Cynical Britain

I recently had my eyes opened to a problem that has been persisting for far too long. I want to upgrade my computer, but if you want to swap out the motherboard you have to buy Windows again. I also want to put Microsoft office on my laptop. The former is about £80 at it's cheapest. The latter can cost around £70 for each separate program amongst it.  These prices are insane given that we have come to regard access to computers as a right, rather than a privilege. And when free alternatives exist that are in many ways as good as, if not better than the real thing, it's no suprise that many people opt to simply pirate the programs. Why should I be forced to add another 40% onto the cost of my upgrade when I already bought an operating system at astronomical cost?

Microsoft's refusal to budge on prices makes no sense. In an age of electronic entrepreneurship, when competition from Apple (who are admittedly much worse on lavish overpricing) and people prepared to produce fully-working products and distribute them for free, surely Microsoft's policy should be to open up the floodgates and allow people on any budget to buy into their corporate family. Evidence from digital distribution services shows that lower prices convince many more people to buy a product (Steam sales have even gone so far as products at half-price selling 32 times more copies), and given that software does not have a manufacturing cost per unit made, it's insane that they are willingly putting off so many customers.

In the end, it's probably just the strength of brand recognition and the lack of public knowledge that is carrying Microsoft. I'll probably buy Windows 7 because that brand alone allows me to play my collection of games. And the regular joes who have more pressing issues than to pay attention to technology will probably keep buying PowerPoint and Word because they're unaware of the free open-source alternatives. This doesn't seem like a particularly honest way to run a business. I make a point of buying games from BioWare and Valve because I admire their commitment to the customer. Microsoft on the other hand don't even bother to admire their customer's commitment to them.

I like to think of myself as a fairly simple person. Hopefully not with the connotations that usually brings, but instead that I try not to have underhanded motives, be nice to everyone and say yes to pretty much everything. I don't try and create an air of mystery around myself, nor do I mind when other people make a mistake or otherwise act human. It's weird then that we often find complex people attractive, and simple people just a bit boring. Maybe if everyone was simple, relationships would just work out great and nobody would have to go through some insane game of pre-requisites to get there. But perhaps we look for a challenge in these things. We don't value things that are easy to get as much; therefore the impossible is priceless.

I like the little things,

her loud opinions and dancing in rings

She’ll never be mine, my voice cannot shine

When I’m trapped in a corner, he reasoned.

 

But then came a change, her attention in range

Of a well placed cupid shot fumbled more often than not,

And so to the next season, this was a time for reason.

 

Mocked by a man when I did what I can,

Every taunting made her more vocal, an alliance of the local;

I can’t help but wish well on that guy, what a curse to by shy,

I’m out of her league, he reasoned.

 

A spark of common ground, explored relentlessly round and round,

But if both felt the same then neither would risk shame,

And so to the next season, this was a time for reason.

 

And so our destinies were revealed, a surprise move afield,

Yet the chatter was stronger than ever, passionate and clever,

Directed at all but each other, a loveless dialogue of sister and brother.

I’ll be gone in four weeks, he reasoned.

 

But nothing else can compare, from the depths of despair,

The curse of silence brings upon yourself violence,

This was the time for reason. A pity, he reasoned.

As a young adult I feel I have to step up and defend the so-called "lost generation" of young Cannabis users detailed in your Calls for Cannabis drug tests in schools story of June 28th.

I do not think that children should use Cannabis, but passionately believe over 18's have a right to. Much like drinking and smoking cigarettes, two pastimes that living in a free country allows us, smoking marijuana should be the person's choice and is given a much worse press than it deserves. 260 children may have been admitted to hospital due to cannabis related-illnesses over 5 years, but just think how much worse the figures for alcohol are - and apart from that, booze leads to the death of thousands per year. Cannabis has never led directly to the deaths of more than a few dozen people. In addition, there is definitively no such thing as Cannabis addiction or dependency. The brain can be tricked into wanting more of it, much like ice cream or Pringles, but the amounts of marijuana required for this would be astronomical. And again, alcohol has a much worse effect in this field.

