Massacre

It's been a weekend of new things. Here are my thoughts.

1) Left 4 Dead

New computer game of the survival horror variety, only for once the developers have really given some thought to the cooperative element of the game. Essentially, Louis, Francis, Bill and Zoey have to shoot their way through 4 campaigns of zombie murderage in order to achieve their final objective, which is always to answer a radio and finally get rescued by whoever is in the local area who hasn't been infected by the zombie... ness.

I admit I feel a mite disappointed by the lack of backstory. There's been a zombie apocalypse, but other than that we have no details whatsoever. I rather liked the development of plots such as Resident Evil where you spent the whole thing wandering around getting eaten alive by giant everything. I liked the fact that there was actually some reason why it was all happening. The zombies are called "the infected" which implies some kind of bio experiment gone wrong, but other than that Valve give their players no idea of what's gone wrong. Having a plot discovery element might have given them a bit more character development. It's a bit sad, because in the commentary they talk a lot about the development of the 4 central characters, and therefore it seems sad that by the end you know so very little about them aside from the half a paragraph they are awarded in the gaming manual. Valve apparently worked hard to make them likeable and believable. Hardly seems much point when they are all capable of exactly the same skills, same weapons capabilities, so they're all essentially the same person.

Gameplay-wise, it's a strong game. The zombies are well drawn, and it's always fun to see that if you shoot them in the arm, then the arm itself frequently gets blown off and flies across the floor. The range of special zombies keeps the game interesting, because being attacked constantly by the horde would get a bit samey and easy otherwise. Having said that, we are only playing on normal difficulty setting right now, and I still frequently get incapacitated. The music is good, lighting good, sounds good - everything you'd expect from a Valve game. I'm satisfied, pleased even, but it would have been nice to be overwhelmed or impressed to boot.

2) Mass Effect

I played through this over the last week and a half and finally finished it as the ultimate Paragon - ie, extremely good and well-behaved. It's definitely the easiest way to play. If you play as a Renegade, it seems hard to get the right options in conversations to allow you to intimidate people. If you're rude to them all the time, or knock them out, or insult their mums, you'll often be ignored or rebutted, which is a pain in the ass. Much easier to be lovely about everything and just charm the pants off everyone.

Though I really enjoyed the plot of Mass Effect and was initially very happy with the game, over an extended period of time, I found it repetitive and too easy. I appreciate that playing it on more difficult modes might have been sensible, fair play, but I do wonder what the real value in having Easy, Normal, Hardcore, Insane etc. What's wrong with having Easy, Normal and Hard? If I remember rightly, DMC even had one after that - Dante Must Die mode or something. Maybe Easy mode should just be made harder? In any case, if this weren't a big enough objection, you do spend an inordinate amount of time roaming around on alien worlds that all look very much the same. Rocky, usually windy, and usually red, brown or icy in colour. They didn't give enough thought to each planet, and hence exploring them is even more tedious than watching soap opera omnibuses. Omnibi. Whatever.

If you ignore the side quests entirely, not only do you miss out on a shedload of weapons and money, but the game is massively shorter in length. There are only 5 or 6 main missions, and none are very long, particularly on your second playthrough, which you will have to endure if you want most of the game's achievements. I had originally planned to play through as a full Renegade, but am thinking the better of it. Games really need to get more inventive with their achievements, rather than just having a bunch of completion bonuses. Yawn.

3) Gears of War 2

Haven't played this, but witnessed it at RK's house. Impression was that it's very much more of the same, so if you liked GoW1, you'll enjoy this offering. What it doesn't do is offer MORE, which is sad.

4) Goldfinger

It was inevitable that sooner or later I would have to confess my ignorance when it comes to Bond films. I admit both to loathing them as well as to only have seen about 2 and a half of the wretched things, and I tend to forget which. Goldeneye, Die Another Day and Casino Royale have all definitely been viewed, and the occasional scene from others. The whole thing just never appealed to me on any level. Pierce Brosnan was a smug and irritating Bond, I was never convinced that 007 as a character was a convincing spy, in fact I still believe that if such a person were to truly exist, he'd probably be dead within a month just for being a pretentious prat, who no doubt get shot by someone, be it his own side or someone else's. His mysogyny didn't help matters in my eyes, and while the gadgets and explosions were fun, I suppose, they appealed only to a very basic action movie appreciation that has always been more deeply fulfilled by proper gritty action as seen in Bruce Willis movies like Die Hard.

