At Home with The Dentons - Episode Thirteen:

'Ave it, Ah!

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: Hi Paul. I saw Avatar last night.
Paul: Isn’t it great? While the story is familiar and dialogue somewhat clichéd, the presentation and effects combine so beautifully that didn’t you find it redefined what we should expect from the cinematic experience?
JC: With my ocular augmentations I thought my vision might correct the effects and didn’t want to risk the extra expense, so I went to the 2D version.
Paul: I have to be somewhere else.

Silence is Olden

I've been spending just over a month now getting back in the habit of getting back into old habits. I'm paying tax again, which is never to be enjoyed, though it at least means I can feel justified in complaining about things of which I care little but am contributing to in some minuscule way.

I'm tootling along at a blistering 60mph on my little motorbike most mornings, while the cold North Wales winds do their utmost to prize my fingers from their joints. I long for the day I can get a bigger bike. One that can have heated grips. Probably should pass my test first though. And get more money.

Minor amusement this week saw the end of the latest series of X-Factor, with the prospect of this year's winner (a boy with a name of some description) potentially being denied the top spot of the nations hit parade by virtue of a significant number of people who, tired of the formulaic approach to the annual inevitability, have set about purchasing an alternate track. Nothing says anarchic quite like orchestrated co-ordination.

Much has been made of the fact both artists are on the Sony label, so whichever way it goes the label are having extra stuffing balls with this year's turkey. I've likened it to deciding to stick it to the man by not buying Coke any more and buying Sprite instead. It's also the concept in itself and the choice of track. All the people urging others to buy Rage Against The Machine, and this little voice in the back of my head is screaming "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!"
Having said that, it remains a fantastic track and has lost nothing with age, so ultimately I bleat like a sheep and do my bit. If for no other reason that a part of me longs for the Xmas albums of tomorrow, where 'Killing In The Name' nestles between Bowie/Bing's rendition of 'Little Drummer Boy' and McCartney's 'Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time'. What a beautiful world that would be.

Factor Fiction

I don't like X-Factor. I think it's a pimply wart on the shittiest arse TV has to offer. Only marginally better than the anal rape that is Big Brother.

My reasons for loathing this travesty is the pretence that it has ever been a singing or talent competition. This has been highlighted recently by what I'm told is called, Jedward. Jedward. The cunning blend of the names John and Edward. Except it isn't at all really is it? They've simply put a J on Edward. Jodward could have worked and would have been more credible as a blending of the two names than Jedward. Jedward. What lazy simpleton farted that out?

Anyway, I love Jedward. I obviously don't love them enough to pick up a phone and vote for them, or any other contestant for that matter. I'm not a complete cabbage. I love that tone deaf foetuses get to writhe around a stage every week, and as a nation we collectively applaud. Some in the belief that their continued presence is in some way anarchic. Others because they genuinely enjoy their performance. I don't know which group I pity more.

From its Pop Idol beginnings the show was about giving society's deluded the opportunity to be told how awful they really are and how Mummy and Daddy had filled their heads with impossible dreams. It also meant monkeys could watch their telly and laugh, immersed in their superiority as they pointed a mocking finger at the pathetic fools who dared to try and realise their ambition rather than staying at home shrouded in ignorance.

Once voting is opened up to the public any semblance of true competition is lost. Sure, some of viewers are drug addled miscreants, filled with self pity and a staunch belief that the world owes them a living, but that alone doesn't make them A&R people or qualified to judge artistic and commercial potential.

With tribal voting we see people supporting someone they feel they should by virtue of geography, irrespective of whether they believe in their ability. Armies of pubescent girls will blow their weekly mobile top up by endlessly punching in the pretty boy's number, while their boyfriends simply want to punch in the pretty boy. Middle aged women dampen their couches salivating over the mid twenties gay one.

Of course it's all kicked off this week because Simon Cowell didn't eliminate Jedward. What amazes me is that people are surprised. To see morons on the street happily telling GMTV and it's ilk that Cowell is a coward and that it's supposed to be a singing competition is almost as annoying as the show itself. Wake up people, it was never a singing competition. It's Saturday night karaoke entertainment for the masses. The stay at home and vegetate in front of mediocrity at its most banal masses.

Tomphonery

I think it's fair to say that all of us on occasion are bothered by telesales calls at inappropriate times. When you have an ex-directory number it becomes alarming as it suggests someone you deal with is selling on your details. Every now and then though there is the opportunity for a tiny piece of payback .

Yesterday evening I was sitting at the computer reading through forums posts and Twitter updates when the phone rings. On answering a very cheery fellow told me he was from Space Kitchens and asked me how I was.

I used to get quite irate at these calls and constantly asking, and being ignored, to be removed from their call list, but now I mostly remain silent. It's interesting (to me anyway) how their resolve and dedication to getting that sale varies. Some give it a couple more hellos and then give up. Some give it a couple of hellos, pause, give it a couple of questioning hellos, then give up. Or like the chap from Space Kitchens keep going for quite some time, presumably confused by the silence and possibly assuming there's a problem with the phone that will magically rectify itself and the most eager kitchen purchaser they are ever likely to speak to is moments away. They do hang up in the end though.

Once the line is dead I give it a quick 1471 to check the number and search online to verify who the call was from. The reason for this is that some company's will use a third party call centre for a fixed period campaign, so it just verifies who is calling.

In this case it was indeed Space Kitchens, who according to a number of testimonials are quite rude and offensive to people who refuse their offer of a free quotation or ask not to be bothered again. I noticed that they had a freephone number on their website. A plot hatches.

While freephone numbers are, by definition, free for the caller, they obviously cost the company. Most seem to have a monthly rental price which has a number of inclusive minutes over which any additional minutes are charged at a rate similar to local calls.

So while I'm enjoying my online time, I ring their freephone number and when answered remain silent. The chap on the other end was obviously confused, I mean, what kind of idiot rings a number and then doesn't speak? When he eventually hung up I put the phone on the desk and hit redial. The phone is loud enough that I can make out if someone is talking without putting it on speaker phone, so I can carry on with my internet diversion, just stabbing the redial button when I hear the line go dead. After a few calls a Scottish woman answered who actually had a conversation with me. She asked me how I was, gave me a few Uh-huhs and yeses, apologised that they couldn't do that (do what I have no clue, though I'd like to think she imagined I asked her to smother me in marmalade while holding aloft a picture of Gordon Brown and singing Aqua's 1997 UK number one hit Barbie Girl.) and suggested I ring head office before giving me a cheery goodbye (obviously head office is where all the marmalade fetishists are). I don't understand why she felt the need to have that conversation with a silent person, but I really liked her for it. The next few calls received a couple of hellos before hang ups, but then they seemed to start getting annoyed. At one point the person asked if I had nothing better to do. I love it when people ask that, as if I'm suddenly going to turn around and say, “Yes actually, I have to fly off to Fiji and get those silly military types to have elections. I'm so glad you asked as I'd have forgotten otherwise. Have an apricot.”

A few more calls and I was told in a very stern voice that she didn't mind me wasting my time as she gets paid to answer the phone. A few more calls and I was back with my Scottish friend who started doing the kind of train impression you'd do for children, with plenty of choo-choos and chuff, chuff, chuff, chuffs.

Presumably they had caller display as it seemed that they stopped biting after about twenty minutes and either just left the phone connected for a short while, or gave some form of raspberry noise as soon as they picked up and hung up immediately afterwards. Curiously though, at no point did anyone ask me to stop calling.

I kept stabbing the redial for just over an hour until I had finished my reading and did actually have something better to do. In terms of cost to the company it would have been insignificant, and at best tying up one of the lines may have caused a modicum of disruption to their business in preventing a genuine customer calling. It did however put a big smile on my face, and maybe, just maybe, they'll think twice before calling here again.

Oh, and if you fancy hearing a truly great choo-choo impression, just call 0800 2888 888.

More On Richard Kershtinkle - Private Eye

The name's Richard Kershtinkle, I'm a private dick. My friends call me Dick, the dick. That's private dick. Being a private dick I get to see a lot of weird shit. There was one the other day by my front gate that looked like the previous evening's Bhuna, even down to the half naan and dill pickle.

The fridge had stared at me blankly when I'd enquired about milk. It's door wide, it's shelves bare. I was going to have to go out. I was going to have to get dressed. I was going to have to wear pants. I dragged my weary legs into the bedroom, kicking the future laundry in the general direction of the corner of the room where clothes that need washed and can no longer be Febreezed into acceptability go to fester. I found a reasonably flexible pair of green boxer shorts and a pair of now cream coloured sports socks. I sat on the end of the bed. Our bed. The bed she'd lay in. The bed I'd lay in. The bed we'd lay in. I was distracted, I needed to focus. I grabbed my jeans and my Han Solo “Don't Get Cocky!” Lego Star Wars T-shirt. I was going shopping in style. I picked up my keys and wallet from the dresser, her dresser, and headed for the door.

I sat in the mk3. With its red paint faded to the point where it looked like an albino with sun stroke, I was thankful for the spotlights retaining an air of cool about it. I turned the ignition key and she purred, coughed, fell over a cracked paving stone and spat out a small chicken bone to life. We headed off to the sweet soul sound of Smokey's Tears'.

