Books.

Started my new job today.
It's good, and it's nice to know I'm getting paid for going into work.

Two intriguiging books stick in my mind:
The Diabetic ABC War-Time Supplement by R.D Lawrence, which gives a recipe for cream cheese that calls for placing milk at 70 degrees for 30 hours, and then straining through a muslin for 5 hours.

The second was a book that didn't have a title. The front page was just a shade of royal blue with a small swastika in the corner. Scary stuff, I decided it wouldn't be best to put it in the reject bin.

A Christian atheist?

This might not be the kind of words you would expect to read on the blog of an atheist, so brace yourself:

I like Christianity. I like it very much. In a sense, I feel I am mildly Christian.

Don't get me wrong, I also hate Christianity, and in many ways, I cannot stand religion. So let's clear a few things up.
I certainly do not believe in God, but contrary to what an irrelevant, ancient book suggests, I doubt that really matters.  

See, at the heart of Christianity, and indeed most of the mainstream religions, there is a message that I could not agree with more strongly.
It is a message that preaches kindness, generosity, loyalty and compassion.

I think that's excellent. I hate the way the world has become a selfish, money obsessed cesspit with a disgusting mainstream culture of greed and narcissism.
I think we should all make an effort to be kind, and selfless and generous.
At the moment, if you try to be always kind and selfless and generous, it will get you nowhere, because people find it far too easy to take advantage of you. So instead we all have to descend into the same level of cynicism, and we all have to look out for ourselves, and ourselves only.

So, morally and ethically, I fundamentally agree with the message of Christianity. Help people. Be kind. Be generous.

But what I don't understand, is why these concepts have to be tied into the idea of a God.
The Bible and the teachings of Christianity often offer wise advice, strong moral stories and the uplifting idea that humans doing good to each other can only be a good thing.

Why does there need to be a power-hungry Santa Claus figure at the top of the pyramid who demands that the most important thing that you do in your life is believe in him?

Why would it matter if you believe in him or not?
Say you live a kind, selfless life but you don't ever believe in God, you don't go to church and you don't pray. You don't do those kind selfless things because you want to improve your chances of getting into Heaven for eternal bliss. You just do them because it's the right thing to do, and you feel good when you do good.

Why would it matter if you're wrong at the end. You die, and God pops up and says "yeah, I do exist, you were wrong not to believe in me".
It wouldn't change the fact that you lived a good, kind, selfless life.
If anything it makes it more noble.

Christians who believe in God (and it works for most religions) can justify their good deeds because they are getting something out of it.
I'm not expecting to get anything out of being nice to people.

I don't believe in God. But I think that if he does exist he would rather I do good things and not believe in him, than do bad things and completely believe in him.

Strictly Come Dancing, and why it can't/won't last.

The following is a boring rant with lots of unsubstantiated reactionary guesswork and pathetic self-indulgent opinions on culture.

I hate Strictly Come Dancing. But I don't hate the people who watch it.
It's entertainment. It's made to be entertainment. I'm sad to say that for a long time, I was a bit delusional about hating it.

I think I'm just so used to liking things that, in general, most people don't like that I begin to associate things that I don't like with stupidity.
And that's not to say I think I'm more intelligent than people who watch Strictly, I'm not saying that at all. (I'll do a blog about intelligence later). But in general, I tend to find that counter-culture tends to attract a more intelligent level of person than the mainstream.
But my new thinking points me in the direction that perhaps there is just a lot more people counting as "mainstream" and so it has a wider range of intelligence.

As an example, I can use comedians.
My favourite comedian is Stewart Lee.
My favourite comedian is not Lee Evans.
Using a basic straw poll of my life I can tell you that I know more people who like Lee Evans than I know who like Stewart Lee.
I can also tell you that everyone I know who likes Stewart Lee, I would count as intelligent. And of all the people who like Lee Evans, I know some who are very intelligent, and some who are very stupid, and most variations in the middle.

Now, these days, Stewart Lee might be becoming a bit more mainstream. But he definitely has limited appeal. Lee Evans definitely counts as mainstream. I'm not having a go at him. I don't mind Lee Evans.

But anyway, so the point is, lots of people like Strictly Come Dancing and X-Factor and all that other stuff that I think is rubbish. Lots of people who are much more intelligent than I am.
But I realised I am factoring intelligence far too much into the debate. It is just entertainment, that's all. It doesn't have to have intellectual properties. It doesn't need to make you think.

