New Site - Fuck this Place

Hey there, guys. I'd just like to inform you that I have recently launched a new site with a layout that doesn't look like shit and stuff. Check it out at RevolutionaryZeal.Co.Uk and add it to your favourites, list of RSS feeds... whatever. Atom is fucked, come to think of it... so yeah, RSS2 is probably your best bet.

Mornings are Awful

Some say that your waking hours define your mood for the rest of the day and, consequently, how the day itself goes. No wonder I'm having such a rough time.

Why do mornings have to be so horrible? No matter how early you wake, or how late you have to leave the house, it's always a rush. I can't think of a single aspect of the whole ordeal that's pleasant. Not one thing. You know how it goes: there's the initial profound lethargy as you struggle to open your eyes (and keep them open), followed by the groan of discontent as you flick the TV on to check a morning programme's clock (because the alarm clock has been stuck on 8:11PM for 8 months). Then there's the morning programme itself.

There's a choice of two, isn't there? Morning programmes, I mean. BBC Breakfast and GMTV. Neither make for particularly pleasant viewing, both in terms of style and content. In the case of Breakfast, it's the colour scheme that really fucks the already annoyed morning me off. Red. Orange. Yellow. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that in the morning, my eyes are a little more sensitive than usual. I think the only phrase that can sum up what I'm saying here is 'IT BURNS'. Of course, the visual torture of Breakfast still beats the mental anguish one endures if they dare flick over to ITV. I'm surprised that GMTV wasn't the one to opt for the depths-of-hell inspired colour scheme that Breakfast uses. Certainly, with its blend of sensationalist news, celeb gossip, middle-aged fuckwads getting angry... and very occasionally the odd legit news story tacked on very briefly, it really is soul-destroying. Think of it like being trapped in a box, with only the Daily Mirror to keep you company. It's that bad.

Once you've dragged yourself away from the televisual agony of the morning shows, you then have to wash and stuff. Oh, and brush your teeth. Is it just me, or is there something in toothpaste that makes you want to vomit? There's something very wrong when that stomach-churning chemical mint aftertaste makes brushing your teeth every bit as much of a chore as it was when you were four years old.

And getting dressed is no more fun, either. Especially when that piece of shit radiator isn't working for whatever reason again, it's teeth-chatteringly cold and the only thing that compels you to put on some clothes- beyond just the cold- is the fact that nudity in public isn't taken very well. By some people, at least. And the whole process is even worse if you've opted to wear something with buttons. Inevitably, you won't have lined them up properly, and will have to undo them and redo them. Probably several times. In the end, you always seem to just end up getting pissed off, throwing the item of clothing in question across the room and pulling on the t-shirt you were wearing for all of the previous week(s), which is still laying on the floor somewhere nearby.

When you're dressed, you're ready to leave. You really have no choice at this point, since inevitably by this point you'll already be incredibly close to running late. Even if you woke up at 5. As for breakfast, there's simply no time for a morning meal. Again, people with the time to eat before leaving the house will cite how beneficial a morning meal is for you. Yeah, tell my boss that when I roll in 10 minutes late every day. And besides, that chemical mint taste still hasn't gone, so whatever you would eat or drink would taste like shit anyway. Well, not actually like shit, but you get the idea.

I think what I'm getting here is that getting up in the morning is purely and utterly counterproductive. Who actually feels good once they're up? Who actually doesn't feel like collapsing after an hour of being on their feet? Nobody I know.

I wish I got paid for doing nothing. That'd be ace.

The NHS is really improving!

Ambiguous news headlines are so much fun.

Console gaming is as fun as being raped.

Actually, that's a lie: gaming is generally the complete polar opposite to sex in every way. But hey, I don't think I can afford to digress so early. Can I...?

But before this digression happens, I'll try my best to raise the point I have to make. Well, I think I have one, at least. It is that console gaming is generally, from my perspective at least, getting worse- as far as both *what* it is and *how* we get it.

From what I can see, in recent years and especially now with this new, seventh generation of consoles, it has begun to make a series of steps to becoming more like what PC gaming is. Or rather, has begun to make a series of steps to gaining some of the problems associated with PC gaming.

The idea of being able to connect your console to the internet is no bad thing in the slightest, don't get me wrong. But to get updates and patches? One thing I always felt I could always trust in console gaming which I never really held the same feelings about in PC gaming is that the product you'd get would be... well, complete and tested to a large extent. That there wouldn't be any game-crippling pitfalls of incompetent programming or just plain bizarre anomalies that jump out of nowhere and violate you with the waving penis of despair. Obviously, the very existence of patches for console games seems to indicate I was wrong in thinking what I once thought... or at least, I was wrong in applying that train of thought to the seventh generation.

