Last night I watched Charlie Brooker's newest in the '-wipe' series, Gameswipe. Even though touted as a one off, I don't think it should be. The program was a compressed encyclopedic look at games, with a touch of critique - as always - thrown in here and there. I enjoyed it. I laughed. This is probably because I am a great fan of games, and, unfortunately, fall prey to the in-jokes that you aren't socially allowed to understand. I won't go into the grisly details. But with ownership of consoles increasing, especially the Wii, notoriously family orientated and with just that touch of easy-listening quality, should information about videogames - and all that is involved with them - be more accessible, more mainstream? Around a quarter of all UK households own a console of some sort - and this is the key word, I think: HOUSEHOLDS. Not a quarter of all geeks, a quarter of all single men, a quarter of all odd-bods, but a quarter of households. This means real people. Videogames have a terrible picture painted of them, and as Brooker mentioned, it is more often than not because of violence and swearing and all sorts. I'm quite sure cinema probably had the same reaction when it was in its early stages (as videogames are; realistically, their history only spans 25-ish years), and photography as well, and probably, although I'm not presenting it as fact, the written word was demonised thousands of years ago. Marks that mean words! Cameras taking souls! Films being entertaining and realistic! Videogames providing escapist fun! Make it stop!
But the worst thing, or the thing that is a shame, is that videogames are not allowed the same graces that film and television get, meaning, they are forgotten about, and this one quarter of households have to really search to find any decent information about what good games to buy. Gamesmaster looks dated now, but it had the right idea. As Jonathan Ross is allowed Film Two-Thousand and Whatever, because it is socially acceptable to watch films of course, why is it strange and unbelievable that a counterpart may be allowed to exist? A sort of Game Two-Thousand and Whatever. I'm sure you have probably all noticed that there are adverts on television for videogames - they are slowly becoming mainstream, and will only continue to do so; there are only more people being born into a world where consoles already exist, rather than videogames being 'invented' within living memory, so it makes for a more accepting generation. I think this was illustrated quite well on Gameswipe, maybe not intentionally, when Mark Kermode (probably on the One Show) said something like "I've never played a videogame and I hope I never will again". This is an example of someone who was not born 'into' the videogame era, and so probably will never 'get it'. It may not be true of everybody, however, because anomalies exist everywhere. Children growing up with a console in the home, much as children growing up with a PC or a television, will see it as part of their life. Material, violent, expensive, timewasting... but then again, nothing has ever been material, or violent, or expensive, or timewasting, has it? It is just a matter of time until videogames are 'normal'.
Games are hardly discussed outside circles of friends and internet forums, in spite of their actual popularity. This is why Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe was not only a surprise, but a little knock-knocking on the door of sense and normality. With gaming now pretty much established as something that is here to stay, I don't see why there can't be a regular platform for reviews and discussion which can cater for its only-growing audiences. It is just as valid a medium as film or literature, by which we can be just as validly entertained, but in which we can become more involved, because there is that added factor that we are playing the game, not just watching it or reading it.
Wednesday 30 September 2009
Wednesday 16 September 2009
omnibus/hidden tracks: 1) Dream of Boxes, 2) Five Leg Blues)
So I haven't been writing. So what? So and so.
Here we are, now in September. Summer is over. I mustn't say this in front of Becky, however; she maintains that summer ends when the clocks do their thing, forwards I should expect. What have I spent so long doing? What have I been talking about before the disappearance of any real sense of update. What indeed. What and what. So and what. So, this and that, what what? What-what? Yuk, I'm boring myself. I've been doing a few things. Here are some that I can remember.
I went camping to the Isle of Wight. This was with my mum &dad&brothers, and Becky was also invited. She was invited, and came along, too, so everything worked out. We stayed... near Bembridge. But nearer a little village called St. Helens - or Stelens (stell-ens). The sea was cold, but so it goes that every English beach must be properly utilised by any beachgoer. So it is. I swam and things. One other point of interest was Appuldurcombe. Go here. We were taken of a tour of the house by an eccentric old man (Norman, 87) and his dog (Benjy, 14). The dog did most of the talking. He seemed to know an awful lot about the history of the place, plus other periphery knowledge that he woofed to us. Norman barked and sniffed trees, so was his nature.
I have been helping my dad work. I have been working with my dad. My dad has been giving me charity work when I'm quite sure he would have been able to undertake without me. He is not an undertaker. He is a tiler. These are my grassroots. I've got a bit of money from this.
