Facial Kerplunk

So I thought I might as well post another part from my "diary of crazy". This one isn't at all political, but is still something I am passionate about.

"People Who Shouldn't Be Allowed to Enjoy Music Concerts

• Anyone who throws drinks around.

• Anyone who takes their top off.

• Anyone who arrives in any kind of costume.

• Anyone who brings props.

• Anyone who crowd surfs.

• Anyone who starts a mosh pit and then gets offended when people push back.

• Anyone who starts a mosh pit just so they can have a fight.

• Anyone who starts a mosh pit.

• Anyone who heckles the performers.

• Anyone who demands huge amount of space for their dancing/dreadlocks (usually its both).

• Anyone who bring their kids (except festivals) or their parents (ever).

• Anyone who the surrounding people decides are too old/hairy/much of a dick head.

• Anyone who is too drunk to stand up.

• Anyone who is too drunk to actually enjoy the concert.

• Anyone who is too drunk.

• Anyone who takes about six full pints of beer right to the front of the crowd just before the main act comes on stage - you will be jostled.

• Any couples who decide to have a sloppy snog-a-thon right in the middle of the crowd. Your love is great and all but it is currently dribbling down my shoulder.

• All those people who go without saying.

"

The piece ends abruptly with the following quote on the next page:

"I'm not trying to ban fun. Just tightly regulate it."

Well it made me laugh at any rate.

Old Political Ramblings #1

I recently found a bunch of writing that I did whilst on my placement year. A lot of it was written on the train, it is mostly incoherent and unfocused. It is also very socialist. All of them were written when the recession was at its hardest, when bankers' bonuses were a top news story. Still, I have decided to type up some of the writings, because it is the kind of nonsensical pap you people are used to hearing from me.

The first is about banks, naturally.

"I am convinced nobody knows everything about economy and finance. How could they? There are too many variables. Representing economy and finance in terms of figures and graphs is like trying to represent the universe in felt.

It is ridiculously complicated to even open a bank account: which kind of account, which bank, what kind of card, etc. And there is no transparency at all. You have no idea where your money actually is. Can't someone make banking open source?

Surely all most people use bank accounts for are convenient transfer of funds, cash withdrawals and somewhere secure to store their money. But we appear to be paying a very high price for convenience."

This is a piece about religion. It probably reads a little more controversially than I intended.

"I do not like to believe religion deliberately oppresses its followers. Religion was a mechanism used in the past to assert authority or enforce morality. Now we have government, education, prisons, courts, etc. Religion no longer seems relevant. But alas, it prevails. As does its nonsensical beliefs. `Don't eat pork` made sense when food could not be safely stored and cooked, and medicine was in its infancy. This is no longer an issue.

However, as it should be obvious to anyone, that is the most minor of issues. Abortion is the issue that most accurately displays the disparity between religious edicts and modern wisdom. The woman's right to choose to have an abortion is fundamental for any civilised society. And yet religion calls it murder. This kind of backwards-thinking can only hold a progressive society back."

Those are the two least crazy-sounding one's. I will post more when I get the chance.

"Close Enough"

I don't know whether it is the rapture-that-didn't-happen, or something else, but I have recently been thinking about something that happened to me a while ago.

So one day I was at home, no doubt doing something incredibly important and time consuming, something during which I could not be interrupted - for fear of my concentration being broken and all of my effort would be wasted. Whatever it was, it must have been urgent, and time consuming. Probably.

Just imagine those are a pair of male hands. And the hand cream is completely organic - and yet somehow man-made.

Unfortunately there was an interruption to my incredibly significant work - the doorbell. As I am sure you can appreciate by now - I did not want to be disturbed. However I had no choice but to run downstairs and answer the door. There I was greeted by two middle-aged women, one standing about a foot in front of the other. The woman closest to me then asked me the question that they had clearly said many times before: "have you discovered the glory of our Lord, Jesus Christ?"

"Well this may take a while."

At first I was tempted to say: "who?" Why is it that Christians seem to recruit people by asking about Jesus, as if there are some people in the Western world who legitimately would have no idea what a Jesus is? Don't get me wrong - I am not bashing Christianity. I have met Christians whose lives are better because of their religion. But the problem is that, when they come door-to-door, they do tend to... go on a bit. I stood there, trying to think of the quickest way to get them off the doorstep. You see if you just say you're an atheist they take that as an opportunity to convert you. It gives them a target to hit. I was racking by brain, desperately trying to come up with something when I had... an epiphany of sorts. It was so simple. Why had I never thought of it before? A pleasant smile spread across my face as I said the lie that would ensure they would quickly leave:

"I am Jewish."

