Watching football
May 19th, 2007 at 23:38

I was trying to find something to watch on TV this afternoon, and ended up watching what I assume must have been some sort of minor football match being shown on BBC One. I usually steer clear of any sort of sport on TV, bar the occasional England team World Cup match, but I’d already seen the episode of Top Gear they were repeating on UKTVG2+1, and as much as I try to enjoy them, I can’t bring myself to watch a Tedious minor battles explained at length special on the History Channel. So I watched the football.

It was like watching a nature documentary: a pack of ape-like men chasing after some prey and then fighting between themselves over it. Eventually they seemed to give up and one group of them established themselves as the alpha-males of the herd. It was here I observed a strange ritual.

The team with the distinctive blue markings swarmed around each other, seemingly slapping each other. It seemed to be a sort of congratulatory greeting. What shocked me was just how aggressive a slap it was – even if the other male wasn’t looking, they were simply slapped around the head or back in what looked like some sort of acknowledgement of what he’s done.

I think it just goes to show that despite originating from the same genus, human beings are so markedly different from soccerious-twatticus. Whereas civilised men would perhaps greet each other by shaking hands and congratulate each other by articulating their praise as speech, the less advanced species are reduced to behaviour similar that of a happy slap.

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Column – 18/05/07
May 19th, 2007 at 15:29

I’ve got a little bit political this week. Read it on the Herald & Post site here, or click here to see the original.

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Simulation Tribulation
May 19th, 2007 at 01:14

Today was one of the most important days of the university year: the European Union Simulation Exercise. I spent the day pretending to represent The Netherlands as we pretended to renegotiate the Common Agricultural Policy. It makes up 30% of one of my module grades, the module in turn making up 25% of my final grade for the year, which in turn makes up about 30% of my final degree grade. So two and a quarter percent of my final grade was effectively decided today.

More importantly: I got to wear a suit and be xenophobic. Here’s a picture to prove it (you’ll have to imagine a speech bubble with something xenophobic in it):

As you might imagine, I don’t wear suits very often, so it was quite an experience to actually commute on the train dressed like a business twat. I really wanted to wear one of my “CAPDOWN” t-shirts, as that is exactly what the Netherlands were after, but I was overruled by the rest of my group. But anyway.

I don’t know how James Bond copes with wearing a suit all the time and running about shooting at baddies. It makes even the simplest of actions contain many more units of hassle. Even something as simple as raising your arms causing the entire jacket to shift about awkwardly… and I don’t even want to mention the shoot-out and car chase today, it was that embarrassing.

The suit made me feel quite important though: I marched around with purpose until I realised that I was basically a walking sham. Yes, I was wearing a suit, but inside I was still a lazy student. It wasn’t until I’d been wearing the suit for an hour or so that I discovered that the “pockets” were in fact just flaps of fabric sewn on to look like pockets. I had immitation pockets – I can’t even begin to understand that design decision.

It turned out that my delegation, the Netherlands, was the only delegation to turn up dressed smartly. Whilst this was initially embarrassing, I think it Victoria, Zarar, Michelle, Michael and myself a psychological advantage. We had ironed clothes and little pin badges of the Dutch flag that showed that we meant business. I did subtle karate chops with my hands whilst speaking and rolled my eyes when others spoke in order to reassert my authority.

I’m desperately trying to think of a way to describe the day in a way that you readers might find engaging or interesting, but it’d be full of sickeningly obscure references (the decoupling of single farm payments was excellent) and in-jokes. Basically it was all good – especially how we managed to get the French to concede on several of their key demands simply by sending them a polite “hello” memo offering them nothing. Which was nice.

Just look at the picture of me in a suit – surely you don’t need any more material than that? Look, it’s James O’Malley in a suit!

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I hate you, Masterfoods
May 17th, 2007 at 23:24

For fucks sake, humanity. First you invent (and subsequently abolish) slavery, then you go and put dead animals into my favourite brands of chocolate.

I hate you, Mars and Malteasers. You used to be cool, but you’ve really changed. Its ever since you started hanging out with those calves – using their stomach lining in your products.

Seriously, I’m really annoyed about this because as you’ve probably guessed, I’m a vegetarian (“Do you eat fish?”, is your immediate follow-up question upon this discovery. No, I don’t, stop asking.). I thought that business generally worked by expanding your markets by making your products more accessible, not by putting dead baby cows into your products ruling out usage by Vegetarians, and presumably Hindus, as they’re big fans of cows, as well as maybe Jews and Muslims, depending on how the calves are mercilessly slaughtered.

