The Sad Monkey

Operation Exit Oxford

2007-01-22T01:05:00.000Z

Right, well this is set to kick off at the end of the coming week. I'm tired, I haven't eaten since Friday because I feel quite ill and I just need to get out of this city.

As antisocial as it might sound, I had to go to the pub with work people on Friday, but I had half a drink, made an excuse and left. They're cool people, but I don't want to make friends. All I really care about is payday.

To the people who e-mailed me after my last entry, I am typing this on a Wii and so can't get MSN. Not that you're missing much really, as I don't feel much like talking at the moment.

As crap as my old job was, I wish I had just stayed put. City life has proven to be as soul destroying as I thought it would. The quicker I can disappear back to a small anonymous southern village to do some dull job away from pressure, the better.

i'll burn this whole city down

2007-01-14T17:20:00.000Z

Excuse the Decemberists quote. Not updated this for ages. Now living in Oxford, although smart gamblers should put money on me being back in Dorset by April. New job isn't what I hoped it would be, people are okay but I don't particularly want to be mates with any of them and I really can't find the words to convey my hatred of the city. It's packed full of pretencious nobodies.

If the whole place burnt down overnight you'd not find me shedding any tears, that's for sure.

Get well soon Shorty

2006-08-04T09:35:00.000+01:00

From Speed TV:

Cristiano da Matta suffered severe head injuries Thursday after striking a deer during Champ Car testing at Elkhart Lake, Wis.

The 32-year-old Brazilian was airlifted to Theda Clark Medical Center hospital where he underwent surgery Thursday night. His condition was critical.

“After arriving at Theda Clark Medical Center, a head CT scan showed Cristiano had suffered a subdural hematoma," stated Dr. Chris Pinderski, Champ Car Director of Medical Affairs. "He was urgently taken to the operating room for surgical removal of the hematoma and is now being observed in the intensive care unit.”

The next 24 hours will be crucial for the 2002 CART champion as doctors try to reduce the swelling in his brain.

According to an eyewitness, da Matta was heading for Turn 6 at Road America when the deer ran out in front of him and struck the right front of his RuSPORT Lola. The deer caromed into the cockpit as da Matta smashed into the tire barrier with his foot still planted on the throttle.

Safety crews extracted him on a backboard and applied an oxygen mask as he was taken to a helicopter.

In the wake of the crash, RuSPORT announced that Justin Wilson and the No. 9 team will not participate in the final day of Champ Car testing at Road America.

Known as "Shorty," the good-natured veteran was coming off his first podium of the season, a second place last Sunday at San Jose.

Get well soon, Shorty.

ill....?

2006-07-25T14:34:00.001+01:00

Something really strange happened to me yesterday. I'm not exactly sure what it was.

I was sitting at my desk and it was one of those really busy periods where the phone was ringing and I was having to stack things up and generally get a bit stressed.

For no good reason, my vision went all odd and it was like I was staring down a tunnel. It was really misty and weird, and my hearing went as if I was underwater. My hands and arms felt really light and it was generally really odd. My colleague said I went from being reasonably chatty to dead silent really suddenly and was just staring at my screen.

Dunno what it was, although someone told me they think it might be blood pressure. Either that or I am finally going mental :-).

I really, really haven't got anything to add at the moment that is worthwhile, so updates on this might be sparse. As David Gahan said circa February 1990, enjoy the silence.

Another one of 'those' Saturdays

2006-07-23T02:57:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the slightly bizzaro-world colour filtering on the picture - it actually looks remarkably like the image of it I can see myself. About 30 minutes ago that bottle was 3/4 full. Now it's 1/4 at best.

Thankfully, I can still post decent grammar whilst under the influence. I'm sure this attribute will get me far in some form of life, such as wine reviewing and the like. To think I only started drinking tonight to get rid of a headache. Grammar might be my strong point, but logic sure as hell isn't.

Haven't spoken to anyone now for about 14 hours. I'm beginning to realise that it really isn't a case of me going out of my way to do it - rather it seems now to be the autopilot mode I'm set on. I don't mind though. I'm happy enough in my own little world with a glass of Jim Beam and some toast with marmite. Oh, or peanut butter. Yeah, peanut butter on this slice.

There seems to be boxing on the telly. Might go and watch. Hang on, I hate boxing don't I. Oh well, never mind. Yup, it's been another one of 'those' Saturdays, alright.

Monkey out.

3.42am

2006-07-22T03:46:00.000+01:00

I have no idea why I am up. Well, actually I do - I fell off the end of my bed and in the process knocked a pile of CDs off my table onto myself. Har har.

It should be the weekend for me now, but in *checks clock* 3 hours and 46 minutes I have to get up for work. Ho-hum. Was phoned at work yesterday by my sister whom I gave an excuse why I couldn't talk to her (was busy), and then my Dad who said him and my Mum and gone to my Brother and Sister-in-law's house and were having a chinese so I should go there straight from work. Except, I didn't really want to and just ended up going home to bed. It wasn't a conscientious thing I did really, I just didn't feel like it.

Pointless Muppet video:

Monkey out

Monkey reviews.....

2006-07-21T16:00:00.000+01:00

Fear Of Music - Fast, Faster, Fastest EP

Yup, so this is the second release from this band who have an average age of somewhere around the 18 mark. The first self-titled record was pretty spiffy, with a good deal of different influences (although most of them not sounding much like Muse, which most people suggested it did) and some great songs.

This second EP seems to find them focusing a lot more on the kind of sound they're heading towards, which results in a more heavier rock sound but perhaps a little less variety. However, there are 4 very good rock tunes (discounting the interlude, which is... an interlude), and it makes a very good EP. For me nothing quite touches the level that The Waltz or Millions Screaming managed from the first record, but across the board it is a strong record and augers well for when the band release their first proper album.

On another note, I see the Indian government has blocked the country from using Blogger. Nice to see freedom of speech flourishing into the 21st century.

Monkey out.

People

2006-07-20T16:19:00.000+01:00

I don't know what it is with people at the moment, but they annoy me. Generally, that is. Lots of niggly little things that just add up to some self-imposed weight on my shoulders which causes me to go home in the evening from work and to shut myself away with my phone turned to silent and what once was a much-used MSN program untouched.

I just feel a complete lack of any need to talk to anyone. Not in a nasty or a malicious way - I just don't feel like talking much. I go on appointments at work now or answer the phone and I'm practically monosyllabic, which ironically has lead to some kind of upturn in my productivity. Perhaps the realisation that I am here to make money and not friends was a good one.

Looking around for cheap flats and things at the moment. Problem is, even cheap and rubbish ones are about £120,000. Little point in bothering considering moving out of home until I can afford something. Until then I'll sit quite happily around my house drowning myself in my swamp of DVDs, CDs and strange foreign whisky bottles. My Mum calls me a small scale Syd Barrett. I guess that's what interest me so much about him - take away the acid addiction and I can completely understand his feelings of wanting away from the outside world. Sometimes people just need their own space, their own schedule and their own way of life. It's not that I am depressed (or that he was most of the time) - I am quite content really. I guess some people confuse depression and solitude. I'm pretty content with my lot really.

I'm having another of those thinking moments. I'm starting to find it a real struggle updating this thing, so I apologise for any further long silences. I'm meant to be on an appointment in 10 minutes though, so I have to run.

Monkey out.

\m/use

2006-07-12T17:30:00.000+01:00

Monkey out

Syd Barrett: 1946 - 2006

2006-07-11T15:22:00.000+01:00

Original front man of Pink Floyd and inspiration for one of my favourite albums of all time (Wish You Were Here), Syd Barrett had died from complications resulting from his diabetes.

R.I.P

Monkey out

amputechture

2006-07-08T10:18:00.000+01:00

New Mars Volta album has leaked and it's pretty good, but generally quite heavy going. First two songs weigh in at about 9 minutes and then 16 minutes, so it's not exactly something you can slip into your car stereo on the way to the shops. Still, pretty good stuff.

I'm sorting out thing with what car I'll be getting next May. My current car is alright, but everyone agrees it is time for a bit of a change. having pondered about this whilst hanging upside-down from the monkey bars in my local park yesterday, I have decided on a particular car within a budget. This car is the Nissan 350z:

A bit sporty, decent on insurance and generally quite cool. Roll on May 2007, then.

Monkey out.

How to disappear completely

2006-07-04T16:20:00.000+01:00

Mmm.

Recently, I have discovered that I have some kind of urge inside me to kind of uproot and just go somewhere secluded. Dunno. I guess job satisfaction and the realisation that I don't actually like being around people anymore has finally dawned on me.

I just feel like saving some cash, throwing my phone in a bin and wandering off unseen into some kind of massively obscure Chinese village in the middle of a forest to live out the rest of my life doing something else, miles away from anyone. Hmm. Odd.

Would type something else, but I'm massively, irreversibly bored and can barely summon the effort to lift my fingers onto the keyboard.

Monkey out.

