Pole Axed

When people find out I had a short-lived Journalism career, they tend to ask "so why did you pack it in?" to which I reply "because I wasn't a big enough arsehole", and we all have a jolly good laugh.

Actually, the truth is that I was sick of the crap money and long hours. By the time I was about to hand my cards in, I was a Sub-Editor and was offered a promotion to Production Manager. Granted, this was for a small publishing company, but even then I knew it would provide contacts and experience to move up in the world: the guy who had vacated that role had done so to essentially take a dream job with a famous English sports team. But I'd decided at that point that I preferred being home for five in the evening every day, rather than seven some days and past midnight on others.

That said, the "arsehole" point stands when you check out a number of the prominent "columnists" that work for the leading UK tabloids. This is a position a journalist tends to rise to when it is proven their willingness to spout any old objectionable bollocks is matched only by how much of a fuckwit they are. Yet the rewards can be significant - take Richard Littlejohn, for example. A man who made a habit of spouting "you couldn't make it up!", only for it to be found out that he usually does. A man who shrugged off the murder of prostitutes by the serial killer Steven Wright because "none of them were going to cure cancer". He still calls women "birds" in the style of his beloved 70s TV shows, derides Health and Safety as meddling and is generally a total bellend.

Currently, he lives in gated community in Florida, paid for the huge sums of money he's paid by the Daily Mail. Thus, many look to follow in his steps. One such chancer is James Delingpole, who comes out with total arse discharge like this. I wouldn't recommend clicking that link if you get wound up too easily, and also because it probably helps him get paid. Needless to say, his views can perhaps be best summed up with this picture:

Men shouldn't play with dolls, it seems. And girls like pink. Let men be men, and let women get on with the important work of having babies and looking pretty. Evidence? Pah! He has anecdotal proof to back up his watertight assertions. The same way I can say my kid brother loved his My Little Pony dolls as a young lad. And he's not even gay, James! All the same, curse my parents for not smashing those dolls and insisting he play with a toy gun instead. It certainly explains why he's fucked up in life, being a respected teacher with a PhD and a stable relationship that's lasted over 10 years. But the bad news is, he's a teacher, so he can pass on his VILE POLITICALLY CORRECT views onto another generation. Oh, the horror.

See, I can do the whole "anecdotal evidence" thing too. Where's my column in a national newspaper?

Another reason Journalism wasn't the bag for me is my lack of patience with idiots - people like Sunny Jim, essentially. And my horrific spelling. Luckily, there are many other folk better than me for this. One such is this blogger here, who does a wonderful job of dismantling the article and the man himself. Even when he tries to be a smartarse on Twitter, she keeps her cool when I would have been banging on his door asking if he'd like to repeat himself to my face. Then to the pavement.

Music to Make Me a Mad Man

Meanwhile, back in the real world, not one currently being invaded by aliens (see last post for details), I've had my tolerance for it shortened by hearing an abomination of a cover version the INXS classic Never Tear Us Apart by someone called Paloma Faith.

I'd never heard of the lady in question before, and I'm sure she's a nice enough lady who loves her mam, but her reading of the song is (to these ears) a complete fucking disaster. For one thing, you're onto a loser by going up against Michael Hutchence: the guy was complete sex on legs and the best rock icon of the 1980s, so Faith has no chance of getting close in those stakes. Secondly, the arrangement of the song is tired arse gravy and she even seems to struggle to hit the notes from the original.

But what really stoked up my wish for Immediate Nuclear Holocaust was the whole bag o' shite was put out due to an advert campaign by British department store chain John Lewis. This is part of a trend of adverts using "contemporary" versions of 80s classics, usually in some acoustic fashion. I'm not saying it's a bad thing in the scale of human suffering, but the people behind it need to be tracked down and stopped.

I think the whole mess began, oddly enough, with an actual indie popster. Fyfe Dangerfield, best known as singer from Guillemots, did a version of Billy Joel's She's Always a Woman that got picked up for a particularly gruesome John Lewis Christmas campaign ad. Given I hate the works of Joel, this didn't bother me too much.

However, when it was Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want being sacrificed at the alter of Don Draper wannabes everywhere, something needed to be done. I know it isn't illegal, and it isn't really doing any harm, but I still find my blood boiling whenever I hear these songs anywhere.

Perhaps the problem is that all these young stage-school trained singers don't have anyone writing songs for them anymore. In the first days of pop, you had the whole Brill Building teams knocking out songs by the hour. Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman churned out loads of hits for the glam rock bands, Stock, Aitken and Waterman did the whole production line approach in the 1980s.

But I can't think of any modern equivalent. This is the age of the Simon Cowell-type figure, who has the talent brought to them live on TV, before moulding them in the fashion of the day and binning them off when the next thing comes along - wither Shayne Ward? And while Cowell might have many talents, writing songs is not one. So they naturally just run through rock and pops back pages, offering slightly modernised versions of the classics.

Then when you need something with a bit of edge for a more serious project such as selling Christmas presents, luckily all those old alternative classics will do a good job. The way things are, I expect Dead Souls to be used in life insurance ads within the end of the decade.

Autogeddon

These last couple of weeks, I've had the temporary use of a car after over a year reliant on public transport. For one, this means I get an extra 25 minutes in bed in the morn, which can only be a good thing.

In exchange, I have to put up with my short patience on the road. It's genetic, you see. My dad in general is a guy so mild mannered he makes Clark Kent seem like the Hulk. Once on the road and stuck behind a tractor (which happens a lot in Cumbria) he is prone to go into rants so profane Malcolm Tucker would blush.