The horrible thing is that this little episode has caused me to wonder about other companies’ chocolate too. After doing a quick Google, it turns out that my childhood favourite, Smarties, are in fact made out of crushed beetles. The red dye for the shells is made out of the females.

I’m probably more irate about this than I am about actual worthy causes, like poverty or global warming or whatever. I guess this is because not being able to eat Malteasers affects me, whereas poor people don’t affect me unless they somehow manage to stop me from buying things I don’t need.

Masterfoods have come in for some criticism for this from the likes of the Vegetarian Society, so they’ve put a list on their website explaining what is now on the “unsafe to eat” list, along with this sickeningly patronising message:

“The whey [ie: animal rennet] we will be using is the same kind of whey which is used in the majority of cheese, which many vegetarians eat. Therefore all those vegetarians who are content to eat all varieties of cheese can continue to enjoy our products.”

They seem to think that they can tell vegetarians what they can and cannot eat. I don’t know about the other vegetarians out there, but as a rule of thumb, I tend to, y’know not eat things with animals in it. Milky Whey indeed.

I think its time we took a stand, and stood up for what is right. And that’s not just by not buying Masterfoods products, as we’ll obviously be doing that anyway – we should be actively hassling them about it until they change back. They say that the customer is always right – during my brief stint as a till monkey in a hardware store, I learnt that this is not the case – but there’s a first time for everything. I command you loyal readers to point your computers towards http://www.masterfoodsconsumercare.co.uk/ and send them a piece of your mind! As long as your mind agrees with my mind, I mean.

Consumers managed to get Coke changed back after the ‘New Coke’ fiasco, Choco Krispies returned to being Coco Pops after public outcry – I’m hoping that Masterfoods will soon be added to the list of ultimately pointless causes that the public have campaigned for.

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What a quitastrophy
May 16th, 2007 at 00:07

Today one of the government’s key figures announced his intention to resign by the end of June. The Rt Memorable James O’Malley, a civil servant announced that he was resigning his post as of June 13th.

Whilst speculation had been mounting for some time, it was only today that O’Malley finally confirmed that he was going. In a speech today, O’Malley exercised an unusual degree of humility and said that “I ask you to accept one thing, I did what I thought was right” – which was thought to be a veiled reference to the ill-fated so-called “dodgy dossier”, in which he claimed that an entire batch of tax returns could be processed within 45 minutes. This later proved untrue.

James O’Malley will now be embarking on a “long goodbye”, looking back on his nine months in the office. It is thought this tour will include trips to both the second floor photocopier room, as well as the Coke machine.

He has thus far refused to endorse a successor, including the widely believed most likely successor “no one”.

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Ubuntu
May 13th, 2007 at 17:39

I was a bit worried that I was going a bit too “mainstream” last night, so I did something dangerous and irrational to try and up my geek-cred. I installed Linux.

I found an excellent installer, called Wubi, which will install Ubuntu (a Linux distro… if this is too techie for you, you should probably scroll down) automatically, without having to partition your hard disk or do any nasty reformatting. It apparently mounts a folder in windows to act as the partition or something – I don’t really understand it myself.

Aside from the faff of getting the wireless drivers working, its been all right so far – apart from the gross incompatibility of everything from Flash to Real Player to iTunes, the lack of keyboard shortcuts for half a million things that you’d expect to have short cuts for. The backspace key doesn’t even work as a back button in Firefox.

The music playing software that comes installed doesn’t actually support mp3s.

I’m going to soldier on with it though, if only so I can claim the moral left-wing highground. “My operating system isn’t owned by an evil corporation – only my hardware, car, clothes, food, consumer goods and Coke are, and this makes me better than you.”

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Eurovision Live Blog
May 12th, 2007 at 20:02

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Eurovision Live Blog Tonight
May 12th, 2007 at 13:28

As I mentioned below, tonight I’m going to be liveblogging (live blogging? Is there a space involved?) the Eurovision Song Contest.

I’ve got a confession to make: I had planned for some of the comments on the live blog to be pre-scripted. I know, I’m awful fraud. I watched the semi-final on Thursday night whilst sitting in a couple of chat rooms commentating on it with some other people – and I planned to repeat some of the hilarious quips I came up with then. Unfortunately though, as viewers of the semi-final will know, every single notable artist were knocked out at the semi-final stage, rendering my preparation void.

