Anyone for Tennis?

This blog knows where it’s priorities lie.

On the Fourth of July, in the year 2012 CE, scientists are CERN found what they are almost absolutely certain to be The Higgs Boson: ‘The God Particle’, or as it was originally supposed to be named: ‘That Goddamn Particle’.

If this does turn out to be The Higgs Boson, this spells out a huge breakthrough in scientific discovery. Scientists are hoping that it will prove to be a more exotic version of the Higgs particle, as it would give them a better understanding of all that is, but even if it turns out to be the most basic form of the Higgs particle, it still helps us to understand a lot about the universe and all of time.

I don’t pretend to understand how it all works, but I know that, if this does prove to be the Higgs Particle, it means that there is such a thing as the Higgs Field, which means that there is something in the universe that gives other particles mass.

This is a huge scientific discovery, and even drew a tear from the eye of Peter Higgs, the man who was part of the inception of the theories that support the existence of the particle 45 years ago. It raised cheers and applause from everyone present at the announcement.

This discovery has changed our understanding of science permanently, and fills a gap in The Standard Model which has remained empty for years. The way we explain everything ever.

My twitter feed was going mental with all sciencey types tweeting things about The Higgs Boson, Peter Higgs, the Standard Model and has generally been full of excitement and buzz about the discovery.

And today, four days later, on the 8th of July, 2012, a Scottish man didn’t win the tennis at Wimbledon.
And this is all anyone can think about. Now my twitter feed and my facebook feed are full of people saying ‘Well done, good effort Andrew Murray, you did your best, and that’s all anyone asked for.’

Fair enough, the first British Man to be in the finals of Wimbledon for 74 years, but he didn’t win. He played well, but it’s just tennis.
And immediately, everyone forgets about the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Perhaps people don’t care as much about it because they don’t understand it, but they can understand two men hitting a ball with rackets. I don’t understand it, as I said before, but I understand the gravity of the situation. I know that this is big.
I’m not really into sports, but even if I was, I’m sure The Discovery of Something that Explains Everything would still be of more interest to me than the athleticism and fitness level of A Guy.

Apparently, when it comes to the General Public, sports are easy, they bring people together and pull others apart.
Teams and supporters can join together, having something in common, and attack and berate supporters of other teams.
Sport matches last between a few minutes to a matter of days, not a number of decades. People just don’t have that kind of concentration span.
But with science, it’s complicated, it doesn’t capture people’s imaginations in the same way, things take ages and even then we can’t be 100% certain that what we’re being told is solid fact.

But science doesn’t get rained off. Science will last for years. Science allows other scientific discoveries to be made, it’s perpetual.

As far as I’m concerned, no matter what game they’re playing:

Science > Sport

Let’s get a little perspective here.

Well done Peter Higgs, well done everyone at CERN, well done science.
Andy Murray, you lost. Sorry, better luck next time. It’s just a game.

“They Mostly Come Out With Shite… Mostly…”

This blog died and came back to life, but it didn’t take 3 days to respawn.

Well, I said I would be trying to write these more often, but it doesn’t seem to have been happening, so I will just resign myself to admitting that I will write these as and when I can.
The last time I wrote one was when the clocks went back for Winter, and they’ve not long gone forward again, so I guess I have to just own up and admit that there are more important things in my life at the moment than blogging. Sorry. But I’m not giving up completely, I will still be blogging from time to time.

Since my last post, then, we’ve had Christmas, we’ve started a new year, I’ve had another birthday, I’m at University and that’s all going well, Student Finance finally sorted my shit out, but now I have to apply to them again, so expect more rage when I finally get around to that… What else?

Well, University is going well, I’m sitting on a good grade at the moment, and if I can keep it up I’ll be pretty happy with the end result. I’m learning a lot about films and what goes into making films and where I want to be in a few years maybe. Kind of what you’d hope, on a Film Production Degree.
I’m still working in the Pub, and people still get on my nerves, but I’m learning to cope with it a little bit better.
I’m still learning about beer, and there’s the possibility of getting in a few hours at the brewery over summer, which would be cool. I’m always up for learning new things, especially when there’s booze involved.

That’s boring life over with, so what’s been happening in the world?

2011 ended spectacularly, with a lot of the evil despotic leaders being downed within the space of a year:
Kim Jong Il, Muammar Gadaffi and Osama Bin Laden being the most permanent of these, but also Hosni Mubarak and Silvio Burlusconi fell from power (or had it taken from them, whichever you prefer).
Unfortunately, we also lost Christopher Hitchens, Steve Jobs, Amy Winehouse, Sidney Lumet and Pete Postlethwaite, which was a shame.

We had Kony 2012, in which a man in Africa was rather mean to some children and some people got upset about it.
It’s all very well trying to change the world for the better, and that’s all good if you can actually do it, but what seemed to be the case here was that a lot of students and middle class white kids watched Blood Diamond and realised that things in Africa aren’t really fair, and they were going to do something about it by putting up a bunch of posters.
Also, the leaders of the group Invisible Children, who incited Kony 2012, seemed to be complete tools who were in fact supporting other African despots and weren’t actually the heroes people were trying to claim they were. A few weeks later, one of them went nuts. Which was hilarious.
Now, what they were trying to do was noble and fine, but it’s the way that they went about trying to solve it (firstly, thinking that they could resolve all of Africa’s problems by getting a bunch of  students to ‘Like’ a post on Facebook). It reminded me of the student riots last year, which were all fine and dandy: people hanging about with signs, everything being regulated by police, making their point and not getting in anyone’s way. Until a few of them got a bit over-excited, and managed to do more harm than good by kicking in windows and chucking stuff off buildings.
Up until that point, people had sympathised with the students, saying “Yes, that is rather a lot of money, and of course not so long ago it was free don’t you know.” but then some lads dicked it all up by being pricks, and suddenly all students were having fingers pointed at them, with a cry of “You should be ashamed of yourselves.” The innocent students who simply didn’t want to fork out £36000 for a degree were being lumped in with the fire-extinguisher brandishing fuckwits.
In my opinion, if you have a point to make, doing it peacefully seems to be the best option. It gets people’s attention, and if you behave yourself, people don’t end up just getting annoyed at you, subsequently resulting in vindicating whatever it is you’re trying to prove.

In some cases, this simply isn’t an option, but more often than not, violence and civil unrest will indeed get your cause noticed, but it will have negative connotations, ultimately hindering your purpose.
If we look at the Occupy movement, for example, it got a lot of media attention, it got a lot of backing, it got a lot of support. Eventually, however, most people left it alone, realising that they had said their piece but you’ve got to cut your losses some time. And then, some people stayed. And they stayed. And they stayed. At least, that’s what people said, I think it was pretty much an excuse for the tramps to put up their tents and hang about without fear of being moved on. These guys, eventually, had to be removed from the settlements, and people just started getting annoyed at them. What started off as one thing just got people irritated, and people’s admiration and respect for the protest turned to anger. People forgot what the initial cause was, and thus the cause was lost and replaced with malice.
So, nice try Kony 2012, but I kind of wish someone had done their research in the first place, and they had come up with a better campaign than ‘Let’s put up posters so we can show people that Africa isn’t as great as it’s cracked up to be’.

In other White Privilege news, a chap chucked himself into the Thames as a protest against the Oxford/Cambridge boat race.
What did this achieve? It meant that they had to do it again, and people were pissed off because they feel that the outcome might have been different had they just been able to do it first time around.
Why did he do this? Well, from what I can fathom, because he went to the London School of Economics, was privately schooled in Australia and his parents are rich, and despite all this, he wasn’t allowed to compete in the Oxford/Cambridge boat race…
If only he had gone to Oxford or Cambridge, then maybe he would have been allowed. But, despite his privileged upbringing, he didn’t get what he wanted and so decided to ruin it for the guys who were involved.
Poor little rich boy. Poor little rich boy who didn’t get what he wanted. He is now on a mission to “Fight the system” to “Retain his individuality”.
Take from that what you will…

More recently, in Africa, we had reports that Robert Mugabe was ill and it was potentially fatal, causing everyone to sit on the edges of their seats in anticipation for another leader to pop his proverbial clogs and for there to be more balance in the world… Unfortunately, at the moment, the media are making it seem like he’s okay. I hope that this is merely a rouse orchestrated by his cabinet.
Unfortunately, even if he does snuff it, most of Africa is still pretty much fucked anyway. There’s going to have to be a lot of change all at once for anything positive to happen there.

Speaking of fascists, in America we have seen Rick Santorum being the stereotypical Republican pro-life tool, charging for the birth control pill for women and being a general Bible Brandishing tit.
Another of Rick Santorum’s policies was to cut back on abortions, giving the old ‘A life is a life no matter at what stage’ spiel again.