It really would have helped if I had looked like this at the time.

I really thought this was a stroke of genius on my part. Jewish people do not embrace Jesus as the messiah - surely these Jehovah's Witnesses could not believe that they could reverse the beliefs handed down over thousands of years? Surely nobody is that insensitive? That misguided? The reactions to my statement from the two women were interesting. The woman furthest from me looked at me as if I had just said: "sorry, would you mind coming back a bit later? I'm feasting on the innards of infants at the moment."

Maybe I shouldn't have answered the door like this.

The woman closest to me took longer to formulate a response. She seemed to be turning things over in her mind, trying to decide if she should persist or just walk away. "Oh. Erm. Well... I suppose there are some similarities..." What?! I could not believe she was seriously going to try to convince me a (for all she knew) devoutly Jewish young man to get off the Jew train and ride on the Jesus Express. It is actually deeply offensive. Perhaps not as offensive as pretending to be Jewish just so you don't have to talk to Jehovah's Witnesses, but still pretty bad. I was about now that I realised how misguided my lie may have been. Not only am I not Jewish, I know very little about the religion - despite what I had seen on TV and in films. I was stuck. She then started to outline the Christian beliefs to me, and my sense of politeness forced me to just nod along and pretend to be interested. "You see, we believe that Jesus is the son of God and died for our sins." "Oh, sure."

"I'm sorry, could you please go over who exactly killed Christ? Thanks."

After a while she stopped and said to me: "You know it is so great to see a young man with faith. Can I ask you what you call God?" I still don't know what word Jewish people use for God. I had to cover. "Oh, I just say 'God', to make things easier for my non-Jewish friends." "Do you usually where a skull cap? It's just I notice you aren't wearing one now." "Err, well mine's in the wash. But I always where it to temple. I don't wear it all the time. It keeps slipping off." You might be able to tell by this time I was getting a bit desperate.

I guess I must have lost the clip? Or something like that.

"So are your whole family Jewish?" Now I started to think if they talk to anyone else in my family, and they figure out that they aren't Jewish they will know I was lying. "Um, no. It's just me. My family are not practising. Just me. We're all Jewish but I am the only one who visits the synagogue." "Which synagogue do you go to?" My answer requires a little explaining. For reasons too convoluted to get into, a friend of mine had pretended to be Jewish (so there is something of a track record when it comes to falsifying faith) and had also been asked to which he went synagogue. He just replied "the one in Romford" - having no idea if there was one. Apparently there is, not that I have ever seen it. So I just copied his answer. "Oh yes, I know the one." Good job she did, because I didn't. "There's a Jewish festival coming up soon, isn't there?" "Oh, yeah I think you're right. I'd completely forgotten about that, I had better start getting ready for... it." As unconvincing as my blagging seems now apparently she completely bought it.

I could make a joke about how Christians are quite easy to fool but that would just be mean.

Finally she gave me some pamphlets and left. Now let's follow this thought process through. Either she really did respect the fact that I was(n't) Jewish, and decided to have an earnest discussion about the differences about our faiths - or she thought that by explaining how great Christianity is she might be able to convert a young Jewish man to Christianity. Does that seem likely? I mean really, how many Jewish people are going to go back on everything they believe and suddenly say "actually, yeah, Christ is the messiah"?

To be fair that group is in the US. The parameters for 'crazy' are way more strictly defined over there.

So that's what happened to me. In the end it could have gone a lot worse - or possibly better - if I had gone with my original idea. To tell them I was a Satanist.

Only Short

This won't be a long image-heavy post. I just thought I could write a little about what's been going on.

I have finally updated the boxes on the left - finally you can judge me again! There is a disappointingly small amount of albums I have bought - considering how many I want I'll have to wait until I have some money before I can do that. My recent posts have included images. I like blog posts with images. It breaks up the text, making it easier to read and helps the posts flow. I am still getting to grips with how I incorporate them into the content. It will probably be a long time before you see me attempt to put some of my own work in there - I am a terrible artist and not the "bad-in-a-funny-way" Allie Brosh can get away with. Just plain awful. Bear with me while I try to find the best way to combine images and text into a post that is somehow good to read.

