James O'Malley... living legend

Nutter of the week

2005-10-11T21:21:00.000+01:00

In what I'm hoping won't become a regular feature (for my own safety), I present to you the first Nutter of the Week. Being the big wimp that I am, I'll give a "wide birth" to anyone who looks like an "unusual" characters, such as large gangs of hooded teens, big issue sellers, bearded men carrying around signs promoting the Bible, charity muggers, and troops of poets/childrens entertainers.

I was in the centre of Leicester at lunchtime today, I was killing time before my second gruelling hour of education of the day with Mike and Rob. I believe we were discussing the Tory leadership when this woman, from about six feet away looks like she's staring at us. I didn't think anything of it until she moved nearer to us, still staring.

She was then part of our elite circle of arm-chair politicans.

She looked strange- she was old, perhaps around 60, and she had what looked like a small circular mouth. Curiously- it looked as if she only had half of the correct number of teeth, and they were all yellow. She was also wearing a massive padded coat- and it was t-shirt weather for the "normal" people there.

She stared at us. Us back at her.

"Gaa Uhhh Cirruhhh?", she slurred at us.

"...Sorry?"

"Got a cigarette?", she enquired in a more coherent way.

What made this unbearable was that after we'd apologised for not carrying any cigarettes, she stood there for a few seconds too long, before trundling away.

It was weird.

Night on the town

2005-10-10T12:29:00.000+01:00

I had a lovely evening last night - I went out with my friends. In fact, it was something of a "pub-crawl".

We went to two pubs.

I met JD, Charlie (she's a girl with a man's name), and Heggs (he's a man with a sur's name), at The Greyhound- which you might remember that I went to before with the aforementioned JD, and Matt. It hasn't changed much. Again, there were very few people there- apart from us, there were three old men sitting, alone, at the bar, drinking slowly. They glanced at us, the outsiders, as if to say, "What are you doing in our public house?"- I'd imagine if they had actually said it, they may have pronouced "doing" as "doon", and "our" as "are". Maybe even "what" was "wod".

We bought some drinks and I did something I've only ever done once before: I bought a drink at a bar. To make it look like I knew what I was doing, and to emphasise that I wasn't a chronic alcoholic (I was drinking Coke, for a start), I leaned against the bar to look casual and relaxed, whilst sort-of balancing on one leg, to show that I still had self control.

I had a game of Table Skittles with Charlie. It went on for literally forever (slight exaggeration) because we were so awful. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game (like me approximately 16 hours ago), imagine ten-pin bowling, and instead of rolling a ball, you're throwing a projectile. Needless to say, I'm surprised I didn't break anything. The important point is that against all odds, I ended up winning.

We didn't even have to settle it with a pub brawl- I think that's a publican tradition that I'm going to have to wait until next time to have a go at.

Heggs, being the enterprising business man that he is, tried to sell me a book to help fund his gap year. He was practically throwing away a perfectly good piece of Idi Amin satire for fifty pence. Or at least, he wouldn't have done, if I hadn't bartered him upto £1.10. I think I get this particular negotiation skill from my mother. (There's a dull anecdote attached to that, that isn't worth writing).

After thrashing the others at Pool (whatever they say is lies), we moved on to the second pub of the evening- The Cherry Tree, which is just across the road. For those of you keeping tabs on my pub trips- perhaps with the use of the Google Maps API, it was the same pub that I went to on A-level results day, and to the Wilkinson quiz.

It was much busier than The Greyhound, but in an uninteresting contrast, the ceiling was much lower down. After the high-ceilinged caffeine-fueled exploits at the Greyhound, I suddenly felt like a giant (due to my head being nearer to the ceiling).

Because it was busier, and I was apparently a giant, I had to push my way through crowds of people, and dip my head lower than usual to pass through door ways without hitting anything. I'd have roared with laughter, in a gianty "I'm going to eat you because I'm a giant with very few ethics, and nothing but contempt for the rule of law" sort of way, but I already felt somewhat out of place- I was in a pub. And everyone else was of normal height, too.

The others decided that they wanted a curry, so off we walked through the town, late at night... on a Sunday! This is unusual for me as my Sunday nights are usually spent whistling to the Panorama theme tune and rocking back and fourth, ~~hunched up in a ball, crying~~ waiting for someone to talk to me on MSN.

Thinking about it, being out in the evening is unusual for me, so maybe I should italicise some more?

The others decided that they wanted a curry, so off we walked through the town, late at night... on a Sunday! I don't think the curry place was very pleased to see them- it was 2250 at night, and they were ten minutes away from closing, and now they had to fire up all of the kitchen equipment again and work harder.

We then walked upto Heggs' house, and he held an impromptu social occasion that late at night- and his parents didn't even mind. My parents, who I know are reading this: take note.

The exciting thing about his house was that not only did he have an old map of the local area, showing that my village (Heather, take note there... readers, don't ask) was in fact, at one time, in Northamptonshire, but he had a Weetabix dictionary that had been censored- it contained no swear words, nor "Weetabix".

Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and fingers crossed I'll have another pub-tale to bore you with again soon!

Smoking is cool!

2005-10-09T18:13:00.000+01:00

I've just finished the book I've been reading for the past couple of weeks- the same book that I've made a point of name-dropping into multiple blog updates. BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson's The Wars Against Saddam: The Hard Road to Baghdad, was excellent.

Essentially, the book is, unsurprisingly, about all the wars Saddam Hussein has been involved in- Iran/Iraq war and the two Gulf Wars- they tell the tale of how John covered them, and how they all happend and that. Dead interesting stuff.

The best bit is probably getting to "hear" John swearing- after his convoy is missiled by the Americans, he phones up the BBC and shouts, "Get me on the fucking air!"- not only are we seeing someone unexpectedly swear, but it really emphasises and exaggerates the point he's trying to make!

As it's easier to criticise than be nice about something, here are the bad points about the book:

John (we're on first name terms) expresses opinions! I'm aware it's not published by BBC Books, but surely he should uphold the whole impartiality thing? Having a guess at where he is politically, dare I suggest he's more conservative (small C?) than I'd have hoped? He seems to hate Bill Clinton and the most liberal man in the (first) Bush Jr administration, Colin Powell. They've apparently fucked up Iraq bad.

He also seems to apologise somewhat for the Bush administration, but not too much- "there were WMD", "Saddam was awful". Maybe I'm reading into this too much?

He also seems to repeat himself once or twice, and I've felt like I'm reading the same descriptions and stuff, although this may be because I've skipped about in reading the book, although he might just forget what he's written. It wouldn't surprise me- I'm always repeating myself, including the same puns and so on. Just ask Heather. It's worse when I'm parroting a blog entry that I know she's read.

The other thing is, that I'm sort of disappointed with him. There's many references to him smoking cigars- when I first read it, I thought it might just be because he was offered one at a hotel in Arbil, but I think he does actually smoke. I mean, yes, it's hardly CELEBRITY CAUGHT IN SMOKING SHOCKA, but being straight-edge in all but name myself means I have a certain dislike for smoking.

The worst part of being in "pubs", like I've done a few times recently, is ending up stinking of smoke, even if you havn't been near any. John must smell like this, all the time.

In fact, I try to make a point of saying, "you shouldn't smoke, it's bad for you" when I see people that I know smoking- much to their annoyance. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Kayleigh dislikes me so intensely?

And now here's John Simpson, a man who I admire for being on the telly, smoking like the oil wells that have been set-alight around him. He even tells an anecdote where he shares a cigar with Feargal Keane, who's another BBC correspondent.

There's also an anecdote where John explains how he hadn't changed his clothes or washed in five days- this coupled with the evils of smoking, I bet he was really pleasant to be around!

Unfortunately, I think all of my favourite celebrities smoke- Andrew Marr's book, My Trade, which admittedly, I've only read the preface of so far, includes Andy (we're also on first name terms) admitting to being able to smoke sixty cigarettes a day.

Then lets think about the bands I like- all punk and pro-drugs and all sorts- I'd wager that with the exception of Anti-Flag (they're "straightedge"), most of them smoke like chimneys and make it look like the best thing ever.

I believe even Charles Kennedy, leader of the party I'm a member of, has admitted to having the "occasional" cigarette.

If all these people are smoking, then surely it's cool? Surely I can be better than them by imitating them as closely as possible? Maybe I should take up smoking? It'd go against everything I've been taught until now, but if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I?

Thom's Party

2005-10-09T14:57:00.000+01:00

I spent yesterday evening at Thom's 18th birthday party. He's the so-called "theatery ponce" who's good friends with Heather. It's a good job he's really camp, otherwise I'd be worried by his closeness to Heather and his constant upstaging of me.

The ponce passed his driving test before me (ie: I havn't passed mine yet, despite learning for longer), and then goes and wins thirty two pounds on a scratchcard, compared to my four.

This said, he isn't sixteen times better than me.

Prior to arriving at Thom's, Heather ~~and I~~ had prepared an excellent birthday present- a print out of a DVD box, of a DVD that we'd bought him, which isn't out yet. Not only this, but we'd bought a box, and carefully replaced the label to read "Thom's Box from Heather & James".

But wait, there's more! We Heather had also got him some bubbles and straws- and being the fans of consistent branding that we are, we stuck "Heather & James Present: Bubbles/Straws" on that too.

He was delighted. We didn't anticipate all of the innuendo caused by the latter two presents, though.

The best bit was that I got to see all of my old friends from the year below me, again- including Sid, who always used to cheer me when I walked into the Sixth Form Centre at my old school.

Incidentally, the worst bit was that I had the "good fortune" of seeing my nemesis again, Kayleigh. Turns out she has read my e-mail (see the previous post linked to), and didn't want to dignify it with a response. Silly northerners.

Because I was at a party, and because Heather looked disapproving, I decided to try and build some bridges. "Kayleigh, why don't we start afresh, and draw a line under our past differences?", I asked, before adding, "you shit". It was going well until then. She went a bit mental. I mean, more mental than usual. I think. It's hard to tell when someone so terminally awful becomes even worse.

Later in the evening, I tried to actually build bridges, re-use metaphors, and extend the metaphors beyond their natrual end.

I actually wanted some sort of "peace", so I used proverbial cement and some sort of (proverbial) cabled-stayed design cross the gulf of disdain between us.

Unfortunately, I phrased it in exactly the same way as before, so before I could finish a sentence she slapped me. Well, sort of. It wasn't even a very good "slap", in that it was more her flicking my face with her fingers, causing minor pain. Kayleigh: try harder- quite literally, too.

Other than that, it was a very enjoyable evening- thanks for inviting me, Thom!

George Galloway'd

2005-10-07T16:57:00.000+01:00

I've done it! I've met my second minor party leader! If you're politically ignorant, and can't identify the man in the picture above, it's RESPECT leader George Galloway.

In case you can't be bothered to read what I'll write below, long story short is that its not quite as impressive as when I met Kilroy- I don't hate the man with a passion, nor did I spend six months beforehand making jokes at his expense, repeatedly.

Unfortunately, to meet him, I had to attend what they called a "meeting" of the DeMontfort University Respect Party... of course, anyone could just turn up. After an introduction by the DMU Respect leader, and then the NUS Respect Leader, we finally got to what everyone was there to see:

A middle-to-old-aged man ranting about how awful the government is, and how brilliant all these left wing causes are.

He went on for nearly 40 minutes (click the picture to listen to the whole main speech that I recorded)- using words like "comrade", "blair" and "100,000". Curiously, it appears that George, the man elected off of the back of racial tensions, was fasting for Ramadan. Now, I'm not a muslim, nor can I claim to know a lot about Islam... but surely George Galloway can't either? If he'd converted, it'd have been in the news and that... if George is going to jump on the "muslims should vote for me because I follow their traditions/customers/whatever" bandwagon, he should at least be slightly more discreet about it!

I also liked how a man who famously got owned by Jeremy Paxman on election night, used Paxo in explaining why other people (I forget who) were rubbish.

After his rant, there was a badly-executed Q&A. The DMU organiser picked people to ask questions, and George answered them with another rant later on.

(Calling him "George" over and over makes us sound like mates)

Do you remember that famous video from when Saddam first took power from President Bakr? It's in black and white, its dead grainy and had the See Hear! team doing the sound. It was a meeting of the regional (ie: Iraqi) Baath Party. Saddam sat there in his big chair, cigar on, looking important, and read out a list of traitors. These people were then escourted out of the building and shot. Occasionally people would stand up and shout things like, "Saddam, you're ace!" (paraphrasing), and he'd sort of nod approval, and not murder them yet.

It was just like that. "What's your question?" "I think you should join Respect, it's really great, issues, people, Galloway! It's got them all! Woo Yeah!".

Galloway even bears a passing resemblance to Saddam- what with the moustache and cigars.

There was even some dissidents there- so-called ultra-leftists from the likes of The Socialist Party and so on. Galloway didn't send them out to be shot- he tried to verbally batter them, though.

After all of this, I dashed down to the front of the lecture theatre, and before I knew it, Rob, who's in my seminar group, had taken the photo of me and George that you can see above. After some more milling around, with me acting as photographer for Rob, Mike, and Shaz, and another guy, who's name I don't know yet, the room was almost empty. Whilst not knowing someone's name may sound really, really rude, I thought Mike was called Mark until yesterday. Whoops!

Afterwards, when practically everyone else had left the lecture theatre, for some reason, a militant socialist got talking to us. Now, as much as I like politics, I'd just finished two hours of Gallowaying, and was tired and wanted to go home... he just wouldn't shut up! It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't more or less agreed with him- although not on everything. I found myself thinking and saying relatively right wing things, which is really quite odd.

Worst bit was, I sort of put my foot in it.. again. The socialist explained how his father and brother were really racist, and how his brother was a member of the BNP. When he told us that his girlfriend is asian, I remarked that "I bet you have some interesting conversations with your brother and father at Christmas!".

"I havn't spoken to them in seven years".

...

Whoops!

This hiccup couldn't have been too bad, though, as he invited us to somewhere for some reason, to which I declined as I had a train to catch- Mike went, and it turned out that he dined with George Galloway. Wow.

Now THAT would have made one hell of a blog entry.

Galloway

2005-10-06T15:04:00.000+01:00

Excitingly, I'm currently sat in the "computer node" in the Humanities department, trying to kill 2.5 hours. At six o'clock tonight, I will be meeting the one and only George Galloway. And thankfully, there is only one of him.

I'm not quite sure what's going to happen yet - should I go for another "Kilroy" style owning, or should I listen to him appreciatively? If I get the opportunity to have my photo taken with him, should I make the "pistol" hand gesture, like I did with Kilroy, or should I just do the standard "thumbs up and smile"? I really can't make my mind up whether I like this (horrible?) man or not.

The trouble is, he's anti-war, which is good, but then he's a bit of a Saddam apologist. I mean, he really was practically best mates with Saddam- the same Saddam who massacred, or owned around 5000 Kurds at Hallabjah. Worse still, he prevented everyone's favourite World Affairs Correspondent, John Simpson, from getting an interview with Saddam. Saddam told John that to get an interview, he should get Galloway to say that he's cool with it. (This isn't a lie, see The Hard Road to Baghdad by John Simpson, chapter 44: "Face to Face").

But then, he did go in front of some sort of US Senate inquiry and verbally kick the crap out of them- getting the "there was no WMD" message on Fox News of all places. But anyway.

He's got an annoying accent.

Remember the election night interview with Jeremy Paxman? He stormed off about "Paxo" presented the facts: he'd jumped on the racial tension bandwagon to get elected on an anti-war ticket, kicking out of Parliament one of the few black, female MPs.

And everyone know real democracy has minorities represented, whether the people want them there or not!

So, the question is: should I like this man?

I guess we'll find out later tonight when I post a "what happend" sort of thing on either here or Canned Ham, depending on how politic'd up what I write is. I have a horrible feeling I might have to join the "RESPECT" party to get in, which is worrying- why would I want to be associated with an organisation that has one of the most contrived acronymns in modern history?

Train Tickets

2005-10-05T21:36:00.000+01:00

I've spent the last week travelling back and fourth to University on the train, and I've had the foresight to keep all of my "used" tickets. I say "used" because if there wasn't a date stamped on them, I could easily use them again. For some reason, Midland Mainline seem completely disinterested in checking whether or not someone has bought a ticket- and this puts me into the morally questionable situation: Should I not pay for a ticket, and potentially get free travel, saving money, or should I pay for using Midland Mainline's facilities, like I should do?

Looking at it from a "would you steal a plasma TV that happend to be just sitting in the middle of the road" point of view, I certainly wouldn't but then, the statistics speak for themselves:

As illustrated above- out of eleven tickets (ie: return journies are two tickets), only four were checked. Having spent exactly £30 so far on train tickets, it turns out I could have saved Eighteen Pounds and Forty Pence on tickets that wern't checked. If that number doesn't mean much to you, then it's because you need to factor in when I've used a rail card- and I've also counted a return where the out journey was checked as the cost of a single fare.

But the pie chart speaks for itself- chances are I'd get away with doing it! It's like putting a small child in charge of guarding the entire crown jewels. Admittedly, given the not-so-minimal chance of being checked, the child would probably have say, a machine gun with a pike strapped to the barrel, creating a modern day makeshift bayonet, but my chances would still be pretty high. Children are rubbish at aiming, and operating a complex device, like a pike. They'd also take regular naps, so that'd be the perfect time to strike.

Anyway, should I try and get some free travel? (Possibly including a one way ticket to Hell, too, if the nazi Christians are correct)

Beaurocratic Incompetence

2005-10-04T16:52:00.000+01:00

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!

We're everywhere!

2005-10-03T23:32:00.000+01:00

Following on from the sighting of the poster featuring Heather and myself, I've started to notice it everywhere. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but I spotted it no less than three times on the way back from Uni today...

Here it is outside the Pheonix arts centre.

And outside the offices of Leicester City Council. There was a good thirty people waiting for a bus right next to where I was standing- they look quite bemused when I produced a camera. I took the picture as quickly as I could, as I knew they were working on producing a camera* of their own.

* knife

And this bloke was enjoying our reflected glory at the top of Belvoir Street. Contrary to Heather's interpretation, I think he looks delighted.

Have you seen this poster around? Let me know where and I'll take a photo of it and put it on this blog - I know you're only here for pictures of advertising in Leicester, anyway. I'm booting up the Google Maps API as we speak.

Gadgets and that

2005-10-01T21:48:00.000+01:00

I think I'm slowly turning into a robot- I seem to be accumulating a variety of different handheld gadgets, all of which will slightly enhance my ability to live life to the full. For example, when going to University the other day, I carried with me: (muggers, this is the bit you need to read... rapists, you can skip this)

Mobile Phone
Of course, I carry around my phone, keeping me in contact with the outside world, and thanks to a posh moblogging script I've written, I'll be able to send pictures back to my Pokémon site live. It has bluetooth, so I can link it up to my computer.

MP3 Player
It's a brick- a brick with built in wifi and 1.5gb hard disk. It's an Aireo, if that means anything to anyone.

Digital Camera
Another big brand name here- a 5 megapixel Vivitar digital camera- this actually allowed me to take the photo of a photo of me and Heather.

Pen Drive (512mb)
I have a pen drive as I'm that leet.

I addition, I have a Nintendo DS, which I would have bought with me, but I'm trying to get into books, so I look intelligent and so on.

Why am I telling you all of this? Aside the fact that when I'm out and about, I'm carrying over two gigabytes worth of storage space in four devices, I've bought yet another gimmicky piece of consumer electronics. I've bought a dictation machine. (64mb flash memory, if you're counting). The theory is, I'll record lectures and stuff, and then I'll be able to put them on my MP3 player. In reality, when I walk around, I sound like a medieval knight, and look like I have wider legs than I already do.

I suppose I'm writing this post as more of a warning than anything- if you, yes you try to rape me, you'd better watch out. Not only can I phone for help, take a photo of you to help identify you, and even pass the time whilst waiting for the police to come, I can now also record what you're saying to me- evidence that can and will be used against you in a court of law.

Rapists: owned.

In other gadgets news, or more specifically "James O'Malley's gadget's news"- don't get any ideas about me blogging about the latest technological innovations for your benefit, my laptop finally died the other day. It wouldn't boot into Windows, because of a corrupt install. I'm not going to reformat it because I need my data. It's had all number of other problems, including:

A battery that no longer holds charge, the contacts between power connector and laptop have become very loose, and as a result nudging the lead will cause it to power off (no battery, see?), dodgy keyboard since I spilt Coke all over it (no, really), the screen replacing all areas of "#000000" black on the screen with "#FF0000" red, and the screen flickering like an untuned TV unless the power lead is in just the right way.

Anyway, I've bought a hard disk caddy, and I'm currently playing the coroner, and carrying out an autopsy. I've managed to remove the battery and fan from the inside- but the important bit I need, the hard disk, is stuck in there. It's covered in a metal "thing", which is screwed into another "thing", which is connected to the big "thing".

The question is now: should I try and force it out? This could potentially fuck up the hardware, rendering it beyond repair?

Expect more dull updates about the hard disk saga in the future.

Children on public transport

2005-09-30T21:17:00.000+01:00

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?

Poster fame!

2005-09-30T15:21:00.000+01:00

I spotted this near Leicester station, on the way to University yesterday...

Yes, that's me and Heather, breaking a world record. Despite what the picture suggests, I was equally as enthusiastic as Heather, honest!

Commuting

2005-09-28T18:55:00.000+01:00

A while a back, you might remember me moaning about buses. With the recent change in University living arrangements (I'm going to live at home), I'm now going to have to commute in every day on the train- not that I'm complaining. I'm looking forward to having time to read the many political books I'll no doubt get for background reading.

Before, I mentioned how on a bus, you have to master ignoring your fellow passengers- on a train this is even more tricky, as in some parts of the carriage, there are two sets of seats facing each other. This meant this morning, I awkwardly sat opposite an old bloke who was reading The Times. What made it awkward for me was that I didn't have the foresight to bring along my new Andrew Marr book, so I didn't know where to look. Wherever I looked I'd risk looking like I was staring at someone- and looking down would have been odd, as I didn't have a book to look at.

In the end, I attempted to get into deep thought, so I'd be sort of staring into space- my head would be forward, but I'd look dazed enough to not look as if I was watching anyone. Unfortunately this was impossible because I was concentrating on trying to not look like I was fully concious of what was going on around me.

In the end, I successfully completed the journey without looking too weird. If you can see how I worried about things like this, then I'm sure you can understand why I can't cope with living at University!

Back home.

2005-09-27T19:35:00.000+01:00

~~Bad~~ Good news!

I've decided to live at home and commute in to University - it's only 15 miles away, and easily accessible by train or bus.

Long story short, I can't cope with living there- the social side doesn't appeal to me, and I havn't really "clicked" with my soon-to-be-former flatmates.

But I'm still doing the course, and that's the main thing, and at the moment, it looks like it's going to be fantastic. I got my first ever "homework" earlier - something which has now taken on a slightly more literal meaning with my revert in living arrangements. Politics and that is often a very sombre subject, what with all the bad news and big issues, so they've decided to introduce us to the course with something a bit more upbeat- the death penalty. I need to research it for Thursday, where they'll be a follow-up introductory session, which should be fun.

In the introductory session earlier today, I tried to drop in bits of trivia to sound knowledgable and important, but I don't think the people I was working in cared very much. "Alistair Campbell used to leak news about Bill Clinton when he wanted Clinton to support the bombing in Kosovo", I said. They didn't look too impressed.

Nevertheless, it's been an interesting three-day experiment, and I've learnt a lot. Mainly that I can't do much for myself and being with hundreds of people you don't know is horrible.

More funnier and upbeat updates to follow.

Introduction to the course

2005-09-27T13:50:00.000+01:00

Earlier this morning I went down to the Humanities building to get an introduction to the course I'll be starting next week.

It turns out the workload is slightly more than I expected... four lectures and four seminars a week. This should make the commute in that I'll be inevitably be taking when I decide I can't cope with living here, slightly more justified.

After being given a talk on the course, who we can talk to if we need help, and so on, we were split into pairs to work on a couple of "brainstorming" questions. The first one was "What is politics?". The person I was working with and myself came up with several "keywords" about the subject, but it was all slightly worrying that I can't define the subject that I'll be learning about for the next three years.

After this, the class (can I call it that at my age?) of ten were split into two groups of five. We were given a situation, and we had to make political decisions about how to deal with it. My group's scenario was "It's the BSE crisis, the government have setup the food standards agency, Blair's going to open it, but oh no! The night before there's a salmonella outbreak there!"- the question was how to handle it?

The most amusing part of discussing it was when someone suggested that the PM "blame the French", and we all sort of jokingly agreed that it'd distract the media by getting the xenophobes mad. Then the girl with the obvious French accent decided to contribute something to the discussion.

The course itself though looks like it's going to be pretty good- I just can't see myself actually living here for much longer.

"Please get drunk, you're a student afterall"

2005-09-26T15:29:00.000+01:00

I've just been down to get enrolled onto my course (International Relations and Globalisation). I'm feeling slightly more positive towards the whole University experience now I've got things to do (ie: go to this, that and then something else), and I've come to the realisation I don't have to go out in the evenings. In fact, it's a bit like being at home.

The most unfortunate thing about being on the course that I'm on, and a student in the Humanities department, is that I was sharing an introduction "lecture" with DANCE and MEDIA STUDIES students- with company this uncool, it must cramp my style somewhat.