That's the first point I wanted to make: an acceptance that I was wrong, as usual.

The second point, however, is that Strictly Come Dancing has a limited life span.
Now, I suppose this is obvious. Nothing last forever, especially in fickle TV land.
But it hits home this series with the success of Ann Widdecombe, who is clearly the least skilled dancer, and the least attractive person on the show. And that is the reason she has been successful.

It is a glorified freak-show.
"What shall we do tonight for entertainment?"
"Let's laugh at the fat ugly woman making a fool of herself on TV again"

If you want proof, the exact same thing happened in the last series with John Sargeant. He quit the show for exactly the reason that he had a real chance of winning. Winning on the basis that he was the least talented and people just wanted to laugh at him a bit more.

So the problem arises as what's next for Strictly?

How do you top the entertainment factor of Ann Widdecombe?
We've had a fat, ugly man. Now a fat, ugly woman. What's next?
The American version has already used Heather Mills... she was the next logical step (forgive the pun).
Stephen Hawking perhaps? And then what? The rotting corpse of Michael Jackson? Hitler's skeleton?

It can't last. And it won't.

'Where' and 'were', and the embarrasing way I remember the difference.

This is a song called "Where do you go" by No Mercy.

I don't know anything about it.
And I don't want to know anything.
It's shit.

In finding this video, I listened to about the first 20 seconds of the song. And that is the first time I have heard it in years, maybe even a decade.

Despite this fact, it has played a very prominent role in my life.

That's because, to this day (and it doesn't happen often at all any more, but it did occasionally, probably up until I had finished college) if I couldn't remember whether 'where' was spelt 'where' or 'were'. I would silently repeat the opening words of the song, which are simply: "where do you go?" and from that I would know the difference.

I don't know why.
I just always remembered that "where do you go" was spelt like that, and so I can always remember whether it is 'where' or 'were'.

A brief update.

In recent times this blog has become far too cheery. I am not living up to my mantra of lengthy rants on how awful everything is.

Well, it is awful.

Bloody Tories. No job. No money. Fear of failure. Likelihood of failure. Haven't written anything creatively (apart from guides to countries I haven't been to) in ages. Lingering doubt. Agitation at human stupidity. Bungee-jump confidence levels. Deteriorating basketball ability, despite extra practice. Not being able to remember whether 'practice' or 'practise' would be correct in the preceding sentence. The X-Factor. Christmas coming up (combined with aforementioned lack of money). Constant, self-inflicted nausea. Transcendental self doubt. Writers block. Song-writers block. Desperation to go on holiday. The complexity of human interaction.

But aside from that, things are actually pretty good.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.

It's the last day my work experience.
I was supposed to be working until Friday but my little excursion to Leicester has forced it to come to an abrupt end.

Thank you! *very low bow* Thank you very much.

Oh gosh, so many people to thank. OK first off I'd like to thank DG, the Jamaican soft drink producer. Your Old Jamaica Ginger Beer (other ginger beers are available) has kept me hydrated and motivated during the long afternoons.

I'd like to thank the guy who sits on the front desk who looks up at me every morning and half says "hello" but doesn't quite. 

I'd like to thank Dave the dog, for barking at people he doesn't know and attempting to be intimidating despite being the size of a hamster.

Singing in Leicester.

On Thursday I will travel approximately 165 miles to play an acoustic guitar and display my limited abilities as a singer in front of a number of University of Leicester geology students who I do not know.

This may seem an extremely foolish thing to do.

I'm not doing it on my own though. Joe is going to be the main singer. He is a geology student at the University of Leicester, so you see there is some sanity hidden within my opening statement.

I don't think I'm nervous... but then I am posting a pointless blog about it, and that usually suggests I'm nervous. I haven't played music live for at least three years, and I didn't used to enjoy it very much then.

I'm a bit more confident within myself now though, so hopefully it will go well.

I'll let you know.

Bikes, and how they are more important than people.

People who ride a bike must feel pretty good about themselves.

They are saving the environment by avoiding travelling in a horrible car, polluting the Earth. And they are staying in shape too, getting rid of the visual pollution of unsightly flab.

A form of athletic altruism, you might even say?

So, riding a bike is, in theory, a very good thing.

Okay, so, it's a horrible day out there, so I was already in a bad mood. So you'll forgive me if the following rant about cyclists is grossly unfair.

But, you see, there is a situation when riding a bike can be extremely selfish. The situation I am referring to is when someone takes a bike on a train.

