Thistles, sausages and Christianity.

I'm listening to Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. That's a good one. It sounds very cheesy and film noir, but fuck it. I'm currently living in the aftermath of a barbecue. What a God damn stupid word. I know what it means, but phonetically it can only be described as “inappropriate,” or “a rape of the English language”.

Funnily enough, the house it was hosted at (and I'm now in) is owned by a devout Christian, to the point where there are crucifixes on the walls. I say “funnily” because I'm wearing a t-shirt with a pentagram and a ram's skull on it. I could be more out of place, IF I WERE HITLER.

Futhermore, the reason I'm posting this the day after the BBQ commenced is because I can't connect to a fucking access port. It's asking me to log in ON AN AUTOMATICALLY REDIRECTED SERVER. Home pages have no significance in this world of shit. I'm not sure if the access port is that bad, or if it's because there's a statuette of Jesus in a cabinet behind me using his divine power of misdirection to kill my connection.

I'm sure it was a good idea at the time, but my hands are riddled with thistle stings from playing hide and seek earlier. The best hiding places hurt like a bastard. I was a little careless, sure, but it's quite hard to spot thistles behind a garage when your tipsy and it's pitch black...and you need a piss.

I'm the only person awake from the sounds of things, but fuck it. At least there's an insect on my Macbook's screen. Perhaps it's one of the many plagues I've incurred while writing this blog. YAWN. I'll try and sleep now. Written at approximately 02:30, Sunday 28th June, 2009.

It's now 14:32. I couldn't sleep last night. Not one chair in that house is comfortable. NOT ONE. Nor's the carpet! Well I took the initiative and drove home at 06:30, having had 1-2 hours of sleep. Oh joy! It still paid off though. I actually slept in my own bed and not on the floor.

On Michael.

I was going to call this blog "Tragic", "Re-God-damn-diculous", amongst other things, but nothing is more fitting that the title I've chosen.

When I received a text mere hours ago, I thought it a cheap chain letter, the likes of which YouTube would've envied. However, with Cefax and even my news RSS feeds confirming the story, it seems the world just got a bit emptier.

Sure, make jokes about molestation and changing skin colour, but remember that unanimous verdict of "not guilty" accompanying the court case, remember the presumptions of skin cancer in the red-top tabloids, and most of all, remember the man's musical success.

What's overcome me the most, however, is the fact that I'm so bothered about this. Perhaps it's because I finally dispatched the general consensus of the man being guilty, when in fact proved innocent by numerous parties. Perhaps it's because I just disagree with anything the tabloids spin (ranging from his guilty until proven innocent persona generated by the media to his sympathy for the last world tour and the hypothetical skin cancer). Perhaps it's because his music amounts to far more than anything that challenged the man could ever become.

Even in death Michael Jackson's music will live on and remind us of the happy, young, enigmatic persona that developed over the course of his biggest hits and bigger music videos.

For another blog is my hypothesis of the surge of recent media coverage of this artist, but this one is strictly for a celebration of this icon, who I'm sure that if people overlook the miss-information they've received, they will appreciate as  do.

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

It would appear that I've been the very opposite of Mr. Commitment lately. Quite ironic.

Regardless, I do need to consider a subject for this blog. Should I talk about how the latest Star Trek film is universally loved, yet people are surprised that they like it. If you are one of those people, you are an idiot.

Star Trek (or more appropriately, J. J. Abrams Trek) is an action film. It uses unoriginal characters in a chronologically past Enterprise, but with more high-tech gizmos than even the Enterprise-E. FUCK. How to you maul a franchise so badly? In celebration of one of the most influential television series' ever, you destroy its atmosphere.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation the plots are about morality and relevance to the present day. Issues in the series are still relevant now as they were over twenty years ago. Yet there I was in a cinema being hurled through explosions and confrontations more than anything else in the film.

The odd reference was nice to see. The Kobayashi Maru test was a welcome scene, as was a considerably important role for Leonard Nimoy. However, the original qualities are what truly stood out about that film, not the new guys and designs. The characters lacked the depth of those on the television series'. Sulu bore no resemblance to George Takei's mannerisms, Chekov was missing the Monkees haircut and failed to detect any enemy "wessels".

Hurray for depth! Let's hope that for the next film they MAKE IT SO!

Mr. Commitment

My name is Mr. Commitment...and I hate being Mr. Commitment. It carries so many connotations of responsibility and is just generally an encumbrance.

