Age

Fuck!

age_a@hotmail.com — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:14:21 GMT

Fuck!

I just spilt tea on the remote for my TV, ruined a conversation with a close friend because my poorly suppressed rage cast a pall over everything, I'm stuck in my new game and my best friend is in hospital with what, in the best case, is probably appendicitus. Also? Suggesting someone claiming to be a rape victim be regarded with a degree of healthy skepticism is apparently not well-received on the internet.

I say again: Fuck!

I know, I know... Whiny journal entry is whiny.

Lousy Day

age_a@hotmail.com — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:58:50 GMT

Phone-line and internet have been down intermittently, I've had half a dozen e-mails to reply to at length, and its turned out that going out of your way to offend people is not the best way to make friends. Today has been pretty depressing.

Still, posting that survey hasn't turned out all bad. So far, two people who I thought were done with me have expressed an interest in us talking more, and one person has expressed an interest in talking to me less. If you can apply the principles of profit and loss to relationships, I guess I came out ahead. Doesn't really feel that way, though.

It's strange. In the UK, there aren't really many people who would oppose a persons freedom to abort their child. The general attitude is that it's unpleasant but something you just have to do, like having a pet put down. Intellectually, I have few qualms about it. Emotionally, I have even less. A foetus has less of a mind than a rat or a cow, things we kill in the hundreds. More human tissue died when I had my tooth pulled. No mind, no real body... And yet I'm troubled.

The human mind is a pattern recognising machine. It builds up an intuitive understanding of right and wrong through it's experiences of the world. Not just things it's told, but things it sees and hears. Everything I know tells me abortion is a normal, healthy thing to do. Yet, at the same time, the Romans probably felt that way about the Circuses. American settlers probably thought the same about giving disease-infested blankets to the Indians.

I don't know what's right and what's wrong. I don't think I can ever know. All I have are what I think and feel. How can I hold to that in the face of another persons certainty? How can I debate the point with someone who really believes they know right from wrong with no doubt? And if I can't, doesn't that mean I'm wrong?

The Controversial Survey

age_a@hotmail.com — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:22:54 GMT

1. Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
I'm not sure if "guts" is the proper term. Sometimes I think the internet evokes a sense of anonymity so acute it could drive a person to start throwing punches randomly on a crowded subway train just to get noticed. Anyway, none of this stuff seems all that controversial to me. Ask me about eating meat or imperialism, then I'll show you controversial.

2. Would you do meth if it was legal?
I think so. I'm a lazy, fat bastard, so anything that over-clocked my metabolism and blunted my appetite... Well, I'd be prepared to gamble that the benefits would outweigh the hazards.

3. Abortion: for or against it?
For. I believe a persons identity is something that needs time to accrue. Frankly, I don't even fully consider very young kids to be fully-fledged people. Furthermore, even if a foetus were a person, no person has the right to gestate inside another persons body like some grotesque parasite. Sometimes, killing someone is the best way forward.

4. Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
No more so than it would fail under a male one. I do have grave misgivings about the idea of a global government, though. Sometimes, it seems as though the only way to achieve stability is to have dozens of different factions working at cross-purposes.

5. Do you believe in the death penalty?
Yes. It's quick, clean and far more merciful than keeping someone cooped up in an over-crowded prison. However, I think it should be limited to very specific crimes, and instances where there is incontrovertible evidence. For example, the perpetrator can clearly be seen committing the crime on a video recording. I would also favour the reinstatement of corporal punishment for first-time offenders. As with capital punishment, it's far quicker, cleaner and more merciful than a spell in prison, and far less likely to introduce the offender into the society of career criminals.

6. Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Yes. Whilst I think there are far too many addictive and harmful substances on the market already, people are currently giving their money to organized crime in exchange for a product that is often tainted with a wide variety of unsavoury or toxic substances. Not good on any level.

7. Are you for or against premarital sex?
Meh. People should be free to stick it in whichever consenting adult they choose, under whatever criteria they choose.

8. Do you believe in God?
Not really. The world seems like such a shoddy, half-arsed place, I don't really see how any guiding intelligence could be behind it.

9. Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
I don't see that there's a single good reason for same-sex couples not to enjoy the same recognition in law as their heterosexual counterparts.

10. Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
Hmm... I think they should be staying at home and trying to improve their own country. Other than that, I can't see a problem with it.

11. A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it?
No. Hell, no. What for? Why the hell was this girl not carted off down to the hospital for an abortion by her parents or some other responsible adult?

12. Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?
I think a child should be permitted to drink at the discretion of their parents, with the parents taking the responsibility of seeing to it the child doesn't make themself ill. An adult should be permitted to drink whenever they damn well please, as long as they don't plan on driving.

13. Should the war in Iraq be called off?
Firstly, what war? There is no war in Iraq, and there hasn't been for years. What we have now is an extended police action. And, if nothing else, it serves the purpose of providing a soft target for Islamic extremists who would otherwise be trying to blow shit up over here. Also, western involvement in the area is pretty much the only thing stopping Iraq from turning into a war-zone or a second Iran. So, no, pulling out wouldn't help them, us or anyone else. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either naive or a drooling imbecile.

14. Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
Whoever worded these questions should be shot through the lungs... The actual question is whether or not I agree that assisted suicide should be illegal. And... No. No, I don't agree. Given that so many able-bodied people have good cause to top themselves, I can't imagine more than one good reason why the option should be denied to those who are suffering the most. The only concern I have is that people who would not ordinarily opt for the option of suicide may feel obliged to if they believe they're a burden on their family.

15. Do you believe in spanking your children?
As I said earlier, I consider children to be more akin to animals than fully fledged human beings. As such, they can't be reasoned with. They can only be enticed or driven in the desired direction. I won't say that it's not possible to raise a child without employing some form of intimidation, I'm just saying that no reliable method has been documented.

16. Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
No. I've no great respect for any flag other than the Union Jack, but I'm aware of the symbolism involved, and would be loath to invoke it recklessly. I'd also be very suspicious of anyone offering me money to do so...

17. Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?
Don't know. They're both pretty anonymous to me. Obama is a completely unknown quantity behind the spin, and McCain is so well camouflaged amongst the Republican herd that he's just as much a mystery as Obama. Also, McCains military service is as irrelevant to his fitness for the presidency as Obamas being black. Ultimately, though, I'm just not convinced it'll make much difference which of them gets in.

18. Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
A bit, but I suppose it's better than being irrelevant and ignored.

Further Thoughts: The Walking Dead.

age_a@hotmail.com — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:15:45 GMT

Well, FA is down, so, in the interim, I'll be making a few journal entries here. Today I'll be talking about the comic book entitled "The Walking Dead". The story relates the misadventures of a group of survivors in a post zombie-apocalpyse America.

Walking Dead suffers from the same problem as a lot of daytime soap operas. The characters exist for the sole reason of having terrible things happen to them. There's no tension, because you know they can't win. All they can do is lurch from tragedy to tragedy, slowly losing their minds over having been forced to gun down their zombified family or saw off one of their own infected limbs.

And it will never get better, because, if it did, the story would be over. Any improvement in the characters circumstances is temporary, a brief respite that allows them to set themselves up in order to be knocked down again.

Of course, these are all problems inherant in the genre. Where Walking Dead *really* falls down is the characters themselves, who are uniformly detestable and come in two varieties; the quaking weakling and the vicious thug.

So, yeah, I don't recommend it. Thanks to the kind charity of a friend of mine called Brazz, I read it for ages before giving it up, and, having recently looked back in on it, I can say that it most definitely has not improved.

Addendum:
I am prepared to take back a lot of the bad things I have said about the common house cat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGTZoyARvnQ

"Blog like it's the end of the world"

age_a@hotmail.com — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:58:02 GMT

Seriously, who the hell would be "blogging on the livejournal" during a zombie uprising? The mind boggles...

I found this...

age_a@hotmail.com — Thu, 03 May 2007 10:20:26 GMT

... and thought it was kind of neat.


	Remember the illegal number? Well, I converted the hexadecimal number into a set of five different colors (using hex-color codes) and made this lovely GIF to illustrate. Don't use these colors together. If you do, you're breaking the law. Or, at least, you're breaking it enough to get sued for it.