Now, I don’t know if it’s just me, but there seems to be a bit of a problem here.
You want people to not use birth control, but then you want them to keep the children. You’re trying to persuade teenagers to simply abstain from sex, and not provide them with the necessary equipment or teaching to help them avoid unnecessary pregnancies or STI’s, if, by some insane chance, they decide that they do actually want to have sex rather than simply abstain. That might have been fine for Rick, but it might not be viable in the rest of the world.
Condoms, I think, are slightly better and are allowed to be used in these rare cases where people want to have sex but don’t want to catch STI’s or get pregnant, but he’s not going to give Sex Education in schools, in the hope that, if people haven’t learnt about it, they just won’t do it.
I’m not sure enforcing Religious beliefs as part of a political system is ever a good thing.

(As an aside, I saw a newspaper article claiming that ‘Religious people are more likely to be Left Wing’… I have no idea where they found their sources, but I doubt they took All Of America into consideration.)

Rick Santorum’s anti-contraception bullshit was backed up, in a weird and hilarious way, by Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh understood that, if birth control pills were free, that meant someone had to pay for it; Taxpayers. His reasoning followed:

“[Wanting free birth control] makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex… If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is: We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Wow… I honestly don’t know how these guys keep doing this. There’s making strange connections between two points, and then there’s doing ‘The Full Republican’ and making wild leaps between one thing and something entirely different.
If she wants to use birth control, then she is a slut and we should be able to watch her have sex.

Just, run me through the reasoning again, Rush. Just, one more time… Humour me… Just so I can be absolutely and completely sure that you are, in fact, a complete fucking tool.
Ah yes, just as I thought.

After all this happened, Rick Santorum said that he thought Limbaugh was being ‘Absurd’.
Gutted, Rush. Even the person you’re trying to support thinks you’re a moron.

Back to Santorum, and after his ridiculous policies and ludicrous claims, he managed to fluff it. After all that, he was still getting votes, and then he did something which managed to cock it up spectacularly. I was worried that his public image might not change significantly in the eyes of America after this, but they exceeded my expectations, and I am very happy about that.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone drops the word ‘Nigger’ into conversation, I tend to end the conversation there unless they have very good reason for using it (as I like to think I do here). When a Politician drops the word ‘Nigger’ into one of his speeches, on television, in front of an audience, and then tries to pretend he hadn’t said it, it clangs and rattles around the room like the piano clash in old Westerns. Everyone stops, looks, silence falls across the room, all eyes are on the stranger in the doorway, waiting for his next move.

Rick Santorum, thankfully, bowed out. He realised that he had made an incredible faux-pas, and he wasn’t going to to be able to fix this one. Perhaps he realised that we had moved on from the 1920′s, and that actually, this wasn’t a good way to try and rally his followers.
Well done America, with the amount of votes he was getting, I had serious doubts about some of you.

It’s a shame no one reminded him that, by his own admission, he wasn’t actually allowed to abort.

But, like the heads of the Hydra, with him gone, two more take his place: Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, both equally monumental fuckwits.
Now, I have very little to say about either of these guys that I haven’t already said about Santorum or Limbaugh, but there is one thing I will say in favour of Newt Gingrich, and one thing only.

He wants a space station in manned orbit by the year 2020. 

That’s one of his policies. And that’s fantastic. I don’t know if this is because he’s completely bat-shit loco, or because has the mental age of a 5 year old, but that’s kind of cool. I can just imagine him now, standing behind the podium, talking to the press, explaining to them:

“I want to live in space. I want to go into space. I hope we live in space by 2020, like in that programme Space 1999 but 21 years later, or that film 2001: A space odyssey, but 19 years later. Here is a picture I done of what it would be like to live in space. I built this model of the space station we are going to live on. I made it out of Lego. Here is where we will live, and this is where the horses go. I done another picture of the space station but I can’t show it to you today because it is stuck on the fridge.”

"This is a picture I done of me in space." - By Newt Gingrich

Bless his little All-American cotton socks.

That’s enough badly informed and controversial news and politics for now, let’s get onto what’s really important – the films I’m most excited about this year:

Prometheus
Moonrise Kingdom
The Dark Knight Rises

My summer is going to be pretty busy. On a dead shift in work the other day, I read an article on Prometheus, and without saying really anything about the film, I am already incredibly excited. My first reaction after reading the article was “I must go and watch Alien again. Now.”
If you don’t know much about Prometheus, it’s the ‘Prequel’ to Alien, Directed by Ridley Scott, and their advertising campaign has been astonishing. They managed to set up a fake TED talk (TED 2023) which has been a better advertising campaign than Redd Pepper could ever narrate (although I would love to see Redd Pepper’s biopic. Just him with a camera, doing his usual day to day things, just narrating everything).

Nothing much has been really said about Moonrise Kingdom, other than it’s coming out at the end of May and, being a Wes Anderson film, everyone’s in it again. Jason Schwarzman and Bill Murray of course, but also Tilda Swinton,Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel and Edward Norton this time. As a Wes Anderson fan, I don’t need to have seen a trailer for this to already be excited. Nor would I have been with Prometheus, but the campaign does look incredible.

As for Batman… It’s Nolan, it’s Batman, it’s the final episode in the Nolan/Batman saga… It had better be incredible or I will be very disappointed. But I know that it will be, so that’s okay. It’s got Bane and Selina Kyle in it (possibly as Catwoman, although no one’s seen any pictures of her with the ears on, so people are unsure as to whether or not she’ll be fully fledged Catwoman or not.). It’s going to be the metaphorical tits.

I am also working on a 5 minute short for my course at the moment, which I will put up as soon as I can, so keep an eye out for that. We should be wrapping up post production in about a month or so, and I’ll be putting links to it about.

Well, that’s all I can be bothered to do for now, just thought I’d let you know I’m still here and I haven’t forgotten about this, but for more frequent updates you can follow me on the Twitters and on the Facebook group.
Sorry it’s not been a terribly exciting blog, but it’s hard to cover everything that’s happened in the world over the past few months.

Anyway, happy magic zombie jew and chocolate eggs holidays, have a good’un, don’t eat all that chocolate egg in one go or you’ll just make yourself feel quite sick.

Big love,
L

Remember, Remember

This blog understands, but disagrees.

Well, it’s a little bit late, but better late than never. What’s been happening?
Well, we’ve just had Hallowe’en, we’ve had Bonfire Night and the clocks have gone back. Now we’re officially into Autumn, as far as I care. Time to get out the warm clothes, the mulling spices and the vegetable stews.

But I’ve been thinking about the events of the past week, and these things kind of confuse me.

Let’s start with the clocks, shall we?

I understand the purpose of the clocks changing, and I know that once that happens and it gets dark early we like to wrap up warm and it’s all very lovely. But surely it can’t be as simple as it appears to be for us.
Jon Richardson has a theory that no one actually knows when the clocks change. I sure don’t. But every year, without fail, I manage to get caught up on it. Jon’s theory states that it is, in fact, just a little old lady somewhere who’ll tell her visitors
“The clocks go back this weekend.”
“Oh, right. Better remind people then.” they’ll say to one another.
And that’s that. Word spreads, people adjust their clocks accordingly. But I honestly can’t keep up with when it happens. And when it does happen, it baffles me. If we can control time in this way, arbitrarily adding or removing hours from our lives, why are we limited to only twice a year? How do we get an extra day every four years? Where does that time go when we’re not using it? Do we change the clocks at midnight, or do we wait until 0100h and then repeat that hour? Is it just midnight for an hour and then business continues as usual? No one seems to know. I know I feel sorry for the poor guys who do the TV and radio listings.
But then we just get on with it. We get an hour longer in bed, although most of us will just stay up for an extra hour anyway. Brilliant. Lie in. It’s dark by tea time and we don’t feel so guilty about staying in and drinking hot chocolate all night and the beautiful words ‘Hot toddy’ reappear.
But where does that hour go? Do we keep it in a little box until we need to get it out again, only visible a couple of times a year like the Blue Peter tortoise? I always ask these questions, and I am always met by the same response: an unimpressed stare and a change of conversation topic.
People don’t like to humour me with this.

Never mind.

Onto Bonfire night! When we celebrate a failed terrorist plot by covering fruit in melted sugar, setting off explosives and burning the effigy of the chap who wasn’t as good at regicide as he had first hoped.
Fun for all the family (except the pets, I’ve been told they don’t like fireworks)!
I love Bonfire night. I like fireworks. I don’t know how people can’t. But it is a bizarre celebration. I can’t think of another failed terrorist attack we celebrate with such gusto. I can’t think of another we celebrate at all, whether it was successful or not.
And I kind of miss those harrowing adverts you used to see, warning you not to play with fireworks. The ones now don’t seem to have quite the same impact. Public service announcements just seem to have gone downhill since I was young. I haven’t seen anything that quite compares to the horrors of watching that advert of that kid getting splatted by a train when I was a kid.

