“one day all my dreams will come true. Then what?”

That single sentence pretty much sums up my mindset. Nothing could be worse for me than to be completely happy. My writing is mainly fuelled by two things:

1. An inherent desire to create something.
2. Anger

I think that’s the same for a lot of people: it’s why “Master Of Puppets” is better than “Reload”, it’s why “High Fidelity” is a better book than “How To Be Good” and it’s why the original Star Wars movies are better than the new ones.

Luckily everytime I feel like I have no reason to be angry I just look at the news and see stuff like this:

• Gary Glitter apparently joining Twitter and having hundreds of followers. I have 173. So I am officially less popular than a convicted paedophile. (it was later found out to be a hoax account: but my point still stands)
• Someone in The Sun saying that being disabled is now

“incredibly fashionable”

and there’s no reason to being disabled for more than a decade. He then goes on to say that fibromyalgia and M.E just make you

“a bit peaky for decades”

• Costa Condordia sank. Now I actually belief the captain and what he said. It’s entirely possible that (despite being on the correct route, the same route that is used every day) rocks just suddenly appeared (maybe put their by terrorists; who knows) and sank the ship. And just as the captain was about to sound the alarm he tripped over and fell into a lifeboat (look it up; this is what he claims happened) and went to the nearest island where he waited for an hour before ordering an evacuation. Perfectly believable surely? Cuz if he’s lying then he’d have to be a scumbag with no ethics
• Etta James died (better known as “oh, I thought Nina Simone did that song”). Her big hit was this:

So The Daily Mail decided to go with this as a headline

Classy. Very classy.

Yeah that’s not strictly true though is it? Even the most basic box of chocolates have a visual key so you know which chocolate is which. For that sentence to make sense you’d have to be the type of person who just opens a box of chocolates and starts blindly eating them (probably still in the wrapper); and if you do that; then you don’t deserve advice. That sentence is stupid in other ways as well. Life isn’t like a  box of chocolates, life is (as every right minded person knows) actually like a game of Tetris.

You know how it is; you play Tetris and it all starts off well. You get a few lines and you start getting cocky and thinking

“this is easy; there’s no way I’m going to lose this. I AM THE TETRIS KING!!!!!”

You go on like this until usually the 38 line mark; at which point you make a sudden mistake. And you panic. You get careless. You start placing the squares where the L shapes should go (and vice versa). You start worrying but then you just take a deep breath and start to relax. You go from being 4 moves away from death to being at the bottom of the screen with only two tiny blocks in each corner. You breath a sigh of relief. You weathered the storm; you survived.

BUT THEN!!!!! You do something stupid (probably put two lines on top of each other near the edge; blocking that side off so you can’t get anything more)

like this

and you’re screwed for a while. You can’t do anything! It’s all coming too fast for you to do anything! And you know all your problems will be solved if you could just get the straight piece; but you don’t! All you keep getting are those stupid little things

And you’re sitting there getting more and more frantic! Just desperately pleading with whatever deity you pray to to just “Give me a straight line!!!!!!” but you keep getting those bastard things i just showed previously, more and more of the little bastards keep making appearances, you don’t need them, you don’t want them, and WHERE THE F*@K WERE THEY EARLIER WHEN YOU REALLY F*CKING NEEDED THEM? NOWHERE!!!!!!!! But you just get more useless things that you don’t need, and by the time you get a straight one you don’t have enough space to maneauvre it and it just makes things worse.And you just know you would’ve been fine if you just had more luck, and if you didn’t make that one stupid mistake, and if you didn’t keep getting THOSE F*CKING YELLOW THINGS. SERIOUSLY, WHAT ARE THEY? THEY’RE NOT EVEN A PROPER SHAPE. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO CALL THEM???? THEY’RE STUPID. I HATE THEM. AND THEY KEEP APPEARING WHEN YOU DON’T WANT THEM TO. THEY RUINED EVERYTHING!!!!

