Quiz II
November 29th, 2007 at 21:40

I’d love to tell you what I got up to yesterday, but I’m contractually not allowed to. Today though, I took part in my second quiz of the week – it was a bit more of a humble affair. It was a charity rip-off of University Challenge hosted by my University.

I put together arguably the most formidable quiz team in the country – who coincidentally were my university friends Katy, Sean, Sarah and Michael. And I, as the most experienced quiz player, was the Captain.

I’d been training the team for over a week. This didn’t actually involve any practice quiz questions, and was more a case of drumming motivational slogans into their heads. “It’s not the taking part that counts, it’s the winning”, “We can’t do it if we really try – we can only do it if we know the answers to the questions that we are asked”, “I’ll hate you forever and not be your friend if we lose”, and so on.

Things got off to an unfortunate start when Michael failed to turn up – but as luck would have it, so did someone from the opposing team.

So the quiz began, and we got our first starter question right – but then the other team got two in a row, and it went on like this – much like you’d expect a quiz to. There were bonus rounds on identifying the Simpsons guest stars, and a music lyrics round, a bit like a lower-brow version of the thing on the telly (we are a former Polytechnic, you know).

It got a bit farcical though during one round which was “identifying the place from an aerial photo”. The first slide said “Where in Britain…”, so we thought that all of the locations were in Britain. The first one was Wimbledon, the second was Alton Towers (I thought it was Jodderell Bank) and the third location looked really, really like the Hoover Dam. It turns out that it was the Hoover Dam. Damn.

And so it went on – with us eventually losing by something like 85 points to 65… which is fairly respectable. It was interesting to see Sean, who’s usually calm and collected, and the sort of person who can “work the room” without feeling ridiculous lose his cool slightly as he confronted the host about the aerial photo fiasco, or photogate, as I hope it will become known. She wouldn’t change her mind and admit that it was a travesty worse than naming a teddy Muhammed.

Still, at least there wasn’t any massive cash prizes at stake this time – and it was apparently for charity, so I can’t really complain. The team tried their best, so I can’t fault them. Just a shame its reduced my quiz shows participated in to quiz shows won ratio to 2:1 (50%) for this week, really.

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Impulsive Day
November 24th, 2007 at 01:07

Today I got up bright and early at 8am for university – I had my usual rushed shower and check of my emails, before heading to the train station little over an hour after waking up. Still groggy, after a few hours sleep, I met Katy on the train and went into university for a lengthy two-hour day. Unfortunately, this exposition was building us up for disappointment: the lecture and seminar were cancelled, meaning that we had both travelled into university for no reason.

It was at this point we decided to be impulsive. This isn’t something I do very often – I like to plan things with an autistic level of detail. If I go to anywhere big, I like to have a Google Map printed out, all relevant details with me, a map book, and a back-up plan for almost every eventuality. And I’ll constantly run through potential scenarios in my head: “What if a terrorist appears right now and challenges me to a short trivia battle to determine whether I live or die?”, and so on.

We decided to go to London, more specifically to the British Museum.

So we spent thirty pounds each on train tickets down to London, plus an extra fiver for the tube, and hopped on to the direct train down to London. 15 minutes into the journey, I learnt why being impulsive doesn’t pay off – quite literally. I remembered that I was going to see Mark Thomas tonight (which has already happened at time of writing, and was excellent, if you’re asking), so had to cut the trip short by a good few hours, decreasing value for money somewhat considerably.

But we got to the British Museum eventually, which was pretty excellent, although we’ll have to go again in order to fully appreciate all of the old tat on display there, given that we were rushed for time.

You’d think what with it being a museum full of all the best antiquities that Britain has nicked from around the world, full of priceless monuments to human civilisation, like the Rosetta Stone, I’d have taken loads of photos and maybe even done another stupid video. Unfortunately due to the ridiculously impulsive nature of the trip, the batteries in my camera were running very low. So the only two photos we managed to squeeze out of the camera were the following:

Me, standing in front of a placard looking slightly worse for wear, in order to make a horrendous, horrendous lolcat parody:

And what we bought from the British Museum café. Guess how much a couple of drinks, a chocolate muffin and some sort of strawberry/chocolate hybrid. Go on, have a guess.