On to Hallowe’en! A day when children dress up in order to retain their anonymity and mug strangers for confectionery. Or, perhaps, an excuse for adults to dress up as in less clothes than would usually be acceptable, especially in such cold weather, and get drunk. Wonderful fun for all involved.
And don’t get me wrong, I like Hallowe’en. It’s an excuse for me to stay in, away from all the terrifying children, and watch classic horror movies. I don’t usually need an excuse, I can do that anyway, but sometimes it’s nice to have the option of an excuse just in case I feel the need to have to justify myself to anyone.
But I think I prefer the Mexican ‘Day Of The Dead’ celebrations to our alternative. They know where it’s at, honouring and celebrating the lives of those who are no longer with us, it’s usually a bit more of a jovial thing.
But then again, I live in England, where we’re happy for any excuse for a piss up and where people get annoyed about things, whether justified or not. I once had a conversation with a guy who got really angry at me over something that he had decided during that conversation.
I understand that a lot of people would rather their funerals and wakes be more of a celebration of their life, rather than a sorrowful occasion,  but then a lot of people don’t like that idea. In reality, the whole process is down to the people left behind. It’s for the living, to gain some closure and generally come to terms with the fact. I don’t care, people can celebrate and have a laugh or they can cry their eyes out. Whatever’s best for them. It’s not like I’m going to care. “Do what you need to do” I’ll say in my last will and testament, “Just get on with it. Have a drink on me.”
And, not being affiliated with any Church or Religion, people can pretty much do as they please. There’s no code for how to behave at an Atheist funeral as far as I’m aware. But if some of the money I leave in my will is going on a bar tab, I can pretty much imagine how that’ll go down.
But the thing with Hallowe’en, much like many festivals, is that it had it’s roots in some serious occasion, once upon a time.
I read an article lately, seemingly berating Hallowe’en, because… Well, fuck knows. People were enjoying themselves too much I guess. I don’t fucking know.
But this article was on the website of Archbishop Cranmer, who, as well as being an Archbishop, is also rather conservative. I reckon we’d get on famously…
I’ll let you make up your own mind about the article, but what I gained from it is this:
Hallowe’en isn’t about God. Let’s make it about God.
It’s the idea that it’s all about sinister occult things that they get so caught up on, and why not let’s change it and make people say ‘Hallowmas’ and throw anti-hallowe’en parties.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the same people who will insist on saying ‘Happy Hallowmas’ are also some of the same people who get angry about the whole ‘Let’s rename Christmas ‘Winter Festival” fallacy.
I’m all for making it a joyous celebration, but I was kind of under the impression that it already was.
It’s this quote that bothers me most though, I think:

“This kitsch celebration of the ghoulish, promising confectionery-fuelled mischief for children, and alcohol-fuelled mischief for adults, is promoted not just by the retail industry, but growingly by the entertainment industry, where film and television have made vampires synonymous with hedonism and sexuality, and music artists like Lady Gaga don fetish wear and devil horns just to buy a pint of milk. To many eyes, Halloween has come to represent not just pumpkins and sugar, but the culmination and validation of a year round media diet of horror, the supernatural and the occult.”

I know he’s trying to make a point, but… Seriously… ‘Fetish wear and devil horns just to buy a pint of milk.’? Really?
I’m not even going to start on the whole ‘The media made me do a bad thing’ argument.
And then there’s the thing about Supernatural and The Occult.

Right, here we go. I know that there are a lot of fundamentalist Christians, especially in America, and I know there are a lot of believers in the supernatural, especially in America. I’m not sure if they often go hand in hand. I’m going to guess that they probably don’t, Christians believing that souls ascend or descend and so them remaining on Earth would undermine the whole thing, surely? But, really, they’re going to rip on people for being obsessed with Ghosts ‘n’ Ghouls when their entire religion is based on the Holy Trinity; God, Jesus and The Holy Ghost.
That’s right. Omnipresent spiritual entity, benevolent Jewish zombie and pyromaniacal ghost.
I’m not going to start throwing the whole hypocrisy argument around all over the place, I think I’ve been perhaps a bit cruel to the Christians lately, so I’m going to let this one slide. But really? You’re going to get upset about people liking fiction films and books about zombies and ghosts now are you?

Maybe I should start ripping on another religion. But I reckon that the Buddhists are alright, and Muslims and Jews have been getting it pretty bad without me laying in, and Scientology… Well… They do it to themselves, I don’t even need to say anything. I’m feeling kind today.
Most of this Hallowe’en stuff has nothing to do with the church anyway, just a few guys who don’t like it and are using their religion as an excuse to get irate about it. Not everyone shares the same views. Which is probably why there are so many different Churches and sects of Christianity. It’s the details that count, after all.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed your lie in, your Hallowe’en and your Bonfire night.
Time to get making some hearty stews for the long winter nights, and start saving up for the annual bottle of Baileys.

Big love,
L

P.S. I now write articles for Mobilephonenerd, whose logo I designed a while back. Check it out.
You can also still donate to Movember too. Nice one.

Only A Geordie Can Save You Now

This blog thinks that an omelette is, in fact, a female omel.

Right, that’s it. It’s time. I’ve been trying not to write about this, but I have to. Too many of my friends have been yelled at, so now I need to get it out of my system.

Student Finance England.

As a student, I need student finance. I need a loan, or at least something to stump up the three and a half grand I have to pay in order to learn. I don’t have that kind of money just knocking around. And so Student Finance England seem like the best bet, not having amazingly rich parents or a dying billionaire relative willing to throw me some cash.
And aside from rich parents, relatives with fatal diseases, money laundering or theft, the Student Loans Company are the only people you can turn to. It’s not like with banks, where you can wander around looking for the best rates of interest or other bank things I don’t understand with various acronyms. The Student Loans company are the only option. One choice. All the students in Britain have to go through the proper channels and be assigned their various geographical hub of the Student Loans Company. Thus, for me, it’s Student Finance England. Now, I don’t know about the other companies, never having been able to use them, so I’m just going to have a whinge about SFE, although I imagine the problems will be similar across the UK.

Firstly, the fact that they’re the only option means that if I want to get some money in order to be able to afford to be a student, I have to go through them. They only seem to have pretty much one job; to help students out with funding, and they suck at it. They suck pretty hard.

Three years ago I had my first encounter with Student Finance, which didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked. Being new to it, I assumed that any problems I was having was just because it was my first time enrolling, and once my information was on the system, the next few times would be a breeze.
(I’ll give this some context, just in case you’re unaware of how the system works:
Three years ago, I started my first Semester at my first uni, doing a Foundation Degree in Digital Design. The promise was that once we’d completed the initial two years, we’d be able to transfer courses no problem, straight onto the third year of a degree course and that’d be it. That was, apparently, all a lie, and so I decided not to get a degree in Graphic Design but, in fact, try and get a degree in Media, something that I actually wanted to do. So I left after the two year course, got myself a Foundation Degree and moved city in order to try my hand at something new. Hopefully with my previous experience, I would be able to walk right into the second year of the course and I’d be able to carry on pretty much where I left off. Unfortunately, I didn’t qualify for that and so had to start again, my Foundation Degree proving to be approximately £7000 worth of useless. Unless you end up doing what they call a ‘Top Up Course’, as opposed to starting a new course like I did, you only get 4 years worth of Funding. This means that in my first year of my new course, I don’t have my tuition fees paid for. This causes many complications as I will explain later on.)
So, with my first few attempts at trying to get my Student Loan application sorted, sending off Passports and all manner of documentation, they were supposed to send me a letter which consisted of all the T’s & C’s that no one reads, and a little box marked “Sign Here:”. After a week, the letter had still not arrived, so I rang them up, and after being on hold for twenty minutes, I had a thirty second conversation which resulted in whoever was on the other end clicking a button to order me a new letter. After about a month and a number of similar conversations, one very friendly Scottish girl answered the phone, and kindly informed me that since they had sent about seven letters to my house after all my phone calls, why didn’t I just print the form and send it back?
“Well”, I replied, “No one had informed me that that was an option.”
She subsequently gave me a website address, I printed off the form, signed it, sent it off and within a few days, I had myself some lovely free, pretend, student money*. (*Free, pretend, student money not actually free or pretend.)
So that was my first encounter, and the next year I went through a very similar process. After my year out as a Barista/Bar Tender, I had to go through the whole bloody ordeal again. And here we begin.