Stuff about monkey

2006-06-19T15:24:00.000+01:00

Someone sent me an interesting kind of personal question/answer thing on moods. Here's my form:

When I am happy, I am (in 3 words):

Spontanious
Cheeky
Awesome

When I am content, I am (in 3 words):

Relaxed
Receptive
Chatty

When I am angry, I am (in 3 words):

Volatile
Argumentative
Difficult

When I am unhappy, I am (in 3 words):

Reclusive
Quiet
Reflective

Where are you to be located during each mood?:

Happy: Pub with friends
Content: Home
Angry: Work
Depressed: My room. Probably asleep.

Divide the above moods up into percentage related to how often you are in that mood:

Happy: 25%
Content: 45%
Angry: 20%
Depressed: 10%

Do you prefer sociable occasions or solitude?:

Mixture of both I think. More of the former these days :-).

Your favourite thing to talk about with people?:

Music I think, or sport. Gaming perhaps. Mostly music I think.

Do people easily wind you up?:

On occasion. Depends on what kind of person I suppose.

Sum yourself up in one word with the following sentences:

When I am happy, I am the kind of person who would.....:

Spend their last £3 on buying you a pint.

When I am content, I am the kind of person who would.....:

Sit in front of a T.V. for a few hours, or maybe quietly in the corner of a pub.

When I am angry, I am the kind of person who would.....:

Probably bite your head off if you looked at me the wrong way.

When I am depressed, I am the kind of person who would......:

Stop talking to everyone.

3 things that make you happy:

* Privacy
* Friends
* Music

3 things that make you content:

* Peace
* Games
* Contact

3 things that make you angry:

* Ignorance
* Attention seeking
* Stereotyping

3 things that make you depressed:

* Work
* Illness
* Boredom

Finally, write a paragraph about yourself based on the above answers:

Er, right. I guess I'm kind of a mixture of a bloke. I have a slightly docile, tolerant nature which kind of covers up that some kind of rage equating to satan simmers inside me :-P. I'm a bit old fashioned I suppose and would rather deal with things by myself than speak about them because usually I'm the only person I listen to enough in the first place. I'm a lot more upbeat and assertive than I was this time last year though, and generally I feel reasonably jolly :-).

Monkey out.

Rant

2006-06-13T15:38:00.000+01:00

Yes.

You might have noticed that a post that was originally between the previous two entries has gone missing. Nothing to do with Blogger's normal lack of reliablilty - I deleted it.

I'm tired of apologising to people. If I've done something wrong then I fair enough, but most of the time recently it's been just me apologising to keep people in the right mood. After today, that stops. If people continue to nag/annoy/moan at me or generally act in a way I don't like, I'll just stop talking to them. Nice and simple. To the person who know's that they've triggered this, I'm fed up. I don't owe you a thing.

And that is that.

Monkey reviews:

2006-06-11T23:29:00.000+01:00

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations

First the important bit: This review is based on a leaked copy and as such I can't fairly make any comment on production and such, especially given the fact that the leak is in mono and was allegedly recorded from the left ear of a set of headphones (!). Still, I will make some comments about song structure and such.

Firstly, this is a much different Muse from Absolution, which as far as I am concerned can only be a good thing. Whilst aformentioned album had good songs, other songs (Apocalypse Please, Sing For Absolution, Falling Away With You, Ruled By Secrecy) were pretty uninspired to me and quickly found themselves being skipped on repeated listens of the album.

Thing is, the way Muse just play was begging for something funked up. Matt Bellamy's ball-squeezing and massively changeable singing voice, Chris Wolstenholme's groovy bass and Dom Howard's pounding drum beats were things that were just begging for exploration and change. Thankfully, Black Holes and Revelations proves itself a lot different and a whole world braver than its predecessor.

Take A Bow

Rather electronic and viciously angry, this one builds from a simple loop to a pretty brutal gothic ending with huge drums and multi-layered vocals proclaiming 'You'll burn in hell' repeatedly. Well, quite!

Starlight

Hmm, you see, I readily admit I do not like Starlight. It has a main riff which would not sound out of place on a Coldplay album and generally it never really goes anywhere until the last chorus. Not a standout track, then.

Supermassive Black Hole

Eeeeeveryone has heard this now. Really groovy and deceptively heavy for what it is, the song is sung in falsetto and is about as big a departure from 'classic Muse' (whatever that is) as the album gets... just.

Map Of The Problematique

The name is confusing, but the tune is belting. As mentioned by a few people, it (vaguely) resembles Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence and features utterly fantastic pounding drumming over a strange cross between synth and guitar. Builds up twice to a great chorus, and is a dead set winner to be a live favourite.

A Soldier's Poem

I adore this song. A complete change in pace from the previous track, this features a simple bass line, a gentle picked acoustic harmony and slow jazz drumming. The lyrics are painfully beautiful and at a rather short 2 minutes it doesn't overstay the welcome. Probably features my favourite few lines of the album, which are 'There's no one left for us to blame, it's a shame we're all dying, and do you think you deserve your freedom?'. Pretty stark. Also features a lovely vocal layering effect in places. Exactly the kind of song I find myself lying on the floor staring at the ceiling to (see also: Radiohead - Just Like Spinning Plates).

Invincible

Again, a lovely song and pretty uplifting whilst also being slightly sad. The song's lyrics kind of give the message 'things are faling apart, but together nothing can hurt us'. The drumming is very similar to a military march until about midway through, when the song steps up a gear and gets a bit more fleshed out before the final salvo, featuring a frantic guitar solo and a harsher, louder chorus with more of those pounding drums (notice a recurring theme here?).

Assassin

Hehe :-). This one was known as 'Debase Mason's Grog' for ages having been played live in America, but since then it's undergone plastic surgery. The verses gradually ramp up and lead into something which is both heavy and somehow almost danceable at the same time, whilst the vocals have a brilliant baratone echo after them. Probably the heaviest song on the album in some respects.

Exo Politics

Another live one (Pee Candle), this one has undergone a similar change to Assassin and become slightly less frantic and more 'bassy'. Probably what you could call a stomper, this one is really quite fanastic.

City Of Delusion

Is just plain odd, but another good one. Starts off like a heavy metal Bollywood tune, it sweeps into a funky middle section before then turning western and featuring another epic chorus. Certainly a lot heavier than I was expecting given what most had said about it in their previews.

Hoodoo

Hm, another one I am not keen on. It kind of reminds me of Jeff Buckley's Lilac Wine cover, except it turns a bit piano-based and epic again later on before slipping back into its shell and basically just ebbing away. In the battle of the two 'slowies' on the album, Soldier's Poem gives this a black eye and a thick ear.

Knights Of Cydonia

Hurrah! This one's really very, very good indeed and easily takes the crown as the best finisher to a Muse album to date. 60s-style electric guitar solo leads into trumpets, mental falsetto and generally one large rock-and-roll epic before changing its own skin and bringing out a high-pitched Queen-esque choral blast of 'no-one's gonna take me alive', which builds up and explodes in some kind of massive riff-filled pot noodly kind of ending. Hugely, expansively good.

So, yeah. The album has a huge amount of differing influences, and yet still it sounds like a record only Muse could have done. This time though the overall quality is much higher, and whilst the creative juices might have changed flavour, they still taste just as good as they ever have, if not better. With the leap in quality the album will undoubtably get on proper release, this one's definitely an album to scribble down in your diary for purchase on release day. The only reason I can't give this 6 monkey stars out of 5 is that I quite frankly can't be arsed to draw another one, so 5 it is.

Oh, Silverstone 2006 was awesome. A lot more about that as the week progresses.

Monkey out.

Leaks and things

2006-06-08T00:35:00.000+01:00

Had to happen, didn't it? Muse album leaking, that is. Rumour spread around various message boards, eventually links appeared and quickly got taken down. People got stressed. It was generally really quite rubbish. So much stress and arguing. Music shouldn't be about that. I then noticed that someone had emailed me a link. I opened my email account to check.

So, is this downloading thing right, or wrong? Well, bluntly, it is wrong I guess. By downloading an album, you're in effect getting a product for free. No money is going to the band in question, no money to the record company.... nothing. It's wrong, and I don't really have an argument as to why it isn't. Music, like other entertainment forms, is a product which people invest large amounts of money and time producing. Spending hours setting up a studio to record a single bass loop or something. Spending a few days working out a promo poster, or a few weeks on artwork. Music doesn't just go from brain to guitar to microphone to CD.

That being said though, people download for different reasons. When it comes to a band like Muse when albums are spread out between gaps of 3 years, large fanbases grow restless. People genuinely go into single-minded mode and really want to hear new stuff. It's exciting. It's nothing to do with cheating people of money and such at that stage, it's just about the music. It's just sheer excitement and anticipation that overwhelmes some people knowing that a 3-year wait for new material from your favourite group can be over with one click of a mouse. That's the world though I guess - some people are better at dealing with temptation than others.

Both sides attitudes to the other is what annoys me. Firstly, the people who do leak and feel that they are 'owed' it because of them being loyal. They're owed nothing. Bands like Muse spend 10 months a year writing, touring, interviewing for you. You pay them, what, £10 once every 3 years for an album? £10 total for the singles released? £20 for 3 years of work. They provide their part, you provide yours. Fair is fair, that's the way the world works.