I have been attending many barbecues. Apparently the word 'barbecue' comes from a word in language the Timucua people of Florida and the Taíno of the Caribbean, which is barbacoa - meaning 'sacred fire pit'. This was a form of cooking a lot of meat (often a whole animal) in a pit. The barbecues I have been attending are for main part quite vegetarian affairs. I am squeamish with meat. I will eat a burger, a sausage, and a kebab - perhaps multiples of these things - but offer me a chicken wing, and I will politely try to eat it, before realising that it is completely disgusting. Perhaps I am less squeamish than I am lazy. I am lazy and squeamish. Take it off the bone and mince it up, put lots of spices in to take away the taste of the meat, grill it to a second death, stick it in a bun with bare BBQ sauce or ketchup (whichever is at hand), and a cheese slice, and it hardly tastes of meat at all. Anyway, these were the Barbecues of the Summer of 2009, and they will live in our collective memory. I'm sure we could probably manage more barbecues another year. So many more that we get bored of them.
A few weeks ago, a month or more now, I did some more physical labour. I am becoming the salt of the earth. I sanded down a very la.... You really want me to list the procedures involved with sanding down and re-staining a load of decking? No. So I won't. I did enjoy doing it though. Seeing the finished product was quite satisfying. The coffees I got from my commissioners kept me going.
Becky has gone to university, also. This is fine, because now I can spend weekends there pretending that I am also a student. Yessss.
And now here we are in autumn. Pronounced in a different, but also perfectly valid way, it would be 'ow-toom'. Sounds like 'our tomb'. I am aching a lot today - my shoulder and arm areas are particularly in pain. Owtoom indeed. I worked eleven and a half hours yesterday, from 8:30am in a warehouse all through the duration of a lovely day until 7:00pm. Doing what? So you want me to tell you? Well, I'll tell you THAT. Lifting boxes, carrying boxes, arranging boxes. For some variation, later on in the day I was left on my own in the silently echoing warehouse climbing ladders and removing boxes from the shelves (they were full of invoices, mainly), then climbing down the ladder, carrying, arranging --- and so on, and ever. It did feel like a very long day. That is probably because it was a very long day. God did I deserve a bath when I had walked back home. Did I ever. The boxes on the shelves were very heavy. I had premonitions of me falling off the ladder, back into the shelf behind, and knocking a box of invoices off, and then dominoes of tumbling financial boxes, bungling bureaucracy, unsteady and tedious and completely stifling, finally getting the better of me. Bureaucrazy. It didn't happen - I emerged unscathed, save for a scratch on my shin for when I walked too close to something scratch-inducing: the sharp edge of a box, I should expect. Boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes. My Slovakian work-mate for the day said that I would dream of boxes. He was wrong; I would be immersed in a nightmare of boxes. We were both wrong. Instead I dreamt of something odd that I can't recall. Dreamt is pronounced drem' (as in, with a glottal stop, when you don't pronounce the 't') or drempt - it is hard to say without making that popping P sound. Do you p what I meanp? I am p for my constant p of how to p this and how to p p. How p of me. P you think? P's carry on, p, I'll carry p. P? P go.
Later that evening, all horror in me arose and curdled in a silent recognition. There was a daddy long legs in my room. There are worse things that could be in my room, but for me this is pretty bad. A daddy long legs, let me reiterate, a daddy long legs. By this, I mean a cranefly. I hate them. They are pointless. They are stupid, and they can hardly fly. They bobble along, bouncing, their long, thin legs having a fit in the air around them, which is probably why they can't fly. Their bodies look like worms or grubs. Dee-scuz-ting. It could not muster further than 30 centimetres off the ground. So I hit it with a magazine, and it disappeared. Never to be seen again. I stood there for a good few minutes before I ventured near; I lifted up the cushions, which had provided the anvil to my hammer in the smashing process, and found nothing. As in any good action/adventure game, the enemy disappeared. No poof of smoke, or sound-of-defeat. Visuals are rated 4/10: Interesting enemy design - why can't they fly properly? Are they supposed to be drunk? I found this to be poor. God what am I saying. This was scary, but I found popping down to the toilet to be a more frightening experience. I took the folded magazine (The Times, Style magazine) with me, now my trusty sidearm, my stake, my garlic, my Excalibur. No that is rubbish. It was more like a flimsy shield. Imagine the toilet in the unfrequented garage extension... storage area, washing pool & drum-kit room... and spiders galore, I should expect. Not a great prospect, because I have to sleep there (above it) tonight, and I'm scaring myself. "JUST GET TO THE POINT!" I can hear you shouting. But you shouldn't shout, it's rude.
