Herald & Post Columns The Herald & Post, and anyone related to them take no responsibility for anything I write on here. This is all my own work, and consequently, my own fault.
It’s Halloween soon - a pseudo-holiday which gives students yet another excuse to dress up, and Christian groups yet another reason to condemn Harry Potter and the like to hell, and everyone else an excuse to try and scare each other. As a black-hearted rationalist and legal adult though, I don’t find Halloween particularly scary - I know that zombies, vampires and werewolves don’t exist, and the mummies that do exist are safely encased behind glass in the British Museum.
So this got me wondering - why doesn’t anyone make Halloween scary for adults too by going door to door dressed as mortgages, commitments and job interviews? Rather than say “Trick or Treat?” you could say “Can you tell me about a time when you’ve worked effectively in a team?” or “Your quarterly appraisal is… disappointing, to say the least”.
I guess the trouble with scaring older people rather than kids though is that you risk inducing heart attacks. Which despite Halloween having a large emphasis on death and the occult, would still probably put a bit of a downer on the festivities.
I’ve been trying to think of the things that scare me - so I could explain them to you and come across as fallible and human, rather than some sort of consistently inadvertently offensive robot.
Don’t laugh, but I’m really scared of dogs. I’ve never liked dogs. They’re just too big. They have massive teeth, claws, and are essentially domesticated wolves. You could say that they’re like a wolves in dogs clothing. This fear probably stems from a childhood trauma of being chased by a sheep-dog (that’s a dog that herds sheep, not some sort of weird hybrid) on a caravan site in Cornwall. I remember it vividly - it chased me all of the way from the tyre swing to the caravan I was staying in, and I only managed to get in and slam the door in time, otherwise it would have got me, and presumably mauled me up. The fact I can link a memory to a fear makes me wonder why kids are scared of zombies - its not as if zombies are real and form part of your memories. Unless your dad is Michael Jackson, of course.
I’m also really scared of ambiguous entrances to buildings. For example, when people have a glass porch on the front of their house - you can see into it, and it clearly isn’t part of the main house structure as the floor is tiled… but which door would you knock on? Do you knock on the outer door and risk not being heard, or do you open in the outer door, at risk of being accused of intruding, in order to knock on the inner door? And what if the person answering the door is scared by you already being sort of in their house?! I’ve actually lost sleep over this.
I think perhaps my biggest fear though, is of a certain type of person. No, not an ethnicity or other officially recognised sub-group of humanity obviously, as that’d be hideous, but people who exhibit a certain personality type. The sort of people you bump into occasionally and end up making conversation with, before realising that you’ve made a gigantic mistake. The sort of people who early into the conversation say something depressing and awkward, such as “you’re the first person I’ve had a proper conversation with in months” or “you’re one of my only friends”, usually whilst being disproportionately irritating through their mannerisms or conversation style - which is especially terrifying as you worry about getting out of the conversation and ideally never seeing them again without hurting their feelings. The worst thing is, there’s nothing wrong with these people as such - the problem is entirely with you - they’re not doing anything they don’t normally do. And that’s what makes it truly terrifying: that I am the one with the problem.
So there you have it - if you want to scare me, all you have to do is put a dog in an ambiguous porch and train it to bark “I’m so lonely!” at me.
Disclosure: I’ve been sent these to review for free by some very nice people.
Zuprowski Connection - Self Titled EP (Released 10th December)
Zuprowski Connection are a sort of metally-rocky-grunge-noise thing. And I really like this new EP. There’s some slow, gentle songs, and some more upbeat songs. One of them sounds a bit like System of a Down slowed down to half speed. I like the main powerful riff in the song ‘Thru Me’, but not the spelling of the title of the song.
Generally speaking, the band in places sound a bit like Nirvana if they had cheered up a bit - which isn’t a bad thing. The singer sounds a bit like Kurt Cobain, but then I guess so does every metally-grungy type band.
I like it though.