Then again, the people who sit and condemn people for downloading often miss the point. People who download do it out of a desperate impulse born out of excitement to hear something, not some kind of cynical plan to get around paying money for something. Plenty of fans who have downloaded today's leak will rush to the stores on Monday July 3rd and put their cash down for a proper copy of the album. Likewise, lots of people download do feel bad inside, and genuinely do think about what they're doing. They know it's wrong. If they choose to download something, that's the cross they have to bear.

The other main problem is that music fanbases are now hugely internet reliant. Pretty much every band has a website with a forum. What amazes me is that people openly post links of official websites and big fan sites and then complain when they get taken down. They tend to miss the bigger point. Firstly, the moderators and owners of the websites are expected by the band and their management to keep things clean. People rushing around talking about new material after a leak is obviously going to have to be cleaned up, or individual people or whole sites end up knee-deep in shit from people up-and-above, as it were. It's their tasks (and sometimes their actual jobs) to essentially work on behalf of the band in managing their internet fanbase. Whatever their opinions are on such things, they will always (and rightly) look after the site and themselves first.

It's a messy situation. People are always going to take sides and you hardly ever get people sitting on the fence. To those who will not download the album, I would say well done for their patience and self control. To most who will, that's your choice. Only time will tell if you pay your proper dues, but I can't condemn every single person who got the album tonight. I myself have downloaded albums in the past and bought the end product (I own - I think - 263 albums). For me to say bad things against either side is a bit hypocritical.

All of the above went through my mind as I stared at the link in my email account. Did it influence the decision I ended up making? Most definitely.

I've been very tired today. Thinking too much, probably. I guess the fact I've just sat and typed the above shows that. I have a decent weekend to look forward to and I am sure I'll come back pretty bloody happy, but today I really struggled with some kind of self-imposed weight on my own shoulders I can't quite pin down. I guess perhaps I've just had a half-year block of having to consistently fake a smile and fake enthusiasm, and as a result I have a bit of burnout.

I sat up until 3am last night just thinking of the arguments I had on Tuesday, and of the general nagging bad feeling I seem to carry around me in the office. Am I getting harder to like? I worry I am. For the first time it is really hitting home to me that none of my friends are around anymore, and that due to the way I am being and the line of work I am in, I am setting myself up for a painfully lonely life. I don't think I want that anymore. Despite me often saying I like shutting myself away and having time to myself, I really, really need people to talk to sometimes. The image of me rattling around a small flat on my own well into my 30s terrifies me. It’s not that I am desperate to force myself into a relationship either (as yesterday shows). I just want someone I can spend time with and have a laugh with. Someone I can go to the pub with. Someone I can spend stupid amounts of time talking to about music, or sport, or anything. Fucking politics and food. Anything. Coming home to nothingness night after night all year destroys your soul.

Eugh, too much thinking again. I kind of wish I could hibernate for a week or so, but it's time for me to reach down a bit and come out grinning again. I know I can do it, but how much longer I can carry on doing it on my own....

Monkey out.

Sneezexhausted + AAAARGGGHHH

2006-06-06T23:37:00.000+01:00

Eugh.

I've been chain sneezing now for... what... an hour or so. Literally, with no stopping. I feel partly dead inside, and I am sure I have lost about 1/4 of my bodyweight. I've had hayfever since I was a teeny tiny ickle kid and christ, it wears the crap out of you. The slightest hint of dust sets me off, and every summer it gets worse.

On another note, I have seemingly got tanned quite early this year which is quite possibly a result of having sat out in the sun for 2 hours on Sunday reading. I don't usually do that kind of thing (I burn really easily anyway, plus I always tend to find hugely geeky things to do inside most of the time) so everyone was a bit miffed when they saw me on Monday morning at work. It didn't herald a new me though - I was as bored and unmotivated as I ever have been.

Had a massive row with what I guess is as close to a girlfriend as I'll allow myself last night. I kind of took exception to something she said and the way she said it. I guess it was a bit silly, but it kind of showed that I'm now a lot tougher than I used to be. Not in a bad way (I'd never ever hurt anyone on purpose), but I know how to look out for myself. Anyhow, following the argument I went home, shut myself in my room and read all the 6-year-old cards my proper 'ex' got me when me and her started going out. 'Open this card carefully, then flap it all about, it is crammed full of hugs, which should come flying out'. I don't know if it is possible to smile and yet pull a facial expression meaning 'I feel a bit empty without this', but I think I managed it.

I shall sign out with a song. It's a new Muse one and it also kind of sums up how I feel at the moment. Onwards and upwards I guess, and seeing as I am headed to Silverstone this weekend I suspect I will have a good break from work.

Muse - Map Of The Problematique

Fear, and panic in the air
I want to be free
From desolation and despair
And I feel like everything I see
Is being swept away
And I refuse to let you go

I can't get it right
Get it right
Since I met you

Loneliness be over
When will this loneliness be over?

Fear
Our future on the run, running away
And our judgment has begun
No one thinks they are to blame
Why can't we see
When we bleed we bleed the same

I can't get it right
Get it right
Since I met you

Loneliness be over
When will this loneliness be over?
Loneliness be over
When will this loneliness be over?

Monkey out.

Paul Dana - 15/4/75 - 26/3/06

2006-03-26T19:45:00.000+01:00

Being a motorsport fan is quite unlike following any sport in the world. The envelope in which the participants compete is always harrowingly fragile, although the safety advances these days mask that. All that does I suppose is make it even more shocking when things do go wrong.

This morning whilst in practice for the opening round of the IndyCar Series at Miami, Paul Dana crashed head-first into Ed Carpenter's spinning car at over 175mph. He was airlifted quickly to hospital but soon after a press conference was called and it was announced that he had died from multiple head traumas. As a mark of respect his two teammates have been pulled out of the race, which will go ahead as scheduled.

People sometimes ask me what I see in motor racing, and moments like today make it almost impossible to explain. I suppose it is the excitement of seeing people put so much at risk every Sunday at such high speeds. It's the technical side of things mixing with the human side of things. Moments like this are sadly always going to happen, but that doesn't mean me or anyone who loves the sport just shrugs their shoulders and gets on with it when they do. It's a harsh reminder that for the unlucky few their chosen sport sometimes takes the ultimate price.

I've seen the crash a few times. I've seen how destructive it was, and I have seen how sudden it was. I winced in the same way I winced when I saw Ayrton Senna and Greg Moore lose their lives in front of me on my living room T.V. It won't stop the sport moving onwards and it won't stop me watching, which I guess at moments like this one some people would find hard to understand.

However, now is not the time for analysis or scrutiny into the mindset of the people on the outside or the people within the sport. The most important thing for the moment, before all the inquests and arguments, is that a wife no longer has a husband, a bunch of people have lost their friend and a sport has lost a brave participant. Paul Dana, Rest In Peace.

Monkey out.

Snap

2006-03-24T09:20:00.000Z

As of 10 minutes ago, I have handed in my two-week notice. In the next few hours I am going into town to put my name down with all and any job agencies out there, where I will sit down and just ask them to get me anything which isn't estate agency.

I thought I'd tap up the reasoning behind this in a little more detail, as I am sure the 'I hate my job' tag could fit at least 50% of people. You see, this week at work has explained precisely why I need to be somewhere else. Firstly, both of my colleagues have gone away at the same time. Thus, I have been left to run an Estate Agents office on my own from 9am - 6pm all week and 9am - 4pm tomorrow. I'm sure anyone who has even a small idea of how an estate agent runs will know how ridiculous this is. There's no spreading of the workload, no people to conference with to come up with ideas, and on a different level no one to chat to during the day.

This week, we've had two sales fall through. That's about £6,000 for the company, and what's even more frustrating is that there was absoloutely nothing we could have done even if we did have all of us in the office. You see, solicitors spend most of their time arguing, losing documents and generally acting like kids and then when everything falls through they are nice and tucked away from the firing line, which obviously would be me. It's not that I don't mind taking a bit of flack now and again, but when it is because a pair of solicitors just could not be bothered to sort out something as simple as land registry it really winds me up.

Both of these sales that have fallen through have been to people who've not had a great few months. On Tuesday the sale which fell through involved the guy I spoke about who's partner and kids had just upped and left. The sale which fell through at 5.10pm last night was on a woman's house, which was only being sold because her husband died last August. She openly admits she hates being in the place, and telling her that after 10 weeks and a few days before due exchange things had fallen through was like telling someone there was a bomb under their chair. In both cases neither of our sellers were angry at me, but they were absoloutely crushed. Both desperately want to get out of their current place and to have it all fall through is, I suppose, just another thing that has gone wrong.

You see, on my level I am okay. I am okay with having to try to sell a place again. I am in a decent enough situation to be able to not have to wait desperately for commission money to come in. It's seeing what the whole thing does to people that completely wipes me away. They say moving is the most stressful thing you can do, and they are not kidding. Although working here has toughened me up in some ways, I just can't stand seeing how badly things going wrong can mess someone up. It weighs on my shoulders and means that, even when at home, I feel terrible. It's something that the doctors have been telling me for months is having an adverse effect on my health, and having been told the same once more this Wednesday and then having yesterday's things happen, I have to draw the line somewhere before it buries me.

