Not Much Really Of Interest

My source of inspiratrion somethingeveryday.co.uk is back in the virtual realms of quasi-existence; so long CRAZY DAVE! It's nice that I can finally direct you to it, but it's fairly obvious that what I'm actually doing is hoping that if anyone does go there from here, the folks at SomethingEveryDay will take note of this humble source of redirection and want me to write super awesome hilarious things for them in exchange for scraps (I live off bread crusts and my own toenails now). With that theory though, I seem to be under the impression that a lot of people come here in the first place which is, regrettably, so far from the truth it needs super-laser-vision to properly see an eye chart that looks something like this:

T

W O

P L U S T
W O I S F O U
R . . . D U M B A S S

So in my quest to drum up Internet traffic I begin doing stupid stuff that I find difficult to do, like, oh, I don't know, forcing myself to churn out a huge ramble once every day even if I have nothing to ramble about. Altogether, I end up babbling, like this what I am doing now, for no particular reason, other than to extend this particular sentence on and on and on and on and on a little bit further... and then some.

I should be used to being able to throw words at a blank space with relative ease by now; this time last month I spoke about my predicament of having to come up with over 8,000 of the multi-alphabetical buggars for the sake of assessment, which is really just another word for "so we know you haven't just wasted the last seven months of your, and our, lives listening to our knowledgeable stuff that you're not going to bother taking any notice of", which, incidentally (just because of its sheer length, boringness and mind-fucking complexity) could easily pass itself off as an essay question, if you're ever taking a course at University in Taking a Course at University.

However, it's a bit hit-and-miss when there's not much really of interest to even babble about, let alone rant. I suppose I could talk about the fact that my shopping endeavours took a little over one hour today, or the fact that I tried to dye bits of my hair purple so it would look like an orange and purple mess but instead looks blandly orange on the front and blindingly violet at the back, or even the fact that I had a cup of tea today. Unfortunately none of these events seem (to me, at least) remotely interesting, let alone moderately.

One thing that did worry me quite early on in the day (by which I mean within the first seven minutes of up-waking) was how the computer miraculously lost connection to the Internet: any student's and geek's worst nightmare. I had the same trouble literally the day before the first of the month (i.e. the last of last month) where I spent most of nine-and-a-half minutes on the corded telephone (I didn't know they still had those either) to the University's tech support, who couldn't resolve the problem. However, leaving the bloody machine switched off for four hours seemed to do the trick after one hour of relentlessly switching it off and on again, whilst wailing through frustrated tears about how it worked the last time I had it on. Luckily, this morning's techno-fuck-up lasted a mere forty-eight seconds and it was at this point I realised how specific I get with regard to timings.

However, I was going to mention this in the event of such disastrousness, but I think it would be far easier to alert the folks now that should my connectivity to this 'ere Web ever be a temperamental bitch to me again, I'll be forced to use the 3G-ness of my crappy-WAPpy phone with all the latest features at the height of 2007 to complete my daily onslaught here. In such an event, prepare for something that looks like this:

internets broke, so im stuck using the phone for this post. my god typing is boring, but i cant stand predictive. anyway, gonna go now cos its taken me seven hours to write that and im not sure i can be bothered fini

It's about this point in the day that I realised I'm doing weird centralised formats too.

No More Home Videos

It's a little bit surreal forcing yourself through tiredness, being directed to rolling news channels and watching a live address from the American president, so I guess it's just as well people don't capture and kill the world's most wanted terrorist leader every day. Yep, no more home videos from Osama bin Laden in this lifetime. What seems to be even more surreal is how seriously the Americans are taking this though. Al-Qaeda didn't just attack them; people were brutally taken out of existence in Kenya, Yemen, Madrid, even London (if you can be bothered to remember as far back as July 2005), but those streets are just normal today. I'm assuming that anyway since there's no media coverage of crowds around the London Underground. And why are there no crowds out in London? Because it's a fucking bank holiday, that's why! People don't want to spend this precious day off getting stuck in a mass crowd in the streets. Christ, it's bad enough dealing with the morning commute of any other day. That, plus we're all "mass-crowd"ed out from the Regal Union. The Americans are having their own mass gathering of Royal Wedding proportions on the streets today, though, just so they don't feel left out this long weekend, I guess.

