No.7.

This is a difficult one.
I'm not really sure it's fair to say that I "like" Derek Bailey's music.

Perhaps I am not really familiar enough with the style, but it's difficult to find conventional enjoyment from music like this. Certainly though, there is something interesting in it. Derek Bailey doesn't really work with tunes, his music appears to be entirely atonal. But that's probably what I find interesting, it's atonal, but it's still music.
It certainly isn't easy to listen to though.

No.6.

Here is the song for the day.

This song comes from when indie was a genre I liked and no-one else did. In my opinion this is one of the most underrated songs ever written. It's very hard to find the best version of this on YouTube. The full original version is the best. It was re-recorded to be released as a single, the full version was then re-recorded for a re-release of the album, and that version was also shortened for a single version. It's called Further by a band called Longview.

This is the best version I could find, for which I have had to sacrifice a decent video in order to find.
It's a great song, a lovely little tune that is very powerful by the end.

Vegetarianism, and my conflicted feelings.

As I stood at the market stall running my hands across what used to be a coyote's face, I recalled my days as a vegetarian, and what it was that made me turn to the green side, and back.

I wont bore you with the details of how I became finger deep in the eyeball-holes of a fur trinket. Suffice to say that I was at a market stall at a medieval festival. I don't mind if you're considering laughing at me for going to a medieval festival, probably its an indication of why we don't talk much. (Please note, I am fully aware that I should be laughed at for visiting a medieval festival and the previous comment was purely in jest. Like a jester. At a medieval festival?) Also note that I am not entirely sure whether it was a real coyote's face, or a fake one. Although one must question the sanity of someone making a fake coyote-face-fur. Certainly all of the fur looked genuine. Perhaps I am being naive.

Anyway.
It was a stark reminder of the way I used to/kind of still feel about animals, and vegetarianism. Certainly I am opposed to fur, fundamentally I don't mind things like leather because the animals aren't being killed for their skin, they are killed for other purposes (we'll get to that) and the leather is a byproduct and might as well be used.

But when I was a vegetarian, I based my reasoning on that I thought it was the morally right thing to do. I mean, it's not fair, is it. Killing animals for our own sustinance when we can perfectly well get by without ever having to harm one.

Here, of course, comes the problem, and exactly why I don't think I can ever be a vegetarian again. There is no point. Being a vegetarian solves nothing. We're still milking cows all day, and keep battery hens for eggs.

Sorry to digress, but here is an alarming fact.
Almost 80% of eggs bought by people in supermarkets are free range. Now that's a good thing, right?
Yes it is, but we still have countless battery hens facilities in place because pretty much everything pre-made that uses eggs: cakes, breads, quiche, dough, sauces, condiments etc etc etc, are made with battery eggs.
This needs to change.

Anyway.
Vegetarians still eat dairy and eggs, thus nullifying any good they would do by not killing cows and chickens to be eaten, because even if you argue that we could just keep the chickens for eggs, but not kill any, that makes virtually 50% of the chickens born (the males) utterly useless, and they would be culled at birth, and the same for cows. You have solved nothing. As for pigs, who serve no commercial purpose other than to die and be delicious, they would practically become extinct.

Being vegan is the answer. Only suddenly it's not so easy to convince those vegetarian's who like a nice bit of cheese, or a cup of tea with milk, or some scrambled egg in the morning.

If the world decided it could cure world poverty and starvation by going vegan then sign me up, but until then, I'll enjoy my cereal without having to put some cardboard-flavoured soya rubbish on it.

By the way, I have neglected to include in this discussion, the vegetarian sub-group of "I don't eat any meat, but I eat fish".
I have left them out because this is the worst possible type of vegetarian.
Chickens, cows, pigs and lambs are farmed. Farmed to be eaten.
Fish are born free. (I know some are farmed, so shut up)

If you disagree with anything I've said, please comment. I like to argue; I like to discover new ways that I'm still right.

Change, and not in the Barack Obama good sense of change.

For the many hundreds of you who tune into my blog hourly for updates on the world delivered in cool, comic prose, I have some bad news. There are going to be some changes around here.

Big changes.

The basketball season is soon to descend upon us. Now, "wild obsession to the point of criminally dangerous mental instability" is a phrase that is used far too often these days. But it is something that I feel about basketball.

During the basketball season I will be including regular updates on Worthing Thunder, including (but not limited to) a team preview, match reports, and criticism, both constructive and otherwise.

It is likely that you don't like basketball, and even if you do, you are unlikely to be remotely interested in the depth I will go into.