Like father, like son. In the afternoon especially, my blood pressure rockets and I'm thankful just to get home without seeing a vein in my forehead popping. Seeing some knobhead doing 50mph in a 30 zone makes me have fantasies of being a traffic cop so I could pull them over and shoot the tyres out. Then maybe dish out a kicking, Jack Regan style.

Part of this, I reckon, is down to getting older. Trivial things seem to bug me a lot more than they used to. Some of those high up on my shit list include:

Bus and Taxi Drivers
First thing my pop told me when I started learning: "never trust anyone driving a taxi or bus". Sound advice. Buses know their strength and use it with no regard to anyone else, taxi drivers just canter round the city using their own interpretation of the Highway Code.

Dozy Gets at the Lights
You all know the type, those who seem to slip into the Twilight Zone when waiting for the light to turn green, then seem to need an extra five seconds to remember how to shift the car into gear and release the handbrake. Honestly, life is just too short to have it spent stuck behind someone who can't tell the difference between red and green.


Lane Swappers
Driving down the Kingsway, heading South of the city, can be an annoying experience. Matters are not helped by fuckwits bombing down the dual carriageway, switching between the lanes at rapid pace to try and earn a few extra seconds. If, like me, you try to leave a wee bit of a gap between yourself and the car in front, then it's an open invite to these arseholes, who tend to then promptly slam on the brakes. When I am King, I will ensure these people are tracked down, have their cars taken away and crushed to the size of a Rubik's Cube.

Empathy Is Not a Dirty Word

I try to stay chilled out about things in this world whenever possible. I get stressed out, I get pissed off, I get sick. But with the news that charity Save the Children are launching a campaign to raise cash for children living in poverty in the UK, I've got really wound up.

Of course, I've not been living in a hole. I've known a while there are young kids out there who aren't getting enough in the way of proper food and clothing. Times are hard and getting harder for a lot of people. But this story brings it home.

It's too easy to dismiss people who this affects. The media will tell us these people have squandered their money on booze, fags and betting. Politicians will put the boot in too, to justify their callous behaviour with their own expense fiddling now a distant memory in the public mind.

Take Douglas Carswell, the MP for Clacton: "I don’t actually mind charities making political interventions but I totally disagree with them in terms of the causes of child poverty. We have actually spent a very large chunk of taxpayers’ money creating a state of dependency in this country – that’s one of the main causes of child poverty."

And then there's Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley. He reckons: "It is just a publicity seeking campaign. I think people will see through the fact that this is an organisation that has been campaigning for as much money as possible to be sent abroad for many years so it’s no good now telling us there’s no money left to go round to British children."

What a pair of complete and utter drizzling shitehawks. I have to love it when politicians use words like "dependency" in regard to the people at the bottom of the ladder. This from people so far detached from the realities of life, who are chauffeured around and often have second homes on the public's expense. You almost wish for them to just come out and say "look, you people are scum. If there are no jobs, just go to one of our new state-assisted suicide machines. You're of no value to anyone".

The truth is they believe being poor is a lifestyle choice, not the end result of the politics we've been living under for too long. Several years ago, the writer and comedian Robert Newman spoke about "Employed homeless" people in the States - folk who worked a full week, but couldn't afford somewhere to live. He warned it was coming this way, and I fear he was spot on. Support for those who need it will continue to be taken away, legalised loan sharks will thrive and the scrapheap will get bigger.

For now, Save the Children have set a target of half a million pounds for their appeal. I expect it will be met, and then our esteemed Prime Minister will crow on about how this shows "The Big Society" at work. The fucking tosser.

Weighty Issue

Sad to say, the day has come. I've realised I'm in serious danger of becoming a fat bastard. Sat on my old bed last week, I looked down to see my belly was way, way too big.

The warning signs have been there for years. I was lucky in my early 20s to have a metabolism that burned up all the crap that made up my diet, but my body's warranty has finally expired. At 21, I might have not been able to go on all-day drinking sessions anymore but at least I could keep stuffing pizza and sweets down my gob with little worries.

Now, there's a new Sheriff in town, and he's kicking arse and taking names. Action needs to be done, and quickly, lest I end up like one of those sad cases you see wobbling around, all skinny limbs but a gut big enough to rest a tray of drinks on hanging over the belt on their jeans. It's a nightmare scenario that I must do all I can to avoid.

This means, horror of horrors, doing exercise. Yes, the dirtiest of all words. If I want to carry on my lifestyle of spending plenty of time on the sofa playing video games, I'm going to have to pay the price. That means I'm going to have to start shifting my sorry arse around by foot a lot more.

It's not like I haven't been warned. Three years ago, when I bought a car, I also picked up a couple of dumbbells, rationalising that I'd use them to make up for not travelling in a way involving my own energy. Sadly, the concept of self-discipline has never been one I've subscribed to all that much, and they've lain in the corner of the room somewhat unused for a fair old while.

But no more. They're getting a few uses a day, and I'm walking part of the way to work and back, weather permitting, as walking home through torrential rain isn't going to be doing me any favours, is it? Then, the ultimate horror, I'm going to have to start on the sit ups. Wah.

I have friends who like to go on 50 mile bike rides on a Saturday and the weirdest part to me is that they do it for "fun". Well, I'm never going to get that part: all I feel after walking any length of time is the need for a bit of a lie down. Yet needs must, much as that completely pisses me off.