It is not a drug that owns the user like Cocaine or Heroin, but instead brings joy among friends, and helps people appreciate the things we have that really matter; love, friendship, well-cooked food, and comfort. I am acquainted with a family where both parents are suffering from genetic terminal diseases, who use Cannabis to ease the pain as well as live out their remaining time in happiness.

As Peter Tosh sang in 1975, legalizing Marijuana is the best thing you could do. As well as destroying the lucrative trade among unsavory dealers who thoroughly decent cannabis users are forced to buy from, it would allow  to be more carefully studied, controlled (to reduce the potency of 'skunk') and prevent it from being cut down with horrific mixers such as tiny glass baubles that dealers use to increase the weight of packages. Add to that a generous luxury goods taxation and the government could make back the billions paid out to bankers. I may get a mental illness from Marijuana in the end - but I'm sure an oppressive exam-driven school system, a materialistic and shallow society, and one health scare after another will do the job much more effectively.

J R, Manchester

I've always felt that being into nerdy, niche-appeal stuff is pretty detrimental, socially. When everyone else around you is discussing x-factor or coronation street, I can't chip in with an anecdote about this totally awesome platforming section I played on Prince of Persia, nor do I have any frame of reference for the stuff everyone else is interested in. But then, I wonder if quitting games, spending all my time on the internet etc would make me any better. In the end, school or broad topics of life is all I can talk to some people about. That, or bitching about people, which can backfire in many ways. But how much can a man change based on what he spends his time doing?

I get the feeling that if I were to start watching Hollyoaks and get into Peter Kay, I'd still be the same person; just doing something I hate. And all the knowledge I'd gain about crap on TV would outweigh the benefits of being able to perform idle small-talk.

Now, this game is one that has been reviewed very positively by critics but also inspires a lot of groans from the gaming community. In America it's known as Indigo Prophecy, so renaming it Fahrenheit for Europe is a fairly inexplicable choice on the part of the publishers - unless of course, their intention is to divide the West, starting with misunderstandings in forum threads about the game.

The premise of the game that it's a cinematic experience. This is somewhat misleading, as i felt Max Payne was a cinematic experience despite being nothing like Fahrenheit. Indeed, one could argue that Metal Gear Solid 4 was a cinematic experience, if only because the majority of the game was spent watching cutscenes. The game is distinctly last-gen, but I'm playing it on the PC, and the game definitely benefits from being in HD, although there's an annoying film grain effect on at all times. Also there's a limited selection of supported resolutions, and no widescreen - so if you have a 16:10 monitor, don't buy unless you know how to scale it to your panel's native resolution. The game's graphics run smootly though on any gaming hardware bought in the last two years, but some of the character models don't look too improved from the PS2 version. In terms of last-gen ports, it looks a lot better than titles like Beyond Good & Evil, but you'll still find yourself giggling at the virtual David Cage's lip-syncing in the tutorial.

Now, I have a dilemma in reviewing this title. There are parts of the game that are so original and thrilling that about 10 minutes in I was already expecting the game to be a 95% candidate. However, as you get further in, it's almost as if the developers simply lose their impetus to make a good game and instead decide turn it into a generic point-and-click adventure. The writing team too seem to have got bored about two hours in. Instead of dreaming up a many-layered conspiracy which you have to evade whilst learning about them (as promised on the box), you instead discover (no shit) it's some aztec shaman who hypnotises people.

Now I do have to mention the bits in which you're genuinely crapping your pants trying to cover up your actions or hide from the police. The first of these is right at the start of the game, and although the controls take some getting used to, you genuinely feel like someone who's got themselves into a pickle and are trying to desperately get out and salvage as much as you can - and the split screen cinematic gameplay is incredible in these parts.

Unlike a lot of people I've never really had a problem with 'quick-time events', in which you tap a button at the right time to not die. However, this game seems to have decided that playing like this, which is usually just reserved for a 20 second sequence in God of War, is in fact superior to traditional gameplay. In this respect, the game plays very much like a point-and-click adventure combined with an awful simon-says button matching mechanic. The game gets worse and worse at this as you go on, with some levels consisting entirely of this simon-says gameplay, including one (ripped off from The Matrix) fight scene in which you have to match these buttons for about 6 minutes, and more than 3 screw ups means you have to repeat it. This, and I'm adressing you David Cage, is not FUN. It's a slog, it's a child's game while the same scene from a movie replays in the background several times.

