What to you mean, where have I been?

Right. So. I've not been here for a bit. And I have a really good excuse. Honest!

So I've moved house recently, something I think you'll appreciate, is a really good excuse. In the few weeks moving up to it, as I rent I've been nipple deep in painting everything on account of well, renting. They wanted it back to white, which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact when we got the place it was a mix of bile and lime green. Yeah. Awesome. So off I went, painting and packing... in a motherfuckin' heat wave.

Once per year, Britain decides it's not the musty, overcast grey country we know and gripe about, but part of a tropical conglomerate. It's awful, because it's not like temperatures slowly rise and fall with the seasons, it's BLAM TWO WEEKS OF FURNACE HEAT and then back to fifty of grey spittle. So no one has any tolerance of the heat.

I don't remember what sleep is. I go to bed, feeling like undercooked beef roast, and a few hours later a get bored of lying in my own sweat and go to work. That's what the current night cycle is. It's as entertaining as it sounds. And I've been trying to paint in it, which is exactly what you wish to do in high heat: physically exert yourself.

So, I'm back. My internet access is still spotty (another wonderful excuse! If only I'd thought to, you know, address this ahead of time) but I have stuff to talk about, more stuff in the pipeline...

...but I think I just set my Wii U up, and on noes! I'm busy again.

Witcher 2: It hates you with a passion

So I started on the Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings a while back and shut up Payday 2 beginner guides are coming.

Anyway.

What was I saying?

Ah, yes, Witcher 2. It fucking hates me.

He ain't coming for the monsters, he's coming for you.

Okay, some of it was my fault. I booted it up, and thought to myself, "Hey, it's ported to Xbox, so it must mean I can use a gamepad on it, sweet." Oh, poor, stupid past me. I forgot it was an exclusive PC game first, and the first game in the series was a PC exclusive period, no fucking around. Witcher 2 sees your consoles and sniffs disdaininly.

I could feel it's contempt for me as I plugged in the gamepad, like I promised a good night of lovin' but immediately went for the off-limits back door. However, like a fool, I persevered with my decision. Along I went, until the combat started. And, well, the Witcher 2 likes their combat more realistic then most RPGs. This means if you fight multiple opponents at once... they surround you, and stomp your kidneys out of you via your testicles. And it's not like Assassin's Creed 'surround' you, where they surround you whilst politely attack you one at the time,like gentlemen, nah. Witcher 2 will gang slap you upside the back of your head and you'll tough it out, son.

Well, combat started, and went wrong instantly. Yeah, you can use the gamepad, like you can strictly speaking use a USB cable to drink soup. It's not going to easy, you'll do it in drips and drabs, you'll look stupid and everyone will wonder why you're not just using a spoon. The worst was the quick menu - I couldn't select a bloody thing, no matter where I waggled the stick, which wouldn't be a problem if the quick menu paused the game... which it doesn't. Ouch. So much ouch.

So I switched to the keyboard, mid-tutorial, without thinking about it. Most games nowadays recognise if you switch inputs and alter their instructions accordingly - not Witcher 2. It seemed to take my attempts to ingratiate myself with it poorly, and punished me for being a little brown noser. So whilst I was running around in little circles weeping to myself futilely trying to press the left trigger button that no longer existed, I came to the conclusion we weren't going to get on so I should just suck it up and start anew before it physically manifested itself and started strangling me in hate.

The second time round went a little better. Couldn't skip the tutorial so had to do it all over again... gah. However, Witcher 2 grades your performance on the combat tutorial - said tutorial, where they shrugged, listed each move in order, and called it a day. Great. Thanks. The fuck is Axii? Or Quen? Why aren't my spells called Knockback, Control, or Shield - you know, their actual descriptions? Nope. Take your made up words and go with it. And whilst I did a little better it still amounted to my embarrassing myself and collecting more swords in my upper intestinal tract than the Iron Throne. So Witcher 2 looked at me, sniffed again in disappointment, and decreed if I was going to be so shit perhaps I'd like to play it on easy, baby mode, like the ham-handed idiot child that I was.

By this point I was thoroughly beaten down, and just wanted to play the bloody game I had paid less than £3 for on Steam Sale. So the game started proper, and straight into some full frontal female nudity. Twenty seconds past of being humiliated for being shit at games and there's vagina and tits right in my face, with pubic hair modelled also. Normally I'd have to download a mod to have not. Er, not that I'd ever do that.

Look, video games? We need to have a talk. Stop that. Stop throwing female nudity in my face to attempt to please me. It's juvenile. Once again, if I want porn, I'm on my computer, the internet is here, I got this covered. Quite frankly at this point I wouldn't mind at least a little balancing this out with some wang. I don't really want to look at copious amounts of wang, but quite frankly with have to balance this shit out. You put wang in, I'll enjoy the tits more, because at least I won't feel that I'm enabling in the exclusion of a gender from my hobby.

Nope, not good enough. Take off the pants.

Moving on, all was well and good as I taught myself combat, as the game wasn't gonna. Namely, rolling. Rolling is the path to victory. Roll, roll, and roll some more. Fuck parring or riposte - nah, roll. Rolling then use Quen, which is the shield spell. Slap the shield on, and roll faster and further than Sonic the Hedgehog and you'll be able to manoeuvre around enough to stop being stomped into the crappy medieval pavement.

In terms of the story - okay, guys? How did you not see that monk was clearly an assassin? He was like eight foot tall and built of pork shoulder, with spiked knuckle gloves. How metal are the monks in your world that this sight didn't throw you? And secondly, Geralt, whilst being the brooding loner clearly works for you, next time you might want to point out nice and early hey fuckwads, my sword's shiny clean and why the fuck would I kill the king now? We're like bros. Coulda killed him way back, and you'd never suspect me, why now? Nah, instead go all dark and mysterious... and wind up being tortured and blamed for regicide. Smooth moves, genius.

Then the game crashed.

Repeatedly.

Turns out the game crashes with too many saves. Who'da funk it? This wouldn't be an issue, unless you're playing an RPG which requires plenty of saves, (which the Witcher 2 is,) or if the game autosaves every seventeen seconds (which the Witcher 2 does.) So. Manual deleting away we go.

And Jesus! This game still doesn't like me, after all the effort I put in. There's a billion fucking different menus, with cross-purpose uses - okay, so you get monster knowledge, right? That goes in the Journal, on the Monster tab. Great. Ah, no. You see, that's just lore knowledge. If you want to know tactics against a certain monster (and more lore knowledge, weirdly enough) you have to... keep up with me here... go in the Quick Menu, select Meditate (which is not always available) select Character, go in Attributes, select Monster, and then scroll down to what you want. Why. WHY THE FUCK IS THAT SO NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED? WHY DO I NEED TWO. FUCKING. MENUS. TO DO ONE THING? ONE. THING!

This game screams 'PC exclusive' with is unnecessary complexity. Simple little things, like demanding I use the Enter and Arrow keys. No. Listen you bastards, the left hand is on the WASD keys, the right on the mouse. Don't make me move my right hand back on the keyboard when I'm just gonna need the mouse in a second. It's ridiculously inefficient and an uneconomical use of your input device. One time, I had to draw out a glyph by instructing a man to toddle around at a distance. I'd been given the glyph earlier... but could I pull up that page so I could look at it whilst directing the dude? Could I fuck. I had to wander away, open up the inventory, find the bloody page again - a fucking nightmare, as by this point I had thousand of quest items cluttering up my inventory because once the quest's done they don't go - draw out the glyph on a piece of envelope left on my desk and then do it. Did I feel clever? No, I thought the Witcher 2 was being annoyingly bloody minded and inconvenient for kicks.