And yeah, that’s life.

http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/twitter-explained/index.shtml

Some celebrities have taken to twitter like a duck takes to water (just slightly less wet); Stephen Fry being the most obvious. Some however have taken to it like a duck that’s allergic to water (Aquagenic Urticariac). And some; well some are Gillian McKeith. For those unaware; Gillian McKeith is the woman who goes on tv and insults people because their poo smells bad. Now somebody on Twitter mentioned how they were reading Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science and had got to the chapter where the author talks about McKeiths questionable credentials. This sent the poo-lady into a rampage, each tweet getting more and more insane. It’s at this point that shit got strange; she deleted the offending tweets and then started talking in the 3rd person. She then said

“Do you actually believe this is real twitter site for the GM?”

Accusing herself of being an imposter. Which would be smarter if it wasn’t for the fact that her twitter page was linked to from her official website. So all signs point to her backing down and trying to weasel her way out of responsibility. Which makes the wording of that tweet all the more annoying. It’s the “the GM” part which annoys me. If you refer to yourself as “the insert name here” it makes you seem like an idiot. Not quite as much as inventing qualifications and being obsessed with poo; but still.

She’s not the only person who has fallen foul of twitter though. Those of you who paid attention know that Ed Milliband accidentally called Blockbusters “Blackbusters” last week. This was apparently really really important news; important enough that The Sun put it on the front page. Making it the first innocent typo to ever headline a national newspaper (I hope it is anyway; if not then I’m very disappointed about the state of journalism in this country). I find it weird that this was deemed important. Surely there’s more important things that happened? Maybe someone somewhere saw a giant bear. Maybe someone saw a piece of cheese in the shape of Spongebob Squarepants. ANYTHING is more important than a typo surely? It’s not the worst mistake a politician has made. It’s no even the stupidist thing a labour mp has tweeted. That goes to Stuart MacLennon who referred to the elderly as “coffin dodgers” and said “God this fairtrade, organic banana is s**t. Can I have a slave-grown, chemically enhanced, genetically modified one please?”.

Now THAT’S how you destroy your career on Twitter.

]]> http://cyanideandwhiskey.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/insert-pun-about-twitter/feed/ 0 cyanideandwhiskey http://cyanideandwhiskey.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/new-years-resolutions-for-self/ http://cyanideandwhiskey.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/new-years-resolutions-for-self/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 08:48:57 +0000 cyanideandwhiskey http://cyanideandwhiskey.wordpress.com/?p=847 ]]> 1. Actually finish something I write

This year I started writing; 10 tv shows, 2 books, 4 short stories, 1 film, 3 short films. I finished none of them. This is not exactly an ideal situation to be in.

2. Play Portal

I must be the only person on this planet who plays a lot of console games but has never played Portal. Apparently this isn’t normal. Last year I finally got round to playing a Call Of Duty game; it was ok. Nothing special and the graphics were just various shades of brown for a lot of it. Oh, and by the way; there is no way in hell I’m gonna start playing Skyrim. Mainly because it looks like one of those games where you have to play it endlessly to get the most from it. And partly because the name makes it sound like an evil electronics corporation that will design the robot that eventually enslaves humanity.

3. Quit smoking

I don’t smoke; so that’s one down on this list. I achieved something

4. Make less lists

DAMNIT!!!!

5. Learn to check the numbers when I make lists so I don’t miss any out

7. Eat more cupcakes

They’re delicous

8. Find and own a syringe pen

I used to have two. One got taken, one broke. I know they’re really weird looking and kind of creepy; but I think they’re awesome

9. Never stop being awesome.

Now this should be easy. In fact it would actually be harder for me not to achieve this.