£8.20. Eight pounds twenty. Really. I could have cried.

The Rosetta Stone was pretty excellent though. And it was much better than having a boring lecture. So hooray, I guess?

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Taste of Chaos
November 23rd, 2007 at 00:28

Last night I went to a gig. It was, er, (whisper it) slightly emo. By which I mean, there were hundreds of hilarious emo-kids there. I actually felt quite out of place, as aside from being somewhat older than a lot of the people there, I didn’t really fit in because my parents love me, and everyone understands me and my problems. And if I actually, had any problems, they’d be important adult problems, like worrying about money or politics or something – not the popular kids at school saying mean things about me or wondering if I’m bisexual, or whatever it is emo-kids cry about these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate emo. I quite like some vaguely emo bands (er, hence why I was at this gig), I just dislike the culture surrounding it as it seems to be the antithesis of punk values: spending hours on your hair so it swoops across your eye to hide your inner-pain just enough, and drawing tears on your face because no one understands you… and caring about sickeningly introspective topics rather than things that really matter. Oh, and I just think emo kids should cheer the fuck up.

The tour was badged “Taste of Chaos“, and was at Birmingham Academy. I think the fact that it was in Birmingham sort of explains why there was so many emo kids there – I’d certainly be upset if I lived in Birmingham. There were five bands on – I’ve described them in sub-headings below so that if you’re time-poor, you can skip the bands you aren’t interested in reading about.

The Blackout

I’d never heard of them before last night, but I can now confirm to you that they are devastatingly average. They were from South Wales, and the banter between songs was done in that sort of accent – as soon as they started playing though, they suddenly switched into a faux-Californian emo whine.

Their best (ie: only memorable) song included as the main lyrics: “We are the dynamite… demolition is our religion!“. I’m not sure what that means, but it strikes me as something symptomatic of all heavy-rock music that isn’t Bad Religion. Metal bands are just as bad as emo bands here: everyone is so angry, singing about death, destruction and so on… but why? What’s pissed them off? Its just anger for anger’s sake.

Gallows

Gallows were reason #1 why I was at the gig. I went to see them back in September, and they were really good. Sure, their music is as vacuous as everything I’ve complained about above, but they do it in a really decent way. And they do a Black Flag cover.

Their set was excellent, but I kind of got the impression that they were a bit tame. The singer likes to present himself as a right nutter: he apparently got an “NME are shit” tattoo after they voted him top of their “cool list” – he has tattoos of Alan Partridge – and will jump into the audience whilst performing. Both times I’ve seen Gallows (who are signed to EMI) live he’s ran around the back and suddenly appeared standing on the bar or on the balcony. Last night, he came on stage and said “I’ve been told we can’t have any circle pits or walls of death or crowd serving”, and then, the crazy rebel nutter that he is, encouraged the audience to break the rules! How hardcore.

It just seemed a bit tame – it’d be far more revolutionary and subversive for him to, say, spend a few minutes lecturing the audience on the evils of religion or nationalism or something like that.

But, er, at risk of sounding unprincipled, they were still ace. Being squeezed between two circle pits during the set made it all the more exciting.

Also, at one point, the crazy singer joked that The Used had pulled out of the show. I was a bit worried for a few seconds when he said this, as I thought the emo kids might get out their razor blades and it’d all turn a bit “Heaven’s Gate“.

Aiden

I’d never heard Aiden before last night… and honestly, I can’t remember much about them now. The only thing I can really remember was how horrendously emo the band looked. Check out these photos – look for the bloke with the white swishy haircut. He was the singer. The drummer was wearing a hoodie, but you wouldn’t worry about him stabbing you up in the street, as it was covered in rainbows and hearts.