...I have no idea what's going on here.

Tragically, by this point I was drawn in. Originally, I was setting out to beat it to prove I could, now the story was interesting enough to make me continue looking up forums and videos to fix the many, many bugs. About a few hours in, though, something clicked, and there was no ham-handed idiot child - I was Geralt of Riveria, murder machine. I'd charge into combat high of multiple toxic potions and purée multiple opponents with my sweet skills, before rolling off into the horizon, setting a few traps, chucking a few bombs, and blam! Back in the frey again, my sword awash with blood.

That said, the lore and story definitely kept me going as my skills in combat grew. Watching a whole world attempting to tear itself apart whilst you struggle to hold it together purely to clear your name - and I'm a monster slayer, damn it! I kill monsters for you! For very little pay! I deserve a motherfuckin' parade, you miserable bastards! And I'm still debating going through and playing a second time, this time with skill and bugfixes at hand to explore what I missed, and choose perhaps better life choice.

Do I think it was worth the trip?

Eventually, yes. It did help I brought this on the cheap, paying full price for such a buggy game would of infuriated me. At least I got a dev on Twitter to point me towards some help.

The combat was very different to what I was used to, and was very entertaining once I grasped it. It's a pity that the game itself was so bad at teaching me what I needed to know, but getting into it was very rewarding. Once I had it down, I went into many fights only taking hits when I was messing around, and wanting to up the difficulty for more challenge. It hit both my challenge and tactical movement buttons. Each time I saw a fight approaching, my though process was "Hell yeah!"

The story was definitely engaging. Unfortunately, knowledge of what happened in the first game is kinda important, and whilst I managed without, they threw words, politics and factions at me thick and fast at the beginning and I got swamped, to resurface later and get my place. The lore of witchers are fascinating - here's your powers to kill monsters, and here's your powers to bone women better. Not a bad deal, really. Whilst I had issues with the brooding Geralt, an early scene with his friends opened him up to me - he doesn't like people in general, but values his friends, and actually smiles and jokes around. Without that scene, just seeing his brooding poker face would of got tedious. Around people he trusts, he actually inflects things! Nice. And yeah, there's some bad guys you're gonna want to rip into tiny pieces.

Lots of little touches pleased me - Dandelion's voice actor was superb, as was your journal entries, which he writes for you. While I've complained about it being needless obtuse, sometimes they get it right and send you on a quest with enough instructions that lets you explore and feel clever for figuring it out, without resorting to hand holding. Which, admittedly, a little would be nice. It's also very pretty - so damn pretty. Like, staggeringly pretty. There's quite a few games out there that could learn a thing or two about it's optimization.

I'll be awaiting Witcher 3, but just might put off buying it immediately... yeah. Not 100% confident about the developers releasing a fully working game right out the gate. But I see it's gunning for a simultaneous console and PC release, which should iron out a few of the more prevalent menu waffle and stop it from falling back on a slipshod buggy release. I hope.

Upcoming guide

No post tonight - I've decided to write my next beginner's game guide, and it's taking a while. Stupid research.

The upcoming guide will be on Payday 2, so prepare your crew and get ready to rob some banks... and kill about 75% of all police in the greater Washington district.

On TalkTalk? Then you can't see this!

Hey. Hey. Hey.

Guess what?

If your ISP is TalkTalk, you can't see this!

Should've put spoiler tags in the title.

Do you remember when I complained how the filters idea was bullshit? And then later, how it was still bullshit, but had been pushed through anyway? Yah. Still here. Still bullshit.

You know, the original titles to those articles were a joke - "hur hur, I'll have a title with naughty words that'll get banned by the filters" - not that unique or witty, true, but I wasn't exactly expecting it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I always assumed I was way to small fry to bother with. NOPE.

Okay, let's have a look at why I'm banned. This'll be fun!

Now, I wish it is because of my withering criticism of the government, ISPs, big companies, and several rather cruel nicknames of various high-ranking officials, but somehow I doubt I'm that lucky to be on the receiving end of somebody important's ire. More likely I'm being picked up by an auto-filter.

That being said, kinda wish Davy Boy had singled me out.

Anyway, let's have a gander. Several ISPs come with default adult content blocking, mmkay. Well, in that case, perhaps those titles are to blame. Not changing them. But, ah, it's TalkTalk specifically who is blocking me.

Whelp, for TalkTalk, they have default turned on KidSafe. Okay. So. Have I fallen afoul of...

• Dating: I have only fallen afoul of this insomuch as being exposed to my wit seduces everyone into wanting to date me.
• Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco: I talked about cider last week, and how I miss it. Damn!
• Gambling: Er. Not guilty, your honour. Unless I was talking about Payday 2's level randomisation.
• Pornography: Probably those article titles again. Also, considering how many people find my Farcry 3 article by searching for porn of Citra, maybe that.

I'm not even kidding. You people are depraved.

• Suicide and Self-Harm: Wut. No.
• Weapons and Violence: Have I talked about my extensive sword collection before? Maybe. Have I wished violence on certain members of the public? Probably. Oh, that Guns Guns Guns article. Jesus. So many of my titles screw me.
• File Sharing Sites: Well, I ain't one. But I did talk about them when some were blocked, by name even. Whoops.
• Games: Well, there aren't any here. But talking about them? Guilty as all hell.
• Social Networking: I have a link to my Twitter on the side that barely works.

Clearly, I am a threat to modern Britain's decency.

I'm guilt of rampant swearing, and near-absent proof reading, I'll give you that. I am certified not KidSafe. Oh and by the way, another fucking two words lumped into one with no spaces but capitals. Is that a thing we all must do now? Because it's bloody stupid and I wish we would stop it. Personally, I blame HP for starting the trend. Fuck you, JetDirect and LaserJet. That's bleedin' idiotic.

But yeah, in all seriousness, I'm kinda being blocked my freedom of speech? Expression? Whatever. I am admittedly on the lowest tier of blocking - it's the KidSafe that's triggered, no BT's bullshit 'partner respect' trigger or 'extremist' content. It's still rather unsettling that there's a company out there that views little old me as something to block as par for the course. Regardless of how minor, here I am, blocked, for expressing my rather boring, mis-spelled, centrist opinion. Here I am, complaining about it...

...unless you can't see me.

Kinda upsetting to think that my country would do this. I liked to think we were better than that.

I am considering kicking up a shit storm with TalkTalk about blocking me... especially because I HAVE A PHONE WITH THEM. Yep. Of course, there's no standardized way to go unblocking yourself, because why would there be? Pity. Because it looks like I'mma gonna hafta find the standardized form to switch providers.

The permalink to this site's block is: https://www.blocked.org.uk/results?url=http://sarcasmisaverb.blogspot.co.uk/

I would like to thank https://www.blocked.org.uk/ for the service and information they provided me with.