While I wouldn't mind being on Look North (the regional BBC news segment) at Immage Studios (a television studio situated in  Immingham), I certainly don't want to go without friends. Yes, I have friends. So when 9AM rolls around in about 9 hours, I'm fucked. Do I go and be bored, or do I ring in?

I have devised a scheme to sort out all parties. I could go at the required time and see who's there. If there are any entertaining individuals I will stay and if not, then I'll bolt. I'm not sure what my excuse will be though. Overtime at work might be a good one.

Still, commitments get me in all kinds of shit. Things like appointments, which you then have a possibility of missing. Furthermore, the penalty for booking an appointment is substantially less than missing one. God damn!

Dammit Jim! I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker!

Did I mention the headache?

After many drinks, a beef sandwich (why the hell is it called a sandwich, there's no sand at all in there!), and watching sxephil on YouTube, as well as being bitter over last night's events, I find myself unable to spell  or comprehend anything.

I keep pressing Cmd + S to save the blog so  nothing is lost, yet it's written in a browser, negating such actions.

Furthermore, life looks from the perspective of the D00m 3 engine, but with motion blur. I don't know why, but this computer screen is inordinately crisp, yet as I look around the world becomes  blurrier for a moment.

Worry not, there will  be a real blog soon.

Welcome to the friend zone.

Welcome to the worst place in the fucking universe. If you consider the former swearing unnecessary, don't read on.

Welcome to the friend zone. You bought a ticket to happiness in Hawaii, but the plane diverted to Bhagdad. Furthermore, I got nuclear-shitting-bombed. FUCK.

Welcome to the fucking staff room. It's like the Apocalypse, but Tesco happens to be far worse then getting stabbed in the dick by an imp with a pitchfork.

Welcome to the angry zone. It's not my doing, but some idiocy is just out of my hands.

I'm a very angry man who can't get out of the friend zone with someone working at the worst place in the fucking universe: Tesco.

Let's be positive!

NO.

A reader of mine asked me why my blogs aren't more positive. My answer oddly enough relies on one basic principle: people are shits.

For example, leaving the rave tonight, I was confronted by a horde of people (Dead Rising maintenance tunnel style). While I politely waited for even a millimetre scale opening, some woman behind me repeats over and over behind me "are you going to move?" I politely IGNORED THE BITCH and moved on. I have a tendancy to seethe on the inside at the time and then spiel later.

It is far easier to write about things that frustrate, trouble and challenge me because there is far more emotion about that that can be expressed in so many lexical euphemisms, motivated by anecdotes. It can be funny in a black humour type of way. Any way you look at any text, it can be decoded differently. If one were to take my writing as a work of parody, then surely the message of the blogs would be far more positive.

Coming to Coventry

So, this morning (as I'm writing this particular blog) I got up obscenely early to visit my friend at Warwick* University (ironically situated in Coventry*). Right now I'm on the train. If you've never considered this type of transportation because you know what a bus is like, and after all a train is a bus that just moves faster and uses rails to move rather than the blood of a howling toddler I previously murdered for NOT SHUTTING THE FUCK UP; however, this train certainly is luxurious for public transport (for the record, I'm NOT in First Class, I'm sitting about ten metres from its doors....God damn bourgeoisie!).

You see, the advantage of living in a scummy little seaside resort is that the train station is the END OF THE LINE (sounds rather sinister, doesn't it?), thus the train you get on is EMPTY 80% of the time, every time! Hence why I dare to have my Macbook Pro out on display for all the little grimy plebs to marvel at (but not in a gay Superman way), and struggle to read what I'm typing, by using polysyllabic lexis, such as PLIRALITY, or TRANSPENNINE.

There's a suspicious looking businessman walking past. I say suspicious because his general demeanor is that of a businessman, however he has SHIFTY EYES, one might say EYES MADE OF WOOD, he didn't get onto the first class carrages. How very uncharacteristic of such a stereotype.

GOOD LORD. There's a building adjacent to my window labeled “railgourmet” (lol, indeed), and approximately ONE FUCKING BILLION train pilots (for lack of a better term) just burst out from in and around it and onto my train. I'm actually scared for my life.

“This town is from, Cleethorpes to Manchester Airport, stopping at....” I wasn't aware that GLaDOS was employed by the public transportation sector. “If you have any questions, please ask the conductor.” YOU ARE THE BLOODY CONDUCTOR. Computer intelligence is apparently an ironic term made up by some genius computer whiz who doesn't know his penis from his anus (after all, they do rhyme), although he takes it up both, presumably.