Anyone who knows me will confirm that I am not the usual slightly arrogant person you need to be to do this job very well. Whilst I do like talking to people and such, I take problems onboard and let them ricochet around my insides until I fall asleep. I can deal with things on a purely administration level going wrong, but letting other people down so much even when it isn't in effect your own fault does get very soul destroying after a while. It's the thing that haunts me the most. I mean, if I were in a communications job which wasn't sales-chasing or something that would be fine - I could cope with a bit of pressure as long as it was me who carried the can at the end. In this job it isn't. If things go wrong in this job you always have someone else who also loses out along with you, and for them it's all the more important and stressful.

On the other side of things, some people must think estate agents are produced on a conveyor belt and are completely robotic. On Wednesday our secretary popped in to cover while I was at the doctors. She phoned someone up to check their status, and as the phone had rung about 10 times and not been answered she hung up. Fair enough? Not according to the arsey woman who called me 10 minutes later it wasn't. 'Hello, I just got a call from this number?' she started. I could already tell she was going to be trouble - she had one of 'those' voices. I explained that it was us just checking she was still looking for a house and confirming her criteria. 'Well, there is an answer phone and that's what it's there for. Could you ask your colleague not to just put the phone down? Very annoying'. At this point I was probably supposed to apologise, except I didn't. I just said 'Okay, thanks' and put the phone down. I could hear her trying to say something as I did, but after about 5 seconds she would have been talking to the ringing tone at the end of her headset. You get these kinds of people in all jobs, but in estate agency you get the highest concentration of them. Oh, and I'm not even going into working with other estate agents who have high opinions of themselves, or I could go on for hours.

Didn't have much time for music last night. Came home and just shut myself away in my room and watched Fawlty Towers with my now usual empty glass and a bottle of Jim Beam. This kind of thing has to stop one way or another, and changing job is the only positive way I have left of solving it. Oh, joy of joys, just been told that I am going to a solicitors drinks evening. Tonight. I had better go - we get most of our probate stuff through them so if I don't it'll be quite rude. Since when do solicitors have drinks evenings on Fridays?

On a happy note, Oblivion came out for the 360 today and I am going to go buy it when I am in town signing up for new jobs in about an hour. I feel happy in a way; by sorting this out I will probably end up with a better wage, more time off (I am short-changed in both departments. Won't go into pay details suffice to say I could earn more working 5 days a week in Tesco, and I haven't had a day off since early December) and be able to avoid the actual Oblivion that working here seems to be pushing me towards. Onwards and upwards!

Monkey out.

Monkey thoughts

2006-03-23T09:44:00.000Z

Having browsed through my blog yesterday, I kind of realised that apart from small rants about things related to me, I don't tend to say much on bigger issues and probably come across as someone who sits on the fence a bit, which isn't true sometimes. Therefore, in a small whirlwind tour of issues at hand, here are Monkey's opinions!

The war in Iraq

Although I kind of understood the reasons it started, it's a bloody mess now, isn't it? A leaderless country with an obvious civil war and still a place that sends our troops back in coffins every week. The country is now as bad a state as it probably ever has been, and not only does that effect our military over there, it also effects the civilians who now have to put up with a situation worse than the one America decided to 'free' them from in 2003. Is it just me or does this war begin to seem frighteningly like Vietnam all over again? That said, I get seriously angry with anyone who criticises the troops themselves. They're over there risking their lives on Tony Blair's behalf whilst most of us sit around in our lounges drinking tea and watching it on the news. Even if you don't agree with the war and (like me) think it's gone crap side up, you have to have respect for every person out there.

Religion

I have reasonably strong views on religion. The first (and most obvious) thing I think is that no one should be forced into it. It should be a thing of choice - people who want to be religious should be allowed, whilst people who don't shouldn't have to deal with people telling them they are going to hell every 5 minutes. I also think that religion is probably the biggest weapon of mass destruction in the world. The scary thing is not that what these fanatics are doing as such, but that they actually believe they are completely right to be doing it. At the end of the day the majority of people around are being dragged into some sort of religious argument which they don't actually want any part of. If you are prepared to practice religion and live to your own principals without expressing them on anyone else fine. If you start trying to impose things on others, you have to put up with people imposing their opinion on you.

Animal rights

Tricky one this. I love animals - they are fantastic. In a way I am a bit against keeping some animals as pets, although I keep some myself. I have a chinchilla and I have got her a massive cage and I let her run out and about the house as often as possible. I also feed her raisins and nuts too much because she guilt-trips me into doing it :-(. I can understand why people are so interested in animal rights and to a certain extent, for example trying to stamp out bear baiting and such, but when it starts going into the animal testing area my opinion changes a bit. I know it is unfortunate that testing on animals happens (especially for cosmetics), but in terms of medication it is a necessary evil. An example of this would be the drug that made those 6 men really ill the other week - it hadn't been tested on animals and hence they didn't have the slightest clue what it would do and some people almost died. Another thing that really annoys me are groups like PETA who go around threatening people with vandalism and/or violence, but more on that some other time.

Well, that'll do for me on my soapbox today. Might do some more tomorrow. In the meantime, I have been listening to the new Secret Machines album which is excellent. My current favourite song is 'I Want To Know', a mellow kind of Beatles-esque stomp, the lyrics of which you can find below:

I want to know if it's still possible
To find a place that's ours
Maybe there's a world that's still invisible
A murmur coming from the stars

'Cause if it's real
Then I have never noticed
Hidden by the frost that I
Designed and I
Was there the entire time

Don't worry, I'm much too proud
To face the light of your eyes
Crushing stars we collide
What makes us

I want to know if it's still possible
Beneath the endless night
Walking past the window to your bedroom
But the curtains holding back the light
of your heart

I wonder if you'd seen me
I wonder if I caught your eye
I wonder if you had ever noticed
That I was always passing by

Why should I?
It was the only time

Monkey out.

The offspring

2006-03-22T16:23:00.000Z

No, not the crap band - kids. I've had kids on my mind a bit recently, worryingly enough. Thing is though, instead of actually changing my feelings towards wanting one, it's confirmed to me that I really, honestly don't want children in the future. I know the old thing 'if Matt had a kid it will be called Durex Lawsuit Hughes' that I've said as a joke before, but I guess now I am actually serious.

There are a number of reasons I don't see myself as a good father, most of which centre on me being a bit bad with responsibility to a certain extent. Having a kid is possibly the biggest thing you can do, and I know that it would really restrict me. I know it sounds harsh, but I don't want that kind of thing. I want to be able to go home after work when I am in my 30s and to be able to go out when I want to. Same for my future (heh) wife. If she doesn't want kids I would not want her to have to have one either. I know lots of women who love their career and love their jobs and friends, and although I'm probably getting the wrong impression or whatever I just feel that some regret having to give that up. I mean, I know some people would love to have kids and that's fair enough - no complaints. But then... you know. I know a girl who works for another estate agency and she really loves the job - going out and meeting people, doing deals, you know. She found out last month she was pregnant and that she'll have to shelve her job for a year or so and you can just tell she's not really happy about it.

I know it's not the case for all women, but sometimes I wonder if some have children because their husbands want one or something. I just would hate to find a really great girl and then effectively leave her housebound if she didn't want to be. On the other side, if a girl really did want kids the least she would deserve would be an equally devoted husband who does his fair share. I know inside myself I couldn't be like that. I know that these days some parents leave their kids in nursery during working hours all week, but that makes me feel sad. I'm a big believer that in the first few years at least a kid really, really needs his or her own parents. If the parents don't have the time to be with the kid at least a few hours on some days of the week I don't understand why they wanted one at all.

It probably sounds selfish or whatever. The thing is, in my job I have to deal with so many horrible family situations you would not believe it. Families splitting up and arguing over the kids and things. People who are struggling so much with their kids becoming teenagers that they are literally sobbing and at the end of their tether. It's gently eroded me away inside and I just have nightmare images about the whole thing now. I've heard of 9-year-olds having to sit in court and watch their parents argue about who gets what and things. We had a guy who owned a house and his wife had left him, and now even his children don't speak to him. The guy did nothing wrong and now his kids won't even talk to him. I could probably deal with a marriage breakup if my ex wife didn't speak to me, but to have your own children turn their nose up at you... no.

I am probably looking at this in a really negative way, but I am kind of glad I got it all sorted in my head. I'm not exactly a kid anymore myself and being 23 I'm at the start period of the family-building stage of life I guess. I'm okay with my nephew and stuff, but I know I can hand him back to my brother after 10 minutes when I run out of ideas on how to keep the little guy amused. Last year my parents had to look after him for an entire weekend, and after the first day I am a bit ashamed to admit that I was creating false appointments at work to enable me to get home later so he would be almost in bed by the time I got there. It wasn't that I hated him being around, it was just that I didn't know what to do around him and I found him constantly wanting me to play and do stuff really tiring and not too fun.

Luckily my parents already have the one grandchild and I guess my sister likes the idea of having a family, so I suppose she'll be having one or two. That kind of lessens the worry in my mind because at least I know the family is being carried on elsewhere. I just know that when I am older I'll want the kind of freedom and ability to spend time doing things that having a kid will just not allow, so I'd rather not bring one into the world and then mistreat it. I'll leave the playing Daddy thing to people who can properly bring a kid up I think :-).