Rise Against

Reason #2 why I was inexplicably attending an emo gig where I’d have fit in more with the parents and legal guardians at the back than in the audience at the front. Rise Against are a pretty excellent punk band – although they were pretty flat live. Maybe its because I didn’t know all of the songs – the one I did know were ace – or maybe its because during the set I got pushed to the front-right of the standing area, where the people around me were practically dead. Don’t get me wrong- I’m not a big fan of participating in ridiculous levels of jumping about and so on, but they were just standing there lifeless. Way to show your enthusiasm, miscellaneous emo kids!

The Used

The third reason why I was at the gig. And I can’t deny it – they are quite horrendously emo in what they do. Their album cover is a heart hanging itself. (Really). But I like them. And they’re surprisingly good live. As in, really good. The atmosphere during Take It Away was incredible, and it was pretty cool during one song where people who were crowd surfing forwards got to go up on stage. Hilariously, for some reason, the singer decided to throw one of the on stage people’s phones back into the audience- which resulted in about thirty seconds of a 15 year old emo kid looking shocked and upset waving his arms in a “what the fuck?” motion.

After the song had finished, the singer tried to make himself look like less of a twat by promising a free t-shirt to whoever returned the phone.

It was a surprisingly good gig. Yeah. That’s my conclusion. It was a good gig. But despite all this, I still felt like crying afterwards.

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Ancient Conspiracies
November 21st, 2007 at 01:43

These days, you get the occasional crackpot claiming that they don’t believe that man has landed on the moon – nobody believes them, of course, because of all of that pesky evidence, like rockets, flags, and the involvement of thousands of people in making it happen. The only thing that these conspiracy theorists are good for is being one of the handful of people who really do deserve a punch.

The thing that makes conspiracy theories persist though is that they have the remarkable ability to sound vaguely credible for the first few seconds after you hear it, before the faint whiff of bullshit becomes overpowering and induces retching.

It makes you wonder though: surely, hundreds of years ago, when people had a greater propensity towards believing utter bollocks, there must have been loads of conspiracies? All we hear about these days is modern things, like the moon landings, Roswell and Richard Madeley being a government experiment gone wrong that they can’t hush up because he just keeps talking.

Did Columbus really land in the New World? How do we know it wasn’t just faked by the Spanish government to boost national morale and one-up the other European Superpowers? The evidence is pretty shaky after all – just like the moon landings, there are discrepancies with the photos… the discrepancy being that they don’t exist… mighty suspicious, don’t you think? And frankly, a land of technologically-backwards savages who speak a strange jibberish language that’s incomprehensible to the civilised world could just as well have been Wales. Funny how Columbus didn’t come back with a new passage to India, eh?

And even if the Spanish did invade and conquer the New World, who’s to say it was about spreading Christianity and Spanish values like they claimed? It was obviously just a resource grab. A War for Gold. The second they’d got over there and set up a puppet government, they ruthlessly exported the gold back to Spain, which is what their economy relied on to keep going.

And what about the 5/11 attack? The so-called Catholic plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament was really orchestrated by the British government, to give them an excuse to stir up anti-Catholic sentiment and clamp down on civil liberties. Guy Fawkes was just a scape goat – someone to blame. Its funny how he was being directly supported by the British government under Mary I just a couple of decades earlier. No one man could have arranged for that much gunpowder – the British government must have known about it and let it happen.

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Picking on people who share names with bastards
November 19th, 2007 at 16:56

I’ve invented a new game. Its called “How many people on Facebook share a name with someone I don’t like?”. I’ve been trying to think of a snappier title, but the best I can come up with has to be read in a Scottish accent: “Guess who many?“.