Excitingly, I've prepared some pictures for this update!

As you might be aware, I'm now a student and obviously want to get as pissed as humanly possible. Nothing will delight me more than being able to hold in my hand an upturned traffic cone full of my own vomit, in a toast to the student lifestyle.

Clever Leicester business people have cottoned on to this, and have setup literally billions of pubs, bars and nightclubs within a few metres of the campus (not literally). The obvious thing this creates is a lot of competition and as such, they've all employed what I assume are second and third year students to stand outside the campus centre, which is the hub of all DMU activity, giving out leaflets, many promising a free drink. This creates a hell of a lot of litter- I'm not joking when I say the pavements are carpetted in glossy paper talking about Vodka.

I'm hoping that they've got environmental science students giving them out- I'm sure they'd be irony or some sort of elitist joke there somewhere.

For your viewing pleasure, because I know that you're incapable of imagining what a flyer looks like, I've taken a photo of some of the stuff I've recieved. I'd have scanned them, but I didn't bring a scanner.

Mosh is apparently a night club that does, unsurprisngly, predominantly rock music. I didn't know such a night club existed, as I assumed it was all "dance" music, or as it's known in the industry, "a damaged CD, that keeps looping the same bit". I've never been to a nightclub, nor do I want to. In fact, being conscripted into an armed force where they give you a super-soaker to take on a Tomahawk cruise missile is probably more desirable.

In fairness, the back of the flyer gives a run down of the bands on their "punk" night on a Wednesday, and I regularly listen to nearly all of the bands listed, but the lack of a real live band, and the presence of hundreds of people whom I don't know still puts me off. You also have to pay just to get through the door, which is ridiculous- I didn't know a CD player (or would that be an iPod set to 'random' these days?) worked on a commission basis.

Of course, the other thing counting against Mosh as a desirable place to go is that on another flyer I was given, it features a handful of photograph of people there enjoying themselves. Is it me or do photos from any nightclub ever always look exactly the same? The photos could be taken anywhere. It's just people looking at the camera, looking a bit pissed. Never seen that before! I also think this is true for parties and football matches- why not just use library footage (ie: a google image search) and save yourself the expense of a camera, people?

The Mosh publicists (leafletmonkeys?) also gave me a small badge (pictured) and a rubber wristband, like a slightly more commercial Make Poverty History one, in black (not pictured).

Not wanting to sound like a branding nerd, but I'm not a fan of the Mosh logo- from afar it'd look like it says "osh", because of the choice of colours- perhaps it'd have made more sense to have a white "M" and a white "osh", too?

This "Stock Exchange" thing is a fantastic idea, let down by an apparently nationalist edge. It looks like that as people are there, market forces will be used to determine the price of the drinks- ie: if no one's buying drinks and everyone's sober and sans traffic cone, the price'll go down. When everyone rushes to the bar to buy a drink, whoosh! Prices go up!

I'd commend their efforts on the flyer for trying to extend the economics gimmick beyond its natural end- "Look out for a Market Crash!! Market Crash = very cheap drinks", as labouring a point, as you might have guessed, is one of my favourite things. However, points are lost for the inclusion of text speak on a flyer with ample room. "Entry £1 b4 9"... speaking properly, please! We're UNIVERSITY students and thus NOT braindead idiots. At least, I'm not.

I don't!

By far the best promotional literature so far (and this isn't saying much) was a plastic yellow "camera", given out by people advertising "Polar Bear", whatever that is- I assume it's a pub or nightclub, rather than a bizarre new initiative by the WWF. (Wrestlers don't like camera).

If you look into it, there is a real of slides containing pseudo-rude photos, and you can scroll through them by pulling a small lever on the side.

The best bit is that the slides come on cartridges- they offer other cartridges if you go to their thing. As much as I'd love to expand my collection... I think I'll pass.

More as it happens.

Out of my depth!

2005-09-26T11:54:00.000+01:00

Something interesting has happend - by which I mean, it would be interesting if it didn't happen to me and I didn't have to endure it in real time, but it turns out that I hate student culture!

What do I mean by this? I'm talking about the "going out in the evening, drinking heavily, being rowdy, and essentially doing the opposite of what I like doing". I went to the Student's Union last night, for what turned out to be like a big disco. Earlier in the day, we were given vouchers for a free drink to the value of two pounds... when we arrived at the Union, the same Union we'd been inside for free earlier, we had to pay two pounds to get in!

Needless to say, it wasn't my cup of tea... hundreds of people I don't know, drinking alcohol, with loud pop music and a "DJ" encouraging "party games". Needless to say, I'd swam into the deep end, and there wasn't a novelty island-themed inflatable for me to grab on to. It was a lot like work, in that everyone else wern't below me they're just different, to me. Or as my Harborian friend Matt put it, I'm not normal.

In the end I did the most sensible possible thing- walked alone through a big city at night to get back to my halls.

I actually had a half decent evening after that- I sat online, which was speeding along at 5 megabit, because everyone else was down at the Union, I watched Space Race from the other week, and read a few more chapters of John Simpson's The Wars Against Saddam: Taking the Hard Road to Baghdad.

Yeah, look at me! I'm doing all the studenty things!

So, who's for sweepstakes on whether or not I'll still be here ~~tomorrow~~ tonight?

Back to the slacker's league

2005-09-25T17:32:00.000+01:00

It's been a turbulent 48 hours. Yesterday, was my last day at WORK. Yes, that's what I've been censoring all along. Long story short, all of my co-workers found out about this blog, read it, and wern't too pleased. I've now restored all of the posts I removed, as I no longer work there!

No, I wasn't sacked! I left on my own terms because of University.

Incidentally, I'm writing this from my room in my halls of residence. I'm on the sixth floor- that's the top one, and the view is quite spectacular. You can see quite a long way.

The room is pretty much what you'd expect- a bed, a (surprisingly nice) desk, and some shelves. I've got my computer setup in one corner, my TV in the other, and all of my other consumer electronics surrounding me.

When I arrived, I met one of my flatmates- Harshil is from London, and actually arrived yesterday, so had spent the last 24 hours on his own. Ross arrived a bit later- he's from down south too. It's bizarre to think that they'd refer to Leicester as "oop north". Trivial information: they're both doing business-esque courses, which is in the building next door... I'll have to take a five minute walk to get to where all of my lectures take place. It might be like walking to Great Stretton, every day!

After my parents had abandoned me, we went to a so-called "party" at the Student's Union- it was just like a bigger and louder version of one of the pubs I'd been to many times before! There was a magician poncing around, showing people tricks, and in a letter sent out a few weeks ago, we were promised fire eating and chain saw juggling- unfortunately I didn't see either.

When we got back to our flat, we met our fourth and as it turned out, final flatmate. He dashed off almost immediately to go and visit relatives who live "down" here (he comes from Manchester), and I'm afraid to say I can't remember his name. Fingers crossed I'll find it out soon.

And now... why I've been sitting on my computer for the past couple of hours... it's a home from home! The exciting thing is, because of the network setup, I can see other people's shared files, if I know their IP address- the person who's IP is one digit below me has the entire series of Lost on their hard disk! Needless to say I'm working my way through as many IPs as possible, seeing if they'll respond to ping.

So far: University is quite good.

Last day of freedom

2005-09-23T15:53:00.000+01:00

14 weeks ago I talked about this day as if it was months away- it was. Now, those fourteen weeks are over, and on Sunday I'll be going to University. Yes, I'm well aware today is Friday (I'm quite surprised I do know that, actually), and there is usually another day between Friday and Sunday, but I'll be spending tommorrow CENSORing, and tommorrow evening at Scot's party. As such, this is my last day of doing bugger all.

That isn't strictly true either- I've spent the day coding a moblog (don't ask, yet), and listening to all the songs flagged as not listened to by Winamp. I can see why I hadn't listened to them until today.

I hope that when I start there, to ease us in, we don't have to write about what we did in the summer in our English books- I havn't done that much at all.

Wait, hang on!

...

I've done loads. You regular blog readers should know that. If you'll allow me to go all "clipshow" for a second, here's a definitive list of everything I've done:

In retrospect, I've had a fucking excellent summer. I think the swearing appropiately emphasises my point, too.

The Greyhound

2005-09-22T13:59:00.000+01:00

Just as I thought this blog was at risk of becoming a "party blog", merely detailing my latest wild exploits at a party, somewhere, it looks as if it could be becoming a pub blog. Now, if I were a better writer, I'd review each public house and compare its relative merits to the other pubs that I've been to.

As things currently stand, if I'm not spending seven hundred words agonising over a two word exchange with the window cleaner, I'm criticising gingerbread men- I'm not so much a critic, writing a useful blog which others can use for advice, I think I'm probably a (bit) critical (about everything).

Yesterday evening, Matt invited myself and JD to "go for a drink", as they say- and he was kind enough to drive us there, too. The best part was that I got a lift, even though I live about two hundred metres away! I think this was a victory for slackers everywhere.

I could tell I'm getting used to this "pub" thing, as I didn't feel that out of place, as soon as I was sure the likelyhood of us bumping into any CENSORED colleagues, or former-school nemesises was minimal. This is probably a good thing too, considering I'll be an official lay-about good-for-nothing student in THREE DAYS. Apparently students go to a lot of pubs, too.

I didn't want to say anything at the time, but I've got absolutely no idea how The Greyhound stays in business- considering it was prime time on a Wednesday evening, there was only very few people there - probably less than ten, including us. I mean, if they need to make £x an hour to pay the barmonkey's wages, margins on the few drinks that have been sold can't be THAT big, can they? And the Pool table was only 50p- I'd have happily paid a pound to thrash JD and Matt at my favourite sport.

The most remarkable thing was that whilst we were playing Pool, an old bloke who was sitting at the bar shouted over taunts and pool tips... we didn't even know him! It's just like... people being reasonably friendly. It was all very odd.

The most unsuccessful part of the evening was probably my feeble attempt to coin a phrase, which failed to catch on. "You're getting owned, James", Matt exclaimed... "I'll own your face in a minute", I retorted, feeling proud of myself and my hilarious wit. Unfortunately this was just met with an expression of "WTF?"- even when I repeated it!

In case you're wondering, yes, we were using so-called "Leetspeak" in real life. We have done for some time. Back in the days when I went to school, I helped introduce "own" to the "James' social group" lexicon. (This wasn't entirely singlehanded though, I admit).

Clearly my entending this new-age slang to ones face was a step too far. Oh well.

Never the less, I had a lovely evening of owning Matt and JD at Pool- at least, that's how I remember it. If they tell you any different, they were clearly too pissed to remember who won what.

Crappy Gingerbread Man

2005-09-20T20:36:00.000+01:00

The other day, before "Black Friday", I wrote a post that was different to the usual- I had a bit of a rant about politics. Since, I've had two pieces of positive feedback about it. Admittedly, one was from someone who isn't going to complain about what I write, but the other was a genuine person "enjoying" (his words) what I'd written. The interesting thing is, despite the fact that this time next week, I'll be learning-up politics at University, I've neglected to write about anything political until this point. This positive feedback has changed things.

I'm going to do the clichéd blog thing and tackle the big issues- nobody will care about my opinion, as I'm not an "opinion former", nor Maddox. But still, I'm going to rant on. Tonight I'm going to talk about a subject very close to my heart- poorly produced novelty biscuits.

Look at this! Look! It's a gingerbread man from Sainsburys and it's terrible.

Just by looking at the thing, you can clearly see the lack of effort that was put into making it. The icing on the face is sloppily applied- skewed to the right, as if someone has just casually brushed over it, sans care and attention. The Smarties on top, too - badly done. Newsflash for the bakermonkey - they're supposed to be buttons, not hideous over-sized warts.

I mean, I know Sainsburys are still making tiny profits in businessland and probably need to cut costs, but surely they should concentrate on the food first. Try Something New Today? Not if it lacks as much effort as this!

Based on this one experience with a Sainsburys product, and despite having ate and enjoyed it, I'm going to condemn Sainsburys and their "look at us, we charge high prices because we have high quality stuff" as bullshit...

Y'know how Sainsbury's charge higher prices than their rivals, as they claim to be a "quality" focused supermarket, at least compared to Asda and so on? That's bullshit.

I suppose the silver lining to all of this is that I've got a grand total of 332 Nectar points - 100 for signing up, 200 bonus for some reason, and 32 earn't by spending £16 in store. That's only 50,168 to go until I can get a digital camera. (I need to spend another £25084 in store).

Chav Pub

2005-09-18T00:18:00.000+01:00

The most unusual thing happend this evening after CENSORED. Thom, who was last mentioned on this blog a few months ago, invited Emma, Heather and myself "out for a drink". I'm NOT linking to a picture of Heather, as I think if you're a regular reader, you should have a pretty good idea of what she looks like and who she is by now!

That's right- I went to a pub on a Saturday night. This is most unusual for me. More unusual still was that we started socialising at nine PM. As in, already reasonably late. Crikey.

Thom, the theatrery ponce that he is, drove a car to get us to where we were going. Show off. He picked me up, and then we went and collected Heather and Emma, and off we went towards Leicester. I was quite glad when we didn't go all the way into Leicester, as I noted that it looks like quite a scary place to be late at night... then I realised where I'll be living in exactly one weeks time. Oo-er.

Anyway, when we reached Oadby, Thom used clutch control and driving abilities to go slowly around Oadby, looking for a "pub" in which we could "drink". We, by which I mean Thom and Emma, eventually decided on The Old Library. This was slightly misleading as the only book in sight contained matches, and the "librarians" were retailing drinks. I don't think they wanted me to "return" my drink after I had finished it, either.

Heather and myself were slightly aprehensive about just walking into a pub... despite being 18 and a big man, I'd never actually been to a pub with friends before- the closest I'd come had been the CENSORED quiz, a few weeks earlier. Heather, I assume, was similarly as inexperienced in youth drinking culture I was. That, or she was trying to make me feel a bit better by not being the only one out of my depth.

Upon entering what we were sure was a fine establishment, it turned out that we had stumbled into a public house worthy of a mention on the Chavtowns website. Ooh-heck.

It was alright actually- presumably most of the chavs had taken the day off, or indeed, were calmed by my presence there. We did the standard pub thing... sat and drank coke. Thom told tales of people he'd served in the line of duty at his employer.

After the girls had gone to, and returned from the toilet in a pack, and Thom and myself had discussed "The Match", how women are like objects, and other manly things, I coerced us into a game of Pool. It was me and Heather Vs Thom and Emma.

Pool is a fast game compared to say, Snooker or Cricket. Well, usually. Unfortunately, we were all rubbish. We must have spent a good half an hour smashing the balls around the table, to no avail. Highlights included me knocking the ball off of the table, and Heather potting a ball that had bounced off of the cushion- the latter was certainly not just a fluke, and I'm not just saying this to avoid allegations that I suggest I always criticise Heather's sporting abilities.

Either way, we ended up leaving a good twenty minutes after the pub had actually closed, none the wiser as to which team was better at an Americanised parlour game.

Long story short, I had an excellent time- including bonus points for being so out of the ordinary and short notice. Thanks to Heather, Emma and Thom for their company, and thanks to Thom for inviting me along.

Next update: something nerdish and more traditionalist JamesOMalley, I promise.

Freeway Cola

2005-09-16T13:39:00.000+01:00

I'm leaving behind the unpleasantness of this morning, and remaining upbeat and full of caffeine!

As some of you might know, I consider myself something of a connoisseur in the field of cola drinks. I'm trying, aided primarily by Heather, to kick my so-called "Coke-habit", because it's eroding my teeth- much like how Tapman erodes metal. (That's your obscure reference of the day).

I've sampled many of the great world Colas in my time, and none have yet managed to surpass Coca-Colas supremecy. Now the time has come to see if Freeway Cola can stand up to the Ant & Dec of the populist cola drink world.

From what I can tell, this cola is exclusive to German Super (market) chain Lidl. If you'll allow me to make a racial slur, no doubt it was packaged efficiently/hypernationalistic/something about Nazis.

Spoiler: it's Timmy Mallet.

The first thing I didn't like about this drink was the name. FREEWAY Cola is almost adding insult to injury, when consumed by someone who has JUST FAILED THEIR DRIVING TEST.

Vaguely interestingly, today wasn't the first time I'd encountered 'Freeway', or indeed, mentioned it on this very blog. I actually spoke about it briefly back in June, in the same post where I explained about the minor driving error I made on Christmas day. How ominous it has turned out to be. I made the same xenophobic jokes back in June, too.

But what did it taste like? I took photos to show you what happend when I tried it.

In the above picture I take a sip. You can tell I'm an expert at this sort of thing because I taste it with my eyes closed.

And this is how I reacted immediately. It was certainly a shock to the system- and I've had ASDA Cola in the past. The memories of that are horrifying.

So what's the verdict?

Not good, not horrible. I managed to empty the glass, and I wasn't being polite, as I was the only person in. As such, in terms of thumbs, I give Freeway Cola the neutral thumb rating. The taste actually reminded me of Panda Pops. That's right- the cola that the primary school "tuck shop" always sold, rather than the products of evil multinationals.

Factor in the price, 39p for two litres, then I think its safe to say "not bad, if you're a cheapskate", but if you're a real cola drinker like myself, and you like your "black & water" to taste like something you're used to, stick to the traditional Coca-Cola.

Still an environmentalist.

2005-09-16T10:51:00.000+01:00

That's quite a spectacular failure, I think.

Failure Imminent

2005-09-15T22:54:00.000+01:00

Its now less than 12 hours until my driving test- this time tommorrow, or indeed, in twelve hours time, I could be a qualified driver. Make no mistake, I certainly won't be an insured driver, as there's not a chance in hell my mum will let me back on her insurance.

As previously mentioned, I can't get my head around, or more importantly do three-laned roundabouts. More specifically: this one.

As any sort of "revision" was impossible, my family and I did the next best thing- my dad drove us all to THAT roundabout, and proceeded to fail to do it correctly himself, five or six times.

Considering this is a man who has been driving for twenty five years, and in six goes could not successfully get into the correct lane at the correct time, I think I'm proverbially buggered when I take my test tommorrow. I have a horrible feeling I might end up actually crashing the car or something- whilst making an impressive blog entry, and anecdote for use in the future, that'll make me stand out as a "character", and will make people think, "ooh, he's memorable", it's not something I'm particularly looking forward to doing.

Wish me luck, I'm "sure as hell" going to need it!

No blood for oil.

2005-09-14T15:35:00.000+01:00

I had what could have been my last driving lesson ever earlier today- my driving test is on Friday, at 9:37am. The likelyhood of me passing is slim- my instructor still tells me that I would have failed for whatever I just did, every few minutes.

It's particularly unhelpful when he reminds me that the examiner would "tell you [me] to pull over, turn off the car, and he'd terminate the test there in the interest of public safety. You'd then have to wait for up to TWO HOURS for me to come and find you". It doesn't fill me with confidence, to say the least.

My main problem at the moment seems to be three laned roundabouts- I can't seem to get my head around when you switch lanes and so-on. My other main problems are two-laned roundabouts, mini-roundabouts, traffic lights, bay parking, parallel parking, reversing, going straight down a road, staying in lane, not wandering about the road like a loon, and not hitting bollards. This said, I've got a mean three-point-turn. Unless I accidentally hit the accelerator when reversing, or don't apply enough of the accelerator to make the car go forward when doing some clutch control.

Anyway, my point is- if I do pass, which is unlikely- this could be my last-but-one day as an environmentalist- in fact, I'm fully expecting to do a U-turn on Friday. Both in my beliefs about car usage and the environment, and involuntarily during my test.

I mean, its just my luck that on the same week that some nutters who don't understand basic economics threaten to protest about petrol prices, that I have to have a car full of petrol to take a driving test in.

I mean, not wanting to babble you with science, but if you were the manager of a petrol station, would you lower your prices if you had queues of paranoid motorists PANIC BUYING?! If anything, I'd raise my prices - I need to pay for the extended three digit sign somehow!

But then again, I suppose the entire automotive and fuel industry is shit. Not literally, of course- if it were literally shit then the environment would be marginally better off, as we'd be using a ""cleaner"" source of fuel.

Imagine I'm ranting about American interventions for oil and the whole oil industry here- y'know, the standard lefty stuff. I'm not just talking about Iraq, mind. Think of the failed coup to take down democratically elected leaders, and getting the secret police to shoot up peaceful protestors who want a nice environment rather than your oil rig fucking up the eco-system.

Let's not forget all of the emissions cars produce- there are now viable alternatives but the oil lobby who pay for the US election campaigns for both teams, and thus the elected government returning the favour by giving them big contracts and stopping any competitive technologies from emerging. But then, America is run by a man who isn't a big fan of science.

Hmm. Looks like I did go into the anti-oil rant a bit.

But petrol prices should be kept high, because the last thing we need is more cars on the roads, for obvious reasons.

I'm mainly writing this so I can look back on it with contempt when I do pass, and discredit my former views on this sort of thing, and join the mindless pro-car people. People like Jeremy Clarkson- who once said "Do not, ever, swear at or curse people in cars or trucks. You are a guest on roads that are paid for by motorists so if we cut you up, shut up."

Its horrible really- I don't want to be an aggressive motorists who likes burning finite resources and going dangerously fast. For some reason, I've got a mental link between Clarkson and being really quite right-wing about certain other issues. I've no idea if he is the Derek Clark of the BBC Two Sunday schedule, but he's still a twunt.

The worst thing is, I've noticed the transformation happening already - I hate most cyclists already, as they caused me to smash my mum's car up, and in my driving lessons, I can't seem to help going fast. I can also name certain types of car beyond what I used to be. If someone had said to me "what sort of car does your instructor have?"- rather than respond "a... blue... car", I could now tell you it was a Diesel Corsa. THAT is how advanced I am at this driving lark.

The questions now is... this time on Friday, will I be a so-called "petrolhead"?

Back to school

2005-09-13T16:16:00.000+01:00

I went back to school today! What?! No, not participate in learning, but to return an ICT textbook.

I didn't walk all the way to my old school to do this, you must understand- I was meeting Heather, and she was tired of carrying around my old textbook in her bag. She finally managed to convince me to trespass on to the school premisis, to "do" the handover.

It was dead weird- as I stepped back into the school grounds, for the first time since results day, a shiver went down my spine, and there was some lightning. It then returned to being a warm, sunny day.

Trespassing into the sixth form centre was unusual- it was the same building, the same notices, the same Coke lorry parked up outside, but I didn't recognise most of the people. Of those I did recognise, I exclaimed "I remember YOU!", and after explaining why I was where I was, they all made reference to my sodding monocle. Just like last Saturday at Heather's party. Yet again, I was proven to be just a one dimensional character with a gimmick.

As I mentioned before, I should probably have a catchphrase- rather than fight this and convince people that there's a lot of depth to my character and personality, I'm going to give in and just accept my catchphase. Any ideas? Comment below and suggest one.

What is sport?

2005-09-12T19:06:00.000+01:00

All day I've been trying to take an interest in the cricket. I say trying because it is so insanely boring. I've tried watching it for a few minutes at a time, only to realise that I don't have a clue what is going on. In the end, I gave up and switched to my usual diet of News 24, Sky News and CNN. After initially feeling disappointment at CNN not simultcasting the domestic (US) feed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it dawned on me... even the news channels were talking about cricket.

Why yes, this update is written purely to get some search engine hits off the back of people searching for "cricket" and "Katrina".

Quite why the news channels decided to send their best people to just outside the oval (as Channel 4 are the only people with the rights to broadcast from inside the stadium), to do two-ways every 15 minutes, giving an update on the scores is beyond me- if you can recieve the new fangled digital channels, then of course you can recieve Channel 4!

So, anyway, I tried to watch the cricket. If you're a new reader, I'm not unemployed, I'm just nearing the end of a long summer holiday before university, and I do have a (part time) job- but since they all found out about this blog, I don't know for how long!

After watching England's unimpressive victory against whoever they were playing, I thought it was very noticable just how rubbish the crowds were. If it were a football match, they'd be going fucking mental, invading the pitch, shouting at the tops of their voices, and violently harassing supporters of the opposing team. Instead, you'd have gotten more energy and excitement from a dead battery. Yes, there was a few applause and cheers, but nothing dramatic. Maybe the crowd was badly mic'd, or maybe they'd grown tired of the world's most boring and needlessly complex sport ever, too.

One of my many friends, who has become somewhat obsessed with cricket over the last few weeks, in a similar way to what everyone else does for the two weeks of Wimbledon every year, tried to explain some of the finer points to me. Turns out that "we" won because of the weather- not because our skillz and talent at hitting a really hard ball, really far are superior to that of our criminal cousins... but because of the weather.

The Australians would have won if it was purely on skill- they'd have the best bats and equipment, because they'd have caught them when they fell off the back of a lorry, or something.

This reminds me of something I thought about during last year's olympics in Greece. Just what is a sport? I think it's valid of me to answer this, given that I play and watch a great number of sports. Cough.

To my mind, a sport is a competitive game in which a winner is decided through a measurable quantity. For example, a number of points, or a time. Football is a sport- because it is the team who have the most number of points (goals) after a fixed period of time. Marathon running is a sport, as it is the person who runs a fixed distance in the shortest amount of time. It's things that involve judges that are not a sport. Diving is NOT A SPORT. Figure skating is NOT A SPORT. Horse dancing is NOT A SPORT.