There will still be rants on the shitty state of the world, and there will still be regular videos on music I like, but these will be broken up with pointless and boring basketball melodrama.

Thank you for listening.

No.5.

Here is the 2nd video of the day.
It's very much NOT a pop song.

Embedding was disabled on YouTube so I was forced to use the highly inferior Metacafe. Despite what you might imagine from the first minute or so this is the official video as released, I remember watching it on MTV2.

Mad Capsule Markets, much better than the pansy dance rock you get these days.

The Mad Capsule Markets - Tribe

The guessing game.

I hate embarassing situations. But here is one I am subjected to on an occasional basis.

My friend says to me:
"Guess how much I paid for this bonsai tree!"

In front of me sits this little thing. It's cute, and looks like a pretty example of a miniature tree.

Now, I know how this annecdote is supposed to work:
I guess a arbitrary figure, and then the teller of the annecdote amazes me, by revealing the price is x10 in either direction.
"OH WOW! It was that much/little?"
Fin.

But there is a problem.
I have absolutely zero knowledge of how much a bonsai tree is worth.

You could tell me £15, and you could tell me £1,500, and neither would particularly amaze me.

But if this annecdote is going to work, we are going to have to avoid that part where I make a guess and it is virtually right. That makes for a terrible annecdote.

What I tend to do is make a ridiculous guess.
"£1 million" I say, in the hope that this will save the annecdote.

Inevitably, though, they role their eyes and say:
"Come on, have a serious guess"

Well, that might have been a serious guess! I don't know! And now this stupid story about the price of a tiny tree has become worse than uninteresting; it has become something that is causing great stress.

I am now at the point where I am forced to make a serious guess.
But the problem is that, because they have asked me, I know that the actual figure is going to be incongruous to what it should be.

So now I have to try to guess whether they are trying to impress by how high the price is, or how low.
Cos if I guess £50 now, but the revealed discount the price is £75 (but should have been about £350) the the story is ruined.

If I guess £500, and it actually cost them £350, the story is similarly ruined.

I can't win.

No.4.

I missed posting it yesterday, so there will be two today.

The first is a pop song. A fairly random pop song. But nevertheless a pop song that I really like. Over the years the Sugababes appear to have gotten progressively more "attractive" (or perhaps, just more willingly to wear less clothing), and at the same time, exponentially less interesting.

Questioning the questions.

I'm an atheist, but I'm not entirely sure why.

My parents certainly weren't staunch atheists, my mum is a Catholic in principle, but doesn't attned church or really believe anymore, but when I was younger we went to the church every Sunday.

My beginnings were pretty Christian. I went to a junior school that said prayers every morning, and had discussions about God and the bible in the evening.

It wasn't even that I felt smothered by a Christian upbrining or anything like that. I said prayers quite happily. I went to church but never had it thrust upon me unwillingly.

I don't remember ever believing it, though.

I can remember believing in Father Christmas, when I was very young. We used to leave milk and carrots for Rudolph, and a little glass of brandy for the jolly fat man himself. Unsurprisngly, the brandy was always gone, so too were the milk and the carrot, although I find it unlikely that my parents cos-played a reindeer; they almost certainly ended up back in the fridge.

I digress.

I don't remember believing in God, or heaven, or miracles. Even at a very young age I don't recall ever being taken in by it. I don't know why. I don't remember disbelieving it, as such, I just never bought into it.

It's funny, because given my upbringing, one would assume I am prime, good little Christian boy material. But I suspect it's true for a lot of people I know. Maybe kids are just getting smarter, learning to question more what they are told rather than believing it blindly.

I don't really have a reason to not have believed. I am not what you could call a scientist who felt overwhelmed by the evidence for evolution. I didn't have a powerful atheist figure in my life telling me what not to believe. I just never believed.

No.3.

No.3 in the Music I Like collection is a bit of a cheat.

The point was supposed to be that I would post a different video everyday with contrasting music, to show that I have interest in many different genres, so as to give you an idea of the kind of things I listen to. And while this song is very different from what you may assume I listen to, and what has come before, it is still a cheat.
This is because of where I found it from.

P.O.S toured with Brand New.
I don't really know how that came about.

No.2.

Here is the second video in the "Music I Like" collection.

It's "Once In A Lifetime" by Talking Heads.
It has in it's personal possession one of the most obscure mainstream pop videos you are ever likely to see.

Enjoy.

The percieved declining quality of The Simpsons.

Some people complain that The Simpsons isn't as good as it was when they were younger.
But some people are silly.