Of course, Americans don't do things by halves. When they celebrate something, they go the whole hog and bring out the flags, the cameras and the mob mentality. Oh, and that mind-grating chant of "U-S-A" over and over, and I can't help feeling that without the Pakistani intelligence they received, they wouldn't even be celebrating today in the first place. If anything, they need to modify that tri-syllabled "U-S-A" chant to include "Pa-ki-stan", while Michael Jackson leads the afterlife celebratory movement with "This-is-it" and Janice from Friends shouts "Oh-my-God".

Nevertheless, I can't help feeling all this celebration will horribly backfire looking at the bigger picture. I mean, this man was the head of a terrorist organisation but all he really did is give the orders and make rubbish videos. Meanwhile, it was the groups of followers who were the ones to force their way into cockpits and kit themselves up with self-explosives. Those followers are still alive and I'm guessing they's gonna be reet pissed off a bit that their leader's been killed. If the Americans had captured bin Laden alive, he'd at least be in exile or whatever (I'm not that clever with politics), but the fact that they've killed him outright and declared his corpse to the world means there ain't no going back on it now. I'm all for justice and peace and everything, but I can't see this being the end; if anything, this is a horrible new beginning.

Going back to the celebrations in Washington and New York, I can't help feeling the Americans are drawing far too much attention to themselves and practically just asking for trouble, but right now they're acting too wrapped up in their own bubble to realise that even though the leader's gone, there are still followers and, if anything, they'll be wanting to avenge his death. Even though in the long run, what we essentially have is a small organisation vs. the rest of the world in the humanity stakes, we've seen what those guys are capable of doing to us "rest of the world" folks and I'm just hoping that should there be a 'next time', it won't be as catastrophic as previous attacks.

Osama bin Laden's life may be over, but there's a scarily massive potential for a whole new wave of destruction beginning. In other words, America: CALM THE FUCK DOWN!

"Once A Day" Is Far Too Often

Well, I said I would, but evidently my brain didn't mean it. Here's the first of (what is intended to be) 31 entries of this month. Of course, I can't promise I'll stick to it, or even remember, since my brain/body/entire existence will most likely get annoyed after Day 2 and loudly proclaim that "once a day" is far too often. But therein lies the challenge, I guess.

Yes, I decided to make myself write stuff in here every day for the whole of May because I saw some other website have the idea, only for it to go down mere days before so I can't really cite it or redirect ye to it without ending up a page named "Crazy Dave's Crazy Domain Names 4 Sale... DOT COM". Anyway, I decided to give myself a limit (because I always tend to ramble on for an unspeakably stupid amount [like this {hey! more brackets within brackets!}]) so as to stop me from pointlessly going over the 1,000 word mark. So 750 is the benchmark for the next (potential) 31 of these 'ere thingys, some of which will probably go nowhere even near there, like this one for example. Can you tell I'm waffling and using random words like 'domain' and 'pointlessly' and 'the' to just pad this out? I tell you what, it really feels like it. It's pretty much what I've done with essay writing where I deliver everything in about three times as much space as I could've done just by talking normally, meaning that theoretically some very learned, educated, professional-type person could edit my essays down to a paragraph and a half, and fill the rest of the time with a very eloquent and perfectly executed bowel movement or ten. Speaking of which, my essays are pretty much done now.

I did actually think these finishing touches would take me whole days to do, but a combination of still looking at them when I've written them all out and the big glass rectangle of BLINDING COLOURED LIGHTS is distracting me terribly. By that, of course, I do mean the television, but one could easily be mistaken for thinking of my westerly-facing window in these increasingly longer Spring evenings, as the slowly setting sun makes its way towards the horizon RIGHT OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW!!! I suppose it's nice that for literally an hour before sunset my room is just bathed in a brilliant orange, but the fact that the object of my distractions is right next to said window means torture for my retinas and frustration for my brain as it tries to work out what coloured snooker balls are left on the overhead-angled table.