Where does cricket come into this? Allowing an external factor to determine the outcome- ie: the weather, the number of days you've been playing for, in an unfair way, isn't right- it just ain't cricket.

Surely, it should be something fixed like "each team gets 6 hours to bat", or something? Something that will make it entirely fair- England has just won on a fluke.

Is saying "We're better than criminals", really that spectacular?

CENSORED (and Heather's party, too)

2005-09-11T17:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday at CENSORED I discovered that CENSORED including the CENSORED have read my blog! Needless to say, they spent all day CENSORING me. So I said to the CENSORING CENSORS that they should CENSOR off. Not really, I took a very CENSORED stance, and have CENSORED a lot, and gone as far as CENSORING the CENSORED entries from my blog.

Yesterday evening, after CENSORED, I went to Heather's dad's 50th birthday party.

My initial fears of only having a proxy-invite (ie: I was invited by Heather, and not her father) were rendered needless when I discovered how excellent Heather's family are at organising a party. I thought my party was done pretty well- but it was a shetland pony to the really, really big horse that was Heather's family's "do". They had a marquee going seamlessly from their house into the garden, a CD player in the garden, mountains of food and drink, and what felt like around 100 guests!

Apart from Heather, the only other people whom I vaguely knew were Heather's friends, Naomi and Alice. Unfortunately, they only vaguely knew me as the one dimensional background character with a gimmick, and probably a catchphrase. When they saw me, the first thing they asked me about was where my monocle was. I was tempted to cry, to show them that I'm actually multi-dimensional, and I have feelings too. I didn't in the end, as it might have given the wrong impression on what I was thinking with regard to the party I was attending.

One of the nicest surprises of the evening for me was that it turns out that I'm quite the celebrity in my old school. Heather's sister reliably informed me that people talk about me in the corridors, and they play my duck shooting game in ICT lessons! I think this is because it's the only games site that isn't banned.

All in all, it was a tremendously enjoyable party- just what I needed after a long, hard day at CENSORED.

Happy Birthday Heather's dad!

A Party in Pictures

2005-09-09T19:06:00.000+01:00

I left my house again yesterday, I went to Andy's University leaving party- he's going all the way upto ~~Edinborough~~ ~~Edinborugh~~ Scotland tommorrow. I assume he's starting earlier because the Scottish are on a different timetable to everyone else- and a different planet when discussing how "aye, our oil can sustain us and we should be indepedent from England and your massive subsidies are rubbish"- presumably followed by a ridiculous dance.

Unlike previous parties, bar my own, I've not had a camera to capture all of the important moments on SD card. Times have changed, and I've bought myself a posh new Vivitar camera, and so I can give you lucky readers a pictorial review of events...

Dundas was there- he helpfully explained the rules of cricket, but not why its so insanely boring.

Heggs was there too- I was quite surprised to see him, as last time I saw him, he was sans-facial hair. Now he's sporting a moustache which, if allowed to grow a bit, will make him look a bit more menacing. Or French.

Andy, Bailey and Danny were there...

...as was Scot, and Andy's cat.

Oddly enough, Scot and I played "Cat Buckaroo", despite the fact that I don't drink, so I was fully aware of what I was doing. It seemed to enjoy it, though. By which I mean, it didn't own my face with its claws. It just sat there and looked bemused.

All in all, it was a lovely evening- Andy, if you're reading, good luck at University, and thanks for inviting me!

Christians and Byker Grove

2005-09-08T17:34:00.000+01:00

Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about both of these things together, that'd be a bit too weird.

My mother, being the obsessive-compulsive person she is, who will labour a point until any sort of meaning that it had has been verbally eroded, told me about someone she was speaking to at work, about University.

You can really tell it's been a slow week when I'm using my mothers anecdotes for blog material.

This person said he was lucky that in his halls of residence, all six of them were CHRISTIANS. Good god. The possibility of me being stuck for a year (or at least the three hours before I bail out and decide I want to live at home) with religious zealots "preaching" on at me about how my Coke in-take or something is "wicked", scares me a lot. (Apparently, in religious circles being "wicked" is a bad thing).

I mean, Christians would undoubtedly be the worst - all of the other religions have a sort of quiet dignity about them. Muslims will go off and pray when they need to, according to their calendar, Buddhists will go and sit quietly and meditate, whilst Christians go from house to house, trying to get you to join their religion and promising "salvation". If they promised me a Playstation Portable, or perhaps, an iPod, then I'd be interested.

There's only so many times you can have an argument about creationism and it be entertaining- after a while it would just get annoying. I'd imagine it would end up with me saying "show me the evidence, show me the evidence", over and over, whilst the creationist parrots some Bible at me.

Maybe it's just the real nutter Christians I hate? Like the cowboy hat wearing godhatesfags.com (suspend your disbelief now, this website is real) guy, or George W Bush.

Either way, I really hope I'm stuck with five or six other normal people.

Speaking of nutters, though, a new series of Byker Grove started this week. This was of particular significance to me, as it marks about a year since an old foe, or nemisis, if you will decided to hate me for no reason. Who am I talking about? Why, Kayleigh, of course. Click here for a short rant about how awful she is. Long story short, she dislike(d?) me because I accused her of looking like a character from Byker Grove. I saw it as a running joke, but for some reason she saw it as something slightly more sinister.

This new series provided me with an opportunity- an opportunity to build bridges, cross the river and burn down her house, as a suitable punishment for the crime of disliking James O'Malley. Using a very poor quality capture card, I captured the episode of Byker Grove, and have taken a number of screenshots, proving my point about her resembling one of the characters. Only an idiot would dispute my flawless argument now.

As luck would had it, one of those "Send this to 20 ppl or u will get bad luck 4evr" e-mails had circulated around people from my old school, and it was still in my inbox. Using this, I harvested Kayleigh's e-mail address, and sent her this damning e-mail...

>It is me, James O'Malley! Never one to let a running
>joke die when it became no longer funny, I've decided
>to make a point.
>
>You apparently "dislike" the magnificent James
>O'Malley because he likened you to a character from
>children's series Byker Grove, and writes e-mails in
>the third person.
>
>Today, I digitally captured the first episode of the
>new series of Byker Grove- within seconds, before the
>opening title sequence had even kicked in, I had
>gathered indisputable PROVING that the allegations I
>made are in fact 100% correct and that you DO look
>like the aforementioned character.
>
>See for yourself:
>
>http://jamesomalley.pkmn.co.uk/blog/pics/23/kayleigh/
>
>As such, I am anticipating a full apology for all of
>the aggressive behavious and the negative attitude
>towards me over the last year.
>
>I hope your catastrophic defeat will mark the
>beginning of a new era in JAMESOMALLEY-Kayleigh
>diplomatic relations, in which you will no longer
>question my superiority over you.
>
>Regards,
>
>James O'Malley
>www.jamesomalley.co.uk
>
>PS: Owned.

I'm still awaiting a response.

"Hello, alright?"

2005-09-06T16:16:00.000+01:00

Well, THAT was embarassing. What? Wait and see.

Heather's gone back to school now, but luckily enough, had a few lessons free, so came to see me. Long story short, we did some slacking, and I made fun of her meat eating.

"The teachers that used to live two doors away from you until recently have some chickens now!"
"It's a shame they didn't have them before- we could have fed them when they go on holiday... it's a good job they don't live near you though, as otherwise they'd feed you".

It was funnier at the time.

But anyway, just as we were leaving my house, as Heather needed to get back for a Chemistry lesson with one of the aforementioned teachers, we noticed the window cleaner outside. I posed the question, "should I attempt to engage him in conversation?".

I was concerned about how formal I should be- I mean, he's a window cleaner operating in the informal economy, is "Hello?" to formal? Would it sound like I'm "taking the piss"? I never say "Hi", in real life (as opposed to online, where it's my standard greeting), and "Alright?" would go a number of my beliefs.

This lead me to explain to Heather why I hate it when people say "Alright?" as a greeting- if you're not sure what I'm talking about, it's what people are saying when they say "ooh-ight".

My main problem with the phrase is that I don't know how to respond - are they saying it as a substitution for "Hello!", or is it the first two exchanges of a conversation rolled into one? "Hello, how are you [aka are you alright] ?". This is particularly puzzling when I'm at work- I get hundreds of customers come past me every hour, each of which I greet with a "Hello!".

The question is- if they respond "alright?", are they really caring enough to erm... care about my wellbeing? Should I just smile politely and get on with scanning their cat food and bags of nails, or respond "I'm not bad... how are you?". I mean, if you look at the question posed, "Are you alright?", then I should respond, and indeed have done in the past, with a "Yes", as in "Yes, I am alright". If they can't make the effort to construct a proper sentence, then I'm not going to construct a proper answer. The worst bit about responding with a "Yes", is when I say "how are you?", as a follow up, out of politeness, and they give a sarcastic "Yehsth", which is pronounced "yes", but with a slightly more drawn-out "e". That's not even a response to my question!

The most awkward situation like this is when the person I'm talking to, whoever that maybe, in whatever situation, says "Hello, alright?"- they're either greeting me twice, or asking about my state of wellbeing. I never know how to respond.

I'm not mad. Heather said that she sometimes thinks the same thing too- although I suspect it may because she was scared.

But anyway, we left my house to go back through town, and the window cleaner was standing by my neighbours front window... "Hello, alright?", he says. He must have heard me! Who'd have thought a window cleaner would be malicious enough to do such a thing?! Yes, maybe he was being friendly, but it was done with a sort of "I'm treating you with contempt" face.

I've been owned, by a window cleaner.

Soph's Gathering

2005-09-05T16:39:00.000+01:00

Last night, Soph invited the tier1 gang around her house for some slackin'. The "line up" was much the same as last time we "got together" and slacked- this time it was sans Dundas, though, which made all of the personal attacks on me slightly less venomous.

I think we all had a lovely time- although if I was to try and describe it to you, it'd be largely unremarkable. I mean, it's not like we got "you burnt shit gay face" on TV, or did something you can identify with... not unless you're a world class table tennis master like me.

Something we did do, that you can recreate RIGHT NOW on your own computer screen is reminice about the old flash films I made of a fictional band called The Horses, starring JD, Matt, Soph and Dundas. Check these flash films out, they're great. No, really.

Goldfinger - Superman
This was the first one I made, to celebrate Matt's 17th birthday. To give this some context, he's now 18. This was originally made in black and white, and digitally coloured later on.

Capdown - Act Your Rage
This is a video of a fantastic song from Milton Keynes Skacore band Capdown. Filmed in front of our old school.

Green Day - Superman
This is a different superman to before. It's Alex Wells, of "went to our old school and drove a car" fame, doing an acoustic set.

NOFX - Longest Line
This is the best and most recent one. The horses do a NOFX song, with all sorts of crazy surfing and jumping up and down. The best bit is the drive by shooting scene- see how many famous faces you can spot.

I'm currently working on Horses 5, but it's taking ages, and I can honestly say I've got no idea how I managed to churn out those four films, considering the effort needed... and I'm a very lazy person.

Wilko Quiz

2005-09-04T18:15:00.000+01:00

Saturday night was an interesting change from the usual "spend the evening on the computer, doing nothing really productive"- I went to a quiz night for employees of my place of work. It was held at quite an unusual place, so you'll have to use your imagination. It was in a big tent, which was in the garden of a so-called "pub". Apparently there's a small minority of people who rather than spend their evenings clicking "Stumble" on the Stumbledupon toolbar, go to these places and drink and "socialise".

Only later it turned out that I wasn't being paid overtime for being there!

Anyway, it was a bit like the quiz episode of The Office. We'd all been previously put into teams- I was with Matt, John and his girlfriend- all three were last seen together at Matt's birthday party, last April. There was four or five other teams, predominantly made up of the full time staff, but our main rivals. There were a handful of other teams made up of the other members of staff there, but our main rivals were "Team Tills", which, as you might have guessed from the name, was the rest of the till people who arn't me. By "main rivals", I mean that I'd been boasting for a few weeks previously about how we were going to own them like noobs. I don't think they were taking the quiz as seriously as I was.

This is where my plan fell apart slightly - I was anticipating questions like the general knowledge round on Mastermind. That is to say: politics, history, flags, greek gods, artists, Shakespeare, "what is the capital of x?" type questions. Unfortunately, these subjects only made up one or two of the sixty questions.

The first round was ten "riddles", with the clue being Chocolate- for example, "The red planet", would be referring to Mars. They were slightly more cryptic than that. It was here I first thought a Slashdot round was becoming slightly less likely. Following this was the music round - ten tracks were played and we had to name the artist and song. The only one we recognised was the Crazy Frog. Where was the Canadian hardcore punk? Team Tills, as they called themselves, or Team Rubbish, as I called them were probably going to do quite well here, which worried me a bit.

After this though, it was the "general" knowledge round! Excellent! This is what I was here for. First question: "who is the presenter of The X-Factor?".

...

Hmm. Oh well, it's the taking part that counts- dignity isn't everything. I mean, yes, I was being beaten at a general knowledge quiz by a team of now-tipsy women, and yes, I'd just paid £2.20 to watch a former school "mate" pour Coke from a standard bottle into a glass, but it's the taking part that counts!

Question 39 is where things got good for us anyway- "Who was sacked twice by Tony Blair and is now EU trade commissioner?". Team Rubbish said "William Hague". I'm not even going to go into the reasons why THAT is incorrect, but I knew the correct answer immediately, which is the main thing. It was obviously "Prince of Darkness", Peter Mandelson.

In the end, we got 42/60, and more importantly, our rivals got a pathetic 40/60. Yes, we were one from last. In our defence, all of the members from the other teams have been alive for longer than us, and might actually remember Nixon's death in 1994, or be the sort of person who can endure The X-Factor, without their brain melting and creating a sticky mess on the bottom of the interior of their skull.

All in all, we didn't win, but at least no one can say to me "you got beaten by a girl!".

An Alarming Situation!

2005-09-02T21:54:00.000+01:00

I've been having a very "techie" week since I last updated, or more specifically, since I spent a slightly less "techie" day with Heather the other day. My point is, I've bought a hard disk and a new digital cameras.

Yes, lady readers, it's one of those updates. I'm going to talk about gadgets.

The hard disk was part of a grand plan of mine to finally join the elite club of Linux users- I'd stopped applying deodorant in preparation, and bought myself a Babylon 5 t-shirt. The 120gb Maxtor drive was going to have Fedora put on it, so I could do everything I currently can do, but in a more fiddly way. I'd also be able to sound like an elitist, rather than a cheapskate by telling people who don't care about how wonderful free open-source software is. Trouble is, I couldn't get the sodding thing to work. More specifically: Matt couldn't get the sodding thing to work. A trip to his house, via nearly hitting a cat in a big car, confirmed that the motor inside the hard disk that turns it around isn't infact doing its job. What I essentially had was a metal brick that I'd paid forty pounds for.

Having spent a big chunk of money on a useless piece of equipment, I thought I'd dig deeper into my savings and buy a digital camera. I justified it to my parents by saying it was for University. It's dead good- 5 megapixel, 3x optical zoom, links up to a telly, takes SD cards, so is vaguely compatible with my MP3 player and memory card reader and only cost £100! You can tell it's a good camera because it's made by the giants of the digital camera world Vivitar. And yes, it's a model that isn't even acknowledged on their official website!

You're thinking "this is all well and good, James, but where's the regular hilarious anecdote?".

I left Argos, digital camera in hand, and went into good old-Wilkinsons (who happen to be my employer) to buy some batteries. Whilst standing patiently in the queue, the fire alarm suddently went off! This never happens when I'm working!

After a good two minutes of carrying on as normal, only with some added occasional mutterings of "what's that noises", and rotating our heads about to see if we could see what was causing it, the supervisors/management eventually told everyone to evacuate.

It was dead good- all the staff stood where they'd been trained to, outside Argos, whilst all the customers looked on in bewilderment. The alarm kept going and going. The only problem was, it wasn't a very effective alarm- it didn't scare you into thinking "oh crap, there might be a fire", it was slightly more slapstic. I was half expecting to have won something for being the millionth customer, or the gunge tank to activate.

Fingers crossed, the alarm won't be fixed by tommorrow, when I'm due in work, so they'll have to send us all home. Or I suppose they could force us to work, whilst listening to something louder and worse than the music. Latest reports from the aforementioned Matt suggest that it still isn't working, despite having someone out to fix it, and they did indeed force the shelfmonkeys to work during it.

I can't wait for tommorrow!

"Burnt shit gay face"

2005-08-30T01:13:00.000+01:00

What an evening! Once again, my parents have abandoned me to go off to Lincoln, of all places. The interesting twist this time is that they've left my sister Lucy, with me. This is good because it means I get all the benefits of not having any parents here, only without having to (attempt to) tidy up and so on- I can just bully Lucy into doing it!

Parents away? Surely this called for a wild party... or at slightly more sober gathering of friends. Who was here? The lovely Heather, the haxxor Matt, the "Beth from work" Beth, the controversial Soph, the dischevelled Dundas, and the "I get paid money to do techie lighting stuff" JD.

Earlier in the evening, it emerged that several important people from work know about, or have seen the very website you are reading now- my blog. The same blog where I allegedly bad mouth and "criticise" my co-workers and the company I work for.

So just to clarify: anything written on my blog is largely done so "tongue in cheek"- figuratively speaking. I exaggerate the truth and occasionally change the chronology of events to make things a bit more exciting. I love working as a cashier and respect my colleagues and their opinions. Honest.

But anyway, the best was yet to come. Flicking through the Sky channels as you do, you inevitably end up cycling through an uneven camber of bad channels- religious ones, teleshopping and quiz games.

After being mesmorised by this amazing "V" shaped cheese grater/chopping style device, and then by an equally amazing collection of knives, we found one of the many Quiz channels in the dark depths of the late 600s on the Sky programme guide.

Essentially, what these channels are, are a presenter standing for hours on end next to an unsolvable puzzle (or at least one with billions of interpretations of the answer), encouraging people to ring it to potentially win £x hundred at 75p per minute. In this case the question was "count the reds" and then the sentence on screen was "Red the dog went to a red forest with 52 trees", and so on- basically, the answer could have been practically any number, so everyone who rang in got it wrong. It's probably fixed and rung by crooks.

Quite who watches Quiz TV, which is broadcast in the downtime of generic American teleshopping channel at midnight on a bank holiday monday, I don't know- the people who ring in must be real nutters. Some rang in multiple times. Worst bit is, we were watching it... for about two hours!

Anyway, as my parents wern't in, we rang up and had a guess. Dundas was live on telly to about six viewers! He was wrong.

After checking the website, we discovered that you could enter for FREE. Rather than have to pay 75p a time, you could simply enter your phone number in and it'd call you back and put you on air! Excellent!

We knew these people were crooks, taking money off of the people who need money most. So we set about proving a point, albeit in a very childish way. The fantastic Burnt Face Man flash cartoons were our inspiration. It was at this point we remembered that Soph's brother had made a Burnt Face Man "sound board"- in other words, a series of buttons you can click which will trigger various pieces of BFM dialogue.

The phone rang! We were back on the air! "Hello, what's your name?", the female presenter, now in her third hour of asking the same question, enquired. "YOU BURNT SHIT GAY...", cried the caller! It was cut off after "gay". I believe the woman responded with a look into the camera of surprise followed by saying something like "okay, alright", and then moving on.

But we didn't care-we'd done it! We'd got a vaguely homophobic-sounding Burnt Face Man sound effect onto the television! It was one of those legendary moments that'll be up there with the time I met Kilroy, and the time I broke a world record.

In retrospect, it was probably more exciting at the time.

We nearly went one better, before realising it was after midnight and thus officially "late". The plan was to shout the "c-word" into the phone- get them to cut us off after, of course, but then complain to Ofcom about the obscene language used on TV! Getting Quiz TV fined would have been fantastic justice for all of the poor people who they keep getting to ring in, despite there being no answer.

But maybe that's an adventure of another day?

Record Breakers

2005-08-25T20:26:00.000+01:00

At the end of my last update, I said, "I'll try and break a world record or something to make the next update exciting!" - whilst this sounds like a throw-away remark, similar to David Kelly's "I'll be found dead in the woods", much like Dr Kelly, I too was fully serious.

Of course, as usual, I was accompanied by Heather- who was equally as, if not more enthusiastic than me. What were we doing? We were taking part in the Leicester libraries "Everybody's Reading 2005"- in other words, an attempt to get the most people, reading the same thing, at the same place, at the same time. The previous record was 1000 people in San Francisco. The equally internationally renound city of Leicester was going to try and beat this record, by getting over 1000 people reading a "passage" from The Salt Pirates of Skegness by Chris d'Lacey. It was such an exciting feat, apparently some people had travelled all the way from India just to be there. It's a good job we wern't reading Pinocchio!

Incidentally, and somewhat uninterestingly, this world record attempt was being held at the same place as BBC News on Tour was a few weeks ago. Now it was the turn of a mass-reading thing, which was a part of the so-called Leicester Expo, which is a council run series of activities that are being held... for the sake of it.

When we got there, a band we thought were called Mellow Harmony were performing. Later investigation reveals that this is in fact a woman's name. The rest of the band must have been generic musicians. Perhaps due to crowd apathy, or the fact that everyone there just wanted to get the reading over and done with, when she finished a song, she didn't get many applause. I think perhaps the loudest applause came when she left the stage- despite what came next was infinately worse. Mellow, if you're reading this, having google'd for your name, you're not a bad musician. Not my cup of tea, but infinately better than Complex Trout.

Who?

Unfortunately, we had to endure the warm-up act before the main event. They were a quartet of poets/generic entertainers calling themself "Complex Trout". As the name accurately suggests, it was a group of "wacky" people, who prance about on stage making fools of themselves. Heather was right in saying they were funny... but not in the way she was thinking. They were funny in the "I'd cross the road to avoid them" sort of way.

They arrived on stage to one of Franz Ferdinand's songs- apparently it was called "Take me out". That's the name of the song, not, unfortunately, Complex Trout giving instructions to a sniper on a well positioned roof top. They had it so when a particular lyric was sung, the music was muted, and they sang "Complex Trout". They danced to it too- it was certainly interestingly done. There were parts in it where the dance seemed pre-planned, with them all being coordinated, and other moments where they sort of did their own thing.

I've always hated the sort of "viewer participation" entertainment- from when I was a child, I never participated in the kids things at places like Haven holiday parks, and even now I can't bear to watch TV programmes where members of the public are involved, such as phone-ins. This is mainly why I disliked Complex Trout.

It was a pirate themed event because of the book the record attempt was using- so the Trout "crew" were all "pirated up". Sort of. They'd managed pirate hats. They decided to introduce "us" to each of the inconsequential bunch. This basically involved the audience parroting a pirate-based catchphrase. They tried to get the audience to participate in swaying and waving and so on. I didn't participate in any of the "fun", much to Heather's annoyance. She was really getting "into" the spirit of things, prancing about, waving and smiling. I just sunk my head into my disproportionate hands and tried to believe I wasn't in the middle of this humiliating crowd. The news media were there filming it all- hopefully, they'd be a shot of the whole crowd swaying and doing piraty things, with me, stationary in the middle. In terms of bizarre psychological impact, because I knew that everyone around me was swaying (and shouting "port" or "starboard" each time they switched direction), I found myself trying my hardest to remain absolutely still. Like some sort of monk. I worried that if I was seen to even move an inch, it would look like I was participating.

They were a cancer on my vision.

I think the thing that annoys me is that pirates are now seen as a humourous thing- an object of mirth and enjoyment. Children are encouraged to act and dress like pirates, and celebrate pirate culture. If you'd told a merchant in the South China sea this, circa 1600, I doubt he'd see the funny side! In four hundred years time, will future people, with their flying cars and green hair be encouraging their children to dress up and act like, say, terrorists? Will we be getting holograms of the future entertaining children by being Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and Gerry Adams? Rather than shouting "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" will they be shouting "Death to the west"?

After enduring this for a good few minutes, and getting to hear the Franz Ferdinand song again, with the audience this time dubbing the "Complex Trout" lyric, we finally got on to the actually record attempt- the reading bit, finally.

The author came on stage, and clearly had less shame than Trout. He was dressed as what I assume was a pirate. I have a horrible feeling the costume shop might have sold him a civil war Royalist costume, but not told him. He was dead enthusiastic- it was his book afterall. On stage, he lead the reading of his book. Despite being an extract, one got the feeling that it had been modified to include a token local reference- Leicester was mentioned a few times in a somewhat unneccessary way. The reading was slow- presumably to let the kids in the audience keep up. We got there in the end, though- to much jubilation. We were now world record holders in reading-aloud-the-same-thing-as-many-others-at-the-same-time.

A later count revealed that 1,256 people had taken part- owning the previous record holders by a good 250. Not that it looked like it at the time. We estimated there were only a few hundred people there, and to be honest, there could have been. There didn't seem to be anyone checking we were all reading it- and the organisers could have just registered many times themselves. Not that Leicester libraries are such an evil organisation.

In terms of demographic, the participants were mainly small children and their families, and drunken students from Leicester's two Universities- I'll be a part of the latter group in only a matter of weeks. Of the few other people who didn't fit into either of these groups, Heather and I were one, and a dischevelled man drinking a can of beer, whilst smoking three cigarette ends (I assume he'd already worked his way through the rest of them). Needless to say, we didn't stand near him- he didn't look like he was taking part, anyway.