Don’t equate my use of the word “notable” with “good” there- this is Eurovision after all.

Looking at the list of who qualified for the final though, it’s really quite irritating – Israel with their slightly unconventional song, for example, were knocked out, as were Andorra’s borderline “not bad for Eurovision” pop-punk band. The Swiss entered a terrible song called “Vampires are alive“, which aside from being a gross-misstatement of the facts (vampires are definitely not alive) was a horrific blend of Europop and dressing up like goths.

A Danish drag queen was knocked out too.

The Maltese entry’s song hinged on the lyrics “loving you gives me vertigo”, which illustrates a shockingly blatant disregard of medical science: I’m pretty sure that its actually being high up that gives you vertigo. Not love. Unless the object of her affections happened to be a really, really tall man. Perhaps in the video for the song you can only see his legs?

The Belgian entry also tried to kick science in the face, asking the listener/viewer “can you feel the love power?” – a question to which humanity collectively shouted “No”, refusing to vote them into the final. My main problem with this song is that they seem to be theorising an unobservable force, which can most definitely not be felt, as if it is possible to detect, then not only would it rewrite the laws of physics, but would imply that love power can be transferred, and thus measured. Which it can’t.

I think this is the problem with the semi-final: all of the nuttier acts are weeded out before the big day, meaning that it’s much harder for us British people to sneer and the TV and say “stupid foreigners” with a derisory disdain.

Also, somewhat bizarrely, approximately 50% of the acts in the semi-final seemed to feature someone playing (well, miming) the accordion. And approximately 100% featured someone waving fans about. There were more fans per capita than in most animé. I wonder if this trend will continue into the final? SLY PLUG: Well I guess you’ll have to follow my live blog tonight to find out (or, y’know, just watch the telly and judge for yourself).

Eurovision Live Blog begins at: 20:00 BST.

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28 Weeks Later
May 12th, 2007 at 01:16

I went to see 28 Weeks Later this evening – y’know, the sequel to the excellent 28 Days Later. Its a zombie film full of blood and death and calm scenes being interrupted by awful zombies.

Yeah, I know that they’re “infected” and not “zombies”, but these two things are practically identical. So I’m going to refer to them as zombies throughout, just to be needlessly irritating.
It is set some time after the first film – 168 days after in fact. Britain’s entire population has been wiped out by the rage virus, so the Americans are leading efforts to reconstruct the country. FAIRLY OBVIOUS POLITICAL ALLEGORY ALERT.

The Americans try their best, setting up a ‘green zone’ on the Isle of Dogs, but fail to control a determined local population of zombies leading to chaos, and the indescriminate shooting of civilians.

The film follows essentially the narrative of the first film after the setup: “Phew, we’re somewhere calm and secure, there is absolutely no-way the zombies can get us now“, followed by “Oh no! The Zombies have found us! We should run to somewhere else!“. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

There’s an excellent scene when a helicopter is trying to rescue an uninfected soldier, when hundreds of zombies appear – so it flies at them and chops them up with the blades. There’s also a horrible scene when a newly infected bloke kills his wife by pushing his thumbs into her eyes.

The only notable bad point about the film I can think of is that because the two main characters are kids, you know they’re going to make it through the film* alive, as kids, much like pets, are indestructible when projected on to a cinema screen.

But overall, it was good. Yeah, that’s my review: “good”. Put that on your DVD cover.
(*If you ignore the vague epilogue, perhaps)

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Date for your diary: Saturday Evening
May 10th, 2007 at 23:13

I’m going to be doing something new and exciting this Saturday night- it’ll be so bleeding edge you’ll probably risk contracting some sort of infection if you get too close to the open wound that is technological progress. I’m going to be Liveblogging the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday evening.

Basically, this means that as I watch the ESC, I’m going to continuously update my blog with my thoughts, so if you’re watching too, we’ll be able to share in the experience of watching 30 terrible pieces of Europop – it’ll almost be as if we’re sitting in the same room after having a massive argument, which means that we only speak once every few minutes, and then its stilted unconnected sentences.

I’ll hopefully get a friend or two to join in the fun too. It’ll be dead interactive and stuff. So if you’re not cool enough to go out on Saturday night, why not stay at home in front of your TV and computer, and listen to nobody express his opinions publicly?

REMEMBER: SATURDAY, 8pm, JAMESOMALLEY.CO.UK

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