You will also notice some AdSense stuff around the page - just ignore it for now - I am trying to get some stats about how many people read the blog, how many of those would click on the adverts. I am not the kind of person who actually clicks on the ads on webpages, so I would be interested to see who is.

Even though it has been requested that I don't review entertainment - I feel I have to comment on a few films I have seen. First of all: 12 Angry Men has just become one of my favourite films. The dialogue is engrossing, the characters are played to perfection and the plot plays out in such a well balanced way - you never feel patronised. Overall just a very, very good film which I would urge anyone to see. Apparently there are remakes of this film, I am talking about the 1957 original.

Also I am apparently surrounded by people who do not like Inception. So far their reasons have been flimsy to baseless. To me it is a great film, intelligent, moving and action-packed - I really couldn't see how anyone could dislike it. One reason was "it seemed a bit full of itself". To me it didn't seem at all pretentious. I can withstand a certain amount of pretension in a film if it is a good feature, but Inception never struck me as pretentious in the slightest. Another reason I have heard is "basically, the film is all about a man getting over the death of his wife. That is a girls' film." (I should point out that the person who said this is a male.) There is so much I don't understand about that statement it is breathtaking. First the is the "girls' film" bit - I think something is either good or bad, despite what demographic it is aimed at. Inception doesn't appear to be marketed to any one demographic - it's just a great film. There appears to be an assumption that a film's merit can be judged solely from the groups it will most appeal to. There also appears to be an assumption that any film that deals with feeling of love and loss is somehow a bad film. I really don't understand the argument, but I think that is just because it is a faulty argument rather than a review.

I also recently watched the film "Reel Injun", which is a history and analysis of portrayals of Native Americans in US cinema. It is an interesting piece, which has given me a few films to watch - such as "The Fast Runner", which can be obtained on a "pay-what-you-want" basis from the studio. How cool is that? I have also recently seen "Coraline". Coraline is a strange watch, it seems like a family-friendly film but it really is very creepy and scary (for an animated feature, anyway). You wouldn't want to show young children the images of people with buttons for eyes and a story about an evil being abducting a child and her parents. That said, a thoroughly enjoyable film.

At some point I must watch Kes - it is on the BFI's top 10 British films list - as it is widely acclaimed and appeals to me hugely from the synopsis. Yet more ways in which I can procrastinate before the big assignment hand-in on Friday. Sigh.

This short post has ended up being rather long, apologies. Maybe I'll post something halfway-decent soon. Or ever. Bye.

Whippersnappers

Time for another "curmudgeonly old man" post. I know you all love them. I get to vent my anger about something new and foreign to me and you get to enjoy my flowing, but vitriolic prose. It's win-win. So here we go: is it me or is pop music getting worse?

Pictured: the good old days.

I know the music industry is thriving (despite what the mainstream press may say). We are living in a music revolution, with more bands, more labels and more access to great music. I am slanted towards alternative and indie music, which has changed dramatically in my lifetime, but mainstream pop has only seen some small changes. It seems like only a little while ago people were talking about the "democratization" of music, how anyone could record a song and put it up on MySpace, for millions of potential fans to hear. Record companies could become irrelevant, due to digital distribution and low-cost, high-quality home recording equipment and software. That dream never really fully came to fruition, instead we have seen the inevitable march of music, it's evolution and amalgamation of styles. Sometimes this can be great. Sometimes it can be a monstrosity.

"Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I present to you Exhibit A. Exhibit A please stop grinding against the defence solicitor."

Over time new music genres emerge. These genres are then blended with other genres, creating new genres and new music. This can create some great music, because it means that songs and artists aren't "tied down" by the rules or expectations of one genre of music. Sometimes, however, a more cynical, analytical method can be used. By researching the most popular songs of the time, and identifying common elements, it is possible to extract the information necessary to create a song that, mathematically, has a high probability of success. I think science and maths is great, but to see it used for such a capitalist endeavour leaves me cold. There are elements we can see in today's charts that are common to all the big songs. "Big Euro synths" are popular, as are having a rapper featured on the track. I wouldn't say auto-tune is a part of this, quite literally, formulaic approach - it is just cheaper to record the vocals in a couple of takes and apply auto-tune than record 30 takes to get it perfect, editing them all together. I don't think I am some kind of conspiracy theorist: listen to the Top 40 and tell me it isn't all largely similar.