Monkey out.

Spending time going backwards

2006-03-21T11:00:00.000Z

I'm looking after the office this week as my two colleagues have gone skiing (they are related), which means every single thing which happens in the office goes through me. This obviously isn't a great situation, and something happened over the last few hours which really sums up this whole job.

One of our home owners got really badly messed around by his fiancee and she and her kids have left, so obviously he isn't too happy. Yesterday we had a viewing at his house which I did. The people made an offer and the guy accepted it. For the first time in a month he actually had something to smile about. The same people phoned me up this morning and said they had decided to withdraw their offer, mentioning in passing that they were 'not sure' about the place even when they made their offer.

Why waste the time? At the end of the day I spent an age yesterday phoning around solicitors and estate agents sorting through the chain details. The guy in the house started feeling a bit happier that finally something seemed to be sorting itself out. Now all that time was spent for nothing just because two people decided they'd stick in a very wobbly offer anyay. All it seems to be these days is me working my arse off to stand still. If I take a break I slip backwards. I'm currently searching through job hunting sites to see if I can find myself something with even a small scrap of job satisfaction. I'm convinced that within half a year I'm going to be stacking shelves in a supermarket or serving people in a takeaway. Honestly, anything beats my current day activity. The fact I have not had a day off since December is probably contributing to this. Just taking note that even call centre jobs these days seem to want A-Level training. The education and employment system is okay, but once you're out of the loop it seems you are - excuse the language - fucked. I think I'll stop this paragraph as every letter I type chips another few percent off my motivation.

The one thing that worries me is my writing. Take a peek at the paragraph above and try reading it back to yourself aloud and you'll realise that it doesn't actually read very well at all. I'm not sure whether it's through lack of practice or just my current rather strained state, but I have lost my ability to write properly and it doesn't seem to be improving at all. For quite a few people that wouldn't be a problem, but I am relying more and more these days on writing as my primary method of communication (despite rarely remembering to check my emails even once a week now). Then again, I suppose it could be taken as a good thing in a way; my awkward and forced writing now accurately matches how I am in person.

Currently listening to Iron and Wine - Cinder and Smoke. Lyrics below:

Give me your hand
The dog in the garden row is covered in mud
And dragging your mother’s clothes
Cinder and smoke
The snake in the basement
Found the juniper shade
The farmhouse is burning down

Give me your hand
And take what you will tonight, I'll give it as fast
And high as the flame will rise
Cinder and smoke
Some whispers around the trees
The juniper bends
As if you were listening

Give me your hand
Your mother is drunk as all
The firemen shake
A photo from father’s arms
Cinder and smoke
You’ll ask me to pray for rain
With ash in your mouth
You’ll ask it to burn again

If you were to cram my day into a 5 minutes highlight show, this could perfectly fit as the background music just because of the way it sounds. Not that I actively encourage downloading songs here(!), but I recommend finding this one and listening to it.

Monkey out

EDIT - Have just had a disagreement with another estate agent over something that my boss did and I was not actually involved in. Ended up putting the phone down. Let this sentence mark a milestone in my life, as I have never, EVER felt this angry before.

EDIT 2 - Remember my post about people who eat really, REALLY loudly? Someone in office now eating Tooty Frootys, i.e. the single most chewy sweets you can buy. Sounds like someone trying to clear out a sink with a plunger! I swear, if I don't give myself a heart attack today it will be a miracle....

Monkey reviews......

2006-03-16T14:05:00.000Z

Howl's Moving Castle

Question: What do me and Howl have in common?

Answer: We both fell for a rather pretty, slightly posh and moderately desolate girl named Sophie who had a bad opinion of herself for no good reason.

The key difference of course being that in my case Sophie didn't turn into a 90-year-old woman because of some curse (although it would have explained a lot). Oh, and I am not a wizard who can fly and turn himself into a strange bird. Yet. Seriously though, The main plot theme behind Howl's Moving Castle is that Sophie goes on a quest to cure her of her curse, and while attempting this she gets involved with a wizard bloke named Howl who also has a curse. Oh, and a scarecrow which has one too. Kind of careless people around those parts, don't you think?

This aside, the film is beautiful. The plot flows along very well and the imagination and vision that has gone into the artwork is second to none. The movement of the castle in itself is something which will make your draw drop and might even raise a grin if you've watched any animation by Terry Gilliam. The English dub is (surprisingly) a proper alternative this time around, so even though you might like watching the films with subtitles (or none if you know Japanese, but that's showing off) the English language version is perfectly acceptable and actually quite charming. That of course might be due to the relatively high proportion of English accents on display. Our accent > American accent.

So, yes. I didn't think they could top Spirited Away, but they have. This one can be filed away in the top drawer alongside Nausicaa, Mononoke and aformentioned 2001 Oscar winner. I award it 5 monkey stars out of 5, with banana slices on top. Go and buy it. Now.

The Sad Monkey

2006-03-15T21:12:00.000Z

I've been a bit of a loss recently. Kind of at a loose end. I've been really irritable and downbeat for an absoloute age now. Kind of empty. You know how sometimes you feel just desperately sad and reflective? Like that feeling, but chained together and unending.

I don't think anyone reading this can sit back and say they have turned out to be exactly what they hoped to be the day they left school/college etc. I haven't. I'm not even a shadow of what I had hoped to have become. I was never particularly brilliant at school I guess, but it wasn't that I was incapeable. When the enthusiasm sparked me I was as good as anyone in most subjects, English particularly. The problem for me is that at that age my spark was already fading out and eventually it just went completely. I like to hide behind the illness excuse I bring up, but at the end of the day even with a clean bill of health I would not have done terribly well in my A-Levels. I never filled out a UCAS form. I never even thought of a Uni I wanted to go to. I'd already failed my A-Levels before they were even half done.

But... yeah. I dreamt of reaching an industry that's picky to say the least. No qualifications, no chance. It's completely my fault of course, but still. I know deep down I'm not going to get there, which is made all the worse by the fact I know in myself if I ever did I would actually almost live the job. I'm okay at what I do at the moment, but I hate doing it. The job scratches and tears away at my insides and leaves me unwilling to go out anywhere or talk to anyone. I literally cannot find anything to talk about with anyone anymore. Completely run dry. The constant interaction with people combined with the unchallenging and mundane nature of the whole thing just eats my soul. I flicked onto auto pilot ages ago I think.

It's not that I am massively depressed or suicidal. Not anywhere close. I have plenty to stick around for, but the sad thing is that currently in my immediate surroundings it's all material stuff. I have hundreds of DVDs, games, cds and stuff just piled up in my room. I could keep myself occupied for days. Maybe even weeks. In material terms I'm pretty well off, but in terms of things more important I'm into my overdraft. The easy answer I suppose would be to do what I mostly have been doing and disappearing on my own into some dark corner of my house with an empty glass and a bottle of whiskey, but it isn't the answer. Unless, that is, the question relates to liver damage.

I was talking to the people in the office today. The guy I work with goes around women more often than I change CDs in my car stereo. He's sitting there noticing I am a bit morose and trying to cheer me up in some way. 'You', he said, 'are the sort of guy that people thinks is cool. You know, you don't let women mess with your head. You're strong enough to be on your own and you also seem to be happy to hang around for ever until the right person turns up. That's cool'.

Problem is, he doesn't know how wrong he is. I've been out a few times with people now and it's just been like water off a duck's back. College people, friends of workmates... eh. Nothing's come close to 'clicking' inside my head. Something somewhere seems to just be 'broken'. Maybe my standards are too high or something. Maybe I just ignore everyone in some ridiculous primitive attempt to protect myself. What my work chum said about me seems to be becoming the general opinion of what I am like. I never used to be like it. I used to have fun around people and things. Now I guess I spend most of my time trying to run away from them.

Monkey out.

NME vocabulary

2006-03-09T15:30:00.000Z

Today I realised exactly why I hate going to gigs and spending time on music forums in general, i.e. the kind of person you find at most of them. Case in point, the following user review of the album 'You See Colours' by The Delays on the BBC:

"If you see colours when you hear music you experience a phenomenon scientists refer to as synaesthesia. This is a fact. What is also certain is the genesis of this record being convoluted in myth and ripples. Aaron Gilbert lost a disk's worth of one hundred ideas and songs whilst eldest sibling Greg sought inner peace. A tour bus muse conveyed an intense form of soul-searching. A philosophical approach on how to avoid turning into a case whilst still locked with a desire to make the next perfect record would be subsequently adopted. The spiritualist took shelter; Delays would sail as one irrespective of the storm. A faith attested by several blistering one off performances during the course of 2005 previewing a wealth of new material. With metal intact, a sky scraping psyche of undoubted aim "we are a shadow of the band that we are going to be" (Greg Gilbert informed, December 2004). 'You See Colours' arrives to the fade of winter and almost two years since their debut offering 'Faded Seaside Glamour' hinted with such equal grandeur and mystique. It starts with absolution. 'You & Me' is achingly beautiful in sentiment "To the bitter end, I have fought alone, now this Calvary is coming home” and in execution. It cuts the marrow, challenging our resigned contentment with the way things are. It is a spirit that slides under the gates of time and genre, reaching up to haunt us out of a stupor. Like any great art, it defies analysis and can only be experienced at the most individual level."