I cruised to Motown and pulled into the supermarket carpark with an air of superstition delivered by Stevie. I resolved to kick anything blue I saw for the rest of the day. I parked in the carpark. It seemed the logical thing to do.

The automatic doors spread like the legs of a cheap hooker as I approached. An old man stood just inside, smiling at every face that wondered what the sweet Mother Mary he had to be so damn happy about as they passed. As I got level with him he told me it was a good morning. I stopped and turned to face him. I questioned his assertion. I demanded to know what was go good about it. Sure the sun was shining, but there were dark clouds approaching and the forecast was for showers. Life was a cruel mistress who promised love and romance and delivered sorrow and pain. Given his current position smiling at strangers in a supermarket doorway, what did he have to be so damn cheerful about that he could dictate to me whether this was any particular type of day? He told me peaches were just twenty pence per punnet. That was good. I went and picked one up.

I wandered past the organic vegetables, with their knobbly brown bits that cost twice as much as their shiny pesticide protected cousins, and as I did I could hear the sound of a three legged cat having it's lower jaw shaved with chicken wire. As I continued forward, towards the Entertainment area, the noise got louder. I realised that they were pushing the music of Whiny Alehouse. Their marketing ploy would have no effect on me, I was immune to such obvious and blatant sales tactics. Her depressing brand of audible self harm and chemical dependency was neither uplifting nor referential enough to influence my musical purchasing preferences. I headed for the alcohol aisle.

As I passed the biscuits that I could buy and receive an equal amount in addition for no extra charge, I turned to see a gallery of shimmering glass. I aimed for the Shiraz and paused, my arm reaching out like a baboon sending an elevator to the third floor when he meant to press for the fifth. Wine was the comfortable middle ground. A bottle of plonk to send me the way of the weary. Perhaps this was a time to fall back on my old friend beer.

Beer and I had parted company some years ago. It wasn't that we had fallen out or had any significant disagreement, she just never felt he was sophisticated enough, and certainly not the type of friend to bring out at dinner parties. We'd kept in touch, mostly meeting up at Harry's, but even now I felt I couldn't take him home. I couldn't go back.

Perhaps it was time to step up to the big leagues. Grab a single malt and get down to some serious brain rotting. I looked around, curious to see what the great and the good were buying. I saw a pair of Spider-Man pants picking up a large bottle of an exotic fruit based drink. As he brought it down from the shelf he nodded excitedly. The hyenas at his side systematically increasing the number of bottles they could consume and trying to define exactly how drunk they had been previously.

I tried to recall if I'd ever had Spider-Man pants. Then I tried to recall if I'd ever felt the need to wear my trousers low enough for people to see my pants. Then I remembered that incident after too many tequilas on the night bus with four drunken men, seven loud and obnoxious girls on a hen night, a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch, and two members of the local constabulary. Those cell cots are hard.

Once the pack had moved on, I followed the Spider-Man pants' wisdom and examined a bottle of the exotic fruit concoction. It was one of those drinks that combines any number of liquefied fruit, adds a dash of vodka, and suggests that by drinking it you'll be instantly more attractive and women will think you're sensitive. It's all bullshit, but it was a litre bottle of bullshit and cheap. I took three and headed for the tills.

Back in the car park the grey clouds were now overhead. As I climbed into the mk3 they started to weep for me. I threw an angry look up at them. It hit the windscreen and fell into the footwell by the clutch pedal. I stroked the ignition key, then grabbed hold and twisted it like it was Edward Ruttlinger's right nipple. Edward had sat by me in Maths classes back in school. He was a smart kid. A proper brain box. I displayed my superiority over him by inflicting pain regularly. The last time I bumped into him he said he was working in a bank and blathered on about bonuses. Loser.

The mk3 carried me home while Otis chilled out watching boats. As I pulled up outside the house the sky was now spitting its contempt at me, so I ran inside. Shaking off the rain I headed to the fridge to deposit my wares, and as I pulled open the door the hinges creaked and whispered 'milk'.

I bit a peach, unscrewed a bottle, and set a course for fruit based oblivion.

Busy Doing Nothing

It seams of late I'm finding a myriad of things to not do rather than doing the things I supposedly like to do.

Part of the reason has been decorating. My little munchkin is getting big and she deserves a larger room, so what was effectively an upstairs laundrette has been cleared, stripped, dismantled, extra power points added, inbuilt cupboards ripped out and walls re-plastered. I'm learning new skills, which I guess should be uplifting, but is just another inconvenience.

I've learned plastering isn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Though my efforts are certainly not up to professional standards, they are mighty fine. Similarly, Artexing the ceiling and freeze, while destroying my right shoulder, has resulted in a stippled ceiling that Michaelangelo himself would look at and say,
“S'allright that Peach!”
Only he'd say it in Italian. And cough up a lung. And snog me.

I'm also tootling about on a little motorbike. As I'm currently in v3.0 of my mid-life crisis (v1.0 was cutting all my hair off, v1.1 was dying the resulting mop red, v1.2 was changing from red to purple and v2.0 was the common or garden variety depression) the two wheeled wonder was just a natural progression.

This hasn't left much time for proper gaming. I say proper because I have still been playing, but mostly at friends houses so somewhat superficial. It has allowed me to get to grips with a few new titles, but more on that another time. At home I'm either labouring through some form of DIY or watching The Wire (at time of writing we're about to start season five).

I've also not been reading nor writing, though I can't fathom what I've been doing or not in their place. It's the arse end of September and I've nothing to show for a months worth of existence. That is a somewhat terrifying realisation.

What little gaming I've done at home has mostly been GTA IV (PC), which given some of the nightmare scenarios I'd read about online getting the game to run, is rather splendid looking and smooth. There's no doubt it's a questionable port and certainly seams little thought has been given to optimising for the PC, but the core gameplay is solid and as fun as it ever was.

I've also dipped a tentative toe back into the murky waters of football management. It's been a good few years since I played Championship Manager (PC). Back in the days when Sports Interactive and Eidos were still cuddly bed fellows and spooning, before SI's arm got pins and needles and Eidos kept leaving the light on and toilet seat up.

Since SI went and hopped into Sega's Emperor sized pillow topped, duck downed, snuggle fest', and Eidos inflated there own love dumpling while shouting through their tears how they didn't need SI anymore and they'd make their own CM, I've left them to it. Reviews have suggested that SI have maintained the quality and depth of their CM games in the guise of Football Manager (thankfully sans a bearded knob on the cover artwork) and Eidos's Beautiful Game Studios have struggled and consistently suffered by comparison.

For the 2010 iteration, Eidos decided to offer pre-orders through their website for as little as £2.51. Being the generous sort I am, I gave them £3.00. My place in heaven assured, I waited patiently for the release date whereby I would download the game, spend a couple of hours fumbling about, then walk away from it forever. A solid plan, until the other night I was lambasting my defence for failing to close down the opposition's attacking midfielder when I realised it was beyond three in the morning and I'd been sat at the computer for six hours. Thus far I've navigated far too many menus, noticed a few players performing vastly different to their real life counterparts, and the only Premier League badge is Aston Villa's, with the rest of the league sharing a generic club-coloured shield, which is surprisingly annoying. Surely it would have made more sense to forego the badges altogether? I haven't decided if it's a good game or not, and not having played FM I can't compare the games. It's certainly compelling, for now.

Also on the home front, last night we discovered a mouse in our living room. Having distracted us by making a scratching noise in the hall we went to investigate, only to find nothing until the wife turned around to find it flipping her the finger from the rug in the living room. By the time I entered, all manly like in my shorts with a big stick, the little blighter had disappeared behind the couch. Today has therefore been mainly spent setting traps and laying poison. Oh, and before anyone gets all 'humane' on me, if you'd shit on my carpet I'd poison you too.

And as if that wasn't enough, I lost a tooth today.

Roll on October.

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Twelve:

Deny Me Three Times

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: Hey Paul.
Paul: News on the third game in our award winning franchise has gone a bit quiet.
JC: Third game?
Paul: Yes, y'know, Deus Ex 3?
JC: How can they make a third when there wasn't a sequel?
Paul: Yes there was, Invisi...
JC: HOW CAN THEY MAKE A THIRD WHEN THERE WASN'T A SEQUEL?
Paul: Shh, Alex is asleep in the back
JC: Alex?
Paul: Riiight.

Summer Shun

The supposed summer holidays are upon me, which of course means my beloved offspring is home all day and looking for exciting things to do. As such, I don't get as much game time as I would previously because, and here's a crazy notion, I don't play games rated for adults when there's a child walking about the place. Bless her little cotton socks, she does like to play the occasional game though, so when it's raining outside (odd phrase that, when has it ever rained inside?) and she's not having one of her creative sprees, she will hijack her mother's DS or play on the Wii with me. Huzzah and hurray then for Wii Sports Resort (Wii).

Much has been made of the new Motion Plus and in the main the comments about improved interaction and responsiveness are fair. Some of the praise though, particularly from the Nintendo only press, is a bit, obsequious. It certainly works well in the main, but it's not the earth shattering golden glory hole some corners of the media would have us believe. It's fun and works well in most cases, particularly the sword fighting and bowling, but does frustrate at other times. Canoeing is anger inducing crap and had me wondering whether the play-testers were tanked up for that session as I can't see how me performing exaggerated sweeps to my right can have the avatar scooping at his left.

