The Earthquake
February 27th, 2008 at 11:27

So, who felt the earthquake last night? Lets try not to worry, people, we can get through this together.

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How to win at quiz shows
February 26th, 2008 at 01:24

Being a cold-hearted rationalist, I’m unable to appreciate the abstract concepts of “luck”, “faith”, “hope”, and useless words that essentially mean “spurious assertion based on nothing” – this means that I have a habit of approaching everything rationally, with a sort of “risk assessment” and mentally judging the probabilities of things happening.

I could apply these skills that I assume I have to a career as say, a health and safety executive – or a spoilsport as they’re colloquially known. As it happens though, I instead devote this part of my brain to something far less useful: figuring out which television game shows it would be best to appear on to win some money.

I reckon if you can win pretty big on maybe three or four game shows a year, you may never need to get a proper job, and can sit at home with a self-satisfied grin on your face, like CJ and Daphne from Eggheads.

This may sound pretty silly – and twenty years ago, it might have done. Back in the olden days, before Chris [Tarrant] (BC), quiz shows never really gave away much money, and it was all about the prizes. It would have been all well and good appearing on The Price is Right or Bullseye or whatever it was people watched prior to my birth, but having watched years of repeats on Challenge TV on Sky of all sorts of crappy quiz shows, unless you can live in a speedboat, and eat chequebooks and pens for lunch, then living entirely off of the proceeds from quiz show winnings would have been impossible.

Thankfully now though, TV seems to chuck money at whoever can bark the answers to a handful of stupid questions, and thanks to satellite TV, there’s now enough channels with enough time-filling cheapo quizzes on to make this possible.

So what quiz show is it easiest to win big money on? There’s a couple of factors involved, I rationally think – the amount of prize money and the contestant turnover. Its all well and good going on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but they only have more or less one contestant a week (or at least did back in 1999 when people actually watched it) – but chances are, even if you make it on to the programme, you’re going to end up sat in the audience watching someone else walk away with £32,000. Similarly, going on Mastermind is great if you can handle the questions, and they have four people a week on… but is it really worth all of that effort for a trophy and bragging rights?

If you’re after some cold, hard, cash, then I think the game show that is best to go on is The Weakest Link. Sure, you only know how it works because you used to watch the last round after switching over from Neighbours, waiting for The Simpsons, but its almost the easiest quiz to get on: they have nine contestants every episode, and its on practically all year round, so they must need a lot of contestants – which increases your chances of being on. The prize money is good too – its nearly always over a thousand pounds – which really isn’t bad for a day’s work. And the best thing? You don’t even have to be clever or intelligent. The trick to winning is being the second cleverest, or good at pretending to be clever – as they’ll always vote out the strongest link in the penultimate round.

So that’s my advice – if you want to win money on the telly, go on the Weakest Link.

Incidentally, you might want to watch the Weakest Link on Monday…

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Classic FM
February 25th, 2008 at 19:07

My car’s cassette tape adapter finally broke the other day, meaning that I can no longer rock out listening to my iPod whilst driving along. This means that rather than listen to Reel Big Fish, or, er, The Economist Podcast, I’ve instead had to endure the radio.

As a young, cool trendsetter, I first decided to turn to Radio 1. I tried listening to this on a couple of journeys, but it made me feel old and depressed. The DJs spoke about the most asinine garbage: on Saturday afternoon - I’m not making this up - there was a phone-in discussion about what biscuits the listeners were eating at that point in time. The DJ read out texts from people who were (thrillingly) eating digestives, rich teas, custard cremes and so on, and then upped the ante by inviting a caller to speak live on air about the biscuits she was eating. Spoiler: it was a chocolate digestive.

The music was strange too. I didn’t realise I was so hopelessly out of touch - listening to the last part of the Top 40 yesterday was a bewildering experience, as I didn’t know any of the songs, or even recognise the names of any of the artists. Why had I never heard of the number one artist (”Duffy”) before yesterday? Surely if someone is famous enough to be number one they’d at least be a part of the public conciousness?

So for the past couple of days I’ve been trying a different tactic: I’ve been listening to Classic FM instead. Its significantly better because Chris Moyles isn’t anywhere near it. It clearly takes a populist stance, as despite knowing nothing about classical music, I’ve so far recognised about half the tracks I’ve listened to on there. Driving along to the James Bond theme tune is quite exciting, even if subconsciously it is urging you to drive fast and womanise.