I would also like to thank http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/ for bringing this to my attention. Both of us are blocked by TalkTalk. We're blocked buddies!

Suddenly being allergic is actually a thing

Actually, I was wrong. Something did happen recently. I became allergic to a bunch of food.

I don't even know how that's possible. One day, fine, next day, blam! You're allergic to this particular foodstuff, buddy. The rest time you eat it for the rest of your life, have fun with that.

I'm both blessed and cursed. For starters, my allergies appear to be on the tame side, for now. I just break out in hives and rashes, and they always start on my right hand's ring finger middle joint. Yes, that is ridiculously specific, that's where it wants to flare up, I can't stop it. So at least I am not dealing with a throat-closing up dramatic death scene every time I sniff a peanut.

The cursed bit is that with a bit of narrowing down, I'm pretty sure it's sulphites.

Want to know what sulphites are in?

FUCKING EVERYTHING.

Pictured: FUCKING EVERYTHING

Look at that list. Look at it! What the fuck can I eat now? I'm down to bread and water... wait, bread's baked? Shit. Hmm. Chocolate doesn't appear. Fuck it. Chocolate and water. Let's ride this fucking train.

This is utter bullshit. How, how! How do you become allergic to everything as an adult? Look at it! That is everything. Apparently, the next time you're sat down in front of someone's signature dish that they're really proud of but they can't cook for shit you can legitimately go: Sorry, bra. Turns out I am suddenly allergic to all that shiz-niz, yo. Well, peace outy, I'm laters! and that's something that really happens. The allergies, I mean. That sort of language only appears on Dog the Bounty Hunter, and that's probably staged.

And how do allergies develop? Am I stuck with an itchy joint forever, or in a couple of months am I looking at a heart-breaking tear-jerking lifetime special movie?

I am far too old to pull this sort of crap off

It's not like my whole life I've battled with an rash on my knuckle, or dealt with asthma like symptoms. A month or two ago, I was like, huh, I have a rash. A few weeks later, huh, the rash is back, same place, weird. For more weeks and I'm keeping a food diary and yep, sulphites are the common thing, god damn it.

It's also delicious irony. Which is more delicious irony because it's keeping me from delicious things. It's multiple layers of irony, (like an onion, which I probably can not have) which as we all know using irony correctly now makes me ridiculously attractive on the internet.

Anyway, getting back to the irony bit,  for religious reasons, I used to not drink alcohol. Later in life and outside that constriction, I was watching the pennies and people vomiting over themselves in university and just didn't start. Didn't see the need. I can be bad enough sober for fuck's sake, I did not want to see me without what little common sense I had turned off.

whoops

Out of sheer curiosity way later on, I tried wine. I didn't like it. Then I tried cider. I didn't like it. Then I tried peach and apricot cider and oh my god what is this delightful beverage. Now, I like my ciders. I like them a lot. And so, I drink them a fair bit. Because of the whole liking thing, and I'm an adult, with my own disposable income and everything. Sure, it's basically a slightly more grown up alco-pop, but fuck you, they're delicious.  I still only ever drink the one and done, because hey, keep that remnants of common sense turned on for as long as possible, but now? Every cider. Every bloody cider has sulphites. Every. Single. One.

Now this atheist can't have cider.

Or anything, really.

This is bullshit. You hear me? Bullshit. I don't have to put up with this, body. I don't have to put up with your shitty, malfunctioning eyes. I don't have to put up with your shitty, malfunctioning guts, and I especially don't have to deal with your shitty, malfunctioning immune system!

I'm calling in the warranty, and I'm getting a new one.

Something happen, please

No update today out of sheer lack of anything happening, and I feel guilty about that. I mean, I was intending to get more material out of England being shit at football, but we managed to eliminate ourselves in a mere two matches so that's great. Thanks England. Way to suck even harder then I expected you to. Your prize is my further contempt, which is a bit of a let down as I got you that last year.

Oh, there's a story going round that Nick Clegg is toxic for the Liberal Democrats.

Please.

Considering what they've done in their half power, it's clear that the Liberal Democrats are toxic for the Liberal Democrats.

We won't win the World Cup. I can change that!

Whelp, time for another World Cup. Now this wouldn't be so bad, if that was all it entailed. But no, I am British, or strictly speaking English, so I have endure weeks of 'this year could be our year!' and 'come on England!'

It's not going to be our year.

Because our football team sucks.

This may come as a surprise to you

The last few World Cups they looked like people who got a free holiday but all they have to do is a one-hour meeting about the benefits of buying a timeshare. Every minute on the pitch they sulked about, eager to get the fuck off and back to the bar. So far, the only difference this year is that they avoided looking like this for 45 minutes before they lost interest in the sport.

I mean, fuck it, we're not going to win. Patriotism doesn't trump reality. So why not have fun with it? David Beckham wanted to play one last time - why not? It wouldn't hurt our chance. Hell, let's get nostalgic and ask if Linker or Gazza is free. Super dedicated fans have travelled to Brazil to watch their team play: why not let them participate instead? Hold a lottery, or hell, just point to random people in the crowd and tell them to jump in. Don't want to play? Well, why don't you manage instead? Knock yourselves out. There's Make a Wish Foundation too, if they want to get in on that. It's not like it'll hurt our chances!

Perhaps we could roll with this, and use the fact we are just not sucky enough to fail to qualify every yeah, and use it as a bribe. We exchange our place in the World Cup to the Scottish football team, and we'll publicly announce that this means, yes, they are better than us at football... just that they gotta stick it out with us in the union. Why not? Scotland, for one, they would actually want to be there, and once again, it's not like substituting Scotland would hurt our chances.

I'm saying our chances are 0%, right? You got that?

As much chance as this ending well

In fairness, while I'm bashing on our team for sucking more than an atomic power vacuum cleaner, it's not entirely their fault. Every year the media hypes up our chances and our players until they talk of Wayne Rooney being some form of football messiah who's descended from heaven to lead us to glory... when he's clearly not. And we play a team of people who barely know each other, as we grab random players from a menagerie of rival teams and tell them to ignore all the training and teamwork they've done with their individual teams and play with these practical strangers... and what do you know, they play like shit. Funny, that.

Now some of you are reading about my bitching and wondering if I don't like it, then I can shut the fuck up and go home. Fine. But it bothers me that me embarrass ourselves like this every year. So, thinking to myself, I devised a plan. It's a glorious plan, literally. My plan will not only win ourselves a World Cup, but I guarantee a second World Cup - yes! Defending champions, something only shared with Italy and Brazil. And just maybe - maybe - an unprecedented third cup in a row. Three in a row baby! Though I do admit that'll be hard to pull off.

So here's my plan. From the get go, it's long term. I will need twelve years. So, we're going to suck for another twelve years. But look on the bright side: without my plan, we'd suck for twelve years, then continue sucking after that. With my plan, suck for twelve years, then GLORY.

So I'm going to need about a hundred children.

And their parents! Jesus. Calm the fuck down. You see, where we suck now is that we don't have players trained early enough, and trained early enough together. We need team-mates, not acquaintances. So, I need a hundred children, about six years old or round about, who love football, and want to play. See? Not so sinister. Then I will train them.

