision. I got socks as a present.
I think the only point I’m trying to make here is that it’s my birthday: hooray for me!

Comments(0)

[spunge]
June 3rd, 2006 at 00:18

Last night was excellent- I went all the way to Loughborough Student Union to see who a music magazine may prefix as “ska punksters”, [spunge]. The lowercase and square brackets is how it’s spelt- like Newsnight’s fashionable new logo now uses entirely lowercase. I dragged JD along too, as I knew that as a professional sound technician and someone who can play practically every instrument ever invented, he’d love three chords and shouting.

Getting there was a nightmare in itself- I assumed my photographic memory would perfectly remember the route that Google Maps plotted for me. In practice, I ended up driving through all of the “rough” parts of Leicester (you can judge roughness by the ratio of England flags to houses), and got a scenic tour of the ring-road. After coercing the surprisingly laid back JD into having a look at the map book, he managed to expertly guide me out of Leicester and back on to the A6. We got lost in Loughborough (or, Loogaborooga, to American readers), too. In all we (I’m unjustifiably spreading the blame) turned a journey that should have lasted an hour and a quarter into a two hour marathon.

We finally got to the venue at 10, thinking that we’d missed the support act. As luck, and an elected committee of lazy students who probably get up at around tea time, would have it, the thing didn’t kick off until quarter past ten.

Gandhi’s Flip-Flop, a band made up of seven people, three of whom played brass instruments, kicked off with a cover of Less Than Jake’s Gainsville, Rock City. As you may have guessed from my film reviews in the past, I’m not exactly Captain-Adjective when it comes to describing things. Essentially, it was good, as was the rest of their set: some original songs, another LTJ cover, Five State Drive, and what I assume is a cover-of-a-cover of Reel Big Fish’s cover of Take On Me. They ended on a cover of RBF’s Sell Out. I realise this means nothing to you if you don’t like modern American ska/punk, or are a member of the deaf community.

They were good, and I would probably have bought their CD had they had one on sale (for cheap), although the damning critic within me questions the choices of cover songs, as they don’t appear to be very relevant to the band performing. I mean, I like to imagine the band playing the song have the same “passion” for the lyrics the original band did. I can’t really imagine the seven piece British band going on a “five state drive” or singing passionately about their hometown of Gainsville in America. And they don’t strike me as a band that have had the opportunity to Sell Out yet. I could be wrong.

But don’t get me wrong, if you’re in this band and are searching Technorati for people talking about you, you were good! I enjoyed your set immensely! Well done!

[spunge] though, they were another story all together!

Yes, that’s right! Another positive story about seeing a good band!

I can’t remember what they opened with, but what I can remember was that they came on stage nice and earlier… quarter past eleven. They did a number of songs that I recognised. Prior to last night, I didn’t own any [spunge] albums, and was going on the strength of their one song I’d heard more than once, Jump on Demand. Throughout the show, they kept taunting the audience with arguably their most well known song, Kicking Pigeons. They’d play the introduction, then abruptly end just as the audience got “going”.

And “got going” they did. At the start, JD and myself were standing right in the middle of everyone, only a few feet from the stage. After their first song, the lead singer encouraged the audience to start a mosh pit. As their second song started up, people to the right of me started jumping about, so I shuffled to the left as I was being thrown about a bit. Unfortunately, the group of people to my left started doing the same, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by nutters “moshing”.

Needless to say, I fell over. It was terrifying. Thankfully, there appears to be a kind of moshing-ettiquette, where others around you help you back up, which was nice. This said, I still moved as fast as I possibly could to the sidelines.

Other songs they performed include Ego, Roots, and a punk cover of No Woman, No Cry.

They were dead good- and as I predicted, finished on the fantastic Jump on Demand, which had the audience going mental.

Well, almost all of the audience. I think I’ve got some sort of horrible problem. I can’t seem to express any sort of enjoyment when watching live music (publically, at least). I really enjoyed watching Spunge do their thing, but because I don’t get drunk, and have abnormally large amounts of dignitons (units of dignity), I couldn’t express this in the form of nodding my head, shouting “Wooo”, or even by cracking a smile. I’m just glad that the rest of the audience wasn’t like me, otherwise it’d be quite demotivating to see a couple of hundred people looking “appreciative”.

Long story short: [spunge] = excellent.

By the time we left, it was about half past one in the morning- this may not seem too late by seasoned concert-goers standards, but considering I was facing a lengthly drive home, I was tempted to either pull over in a lay-by and sleep, or attempt in a matter of minutes try and adapt my personality to be more out-going, make friends, and “crash” at some local’s “pad” overnight.

The drive back was much easier- for a start we followed the road signs. Part of the problem on the way there was that I decided to go right at a roundabout rather than left, contrary to the signs, because my mental image of the satellite photo I’d viewed hours earlier suggested turning right to go north… towards Loughborough.

It wasn’t without it’s problems, however- we ended up going through the centre of Leicester through the seemingly never-ending buses only area, including all the way through the bus station. I was quite concerned in case a pig, or indeed any other farm animal or even an officer of the law was to stop us. We were technically breaking traffic laws, and I don’t really want to get points on my license or end up in traffic-prison. Imagine the tailbacks on the queues in the cafeteria!

I got home in the end… at half past two. It was all good though.

Hopefully I’ll be going to see Capdown in a few weeks, so you can look forward to another thrilling gig report soon!

Comments(1)

“Mosh”
June 2nd, 2006 at 22:45

The other night JD and I went into Leicester in search of live punk music. A flyer had promised us four punk bands but when we turned up at the venue it was about as open as the KGB during a security alert. In other words, it was cancelled.

Undeterred, we instead went and figuratively pissed away money on an itBox quiz machine, before going for a wander around Leicester. “Let’s go in here!”, JD cried, whilst gesturing at a building with no windows and no fire exits.

Due to a combination of JD’s persuasive argument, “Let’s go in here“, and my lack of willpower, we ended up going in. Hilariously, it turned out to be a nightclub.

Bizarrely, I’ve written about Mosh before- on my second day of University, when I briefly lived in halls, I complained about the flyers I was given. Whilst I still stand by the points made in the blog entry, I think it’s interesting that I’m now a semi-regular patron at Polar Bear.

Mosh was weird though- you have to pay just to get in, and judging by the insides, I can’t really see what the appeal is. It was very dark. As it filled up, there were hundreds of people around us, drinking and shouting and things, and I felt a bit out of my depth, as to speak. Here is a picture of me looking out of my depth:

Excellently, we bumped into my old school friend Craig, who’s also a regular reader of this blog! Here’s a photo of him:

On the basement floor, there was a more pub-like place, albeit a pub that was decorated like a church (it had stained-glass windows and gargoyles). As JD and myself were sitting there, a woman was going around to each group of people trying to hawk a “music fanzine” that she’d “printed herself”. I hesitated putting on the most sarcastic voice I could muster and say “1994 called… they want their non-web-based citizen-journalism back”. It didn’t help that she was charging a pound (or two rounds of Hex Appeal in real terms) for something with such a vague title.

It was certainly an experience, to say the least. Maybe I’ll return again one day? I mean, if you consider the policy U-turn with regard to the Polar Bear pub, it’s not an impossibility. Tomorrow I could well be telling you how brilliant Thundercats was and how wacky I am for referencing Pat Sharp and Fun House.

Comments(2)