Come to think of it, it's a bit ironic having my window onto the imaginary world right next to my window to the real world; almost like the rest of my room being so boring that one single side of it provides so much outlet to interesting...ness.

Ooop, here I go. Brain's dying. Fingers... failing. Words making less ond luss sornse. Blarrbl blehhbl, juccoriba word count of about five hondrod und something. Gunner go be-four Brian gives owt in-tyre-lee.

One down...

The Royal Overkill

At the time of writing this, it is exactly 22 hours before apparently a third of the entire human population sits down, shuts up, and simultaneously stares at the magic picture-generating rectangle in the corner of the room (or the ceiling if you're one of those people from flatscreen adverts who lie in bed without the ability to crane their necks slightly upwards). Nobody's actually aware of it, what with all this hush-hush over one of the biggest TV events of, like, you know, ever... that is, of course, in any country that isn't Britain. In Britain, however, the results of a solid month of the Royal Overkill are about to come to fruition. Let's face it, anyone who hasn't heard of tomorrow's matrimonial ceremony is either (a) dead, (b) dead, or (c) comatose on the brink of death.

It's gotten to the point that people in the hypothetical realm of Facebook have taken to their blue-text abusing, third-party "like" sites to express how little they care about the latest member of the monarchy to sign his life away 'til death. Then again, the kind of people who really get into the obscene amount of random "likes" pretty much reaffirm my view of them as an en masse flock of idiots who read something as banal as "liek dis if you wake up and look at your alarm clock and go OMG cant be botherd today, FML FML FML" and instantly think to themselves 'ohmigod, I soooo do that!!!'

(I would like to use these brackets as an opportunity to stress the en masse description of such people as I do know people on Facebook [i.e. pretty much most of them] who do this and I would like to keep friends and not insult anyone's intelligence. Having said that, if any of you are reading this and your intelligence has been insulted, then might I suggest you go make a "dont you just hate it wen you get caled stupid and your rly not" link for other idiots to join you... with those exact spelling mistakes! Oh, and for the unitiated, "FML" is widely regarded as "fuck my life" which may seem a bit extreme considering the overall unimportance of the tiniest niggling issues not remotely having any affect on a person's life in general, but then again, we are dealing with people who can't tell the difference between "your" and "you're", and I mean if that was me I'd probably just stop altogether. [Oh my, those were some long brackets.])

Anyway, it's understandable that people in Britain probably don't give much of a crown jewel about the main event and are probably more excited about the live edition of Don't Tell The Bride later on in the evening. Just as well, chances are it'll be much more hilarious to see a happy couple get wed in a ceremony in the foyer of the Heineken factory in three-and-a-half minutes, where the bride produces enough tears to hold off a hose-pipe ban this summer and the groom swaggers about squinting, unsure if the woman in the big white dress is the same woman he asked to marry him. However, people around the world probably haven't had this kind of overkill, and if they have, they probably love it. Take the Americans, for example. They'll eat up anything regarding the affairs of the Royal Family over on this side of the pond, but then again, they'll generally eat up anything. But we Brits, as a people, manage to suck the living optimism out of anything and everything we can. Let's not forget, this is pretty much one of the biggest planned events in this still very young century; we're practically living through history right now. In the many years to come when people will ask 'where were you when the Royal Wedding happened?' and it'll be looked back upon with fond nostalgia, which I suppose is somewhat better than reminiscing over 'where were you when September 11 happened?' ...unless, of course, you're one of al-Qaeda.

I totally agree that the preparations for tomorrow's hoo-ha have been long drawn out and shoved down our throats so much that people are actually starting to crap out their own tongues, but regardless, we people should actually be looking forward to it with a cautious vague interest. After all, let's suppose, hypothetically, that the Queen, Prince Phillip, Charles, Camilla, William, Harry or your own choice of Royal affiliate falls onto the table with the wedding cake on, catapults it into the head chorister's face, the rest of the choir follow his lead chanting 'Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy...' down the aisle of Westminster Abbey, David Beckham starts clapping like a seal because he thinks it's a circus and Philip Schofield - in a disastrous scheduling mix-up - thinks he's presenting The Cube and demands to see a 360-degree Matrix-style shot of the wedding cake mid-flight. Just think in all those decades to come people will ask 'where were you at the Royal Fuck-up?'