True Romance of the Cup

It’ll have come to no surprise to anyone that the Football Association has managed to completely screw over Liverpool fans ahead of this year’s FA Cup final. It’s merely another symptom of the level of fuckwittery of the people running the best sport in the world.

To whit: the final, by tradition, is held on a Saturday, kicking off at 3pm. They already messed about a bit last year by having a full league schedule on the same day, meaning a lot of people wouldn't have had the chance to watch such a big game due to being at their own team’s game. Now, this year they've decided to hold the game in the early evening. Unfortunately for Liverpool fans, this means that by the time the game finishes, they’ll have long missed the last train back North, due to engineering works that have been scheduled for the last 18 months. Naturally, the FA didn't bother to check this as the shift in time was important to things like “maximising viewer revenue streams” and “brand awareness in other markets”. The actual poor sods paying stupid money for a ticket don’t seem to have raised much interest.

The common myth is that Manchester United destroyed the integrity of the cup. In 1999, we flew off to Brazil to take part in the inaugural World Club Championship, withdrawing from the FA Cup due to fixture congestion. Pundits have long since perpetuated the myth that this moment above all meant nobody could take the oldest football competition in the world seriously anymore. Of course, it’s a line that ignores just about all the important factors.

(As it happens, I wasn't best pleased about it myself, thinking we should have just played a bunch of reserves against whoever we drew, and I was especially miffed when we subsequently embarrassed ourselves in the games. That the whole farce of a tournament was never repeated shows it was all a colossal waste of time.)

The FA, I suspect, are quite happy someone else is taking the flak for the fading of the glory of the cup. For it ignores their own series of decisions that have seen most fans see playing in it as a fairly low priority:

a) Let’s start with the fact they sold the name of it, so that commentators on TV have to refer to “The FA Cup, sponsored by Ann Summers' New Vibrator Range” or whoever has stumped up the cash this year.

b) Getting rid of semi-final replays. Alright, maybe I’m biased as a United fan, as we had some crackers of these in 1985, 1990 and 1999.

c) And on the topic of semi-finals, deciding to play them at fucking Wembley. It’s been said many times by many people, but it somewhat obviously removes any allure of playing in the final. We know why it’s been done (because the FA need to pay off the stupidly huge bill for building that pile-of-crap new Wembley stadium), but the fact last Saturday of having' tens of thousands of scousers having to get down to London to a early afternoon kick-off is absolute madness.

d) Finally, and more obviously, fucking around with the times of games to suit TV. Chelsea vs Tottenham on Sunday started at 6pm on a Sunday evening. What kind of time is that for a football game?

Not that the FA are unique in this kind of thing. In the past, the people running football were in for the power, the prestige (especially club owners) and the money (especially the authorities). These days, you suspect, they've got rid of the first two in that list. Football corruption in certain nations is rife, especially around a betting industry that is gaining more prominence, but is generally ignored by a complicit media. Andersred has written a superb article on how the powers-that-be in football refuse to do anything about the crucial issues concerning the game.

My own club has suffered from this attitude: I’m even aware that the people in charge of Manchester United probably don’t like me. When I go to a game, on average ten times a season, the most I spend is on my ticket and £3 on a programme. They’d much rather have some one-off tourist in the seat, who’ll visit the club shop and spend a fortune on souvenirs.

Football isn’t dead, even if the body is beginning to smell funny. The success of clubs like AFC Wimbledon shows that supporters can make things happen on their own terms. The rest of us may have to make do with casting envious glances to Germany, where supporters are treated with at least some degree of respect from their clubs.

Prolonged Talks

“No”. It’s not a complicated word, is it? Yet as the old adage goes, some people just won’t take it for an answer.

To whit, recently I decided to join the modern world and get yer proper wireless broadband in the flat. For the past five years, I've made do with one of those dongle things you plug into your PC. In the main, it worked fine but it got to the point where it was the same cost to upgrade and besides, I wanted to get my Playstation online.

So, the nice guy from the company came round, drilled a hole in the wall, fitted a wire through and pissed about up the telegraph pole a while. Not bad for a £19 connection fee and after a couple of days, I was assured that my new super-dooper broadband was doing the job. Therefore, I could cancel the contract for my dongle (a word I find hard to type/say without resorting to a Finbarr Saunders-esque “fnarr” and saying lines like “ah, I'll just plug my dongle into the socket”).

Not a tricky job, you would think. In the ideal world, it would go thus:

Me: Hello. I would like to cancel my connection to your mobile broadband.
Phone Person: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
PP: Alright then. (types) There you go.
Me: Thank you.

A shame, then, that we have to live in this world, where concepts such as convenience and customer service go flying out of the window in the name of chasing a few quid. Put through to some poor sod working in a call centre in (presumably) India, he seemed positively distraught that his company wouldn't be getting my £20 a month anymore, as if his boss would come round to his house personally and extort the money from his family.

As it turned out, I was a “Gold” customer and therefore applicable for some big bonuses. Strange, as this was the first I’d heard of it. I was offered an Ipad or a new laptop. This may sound tempting, but my logic chip reasoned that anything given in exchange for me signing on for another year was probably a piece of old crap.

After another ten minutes of various offers, I managed to state that I’d rather just finish it all up. Instead, I was put through to the chap’s manager. He then proceeded to repeat pretty much everything I’d already heard, asking how long I’d had my laptop (I lied and said a year, rather than the truth, which is about six years, in a vain attempt to stop him going on) and how the Ipad they were offering was part of a range “just out this week, so this is a very good deal” and so on.

