Childhood ruined by Wikipedia
February 26th, 2006 at 14:48

I’ve just spent the last three hours reading Wikipedia. Rather than filling my brain with useful knowledge about like, the cold war or how the gas giants work, I’ve been reading about kids TV series like the Spiderman animated series, and Beetleborgs. Again.

I was horrified to discover something most disturbing about VR Troopers, which you may or may not remember as the Power Rangers style show that lasted for a couple of series about ten years ago. Now, it’s fairly common knowledge that Power Rangers was essentially made up of scenes of American kids with scenes from Japanese action series spliced in- essentially as stock footage. It turns out that VR Troopers was even shonkier than this- that used “stock footage” from two Japanese TV series, where costumes were inconsistent. This worries me, as I’m left wondering why my eight year old self didn’t notice this?!

Worse still, in the Saban made Masked Rider (which was produced in the same way as VR Troopers) you could apparently still see the Japanese actor’s head in a lot of shots… and the costume was different between Japanese and American actors.

I never spotted these inconsistencies before- and seeing this now has ruined my childhood. How much else of my childhood was let down by poor production values and cheap Japanese imports?
I hate you, Wikipedia.

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Dignity
January 13th, 2006 at 21:42

As you might well know, I’ve got quite a lot of dignity. There’s a lot I won’t do that’ll make me look vaguely silly, and it really is quite restrictive in what I can do- no breaking into song to illustrate a point, for a start.

This means that the hundreds of additional cast members who only appear for the musical scenes of my life are perpetually sitting in the wings. It’s too late to get the audience rhythmically clapping along to me meeting Kilroy or collecting my A-level results for instance. On the plus side, not much rhymes with Kilroy, so getting hundreds of people to simultaneously compose and execute the same song and dance in perfect time would be tricky, anyway. Swillroy?
Dignity is annoying though. A few minutes ago I was miming the drumming to the Gollum of the heavy rock world that is Audioslave, (of all things) and getting quite into it. I was nodding my head with vigour, and I had the volume on “loud”. Then it hit me. I was flailing my arms about wildly to an audience thankfully composed of no one, moving my arms as if I was playing the drums- despite not knowing how to play the drums nor the beat (or whatever) that the drums in the song make. If I was seen by someone who was deaf, or from outside of my bedroom window, I’d look demented. How hideously embarassing!
The trouble is, I’m always confronted with choices where I have to decide which option will allow to retain maximum dignity.

Yesterday at University I was vaguely late to a lecture and wanted to sit within bantering distance of Mickey and Shaz- rather than simply jump over the staggered desks like a lunatic, I forced my way along the isle of seats (Isle of Man, if you will, haha!), causing everyone in the row to stand up and watch me squeeze past them, me pushing my bag into each and everyone of their faces. With the benefit of hindsight, and in retrospect (ie: hindsight), it would seem that simply jumping the desks would have caused me to lose less dignitons.

Dignity restricts my capacity to explain, as well as my physical capabilities- as you can imagine it makes discussing music near impossible, especially as I don’t know any technical music terminology in which to subsitute for “waa waa waaah”, which I’m not willing to sing or hum. “Have you heard the new System of a Down album?” “Yeah, I like the song with the… guitar… and… drums in it”.

Maybe it’s a class thing? Maybe I’m trying my best to be as “upper-class” as possible, despite having only modest (as opposed to extravagent) material wealth, and being opposed to fox hunting, unrestricted capitalism, and upper-class cunts.

I bought a monocle about a year ago to try and raise myself about my station, and I wore it to school one day. This was very conflicting for me in terms of dignity- I was damaging my dignity by wearing a “silly” (£14!) prop, but at the same time, I was trying to increase my dignity by acting all upper class. I even adopted the posh accent, mannerisms and phrases. I called my classmates paupers and told them to “get back to the colonies”, among other things. Contrary to my expectations, this didn’t make me more popular, and a girl on the table opposite the James Gang table started actively blogging her dislike of me. Bizarre.
Will I retain this dignity? Will I get into hilarious scrapes that will compromise my dignity? Tune in next time, folks.