• The Islamic world were annoyed that a bingo and gambling company had called themselves Mecca. Now this isn’t one of those “Muslims hate everything to do with the west because they hate freedom”; this is “the company was being stupid”. It would be like opening a gay night club and calling it “Crucifixion”
• Margaret Thatcher was nearly put in a car with the French president (Francois Mitterand) for 40 awkward minutes becase their wasn’t enough space for an interpreter. I think the most interesting thing about this piece of news was that it was deemed important enough to be kept a secret for 30 years.
• One of Saddam Hussein’s sons was found with a gun in London. He was set free as to avoid a diplomatic incident. Since then we’ve been to war with Iraq twice and yet it was still never mentioned for some reason.
• One of the secret codewords to authorise government evacuation in case of nuclear attack was ‘orangeade’. You bastards; you ruined something delicious. Now whenever I hear someone buy orangeade I’m going to assume we’re being nuked.
• The Conservative government suggested evacuating Liverpool and/or letting it rot after the 1981 riots. Their justification for this decision was that Liverpool itself was to blame for high unemployment and poor government decisions when it came to postwar development of the city. 30 years later and nothing has changed.
• Two thirds of the government were opposed to Trident missile system. Of course the government ignored itself and got the missile system anyway. So next time you’re voting in the local elections be aware that not only are your views not important; the person you elect to stand up for you isn’t listened to either. Unless they’re from Kensington or somewhere else with money. If you’re from Medway then you, and your elected officials opinions were about as important to Thatcher as the opinions of the cat she killed every morning (citation needed but if it turned out to be true you wouldn’t be surprised)

And that’s it; see you next year And the final headline I see this year is this; Chinese state media says that bus driver infected with Bird Flu has died.

Yup; the return of Bird Flu. We got that to look forward to.

“wow you are so awesome. I worship the ground you walk on”

Ok that’s not the exact reaction I get; but it damn well should be. And besides; that’s not important to the point that I shall (eventually) be making. My point is this; nobody has ever really taken offence to any of it. That was until a few months ago. Now I have a thing somewhere on this blog so people can e-mail me directly (it’s mainly there for people to send me their addresses and invite me round for cakes or cookies). Now sometime in late september/early october I got a comment from someone that said they were outraged by the things I said, and considered them libellous. Now her e-mail was very courteous, polite, and (most importantly) contained no spelling mistakes. So I replied in kind; pointing out that I don’t go out to insult them unnecessarily; I just post responses to mistakes they have made and things they have said that I disagree with. I then got another reply saying I am setting myself up to be sued. Which was probably true but there was a sentence in her e-mail which I had to pick up on. She said (and I quote):

“The Daily Mail is an important English institution. It’s the only paper that’s fearless and doesn’t pander to popular opinion”

My response to this was as follows (obviously these aren’t direct quotes):

1. It’s not fearless though is it? It attacks easy targets. And not only does it pander to popular opinion; it creates the popular opinion. A lot of people nowadays don’t just get the news from newspapers; they get opinions and ethics from them as well. For the perfect example of this look at the Andrew Sachs scandal; something that wouldn’t have been an issue if the newspapers didn’t mention it as prominently as they did.
2. The parent company of The Daily Mail Group Trust is Rothermere Continuation Ltd. A company based in Bermuda (I’m sure that the company is based in Bermuda because of the wonderful forward thinking workforce in the country; and has nothing AT ALL to do with the fact that it means that they don’t pay barely any tax in the UK). Also the owner of the company is listed as a “non-domicle” which is a tax status where the person can live and work in the UK but doesn’t pay tax. So if they’re such a fantastic English institution then why don’t they pay tax?

Now THIS really seemed to annoy her. I won’t say her exact response but I will give you a few excerpts (with added comments by me occasionally):

“non-whites have a genetic pre-disposition towards crime. This is a provable fact”

(the smartest wording of the stupidest idea i’ve every heard)

“there’s a reason that every scientific achievement has come from a white person” 

(apart from paper, printing, gunpowder etc. Just google Egyptian and Chinese discoveries to see how truly, truly wrong this woman was)

“you, and all people like you are everything that is wrong with this country”

“name one homosexual scientist; you can’t do it”

Now by this point I figured I had really annoyed this woman. The mature thing to do would be to just stay quiet and keep my head down; and from now on calm down on the Daily Mail bashing. That would have been the mature thing to do. The next blog I did after this:

Screw maturity

Anyway it turns out she read this one too (why she felt the need to keep reading a blog containing things she hated I have no idea) and I got ANOTHER e-mail accusing me of being

“nothing more than a pompous idiot. It’s obvious you will never change your illogical position on this subject. May God have mercy on your soul”

I love being me sometimes.