I suppose everyone is aware of the scale of it though, and that everyone knows that they're ready to witness history in the making, but the build-up really has been too much and unnecessary. I guess, at least, that's what gives people that excuse-by-proxy for not liking something. This event is pretty much going be everyone's guilty pleasure where we say 'oh my God, this is so boring, what else is on' but secretly inside we're all screaming to ourselves 'I wish everyone would shut up so I can watch this!' It's exactly the same sentiment I've had (and therefore automatically assume other people have) with the likes of Masterchef and Eurovision.

The first of these I've mentioned before when I horribly likened Gregg Wallace's visual appearance to that of a baked potato, while I couldn't find anything interesting to say about the other one so just called him "an Australian man". I've now come to realise that they are, in fact, the human embodiments of Dr. Honeydew and Beaker of The Muppets, with Gregg being the baldy bloke with the big glasses and the other one being so dull that the internal censor in my brain automatically blanks out his speech with a high-pitched "mee-mee, muh-muh-mee-mee-mee". Anyway, it's over now, and the American-who-wants-to-be-Japanese bloke won it, so it you've been following it and haven't had the chance to catch up yet, might I introduce a spoiler alert about seven seconds ago. The other so-bad-it's-good guilty pleasure I assume nobody will ever admit to is Eurovision, with which I've become increasingly fascinated by over the years of technological development in the Digital Age (who knew that places like Latvia and Armenia were capable of epic light-shows?) but I'll probably come back to that next month, if I can be bothered. As far as I'm aware, this is the first post of April!

I've pretty much been busy for the last month contending with copious amounts of coursework (apparently this University wants to assess my knowledge before giving me a degree) and having my head royally stuffed with Kate Middleton's wedding planner. However, to make up for lost words, I've decided to grab hold of the idea of the website SomethingEveryDay (which is currently down, but can be found on Facebook here) where people produce... well... something every day. It first caught my attention when my former poetry tutor was made to write poems (quite possibly at gunpoint, but highly unlikely) every day for the whole month of February, and while I don't really check up on the happenings of SomethingEveryDay every day, I'd like to take the idea and at least attempt to make a blog post every day for the whole month of May. That's the plan anyway.

Then afterwards you can complain about my incessant ramblings as much as the wedding preparations.

Oh, Brother!

It's true. It's all true (apparently) that everyone's favourite 24-hour nothing-fest Big Brother shall be returning to tellyboxes everywhere just a mere twelve months after its self-proclaimed 'last edition ever!'

I think the main thing I should point out with this is that it's being resurrected on Channel Five: TV's dumping ground, the long-lost cousin of entertainment (I mean have you seen some of their output, like The Wright Stuff and Live From Studio Five? I haven't! But I have watched clips of each and desperately wanted to reach for the nearest katana or at least a length of sharpened lead piping, just so I could perform the Japanese ritual of Seppuku, right there in front of the TV).

According to the Daily Star (scoff, snort, scoff): 

"It will still have things like the Diary Room. The show's format will also stay the same so fans don't have to worry. It will still be the same programme that they've all grown to love over the years but with a bigger, brighter and sexier future."

Oh, brother! The simple minds of the public glaring into the magic, midget window in the corner shall not be sent into submission with grand changes, but they shall be fed with more manipulated twaddle about the boring, closed-off-from-reality happenings (ironic for a 'Reality' show to remove people from reality) of a handful of attention-seeking wannabes: half of whom will realise they can't hack it and walk out (you know, when thousands of others would've preferred to be there in their place) and the other half desperate to exploit themselves in front of millions so they could probably get a magazine deal afterwards. Far be it for me to judge - I am, after all, just a mere one in the approximate 61 million UK dwellers - but I found Big Brother to be quite interesting back in its heyday. The premise: take 10-12 people from all walks of life, put them in a monitored solitary confinement facility and watch them react to one another. Will they befriend each other? Fight each other? Compliment? Clash? It's an interesting psychologial experiment, I think. Over time, though, it evolved into a mad desperate rush to see if anyone would have sex or beat each other up or resort to cannibalism or something. And lo, people stopped living their own lives and began feeding off the lives of people they could see inside the telly instead.

