Cameron the ‘Green’ Conservative
February 11th, 2007 at 20:31

Surprise, surprise, it turns out that David Cameron did smoke cannabis at school after all. Whilst this doesn’t really shock me (“Young people in recreational drug use, shock”), I do find it slightly depressing that the leader of the Conservative Party has more street cred, or whatever, than I do.

That’s right – I’m not going to confirm or deny the rumours that I’ve never smoked Cannabis. Which is basically a politicians way of saying that I haven’t.

Dave’s being clever too- as he’s not confirming or denying it, all of the mega-Tories can go “he’s alright, he’s not said he has done drugs, and I believe him” whilst silently weeping but still supporting him, whilst the more liberal drug fans will go “yeah, Dave’s cool, he’s on our level… I’ll vote for him, without checking any of his policies or party’s past behaviour, because he has at one time in the past done something that I have done before too”.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dave campaigning for the voting age to be lowered to 12, so he can capture the full bad-ass teenager vote.

I hope the marginally less evil parties latch on to the, er, popularity of drugs too. It’d be fun to see Gordon Brown snort a line of cocaine off of the dispatch box to try and garner some popularity for himself. And I can’t imagine that drugs are that unfamiliar to Sir Menzies Campbell either, as he was presumably around when there were opium dens on the streets of London anyway.

Personally though, I’ve never been a big fan of drugs. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Cannabis should be legalised- and not just because I’ve got a vested interest in it being taxed. It’d make it safer as it wouldn’t be ‘cut’ with bricks, sawdust and AIDS, and it’d become a less desirable thing to do in the eyes of young people. After all, Morris Dancing is perfectly legal, and how many groups of teens do you get on street corners discreetly waving handkerchiefs and making a quiet jingling noise?

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Video Podcast
February 9th, 2007 at 23:05

As if blogs weren’t modern and hip enough, I’ve gone one step further. I’ve started a video podcast! These are so ultra modern and bleeding edge that not many people know what they are yet. And even less people own a video iPod to play them on. Of course, you could still watch me move and talk on your computer, but that’s like, so 2005.

What videos are on there? Well, it wouldn’t be a James O’Malley production if it wasn’t essentially old material recycled and passed off as new! So you’ve got all of my video blogs that I’ve posted on here so far- and any videos I post in the future will also appear on the podcast.

So want to watch me do things on video from say, the comfort of your own bed, or perhaps on your commute in the morning? As long as you’re not in the driving seat, why not subscribe to http://jamesomalley.co.uk/blog/videopodcast.xml ?

If you have any technical problems or whatever, post a comment. In fact, post a comment and tell me that it works if you can make it work, as that’ll be just as surprising as it not working.

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NHS Deficit
February 8th, 2007 at 21:01

There’s one thing that I keep seeing that confuses me every time I see it. And I’m not talking about Noel Edmond’s career revival.

They’ve started branding ambulances and giving them a slogan. Seriously. On the side of a lot of ambulances I see, it says “responding to need” in fashionable lower case.

As much as I love branding, it does seem a little… pointless. It’s not as if there’s a rival easyAmbulance, who offer a cheaper no-frills service (there’s no defibrillator in the back) and will drop you off twenty miles outside of the hospital.

It just seems like a bit of a waste of money when there’s apparently a massive deficit in the NHS. There’s been all sorts of fuss over the NHS’s financial problems, and it baffles me, as there’s such an easy solution:

I think one way cutting costs would be to make Doctor’s pay performance linked. That way, doctors would be discouraged from doing a Shipman, and would cure more people, and would work harder, otherwise they get no income whatsoever. They’d also reduce the need for as many doctors as they’d treat more people. Of course, to be fair they’d have to weight the pay: a heart transplant could perhaps be worth four hernia operations- and multiple ailments on a patient gets bonus multipliers.

The NHS must have to source its drugs from the likes of GlaxoSmithKline. Because of drug patents, the drug companies are able to charge as much as they like and people will have to pay, otherwise they’ll die. Basically, drugs companies are bastards… so why not source the drugs from elsewhere? Every day I get hundreds, if not thousands of e-mails offering me “CHEAP MEDS”, or even “CHE@P MEDS!!!”- surely I’m not the only one? If the NHS bought their stuff online, they could make a massive saving, as my understanding is that the meds available on the internet are “cheap”.