A Brief Apology

age_a@hotmail.com — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:12:13 GMT

Just wanted to quickly apologise to everyone who'd hoped to see me online yesterday. I share a computer with someone, and, having hogged it all day on Saturday, it seemed only fair to let him have it for most of Sunday. Rest assured, if I could've been online without screwing anyone over, I would've been.

Don't know how much I'd agree with this, but...

age_a@hotmail.com — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 14:21:49 GMT

The Everything Test

There are many different types of tests on the internet today. Personality tests, purity tests, stereotype tests, political tests. But now, there is one test to rule them all.

Traditionally, online tests would ask certain questions about your musical tastes or clothing for a stereotype, your experiences for a purity test, or deep questions for a personality test.We're turning that upside down - all the questions affect all the results, and we've got some innovative results too! Enjoy :-)

Personality

You are more logical than emotional, more concerned about others than concerned about self, more atheist than religious, more dependent than loner, more lazy than workaholic, more traditional than rebel, more engineering mind than artistic mind, more cynical than idealist, more follower than leader, and more introverted than extroverted.

As for specific personality traits, you are adventurous (70%).

Stereotypes
Geek	90%
Punk Rock	87%
Old Geezer	67%

Life Experience
Sex	31%
Substances	22%
Travel	9%

Politics
Your political views would best be described as Socialist, whom you agree with around 100% of the time.

Socioeconomic
Your attitude toward life best associates you with Working Class. You make more than 0% of those who have taken this test, and 96% less than the U.S. average.

If your life was a movie, it would be rated PG-13.
By the way, your hottness rank is 36%, hotter than 51% of other test takers.

TAKE THE TEST
brought to you by thatsurveysite

I got interviewed!

age_a@hotmail.com — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 19:03:11 GMT

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I'll respond by asking you a couple personal questions. If I already know you well, expect the questions to be a little more intimate!
3. Then you update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Interviewed By bluewoozle

1) If you met Charlie Brooker in the street, what would you do?

I'd ignore him. He could probably do without being bothered.

2) Of all the pizza toppings in all the world, what would be your ideal? (Doesn't necessarily need to be an actual pizza topping)

Anchovy and ground beef, with sour-cream and BBQ Sauce.

3) Which is your favourite comic-book hero (and why?)

It's hard to think of any comicbook characters whose ethics mesh comfortably with my own. I'm pleased to say the only two that do are both English creations. It'd have to be either V, from "V for Vendetta", or Marvel UK's Deathshead. I may not agree with their politics, but they both represent a great balance of style and substance.

4) When did you decide to grow a moustache and beard?

I guess I always kind'a meant to, at the back of my mind. I was just waiting until I was fairly certain I could pull it off.

5) Given the chance to change one thing, how would you improve the country?

Well, I've got a lot of ideas that are pretty out there, but I'm going to be conservative and stick with something that I think would almost certainly work. I would replace GPs with more numerous and larger walk-in clinics, where you could see a doctor without an appointment, wherever you were. I think this would be a more efficient use of funds and resources, whilst at the same time offering an improved service.

I was tagged, no-one was hurt

age_a@hotmail.com — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:17:30 GMT

1. Grab the nearest book. (N.B. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.)
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 people.

V for Vendetta- Moore/Lloyd
"... Bloke over in Pimlico."
"Magic. Tell Terry I'll see him Saturday about the money."

One of the crackiest comics in the history of forever, and I get what sounds like a snippet of conversation overheard at a taxi rank.

Anyway... I'm afraid I don't really know five people I can tag, let alone five people who read this journal, so, if you're reading this, consider yourself tagged and leave a reply, letting me know about it. If five people have already replied (It could happen!), then you needn't bother.

Word of The Day

age_a@hotmail.com — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:01:17 GMT

"Apiphany:
[a-pif-uh-nee]

A sudden, intuitive insight into the nature of something
which, whilst being self-consistant and appealing, has no
grounding in reality whatsoever."

A word I invented a while back, and was provoked to finalise whilst watching Grant Morrison lecture at Disinformation, back in 1999. Seriously, listening to that was like inspecting my own crap. Every now and then I'd spot something familiar, but most of it was just a jumbled mess. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this sigel stuff doesn't work. I'm just saying that, if it does, then every single piece of information accumulated in the entireity of human history is wrong, and that the whole universe is circling the u-bend.