All this Wii focus did mean I took my eyes off the wider scene for a moment, and when I did catch sight again I was genuinely pleased to see that EA had subtitled the new Need For Speed game in a way that really emphasises the direction they've taken the series. Then I spotted the “F”.

IGN are running another “Death of PC Gaming” piece. Read it with disbelief yourself here .

Finally for this little session a word about Ben There, Dan That (PC): Good. Now a word about Time Gentlemen, Please! (PC): Great. Now some more words on both.

I had a little look at Ben There, Dan That some time ago, but, and this may shock you, I was never a huge pointy clicky adventury kind of person. I tended to sit and watch friends play them. That way I could enjoy the story and get bonus jollies from watching their frustration when unable to solve a puzzle. Nothing ventured nothing failed, so to speak. It wasn't until the recent release of Time Gentlemen, Please! that I remembered about Ben There, Dan That and so popped back to the Zombie Cow site to download it and give it a go. Seeing the ad for Time Gentlemen, Please! there as well, and noticing that it cost just £3.44 including VAT, I had this strange uncomfortable feeling of guilt. Why guilt? I don't know. Maybe because I hadn't played Ben There, Dan That when I originally meant to and thus failed to donate any money for future developments. Whatever the reason, I decided that without further ado I would make amends, and even if they turned out to be the worst games I ever swung a cursor at, I was going to help these bastions of the independent gaming development bods. So in the best traditions of those pointy clicky adventury things, I used credit card on website.

I won't bore with the details, and I wouldn't have a clue how to explain what happens in the games without giving away the story and jokes, suffice to say they were some of the most joyous hours of gaming I have ever had. I laughed more at these games than I have at any comedy DVD of the past few years. Self referencing comedy genius of the highest order.

Given that Ben There, Dan That is free, and Time Gentlemen, Please! is just £3.44, I do find myself wondering what kind of person wouldn't head off to www.zombie-cow.com for a download, and the only people I can think of are Nazis, morally righteous mice, and paedophiles. I'm sure you're none of those.

Street Blighter

Time once again proves to be anything but a friend. This time it has teamed up with my failing memory to play the cruellest of tricks. You see, I remember quite clearly being good at Street Fighter II. Back in the old SNES days I first completed it with Blanka, a feat my friends told me was quite an achievement, themselves first making their way through with either Ken or Ryu. I soon followed suit and completed it with all seven of the original playable cast. You'll notice I said seven there. That's because we don't count Zangief. We just don't.

Some years have passed and despite at least six further versions and sequels, we now have Street Fighter IV (360). I'm sure you will appreciate, given my undoubted skills, I had little to fear from this new incarnation. It is, after all, just a modern version of Street Fighter II with nice new graphics. The gameplay mechanics remain as they were back in 1992.

Starting as Ryu I went into the first round and immediately fired off a couple of fireballs and dragon punched my opponent, following up with the whirlwind kick. This was like riding a bike. I was home. That, however, was where the joy got up, left the room, and buggered off to South America with the window cleaner. Before I knew what was happening, this laddett who I believe is called Crimson Viper, in a poorly fitting suit and awful glasses, was beating seven shades of the proverbial out of me. I put it down to complacency and being over confident and resolved that Round 2 would see me regain my rightful place as the Ultimate World Warrior. No, spanked again.

I'm sure I used to be able to play these games. I'm sure I was at least competent. Have my reactions slowed that much? Was I actually just a bit shit and I've spent these intervening years steeped in ignorance and delusion?

Anyway, fighting games are so last century. I've moved on.

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Eleven:

Love Casualty

Paul: See you later JC.
JC: Where are you going?
Paul: Got to pick Alex up from the clinic.
JC: Clinic?
Paul: Yeh, he's had treatment for the infection he caught from Ava.
JC: Ava? But she's, I mean, she's an AI construct. She has no physical form.
Paul: I know. Anyway, I wouldn't use the holograph generator for a while.
JC: Ew!

Tightening Up

I know, I've been slacker than a cheap whore's money maker of late. I'd like to say it's because I've been so focused on my exercise regime that when not pumping my body full of lactic acid and natural endorphins I've been stood in front of a mirror admiring my finely tuned physique.

Obviously I can't say that as it would be an obscenely large mountain of bullshit and only slightly more difficult to swallow than a BBC press release stating that they are actively seeking a woman over the age of 50 to present a popular Saturday night entertainment program.

Anyway, I've no doubt my absence from the densely populated blogosphere has gone largely unnoticed so my preoccupation with other, more interesting, things was under no pressure to cease being indulged.

“What is this wondrous new thing that has kept you from projecting your innermost thoughts out into the void where they are free to roam and meet other thoughts, do some networking, get a job and then turn up on your doorstep one July morning laughing at you, dressed in a fine suit from Slaters in Liverpool, a good one, not one of the cheap ones off the rack but a proper tailored one, like you'd only get for a really special occasion like your wedding, but is now before you being worn as a regular day suit?”

Well no-one in particular, It's none of your damn business and I'll thank you to refrain from such intrusions in future.

A Gull and a Bull

Children are the most wonderful invention. Their innocence is so refreshing, particularly the way they assimilate some of our grown up bullshit.

The other day I was standing in the local Asda chatting with Michael while his dynamic duo (that being his children, not his testicles, as dynamic as I'm sure they are) happily amused themselves rearranging the various carbonated beverages into neat displays. Being children they also wanted to partake of such beverages, and Michael being a budget conscious soul (see: cheap) agreed to allow them to select three, thereby invoking the shops own brand three bottles for a solitary pound of her majesties tender covenant.

Alas the bright colours proved too tempting for the young charges, and soon there was a dilemma. With four flavours to choose from, what method of elimination could be employed?

A Britain's Got Talent style competition was ruled out as Simon Cowell is off having expensive fun on his expensive private jet while he lives his expensive life with his antique marble teeth and 1950's yard brush hair; Amanda Holden was too busy shaving her ankles; and Piers Morgan's a cunt.

Strictly Comes Dancing was a no go as Bruce would just blend in with the greeters so we'd constantly lose him, and Tess, let's be fair, Tess' personality is on ITV hosting Beat The Star.

Dancing On Ice was a none starter. We were nowhere near the freezers and if Holly Willoughby had turned up we'd be too busy restocking the milk cages.

In looking at the flavours on offer, Mike seamed to favour Dandelion & Burdock the least. I got this impression from the way he said Dandelion & Burdock as if he was locking tongues with a camel who had just finished giving it's diarrhetic baboon lover a rim job.

Turning to his children I asked if they knew what Dandelion & Burdock was made from. Of course they didn't, they're children.
“Well a dandelion is a flower, I'm sure you've seen them, they're the ones you pick and blow, not unlike a nose.”
They nodded enthusiastically,
“Well, you take some dandelion flowers and you crush them and their seeds down to a pulp.”
Gripping stuff.
“Now do you know what a Burdock is?”
Of course they didn't, no-one does. And going off to Wiki and claiming you do doesn't count.
“A Burdock is a little beetle, about an inch long,”
I held out my fingers and indicated an inch between my thumb and forefinger. Then bringing my other hand into play I commenced the mime,
“and what you do is peel back the wings and scoop out all the soft stuff underneath like the guts and intestines, and then pound that into the mush. And that's where the flavour comes from. It's full of protein, like eating flies and worms.”

“Don't want that one Dad.”

Shit and Damnation

I've been pretty quiet through June thus far. I think this is because I've been trying to catch my breath after what has been a rather viscously delivered metaphoric steel toe capped boot to my love juice factory.

MP's with their nose in the trough is nothing new, and at times of financial hardship I can understand the general population getting angry. Having said that, for all the things this, previous, and successive governments have and will do to get us angry, the expenses issue is a disproportionate smoke screen to real issues, and certainly should not have been used as an excuse for what some people did in the wake of the revelations. As I've said elsewhere recently, I believed being British meant upholding the virtues of freedom and the unequivocal right to live without persecution due to ethnicity, religious belief, gender or sexual orientation. To oppose fascism by spreading light and understanding into every dark corner where it seeks to fester. Clearly I was wrong.

Aside from the misery that is our political system, Duke Nukem Forever failing to materialise and Take 2's reaction is as comedic as it is tragic.

PC gamers fell out of love with Valve after the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, while Xbox 360 owners decried them for complaining about what will no doubt be a fine sequel, completely missing the point of the anger which isn't that Valve are releasing a sequel, rather that Valve have announced a sequel that contains all the content that purchasers of the first game where told would be made available to them after they'd paid upfront at launch. There's also the issue of splitting the community and further concern that there's still no sign of HL2:Ep3 and questions over whether Valve are moving away from their, until this incident, steadfast supporters in favour of the console market.

On the subject of consoles, consoles are good. There, I said it. While my gaming medium of choice remains the PC, I don't exclude other formats for my gaming fix, and given some recent releases I'm more grateful for the soulless boxes of blasphemy than I have been for a number of years. Some games simply don't warrant a purchase, and in the absence of a rental market for PC games, Blockbuster along with Xbox 360 and PS3 owning friends become all important.