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Brooke Weston CTC
November 30th, 2005 at 16:34

I’ve noticed in the breakdown of where my hits come from, I’m getting a few from Brooke Weston CTC- the posh school where I did my work experience.

Don’t worry! Don’t think for a second that I want to be a teacher! They’re so posh that they employ a full time web designer, and I spent the week helping out on the school website.

For readers unaware, imagine a perfect school- all of the kids are polite and courteous, with even the nastiest bunch of youths offering to help you find somewhere if you look lost. Imagine carpets. Imagine resources. Imagine an entrance exam to get in. That’s how posh this school is. They don’t even have lunchtime or breaktime- they just stagger it as a point on the timetable for different year groups. It made me feel thick and rubbish just being there.

But anyway, I’m intrigued as to who at the CTC is reading my blog? Has the guy I experienced work with fours years ago been googling names? Is it a student with my blog on one tab, and Wikipedia on another? Either way mysterious person, please reveal yourself!

No, not in that way! Just post a comment explaining who you are. I’m intrigued.

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Remembering an awful supply teacher
November 15th, 2005 at 18:58

I’ve just been reading through the B3ta question of the week about teachers and it reminded me of a terrible supply teacher I had.

When I was in year 8 or 9, the new IT teacher, after only two weeks in the job got almost the entire school year off because of stress. His long-term replacement supply teacher was awful.

I was the excellently behaved kid at or near the top of the class in my form (although I only got a C for modesty)- this tedious backstory is neccessary if you want to share in my pain.

For some reason, or more likely, a number of similar reasons, we were on “class report”, which essentially meant that at the end of every lesson, the teacher signed a piece of paper and commented on the class behaviour, noting down the naughty kids, who would then get detentions automatically.

This was an IT lesson – a subject that I knew more than the regular teacher in, let alone the supply. I had to show Mr Nameless how to crop an image in Microsoft Publisher, for example. It was very easy to “babble him with science”.

After working hard all lesson, no doubt doing something like “word processing and using Encarta”, the kids who had been misbehaving all lesson told Mr Nameless that I was “hacking the c:\ drive”, whatever that meant. The lunchtime detention I had because of it went on for so long that I missed any opportunity to get some lunch. He was an arse.

He must have enjoyed being treated like dirt, as he once took our form, who were notoriously dreadful, for English. The room the lesson took place in was actually a larger room divided by a plastic curtain, and was quite flexible, and could be opened when the head of English decided to “double up” as a “treat” for “not employing enough teachers”.

The same kid who, erm… grassed me up for my awful hacking crimes went into the classroom on the other side of the divide, and waited for Mr Nameless to stand behind it, before kicking it as hard as he possibly could. Needless to say, Mr Nameless flew a good few feet across the classroom. At the time, I acted shocked and/or indifferent, in order to not get in trouble, but in retrospect, he deserved it.

The “grass” was suspended for a day, and is probably now sitting in a ditch crying about where it all went wrong. Hooray!

Better still, when this supply teacher left the school at the end of the year, it was announced in the end of term assembly to everyone in the room cheering loudly. Mr Nameless was in the room at the time.

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Beaurocratic Incompetence
October 4th, 2005 at 16:52

Despite Universtity being shiny, new, and exciting, and full of things to do, it’s still obvious that it’s an educational institution.

It’s not the lecture theatres, text books or group of youths smoking outside that give it away- it’s the fact that trying to get anything organisational or beaurocratic done is near impossible. You’d think that issuing a timetable and allocating a seminar group to all of the new students who enrolled at the same time would be easy- all of the data is in one place so it’d simply be a case of saying “mail merge this, SQL that, print everything”. But this is a place of learning. Nothing is that simple- so I’m without a timetable, seminar group or clue about where to be at what times.

If I even bother to go into Leicester tommorrow, it’ll be at a time of my choosing, as I will quite literally have no idea when to be there.

Once again I’ve been let down by the people who make such a fuss about being able to offer help and guidance. The guy on the phone has essentially said, “yeah, I’ll sort that out for you. Whatever. Leave me alone. It’s not really my job to be helpful!”. (It was).

