Nutter of the week
May 31st, 2007 at 00:08

Driving home from work today, I stopped at some traffic lights and waited for an old man to cross. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.

Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration, as I’ve seen the internet.

He was your typical old unhinged type – slouch, stick, lack of teeth, looks like he’d murder you if absolutely necessary.

He ambled across the crossing, but as he did so, stopped every few seconds and turned to the three waiting lanes of traffic, and waved, looking at the drivers. He then, bizarrely, waggled his finger at the drivers, as if he was telling us off. Before walking a few more steps.

As he was passing in front of me, with the lights already on green, he looked straight at me with a face that said “Haha, I am slightly delaying your progress”.

I just wanted to write about this so I know that it definitely happened, and I wasn’t just station at a green traffic light, as has happened many times in the past.

Comments(1)

Labour Deputy Leadership
May 30th, 2007 at 00:21

I’ve just watched a cracking episode of Newsnight – they had all six contenders for the Labour deputy leadership in, and had something resembling a debate. They went through it all, with Paxo asking the questions: Iraq, schools, Trident, and so on. Unfortunately, the only thing I can really remember on any of the candidates positions is that Hazel Blears is really, really small.

Ridiculously so – as five grown-ups stood at their podiums trying their best to look leader-like, but only to the extent that you’d put them as second in command, there was a sixth podium where behind stood Blears. I say “behind” – I think “underneath” would be a better description of where she was standing.

It doesn’t help that she has a little squeaky voice and according to her Wikipedia entry, once played an ‘urchin’ in a film. I think she should have gone the whole hog and inhaled some helium before going on air.

If I were a better satirist, I’d perhaps offer some wry remarks about her policies not being very grown up – Her stubborn stance over the war being childish. Y’know, that sort of thing. But, alas, it didn’t descend into the literal fist fight I was hoping that it would be, so there’s very little material to work with.

Here are some serious political thoughts about the debate in a bullet pointed fashion. Don’t worry, my opinion doesn’t matter or anything because it’s not like I’m a member of the Labour party, nor would particular consider voting for them:

• It’s a shame that Hilary Benn didn’t regret his vote on the war and is pro-Trident and nuclear power. As he sounds like an all right bloke.
• John Cruddas seems quite good. He wasn’t as sickeningly PR as Blears was.
• Blears’ reliance on the “Vote for a woman” tactic is annoying and rubbish. For proof, think back to Britain’s Best Sitcom (an equally important election, if you ask me), where Carol Vorderman managed to mobilise the idiot women of the country to vote for the Vicar of Dibley on the basis that there’s a woman in it.
• Alan Johnson has an unusual face. Like a younger Anthony Howard.
• Peter Hain, in his opening spiel seemed to imply that it was him and him alone that beat apartheid. I thought Nelson Mandela had something to do with it, but clearly I’m misguided.
• Harriet Harman is a bit forgettable.

Comments(1)

Bitter about religion
May 28th, 2007 at 21:19

I hate religion. Have I mentioned that before? The more I read, and the more I learn about it, the more I just realise how truly awful it is.

Sure, it looks like a good thing on the surface, full of attractive notions of an afterlife and “salvation” and so on. From afar you can look at its moral foundations and go “yeah, that’s a pretty good set of morals”. But take a closer look and you’ll see that it’s full of many, many horrible flaws – a lot like some of the science and plots in some episodes of Doctor Who, in that sense.

Chances are that if you yourself are under the spell of organised religion, you’re blind to the probems. Or more specifically, you’re able to see them, but you just discount them as you’re in denial. Almost as if you’ve just made a fuss about spending a lot of money on a terrible car, so sort of feel obliged to force yourself to like it.

“Yeah, well, you would say that, but I really like the orange paintwork, I don’t think it’s in poor taste at all… what do you mean ‘it doesn’t go anywhere’? Just because it has no wheels doesn’t make it any worse a vehicle… just look at the incredible bucket seats and beaded seat covers”.

Religion’s the same: you could try and apologise for it in the same was that a mother will try and put a positive spin on their little bastard of a kid: “He’s a good kid really – encouraging people not to kill or steal… he’s just like anyone his age, getting into all sorts of mischief, stoning the unbelievers, arguing that black is white… but what can you do?”.