Mnemosyne - Except For Access (10th December)
Mnemosyne are a fast band. A fast band with a near-unpronounceable name. “Muh-nemo-seen”? “Nemo-sign”? Its hard to tell. And probably not that important. They’re a lot less grungy than Zuprowski Connection - by which I mean, not really grungy at all. The guitars are clean and the singer’s voice isn’t coated in gravel.
I like their new EP - its pretty decent. Without the lyrics it may risk sounding a bit like the a heavier version of the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack at times.
According to the press release, they released another EP a while ago called “Suggestive rather than Offensive” - I’m not sure about how suggestive this new one is, but it certainly isn’t offensive on the ears. Unless the songs are about holocaust denial and I’ve failed to pick up on that, or something.
Some poor, struggling singer at one point in time must have gone into the studio to sing the immortal lyrics: “Bounty, the stronger soaker-upper… Bounty!“, or worse still, “I love horses, best of all the animals, I love horses, they’re my friends!“. Presumably shortly after their heads fell into their hands, as they cried, wondering where their career went wrong. At least they’ve got a strong, highly absorbing towel to wipe away those tears with.
Imagine being a struggling musician and meeting someone, and introducing yourself as a musician (rather than “job seeker”)- what would you say when pressed for details on what you’ve done in the past? Would you even admit to being the person who did the irritating scat-singing on the Norwich Union advert (with animated car windows zipping around the screen)? “Yeah, I’m signed to Aviva… I wrote the lyrics myself… I think they really speak to people.”
I wonder if there’s a jingle industry? They could have conferences with the “they’re gonna taste great!” Frosties kid as the keynote speaker. And discuss, er, how they’re annoyed that they didn’t get the Radio 2 frequency jingle gig. I don’t know where I’m going with this.
Doctor
“Next!.. Eurgh! That’s horrible! Jesus, what is wrong with you?!”
“You’re the fifth Goatse I’ve seen today.”
It must be really unpleasant being a doctor, as all you ever see and meet are ill people. I imagine meeting tonnes of ill people is bad enough - always bloody moaning about their ailments. “My throat hurts”, “There’s blood coming out of the holes in my face”, “I sat on a metal railing” and so on indefinitely. “Get a grip”, Doctors must think - but never say. Such advice could be fatal to the bloke on the railing. It must be easier for them to count the number of people who are well.
The other concerning thing about doctors is that they must get used to seeing people who are by one definition or another “wrong” - they’ll never see healthy people as they don’t go to the doctors, so how will they know what “right” looks like? How do they know that not having, say, unaccounted for lumps on your face, is abnormal? Its not as if a face doctor will ever see anyone with a normal face. Presumably, most doctors must rely on guesswork.
Medicine is a broad area though - by far the most depressing medical job must be the doctor in the gay IVF clinic, because the success rate must be phenomenally low. Gay couple after gay couple failing to be successfully impregnated must be really dispiriting. IVF is a proven technology, so a doctor who can’t make a gay man pregnant must just be really, really bad at his job or horrendously unlucky.
Ancient Man
Being a Roman/Saxon/Viking/Pirate must be a rubbish job. You spend half your life pillaging, sacking and looting treasures, and then rather than spend the bounty on things you want, you decide to bury them? Where’s the sense in that? Sure, appearing on Time Team would be pretty cool… but not after you’re dead.
Bin Laden’s Stand-in Presenter
TV Presenters can’t always appear on their programmes - they have a lot on. Its why you sometimes get Gavin Estler presenting Newsnight instead of Paxman. Imagine getting a call from Al Jihad or whoever telling you at the last minute that Bin Laden can’t make the recording of his latest tirade against the west because he has a (literally) conflicting engagement - and they want you, the up and coming, sprightly young person dying to work in telly, to stand in for Osama. What would you say? Think of the exposure! You’d be on every channel and become world famous!
Of course, the downside is that a few people might hate you. Aside from the obvious lot, like those western governments and most sane, rational people, if you give a poor performance you might get slated by the likes of Gary Bushell, Charlie Brooker, Victor Lewis-Smith and Ally Ross.