This isn’t the first time something like this has happend- educational officials are rubbish. Now, I’m not talking about teachers- they’re usually excellent. The exception here being the supply teacher who gave me a detention for doing the work set in year 8.

But anyway, I was in year 10 or 11- which for any Americans reading, is when I was 15 or 16. I’d imagine you American readers also read it with me having a quaint English accent, or at least a cockney.

As I was one of the “better” students, who would have been in the clever people club, if my form teacher had passed on the message about the meetings, (grumble, grumble), I was asked to take part in something called the “World Challenge Day”.

I think it was run by the gap year company “World Challenge”, and was essentially a day of team building activities, like “construct something from these planks of wood that can have everyone sitting on it, raised above the ground” to the ever-popular “obtain objects from the opposite side of the hall, without touching the floor, using these objects”. It was especially exciting as us main-schoolers didn’t have to wear school uniform.

As it turned out, some of the people, despite being intellectually superior to their peers, decided to use the occasion to muck about and show up the school. This might be libel, but I’m sure I’ve got memories of my good friend JD rolling someone along in a few tyres.

Next day, one of the senior staff members called everyone into a room for a bollocking. After having a good rant, she told a few people to stay behind, as they’d been the worst offenders. Perhaps the rant was just to mask the identity parade that was taking place? After leaving, I thought nothing of it.

It was only a couple of days later when my parents recieved a letter in the post that was essentially bitching about how awful I really am. When my dad leaned against the sofa, sitting on the arm, at 7:30am, and casually saying “so what happend on the world challenge day, then?”, I knew something was up.

After a short discussion, a letter had been written to the school, demanding an apology for the injustice- we reckoned that one of the people who actually were mucking about gave my name instead of theres.

My point is, we demanded an apology from the school, and in the end they just brushed it under the carpet, never using the word “sorry” for falsely accusing me. The closest I got was a senior staff member, who out of coincidence, was supply teaching my english lesson said, “Ooh, I need to have a word with you”. She never did.

This clearly must have scarred me somewhat, to still be clearly embedded into my mind even now. DMU, let this be a warning to you! Don’t muck up otherwise I’ll be blogging about it in four years time, which will no doubt reflect badly on you!

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Children on public transport
September 30th, 2005 at 21:17

As you might have read in previous updates (I can honestly say I’m not sure if I’ve written about the subject before), I hate children. They’re horrible, and contribute nothing to society. Like dogs.

I mean, they both live in their own filth, make incomphrensible noises, wreck everything they go near- at least some dogs are guide dogs, which is a very noble use. At least parents don’t try and get their dogs to do the transaction in shop, as part of a learning experience.

Anyway, I’ve got a point to make. Well, not really. It’s just children have annoyed me again. On the train back from Leicester yesterday, I found a couple of seats to myself- I’d worked my way into public transport mode, that is to say: bag on the seat next to me, to prevent anyone from sitting there, MP3 player on loud, intelligent looking book open and being read.

The train tends to sit at Leicester station for a few minutes if it’s early (!), so that everything stays in time- this unfortunately gave a young mother the opportunity to board the train. She parked her push chair and child on the opposite side of the isle to me and then proceeded to sit next to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I could easily have coped with her sitting next to me, trapping me on my seat- if she was going to murder me, then she’d also have to murder the rest of the carriage, to eliminate eye witnesses (unless she was a nutter who’d turn the gun on herself afterwards), it was her child that was the problem.

I like to listen to music loudly- I work under the assumption that by the time I lose my hearing, bionic-ears will exist, and will replace my current, broken ears, and even have say, a built in MP3 player. (No jokes about where the USB cable connects, please).

My point is, not much can overcome this sound- I can walk through town and hear nothing but straight, white men ranting about how bad homophobia, racism and sexism are. (ie: Punk music).

This child, managed to cry for the entire god-damn journey. I mean, the phrase “STFU” was invented for this situation. It’s not even as if the mother tried to help – she sat there, texting away on her phone.