Not surprisingly, Channel Five (or "five" or "5" or whatever they call themselves these days [message to Channel Five: Have you considered rebranding your channel as "The Dumping Ground"?]) want to get some young sexy thing to front the show in the absense of Davina. How about, someone like... oh, you know... Cheryl Cole? (You know, that one who's famous for being that one from Girls Aloud. What about the rest of Girls Aloud? Oh, they're too busy not being famous for being the other ones from Girls Aloud.) That's not a question posed by me though. That is actually who they're trying to line up for the part. I can't help but find it extremely surreal that every Friday night the country will be treated to renditions of "Big Brutha house, it's Cheral he-yah. Are ya all alreet? We're live on channal five, reet. Noo swearin'." etc. I somehow feel she'd be much more suited to the narration of the daily highlights shows since we're used to a Geordie voice telling us what people are doing as we're watching it, and as we've already explored, you can't change too much or people's simple brains will boil in their head and explode all over the place. At least this way, people might just mistakenly think that Marcus Bentley's had a sex change, or at least caught his balls in a vice.

I think the worst part in all of this comes from how our summers are affected. There was a time (although I don't remember it any more) when summer was a season of staying outdoors, enjoying time with fellow humans with whom we establish friendships, water fights, casual drinking and general merriment. Although, ever since Big Brother came along, summers have become filled with staying in, watching the TV and following the lives of the people on it as they enjoy time with fellow humans, establish friendships, have water fights, drink excessively and generally fuck about... because they can. We, as a people, had just got our summers back following the demise of Big Bro on Channel 4, and this, the first of those summers, is about to be cruelly snatched away by the same thing that took them from us in the first place.

I blame you, Channel Five! (or The Dumping Ground, as you are now known if you've heeded my advice from earlier on.) Still, I suppose now people will actually be watching the channel for once.

An Evaluation Of Myself

There are times when this place goes deserted for weeks on end, and there are times when I essentially become a writing whore. I feel I'm currently in a period of the latter.

This has pretty much been brought on by a couple of reasons: 1) because I've been reading other ranty-writery stuff (which I'll get back to more in a minute) and 2) because I've got stuff to rant about, all screaming inside my head that it's wanting so much to burst forth and set itself free onto the world to the point that I'm (I'M!) worried for my own mental state... and that's actually saying something when I'm the one worrying about somebody's sanity.

Mostly, I'm bothered by the realisation that I have a mere five more weeks left to get cracking with the four biggest assignments of the year. And sure, five weeks is, like, over a month. It's easily done and blah blah shitting-blah, but you seem to forget... I'M A GOOD BOY! I like to do my work on time and make sure I don't leave everything to the last minute (and I mean that in a literal sense, since I'd undoubtedly struggle trying to shit out a grand total of 8,000 words in sixty seconds without having to resort to the ol' copy-n-paste method, which, quite frankly is more than tempting in the Age of Wikipedia we are so firmly embedded in right now).

Altogether, I'm finding myself taking deep, soothing, self-patronising breaths in between the thoughts of an original short story (1,000 words), a study of the 1974 film Chinatown with regards to film theories and other such shite (2,500 words), trying to explain how the American 'let’s-answer-his-question-with-another-question' Lord Of The Flies-esque programme Lost can be described as a "Quality Drama" (2,500 words) and a, quote, self-evaluation on myself and my progress over the year with regards to being a writer (2,000 words). For that last one, however, it's just occurred to me that should this post happen to come near that amount (which is more than likely with all the crap swimming around in my head right now, seriously my fingers are tapping away so quickly they won't stop for air, but that's OK; fingers don't breathe [I was going to say that the rate they were typing was 'fast and furious' but decided against it because a) it's clichéd and b) it just goes to show how much my brain has been permeated by endless repeats of Catchphrase on Challenge {right at this moment, I have Roy Walker's Irish tones telling me "it's fast, it's furious, it's the Ready Money Round!" while my brain conjures up images of Mr. Chips tap-dancing on a mountain of animated gold coins}]. Wow! See, I might actually get up to 2,000 words after all!), I could always just submit this as an evaluation of myself. Pretty damn accurate, too.