But it turns out that Thailand has more to offer the world than delicious food and Street Fighter bosses. They also have leaders who are bastards. King Bhumibol Adulyadej (pronounced that-guy-from-thailand) to be precise. An American citizen was arrested this week for translating a biography about the king. He was arrested when he entered Thailand on a visit and has been jailed for two years. This has raised questions about whether someone should be arrested for breaking a law whilst in another country. And of course whether they should change the slogan of Vegas to “what happens in Vegas; stays in Vegas, unless of course it’s against the law in Senegal; then it means you’re banned from entering that country”

Thailand has EXTREMELY strict Lese-majesty laws. You’re not allowed to insult the king at all, or even like a link on facebook that defames him. In fact if I was Thai then I’m pretty sure I’d be arrested by now. But luckily I’m english and have no intent of ever going to Thailand so; neh neh neh neh neh

In other international news US presidential hopeful Rick Perry brought out his new campaign ad in which he said

“You know something is wrong when gay people can serve in the military”

Now I’m not going to point out the hypocrisy of using religion as a basis of hate, I’m not even going to point out the fact that a lot more soldiers would be alive if gays had always been allowed in the military, and I’m not even going to point out that you can’t be opposed to gay people based on religious texts unless the rest of your lifestyle also adheres to every rule of the bible. All I’m going to  do is show you two pictures and say the sentence “look at the jackets”

Yeah I know this blog was short; I’m tired and hungry. Next one will be better I swear; unless of course I get hungry again (which is likely)

Now the first thing people will ask when you tell them you’re going to see a film is “what’s it about?”. In this case your answer will be “it’s a comedy about someone with cancer”. “Comedy” and “cancer” are two concepts which usually go together as well as cheese and cardboard (although if anybody has any cardboard recipes they’d recommend then send them to the usual address). However in this case it goes together as well as cheese and marmite.  If you’re looking for a standard feel good film then don’t see this one; it will depress the living hell out of you at some points (although it’s a film about cancer so that’s to be expected), although it will also make you laugh so hard you choke a little bit. It’s actually ended up being probably the best film I’ve seen at the cinema all year . It’s smart, funny, and ridiculously heartfelt with some fantastic performances all round. Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have an on-screen chemistry that makes it seem like they’ve known each other for years; and that really helps the film. Also it is great to see Anjelica “morticia adams” Huston back being awesome (and looking surprisingly like one of my primary school teachers).

Now whilst looking up about this film I read two things that annoyed me:

1. A very negative review. I didn’t hate the review because it’s negative I hated it because the reviewer said that they didn’t show how ill the cancer made him. I’m guessing the reviewer fell asleep for the parts of the film that saw the guy vomiting and nearly losing his mind.
2. They’re being sued by a music label called Phifty-50 which claims that the title of the film will confuse fans of the label. For this to work you’d have to ignore the fact that there’s a 1925 film called 50/50 so unless their music label pre-dates hip hop then I think the film came first.

So exactly how good is this film? Well put it this way; on day of release, no matter how poor I am; I am buying the DVD. I have to

Well there’s been arrests but few convictions, and inquiries that haven’t seemed to go anywhere.

This is actually a great story to follow because it’s interesting to see how the media reacts to itself. The Sun has gone the “News Of The World? never heard of it” route, The Times went with this:

Thereby implying that the phone hacking scandal isn’t important because there’s worse things to worry about. Although by that logic all newspapers would be one story long and would be about the same thing everyday.

In the US, Fox News went with coverage that (to the casual viewer) made it appear as though News Of The World was the victim of phone hacking rather than the perpetrator.