She did eventually do something of course- but I think this was only when the train reached the point where getting a phone signal is impossible. First of all, she just tried talking to it- and then gave up on that. She got the baby’s crap-covered things, like some sort of drinks container, and other stuff out onto the fold-down tray, and I mean, how can people go near stuff like that? It looks revolting, you can tell just by looking at it that a child has been near it.

This shut it up for a bit. And by “a bit”, I mean, “approximately one minute”. Things got worse- it started crying again. By this time, reading was near impossible- imagine trying to read John Simpson describe the gassing of the Kurds at Hallabjah- I don’t want the fucking sound effects! It’s horrible enough as it is!

Back in the day when I worked in a well known hardware store (ie: until six days ago), it was truly horrible if someone put their child on the counter whilst they mucked about in their purse, or whatever- this woman sitting next to me decided the best course of action was to pick the child out of the push chair and stand it on her knee.

I was trapped. There was nowhere I could move to, and I was in very close proximity to this mother and child. This baby would only have to be sick, and my book (which cost £3.99 from a publishers outlet store) would be ruined! It was awful.

If you’ll allow me to put my Daily Mail hat on for a second, I think that children should be banned from public transport.

Over a year ago now, when I’d just turned seventeen, I went to Portugal with my family for a week. I’m not the biggest fan of flying, probably because I don’t fly enough to get used to it.

Oh, alright, I’m a big wimp.

We were flying with “Flyjet“- an airline that hopefully does what it’s name suggests. At the time, they owned, I think, two aircraft, and clearly, the pilots did not get much of a chance to practice. When landing in portugal, rather than doing a nice, smooth landing, it was like rolling down some stairs. In other words, it was “fly straight for a bit” then “drop a few hundred feet”. It also landed at an angle making the plane bounce around a bit. But this is irrelevant.

The thing was, there was children on the flight. As we were landed, they shouted things like “we’re going down!”- even though I knew the chances of them being trained pilots, or experts in aviation, it wasn’t very reassuring. Flying is horrible enough in itself, I don’t need children who could be easily ended making it even worse.

Children are small- can’t Parcel Force transport them around?

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Plugged in!
June 10th, 2005 at 20:19

I had no reason to be in school today- the stats exam was over and I thought I’d celebrate by taking a day off. Heather, having recently finished her exams, joined me.

The agenda for the day was unclear, so we were unsure as what to do. We met in town, and after activating my new debit card, we came to the conclusion that the town isn’t the hotbed of activity neither of us had anticipated. We retreated, much like the French, to my house.

On the way back, we, by which I mean, I, as Heather has a habit of being horrendously indecisive, eventually agreed on going to my local recreation ground. Now that I’m an adult, the swings have lost their appeal. I tried to enjoy myself, but it wasn’t the same. I complained about my back and how kids today have no respect. I suggested to Heather that we were being teenage louts, and a cigarette was needed to complete the look, as after all, here were two teenagers, on a childrens play area. When a small child and his mother came to presumably use the equipment for what it is designed (childish frolics), we abandoned The Rec and went to my house. In retrospect, there’s nothing strictly wrong with what we were doing, as Heather is still under 18, and thus it was an adult supervising a child having fun, surely?

We got to my house, and sat about a bit, not really sure what to do. Afterall, I’d invited her round with the theory being “slacking”- I hadn’t planned any further ahead. Long story short, I ended up standing on a plug, and really hurting my foot. There was a big, prong shaped, hole in it.

Panicking, whilst trying to remain as manly and brave as I could in front of two women (Heather and my mother), I squeaked in the voice you can only do when in pain that I needed a plaster. There was none in the house, so this lead us on to the next stage in today’s adventure. Heather and I took a trip to the relatively new Lidl to buy some. Both of us had never been in there before, so we didn’t know quite what to expect.

The shop itself was a lidl bit exciting. (Haha!)