If there’s a bed shortage, why not make any couples who are seeking treatment at the same time share a bed? It’s not like they’ll mind. Similarly, perhaps they should set up an NHS dating service? They could reduce the need for beds without having to build any new wards.

I think they take quite a few photos during operations too, for like, training purposes and researchers on Holby City… why don’t hospitals take the next logical step and try and sell photos back to patients in a cardboard frame at a massively inflated price, like you can buy after going on rides at places like Alton Towers?

If they’d just turn hospitals in to more of an entertainment experience in general, then people would be more willing to part with their cash. It wouldn’t even take much effort: charge an entrance fee to the “hilarious injuries” ward, and offer people the chance to have a go at “real life operation”- they could do it in the morgue, as the atmosphere is currently pretty dead in there, and the ‘patients’ are less likely to complain about being wired up with a buzzer in a cynical money-grabbing exercise.

Any political parties reading? Why not get me in to consult on your hospitals policy, like how David Cameron got Bob Geldof in to talk about poverty?

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Bernard’s Watch
February 8th, 2007 at 00:35

Probably about ten years ago now, there used to be kids TV show called Bernard’s Watch. Long story short, there was a boy who had a watch that could stop time, and despite this, inexplicably, everything he did in frozen time was legal: he paid for the paint he took from the DIY store in one episode, and didn’t once grate some ‘frozen’ fire in a cheese grater and and pour into the eyes of his enemies, before starting time again.

The programme itself was full of plot holes- like water being both liquid and ‘frozen in time’ depending on what the plot needed, and so on, but ten years on, I’ve only just realised there was another glaring plot hole. And I want to put this somewhere on the internet so it is at least documented for future historians to look back on historical records of our time and remark that our simple civilisation couldn’t even construct a pseudo-scientifically coherent narrative.

In the last ever episode, for some reason Bernard moves to America. Whilst on the plane the ‘magic postman’ who for some reason provides after sales support on the watch that can stop time pops up and gives Bernard a new watch… a digital watch, I seem to remember. The reason being that America has a different time zone to Britain.

So what’s my complaint? The fact a postman is regulating space-time? Why a watch that stops time would be given to a small boy? No, my problem is that there is some sort of metaphysical watch that is capable of manipulating the space-time continuum and for some reason it has been given arbitrary limits on its power based on the human construct of time zones.

If I’d noticed this ten years ago, I’d certainly have written to ITV telling them this (the internet wasn’t very good for this sort of thing back then). As I’ve only noticed this now, I’ve instead taken this whole ‘ironic student’ thing reminiscing about old kids show to an entirely new level.

So yeah, point proved about a kids show that you can’t remember anyway, then.

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Things that I like
February 7th, 2007 at 03:06

They say that everyone’s a critic. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, as I once knew a woman who never once expressed an opinion. The closest she came to manoeuvring her facial features into anything other than a blank indifference was an emotionless wide eyed stare. I think her favourite colour would have been grey, if she’d had dared to pick and admit to having a favourite.

As an interesting contrast: I have opinions! Exciting opinions, on things that you too can purchase and enjoy. Here are some things that I have enjoyed recently, where you can witness my incredible descriptive powers and reviewing skillz: which is basically a list of synonyms for “excellent”.

24 (Sky One, Sundays)

As I’ve explained in previous blog entries, 24 is my favourite TV show. Its full of fast paced shooting, political intrigue and mental plot twists. I think in a lot of ways, I live a similar life to Jack Bauer: I’m a westernised, heterosexual male and I live my life according to a 24 hour clock. Basically the only difference is that I sleep more.

Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe (BBC Four, Mondays)

Actually, 24 isn’t my favourite TV show. Well, maybe it is. I don’t know any more. But anyway, a new series of this has just started and I was crying with laughter throughout. Basically, I’d like to emulate this guys career in its entirety. I just tried to look for a clip of this on YouTube in order to illustrate my point about how brilliant it is, but I ended up spending an hour watching the clips myself.