Klingons Dictate American Foreign Policy, says Rep. David Wu.

age_a@hotmail.com — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:28:06 GMT

Take off your hats, boys. Mister Wu wants to mess with your brains.

Apparently, this all arose from the Bush administrations foreign policy advisors nicknaming themselves "Vulcans", after the Roman god of fire, the forge and metalwork. "Only in America", as they say...

The Klingon community has reacted poorly to Mr. Wus comments, describing them as "unacceptable". Click here for more information, followed by an unexpurgated version of the Representatives speech.

Stolen from Mike Fang

age_a@hotmail.com — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 20:11:13 GMT

Your results:
You are Venom

Venom		70%
Dark Phoenix		64%
Juggernaut		52%
Mr. Freeze		50%
Apocalypse		50%
The Joker		49%
Two-Face		44%
Mystique		40%
Magneto		39%
Green Goblin		36%
Dr. Doom		29%
Kingpin		25%
Catwoman		22%
Lex Luthor		18%
Riddler		16%
Poison Ivy		13%

Strength, disguise and adrenaline are your greatest weapons.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

"Gone Fishing"

age_a@hotmail.com — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:56:40 GMT

So, from Friday the twenty-first onwards, I will be away on holiday. I know, I know. However will you cope? Tragically, even I need to go away from time to time, and the last couple of months have been pretty harsh, so I'm looking forward to spending Christmas "en famille".

I'll get onto those sketches I owe people once I get back. Until then, I hope everyone has a pleasant time. I'll leave with the following link to YouTube, where you can watch the intro to "Frontier: Elite II". I used to watch that thing over and over when I was a kid, so it's either really good, or else I've got Aspergers Syndrome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEJ603FAqXs&mode=related&search=

Supposing ... There's only one thing worth debating online

age_a@hotmail.com — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:38:13 GMT

Charlie Brooker
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian

Last week I wrote a load of nonsense about flags and idiocy; as well as appearing in print, it also turned up on the Guardian's "Comment is Free" blog-o-site, where passers by are encouraged to scrawl their own responses beneath the original article.

Some people disagreed with the piece, some agreed; some found it funny, some didn't. For half a nanosecond I was tempted to join in the discussion. And then I remembered that all internet debates, without exception, are entirely futile. So I didn't.

There's no point debating anything online. You might as well hurl shoes in the air to knock clouds from the sky. The internet's perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain't one of them. It provides scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional "live audience" quickly conspire to create a "perfect storm" of perpetual bickering.

Stumble in, take umbrage with someone, trade a few blows, and within about two or three exchanges, the subject itself goes out the window. Suddenly, you're simply arguing about arguing. Eventually, one side gets bored, comes to its senses, or dies, and the row fizzles out: just another needless belch in the swirling online guffstorm.

But not for long, because online quarrelling is also addictive, in precisely the same way Tetris is addictive. It appeals to the "lab rat" part of your brain; the annoying, irrepressible part that adores repetitive pointlessness and would gleefully make you pop bubblewrap till Doomsday if it ever got its way. An unfortunate few, hooked on the futile thrill of online debate, devote their lives to its cause. They roam the internet, actively seeking out viewpoints they disagree with, or squat on messageboards, whining, needling, sneering, over-analysing each new proclamation - joylessly fiddling, like unhappy gorillas doomed to pick lice from one another's fur for all eternity.

Still, it's not all moan moan moan in NetLand. There's also the occasional puerile splutter to liven things up.

In the debate sparked by my gibberish outpouring, it wasn't long before rival posters began speculating about the size of their opponent's dicks. It led me to wonder - has the world of science ever investigated a causal link between penis size and male political leaning?

I'd theorise that, on the whole, rightwing penises are short and stubby, hence their owners' constant fury. Lefties, on the other hand, are spoiled for length, yet boast no girth whatsoever - which explains their pained confusion. I flit from one camp to the other, of course, which is why mine's so massive it's got a full-size human knee in the middle. And a back. A big man's back.

Anyway, if we must debate things online, we might as well debate that. It's not like we'll ever resolve any of that other bullshit, is it?