And further expanding on the patch thing, what makes matters worse as far as console games are concerned is that you simply cannot fix the problem yourself. With PC games, you can play with config files, open the console, type a few lines and at least come up with some sort of workaround. Or just download an unofficial patch released by the fan community within a few days of game's release. With console gaming, you obviously can't do this. You're left waiting for the devs to haul their asses into gear. And I don't know about you, but I don't trust in them being particularly quick.

Ich, and then there's all of these first person shooters that seem to be banging about for consoles nowadays. A fundamentally shitty idea. The simple problem is the control system just isn't right for what it's being applied to. The recent memories of PS2 first person shooters are particularly bad. Try sniping... the movement turns out, because of the controller's limitations, to be so jerky that it's like playing a Michael J Fox simulator. Of course, the solution is auto-aim, but where's the skill involved with that? The fact that I could come out #1 on a full server on Battlefield 2: Modern Combat with no experience of the game whatsoever prior must show that something's very wrong. Very wrong.

And then there's the price of the games themselves. Check out Amazon.co.uk and hit in 'Oblivion'. You're looking to pay over double for the Xbox 360 version than you are the PC version. With the problems I've mentioned earlier in mind. But hey- at least it's cheaper than the horrific going rate for N64 carts back in the day, huh? (In retrospect, the N64 was in many ways a heap of shit, by the way.) But surely the lower cost of the consoles themselves negate the cost of the games, right? Well, no. Not if you're going to amass a sizeable collection of games, at least. And even then, there's the practical point that fucks that argument right up anyway: if you're ordering stuff off Amazon, you're going to need to have bought a computer at some point anyway...

Though of course actually receiving a tangible item is not always the only way to buy things. Downloadable content is the wave of the future! Or at least, it could be. It's already gained a foothold as far as smaller plugins and applications are concerned (and, in the case of the Wii, games that have been banging about on the internet ready to be emulated for a decade), but what'd get to me is the idea of someday actually downloading *entire, full games* for your consoles. Not only would you be royally fucked if for some reason you hadn't access to an internet connection, but (and call me old fashioned if you will) I feel it's always nicer to get something more... tangible out of your hard-earned cash. Plus you wouldn't be so fucked if your hard disk exploded; caught fire; became sentient; got sucked into a black hole... or was otherwise rendered useless.

And then there's still a number of those traditional problems of console gaming remaining. Regions, localisation, the fact that Europe gets assfucked 90% of the time... it just seems that it's generally an easier affair with PCs. Buy from anywhere, and it'll work. PAL, NTSC and SECAM seem to have little place, and that's a good thing.

Simply, console gaming should learn to stop sucking real soon.

Be noticed and desired by women...

Sorry guys... although it might work for ants, leaving a pheromone trail won't result in chicks swarming over your termite mound.

Neatness: it fucks me off.

I won't lie to you here: as far as housekeeping is concerned, I'm a slob, and there's no denying it. Take a step into my house and the first thing you're likely to see is an assortment empty bottles or the remains of last Tuesday's dinner or something. Clothes are thrown around the house lazily, as if I've made multiple expeditions of varying success to the washing machine. I cannot recall actually properly cleaning this place properly in the whole time I've been here. I can't exaclty remember the exact date I turned up here- it was either in the last few days of me being 20 or the first few days of me being 21, but that's not important. What is important is I'm 24 now. Yeah, that's probably not good.

As you can probably tell, I do not exactly condone my sort of lifestyle. But would you not agree that the complete opposite is arguably worse? Take this, for example...

Have you ever been in a house were the lounge looked like it had been cleaned by a 1,000,000 guys in radiation suits wielding tweezers? With a kitchen that looked like a scientific clean room? I'm sure you have. It's almost eerie, isn't it? And you really don't know what to do with yourself either. I mean, when you realise that the spoons have been categorised into size and shape, and then subcatergorised again into what design is on them, you really start to get nervous about the fact that you're standing there, in this microbe-free zone, in a pair of muddy, worn out trainers that you've never cleaned since you got them 3 years ago. The fact that you're making observations on spoons is probably worrying too, but in this case it's inconsequential. Really.

It's this rigorous categorisation that I just don't get. What's the point? Not only is it really, really time consuming, but more often than not I find it just makes things more difficult to find. Surely, ingeniously filing everything in obscure holes and draws in the long run makes finding things much more difficult than just having to sift through a giant pile located in the middle of the floor, right? Plus, don't you feel somewhat pathetic pondering to yourself:
"Oh, what draw have I filed document X in?"
"What ring binder folder would I have placed document X in?"
"What carefully colour-coded divider would I find document X in?"