The Simpsons is aimed at kids and teenagers, you know.
It's not really much of a surprise that you found a show funny during your teenagers that's aimed at teenagers. It's also not much of a surprise that you don't find the new episodes so good.

No-one got to 11 and complained about the declining quality of the Teletubbies.

The Simpsons is still good, but I am not capable of commenting on how good it is compared to when I was younger, because back then I enjoyed a different type of comedy.

So stop worrying. Enjoy it for what it is.

Something new.

Given that I was unfairly mocked last night for having a lack of diversity in musical taste, I have decided that each day I will present to you a different video with a song which I like very much. Hopefully they will be songs you don't know, or have forgotten, or where kind of aware of but not really.

Here's a performance of Colorblind by Counting Crows, an incredible live act mainly due to the emotional nature and onstage charisma of Adam Duritz, who once said "For me, for us, songs after the finish of the album process become almost like coffee filters. You pour your life through them every show and they come out a little different every time, because your life’s a little different every day".

iPhones, and why they annoy me.

iPhones. I hate them. And everyone who has one. Ergo, everyone.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

I have a history on this blog of disliking a lot more things than I like.

I also have a history of explosive jealousy, so I confidently expect you to pass off my hatred of iPhones on the basis that I don't have one, and would probably like it if I did. So please don't take it too seriously.

Nevertheless, I dislike them very much.


I'm not big on technology as fashion, for one thing. Because for a lot of people what has essentially happened is they have seen people with iPhones and made the subliminal calculation that they will soon become un-cool if they don't own one too.

In the most basic terms, I see an obvious analogy in chavs buying Burberry caps.


Although I'll admit that if this was the case many of those iPhones I hate, would be aPhones, or ePhones, and would almost certainly have been stolen.


Now, I'm not trying to suggest everyone who has an iPhone, has one because they are trying to be cool. But there are a number of other reasons that I don't like them.

It's the death of intelligence.
I remember when if you knew something, that was a good thing, because you were smart enough to learn it, and therefore you could distinguish between when someone was intelligent, and when someone was thick.

Now, if someone uses the word "escadrille" and you don't know what it means, you can just turn on your iPhone and look it up on your tiny screen.

I am aware there are almost limitless problems with this argument, and I can't be bothered to go into why these problems are unimportant. The point is it appears to have made learning something a bit of an outdated concept, and that seems a bit sad.

Buying an iPhone 3G 8GB means you have spent £350 on Tesco.com (other retailers are available). That's quite a lot of money for a phone, and yes I know you can easily spend more if you want to, and it's your money and you can spend it on whatever you want.

But you didn't have to. Other phones, cheaper phones that call people just as well (probably better, actually, due to this "holding it wrong" malarkey) are available. But no, you chose an iPhone, and you lose my respect for doing so.

Courtesy of mewithoutyou.

Poetry.
You don't like it. I don't like it.
And certainly you don't care about what is my favourite.

But anyway, here is my favourite poetry.

It's not even a poem:

Through mostly vacant streets,
A baker on the out-skirts of his town,
Earned his living peddling sweets,
From a ragged cart he dragged around.
The clever fox crept close behind,
Kept an ever watchful eye,
For the chance to steal a ginger spice cake
Or a boysenberry pie.

Looking down was the hungry crow;
"When the time is right I'll strike,
And condescend to the Earth below,
And take whichever treat I like."
The moment the baker turned around,
To shoo the fox off from his cart,
The crow swooped down and snatched a shortbread cookie,
And a German chocolate tart.

Using most unfriendly words,
That the village children had not yet heard,
The baker shouted treats by canzonette,
To curse the crafty bird.
"You rotten wooden mixing spoon,
Why, you midnight winged raccoon,
You better bring those pastries back,
You no-good burned black macaroon."

The fox approached the tree,
Where the bird was perched delighted in his nest,
"Brother Crow, don't you remember me?
It's your old friend Fox with a humble request,
If you could share just a modest piece,
Seeing as I distracted that awful man."
This failed to persuade the crow in the least,
So the fox rethought his plan.

"Then if your lovely song would grace my ears,
Or to even hear you speak
Would ease my pains and fear!"
The crow looked down with the candy in his beak.
"Your poems of wisdom, my good crow,
What a paradise they'd bring!"
This flattery pleased the proud bird,
So he opened his mouth and began to sing."

"Your subtle acclamation's true,
Best to give praise where praise is due,
Every rook and jay in the Corvidae's,
Been ravin' about me too.
They admire me one-and-all,
Must be the passion in my caw,
My slender bill known through the escadrille,
My fierce commanding claw!"