The very idea that a team of dozens of experienced games designers sat back and thought that this was a good idea makes me worry deeply for the human species. If you replaced the action sequences occuring in the background for a series of brightly coloured flashing lights, anybody watching would be sure you were playing stepmania.

To sum up - Fahrenheit at its opening is unique and intriguing. Then, somewhere down the line, someone opens up a can of bullshit that haunts the experience right till the ending.

Pros:
Genuinely unique, creative and pant-wetting gameplay sequences
Graphics are good and well optimised

Cons
- Story turns really shit
- No widescreen support
- Gameplay turns really shit

Is it worth.. £7.98? 63%

You'd be better off getting a real game and not what is essentially a really bad piece of pretentious concept. It dared to dream, and was rewarded with being half-amazing and half-fucking awful.

So I basically just want to turn this into a sort of portfolio of everything I've written, and I have a far easier time thinking about games and the gaming business than I do about politics and philosophy, because unlike the latter two, the games industry vaguely makes sense to me. I don't, however, agree with the common notion that games are lowbrow piles of cultural sewage. Some of them are, but a number of them have moved me more than most films; and most are far more entertaining and non-passive ways of spending your evenings.

So the gaming related posts I'll make are basically going to be in two categories: opinion and review. Opinion means I'll be commentating on some news event in the games industry, or putting something under my own spin; whilst in reviews I'll be attempting to make sense of whether a game is worth money or not. This is of course mostly just to help me practice my writing skills, because not only am I not really qualified to review games (although one could argue more than most) but because nobody really has any reason to care about my thoughts.

Anyway, my reviews will be like this:

A block of text attempting to fit in puns, half-arsed social satire and a general commentary on my experiences of playing the game.

A pros and cons section for those who live fast-paced lives or are simply too illiterate to draw conclusions from the main body of my review.

A percentage score - but not of the actual game itself, but how much it's worth the price I paid for it.

 I realise it's been ages since I wrote anything, which is a shame because I enjoy it, but I've not really had any good ideas. I feel like I could write loads about games and technology, especially since I've bought quite a few new ones for the summer holidays, and because of E3, about the games industry in general.

However, I've been more focused on the crushing boredom of not having anything structured to do with my holidays. As much as we all look forward to the end of school, the reality is that without any real reason to wake up in the morning, you often find your days unfulfilling, and even with all the games in the world available to you, slightly boring.

So for this reason I joined a gym, which enables me to feel like I'm doing something worthwhile with my holidays, after failing to get a job or having any work or revision to do over the holidays (although I'd just not be arsed to that and thus end up feeling even more depressed). The problem with gyms is they're not fun. Pain is bad for a reason, and getting off the treadmill with a massive stitch and not enough oxygen in your system to fill a rubber glove feels horrible. You have to go sit down somewhere and gulp water, which in turn can fill you up and make you feel nauesious. Even worse is the fact that you don't want to look like you're slacking off in a gym, so even though you would love to lie down somewhere and comfort eat some deep fried ice-cream pizza, you have to then go do some arm excercises until the feeling of having utterly broken legs has gone away.

Another annoying aspect of regular excercise is, as written about in a previous post, you get cycles of hope and despair. You despair that it might not be helping you lose weight, and the weighing scales are the worst cause of this. You despair that you're going through all this pain for nothing, and you despair at seeing other people run for miles and wonder how on earth they can do it when 600m into your run, you're holding a debate with your own conciousness about how much further you can go on.

But then you catch yourself in the mirror and for the briefest second imagine that you're slimmer than last time you looked, and the hope that you're going to improve and become a new person fires up you. But no matter how in shape you get, there'll always be someone more attractive. And you'll never change. Nobody changes.

I had my first ever job interview the other day, and was told that I would find out via letter whether I got it in under a week. But this has led to a conscious cycle between optimism and despair ever since the interview. There are a couple of factors affecting this. For a starters, I have a fear of sods law - whether this is an irrational fear of things going the opposite way to what I say I want, or an insulation to stop me getting too hopeful - I have no idea. It always, however, manifests itself as pessimism, which can be a mixed blessing.