Click. Mine's bigger than yours. Click. No, it isn't. Click. Yes, it is. Click. Refresh, repost, repeat to fade.

For more from Charlie, look here.

Contemplating a career in television?

age_a@hotmail.com — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 20:29:49 GMT

Here's an upbeat guide to getting your idea on TV!

Torchwood

age_a@hotmail.com — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:15:57 GMT

Wow. So... Torchwood. That was despair-inducingly bad. I mean, seriously. That was... fucking diabolical. The plots were dreadful, the characters were, to a man, loathsome, and the writing was almost entirely devoid of the smallest shred of intelligence. I may expand on this later, but, to summarise for the time being, and in the words of Tim Bisley, it made me want to drown things.

Armando Iannucci

age_a@hotmail.com — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:53:58 GMT

Been watching the Armando Iannucci Shows, lately, so I thought I'd post some links to a few clips of his work on YouTube. You may find them moderately amusing.

The Village Sniper.

Bored To Death.

The Sunday Observer.

Home Make-over.

Mike Fang: Intercontinental Stalker!

age_a@hotmail.com — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 20:34:53 GMT

I doubt it, but I'd be seriously impressed...

age_a's LJ stalker is mike_fang!

mike_fang is stalking you because they have nothing better to do with their time. They are also stalking you in real life. Look out!

LJ Stalker Finder
From Go-Quiz.com

age_a@hotmail.com — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:04:11 GMT

I have to wonder where the hell my life is headed, sometimes. I expected to long since have crashed and burned by now, and I certainly would've if I'd been left to my own devices, but, for some reason, people just don't seem able to let me go. I can't imagine why. I have no skills, no talents. Not even anything in the way of raw physical ability. I'm incapable of getting along with people. I'm lazy, slovenly, arrogant... I just wish this shit would hurry up and go away.

Banksy vs. Charlie Brooker

age_a@hotmail.com — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:34:23 GMT

(Grumbles)
Oh, fuck...

Being something of a Brooker fan-boy, I've been nosing around on the web, trying to see how his fortunes have improved. A while back, he was e-lynched by the Republican party for advocating the assassination of George Bush, forcing him into hiding temporarily. Since then, he's had a book published, wrote a TV series and appeared in one of his own, amongst other things. Hence my curiousity to see how his online profile had changed. In the process of nosing around after traces of the man, I stumbled upon a series of what appear to be editorial articles written by him, which can be found here. One of these articles pertains to Banksy, the subversive graffiti artist, and refers to him in a less than flattering light.

"Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.

Banksy first became famous for his stencilled subversions of pop-culture images; one showed John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson in a famous pose from Pulp Fiction, with their guns replaced by bananas. What did it mean? Something to do with the glamourisation of violence, yeah? Never mind. It looked cool. Most importantly, it was accompanied by the name "BANKSY" in huge letters, so everyone knew who'd done it. This, of course, is the real message behind all of Banksy's work, despite any appearances to the contrary.

Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her.

Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff. Wow. In an instant, your worldview changes forever. Your eyes are opened. Staggering away, mind blown, you flick v-signs at a Burger King on the way home. Nice one Banksy! You've shown us the truth, yeah?

As if that wasn't irritating enough, Banksy's vague, pseudo-subversive preaching is often accompanied by a downright embarrassing hardnut swagger. His website is full of advice to other would-be graffiti bores, like: "be aware that going on a mission drunk out of your head will result in some truly spectacular artwork and at least one night in the cells". Woah, man - the cells!

He goes on to explain that "real villains" think graffiti is pointless - not because he wants you to agree with them, but because he wants you to know he's mates with a few tough-guy criminal types. Coz Banksy's an anarchalist what don't respect no law, innit?

One of his most imbecilic daubings depicts a monkey wearing a sandwich board with "lying to the police is never wrong" written on it. So presumably Ian Huntley was right then, Banksy? You absolute thundering backside.

Recently, our hero's made headlines by sneaking a dummy dressed in Guantánamo rags into Disneyland (once again fearlessly exposing Mickey Mouse's disgusting war criminal past), and defacing several hundred copies of Paris Hilton's new album (I haven't heard her CD, but I'm willing to bet it's far superior to Blur's godawful Think Tank, a useless bumdrizzle of an album, whose artwork was done by Banksy - presumably he spray-painted it on a brick and hurled it through EMI's window, yeah?).