The first few months the children will be monitored closely. I'm looking for passion and talent, and more of the former than the latter - I'd rather have trained skill then people relying on just talent. Then after the first few months, I'd let the injured and the not caring go.

Then the real training begins.

Yeah, that phrase is never preceding something good

It's going to be fucking brutal. It's going to be harsh. These children will learn nothing that is not related to football. Sure they're learn some maths - engineering and trigonometry because you better learn the angles son, because if you don't I will kill your parents.

Fine, we've moved back into sinister territory, but we haven't won a cup in over sixty years and desperate times call for desperate measures. Those children will be playing for more than the love of the game - they'll be playing for their parents lives. Eh, major psychological trauma on a few dozen children versus multiple World Cup victories? The public will be on my side.

They will become the greatest football players known to man, though I must admit I recently watched Soldier with Kurt Russell and I may be basing my entire plan on that film's plot, but whatevs, it's not like Hollywood lies to us.

Originally I planned on whittling down the player to a final team by some form of football themed gladiatorial death matches, but I eliminated that as being needlessly wasteful. For starters, if I had thirty equally skilled players, then it's a hella waste when spares will do fine. Secondly, I don't want to encourage individuality, I want teams of players. I want them to band together, united by hatred of me and and desire to save their loved ones. United they'll be an even better team.

Thirdly, it'd just look ridiculous.

And they will march on the pitch, at eighteen years old, and fucking annihilate the opposition. They will march to victory without pause or mercy. And they'll return at twenty two years old. And twenty six. Depending on the attrition rate, or whether of not they get other their unholy fear of me and beat me to death in some back alley somewhere. Besides, maybe I don't have to kill all the failed player's and their parents - maybe the first set of six, and the rest can just disappear.

Sure, it'll be an awful, protracted crime, but two to three World Cups! Maybe four!

Metro: Last Light shows you how not to do a silent protagonist

Why do we still have silent protagonists? Or rather, why do we still use them so badly?

I've been catching up with Metro: Last Light recently, or perhaps known by it's less catchy name: 'Miserable and Bleak Soviet Apocalyptica: The Game.' Whilst I'm being drawn in by it's world, the atmosphere, I am constantly being taken out of it by the way my character stares dumbly at people whilst they talk at him. By the end of what's laughably called a conversation, I wordlessly go do what they said. It's gone from unsettling to really creepy, and it's putting me in mind that my character is the world's ultimate doormat.

No, this doormat is way to interesting for Metro's main character.

I doubt I would feel this way if I was playing the first Metro game, but I'm playing a sequel. Silent protagonists are great for putting yourself into the situation, but that's not really relevant now. My character, WhatsHisNameSki, has done stuff without. Done a lot of stuff the last game. A lot of world changing, morally ambiguous stuff. So what this character has, strictly speaking, is character. He's no longer the blank slate; his slate has been appropriately muddied with experiences and life choices and the fuck I know of any of it, making the doormat feature of my personality super awkward.

I live in terror of playing Half Life 2 again and finding myself unable to enjoy it because of the shared mutism.

Twice now I've ran into old friends, who've greeted me warmly and I've stared at them quietly for a bit, before getting bored and rifling through their stuff for ammo, which they've either politely ignored me thieving what precious little they have left of they view it as an endearing character trait of mine, and if it is, I'd love the game to share it with me. What's WhatsHisNameSki likes, dislikes, what's his parents like? Does he have hobbies? Does he like ham? I would really like to know. Fucking seriously. Tell me - something - about this dude. His room was sparsely decorated - it had a box of books in, so he might like reading? But I couldn't see the spines so I have no idea what he reads (aside from the Metro series of book ha ha get it?)

My only other insights into him is a little internal monologue between chapters and his diary, which apparently he writes ahead of time for everything that'll happen in the day and scatter them randomly about the level ahead of him, because adding collectable items is a quick an easy way to extend game length of reasons.

So clearly he's a amnesiac time-traveller.

The internal monologue has indicated he doesn't like communist, but he dislikes Nazis way more. Well yip-dee-fucking-doo, everybody dislikes communists but hates Nazis more. Also he's sort of conflicted about killing the last Dark One off, but Grr Grr Duty Grr. Actually, come to think about it, the last time I passed a mirror the developers never bothered to animate the character in. So I have no idea of what my character looks like along with no knowing what he is. Aside from being a vampire, obviously. An amnesiac time-travelling vampire.

It's a definite pity, because god damn is this word interesting. The very first opening fight is against the Dark Ones, who look weird and toothy and as you drop each one, they turn into your mates and that is creepy as all hell. They get into you mind, but my character has somehow communicated with them before, which no one has accomplished before or even though possible. So I'm an amnesiac Chosen One time-travelling vampire.

But I'm a post-apocalypse nut, and this is one of the few downsides. As stated, the world is vividly interesting - mankind stuck after the bomb in old Russian metro stations - and the scavenging aspect to survive on the poisoned surface really appeals to me. What's especially interesting the the weird physic phenomenon on the surface. I was wondering around on a crashed plane, and my partner warned me to keep it together. Keep it together, geez. What, is my dude well known for having an over-active imagination? Do I need to add it to the bullshit list I made up? It's getting kinda long now.

Well, it turns out that the world itself gives you an over-active imagination, as we both starting having flashbacks of the plane's final moments. It really killed my partner, as to escape the smoke filling the cockpit in the flashback he ripped off his gasmask... and proceeded to choke on the poisoned air of the surface. A little later, whilst dicking around looking for bullets and filters dead men started to appear in the corners of my vision, and I ended up crawling out as they got more real. Well done Metro: Dead Space taught me to explore through my fear, you taught me to stop exploring as it's terrifying again.

Then I run into another person who talks around me for a bit, and I'm completely taken out of the experience.

Say something! Anything! TELL ME YOU LIKE HAM.

This is not to say silent protagonists are inherently bad. I'll contrast another - Isaac Clarke from the first Dead Space. Now Isaac Clarke didn't speak, and was ordered around a lot. Fair enough, you're a low ranking engineer, and most of the orders you're getting involve the phrasing 'for god's sake fix this part of the ship before we all die,' which doesn't necessitate much response other than 'yep, on it.' No leisuerely chats between friends, here. But we know we're looking for his girlfriend (look, a relationship!) we know he's scared out his damn mind, and everything else has been stripped out to put you in the place he is so you are likewise scared. Unlike Metro, your weapons are cobbled together tools for the most part, and you lumber around in a heavy rig suit, taking away the super-soldier feel. By the time Dead Space 2 rolls around, having survived and grown some, Isaac talks and is his own character SEE METRO. That's what you do. In horror games, a blank slate can be key for helping you to immerse yourself in the threat.

And don't try to contradict me by saying Metro is both a horror game: once you have a shotgun and thus can apply said shotgun to threat's face the horror is suitably diminished.

Pictured: Reassurance (in noisy form)

Want to have a silent protagonist with a past? Make it mysterious, and make it the point of uncovering it. If your past is spread over previous games, and you keep running into prior acquaintances, then trying to justify your inability to open your damn mouth and say, no, I don't want to go down the spider's nest alone where the horrible spiders that eat your eyes and lay eggs in the empty sockets are, as that sound's fucking stupid...

Well, it get's rather daft, see?