I’m fully aware I’m partly to blame for ending up on the phone for the best part of 30 minutes. I could easily have just said “look, I know you have a job to do, but for fucks sake, can you just close my fucking account, as I do have some vestige of a life to be getting on with”. But my mother brought me up to be good mannered: I've also inherited this from my dad, who can often be seen frothing with rage about some company as he dials the number, only to turn into politeness personified once he talks to somebody.

Eventually, I was seeming to get my way after stating I didn't want to pass on my contract to anybody I knew, that I knew I was losing my points (whatever they were) and that I didn't want to keep my dongle (fnarr) as a backup. Me being me, of course, by the end I felt like I should apologise to the poor sod - it's not like working in some call centre all day dealing with the likes of me is easy - instead of being pissed off that an apparent simple procedure sucked half an hour of my day away. Go figure.

Failing to Keep Calm and Carry On

As I've noted before, like Peter Griffin, a lot of things really Grind My Gears. I think it’s a result of being an overly anxious sort that I get wound up easily, resulting in inarticulate rants against anyone unfortunate to be in the vicinity. A friend reckons I’ll come out of the other end of this at the age of 50 as a kind of Buddhist Guru type, permanently chilled out and prone to dishing out pearls of wisdom to my kid brother’s children/grandchildren that I imagine will be forthcoming now he’s just got engaged.

Not now, though. No, for now I remain a man permanently on the edge of an aneurysm brought on by things like:

1) If any one organisation has gone straight to the top of my shitlist, it’s GMPTE. That’s the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, for those outside the confines of the Best City in the World (Super Scientist and Stud Muffin Professor Brian Cox said so, which makes it true).

I could easily go off on one here about the lack of decent, affordable municipal transport provision in the city, but the main source of my ire is that on trooping to catch the bus one recent morn, I found myself waiting for 25 minutes longer than expected. Later that day, on checking online timetables, it was revealed that the schedule had been changed. Just a shame, then, that GMPTE had failed to change the timetables at the actual stops.

Now, I know what you’re saying. “My dear boy,” you sigh. “Why didn't you take another route when it was clear the one you wanted wasn't forthcoming?” But it’s never that simple, is it? You can be stood there, in the pouring rain at 7am and you will not be moved, because you just know that as soon as you’re round the corner, that sodding bus will chug along, merrily leaving you behind. So you will not be moved. You will wait as long as it takes, even as the water drips down your hair into your eyes and the feeling in your toes begins to fade. The timetable says the bus should be there, and that’s the bus you will take.

Incidentally, the changes that were made now mean the journey between home and work takes me an extra ten minutes. So that’s 20 minutes of my life gone every day I go to work. Thanks for that.

2) This post was inspired by buying some milk this morn. Now, this is an essential purchase on a Monday as I’m unable to function without a high level of caffeine in my bloodstream. I’m sure some of you know the horror as arriving at the workplace, pouring said drink and when adding milk, seeing the flakes of manky dairy product rise to the top. Despite the “use by” date saying March 10, it has gone off. Cue sigh, a brief moment of wondering whether to risk an upset stomach by drinking it anyways before pouring it down the sink and shifting my sorry arse back to the shop.

By my reckoning, this happens once every 50 cartons of milk I buy. But everytime never fails to bring about a deep sense of existential despair in my bones, as if the sight of what should have been a reassuring cup of coffee going down the plughole is instead my very soul washing away. Honestly, sometimes I could weep.

3) That the release date for Mass Effect 3 appears to have been put back from Tuesday to Friday. Now, anyone who knows me will know how excited I am by this game, to the degree I had put in a pre-order with a Certain High Street Game Store for the full-on package with lots of useless shit included, primarily to ensue I had the extra content promised. Additionally, I have booked Wednesday to Friday off work so that I could properly hammer it without causing my lady friend immense boredom.

However, fate has decreed otherwise. Not only do I apparently have to wait three more days, but said store have decided not to sell the game after all, rumour being because they’re too skint to pay EA for the copies up front. Bastards!

It’s all incredibly trivial, I know, but as Mozzer once noted, such a little thing makes a big difference.

On a final rant, something that seriously grinds my gears that isn't minor is when some old fart Cardinal says two fellas or two lasses getting married is an “aberration” that will cause moral decline across the nation. I've not got a boyfriend, and I don’t plan on getting married at all, but if two other people want to do so, then all the best to them. It doesn't destroy the “sanctity” of anything, it doesn't mean jack shit to anything except the happiness of two people. As I know by my tragically advancing age, we’re in the 21st century now, so let’s make an effort, eh? Cardinal Keith O’Brien, to use his own words, is a “grotesque subversion” of a man who probably wants people to be as miserable as possible so that they may take guidance from some old dude in Rome rather than seek fulfilment through concepts such as love and emotional peace with a partner they are able to be with free of stigma and prejudice.

He’s probably just jealous of all those happy campers having hot guy-sex anyways.

Sad Estate of Affairs

As we privileged First Worlders move through the 21st century, trivial matters become gut-wrenching experiences full of existential despair. Of these, amongst the worst is moving home, which I've just had to do, again, and I’m left with a deep sense of utter despair from the whole experience. It never gets easier.

Well, for one thing there’s the actual physical part of it. Unless you've got enough money to hire a large man or men to do it for you, there’s a lot of hard work involved. This leaves me very sore for days after, meaning that instead of unpacking I lie on the sofa and feel sorry for myself.