Right now you can see some of Banksy's life-altering acts of genius for yourself at his LA exhibition Barely Legal (yeah? Yeah!), including a live elephant painted to blend in with some gaudy wallpaper. This apparently represents "the big issues some people choose to ignore" - ie pretty much anything from global poverty to Aids. But not, presumably, the fat-arsed, berk-pleasing rubbishness of Banksy. We're all keeping schtum about that one."

Cue a whole bunch of people climbing over each other to condemn Brooker and defend Banksy, followed by a bunch falling over themselves to defend Brooker and condemn Banksy, followed by a whole bunch of both.

Being familiar with both, I decided to write a comment detailing my own thoughts on the matter. Which, for some reason, I now am not allowed to submit. Bastards.

"As a street-cartoonist, Banksy is alright. Like Garfield, his work rarely fails to raise a smile, and, like Garfield, it's invariably both obvious and predictable. To paraphrase Fry, of Futurama fame, clever things make people feel stupid and unexpected things make them feel scared. In the UK, a country that seems to breed "Citizen Smith" types in their thousands, Banksy tells us exactly what we all already suspect to be true, and that is the secret of his success. Those who call him subversive couldn't be more wrong.

Whilst similar accusations could fairly be levelled at Mr. Brooker, there is one fundamental difference between the two. Brooker has, and does, work in television, the medium he so frequently rails against. Not only does he castigate what he regards as low quality entertainment, but he actively works to rectify the situation, writing and appearing in shows that meet his personal standards. Banksy may speak out about consumerism and commercialisation, but has he actually done anything about it, apart from line his own pockets?"

Because just what the hell is an LJ for, if not for airing ones own ill informed and ill thought out opinions?

The Soundtrack To My Life

age_a@hotmail.com — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 21:05:27 GMT

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

Here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool.

Opening Credits:
- Serious Sam: End Credits

Waking Up:
- Tenchi Muyo: Opening Theme

First Day At School:
- Dragonball Z: Super Buu

Falling In Love:
- The Offspring: The Kids Aren't Alright

Fight Song:
- Lemon Jelly: The Staunton Lick

Breaking Up:
- Transformers 1985 Main Theme

Prom:
- The Eagles: Journey of The Sourcerer

Life's OK:
- The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy: Main Theme

Mental Breakdown:
- Buckaroo Banzai: End Credits

Driving:
- The Raccoons: Run With Us

Flashback:
- Dennis Leary: Life's Gonna Suck

Getting Back Together:
- Helsing: Double Crossed Fool, Prohibited Resentment

Birth of Child:
- Smash Mouth: Walking On The Sun

Wedding:
- Tears for Fears: Mad World

Final Battle:
- Oliver Twist: Reviewing The Situation

Death Scene:
- Batman/Superman Adventures 1997 Main Theme

Funeral Song:
- Helsing: Shine/End Credits

End Credits:
- Genshiken: My Pace

More Charlie Brooker

age_a@hotmail.com — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:30:06 GMT

In the absence of anything worth saying of my own, here's more Charlie Brooker. This time he's on about Family Brat Camp (Wed, 9pm, C4).

"The original Brat Camp was an entertaining exercise in microcosmic fascism in which unruly British teenagers were sent on a variety of hard-nosed American "improvement schemes" where they were denied half their human rights and forced to gather twigs in the wilderness until one by one they eventually broke down and pledged to put their days of tantrums and bong hits behind them. It pounded humility into them whether they wanted it or not. You know: like cults do.

Family Brat Camp is much the same, except this time mum and dad come along for the ride too. Yes, it's heavy-handed psychological deconstruction for the whole family!

The pattern is the same as ever: the infuriatingly pious staff gradually nudge the participants through a gruelling desert survival course apparently designed to flush out their emotional flaws like a mental enema. Everybody throws a tantrum at some point, only to be choked on their lead like a disobedient hound. And everybody cries. Mum cries, Dad cries, Daughter cries: there's a whole lot of blubbing going on, which probably isn't a good idea out there in the desert, where conserving fluid ought to be your body's number one priority.