Because to take a bike on the train you have to have made an assumption. And the assumption is that everyone else isn't going to bring a bike. Because I promise you, if we did, there wouldn't be enough room.

A bike takes up the standing space of two people, and yet a cyclist doesn't have to pay extra. Selfishly, they have assumed that it is more important for their journey to have a cycle, than it is for the potential of two other people to stand comfortably.

Therefore, I propose that from today (why waste time?) it be necessary to buy a Bike Ticket for the train in addition to the standard ticket you buy. It could maybe cost half the price of a normal ticket (and here, I think you'll agree, I'm being very generous) and any cyclist found not to have one would receive an immediate on-the-spot fine of: execution.

I have spoken.

Mr Happy sold his soul to Specsavers.

"You should've gone to Specsavers, mate"
They might say. I imagine them having a strong London accent despite never having lived outside of a middle class neighbourhood of West Sussex.

Now, I hate Specsavers.
Their fabled slogan is so catchy that it became a perfect tool for bullies. I didn't wear glasses in school, but I even in my time as an adult I'm sure I've had someone come out with the dashing wit of being able to repeat a line they have heard in an advert.

Funnily enough I have never been to Specsavers. All my recent glasses/contact lens excursions have been in Vision Express. Perhaps subconsciously because Specsavers created a slogan to bully me... but more likely because Vision Express is easier to get to from my house.

Now, I'm not usually impressed by pieces of advertising.
In general, having been a media studies student since a-levels, I find myself analysing them rather than enjoying(?) them for what they are.

So this was an advertisement for Specsavers.

The detail for the story is vital.
Okay, so in my lunchtime routine of walking to the shops I have to walk down a fairly busy road with lots of side roads leading off from it. Cleverly, the advertisers have realised that lots of people walk down this road and so there are a number of billboards on the walls of the final buildings of the side roads.

So as you walk up the road, every side road you see a new billboard and advertisement. If you follow me.

Here is an example of what I mean.

So as you can see the billboard is on your left as you walk up the road, as I do on my way back from lunch.

As you walk towards this particular billboard obviously your view is partially obstructed by the houses in the road. So the first thing that you see is on the right off the advert.

And you read the words:

"Mr Happy should've gone to Specsavers"

And then as you walk a few metres closer, the other half of the billboard becomes visible and it's an image of Mr Happy with a big frowny face and some broken glasses.

I liked it.

Capital cities, and learning them.

I recently embarked upon a quest... a personal goal, perhaps, of learning every capital city in the world.

I realise it is stupid.

It serves no purpose. I wont gain employment by knowing that Nicosia is the capital of Cyprus. And it has the added problem that inevitably, the one time someone asks a capital-city based question, it will either be one of the ones I don't know OR one of the easy ones that I mix up.
A good example of the latter is Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. I know one is Malaysia and one is Indonesia, but I always forget which. (Without looking it up I think Jakarta is Indonesia, but I am prepared to be wrong).

Even a genius thinks it's a bad idea. Einstein said (and I paraphrase) that you should never learn something that you can easily look up.

Of course, Einstein lived before the internet, so I don't think the point is relevant any more.

I currently know most of the European capitals apart from the tiny ones like Moldova and Albania. I know most of South America. And most of Asia.

But one of the biggest problems, I tend to find, are the Caribbean countries.

The problem is that most countries have capitals of really banal, English names that are extremely similar and boring.

Let's see:
Anguilla - The Valley
Antigua and Barbuda - Saint John's
Barbados - Bridgetown
British Virgin Islands - Road Town
Cayman Islands - George Town
Grenada - St. George's
Guyana - Georgetown
Jamaica - Kingston
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - Kingstown

That's gonna take some learning.

For anyone who knows Joe Keating.

I was trying to find out what series American Dad! had got up to when I stumbled across the American Dad! wikia.

I decided to read the page on Roger the Alien. I scrolled down to the personality section and read through.
Only after did it occur to me that if you change nothing but the name "Roger" to "Joe", and a couple family names, it an EXACT biography of Joe Keating.

Take a look:

Joe is seen as the 'Adam Sandler' of the family, that is, a comedic clown. His sexuality isn't known but he is either gay or at least bisexual. He longs to be a celebrity and have others adore him. To shut out the total misery of his ordinary life, and to cope with being locked inside a house all day, Joe turns to alcohol.