Capdown’s New Album (Wind Up Toys)

As long term readers might have guessed, I like Capdown. They’ve released a new album, finally, after approximately a billion years. Unlike their older stuff, its a lot more polished, I think. It’s dead good, though – I’m going to listen to it constantly in preparation for going to see them again next week.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)

I should probably point out that I’m not listing these things in the order of which I like most- otherwise Zelda would be at the top. I’m currently 35 hours into the game, and have maybe one or two dungeons to go, and it is without a doubt one of the best games I’ve ever played. I’ve been playing it especially heavily over the past couple of weeks, to the point where I’m now expecting objects appear with a Z-target arrow over them, and I’m expecting everyone I talk to to drop subtle hints at what I should do next by highlighting key words in red. I also expect to be able to solve any problem that confronts me by solving a logic puzzle- by pushing blocks or shooting arrows, that sort of thing. I’d be lying if I said that whilst I was being nearly mugged yesterday that my brain didn’t briefly consider the situation in terms of Zelda combat.

Everything about it so excellently perfect. The thing that I really like is that there is so much freedom, so many things to do, so many places to go in such a vast world- ’sandbox’ games like Grand Theft Auto have nothing on Zelda. You should buy a Wii so that you can play this game. It’s depressing to think that in maybe a few days or weeks time it’ll all be over, and I’ll have to wait another five years for the next one.

Mark Steel’s Vive La Revolution (it’s a book)

Stand up comedian Mark Steel has written a history of the French revolution, and it’s good because it does it with laughs. It was interesting to see that he recycles some of the jokes from his stand-up (and TV) material in it – this proves that you can become successful by repeatedly peddling your old material. I’ll be taking this advice on board.

The book’s good though, and yes, I would recommend it to a friend. It was especially good that when it name-dropped people like Kant, it felt like it was relevant to my course, making reading it seem like less of a waste of time, than reading, say, the, er, ‘laugh-a-minute’ guide to Neoliberalism: Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Keohane and Nye).

So yeah, that was a list of things I like. Why not go and buy the same things as what I own, and should we ever meet, we can express our mutual enjoyment of aforementioned things and avoid having to admit we have nothing else in common to talk about.

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Karting
February 6th, 2007 at 00:44

Yesterday I did something slightly out of the ordinary. No, I didn’t spend the day walking backwards and swapping the past and future tense when speaking, I went karting with JD.

Here’s a video I recorded just before we went in. I would have filmed more, of say, me actually driving or wearing racing gear, but it was a bit expensive, so we wanted to make the most of the half an hour we had by actually driving rather than faffing about with a camera. How expensive does something have to be before I give up on you loyal blog readers? Thirty five pounds! That’s more than a pound a minute and the most efficient way of losing money since collecting Pokémon cards.

My only prior experience at karting was in Mario Kart form- so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Apart from power-ups and a speed boost if you press the accelerator as the starting countdown reaches “1″, obviously.

After a wait of around 45 minutes, we got kitted up in proper racing gear. After watching an instructional DVD and signing a form saying “I won’t sue if this dangerous sport ends up turning me into a Hammond”, we got on to the track.

A go-kart handles different to how you think- the steering wheel is tighter than a regular steering wheel meaning you have to put a lot more energy into turning it. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover this until I hit the first hair-pin bend, and nearly smashed into the side at 50mph.

Karting is especially terrifying for the lazy. If you’re anything like me, and don’t enjoy putting too much effort into anything, its pretty scary to be confronted with death unless you put all of your strength into rotating the steering wheel.

The, er, gears are also a bit funny. There’s only an accelerator and a break, meaning that when you start off from zero you have to really put your foot down to move anywhere (I instinctively tried to do something resembling ‘clutch control’ when manoeuvring out of the pit). Conversely, when you’re going really fast, even a gentle tap of the break will send you spinning.

If you’ve watched the video above, you’ll see me joking about crashing. As it turned out, I actually crashed. Twice. When I saw JD, who drives like a milk-float when on the Queen’s highway, consistently lapping me, I put my foot down. And went straight into the side of the track. How relieved was I when it turned out the bumpy-textured yellow things at the sides were made of sponge and not stone? Answer: Very.

Stuck in the mud, I had to wait for the marshal to come and rescue me. It turned out that the marshal was the former British karting champion – whilst this isn’t that interesting, I want to point it out for my own reference in case karting suddenly becomes really popular and I get a vague claim to fame out of meeting someone vaguely associated with the sport.

I think my best lap time in the end was around 49 seconds- down from 59 seconds during the first 15 minutes, although a long way off of the bloke who owns the place: he’s done it in 33 seconds. JD got around 39, which is fairly impressive. I clearly drive far too carefully.