As I had applied for a loan before, my details were still partially on their system, by which I mean, my login still worked… Just… All the rest of my details had mysteriously disappeared, meaning I had to fill in all the form again.
Fine, I can cope with that, it’s tedious but okay. I began this process in March.
Now, having lived away from my parents for the required period of 3 years, I would have though that I would apply for ‘Independent Student’ status, their requirements being that you are estranged/orphaned/have lived away from your parents for three years. They even have a helpful little bit on the website (once you can navigate through the fucking thing. One of the least user friendly websites I have used ever) where you can click the box that says you think you meet the requirements for ‘Independent Student’ status. To prove your status, you need to provide them with a Passport/Birth Certificate/Something else, and P60′s for the past three years. Now, as I was a student for two of those years and didn’t have a job in my first year, I didn’t have the necessary P60 forms. Also, never thinking I would need it, I don’t have my birth certificate in my possession, and wasn’t sure if I had a valid passport (why it needs to be valid I’m not sure, I’m the same person whether or not the passport is in date), it turns out that I did have a passport at my Father’s house, but on the website they apparently preempt you not having whatever documentation is required with a check box that allows you to select ‘I do not have any of this information’. No matter how many times I clicked this box, the same message would always remain on my home page; ‘We’re still waiting for information from you’. Why bother having the option if you need the information and can’t continue without it? So, once again I called them up. Apparently, you need to have been earning a minimum of £7500 a year for those three years that you claim to have been living away from your parents. Now, the one year that I did have a P60 for, I hadn’t earnt enough, apparently (badly paid job, not enough hours, just managing to scrape by, only just being able to afford rent, etc). This astounded me, given that assuming I’m earning less than whatever, you’d assume I would be in need of the loan more than someone who had been earning however much. But apparently not. So I had to change my application.
It was August by the time I had discovered that they did, in fact, need the information, and so I got to work sending off my passport (if I didn’t have a passport, I would have had to go to the registry office in the town that I was born in and buy a new birth certificate, which would have been a bit of a bloody hassle, if I’m honest.)
So, after speaking to another useful Scottish girl after a string of English morons, they got me to print off a bunch of information to fill in and send back to them, as you can’t amend certain parts of your application online once you’ve clicked the ‘That seems fine’ button. So I had to do this all by hand, filling in the forms, getting my mother to fill in similar forms, sending it back to them, not receiving any confirmation that they had received any of it, calling them up again, getting nowhere, waiting a bit, calling them again to be told that they had received the forms, they were in administration and until they’d been processed “There’s nothing you can do”. Those were her actual words.

By now we’ve reached September, and I’m getting a bit bloody anxious about Uni and not ever having any money to be able to pay them. Remember that I started this process in March, so they’re taking their sweet time about it. Alongside this, I also have to send the University evidence of my Foundation Degree grade, A level results and GCSE results. Again, not forms that I have in my possession, I would have thought that a Foundation Degree would do, but apparently a C in GCSE english is also necessary. I was half expecting them to want my SAT results and any evidence of ‘Finger Painting’ and ‘Use of Crayons’ I might also have, perhaps to assess how proficient I would be at ‘Advanced Crayola Theory’.
So after back-and-forthing with the University and Student Loans lot, and after many emails and phonecalls (although the emails were less successful, given that finding a contact email address for the loans company is like finding the Holy Grail and even when you do track it down, you’re met with a ‘This service is temporarily unavailable’ message, although ‘Temporary’ seems to be used quite loosely here, since every time I’ve tried to use it in the past six months I’ve been met with the same message) I’m finally at my wits end. And then a receive an email on September 27th, responding to a message I sent on August 11th, stating that they can ‘Confirm you have applied for Independent Student Status; Please send us P60 forms, etc.”

And that was it. I lost my rag. That was the straw that broke the camels back. I’d already sent off my forms and information to the contrary, and I was furious. I called them up one last time, and I was out for blood. My hands were physically shaking as I punched the keys on my phone in response to the “Press one to go fuck yourself, Press two to bend over and let us fuck you” robot. Finally, after being on hold for 22 minutes and 19 seconds, constantly being assured that my call was important to them and that they were particularly busy at this time of year, and I was met by the lilting tones of a Geordie accent. Confirm ID number, date of birth, what can I help you with?
“Hi, is there anyone I can speak to in management, or at least higher up? I’m really quite angry right now, and I know that what I’m angry about has nothing to do with you whatsoever”, I was tempted to add at this point ‘and to be honest, even if there’s no one in management I can speak to, you seem very nice, just patch me onto someone in your office you don’t like’.
I was in a rage, I was going to yell at someone, but I wanted it to be someone who deserved it. I was ready and willing to kick off almost instantly, but with their advanced combat tactics, Student Finance England has sensed my rage and deployed a Friendly Geordie Lass. But I was not perturbed.

“Well, if you want, I can have a word with management and see if I can get someone to talk to you, but if you want to explain what the problem is then that will help me sort out who it is you need to speak to.”
Fine. I would suppress my wrath for a while longer. I explained basically what I’ve told you up until now, from March onwards, and she could confirm all of it, having all the details of letters I’d posted, emails I’d sent and every time I’d made a phonecall up on her computer. She understood. She made all the right ‘Uh huh’ and ‘I understand’ and ‘Yeah, I know’ cooing noises into my ear. But I was angry. The red mist had descended. They weren’t going to get past this angry bastard just with some friendly Geordie. She explained that she would put me on hold while she spoke to a supervisor, and then we could sort things out.
Damn right we’re going to sort this out. Either you tell me what I want to hear right now, or the SFE building is going to become Nakatomi Tower, and I’m John McClane. I’m taking off my shoes.
“Right” she said, the receiver click having ended the Muzak they had been playing at me, “Here’s the situation.”
Fortunately for them, they chose the first option. They’d sensed my fury, they were willing to play ball. They’d fucked with this guy one too many times, and they knew it.
She sympathised with me, told me how she understood it can be a stressful enough time becoming a student, let alone with all this bullshit. She informed me that they were going to look up all the whatever they had to do and I would get a letter in a couple of weeks, regarding the information about my loans. It came yesterday. If it hadn’t they had one more week before I stormed Student Finance Fortress with a big stick.
Fortunately for them, Friendly Girl from Newcastle saves the day.

From this, I can surmise only that, if you work in a call centre, the further north from the equator you travel, the more useful you become. I have spoken on the phone to maybe thirty different people at Student Finance England in the last few years, and 3 of them have been helpful; Two scottish girls and a geordie.

But what the fuck? Student Finance, the only option you have, is one of the least organised organisations I know. Every year, around results time, they seem to freak the fuck out that they’re getting so many calls. But it’s not like this is a completely unexpected phenomenon.

They’re worse than The Whole Of England when it snows. I can tell you that, come winter, it’s probably going to snow. Get the gritters out when it gets cold. But instead, the first day there’s frost, everyone freaks the fuck out. Trains stop running, the news broadcasts exclusively news about snow, how it’s ‘Colder than last year and subsequently the coldest day ever‘, shops close, miles of motorway become traffic jams, people trying to escape the mysterious cold, wet, white substance floating gently down from the sky. I’m surprised I’ve not heard the words ‘Apocalypse’ or ‘End of days’ yet. England, get your shit together. Winter means it’s probably going to snow. It’s been this way for FUCKING AGES, it happens every year, get a grip.

Student loans company, you’re even worse. You don’t have the highly-technological-but ultimately-mostly-useless equipment the meteorological guys have to work with, you’ve got something even better. A fucking calendar.
The date for A Level Results is told to you months in advance. You know when you’re going to get busy. It’s there, in writing, telling you ‘This day, you’re going to get a lot of calls’. Perhaps put a few more members of staff on? It’s not like it’s a surprise, I can tell you when you’re going to be busy. Sort your shit out.

To conclude, the Student Loans Company are shit. But they don’t know this, because you’ve got to be fucking Theseus in order to find the complaints button in the first place. They’re the only option, and they don’t work. Student Finance England, you’re a bunch of incompetent bastards, but you’re the only choice that doesn’t involve Robbery or Parricide.

On a lighter note, to end the blog, remember that I’m Movember-ing this year, and donations and team-joining can be done here. Failing that, there’s always the Facebook page here where ‘Like’s will be viewed as support, and support is most welcome.

Big love,
L

PS. If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this blog, you’re welcome to try and find the complaints address on the Student Finance England website, and good luck to you. (The complaints button at the bottom, by the way, goes to the Student Loans Company website, so if you -do- manage to complain, it takes forever to get back to Student Finance England. This was the only way I could contact them via email, as far as I could work out. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to write to if you don’t want to complain, and if you just want to ask a question.)

Independent WoMen

This blog is an astronaut.

“Ladies!
Worried about your weight? If not, you should be!
Now that you are, you can get down to eating this! It tastes like cardboard, it’s a greyish beige and it will make you thin!
You too can look like you always wanted to look by not eating properly and forgetting what flavours are!”

Ladies, specifically. This kind of advert angers my girlfriend no end, and I can understand why. She is a self-confessed feminist, and I applaud this fact. However, I have a few issues with her whole stand point. And I raise these issues with her as she does with me about her point of view, and now I’m going to share some of these with you.