Joe's flamboyant and dramatic nature is enhanced by his alcohol dependency. This nature often clashes with the conventional attitudes and demeanor of the other Keating's.

Joe has a weak nature and will change sides in an argument almost immediately if he feels threatened. His desires are often superficial. Instead of taking responsibility Joe will often deny making mistakes.

He does not consider other's feelings before acting and will often take before asking. Joe is fragile in nature and longs for connection with people, but his forthright nature often prevents this from happening. Joe's species are biologically incapable of being nice.

Joe's species has also been known to excrete gold and jewels. However, neither Joe, nor any of his species, or the Keating family have realized that his waste is considered valuable on Earth. This is probably beneficial as everyone who has discovered Joe's gold has had met a horrible ending.

Joe's political beliefs are unknown. One time when Tom was making a rant about the merits of socialism, Joe told him to shut up, although this is not known whether or not he wished for him to be quiet or he disagreed with his stance.

Joe Keating?

Toilet Etiquette 2: The Toilet Strikes Back.

Interestingly, or perhaps worryingly, the most popular individual page on my blog (discounting the hundreds of views of the picture Richard Dawkins transmogrifying into Emma Watson that I stole) is the one about male toilet etiquette.

Therefore I have decided, in order to propel my writing to new levels of popularity, to pen the difficult second story.

Sequels are worse (apart from the Godfather Part II and The Dark Knight), we have had this drilled into us with horror films. And this will be no exception.
I used up the good material early. Now you're just getting the dregs.

There are two toilets in my house.

There's the little draughty downstairs one that used to house this pink metal monstrosity that, during the winter, was the coldest fucking thing in the world.
I'm not exaggerating.
Fortunately it was renovated a few years back and is now good.

Then there is the upstairs one in the bathroom. Old faithful.

Both doors have a lock.
And neither of those locks work.

I hope that sends chills down your spine. If you have ever been in my house, and felt safe and secure knowing that the toilet has a lock: you were wrong.

Whilst this is inconvenient, it has established one thing very clearly in our household:
If the toilet door is completely closed, that means it is occupied.

Unfortunately, at other people's houses this rule is not always in place.
I mean, as a rule, generally people close the door completely if they are using the toilet. But sometimes they also completely close the door once they come out, making it impossible to know if someone is in the toilet or not.

Many times I have approached a closed toilet door in an unfamiliar house and had to silently wait outside for the tell-tale splashing noise to tell me whether it's not safe.

I hate knocking on the door and someone calls:
"Just a minute"
Hate it.

So up next is Toilet Etiquette 3: The Prequel, in which David completes potty training. It's a cracker.

Wow, Kings of Leon supporting Attack! Attack! at Brighton Audio... no? Oh.

Now.
I get annoyed when people listen to a song and at the end they say:
"It just sounds like..." and then pick an arbitrary song that mildly sounds the same.

That annoys me because everything has been done before. Everyone is re-using the same sounds. Fundamentally because that is what we have become conditioned to like.

I illustrate my point with a video I have probably posted before:


But last night I went to a gig and I became the very thing that annoys me.

Headlining the gig was Welsh band Attack! Attack! famous for their (and I use the term extremely loosely) "hit" 'Not Afraid'.
We'll get to them in a minute.

I was there to see Verses. The band with my close compadre Joe on the lead guitar.

But the first band was City Stereo.
I quite liked them. They aren't really my style. But they had a song called 'Lothario'. As I listened, I thought to myself "this sounds like 'Use Somebody' by Kings of Leon".
When I got home and listened to it, I changed my mind.
It is a complete rip-off of it.
Not so much the verse. But the chorus manages to similtaneously plaguerise both the verse AND the chorus of 'Use Somebody'.

Take a listen:



I don't think it's a bad song. Just a rip-off. I don't know if the two things are mutually exclusive.

Verses were awesome as usual. Highly recommended. But I guess if you read this blog, the chances are you have already heard of Verses and made up your own mind.
Nevertheless, their songs are good, and much more interesting than Attack! Attack! or City Stereo's and don't rip anyone off.

Attack! Attack!'s set was anticlimactic. Their performance was energetic, but the singer was a bit average, and so were the songs, really.

The other support band Freeze The Atlantic were good too.

Practice, and how you can't do it.

Here's something a lot of people get wrong. Including me.

Practice and practise.

Practice is a noun.
"I've got basketball practice in the evening"

Practise is a verb.
"I'm going to practise basketball this evening"

Kinda silly really.