If anyone can find a bigger pile of bullshit on the internet I will actually award them a prize. I bought the aformentioned CD this Monday and it is as average as you like; the singer has a decent voice (kind of like the lead singer of JJ72) but the songs just float past in one long generic indie pop melody blur. Some of them are better than others, but it's in no way even approaching being a classic album, or even a piece of art. Likewise, I've seen even the best professional writers struggle to do a decent 'concept' (for lack of a better word) review. If you're going to write about an album, it's probably best to stick to the mood, the style and how well executed you feel it is rather than sprouting off paragraphs of crap about motivation, meaning and the like.

I'm feeling unusually vitriolic at the moment, as if I am actually looking for confrontation on purpose. I've always been the kind of person who'd spend his last £2.50 on buying someone a pint, but I had people warning me that at some point the weight that would put on my shoulders from people expecting me to be like it all the time and taking advantage of that (talking specifically about work here) would cause me to snap. I'm not quite sure if that's fully happened yet or whether I'm just in an utterly foul mood due to being told the eye surgery I had been hoping for since I was a little kid now can't be carried out."

I still find time to be nice though - recently I paid one of our seller's bus fairs when it started raining outside our office and she had spent all her money on shopping. I was also told by a very ex girlfriend last weekend that I was the best boyfriend she'd ever had. Would have been nice to know, but I've known that was the case for the past 3 years anyway so I wasn't immensely bothered.

Monkey out.

Monkey reviews.....

2006-03-08T09:48:00.000Z

Mogwai - Mr Beast

This album seems to have received a bit of a mixed opinion in the press and from fans. Some people reckon it to be their most boring album yet, which I take issue with due to the fact these people must have been listening to something else when 'Happy Songs For Happy People' was released (although it was still an okay album).

I like this album. It's quite heavy on the guitars, and generally quite angry. It's exactly the kind of album you can come home after a bad day at work to and sit in a room in the dark with a bottle of whiskey and really let yourself go. My particular album highlight is about 2 minutes into second song 'Glasgow Mega Snake' when a small period of tension-building guitar squeeling makes way for an angry, thundering chord progression. Not all of the album is quite so bombastic - a few tunes like single 'Friend Of The Night' are piano-based and actually quite beautiful in a low-key way.

So yeah, a good CD. I probably like it so much due to it fitting perfectly with how I view the world at the moment in a slightly angry, edgy, resigned and thoughtful way, so good stuff. I award it 4 badly-drawn monkey stars out of 5.

Monkey's F1 preview

2006-03-06T19:28:00.000Z

Yup, it's that time of year again. A full 12 months after Giancarlo Fisichella won me over £200 by scoring a win at the 2005 Australian Grand Prix, F1 is set to go for another season. 2005 kind of turned out okay - I attended my first Grand Prix and in events of lesser importance to the world of sport Fernando Alonso became the first new F1 Champion for 5 years and Renault scooped the Constructor's Cup. Ferrari and BAR slipped down the grid, McLaren, Toyota and obviously Renault zoomed up it and some decent enough racing happened (glad no one was anywhere near me during Raikkonen's move on Fisichella in Japan).

So, what for 2006? I won't bore anyone with any rule talk as if you're reading this you are interested in the sport enough to know them already. Time instead for a team-by-team rundown of my expectations for this year!

Renault

Looking quite good again for Reggie, really, which will no doubt please the French board folks before they pull the team out of Formula One before 2007. Alonso will be as strong as ever, although given that he is off to McLaren you could be tempted to say that Fisichella will suspiciously become the quicker of the two drivers about midway through the season when all the good bits get put on his car. Then again, if Renault are pulling out for 2007 then they have nothing to worry about! Car looking very quick on short and long stints, so expect lots of wins.

McLaren

Had I done this preview last month, this entire McLaren entry would have consisted of repeated 'lol's. When it first hit the track the MP4/21 was discovered to have a 'Mercedes Special', aka an engine which lasted about 5 minutes and went pretty slowly during it. Testing at Barcelona saw the McLarens lodged at the bottom of the timing sheets and stupidly slow on the straights. Fortunately (well, for them anyway) they seem to have sorted it out and now seem quite fast, although I get the impression they won't be quite at the sharp end as the green flag drops. Risky prediction time - Montoya to score more points than Kimi, which goes unnoticed as the Kimster heads to Ferrari to partner Rossi (!!) in 2007.

Ferrari

I hate Ferrari's preseason testing. They always trail off on their own little schedule which leaves no one with any idea as to where they are. The only minute clue people had was that, having stuck the latest aero bits on the F248 on the final good day at Bahrain, they suddenly started lapping quicker than any Honda had managed at any point previously. Then again, Honda might have been running heavy loads to check on Michelin performance in the Bahrain heat. Never the matter, the chassis is (in my opinion) the best looking of 2006, especially now they have ditched the stupid tray underwing at the front. Schumacher will be as competitive as ever, but the real interest is Felipe 'I wish I had a longer contract' Massa. Last year he actually did a bloody good job at times, so I reckon he'll win his first race which will see many more Marlboro packs fly off the shelves in Brazil, which is why he's there in the first place.

Toyota

I have a sneaky feeling that Toyota are pulling a Paul Daniels here and tricking everyone into thinking they are pedestrian people who threaten no-one. They did it in 2005. Thing is, look at their budget. They have 2 brilliant development drivers. They have Mike Gascoyne. Can we honestly believe we'll see them struggling at the lower end of the points in 2006? Nah. I reckon they've been just playing themselves onto the Bridgestone tyres and will unleash a rather surprising performance when the season proper starts. Wins and podiums beckon in my opinion, but if they don't it's safe to assume that the bods at Cologne compounded their error of stealing the plans for a pretty uncompetitive Ferrari by stealing the wrong guy from the Renault design department during the winter of 2004.

Williams

Big shrug for Williams. The Cosworth engine seems to be bloody good indeed - initial estimates reckon is to be the highest-revving, biggest horsepower-pushing V8 unit currently out there. This would fill anyone with a sense of anticipation, but then we all remember that Williams don't seem able to build a decent chassis. The FW25 was initially a disaster in 2003 and required a complete rebuild before it started showing form, the FW26 was a weird one with a fat walrus nose which wasn't all too hot, the FW27 wasn't exactly brilliant (although the 2005-soec BMW engine didn't help)... you know. Mark Webber seemed alright last year but got burnt by Heidfeld outperforming him almost every week. As for Nico Rosberg - actually seems quite promising. He won't win a race (tempting fate here!), but he will keep Webby honest and might even score a podium early doors if the Cosworth engine keeps them pulling along early in the season. Thereafter they'll slip down the grid and generally be going nowhere from Spain onwards.

Honda

Ahh, yes. Honda (BAR) gave me one of the moments of 2005 when their engine preservation scheme which saw them retire both cars on the last lap at Melbourne failed spectacularly when both 007s ground to a smokey halt on the same lap about 3 minutes into the Malaysian Grand Prix. They then got the screw from Max Mosely regarding some bullshit rule about their fuel collector tank, and didn't score a point until France. They then came quite good and Jenson scored a good amount of points, and now Sato isn't around they will actually get some good track time, particularly with Barrichello onboard. They look quick and they have two drivers who I reckon could win a championship, so let's see. I reckon Barrichello will accumalate enough points to challenge for the title, whilst Jenson will win a few races which will in turn treat us to James Allen having an on-air orgasm. Oh joy.

Red Bull

Looks a bit bad for Red Bull at the moment, and it's nothing to do with the pace of the car (which seems not too bad). Thing is, they can't actually run a race distance at the moment so until that happens they could have 10 engines in the back and it still wouldn't matter. Coulthard was okay last year, but Klien was close (and quicker often) so I reckon he will outscore DC now al that driver-swapping rubbish is out the way. I say 'outscore', but that would of course depend on the car actually holding together long enough to get points. My tip is that a RB2 won't see the finish line in the opening two Grands Prix.

BMW

Uuuugh. The most boring car manufacturer in the world produce a boring looking car to be driven by a quick-yet-dull German driver. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but I don't see BMW doing all that much in 2006. Their car looked quick initially in testing, but subsequently most other teams have leapt up a gear and the BMWs haven't. I think Heidfeld will be the better of the two drivers with Villeneuve popping up with the odd good result on occasion. They'll get closer to the front as the season goes along (with their size of budget you wouldn't really expect anything else), so I reckon they'll be the exact opposite of Williams, with an uninspiring start and a stronger, more promising finish.

Midland F1

Hmm. First off, I don't think Midland are going to do anything this season. Actually, I don't think they'll even score a point. Their driver lineup is solid but unspectacular, their car looks outdated and square in comparison with the sleek Renaults, Hondas and Ferraris and it doesn't seem to be setting particularly great times in testing either. It's obvious by their rather excessive lineup of 4 test drivers that they are struggling for cash too, so that confirms that Alex Schneider underestimated F1 before he bought Jordan. Then again, it means they will get extra advertising space courtesy of Markus Winkelhock's HUGE chin, so that's an advantage. Only Super Aguri will be behind them on the majority of grids this season.