You also spend masses of time fretting about tiny mistakes or faux pas' you made. This can be applied to everyday life as well - people are intensely worried about how something they did/said might be perceived or interpreted, and yet most of the time even if people do notice they'll think about it for a second then forget, or it won't change their opinion of you.

On the other side of the coin, you have the phases of optimism. These can be caused by anything from an almost manic hope that everything will turn out fine, or simply by thinking that I must be superior to everyone else who applied. Despite my pessimism on here, I find every now and then an almost instinctive feeling that I'm more important than everyone else, and the same is likely true of every human on the planet. We have some attribute we're proud of, even if we're not the best (example, I'm proud of my writing even though Charlie Brooker beats me).

So to the point mentioned in the title - not knowing something is not necessarily bliss. It doesn't change the fact that the knowledge exists and, inevitably, you'll find it out. The reason is probably that those who are not informed usually don't care - Apathy is bliss.

I had a thought today due to a combination of things that happened at college. Looking at the 1960's, when it was acceptable to throw stones at civil rights marches and stand at the side of the road with misspelled placards and confederate flag belt buckles. Indeed, in a general election, one Conservative candidate ran with the slogan "Vote Labour if you want a nigger for your neighbour." Luckily for us, the racist generation will soon be wiped out, partially submerged in their own bile-tainted leakages in old people's homes around the country.

Society in general has undoubtedly moved on since those terrible years of institutionalised racism, ignorance and; most common among white supremacists: dungarees and mullets. Barack Obama presents the opportunity for the end of an era; and even if he is not elected, he at least signifies the beginning of the end. Which leads me to my actual point: if society has become that much more liberal about race in 40 years - will Cannabis ever be legalised?

Cannabis is regularly used by 2-3 million people in the UK; higher than Church attendance figures. The point of this particular post is not to argue the case for legalisation, just ponder if and when it will occur. Such an act would most probably require a Liberal Democrat government, or just an extremely liberalised version of Labour or Conservative. However, my view is that in the next 40 years, the Labour party could crumble, and the two major parties could become the Lib Dems vs. the Conservatives.

If this was the case, then it would be under 20 years from Labour's crumbling that the Lib Dems would make it into power. The question is whether that at that point, society would have progressed enough, ideologically and logically, into supporting legalisation of Cannabis.

What would be required is a reversal in general public belief about how dangerous Cannabis is - the fact of the matter is that Alcohol is more lethal, socially dangerous and adversely affecting of your health than smoking Marijuana. We have seen the rise of atheism in the last few decades - with atheism now at 85% in Sweden, it looks like Europe is getting more and more rational. Therefore we simply need a change of public opinion. Gordon Brown managed it about him being a competent leader in under 6 months - so it can't be too hard.

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Today Jack was placed between a rock and a hard place - does he risk social awkwardness and humiliation by having to work alone with someone he despises and who probably laughs at him in spare time, or does he explain to that person's mother (who is entrusted with his fate) that he doesn't want to work with them?

I had planned to do one post a day on this, which initially seemed very daunting since I don't necessarily go through a day and come up with an idea of what to write about. So in this respect, I've failed, because I didn't do one yesterday. Luckily, it's given me a subject to talk about, which can only be a good thing. So what I want to discuss is the fact that we humans, or maybe just me, 'live for the moment' no matter whether we hate that phrase or even the idea behind it.

I literally cannot focus on work, be it homework, in a lesson (although I can keep it together a bit better there) or even something of vital importance like a CV. If I don't have Attention Deficit Disorder then I at least have a mild procrastination complex. See! Right after writing that sentence I had a random train of thought that led to me alt-tabbing out to Youtube for a few minutes. If I'm trying to write an essay, I'll write a few words before slipping into some kind of unconcious daydream, which ends ten minutes later when I realise I've been absent-mindedly playing with a lamp or something.

Now this is what I call instant procrastination - short term. It seems worse to you at the time but is basically harmless - who cares if you miss one homework (actually there is this one guy..), or lose a few minutes; how long do you think you spend sleeping every day? So much untapped potential time. But there's another kind of procrastination, one that you don't realise you're doing, or is bad, and it's far worse. This.. is long term procrastination! Yeah, scary prospect, eh?