A condition made worse when you have to deal with trying to get your deposit back on the old place. Dealing with agencies is never made easy, as they seem to employ people who delight in making something out of nothing. As in:

“The thing is Mr Harrison, there was a small amount of dust on the top shelf of the cupboard.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, so we’ll have to get the whole flat professionally cleaned, which will cost £200.”
“Eh?”
“Also, the inventory listed a box of 115 matchsticks, of which I've noticed one has become slightly bent. The cost of replacing these will be £20…”

And so on. Anybody who’s dealt with these people before may well know exactly what I’m talking about. My advice to anybody would be to always check the inventory with intense scrutiny and take plenty of photographs of the property the second you move in.

I've long been of the mind that people who work for estate/letting agents are complete swine because life has dealt them a bum hand. Even the most down-on-their-luck alcoholic street wreck can, whilst drinking White Lightning at eight in the morning, look at themselves in a puddle of what may well be their own piss and sick and think “at least I’m not an estate agent. For that alone I think I deserve another drink”. And they’d be right to do so.

Essentially, no child ever thinks “when I grow up, I want to find ways of not giving people their deposits back. Yes, that’s the life for me”. Only a series of cruel circumstances sees a person go down that path in life. Perhaps they made a bad deal with the devil when they were young: “Oh, I really wish that girl who sits next to me in Physics would give me a hand job”, and then the dark lord appears and offers to make that dream come true, but only at a terrible price. Maybe not that day, or even in the near future, but someday they will have to become an Estate Agent. These are the kind of people we have to deal with when trying to find somewhere to live. Weak, weak people who may well be Satan's envoys on Earth.

But should we hate them? Should we whisper about them in dark corners, point at them in the street to inform our children to beware and spurn them at social gatherings? Should we not instead pity them and offer sympathy for their wretched existence? Surely they must go home every night, wash themselves with bleach and drink a bottle of Scotch to just blank out the horror of their pathetic and futile lives.

After some thought, I decide that no, we should hate the fuckers with everything we've got. Wankers the lot of them.

Open All Hours

You know we're in the festive season when the tabloids begin their “Christmas Outrage!” stories. In previous years, we've had numerous recycles of the “Winterval” non-event, until it was (hopefully) finally put to bed recently as the complete load of bollocks it was.

Instead, 2011 sees the first shot as “Church Fury” as a branch of McDonald’s drafts in some Muslim bod to manage the place on Christmas Day. I had to think this one over for a good while when I first read it. But no matter how many different ways I thought of it, the only conclusion I could come to was: So. Fucking. What.

As it turns out, the purveyors of fine foods are opening about 60 stores across the nation on Crimble Day. Also as it turns out, the story is a classic example of that tabloid trick of headline over content. The “fury” turns out to be from some local Reverend nobody has ever heard of, and I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to find out he’s been promoted by the Daily Mail into a “church leader”. Nevermind that an actual leader of the church, the Dean of Derby, has been quoted in the same story as saying he has no objections whatsoever.

Finally, let’s consider that there are people who have to work on Christmas Day – such as those in the emergency services – who might be feeling a bit Hank Marvin at some point. That they would want to eat at McDonald’s could be seen by some as a sign that they’re not mentally fit to work such jobs, but hey, it’s nice to have the choice.

Still, any excuse for readers to have a right good moan about the decline of Christian values and all that guff. As long as they forget that when they need some milk on December 25th and pop down to the local 7-11 which is open thanks to those nice people who don’t mind working that day. As for the Rockin’ Rev? Maybe he should chain himself to some railings outside the McDonald’s in question. Careful now.

(As an aside, it’s not even that much of a new thing. When I was a wee laddie in Whitehaven, the local petrol station was open 24/7, including Christmas Day. And my pop worked that day himself on several occasions, being on shifts. It was bloody frustrating having to wait till he got home around 3pm to open your presents, I can tell you.)

Expand Your Mind, Retract Your Wallet

I question my sanity sometimes, I really do. A couple of days ago, I stumped up eight quid to buy Dragon Age II: Legacy, an "add-on" to the PS3 title that I reviewed some time ago. Previously, I'd also chucked a fiver the way of Bioware to get The Exiled Prince extra content.

A quick word on Dragon Age II: since I first played it (I'm on my second run through now), I've played the original Dragon Age: Origins and in my mind, the original had a much stronger story and character development. Perhaps having a more clearly defined "big bad" (or bads) from the start helped. The ending of the second game felt a bit tacked on, as if the writers had written themselves into a corner and desperately need an exit plan for the storyline.

To start with The Exiled Prince, I was somewhat annoyed with this one, as it turned out that the Prince in question, Sebastian, is actually pretty fucking vital to the plot development at a crucial point. On my original play, without Seb, the point in question passed with a curious sense of something missing. Now I know what it was. Bit of a rip-off there, lads and lasses.

Not that this is anything new, even to this century. Going back to the early 1990s, I can remember Origin bringing out "Expansion Packs" for their Wing Commander and Strike Commander games. I was lucky enough to find the versions that bunged in all the content into one handy package (as I did with Dragon Age: Origins), but it's become an increasingly common practise in recent years, especially in the RPG genre. Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are the biggest culprits, but I noted that L.A. Noir has been doing the same, which is more disappointing given the brevity of the original game.

The latter point was pretty much what put me off handing over thirty of my hard-earned (alright, not that hard) pounds: 15 hours of gameplay? Fuck right off. I'll wait till they bring out the "Ultimate Edition" in a year or so.