But yeah, karting was good fun. And surprisingly tiring. Or, er, tyre-ing. Get it? Yeah, that’s weak.

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Nearly mugged
February 5th, 2007 at 22:52

I left work early this evening because I was feeling ill- I had (and still have) a headache, and feel a bit sick, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, because I didn’t drive in and didn’t fancy waiting for a lift home, I had to walk to the station to get the train home.

Just as you get to the station there’s an underpass. Normally, I’d be one to avoid underpasses at night – but I reasoned that it was only half past seven, the underpass was well lit with CCTV, and I shouldn’t be scared in the city that I practically live in these days. Also I’m dead macho and that.

So I walk under the underpass, and standing on the ramp on the other side are four chav types, who are probably about my age. They weren’t using the underpass for its intended purpose: travelling from one side of the road to the other, they were just standing around in there. And how cool they looked because of it.

What scared me was that I thought I saw one of them holding a knife. I certainly saw something glistening in one of their hands, and thought that if I continued walking towards them I might be the victim of street crime: it was at the point in the evening when the city is deserted… the shops were closed and it wasn’t exactly “pub time”, meaning that if I were to cry for help, no one would hear me scream.

It was here I made a fatal mistake. I changed the way I was walking as a reaction to the perceived Burberry threat. Rather than continue on up the ramp, I decided in haste to walk up the steps to my left and try and get to the station that way. I’d just broken the first rule of avoiding being attacked: “don’t make it look like you’re scared of them in a really obvious way, for fucks sake“.

One of them spots me doing this and I believe he shouted something like “get him!”- its hard to tell because I had my headphones in at the time. When I saw him running towards me I decided to run. And I’ve never run so fast in my life.

The architecture of the pavement was against me slightly – I ended up running along a raised path parallel to the slope up from the underpass. Chasing behind me was the guy who ran after me and up the steps… and as I ran along as fast as I could, weighed down by a heavy bag, he shouted to his mates “get him lads!”. Seriously. So the three others who were on the underpass slope ran up it – this would have cut me off. I’d draw a diagram, but I think that might be a bit excessive.

After what felt like a lifetime, I got to the station and they didn’t seem to follow me into the station. I’m guessing this is either because it was crowded and people would see me being stabbed up, or they were only chasing me because they were cunts and wanted to scare me. They saw I was scared so they thought they’d have some ‘fun’.

The worst thing was, well, not the worst thing, as being chased by some hoodies was pretty fucking awful, but it was a bit depressing that when my life flashed before my eyes when I was being pursued, all I saw was the time I met Kilroy. That was it.

I’ve never been so scared in my life. Hug a hoodie? David Cameron has clearly never been in this situation.

I’m just slightly concerned now that this event might send my political opinions to the right and turn me into an awful bigot. Lock ‘em up and cut out their eyes etc etc. Something must be done about the chav underclass: MIDDLE CLASSES OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

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Super Bowl XLI
February 5th, 2007 at 02:51

As I write this, I’m currently attempting to watch the Super Bowl. I’ve been watching it for around an hour now, and I still do not have a clue what the fuck is going on. I couldn’t even tell you who was playing.

Every time they start playing, literally less than ten seconds later, a whistle blows and they stop again. The TV shows a replay of the throw that just happened, they have a scrum, and the cycle repeats. In fact, there’s so little action happening that its difficult to watch – I’m getting that sort of sick feeling in the gut you get when you see someone failing to do something so simple in front of you, and when you’re unable to help or express your frustration to them.

It looks like there’s so many pointless rules which stop the game, and the players don’t seem to be helping either- for some reason they keep running off of the pitch to cause another scrum situation. I can’t see the appeal of this sport.

Also, rather oddly, ITV have got former England Rugby Captain Martin Johnson in the studio as a pundit- I’m not sure what he knows about American football, but his qualification seems to be that he plays a game that uses a similar shaped ball. So far he’s offered some excellent advice to the team who are behind: “they need to figure out a way to score some points now”. I’m trying to make this a sarcastic point about how meaningless that comment is, but for all I know, scoring points might be a bad thing in this pseudo-sport.

The commentators don’t even seem to be speaking English- I can hear the odd number or snippets of english words, but they’re jabbering on about “taking the snap” or “the sack and the fumble”, whatever that means. But this is really dwarfed by the stop-start nature of the game.