The funniest thing though was listening to the Classic FM Chart Show on Saturday night. It was just like Radio 1 - there was a presenter playing the top selling singles, they even had jingles to introduce each track with the number of its chart position. The crucial difference with radio one though, was that whereas Radio 1’s jingles are something like “Number One… one… one…”, with lots of echo, over production and laid on top of a several sound effects, like most radio jingles are, to sound exciting, Classic FM’s jingle was just a man’s voice saying in the Queen’s English “Number One”. Classy.

Recommend me a radio station, people!

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Reely, Reely Big Fish
February 25th, 2008 at 16:06

I’ve had a rather hectic eight days - I hesitate to claim that I’ve been “busy”, because that would imply that I’ve been doing something worthwhile. I’ve been over-indulging in a hallmark of popular culture: I’ve been to see one of my favourite bands, Reel Big Fish, three times. Yeah, that’s right, three times.

I’ve travelled all around the country to see them - to the Cresset in Peterborough, the Academy in Birmingham and Rock City in Nottingham. Each gig had almost the same set list - starting with Sell Out, about half way through having “Good Thing” and “Your Guts (I hate ‘em)” segue together (just live the live album), finishing the main set on “Beer”, then having “Trendy” and their cover of “Take On Me” in the encore. They also played at some point: “Everything Sucks”, “Ban the Tube Top”, a cover of “Enter Sandman” and “She’s got a girlfriend now” (sung with the singer from Sonic Boom Six, introduced in almost the same way as the live album), “Where have you been?”, “Somebody hates me”, “Don’t start a band” and “Kiss Me Deadly” (just like the live album, introduced by saying “Here’s a song!”, before launching into it). One notable difference in the set lists was that in Peterborough they played “She’s Famous Now”, whereas at the other two gigs they replaced it with “A little doubt goes a long way”. They played some other songs too, but I was too busy rocking out to remember them. Last night in Nottingham, right at the very end, just as they were going off stage, Aaron played an impromptu riff from “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by the Scorpians, bizarrely.

The support were good too. Sonic Boom Six are pretty cool - they stuck to the same “script” at all three gigs, getting the audience going by doing a “When I say ‘Reel Big’, you say ‘FISH’”, bit - and mixing in a couple of hip-hop bits. Streetlight Manifesto, who were also supporting, are also rather excellent - and rather ska.

So it will come as no surprise to you that I think they’re the best thing since sliced bread, and one of the best live acts around. And I’m still on the post-gig high right now.

One of the best bits, aside from meeting Aaron Barrett, the main bloke in the band last night, was knowing all of the words to all of the songs, and being right down in the pit for most of the three gigs, surrounded by hundreds of people all saying the same thing, in time, appreciating a charismatic group on a stage in front of us… without any fascistic undertones.

It was excellent. Go and see Reel Big Fish, readers.

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Lets go fly a kite…
February 24th, 2008 at 18:51

…or attempt to, anyway…

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Important: Date for your diary!
February 22nd, 2008 at 23:55

You might have spotted all of the subtle hints I’ve been placing over the past few months. I mean, if you’re an obsessive compulsive who’s obsession is me. But now I can finally tell you: I’m going to be on the Weakest Link. Yes, the TV game show.

Its going to be broadcast on Monday March 3rd at 5.15pm on BBC One. Tune in and watch me make a fool of myself! (It’ll presumably also be on the iPlayer for the week following.)
I’ll hopefully put some of the “best bits” (assuming there are some) on YouTube afterwards, complete with directors commentary.

So don’t miss it!

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Monetary Fallacy
February 18th, 2008 at 23:02

Economics is a hard subject, and I imagine that working in the world of finance is difficult business. You need lots of highly specialised skills if you want to work in the city – like the ability to use two phones at once, and being able to wear braces without looking like you’ve just stepped out of the nineteenth century.

In these turbulent economic times, we have to put our faith in these people, so we have to assume they know what they’re doing. Most economic concepts are simply too abstract for us to grasp – understanding what bonds, futures and dead cat bounces are is almost as complex as understanding quantum physics, or what would possess someone to actually buy Kerry Katona’s autobiography.