And what if the Overnights are bad? Lets face it, the western pigs are fickle. Anti-western rants on a grainy video are a dying genre - there’s been several now, and viewers are getting fatigued by the same format over and over. Nobody cares about Big Brother any more either, and it isn’t held in high regard. If you stand in for Osama, you risk being compared to Ed Tudor Pole or the people who replaced Ant & Dec on SMTV.
Uni-skilled Cobbler
Times are hard in the cobbling industry. These days, in our disposable culture, most people just buy new shoes when their old ones break. If you’re a cobbler and your only ability is to cobble, you won’t survive in such a business environment for long - especially when there’s people out there who can both cobble, and cut keys - and in some extreme cases, fabricate signage for elaborate displays of house numbers as well.
I thought today I’d have an easy blog entry. For some reason, Midland Mainline had decided to go on strike today - presumably in a bid to irritate commuters even more than usual. This has basically meant that all day they’ve have a more limited timetable, with only one (maybe two?) trains going up and down between London and Derby - and stopping at every stop along the way.
I thought the blog would be easy, as I’d just be able to moan about the horrendous conditions on board- how it was overcrowded (I got the first northbound train of the day) and how awful the passengers were. That sort of thing: a rant by numbers.
Unfortunately for me, though the trains were overcrowded, and shock horror, there was no “MM’s bar” catering, catching the train today was surprisingly painless. I got a seat both times - so I can’t really complain.
Sure, I could call the Stasi who were working ’scabs’, but that seems a bit cheap. And all of the foaming at the mouth calls for some Thatcherite union-busting I was doing last night seems a little mean, in retrospect.
The closest thing I’ve got that even begins to approach an anecdote is that on the way to university, I sat next to a businessman, wearing a business suit, with his business smart phone out. “No doubt doing some important business”, you’re probably thinking - peering over his shoulder revealed him to be playing some sort of golf game on his phone for the entire duration of the journey.
I, meanwhile, the unkempt young person, who you’d expect to be playing obnoxious ringtones because of my proximity to public transport, was actually reading The Economist (running gag: apparently they’re having trouble forming a coalition government in Argentina).
I might owe you lot an apology. You might remember a few weeks ago when I wrote a column slagging off football – aside from being deliberately controversial (making people angry makes an impression – which is better than a loud, deliberate sigh of indifference), I really struggled to understand how people can get so worked up over a game.
I think the other day I realised why – it was something of an epiphany moment as my entire world view shifted. This epiphany occurred whilst I was slapping a quiz machine in a pub in blind rage, in frustration at not knowing which US state a mountain range was located in. I realised that I wasn’t above the barbarism of sports after all – I was as fiercely competitive as the next person.
I think I might be slightly addicted to these quiz machines. At risk of sounding melodramatic, and to paraphrase the film Fight Club, after playing a quiz machine, the volume of the rest of life is turned down. Once you’ve played a few times, you no longer feel alive unless you’re playing a quiz machine. All you can see in front of you is victory; the massive debts that are mounting up are hidden behind a veil of aspiration and false hope.
I seem to pour in pound after pound in the vague hope of one-upping a computer-controlled device with a fixed payout rate that will control the difficulty accordingly. My struggle transcends any monetary gain from playing these stupid quiz games – it becomes about winning. My mind frames it as an epic struggle of Man versus Machine. A bit like the Terminator films if the humans, instead of starting an armed struggle, instead decided to appeal to the machines on an academic level and challenge them to a game of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t fall into a spiral of self-loathing every time I fail to “remember†something that I never knew in the first place. I didn’t know who the first man in to space walk was - but I can still hate myself for never bothering to look up such an “obvious†fact in the past (it was Alexie Leonov, fact fans).
And the worst thing is, I’m going to be stuck in this hideous rage every time I play a quiz machine. Unfortunately, it is impossible to “revise†trivia – believe me, I’ve tried. The world would be a fairer place if there were a quizzing syllabus, and textbooks you could buy to learn facts from – then winning would be linked to merit and not fluke guesses or mashing the screen with your palm and hoping. This would also presumably stop the quiz machines throwing up an impossible question and removing the silly option C answer and replacing it with a serious one every time it thinks that you stand a chance of winning – once when things were going well, and me and my friends were on course for the £20 jackpot, it started asking us questions about the difference in runtimes between Gladiator and Stuart Little.