After breaking this amazing record, we had a wander around Leicester. By "we", I mean Heather and I- NOT the 1,255 other people who had broken the record and myself. We ended up at the beach. Not a real one, obviously- Leicester is hundreds of miles from the nearest coastline- "Salt Pirates" would be rubbish in Leicester. The council had covered an area of Leicester, around a fountain, in sand, and retailed candy floss and CocaCola, and other beach-like things. Heather really liked it as walking across it was just like a real beach! She also pointed out, many times, that I could have got my face painted. "No", I said, earning me a disappointed facial expression, that was something like this: ":-(". I tried to think of a way I could "soften" my refusal, perhaps conceed some ground slightly, to cheer her up from her obvious disappointment, and then realised what exactly I was talking about. "I am NOT getting my face painted", I reiterated.

Bought another scratchcard. Lost.

In conclusion- we broke the record, and Complex Trout broke my spirit. I had a good day overall, and I am no longer just JAMES O'MALLEY, I am JAMES O'MALLEY WORLD RECORD HOLDER. And I've got a certificate to prove it!

What's in my wallet?

2005-08-24T21:48:00.000+01:00

I'm jumping on a bandwagon! That's right! I've already dismounted from my high horse, and I'm instead going to travel by bandwagon! A popular blog thing at the moment is to post the contents of your wallet on the internet, for wallet-based perverts to see what stuff you have. Yes, I'm betraying every sort of post-modernist "I've done a blog for the irony" value I started out this whole blog lark with.

To be honest, the only other blog I've seen this on is Geoff the cool BBC and iPod man. But I'm copying him. My thinking is that if I can emulate him, I might end up working for the BBC, and own an iPod.

So, what's in my wallet? I'm sure you're dying to know.

In the centre of the photo (that's the most logical place to start), you can see my many cards- Natwest Solo card, discount card for my employer (with which I get a staggering 13% off), a national insurance card and most excitingly of all- a Nectar loyalty card. So far I've got a staggering 118 points! You get 1 point per 50p spent (and 100 points for signing up), and you only need a tiny 2000 points to get a chart CD from a very limited selection! How can I lose?

In terms of cash- I've got a grand total of £4.08 in coins, and a £5 note. The curious pink coloured note is infact 5 Iraqi Dinars from the Saddam era. I bought it from eBay for around £3. Thanks to all of the hyperinflation in Iraq, caused by war and stuff, and the fact that it's no longer legal tender (the Americans replaced the currency asap), it had an infinite % mark up.

Above my provisional driving license is a piece of string that Heather and myself used to measure the distance we travelled when we walked to Great Stretton. I don't think the string does justice to showing just how painfully far it was. I'd like to draw attention to the string, rather than the fact that my license is still provisional.

The Virgin Megastores loyalty stamp booklet was obtained on the same day that I bought Heather's fantastic birthday present- and the cinema ticket underneath it is from our jaunt to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. You can see some of the exciting bus tickets that helped cause these adventures near my various cards.

I'm desperately trying to think of an internal link I can provide to justify the receipts to the left of the photo, but it's just a Sainsburys and Virgin Megastores receipt from ages ago, despite being the most recent things I've bought. Despite working in a shop, I've found I very rarely actually buy things from a real shop. I'd imagine it's partly because I can't bear to watch other tillmonkeys fail to be as good as me.

Either way, I apologise for this clip-show of an update. The next one will be singing, just like the Simpsons. I'll try and break a world record or something to make the next update exciting!

A picture

2005-08-23T19:44:00.000+01:00

Here is a picture of me, with my arm round someone who's very special to me indeed:

That's right- I had a haircut. And a shave. It's that exciting.

Don't mess with me

2005-08-22T19:56:00.000+01:00

Or I'll knock your block* off...

...with this plaster of Paris fist!

*head.

Exam Results

2005-08-18T17:15:00.000+01:00

As you might have seen on television this morning, today is A-Level results day, where, if the TV is anything to go by, is where everyone gets straight As and exams are getting easier, and dumbing down and so on.

I got my results earlier- it was something of an anti-climax, having already known I'd got in due to a "Welcome to deMontfort University" letter arriving this morning, and having checked the UCAS website this morning, where it confirmed I'd got in. The only remaining questions were what grades I'd got.

I'm reasonably pleased- I didn't work very hard over the past two years, yet still achieved University-enabling results! To be concise: B in Economics & Business, C in the world's shittiest subject, ICT and the fabulous General Studies, and a D in Maths. Annoyingly, I was very close to the next grade up in both General and Maths.

I did the most unusual thing was what happend next- I went to a pub! No, really! Just like a teenager! Dare I admit that it it was the first time I'd ever been to a pub (sans family)? I may as well, considering that only a few days ago I admitted to having never used a kettle before.

It was the first time I'd ever been to a pub (sans family). We sat in the so-called "beer garden"- a name that's misleading as it didn't actually produce a crop of beer, or even have beer-themed characters poncing around for children. A large portion of "the gang" were there- it was just like being back at school in the sixth form centre. We were sitting around a table, slacking and drinking coke.

Two cokes later (my third of the day, and it wasn't even 1pm), £0 down, thanks to jubilant friends and being tee-total, we decided to go to another pub. "We" being the people who hadn't run off during the first pub stop... Dundas, Heggs, Andy, Matt and myself.

Was this becoming a so-called pub crawl? No. We went to two pubs. But the point is, it was very unusual behaviour for me, and presumably a very unusual sight for people who "know of" me from school, who regularly go to public houses and drink themselves silly! It certainly was weird sitting, drinking coke in pub-like conditions, knowing you're sitting approximately where the Penguins and Club biscuits were, when it was a Gateway supermarket in a previous life. It was probably more of an "averagemarket" though, truth be told.

Yesterday evening, Andy had another party, which I of course attended. I continued drinking and having a nice day, and in the end, had a huge SEVEN cokes. I'm proud and ashamed at the same time. Proud, because it was a new record since I started counting CPD- the previous high was a lowly six. Ashamed because I should be cutting down. I hope Heather doesn't read this.

If you are reading, Heather, then I'm exaggerating so I can sound like a big man! I didn't really have seven cokes, honest!

Illness

2005-08-17T13:58:00.000+01:00

I'm ill at the moment, and it's slightly irritating. Long story short, I feel vaguely dizzy, get the odd headache and feel a bit shit, to put it bluntly. It's the first time I've been ill in years.

To put this into perspective, sort of, I was at a party not too long ago (I can't remember whos), but people there were discussing the last time they were sick- boasting how they havn't been sick for "two years", much to the surprise of the other drunkards there. I, meanwhile, being "straight edge" in all but name and fashion, revealed that I had not been sick since I was 10.

My mother is far too caring- I can still move about, I can still do stuff, I can still retort her silly arguments with razor sharp wit, yet she fusses over me like I've got the plague. She briefly returned home during her work to bring me some Coke and other stuff I didn't even ask for. It's like I've got the plague or something, and she's trying to make me happier! Does she know something I don't?

Perhaps the funniest thing about this whole illness experience is my being told to "take it easy", not to go out, not to make an effort, just to rest, and sit on my laptop and watch TV. Same as usual, basically.

Scary hand thing

2005-08-16T20:31:00.000+01:00

In a previous update, I taunted you loyal readers with a future mention of a plaster of Paris hand mould, for children. Today, Heather came round, and we attempted to make a mould of my hand.

I'm well aware that the box says "perfect immitations of your child's hands and feet", but we bought it on the the basis that my hands are quite small- an assumption that later proved to be incorrect.

The original plan was to mould it into my hand doing the classic "V sign", although there wasn't enough of the mould to achieve this- so we ended up just doing my fist. This was where we discovered that my hands arn't small, they're just disproportionate.

Never the less, it all went well, because Heather was in charge. She was mixing, measuring, pouring and chopping like a pro(fessional)! All I had to do was sit back and feel the gungy green stuff wrap around my fingers. The instruction leaflet recommended this is carried out "when your child is asleep". As hard as I tried, I couldn't manage to get to sleep again, as I'd only woken from 10 hours of rest a couple of hours previously. Hopefully this wasn't critical the process.

When the mould was complete, and I'd managed to wriggle my hand out, and it was already setting around me, we got the actual plaster of Paris and poured it in. The unfortunate thing is, I now have to wait for an entire week for it all to dry/whatever- I want a plaster version of my fist now!

As you can see above, this is what it looks like right now. I'll post pictures of the finished thing- and if it looks nothing like my hand, I'll adapt my hand to look like it.

Arguably the best bit of the whole pseudo-cooking experience was seeing Heather turn into a pseudo-housewife afterwards. She insisted on washing all of the materials we used, and scraping all of the left over mould-stuff away. I just watched in my ignorance. Although I did learn how to boil a kettle. (You just press the button- it's magic!)

More soon!

The James O'Malley Archives: Kilroy

2005-08-15T18:25:00.000+01:00

Nothing interesting has happend lately, so I'm afraid that today's blog update is going to be a bit of a repeat run. It's just a shame I don't get repeat fees, or indeed, to reenact the event only improving on it slightly.

So tonight, dear readers, cast your mind back to 21st January 2005, and I give you the story of me meeting Kilroy...

(note: Canned Ham is the satire website I work for, but it's down at the moment.)

If you're a regular Canned Ham reader, you'll know that the only things we make jokes about is Kilroy and the Nazis. After months of update after update featuring the far right MEP everyone loves to hate, I finally got to meet my nemisis. Robert Kilroy Silk. I've disliked him ever since I realised what a horrible person he was. It makes you wonder- was his chat show really just a secret way of indoctrinating the masses? It would explain why old people and the unemployed are all racist biggots.

There I was, at school, reading the latest news on my mobile phone, when suddenly I realised that Robert Kilroy Silk, the figurehead of a hideous right wing movement was going to be giving a press conference in Hinckley. A small town in Leicestershire. That night. I had to go.

After ringing the council, local paper and venue, we were all set to go. Charlie and I took two heavily delayed trains and finally made it to Hinckley, shortly having to sit near ten youths on the train taking drugs, swearin' and speakin' a language of which the only words we picked up were "Machine gun" and "bitch". Scary stuff.

Usefully, we had Evilmonkey back at base, who was on hand to give us train times, directions, and fashion advice. It was just like the series "24". He patched me through the mainframe and setup a pipe to the train network and reconfigured the matrix interface to do some bollocks. Of course, he had to go rogue in order to get us to the hostile and break protocol. He pissed off his boss, got sacked and arrested, but was but was pardoned because of the gravity of the situation, and the fact that he "gets results".

Whilst on the train, Monkey gave us some alarming information- it was 2.7 miles from the station to the venue. Bugger. JD had said earlier in the day, that judging by the crappy, inaccurate map on the venue's website, it's "about two feet" away from the station. Of course, a golf course is fucking massive, so that little green area representing the venue was actually REALLY MASSIVE. We had to get a taxi. The taxi driver didn't exactly make us feel comfortable either- he was watching Harry Potter 3 on a dash board mounted LCD screen whilst driving.

Anyway, we made it there ten minutes late- and Kilroy, or "killers", as he's affectionately known, was in full throw. Plenty of violent rhetoric, plenty of sound bites, plenty of ranting. And far too much slagging off your former colleagues. I knew I couldn't let this man, who looks evil from every angle (I think it's the eyebrows), get off easy- despite his far right views, what he was doing was absurd.

Long story short, Kilroy was a bit upset that UKIP wouldn't make him boss, just because he said so. So he's quit in a vaguely dramatic way, and is ALLEGEDLY (read: this is true) going to setup another new party. His new party will allegedly be called "Veritas", which is the Latin for truth. Ironic, really.

After his speech... well, rant, he allowed the assembled audience to ask questions. I thought "I've only got one chance at this", and asked the most polite and scatching question I could think of. After contemplating "You are a twunt, discuss", I came up with "Will you quitting UKIP and standing independently not only serve to divide the anti-Europe opposition and harm what is presumably your ultimate goal?". He spent about ten minutes rehashing the rhetoric he was spounting- I'd hate to have been a Brussel's fat cat right then. It didn't help that he didn't have a microphone plugged in - although this speaks volumes (no pun intended) about Killer's popularity. He didn't really have to project his voice very far, shall we say?

My question would have been infinately more brilliant if I hadn't been so nervous. I was nervous about the worlds media having cameras pointed at me, rather than being the one talking to a twunt. I was planning to draw a comparison that the anti-EU opposition would be more powerful and influential if united- a lot like Europe. Haha.

Anyway, after the press conference, we stuck around to "mingle" with the press and nazis. Killers came walking towards us, so I seized my opportunity in a similar to way how he will seize foreigners and dissidents, if elected. "Can I have a photo?", I enquired. Kilroy posed for the above photo- notice how my left hand is in the shape of a hand gun, and pointed at his head. He had no idea. How we laughed. I think the photo really captures Kilroy's dark side really well.

After this, a woman started talking to us, claiming she was an "interested independent", who clearly wasn't. After initially suspecting that she works on Newsnight, we later concluded she's Kilroy's Alistair Campbell type figure. Spinning Kilroy's must be very hard work, so I wish her the best of luck. We told her about Canned Ham... and I described it as an "irreverent political journal". Whoops. We'd be taking an objective fair and balanced look, I said. Whoops. Sorry about that. She hoped we would give a "positive report". Whoops. She did promise that she'd be able to get us Kilroy's personal e-mail address so we can ask him some questions- it'll be interesting to see whether or not Kilroy still gets in touch, or will he hide from a liberal challenge?

We managed to get a copy of the press release- not tremendously interesting, but at the bottom was a mobile number attributed to the one and only Kilroy. I havn't tested this yet, but time will tell. Needless to say, Kilroy might be offered a timeshare in a number of European destinations soon.

The other interesting thing there, from a TV News nerd's point of view was the media setup. BBC News 24 was the only TV channel carrying the rant live, which it stuck with for about ten minutes before going onto more important stories. Probably cat stuck up tree. They went back for a live after the main bit had finished, at which point I was live on News 24 live... twice! Irritatingly, only minutes earlier I'd given my Canned Ham banner to the one and only Kilroy's PR woman. I managed to shake the hand of one of News 24's political correspondents, who's name I'm afraid to say, escaped me. In terms of other media, Sky and ITN were probably also there- not that they caused as much fuss as the BBC. Newspapers were out in force- I believe the Guardian and the Times had people there. Their photographers were actually uploading photos before Killers had finished speaking.

Just before we left, we managed to get talking to the Killer again- Charlie asked him if he would improve protesting conditions for Animal Rights activists- they're currently banned from protesting near to testing places. Killer gave a bloody mess of an answer, "Yes, absolutely! This is what its all about! Getting your country back!". Hmm...

We left shortly after, our goals complete; My nemisis now knows that I exist, I managed to make him look silly in a photographic way, and the world is saved from the threat of a credible anti-Europe opposition. The best bit was that Evilmonkey for the first time EVAR was positive about something that I have done, claiming that this was "the best thing ever".

Kilroy == Pwned.

Big Maps

2005-08-12T23:02:00.000+01:00

I love maps- they're probably the best thing since those cut-away drawings of Thunderbirds and castles from the magazines I had as a child. There was a time, when every night for about a year, I looked through an Atlas that my grandmother bought my sister and I, in a set with an encyclopedia, dictionary and thesaurus. Excuse me if I sound arrogant, but I think is perhaps why I have such the fantastic geographic knowledge I have today. I can name most countries using an outline map, apart from the tiny islands in the Pacific, which are probably less important to global affairs than the books and websites that publish information about them.

But anyway, I've recently discovered the Google Maps API- by which I mean, I've known they've existed since it launched (thanks, /.), but I'd never bothered finding out how to use them. What is all this? Google are now letting anyone use their fantastic maps system- long story short, it involves a lot of boring programming things. It's so good, I have managed to create a map of all the Wilkinson stores in the UK! Coincidentally, I do leave my house occasionally. Have a click around, it's bitchin' stuff.

This API has reinvigorated my interest in cartography, maps and stuff- I'm now dying to find some dynamic data that uses longitude and latitude, which I can then plot on a somewhat needless map. As you might have guessed - there is very little on the internet that hasn't been plotted on a map. I lacked inspiration.

But then I had an idea. By which I mean, I remembered an idea I had a few months previously, but had never made the effort to do anything about.

In Leicester this morning with Heather, I bought, along with a child-hand-mould-plaster-of-Paris kit (more on that in a future blog update), two road atlases from The Works, for £1.99 each!

What am I going to do with these?! I'm going to cut, glue and sellotape together the pages and fabricate a massive map of the United Kingdom's road network! Coincidentally, I do leave my house occasionally. So far, I've only done the very tip of Cornwall, and I'll hopefully be doing more in the coming weeks.

Why? I'm hoping to emulate Geoff the iPod man, Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace, albeit in a very craptacular way. C'mon publishers, give me a book deal or something! I love writing about myself! 30,000 no problem!

I'll keep you posted on how the big map goes.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

2005-08-10T21:35:00.000+01:00

What?! No blog update for five days?! Have I not been doing anything?!

Of course, I've been doing things- but as usual, they'd just be insanely dull if I told you things about them. Of course, I've found it exciting, and I hope Heather has too, but you, dear reader, would be bored to tears. I'd say quite literally, but lets face it, my life isn't that upsetting.

I went to see Charlie and Chocolate factory today. Erm... Heather wanted to see it. Yes, that's it. Heather wanted to see it, honest.

Having seen the 1970s original a few times, and having had the novelisation read to me as a child, I wasn't expecting any surprises- it was much darker (for a kids film) than I'd imagined though. The other surprise was that David Kelly was in it! I thought he was found dead in the woods!

The good points in a review are boring, so I'm going to moan about the bad points.

Americanisms! Roald Dahl was British- the original novel was, I assume, set in Britain, yet the film makers had sold out and set it in America- using dollars. It was ridiculous, especially when you consider what the film is about. Did the scriptwriters not check the title of the film? Charlie and the Chocolate factory, NOT "Candy Factory". They then get the quaint British grandad (the unimportant one) tell Charlie to get a mark or stain or whatever off of his "pants"- think of the connotations for the British viewer!

The other irritation was the Wonka Bars in the film share a brand with the erm... Wonka Bars sold in my place of work- the place of work I hate so much! It bought lovely memories flooding back. The other (vaguely) interesting thing is that "Wonka" brand chocolate bars, in the real world, are made by Nestlé, whom evil has a controlling number of shares. I don't need to document how evil the company is, as it's widely done. All I'll say is "Too tasty for geeks? WTF?". Oh, and they exploit third world workers and get third world babies hooked on their milk, so they reject erm... mother milk. (I know I'm a hypocrit, I buy Nestlé things without thinking it through too).

Other than that, and a terrible mistake involving using the incorrect Iraqi flag in a certain scene, I enjoyed the film. Apart from the parts where the CHILDREN in the CINEMA were TALKING throughout. I mean, for fucks sake children, TURN YOUR MOBILE TELEPHONES OFF AND SHUT THE FUCK UP. This was down the front, mind.

On my right, was the lovely Heather. On my left, was a WOMAN with a SMALL CHILD. "A golden ticket!", she'd scream every time a Wonka Bar was on screen. Does she not know the plot?! "He keeps walking into the glass!" she's cry. He walks into the glass twice in the entire god damn film.

I don't like children in cinemas, aircraft, schools, shops or places of worship. Actually, I don't like children.

If I were Quentin whatsit, head of the BBFC, I'd make every film an 18, regardless of content- to keep young people out, and so I wouldn't feel so embarassed about going to see what is essentially a children's film.

Overall: 8/10. Not bad.

The Lynx Effect

2005-08-06T22:11:00.000+01:00

The second most odd thing happend at work today. It appears that the so-called "Lynx effect", actually works! The question of scientific phenomenon or marketing slogan aside, I was complemented by a handful of people (women, more precisely) at work by my erm... smell, and it was down to my "wearing" Lynx anti-perspirant.

It was odd. I mean, if people are complementing me on how I smell now, does this mean that I smelled particularly awful before? It made me quite self concious.

I don't even want this attention- I have no desire to break out into a dance, or control what a woman does by doing various gestures, like the adverts would have me believe. In fact, this attention is unwanted- for at least one reason. Additionally, I like being slightly mysterious and not part of the main tillmonkey society- I'm an elitist. Today I was reading a piece by Noam Chomsky in The Independent whilst my co-workers were reading about Big Brother (no, not Orwell!) in Closer Magazine.

(To clarify: I would like to control what everyone does, but through some sort of control panel with a bank of monitors, as opposed to making gestures and using an aerosol.)

Tommorrow morning, I'm going to go to the nearest field, and roll around in the mud, and hopefully manure, for a bit.

Buses, Walking, Tiring

2005-08-04T20:53:00.000+01:00

I've had a reasonably busy four days since I last posted. My family are now back from their holiday in France- they returned a relatively tidy house. By which I mean, Heather came round briefly and insisted on tidying up for me, much to my distress. I thought it'd be weird if my family thought I'd unloaded the dishwasher, and moved any of my (non-literal) crap into an organised pile. But oh well, at least Heather (aka: a woman) knows her place.

The major theme lately seems to be buses- after a drought of ten years, I've caught rather a few lately. Since the trauma of first trying to catch a bus, to the trauma of bomb-scares, I've taken quite a few buses. I'm getting quite good at it now- ignoring my fellow passengers, only saying what is neccessary to the bus driver, and the whole ticket purchasing mechanics of using the machine, and the quiet squeal of "thanks", looking away from the driver whilst disembarking.

It'd be vaguely relaxing listening to loud punk music, whilst not seat-belted in, going down the A6 if it wasn't for one particular annoyance.

One thing that consistently annoys me about buses is the lack of leg room. Now, this is nothing to do with my being overweight, or me being incredibly tall. In fact, I think I'm probably shorter than average these days... but bus seats are clearly not designed for human beings. They are TINY. They seem to try to be trying to pack as many people into these buses as possible- not that any of the buses I've been on have ever been full. The only place I'm slightly comfortable on a bus is either in the front seats, where slightly more leg room is given, due to the lack of seats, or right at the back, where, for some reason they also give you more room.

I mean, seriously, what sort of midgets did they design these buses on? Were they bought cheaply, second hand from the Lord of the Rings set, where they got in all the hobbit extras every day?! It's things like this that keep me awake at night.

Speaking of transport, I went to visit Heather today- on the bus, of course. It was the particularly unfriendly bus driver today. After offering me a glass of water, to which I refused, Heather suggested we go on a walk. Now, I was expecting a gentle stroll through her village, through the urban areas- full of houses, commerce and pavements. It was quite a bizarre walk, for many reasons.

First of all, it was like stepping back into the 1950s. The village is a mobile phone blackspot anyway, with a signal only being possible if you're 3m off of the ground, so the phones were dead, and scarily, in the post office (cleverly combined with a news agents), the tillmonkey knew all of the customer's names. Dare I say he looked at me a bit funny as I was an outsider? There was a community spirit, of sorts.

Bought another scratchcard. Lost.

Heather then took me through a park, full of horrible children enjoying themselves, and then down a small, overgrown footpath. This lead into a field. The field lead into the middle of no where. If she was planning to kill me and hide my corpse, perhaps to steal my brick of an MP3 player, now was the best possible time to do it.

As luck had it, she didn't kill me- and the closest I came to death was either from several tractors approaching me, or dehydration from such a lengthly walk... by my standards. After we reached what I assume must have been the next village, there was... a lengthly walk back. I probably should have predicted this. This time we took to the road, and I literally mean road. There wasn't a pavement, which made walking into traffic slightly unnerving, especially when there, in theory, could be people like me on the road.

We finally made it back to her house. After checking an OS map using a bit of string, it turns out that we'd walked a staggering 5.8km (that's 3.6 miles). It was the furthest I've walked in ages, and I'm horrendously unfit. It was slightly embarassing.

This said, I got my revenge on Heather when we played table tennis on her very impressive home-made table tennis table. She was rubbish. There was me bouncing the ball about on the bat, alternating sides, letting it hit the floor and catching it, and turning it into a perfect serve, in one swift movement, and there was her, trying desperately to presumably push away the air in front of her bat.

All in all, it's been a lovely few days, presumably made more lovely by myself being a feature in other peoples lives.

Home Alone (Again) and Scot's Party

2005-08-01T11:29:00.000+01:00

It's been an interesting couple of days- this in itself is rather surprising, as I have had work. My family have abandoned me and gone off on holiday to France, on a ferry, as opposed to an aeroplane, and my good friend Scot had a party, because his family are on holiday.

Incidentally, I'm currently living with four women. They're guinea pigs and I've got to look after them. My sister, Lucy, has left me some instructions. I wish my mother had done the same with regard to locating my socks.

But anyway, I'm sure you don't want to hear tales of me managing to change the bin liner in the bin, you want to hear about the drunken antics of Scot's party.

Now, I've been to a fair few parties now- I don't drink, I go because I crave friends. Scot's party was probably the most drunken and what I could call "wild", that I've been to yet.

Aside from what I'd call the "usual gang", for some reason, a delegation of Harborough's chav elite had erm... graced us with their presence. Having not spent much time with chavs since the end of further education, and having actively avoided them socially, it was certainly an interesting reminder of the finer points of their species.

"I ain't no townie", one said, completely sincerely, whilst wearing an Ellesse tracksuit, and large jewellery.