So the question arises, how can we sort out these problems? The national debt is apparently £1.3 trillion – which is pretty big. The Chancellor taking out another high-APR credit card and paying off the national debt with that probably isn’t going to sort this out, it will merely delay it – and its not like we can call in the loans that we’ve given the developing world over the years – the “Make Poverty History” campaign showed how mean that is… and besides, even if we sent the toughest, burliest looking men to the developing world to act as loan sharks it would be futile. Sure, they might come back with their video recorders, but we couldn’t sell them on to, say, America, because they have different sockets in the back of their TVs to us.

So dealing with the forthcoming economic problems looks tricky, and has economists and the general public alike scratching their heads, furrowing their brows and chewing pen lids to pieces. Does anyone know what to do?

Ignorance has never stopped me from commenting on a topic before, so I’ve come up with a solution that thinks outside the box a little bit: tax the poor more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a Thatcherite policy that relies on giving rich people loads of money and hoping it’ll filter down to the poor people, as that obviously doesn’t work – what I’m suggesting is a little ruse that we can use to exploit the goodwill of the rest of the world. So make sure you don’t tell anyone foreign about my brilliant plan or this might not work.

If we tax the poor 100% of their income they will be left with nothing – and our poor people will be living on significantly less than a dollar a day (in fact, exactly one dollar less than a dollar a day), and thus qualify as living in absolute poverty. All we have to do then is give Bono and Bob Geldof a ring, and before we know it, they’ll be benefit concerts around the world to raise money for us.

“Just £14 a month is enough to give a family of four a subscription to Sky Sports”, concerned celebrities will say on adverts shown around the world, “and just £6 will pay for three hours in a multi-storey car park”. Then all we have to do is wrack up the desperation by explaining that some of the most rural British people have to drive up to maybe ten miles a week to reach a supermarket to get food and bottled water and the money will come flooding in.

Sure, some may claim that we’re essentially “sponging off benefits”, but we should be able to take that, as it’s not like our right wing press have never accused foreigners of doing that before.

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O’Malley in “classical realist” shocker
February 18th, 2008 at 19:45

So, Kosovo has declared independence, and the world is waiting to see what all of the key players are going to do about it. Britain, America, France, Germany and Italy have all recognised Kosovo as independent, whereas (obviously) Serbia and Russia and kicking up a fuss and claiming that they can’t see it. You’d think they’d have a better vantage than the British, as they’re much closer.

But the world is no doubt asking what that other key actor in international relations’ take on it is: “What does James O’Malley think?“.

I’m glad you asked. I’m having a bit of an intellectual crisis about this at the moment - on the one hand, my instinctive liberal values thinks that it is nice that the (majority of) people in Kosovo have what they want, and are able to self-determine (in international relations parlance) what they do. But on the other hand, what of my pragmatic respect for international law and my disdain for how Kosovo seem intent on messing up what was a highly flawed yet tolerable international system?

International law is probably the most complicated thing in the world. Because a state can’t appeal to a higher authority to justify its actions like individuals can (”you can’t murder people because if you do you’ll be arrested”), the international system is lawless, like the rough parts of Brixton where the teenage gangs are in charge, and you have to earn the respect of your peers… which in international relations is again just like Brixton: you might have to shoot someone to do it. This is just like how you wouldn’t mess with Russia because you might end up being a bit too radioactive.

And this is what worries me about Kosovo… by recognising Kosovo as a country, the west are sort of intruding on Russia’s turf… and a gang war breaking out over territory would be bad for everyone.

Because there’s no international rule book, international law is basically defined by a series of precedents that have been set throughout history, but conversely, relies on the status-quo being maintained for stability. This lack of a rule book, whilst it means that you can roll a double consecutively as many times as you like, without the risk of automatically going to jail without passing go, does mean that if anyone does anything new and bold, it could shake things up and all hell could break loose.

And this is why Kosovo worries me a bit. Now that there’s a precedent for declaring independence without being able to moan that the parent country invaded you years ago (like when the USSR split up), there could be a big domino effect around the world. What about, say… Chechnya, South Ossetia, Somaliland, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Corsica, the Basque region, either half of Belgium… or even Cornwall, or slightly more realistically… Scotland? It’d be a bit hypocritical of the government to fight against Scottish independence now that they support Kosovo - the situations are identical, give or take a genocide or two.