Damnation (360) promised much and delivered nothing. Steampunk by it's very nature is a bit wank, being laughably quaint in it's original vision as future technology. Ignoring the reality though and taking it as the fantasy it is, in the right hands it can work as a marvellous piece of escapism and alternate reality (if that's not hypocritical, which it probably is). There's a number of fine literary examples, Verne and Welles being the most obvious exponents, and inspiring early science fiction cinema and the birth of special effects in Melies works. Gaming wise I struggle to think of any that really made the decision to choose the steampunk route worthy. BioShock just about got away with it by the steampunk elements being relatively incidental, and besides that the only game that springs to mind is The Chaos Engine way back in the Amiga days. I'm sure there's been others, but they clearly fade from memory so as to be worthless. Enter then Damnation to pick up the torch of the forgotten, in the cave of the lost, and immediately piss on the flame of redemption. Now it could be that the steampunk elements work quite well in Damnation, I can't say as I got that far because the game is so horribly broken that anything it may do right is tainted by the mountain of shit it's buried under.

Damnation sees you control a chap named Hamilton (I shit you not) Rourke who fancies himself as Marcus Fenix in a cowboy hat, leading two fellow rebels (a feisty semi naked damsel and a wise ass bullet magnet) on a mission to do something I soon forgot all about as I cursed the AI who kept getting shot and making me go search for them in order to revive them, the visuals that had me thinking I'd developed cataracts, and the acrobatic displays that are supposed to be a key selling point, and in fairness can look quite nice when pulling off a backwards leap from a flagpole onto a broken wall before springing over to face down the generic men in masks, but which most of the time had me mashing the pad wondering why it was refusing to do what it promised if I followed it's instructions. At one point quite early on I was supposed to scale a wall, only halfway up I could neither climb further, move down, or jump to the building behind me. All I could do was move sideways, which was pretty redundant. Handing the pad to my dear friend who had been chuckling away at my increasing levels of hostility, he spent five lateral minutes before declaring the game a “pile of cock”.

It's quite conceivable I missed something significant, and after a reset I must have paid more attention as I progressed a little further, shot a few more men in masks, and revived allies who may as well have just left written instructions before eating a bullet, thereby saving me a lot of time and the enemy some ammunition.

Like I said earlier, some games aren't worth buying, but this festering arse boil isn't even worth the rental price. In fact, if someone offers you this game for free, they're doing so because they hate you, they wish you were dead, and have been sleeping with your mum. And dad.

Equally not worth a purchase, but far better executed and fun for the few hours it lasts is Terminator:Salvation (360). Released to tie in with the new movie, though sans Bale, it has you taking the role of Marcus Fenix again, sorry, no, it's John Connor this time, as you sequentially move between cover points destroying robots. The gameplay really doesn't get more complicated than that. You'll man gun emplacements, including on the back of a truck, but it's all the same really, and that's no bad thing because as I suggested at the start, for the few hours your blasting T-600s and HKs to smithereens you're having fun. Yes, fun. It's why we play games, and sometimes a little bit of mindless action is a good thing. The visuals are also surprisingly colourful, with foliage draping the shattered walls and the smashed cars in the streets still wearing their paint with pride. It may sound strange, but after so much grey and brown with the likes of Gears of War, GTA IV, Fallout 3, Damnation, it was refreshing to see colour splashed around so liberally.

There's no significant characters to get attached to and no meaningful storyline to follow. A linear third person shooter without pretensions in which you, and a friend in co-op if you so desire, will spend an evening blasting robots.

In more serious game related news I've just completed Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (PC). Despite what I'd read about it's bugged nature and incomplete story, I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it to be far more stable than the original, though the stability could be down to a registry tweak I discovered after completing the first game.

I again followed the path of the light and hope to return in the future as an utter bastard. While the ending doesn't give closure in the same way the first game did, it's still a worthy sequel, and as a nostalgic old man who still remembers the excitement of being taken to the cinema in Birkenhead in 1977 (the one in Wallasey was a bit small and certainly didn't have a decent audio system) and the racing pulse as the blockade runner seemed to pass over my head, this pair of games encompass everything that was good about the fantasy and doesn't shoehorn in an Ewok or irritating Gungan. Not to mention the fact that they are incredibly well crafted and detailed roll playing games.

I do wonder whether The Old Republic MMO could succeed where others have failed to capture me. Though maybe it's too soon to think of such things, still being in mourning for Warhammer as I am.

I also boxed off Call of Duty:World at War (PC). A re-skinned Modern Warfare relocated to WWII and focusing on the Pacific campaign and Russian front, that on paper should have been at least on a par with it's older brother but which failed to capture anything of what made the previous incarnation a delight to play. All too often I found myself pinned down with endlessly spawning enemies charging at me, while my comrades sat around discussing the virtues of needle point and darning in the pacific islands. Okay maybe not, but the one thing they weren't doing was being soldiers, or any use whatsoever. All too often death came from places unknown, forcing slow progress as wave after wave of bayonet wielding Banzai merchants charged. Maybe I expected too much, but World at War sullied my love of the Call of Duty franchise to date, and I even liked the Wii version of Call of Duty 3.

I also took advantage of another of the weekend deals on Steam and purchased the Penumbra Collection (PC). Having played the demo of Black Plague and been impressed enough to add it to my ever expanding list of future purchases, the offer of both Overture and Black Plague along with the add-on Requiem for the ridiculously bargain basement bucket of bliss price of £4.50 was just too glorious a deal to walk away from. Since then I've spent more time than is probably good for me crouching behind boxes and creeping around in the dark.

A first person horror adventure, the emphasis is on exploration and physics based interaction and puzzle solving as you try and discover what happened to the residents of the deserted mine you've stumbling into, and search for a means of escape.

It's still early on in the first game, but it's certainly been a wonderfully terrifying ride so far.

I've also been catching up on some TV. One of the beauties of having the option to series link is that you can wait for the series to finish before watching the lot back to back. Of course the downside is you end up with multiple series and a full box before you know it. Rapidly running out of hours it was time to spend a few evenings watching the second, though unfortunately I believe not final, series of Ashes to Ashes.

I can't quite put my finger on why I haven't enjoyed Ashes to Ashes as much as Life on Mars, though it has to be said, the opening monologue as the title music starts doesn't help,

‘My name is Alex Drake. I’ve just been shot and that bullet...' at which point I'm already screaming “Oh Fuck Off!” at the screen.

Even Life on Mars I felt was stretching it by running to a second series, but the dynamic between Sam and Gene kept things moving along. Sam with his modern techniques and attitudes, Gene embodying the very bad old days, albeit as a caricature of them. They were poles apart in technique but drawn together for the common good, as similar as they were opposed.

I don't see that dynamic with the Alex character, and as we reached the end of the second series I felt Gene had been watered down to the point were he wouldn't have looked out of place in The Bill.

In other TV related fun, Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire is a hoot.

Finally, at hour thirty two, I'm just adding a little note here to remind myself should I ever look back on this with disdain, that it was written during one of my wonderful periods of insomnia, and rather than wait until I've had a good and proper sleep to proof read and edit, I'm lobbing it up in a final act of carefree rebellion to common sense.

But yeh, Krod Mandoon. Good.

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Ten:

Suspension Bridged

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: Hey Paul.
Paul: So, episode ten. Never though we'd get this far.
JC: What?
Paul: This is the tenth episode. Never though it would last this long.
JC: No, no clue what your talking about, so you should just stop talking right now.
Paul: You know, short conversation pieces detailing our sibling interactions.
JC: No, shut up. No clue, be quiet. Look out the window, there's some grass.
Paul: Okay, why are you being strange?
JC: [sighs] Fourth wall?
Paul: Ah. Sorry.

Richard Kershtinkle

The name's Richard Kershtinkle, I'm a private dick. My friends call me Dick, the dick. That's private dick. Being a private dick I get to see a lot of weird shit. There was one the other day at the side of the the burger stand, looked like a pigeon in a Stetson.

I was propping up the bar in Harry's. Why he couldn't have used a workbench or even a chair I don't know. I guess he just wanted that personal touch. Besides, it had been raining most of the day and he'd offered me free drinks while he fixed it in place, so I was glad to help. Harry wasn't accomplished when it came to DIY and was too cheap to get people in to do the refit. I was on my fifth J2O and had pushed the boat out and gone for the Orange & Pomegranate. It was a mistake.

Harry and I were old buddies. We'd knocked about in the same neighbourhood as kids, getting into fights, chasing the girls, getting the ever loving crap kicked out of us when we caught up with them. It was a tough neighbourhood. The compensation Harry got for the time Katie Guffnapper kicked him so hard in the juice box he was left permanently cross eyed had been invested wisely and he'd opened the bar a few years back on the returns. It was lucky he'd seen the ad for The Injury and Accident Lawyers 4 U Claim Group Direct. They offered a no win no fee guarantee to get compensation, or for a small fee knee cap the other party and take their dinner money. In my youthful exuberance I'd urged Harry to go for the knee capping. Katie had once pulled tongues at me, and that kind of pain never goes away.

Harry laboriously fixed the final screws into place so I could let go. Fair play to the old boy, it looked good and level. We tested it out by skimming shot glasses across it like you see in old Westerns. Harry slid down my Orange & Pomegranate. Seriously, don't. It's nasty. I held my breath and swallowed hard.