Toro Rosso

Hmm, what to think. Firstly, this used to be Minardi, so on that hand you expect them to be quite slow and off the pace. Then again, they have Red Bull backing and are running cars which are blatently rebadged Red Bull RB1s, with some restricted V10 Cosworth engines which I guess will also help them. Liuzzi seems a good driver (rumours have it that Red Bull cooled their interest last season for the main team when they found he was starting to lose his hair!!) but Scott Speed is an unknown and I reckon he will struggle. He did okay in GP2 during 2005 but I can't really see him matching Liuzzi and I reckon this'll end up being his only season in F1. As for the team itself - a few points possibly, especially in the early races.

Super Aguri

I had this fantastic idea a few hours ago. When Yuji Ide takes to the track for qualifying in Bahrain, look carefully at his car. I plan to run out of the grandstands at a similar point to him, and then proceed to sprint around the circuit as he naviagates it. I obviously don't have any aerodynamic wings on my head and my shoulders haven't been raised to compromise airflow, so when I come to overtake him I will be fine. Either that or he'll spin off under pressure and dent his car. The image of a Super Aguri car going at 30mph around a flat-out bend with tyres screetching and the drivers fighting for control as if they were on the ragged edge puts a wry smile on my face. Sato gets the first seat despite a flankly borrocks 2005. At one point it was rumoured that he was going to be scooped up by Toyota so they could get a PR win over Honda in Japan, but obviously the initial date between Taku and the Toyota boss' daughter didn't go too well so he ended up back where he started. As for Ide - god knows! They may as well have put me in the car. Seriously though, thank god we have a new team this year. When they get their own chassis they will move forward, even if they are *cough*bullshit*cough* not getting any financial help from Honda *cough*bullshit*cough*.

That's about it really - looking forward to seeing how things pan out and how hideously wrong I got things in the months to come!

Monkey illness

2006-02-13T22:49:00.000Z

That previous post (Angry Monkey, just down there) was actually posted on Saturday night, but due to immense ineptitude by Blogger it only happened to appear about 15 minutes ago. I did indeed get a lie in the next morning, but due to feeling like death I actually only got up a 6pm, at which point I fell over and spent the next few hours somewhere between being conscious and not. This morning was much the same, and all I've managed to eat all day are one Shredded Wheat (dry), one stick of celery and 2 pieces of toast (again, dry). I do feel pretty ill at the moment - my energy is gone, my head feels like someone's filled it with burning coal, and I am actually shaking. The doctors have said they want to see me tomorrow given my past with illnesses*, so I have that to look forward to.

* A potted history of Monkey's illnesses!

1999 - Cardiac Dysrhythmia

This one wasn't too fun - it caused me to go from being a relatively happy, fit 16-year-old to a nervous, unfit shut-in inside a month. Being 16 and learning something's a bit dodgy with your ticker is never too great.

2000 - Glandular Fever (Episode 1)

Right at the start of my final A-Level year I became aware that I was coming straight home from school and sleeping, and generally feeling very ill. Eventually it snowballed and I was diagnosed with glandular fever, which kept me out of school for 2 months and destroyed any chances I had of passing my exams due to the complete lack of support I got from the teachers upon my return. Lovely!

2002 - Glandular Fever (Episode 2)

Yup, it reccured. I must have not ever really lost it from the first time, and some 3 weeks into my new job I was being sent for blood tests every couple of weeks to try to solve the mystery of what exactly was wrong with me. Some 8 months later and a heck of a lot of blood wasted, it was eventually discovered that I was suffering once again from glandular fever. I missed a month of work.

2003 - Shingles

Ooooh boy, this was a barrel of laughs. Caught in the winter of 2003 when my family were all abroad and my friends all at Uni, I practically went mad having this. I ended up sleeping at random parts of the day and waking up not knowing what time it was, I could hardly even put a t-shirt on because the blistering was so bad and I didn't answer the phone or draw the curtains for 2 weeks.

As I am feeling a little random today, I decided to do a survey on the wonderous . This test was the 'Office Moron test', the results of which are pasted hastily below:

Which Office Moron are you?

You've been here since the dawn of time itself, old timer, and you've been biding your time with your eye on the boss's job.

You deserved to have a promotion. You've been here longer than anyone else. Your fingers have become craggy, and you see Excel spreadsheets when you go to sleep at night. More than half your life has been spent at budget meetings, advertising liason sessions, team-building seminars and pub lunches with people you hate. Yet for some reason you've been passed over every time in favour of younger, less competent workers.

No more. You're at the end of your tether. Where's your gold watch? Where's your acknowledgement? Your raises? When does your time come around?

Your time is now, hombre.

Frighteningly close to the truth, even if I am only 23. That kind of fits in with the general pattern of my life :-). Now time to return to bed before I collapse.

Monkey out.

Angry Monkey

2006-02-12T00:25:00.000Z

Someone today told me that I was a pretty mild-mannered, relaxed monkey, and that they couldn't imagine me getting angry. Trust me, this is as far from reality as it could possibly be. As a result of this, I have below listed some of the things which are guaranteed to get my blood boiling, should anyone want to experiment on me in the future.

Teeth Grinder Number 1 - Noisey Eating

If there is one thing I can't stand, it is people who eat really, really loudly. Like, mouth open so we can all see their food noisey. Sounding like someone stamping in a muddy puddle noisey. Using a plunger on a clogged sink noisey. I HATE IT! I don't mind the odd bit of chewing, but anything too loud just really puts me off my food and makes me generally a bit of a grumpy monkey. Oh, and while I am at it, you know how some people suck their fingers after eating crisps? I bloody hate that too. Even more, probably.

Teeth Grinder Number 2 - Losing things

I know everyone gets annoyed when they lose things, but I get really, really annoyed. I have practically destroyed areas of my house before searching for my house keys, and if I lose a DVD or CD from a case I will not stop looking for it until it is found, even if it takes hours and angers me. Despite living quite a messy life, I do like to keep some things in order and get ridiculously stressed if that order is disturbed.

Teeth Grinder Number 3 - Arrogant driving

ARRRGHH!! The thought of this annoys me. People who drive a sodding BMW so they decide they don't need to indicate. People in Jaguars who cut across your lane at a roundabout. 40-year-old divorced hairdressers in their Land Rovers who park on double yellows while going to buy OK Magazine and lipstick. If I could put these people through one of those car crushing machines with their piles of metal cack, I would.

Teeth Grinder Number 4 - Constant questioning

Are you okay? Are you sure you're okay? Are you tired? You're not speaking much - have I annoyed you? Do you want a drink? Sometimes, I need my space (this obviously doesn't count for MSN - anyone who logs onto MSN and then says they don't feel like talking are usually crying out for attention and shouldn't log in to a chat program if they want privacy) but people around me who generally can't take the hint that I want a bit of time to my own thoughts.

Teeth Grinder Number 5 - Music snobs

I bloody hate this. A lot. People who consider themselves to be an encyclopedia of musical knowledge just because they list bands like Belle and Sebastian, Yes, Led Zeppelin and Joy Division as their favourites. Big deal - lots of people like those bands. I like them. Does that mean I think people who like bands I hate (Arctic Monkeys for one!) are idiots? Of course not. Does the fact that I don't like some bands mean that those bands have no place making music and should be seen as generally shit? No way. Half the people who write on music forums always quote musicians they have only listened to briefly or not even listened to at all anyway, and most also say they like some bands just to up their image, whilst in reality they can barely listen to the records in question. Tits. If I like a bad, I listen to them. If I don't, I don't.

Teeth Grinder Number 6 - Disturbed sleep

When people see me sleeping, what they do not realise is that I am actually a ticking bomb that will explode unless left to wake naturally.Working 6 days a week really tires me out, especially the hours and the lack of breaks. When I doze off, I really need it and to be woken early for whatever reason jolts my brain out of a mini-coma and leaves my nerves a little raw. A simple way to avoid this is always abiding by this rule: if you ever see me asleep, only something equating to the seriousness of the world ending should be used as an excuse to wake me. Ignore it at your peril.

There are more, but that's it for now. Listing those things was actually raising my blood pressure, so time for a glass of water and a stick of celery. At least I get a lie-in tomorrow morning :-).

Monkey out.

Most depressing song

2006-02-10T14:37:00.000Z

Today I believe I have concluded my unofficial search for the most depressing song ever. I found it quite by chance - having decided to obtain The Perishers' album having seen them on Wednesday night, I then shuffled my iPod and got this following song:

Pills

I hope my smile
can distract you
I hope my fists
can fight for two
So it never has to show
And you’ll never know

I hope my love
can blind you
I hope my arms
can bind you
So you’ll never have to see
What we’ve grown to be

One may think
we’re alright
But we need pills
to sleep at night
We need lies
to make it through the day
We’re not ok

One may think
we’re doing fine
But if I had to lay it on the line
We’re losing ground
with every passing day
We’re not ok

But that’s one thing
I would never
One thing I would never
That’s one thing
I would never say to you

Not only is it a really haunting song (duet - male and female with an acoustic guitar), it also reminds me of the period between November 2000 and May 2001 pretty well, which makes the song have even more of an impact. You know that feeling you get in your stomach at the end of a really sad film? That.