So what am I supposed to think? Am I supposed to think that self-determination is a good thing or that it will really mess up the relatively stable international system? If I think the former, how far can it go? Could Cornwall declare independence? If so, then what about, say, Leicester? And why not individuals? Could I not declare my house independent from Britain and fight for my right to self-determination? Where can this madness end?

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Yet more proof democracy doesn’t work
February 10th, 2008 at 20:56

Hey, remember the UK Independence Party, or UKIP as they’re also known? You must remember them - they have a lurid yellow and purple pound symbol logo and have been the replacement joke-party for the Monster Raving Loony Party in recent elections. Every election cycle, they come up with a load of ludicrous joke policies, stand against the main parties, get barely a handful of votes and then lose their deposits.

Of course, there are some people who just don’t seem to get the joke, and for some unfathomable reason, treat them as an almost legitimate political party - including the leadership themselves. It would be fair to say that they have a bit of an image problem - David Cameron, of all people, said that they’re “fruitcakes, loonies and closet-racists“. Its difficult to find evidence to the contrary.

This said, I really can’t see why they have an image problem when someone who cites the Farage Youth as their homepage posts the following comment on my blog:

“Dear fuckhead,

You’re a big fat unfunny cunt and I hope you get AIDs and die.

Not only that, but being as your parents are massive whores I also hope they get infected with some horrific STD, maybe syphilis.

Your blog is so bad I believe it has given me cancer. You manage to give new meaning to the phrase ‘fat uniformed student twat’, a F.U.S.T if you will.

What a massive gaping cunt you are.”

Clearly UKIP’s hopes for the future are bright if they’ve got powerful young minds like this supporting them. It almost makes me worry what the “everyone left of far-right” opposition are going to do in the future if they’ve only got massive, gaping cunts like me supporting them. I mean, aside from ignore them as a political insignificance and pay attention to them only for a little light relief.

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A blog about actual things that I’ve done for once
February 10th, 2008 at 02:22

I went to London today with my friend Bouff, and have unexpectedly got three interesting, yet unrelated stories out of it. I’ve ranked them least interesting to most interesting - which is incidentally also chronological order - to keep you reading to the bitter end.

STORY ONE

Bouff suggested we go to London a couple of weeks ago, and I readily agreed, as I bloody love London. A few days ago when discussing what to do there, I suggested to him that we could, say, go to Highgate Cemetery, and have a look at Karl Marx and Douglas Adams’ graves. Bouff replied “I was thinking of H&M”.

“Nah, we won’t end up simply shopping”, I thought. Then we ended up in the Vans shop on sickeningly fashionable Carnaby Street, so he could buy the sort of shoes skateboarders wear to show that they’re totally sticking it to the man, from a large multinational corporation. Here is an “action shot”, and I use the term “action” incredibly loosely, of a man you don’t know purchasing shoes to validate this story as truth:

STORY TWO

I was shocked this evening when I checked the news earlier and found out about that massive fire in Camden. Why? Because I was there only a couple of hours earlier. Its a bit weird switching on the news and seeing the street you were just on (the one with the shop with the aeroplane on the front) covered in flames.

We went to The World’s End pub, which is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page. Well, some people do predict that the world’s end will be in a hellish scene with lots of fire and destruction.

Whilst not technically in Camden so not relevant to this half-baked story, but it’s not like it was actually going anywhere in the first place. We also ventured to Holloway Road, which is basically just a suburban street somewhere in north London, but we went there because it was all about the destination: the club Nambucca, which is apparently some sort of famous Indie venue - I vaguely knew of it because its referenced in a Frank Turner song. Yeah, its horrendously obscure, but Bouff was excited, going through his phone book, texting everyone he knows. All I really saw was a closed building. Here is another exciting picture:

STORY THREE

This is the best story. If you’ve skipped the other two to see what’s here, then it was worth the effort. You’ve seen Shaun of the Dead, haven’t you? Well, do you recognise this newsagents:

No? Its the one from Shaun of the Dead. Really, it is. That’s why we took what looked like an unlicensed mini-cab half way across North London to a small parade of shops in a heavily residential area devoid of a Tube to take photographs of ourselves standing outside a newsagents.

Annoyingly, the shop was sold out of Cornettos.

Here’s Shaun’s house. It’s changed a bit since the film:

It was dead exciting. See, that’s a pun there. Sort of.

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