Oh, I got a walnut brownie brain,
And molasses in my veins,
Crushed graham cracker crust,
My powdered sugar funnel cake cocaine.
Let the crescent cookie rise,
They carob coloured almond eyes,
Would rest to see my cashew princess,
In the swirling marble sky.

Would rest upon the knee,
Where all divisions cease to be,
A root-beer float, in our banana boat
Across the tapioca sea.
When letting all attachments go,
Is the only prayer we know,
May it be so, may it be so,
May it be so, oh.

Sharks and lightning.

In terms of fears, I suppose you could say that I am afraid of sharks.

Now, you could say that fear of sharks is an irrational fear... but it's not.

When I walk down the street I'm not afraid a shark is going to find it's way onto land, and hunt me down.

When I take a shower I'm not afraid a Great White will push it's way through the shower head and Jaws me to death.

That would be stupid.

I am afraid that if I went swimming in shark infested waters, a shark would find me and tear me to pieces. This is a perfectly rational fear.

I've read statistics that say you are 30 times more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to be bitten by a shark.
I'm sure that this is true, but it's a false statistic.

As lightning strikes the Earth approximately 100 times a second, and can strike anywhere, humans are always at risk.
It's pretty rare that humans go swimming in shark infested waters.

I bet if you compared the likelyhood of someone being struck by lightning vs. bitten by a shark, whilst they were swimming in shark infested waters, I bet the stats would tell a different story.

Musical "Talent" Shows.

I made the mistake of commiting half an hour of my life to watching Must Be The Music.
You know; Sky1's "The X-Factor" rip off with Dizzee Rascal, who appeared capable of giving two judgements throughout the night: "Yeah man, that was tight" and "Nah man, I wasn't feelin' it".

No disrespect intended towards Mr. Rascal of course. He is a phonomenally successful artist in his own right, and I don't doubt for a second his talent in writing catchy pop songs with archaic words our grandparents used.

It is a good example, though, (should we have needed any more than Charlotte Church) that just because you're good at one thing, doesn't remotely gain you skill at another. Dizzee Rascal is not a skilled judge of talent.

I'm not surprised, the judges appeared to have been selected utterly at random based on their accents. It was as if the producers had landed the London street accent of Dizzee, and chose to quickly counter balance it with the generic semi-posh of Jamie Cullum. Suddenly, though, they realised they had two judges representing the two sides of London, but had nothing from the rest of the UK.
In order to counterbalance this they employed Sharleen Spiteri, presumably on the basis that she came from as far away as possible from London whilst still being intelligable to the easily-confused British public.

Perhaps earlier, I was too quick to blame Dizzee for his lack of ability to judge ability.
The "talent" on display were like an assortment of good kareoke singers and instantly-forgettable pub bands, with the odd bit of classical music thrown in to break up the drone. Tack a little sad-story on top ala X-Factor and you've got yourself a TV show.

Now, at this point, it does become apparent that what you are now reading is someone of miniscule talent sitting in front of a screen, slagging off some people with talent enough to impress some highly successful recording artists. Certainly, that is true, but the problem I had was that the acts just weren't that good. Sure they were in tune, or full of energy, or passionate about their music, but there was nothing that stood out. I barely remember them, and it all just seemed really forced, like the judges had to put through pretty much anything that was half decent in the knowlegde that they were the best they were gonna get.

I was also annoyed by the fact that the show was just one long advert for Apple. During the selection process the judges gleefully scrolled through their iPhones and iPads and iDontGiveAFucks, as if somehow seeing them on an Apple product improved the musical experience in some way.

Don't watch it. Turn it off and listen to something decent.

Drunk.

As promised, I have decided to write a blog while drunk, thus discovering my true feelings.

Here they are:


I AM AMAZING.

YOU ARE ALL AWFUL TERRIBLE PEOPLE AND I FEEL ASHAMED TO CALL YOU FRIENDS.










Please note this blog is satire. SATIRE you fucking retards. I love you really. I couldn't do without you.

Lying, the secret to being funny.

When you hear about what a woman is looking for in a man an almost universal appetite is that of a "sense of humour".

I don't quite know how you could define "sense of humour". I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to find someone who doesn't laugh. I don't know, maybe I am blessed to hang around with an unnaturally high percentage of people who find things funny, but in general, even the least amusing of my friends enjoy comedy. We aren't German.

So why is it then that "sense of humour" is such a highly valued personality trait?

I was asked in a recent job interview, which the more mean-spirited amongst you will be pleased to know I was rejected for, "what is your sense of humour like?"
Now, I don't think there is a sensible way to answer that question without sounding like you don't have a sense of humour.