I bid farewell to Harry and turned to leave. That's when I saw her. Her auburn hair was pushed back behind her ears. Her ears where on the side of her head. Her hair brushed her shoulders as it flowed behind her back. The light caught the waves as they ran like rapids out of sight. I gazed at her as she removed her coat and shook off the precipitation she had collected outside. She stood before me in a cut off tee shirt, blue jeans and a pair of blue Adidas Samba's. Classy.

She walked up to the bar and gestured Harry. Harry looked at her. She gestured again, damn his eyes. She looked at me. I looked at her. We looked at each other. She looked back to Harry. I looked at Harry. Harry looked at us both, I think.

She said she was looking for someone to help her out. I told her I was always available to help a pretty dame, and truth be told I'd help the munters too. I'm not as young as I was and long since sold my principals down the river when I started accepting KFC Bargain Buckets as payment. I said I'd be glad to help her out, took her arm and headed for the door. She stopped me and said that's not what she meant. I told her to be more specific then, I was a busy man and time is chicken. She asked me who I was. I told her I'm Richard Kershtinkle and I'm a private dick. My friends call me Dick, the dick. That's private dick, and that being a private dick I see a lot of weird shit, like the other day there was one in the supermarket car park that with the tyre tread looked like a Semilarvatus Butterfly Fish.

She said she had no time for games. I put the Scrabble away. She said she needed a man. I was a man. She queried the past tense. I assured her the chest luggage was all man, as was the salami looking for flaws in my zip. She told me I was disgusting and ought to be ashamed of myself. I explained that ever since I found myself putting Britain's Got Talent on series link I've been beyond shame. I could see the pity in her eyes, mixing with contempt. She put her hand on my arm and whispered sympathy. I told her to take her sympathy and flush it with the other rotten goldfish. She looked shocked, like a beaver chewing a scaffold pole. I took a step back. She stepped forward. I took another step back. She took another step forward. I jumped to the left. She stepped to her right. I put my hands on my hips. She closed her legs, bringing her knees in tight. I told her that if her name was Janet I would be very likely to soil myself. She said it wasn't, that her name was Florence and that the Kit-Kat in her pocket was just coincidence. Florence. A beautiful name to match the beauty of the city. In her case the city of Sheffield. She opened her mouth, and from this range I could scent the mild garlic from the Kiev she had eaten within the hour. I know my chicken. She told me she'd recently moved into a flat above one of the shops down the street. I asked why I should care. She told me I shouldn't and that she was just trying to make small talk as our conversing seamed to have reached an impasse. I told her that small talk was like foreplay, unnecessary. I asked her if she was going to get to her point as I wasn't going to see her wasting any more of my time, not when there could be a Zinger Wrap worthy case just around the corner. She called me a dead beat and said she wished she hadn't bothered coming in. Thrusting her arms back into her coat and turning towards the door and said she didn't know who I thought I was. So as she stormed back out on to the cold wet streets I reminded her. I'm Richard Kershtinkle, and I'm a dick.

Hero Worship

I've been a bit of a fan of the Guitar Hero games ever since I was given a baptism of beer and pizza with Guitar Hero II on a friends Xbox 360. I even bought both Guitar Hero On Tour (DS) and Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades (DS) leading to many an evening being spent guitar duelling on the couch with the wife.

I'm therefore feeling a little privileged as I got to play the new entry in the ever expanding and market saturating Guitar Hero franchise before it appears in UK stores. Guitar Hero: Metallica (Wii) had me joining a Metallica wannabe band looking to support their heroes by playing Metallica songs past and present along with a number of tracks favoured by the band. There are 28 Metallica tracks and 21 from artists such as Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters, Thin Lizzy and Queen.

I'm sure there can be few who aren't familiar with the Guitar Hero formula, and it's post RockBand expansion to include microphone and drums as of Guitar Hero World Tour. As with previous versions, coloured 'notes' fall down the screen which must be matched by the player by pressing the appropriate colours on the guitar neck and strumming in time with the track. Similarly drums require the appropriate coloured pad or cymbal be struck, and lyrics warbled in roughly the correct key.

This is the second artist specific edition of the franchise, the previous being Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Unlike the Aerosmith edition the track listing here feels solid, and even a none Metallica fan such as myself will be familiar with most of the songs, which adds a comforting element to their playing. There's an additional Bass Drum peddle which can be purchased and a new Expert+ difficulty level so you can really pretend to be Lars Ulrich if you so desire.

One thing I feel the Guitar Hero franchise has, somewhat ironically, failed to effectively simulate is playing the guitar. As a guitar player myself there's always been a feeling of detachment when playing the games. The strum bar is uncomfortable to actually strum, and holding it bears little or no resemblance to holding a plectrum. When I can pick up a guitar and play a track such as She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult, as seen in Aerosmith, there's a distinct feeling that there's something wrong with the interpretation the little plastic codpiece has me fumbling through. When playing with fellow musicians it's the keyboard player, who has never managed to master a real guitar, that gets to live out his Hendrix fantasy. Make of that what you will. By contrast, the drumming (yes I drum too, really rather well!) in both RockBand and Guitar Hero is logical and could actually be an aid to drum tuition.

Like I said, I'm not a Metallica fan so fandom wouldn't be enough to sell me the game. I can play a few Metallica songs though, such as the now staple Enter Sandman, so it was interesting to see that playing the track in the game felt akin to playing the track on guitar. There was a logic to the progression and hand movements that I hadn't experienced in the games before. I don't know whether this is just because the Metallica songs translate better or whether there's been a change in the way the music is converted into the rainbow drops. Whatever the reason, my moment centre stage left me hungry for more and cursing the fact I couldn't take the game home.

The version I was playing was on the Wii so graphically it obviously can't compete with the 360 or PS3, though in my opinion the only graphics that matter are the 'notes' so I've never really understood that being a criticism of the games. Audio on the other hand is paramount, and thankfully things have continued to improve since the somewhat lacklustre audio performance seen in the Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.

Unlike the 360 and PS3, instruments are not interchangeable between the RockBand and Guitar Hero games on Wii, so RockBand owners need to stump up extra cash if they want to join in with their Guitar Hero playing friends. The Guitar Hero instruments require a Wii remote be plugged into them to work, and this is the main issue I have with the pricing policy of the Wii versions. I wouldn't pay the same price for a TV which only worked if I inserted a circuit board I already owned into it as I would for a whole new TV, so why do Activision expect Wii owners to pay the same price for their instruments as 360 and PS3 owners? Whether there's justification for the pricing or not, it looks like Wii owners are getting the mucky part of the woody thing.

Instrument pricing aside, this is certainly my favourite Guitar Hero game to date and has actually made me reappraise Metallica. Maybe I should download some of their songs. They're okay with that, right?

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Nine:

Silent Witless

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: I'm not speaking to you.
Paul: Really? So, you wouldn't mind if I drink all the beer out of the fridge?
JC: ...
Paul: How about I eat all your Doritos?
JC: ...
Paul: I'm just popping to the bathroom with your Sophia Sak pictures.
JC: ENOUGH!
Paul: You're my bitch.

May Play

I believe it was Forrest Gump who said, “I am not a smart man!”. Never has a game had me sat on that white bench eating chocolates quite like Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason (PC), a first person suspense thriller of the highest order. Feeling defensive all of a sudden I should stress it wasn't the puzzles in the game that had me head scratching, as good as they are, but rather the story itself. I lost count of the WTF? moments as a female voice, accompanied by postcards depicting cave drawings, told me about some tribe doing a runner from slavers and then turning on their leader in a forest. Exactly what this had to do with the Russian nuclear icebreaker trapped in the Arctic I was investigating, I really have no clue.

The game seems to have split reviewers as it doesn't sit comfortably in any particular genre. It's played out as a first person shooter, but don't let the guns fool you. There are puzzles that need to be overcome in order to progress, though they are never excessively challenging and function as a way of telling the story of what happened to the stricken ship and her crew.

There are numerous breaks with gaming convention along the way. Rather than health and medi-packs your survival is dependant on your body heat. Finding hot pipes, burning embers, or even light bulbs becomes all important. Weaponry is incidental as while the guns you find are necessary, it is a shooter of a sort after all, you're not gunning your way through enemies with unending supplies of ammunition, but rather using weapons selectively as and when required. The enemies themselves are in the main members of the crew who have become a kind of possessed semi human, and I'm desperately trying not to use the term zombie but failing miserably to come up with a suitable alternative, with the exception of a couple of what could be classed as end of level bosses.

The character you play through the game is a geologist who by a rather fortunate happenstance is gifted with psychic ability. This ability gives you flash backs to some of the events leading up to the ship becoming stranded in the ice. It also gives access to the games primary selling point. Mental Echoes. A number of frozen corpses you come across still have some form of essence that you can use to relive their final moments. In doing so you alter the physicality of your surroundings by correcting their error. For example, accessing the mental echo of a body lying in front of a door leads you to finding a piece of the hinge allowing the crew member to repair the door and escape, which on returning to your own mind has resulted in the pathway now being cleared and the door open.

Of course any self respecting physicist will by this point be having kittens (biologists not withstanding) and screaming terms like 'causality' and 'paradox', and they certainly entered my head on a number of occasions.

At the start of the game there is the not uncommon step of taking you through the gameplay mechanics as you are approaching the ship across the ice. As far as I could tell though, the bodies (yes plural) I was coming across and reliving those final moments of were my own, which lead to my first WTF? moments. On completion it does link back to the start and so corrects itself to some degree, though I was still somewhat perplexed.