It turns out that there’s loads of unfortunate people in the world. Here’s a top-13 list of some unlucky people cursed with sharing a name with some truly dreadful people:

1. Nick Griffin – 274
2. David Cameron – 252
3. James Blunt – 171
4. David Mellor – 47
5. Jeffrey Archer – 37
6. Maxine Carr – 12
7. Richard Blackwood – 12
8. Richard Littlejohn – 8
9. Ian Huntley – 5
10. Vernon Kay – 3
11. Lowri Turner – 2
12. Madeleine McCann – 1
13. Adolf Hitler – 0

There are 171 James Blunts in the world. I especially feel sorry for the ugly ones, who have the joke set up for them by their namesake. At least no one named their kids Adolf Hitler, I guess.

I feel sorry for the Madeleine McCann on there – every day she must glance at the Daily Express front page on the way to work, only to learn that she’s either alive, dead, or whether or not her parents killed her, depending on the editorial slant the paper are taking that day. And every time her location is questioned, it must sound like some sort of sick joke, rather than a genuine enquiry. I hope she’s not planning any trips to Portugal otherwise we could be in for a year of the press saying “Maddy has been found” and then speculation on how she’s managed to age by 20 years.

And the poor other Richard Littlejohns – if they Google for their own name, as people (er, I) sometimes do, they might inadvertently think that I hate them.

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Weekend in Review #1
November 19th, 2007 at 00:04

I’ve had an idea for a new regular feature. I say “regularl – I can’t guarantee that at this stage. This could fall flat quicker than the Trumpet Blog. The idea is that I’ll review things I’ve been doing, like a critic would, and you can read it and value my opinion when judging whether or not to participate in an activity similar in nature to what I’ve been doing.

Robin Hood

About a year ago, I wrote a rather unkind review of the BBC’s attempt at doing Robin Hood, and then a few weeks ago admitted to giving it another chance. Inexplicably, the series has continued to grow on me, and its got to a point where I’m recognising and even appreciating the series-long sub-plot. It’s surprisingly watchable. I think this is because this series they seem to have ditched any attempt at historical accuracy, and have basically turned it into a middle-ages version of the Flintstones. In one episode, the Sheriff of Nottingham sets up a Vegas-style casino – and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have those in the olden days.

In a nutshell: “A weapon-carrying criminal who constantly evades the law is the perfect mascot for Nottingham”. 8/10

Top Gear

I watched Top Gear earlier. And it was a bit shit. They’ve gone back to talking about cars, rather than going on road-trips and having totally unscripted and unplanned banter. One thing that bothered me more this week than it has before was Jeremy Clarkson was more noticeably twatty than usual. I mean, obviously he’s always been a twat, but his tired old attacks on environmentalists have got boring when not done in a clever way, and he seems to get more xenophobic as time goes on. By the time he retires and the genes that make old people racist kick in, he’ll presumably be the most racist person in the country. Richard Hammond and James May are nearly as bad, but they still retain their position as the “slightly likeable ones” because Clarkson keeps being even more of a twat.

In a nutshell: “Objectively speaking, cars are still boring”. 4/10

Training Pokémon

I’ve spent a sizeable proportion of this weekend playing Pokémon again. I really want to beat the Elite 4, and thus complete the game, as I’m so horrendously close it’d be silly not to. To this end, I’ve been levelling up a Snover in Victory Road using an Experience Share. Its nicely relaxing, as you can train whilst watching telly (see above), and is slightly more productive than playing Solitaire.

In a nutshell: “That’s right, I play Pokémon”. 8/10

Finally writing something on the blog

You might have noticed, but blogging has been a bit slow as of late. I’ve had a massive bout of writer’s block. Sure, I’ve done the odd thing, but I’ve literally been devoid of inspiration, which has been irritating. I think I’d have written more with both arms broken and a recent bereavement than with writer’s block.

Thankfully though, I appear to be slowly overcoming this. Look! This is the third thing I’ve written today!

In a nutshell: “More obscure CD reviews and blogs about gigs you didn’t go to coming soon!” 9/10

Super Mario Galaxy

On Friday, the new Wii Mario game came out, and so far, it has been bloody marvellous. The hopeless Princess has been kidnapped again (it is Mario), so you’ve got to faff about in an implausible universe collecting stars that will somehow get her back.