It was as hyper-nationalistic, efficient and blond, just as I’d anticipated. I have never seen a supermarket with so few brand name products. There was Pepsi, but that was it. When we walked in, I thought there was stacks of Coca-Cola, it was actually a “cola” in a red bottle, but it wasn’t coke. I wanted to get some, just to see if the German’s are better at cola than they are at war. Of course, the downfall in this plan was that Heather was there, and she’s rather militant on the whole Coke thing.

Point is, we bought some much needed plasters. Up until this point, I had been keeping my foot pain-free with some tissue paper in my sock. It was like a plug-induced nose bleed, which I get rather a lot of (regular nose bleeds, I mean).

Plaster applied, we decided to test out my “new” foot on a trip around the area where I live. First stop was the place where I fell into the river, around five years ago. What’s this? You’re presumably wondering. Back in my somewhat well-spent youth, Stephen, Teb and myself (obviously we looked, and were, much younger then) occasionally went to an artificial weir. That’s a little concrete waterfall thing, for you plebs out there. We’d jump across, as if to prove our sporting agility. You can see where this is going. I walked across the little waterfall bit between the two concrete erm… bits (guess who hasn’t done any geography in two years). Carefully stepping across in order to look around the bend in the river to see if there was any ducks. I slipped. I fell. I slid. I splashed.

I was then sitting waist high in river water, and laughing whilst simultaneously being in a degree of pain. It was hilarious at the time, and equally now, I think. I broke my first mobile phone in the process. Quite why I didn’t just jump across to the other side and look from there, like I’d been doing seconds previously, I don’t know.

Anyway, after spending a few minutes enthralling Heather with this tale of heroism and victory, much to our surprise, my physics teacher from my AS levels jumped out of a hedge, carrying what I assume were his recycling bins. “Shouldn’t he be at work?”, I thought.

The trip continued, and we ended up at the site of a somewhat infamous accident. All of my friends know about this, partially because I won’t shut up about it, but because of the circumstances under which it happend. That’s right, we arrived at the traffic island where I smashed up my mum’s car.

Long story short, Christmas Day, got put on the car insurance as a Christmas present. Two hours later, I panicked after a drunken cyclist, the only other person on the road, swerved in front of me, so I in turn swerved my mum’s car into a bollard. Written off. £1600 worth of damage.

The bollard is still there. It’s not in bad shape, really. Just a bit warped. It sprung right back up. Unlike the cyclist I hit car. We stood in the traffic island for a few minutes, reflecting on what happend, just under six months ago. I don’t think Heather was too impressed.

After the repressed memories came flooding back, we headed back to my house, where my mother, like she does with all of my new and relatively new friends, interrogated Heather. “What are your parents jobs?”, “Have you always lived where you do?”, “Did you know James was born eight weeks early?”, “Would you like to read James’ school report?” (she did), “Here’s an embarassing story about James”.

Shortly after this, and after a brief experiment which involved a free razor Gilette sent me for my 18th, in which we discovered that it works on arm hair, even without shaving foam, Heather had to go to catch a bus, ending what I thought was a very nice day. I hope she enjoyed it too, because otherwise she’ll spread rumours to her friends and peers about how boring I am.

Hmm… just revision to worry about now.

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Talking to Old People
April 28th, 2005 at 21:44

It was my grandad’s birthday today, so we went to see my grandparents this evening. We bought him a garden bench from Homebase- incidentally the same thing he’d receieved three hours earlier from my uncle and his family. As it was his Birthday, and I realised that he was born in 1931, I did the unimaginable. I asked an elderly person about the war. No, really.

It was actually quite interesting. No, I can’t believe I just wrote that either.

Here was my relative, an evacuee who I’ve known for 17 years telling me first hand the stories about know what a cow is, although his friends didn’t, because he’d been on holiday to the country before. He also told me he and the other London kids got one of the country kids and tied them up, and set fire to them. Oo-er.

It was weird in a way- it was like watching Spy Watch or taking part in year 4 national cirriculum Histroy. I think all evacuees must have had similar experiences.

The other shock of the evening was hearing my grandparents allude to what the older kids got up to with American soliders who were apparently stationed near by. It’s horrifying to think that old people had lives and did non-old people things.

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