We're on the move now. I'm looking at the cars moving past in a symetrical order of “cut-me-off-and-you're-dead-ness” and feeling incredibly happy that I'm not driving there. Asides from it being a long journey, I just generally hate driving, especially when every other person is incessantly unpredictable.

Huzzah, refreshments! One coffee with sugar, but not just any sugar, Fairtrade certified “WHITE SUGAR”. How very ironic! It should be pointed out that I like my coffee as little like coffee as possible, so I've just added about 4 lumps of sugar and two pods of milk to it. I swear, it is necessary.

[UPDATE: Coffee is half way gone.]

Christ, it just keeps getting sunnier! I would say I hope it's even sunnier when I get to Coventry, but to be honest, it would be that hot that it would melt your face.

Just stopped at Barnetby. A man has joined me at my table. I'm THAT popular. He seems to want to keep to himself. He looks like a cross between Father Gregory from Half-Life 2 and someone from UFC. I smiled. He didn't share it.

Christ, he's so cool! Somebody just phoned him and his ringtone was from Thunderbirds. THUNDERBIRDS for crying out loud! Also, apparently he knows someone called fat boy. Don't we all...

“We will shortly be arriving in Scunthorpe.” Given that for the ten minutes prior to the announcement we'd been going past some kind of tarmac foundry place called “Scunthorpe works”, I'd not be wrong in assuming that the announcement is incredibly wrong.

Yet another individual has joined my party. This is all beginning to look disturbingly like Left 4 Dead. Fingers crossed we don't end up in a subway, I know there's a Tank spawn point somewhere in here and I don't think our team skills are anything short of IMMACULATELY bad IRL (ROFLCOPTERLOLLERSKATES).

The next stop is Doncaster. There I leave this train and board another heading in the direction of Reading. If there's a massive blank spot in the blog, that'll be the place it happens. Getting a seat on an already active train NOT at the end of the line is something like a miracle. Considering I'm not a religious man, I'd assume that if a miracle were to take place, I'd not be privy to it.

I just saw a man by a fishing spot with a sickle. I have no idea what he intends to catch with that. But do I want to know?

The train's going considerably slow now. About running speed. We're going past some kind of river, but there are visible lilypads. I don't think I've seen them outside of a book or a zoo. Quite extroadinary. [Train is now picking up speed like a bastard] This stretch of water reminds me of a trip I went on when I was at primary school. We went to a place called “Hubbard's Hills”, a few miles away from the town. We were measuring water levels or something, and it involved using a lolly stick and a metre long measuring stick. Somehow they were both dropped. I saved the lolly stick, in some quickly thought attempt to save the apparatus, leaving the measuring stick to the current of the water. Later I was punished for leaving the metre stick, be to be frank, they both had the same value to me.

Amazing, I've managed to find my own seat, complete with plug socket for my laptop! I'll be on FlatOut 2 until I reach my next stop in Birmingham New Street station. Good day!

[AFTER THOUGHT: FlatOut 2 is not the way to go on a long journey, video editing is preferable.]

I decided to spend this portion of the journey editing my coursework. It should be on my YouTube account soon enough. Right now it's almost eight minutes long! Full of gags, in-jokes and a poorly connected SLR cable (for the microphone, essentially) creating literally a buzz.

We're scheduled to arrive at Birmingham New Street station in six minutes, then I'll have twenty minutes to essentially find my platform. It's a maze in there, trust me.

So I've found my platform, a seat and the train (after all, that would follow). However, it's a miracle I did. I miss-read the route of the trains and thought the train went to just Coventry, however I needed toe train to London Euston, which I discovered my chance on a stroll down the massive station. It was like being in Shadow of the Colossus. The only way I found the appropriate train was by looking at thed televisions scattered throughout the station. It didn't help that the train't departure time was six minutes. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, but with regards to things I'm not hugely confident about, I prefer to have EXACT information.

Just got to get to Coventry now. The train departs about.....NOW!

*If you don't know where either of these places are, use Google Earth, or Google Maps.