I found I quite liked Goldfinger, which I suppose isn't saying much. 60s Bond, as opposed to being cheesy was that enjoyable kind of old, where we accept that the effects aren't as good because it was made years ago. Bond is acceptably pervy because men were allowed to be in those days and nobody so much as batted an eyelid. Maybe my biggest problem with Bond is that he just never changes. Though his sad chauvanistic behaviour was acceptable when Connery donned the suit all those years ago, it just doesn't fit or add up in noughties Britain. If anyone actually behaved that way the majority of girls would reject his smug, slimy attitude. After all, we have better things to do these days than make an arrogant turd in a sharp suit feel even more self-satisfied.

Anyway, that aside, the villain Goldfinger was unconvincing, and bits of the plot were too contrived, such as having one gangster cubed in a car crusher for no good reason other than to have a bit of excitment as Bond tried to get his message out. The random slaughter of a group of gangsters after Goldfinger had just spent 15 minutes of the plot explaining his cunning plan to them seemed a waste of time. Still, as said, it was fun to watch in an old, cheesy movie kind of way. Like it's fun to watch an episode of The Avengers simply because the plot lines were always so utterly absurd.

5) Mallrats

Oh dear. I really wonder sometimes whether I should go on watching Kevin Smith movies as so many of them are entirely awful. The acting in this one - albeit an early one - was flaky at best, with memorable performances from Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith himself only. Unsurprisingly someone dropped in a 90210 joke because Shannen Doherty is in it, and generally most of the plot was just pointless filler with gags that generally flopped.

6) Zach and Miri Make A Porno

Thought I'd mention this alongside as it's another Kevin Smith. I saw it for my birthday, and generally I laughed quite a lot, though again the plot only hung together well enough in order to be predictable. What saved it was a genuinely likeable cast, Zack who was also famously in Knocked Up was good, though the part seemed too similar to ones he's played in the past. Jason Mewes again was a pleasure to watch, and it was nice to see he could be someone else on film than Jay. It was fun, but not really a patch on Dogma, my personal Kevin Smith favourite.

7) Bowling for Columbine

I had a feeliing that this one would be an extended documentary where Michael Moore tore apart the US people and government, and lo and behold it was. What was most frustrating about this tedious piece of television is that Moore doesn't actually answer his own question, despite the hours of research that must have gone into making it. Essentially he's just another critic who points out the flaws in everything without saying how to fix it, making him just as bad and ignorant as everyone else. Admittedly Charlton Heston needs a kick in the privates for being a insensitive jack-ass, but tragically I don't think he's going to change his way because a chubby geezer with a picture of a little girl turns up on his doorstep. Also, heston is not singularly responsible for gun crime, and I imagine commits extremely little of it.

My better half and I sat down to watch this after a conversation we had in the pub where I argued that guns were a menace and I'd like to un-invent them. We discussed that without guns surely there'd be swords and other weapons, but still think that having studied the WW1, machine guns and automatic weapons played an enormous role in the massacre of soldier's lives. It's never been so easy to take a life as it is in modern day America.

Everyone's a critic

I think I pointed out the other day that anyone who can lift a pen or use a keyboard thinks they're a critic. The sad fact is that exceedingly few of us are really informed enough to make judgments about the never-ending supply if new media and culture being thrown at our faces. Personally, I really loathe critics. Partly because I almost do subscribe to the view that one opinion can be as valuable as any other - even if for no other reason than it tells us about what a segment of society may be thinking. I just can't get into the idea that I need someone else to tell me whether something's good or not. No critic writes a column explaining why something's valuable or clever, instead they sit down and tell us whether it's "good" or not, which is the part I have a problem with.

I much prefer to be presented with the information about something and then allowed to develop my own opinions. Just because I haven't spent my whole life watching movies and talking about them (which by the way scarcely seems like the kind of activity that would make you qualified to do anything) doesn't mean that I, as a viewer of movies, cannot sit down and say "I like that" or vice versa.

And the sad thing is that all critics seem to come from the same background. You can guarantee that anything coming out of The Guardian, The Telegraph or any other smarty pants paper with a features editor who no doubt graduated Oxford with a first and has nobby friends who like to have wine and cheese parties is going to be written by an academic who will only know what the film brings to them personally. I imagine they're waiting for their mighty brain to be warped by the next big thing, and unsurprisingly everything in between is going to be a disappointment. Papers like The Sun are full of crap, judgmental bullshit aimed at people who like boobs and see it as a necessary part of their morning schedule.

I mean, what's with that? seriously? Yes, boobs are harmless (I'm aware of that, I happen to have a pair of my own) but that doesn't mean they need to be pasted all over page three with half paragraph about some doe-eyed dopey looking bitch with an inane grin plastered to her face. Anyway, I digress.