Example time: I've been wanting to get a job for several months. Seemingly everyone else in the school year has one, including some people who would struggle to establish the connection between smoke and fire. Therefore, I reason, it must be incredibly easy to get one. Well, I've handed out a few CV's, and so far it seems that the opposite is true. I know that it's not, but society has built up employment to be such a big thing that I must be unconciously afraid of it somehow. Despite the fact I'm in £50 of debt, getting up right now and handing out CVs just doesn't appeal.

So if I can't be arsed to do that, then I'm pretty much screwed for applying to Uni.. -_-

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Jack hasn't been doing anything today, considering he only just got up.

So I signed up to write a couple of articles for the school newsletter today. No big deal really, but then you think that almost a thousand people are gonna be taking a quick look before screwing it up or making a paper aeroplane. Exposure for writing is usually a good thing, especially for someone who enjoys writing like I do. But the problem lies with the fact that it's the school newsletter. My usual style; cynical, acerbic and pessimistic won't even get a look-in. I'll have to write a report about a crappy expo day that everyone went to, so already knows about, therefore having no interest in reading about it.

"This event is really good and I'm glad the school has put it on" will say the interviewees, reading it directly off the headmaster's face like a tyrannical autocue. Then I'll write a couple of paragraphs about what an amazing time everyone had, before rounding it off with a statement about how great the school is, and how everyone should be grateful to the point of sycophancy, you misbehaving little bastards.

So two things bother me: I'll have to leave out any negative comments or opinions unless they're of the "it seemed like things were over, but then suddenly the teachers saved the day, how lucky you all are to have them, you uncivilised horde of ingrates" variety. That means that I'll be entering voluntary censorship, writing propaganda to warm the hearts of the middle-class housewives who read it looking for real news.

Secondly, everyone in the school will be handed a piece of paper symbolising the institution they despise, with my name printed at the bottom of three of the articles. Then because I've not been able to put in the cynicism to which I'm accustomed to writing with, they'll think I'm a crap writer with a severely-browned nose.

Still - at least I don't have to take part in it, just write a load of bullshit about it.

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Today Jack got the 30,000 points per minute achievement on Audiosurf, but his glory is tempered somewhat by the fact there's probably some kind of glitch since he got the world's highest score in Free Bird with over 2x the guy in the second.

"The human condition is comparable to a frail child, playing chicken with heavy traffic." - Me, whilst suffering a violent hangover

We all feel egotistical on some level. You physically can't see the world from anyone else's point of view, and it only occurs to you every now and then that everybody else is looking at things exactly as you are. Then there's the problem that you're pre-programmed to look after yourself, survival of the fittest and all that jazz. So it's nice every now and then to think about how awesome you are. Even if you spend most of your day feeling cynical about everything, as I do, you occasionally get a quick burst of self superiority. I felt it myself within the last year, I used to have stupid long hair (it didn't look good at all) and glasses, so when I switched to contacts and had a haircut, I would find myself every now and then seeing myself in the mirror and thinking I looked awesome.

Of course, that was only a comparative glow of pride. When you looked worse than somebody suffering an allergic reaction before, any semblance of normality looks good. This is pretty much the rule of thumb for egotism across the board. Someone who is average at a game or sport might feel awesome when they play really well, but playing like that might seem normal or even rubbish for someone who is better at it (which also explains "you never realise what you have until it's gone").

Therefore when I see myself in the same picture as other people, I'm of course going to spot that I have chubby cheeks or a seemingly constant perverted grin. I logged onto facebook today and found that on some rubbishy application thing, 1 of my friends said they would date me, whilst 5 said they would not. Now this presents a branching path for my feelings. If you go around thinking you look awesome because you're accustomed to what you used to look like, then stuff like that is going to hurt. HOWEVER, if you got used to being a loser while you looked awful, then the mere fact that one person (even with the knowledge that they're probably joking) said they would date you is inspiring.

So as it turned out, I didn't really mind reading it. It's made me want to lose some weight though, and that can only be a recipe for feeling craptacular.

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Today Jack has been overloaded by literally billions of events, open days, expo days, trips and the like, all cunningly timed to occur at the exact same time as one another. Stress levels rising, he can't wait to reach for the cheese...