Simply: Denied

Today's blog was originally going to be called "TescOWNED", yet this is not the case. Nothing particularly pissed me off at work today. At all. I can't believe it; usually I bitch about the management, the fact that they never praise us, yet always find the time to penalise us for incorrect practice, narrowing down to even not wearing a name badge. It really can be that absurd! You'd think a conglomertate like Tecso would figure that out for themselves. I guess not. But regardless, there was no misgivings today. Unbelievable!

So what can I say? Perhaps how I'm increasingly becoming pissed off with JDPro, a member of the NaturalMotion community forum, who continually fails to realise how stupid he sounds, trying to be rebellious in his own self-righteous bastardry. Perhaps how I wish I'd neglected those first two pints of obscenely strong cider. At 7.5% and coming in pint measurements, it's surely not a great idea to begin the night with two of them!

If only work allowed for being drunk. Sure, it's unreliable when handling money, but I'll be damned if it wasn't fun!

P. S: My Christian Bale syndrome has improved and my recovery is nigh.

Christian Bale Syndrome

For the last week I've been suffering from what can only be described as "Christian Bale Syndrome". It seems that whenever I, succumb to the same rhaspy, face-made-of-sand gargling as John Connor, except I don't have the Resistance fucking me in the eyes 24/7; I guess it's a good thing. Alternatively, it could be likened to the pitch black vocals of Dani Filth, but that would be too positive an analogy.

Still, as metal as it sounds, the fact remains that I can't use FALSETTO, nor any other super high notes I could molest prior, which is a complete bastard, given I've got to sing Breakout by the Foo Fighters in a matter of weeks at a gig. MASSIVE BUGGERY! That being said, it means that I have to sing properly and put my DIAPHRAGM to good use, if there ever was a use for it. Why does that have any relevance? The diaphragm is essentially the top quarter of the abdomen, so if that actually moves (which is more than I do on any particular day), then I get exercise FROM SINGING. Take that Wii SHIT!

But regardless, the problem is that even the music that you sing manages to make you conform to every stereotype in the book (assuming there is a book called "Stereotypes in Singing Technique: Christian Bale Syndrome, By Christian Bale"). Through singing "clean" (i. e: Not sounding cool, e. g: Stereophonics), you manage to appeal to a wider target audience, considering black metal is a niche (as is Bale metal), you become slimmer, becoming more like someone in a magazine.

Yes, I can boil ANYTHING down to the media or sociology.

Perhaps this needs more explanation: Metal or screaming vocals come largely from the throat, if not trained properly. This is why some screaming vocalists live will eventually sound like crap. However, if you're lucky you go all Wolverine and your throat turns into Adamantium. I digress. Singing from the throat requires little or no effort from the diaphragm, thus once a fat slob, you're always a fat slob. Promising!

P. S: The Christianity Party didn't win. Thank God!

Voting for DUMMIES

Today started like any other day: I woke up, I got dressed, I read my mail, etc, but then BOOM! “Official poll card” sitting right there on top of the fireplace. I was tempted to drop it into the gaping, flaming hole in the wall. What an inconvenience. Don't get me wrong, but handing the vote to the public is the worst thing you could possibly do in the aims of a “democracy”.

Allow me to explain; in terms of hierarchy (from most powerful to least powerful): The USA, the Prime Minister, the UN, MP's, government controlled organizations, la policia, people with money, minorities (generally ethnic), then YOU. Therefore, any spiel that anyone above you says gets put in the news, or adverts, or films, or reality TV, or soaps, or the internet for you to sponge up

Well, essentially. I walked in the polling station and was baffled. There were the usual Labour, Conservative and BNP choices on the massive yellow sheet of doom, but accompanied by random people I've never heard of, like “the English Democratic Party”, something to do with Christianity, somebody with a £ in their logo. It was all very foreign to me, which is ironic, given it's a vote for my country, however screwed up it is.

Who did I pick? Well Labour and Conservative are practically the same party these days. I'd previously wanted to vote for the Green party in this situation, but since that epiphany I found out that humans are far less fatal to the environment than the emissions of algae, volcanoes, squirrels, etc. I wasn't going to vote BNP because regardless of how far right they are, they're still self-righteous *******s.

So, this left me with the unknown parties. The Democratic Party would be nice if democracy worked, the Socialist Party would be nice if it didn't lead to Nazism, Britain relies on so many outsourced materials that the Independent Party was out of the question.

Ultimately I voted for Christianity. I'm a raving Atheist, but besides not voting at all, it was the best choice because I'll be damned if they ever win anything political (and Scientology wasn't on the list).