The most amazing thing about the game though is the level design. It is spectacular. I thought some of the Zelda dungeons were pretty complex, but Mario takes this to a whole new, er, level. Most of the levels take place over several tiny “planets”, which are entirely spherical and you can walk entirely around – once you solve the planet’s “puzzle”, you’ll be able to get to the next one, and so on. It is amazing though – you’ll traverse one area, only to end up with the gravity flipping and you’ll find yourself having to cross the same area but in an entirely new way. Spectacular.

In a nutshell: “Lets-a-go… and buy it”. 9/10

Focus 800w Halogen Heater

Bloody hell, its been freezing lately. Its why I got a new heater for my room. Its pretty excellent. I mean, I’m not heating expert, and don’t spend my time on heater message boards or anything, but it seems to do the job. It puts out so much heat that it makes the air go wobbly directly in front of it, and will grill your legs. Take that, shit weather!

In a nutshell: “Bit warm in here, eh?”. 10/10

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Blair shits in woods.
November 18th, 2007 at 17:12

Tony Blair (remember him?) has apparently admitted in an interview that there were “disagreements or tensions” with Gordon Brown when he was Prime Minister. In a separate interview, a bear has admitted that, at times, it has indeed shit in the woods.

The disagreements throughout Blair’s 10 years in office are thought to be trivial and varied. Tension is thought to have arisen after the following incidents:

• Brown has an awful habit of drumming along to songs in his head – during Cabinet meetings. What made this intolerable for Blair was that he wasn’t just drumming with his fingers, but even used his feet to mimic hitting the pedal on the bass drum and occasionally raised his arms to “hit” the “cymbals” whilst making a crashing noise with his mouth.
• The pair once turned up to a party in the same suit – making both of them feel self-concious and awkward for the entire evening.
• Brown breathes heavily through his nose, resulting in an irritating wheezing sound, that once you notice it, you can’t focus on anything else.
• Whenever Blair tried to play it cool in front of foreign leaders and dignitaries, Brown was invariably found prattling about in the background, going out of his way to cramp Blair’s style. Whilst Blair was entertaining his cool American friend George, discussing cool topics like laser missile defence and monster trucks, Brown allegedly burst into the room, completely ignoring George, and reminding Tony that he’d said that he’d help him put together a new inflation control white paper to submit for review to the monetary policy select committee. Apparently Blair’s guest pretended to fall asleep and for the rest of the weekend made sarcastic references to how boring Blair was. The story goes that a fuming Blair yelled at Brown “Why did you do that?!”, only for Brown to reply “Do what?”.
• Apparently there was a really bad argument just before the 2005 General Election when Blair nearly “dumped” Brown – trying to make his job defunct and allegedly even blocking him on MSN.
• Brown whistling off-key.

If any “insiders” know of any more incidents, let me know in the comments!

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Immigration
November 18th, 2007 at 00:26

For some reason, there’s loads of British people who are scared by immigration. Apparently people talking English in endearingly fractured English and having a surname composed entirely of the high-scoring consonants in Scrabble is something to be TERRIFIED of.

Since 2004, there’s been loads of Polish people who’ve come over here and actually done some work, threatening our lazy way of life. I was too lazy to start the Polish supermarket I always wanted to open – then some Poles went and got in there first. It strikes me as slightly ludicrous that they say that foreigners are coming over here to scrounge off of our our benefits system – why would you move hundreds of miles away just to be unemployed? If you’re going to choose anywhere to be unemployed, at least choose somewhere with nicer weather.

I don’t know why the right wingers are so worried about the Poles though – I think the real nationality we need to fear are the Germans – and not just because of their, er, track record.