I guess basically I probably wouldn't know a good film if it smacked me in the face. The Dark Knight was too long, Ironman had a crap ending battle, Zach and Miri had good gags, but the plot didn't hang together. I don't see that many movies, but nothing I've seen this year has impressed me much. Mamma Mia was pointless, with weak vocal performances in places and is just not a very good musical, Sex and the City was just plain crap. I guess I've named there a selection of movies from this year, and whether the critics liked them or not, I didn't like any of them. I'm even beginning to get used to how films that DON'T end happily end. It's that bad. I want someone to bring on a film that isn't so bloody formulaic, because I am so tired of guessing what's going to happen before we're even an hour in.

I don't pretend to know anything about anything, but I do know what I like, and throughout my life I've never met anyone who would change the things that they truly like just because somebody else didn't like it, so why do we employ critics at all? So somebody can ruin things for us before we even give it a fair chance to impress us? Nothing's crap til I say it is, God damn it.

Fair? This is television

While I may not be a big fan of the X Factor, I can occasionally sit down and watch the odd episode without wanting to curl up in a cringing little ball beneath the sofa. Admittedly that isn't during the opening episodes, where the untalented and unsuspecting members of the general public are shoved through like cattle and poked and prodded then rejected by the showbiz elite. Seriously, I just can't watch it. Firstly I don't understand how some of these people are under the delusion that they're good, or who it was that told them that going in for the competition was a good idea. Others are just so ugly that there's no way they could seriously win, and then there are the ones that just aren't quite good enough, and those are the ones that are hardest to watch. The judges sit there and umm and arr about the starry eyed hopeful for 10 minutes, then put it down to a vote after listening to whatever dreadful sob story they've got, just to make it all the more painful to watch. "Oh no!" we think, "evil Simon Cowell has crushed the dreams of another poor kid". Sad fact is that Simon is almost always right. Admittedly I don't think he picks the nicest ways of telling people so. Dropping the bombshell that they're the worst person he's seen all day seems to border on the sadistically cruel, but I suppose if you're going to have your dreams crushed it may as well be completely, and with the finality of the Monty Python boot.

Anyway, I didn't start this to chastise Simon Cowell, I actually decided to write this just to comment briefly on the Laura White vs Ruth Lorenzo controversy. I hadn't really been keeping up with the show, so I went on to YouTube and looked up their performances, and have just a few things to say.

Firstly, the voting on The X Factor doesn't always give a clear picture of how good the performers are. Instead of voting for their favourite performance (which I imagine is what you're supposed to do) voters will frequently call in to place their vote for the person they least want to go out. And this isn't always their favourite. Most voters assume that their favourite will receive enough votes from their fans to keep them in the competition. This seems like a logical explanation for why someone who seemed to have so many fans ended up in the bottom two. Because other people were too keen on trying to keep Daniel Evans (or "Deadwife" as my better half calls him) in the competition. We also witnessed it this week when the public voted to save Diana Vickers, who let's face it, performed like crap. Yes, she was ill, but it was still crap, and though you can give her props for trying, if the show were about effort and sportsmanship, it would not produce performers who were actually, you know, good.

I was more or less horrified to find out The X Factor had done Mariah Carey week. Not because I don't like Mariah, but as a long-term admirer of her work and a rather amateur singer, I know that her songs are really hard to sing. Unless you're Mariah Carey, or somebody of her calibre. Alexandra was distinctly flat on the high notes of "Without You", though JLS faired very well in their performance of "One Sweet Day", which was altogether much better than their bizarre Beatles medley that they did this week. Ruth's performance was week, and she fumbled for the correct notes at times. Laura's performance of "Endless Love" seemed strong, if she did over-bake it a bit on the high notes in the second half. It must have been a surprise therefore that she ended up in the bottom two, but whereas the papers I read heaped the fault on Louis Walsh for his criticism and said that he had removed her from the competition as she was too big a threat, I have to disagree. Whereas Laura's final performance of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" showed a lack of spirit, and some quesionable tuning in places, Ruth really let rip with "Knocking on Heaven's Door" and revealed some pretty awesome rocky vocals. Even as they stood there before the panel, you could see in Laura's face that she knew she was going out. The fight in her was just gone. On top of that, though Louis placed the final vote, Simon and Danni had already voted to keep Ruth instead of Laura, with only Cheryl placing her vote for Laura as she was her contender. Simon, bearing the other unbiased vote, must have seen, as Louis rather accurately pointed out, that Ruth had more fight in her, and had performed better when it was needed.