...? I know I do. Surely it's just... cooler, not to mention much less anal to, instead of going through this disturbingly logical process, just dive into a heap of paper, occasionally divided by a pizza box? I'd like to think so. I mean, you know whatever you're after is in there... somewhere. Since you don't precisely know where, you also save valuable time that would otherwise be spent pinpointing its exact location. And of course, if you're anything like me whatsoever, thoughts are a very rare commodity that are to be used with utmost frugality.

And though it's annoying enough when you've been idiotic enough to file things yourself, it's even worse when someone else has taken the liberty to do it for you. As annoyingly thought-consuming as finding things you've arranged yourself is, finding things someone else has neatly filed is nigh on impossible. At least when you file something yourself, a little bit of detective work will pinpoint the exact location of the thing required. When someone else does it, on the other hand... well, then you're fucked, plain and simple. In this case, simply finding the neat, squared up pile is difficult enough, let alone being able to navigate your way through the folders and dividers. It is bureaucratic villainy, plain and simple!

But who is this heinous villain who commits this evil crimes against your organisation skills? They're known as the neat freak. Oh yes. Those most woeful of human beings, if it is even appropriate to call them that, who seem to take great delight ferreting things away in neat piles, categorising forks and carrying a dust buster with them at all times in a holster. What possesses these people to do what they do? Surely, they must realise that their endeavours are ultimately useless and the supreme exercise in futility. They must. Because of course, their endeavours are pointless almost beyond comparison. Before long, they must surely know that someone like me- and hopefully you- will come along and muddle their spoons, introduce microbes to their kitchen and leave a groove in the cushions of the sofa that'll put their spirit level out of whack. So what motivates them in their continued pursuit of a pointless and temporary state of organisation?

They're doing it just to piss us off. Yeah, that's got to be it. What else would ever possess someone to do something so ultimately pointless and worthless? Something so tiring, something so monotonous? And they must certainly hate us a lot- even I wouldn't normally sacrifice so much of my own time and energy solely to antagonise and hurt someone else. And I can be a real fucker.

People, we must take action. The next time you see someone cleaning, kill them.

Something about news interviews.

It just struck me... how come they always seem to use a mediocre, grainy video of Westminster in the background of practically every interview with, for example, cabinet ministers or whatever? Though I do understand the fact that Westminster is like, totally the centre of British government, I don't see why, for the sake of presentation, they'd continue to use such a shoddy feed of it. Superimposing the interviewee also seems to be a problem for them, too. I mean, what's up with the shitty outlines around some of the guys they have on there? It's akin to an amateur job in Photoshop or something.

It's not even aesthetically pleasing, either. I mean, come on... London is not a pretty place whatsoever. I've been there, man- I have relatives who have the misfortune of living there. It was like where I live, except twice as shitty. And I can tell you now: where I live is as about as aesthetically pleasing as Goatse. Even the landmarks that always seem to be shown in the backgrounds look like shit, too. And it's so grey... like the news isn't depressing enough already.

If they're so damn determined to have that shitty collection of buildings in the background, why couldn't they, say... dangle the interviewee and a camera crew off a crane? Yeah, that'd be a lot more entertaining. Plus, it'd make it a lot harder for the average interviewee to come up with their standard assortment of lame excuses and attempts to detour from the question at hand- dangling off a rope does tend to have that effect on people. Especially if these 'people' are fat, impotent old shits in suits.

And while I'm at it, local news is shit beyond all measure. Ever wondered what happens in Norfolk? No, neither have I, to be blatantly honest. But at any rate, the local news very much makes it clear that it would be a fruitless endeavour, anyway. No matter how hard they try, it seems the local reporters cannot last more than 3 minutes without descending into the sort of inane drivel you'd expect out of a local news programme. Local Sunday league football teams? Old people complaining about paths or something? You betcha. It's really an argument for having more serial killers, come to think of it. Yeah, serial killers are ace.

Oh man, and then there's that section of Newsnight. Well, I think it's part of Newsnight. The bit with film and book reviews- that thing. Is it really that hard for the reviewers to not come across as pretentious cunts? Because they sure do.

Heck, news programmes in general suck shit. And wash it down with diarrhoea. And the weather. Oh man, weather reports are shitty. It's pathetically amusing when you're getting told that today is supposed to be dry all the way through, whilst it's actually raining at that very instant. And then there's the phrases they use. Why they can't just say "it's going to rain" is beyond me. Or, if they really, definitely needed to be specific, "it's going to rain hard".

I guess the only consolation we can take in the whole predicament is that someday, all the presenters, writers and producers will be dead. Then you can shit on their graves and spraypaint cocks on their headstones. Heck, you might even get in the local news.