That being said, please don't mistake this bitching as that I'm not enjoying Metro: Last Light, that while your character may be bland the world certainly isn't, and I look forward to seeing what the amnesiac Chosen One time-travelling vampire becomes next. I'm hoping for a robot!

I'm still here! Mostly.

I am writing again! Just getting over neck pain and wrestling with my feeling of pointlessness of continuing with the blog, so, you know, a Tuesday. I'll put it up tomorrow. I mean, I could put it up now, but I having yet giving it my cursory typo and spelling check... and you're aware how bad I am after checking?

You don't want to see my posts before the check.

People die.

Wanted: New neck. Old one defective.

I have done something god awful to my neck. I think I've thrown it out, if that's possible, and if it isn't I want to throw the damn thing out and get a new one. I am functional only by a combination of Deep Heat and ibuprofen.

So.

No updates until it fixes itself, as it hurts to sit in chairs, lean down, lift thinks, or walk. It's a good thing my day job has all those things, right?

Perhaps we don't deserve free movement of persons

So for the European elections the far right has made definite gains. whilst the turnout was shit as always, both UKIP's rise in here and the National Front's gains in France suggests a few things. Namely, we can't have nice things, and secondly: is freedom of movement between borders worth it?

From my perspective, that's a definitive yes. However, it's undeniable there's a big swell of thought in Europe right now that we have too many foreigners wanderin' around.

When I talk to people, there's constant fear and anger about people in this country walking along the street talking a different language, or wearing different clothes. And I was be the only person who doesn't give a shit. Whatever. You're talking something that's not English. You're wearing non-English traditional clothes. I'll be over here, looking for my fucks to give.

I don't even give a fuck about the lack of apostrophes in this picture.

Tragically, my incredible tolerance / incredible apathy isn't a universally shared thing. UKIP and the National Front has been making their gains of the back of an anti-immigration stance, with many comments levelled at the stance 'they're finally saying what we're all thinking!' Well, awesome. But you know why the Big Three parties (well, Big Two after the Lib Dems dismal showing) have never got round to doing anything about immigration? It's a boring answer, I'm afraid. It's because we gain a net economic benefit.

That's not the story that every newspaper, and every 'everybody knows' story that's been doing the rounds for god knows how long. And the stories that are wrong, or blatantly false, like Farage's '29 million Romanians and Bulgarians are totally going to come here,' (even though there's only 27 million of them, and god damn is that stupid to suggest) are never really challenged, or called out for the scare-mongering lies that they are. But whatever. Clearly we just don't like immigrants.

So what's next? Perhaps we should have tiered freedom of borders, like the big players in Germany, France and England can wander freely, but everyone else in the EU can wander around themselves but need border checks coming into the big three. It is admittedly not a good system, and is brutally unfair, but hey, it lets me dodge getting visas when I go on holiday. It does somewhat stop the 'takin ma jobs' cries, as look everyone - we're all just well off white people wandering around, amiright? Non of those, poor, ethnic chaps!

Excuse whilst I go puke for writing that.

How I feel about myself right now.

However, this, whilst politically perhaps more acceptable to the public, would be immediately challenged as other countires would want to get into this tier of free movement. Then you have the problem we don't have any internal borders, so you'd just have to walk around to get it. And thirdly, the big three want immigration, to do those jobs cheaply we don't to do or fill skilled roles we don't have, and not having it would make us exceptionally uncompetive. Also, I have friends who live here but aren't from Germany and France, that I'm basically determining that they gotta be deported. Er. I don't want to do that. I did say this idea was fucking terrible, right?

Perhaps we should have a leaflet to anyone turning up, quietly saying, 'Welcome to Britain! We fucking hate you. Please do us a favor and hide your unquie cultural hertiage and pretend to be just like us until we decide we're cool with you. It will only take, twently, thirty years, tops. Peace out!'

Or we could have the media stop fellating Murdock's wrinkled cock, and actually tell the truth about immig-

Heh, I made a funny.

Yeah, fine, that's not going to happen.

You know, immigration is never going away? It's never going to end? It's been with use for-fucking-ever? And that some of our best people were from abroad? Oh, hey, the big man, Winston Churchill's British, right?

FUCKING WRONG HIS MOTHER WAS FROM AMERICA.

What about Brunel, our famous engineer?

NOPE, HE'S FROM FRANCE, A FUCKING FRENCHIE.

T.S. Eliot, poet?

AMERICAN AGAIN, FUCKFACE.

Okay, the guy who designed that weird twisty thing in the Olympic park? That weird thing is the British thing ever. It even stands like it's embarrassed at itself.

KEEP LOOKING, ANISH KAMPOOR'S WAS FROM INDIA.

Fine. The Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon, he's as English as you get, right?

AS ENGLISH AS A FUCKING IRISHMAN. WHICH HE WAS.

Dame Helen Mirren, the quintessential English-

DAD'S A RUSSIAN IMMIGRANT, YOU. UTTER. FUCKTARD.

This, this! Is what people who bitch against immigration stand against. One generation, two generations, and they are British. One of us! Even earlier, if they want to be. Whatever. Fine. No immigrants. Woo.

I'll be over here, watching Eddie Izzard's Mongrel Nation again.

Utterly confused about media coverage

I'm blanking on what to write about, so I'll feebly excuse myself until tomorrow.

I will leave with a parting thought. Alongside the European Elections, we also had a whole bunch of local elections. What makes me confused is the accepted story on how UKIP did really well, and Labour not so much. This is weird, considering that Labour made net gains of over three hundred seats, and took many councils outright, where UKIP, whilst having a bunch of seats, were shotgun scatted giving them precisely... jack shit. No councils taken, no not even being the opposition for a council. For fuck's sakes, the Green Party has a council, and is an opposition! That's not even including the fact that it looks like UKIP's percentage share of the vote went down compared to the last council elections.

So what I ask you is this - if this is Labour doing badly, and UKIP doing well, what the utter fuck would Labour doing well and UKIP doing badly look like?

Doing a protest vote right at the European Elections

The European elections are coming up, and you don't care!

Ugh. Politics.

Why would you? They are very boring. Also, as a Brit, common knowledge is that the EU is ridiculously undemocratic so what's the point of voting anyway? Er, aside from democratic accountability and shutup.

But there is going to be in all likelihood a lot of votes for UKIP, as a protest vote. Yeah. We need to talk about that.

Okay, so you don't like the EU. Or the Tories. Or Labour. Or the Lib Dems. I get that. I am with you 75% of the way with those statements, and depending on the day, maybe even 100% behind you. However, if you really don't like the EU, I'd recommend passing on voting UKIP as in doing so you're not helping. What you're doing is voting in people who won't bother turning up - thus missing your chance to do anything meaningful over the EU - and who take every penny they can from the EU. Before you chortle that they deserve it, please note that money is our money. We pay it to the EU, which then gets claimed by UKIP who don't turn up to work. So yes, they are in fact wasting British money in doing so.

They are also not a protest vote. Sadly, if your attraction to them is that they seem different to the main three parties we have (and I am sympathetic here, the main three parties as undeniable arseholes and incompetents) they are just like everyone else. They're primarily funded by Paul Sykes, as ex-Tory backer, and are staffed by plenty of ex-Tories... when they're not jumping ship back to the Tories. I mean, come one, Neil bleedin' Hamilton is a UKIP member, and the only reason he's famous is for being a Tory MP whilst being on I'm a Celebrity. Also Nigel Farage himself used to be a Tory. Go figure.