There's a horrible term from the past, the 'interactive movie'. Used to describe dreadful FMV titles it has thankfully disappeared from the lexicon, though my personal feeling is that Cryostasis is what an interactive movie should be. It's blend of thriller and investigation driving the story forward makes it compelling viewing, while all the actions of the protagonist being directly controlled by the player means it is still very much a game rather than some passive experience.

Unfairly being labelled a Russian BioShock prior to release may have raised interest but also expectations. Gameplay if more akin to Condemned or Fahrenheit than Rapture's Plasmid and fire-power driven action. Visually the environment is repetitive, you're on a ship in the Arctic after all, though the ice effects, and particularity the melting frost on the walls, are beautiful to behold and never get tired.

Despite my confusion I thoroughly enjoyed Cryostasis and found it to be a breath of frosty fresh air.

The same can't be said of Wheelman (360). Vin Diesel has professed a love of games and so in addition to making mediocre formulaic movies he's now responsible for mediocre formulaic games.

It's easy to dislike Wheelman. The story is farcical in so much as the plot sees Vin driving cars and getting mixed up in a gang war to save a woman from his past. Edam-orific. The Barcelona scenery is colourful and comic as opposed to the gritty realism of GTA IV. The out of car controls are cumbersome and combat against the woeful AI opponents simply reinforces that this is a driving game and you need to get back in a car without delay.

Whatever the developers may have been striving for, one thing they have not delivered is a rival to the afore mentioned GTA IV. This is not a sand box action adventure game. This is a relatively open arcade driving beat-em-up. Preposterous actions like 'Airjacking', which sees you driving behind a target vehicle and then jumping from your vehicle onto the target in order to capture it, wouldn't be seen in the same neighbourhood as Nico Bellic. On that basis a fairer comparison would be to something like Burnout Paradise, which is certainly superior in the driving stakes though loses out in the destructible terrain and lack of vehicle melee combat. Yes, vehicle melee combat. Racing down a street and an opponent pulls up alongside? Shunt your vehicle sideways and give them a crumple zone slap. Ridiculous and hilarious when pulled off. As you progress even more ridiculous moves become available, such as turning the car through 180 degrees while maintaining directional motion so you can shoot the driver of the car tailing you. Not something you could do in the family Zafira, I'm sure.

If Midtown Madness met Road Rash after a few too many and got friendly in an alley, this would be the illegitimate offspring. It's not the best driving or racing game by a long way. It's certainly not the best beat 'em up, obviously. It is arcade tomfoolery and great fun. A game to hire for a weekend of tearing around Barcelona and frightening your sub woofer with Mr Diesels dialogue.

Finally a quick word about Plants Vs Zombies (PC). It's £6.99 on Steam. 'nuff said.

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Eight:

Since You've Been Gone

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: Hi Paul.
Paul: Seems like a while since we spoke.
JC: Yes. Yes it does.
Paul: Should we talk about that?
JC: Best not.

Your attention Sir, with relish.

I think it's fair to say I like a little attention. If I didn't I wouldn't write a blog and post it here where literally some people could read it. I also wouldn't use Twitter. I used to play in bands and relished live performances, so there must be some degree of exhibitionist in me. Having said that, I was always uncomfortable at social gatherings as I was quite happy to stand or sit in a corner having a chat with one or two people when I was apparently supposed to be entertaining the collective. Eventually my lack of contribution to the overall joyous nature of such occasions saw the invites diminish year on year until my plan to perfect social leprosy was finally complete. I'm quite happy to present myself and open myself up to praise or ridicule, but I don't feel any need to attract either. From scouring tweets and blogs, I get the impression that my philosophy is typical. Every now and then I do spot something that is at odds with that philosophy, such as the actions of Andy Ireland.

Andy is from Leeds. His Bio reads: Hi I am Andy. I am Fun.

Andy appears to have gone beyond liking a little attention and has entered the dark realm of needing attention. Not convinced? Let's go back to his Bio. “I am fun”. I'm sure that's supposed to be endearing. Hey everybody look at Andy, he's fun, let's all be his best bud. The problem with such a claim is of course that as with people who claim to be intellectuals, or not be racist, or crazy/zany, if you have to tell people then it's clearly not self evident, which would suggest at least some degree of delusion.

Further, Andy doesn't crave attention from just anybody. His demand is for the attention of those perceived to be outside the generic public domain. Celebrities. Andy has gone beyond the pitiful begging of celebrities to follow his tweets and has instead opted to get their attention by sending them a Rick-Roll link that when activated resizes the browser and moves it around the screen. This would be annoying in itself, but to prolong the pain in the event of the browser being maximised, an attempt at closing the tab instead produces the lyrics in a succession of dialogue boxes. Increasingly annoying based on the number of tabs open at the time and the fact that using task manager to close the browser also means the session cannot be restored without also restoring the Rick-Roll.

Rick-Rolling was a harmless, if irritating, Internet phenomenon that some people found entertaining last year, but what Andy has done is turn it into celebrity browser hijacking – by proxy. You see Andy can't even claim the Kudos for the scripting, he's just sowing a link he's collected. No doubt caught by the honey trap laid before him, his frustration turning to elation as he realised he could piss people off to the same extent he surely was and in the process temporarily fill his attention void.

I think Andy needs to amend his Bio. Hi, I am Andy. I am a twat.

Fat Man Uses The Force

April has been a funny month. Not hilarious, or oddly peculiar. In fact, now I think about it there's nothing particularly funny about April at all. Forget I mentioned it.

The schools being closed for a fortnight over Easter gave me some precious time with the fruit of my loin, which in addition to her bicycle escapades also saw her attempt golf for the first time, complete with a solid five foot put. Already aspects of her game are superior to mine. She'll be five next month so will naturally be turning pro.

Days in the park, basketball and football were fun, though did highlight my ever expanding waist and my need to step up my weight loss and fitness regime. Time to fish a dusty Wii Fit board out from under the TV unit. Firing it up I discovered that it had been over three hundred days since my last workout, giving my beloved and ever supportive wife yet another opportunity to assert her correctness. Looking at the figures from last year I was genuinely surprised to see that I had been losing weight at a nice steady pace, so I started to wonder why I'd stopped using it. Some uncomfortable memories of my former employer followed. Extra work, additional hours, integrating new people following another acquisition, re-routing the fleet, and the regional manager suggesting that I should tell the disruptive elements of the workforce that I masturbate regularly, as a way to endear myself to them. I'm still not sure how that was supposed to work. Perhaps the thought was that once informed they'd invite me to their masturbation parties.

As I no longer have those excuses, I mean reasons, I'm back on the fitness trail. This is where it gets difficult though. I know why I'm fat. I eat too much and exercise too little. I eat because I'm hungry, because I'm unhappy, because I'm happy, and because I like food. I don't exercise enough because I'd rather be eating. Particularly crisps. In fact, just thinking about it makes me want to eat.

As I'm being healthy I had a large bowl of Bran Flakes, with a Cheerios chaser.

Getting back to exercise, the idea is to burn off more calories than you take in, only, the exercise makes me hungry. So I eat. I learned that lesson early, which is why I stopped using the treadmill after breakfast while watching The Wright Stuff and switched to watching Stargate SG1 before lunch. Whether this fresh impetus will work is solely down to me, and I think that's the main problem with weight loss and exercise. The only people who can effect change are the people whose lack of discipline got themselves into that state in the first place.

On the game front I finished Far Cry 2 (PC) and found the whole experience somewhat lacking. For all it's free form pretensions I found it to be little more than a series of fetch quests through familiar terrain and endlessly spawning enemies with Steve Austin-O-Vision. That's not to say it wasn't fun. It was. The weapons and vehicles were well realised. The environment was suitably varied, if a little ecodome-esque, and graphically it was stunning. Game breakers for me were the likes of destroying a checkpoint, including blowing up the gas cylinders and fuel storage and killing everybody on site, only to return a short while later and find the thing rebuilt and fully manned. It's all well and good having great fire effects and showing them off as the fire rages and spreads across the grass, but when that grass grows back into a lush carpet within the day, the suspension of disbelief puts on it's coat, gets into it's jet powered rocket copter, and trundles off back to Jelly Tot Land.

On a happier note I corrected a grievous error on my part and finally played Knights of the Old Republic (PC). When it was released back in 2003 I had a quick go on a friend's X-Box, and I didn't take to it. Since then I couldn't help but notice the reverence with which it and its sequel have been held by the PC community at large. There is a fear with such things that nostalgia does have a habit of painting things much more vibrantly than they may appear to the naked eye, so when I installed it and it proceeded to crash to desktop on a regular basis I was in danger of letting my frustration cloud my judgement and dismiss the game. Obviously the issue is down to the game being so old and Windows, despite what Microsoft may say and what we PC gamers may extol about our wealth of a back catalogue, doesn't play well with it's older siblings. Thankfully the issues brought about by Vista and in particular 64bit Vista are not uncommon and I found a number of fixes, none of which work fully but that between them made the game playable. As long as I saved my progress frequently I was able to make it through to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. At some point I will return to it and play through again, allowing the dark side to rule. For now I remain a child of the light. A fat man-child of the light casting a grotesque shadow, but a child of the light all the same.