Anyway, downstairs I opened the bathroom door, magazine poised in hand, ready to tackle a beast of a spider. There was a beast of a spider, on the floor, which darted as soon as a door-just-been-opened-sized area of light spilt into the bathroom. It was now in the shadow just under the toilet. I swear it had only 5 legs, but it was still fast. I was going to hit it, but that would've meant mess, and secondly, I would've felt a little bad. But then I remembered, spiders and daddy long legs are supposed to be in high supply indoors this early owtoom, because it is warm and wet. But I thought they only came inside when it was colder, as well. I suppose it has got a little bit cold. It is a house spider, or giant house spider; Tegenaria duellica. Apparently the males leave their webs late Owgoost, early September, and run around looking for a mate. No way was I gonna poo in there with that freak legging it around - they used to be the world's fastest spider (Guiness Book of Records, 1987), with speeds of half a metre per second. Usually in my bathroom there are those little floaty spiders, which I found out are also called daddy long legs. The other things which are called daddy long legs are Harvestmen (these are sort of spiders, with one body fused together rather than in seperate segments like spiders - and have very long legs in comparison to their bodies). I used to think that these arachnids are the same as those spiders which hang around in my bathroom downstairs. They are 'floaty spiders', in my world (named by Saunders, R. A., 2008). However, I have found out that these are Pholcus phalangioides. Besides daddy long legs, they are called cellar spiders and skull spiders, because apparently the bottom part (the cephalothorax) looks like a human skull. I have never thought about this before. I will endeavour to call them floaty spiders. Anyway, after gauging the situation, I hastened for a poo in the main house.
Around the world, the cranefly has silly names; "gollywhopper" has to be the weirdest one. I have learnt that it has evolved - like most 'modern' flies - little stubs under its wings called halteres. They are supposed to maintain stability, allow for fast aerobatics, and help stabilise the head during flight. Why don't these help daddy long legs actually fly? Because daddy long legs are p, absolutely p.
Here we are, now in September. Summer is over. I mustn't say this in front of Becky, however; she maintains that summer ends when the clocks do their thing, forwards I should expect. What have I spent so long doing? What have I been talking about before the disappearance of any real sense of update. What indeed. What and what. So and what. So, this and that, what what? What-what? Yuk, I'm boring myself. I've been doing a few things. Here are some that I can remember.
I went camping to the Isle of Wight. This was with my mum &dad&brothers, and Becky was also invited. She was invited, and came along, too, so everything worked out. We stayed... near Bembridge. But nearer a little village called St. Helens - or Stelens (stell-ens). The sea was cold, but so it goes that every English beach must be properly utilised by any beachgoer. So it is. I swam and things. One other point of interest was Appuldurcombe. Go here. We were taken of a tour of the house by an eccentric old man (Norman, 87) and his dog (Benjy, 14). The dog did most of the talking. He seemed to know an awful lot about the history of the place, plus other periphery knowledge that he woofed to us. Norman barked and sniffed trees, so was his nature.
I have been helping my dad work. I have been working with my dad. My dad has been giving me charity work when I'm quite sure he would have been able to undertake without me. He is not an undertaker. He is a tiler. These are my grassroots. I've got a bit of money from this.
I have been attending many barbecues. Apparently the word 'barbecue' comes from a word in language the Timucua people of Florida and the Taíno of the Caribbean, which is barbacoa - meaning 'sacred fire pit'. This was a form of cooking a lot of meat (often a whole animal) in a pit. The barbecues I have been attending are for main part quite vegetarian affairs. I am squeamish with meat. I will eat a burger, a sausage, and a kebab - perhaps multiples of these things - but offer me a chicken wing, and I will politely try to eat it, before realising that it is completely disgusting. Perhaps I am less squeamish than I am lazy. I am lazy and squeamish. Take it off the bone and mince it up, put lots of spices in to take away the taste of the meat, grill it to a second death, stick it in a bun with bare BBQ sauce or ketchup (whichever is at hand), and a cheese slice, and it hardly tastes of meat at all. Anyway, these were the Barbecues of the Summer of 2009, and they will live in our collective memory. I'm sure we could probably manage more barbecues another year. So many more that we get bored of them.
A few weeks ago, a month or more now, I did some more physical labour. I am becoming the salt of the earth. I sanded down a very la.... You really want me to list the procedures involved with sanding down and re-staining a load of decking? No. So I won't. I did enjoy doing it though. Seeing the finished product was quite satisfying. The coffees I got from my commissioners kept me going.
Becky has gone to university, also. This is fine, because now I can spend weekends there pretending that I am also a student. Yessss.