Okay maybe not 'largely similar'. 'Carbon copies of generic pop mulch' is more eloquent.

Something you may have noticed is that lyrics are quickly becoming much simpler. There is a swerve towards the sound of the lyrics being more important than their meaning. They still pretty much make sense, you won't find any esoteric, abstract word-poetry in a Black Eyed Peas song - but increased use of repetition and general move towards lyrics that, in some cases, a 13-year-old could write is particularly disturbing. You've probably seen the Rebecca Black video. Obviously it is awful, but I would ask if - aside from the glossier production and higher-budget music video - there is any real difference between "Friday" and "I Gotta Feeling"? Both exhibit lazy song writing and both are popular - people chose to view Rebecca Black's song as bad because it didn't quite tick all of the boxes of a modern pop song. The lyrics, perhaps, were too simple. But Black Eyed Peas resort to listing the days of the week and nobody bats an eyelid.

Pictured: the Black Eyed Peas' Offical Songbook

I suppose you could say that not all pop music is like that. And you would be correct. I am mindful of referring to "disturbing trends" that aren't really trends at all (the phrase gets used a lot in political discussions) but when I think back, the pop that I disliked in the 90s - by comparison - sounds Earth-shatteringly brilliant by today's standards.

And everybody did, indeed, get up.

I said before I am slanted towards the alternative music scene. I don't buy or listen to pop music. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a decent pop song. And there are some good tunes out there. It is just that record companies have figured out an equation for success and they will continue to use it as long as people continue to buy those singles. Because that is what pop music is really all about. Alternative musicians aren't bothered about single sales - most of them give MP3s of their latest single away on their website for free - but the pop industry thrives on it. It is their barometer for success and quality. Indie artists can make most of their money from live tours and album sales. With some indie artists you can buy the album directly from the artist, or through a portal that promises most of the money from the sale goes to the musicians. For pop musicians the album is just a collection of singles to be released. They aren't "records" in the true sense. The thing is I don't know anyone who actually buys singles - what is the point? - but there must be people who do, otherwise the charts wouldn't make any sense. I would like to see some analysis of the type of people who buy singles, where from, why, etc. For all we know the single charts are being manipulated by three 14-year-old girls.

Pictured: every single person who still buys singles.

Okay that's enough blathering. In conclusion this new music is just noise and you whipper-snappers need to listen to some proper music for a change. Now get off my lawn.

Everything Changes

So when it comes to change I am a hypocrite. I am all for change - why hold on to relics of the past? If it's broken give it a ruddy good fixing. This is for partially ideological reasons, but also because I like to believe in the relentless march of progress. With each version brings more efficiency, and greater outcomes. Unfortunately the most "the relentless march of progress" affects my life is when Facebook implements a slightly different layout.

"I cannot believe "Top stories" is default over "Most recent"! I fucking hate Facebook. Join my Facebook petition if you agree!"

I suppose that kind of thing doesn't matter all that much to me because I am more of a spectator on Facebook - I don't have thousands of friends and millions of photos. And that's not because I am a loner (although it is) but because I don't usually want to advertise my social life to everyone. Sure, I'll post a status update about some Youtube video I have found - but what is the point? Nobody really cares!

If ever you see me daydreaming, or it just seems like I am not really listening, and you wonder what is going through my head - it is this exact thing.

However something has changed that I really do care about - Firefox. I recently upgraded to Firefox 4. I was ready for the address bar being below the tab bar, but for some reason my home, stop and refresh buttons re-arranged themselves into some crazy configuration. Menu items re-arranged, I can focus on some things I wasn't expecting. Such as the weird transparency in the menu bar and tab area. I can sort of understand the change - in a "you know what would look cool?" kind of a way - but I don't understand why there isn't a checkbox or about:config setting to turn it off. Seriously, with my wallpaper it looks like crap. Thankfully I found a forum post that helped me to correct it. Create a file called "userChrome.css", in the folder "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\fahhwhja.default\chrome" - or whatever your equivalent is. Then copy and paste the following into that file:

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* set default namespace to XUL */

#toolbar-menubar {
-moz-appearance: -moz-win-browsertabbar-toolbox !important;
}

#TabsToolbar {
  background-color: -moz-dialog !important;
}

window, page, dialog, wizard, prefwindow {
  background-color: -moz-Dialog !important; }

Save the file, enjoy the difference. There is one more thing - the status bar isn't always shown by default. I like the status bar. Thankfully an extension is available that enables it again - Status-4-Evar. Despite the quite frankly rubbish name it does everything required, so you can enjoy Firefox again.