I wonder, which one of these should I do?
A) Play More Quiz Machines; B) Play Less Quiz Machines; C) France
My blogging has been pretty light lately, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. I’d love to be able to give a definitive excuse, like “the dog ate it”, or “I’ve been really busy working”- but I think its fairly obvious that I’m workshy and dogless. I guess it is because I’ve been stuck in a routine, doing normal boring things that have happened without anything notable happening - or when things vaguely have, I’ve worried about the focus of the blog.
Every time I post a tale about something I’ve been doing, I worry that people who are for my, er, political insight aren’t going to care - and what if I want to write about politics? Will the people who are after drivel or stupid videos care? I know you’re all very fickle people, and in all likelihood, get distracted by other, more exciting things, before you think about scrolling down to see what’s below.
This blog entry is quickly turning into the first type of blog entry: things I’ve been doing lately. Here are the things I’ve been doing:
Krisha Consciousness Society
Don’t worry, I haven’t gone all theist - it hasn’t been God telling me to refrain from blogging. A couple of weeks ago I received e-mails promoting a debate at the university KC society: “Does God exist? If so, prove it!” - something that seemed to pander directly to my interests. “This will be an easy win”, I thought.
I spent the afternoon watching videos of Christopher Hitchens on Youtube, making myself angry and spoiling for an argument. I then drove 15 miles looking for this particular argument. I arrived at the building and got to the room the argument debate was to be held in, only to find the lights switched off and with no indication that the debate existed at all. It was annoying - as only hours earlier I’d read an e-mail from the society telling me the debate existed, and that seemed like a credible source as it was from the voice of the debate organisers, but there was absolutely no observable evidence suggesting that the debate did in fact exist. A bit like God, really.
“They’re not going to get much peace and love from me if they’re not going to turn up to their own debate”, I thought. I did make a point of going into the darkened room and declaring that there is no evidence that God exists though, and because I was the only person in there, won by default.
There was a fuss the other day about Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I say “a fuss” - I really mean that the crackpots who don’t like the environment or the idea of saving it complained about it, because they are idiots. Regardless of whether or not Al Gore deserves the prize (wasn’t he vice-President when Clinton did some distinctly unpeaceful things?), I think there’s something that everyone has missed:
If the Nobel Prizes are awarded every year, then surely some years, the winner must be rubbish? If the Nobel committee are obliged to give at least one Peace/Physics/Chemistry/Medicine/Economics prize out every year, then some years there must be a number of decent contenders, and the other years, a veritable drought of decent candidates. After all - they did once give a Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat and his Israeli counterpart and, er, look how that worked out.
It’s not like you have a physics breakthrough every year, so some of the winners must be filler. For the same reason, its why that regardless of whoever wins the Brit award for ‘Best Album’ in any given year, the best albums of all time are still invariablyvotedto be by The Beatles, Nirvana and Radiohead.
I’m about 80% sure that the bloke who won the Nobel Prize for Physics the year after Einstein, in 1922, Niels Henrik David Bohr, was much more shit at physics and his discovery much less important - as after all, I’d never heard of him prior to researching this. And everyone knows that recognition by a layman is the, er, definitive definition of how important something is - its why creationism is a theory equally as valid as natural selection.
Maybe they ought to do the Nobel Prize like world records? So that it is definitely the best of the best being recognised - and to win you have to objectively beat the current title holder at whatever the field of study is? For example, if it was around back in the olden days, Newton may have won the prize for theorising his laws - although when Einstein came along and proved that Newton was an idiot because he was wrong - Einstein would deservedly take the prize.
Poor Ming. One day he was leader of the third largest party in the House of Commons, and the next day the younger generation have stabbed in the back to get the inheritance.