Furthermore, I need to give a presentation in, well, technically two days since it's gone midnight and it's Sunday now. This presentation shall look into the workings of a writer of non-fiction, meaning that I've spent the last week-and-a-half or more reading through almost anything and everything written by columnist Charlie Brooker. Naturally, I'm in ranty polemic mode as a side-effect and can only apologise now if I happen to make any references to people "shitting pine cones", coming across as overly sociopathic or ending this whole thing with a sign-off like 'now, go away.' The worst part of this is that I need to formulate all of the knowledge inside my head (and Wikipedia) into some kind of a 5-minute presentation-slash-speech-slash-jittering at the front of the class desperately telling myself not to pee my pants, all within the next two days.

Now, it's at this point I could point out that all the other big assignments I've done, I've managed to knock out in two days (or in the case of the last presentation, a single afternoon... and even that was interrupted by Family Guy and chips) and managed to get respectable marks for each one of them; and no wonder really, judging by some of the crap I've seen other people churn out. Like I said, I'm a good boy; I may rush the work but at least I'll do it properly. So I suppose I could, you know, not worry too much about the 8,000-word mountain I've yet to scale, but instead leave it 'til a week or two before the due dates and lock myself inside a darkened room with only the necessary literature and a restricted access to the Internet, which would admittedly give me more time right now to procrastinate.

One such feat of procrastination as of late being my rediscovery of the great oft-overlooked sketch-com Green Wing, which I have, in fact, spent days lying in bed re-watching the whole thing from start to finish, praising the fact that they didn't ruin it by going on any longer, yet cursing the fact that it didn't go on any longer thus bringing more laughs, and the fact that there's been nothing like it since.

Well, dang me britches (whatever the hell 'britches' are, anyway) for only just recently I've come across the news that a brand new show by the same writing folk, by the name of Campus, premiered as a pilot just over a year ago and is coming the tellywaves sometime in the coming weeks. And to have a Green Wing-style comedy with a name like Campus, you wouldn't be far wrong in assuming it might feature an ensemble cast in a University setting. I managed to hunt down this pilot earlier thanks to the miracle of 4OD (well, technically 4OD on YouTube since real 4OD refuses to show me the stuff I desire to watch) and while it's not exactly the same as Green Wing, it's a nice stupid and surreal substitute that can keep us going for a while. What I'm finding spectacular, though, is that the whole notion of me re-watching it whilst in University coincides with a new similar series set in University, and just seems to scream out to me that this is a sign that was meant for me and only me like nobody else in the world actually matters at all. This has also prompted me to start thinking of winning the lottery non-stop for the next week, until come Friday afternoon, I pop down and get a lucky dip and just play the waiting game until Saturday night when I eventually go from plebeian student to "rollin'-in-da-moneyz'.

Chances are, however, that only one weird miracle coincidence is meant to happen to me this decade and it's just been assigned to me in the form of television, and my inevitable lottery win is actually barely probable at all. So instead, I'll just have to bum off student loans and what essentially amounts to glamourised slave-work in some kind of retail institution or another to make some kind of financial gain in this life, all the while trying to convince myself I can "make it" as a writer doing stuff like this, but chances are that anyone who started reading this seven hours ago got lost somewhere around Catchphrase and has withered and died, leaving a skeletal corpse in Mr. Chips' money pile or something.

Also, I regret to announce that all of the above is just a load of time wasted and, in turn, future time wasted as I don't have the 2,000 words to submit as a serious assignment (it's just as well really looking back over half of this – sleep deprivation doesn't half do some dodgy stuff to my head) so will have to actually have a think about what I do want to spend 2,000 words saying and spend time typing them all out in some kind of coherent order, and all this thought of wasted time is really just depressing me now. Go away.