"What is your sense of humour like?"
A) "I have a sense of humour" No.
B) "I have a mastery of the comedic wit" No.
C) "HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAH" No.
D) "Excellent." No.
E) "What do you get if you put a baby in a blender? A erection" No.
F) "My friends say I should do stand-up, but I just say what I think" NO. No you pretencions dick.

I tried an equally unfunny way of proving that I had a sense of humour but, in a case of impressive irony, it's not really funny or interesting enough for me to bother to write it here.

Clearly, then, proving you have a sense of humour is difficult.

However, if stand-up comedians have taught us anything, it's that it doesn't matter if you're not actually funny naturally, you just have to be a decent liar.

Real life, you see, is rarely funny. And certainly not in the sense that re-telling it might be funny. That's why we have the phrase "you had to be there", to save us from when it turns out that the funny thing that happened to us, actually was blank-face-ingly dull.

There are so many obviously made up stories that comedians tell, it gets actually pretty uncomfortable and embarrassing to listen to.

I recall Russell Howard thrilling a Mock The Week audience with a tale of how "his mate Dave" once said to him, without any humour, that "those vuvuzelas are so loud they could kill a monkey".
It got a laugh, annoyingly.

Now, either three things are possible here:

1) Russell has just made up that story, because it's mildly funny to imagine someone being so STUPID they would believe that the loudness of a vuvuzela would kill a monkey.

2) In reality, Dave had made this comment, perhaps as one of those ridiculous moments you have with your friends, and said it to make them laugh. The quote therefore was out of context, and was pretty much a lie.

3) Russell Howard hangs around with genuine idiots.

I would say that one or two is definitely the most likely.

So we can see that Russell Howard was paid good money by the BBC to lie.

Because as the old adage goes: it's funny because it's true.
Except it almost certainly is not.

Enemies of the Bear.

4. The Cougar














3. Wolves













2. Killer Salmon










And I think you'll be surprised to see what creature was no.1 in my "enemies of the bear" collection...











1. Man

MI's 13 and 18, and their lack of official existance.

You've probably heard of MI5 and MI6.

There are both part of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and are basically our highest level intelligence and security services.

MI5, known these days as the Security Service, deals with things that happen in the UK. It protects the UK from things that happen in the UK. Think Spooks.

MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service, protects the UK from things happening outside of the UK. Think James Bond.

Maybe, though, you didn't know that it goes up to MI19.
Of course, maybe you do/did know that, in which case it's probably not worth reading on.

The Military Intelligence (not Mission Impossible as some of you were hoping) departments were set up during the First World War basically to have a more effective and co-ordinated intelligence service. All the different departments had distinct purposes.

MI1 dealt with code-breaking.
MI2,3 and 4 all dealt with geographical information from different parts of the world.
MI7 dealt with the press and propaganda.
MI8 dealt with communications.
MI9 dealt with the aid of resistance fighters and British PoW's abroad, but also with interrogation of the enemy.
MI10 dealt with weapon and technology analyses.
MI11 dealt with military security.
MI12 was similar to MI7, but focused exclusively on censorship.
MI13 didn't exist, and we will look at that more specifically in just a minute.
MI14 dealt with information about Germany.
MI15 dealt with aerial defence.
MI16 dealt with scientific developments.
MI17 dealt with the secretarial tasks of all of the MI departments.
MI18 didn't officially exist, but it has rumoured to have dealt with Radio Security.
MI19 was set up later to fully replace MI9 at enemy interrogation.

See I was inspired to write this on the basis of my previous research around 13, and my intrigue was piqued by the lack of an MI13.

There isn't an obvious reason why it was left unoccupied. Even if its for superstitious reasons that doesn't really explain why they would leave MI18 open as well.

I have a few theories. I have no idea of how grounded these ideas might be.

Maybe MI13 and/or MI18 were originally intended to do something that they thought would be important, but ended up not being, so were unnecessary.

A possibility is that the government imagined that the details of these departments would never be made public, and as these departments could have been something they didn't want their allies, and even their own people to know about.
Of course this opens up the debate to much more interesting theories about what MI13 and MI18 could have been.

The most popular of these suggestions appear to be a department regarding UFO's, or advancd/alien technology in the war effort.
Perhaps the more sensible idea is that these departments were set up to monitor information about our own allies in case they should turn against us.

This seems much more plausable, but I would imagine at this point we will never ever know.

Mixed-sex wards.

The coalition governmenth has today announced their plans to completedly eradicate mixed-sex wards in hospital, see here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10982566

I don't think you can say that this is a bad idea. I'm sure that hospitals would be a more dignified place without mixed sex wards.