"I said like yeah that my mum died like three years ago yeah and then then she said her mum had died recently and my aunt yeah said yeah that she killed her shes a bitch and I no longer associate with her for disrespecting my family yeah like I don't want nothing to do with her yeah". (Paraphrasing).

For some reason they were both shouting this at me. It was really quite surreal.

I'd like to blame this on their drunkeness, but I think they're actually a lost cause for society. They were drunk though- and this was brilliant. It meant that me, being fully sober and full of razor sharp wit could insult them, right in front of them, and they didn't understand me or give a damn- much to the amusement of the other erm... straight edge people, and those who remained coherent whilst intoxicated.

Turns out that the chavs were only 15, and were apparently "going out" with people there who were a few years their senior. "I can't find $person", cried one, "at least you're not being groomed", I called back. It was funnier at the time.

Also, in an effort to perhaps conform with every teenage "house party" stereotype, rather than having Mr Blobby and gunge tank, the neighbours rang up to complain about the noise, people were doing lewd things, and "no" class C drugs were being taken by others. The keyword here is "others"- as you may have deduced from earlier blog entries, I'm not a risk taking, exciting person- I don't drink, take drugs and so on. My "alcohol" is CocaCola, and my drugs are social adventures.

Finally, the walk home was slightly hair raising- as I passed the roundabout near Lidl, there was a police car on the otherside, with a police woman standing by it- I heard screams and swearing coming from near them. When the police car started drive off, I decided to run home, or more specifically, light jog.

It was an immensely enjoyable party, all in all- with the chav-baiting providing an unexpected bonus. Thanks for inviting me, Scot. Thanks for entertaining me, chavs.

BBC News on Tour

2005-07-29T19:55:00.000+01:00

Today, Heather and I went to the BBC News and Sport on Tour "tent" that has been put up in the middle of Leicester. Why? I'm a big TV Pres nerd. What's that? I erm... like to watch the news and take an interest in the graphics, and the technical side of tv (predominantly news) production.

Getting to Leicester, and to Heather was a problem. I had this conversation when I got to the train station:

Me: Can I have a return to Leicester please?
Ticketmonkey: No.

Slightly taken aback by his apparent rudeness, I stood in silence, mentally urging him to explain his actions. He explained that there had been a security alert at Leicester station, and that it had been evacuated. He recommended that that I take a bus. Oo-er, I thought. I think this somewhat distasteful link explains why I was slightly unnerved by his suggestion. Nevertheless, I pressed on, I had a mission. The mission was to spend the day with Heather doing BBC things.

It worked out better in the end- I caught a bus, Heather got on the same bus at a different stop, and we ended up in Leicester at the same time and place.

Upon arrival at the BBC tent, there was an awful lot going on- there were people having a go at making a news bulletin, making a web page, radio presenting, all mixed in with the "go digital" sales pitch, "we're not only about London" propaganda, and hundreds, and hundreds of over-friendly BBC staff looking to make us love them. Seriously- there was probably one BBC member of staff for every member of the public.

I got talking to a sports journalist, who told me about the CPS ("content production system") the BBC use, hoping to steal some ideas for PKMN.NET's CMS ("content management system"). I think the less motivational-sounding title of my content system reflects my work ethic a bit. From here, I was referred to a BBC technical bloke, who explained in more depth about the technical setup. Apparently, the BBC News ~~online~~ website had originally been made exclusively in dream weaver, before they'd moved on to their own custom system. All dead interesting stuff!

Of course, Heather was probably bored to tears.

I booked myself in to have a go at vision mixing a bit later in the day, and we went to Pizza Hut. Partially because it provided a reasonably nice setting for me to give Heather her birthday presents, and partially because I was hungry. Mainly because I was hungry.

We were both somewhat surprised to find that the Pizza Hut we'd been to at least twice before had an upstairs section- whilst perhaps not the most explosive revelation of the day, it was certainly the first or second most surprising. The first floor struck me as an afterthought- as it was almost like they'd built two Pizza Huts on top of each other, as they had seperate kitchens.

This is the best bit of the day- when Heather recieved her presents. I'd planned it precisely, perhaps out of my own sick desire to see Heather try and cover up absolute shock and dislike with a friendly smile. She rightfully didn't let me film her reaction to the presents, so I could go through frame by frame at a later time, and watch her frown turn into a forced smile.

She started with the pig lighter.

Maybe this was a mistake? I didn't go as far as saying "I saw this and thought of you", but it still felt like a bad idea as she tore apart my absymally wrapped gift.

She was certainly surprised- although perhaps not as much as she could have been. I'd previously asked her if she liked pigs, and if she likes fire, as two seperate questions. Surely combining her two obviously greatest interests into one fantastic gift couldn't fail?

"I like it... it's just a bit weird" (paraphrasing).

Next up, the book. This seemed to go down quite well. I then paused, leading her into believing that it was all I had bought. Then, with no prior warning, I produced the necklace in the world's campest gift bag. (It was pink).

"Oh, thank you", she kept saying. I'm not very good at the social situations, so I've no idea if this is being polite or was genuine delight on her part. Judge for yourself. I'm going to think it was the latter, to justify the price I paid for what is essentially a lump of metal. It wasn't even upgradable! The firmware was fixed! As far as I'm aware, it isn't compatible with any of the leading IEEE technical standards- no bluetooth, no firewire, no USB! I'll be honest, if I recieved a small necklace for my birthday, I'd be pretty dissappointed, and probably visibly so. However, Heather, being female and perhaps thankfully not entirely like me (she passes exams), seemed to like it.

Things were going well- perhaps the only thing that went wrong, aside the whole "Leicester station cordoned off with armed police, police tape and flashing lights and everything", was the fact that I'd bought Heather's birthday card with me, but I'd failed to actually write it. Whoops! I'm hoping the fabulous pig lighter cancels this error on my part out.

In my defence, I'd remembered whilst sitting in bed, reading Blair's Wars, last night that I needed to:

a) Write Heather's Card, using a nice pen, perhaps my Pen Island pen.
b) Transfer some money from my savings account to my current account through Natwest Online Banking
c) Put the Whitmore and Punk-O-Rama CDs I bought yesterday on my MP3 player.

Guess which two of the three tasks I completed. Just to clarify, this isn't a demonstration of what I consider important. At least conciously.

After apologising on this, and reminding Heather of all the good I've done for humanity, and all the nice gifts I've bought her (pig lighter), I managed to move the conversation on to other things.

Later in the day, we returned to the BBC News on Tour thing, where I had a go at vision mixing. Heather nearly had a go at reading the news on radio, but the five year old who booked a go hours earlier turned up and deseated her. She couldn't pronounce Al Quaeda correctly. The five year old I mean, not Heather.

When it got to my turn as a vision mixer, after bothering the BBC staff with yet more technical questions about caption generation, and telling them about my bluescreen exploits, I got to use some sort of control panel with lots of buttons on to cut and mix between four different video sources- TX1 and TX2, both video tapes, the news camera and weather camera. The BBC man seemed somewhat unimpressed when I suggested a star wipe between the titles and the presenter. I think it went well considering that I'm a n00b- I only went wrong once, and that was cutting to something when I should have just put it on standby.

I'm sure Heather enjoyed standing about for ages watching me muck about with BBC equipment.

It turns out we were both in the background for 10-15 seconds during a live report on East Midlands Today's lunchtime bulletin. The presenter walked right past us, so we must have been really quite visible. JD texted me immediately to let us know, and it also turns out that we've been seen by others too. This just adds yet another layer of cement to the brick based structure that is my celebrity career.

Overall, I had a lovely day- I hope Heather did too. I mean, I would if I recieved a pig lighter for my birthday.

The Average Four

2005-07-29T18:51:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I went to see the new Fantastic Four film with JD, Emma, Dundas, and most importantly, Matt. His attendance was important, because he was the one who was driving. The flashy show-off git. Not that I'm jealous. Git.

Boringly, he's actually a really good driver. I'd love to tell you tales of how Matt nearly killed us all with his wreckless driving- and how he caused a gigantic crash when he planted a banana on the road and then used a mushroom power up. Unfortunately, we had a safe and successful journey into Leicester, with the only dodgy bit being Matt having pop music on his iPod.

The Fantastic Four film itself wasn't of the same calibre as Batman Begins. The plot was a bit... questionable. The special effects were not upto the quality of say, Spiderman. You could clearly tell that Mr Fantastic's hands were computer generated. Long story short: 6/10.

Post-film, on my suggestion, we into Leicester itself so I could buy Heather a birthday present. I didn't take my sister's advice that I shouldn't go there, because "ethnic origins" live there. Yes, it appears she's a big racist.

After spending a good while in Virgin Megastores, buying a few CDs for myself, I then moved on to Heather. My friend's used peer pressure to convince me into buying Heather a necklace. Now, I thought she'd be happy with the book about cats and the pig lighter I'd already got her, but apparently this wasn't enough.

The necklace itself was a rip off. Now, I'm no fan of jewellery, but I hoped that Heather was. It's probably the most expensive thing I've ever bought per cubed centimeter of tangible matter. This tiny thing, which was essentially sparkly metal, could have bought me many hundreds of loaves of bread. Think of the surface area on that, in comparison! I got the "gift bag" with it, as it was free, and justified the purchase slightly more.

I mean, I could have bought a pencil sharpener and put it through a chain of paperclips! You get infinately more metal there! The other alternative was one of those necklaces where you have the letters hanging off of them, arranged to spell the owners name, or something. If a shop selling them could have made one that says "JAMES O'MALLEY PWNZ J00", she would have been getting that instead. Thank god taste and decency lead me to the one I actually bought. (Via GAME, where the shopfloormonkey had a brief conversation with us about games and how I hadn't yet bought a present).

With a present and card successfully bought (the story about buying the card isn't as interesting as the necklace, so I'm neglecting to tell it), we decided to head off home.

In retrospect, I should probably take back what I was saying about Matt's driving on the way home. On reflection, perhaps making the car fly over a small arch bridge to the extent that at least two wheels were off the ground isn't a sign of a good driver. "I've never done that before, but I knew it'd work", Matt confessed. All I could think of was what happens if you do that, at that speed, in Grand Theft Auto.

Anyway, a lovely day was had by all, I assume. A productive day was had by me. Thank you Matt, for the lift and the present guidance.

Celebrity

2005-07-27T15:02:00.000+01:00

Something amazing has happend. Twice.

I've been recognised!

As you probably know, I'm the webmaster of the world's biggest Pokémon website, PKMN.NET (PUK). It's quite popular, and it's now reached the stage where two people from completely unrelated websites have recognised me- these websites do not link to my website, nor do I link to them. People just know me because they happen to go to the two.

Noit from B3ta/Talk was the first to "recognise" me a few months ago- claiming he visits PUK every other day, and just yesterday, Xavious on UKNova recognised me, just by my username!

He had this to say:
" yea, your blog ive read a few times, its pretty funny."

Oh, and, this...

"ps, loving the terrorist shirt with george bush on it".

Even strangers think my fashion sense is second to none!

More Guinea Pigs

2005-07-25T21:05:00.000+01:00

As I hinted at yesterday, four more guinea pigs have come to stay. Jeremy went home ages ago now, and we're looking after someone elses.

Whereas Jeremy has a normal name- a name to be proud of. Something you wouldn't hesistate to call a small child, if it's name was in actual fact, Brennan. The four guinea pigs have silly names- Fudge, Toffee, Bubble and Squeak. I think it's bizarre how people name their pets after the most abstract of things, and not their own children. Why not stick to normal names? Why name in pairs?

I think this double standards in naming must stop. To these ends, I, JAMES O'MALLEY, will give £100 Sterling to the first pair of human twins named Salt & Pepper. The terms are this: the twins must be identical, and they must retain the names until at least their 18th birthday. No shorthand names or nicknames can be used on a regular basis during this time. The prize will be awarded on their 18th birthday- to males in the form of Boots vouchers, and to females in the form of £100 worth of power tools and football tickets.

So, anyone up for the challenge? C'mon any couples reading, get conceiveing! You could win £100!

(And yes, Miss Pedant, I'm aware my childhood Guinea Pigs were named Beano and Twinkle.)

Driving me mad!

2005-07-24T22:10:00.000+01:00

It's been a slow weekend for blogworthy events, or more specifically, it hasn't, but Firefox crashed before I had a chance to submit the one I wrote yesterday, and I'll be damned if I'm writing about Guinea Pigs again. (Four more have come to stay).

I can't remember if I've "announced" this before, but it looks likely that my driving test (seriously) will be on 16th September at 9:37am. I am fully confident that I will fail, and being a laughing stock, after over 55 lessons (!). To reach this point, it's certainly been an experience. My instructor has certainly been a... character. I also managed to smash a car up. (The latter link is a retrospective look at what happend, as this blog didn't exist back then).

Now, as with since last November, I've done all the maneuvers, and it's just a case of practice, practice, practice. The trouble is, the only practice I do get is the 90 gruelling minutes a week with Bob. I can just about do everything, but occasionally I'll lapse and do something silly- things I'd consider relatively minor, but my instructor tends to hype us as the equivilent of invading Poland.

The major thing at the moment is a three lane roundabout on the outskirts of Kettering. I just can't seem to do it without being in the wrong lane, or nearly smashing someone up.

My next lesson is tommorrow, 1435. Tough luck if you want to rob my house- my sister will still be in.

It seems the plot for the next few weeks is clear:

Shoe Shopping

2005-07-22T19:58:00.000+01:00

I've spent the last couple of days slackin' it up with Heather. It's been lovely, as the most difficult thing we did was erm... go shoe shopping, as I needed some more shoes. We both say we hate shopping- I know I do, for a fact. Heather though, may have been saying so just so she can be as cool as me.

So why did we go? My mother has a horrible habit of speaking to my friends, and mentioned in what was slightly more than a throwaway remark, that we should go shoe shopping. Heather, in what must been a challenge from some sort of higher being (or indeed a casual aquaintance) to annoy me by constantly agreeing with my mother about what's best for me, encouraged this idea to the point of having to act on it. Long story short, we went to Brantano. Spoiler: the trip was unsuccessful, although I did manage to get some ~~nice~~ cheapo speakers for my new computer.

I only own one pair of shoes- the non-brand name trainers that have become an essential part of the James O'Malley Collection- alongside such stalwarts as the blue fleece and "black t-shirt with slogan". (If you know me in real life, this probably has more relevance). My erm... shoe collection, peaked during around Year 8, in school terms- I owned trainers, "proper" shoes and bizarrely, football boots, which I hasten to add, were only worn once a week for the unfortunately compulsory PE. Since then, it's been a downwards spiral of laziness. Since I entered the sixth form, nearly two years ago now (I've technically left the school now), I've done away with even for the formal shoes. Only the trainers remain. I'd be buggered at a wedding. (Not literally). My current shoes (a term that only just manages to make it into plural territory) actually have holes in them. This means that, should I want to, I could push apart the rubber soles and fit my fingers through.

I hate shopping. I hate shoes. It's unfortunate that the concept of "shoe shopping" exists- presumably this was a concept dreamt up by some woman, to torture male colleagues.

I mean, shopping can have its merits. Take, for instance, buying expensive consumer electronics- at the end, you get a shiny new toy that has "oodles" of functionality, and will get hours of usage. You can connect it into your current media setup and use to enhance it. Shopping for dead sheep(?) to strap to your feet, meanwhile, is positively mundane. Shopping for other things is rubbish too. "Whoopee! I've just bought some bread!". Ph33l the excitement.

Shoes are crappy. Yes, they serve a purpose, but a very dull one. I don't care what's preventing me from obtaining more blisters, as long as it works. I mean, would it kill them to put in a pedometer, GPS and integrated bluetooth? I'd love to upload my movements when I walked in range of my computer- and plot my journey on Google Maps. But no, the best "they" can do is put a brand name on the side and so-called "laces" on the top.

This doesn't sound good. Shoes + Shopping = The most uninspiring combination of words since Celebrity Love Island.

During the trip, I made a point of ignoring Heather's suggestions. I walked away from the shop, empty handed. I couldn't find any shoes that were identical, or nearly identical to the ones I was wearing.

I hate shopping. Today, I applied for a Nectar card.

1) Buy Scratchcard 2) Scratch off silver stuff 3) Profit

2005-07-20T15:23:00.000+01:00

I had a lovely day yesterday. I went to see Heather, who you might remember from the time I went into Leicester and had no money. A suitable theory might have been that Heather == Bad luck with regard to money. This is no longer true though.

Yesterday afternoon, in the village post office, I bought a scratchcard. I'm not going to say which village, because I heard that my blog is the "Link of the day" on some sort of rapist forum. Point is, I got a "beginners luck" scratchcard on a whim, and won! I scratched off each panel, trying to reveal three of the same amount. The amounts varied: £5000, £30, £2000, £4, £4, £4! I'd won Four Great British Pounds! How chuffed was I?!

The best bit was, being the cheapskate that I am, I actually finished up "earning" more money than I spent yesterday... if we don't count my driving lesson, as it's a lost cause.

I think Heather was embarassed by my delight at winning, what some cynics might say, is a paltry amount. She didn't return to the post office with me to collect my well earnt winnings. Tsk.

I'd say "Other than that, I had a lovely day", but truth be told, today's blog entry is a constantly upbeat one. I'm reporting good news, rather than the bad or neutral. So there is no "Other than that", to mention.

I had a lovely day. Thanks again for letting me invite myself round, Heather!

"Employee Training"

2005-07-18T18:17:00.000+01:00

Not much has happend so far today, so I thought I'd share with you, oh lucky readers, a small tale from work. In fact, consider this the start of a new occasional feature: twunt of the week.

On Saturday, a gentleman (as we have to call him) came into the shop where I work and after finding his goods, enquired to my supervisor, "Are you going to open a till for me then?". There was already five tillmonkeys on various tills, with queues at each. Everyone in all of the other queues was waiting patiently, either as they're braindead idiots (likely), or are being polite and not abusing the good nature of Wilkinson staff.

My supervisor got me to go back on to my till- something I consider infinitately less interesting than such exciting tasks as "replenishing the kitchen roll" and "taking the piles of baskets back outside".

After I scanned his goods and got to the payment part, the chip & pin broke down. It took four attempts for the card to go through the system- each time various errors occured. This, you must understand, is clearly a technical problem- any idiot in their right mind could figure that out upon seeing what was happening.

It finally worked. This twunt of the week, or "bastard", as he's known in some circles, looked at me in a very "smarmy" way (probably a local colloquial expression), then a

Lots to report

2005-07-16T20:37:00.000+01:00

A fair bit has happend since I last updated. None of it is that exciting though- although this ISN'T an invitation to close the browser and not lavish praise on me via the comments system.

On Friday evening, Heggs held a party at his house. I'm afraid it's yet another "party blog". As always, a lovely time was had by all- the added erm... "bonus" this time was at around midnight, everyone walked down to Ottakars for the launch of the new Harry Potter book.

Now, I'm not a fan of Harry Potter. In fact, I'm making a point of disliking it, as I want that to be the quirk in my character that gets me recognised. I want to be the one person who doesn't like Harry Potter, so I can be highlighted, and become the centre of attention in conversations. A bit like the person who doesn't like The Matrix or James O'Malley.

The second film was the worst three hours of my life. If I could be bothered to use a printer, get an envelope and so on, I'd write to Warner Brothers and demand those three hours of my life back, and a Harry Potter goodie bag. Sending an e-mail would be silly, as navigating the presumably flash website would lead me to the privacy policy, which would have an obscure 10px e-mail link that would go to the "nobody cares" department.

The new book is apparently the penultimate. It say "apparently", because I will put money on "Harry Potter: the College Years" as soon as JK needs to pay for a new boat. Even if Harry is killed off, she'll find a way to bring him back. Even if she has to used a concept as foreign to the Potter series as magic.

Now, I'm not going to RONing the ending by telling who DIES. But I might post a fake spoiler or two.

The walk down to the town was unusual for me. Unlike the millions of people my age who regularly go out on a Friday night to a pub, and proceed to get drunk, I rarely leave my house after dark. It's a push to get me to leave during daylight hours too. I don't drink, either- not because I'm "straight edge", I'm just damn cool. I was quite nervous, to tell the truth- I hadn't been in town at this hour before, I didn't know whether to expect gang warfare or gang rape. Thankfully, both happend in the very most minimal quantities. Heggs helpfully profiled each group of people, or person we passed in a military fashion, so we knew what threats there were. "White male aged 16-23. Alone. Walking with arrogance, but has nothing to prove".

Tonight was different- I was a part of a drunken rabble. I was walking through town with some drunks, in fact. I was expecting it to be only slightly rawkus, when in fact it turned into quite a fracas. In fact, Tilley (no picture link, I'm afraid) put Scot's shoe on top of a road sign (a really awful picture link, I'm afraid). This happend minutes after they abandoned an attempt to steal a traffic cone. No, really.

It's a shame that my drunken "crew" wasn't more drunken. I'd love to see the Harborough Mail have the headline "DRUNKEN YOBS SPOIL POTTER BOOK LAUNCH". It wouldn't even had been too difficult for the drunken yobs to spoil- all they'd have to do is upset the children... perhaps steal the horse that someone had dressed as what I assume was a Harry Potter characters (seriously).

I was tempted to go in there, fully sober, as I was, and buy a different book. An old book. A really old book. Perhaps the Bible. "Cor! I've finally got it after all of this waiting!".

Why was there a horse there? You're probably still asking yourself this. The queue was ridiculous. Midnight on a Friday, there was a queue coming out of a book shop (NOT a brothel) stretching about 50m back to opposite the Carphone Warehouse- if you live in Harborough, you'll know that's quite a long way. The stoned drug users I was expecting to encounter in town had been replaced with eight year olds running about on the World War monument. The only thing they were high on was Harry Potter, and presumably the free samples of ecstacy the dealers give out to gain new customers ("grow the market", as such).

When I went home at 0030, as I had work today, the queue hadn't shortened much. I sort of feel sorry for the tillmonkeys who were earning triple time, as it must be especially dull selling the same thing over and over.

RON DIES.

The LAN Party

2005-07-13T13:11:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, Dundas held a LAN party as his family were on holiday without him. Rather than sit in the dark, crying, asking why his family hate him, he allowed his house to be used as a virtual battlefield.

What's a LAN party? If you're asking, then you probably leave your house and like natural light. It's when there's a large gathering of computers, and multiplayer gaming occurs. We played MOHAA, which is a first person shooter set in World War II. If WWII was that fun, I don't know what all those conscripts were complaining about. I'd kill for the chance to shoot Nazis in Stalingrad.

For the event, I had to buy some ethernet cable from a local computer store... for 20m and 10m, it cost me the bargain basement price of £32.99. I shit you not. It's ridiculous, but unfortunately, I was trapped. The shopkeeper had made his sale before he told me the total, as he got talking about the LAN party I was attending. It was vaguely reminicent of the time I applied for a credit card. £32.99, though. I could have bought so much with that.

It didn't help when JD turned up with tonnes of ethernet cable of his own.

The LAN itself was good though- in the end we had seven people playing: myself, Dundas, JD, Soph, Scot, Craig and Jody, JD's 10 year old brother. Whilst this list isn't very interesting to people who don't know me personally, and indeed, people who do know me personally, it's going to help when I bother to put my blog into a database and offer a scary automatic profile for everyone mentioned or something.

It's a shame Jody isn't 100 years old and a closet Nazi, because he could really have helped them out in the real World War if his gaming skillz are anything to go by. Seriously, he's amazing at MOHAA, which frightens me in two ways.

The first being that he's a ten year old with the calculating mind of a member of the SAS, and secondly because young people are better than me at stuff. Surely that's a sign of age? My dad confirmed this, much to my disappointment. It's like with who I used to call old people, but who are now presumably my peers. No longer do they patronise their kids by asking stupid questions or speaking to them in a silly voice, it's the other way around. The kids talk to the parents like they're idiots and put them in a home.

Is the fact that the younger generation scare me also a sign that I'm old?

People at work

2005-07-09T22:44:00.000+01:00

As you know, I work in a well known hardware store, I worked there today, for eight and a half hours. (Three breaks inclusive, two paid 15 minutes, one unpaid 30, if you're making graphs). It's insanely dull, but there's a few characters in there, who make you realise that however undignified tillmonkeying is, there are thousands of other weirdos, nutters and twunts out there who are much lower on the step ladder of humanity than you are.

One of the most bizarre character traits of the middle-aged male customer is his habit of winking. I mean, there's obviously no homosexual subtext to his wink at the end of the transaction- I hope so anyway. If there, that's WEIRD. Not in a homophobic sense, of course, but in a "it's an old man winking at you in a somewhat out of assumed-character way". This was made more disturbing today when this exchange took place:

INT: Store tills area ("Area 1")
Me [to woman]: Have you ever used the Chip & Pin before?
Woman's husband, whilst winking: She'll try anything once!

Good lord! You can't say that! I had horrible mental images of this bloke's wife white-water rafting, parachute jumping, eating roast dog, attempting to read through the entire EU constitution, taking on 50 five year olds in a fist fight in an area the size of a basket ball court, after receiving an hour of training, compared to the five year old's day of training. You get the idea.

If I ever serve you in the line of duty, please don't wink at me, it's WEIRD.

The Crazy Frog

2005-07-08T22:49:00.000+01:00

No exciting news to report, gang, so instead have a little flash film I made.