Still, even though it seems likely each family will leave the camp with a newfound cohesive respect for one another, I'm not quite sure what Family Brat Camp's overall message is. Bring back national service? A touch of totalitarianism does you good? It's good to weep? What?

After all, you could achieve similar results by subjecting the participants to almost any kind of sudden shock. How about a show where a gang of hellraising Asbo teens are strapped down - preferably on drugs, with their eyes clamped open, just like Alex in A Clockwork Orange - and forced to watch fatal traffic accidents projected in unremitting grisly detail on an IMAX screen for six weeks? And they're not allowed to leave their seats the whole time, even when they need the toilet. They have to piss and crap right there in their trousers, while the carnage churns over again and again on the big screen, until they're all screaming and wailing so loud you could hear them from Saturn. And we don't let them go until they agree to shave their heads and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their saviour.

Actually, that's far too subtle. Let's simply round up everybody who fails to conform to our accepted ideal. We'll gather the vandals, the fatsos, the people who don't buy free-range eggs - the commoners, basically. We'll bundle them into windowless trucks and transport them to a camp and make them break rocks in the sun and then after a month of that Jamie Oliver and Gillian McKeith run in dressed as stormtroopers, wielding batons, and they beat them and beat them until absolutely every member of the audience is sporting a massive self-satisfied hard-on. Even the ladies.

Yeah, let's do that."

Why?

age_a@hotmail.com — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 11:59:13 GMT

Apparently, the baby Jesus is the creepiest fucking thing ever, but in such an out-of-context way that you can't help but laugh. Be sure to roll your mouse pointer over him for the full effect.

Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn

age_a@hotmail.com — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:06:30 GMT

Nice to see Charlie Brooker's not let TV success go to his head, and is still doing his thing over here on the Guardians Webpage. Recently he touched on something of a sensitive topic for me. The government-sponsored battle against obesity, a primary tool of which appears to be the dehumanisation of the overweight through advertising and propaganda. Yes, Jamie Oliver, I'm looking at you! I've found myself half-expecting to hear news-stories about reports by government think-tanks which suggest that fat people aren't even be able to breed with pure-blooded thin people. I can't wait until society and the eco-system collapse under the weight of global warming, and I get to watch you thin fuckers starving to death because your body doesn't know how to store energy.

Anyway, here's an exert from Brooker.

"You eat too much. You eat the wrong things. You drink. You smoke. You don't get enough exercise. You probably can't even shit properly. You'll die if you don't change your ways. Your health will suffer. Have you got no self-respect? Look at you. You sicken me. I pity you. I hate you. We all hate you. God hates you. Don't you get it? It's so sad,what you're doing to yourself. It's just so bloody sad."
That's the mantra. And it goes without saying that the people reciting it are routinely depicted as saints. Last year, the media dropped to its knees to give Jamie Oliver a collective blowjob over his School Dinners series, in which he campaigned to get healthier food put on school menus. Given the back-slapping reaction, you'd be forgiven for thinking he'd personally rescued 5,000 children from the jaws of a slavering wolf.
Anyway, the series was a huge success. In fact in telly terms there was only one real drawback: it wasn't returnable. After all, when you've saved every child in the nation from certain death once, you can't really do it a second time. The only solution is to find a new threat, which brings us to Ian Wright's Unfit Kids (Wed, 9pm, C4), a weekly "issuetainment" programme in which the former footballer and renowned enemy of grammar forces a bunch of overweight youngsters to take part in some extra-curricular PE.
It's essentially a carbon copy of the Jamie Oliver show, with more sweating and fewer shots of pupils mashing fresh basil with a pestle: an uplifting fable in which Wrighty shapes his gang of misfits into a lean, mean, exercisin' machine - combating apathy and lethargy, confronting lazy parents, and attempting to turn the whole thing into a nationwide issue that'll have Range Rover mums everywhere dampening their knickers with sheer sanctimony in between trips to the Conran shop. Oh isn't it simply terrible, what these blobsome plebs do to themselves? Not our Josh you understand: he eats nothing but organic spinach and attends lacrosse practice six hundred times a week.
Bet he does, the little shit.