Who Watches The Watchmen?

Quality time with the family. Playing in the park. Trips to Granny & Grandad's and Nan's. Learning how to fall off her stabiliser free bike. School holidays are an endless treasure trove of tiny delights. In this oasis of joy I find myself popping my head over the parapet to see the bullets of hate and lies whizzing past.

World leaders gathered in the sleepy village of London to try and find a way to dig us out of the shit pile their friends Fred, Brad, Topper and Gretchen have landed us in. Those who would oppose global economics used their time off from their studies to gather and make themselves heard, before returning to complete their dissertations and embark on their chosen career, complete with pension and stock options. Somewhere in the middle would be the usual pack of anarchic Neanderthals for whom any mass gathering is an excuse to show their disgust by destruction of property. Nothing says you are a true anarchist quite like forcing up insurance premiums.

In my happy little pacifist ignorance I watched the headlines and was saddened to see that in the midst of the chaos a protester died of a heart attack, and that as police tried to provide assistance and get him medical treatment they were beaten back by bricks and bottles from other protesters. Except, over these past few days footage has come to light proving that whatever the actual truth of what happened is, those initial reports given by police and reported as fact were nothing but abject lies. Ian Tomlinson wasn't a protester, and the circumstances leading to his death seem far removed from what we were lead to believe.

I'm reminded of a sketch David Baddiel did on The Mary Whitehouse Experience in which he explains the feeling of helplessness should a member of the constabulary decide to take their frustrations out on you, as it's something I can relate to. When you've been jumped or are being beaten up, one of things you may think to yourself as another brick hits your lower back, is that maybe someone in a house overlooking the scene will have heard the noise. Maybe they'll look out of the window and see a gang amassed around a solitary figure huddled in the foetal position, and they'll pick up a phone. You hope beyond hope that in the absence of any superhero like figure willing to take on such a collective that perhaps the sound of a siren or the sight of blue lights would be enough to at least disperse them while you still have some feeling in your legs to make it home. Aside from wishing that it will end while you're still breathing, there is always that hope.

When those who are tasked with our protection are the ones dispensing arbitrary justice, there is no hope. There is just confusion and fear.

Anyone with a keen interest in photography will no doubt be aware that police now have the power to confiscate your camera on sight if they believe that you have captured images of them, or official buildings, or manhole covers, or anything at all in a public place, under the crochet blanket of the Counter Terrorism Act. Indeed it's a wonder MI6 haven't been breaking down the doors of Google's London offices or undertaking controlled detonations of Street View vehicles.

The cynical or sceptical may say that the purpose of such a power isn't so much to protect us, but to conceal things from us. I also wonder why else police would wear balaclavas and hide their identities if their intentions were not nefarious.

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Seven:

Glimmer Men

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: Is he gone?
Paul: Oh, Hi Paul, how are you? What you been up to? You're looking well.
JC: Is he gone?
Paul: What kind of question is that? Don't you trust me?
JC: Is he gone?
Paul: No.
JC: Why?
Paul: He bought me Maltesers and said we could watch Steven Seagal movies all night.

Son of a Pun

On occasion I like to embark on an evening of culture and sophistication. Other times, like last night, I like nothing more than blasphemy and knob gags.

I've been looking forward to this for some time. Since embarking on my Twitter obsession and discovering Richard Herring hadn't died in a unfortunate éclair incident and was touring in fact. So Thursday 19^th March 2009 at Liverpool's Unity Theatre myself and my ever tolerant wife, having Shanghaied my mother into caring for our daughter while we went out to enjoy ourselves, met a couple of friends and laughed our socks off and wiped tears of joy from our cheeks.

Herring bounded onto the floor like an enthusiastic kitten. Actually, given his current girth and hairiness maybe Ewok would be more appropriate. Not one of the cute ones like Wicket or the baby in the basket who shields his eyes when C3PO does his 'Vader impression, maybe more a Chief Chirpa. Whenever I've seen him on television he's always appeared sprightly, even when being melancholic, though as this is around the midpoint of the tour with material he first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2008, I was expecting him to be more subdued. His Empire destroying skills had clearly not waned through touring however.

Hitting the floor running with the single greatest piece of blasphemy I've ever been condemned to Hell for enjoying, we were taken on a journey through Herring's adolescence as he examined his inability to commit, his childish behaviour, and his obsession with masturbation and the need to catalogue it. He read passages from the young Richard's diary, much of which will be familiar to anyone who has been aged between 13 and 17 and written bad poetry, and talked of his upbringing and the effect being the son of the Headmaster during this adolescence has had on his psyche.

We learned amongst other things of his early obsession with comedy and breasts. His fleeting moment of coolness when Dexy's Midnight Runners released Geno. His first love, and meeting her again after twenty years. His uncontested genius at Maths and History. His freakishly small hands and their potential uses.

Sometimes pushing the envelope and referencing current news events, Herring managed to draw a few sharp intakes of breath before the guilt edged chuckles forced their way out. Mostly though the show was a considered retrospective of his formative years rather than a barrage of jokes or satires, and as such it felt like sitting down with an old friend recounting the stupid things you did in your youth. Only this friend was smarter and funnier than you and had you known each other as youths he would never have associated with the likes of you. Obviously.

Closing with a prolonged conversation between himself now at forty-one and at sixteen, he juxtaposed his ambitions then with his position now and ends with a touch of reverence for his father, before one last punchline to send us out happy.

On exiting the venue there was the opportunity for a brief meet and greet while Herring sold merchandise and collected donations for Scope (at this point I should say a big thank you to Mal and Tiff who in offering us a lift home allowed the bus fare to go to a worthier cause). Maybe I won't go to Hell. Maybe just a few millennia in Purgatory.

Richard Herring's The Headmaster's Son is touring until the end of April. Details can be found at http://www.richardherring.com/

Express Your Disgust

Not living in Scotland and not being an Express reader I wasn't party to the ground breaking scoop of 8^th March 2009 when Paula Murray unleashed both her barrels on the Dunblane survivors.

In the days that followed publication, numerous messages started bouncing around the Twitterverse and links were posted to the article. Like many who have read it, I was aghast at the depths to which this journalist was willing to stoop. After reading it, I read it again. I was looking for the public interest. I was looking for, well, the story.

I've since sent a few e-mails and signed a petition but I still feel genuine anger. This anger isn't just about the article, it's also about the Press Complaints Commission's codes of practice, and oddly, it's also because despite the few e-mails and the petition signing, I feel so useless and somehow, vulnerable. I don't know what else to do and so the anger turns to frustration which in turn spins back round to anger. But this post isn't about me. Truth be told it's not about the Dunblane survivors whose only misdemeanour seems to be acting like normal teenagers. It's about a shining (though perhaps in context that should be rusted and faecal splattered) example of the gutter press and her character assassination of the most vile kind. It's about Paula Murray.

I keep wondering why she felt the need to attack these survivors. Was Paula Murray involved in some horrific accident that left her in a coma through her teenage years? Was she so ostracised by her peers she spent her adolescence locked in her bedroom, cardigan buttoned to the neck, nose in an Enid Blyton? However she spent it, she clearly never uttered a foul word, had any form of sexual encounter or made any obscene gestures, as that would just be hypocritical.

Anyway, one much wiser than I has collated the details and explains the situation much better than I ever could, so I would ask those few who stumble across my words to please read his: http://bit.ly/3hukrY

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Six:

O' Brother

Paul: Hi JC.
JC: Hi Paul. Listen we need to talk about Alex
Paul: Why?
JC: Well because I want him out of the house, so you've got to tell him to go.
Paul: Hey, if you want him gone, you tell him. You're not the boss of me.
JC: Yes I am.
Paul: Oh.

Martin

Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was a little watermelon who's name was Martin. Martin was a happy little watermelon who looked forward to growing up and being a nice big watermelon. He would spend his days in his little corner of the greenhouse, practising his dynamic tension and waiting for George to visit. George tended to Martin and was an accomplished gardener. Each day he would stand over Martin and smile down at him. He'd check the soil, give him a dash of water and take hold of him, squeezing a little. Though they were quite rough, Martin felt at ease when George laid his hands on him. He would have liked to make friends with the strawberries too, but he always felt they looked down on him, so he focused all his attention on George and making George proud. Martin liked George. George was his best friend.

One morning, Martin was aware that something was different. He took a moment to compose himself and started his dynamic tension routine, only he couldn't. He had no flexibility. Every part of him was taught. He concentrated and could sense the vitamin C levels within him had peaked. He realised he was now a fully mature watermelon and felt elation and pride. The strawberries could look down on him all they wanted, he knew when George arrived he would be proud of him. He felt himself glow, his green flesh incandescent.

As the sun started to fall on the west side of the greenhouse, it's rays smashed through the glass roof and shone on Martin like a spot light. George would be visiting soon and Martin, eager to please, made every effort to soak up as much of the sun's rays as he could. He really wanted to look his best when George arrived.