Feminism is a concept that I understand and applaud, but that also confuses me.
The anger and malevolence towards the media by feminists and women in general confuses me.
The malevolence towards men by a lot of feminists confuses me.
That there have been no similar movements for men, no ‘Masculist’ movement, confuses me.
And here’s why:

The main arguments for feminism, as far as I can make out are:
Inequality in the workplace
Objectifying women
Pressure on women to look/dress certain ways
Gender stereotyping
Media representation

Now, I put it to you, the reader, to tell me that these are not things that also affect men. Maybe not in exactly the same sorts of ways, but there can be many a comparison drawn.

I work in a pub, as you probably know, and getting this job was not as easy as it might have seemed. Most of the bar staff are women. And there’s a reason for this. Women sell more beer than men. Now you can take one view on this; that this is because men, who are our main source of custom, will hang around longer to ogle a pretty barmaid and thus spend more money. My stand on this is that, as far as inequality in the workplace goes, this is not in my favour.
This does not just apply to my job, mind. I know a lot of women who will flaunt their ‘Womanly assets’ because it will get them what they want. A lot of the time, these women are just as quick to pull out the old ‘My eyes are up here’ routine, despite the fact that they often have everything on show but their nipples. I find it very hard to reason with someone who will use one trick to get something that they want, but find it inappropriate when someone gives them a glance. Sometimes, a man will eye up a girl because she’s showing a lot of cleavage, and sometimes because he actually finds her attractive. In one instance, it’s offensive, in the other, it’s flattering, although both consist of a man looking at a woman. In most cases, it is down to whether or not the woman finds the man attractive as to whether or not she considers his glance to be offensive or flattering. This kind of logic boggles me.
The company I work for only employs one man a year, because typically, men sell less produce. It was harder for me to get a job there because I don’t have breasts, and therefore have to rely on actually being good at my job. It shouldn’t be this way, but it is. I’m not saying that the girls aren’t good at their jobs, what I’m saying is that it was harder for me to get the job in the first place, because I will typically not sell as much beer, because I have a Y chromosome. It’s not anything to do with people pigeonholing genders, and it’s not to do with me being annoyed that I very rarely get bought a drink, but the girls seems to get bought plenty (although I do get quite annoyed about that, especially when I’m serving the same guys all night and actually selling them beer, rather than just serving it, but as soon as one of the girls serves them, they buy her a drink. Sexist pigs.), it’s to do with profit. I was up against more  competition with only one ‘Male’ job vacancy available than the girls were. And if something is selling well, sell more of it. In this case, tits. People will spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns in order to sell a product, and if the POS or the advertising campaign is working, why not stick with it?
Which brings me to my next point:
Advertising, targeted at women.
Typically, healthy foods will be advertised mainly towards women. Now, I can see two sides to this, so let’s break it down.
Yes, women are the main demographic, and if you want to sell something, you need a demographic. It’s all very well being annoyed at advertising campaigns, but if they weren’t trying to sell to somebody, they wouldn’t be doing their job.
But there aren’t any adverts directed at men, so who do we turn to when we want to lose weight?! Surely we don’t eat the same things as the women! Why, that would make us like them! What a blow to our masculinity! Obviously, as men, we don’t need to worry about our appearance. That kind of insecurity is down to women.
Now, the sad fact of the matter is, it is almost impossible to have an advertising campaign whose demographic is everyone. Having said that, I disagree with this notion that women typically care more about their weight or how they look than men. This, to me, is a crock of shit.
Plenty of women get so irate about how women are told to behave or dress in certain ways, but it’s not as simple as that. Yes, slim, bronzed women will be spread all over magazines, and some of those magazines will contain pictures of celebrities not looking their best and isn’t is surprising that not everyone looks at their best all the time? What a fucking revelation. Sometimes celebrities don’t look as polished as they do when they’re in for a photo shoot. Fuck-a-doodle-doo. But this isn’t telling women how to dress or look. Fashions come and go, certain people are more photogenic than others, and certain types of people will be used to sell certain things. But it’s up to you to decide how you want to dress or look. And it’s the same for men. Women have Grazia and Cosmo to ‘tell them how to look’, men have Men’s Health or Front or Zoo to tell us how we should behave, what we should wear and how muscular we should be. But fuck, I don’t want to look like these guys! Sure, I’d like to be thinner, sure I’d like to have some muscle definition, but shine a light! I don’t want to look like all I do all day every day is bench press JCB’s!
It’s exactly the same psychology involved, attacking the same insecurities regardless of gender. We’re told in the same way as women how to dress, but it’s up to us whether to obey the great Media Gods.
This being said, who doesn’t want to look nice sometimes? And if that means wearing that dress you like, or putting on that shirt than fits you quite nicely, or having put in some time at the gym and being proud of how you look now, that’s not a bad thing is it? That’s just paying attention to how you look. That’s precisely what Gok Wan’s there for, a bit of self confidence. And self confidence isn’t evil. When it goes too far and becomes vanity or pretension, then it borders on evil, but being pleased with how you look is healthy.
And then there’s TV. Women will get angry as a bear with itchy balls about being told by an advert to eat salad now and again, but still watch Sex and the City. People watch The Only Way Is Essex (though fuck knows why) but no one is telling you that this is the way to live.
It’s optional.
Looking at magazines or photographs of ‘the beautiful people’ might make you feel like you want to lose some weight, but no one is telling you to! (Unless it’s a doctor, in which case, you probably should.) But who doesn’t want to feel better about themselves? I envy the people that don’t, I really do, but it’s not just women who have body issues. The same stresses appear in the media on men as they do on women. Look, here’s how it goes:

‘LADIES!’
The ‘Media’ says,
‘Get thinner! Wear less clothes! Wear more clothes! Wear no clothes! Just wear shoes! Don’t wear those shoes! Wear these shoes! Get some exercise! Wear jewellery! Wear perfume! Get bigger breasts! Only find these kinds of men attractive! Look like these women!
BIG BROTHER IS JUDGING YOU!’
and so on and so on.

And on the other side:

‘GENTLEMEN!’
The voice of advertising bellows,
‘Get thinner! Wear less clothes! Wear more clothes! Wear no clothes! Wear these clothes! Smell like this! Get some exercise! You don’t have enough blades on that razor! Grow muscles! Get a bigger penis! Act like these testosterone-laden pricks! Enjoy sport! Only find these kinds of women attractive! Look like these men!
BIG BROTHER IS JUDGING YOU!’
Football, shagging, cars, pint of tits, etc. etc. etc.

So, you see, to my mind, there are exactly the same pressures on both sexes when it comes to how to look, act and dress. As for objectifying women? Men will act like that, but so will women. I turn your attention to the old Pepsi adverts. As a man, I can tell you that there are few things more emotionally crippling than being giggled at by a group of women from behind their hands. I’ve seen teenage girls in high school, hell, I knew a few of them, and I know how bitchy they can be. And with some people, it doesn’t change. But those insults and crippling rumours happen to the guys as well.
I heard a statistic that said something along the lines of:
‘in American children aged 8 or 9 or so, the number of kids wanting to be President is about equal in both genders. When they get to about 15 or so, the statistic changes.’
When I was 8 or 9, I think I wanted to be a cowboy. Not much has changed, but I have gained a little perspective over the years, and realised that it’s not really feasible. I imagine the same happened to a lot of those American kids.
Apparently, only 16% of Film directors, writers, editors and producers are women. I’m not sure what this proves, other than more men want to be Film directors than women, perhaps? I’m not really sure it’s to do with misogyny in the film industry. I bet if you looked into Hairdressing or Fashion, there would be more women working in those sectors. Same probably goes for floristry, but at a guess, I’d say you’ll probably find more male greengrocers and butchers.
No one is forcing anyone to go into a particular industry. No one is telling you ‘you MUST behave like this!’ but there are certain social guidelines. Society dictates a lot of things, and yes, the Media will influence society, but everyone is free to think what they want. I put it to you that society is mainly dictated by the people. Society will change within cultures, and the ways people dress, talk, eat and behave will change.
Now it may be, for the sake of argument, that you believe that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. And you’d be allowed to think that. I, for one, would call you a complete fucking tool, but you’re allowed to think it. In the same way, if a woman enjoys cooking, let her get on with it. Don’t refuse to cook because you don’t want to fall into the ‘A woman’s place is in the kitchen’ stereotype. That’s just backwards.
Me, I love cooking, and despite the whole ‘A woman’s place is in the kitchen’ misogynistic bullshit view, I can name more male chefs than I can women. Not just on TV either, but generally. I know and have met quite a few chefs in my time, and most of them have been men.