Despite the speed at which it all happened - he was only struck by leadership rumours a week ago (after the fake election was called off) - it hasn’t really come as a shock, as he was really, really old. On reflection, it is perhaps also a relief that he’s finally gone, after all of the suffering before (11% in the polls).
Initial reports say that he went of his own accord, but its pretty clear that was really happened was that they sat him down and said “you’ve resigned…. RESIGNED… YOU’VE RESIGNED… YOU’RE NOT THE LEADER”, shouting into his ear in a patronising voice, before filling in the resignation form for him and just getting him to sign it.
Imagine this photo in a sepia tone.
I particularly enjoyed the way the resignation was announced - it was something akin to how I imagine coups tend to happen in despotic African countries. Simon Hughes and Vince Cable stood on the steps outside of the LibDem’s Cowley Street HQ, and announced the coup, with no sign of the old leader - and for some inexplicable reason, the BBC decided to broadcast it first time around in black and white. All they needed were AK47s and balaclavas to complete the look.
I was delighted to read this morning that the Tories have lost eight million quid. This isn’t the best bit, though. The money, that Branislav Kostic, a dead man, had left to the Tories in his will, is going back to the family after a judge decided that Kostic was mentally ill when he made the will.
Well, you’d have to be if you were giving money to the Tories. Apparently, and you can check this with the BBC news link above, he exhibited the following signs of mental illness:
Paranoia
Delusion
Admired Thatcher
Wanted to donate his money to the Conservatives
The weird thing is though, that the BBC report reads like it is describing a typical Conservative voter. His son said Kostic was “deluded and insane”, and his support for the Tories was “in part the product of the state of his mind”.
No doubt his paranoia came from the worry that the existence of poor people might undermine the success of the free market at distributing wealth and his delusion stemmed from his belief that we need nuclear weapons.
“He was tormented by delusions that [his son] and other members of my family were part of a worldwide conspiracy of terrorists and criminals who were trying to kill him.” - yeah, that sounds pretty much Conservative thinking.
“The court heard that Mr Kostic had made the will after saying Margaret Thatcher was ‘the greatest leader of the free world in history’ and that she would save the world from the ’satanic monsters and freaks’.” Speaks for itself.
I think they ought to ban donations to the Conservative Party, or at least take it to be the first sign of mental illness.
As you might have guessed, being the 251st political blogger, I lead a life of thrills and spills. Not a day goes by without me having an exciting adventure or an amusing scrape. Apart from today, when I’ve mostly been watching television whilst playing the new Zelda game. Watch out, society! Who knows what crazy things I might do next?!
Here are some “reviews” of TV shows that have already been on TV. So you’ve already missed them, so my opinion on something you’ll never see is essentially worthless. And if you did see them, then my opinion is also worthless because you’ve probably made up your own mind, and decided that you like or dislike them based on your own criteria.
Are you smarter than a ten year old?
I’ve been watching a bit of the new game show that Sky are hoping will prove that Noel ‘Someone died on my old TV show‘ Edmonds isn’t a one trick pony. Helpfully, the programme’s title doubles up as test of whether you’re disqualified from viewing on intellectual demographic grounds or not.
My excuse for watching was that I was waiting for The Simpsons to start.
Despite Sky One desperately trying to make it seem like the next big thing, flashing up the logo on every break bumper, trailing the programme with an annoying bit of text under the Sky One logo, and having spent the last few months pleading for people to appear in the audience, I still can’t see what the appeal is all about. After all, I thought that hype was never inaccurate.
From what I’ve seen, it’s a slow burning quiz (like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, for example) - Noel walks about, trying to build up the tension, bantering a bit with the contestants. Presumably to provide Noel with a more challenging role than his other game show.
Its a shame really that all of the dramatic music in the world, even if it were played over images of the Battle of Kursk, can’t compensate for the fact that the questions are so easy any tension falls flat. It is called “Are you smarter than a ten year old?”. For some reason the audience are expected to sit on the edges of their seats as they watch a cretinous pensioner agonise over what the adverb in a simple sentence is. At least with “proper” quiz shows you can play along at home, perhaps discuss the answers, and generally have a desire to learn the answer if you don’t already know it.