Introducing, the crazy frog.

The computer works

2005-07-06T21:52:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately, events in my life have slowed down somewhat- there very little to report. This is largely due to me not leaving my house. So, unfortunately, I'm going to have to talk a little about my life in the world is computer... just like other sad idiots. I'm not going to sit here with a thesaurus writing 2500 word rants about how awful the webmaster of a Pokémon website is, though.

The, ahem, exciting news is that the lovely new computer I sort of hyped up a month ago has finally started working. Turns out the only thing I needed to do to fix it was send a friendly e-mail to the computer who sold it to me. For any nerds reading, there was some dodgy RAM, which I've now removed and will be getting a replacement for shortly, with any luck.

In more exciting news, a police man very nearly did what we wish we all could do.

Tune in next time for more excitement with JAMES O'MALLEY.

Partying hard, working not as hard

2005-07-04T15:53:00.000+01:00

After a week of nothing, I've had an insanely busy weekend- I've been to two parties, held by the same person, at the same place, and as usual I've been to work.

Now, I don't want anyone reading this blog to think that all I do is "party", and that I'm a big "party animal". I'm aware that most of my updates seem to be about the various parties I've been to, but I'm merely archiving every time I actually leave my house.

On Friday evening, I turned up fashionably late to Andy's party. I've known him for around 15 years now, and I hadn't been to his house in years. I was quite releaved to find out that he hadn't moved house, as I'd neglected to check this until I turned up. What I didn't neglect to check was whether or not I was invited- being the social paranoid nutter that I am, the person who can't even socialise without running out of money, or standing on a plug, I needed a flurry of text messages to 100% confirm that I was indeed invited. I didn't want to be like Iain Duncan Smith at the Tory party conference.

It was the biggest wild party I've been to, to date. Not only was Andy and his friends there, but his family had invited their friends too. Most disturbingly of all was perhaps the two teachers from my old school- one of whom taught me science (and why the number "69" is significant, after I didn't get a joke she made, and the whole class was laughing apart from me) in year 10. I'd love to say more about this party, but essentially, it was just a party, and I had a nice time, as usual.

Less than twenty four hours later, I was back at Andy's for another party. This time it was just his friends, and it was much like the night before, only with the added mixed fortunes of a political rally being broadcast on TV. I mean, I agree with the Live8 cause, but it's a bit odd that the BBC, who must remain editorially indepedent managed to broadcast it. I mean, I'm pleased they did, but essentially they were putting forward a political point of view. "Let's help the poor" is not a partisan issue, but the whole putting pressure on the G8 leaders to do specific things, like drop the debt and increase aid (not AIDS, haha!), is a point of view. Certain Nazis might not think it's the right thing to do, and it's up the to BBC to remain fair and balanced in this. Yes, they show other political rallies- such as the anti-war stuff in 2003, but that was part of the news and not an entertainment programme. Either way, what I got to see was enjoyable, if only because of the humour in hearing "motherfucker" at 6pm in the evening on BBC One. Needless to say, the Daily Mail has infested the Points of View message board.

The other Live8 revelations were that my dad looks a bit like the guitarist in The Who, and Dundas (aka Fundar) looks a bit like the lead singer from the world's most boring band, Keane.

Back in the real world, Heggs was trying to boost his daredevil characteristics by walking across the fire. Call me safety concious, but I didnt' think it was a good idea. I'd have much preferred if he'd stuck to more sensible activities, like breaking into waterworks or posing for photos that would look dramatic if they were taken with a non-VGA camera...

Like before, it was a nice party, but very difficult to write about- especially when you don't have a picture gallery, like I did for my big rave.

Yesterday (Sunday), I didn't have a chance to rest- I was out again. We, by which I mean, myself, Heather, Matt and JD went to Soph's for a smaller table-tennis themed gathering. I was expecting to be quiet good at table tennis, given that I was runner up in the Haven (Skegness? Somewhere like that) children's table tennis competition 1996. There were three competitors. Unfortunately, Soph's smart mouth brother who was born in the nineties somehow managed to beat us all and antagonise me. He doesn't know what osmosis is though, so I've got the upperhand in the long run. The most exciting thing about the evening was probably revelations about Soph's new job, which I can't say anything about.

And that's the story of another weekend partying, folks.

Oh, and Jamesomalley blog anoraks, I'll try and get a new picture gallery soon... I think I've just about exhausted my 18th birthday gallery.

Fourteen weeks of fun

2005-06-28T23:39:00.000+01:00

I can't quite believe the situation I'm in... it's lovely. I've got the next fourteen weeks of absolutely nothing. This isn't pretend nothing, with revision I should be doing, this is really nothing. The only limitation to my nothing is work on Saturdays and probably Sundays too. But other than that, it's five days a week of glorious nothing.

That's right kids, the exams are over, and in fourteen weeks time, I'll be coming to terms with the fact that I'll be living at the DeMonfort University in Leicester. The very thought of having to look after myself scares me a lot, so I'm trying to repress this as much as possible.

I havn't really got any plans for the summer- I'm not going on holiday with my family this year, assuming they go somewhere that doesn't involve flight. I don't really like the idea of them all dying in one go, in one plane crash. If they took three individual flights it'd be alright, as at least some of my family would be left over.

Needless to say though, that the family holiday week will be full of teenage parties and wreckin' the place up. I may even need to learn how to use a dish washer, given that it'll be a full week of living on my own, rather than the couple of days I've been left for before.

To cope with this eventuality, I've transcribed the instructions my mum gave me last time I was left at home over the weekend...

"Pre-wash" ~5 Minutes

1) Load dishwasher- load with dirty glasses etc
2) Turn dial to number four
3) Press the "start" button
4) Wait until stop

"Main Wash" ~90 Minutes

4) Open up dishwasher
5) Put dishwasher tablet in tablet hole. Ball down
6) Make sure the tablet door is shut
7) Close dishwasher, turn to number two
8) Press "start" button
9) Wait until stop

I didn't actually take this advice, as I bought paper plates instead. I'm sure this advice will be useful at some point in the relatively near future.

I've actually deliberately avoided learning to do anything practical like dishwash, iron, vacuum, cook, sweep, and other women's activities (!) so that I can't be called upon by my family to do them. I let them get on with it, and live happily in my ignorance.

In my defence, I generally keep out of the way when they're doing these things, and I'm very low maintenance... as long as I've got my beloved internet. I own seven t-shirts, three pairs of trousers, and several pairs of identical socks- they all "go with" each other in the fashion sense, so I don't have special requirements with regard to washing clothes. My sister, on the other hand, the other day recalled the last time she went "out" without straightening her hair, as it must have been quite a distressing experience for her. It was just over a year ago when she went to Blackpool. Imagine the various clothing demands she makes to go with this.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't need to contribute to the ground level workings of the household- I see myself in more of a strategic guide, setting out the long term agenda and direction of the family. I think outside the box, I use blue sky thinking. I simply don't have the time for operational level activities.

The Guinea Pig

2005-06-24T20:21:00.000+01:00

It's been another one of those few days, when it has been exciting for me, but dead boring to read about. By "another one of those few days", I mean "another few days in my life".

I had another ICT exam yesterday... the last one ever. I can now forget everything I ever knew about the exciting world of middle management and buzzwords, without ph33ring the repercussions. In a last-ditch effort to salvage anything from what on all counts was an awful, awful A-level, in one of the many blank pages at the end of my answer booklet, I wrote a list of "my real ICT" achievements- which is very similar to the list at the start of my previous blog entry. Fingers crossed the examiner will see the list, which I tried to make it look like I'd scribbled it out, and say, "hang on a moment, this student has a point, full marks, because afterall, the qualification isn't worth the paper it is written on", rather than "pffft, he still doesn't answer the questions and I'm a jobsworthy twunt".

For those of you keeping tabs on my appearance, perhaps with some sort of fuzzy-felt stick on picture of me, where you apply facial features and beards and so fourth, which might be on your kitchen wall, next to the calendar, I've had yet another hair cut. (Can't be bothered to upload new pictures).

Most exciting of all though, is the guinea pig. My cousin's gone on holiday so we're in charge of looking after Jeremy. He's adorable and instantly better than any of your pets. It's not the first time we've "had" him- last February my cousin abandoned him, much to our advantage. Last time I used some little wireless cameras to watch him live, in his cage, and broadcast it live, around the internet. A bit like a cheapskate Oinkernet. This time I hope to top that, perhaps by doing live guinea pig racing. I only have one guinea pig, so it'll have to be time trial based, perhaps with some sort of "ghost pig" superimposed on top. Rather than falling foul of the gambling laws that I assume exist, the betting currency would be coke.

Speaking of which, I've recently won my first coke bet ever, with Heather. She reckoned Tim Henman would win Wimbledon. "He's crap!", I cried. I was right. This follows losing various celebrity death bets- on Yasser Arafat, Michael Jackson, and the Pope.

Anyway, we've got Jeremy for two weeks... the question now is will my parents temper last for that long, because of all the hay/food/excrement that will no doubt be thrown about the house.

IT's a load of rubbish

2005-06-21T23:02:00.000+01:00

Hi gang. It's me, James O'Malley. The resident computer wizz-kid. (That should probably be wizz-adult now, though). My virtual empire has outposts in the bleakest corners of the interweb... from Pokémon, to satire, to flashy gimmicks. I know HTML, CSS (if you can "know" them), Javascript, PHP, and bits and pieces of actionscript and other languages. I can tell you all about hardware, I can put new components into a computer (shock, horror), I can use a wide variety of software. I can edit video. I spend every hour awake at home online, and in some cases, when not awake. I can label the input and output devices of a desktop computer without the need for a box containing each of the words for me to draw lines from.

I live my life in this virtual world that I clearly must like an awful lot.

Why the feck did my ICT exam go so badly?

ICT4 was about "information systems in organisations", which roughly translates to "buzzwords and management talk 101". Don't get me wrong- these buzzwords arn't computer jargon. That'd be bar too complex. The words "computer", "hard disk", "memory" and so on didn't feature in this Information Technology exam. These buzzwords are things like "management information system", "implementation", "testing plan", "blue sky thinking". It's ridiculous.

This qualification isn't worth the paper its written on. What are the people who somehow manage to pass going to be able to do? Create and write an information system? No. The syllabus doesn't cover any programming languages and so on.

These people will be able to tell you about the feasibility study carried out to determine whether a new system is worth developing.

Now, I'm no expert, but doesn't all of the feasibility study go without saying? Something non-cretins would do in their heads before pursuing any new system? Can it be done? Can we afford it? Is it legal? Can people use it? Can it be completed in time?

All blindingly obvious questions.

As you might have guessed, I'm angry. Piece of advice kids: don't pick A-level ICT as it's only for jobsworth middle-managers and people who want to sound important by using buzzwords.

Exam; Batman; Heather

2005-06-17T19:51:00.000+01:00

It's been a lovely couple of days, yesterday and today. Unfortunately, this upwards trend doesn't look set to continue, with a high likelyhood of work occuring tommorrow and Sunday.

Yesterday afternoon, I had the exam I'd been hyping up a bit. The Pure 3 Maths exam was... interesting. Having done minimal revision, it was a bit of a nightmare. "Section B" of the paper, something which I'd never even looked at the revision notes for, was interesting- it was about our "understanding" of maths. We were given some text about communicating with aliens using pi and other universal constants (or rather, ratios)- dead interesting stuff, just a shame I couldn't do any of the associated maths.

Yesterday evening, I went to see the new Batman film with my family. Long story short, but it's one of the best superhero films ever. It was full of action, plot, and it justified all of the techie stuff with pseudo-science, which was nice. Word of warning: women will probably hate this. My mother and sister thought it was boring and went on too long. Presumably they wanted to get back to do some ironing, or talk about curtains, or something.

Most importantly, I had a massive cinema sized, over priced, Pepsi. It still only counted as one on the graphs, though. Heather wasn't too pleased, of course.

It was perhaps unfortunate in this respect then, that this morning I went to visit Heather, and meet her cats for the first time. In every other respect though, I had a lovely time.

The first major hurdle was catching a bus- something I havn't done in around ten years. It was very different to what I expected. The terminal building was sparse with very few facilities, and the bus itself was completely different to my mental image. It wasn't a large red double decker, with an open ledge on the back of the bus, with a pole supporing the upper deck. Nor did it have a friendly conductor with a small cash register type contraption around his neck, who would allow me to hop on whilst the bus is in motion. There was just a surly bus driver who grunted as he handed me change, after I'd hesitated in taking myself a ticket.

Safety seems to be up to Soviet standards. There was no seat belts, and no bus hostess expelling safety instructions- I wasn't even told how to inflate my life jacket, or the locations of the emergency exits. The bus hostess, who was in fact non-existent, also didn't offer a variety of beverages or bus-related souvenirs, which I could buy at multiple times their market value. The again, this was all trivial when compared with catching the correct bus.

Bearing in mind I had only previously seem the village she lives in during darkness (I'm not going to name it, so internet nutters can go and attack her), and also considering that I was told to get off at the second bus stop, I got quite worried. Whilst passing through what I assume was Heatherland, and after passing a handful of bus stops, I started to wonder if I was on the right bus. In perhaps the biggest anti-climax ever, it turns out it was the right bus, and Heather was there waiting for me. Or it could have been another one of the bus folk who she was dying to meet, I don't know.

We got to Heather's house, with a plan to slack.

It turns out, Honey and Treacle had dressed up for the occasion. I can imagine that meeting me is a grand occasion for anyone, cat or not. Despite previous allegations that I am a so-called "animal Hitler" (I coined that phrase myself), they reacted somewhat nonplussed by my presence. I was delighted- Heather had painted a mental picture of them being terrified of my sellotaping, buckaroo playing antics. They couldn't care less. Well, Honey couldn't. Treacle stayed hidden under the bed for the entirety of my stay- that is to say, around six hours, whereas Honey just laid on top, slackin' it up as cats do best. I wish I were a cat.

It was a bit like through the keyhole- Heather showed me around her home, and I made critical or offensive remarks about its furnishings.

Backstory: I'm a vegetarian who can labour a point. Heather eats dead animals yet expresses vague regret after I act disapprovingly. After seeing a ceramic chicken containing potpourri on her windowsil, I suggested I should do that with a box of microchips. She wasn't impressed. I was. I said how I'll blog that hilarious comment this evening, and well, I am! Erm... she also had me try on a beret she got from France, of all places. Looking at the photo, I think I worryingly look a bit too much like a cheese-eating-surrender-monkey. It's my psuedo-moustache that does it, and the jaunty-angle the beret is set at. I can't believe the photo exists.

Perhaps the weirdest thing was that because I talk to Heather quite a bit on MSN messenger, visiting her actual house was like constant deja-vu. I recognised many things from her descriptions, and I have a feeling I may have repeated all of the hilarious comments I made at the time, again, without noticing.

Either way, I had a lovely day, free of revision, and full of cats, buses and perhaps most exciting of all, a tree house! Thanks for letting me invite myself round, Heather!

J'ai deteste la francais parce que la exam

2005-06-15T22:17:00.000+01:00

Today was like the prelude to the even bigger and less exciting day that will be tommorrow. Pure 3 exam tommorrow, including the mysterious "Section B", which is about our understanding of maths applied to the real world. Needless to say, given my understanding of maths, and how often I go out into the real world, I'm somewhat buggered.

Today was two of the general studies exams, including the infamous French test. This was a language I havn't studied in two years, and two years ago, I wasn't exactly any good at it. (Got a B!). Luckily, because general studies is sort of an easy version of a wide variety of subjects, the theory is that I should be able to "blag" it, and do what all the best tourists do. Surely writing English in capital letters is equivilent to the same thing in French? That's how my mother managed to get us some tickets to the tourist train on our last holiday in France. She waved her arms too, but this is hard to transcribe. This plan's downfall was the fact that the French bit was multiple choice.

The exam should have been like fighting the French in a war. Dead easy.

Je suis tombé la escalier.

It's hard to say how I did, but I don't think it was well.

The other part of the French exam was, bizarrely, an essay written in English about the link between the decline in religious worship and changing public morals. I had a rant at religion and spoke about dynamic relativism, and how religion is crap, and stuff. Whether this is the right thing to do or not, I don't know.

The best thing that happend in the exam, and I use the term "best" in the loosest possible sense, was a year 11, who was in the hall at the time doing a Geography exam,'s phone went off. The unfortunate thing for him was that the ringtone was the now reviled Crazy Frog. Unfortunately, the people controlling the exam didn't frog-march the kid out of the exam room to be executed by firing squad- they merely took his phone off of him. The phone rang again whilst it was at the front of the room, too.

After 90 minutes of what is best described as "a general studies paper", we got what everyone in the room was collectively hoping for. Yet another 90 minute paper. This time it was about maths and science, and that sort of thing. After a hopefully easy bit on the funny canal twisting thing up north somewhere, there was another essay question. I wrote about intensive farming. Given that I don't live on a farm, or in the countryside, or indeed, had never seen a duck fly until a few weeks ago, I was quite impressed with how much I wrote about how it's cool, and how it's bad. I just hope genetic modification has got something to do with it. Oo-er.

I finished this paper with what must have been around 45 minutes to spare- whilst not a good sign, I made good use of the time. I drew an incredibly detailed picture of my calculator, and wrote "JAMESOMALLEY.CO.UK" in large writing on the back of the answer booklet. Theory is, the examiner will come to my website, contact me with his or her paypal details, and then all my "hard work" will pay off and I'll get straight As.

Expect an update in August about my exam results, unless they're really bad, in which case I'll keep them quiet.

Also, keep the questions coming in.

Scraping the barrel

2005-06-14T21:02:00.000+01:00

It's been a couple of dull days, really. To be honest, I'm only updating now out of popular demand- everyone seems to love this blog, so I'm doing the decent thing and giving the public what they want. I'm going to flog this blog to death and then some- I'll keep updating even when things arn't entertaining or funny anymore. I'm in it for the money.

The content well has run dry. We've reached the point where the events in my life have looped back to the beginning, meaning there's no new material. To this end, I've had to devise a cunning plan to keep this blog updated regularly, and hopefully get a book deal in a few years time, when someone will want to publish what I have to say, because of my informal, yet strangely endeering written style.

So, here's the deal. I want you, yes you, to send me questions. Ask me stuff and I'll respond. We'll call it a letters page. Ask anything, preferrably about me or something that I can perhaps launch into an amusing anecdote. Use the comments thing at the bottom of this post, otherwise I'll ignore your e-mail, as I'm self obsessed and don't consider communications from others important. I want everyone who is reading this to send me a question that I'll answer in the next update, assuming nothing else interesting happens.

So go on, ask me a question- you care infinately more about my life than I do about yours.

More work fun...

2005-06-12T17:38:00.000+01:00

It's been another busy weekend of ~~revision~~ work. I'll have been in paid employment for 23% of my weekend. This compares to 3% of my weekend watching Doctor Who (I watched it twice). Point is, work was as awful as it always is. Actually, slightly worse.

For months, the music played in my place of work (I don't want to name it so head office can google for it, and find me criticising them), was always the same "wallpaper" music. It was like someone had taken the most bland and dull pop records of all time and thought that it would encourage consumers to buy things they don't need. The playlist was somewhat limited... but maybe that's because all of the songs sounded the same.

A few weeks ago, shock horror, the playlist changed. In tune with the current trends, it was a slightly "rockier" sounding playlist. Wasn't as bad... there was the three recent Green Day singles. Unfortunately, this is offset against Will Young.

But wait, there's more! At work yesterday, I discovered the music has changed again! It's now an incredibly upbeat "collection" (and I use the term losely) of classics (again, used losely). The size of the playlist is worse than ever- on Saturday during my eight hours, I heard the song D.I.S.C.O (no idea who it's by) no less than FIVE times.

It's all played out from head office down what I'd imagine is a broadband connection. In other words, the music's probably just glorified Winamp and Shoutcast. There must be around an hours worth of music on there, on a loop.

The interesting thing is that whenever Amarillo comes on, the whole shop lights up and even the customers start singing. I don't. There's nothing more scary when the store manager is trying to encourage a "sing along", clapping and singing away at the top of her voice. Thankfully, this was upstairs in the staff-only area, as opposed to in full view of the moronic masses.

And why, why oh why is Y.M.C.A on there? EVERYONE hates it. It's played at every sort of "disco" (that I've been to, so the sample size isn't massive), and nightly at holiday parks... how much commission must the Village People be getting? I bet the builder is currently working on another wing of his house.

Bizarrely, along with all of these "party classics", as the album of the store may be called, is the Nirvana classic, Smells like teen spirit. I don't know enough about the song to know what the presumably positive message is, but it breaks up the tedium a bit.

I'd comment on some more songs- but I think I've mentioned almost everything. It really is ridiculous. I'd liken it to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharib, where the American army forced the "terrorists" to endure hour after hour of crappy music, an an attempt to break them.

Are my employers trying the same thing on their staff? Regular customers wouldn't notice as they're in and out in a flash (with my fast tillmonkey skillz anyway). I think one day in the near future I'm going to collapse or tell my supervisor all of my terrorist plans, or whatever.

Plugged in!

2005-06-10T20:19:00.000+01:00

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.

Exam phun

2005-06-09T17:13:00.000+01:00

It's been an insanely dull couple of days on the "write about my life in an interesting and entertaining way" front. It's not been bad, excellent in some respects, if you were there at the time, but however much you might like to be me, you can't be. So shut up, get on with your life, and keep those Paypal payments coming in.

The major theme of late has been revision- I had my Stats 2 exam today, which went badly. It was the culmination of a weeks work, revising hard, and I now have not a lot to show for it. I think the bulk of the problem is that when I was "revising", I was actually complaining to people in a similar situation about how awful revision is. The actual "doing stuff" part never really got off of the ground. A bit like the European Constitution in that respect.

In what should be hilarious news, I retook ICT2 for the second time today. How the feck I managed to get a D both times, I don't know. First question today was "name three different methods of formatting that can be used to make a piece of text stand out", or something to that effect. Don't push yourself too hard in looking for the answer. It was bold, italics and underline. No, really. We've (by which I mean, my mother and I) have come to the conclusion that the reason I've been doing so badly is because I havn't been dumbing down my answers enough. I'd like to say that I prepared for the exam last night by watching Celebrity Love Island on ITV. I didn't, as I'm still struggling with the notion that the programme exists. Vaguely interestingly, Sky One, the satellite channel behind Lesbians go mad on Lesbos, turned down the opportunity to make the programme claiming it is too tacky.

At least the weather has been lovely.

What? That noise? That's me scraping the bottom of the barrel for something to write about.

Because of the lovely weather, I've decided to stay inside, in a dark and dingy room, pretending to revise.

Expect more updates like this over the next few weeks, then we'll return to tales of me partying hard.

Credit where it's due!

2005-06-07T17:09:00.000+01:00

Just six days into being an adult, and I'm already doing adult things. No, I havn't been buying pornography and mowing the lawn, I've got myself a credit card! Erm... not that I wanted one.

I went into Natwest this morning to cash a big cheque, only to have a woman coerce me out of the queue and into the seating, or "hard sell" area. It all started when I asked her if a debit card version of Visa or Mastercard exists, so that I can buy stuff from American websites without getting myself into loads of debt. They don't exist.

"So... why don't you want a credit card then?"
"Well, I've heard a lot about people getting themselves into a mountain of debt and bankrupting themselves"
"Hmm... well, are you sensible with your money?"
"I like to think so"
"Well, that's okay then, want a credit card?"
"Alright"

Quick as a flash, she was filling in a credit card application form for me. I signed something, and then that was that. I've erm... applied to have the ability to get myself into loads of debt. Woo yay.

Apparently, getting a credit card now will allow me to build up a credit history, which is apparently a good thing. I'm not sure whether or not I'm inclined to believe this, as my attempt to build up a good driving history, ended up in me smashing up a car. (On Christmas day). (Two hours after getting on the insurance). (I hit a bollard).

What annoyed me most was the bankmonkey's banter skills. Working in Wilkinsons, I'm getting pretty good at talking about nothing to customers. Or more specifically, I can rate other peoples banter skills. The bankmonkey asked me about what I was doing in terms of school and university, and how I'd be looking a student account, and then made the "kill", and got the credit card. When I continued to humour her and tell her how the student rail card that Natwest do will be useful, she looked like she couldn't care less. She'd got her gullible customer to get a card that will spell financial doom. (Probably).

Immediately after signing away my financial life to a slimy bank manager, I rang my mother. Guess what her reaction was! She wasn't best pleased, to say the least.

I'll be laughing when I can buy stuff with money that isn't mine!

Birthday III and another party

2005-06-05T14:52:00.000+01:00

It's been another exciting few days in the life of Jamesomalley. Maybe.

On Friday, my birthday celebrations continued. My grandparents came round to see me, lovely surprise in hand. They gave me a cheque for £200! Wasn't expecting that! Thank you very much grandparents! Expect tales in the coming weeks of what I'll be spending this money on. I want to buy some expensive and needless consumer electronics.

I also tried some champagne, or wine, or whatever. It was revolting. I can't for a second understand why people make a fuss over it. Why not stick to the real thing?

Also during the day, my friend Ben came round to give me a birthday card, and collect his phone and wallet (long and boring story). He couldn't make it to my big rave, but gave me £10 to erm... celebrate my birth. I reluctantly accepted it.