Now! 58 - Tsunami Special

Ever have one of those moments where your brain breaks down and ends up kneeling in the middle of an abandoned car park at night in the pouring rain with both arms out screaming an impossibly long "NO!" as the crane shot slowly zooms out and pans upwards?

That's exactly a moment what I had when I heard about plans for (and I'm being deadly serious here) a Japan charity LP. Artists like Rihanna, Lady PhoneHead and Just-a Haircut would be featuring on an album to raise proceeds for the disruption in Japan thanks to a very nasty and rude earthquake under the Pacific Ocean right next to the Japanese coast (just in case you hadn't heard). Well, we've seen these charity songs and albums before; they generally consist of big name rich musical stars taking time out of their busy schedules to record two-and-a-half lines of Everybody Hurts or whatever, ultimately making what is essentially a shite cover version with the intention of giving the proceeds to some disaster or another that's in the news. The problem I have with these charity things doesn't just amount to that fact that we've suddenly got a crap version of a classic song suddenly in the media's attention being overplayed to the point it makes your ears want to crawl off, but that all of this could be easily avoided if those celebrities were to stop preaching to us poor folk about how we should "dig deep and give even though financial times are tough" and, oh I dunno, just inject their own inexplicable fortunes into whatever cause they've been told to yabber on about.

The origin of all this came from the, quite frankly classic, Do They Know It's Christmas? for Band Aid, created in an attempt to bring Africa out of poverty, and probably let them know what it's like to have snow since they don't get it at Christmas time (or ever, for that matter). It's become a classic not just for the fact that it's a Christmas song but iconic as it brought together musicians trying to do something decent for a good cause. But ever since then, the same song has been revived by two (not one, two!) different collections of whoever's current at the time. Somehow this has diminished the value of it all while the song still remains listenable to, even if only for the way Dizzee Rascal added some extra rappy bits (cos he's fly and ting, or something).

The problem I have with the 'charity single', though, is that lately it's virtually become more of a preachy cover song by whoever's current and available at the time and wants to look like they care. And more often than not it's orchestrated by someone like Simon friggin' Cowell. Way back in the depths of fifteen months ago, Haiti was struck with a soul-crushing earthquake that left many people homeless and clinging to life. In the following weeks, our ears were violated by every-fucking-body under Cowell's guidance and Jon Bon Jovi (for some reason) bleating out a rendition of the classic R.E.M. track that could drive any miserable old fucker out of this realm and into the ethereal whateverness that lies beyond.

Furthermore, to add insult to injury (quite literally), ol' square-hair's had the brainwave of getting each year's X Factor contestants (most of whom can't fucking sing at the best of times) to cover some shit or other vaguely related to war amputees, presumably because a Glee Cast-esque "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-etc." rendition of Don't Stop Believin' might be deemed inappropriate when accompanied with the montage of people who've had various bits severed off them all in the name of oil serving one's country.

Why do the rich folk of the bigger industries - who I imagine lounge around in one of their twelve L.A. beach condominiums made of diamond encrusted gold bricks and have a box of fifty's in the bathroom instead of toilet paper - preach to the factory workers, checkout operators and dole-ites of the world to give their money to a charitable cause? Surely it would be easier if they just did it and didn't inflict such crimes against sound (not even music, sound) upon the world. Two birds, one hypothetical murdering implement.

Anyway, enough of that rant, because while the 'charity singles' are created for specific causes, this recent LP to raise money for getting Japan back on track (somehow) actually consists of no special track in particular, but is instead a compilation album of songs that you could get anywhere else anyway! There's the usual suspects: Lennon's Imagine, Foo Fighters' My Hero, and Elton's Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me but even they're stretching it a bit in terms of relevance to a mahoosive natural disaster. So, could someone please explain to me how the fucking hell Rihanna's Only Girl In The World, Pink's Sober and Use Somebody by Kings Of Leon constitute as relevant tracks for something called Songs For Japan... cos I frickin' gagged when I saw the tracklist. If you'd like to gag/laugh/cry/sit-open-mouthed/shake-your-head-and-tut at the full thing, click this bit o' purple. Maybe I've slipped into some parallel universe where things just aren't supposed to make sense anymore, but the whole thing read less like a charity CD and seems more like a Now! 58 - Tsunami Special.