I mean, what does religion ever do for you? You spend half your life obsessing over it, praying everyday, reading up on the Bible to stay on God’s good side, giving big donations to the Church, all to try and stay in the good books of a God who in all probability, if he even exists hates you – how else do you explain him not getting you a Christmas present and not even showing up to his Son’s birthday celebrations after you spent all of that money on sacrificing a goat / murdering abortion doctors / complaining about Jerry Springer: The Opera on his behalf?

As I’ve written about before, the moral absolutism that religion offers annoys the hell out of me, and it’s massive hypocrisy annoys me even more so. Religion tends to not live in the real world (er, no pun intended) – and when it is backed into a corner and forced to try and stay relevant to humanity at large, so-called moderates will laughably change their mind, despite the lack of their God coming down and with a sequel to the Bible, sort of empirically proving that there’s no “divine intervention” in the first place.

Moderates annoy me – I’m talking about the regular religious people, who perhaps go to Church on a Sunday, maybe sing in the choir and volunteer to raise money for the church roof. They’re perhaps more deserving of my ire than the hardcore fundies, who are just idiots. Moderate religious people may even be educated and intelligent – they might even be interested in the sciences (I’m talking real sciences, not the oxymoronic “creation science“). I assume that they must have trouble reconciling their “traditional” religious beliefs with the horrible truth they encounter everywhere else – but by at least paying lip service to religion, they’re helping it keep going and stand in the way of progress for another generation.

I think it’s going to be a bit depressing when a more enlightened humanity look back of civilisation and look at all of the money and time, and not to mention lives, wasted at the hands of religion. It might even be more depressing than the feeling you got after watching The Matrix Revolutions for the first time.

Its also slightly alarming how easily wound up I can get thinking about religion.

Comments(3)

Planes aren’t great
May 27th, 2007 at 17:53

I discovered yesterday that one of my university colleagues is getting his own column. Obviously, this is of interest to me, because I have a column of my own. I’m talking about the sort you get in newspapers and magazines as opposed to the “Nelson” kind. Although I would like to be immortalised somewhere that would require on-lookers to crane their necks and risk being blinded by the sun to see me.

So it worries me that I now effectively have more competition, which could be bad for me as it might make me look like a terrible writer in comparison. Thinking this through, if I am worried about competition, I should be trying to kill off everyone on my university course: we’re all studying something that is moderately specialised, so when it comes to getting a job, they’re going to be the ones competing for jobs with me.

Anyway, I want to try and turn this other guy with a column into a professional rivalry. I think it’d be funny to have a professional rival: we could bad mouth each other in our respective columns and force people to choose sides or risk being labelled as traitors by both of us. It’d be brilliant – like that awful woman from the Daily Mail who wrote about divorcing her awful husband in the Daily Mail, whilst her awful husband wrote about divorcing his awful wife in the Evening Standard. Or like Littlejohn and the ‘Guardianistas‘, as he calls them. Or if you’ll let me blow this hypothetical rivalry out of proportion for dramatic effect: like the Allies vs the Nazis, Communism vs Capitalism, Stability vs Freedom, Roe vs Wade, Patrick Moore vs Women, and Blur vs Oasis.

So I’m going to shoot first and launch a pre-emptive strike. My rival, or mortal enemy, as I’ll baitingly call him is going to be writing about aeroplanes in a “plane spotting” magazine. So I’m going to do the grown up thing and write about how I don’t like planes.

I don’t like planes very much. In principle they’re a great idea, but aside from the environmental concerns, and concerns about Boeing and Airbus’s links with the arms industry, I just don’t really like being up in the air with nothing but several thousand feet of empty space below me. As a fan of science, and winner of an E-grade AS-level in Physics, I know that gravity acting upon an object is going to cause it to fall towards the ground. And if you’re inside the object that is very high up, and it falls to the ground, that is generally a bad thing.

I think I mistrust the technology behind it – when I’m driving a car, if I stop at a traffic light, I’ll always find myself toggling the gear stick between neutral and first, to make sure that in the event of having to start moving again, I’ll definitely be in first gear. I think planes are similar. I remember one flight I was on, some years ago now, where early on in the flight, in the in-flight film stopped working and the TVs displayed snow as they were retracted back into the ceiling of the plane. It terrified me that if they can’t make a telly work, how can I rely on them to make sure, say, the engine or wings are working properly?