Having said all of this, I still think that this year's performers are all lack lustre compared to my favourite X Factor winners. Let's face it, the show has coughed up some terriby boring people over it's seasons. Leon Jackson's a good example, with only Will Young and Leona Lewis really making any headway into the charts. I liked those two; they were note perfect every week and could sing everything you threw at them. Leona's performance on this week's X Factor was really good, and frankly there just isn't anyone of that kind of calibre amongst this year's finalists.

I find it a worrying fact that following Mariah Carey and Leona Lewis, Britney is going to be on the next X Factor. Fair enough, she's a star, but are we really saying that she has vocals comparable to Mariah and Leona? And will the contestants have to sing Britney songs? Somehow I'm not quite convinced that Eoghan belting his way through "Oops I did it again" is quite what I had in mind for a Saturday night.

At least it will be entertaining.

Degrees of Desperation

It was only with the additional persuasion of sitting down and reading Chris Owen's facebook post that I finally decided to write this long-overdue blog. I finished university in July, and have to admit that I was initially in no major rush to find work. I was pleased with myself, though undeservedly I knew. To have done so little work and yet still achieved a degree that would supposedly impress employers was surely an achievement in itself. I therefore felt a bittersweet sense of accomplishment as I received my certificate then boarded a train for Suffolk.

Upon arrival, my better half and I decided that seeing as he was working in a local town, it would make the most sense for me to work there also. Having agreed this strategy I dispersed my CV amongst the local job agencies in the hope that something - anything really - would come up.

After a month it was becoming uncomfortably obvious that this was not going to be as easy as I had anticipated. I had been fooled by my own arrogance into believing that my 3 year degree in English actually had some value in the world, and I was just beginning to come around to the conclusion that maybe, actually, it wasn't. Employers didn't want fresh graduates out of university with barely a day's worth of real work experience. They wanted people with 1-2 full years of experience in "a similar role", despite only offering a £15,000 salary. They wanted Quark and Adobe and half a dozen other programs that I've never even had access to. They wanted a full drivers license.

The worst part is that these aren't even good jobs. These aren't jobs that anyone who had better options would take, they are jobs so mundane that not stringing yourself up in the stationary cupboard at the end of week one is considered an achievement. The people who work there are more stupid than you are, and are only more senior and more wealthy than you are because they dropped out earlier so they have those extra years of experience.

It's unbelievable that I could have reached the ripe old age of 25 and still not feel as though I am qualified to do anything. If someone had asked me when I was 15 what I would be doing in 10 years times, first of all I would have said "I can hardly imagine that far ahead" and then I might have hazarded a guess that I would have achieved 3 basic goals. 1) Have a job, 2) Have a house, 3) Get married. I have achieved none of these things, which makes turning 25 the most painful birthday I have experienced in some time.

Nobody told me that English was a waste of time, though with hindsight I look back and realise that it was obvious. People will tell you all sorts of things to get you into the university system. "Just do a subject you love" they'll say, "It's a great experience" and so forth. Now, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy university, but I spent a LOT of money over the course of the last 7 (yes, 7) years. To get to the end of it with a Bachelors that essentially only tells employers that I read some books and wrote about them is thoroughly depressing. Worst still is the fact that everybody these days thinks they're a critic, everyone supposedly has a meaningful opinion about everything, and everyone (I am told) has a book inside them. Okay, so if deep down we're all writers and getting a qualification that tells people you can read isn't necessarily a good use of time and money, then WHY do these degrees exist at all? Or is it just for the sensationally rich, and somebody neglected to tell me that unless I had been born into money, humanities was a fat waste of time?

Just make a comparison; Law, for example. Yes you read a lot of books, learn things, write about them. It's just another essay subject, right? No, because not only do you read things, you are trained to enter a profession. Same with Psychology. A subject like maths is almost always welcome, because having maths is like having a badge that says "I am smarter than everyone else, because I understand how numbers work". It's elitest is what it is. Sciences, likewise, are a sign that you're the brightest and best, but humanities? No. No, because EVERYONE can read a book, and because we're all entitled to our opinions, EVERYONE can write an essay. We should all have an English degree by dint of the fact that we're all English, surely?

What started out as a reasoned debate has turned into a rant, maybe because I'm so angry and disappointed. I'm angry because the economy has decided to fall apart just when I needed it to hang together, and it hasn't done that for years, and it quite simply isn't fair. The government is throwing tax payers' money at greedy bankers in order to fix a problem that they caused, and according to people I've spoken to, apparently this is the only thing to be done, which just makes me want to throw an enormous bitch fit. Fat, greedy bastards with six figure salaries are walking away from this back to their sports cars and their holiday villas in foreign climes until it all "blows over" whereas I have to return to my parents' house to weather out the storm and feel like a worthless sponger, while job agencies tell me unhelpful things like "employers will like it less if you have big gaps in your CV" while simultaneously being incapable of finding even the most basic work.