Yesterday (Saturday), the very same Ben was hosting a party in honour of his birth, rather than mine. It wasn't like my party, it was a more professional affair- he'd hired Kibworth Rugby Club (the hall, not the team), and a DJ. It was a very enjoyable evening, but like my own party, very hard to describe if you wern't there.

Needless to say, I binged a bit.

XVIII

2005-06-03T16:34:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, it was my birthday! I'm now 18, and adult, and a man! I can now commit child abuse and be prosecuted as an adult, I can legally drink alcohol, and legally complain about kids today. I can shout "get off my lawn!", "bloody kids", and "back in my day..." to my heart's content.

I WANT TO BE YOUNG AGAIN!

The most exciting thing that happend yesterday was a massive party that I hosted. I didn't think I had that many friends! 17 people turned up overall. They were...

Heather (oh, and the rumours are true), JD, Emma, Soph, Matt, Stephen, Heggs, Craig, Dundas, Andy, Danny, Scot, Bailey, Kim, Chris, Bouff, and Teb.

Of course, this probably isn't very interesting if you don't know them.

I think the general consensus is that everyone had a lovely time (based on a survey of me). To get the obvious out of the way: the Coke intake was at six. Two before the party, four during it.

The one unfortunate thing that prevented my wild teenage rave from being as house destroying as it was, aside from the lack of "hard house trance" or whatever, was my parents were in the other room. Whilst this helped with the general management of the festivities, my mum insisted on showing everyone a baby photo and trying to embarrass me. I swore at her a bit and she continued un-phased.

Despite it being a birthday party, I wasn’t expecting any presents- some of my friends got me one anyway! This was horrendously nice of them. Heather got me this amazing “20 questions” gadget. You, the player, thinks of anything, and it will, almost without fail guess exactly what you are thinking of. For example, “is it an animal?”, “is it a mammal?”, and so on. It’s weird, I’ve no idea how it works. Is there a database inside with billions and billions of objects and their descriptions listed? It got Guinea Pig, it got napkin, it got electricity, it got candle… it was amazing. Does it use the GSM network to connect back to base, where there are thousands of people tapping away at keyboards asking these questions? Either way, it scared the crap out of me. (Not literally).

JD & Emma got me the League of Gentlemen box set, which I’m greatly looking forward to watching, and Matt got me In Love and Death by The Used. From the songs I’ve heard of theirs, they’re an upbeat lot full of positive messages. I love optical media!

Excitingly, Danny got me a little device that keeps the fizz in bottles, somehow, which was perfect apt for Chris & Kim’s present… a bottle of coke! (She also got me some Cadbury’s Miniature Heroes, which I think everyone agreed were very nice indeed). I was delighted. Bailey, Scot and Ben (who wasn’t there, but I spoke to today) also forced money on me! I tried to refuse but they insisted! Everyone who got me presents: thank you very much!

Also excitingly, my good friend Michael, who's a northerner, phoned and texted me from Wales, where he was on holiday to wish me a happy birthday- which was a very nice gesture. I attempted to ring him back to thank him, but due to the wildness of the party, it was largely incoherent.

Describing a party is actually really difficult- we didn’t so much do anything as just sit about and slack, which was lovely, but isn’t very easy to write about. As such, here’s comments and observations on some of the photographs I took:

We did some real life photoshopping!

Yes, these are “Bratz” party hats. I didn’t buy them, my socially and culturally conscious mother bought them in her ignorance. I’m eighteen and male, not nine and female! I managed to remove them before most people turned up, thankfully.

Matt has had his face disfigured. He should have mounted a flag on a cocktail stick or one of those little drinks umbrellas in it.

Something that was nice was that six of my friends who I’ve known since early primary school were here to celebrate my birth with me. It was very old skool.

Heather really dislikes having her photo taken, for some reason. This is similar to my sister, Lucy. Women, eh? (Ignore JD).

Matt looks a bit like Devvo, the chav from Fat-Pie.

Bouff and myself paid tribute to B3ta. (I was recently 26th best question response in the question of the week.)

Overall though, it was a bloody lovely evening by my standards, and went fantastically well. I hope everyone who came enjoyed themselves- they seemed to. Even Dundas, who’s arguably my fiercest critic couldn’t bring himself to criticise my party.

Thanks for coming, everyone!

A sterling day!

2005-06-01T22:24:00.000+01:00

We're now literally only hours away from the greatest, most fantastic, happiest day of the year. My birthday. More specifically, my 18th birthday. It's certainly going to be interesting. That however, is tomorrow.

Today, on my last day of being 17, on my last day of childhood, I went into Leicester with Heather, with the objective being to socially slack and avoid revision. The mission was accomplished, but not without considerable emotional trauma.

The plan was similar to last Sunday, in that we'd meet at Leicester station, at 1130, as both bus and train "collide" at that time and place. There I was, waiting in Leicester station, having been briefed in the previous days light entertainment news by the London Metro on the train, with no Heather to be seen. Apparently, the Crazy Frog creator actually dislikes the Crazy Frog. Her bus was late! This is odd because isn't it usually trains that are late? Either way, when she finally got there, she apologised for the bus being late- something which she needn't have done, unless she was driving the bus. I never found out what role she had in controlling the bus- perhaps this is best left unanswered?

Either way, we decided to go and see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as neither of us had seen it. This is where the problem began. The only way I got into Leicester was by (not literally) scraping together the change I had in my wallet, with the plan being to withdraw some cash at the station, with which I could buy all sorts of crap. The first problem was the "cash machine" at the station was little more than a sheet of glass with a keypad in front of it. In fact, all it was, was a sheet of glass, with a badly insulated wire where the screen should have been, with a keypad in front of it.

Not a problem, you might think, but that's not all! The cash machine outside Morissons near the Cinema wasn't any more cooperative. I put my card in, keyed in my pin, pressed the "give me money" buttons, and all it returned was a "receipt" claiming that my card had expired.

What was the date today? June 1st
What was my card's expiry date? 05/05

Bollocks! One day late! I couldn't believe this! They hadn't even sent me a new card!

Thankfully, Heather came to the rescue here- she was loaded (with money) and so managed to pay for us both. This didn't prevent me from feeling horrendously guilty, mind. I made myself feel better by consuming a small Pepsi that Heather leant me money for, presumably out of pity.

Coincidentally, my sister Lucy went to the same film today- on the showing after the one we saw. After a quick phone call, she saved my dignity and gave me some cash as we were leaving and she was arriving.

I enjoyed the film itself- I have vague recollections of critics calling it “average” and so on, but being the culturally ignorant person that I am, and having not read the books, seen the TV series or heard the radio series, I enjoyed it.

So the film occurred. It’s hard to write about this bit as we just… watched a film. Hardly the most thrilling them ever, for the reader. (You).

We left the cinema, and after Heather (or “Heater”, if you prefer) finally gave a straight answer to a question for presumably the first time ever, (“Shall we go into Leicester?” “I don’t know… maybe… if you want to”), we went into Leicester to paint the town red, with the £20 Lucy had given me previously.

I got to Natwest, and unfortunately for Heather, and indeed myself, had to spend around 20 minutes standing about in there, trying to get some money out using an expired card. I got there in the end. Paid Heather back, apologised for spending her money, and had a go at the person at the information desk because my new card hadn’t even been ordered. By which I mean, I had a polite chat with the person at the information desk.

We got to the centre of Leicester, and after a somewhat lengthy debate about what to do, we decided to go to Pizza Hut again. It’s my birthday (week)! Can’t I go more than once?

Like the last time, it was a lovely meal. Not really a thrilling thing to blog about if you weren’t there, although needless to say, I’m now slightly more suspicious as to the activities of the “Brownies”. They have weird rituals like most silly cults… but it would seem they recruit their victims young.

On Sunday, I released one of the balloons that Pizza Hut had given me into the roof of the Shires shopping centre. We went and checked if it was still there. Unfortunately, it has now disappeared. Not sure where it went- it could have burst, or maybe it floated gently to its demise. I guess we’ll never know.
Walking through The Shires, it occurred to me that people are everywhere, and are like vermin. It’s hard to move during some parts of real life shopping. Maybe these people are just the real life equivalents of pop-ups? Getting in your way whilst you try and purchase goods and services?

We spent the next “while” (I didn’t check my watch) poncing around Leicester looking in vein for some speakers for the new computer I’ve neglected to mention until now. God knows what I was planning to buy, mind, as, as I said earlier, my budget is somewhat restricted. Turns out in the end that the 19” TFT monitor I found when I got home has built in speakers, so I needn’t have worried anyway.

Anyway, long story short, it’s been a delightful last day of childhood indeed. Thanks to everyone involved, especially me!

Socialising Overload!

2005-05-29T21:59:00.000+01:00

Christ, considering I'm something of a social recluse, I've done a hell of a lot of socialising in the last... two days. Well, by my standards.

Last night (Saturday), after work, I went to Emma's "moving house" party. I was fashionably late. Four hours late. The festivities started at three, I got there at seven. Nevertheless, I assume I rejuvinated the proceedings. JD, Heather, Thom and Christine were also there.

It was all very enjoyable- although like most blog things, not very interesting to read about after it happens. Not that it's going to prevent me from rambling on and on. I seem to be able to write thousands of words about myself yet struggle to get to the word limit on essays that matter. This might make me sound like a bit of an egomaniac, but lets be honest, I'm slightly more important than the relative competitive advantages of two Devonshire holiday parks.

But anyway, long story short, there was an aborted attempt at Pokémon Monopoly (which wasn't my copy), followed by watching Black Books. Wasn't bad at all, actually. The most noteworthy thing that happend was probably a short musical Thom (pronounced Thom) wrote about me. It's interesting because I've previously expressed my dislike of musical theatre to him, before discoving that musical theatre is his life. I'm not joking- if he isn't talking about musicals, he's singing songs from musicals.

James O'Malley: The Musical, as he called it, was a journey through my life... starting with my death. As you might guess, it was all very upbeat. The worst, or best bit, depending on your perspective was that whilst he was getting everyone there to do a read through, I had four of my friends chanting in unison how wonderful it was that I was dead. "Pfft", I thought, "At least I'm not a poncy theatre type".

Other than that, it was a lovely evening.

But wait, there's more!

Today was really the big day for me - it was the day of my big social folly to celebrate my birthday. My birthday isn't actually until Thursday (June 2nd... mark your calendars), but due to others having "better things to do", we did a bit of the celebration today. Spoiler: It was also a great day.

Logistically, it was probably the second most difficult thing I've ever coordinated. I caught the train with Matt and Soph, which was timed with precision to arrive so we could rondez-vous with the village people (Heather, JD, Emma) at 1049. It was remarkably well timed. I really wish there was an amusing anecdote attached to this segment of the story, as it feels somewhat unfinished otherwise.

We made our way to Megazone, passing by a posh bus stop advertisement- it had a TFT monitor mounted inside it, advertising the Hitcher Hiker's Guide film. The only thing was that it had been on for over 60 days- and at the bottom of the screen, there was a Windows XP balloon alert informing the reader that there was unused icons on the desktop. Good old Windows.

We got to Megazone, my massive blister not causing me as many problems as I'd anticipated. I'd phoned in advance- the bloke said that they shouldn't really have 16/17/18 year olds in there with 12 year olds... "You're not going to beat them up are you?", he asked. "God no, we're all sensible", I said as sincerely as I could. So it happend- we got to shoot 12 year olds with lazers.

I celebrated our arrival with coke. Heather wouldn't complain as it celebrating my birth. Result!

We got three games for a fiver each, which wasn't bad atall. The first game was a deathmatch... all vs all. It's like real life Quake 3, only slightly less fast paced in my case. I marched around the arena shooting anything that moved. Ducking and diving, peering around corners and so on. After the game, which lasted around 15 minutes, I came out on top- with a good few frags above my nearest opponent. I'd pwned everyone else at a pseudo-sport, how proud was I?

Next game, we had a team game- it was us, the loutish bunch of teenagers versus a group of kids who hadn't even couldn't even begin to imagine what osmosis is. Needless to say, we "won the day", and sent the kids to their proverbial home, proverbially crying, with their literal lunch money in our proverbial pockets. They kept camping, which was irritating. They also tended to swarm, so at time it was similar to the "how many five year olds could you take on" timeless question. It was like shooting fish in a barrel- picking them off one by one. I pistol whipped a few of them just to make sure they were dead.

Finally, for our last game, it was teams again, but they were split to be potentially more even. Of the people that mattered, it was me, JD and Soph versus Heather, Emma and Matt. The interesting variation this time was that each team had a "base" which they had to protect from the other team. We won. I put this victory down to my |33t skillz and clever handling of the gun- if it's held upside down and pointed around a corner, very little of the lazerable area is exposed.

Before we left Megazone, we had a game of Pool. It was Matt & Soph versus myself and Heather. We put up a good fight, although eventually, due to some dubious rules and mine and Heather's crappiness, we lost when it came down to the black. This was a very different experience to the height of my pool playing career. Matt also owned me at air hockey- although the puck didn't seem able to remain on the table for very long. It made me think we were going to be chucked out.

We chucked ourselves out shortly after the end of the game.

On the way to the Hut, we passed the stage entrace to the Haymarket Theatre- this seemed to bring back a repressed memory of Heather's, as she started making "disgusted" noises. Apparently she had to look after small children, who were all dancers, and make sure they were wearing the right costume. When I remarked how much I'd imagine a pedophile would enjoy that job, she didn't seem best pleased.

We arrived at Pizza Hut both merry and hungry. When seated, Matt told the waitress that it was my birthday... they got me two pink balloons. Great. What made it erm... even better, was that my friends tied them to my wrists.

The Pizza arrived, it was very nice by my standards, and we all pwned Matt, who was more or less advocating speeding. We all went "Booo, traffic accidents", followed by "pwned".

Post Hut, we had a wander around Leicester in search of a table tennis bat for Soph's brother. Whilst not terribly exciting in itself, the process of finding one was. We went into The Shires shopping center, and were childish on the escalators. We ended up being fragmented as a group and at completely different ends of Rackhams to each other. I still don't quite know how I ended up in a women's clothes shop. Either way, Soph left empty handed.

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about erm... shopping, was that we ended up in a sports shop in Leicester. I felt most uncomfortable- I neither wear sports clothing or play sports. Surrounded by metrosexuals and football shirts, Soph found herself paying a staggering ten English pounds for a one table tennis bat. It even said on the packaging "this is for the amateur or casual player"- exactly what her brother is, but for ten pounds, surely something of on-board computer with robotic claw variety of bat is what one would expect?

We were going back to Harborough on the train when it suddenly ground to a halt. There were some CHILDREN playing on the LINE. When I'm Prime MINISTER, I will order TRAINS to run over the LITTLE bastards and TEACH them a LESSON they'll NEVER forget. I blame the railway children. It's giving kids a false impression of what trains are like- and not showing just how dangerous they can be. Also, the posh bloke on the train who waved? He could have been a nutter. It's things like this that make me angry. This, and losing at pseudo-sports.

It was here that Soph left us for another man! Her boyfriend, Scott, in fact. The rest of us decided to go and loiter down by the river. Here was where the biggest shock of the day occured. For the past few months, I've been arguing with my friends that ducks cannot fly. I mean, I'd never seen one fly, and anyway, why would a duck need to fly when it can swim and walk? Three method of movement would be greedy. I couldn't believe it when Matt ran at some of the ducks in the river and they quite literally flew away. I shit you not. The ducks flew away. I was flabberghasted. I don't think I said anything for a good few minutes, just leaving my mouth wide open in shock. I'd be pwned. By a duck. On my birthday. (Celebration). Unbelievable.

We all got back to my house, and we slacked in the garden. I introduced a toy gun I got last Christmas, which can shoot small rubber balls rather powerfully. Needless to say, we spent a good few minutes, if not hours, trying to shoot a can of coke balanced on top of a tube of tennis balls. And then we shot Matt. And then we threw tennis balls at a can on Matt's head. I wasn't entirely "for" this idea, as I didn't like the idea of injuring my good friends. Nevertheless, I had a damn good shot at his head. Knocked the can right off of his head.

Watching Alan Partridge, I became slightly concerned that my friends would find out that I'm a massive fraud, and that practically everything I say is directly lifted from the TV series I'm Alan Partridge. Watching the first two episodes through made me want to cringe. I'd repeated some of the one liners so often that they'd practically become mine, so hearing them come of the mouth of Alan Partridge, a serial loser, was horrible to watch. Even Heather, arguably my biggest fan, conceeded that there's a "little bit" of Alan Partridge in me. Oo-er. It was still very funny though.

Both Matt and Emma left during our very mini Partridgeathon. This left myself, Heather and JD to slack it up twice as hard as usual - as we needed to make up for the loss of two people. We browsed far right websites, and laughed at their silly outlook on life. They're all nuts, and it's funny because they try so hard, yet will never be in power.

JD left after this... not wanting to make allegations, but maybe it was because he didn't like our lamenting of the far right view point? (ie: everyone == bad).

So me and Heather bantered on for a bit, until her dad picked her up (via car, not on to his shoulders or something... I hope, anyway). The only noteworthy-if-you-wern't-there-at-the-time thing that happend was I rediscovered my small collection of Gogo's Crazybones, from around 1995. (So old there isn't a decent website I can link to). The memories came flooding back, and I recalled to myself how I failed to be any good at the game that was attached to the plastic figurines.

But anyway, overall, I had a really wonderful day. The only thing as enjoyable as it would have been writing about it, glorifying myself in the process- incidentally, that's what you've just read.

Woo yay!

Last hour of the last day of school

2005-05-27T18:40:00.000+01:00

Today was the result of thirteen years of school. It was the last day of school evar. With less than a week until my 18th birthday, I'm now officially too old for sixth form. Oh, the mixture of emotions that I'm failing to express!

This said, it was a good day today on the social front, but not on the coke front. I went to school this morning, sans bag and educational equipment, for my one lesson of IT. We did nothing, as usual, and I did something I've never done before. I rebelled against the system... on my last day! When my now former IT teacher had left the room, I made a run for it, and walked with pace back to the sixth form centre. Unfortunately, at the end of the lesson, one of my now former "classmates" informed me that my now former teacher was annoyed that I'd run away from the lesson. I hastily ran back to the IT room and apologised- she didn't care! I'd be wound up! By someone who I'd only spoken to perhaps twice in two years! And on the last day of school evar! Unbelievable!

It was now I realised that after thirteen years of school, I hadn't successfully bullied anyone. I had to make up for lost time. The next lower sixth people who walked into the sixth form centre had some bad luck. "Give me your lunch money!", I cried in the most menacing voice I could muster. To my surprise he complied and handed me two fifty pence pieces. I was taken aback- I wasn't expecting this! The guilt set in immediately and I tried to give him his money back. "No, keep it", the poor innocent victim shouted as I tried to fix this horrific injustice. After a brief argument, he took the money but... handed it to Heggs. Oh well, at least I can say I've been a bully.

I spent period 2 slackin' it up in the sixth form centre. It was exciting at the time, but probably not to you, the reader.

For some reason, my now former school forces everyone to return to their form rooms at 10:25 every day for 20 minutes of... absolutely nothing. Seriously. This isn't an exaggeration based upon there being easy work, we literally do nothing. It's because other "houses" (it's like Harry Potter) have assemblies. This even happens when all assemblies are cancelled due to exams. But anyway, point is, I had to endure the last ever "registration" (as they call it). It was an awkward affair, as none of our form actually like each other. More awkwardly, my form teacher had bought us all presents... presumably she was expecting us to have bought her one... whoops!

Then it was another big slack until the exciting leaving assembly. The only notable occurrence here was the number of enemies I managed to make with literally only hours left of full time education that doesn't have a big loan and a mountain of debt attached to it. I think I hurt my good lower sixth friend Heather's feelings by suggesting it could be the last time she ever sees me. (Unlikely). I also criticised another lower sixth's voice as "irritating". Needless to say, I'm brilliant at winning friends.

Finally, at midday, the big conclusion to my school career occurred. All of the upper sixth were in the upstairs of the sixth form centre, the projector was on, the head boy and girl were sitting smugly at the front of the room, and the senior staff were poncing. It was the leaving assembly, of course. (I think I spoilt the surprise of what happened after this big build up by mentioning it in the previous paragraph).

After a brief word from the very autocratic head of the sixth form, including a slyly played rendition of the Imperial March, the self-important head boy and head girl, who were elected after arguably the most corrupt ballot this side of Iran, presented various "awards" to various members of the sixth form. (Read: their group of friends).

The winners were largely decided by the people presenting the awards, with one or two of the awards being "democratic". Hmm.

The awards were both silly and serious in content- the standard "best sports people" and "best musicians", and the pseudo-standard "biggest flirt", "most likely to be Prime Minister". I say pseudo-standard because they're like standard "silly awards". Probably. I was gutted at not winning any awards- after my erm... massive contribution to sixth form life, you'd have expected me to at least get "best celebrity encounter", or something. The aforementioned Heggs won the award especially created for himself... best in drag.

Farce!

The soul band (starring my fellow Canned Ham editors, JD and Evilmonkey) played us out with a couple of songs that were so very close to sounding like Warsaw Pack, one of my favourite bands. Unfortunately, they were bland pop songs during the singing bits, as opposed to ranty left wing politics.

But anyway, afterwards, it was the end. No more teachers, no more school, no more homework, that's what's cool. Oh, apart from the exams THAT WILL DECIDE THE REST OF OUR LIVES.

Long story short, I ended up at (yet another of my many friends, who must all sound the same if you've only got my descriptions of events to go on) Scot's house. All of the usual upper 6th gang were there- so we did what we knew best. Slack. We slacked it up his garden, drinking coke. It was like being in the sixth form centre we'd abandoned only hours earlier... and it was lovely. It was like my two favourite activities rolled into one, with a lazy rabbit in the background.

The nicest thing was that I was spending the last day of school with four of my oldest friends- Andy, Craig, Teb and Bouff. (The names probably mean nothing to you... they don't have websites so I can't provide links for context). At around half three Bouff, Teb and I did the most pageantry-like thing possible. We took a final walk home like the old days. It was that exciting. When we parted, I shook their hands and walked off triumphant. Not sure why, though, as I didn't win any awards. How poignant!

Coming this summer: BIRTHDAY XVIII

2005-05-25T18:15:00.000+01:00

This is more of a filler update than anything else. As you can see from the other recent post, I'm planning a big party for my birthday. Not sure how many people will attend- although I'm going to invite practically everyone I speak to at school. My mum says I can have a maximum of 15 people round- quite frankly, I don't know if I've got that many friends. But time will tell.

I'm hoping that it'll end up as successful as other people's wild parties that I've been to. The only caveat I've put on it is that I won't be providing alcohol, as I don't drink. I will however, be providing an awful lot of coke.

I've neglected to mention... this is all in aid of my imminent 18th birthday. I can't wait. By which I mean, it hasn't quite occured to me yet that it's happening so soon. Excitingly, this is the first year that my friend's have asked me "what do you want for your birthday?", suggesting that they'll be spending their own cash on their superior (me). Can't wait.

Best bit is, this isn't my only birthday celebration! Myself and five or six of my tier 1 friends will hopefully be taking a trip to Megazone and Pizza Hut on Sunday. Fingers crossed we'll be able to own some ten year olds at "lazer tag", as they call it, and then we'll be able to binge on unlimited refill Pepsi at Pizza Hut. We did the same thing last year, and it was a very successful day. Apart from... erm... the ten year olds beat us.

Apologies for an uninteresting update. Unless you're my enemy, Kayleigh, who damaged my face today with a pencil case, in which case, I'm laughing as I type, at the mental image of you looking disgruntled at having had your time wasted by an update that isn't really going anywhere.

2005-05-25T18:12:00.000+01:00

This is exciting- to celebrate my birth I'm having a big rave. Well, relatively big. My mum's concerned about people smashing the house up, and stuff. Either way, it's going to be an interesting day. Photos on here afterwards.

Act your rage

2005-05-22T13:11:00.000+01:00

It's all a big skive

2005-05-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

The lack of updates recently has been due to a lack of things happening. That seems to be the trouble with blogs; everyone isn't superman.

The big "thing" at the moment is revision, due to imminent exams. It's weird, when revising, everything else ever becomes infinately more interesting and appealing as an activity. Why else do you think I'm desperately trying to update about nothing? I've found myself taking an interest in my mother's TV diet... that is to say, Property Ladder, House Doctor, Weed 'em and Reap, and every other intellectual holocaust on TV. It's just preferrable to revising.

I've got a retake of my Pure 2 Maths exam on Monday morning... can't wait. I used this as an excuse to take all of today's lessons off as "exam leave". I didn't inform any of the teachers though. Whoops. Instead of doing some exciting ICT revision, I stayed at home and watched a documentary about irrigating the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on UKTV History. Whilst I didn't stay for the end of the programme, it appears that they used some sort of clever corkscrew instead of a shaduf to raise water. Exciting stuff.

When I finally made it into school... damnit! This isn't interesting! I'm not going to continue with this, as it is insanely dull. The only other interesting thing to come out of all of this is today was my first zero coke day since counting began.

A strange visitor

2005-05-16T22:57:00.000+01:00

The weirdest thing ever happend earlier. I can't express just how frightening it was with mere words, so you'll have to imagine me waving my arms about, with a shocked expression my face.