And now here we are in autumn. Pronounced in a different, but also perfectly valid way, it would be 'ow-toom'. Sounds like 'our tomb'. I am aching a lot today - my shoulder and arm areas are particularly in pain. Owtoom indeed. I worked eleven and a half hours yesterday, from 8:30am in a warehouse all through the duration of a lovely day until 7:00pm. Doing what? So you want me to tell you? Well, I'll tell you THAT. Lifting boxes, carrying boxes, arranging boxes. For some variation, later on in the day I was left on my own in the silently echoing warehouse climbing ladders and removing boxes from the shelves (they were full of invoices, mainly), then climbing down the ladder, carrying, arranging --- and so on, and ever. It did feel like a very long day. That is probably because it was a very long day. God did I deserve a bath when I had walked back home. Did I ever. The boxes on the shelves were very heavy. I had premonitions of me falling off the ladder, back into the shelf behind, and knocking a box of invoices off, and then dominoes of tumbling financial boxes, bungling bureaucracy, unsteady and tedious and completely stifling, finally getting the better of me. Bureaucrazy. It didn't happen - I emerged unscathed, save for a scratch on my shin for when I walked too close to something scratch-inducing: the sharp edge of a box, I should expect. Boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes. My Slovakian work-mate for the day said that I would dream of boxes. He was wrong; I would be immersed in a nightmare of boxes. We were both wrong. Instead I dreamt of something odd that I can't recall. Dreamt is pronounced drem' (as in, with a glottal stop, when you don't pronounce the 't') or drempt - it is hard to say without making that popping P sound. Do you p what I meanp? I am p for my constant p of how to p this and how to p p. How p of me. P you think? P's carry on, p, I'll carry p. P? P go.
Later that evening, all horror in me arose and curdled in a silent recognition. There was a daddy long legs in my room. There are worse things that could be in my room, but for me this is pretty bad. A daddy long legs, let me reiterate, a daddy long legs. By this, I mean a cranefly. I hate them. They are pointless. They are stupid, and they can hardly fly. They bobble along, bouncing, their long, thin legs having a fit in the air around them, which is probably why they can't fly. Their bodies look like worms or grubs. Dee-scuz-ting. It could not muster further than 30 centimetres off the ground. So I hit it with a magazine, and it disappeared. Never to be seen again. I stood there for a good few minutes before I ventured near; I lifted up the cushions, which had provided the anvil to my hammer in the smashing process, and found nothing. As in any good action/adventure game, the enemy disappeared. No poof of smoke, or sound-of-defeat. Visuals are rated 4/10: Interesting enemy design - why can't they fly properly? Are they supposed to be drunk? I found this to be poor. God what am I saying. This was scary, but I found popping down to the toilet to be a more frightening experience. I took the folded magazine (The Times, Style magazine) with me, now my trusty sidearm, my stake, my garlic, my Excalibur. No that is rubbish. It was more like a flimsy shield. Imagine the toilet in the unfrequented garage extension... storage area, washing pool & drum-kit room... and spiders galore, I should expect. Not a great prospect, because I have to sleep there (above it) tonight, and I'm scaring myself. "JUST GET TO THE POINT!" I can hear you shouting. But you shouldn't shout, it's rude.
Anyway, downstairs I opened the bathroom door, magazine poised in hand, ready to tackle a beast of a spider. There was a beast of a spider, on the floor, which darted as soon as a door-just-been-opened-sized area of light spilt into the bathroom. It was now in the shadow just under the toilet. I swear it had only 5 legs, but it was still fast. I was going to hit it, but that would've meant mess, and secondly, I would've felt a little bad. But then I remembered, spiders and daddy long legs are supposed to be in high supply indoors this early owtoom, because it is warm and wet. But I thought they only came inside when it was colder, as well. I suppose it has got a little bit cold. It is a house spider, or giant house spider; Tegenaria duellica. Apparently the males leave their webs late Owgoost, early September, and run around looking for a mate. No way was I gonna poo in there with that freak legging it around - they used to be the world's fastest spider (Guiness Book of Records, 1987), with speeds of half a metre per second. Usually in my bathroom there are those little floaty spiders, which I found out are also called daddy long legs. The other things which are called daddy long legs are Harvestmen (these are sort of spiders, with one body fused together rather than in seperate segments like spiders - and have very long legs in comparison to their bodies). I used to think that these arachnids are the same as those spiders which hang around in my bathroom downstairs. They are 'floaty spiders', in my world (named by Saunders, R. A., 2008). However, I have found out that these are Pholcus phalangioides. Besides daddy long legs, they are called cellar spiders and skull spiders, because apparently the bottom part (the cephalothorax) looks like a human skull. I have never thought about this before. I will endeavour to call them floaty spiders. Anyway, after gauging the situation, I hastened for a poo in the main house.
Around the world, the cranefly has silly names; "gollywhopper" has to be the weirdest one. I have learnt that it has evolved - like most 'modern' flies - little stubs under its wings called halteres. They are supposed to maintain stability, allow for fast aerobatics, and help stabilise the head during flight. Why don't these help daddy long legs actually fly? Because daddy long legs are p, absolutely p.
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