I understand the feminist arguments, and I’m all for it! But I find it somewhat unfair that men don’t have a ‘Masculist’ movement. Now, previously, I could understand this. We didn’t really have much to complain about, but nowadays, things are changing.
I want to start my own movement. Not one focused primarily at men, but something to say:

‘I don’t want to look like the ‘beautiful’ people employed to sell me things. I don’t want to be told who to find attractive. I want to be who I want to be. I want to fight for what I believe in, to say what I wish to say and make myself heard. I want people to understand who I am as an individual, and not to be pigeonholed or judged before people have met me.’

and so, I shall start the Individualist movement.
And who doesn’t want to feel like this? Regardless of Gender, race, creed, age, sexual persuasion, whatever?

Unfortunately, when it comes to advertising, they still need to do their job and will have demographics and pychographics. When it comes to photography and fashion, they will use more stereotypically attractive people who adhere to certain body types, because when we buy something, we want to look like the attractive person selling it to us. Using unattractive people to market something just wouldn’t work as well. When it comes to equality in the workplace, it doesn’t just come down to income, it comes down to the people that you work with, and if some people turn more of a profit or are better at their jobs than others, that’s life. Some people will choose one job over another, but that’s not to do with gender, in most cases.

Advertising is ruthless, the world can be a cruel place, and we all have insecurities that people will prey on in order to get what they want.
I’m all for feminism, and it has achieved some wonderful things, but I don’t want to be scorned just because I’m a man. Surely that’s a backwards and hypocritical view of things?

So ‘Girl Power’ if you want to, or just enjoy being a woman. I will enjoy being a man, and I am going to fight for the Individualist movement.

Big love,
L

PS. I am partaking in Movember this year, and this seems as good a time to mention it as any. Please, any donation would be greatly appreciated, whether you like my blog or not.
You can donate here, all money raised will go to charities which raise money to combat Prostate cancer and Testicular cancer.
Thank you.

Catch 22

This blog doesn’t give a fuck about an oxford comma.

I’m back, and have now officially made a valiant return to education! My have I been busy these past few weeks.
Now officially a full time student again, I can turn my attention almost fully to films. I’ve only just had my first day, but I’ve met some people and started the arduous process of making a film.
Easy enough when you’ve got an idea, but the brief is nice and ambiguous, and at the end of what seemed like a very long day in a very hot room, the ideas we were kicking around started to get a little surreal and repetition and deviation from the subject at hand was rife. We would never have succeeded at Just A Minute had we been forced to play at half past four on a Monday afternoon.
But I am looking forward to it! Another three glorious years of putting off the real world, and hopefully this time I’ll be able to leave with a degree and get a job in the film industry.
Currently, a lot of people don’t know what they want to specialise in, and I guess it’s a good chance for me to try my hand at things that I haven’t tried before. I have to say, sound production and design take my fancy, so I’m looking forward to experimenting with that.
I has occurred to me though, that at the age of 22 (which I currently am) I am already considerably older than many of my new peers. Not in the grand scheme of things, of course I’m still a nipper, but by the time I graduate, many of them will not even be as old as I am now. And that’s a slightly worrying thought.
Only 22 and already I’m one of the oldest in my group. It’s astonishing how age creeps up on you. And with it, a bunch of things you never thought you’d end up doing. Things that definitely signify your maturity. I say maturity, I mean that point in your life when you go ‘When the fuck did that happen?!”
I don’t feel old, I don’t consider myself old, there are many people out there older than me. Most people are, I’m sure of it, but there are certain things that make you stop and think.
I find myself telling people things about ‘When I was your age’, about the halcyon days when ‘In my local pub, you could get a pint of best for £1.40.”
Indeed, some of these people in my class were 14 years old when I was old enough to legally drink.
One of my best friend’s sisters, and one of my friends, is getting married. I knew her when she was in primary school.
This Easter, I went for a drive with my friend, walked up a hill and sat to admire the view.
Strange things seem to happen once you’re in your twenties apparently. One girl today, quite abruptly, asked me my age.
I was quite taken aback. “How old are you?” came out of nowhere like a kick in the nuts from a ninja.
“Twenty two.” I replied, before I could even think of responding with something ambiguous such as ‘As old as my tongue and older than my teeth.’
She positively rejoiced at this fact, that I was in my twenties.
“Yes!” she said “I’m not the only one in my twenties!”
Well, I was quite shocked. It’s considered rather rude to ask a girl her age, I thought, so I can’t even request similar insight on her part. But I was labelled, there and then, as one ‘in his twenties’ and with that I had been picked from the crowd. Tarred with the twenty-something brush that these young spritely nippers have yet to encounter. Already a black sheep before I’ve even established the field that I’m in.
But there it was. I am one of the ‘older’ lot.

When did that happen?!

I still watch cartoons, I spent my evenings playing video games and eating cereal. I can’t drive, I’m going back to school and I find farts funny. When confronted with a pen and paper, I will draw a penis. I play with blue-tack. I think Lego is awesome. I read comics and I gain an immense amount of joy from being given the opportunity to lick the bowl when I’m making a cake.
Maybe I’m just fooling myself. Like those men with their midlife crises who buy sports cars and wear clothes that are too tight for them.
But I sure hope not.
I’m young.
I have friends in their thirties and fourties, and although I enjoy their company, I would never consider comparing myself to them in terms of maturity or responsibility.
Then again, there are parts of certain cities where I really can remember when ‘All this was fields’. Things did used to be cheaper, and larger. Things were different ‘in my day’. But when was that? Has my day passed? Has it been and gone? Has the sun set on ‘my day’ without my noticing? Or am I just staying up past my bedtime?
No, I’m still in ‘my day’. Although I’m older than my new peer group, I can’t help but feel that it’s only a few years, but all I have gained in the past few years, in comparison to the, is a bit more sensibility. There is a certain smug satisfaction I derived from seeing people in freshers week with hideous hangovers from their parties, whilst I had abstained and worked and was thus fine.
Sure, I want a flat cap. Sure, I think that actually, a briefcase would be damn handy in some circumstances. I don’t have a mortgage or a car or a pension, but I do have debts and sometimes I know when I should stop drinking.
I enjoy going for walks more readily now. I will stop and admire the countryside. I eat my greens. I wrap up warm. I go to the toilet before a long car journey, and if I don’t need to go, I still try. I listen to friendly advice. I consider, to some extent at least, the repercussions of my actions. I would quite like a garden or an allotment in which to grow things. But these are just sensibilities, things your mother tells you, and things you begin to realise are important, surely? Perhaps a sign of maturity (Mature? Me? Surely not!)?
I have also taken up cooking with some vigour.

These past few weeks I have been baking and cooking and getting quite culinarily experimental and imaginative. I have been trying out new things, and to celebrate this, I have started a food blog.
Nothing exciting, nothing in terms of critique or recipes at the moment, just a place to post pictures of delicious things I am proud of. I have friends who enjoy cooking, and so I am sharing it with them as a place to be proud of their works. Maybe something will come of it, maybe not. Anyway it’s here if you’re interested. There’s not much on it at the moment, but I hope it will convince me to cook more exciting things more frequently.

Well, with uni happening now, hopefully there’ll be more films on here, and hopefully I’ll be blogging a bit more. I have been quite lackadaisical about it recently, but I’ve been quite uninspired, and I don’t want to chat for the sake of it. But maybe with more ideas floating around in general, this old thing will get a bit more use.
Please keep an eye out for upcoming works, maybe have a look in on the food blog at some point when I’ve got a few more things going up there, and please ‘Like’ my Facebook page so I know that people actually read this. It’s also easier to find my pictures and videos and things up there, as it should all be archived in a bit more of a sensible way.

Remember:
“It’s not how old you grow, it’s how you grow old.”
In my case, I hope it’s either with an impressive moustache, or completely disgracefully.
In any case, with a twinkle in my eye.

Big love,
L

Campaign Against Moaning, Repetitive Arseholes

This blog is probably not very interesting if you don’t go to pubs.