Ok maybe those are all understandable as NoTW, The Sun, The Times and Fox News are all owned by the same company (News International). What’s more surprising is The Daily Mail wading in. Saying that regulation of the press would be bad for free press. I disagree; if the only regulation we have is “is this true?” then that won’t effect press neutrality; it will just mean no more bullshit.

One other thing they said was that phone hacking led to some important headlines; like the cricket corruption scandal. Now personally I’m not certain how hacking the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl led to that headline but maybe it did. And was the cricket corruption scandal that important? It didn’t save anyone’s life did it? And what of that couldn’t be achieved through standard undercover journalism? The fact that The Mail have waded into this story so heavily makes me think they’re hiding something. Like if we dig around we’ll find out that they too have participated in phone hacking.

The general defence of phone hacking is “well celebrities are quick enough to call the papers when they want it”. Which is ridiculous. There’s a world of difference between a controlled press release and someone hiding in your garden taking photos of you through your window. It’s the difference between having a friend stay over for the night and having a friend sneak into your bedroom and watch you sleep.

Personally I think there are two main causes of this:

1. Celeb culture. The newspapers desire to make us think that celebrities are important and if you don’t know everything about them then you are less of a person. This leads people to think that celebs are more important than us; and demand more stories. Maybe it’s just me but if I read a newspaper and there was no story about a 20 year old blonde from Hollyoaks falling over coming out of a nightclub; I wouldn’t care. I prefer my news to be actually, well, newsworthy.
2. Anonymity in journalism. Journalists don’t have to name their sources for stories. This leads to them being able to just make stuff up and say “insiders say” (such as a story published weeks ago saying someone has been drinking heavily when in fact they hadn’t been drinking for 6 months). It also means that nobody is liable for the fake stories. The papers will say “well that’s what the journalist wrote; don’t blame us”, the writer will say “I was misled by a source” and the source can’t be named so no action can be taken against them.

Quick update: watching the news and Hugh Grant has specifically mentioned The Mail has following him. I was right. Like always.

she probably referred to the toaster that did this as a nazi sympathiser

I still buy them though; which is the important part surely? Occasionally in the past I’ve brought one then given them straight back to the person selling them; thereby giving them the money but not having to wear it. Yet it seems like some people think that wearing it is the most important part. That if you’re not wearing it you must automatically be against the troops, and be pro-nazi, pro-terrorist, pro-whoever else we have decided to fight this week. Just because I don’t wear a Poppy does not mean I want all army personnel to die penniless. It’s pretty obvious I don’t want that via the fact that I’M NOT A COMPLETE ASSHOLE.

The worst part of this is that the Poppy seems to have become a fashion accessory. People compete to see who can get the best version of it. Look; if you want to donate hundreds of pounds to the charity then don’t buy a £100 Poppy; just donate that much money to the charity. Oh wait; then you wouldn’t be able to show off would you? And what seems to be the point of donating to charity unless you have something to constantly show off “oh you have  a REGULAR one? well I have the deluxe which means I donated more which means I’m better than you”. If you ever at a tv taping and see a celebrity wearing one of these; get close to them and explain that the fancier the Poppy; the lower percentage of the production goes to the charity. Explain how the expensive ones require intricate design work; and as such takes a lot of time and effort to make, and so the companies making them will often only donate 10% to the charity, and the standard “paper and plastic” Poppy is simple and displays the same message without any of the showing off. Then whilst they stand there; pondering what you just said; punch them in the face; it’ll probably get you on tv.

Now it’s not just fashionable for people to wear a Poppy; objects do too. You see the Poppy printed on the front page of newspapers.

The point of which I don’t understand. The entire point of the Poppy is to raise money, does the charity get any money when you print an image of the Poppy? No; it doesn’t, that would be stupid. You’re just doing it for a self righteous reason. And actually the Poppy was originally only meant to be worn on Remembrance Day itself; so you’re actually going against tradition.

Not wearing a Poppy is not a political statement; forcing people to wear one is. It says “this is a totalitarian state under a different name”.  Now if you’d like to donate secretly then just go here http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/ then click on donate.