I fully understand why this happens - developers are playing on our emotional attachments to characters in games we love and are giving us more of them. But I, for one, would much rather they spent the time making a proper full-on sequel: I wouldn't be surprised to see one or two more Dragon Age II packs in the future, when what I really want is a Dragon Age III.

Is the price worth it? Probably not. So why did I pay? Simple - because I'm a complete fucking idiot, and that's why they'll keep getting away it.

Off to Silicon Heaven

Old adage: things aren't built to last anymore. I've recently found out to my (financial) cost just how fucking true this is when my Playstation 3 packed in and went to the great gameshop in the sky, a victim of the infamous 'Yellow Light of Death'.

Now, on one level this is just frustrating on what I have lost: my as-yet-unfinished 100 hours playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins Lost! My unbeaten record stats on Buzz! Lost! My achievements on games such as Alpha Protocol and Grand Theft Auto IV. Lost forever! It's very hard to take, believe me. Of course, on the other hand it's an excuse to play all these games again, but it's still very irritating.

But what got to me most of all was when I shared my woe was various others, on replying to their question of how long I had owned the PS3 with "about four years", they came back with "wow, not bad then". It seems in terms of lifespan of this model, I've done well, bearing in mind that while I may not hammer the games for hours every day, I did put some serious hours in and it also acted as my DVD player.

Now, the fact that a machine I paid £260 for some years ago should conk out in less than half a decade seems a bit off to me. After all, my PS2 (bought in 2001) and my PS1 (bought second hand in 1999) still work fine. Man, even my Sega Master System that I got for Christmas sometime in the late 1980s still chugs along quite happily.

The problem, it would appear, is that my PS3 had a failure in being able to cool itself, meaning many microchips got fried. Naturally, I've gone out and bought a new model at some expense. I'm a complete bloody idiot like that. Note, mind you, that I stumped up the extra £70 for a new one, not second hand. Because I learnt that the problem that cursed me can only be sussed by ripping open the console. Let this be a warning to anyone reading - lest the Yellow Light of Death strikes you down.

Dead Air

Watching 10 O' Clock Live on Channel 4 last night was a baffling experience. Certainly, C4 have hyped the show to the skies to the degree that even someone as ignorant of modern culture as me knew about it. I can see the logic in trying to put together a British version of the enjoyable The Daily Show, and it would appear that this was a move of doing so.

And yet, what we were left with was a show exposing the worst aspects of modern British comedy. A whooping, irritating audience lapping up Jimmy Carr jokes about Alan Johnson being replaced by Ed Balls because their names can refer to parts of the male genitals. Brilliant, and not just the same kind of shit that the average 12 year old could knock together. The whole routine had the grim inevitability of a Monday morning.

Later on, Carr was given the task of interviewing a scientist on the subject of climate change. The guy made some good points, principally that current moves to cut carbon emissions are doomed to failure because people in the developed world won't change their lifestyles (very true) and people in the developing world want their share of cars and fridge freezers. In Carr's hands, the guy was made to look like a bit of a mad professor cliche.

As with C4's election night coverage (which must have been some kind of success to merit this), Carr was joined by Charlie Brooker, Lauren Laverne and David Mitchell. Brooker is a man I have some respect for going back to his time as a journo on PC Zone magazine, but live TV is not his medium. Laverne's presence is baffling and her main role seemed to be to act in a beyond dreadful "skit" on trying to make the news of the Sudanese political situation amusing, in which it crashed and burned like the Hindenburg hitting a fireworks factory.

Mitchell was the one saving grace and the one and only reason I may tune in next week. His monologue was a superb piece of opinion and comedy and his interviews showed no shortage of interest in the subjects. It's not his fault also that interviewing three guests on the matter of banker's bonuses and only having about five minutes to cover the subject is a pointless an exercise as can be.

If Channel 4 are serious about bringing a comedy/satire show onto our screens that will last any length of time, they may consider:

a) Dropping the whole 'Live' aspect. It's a weekly show, not daily, so it's nothing but a gimmick to add an edge that isn't needed.

b) Make David Mitchell the main host of the show. Get rid of Carr and Laverne, keep Charlie Brooker on to make pre-filmed inserts. I'm sure he'd be happier spending his Thursday nights tucked up with Konnie Huq anyways, the jammy get.

c) Get in some quality writers. I know we're not in the 60s, when a show like That Was The Week That Was could call on John Cleese or Michael Palin, but surely there's some young writers out there that can write a political joke that doesn't resort to "huh huh... Johnson, Balls" levels.

d) Get rid of all cuts to the audience laughing. I don't care about them!

Not that I expect any of these to happen, of course. Indeed, I expect that over the next few months that the show runs, most of us will instead tune over to Question Time in the hope that Will Self is on to provide us with some laughs.

Railing On

It came as no surprise to me to read that conditions for passengers on Britain's rail network are set to get worse over the next few years. As somebody who spent the best part of a decade using trains for most journeys over 10 miles, it was a relief when I finally got my own car.

As a disclaimer, I'll say first of all that in the ideal world, using the train to head back to Cumbria would be a pleasant way to travel. However, it's often a thoroughly miserable experience for which you get charged a fair old whack. The last two trips, from Penrith to Manchester, were enough to put me off for the foreseeable future.