So they're basically Tories who don't like the EU. Which to me, sounds like they're basically Tories. The only thing I found in their manifesto (which I'm not sure is the right one, as they've disowned previous manifestos for being kinda bonkers) that's different to the Tories is that stand opposed to the Bedroom Tax. That's it. Everything else seems to be roughly the same, bar whatever bonkers bits they keep, which may include making the Circle Line a circle again (wha?) more freedom to manage their own expenses (Hell. No.) and a flat rate of 31% tax of everyone earning over the pitiful sum of £11,500 per annum, which is fucking terrifying. Do you earn enough to lose 31% of your wage? The hell you do!

(If you actually do can I have some? So hungry.)

But if I've convinced you to not bother with UKIP, but you don't like the EU, the Tories, Labour, Lid Dems, and want a protest vote, the fuck can you actually do?

Well on Thursday the 22nd of May you can go into that polling booth and draw a giant, throbbing phallus all over your voting card. That's a protest and a dick joke, so that's a twofer there.

I'm serious. Boom. Spoil your ballot with a giant dick joke. That's a much more effective protest vote than voting in more of the same with UKIP, and is absolutely hilarious to boot. You could also draw a big pair of breasts, a dinosaur, a spaceship, or even a second, bigger penis.

MIND. BLOWN.

Or you could vote. Now, the electoral process for the MEPs are done by proportional representation, so unlike our First Past The Post bullshit where you can live in an area where it makes no difference who you vote for as you're against a cliff wall of voters, this means you vote matters a little more. There's less safe seats, so change actually happens. Weird, that. Also, fun fact - if you get an alternate party in, even a little, then the bigger guys may notice and nick some of their policies. Democracy in action! Sorta!

So let's look at a few parties that are actually legitimate alternative groups. For starters, let me introduce you to The Pirate Party. Not only do they have a bitchin' as fuck name, they stand for the reform of patent and copyright laws, greater protections to freedom of speech and less government surveillance, of which I can say Yes Fucking Please to all three of those things. Particularly the last one, as government, get the fuck out of my emails. And that first one? If you're the sort of person who sees nothing wrong with perusing a torrent site of two, that may be relevant. Of course, patent law while boring is becoming a utterly farcical hammer in recent years, and that's gotta stop.

Of course, those guys aren't probably running in your area, so you might be in mind for someone more widespread. Then funnily enough the Green Party might be for you. For starters, they're big enough that they're challenging the Lib Dems for forth place and I'd love for them to win that to blast the Traitor King further into obscurity. They stand for a bunch of things that you'd probably like - bringing public services such as mail, NHS, trains and energy back under public control which oh. My. God. Wow. That. I love that. How much has your energy bills gone up? How shit are the trains, which we still pump money into and raise above inflation every year? Also, remember that whole line about what if you don't like the EU? The Green Party doesn't like the EU either. They want some urgent reforms, and failing that, a referendum, which is doing EU management correctly - instead of having a hissy fit and walking, they want to reform to make it better, and leave if they can't. Admittedly, that sounds an awful lot like what Davy boy said, but I reasonably sure he doesn't intend to ever have a referendum and regardless of what happens with the EU he'll declare Mission Accomplished so the referendum's averted. The one sticking point for me personally is how they hate them some nuclear power, and I love me some nuclear power. Can't have everything, I suppose.

There are some more, but go research them yourselves. Go on! Go! I'm bored of researching already. You can be to.

It's worth noting that I'm still researching who to vote for in the elections, and drawing a giant throbbing phallus is starting to sound really tempting. Nor am I affiliated with any party, beyond once joining the Lid Dem university group on the sole reason that if I signed up I got a goody bag of lollipops and condoms.

At only £2 to join I strictly speaking made a profit.

The halal non story

Enough with the Daily Mail bashing, I hear you cry. Fine.

I can bash The Sun instead.

I see three headlines, a hat trick of offensiveness!

So The Sun is mad that there's a bunch of halal chicken being served in Pizza Express right now that nobody bothered to announce. And by a bunch, I mean all of the chicken is halal chicken. And by nobody bothered to announce, I mean it's all over their website, just not their menus and for some reason this is important.

Admittedly, I know the reason. But we'll get back to it.

So I paid attention to this story for about thirty seconds, long enough for every other newspaper to run a mini-story on it. My attention briefly flicked over if the chickens were stunned first, and thus humane, and they were, and I just stopped caring. Look, I don't care what you say over a dying chicken, unless your whispering at it how you're going to fuck it's new holes, it which case, damn, that is creepy. As most (like, 90% more most) of the meat is pre-stunned, and thus like every other piece of meat served to me, this means the only difference a halal chicken and a non-hahal chicken is the that little prayer the halal stuff gets. I'm an atheist. Praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monsters is equally valid to me, in that prayer is utterly invalid to me. Praying to the dead chicken makes no difference, it's like talking to plants - only that plants benefit from the carbon dioxide in your breath. If anything, praying is a sort of selfish action. It makes you feel better, but muggins over here stuck in hospital thinks you're just wasting your own time and mine.

Besides, if you're religious but not a Muslim, surely that prayer is as equally invalid? As every religion claims they're the only right one? ...yes, I don't know jack shit about religions, I kinda gave up of them a while ago.

As long as the animal was killed humanly with as minimized suffering as possible, I'm down with that. Look, abattoirs are gross. And you know what? If you're not cool with that, don't eat meat. I know plenty of people who've decided that, and good for them.

So the story went on to look at the multiple places that sold halal meat and whether they announced it, and you know what - they probably should. A lot of meat nowadays seems to be halal to hedge the bets that everyone is cool to eat it. But that's really where the story should of stopped. But it kept on.

So why then? I mean, it's all stunned humanly, and no one's talking about the animal welfare beyond the death - not one mention about mistreatment - so why's this going on? Well, I'll tell you.

It's because The Sun is fucking racist.

What? I said it. I know plenty of well meaning people who are obsessed that there is a secret Muslim conspiracy to overtake Britain and that my friends, is lunacy. Lunacy! We're a country run by rich white men, and we'll always be run by rich white men. Our pastimes are bacon butties and beer. It ain't happening.

Yet we get the hysteria about sharia law: they're running their own courts! Of course they are. Just like Jewish courts, or Sikh courts, we actively encourage people to set up their own courts to deal with financial bullshit because if someone wants to go through a court and be legally bound by that court whilst not going through our courts, thus not costing us any money, we're normally all for it. Because, you know, it's not costing us anything. And then we're got Muslims taking over our schools! So we lose our fucking minds and send in a counter terrorism expert - way to proportionally respond... to a likely hoax. Now they're sneaking in their halal food! Only that is wasn't snunk in, we invited it, and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH.

As this adds up to a nasty piece of xenophobic hate mongering. Whenever I see those bloody Facebook shares of someone crying about animal welfare... look at the group promoting them. One of those nasty, cruel, nationalist right winger groups, right? Because that's the first thing they do to try for legitimacy; they attempt to claim they're kind. They loves them some fluffy animals! Yeah. No, you don't care. You're just bashing, and your types always do this.