What I can say is that it is a waste of money in order for political point-scoring.

Money is tight in the NHS, and everywhere, in fact. It's gonna cost money to take some of the facilities in the very old hospitals and change them so they can accomodate a single sex.

The fact is that Labour said several times that it was going to get rid of mixed-sex wards, and it never completely did it. They were getting phased out, but Labour first pledged it in 1997, so in 12 years of office, they didn't do it.

Admiteddly this is a failure on Labour's part, but now the Tories have decided they want to show up Labour, and make themselves look good by doing something that Labour said they were going to do.
Then they can bring it up in parliament every time for cheap political point scoring.

The problem is exactly that there isn't much money to go around, and to waste quite a large quantity of money doing something quickly that was already happening anyway is just horrible.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia or Friggatriskaidekaphobia, and why I have neither.

It's Friday the 13th.

I used to tell people I was born on Friday the 13th of June.
It wasn't specifically a lie.
It was the kind of thing where originally I didn't know what day I was born and so, to seem interesting, I told people I was born on Friday the 13th, and having told it enough times I started to believe it because I had just kinda forgotten that I didn't actually know in the first place.

But it's not true, sadly. I was born on a Monday.

The whole Friday the 13th superstition has been around for a long time; the first written example is from the mid 19th century, but it's has almost certainly been around as folklore for much, much longer.

As for the basis of the superstition, well, there are all sorts of theories, but I'll do my best.

13 is considered pretty unlucky anyway, especially in England and America. There are plenty of documented cases of building being built without a 13th floor.
One reason could be that 12 is a fairly common number for us: 12 months, 12 Apostles of Jesus, 12 signs of the Zodiac, 12 hours on a clock, 12 Gods of Olympus, etc.
As such we could asscociate 13 with abnormality, which is a common cause of fears.

Friday was supposedly the day that Jesus was crucified, as well as being considered unlucky in The Canterbury Tales.

Now, with all the stigma attached to Friday the 13th, it is inevitable that people will develop a fear towards it. Different sources quote different names, but it is definitely either: paraskevidekatriaphobia, or friggatriskaidekaphobia.
Dr. Donald Dossey suggests that as many as 21 million Americans suffer from this fear. That's 6.8% of Americans.
But then, they are American.
I haven't found any accurate data about the British.

It's a classic irrational fear. It's an old wives tale. There is no scientific evidence for bad luck on Friday the 13th.

You slightly less likely to have a car accident on Friday the 13th. Although it's possible that's because the drivers that are afraid of bad luck on this day just don't drive around if they can avoid it.

If you do ever find any evidence, feel free to disregard it, because almost certainly it will have come as a result of people being nervous about worst case scenarios, and the fear has made them do something stupid. Also, Richard Wiseman from University of Hertfordshire found that people who consider themselves unlucky are more likely to believe in superstitions associated with bad luck.

A good example of this cautiousness surrounding Friday the 13th can be found in the business world, where the National Geographic estimates almost a billion dollars are lost because people will not take the kinds of risks they normally do.

Enjoy your Friday the 13th!

Me; me, me.

Self deprecation, as far as I can see, is pretty much a pre-requisite for being a decent human being. There are few things worse in the world than people obsessed with how amazing they are, and how they can do no wrong.

I bring this up because I feel like self-importance is something that makes the world a worse place.

You can look at this at a very low level, such as someone pulling out rashly in a 4x4 (it's always a 4x4) making you slow down, and therefore everyone behind you slow down. They decided that them getting into the road 10 seconds quicker was more important than road safety and just general comfort of other people.

You can also look at it on a very high level, such as when a big business owner decides that it is important that he can make more money somewhere else, than it is to keep a less profitable aspect of the company in employment.

It's like people buying 10 tickets for a gig that is gonna sell-out, and selling on 8 of them at extortionate prices. See in this instance it was more important for that person to make some money than it was for 8 people to get tickets they wanted for the actual price.

Self-importance and selfishness seem to be very common.
And if there is one thing worth hating, I think it's that.

Daytime TV.

I was planning to blog very consistantly throughout August. I was thinking at least one per day, but unfortunately my plans have been scuppered. See, just as I had been bragging about how amazing my immune system has become, fate dealt a double blow in the form of a nasty insect and a phantom back pain.

The detail, in this case, is mind numbing, so lets just establish that: A) my ankle was swollen to the point where it was difficult to move as a result of an infected insect bite, and B) I have an aching back for no good reason.

These faults in my constitution have made the last few days uncomfortable, and as such I haven't really felt very much like writing, or indeed, doing anything very much at all.