Even if you elect not to pay over the odds for the headphones with the proprietary connectors to be able to listen in to an ancient episode of Friends or maybe an unfunny romantic comedy, in-flight magazines (which are usually titled something that allude to, but don’t specifically imply that you’re on aeroplane – like ‘Sky High‘ or something) aren’t very good either. You’re not going to find anything hard-hitting in them because not only are they designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience (or more specifically: not offend the most number of people), you’re faced with articles on Mediterranean wines or whatever. If you want any issues tackling, you’ll have to look for your complementary copy of the Daily Express. By “tackling”, I of course mean “blowing out of proportion and heavily distorting”.

That’s another problem with planes: the abundance of copies of the Daily Express.

Shopping at airports is weird too: who, when they’re going on holiday gets to the departure lounge and thinks “Damnit! I forgot to buy a big Toblerone for the flight!”? Despite years of searching, scientists are still yet to find massive Toblerones for sale at anywhere but airports and in-flight. The in-flight magazine usually tells you that you can buy them on the plane too – does that mean that the plane’s fuel economy and ability to stay in the air and not fall is being hampered by the added weight of a couple of hundred Toblerones and plastic scale-models of Airbuses painted up in the airline’s colours?

Thinking about it, I haven’t actually been on a plane for a few years – since 2004. Maybe things have changed since then?

The last time I did fly I remember sitting in the little waiting room immediately before boarding reading to Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore. I think it’s slightly unfortunate that I reached the chapter talking about aircraft hijackings just as I was getting on the plane. For a brief few minutes I turned into the sort of paranoid passive racist who reads the Daily Mail, as I looked around at my fellow passengers profiling them based on their ethnicity and how intensely focused their eyes looked.

Luckily, none of them turned out to be terrorists, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to tell you the story. None of them turned out to be snakes, either.

Comments(3)

Reel Big Fish
May 26th, 2007 at 15:24

Last night I went to the most incredible gig. I went to see Reel Big Fish at the Pitz in Milton Keynes. They were being supported by Beat Union and Army of Freshmen.

For some insane reason, I decided to drag along folk-loving friend JD, on the basis that despite him utterly detesting (hed)PE, he might like Reel Big Fish, as they play trumpets and don’t define themselves as “metal”. Unfortunately, this was a spectacular misjudgement on my part. But I really enjoyed it – I’d say it was one of the best gigs that I’ve been to. Does that make dragging JD along any more morally justified, or am I essentially kicking him in the face and enjoying it?

Anyway, we missed most of Beat Union, arriving just as they were finishing their set, so it’s hard to judge them. Army of Freshmen weren’t bad, but they sounded like the most generic pop-punk band in the world. They had the whiny American accent done perfectly… perhaps this is because they are actually American, though. At the end of their set, the lead singer climbed on top of the huge amplifiers at the sides of the stage and jumped into the audience, rather terrifyingly. I’d have hated to have been the venue health and safety person witnessing that.

Reel Big Fish entered the stage to the sound of the Superman theme tune, before bursting into song. They played loads of songs, going on for about 90 minutes. Here are a list of songs I can remember them playing – it will probably mean nothing to you if you’re not a fan:

• Trendy
• I want your girlfriend to be my girlfriend
• Beer
• S.R. (Many, many times)
• Everything Sucks (I think)
• She has a girlfriend now
• Kiss Me Deadly
• She has a girlfriend now
• Dateless Losers
• Take On Me
• An impromptu cover of what I believe was a Metallica song
• Don’t start a band
• Where have you been?
• Good Thing
• Your Guts (I hate ‘em)
• Sell Out

One of the best bits was when they played the song S.R. After playing it normally first, they kept reintroducing it in the same way (“Ladies and gentlemen, shut the fuck up… here’s a song from our new live album, it’s called S.R”), but playing it in a number of different styles. They did a screechy pop music version, a sort of hardcore version, a country version and best of all, an emo version.