Enough.

Any Irish here? I need you to do me a personal favor.

I need you to be our terrorists again.

Look, it can't be the Jews, they're still getting shit. It can't be anyone remotely brown lookin' to the average Dulex paint range racist as they've already been lumped into the Muslim camp. It can't be the Welsh, as we don't belive they care at all about anything beyonf their borders. And we built a wall around the Scots, thus keeping us safe from them forever.

FOREVER.

Just phone up a couple of prank bomb calls, and let us make horrible potato based racist slurs for a bit until we all calm down. That's as far as we'll go - you're in the EU now, you're safe from us unless we... uh... leave. Hmm. Yeah.

Scratch that.

It'll have to be the Welsh. Sorry.

How not to get your hair cut

I wouldn't count myself as a socially anxious person. Public speaking doesn't really deter me, I'm all right in crowds, and I normally greet my work superiors by jokingly ordering them around, in a habit that now occurs to me is potentially going to get me fired one day. I'm a well adjusted person, according to my court mandated counsellor.

Until I have to get my hair cut.

Look, they're waving sharp pointy things near my face and neck, okay? Whatever that person wants, goes. Besides, they take my glasses away, and then I'm kinda blind with sharp pointy things near my face and neck. Tragically, that deference to the person with the scissors coupled with my British desire to not make a scene has seen me get some god awful haircuts in the past.

Some of that blame is on me. I'm male. I have no idea what's a good look for me. What I've wanted for years is a psychic barber who knows automatically what looks good on me, and does it, and they turn out to be in high demand and rare supply. What I get are hairdressers who have nothing to work with as I mumble 'whatever you want, really' whilst they battle with the notion that a bloke wandered in here who doesn't want it all shaved off - and I'm not doing that again. I got out my shower once after shaving my head and thought a escaped naked axe murderer (the worst kind) had snuck into the bathroom by my glanced unfamiliar reflection in the mirror. Yeah. You've never considered yourself feeling vulnerable until you think an escaped naked axe murderer has snuck into you bathroom and is waiting for you patiently to get out of the shower, so you're nice and slippery. Never again.

And then smartphones came along.

God bless smartphones. They prevent me from getting lost with gps, carry a camera that I always forget to bring with me, wake me up extra early so I can get my daily weeping out the way before work happens, carry a secret backup stash of porn, track my position for the NSA's convenience, keep me entertained whilst I poop and distract me from boring people. Also, in this instance, they help immeasurably with my hair. I once heard that hairdressers do better if they have a frame of reference, and so I spent an afternoon on the internet looking at random people online, found a bloke with a decent haircut, saved it to the phone and voilà! Hello, honoured hairdresser, please make my hair look like this photo that I have on my cellular telephone, and I will pay you a shiny thrupence!

This photo, in fact. I specifically avoid the term,  "I want to look like him" on account of the
disparaging remarks about my physique. And attractiveness. And successfulness. Etc.

Follow the photo, and boom! That's not hard. And that's the way it went for a few years. For a few years, my hair looking gooooood. Yes, good, with six 'o's. That's pretty damn good, I have you know.

Tragically, the ability to follow the photo seems to be a skill which is getting rarer recently.

I mean, the warning signs were on the wall. The first sign was that my barber changed management, and became a hairdresser (there's a difference, I hear.) The staff changed. And yet I kept going, presumably because I must of believed that it was the building that contained the magic hair cutting skill, not the people.

So I went to get a haircut, as it was that or buy a truck with truck nuts and I'd have nowhere to park it. Midway through my hair being shaved off one of two employees started complaining about the monumental fuck up they had made with the previous clients hair. Which they had been cooing over before they left. So they lied. Yay. That was the second warning sign. The third warning sign was when I said to take a lot of the top off, she measured up a gnat's anus length worth and nodded to me. I asked for perhaps, maybe slightly more off, and she got out the clippers. Yes, because that's an agreeable escalation. The clippers incidentally that I was sure have never been used for this type of haircut, but yes, it's my head, but she's the hairdresser, she knows what she's doing, right?

Okay, fine, we're one sign number three, that's usually the strike out limit, but I was stuck in the chair. I was committed. Committed to stare at my blurry reflection hating everything about myself forever. It turns out the mirror was slightly warped (god I hoped it was slightly warped) so I spent over and hour looking at blurry me, who looked like an utter fat fuck with eyes that looked in two different directions. I spent over an hour staring at twisted, unrecognisable version of myself wondering if that's what I actually looked like: a manically disturbed obese frog. Do you now how unsettling it is to look at a reflection that's clearly yours but a) Looks's nothing like what you mentally picture yourself, and b) looks like a hideously ugly version of yourself? Let's just say staring at that mirror wasn't doing wonders for my self-esteem.

Also I may of spent a few hours at home obsessively looking in over mirrors to reassure myself I did not actually look like that. I'll have you know in real life I only look like a disturbed frog. It's so different.

The forth sign that I should of got up and ran away was as they were finishing up, they remembered the style was a side parting that splits over one side of my head, not what they were currently doing, which was plastering all my hair in one direction, like I'd been standing in a gale force winds blowing right to left. That's not my look. I think that's a boy band look. I'm not in a boy band, if only because I wasn't willing to do what Lious Walsh wanted me to do. Well, wasn't willing to do what he wanted with the suitable degree of eagerness he called for, at least.

You lied to me! You  said you'd make me a star!

The fifth sign took longer to hit. We were in disaster limitation mode, trying to recover what was left of my shorn locks into the parting I wanted. From the photo. That was right there. Which hadn't been looked at since we started. Anyway. It wasn't utterly awful yet. Sure, it was waaaaaay shorter than what I asked for, but one side sort of looked alright, so there's that, just gotta clean up the second side, cut it into shape.... cut it into shape... cut it into Jesus Christ she's still cutting. She's been cutting for ages. Like, cutting for so long I fear my partner may start posting a missing person report. Like, really cutting. Still cutting. I should say something. Say something. Stop smiling. Stop smiling. For fuck's sake stop smiling she think's you're approving of this god damn it stop smiling you've been smiling the whole time express your reservations you dolt.

No! That is what the photo is for!

It's not working stop smiling say something stop smiling.

It's still fixable!

No, you're worried about possibly going prematurely bald and this woman that your are paying is actually actively doing just that on one side of your head.

It's okay!

It wasn't okay. It's really not okay.

Like, 'maybe I can convince my colleagues I always wore baseball caps' not okay. Like 'Oh god, this looks so bad, I may have to enact scorched ground policy and shave it all off' not okay.

We still have warning sign number seven. Yes, I needed seven god damn signs and I still didn't leave. We have established hairdressers are my kryptonite, okay? Number seven was her burning my scalp with a hair-dryer powered by the fires of Mount Doom. As I frantically tried to leap off my chair, lest my flesh slough off, she admitted that she always did that, and turned it down to Mount Etna levels of fire. By that time the third degree burns that destroyed the pain receptors so it's wasn't a big deal any more.

Artist's rendition on how I felt after the hair cut

At this point, I took one last look of dread at my mangled hair, resigned myself to a month of enforced isolation in case my hideous form emotionally scar small children, thanked her, paid her, and left.