The first of those, back in March, saw me catch a train that was running from Glasgow or Edinburgh to Manc Airport. It had two carriages, both of which were rammed to put it mildly. Given the final destination, suitcases and bags were everywhere and people who had booked seats from Penrith didn't even try to fight their way across. I was one of the lucky ones - by the next stop, nobody else was allowed aboard.

Eventually, the conductor or whoever came over the PA to apologise. It seemed "for some reason we don't know", the train hadn't been given the right number of carriages at the depo. Humph. Arriving at Manchester Oxford Road very tired and very sore, what made this even worse was a month later, when making the same trip, the same thing happened and we were given pretty much the same excuse!

And that was that, barring a trip to Rochdale a few months ago. Sadly, I gather this is quickly becoming the norm for a lot of commuters and now the word is improvements won't be forthcoming despite ever-increasing fares without major support from the taxpayer. Obviously the system has gone to bollocks in an epic way and you have to wonder if there's a way to try and rectify the numerous mistakes privatisation has brought. Answers on a postcard...

Furious Over Five

Recently, my mind has been vexed by a recurring thought. It's troubled me deeply and often kept me up at night, I'm sad to say. The source of my woe is this: since when were Take That seen in any way as credible?

Perhaps the source of this is that they recently won a Q award of some kind. Now, I know Q magazine has long gone to the dogs in terms of any kind of journalistic integrity, but I did buy it every month between around 1996 (Paul Heaton from the Beautiful South on the cover, if I remember right, and a cover CD featuring hip up-and-coming bands like Mansun) and 2001. I'm assuming the slide I noted became terminal if they consider Take That worthy of an entry into any "Hall of Fame". I'll guess David Cassidy will get the nod next year.

What disturbs me more is that a band who made it by covering crap songs with crap arrangements and crap singing are set to go on a tour of stadiums. I'm aware I have little patience with most aspects of pop culture, but this really is a step too far. I can only assume the media have decided to get behind the Take That story - with the return of Bob Williams being as inevitable as a comeback in a Rocky film.

I shouldn't care, I know, but I'll remain eternally baffled why tens of thousands of people - most of whom around my age - will pay stupid sums of money to see five middle aged men sing wretched AOR ballads alongside the inconsequential shite they peddled first time around. Even back then, as a young lad unversed in music, I recognised it was crap and, please, don't give me that "come on, Back For Good wasn't bad": it was nothing but a dried, encrusted wank stain on the blanket of popular music.

And of course, an extra reason to loathe Take That is what they started. They made a huge pile of cash and fully cemented the boy band line up including at least two useless tossers who did nothing but have a few dance moves and enough muscles and dumb smiles to moisten some teenage girls' kex. We can blame Westlife on Take sodding That and the quicker this whole fiasco is over, the quicker we can consign them to the blackest voids of our memory.

Anti-Social Networking

Two questions I would like to never hear again in my existence:

"Why aren't you on Facebook?"

and

"When are you getting an Iphone?"

The second is easier to answer: because I don't need one. I've had the same mobile for about five years now and have no intention of replacing it. I don't see the point in having a new one that does loads of fancy things that will bring zero benefits to my life. The magazine Private Eye has an excellent cartoon called "Ibores" that hits the target bang on.

As for the first question: I never have nor will see the point in those social networking sites, unless you're looking for someone to cop off with. Yet some people seem to see being on this site (or Twitter) as some kind of essential aspect of modern life. I'm baffled as to why the footballer Rio Ferdinand feels the need to constantly update thousands of strangers as to the most trivial aspects of his day, or why anyone wants to know.

A work colleague told me "it's useful for finding people you used to go to school with", which translated to me as that old game of finding people you didn't like back then, and laughing if it turns out they're flipping burgers for a living. The other line is "it's good for letting everyone you know what you're doing" - which seems odd, as I never realised sending an email to more than one person at a time was that tricky.

I'm not covering new ground on this topic, of course, but what I do wonder whether a so-called 'surveillance' society that the likes of the Daily Mail get in a tizz about won't come as too much of a trouble to people who already tell the world what they're doing at any given moment. I'm not a Luddite, but I like new technology to enrich and improve our lives, not trivialise it (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of saying that on a blog, of all things).

If you allow me to be a paranoid nut for a moment (and why not?), I can at times envisage a future where anyone who doesn't have their own Facebook/Twitter pages is banished from society like the 'savages' in Brave New World, ostracised for not knowing the correct context to say "OMG!" or letting everyone know what bar we'll be in that Friday night.

For now, though, I'll remain quite happy in the knowledge that nobody from my past can find out any personal information about me online because, after all, if I wanted them to know, I would fucking tell them.

Hard Sell

I've been raised from my cold-induced mental slumber today by watching Mission: Impossible. It was one of my favourite episodes, with a young Martin Sheen playing the part of a hapless cliched Eastern Bloc military officer manipulated into essentially murdering his own boss. Great stuff.

But it was not the sterling efforts of Peter Graves, Martin Landau et al that got my bile flowing. No, it was the poxy fucking adverts.

A friend of mine never watches TV. Ever, she tells me. I admire that and think I should take a similar stance due to two adverts in particular. The first is those efforts with the plank kitted up as an opera singer with the stupid facial hair. I did hear a rumour that the actor in question is very well paid, which is just as well as I'd like to think when he shows his face in public, he is chased down the street by an angry mob intent of performing surgery with the aid of a selection of power tools.

The second is absolutely anything associated with a certain company who'll buy your wheels off you. At the moment, they have a series where some poor sap isn't at a certain social function because he can't flog his car, so his (apparent) friends ring him up to extol the virtues of a website who will take it off his hands.