They finished their pre-encore set with a cover of Take On Me, making Reel Big Fish the third band I’ve seen cover Take On Me live. Considering I’ve seen 61 bands live (yeah, I have a spreadsheet for this too), that means that nearly 5% of the bands I’ve seen have covered it. Or if you consider it in terms of individual gigs, of which I’ve been to: 22, that’s nearly 14% of gigs that have included a cover of Take On Me. Which is fairly high, I think.

The gig was quite hectic – right at the start of the first song (Trendy) I was thrown into the pit that had formed around me and pushed away from where I was standing, next to JD. As the gig progressed I was pushed further left, before I made the concious decision to cross the pit to try and get to the front. I eventually made it to being about three or four rows back. It was pretty incredible being in the thick of it – despite all of the horrible, sweaty people, the crowd surfers flying over and into my head, and the worrying about whether my iPod was going to work afterwards, it was really quite exciting.

When RBF finished on their most famous song: Sell Out, it was amazing. Unlike a lot of their other material, which tends to be about women issues, Sell Out is about an issue I can easily identify with: selling out. It was incredible. Unfortunately, I’m not a very good music critic, so I can’t really think of any other way to describe it than “it was really, really good”.

But it was a really excellent gig – definitely one of my top 3. Just a shame JD didn’t like the band. He’s planning to get me back next week by getting me to go to a Nizlopi gig with him. Hopefully I’ll hate it so that there is a degree of parity.

On the way home too, we stopped at a service station where we were served at the newsagents by a woman who I’m pretty sure was a Catherine Tate character. Satire: In other words, she was terribly unfunny.

She was obsessed with special offers. She did that irritating thing that happens in small, empty shops where the shopkeeper watches you from the till and starts talking to you before you’ve gone up to pay, seconding guessing your every move. If you were to move your hand near a product, she’d tell you how you could combine it with other products to make a saving.

When I was near the bottled water she was delighted to tell me that it was on two-for-£2, and when I brought a bottle of Coke to the checkout she explained how Coke was also on special offer, saying in a sort-of conspiratorial way, leaning towards me as she said it, “yeah, it’s better to get two for £2 rather than just the one isn’t it… saves you money”. I didn’t have the energy to explain that I only really wanted one Coke.

She was irritating.

Comments(2)

Column – 25/05/07
May 25th, 2007 at 13:44

It might shock you to learn that this week’s column is made up of mostly new material! Have a look by clicking: here. I hope it pisses off Masterfoods PR people.

Comments(0)

What the book?
May 23rd, 2007 at 01:15

I wish I had more will power – I don’t have any. If I argue with people, I’ll probably concede defeat if they nag enough – sometimes this happens even before they’ve finished constructing their first sentence, just because of my sheer apathy and unwillingness to take a stand. Even when they finally come for me, after getting the trade unionists, communists and social democrats, I’d probably go along with it anyway.

Whilst this trait is pretty bad if you want to get results, it’s worse when you consider that I’m probably just as easily taken in by marketing.

Case in point: I was wandering aimlessly around town today, before work, and ended up heading into Waterstones. It turned out that they’ve currently got a 3-for-the-price-of-2 offer on some books. Not any of the books you’d specifically go out of your way to buy, mind, just the ones they’re having trouble shifting.

And this is a situation which preys on those with little willpower. Once I saw that I could get three for two, it became like a game, and I found myself rushing around the store determined to find three books that I want to read, just so I could get them for the price of two.

I ended up coming away with four books and a wallet that was thirty pounds lighter. I don’t think this special offer was quite as special as I had expected. Not only had I bought two books and got another free, but I’d gone and bought a fourth book that wouldn’t even help me win at a special offer, on a whim.

It was at this point that I also realised that not only am I taken in by a sticker on the cover, but the covers themselves are horrible tools of marketing. Looking at my bookshelf, almost every book I own has the same front cover:

A snappy, slightly punning title, a tag line that draws you in, and an abstract cover illustration that makes the book look like something I’d want to look at – despite the insides being full of nothing but words.

For example, today I bought Tescopoly (Andrew Simms), which is presumably about how Tesco are bastards. Clever title? Check. Intriguing tagline: Check (“How one shop came out on top and why it matters”), clever cover: a parody of the Tesco logo with devil horns.