My father and I were on our way back from the Post Office Depot picking up a B3ta t-shirt that I'd ordered, when I spotted the car in front of us was being driven by none other than my Maths teacher. Whilst not particularly shocking in itself, the fact that he was heading towards my house was. "Nah, can't be" I thought to myself. My dad joked that he was coming to see us.

He was. Ooh-heck.

Turns out he's that dedicated to his job, that he had driven to my house to hand back to me my maths coursework! He proceeded to give me an impromptu maths lesson on the door step, which was weird in itself. Not that I'm complaining- it seems that he really wants me to do well. Just a shame that I'm terrible at maths. I actually feel reasonably guilty because of this.

At least he didn't "drop round" yesterday, if we ignore the fact that it was a Sunday, when I was home alone. That would have been vaguely surreal and I'm not sure I would have believed that it actually had happend if my parents hadn't confirmed it. Bizarre.

Exciting rave!

2005-05-15T00:41:00.000+01:00

Tonight was exciting! My parents and sister have gone to Wales for the weekend, so I did the stereotypical teenage thing and had a wild party. The theory was that after a loud rave, with the neighbours complaining and waving their fists, going "grr", that something would be broken. I'd then have a hilarious escapade first trying to repair and then replace the damaged item. In the end my parents would find out, I'd own up to it, and we'd learn a lesson. I'd be given some sort of lame punishment, like being grounded, meaning that I can't leave my house... how dreadful!

But anyway, nothing of the sort happend. It was a very civil occasion- Dundas, Heather, JD, Emma, and Soph all made it and we enjoyed some top quality slacking. We ordered pizza, we ate pringles, we risked burning down my house by making popcorn. It was all good.

Whilst the popcorn making was occuring, I looked up to the kitchen ceiling, and much to my surprise, the smoke alarm's battery was missing. It occured to me that my parents might have been planning to kill me- leaving the gas on, and waiting for me to light up. They know I'm completely inept when it comes to looking after myself, and practical skillz. How will I know how to detect gas? If I'd decided to take up smoking, it could have been a very fatal weekend- both in terms of short term death and long, drawn out, painful death.

At one point, I suggested we play trivial pursuits- Dundas, despite boasting he is the best at trivia, was reluctant to play. By the time I had two cheeses and he had zero, we abandoned the game, with me victorious by default. Needless to say, I had the last laugh.

JD and Emma, the treacherous traitors they are, had to leave at 9 for a more traditional "wild teenage party" hosted by my enemy, Kayleigh. Trust her to try and wreck my great social occasion by going and having a birthday on the same weekend- completely inconsiderate. I told them to pass on a message from me, to her: "You're a horrible person, and you really smell. You look like the character from Byker Grove who setup the radio station, you stupid northerner". I don't know if she recieved the message.

Kayleigh, I know you've read my blog and posted abusive comments under the pseudonym "Wellz". So, read the above message and consider it. Then give up smoking, as it's bad for you. Then apologise to humanity for being such an awful person. Then forget how I'm using this blog to escalate the tension.

But anyway, the rest of the evening went nicely despite not doing what we originally planned. Dundas really wanted to watch the Star Wars trilogy, which he'd bought round on VHS (!). Instead, we slacked, swore, and watched a compilation of System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine videos on MTV2. This angered Dundas, as not only was he missing spending the evening on teamspeak, talking to nerds about a virtual economy that amounts to virtually nothing, but he wasn't getting his own way! When everyone else had left, he stuck around and ranted about how crappy the evening had been. "Pfft", I thought and said simultaneously. I don't value his opinion since he became addicted to online gaming. Seriously- his mother told my mother at their weekly poncing session that he's on teamspeak, shouting into it at 1am on a school night, and doesn't go to bed until around 3am. He's a nutter with silly hair.

But overall, it was a damn good rave by my standards. It's just a shame that my clever laptop-connected-to-stereo-MP3-jukebox setup was spoilt by the appearance of a certain girl in a tub.

The whole evening generated an awful lot of rubbish- I made the effort to move it all to the kitchen "work" surface that night. The theory was that I'd come home on Monday and quickly bin it all then. Unfortunately, my parents got home first and nearly went mental. Whoops.

The social committee black hole

2005-05-09T19:28:00.000+01:00

Daily Mail alert! I'm going on a fully over-blown scare story today! After breaktime today in my free period I was slackin' it up as I usually do, Coke in hand. We, by which I mean, myself, Soph, Matt, JD and Martin, heard some drilling and thought nothing of it.

When we left after the "lesson", we discovered arguably the most horrific thing ever seen in the history of humanity- greatly out ranking the trench warfare of World War I, the atomic bombs in Japan, and Mr Goatse with his party piece. The school had put up a advertisement in an educational establishment! Being the pinko-commies we are, we were outraged at this commercialism in schools... And for what?

The teacher who appeared to be in charge of this reckoned that the £25 (!) a month it would get the school, would go to to so-called "social committee". This is an ironic name, because the members of the social committee don't seem to be the overly-social types. Sure, they ~~probably~~ socialise more than me (I'm averaging 0.078 social occasions per day), but still, what "social" activities have they organised over the course of the last two school years? I can't think of anything. I'd go as far as saying they couldn't organise their way out of a social bag. The question is... Where is the social committee money going?!

Having my life dismantled whilst driving

2005-05-05T20:15:00.000+01:00

I had a driving lesson today- about my 40th. I'm still not very near to taking my test, but I'm "getting there". The driving lesson itself went well- I didn't make any major mistakes, just didn't anticipate stuff quick enough or something.

The interesting thing was that my driving instructor, who's a little bit of a sexist, racist, homophobe, when I got on to the subject of todays election, started on a rant that eventually ended up with him going on about how too many people are going to University for pointless reasons, and not learning a trade. When he found out that I'm going to be doing politics (for you pedants, I know its International Relations & Globalisation, but they're much the same thing), he started to rant on about how I'm leeching off of the system and wasting my life, and just avoiding work. All completely true.

"But all the money I'm getting is through a loan"
"And you're going to pay back every penny you get?"
"Yes"
"..."
I should have said "Pwned".

"You'll never be a politician", he claims, destroying all of my dreams and aspirations in one go. I'm just glad he didn't say, "you'll never drive!".

Obligatory update about work.

2005-04-30T22:11:00.000+01:00

What you might not know about me, is that behind the facade of elitism, superiority and pwning j00, I actually have a job. I'm a till monkey. I spend eleven hours a week standing behind a till, talking to morons, selling them deodrant, paint and hanging basket linings.

The intellectual stimulation is minimal- for the sake a comparison, every week I go to Sainsburys and buy The Independent, whereas my co-workers tend to read Pick Me Up. Whilst there's nothing wrong with this, as such, it'd be nice to have a conversation with someone who knows as much about politics and foreign policy as I think I do.

It's not a bad job, really. (Lie). I get £4.31 an hour, which is considerably more than some of my peers who work in other menial labour camps, and I get double time for the three hours I work on Sundays. The thing that annoys me is the repetitive nature of the job, and how I could make a flow chart of everything I say and do. I'm merely an extension of the IBM POS system that works out the totals. It has gotten to the stage where I don't need to be fully concentrating and can go into autopilot.

Today I was thinking about what questions to ask all of the different candidates should one of them try and canvass me whilst I was on my break. Whilst doing this, I probably served around thirty people, without remembering a thing about them.

"If you just put your card into the top of the machine...Noo, the other way around...That'ss it...Iff you just press 'OK' to confirm the amount and then you can enter your pin number and press 'OK'...Anyy second now...Theree we go, and you can take your card!", I say with a smile on my face, whilst actually thinking about flags and treaties.

It's annoying when something happens that causes me to break my lack of concentration, because I look down on to a till full of things I don't remember scanning, and not knowing what stage of the transaction I am in. I'll often say "and if you could sign here please" whilst handing someone their receipts and card, and gesturing for them to get out of my sight.

On the rare moments when I do have to engage my brain a little, I try to be creative. Calling people down from another queue to come and be served by me, I try to say something slightly edgier than normal company policy might like. "This till's open if you want to come down... aww, c'mon... I'll be your friend".

The infuriating thing is, the job could be made so much more interesting for everyone involved, at no extra cost to the company. Why can't they rotate the till monkeys and the shelfstackerss regularly? How I'd love to be one step back in the supply chain, and be given the freedom to roam the store, pricing gun in one hand, box of Cillit Bang in the other.

I keep wanting to quit- I say to myself on an almost weekly basis "I'm going to resign", but then I remember how much money I'm making, and all of the consumer electronics I could potentially buy. There's a lesson in this, kids. Please, never get a job. You will regret it.

More crap from ITV

2005-04-29T21:51:00.000+01:00

I'm angry. Angry and better than you. More specifically, better than ITV. My sister usually has control of the TV after school, today was no exception. Her viewing choices are always poor- she never seems to watch BBC News 24 or documentaries about engineering. Today, one of the programmes she watched has annoyed me so much, I felt motivated to write this.

The programme was "Girls in Love", and as with most crap, was on ITV. Now, obviously I'm not a part of the target market, but the thing that struck me about this programme was how repulsive it must be to everyone. Everything was wrong about this programme. For those of you who unfortunately havn't seen this, it seems to follow the lives of some teenage girls whilst they act pathetically and do bugger all, all whilst using the most irritating presentational devices known to man. Note: that is not "known to woman", otherwise this programme might have been saved in post production, assuming 30 minutes of library footage could have been used to replace the shite that I had to endure. For the sake of some quotes, "ooh, ooh, let's act pathetic, ooh, who fancies who? Ooh, ooh, lets have a three minute montage of deciding what to wear, ooh, ooh, let's overlay some faux-handdrawn cartoon over the live action to exaggerate a point. Ooh, let's constantly have pop music as background music too!". Agh.

In an attempt to salvage something constructive out of this proverbial car crash, I've come up with this alternative script. (It's a shame the car crash is proverbial, as a real one would make the programme infinately more exciting).

INT: LEAD CHARACTERS HOUSE

Lead character: Oh no! There's an election coming up and I don't know which party most reflects my political beliefs!

Secondary character: Don't worry! There's still time! We need to go and look at the issues.

Cue a montage of clips going though the different issues, like asylum, taxes, university fees. Have the characters going to talk to people in hospitals and universities. Keep it fast paced, show them shaking hands with third parties, don't use any audio, just keep music going over the top. The song can be 'Know Your Enemy' by Rage Against the Machine to give it a suitably politically charged undercurrent.

Lead character: Wow! That was informative!

Secondary character: ...and educational!

Lead character: Oh look, the person I fancy in this weeks episode has sent me a text message! I'll look delighted whilst animated flowers and fireworks fill the screen!

Secondary character: Have you learnt nothing?!

Lead character: Yes, you're right. I think it will be better for society if we encourage people like our former ignorant selves to take their own lives.

Zoom out into the sky, as the sound effects of mass suicide are heard.

Talking to Old People

2005-04-28T21:44:00.000+01:00

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.

2005-04-27T23:59:00.000+01:00

I had my hair cut and a shave today. Here you can see the progression. From left to right: Before, in limbo post-haircut-pre-shave, and After, with the new look fully complete. I prefer the more hairy me.

And this is where blogging slips into tedium...

2005-04-27T21:54:00.000+01:00

Now I've started this blog and got some positive feedback from people I know in real life, I'm dying to post yet more about a new, exciting, adventure that I've had, wanting to jump on the "James is cool at writing stuff" bandwagon. Unfortunately, nothing much has happened.

The potential for adventure only seems to occur during the day time, as that's when I'm at school, socialising, casually swearing and acting all elitist. In the evening I spend night after night, searching, looking for an answer. It's the question that drives me (etc), "why is IT coursework so lengthly, boring and tedious?".

In school, the most exciting thing that has been happening has probably been the continuing saga of my coke intake. It got to the stage yesterday when there was effectively a hostage taking, with my friends all working against me to prevent me from drinking any more of the lovely searing acid. It was resolved in the end after careful negotiations and the bell for the end of lunch going. This said, I have been good this week- sticking to 1 coke per day for the past three days.

The other exciting revelation this week has been local (former) MP Edward Garnier, who came into promote himself in a bid to get re-elected. We discovered that out-arguing a socially liberal Tory MP is actually more difficult than arguing against a deluded lunatic fringe party who have no grasp of the real world. We challenged him on all sorts, the mental economic policy, fox hunting, but he responded quite reasonably. The problem with being socially liberal is that we couldn't get him on Conservative racism in regard to gypsies and foreigners. Vaguely interestingly, Garnier is the shadow Attorney General, so if William "14 Pints" Hague had rigged the 2001 election, it could well have been Garnier going "it's illegal.. oh, alright, it's a bit legal then".

Fingers crossed I'll have another big adventure soon, so stay tuned.

Pwning n00bs

2005-04-26T21:17:00.000+01:00

My IT lesson today was surprisingly amusing, given that I've now got THREE days in which to do six months worth of IT coursework. Ooh-heck.

Some main school chav scum were also in the room, as presumably, their proper IT teacher had failed to control them. When the head of IT left the room, one of them enquired to anyone who would listen "Is there any way I can hack in and turn off [chav friend]'s computer?". "Yes, you need the upl0ad c0dez", I said in a rather sly way.

I then proceeded to talk him through a series of key presses that would bring up what I promised would be a hacking control panel, or something. Long story short, I managed to get him to type "I SUCK" in Microsoft Word before realising it was all a wind up. How I laughed. In fact, how we all laughed, apart from him and his friend.

There's only one thing better than a gullible chav, and that's a gullible chav who needs his friend to point out he's being wound up. Needless to say, I had the last laugh.

Matt's Birthday

2005-04-25T22:49:00.000+01:00

Now this is real blog stuff- I've done something that isn't very interesting to those who weren't there, yet I'm going to tell you about it anyway. Yeah, look at me and my poncy blog. I'm that casual and hi-tech I don't even have to put the word "blog" in speech marks to maintain my credibility. Woot.

Anyway, last Sunday it was my good friend Matt's birthday. I mentioned him in an earlier update about Derek Clark, and that is basically all you need to know about him. Spoiler: there's no twist to this tale or anything, it's just me boasting, making observations and telling you what happened. Like you care.

Having spent my school life up until this (school) year being ignorant to others birthdays, this year I've jumped on the proverbial birthday bandwagon and I'm now like, the best friend evar, because I buy stuff for people. I got Matt a CD off of his Amazon wishlist, and cleverly used an Amazon associates link to get myself 5% off- I'm fighting "the system" and winning! He was delighted, probably. I mean, I would be if JAMESO'MALLEY (one word, all caps, is the proper formatting for all contexts) had just bought me a birthday present. For the sake of being concise, it was by Dashboard Confessional, and I believe it had a picture of a car on the front.

Matt had a birthday party- it was originally intended to be a barbecue, but due to weather conditions and fire, things didn't happen that way. Not that it detracted from the general merriment.

The big shock of the night was JD, who's known for being more anti-alcohol, a |33t haX0r and a stage lighting expert, was, shock, horror, drinking. Once. Point is, we had a lot of fun making references to him being drunk, and not being able to remember things, and having his vision skewed, and so on. The unfortunate thing was this overshadowed somewhat my coke intake, meaning I wasn't centre of attention.

I'm starting to think I'm a rather one dimensional character, as someone with whom I've only ever done a price check for at work judged me to be "like a politician". Which was nice, considering that's what I'd like to do. "Ask me a question and I'll avoid it", I boasted. "Why?" John replied, "Well you're really asking two questions there...", I retorted, and became the centre of attention for being hilarious.

Matt's cats annoyed me- maybe it's just cats in general, maybe B3ta has set my expectations too high, but they're snooty little things. It's the way they walk and ponce about, it was like I should have been shaking its hand in a humble manner or something. This was, of course, until it started licking its underside, then I had the upper-hand in the dignity Olympics. I was competeting with a cat... has my life reached a new low?

Later in the evening, or more specifically, six cokes later, we moved inside because it was cold, and Matt bought out his NES. I was pleasantly surprised by Duckhunt, having never played it before (20 years too late). In the game, you have three shots to try and hunt a duck, unsurprisingly. What makes this exciting, aside the four colours per sprite graphics, is that you get to use an official Nintendo light gun- something which I don't think Nintendo have done since. They're all pacifist now who don't like violent games. I guess Miyamoto must have been out of the room when they okayed that one. Nevertheless, the light gun was surprisingly accurate once you figured out how the sights worked, but I was still rubbish.

I think what surprised me most about this was that in it the ducks were flying, which I don't think they can do. My friend Heather, who was also among the party goers, was and is particularly adamant that they can fly- but I've never seen a duck fly, have you? I'll be honest, we did go down to the canal once to try and see if we could see a duck flying. There were ducks, but a complete and utter lack of flight. The only thing flying was the argument that ducks could fly, and it was on a collision course.

Incidentally, I made a flash game a while back which involved shooting ducks. The flying ones earn you more points because they don't actually exist!

Anyway, we also played Mario 1 and 2 (Western Mario 2, with the picking stuff up and throwing) for the NES, which mostly involved seeing Matt boast how good he was at a level, and seeing him fall down the first hole.

Overall, it was a good party- if not a "party" in the semi-legal barn-rave sense, but nobody likes them anyway. I had a nice time, and just in case you're reading, Happy Birthday Matt! (Again)

Euroskeptastic

2005-04-21T21:12:00.000+01:00

Today UKIP MEP Derek Clark came into school. You might be aware I'm not his biggest fan. He came into school earlier in the school year to have a bit of a rant about anything and everything that's good in the world- me and Matt attempted to "pwn" him by challenging what he had to say. The trouble was that there wasn't a designated time for any questions, so we had to interrupt him and try and make a point based upon what he was ranting about- as you might have guessed, he wasn't talking about the more favourable points of the European Union, so it was very difficult to try and make a point. Everyone at school claims that I got pwned.

Today was my chance for a rematch.

Dezza, as he is "affectionately" known, started off like he knows best- a torrent of rhetoric about the "corruption" and how everyone is lying and how the news programmes are unbalanced as they don't feature a lunatic fringe party who have somewhere around the region of zero current seats in (Westminster) Parliament.

During his tirade, he went on about the job losses at Rover and how the government should have bailed out a failing company in order to protect British jobs. He also ranted about how jobs in the coal industry should have been protected. Minor problem there Dezza, there's no coal left! I seized the opportunity and scrapped my original question for instead, "how many jobs would be lost if Britain pulled out the EU?", "Think of all the beaurocrats!" I cried. He claimed that they'd be "zero" job losses. I can't remember how he justified this. I don't think he did actually justify it.

The problem was, despite having prepared questions that would knock him to the ground, and give him a good kick in whilst he screamed for his mother and volunteered his lunch money, he just kept talking . Dundas asked him the question "What's your policy on terrorism?", the theory being he'd simply answer "it's bad", and then he'd go on to tell Derek how UKIP issued a press release saying that letter bombing MPs was somewhat justified (seriously). If there's one thing I admire about Derek Clark is his amazing ability to dodge questions. Ask him about terrorism, and he'll turn his answer in to a 15 minute jeremiad of the Greek justice system, and how wonderful Britain is and how awful Johnnie Foreigner is.

Unsurprisingly, we ran out of time as the bell went for lunch. As the proletariat dashed out of the hall indoctrinated and hungry, we (that is to say, myself, Dundas and Matt) stayed to ask more. This is where I think for a few minutes at least, I became a slightly politer version of Jeremy Paxman. I asked Dezza if UKIP will ever be taken seriously as a credible party if you consider that in an interview with BBC Four's The Late Edition last month, the presenter, Marcus Brigstocke spoke to BNP leader Nick Griffin, and Griffin called UKIP "hair curlingly racist". I also cited UKIP's alliance in the European Parliament with the League of Polish Families- a nazi Catholic group who hate homosexuality, and have been linked with skin head groups who have attacked gay rights activists. He seemed to avoid the Nick Griffin connection, but went on to explain how the Poles were "devout Catholics", and thus it was okay for them to be really right wing. I questioned if UKIP could morally be allied with these people, and he seemed to say "yeah, basically". "Is this a case of my enemy's enemy is my friend?" I asked, "Not quite" he said, but he "sees my point". Pwned.

On the way out of the hall, we followed him and pressed him on the environment. This is probably where the most unbelievable part of the interrogation happend. He reckons that renewable energy doesn't work, and that in bad (well, good) weather, wind farms won't work, and we'll have no electricity. He seemed to think there wasn't any redundancy measures and that we'd have to run fossil fueled power plants anyway, "just in case". He was completely incapable of grasping the idea of multiple sources of power (wind, hydro, wave, solar, etc) placed all around the country.

Frighteningly, this former science teacher tried to defend fellow UKIPper Steve Reed who said "[‘Renewable resources’] are not renewable… Taking energy from winds and tides irreversibly enervates the weather system and slows the rotation of the Earth". He claimed that wind power slows down the wind, and basically put, was very, very wrong. Dundas explained this to him. At least it wasn't as bad as the first time he came in to school, when he cited chaos theory. Pwned, I think.

At this point, the deputy head of Sixth Form intervened, presumably to save Dezza from any further embarassment. When I saw him a few minutes later, after Dezza had left in his (proudly British built) Toyota, he said "well done", to us, which was nice.

In summary, I think we came off better in this rematch than first time around, it's just a shame we didn't have more time.

The New Pope

2005-04-20T22:18:00.000+01:00

Why is it that days after I suggest the old Pope was a nazi, it turns out that the new Pope was in the Hitler youth and German army?!

2005-04-20T19:38:00.000+01:00

I was at a party on Saturday night- one of the guests dressed as a woman to apparently raise money for his gap year. I think he just enjoyed dressing as a woman.

Don't support school-sponsored events

2005-04-19T22:57:00.000+01:00

At lunchtime today, I witnessed something horrible. I'm often criticised for not having a sense of humour, but it was beyond a joke. Today, for some reason the teachers at school had some sort of "talent" (and I use the term loosely) show. That is to say, students had the opportunity to pay 50 pence to watch a selection of teachers try and be "entertaining" on the "stage".

The money raised apparently went to a good cause. I don't know which, but I'd wager it enhanced the staff room Sky subscription.

I'll be honest, I didn't know what I was going to see until I was in there. My good friend Dundas was the one who talked me in to attending (I'm very easily influenced). This said, I didn't anticipate anything good. This was a school production, after all.

First on stage was the English teacher and the RE teacher playing the recorder. I know the instrument is universally criticised, but it was horrible. Maybe they were being ironic, maybe they were participating in what was to become a running joke. I don't know. What I do know is that of my 50p, which could have been used to buy a Twix, was paying for a sub-standard ITV stage show, which instead of starring Martin Clunes or being presented by Ant & Dec, featured the crappiest "celebrities" with the crappiest "talents".

After a couple of other mediocre "performances", including an unrehearsed keyboard atrocity, the "performance", if it can be called that, was the PE teacher and the science teacher who came on stage with inflatable guitars. "Oh no, they're only going to sing! They can't even play the guitar!", I thought. It was worse than this- the song started and it was apparently a "Busted" song. Did they sing? No. They didn't sing or play the guitar. It's easier to describe it like this as defining what they didn't do is easier than defining what they did, because they did... nothing.

It was obvious to all involved that they'd originally planned to run on to the stage, and "hilariously" jump, saying to the audience "look at us, we're hilarious, we're running about on stage pretending to play the guitar along to a well known song", but in reality, they became really self-conscious so just... stood there. This wasn't talent, this wasn't anything. This made me angry as it didn't justify my 50p and was wasting valuable slacking time.

The finale was the languages department performing a "Grease" song. Whoopee. Emphasising the lines that contain innuendo make it funny. Apparently.

I think the main problem, aside from the lack of rehearsals, was that I'm jaded. I use the internet, I read the B3ta newsletter, I've seen the pulp fiction theme tune played with a blender and a guitar. I've seen a parody song about the London Underground that has gratuitous swearing, I've seen a cat with sellotape on its sides being forced to walk sideways, I've seen an array of minor celebrity in silly situations. Nothing the school can do can surprise me, the internet has already done it, years ago. It's like that Peter Kay video. "Oh look, it's Ronnie Corbett! Isn't this great?!". No. I've seen minor celebrities before, this isn't exciting.

In summary, schools, get with the times. Internet, give schools a chance. Kilroy, get out of Britain as we don't like Orange people here.

Introduction

2005-04-19T22:41:00.000+01:00

Hello, my name is James O'Malley and this is going to act as my blog for either as long as I can be bothered to update, or I code my own |33t PHP one, which I'm far too lazy to do at the moment.

I'm the webmaster of PKMN.NET (which I'll probably refer to as "PUK", should I mention it), the world's largest and most comprehensive Pokémon website, a contributor to CANNEDHAM.CO.UK, which is a satirical news website where I say things about the Pope in poor taste, and insult Kilroy behind his back. I'm still in school, in the upper sixth, doing A2s this year, so I obviously know all about everything, and I'm always right, and my parents don't know better.

Why have I reduced myself to creating a blog? And indeed, why do I think anyone will care? I just want an outlet for my creative rantings that aren't funny enough for Canned Ham, but where I still have a point to make. I'll also be using this blog for recycling anything vaguely amusing I said at school, so that it doesn't feel wasted.

Will anyone read it? I hope so, but I'm not really that bothered. By which I mean, I crave attention to the extent that I'm trying to cultivate a personality cult around me.