This is rubbish. Sports I’d recommend instead: rugby; proper football; smashing your face against your TV screen until you’re unconscious (the competitive element in this is whether you’ll be knocked out first or the TV will smash first).

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All my heroes are just parasites
February 3rd, 2007 at 02:27

As I’m a witless slave to consumerism, I quite like celebrities. I don’t mean the awful kind of celebrities that you might find populating ITV’s latest reality TV failure, I mean the good kind: like Adam Hart Davis, Richard Dawkins, Peter Snow and Patrick Moore.

So basically I seem to be a fan of white-haired old men.

One thing that concerns me though is whether these people are just as cool in real life as they seem to be on screen. I mean, for all I know, when the cameras are switched off, Adam Hart Davis might bark orders at the runner like a career SS soldier before snorting cocaine off of a prostitute’s back. Whilst still in his court jester costume.

In terms of slightly more concrete evidence to celebrities being bastards in the flesh, Patrick Moore, as it turns out, is a member of one organisation I have a special segment of my brain dedicated to loathing: UKIP. I shit you not. It’s a bit depressing really that someone who you assume is cool because he likes space and that, is actually a senile old man with 19th century opinions (asked “Where did all the science programs on TV go?”, he’s said “A lot of TV is run by women these days.”)

Eccentric funny-named, asteroid-worrying, Cheeky-Girl-partnered LibDem MP Lembit Opik supports fox hunting. What the hell, Lembit? You used to be cool! You’ve changed, man.

I wonder if John Sergeant is an obnoxious, self-righteous, right-wing, big-lipped ponce who doesn’t let anyone else get a word in edge-ways?
Most of the musicians I like are probably complete and utter wankers in real life. Leftover Crack, for instance, are big fans of, er, crack. If I turned up backstage and tried to make friends with them they’d be like “that James O’Malley is such a slave to consumerism… he won’t even snort one line of cocaine, and doesn’t understand our hip New York street slang”.

Its weird- if some crack-addled tramp-a-like expressed political opinions to me in the street, I’d ignore them and get on with my life, but give that tramp an electric guitar and a sense of rhythm and I’ll be the first to absorb his opinions and claim that I’ve deeply believed whatever he’s saying for years and that I’m not just jumping on the bandwagon.

I think I have some sort of pathological desire to be friends with celebrities. Are there any celebrities reading? Do you like me? Want to go for a drink some time and discuss how I can exploit your famous connections to springboard my own career?

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The following takes place in a work of fiction
February 2nd, 2007 at 23:43

One of my favourite TV series ever has to be 24. This is why it saddens me that twatty conservative types are using 24 to go “Look at the terrorists! We need to curb civil liberties and stop giving poor people money in order to be safe!” (paraphrasing).

In the last five series, 24 has had all of the big threats that (real life) America apparently faces today: assassinations, nuclear, biological and chemical attacks. And as a response to these threats, 24 has seen extra-judicial killings, torture, kidnappings and illegal wiretaps, and that’s just from the good guys at CTU trying to beat the terrorists. Season six, which has just started, is rumoured to have a scene later in the series which is just Jack Bauer physically wrestling with the Geneva Convention.

So I can’t explain why I like it – being the woolly liberal type, I should hate seeing all of these awful things happening on the good side, and I certainly shouldn’t be feeling patriotic towards America- as that’s quite hard to explain when you’re British.

24 is said to be a ‘conservative’ show- one of the main guys behind it is an outed conservative (he’s now working on a Fox News version of The Daily Show), and it seems to push the right wing agenda. And it even scaremongers about middle-eastern folk the way the Bush administration can only dream of. Hell, in the first few episodes of season 6, there’s a middle-eastern chap who’s friend defends him against a nutty racist, who’s blaming him for terrorist attacks because of his race, but it later turns out that the middle-eastern guy is also a terrorist. I think the message here is “people of mideast descent = terrorists”.

I guess the problem is that a programme where they don’t solve their problems with violence and torture, and instead come to a diplomatic conclusion is the sort of programme that I wouldn’t watch. Because that programme would be called Trisha.

I think the right wing slant has tainted 24 slightly for me- I now feel a bit guilty for really enjoying it. A bit like Green Day’s latest album and pulling the tails of cats, really.

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