Or maybe it's a case of playing each song in reverse to hear the secret hidden messages telling you to "give every penny you have" and "fellate Simon Cowell" (yeah, I still don't like the fucker).

I Don't Really Have A Drink-Of-Choice Anymore

I can tell I'm getting on a bit when my first night involving alcohol after three weeks of "I'm-financially-fucked" sobriety consists of half a bottle of Rosé (11.5%). Somehow this managed to take me into that special realm where shouting is the communication method of choice and actions have no consequences. Cue next morning with a throat that tastes like stale trees and an overwhelming urge to piss, and all I keep thinking is I'M ONLY TWENTY-ONE!

But then, maybe twenty-one is the age where things need to be toned down and "grown-up". After all, I'm well past the normal age for youngsters going out and getting off their tits on White Lightning and Special Brew. This particular generation seems to have been one in which the typical going-out age has declined rapidly. By that I mean that when I was thirteen, people didn't drink and party until they were at least twenty-three, yet now all the fourteen-year-olds are becoming fully qualified adults drinking everything, taking E and sprogging-'em-out like there's no tomorrow, all in the name of child benefit. In fact, it's got to the point now where I feel like such a failure at this age for not being a grandparent with liver failure. Instead I'm a typical student, supposed to be livin' it up and ting, getting wasted off my face and sleeping in 'til 2pm with a head that feels like one of them Masterchef contenders has taken a whisk to my brain to create a cannibal-scrambled-egg-special.

To be honest, though, I've been steering clear of the funny juice for reasons including lack of monetary funds... but you knew that already and quite frankly I'm sick of talking (writing) about being poor as I am sick of being poor. Not only that though; I've been a bit wary of certain drinks-of-choice that I don't really have a drink-of-choice anymore:

• Strongbow made it so I'd never have a healthy bowel-movement again; it's been months since I last touched the stuff and I'm still ejecting parts of my intestines what-ought-not to have been ejected anyway. Also it tastes bad.

• Bottles of WKD, VK, and other letters of the alphabet are supposed to be the staple of a student night out, but MMU Cheshire SU (more letters) hasn't got the memo about that. So while most Universities in the country flog 'em for a quid a pop, they end up robbing us of more pennies than a normal pint would. In fact, screw the country! It's like that in institutions the world over. Even in American fraternity and sorority houses, they're getting sugared-up and whacked-out for next to nothing in kappa-delta-theta (Greek letters).

• I'm even wary of the mix of vodka and any high-energy drink (for legal reasons I wish not to state any particular brands, but common ones tend to rhyme with Dead Dull, Contentness, and Asda’s own Blue Charge). This stems back to some pseudo-scientific rumour I heard a while back; since vodka (alcohol [a depressant]) slows down your heart rate and energy drinks (high in caffeine) make your heart go insanely fast, a mix of the two together causes the heart to get depressed and hyperactive at the same time, getting monumentally confused in the process, screaming, crying, giggling and ultimately not knowing what to do until it explodes in a fit of violent rage. Failing that, it reaches a point where it can no longer understand its purpose in life and takes a pistol from its breast pocket and fulfils its vow to "end it all" straight through the left ventricle.

So I've not been drinking for a while (except for last night, which, as you might've already gathered, is the reason for this bastard of a rant), mostly because I can't but also because I don't want to. I'm showing my age now (in this state of times, at least) by complaining about why anyone would ever want to wake up with a throat full of regret, the body of a sauna and a brain swimming in its own juices. That, plus I can't see the appeal in having your vital internal organs turn all bi-polar on yo ass.

Then again, if Charlie Sheen's taught us anything, they'd be bi-winning bi-taking-us-out-of-this-hell-hole.