Pink elephants and other make-believe creatures

I'm not really a Richard Dawkins fan. Of course I'm in favour of freedom of expression, but there's something about Dawkins that bothers me. His insistence upon there being NO God, which is something he can't prove, and now his budding belief that believing in fairies and folktales is causing stunted emotional development in children.

What brings this loathsome grinch of a character to my forethoughts is the recent pasting of signs on the side of double decker buses. "There is probably no God" we are told, as we woefully heave our carcasses into the workplace for another 8 hour grind, "So stop worrying and enjoy your life".

At no point in my life have I ever worried because of the thought that there is or may be a God. In fact I think a large number of people get a good deal of confidence and support from the notion that someone up there may be looking out for them. That when everything in their life goes wrong it's because there is some greater plan. That when someone dies they don't just disappear into nothingness. What's worse is the implication that belief in a higher power stops people from enjoying their life. How exactly? Because they need to behave? Because they need to love their neighbour and honour their partner and not steal or kill? With the exception of some extreme examples, what harm is it doing exactly that people might believe in God? If the whole world suddenly became atheists would that solve all of its problems? Of course not, we'd still be fighting about oil and money and past wars.

On a very basic level it seems cruel. It seems like telling small children that there's no Santa Claus. Isn't it a more enjoyable notion to believe that a jolly chap in a red suit pops down the chimney every year to bring presents to kids than to believe that for no reason at all we give presents. I mean, Christmas in the Richard Dawkins house must be a hoot. No birth of Jesus, no Santa Claus, and let's not forget the fact that there is no God, so there's certainly no reason to feel guilt if you can't be bothered to get up off your ass and visit your relatives or buy them gifts.

Worst case scenario, a belief in God makes us feel guilt and worry and shame when we do something wrong, and I can't help but think that that might be a good thing. Maybe if we can't bring ourselves to relate to other human beings it's healthy to fear some kind of higher power, otherwise we'd probably have no morals at all.

With Christmas coming up in less than 2 months, I'm genuinely looking forward to it. I look forward to the presents, the cheesy music, the carols played in town centres and the fact that for once in the course of the year people have to think about someone other than themselves. Of course a cynical person could say that companies merely use the Christmas season to make as much money as possible, but that should not detract in any way from the pleasure of buying something for someone else and enjoying their reaction when receiving it, or getting presents yourself and receiving that remarkable gift that you always wanted but never knew you did. Then there's food and rubbish tv and board games and drinks and games. And family. Most importantly there's family and friends who you've probably not seen in months.

If you do believe in God then buses with this kind of shit on the side are nothing short of insulting. The Christians have come under so much shit lately I'm starting to feel sorry for them. It's not like they'd be able to fund buses with the words "Our God is best" on the side, or tell Muslims they're worshipping the wrong God. There'd be public outcry, and quite rightly so, so why Dawkins and his brigade of Bible burners should be allowed to spew this anti-religious junk all over London is a mystery.

If you don't believe in God, then surely you can't see the point in all this, unless you are truly annoyed by people believing in God, in which case, let's be honest, you are an intolerant twat. Going around saying "there is no God" to you would be like going around saying "there are no pink elephants" or "there are no Starbucks on Mars". You already know they don't exist, ergo it doesn't need to be stated.

If, like so many people, you don't really know whether you believe in God or not, but you still pray when your life starts falling apart, or cursing him when you're caught in rushhour traffic, then I would guess you don't see the harm in believing in God. After all, surely someone other than you must be to blame when you show up to an interview in a brand new suit then throw chicken salad down the front. You've got someone to thank when you miraculously survive some terrible accident. You've got someone to thank for everything around you that's precious, because sometimes dumb luck just doesn't feel like enough.

God plays a far bigger influence than most of us think. Not the active force of God's fingers playing chess with his little human pieces, but humankind's belief in God is what makes him a powerful figure. The Bible isn't just a collection of random commands, it's actually got some good rules to live your life by. It's got tenets in it that make it easier to wake up in the morning and look in the mirror. It's got the power to turn people's lives around as much as it has the power to destroy them; so anyone going around ignorantly expressing the notion that God doesn't exist, just because they've lost the ability to believe certainly doesn't have the right to make other people feel guilty for believing.