But I didn't tip.

Oh yeah! Feel the burn of that, bitch! Who's the big man now? I just put upon you the greatest insult my Britishness will allow!

Time advancing is like film reboots - sometimes, not entirely awful

I've always been a proponent that you should forever by wary that you were, very recently, a colossal bleedin' idiot. Think about yourself five, ten years ago. What did you like? What hobbies, fashion, hairstyle, music, politics? Dear god they were stupid shit, right? You looked like an idiot, and your music was garbage to. And think how naive you were!

Case in point - they were once very popular, and fashionable.

The second part of this philosophy of self-reflection is to realise that this happens all the time, so five years from now, you'll think the you of today is stupid.

I've been pondering this today because whilst I was doing my swimming I was struck by the idea if I got up earlier, I could go running in the morning before work. In doing so, I would pick up a little more exercise, and if I did it regularly, I may just lose the last stubborn bit around my waist and get abs. Honest to god abs. I have never had abs. I've never come close to having abs during my life, until recently. I eat well, I even regularly eschew meat and have those healthy vegetarian option... though admittedly that is also motivated by poverty. Meat is expensive.

But this thought came in knowing that I despise getting up early, let alone volunteering to get up even earlier, and I'm not massively a fan of running. It's difficult, and early in the morning is the realm of cold and misery. And it's an idea I really want to do, and what the hell has happened to me.

I am completely different to the person I was ten years ago, which, yes, duh, but it's still a weird sensation. Ten years ago I was practically a carnivore, who believed that there was a conspiracy to claim vegetables as food. I lived in an utter mess, because it wasn't a mess, it was a floor-based filing system, exercise was something completely irrelevant because I was young and had a metabolism that kept me permanently gangly.

Also I believed that the Liberal Democrats were totally legit, and that my degree I would earn at university would lead to a high paying job.

Ah, I made a joke!

Some of these things changed because of reality. Over things, well, you can't live with someone whilst wrecking the place. Words get exchanged. And considering my sizeable battle-ready weapon collection being evenly distributed around the apartment gives a definite motivation to talk things out nice and early, before the screaming happens, and hands get itchy. Tragically, even with the sizeable weapon it appears somewhere down the line I may have become an adult, who knows what escrow is, among various little titbits of boring adult things like ISAs, pension plans, despising modern news media, and wondering where the hell Dr Bashir ended up.

Ah, there you are. Jesus, DS9 came out in the 90s. That is a long time ago!

I'll think that I'll roll with this new me, on account of having slightly more disposal income, a driving license, all seven series of DS9 on my shelf, and a mostly functional nose. Hey, I didn't sleep properly for four years. That sucked. Also worth sliding in is that I live with the person I love, so that's an improvement.

You know, I probably should have mentioned that first, before the money. Hmm. Maybe I'll move the weapon collection out of grabbing reach for tonight.

I sort of wonder what I'll be like in ten years, although I'd be approaching forty so my brain simply screams trying to think about it. I do reckon though I'll be thinking that the way I combed my hair to hide the creeping edges of my forehead was bloody idiotic.

Incidentally on a non problematic subject have I mentioned how proud I am of my country right now? When the Mail on Sunday slandered and defrauded that food back, it turns out that the country that the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail think's they represent is nothing but a twisted fantasy. When exposed to that horrific story, many outraged citizens went out... and donated the fuck out to that charity. They had a few hundred pounds donated before the story... now they have over sixty thousand pounds.

Sixty thousand pounds sterling was raised as a passive-aggressive 'fuck you' to those utter deplorable pricks. That's some good passive aggression. We're also bashing the fuck outta UKIP's blatant racism, which is hilarious that they're playing the 'everyone is bullying me, waaah!' defence. Not quite, UKIP. It's just that you're utter idiots and inclined towards saying racist / sexist / badthingsist things, and any journalist worth their salt knows that following UKIP around is an easy way to fill column inches as they can't keep their own mouths shut.

Who knows, maybe ten years from now I'll be thinking how stupid I was to be worried about Scotland up and leaving, UKIP's growing influence and us leaving the EU.

I already used the Picard grin gif didn't I? Arse.

The Mail on Sunday slanders a food bank. Classy as all fuck, those guys.

Edit: You know, perhaps venting rage at the Daily Mail isn't the way forward. I've accused them of having no class, and screaming at them for it isn't that classy either. But you know what is classy? Donating to the charity, The Trussell Trust, that Ross Slater and the Mail on Sunday defrauded. Link: here.

I have had many opportunities to yell and scream about the Daily Mail. I mean, it's not like they don't give my ample demonstrations of their spitefulness and disgusting actions. So sometimes it's interesting when they decide to fulfil their slogan I once made up fot them: "The Daily Mail: We can go lower."

In today's issue of the Mail On Sunday (same paper, just the Sunday name for my international readers Edit: Actually not the same paper. Huh Different editors and everything. I will treat them as one in the same for this post however, for simplicity) one of their... okay. The technical word here is 'journalist', but that doesn't seem right. Hmm. They need a new technical term for people who right for them. I'm gonna go with 'cunt.' Great. One of the Mail on Sunday's cunts went out to a food bank, asked for some food, and took a photograph of himself with the food.

No link, as fuck their click-bait.

Let's break things down, shall we? And I really must stop making a habit of attacking the Daily Mail, but they must get out the habit about being some of the scummiest people to ever walk this earth first.

The title's a lie, for one. It says no questions asked, but the third paragraph in clearly states questions were asked. You know, Daily Mail? Stick to lies of omission or blatant fabrication from the get go, it'll work out better for you.

Oh, further demonisation of the poor! Yay. Nice to see the Daily Mail is firmly tonguing the government's ass on this one. The Tories slash benefits, and claim the increase of food banks is just a weird coincidence. And by increase I mean tripling. The Tories have attacked food banks for stating the the reason they're in more demand, is 'cos, ya know, benefit cuts (they did ask why so many were coming through the door) by claiming it was just the feckless work-shy poor wanting free shit. Or wanting to eat, the selfish pricks.

Also: Tories, verbally attacking a motherfucking food bank. Wow. Wow. Who does that? Who honestly gives shit to a place that makes it their mission to feed to poor? The Tories, that's who, apparently. And the Daily Mail now, but at least the Tories came out and said what they thought, rather than scuttle about and smear the issue like the Mail.

I love the 'oh look how much food I've been given!' photo. Yeah. That's to feed four. For three days.

And to top it off that cunt, Ross Slater, doesn't seem to get that by doing so he stole food from a charity. And wasted their time. Also, to repeat myself, he stole from a charity. Who gave food to the hungry. The starving. The desperate. He took their food and wrote a peice on who the poor were using food banks selfishly.

Oh, but wait, after the inevitable outrage from a country still in collective possession of basic morality, he gave it back, that makes it okay, right?

Still not getting it, are you?

No.

This is the sort of shit the Daily Mail gets up to all the damn time.

I'm not going to say much more about this, as I can feel the bile welling up again. But, just in case you feel the need to say what your thought of this shameful actions that cunt took, or the paper that approved it, I think I'll leave some Twitter feeds here.

Ross Slater's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rossslateruk

The Daily Mail's Twitter: https://twitter.com/MailOnline