Apart from lying down.

Lying down is good.

The problem with lying down, of course, is that it leads swiftly, and inexorably to boredom.
I have found two activities to subdue to the boredom.
One is reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which is very good, and you should read it too.

The second is watching daytime TV constantly.

Now, I have lied a little here. I have suggested, quite incorrectly, that daytime TV is a cure for boredom, rather than a dreadful component to it.

The "standard" channels only have 4 types of shows that are shown before 5.
These can be broken down into the following categories:
1 - Bored retired people sell all the shit that clogs up their attics, to fund some pointless drivel
2 - Middle class people sell their house and buy another
3 - Talented amatuer cooks make dinner for food critics, who tell them they are shit
4 - Countdown

Male toilets, and embarrassing social etiquette.

I went to the cinema to see Inception. Great film; incredible action sequences and an epic story.
But during my trip to the cinema I was involved in an equally epic case of the embarrassing reality of being a human male.

The cinema was busy, and we had arrived late anyway. We queued up to buy our tickets and gawped at the extortionate prices Cine World places on that most expensive of commodities; popcorn.
Time was short, I knew, but it was going to be a long film, and powerful though my bladder is, it was unlikely to last two and a half hours.

I rushed to the toilets, and found myself in a difficult situation. Let me explain.

Cine World's toilets are fairly big, with 8 "adult sized" personal urinals along the wall with 2 "children sized" ones at the end.

Now, unwritten male social etiquette is actually extremely clear in this field. The first man must ALWAYS take the urinal closest to the far wall. The following must be filled with a one-urinal gap in between, allowing for a maximum of 4 "adult sized" urinals to be in use at any one time.

Under no circumstances do you take a urinal in between those in use. It's just not right.
That would indicate you had made a conscious decision to step in between two pissing men.
Not only that, but it would mean you had to CHOOSE two men to step between. That means you've chosen two men over 3 other possible combinations of two men.
That would make you gay.

I'm sure you can imagine what comes next.

I walk into the toilets, and the wholly inconvenient number of four men are using the toilets.

Time was running out. I needed the toilet badly, but I could not risk contravening the etiquette.

Now, do not be to hard on me, I made the following decision in the heat of the moment. I buckled under the pressure.

The "children sized" urinals were free.
I had to take it. It was the easy option.

With a sombre look on my face, I stepped up to the white porcelain rising little higher than my knees. Seconds after I had taken out the top button, and unzipped the fly, the inevitable happened.

All four men who had been using the toilets stopped, virtually simultaneously and shuffled away, leaving me alone, standing at a child's urinal with a full complement of adult urinals available.

What were my options? I considered sidling across to the adult urinal to my left, but it was too late; the fly was down, the tackle was out (as Blackadder puts it).
I couldn't move now, like some urinal hopping lunatic.
It would be fine. I could relieve myself, and leave with my head held high, as long as I was quick.

It got worse.

Now, everyone had left the toilet by now, and so I was standing there, pissing into a child size urinal, alone.

Who could walk in now, but two young boys and, I presume, their father. I can only imagine the look on his face as he saw a fully grown man, standing in an empty toilet, with multiple full-sized urinal options available, using a child's urinal.

Looking back, this whole situation could have been avoided if I had been sensible and just used one of the free cubicles. Silly me.

Proud.

Another year passes, and Pride has come to Brighton. And I'm missing it. Again.
The reason that I am not attending is because I have found myself to be very much like an old man.

No, not because I am a brainless bigot and I can't accept that homosexuality is a natural, biological occurance, and not a choice made purely to antagonise society.

I am missing Pride because I have a bad back.

It has been a while since I've been, and all of the times I've missed it, I would have gone if I could. I won't bore you with the details.

However, Pride is an interesting time in Brighton. It is interesting because it is something that is associated with Brighton across the UK. Brighton is known as the "gay capital of Britain".

What this tends to mean is that whenever you go anywhere that isn't Brighton, and say, "I'm from Brighton", you are asked, almost instinctively "are you gay?"

To answer that question, allow me to quote you the 2001 census, which admittedly is 9 years of date, but you'll get over it.

1.29% of households in Brighton are same-sex. That's right, 1.29%. Not 100.29%. Not even 12.9%. 1.29%.
It's difficult to tell how many people are gay, because it's a dificult thing to define before you bring in bi-sexuals, or bi-curiousity. But estimates suggest between 8 and 13% of Brighton is gay.