Well almost - you'll probably want a decent theme that is actually Firefox 4 compatible. MX3 is what I am currently using - it seems pretty good and unlike a lot of the themes of Mozilla.org isn't an assault on the eyes.

So I now finally have things looking as they should be - and am able to enjoy all the cool new features of Firefox 4. A lot of the new features appear to be to do with the interface - which I have now mostly disabled. But there is some neat speed enhancements, WebM-compatibility, app tabs, a bookmarks and history sync thingy and a load of other features that I probably won't use but will happily tell people all about.

After this nothing of a post I promise I'll get back to the Things That Are Nice/Shit series - once I actually think of something.

Shocked

Okay so today I log in to Blogger, just to take a little look around the layouts, check on a few things. Out of curiosity I click the 'Stats' button.

And my jaw hits the floor.

Maybe not exactly like this.

I have to double and triple check what I am seeing. However it does appear to be true. I have 657 page views. I know that doesn't sound impressive - loads of people get thousands of views on their blog. But this seems different. I consider this blog to be a bit of relief, some of the posts are really pretty dull. But 657 views? 404 people from the UK decided to look at one of my posts. And 168 from Denmark! 62 from the US! Now I know that those are "views" not unique people but even taking that into account I am astonished. Maybe this just means people will read anything.

Sure looks it.

What I find interesting is the different ways people have come to my site. 5 came from Twitter, one may be myself and some others my friends. I think that's how they found it. There's one from Facebook - I don't remember mentioning my blog so maybe someone mentioned it in a private message? One person appeared to be searching for "villacamp fib" on Google. 7 other searches were for authors of books that I have either read or are currently reading. It appears my most popular post is something that I considered a bit of filler before I started posting real content again. More Ramblings doesn't appear to me to be a very gripping post. But it does mention a then-newly-released film (Robin Hood), a then-months-old film (Where The Wild Things Are), a then-current cause (saving BBC 6 Music), 2 bands (Doves, Cherry Ghost), a music venue (Troxy) and 2 popular video games (Call of Duty and CS:S). I unintentionally wrote a search engine's dream. It makes me feel a little uneasy to consider trying to write posts that will get me page views. Too much pandering to the mainstream, man. Not underground enough.

I'm not worried about being too mainstream - I got 1 page view from just mentioning a Death Cab album.

However I am willing to give this whole "relevant" blogging thing a try. Which is why I have decided to do a blog post about Chris Brown's penis.

Not pictured: his penis.

Most people will know Chris Brown as "that guy that smacked Rihanna about". Some of you may know him as "the guy that's ripping off Calvin Harris' song". It now appears he has a new reason for people to know him. I have not seen Chris Brown's penis. But I am told that, if I were a penis connoisseur, I would be able to appreciate the subtle beauty of his member the same way an art critic would appreciate the evocative exquisiteness of a Van Gogh. I am told it is the sort of instrument that, if put to good use, could feed the starving, clothe the poor and bring about world peace. It is as stunning a totem as that seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Only with a bell-end attached to it.

I should make it clear the bell-end I am referring to is not, in fact, Chris Brown himself.

You would think that a man wielding such an impressively grandiose love slug would be in a permanent state of giddy happiness. But no, Mr Brown has a very troubled mind.

Which must be why there are an awful lot of pictures of him smiling like a psychopath.

I seem to remember reading that Chris Brown went on a morning chat show and was incredulous at having to answer questions pertaining to the aforementioned girlfriend-beating. He was so enraged that he fled the studio and voiced his annoyance on Twitter - wishing people would stop dragging up the past. And who are we to argue with this mighty being? We should be kneeling at his feet (not too close, though) and praying he does not unleash the awesome energy of his man cannon upon the earth, ravaging our planet and dooming us all to die from the misery Chris Brown has unleashed upon us.

The same effect can be achieved by listening to Chris Brown's latest single.

Indeed, Chris Brown is a very complicated and emotionally tortured man. Well, I say 'man'. Anyone who physically abuses a woman isn't really a man at all. No matter how big his penis is.