Taking aside that I'm informed that this company offer little more than peanuts, the advert is based on a huge lie. Because let's face it, if your friends did that to you, there would be no other option but to go round to the party with a huge tank of anthrax and exterminate the fuckers for the good of your own sanity and the greater benefit of the human race.

Now, after that refreshing rant, I will have a beer and enjoy the music of the coolest man who ever lived, Mr John Lee Hooker.

I Travel

The good news is that I'm now done with work for the rest of the month. No need to stress and worry about that for two weeks. As part of this, I'm leaving the country on Sunday morning.

This is also a good thing, but it does mean several hours journey time, which isn't so. I hate the actual physical act of travelling - it makes me incredibly nervous and it takes just about every ounce of mental energy I have to often not collapse in a whimpering wreck in the airport departure lounge.

Of course, I recognise why this is so. I'm a self-control freak. I like to feel that I have command of my situation at any given time. Obviously, this is usually nigh-on impossible given the infinite number of random events that can happen to us at any time, but it's important to me to feel like I have a handle of things anyways.

Which is a bit tricky when you put your life in the hands of a pilot/train or coach driver and you can't just stop at any time if you feel so. So I get more and more anxious in the days leading up, trying to reassure myself that I can back out at any time if I so wished.

I never do, though, and I won't this time. My hands may be shaking tonight and through the Kristin Hersh gig I'm going to tomorrow, but despite all the words I'll tell myself, I know deep down I'll board that plane. And when I do, the fear will almost vanish, because it's too late to do anything about it then.

All of this is a protracted way of saying I'll be gone for most of next week, so won't be writing any nonsense, unless I find a spare computer with internet access. Y'all take it easy in the meantime.

Always Coming Around Again

I feel I have a chronic inability to enjoy Sundays, due to the gut-wrenching sickness that eventually overcomes me as the spectre of Monday looms every larger.

It's not even as if I'm totally paranoid about it: the start of the last two weeks has been the shrapnel of bad news explode in my trench, sending me scarpering for cover. Last week, I found out a colleague of mine had been "let go" and would not be replaced. This essentially means more work for me, unsurprisingly. I did half expect this would happen at some point, but the vibe seems to be that if could be anyone next, myself included.

In truth, I wouldn't care too much about getting the chop: it's the waiting that kills you, the not knowing from one day to next whether that next phone call is going to be from management asking you to "pop round" for a talk. I like having some control over my life, and this situation isn't talking a lot away.

Then, today, I return home and see I have an email from my landlord. They're looking to sell the building and it could mean I'll be on my uppers in a few months. Superb.

Returning to the point of employment, I noted the Daily Mail did a hatchet job against public sector workers a couple of days ago. An apparent 'whistle-blower' penned an article stating he and his colleagues at one local authority basically lazed about all day, took long lunches, plenty of sick leave and turned in whatever time they wanted.

Now, I don't doubt there may well be some workers like this in some council offices, as I'm sure in any other office. No doubt there's a few journos out there who've put a liquid lunch or two on expenses over the years. But this kind of extreme propaganda strikes me as being nothing more than softening public opinion against one section of workers before cuts are made.

We seem to be getting to a point again now where people will be saying "well, you're lucky to have a job". Is that a healthy attitude? Lucky to have a nice car, yes. You might be lucky to have a Playstation 3 and plasma TV, of course - we're all privileged to be able to obtain such luxury items. But lucky to have a job?

Perhaps I'm being extreme and it won't come to that point, yet with the top bods in power talking about "pain" in the future, I can't help but feel the future is looking pretty bleak for a lot of people.

Radio Radio

As previously posted, we've started having the radio on in the office. Inevitably, nobody wanted to listen to whatever was on in the first place and it came down to listening to one of the two stations: Radio 1 or Xfm.

Now, personally, this is like having to choose between being stabbed in your left or right hand. Both are painful, but I do a lot of useful things with my right hand, so my vote went to Xfm and so it's that station which currently buzzes away in the background.

What I have noticed in a short time is how well it sticks to a format. There's the 'modern classic' bands who get their greatest hits played (Oasis, Foo Fighters, Green Day) alongside the likes of the Killers and Kings of Leon. Even Franz Ferdinand are getting a couple of plays, and I thought their moment had long passed. I actually had my first exposure to Florence and the Machine - I preferred my ignorance.

It's depressing how incredibly safe it is, which I would hazard a guess is down to commercial reasons. People want to hear songs they know, especially in the daytime to provide background sounds to a workday. It reminds me of those MOR or AOR stations they have in America - except we're told this is 'alternative' music that we're having thrown at us over the airwaves. Of course, the alternative is always swallowed by the mainstream, the same way large department stores sell punk themed t-shirts. Being a proud music snob, my temptation is always to stop one of those student types with the Ramones shirt and ask them to name five of their songs. Terrible, perhaps, but just the way I am.

To hope for anything else may well be unrealistic. The Oldham-based station Revolution attempted to plug local bands and work on a less obvious playlist (I heard the acoustic version of the Chameleons' Swamp Thing on their daytime show once, which staggered me) and ended up with minimal listening figures. Hence why I, and I would guess many people, can thank the development of the Ipod or Mp3 player that can hold more than enough songs to get you through the day.

On the plus side, Xfm does not have DJs so irritating they make you want to rip out your own eyeballs with a screwdriver and use them to stuff your ears up to cease the pain.