I don’t know why I watched this, as I knew that I’d dislike it. So its like a two-hour creationist lecture I found once on Google Video, in that sense.
Singing With The Enemy
I feel a bit guilty having watched this, as its BBC Three reality TV fodder that follows the simple reality TV formula of “find two things that probably hate each other, find the results and film them” (see also: Wife Swap, Big Brother, Prime Ministers Questions). There was probably an obscure arts documentary on BBC Four or the 50th repeat this week of some high-budget high-brow Channel 4 production on More 4 that I could have been watching.
Anyway, the premise is that they get two completely different musical acts to write a song together whilst living together in the old Big Breakfast house (really) - and of the two episodes I’ve seen so far, they’ve followed the predictable reality show formula.
This week there was a “grime” rap trio from the poor end of South London and some camp cabaret types from Brighton. About half way through they have a big fall out and things don’t look like they’re going well - cut to the overseeing record producer saying melodramatic things like “bringing down to Berlin Wall would be easier” - before finally the two bands cooperating and learning something in the process.
Last week was the same - only with some punks and Christians.
Michael Palin’s New Europe
I like Michael Palin. He looks like he’s probably the friendliest man alive, as he looks genuinely good natured. In another episode of his new series “Palin By Numbers”, he took a charming trip around a part of the world that only geography students have heard of, he watched some ethnic types do their traditional ceremony, before heading to a pleasant, rustic, town to have a chat with a local chef, with whom he softly tackled some vaguely political issues. The chef replied with something like “the war was bad, but was long ago now” in quaint fractured English. After this, Michael shared a joke with the foreigners whilst trying the local delicacy. Michael ended his journey this week by making faintly amusing remarks on the cultural differences in the narration.
Top Gear
Top Gear is another programme I hate to like.
I don’t like cars - I don’t know what they’re talking about a lot of the time, the presenters, especially Clarkson, are still wankers, I still dislike the anti-environment and xenophobic agenda, but Top Gear remains strangely watchable - even when you consider that the banter is scripted and pick-up shots are filmed on all of the reports after the actual races/challenges/etc have actually happened.
One thing I did notice this week, which probably occurs in every previous edition of Top Gear before, is the amount of xenophobic slurs and reinforcement of stereotypes that goes on. Every car is prefixed as a “German” car or a “Japanese” car, or whatever, with its features described as an embodiment of its country of origin’s stereotypes.
Another thing that happened this week, or more accurately, will happen in the fourthcoming week, is that we can look forward to the Top Gear team receiving some free publicity when they’re undoubtedly fined £50 for smoking in an enclosed space.
The Simpsons (the new ones)
Despite everyone having said for years that The Simpsons is getting worse, I’ve always defended it, claiming that there isn’t really a noticeable dip in quality. But I’m starting to wonder now - as half of the new episodes always seem to be “specials” where the characters are transplanted into other scenarios. One of the new ones this evening had Marge and Bart playing a parody of World of Warcraft - which wasn’t even very funny. The B-plot was terribly executed, with Lisa getting annoyed with Homer before they resolve their differences - a plot that’s been done a hundred times before and much, much better.
Robin Hood
I dissected Robin Hood at length after the first episode of the first series just over a year ago, and today decided to give it a second chance. In a thrilling turn of events, my opinion is still the same… it’s “alright”.
Robin Hoodie (get it? I should write for the tabloids) is still doing morally questionable things, and I’m still finding it hard to sympathise with him. This might, though, be because it turns out that Keith Allen, who plays the Sheriff of Nottingham, is excellent - he earned a great deal of my respect after I found a video on YouTube of him having a go at the Westboro Baptist Church. But yeah, it was “alright”, even if the plot didn’t seem very 12th Century.
Fame TV
Oh, and I’ve been texting in to Sky Channel “Fame TV” again, asking them more interesting questions than the usual dirge of asinine drivel…