So, as you may know, I work in a pub. well, two pubs, actually, but one more than the other. And the main pub that I work in is big on real ales.
I have learned to love and understand and respect real ales, and the work that goes into making them. Sure, some are better than others, and sure sometimes it’s down to personal preference, but just getting a batch made in the first place is a serious feat. I didn’t know that much about ales until I started working in these pubs, and have since come to realise the complexities and wonder of ales. Personally, I prefer porters and stouts, although recently have started warming to the hoppier, lighter beers.
And this is great. It’s not a profession I want to pursue, but it’s nice to know what you’re drinking and to be able to have an opinion on it. People consider wine to be a drink of connoisseurs, and sometimes it is, but ale is just as complex as wines, and is ready in much less time. But people will quaff it down without even thinking about it. Some people prefer lagers, and that’s fine too, there are plenty of nice lagers out there, but what you realise pretty quickly is that most lagers taste pretty much the same. Half the time, if you blind tasted a bunch of lagers, you’d be pressed to tell the difference. Maybe you could tell the Carlings from the Heinekens, but trying to guess the Kronenbourgs from the Peronis is a little more difficult. And I’m sure some people can, but personally, it’s not my forté, and when the price difference can be as much as a pound between drinks, I’d sooner stick to something I can appreciate fully.
And this is what I’m trying to do, trying to learn about the different ales, and the processes of making them and the different regions and brewers, and I’d like to learn about the top shelf stuff too, but I don’t have the money for that right now. So far I’ve learnt the different regions of whiskys, but that’s about as  far as I’ve got. Again, it’s a case of “I know what I like, but I don’t know what else I would like based on this information”. I’d need a specialist.
Now, there are specialists when it comes to ales, sure, and they will come in and try stuff and some of them will have a chat with you, and most of them are thoroughly lovely people, willing to teach me, the staff, about the stuff I should be teaching them about. Some of them will even buy you drinks just so you can taste what they’re tasting and discuss it. Brilliant.
But most of the nice ones don’t belong to CAMRA, and these are the ones I generally have a bit of a problem with.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the CAMRA guys are lovely as well, but there are a few who are a fucking nightmare.
And this isn’t to say that the CAMRA guys are the only problem, oh no, and although I hate to say it, you can usually recognise the people who are going to be difficult. And again, sometimes they prove me wrong, but 99% of the time, I’m right.
It is my job, as a bartender, to be able to identify problem customers and nip it in the bud, so that the rest of the customers in my bar can relax and enjoy themselves. Sure there’ll be a few boys in the corner getting noisy, but generally they’re well tempered and don’t cause offense, and if they get too loud, a quiet word and they’re apologetic and continue to enjoy themselves at a slightly lowered volume. Wonderful. Everyone’s happy.

But the ones that come in in big groups, singing the trumpet section of Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’, they don’t even get served. Can’t be doing with the hassle. And the ones that come in and ask “‘ere mate, d’you sell Natch?” I’ll usually keep half an eye on. It’s a bit of a giveaway. Having said that, the girl who asked me “Ere, what’s the closest fing you got to Arrrrcherrrrs?” (Emphasis on the R’s because she had a very strong Bristolian accent) was actually no bother at all. The closest thing we have to Arrcherrs, by the way, is nothing… She settled for Vodka.

But I digress, the main problem in my pub, once they get served, are:
The guys who ask for Natch
The CAMRA guys
And a choice few of the regulars.

Guys who ask for Natch can occasionally get quite mouthy and violent. No problem there, tell them to stop it. If they don’t stop it, stop serving them. If they continue, take their drink away from them and ask them to leave. If they refuse to leave, threaten to call the police. It’s not a pleasant job and these blokes are often hella intimidating, but it’s easy enough to fix. The ones that are even worse are the ones that are comparatively well behaved. They guys who used to drink in there when it was a dive. They come in, and complain about how it’s changed. Basically, from what I can understand, it’s actually a pleasant pub to be in now, and they resent that. So they stand at the bar and complain. And complain. And complain. And they’ll stand there and complain for about five pints. I’ve had to stop myself so many times from saying;

“Listen mate, if you hate it so much, why don’t you just fuck off?”

But you can’t say that. It does boggle my mind when they’ll stay and complain rather than walk five minutes down the road to a pub which would probably be perfect for them. Often they’ll ask if there’s anywhere ‘Rough as fuck’ to drink nearby. In these instances, I point them to The Pineapple, probably the gayest gay pub I have ever seen.

Problem customers type two, the CAMRA members. Now these guys aren’t so much of a problem, just a pain in the arse. We’ve lately established a 10% discount to CAMRA members (CAMRA, by the way, stands for CAMpaign for Real Ale) in order to stay in the Good Beer guide. Unfortunately, that’s the way it is. It doesn’t matter how good your pub is, you have to lick the arses of CAMRA to get in the book. And it’s a good thing to be in the book. But now that we do 10% discount, a whole ton of these CAMRA guys come in, and they will make sure they get their 10% and they will pay to the penny. And when they come in a group, which will usually be about 15-20 blokes, they all drink halves. 2 halves each. Which is a fucking pain.
I asked a couple of the CAMRA guys what the perks of being in CAMRA are, aside from the pain-in-the-arse-for-anyone-who-works-in-a-pub-measly-discount. You get magazines and newsletters and stuff, fuck-a-doodle-doo. But they also get vouchers for Wetherspoons. Now, I understand why Wetherspoons are doing this, but why the hell do CAMRA pander to them? They’re not nice places to drink, and they rarely have any good ales on. I thought the campaign was to support Real Ale, smaller businesses and less-well-known pubs? Promoting microbreweries and rarer beers? Not fucking ‘Spoons.
They feel that because they subscribe to this club, they know more about beer than the brewers do, and have a right to discounted pints and all this stuff. They want to be treated like pub royalty because they’ve got a little silver card.
Now, like I said, it’s not all of them, some of them are very nice, but most of them are a pain in the arse.

And finally, Regulars. Now, some of our regulars are members of CAMRA, making them twice as much fun, but the worst ones are the stalwart drinkers. The ones who are in every day. There are a couple who I think are hilarious, because they seem not to like each other at all, and it seems to be because they’re both so similar. One of them will talk to you, at length, about the most boring bullshit in the world (for example, the other night it was Narrow Boats and Steam Engines). He’ll talk to customers, telling them to drink whatever he’s decided to drink, not letting me do my job, which is fine, but tedious when he comes up with something which he considers to be witty, and insists on telling every other customer this witty clever thing he’s come up with. For example, the other day it was “Your mouth will love you for blessing it with that.”
Hearing this twenty or thirty times, it gets quite tedious. Not least because it was the most bland pint I think I’ve ever tried.
But I digress, he’s preferable to another, who also talks at length about boring, boring bullshit. But he mumbles. I wouldn’t really mind if he just spoke about boring shit, but the fact that I really have to concentrate on this mundane crap just drives me insane. Frequently he’ll be halfway through some thoroughly soporific anecdote about someone I don’t know, when someone will come to the bar, but I can’t just cut him off and serve them because he’ll continue talking. These guys test me. You know it’s going to be a long night when you see them wander up to the bar and get themselves comfortable.

So, to sum up, people who drink Natch are difficult, CAMRA members are even more so, and regulars are frequently boring old bastards. I realise this hasn’t been a very interesting one, but I needed to get this out of my system.

There’ll be more blogs and new videos up soon hopefully, so watch this space.
Big love,
L

P.S. I apologise to whoever was confronted with this page after searching for ‘His little pecker started to grow big’. This probably wasn’t what you were looking for.

Mr. Anderson

This blog ain’t big enough for the both of us.

And here it is, at long last. Another video for you.
This is an homage to Wes Anderson, and features samples from Fantastic Mr Fox, The Royal Tennenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited and Rushmore. I didn’t use any from Bottle Rocket or The Squid and the Whale as I don’t know them well enough.
It’s been a long time coming, but I hope you enjoy it, and if you haven’t seen any of Wes Anderson’s films, I suggest you check them out.

“Mr. Anderson”
All samples from films by Wes Anderson
Editing – Mischief (Me)
Music – Jethro Dix

You can also see it on Vimeo and Youtube.

Big love,
L

P.S. A reminder that I also have Twitter, Tumblr, Vimeo, Youtube and Facebook. Please go to the Facebook page and click the ‘Like’ button at the top of the page. It only takes a second. Thank you.

Bonus: Fetch the Engines, Fetch the Engines.

This blog blames infected monkeys.

So, if you’ve seen the news lately, you will probably be aware of the Riots. They started in London, then started kicking up in Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bristol so far, although I expect they will spread even further before we’re through.

Last night I became very aware of sirens and helicopters flying over Bristol, and I don’t even live anywhere near where the riots were happening. The UK seems to have just gone absolutely mental in the space of a few short hours.
But why? Apparently the trigger was Mark Duggan being shot by police. There is a lot of speculation as to whether he pulled the gun on the police first or whether they just shot him. Personally, I’m inclined to agree with the News reports, but that’s just the kind of person that I am. I accept that the news is biased, however on this occasion I think the reports are probably right, at least about who pulled the gun on whom.
Either way, it seems to have incited mayhem. London went absolutely fucking ape shit bananas, and subsequently, so did everyone else.

But what does any of this have to do with the death of one man? Apparently it began as peaceful protests, and quickly got way out of hand. But it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the death of Mark Duggan anymore. His death started the anger about the opression of minority communities and the lower classes.

So why, oh why, are they smashing up independent businesses and small shops? I can understand smashing up a bank, but setting fire to a children’s costume and party shop? Cars, bins and shops have been set on fire after being looted. But it doesn’t seem to be targeted in any way. Rather than head straight for the big corporations, the rioters are destroying the livelihoods of people like themselves.
It seems less, now, about standing up for something, and now appears to be mass hysteria, gang mentality and a lot of angry young men having an excuse to be angry, and stealing stuff they want along the way. Any excuse to steal shit and break stuff.