Chavs, and Jobseekers Allowance

I don't see classic "Chavs" around very much anymore.
They appear to be extinct in Brighton. They have blended in with the trendys and hipsters making them much more difficult to spot and complain about with your middle class friends.

However, today was different. Today proved that Chavs are still around, and are going strong.

I found this out today because today I went to Worthing.

I have fond memories of the Guildborne Centre. Don't get me wrong, I know it's a shithole, but I went there occasionally as a child and we'd go in a shop that was there and it sold Star Wars figures and wrestling merchandise and all manner of sci-fi nerdy stuff that I love/loved.

I parked in the carpark, and despite getting lost upon exiting and going completely the wrong way, I eventually found my way to the "Job Centre Plus". The inside of the building appears to have been designed with a completely incongruity in mind between it and its "customers". The man did refer to me as a "customer".

It's quite a nice environment, lots of bright coloured furniture, as if somehow that is supposed to make up for the fact that it is an extremely depressing place to be.

I sat in the waiting area of "Section A" and the woman gave me a form.
"Now," she said "this form gets printed off with your details. Could you just check through to make sure you didn't make any mistakes on your application"
...
Mistakes? It's a form about who I am. How fucking stupid do I look?
I have the skills to interpret words, remember the correct answer and write them down. I wouldn't get something like whether I'm married or not wrong.
I briefly considered crossing out the "Male" in the gender section and writing "Female", and see how they dealt with that.
But in the end I didn't. As it turned out, ironically, I didn't have the balls.

When they called me to "Section B" I felt like an agent in a secret branch of the intelligence services, but it turned out to be a very similiar seating area.

I was called over to a desk but a middle aged man. His nametag read Dave, and immediately endeared me to him. Unfortunately, he was also wearing a Christ-on-the-cross pendant around his neck, which frosted over any warmth that having-the-same-name had generated between us.
He was a semi-hyperactive type with a habit of elongating words in a Ned Flanders-esque fashion. But we got through the fairly tedious process of him explaining stuff that I could have guessed.

"Now, I'm going to put down 9 to 5 as the hours you would most like to work," he said "you don't want to be working all the hours God sends"
I merely smiled and refrained from telling him that God didn't exist. I have a history of arguing with the religous, but I tend to only argue with those shouting at me that I'm going to Hell on the street. He seemed like an amiable chap.

I agreed to do a number of things per week in order to try to find a job. Most things that I do daily they asked me to do once a week.

So I now have wait for a couple of weeks, and they might start giving me some money, until I find a job.

Carrot sticks, and why they are pointless.

McDonald's launched an idea a while back. The logic was thus:

Children are getting seriously obese. Aside from the obvious benefit of the reduction in paedophilia, this could only be a bad thing. After all, children are the future. And if mainstream society has established anything it is that fat people are wrong.
The future is wrong.

But what's this? Out of the darkness, a pearly white horse gallops forward with a heroic figure on its back. He wears gallant robes of yellow with fashionably striped red and white arms. His face is an alabaster wash and his hair a powerful shock of red.
It's Ronald McDonald.
He proclaims:
"For no extra cost, you can now swap the high calorie fries for low calorie carrot stick in children's Happy Meals"

McDonald's has saved the future. Hurray.

But wait.
There is a problem here isn't there.

I don't think children are getting fat because they occasionally have a packet of McDonald's fries. I mean, it's not good for them, I'm not saying that, but logic suggests that anything is fine in moderation. I know lots of people who ate McDonald's occasionally and are thin as anything.

I'm certainly not slim, but I can promise you I wouldn't be rail thin if you swapped out all the McDonald's fries I've eaten for carrot sticks.

The problem isn't occasional consumption of fries.

So, if there is a problem with McDonald's it must be that children are eating them too often.
If this is the case then carrot sticks are not going to help.
If your parent believes that a balanced nutritional dinner is a greasy burger, a large sugary drink and a packet of some carrot sticks, you're a bit fucked.

In fact, possibly the carrot sticks are making things worse.
Because now the parents see a possible nutritional benefit to McDonald's where there was none before.

Carrots are a vegetable, they'd reason, combine that with the lettuce and tomato ketchup in the burger, and you've had three of your five-a-day.

At least with the fries there could be absolutely no question that McDonald's was bad for you. Carrot sticks seems to give the parents an excuse to bring their kids to McDonald's for the health reasons.