I also bought Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Title: Check. Tagline: “Religion, Terrorism and the future of reason”, the picture being a bloodied hand print with symbols of the major religions as the fingerprints.

The other two are near identical too. As are the rest of the books in my room.

I’m pretty sure I could be sold a book advocating holocaust denial if it was called something dreadfully pun-tastic like “Hollow-caust: Why proof for the Nazi death camps is thin on the ground”. I’d like to think that on actually opening the hypothetical book I’d return it though.

Comments(1)

Masterfoods are still terrible.
May 22nd, 2007 at 00:35

I was having a look at my hit counter earlier, and it looks as if I’ve had a couple of hits from none-other than Masterfoods. Well, their parent company, Mars (as in bar) Incorporated. They were having a look at this, where they read about my idea of visiting their HQ and complaining in person. So if I do actually decide to get my arse in gear and go there, it looks like I’ve lost the element of surprise.

Strangely though, after reading that, they clicked the “Employ me!” link and had a read of that. Maybe they want to give me a job?

Either way, writing yet again about Masterfoods gives me another chance to make them look bad. Looks as though not everything will be vegetarian again after all. So I’m still not happy. On the plus side, they are making the best chocolate, Mars and Maltesers suitable for Vegetarians, and no one likes Bounty and Topics anyway.

If you’re reading, Masterfoods, why don’t you send me some free chocolate (providing that it’s suitable for vegetarians, of course) – I’ll post on here forgiving you, and might even give you a plug in my column.

Alternatively, if anyone from Cadbury’s is reading, why not send me some free chocolate? I could make you look good whilst having a go at your rivals?

Basically I’d like someone to send me some free chocolate.

Comments(0)

Magicians
May 21st, 2007 at 00:36

I’ve just been to see the Mitchell & Webb film, Magicians, which was written by the same people who write Peep Show too.

It was quite good – not as funny as Peep Show though, and almost as if it had been toned down a bit for more family audiences (although there was still plenty of swearing). It was interesting to see Mitchell & Webb playing almost identical characters, in terms of personality, to those they do in Peep Show (and indeed the Mac adverts).

I already think it’s scary just how similar my mind works to that of Mark in Peep Show, so seeing Mitchell’s character in Magicians working in Wilkinsons (really) was ridiculous. Its almost as if they’re raiding my mind for plot ideas.

Whilst the laughs were perhaps a bit to few and far between, the narrative was certainly entertaining enough to keep me interested, although it ended in the most predictable way possible.

Perhaps the most notable thing was the cast – it was full of tonnes of famous British sitcom celebrities, all of who were famous enough that you recognise them, but not famous enough for you to be able to name them, or probably name anything they’ve been in. There was the Nazi from Peep Show, the kid from Saxondale, the sweary chap from The Thick of It, the woman from Hyperdrive, etc etc etc.

It was good though. My recommendation, which the makers can feel free to quote on the DVD cover: “Yeah, its quite good. Go and see it at the cinema if you like, or you could wait until its out on DVD”. It’d be a good quote to put on a DVD cover because it mentions DVDs.

Comments(0)

I still hate you, Masterfoods
May 20th, 2007 at 12:35

Good news! Masterfoods have conceded defeat and are making their products suitable for vegetarians again! Annoyingly though, whilst this is undoubtedly excellent news, it has only served to annoy me even more than before – and for far less justifiable reasons.

As you probably know, I write a newspaper column, and this week I was planning to try and be like Mark Thomas, and complain about the evil corporations in public, albeit because of a slightly less-worthy cause than the arms industry. I’d basically reworked this blog entry, and was going to submit it for publishing this Thursday/Friday (depending on your area).

But now that Masterfoods have done a massive embarassing U-turn, with a deadline of tomorrow, I’ve got nothing to write about. Bugger.

Also, I was planning a trip to the Masterfoods headquarters, which is only a short distance away from me in Melton Mowbray, where I wanted to try and go all Michael Moore on them, and basically harass the receptionist about aspects of corporate policy that she doesn’t deal with anyway. I was hoping I could film this and make a stupid video for the internet, and become quite famous out of it. But they’ve surrendered now, before I could get shaky video footage of me being asked to leave. Damn.

Comments(3)