Mind you, the police haven’t been much better. Everyone is getting angry about the lack of a police presence, and fair enough there’s a lot to police so they’re stretched a bit thin on the ground. But when they’re all stacked in their riot gear, they seem to be so pumped up that they are being unnecessarily aggressive towards bystanders and people trying to get home. They’re in full riot gear with police attack dogs (attack dogs, not defence dogs) and telling people who are watching to stand back, because they are making them feel threatened. A guy, my brother, filming things on his phone makes a policeman in riot gear with a shield, a stick and a dog feel threatened. Here‘s the video he filmed.
I’ve never had much problem with the police, but there are a few who spoil it for the rest of us. I’ve had run ins similar to this, and maintain that most police are good guys. Some are glorified bouncers – people who enjoy fighting doing it for a living and getting off on some sort of power trip. (That’s not to say that all bouncers are like that, but some of them, quite a lot of them in my experience, are.)

But fair enough, most of the police are (mostly) trying hard and the rioters don’t seem to have thought about things very much.

But what I have noticed, is that this could have all been avoided.
Morrissey predicted all this years ago. “Panic on the streets of London, Panic on the streets of Birmingham”, “Shoplifters of the world unite”, “Barbarism begins at home – Unruly boys who will not grow up must be taken in hand”. Listen to the Smiths, you’ll see that all of this has already been written about.

So when the queen is dead, scratch my name in your arm with a fountain pen and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates.

Big love,
L

(Note: Mischief does not endorse Mayhem.)

Batman or Bust

This blog could survive the total perspective vortex and still be home in time for a pan galactic gargle blaster.

Okay, firstly, if the Mayans were right, and the world ends in 2012, I am going to be massively pissed off. Next year sees a lot of stuff happening that I want to be around to see. Obviously, if the world is destroyed or we all die, then it won’t happen. But by god if I see a meteor hurtling towards us, I am sending in Bruce Willis right away, and he better sort that shit out.

Next year sees the release of the 23rd Bond film (Better be better than Quantum of Solace, that’s all I’m saying) a spin off Bourne film (dubious) Men In Black Three (ridiculous) and Judge Dredd. Oh mate.
Now, some of you may be unaware of Judge Dredd, and my suggestion is you go to your nearest library or comic book shop and check out some 2000AD, because they’re pretty cool. Some of you may be aware of Judge Dredd and also be aware of the god awful 1995 Sylvester ‘Sly’ Stallone version… It’s bloody terrible, avoid it or it might ruin Judge Dredd for you. But the new film seems to have got it right. For a start, Dredd never takes his helmet off and isn’t played by Sylvester Stallone.
But this all pales in insignificance compared to just how excited I am about the final Nolan Batman film: The Dark Knight Rises. I am also excited about the release this year of Batman: Arkham City, which I can only imagine is going to get me even more excited about The Dark Knight Rises.

If the earth is destroyed before I get to see Batman, I’ll be having words with whoever is responsible.

But, there are other things afoot…
Now, I’m a fan of Zero Punctuation and if you’re into games, I recommend checking out old Mr Yahtzee. The problem is, every time I watch one of his videos, I am forced to sit through an advert for The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.
I saw an advert for The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes when I went to see Harry Potter and the Final Milking of the Cash Cow (meh) and commented that I thought that The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes looked like the worst film this year… It was followed by a trailer for the next Twilight film. I spoke too soon.

But The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes… Hmm…
Rupert Wyatt seems to have completely missed the point of the first Planet of the Apes film. In the original, Charlton Heston lands on a planet after having been in space for however many years, finds that it is inhabited by a race of super intelligent monkeys, or normally intelligent people with hairy plastic faces, who have enslaved the human race, believing them to be inferior, but the shit kicks up and Charlton Heston runs away and (SPOILER ALERT: although, given that Planet of the Apes came out in 1968, I’m not going to feel too bad about it.) finds the Statue of Liberty on the beach, with a cry of “You did it, you finally did it!” and there we go. It was my understanding that the Monkey people had evolved over ages and become the next dominant species, overtaking mankind who hadn’t evolved further, it was supposed to be turning things on its head. Wasn’t it?
But in The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, we see James Franco doing some sort of animal testing on a monkey, played by Andy Serkis, and for some reason, wearing clothes, and that’s how the monkeys come to be intelligent; some sort of animal testing thing… And then they wear clothes… Ignoring the fact that they put a CG hoody on a CG monkey for no fucking reason that I can fathom, this still implies that actually, the whole thing happened in a matter of days, weeks, and was incited by humans, not over millenia, giving the monkeys time to evolve. But then maybe I missed the point.
Andy Serkis, good actor, but the only reason they’ve got him in is because of this bloody motion capture bullshit. Now, as far as I can work out, they’ve got slightly better motion capture technology now and they wanted to show it off, and the way to do that was to make a new Planet of the Apes film and go ‘look at the shiny new things we can do’ because what people are still failing to grasp is that CG is not always good. Here’s how it is: computer graphics move so quickly, that things that seem amazing now will look shite in a couple of years, and that’s the way it is always going to be. With things that are entirely computer generated, like Pixar films, it doesn’t matter because the characters match their backgrounds and so on, but why try and show off the new motion capture technology with a film like Planet of the Apes? It could have been anything, anything at all, but instead they chose to bastardise an already humiliated franchise. I remember the days when we had actual monkeys selling teabags, and now we’re computer generating them and putting clothes on them.
But come 2013 (if we get that far) then it’s going to look old and outdated. At least with the new Muppets film, the Muppets look like Muppets should, they’re real actual things and never date because that’s how they look. You don’t believe that they’re real, but you’re not supposed to, but then you wouldn’t believe that the monkey was real, which you are. Things still don’t look real, they may look good, but they don’t look real, which is why I think we should leave it alone. I get irritated by gimicks, they’re ruining the integrity of cinema.

HEY KIDS!
Come and see some shit in 3D! It’ll blow your mind! The film might not be very good, but the people will look like they’re coming out of the screen!
HEY KIDS!
Come and see more shit in 3D! The film wasn’t meant to be made in 3D, so what we’re doing is ultimately a waste of fucking time, but we make more money out of you!
HEY KIDS!
Look at this shit!
KIDS!
Look! Computer generated stuff!
KIDS!
Buy the merchandise associated with this film! The film doesn’t exist for any other reason than to sell this stuff!
HEY KIDS!
Don’t waste your money on that! Who wants to see a film about the Vietnam war? We’ve got a talking dog!
HEY KIDS!
Why don’t you spend twice as much on a ticket so you can watch a mediocre film with the pretense of it being in 3D when really we just want to fuck your eyes.

Now I understand that everything I have just said has contradicted itself, but here’s what I mean:
Batman, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, yes they’re all big money spinning franchises, but at least they’re good films… With a few exceptions. But this is what I mean, Star Wars is an excellent example – A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return Of The Jedi, Excellent films that made a lot of money because they were good films. People enjoyed them and bought into the whole thing because there were loveable and exciting characters and an exciting story.
But then:

“Hey Guys!” yells someone at LucasArts “Remember how much money we made, and are still making, off the Star Wars franchise?” “Shit yeah!” says everyone.
“Want to make some more money?” yells the guy.
“Shit yeah!” says everyone.
“Okay, I’ve got this plan; More CGI, less story, more fighting, don’t worry about the integrity, just make it look nice and exciting.”
“Okay!” says everyone.
“Oh, and I’ve got this idea for a new character, he’s sure to sell merch. He’s called Jar Jar.”

Jar Jar.
Jar Jar represents all that is wrong with modern cinema. He’s a gimick. He represents CGI for CGI’s sake, new technology ‘because we can’, completely unecessary when it comes to the plot, he exists ‘because’.

Making money is fine, selling out is fine. Hell, I’d do it. If someone came to me and said “We want you to edit a Justin Bieber video” I would pounce on that shit like a snow leopard on a wounded goat.
But don’t let it spoil the integrity of the films. Basically, I’m talking about the plots of the Orange adverts.

Let’s bring back original storylines, instead of just recycling old ones. And if we are going to recycle, let’s do it properly, with a new take on things. Let’s not just try and show off our new technological toys at every given opportunity, like a cheap hooker flashing her newly vajazzled quim at every passing car.

Can I have cinema back please? A cinema that tells stories, and looks beautiful without trying to molest my eyeballs.
Casablanca, not Avatar. Please?
Throwing money at a film will not make it a good film. It might look pretty, but it’ll still be a shit film. You can’t polish a turd, the best you can do is spray it gold, but even then you’ve still just got a shiny shit.

Big love,
L

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