Martin felt a chill and looked up to see George stood over him, casting a shadow. As George bent down, Martin could see his smile. Martin had never seen George so happy, and so felt happier than he'd ever felt himself and relaxed as George laid his hands on his ripe body. Martin was soon being carried on a euphoric cloud. George had never held him this long before. His hands were caressing every part of his flesh, his fingers probing every pore. Martin felt alive in a way he could never have imagined. George's fingers reached underneath, into the dirt, and Martin started to drift off as if into a dream. He'd never been touched there before, it was exciting, electrifying. Every fibre of his being trembled, and then the pain. Incredible pain. Mixed with the exquisite pleasure of touch Martin was dumbfounded. The contradiction was terrifying, alluring. The combination unbearable, delightful. Through agony and ecstasy, Martin passed out.

When Martin woke he felt weary. He was exhausted. There was something wrong with his soil, it was hard. The greenhouse glass was fogged, only one pane seemed to be allowing light through. He could just make out George stood by it, though he seemed shorter, half the height he usually was. No, wait. George wasn't shorter, Martin was taller, higher. As his mind cleared a little more Martin realised this wasn't the greenhouse, and he wasn't sat in soil but was on some kind of wooden board. As George approached Martin saw he had something shiny in his hand. A ruler? Was George going to measure him? George took hold of Martin with his granite like left hand. His grip was firm and lacked the care Martin was used to. George raised his right hand and Martin now saw the knife clearly. This was wrong. There's been a mistake. They've been friends for so long. Friends don't hurt each other.

Martin wanted to scream, to plead with George. He wanted to remind George of all the time they'd spent together and how George was like a father and best friend all rolled in to one, but he couldn't. Martin was a watermelon, and watermelons can't speak. He began to weep.

As George's knife tore through Martin's flesh and cut into his body, a few of Martin's tears escaped.

At Home with The Dentons - Episode Five:

Credit Brunch

Paul: I'm hungry. Do you fancy anything?
JC: No thanks, I had a Pot Noodle earlier.
Paul: Which one?
JC: Southern Fried Chicken
Paul: Nice?
JC: It's okay.
Alex: Hey guys, check out the new 52inch OLED TV I just bought. It's thinner than JC's smile.
Paul: Man, that is sweet.
JC: Where did you get the money?
Alex: I got Tracer to order it for me online. He said you already had an account.
JC: You used my account to order it?
Alex: Yeh man. I'll pay you back, and in the meantime you'll get the benefit of it too. Win win.
JC: Excuse me a moment. I have some credit cards to cancel.

Review: Quake Live

I don't normally 'do' reviews. Sure I've summarised my feelings on a number of games on completion, though these were hardly in-depth analyses of the games. I've often been tempted but the truth is there are far better and knowledgeable people out here in the world wide waste of time that are considerably more qualified and adept than I. So forgive the shambolic and rambling nature of what is to follow, but having been waiting for the past 2 days, got so far as downloading the plug-in which required having to restart my browser and therefore dropping back to the end of the queue, then proceeding to join the queue several more times only to have to give up before getting in I was starting to think the whole thing was some elaborate hoax. I've now been queuing for nearly two hours this morning and am still only 2,434^th in the queue. I'm so annoyed that I've decided to stick around so I can pull it apart. I know it's still technically in Beta, but they said I could play and so far I've not. Quake Live, I am here to destroy you.

In case you are unaware, Quake Live is a first person shooter developed by id Software which you play competitively through your internet browser. The goal for id was to bring an enhanced version of Quake III Arena to a wider audience and in order for it to be free to users the project would be supported from in game advertising. Based on the queues to get in so far it has certainly attracted an audience and id can start to push numbers under marketing types noses and open the bidding.

Some orange juice and the end credits to Walk Hard on TV later and it's 2 hours 47 minutes since I joined the queue and the character selection screen has appeared. As well as choosing your character you can familiarise yourself with or edit the controls, customise your crosshair and change a few colours. Nothing too involved or daunting. As one of the ideas behind this endeavour is to make it accessible to to the widest spectrum possible, thus far it's promising. Even my dear mother-in-law could follow this. Meanwhile the main body of the game starts downloading in the background so at this point it's all pretty seamless.

One major concern for online gaming virgins, or even veterans who just suck, will be the prospect of giving this a try only to to find themselves repeatedly fragged out of existence before so much as getting a shot off. I've certainly stopped playing games before due to the constant deaths brought about by those who have dedicated themselves to honing their skills. All credit to them for their dedication, and I don't wish to detract from their ability. It's just not much fun for those of us who have other commitments and are simply looking for a bit of entertainment. This is where the game's Placement Match comes in. Before you head in to the big frag fest you have to play what is effectively a tutorial. This is ten minutes of learning the basics and battling an AI opponent, at the end of which the game evaluates you. The beauty of this is that it means when you do enter the real gaming arena you'll be playing against opponents of similar ability, which should make for a far better balanced and enjoyable game.

In entering my assessment a lovely young lady named Crash took me into a side room and explained about the weapons, health, armour, jump pads, and took me on a brief tour of the arena. She then proceeded to blow me to smithereens. Ten minutes later and we were tied at 14-14. Next frag the winner. A bit of cat and mouse, a few stray rockets, a quick run to a health globe and as I turned the corner I saw her heading for the red armour. If I could just hit her before she picked it up. Yes! Take that, bitch! Boo-yar, who's the man? I rule!

I'm sure id have just been very clever with the tutorial as they wouldn't want people bowing out at this early stage, so keeping the match tight allows the inept such as myself to still feel we've accomplished something and willing to go on.

The game itself runs incredibly smoothly and once the competition was under way it was easy to forget that this was running in a browser. The visuals are tremendous given the platform. Obviously they don't compare to the likes of Crysis or even Half Life 2, but they do surpass the original Quake III Arena's visuals, which lets not forget took a top notch high end PC to do it justice on release, and yet here it is running in Firefox. This was just a 1 on 1 tutorial though. What would it be like in the big arenas?

Continuing you are returned to the main site where you have the option of taking your skills online or practising further. The lower part of the page shows your statistics and will be continuously updated as you play. No doubt a great source of embarrassment for the likes of me with an accuracy rating of 20% in the tutorial. There's not going to be many numbers to be proud of in there.

I should stress that on completing the tutorial the last thing to do is decide that it's lunchtime and head off to make an egg sandwich, pour a fresh glass of orange juice, and sit down to watch the news while you eat, as when you return your inactivity will have had you logged out.

It's 13:42 and I'm 28,430^th.

14:32 and I'm back in.

Unsure of whether I was truly ready to take on human opponents just yet I went into practice. Anyone new to this type of thing would be well advised to do the same. Here I could choose the game type from Clan Arena; Capture The Flag; Team Deathmatch; Free For All; and Duel. Selecting Clan Arena gave the choice of 35 arenas, the time limit, the round limit, the bot skills and the total number of players. Listed like that it can seem a bit daunting, but the interface is easy to follow and in seconds I was choosing my side and rushing around at breakneck speeds. Requiring eight rounds to be won for victory, things didn't start well. The Blue team were 3-0 up and I was starting to remember why back in the day I went with Unreal Tournament's more controlled and tactical antics instead of Quake III Arena's frenetic action. All too soon I was mashing the space bar and left mouse button and while I'm sure there is an art to doing this, it all felt a bit random. Any deaths attributed to me felt more down to luck than skill. Maybe I'm doing myself a disservice. Only way to be sure I suppose is to go up against humans.

The site offered a Capture The Flag game as a 'Best Pick' so I braced for impact and headed in. Allowing the game to decide which team to put me on I had a look around the level. We're in space with each team having a multi-tiered platform at either end and a central plane between us. To the sides are some more platforms, some jump pads, and some glowing discs. Wondering what the discs do I decide to investigate further, but there's no time, the countdown, 3...2...1 it's over and there's already a red skeleton in front of me flying into the air off a jump pad and heading for the blue flag. I instinctively jump and start firing my shotgun, but he's turned and is heading off the platform. I give chase and we both launch across the sky. During flight I've collected a Railgun and anticipating his landing point, I fire. The skeleton hits the ground and the blue flag is freed. Elated, I launch into the air and head towards the red flag, adrenalin fuelled and hungry for blood, until a rocket blast blows me off and I fall into the void of space. So it continued for the next ten minutes. The red team won 6-1 and I sat third out of the four blue team members. I'm not the worst, and I'm hungry for more. Back at the main page there's a number of matched games for me to join so I head in again.

Playing with humans certainly felt a more solid and rewarding experience, though I think I'll spend some more time practising as despite the slightly disconnected feeling, there's no doubt familiarity with the maps will stand me in good stead.

Quake Live is everything Quake III Arena was, and more. Working through a browser gives it a level of accessibility beyond the gaming crowd. I'm sure some purist will bemoan the fact that their beloved pastime will now be shared by all and sundry, though thanks to the matching system they are unlikely to ever meet.

While I was eager to give Quake Live a try, I didn't expect to particularly enjoy it. I was more interested to see how it would work and what concession would have had to be made. It is a truly incredible achievement and a considerably better gaming experience than many retail products. I should warn Vista users that at present Aero isn't compatible, though the game will turn it off for you on launch.

My only real criticism is of the current waiting times. For Quake Live to be viable it needs to attract advertisers and for that it will need to captivate and sustain significant numbers. It's accessibility once you're in will certainly help in that regard, though if the waiting times don't improve people may not be willing to wait. I'm sure once the beta ends and it's fully live it won't be an issue. For now I'm in, and I'm staying put.

Try it yourself at www.quakelive.com