The Germans are famous for being difficult – insisting on trying to stop us from liberating France in the 1940s, and even today they continue to be difficult for the sake of being difficult. They’re staying over there, not taking our jobs, meaning we have to work all the time- and they have the cheek of not even bothering to learn English! They’re expecting us to tolerate them using words like “ersatz” and “schadenfreude” whilst sitting on their arses, totally not working as casual labourers on building sites or in factories working long hours for phenomenally low wages.

I think its political correctness gone mad that we’re supposed to tolerate Germany’s lazy attitude towards contributing to our society.

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Nutter of the week
November 14th, 2007 at 01:03

I got a later than usual train back home today – the quarter past nine. This exposition is probably unnecessary, but does perhaps help me frame this week’s nutter as a weird drunk, rather than just the regular type of nutter who hangs around train stations as a matter of course.

The train was approaching my stop, so I went to stand by the door, where I discovered a man gripping both of the rails at either side of the door, pushing his head, as if looking through railings, towards the window in the door, seemingly talking to himself.

He reeked of booze, so I tried to look away, finding myself taking an extra-careful interest in a route map on the other side of the carriage. Unfortunately, he started to talk to me.

“‘Scuse me, brother”, he said in a cool jazz-man New Orleans accent, “has the train stopped yet?”.

“Er, no”, I replied whilst looking at him looking out of the window. I realised he was wearing sunglasses. I couldn’t work out whether he was blind and asking a valid question, or was just determined to try and look cool and jazz-like.

After an agonising few moments of awkward silence, where I hoped he wouldn’t ask any further questions or attempt to conduct any other conversation, the train finally came to a halt. At which point, the weird jazz-man walked back into the seating part of the carriage and sat down.

Bizarre.

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London Yet Again
November 13th, 2007 at 02:08

I can’t help but think that my blog is slowly degenerating into a poor man’s Diamond Geezer, given the amount of times I’ve been to London. I went to London again today with my ginger friend Bouff. Where we did some London things.

Westminster Abbey

We went to Westminster Abbey – actually paying to go inside a Church. It was surprisingly worthwhile, as there are stacks of dead people in there. I saw the tombs of stacks of royals: Elizabeth I, Henry III, William & Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, and Mary I, for example. Unfortunately though, they are sort of hidden between a lot of filler. Nobody really wants to see the ex-MP for Exeter, whoever he was.

There were also lots of other important people: Newton, Darwin, Thomas Hardy, various old-timey Prime Ministers and so on. Now no one can say that I haven’t drummed on top of Chaucer’s grave.

It was also sort of funny to see the spot where Oliver Cromwell was buried, until Charles II got it removed. There’s some sort of RAF memorial there now.

By far the best bit, though, was what is apparently BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR. Here is a photo of me, knocking on BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR:

There’s even a sign explaining that it is BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR. It even made the news.

David Davies

It seems like only last week I was slagging off David Davies. Whilst walking through Westminster today I spotted him being interviewed for the telly. Here is a picture of me stroking my beard with him in the background, as if to imply that he is saying stupid things and is a twat:

We also saw Sanchez from Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace walking down Tottenham Court Road, but I don’t have a clever picture of me arsing about with him in the background.

Apple Store

We walked up Regent Street to find the Apple Store. And I got to have my first ever go on an iPhone. And it turns out that I really, really want one. Anyone from Apple reading? Send me an iPhone for free, please? I’ll review it and say nice things!

It was literally the best thing since sliced bread – the interface was incredible. The scaling, the scrolling, everything. The picture was sharp as anything. Its just a massive shame that £270 is ridiculously expensive, even before you consider the £35 a month contract.

We also had a go on the Apple TV – which is a set-top box/media server sort of thing, and I ended up watching my own YouTube videos on a massive plasma telly in London. Which was cool.

Conclusions

London is still cool. iPhones are excellent. Important dead people are interesting. But perhaps the most pertinent conclusion is that I am still a dreadful tourist. However much I try to fit in, complaining about tourists, reading the Metro on the Tube, walking around like I know where I’m going, I’m still Oyster-less and have to get about by using the most humiliating ticket known to Londoner: a national rail day travel-card.

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