Don't get me wrong, that's very high. Wolverhampton, for example, has a percentage of gay people in the minus numbers. The standard across the UK is 2-3%. Note, these numbers are highly debatable.

Nevertheless, that means there is an 87-92% chance that I am not gay.
Possibly the fact that I'm wearing a Power Rangers t-shirt and own 2 seperate Backstreet Boys albums reduces that percentage considerably, but it's still a bit unfair.

Not everyone in Brighton is gay, I can confirm that now. The one's that are, in my experience, tend to be good people with infinitely more good character than those people who would torment them for their sexuality.

However, I feel a little guilty just saying that. Putting theall gay people in the same category, as if a single characteristic like that defines the rest of their personality. I don't do this, for example, for people with green eyes, or taste in literature. I'll do my best not to do it in future.

I hope Pride goes great.

Alcohol, and its failings.

Inspired by Tom's blog, which you should all read by the way : http://thisonejustcameoutoftheswamp.blogspot.com/ , I have decided to write a blog detailing why I don't get with girls at clubs, and why alcohol has failed me.

See, the whole concept of clubs is a difficult one. I was thinking how absurd the concept is really. Thousands of Britons go out nightly with the expressed purpose of getting drunk and "seeing what happens". Some people are going "on the pull", some are targeting someone, some are intent on getting whatever they can, but I bet that a good proportion of the single population of clubs are just there to see what happens. You go to enjoy yourself with your friends, and have a good night. Maybe a person of an appropriate level of sexual attractiveness and strength of character will be there. But probably not.
Taking Back Sunday put it quite nicely in Cut Me Up Jenny: "I took full advantage of, being taken full advantage of, yeah I took what I could get".

At this stage, of course, personality is virtually reduntant, as Tom makes clear, you can't hear a word, and perhaps the only way to accurately establish whether or not they are your kind of person is whether or not their lips are pressed against yours, and their hands reaching expectantly at your errogenous zones.

This is the problem for me. Overthinking things at clubs.
There is a lot to think about when trying to "pull" a girl at a club.

Firstly, you have to ask yourself, am I attractive enough to get with her. This first hurdle, is all too often the stumbling block for me. Hair that is about as controlable as an enraged rhinocerous, legs that are roughly half the size of my torso, and a stupid neck, are not a winning combination.
Arguably, of course, you could ask if she is attractive enough for you, but as I established quite a long time ago on this blog, women are infinitately more attractive than men, so it will rarely be a problem. But let's look past this.

Once you have established that you believe you are, in fact, attractive enough, you must face the next question. Is she drunk enough?
I am willing to bet you could produce a pretty consistent line graph showing your chances of success rising exponentially with each additional vodka shot she consumes.

If she appears drunk enough, excellent, there is only one step left.
Are you drunk enough?

Now this one really is a tough one, and one I have not mastered. If I drink too little I find myself aggravated by the oft-awful music playing. If I drink too much I end up sitting out on the street desperately trying to remember my own name, and how not to throw up.

Now then, we can see that I gave alcohol just one simple job to do; make me ultra confident, and it failed. The reason I drink alcohol is definitely not because I like the flavour. It's not because I like waking up and feeling like my mouth has experienced a drought only comparable in the hotter regions of Africa. It's not becuase I don't like remembering things.
I drink because, fundamentally, I am not all that confident, and I need to forget that. I need to be innebriated to the point where ultimate clarity has taken over and I can focus solely on the fact that I only live once, and that girl is hot.

It comes down to an epic battle between thinking vs. alcohol. Thinking almost always wins. And on the rare occasion alcohol wins it tends to go crazy and obliterate any thoughts, not returning til perhaps midday tomorrow.

I am no longer convinced.

HSBC, the world's stereotyping bank.

What we have here is an advert for HSBC; the world's local bank. I invite you to watch it through, even though I'm sure you've already seen it.

Have you watched it? Good.

I would like to make the assertion that this advert is grossly stereotypical and borderline racist.
You only have to look at the vibrant, bustling Indian city with the bright colours, with melodrammatic Indians and a thriving lassi factory.

And whilst that is a stereotype, most people would probably miss the one that I am complaining about.

Re-watch it, and this time focus your attention on the portrayal of Poland. Remember this is from a bank that is supposed to be "local bank" that knows all about the different cultures of the places that it serves.
Pause the video at 0:01 and look at how Poland is presented to us.

When we looked at this in lectures some of the Polish students commented on how it looked like Poland might have looked twenty years ago. But all HSBC has done has pandered to stereotypes of what British people think Poland is like.

India is stereotyped too of course, but probably we would be aware of that, but the Polish stereotyping goes unnoticed.