Not much else to post at the moment. Oh yes - my Dad is fine and will probably be out tomorrow. All good, and I have my monthly half Saturday to 'look forward to'. Woo hoo.

Monkey out.

Mew + additional stuff

2006-02-09T22:19:00.000Z

I've been a fan of Mew since I picked up their first major-label release 'Frengers' shortly after it was launched in 2003, having by complete chance caught the video for 'Am I Wry? No' on MTV2 when I awoke from an afternoon slumber on my sofa. Their brand of slightly ethereal rock blends so many different things there is really no point in me trying to compare them to anyone else - all that matters in the end is that they are very good indeed.

They were supported by The Perishers, who I seemed to like slightly more than my chum who was there. The guitarist seemed to be doing some pretty hilarious movements for the kind of songs they were playing and I can't remember most of their set as I hadn't heard of them before, but I do know they opened with 'My Heart', which I liked. I've subsequently found out that they are pretty big in the States and have had their songs played on one of those shitty American teen drama programs they seem to love, but that doesn't matter. Their studio stuff is a little different to their live sound - at the venue last night they sounded like a rather twee Belle and Sebastian-ish band, when in reality they are a bit edgier and a bit more happy to use effects pedals.

Mew were brilliant - I'd read a few reports around that they weren't too special (get it? GET IT? :-D!... *cough*) live, but they really came across well. They were much heavier than I expected them to sound, and they mixed up the songs well between Frengers (2003) and the latter (2005) Glass Handed Kites, which is more 'proggy' then the former. They opened the set with GHK opener 'Circuitry Of The Wolf' which really got everyone in the mood, and progressed through songs like 'She Came Home For Christmas', 'Am I Wry? No', 'Apocalypso' (the bass on this song made it 10x better than the already cool studio version) and 'Zookeeper's Boy', before ending (as I had predicted) with a nod to their older stuff with a piano solo version of 'Saliva' from 2000 album 'Half The World Is Looking At Me', and a rather stirring rendition of 'Comforting Sounds', their 8-minute mini masterpiece which bought Frengers to a close. The only three noteable omissions from their set were 'Special' (odd, as it was the lead single for GHK), 'Symmetry' (probably tricky without the necessary female duet on hand) and 'She Spider' (my favourite Mew song, but never mind!). All-in-all, a good night. The band also had a bit of banter with the crowd - their first attempt didn't really work too well; at first they seemed to confuse everyone into thinking they were ending their gig after just 6 songs, and then an attempt to say that they were chuffed because they thought no one in Bournemouth liked Mew came out a bit wrong and sounded rather glib and almost patronising, but being Danish they were forgiven. Oh, and I bought a T-Shirt. I never buy band T-Shirts, so investing £12 in one is surely a sign that a band had a good show.

In other news, I managed to completely fuck up my work trousers when my boss insisted that we crawl round a building site trying to take measurements for some details today - a decision that in hindsight was mildly cretinous at best. At least they are getting cleaned from his own cash, so never mind. My Dad's gone into hospital for an operation so obviously I'm not exactly fully concentrated on work at the moment, but hopefully tomorrow will turn out well and I can turn my thoughts to having a nice, quiet weekend.

Monkey out

Music monkey

2006-02-08T01:18:00.000Z

By looking at the bar on the right of the screen ( ---> that way) (no, a little bit more) (little bit more...) (there you go!) you will notice a lovely red button with 'LastFM' written on it. If you click aformentioned button, you will be transported to a wonderous page of magic, where unicorns and weird blue dragons roam and where you can still buy Wham bars and that crackly sugar stuff you put in your mouth to make it sound like a bunch of bacteria were holding a fireworks party. Actually, no, it's better than that: you can check out what music I have been listening to. I'm quite a diverse chappy so it'd be a bad idea to try a band you hadn't heard of just because one you liked appears near them on the list, so be warned. WARNED I TELL YOU! (it seems more serious in brown).

Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit

Well, it's been a pretty dull few days. I bought myself the new Belle and Sebastian album and it's really quite good, but not something that I could listen to non-stop. The particular brand of sunny, jolly indie pop is nice in hour-long bursts, but after that I get an itching to listen to something a bit moodier and can't stomach it anymore. Standout tunes for me are 'The Blues Are Still Blue' and 'To Be Myself Completely', whereas everything else just fits in the 'nice' catagory. Still, a good album. I think I'll award it 4 bananas out of 5. Queue wave of self-conscious indie kids who spend 3 hours perfecting their triangular fringes, stacking their copies of NME and choosing multicoloured scarves to leave this page in a huff.

Valentines Day soon, and I've bought my semi-Miss Monkey a little present. I am actually really good at things like that, so I should be okay on that front. It's nice to have someone who can put a smile on your face without having to give you money, food or beer. Work is bloody busy right now but as a result I might have a salary increase sometime soon, so all is going good. Now, if you'll excuse me I have a date with a glass of Jim Beam and an iPod set to today's Ricky Gervais podcast.

Monkey out.

Ice cream

2006-02-03T21:29:00.000Z

Well, I've been told to write about ice cream, so here goes. I find ice cream a middling sort of food - you know, the kind you eat lots of but never really crave too much of it. Well, it's like that for me anyway. I guess this is not helped by the fact that my favourite ever flavour (EVER!!) is Chunky Munky by Ben and Jerry. Given that this flavour is ridiculously difficult to find in this country I don't get to eat much, and therefore never really get addicted to it. Ice cream then is not too much fun, but freezing random things most certainly is. Nothing raises a more interesting conversation at the dinner table than a good quality frozen egg, for example.

(I stop talking about ice cream here, incidentally :-))

On another note, I have booked my tickets to Silverstone and am off up there for a weekend in June to see the Grand Prix. Should be jolly :-D. I'm still losing weight and generally looking quite slim nowadays which is good, and ever since I gave up crisps, Burger King and Coke I've stopped having my crippling headaches. Hmmm...

On a musical note, I am currently listening to Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan's duet album, and finding it generally quite good. I'm trying desperately at the moment to listen to other things as the entire country jumps on the Arctic Monkeys bandwagon (listened to their album, didn't like it) and have found a few nifty records, such as Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans. The new Belle and Sebastian album is rather decent, and I'm still getting a lot of mileage out of T. Rex. On a visual note, I got Pom Poko and Porco Rosso this week due to them being the latest Studio Ghibli films released as the Ghibli collection. Not watched either yet, but might settle down in front of the latter one of the two later tonight.

On a gaming note, a really satisfying moment. I was having a boxing match against my brother on the Fight Night Round 3 demo, and he came out in round one and decked me. Honestly - he smacked me around, cut my boxer's lip and generally made me look an idiot. But, this was my plan. You see, I was carefully storing energy. Through round 2 I stored more, but got my defensive work going and blocked his decent attacks. His stamina was now spent, and I came flying out of the blocks as the start of round 3 chimed.

Within 2 punches, my brother's boxer was on the floor. A cheeky hook was followed by a devestating haymaker which the replays showed again and again in super slow-mo, meaning I could see my glove practically snapping the other guy's nose right off. Using my advantage, I then smacked the guy back down as soon as he got up and paraded around the ring having won. This therefore proved I have a superb fighting brain, and am probably therefore a match for Ali, Foreman, Hamed and the like. Maybe I should have done boxing in real life!

Then again, maybe not. I quite like having a perfectly straight nose.

Monkey out.

Looking backwards

2006-01-31T22:10:00.000Z

Yesterday, I got a bit bored of my Xbox 360 games and decided it would be quite nice to give some of my original Xbox titles a whirl for the first time in ages. I had just settled back into my chair for some play time when my 360 decided to inform me that the game I was trying to play - Silent Hill 4 - was not yet compatible with the Xbox 360. 'Oh well, I'll try Pro Evo Soccer 4' I thought. Same result. Ditto for Moto GP 3, the entire Grand Theft Auto Trilogy boxset, Jet Set Radio (booo!), Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, FIFA 06, Brian Lara Cricket, Top Spin Tennis and Fahrenheit.

Obviously, this is a slice of todge. I understand the backward compatibility people at Microsoft are working on it, but boy I wish they'd sodding hurry it along. I've completed Condemned and Call Of Duty 2 now, Kameo is drawing to a close, DOA is cack and won't be getting played and Project Gotham 3 has been milked completely and utterly dry. A quick peekaboo at the Gameplay release radar tells me that in the next month there is not a single 360 game I have any interest in being released. In the next 8 weeks there are perhaps 2 I might buy. Oh well - it saves me money I guess.

Money for things like going to see the British Grand Prix again this year, which I will be arranging at some point in the next week. Last year's event was probably the coolest long weekend of my life; not only because of the racing, but because I spent loads of time having fun around cool people at and away from the track. Hopefully this year will be similar :-). On a general F1 note, it seems that Renault are looking in good shape for this season, with Honda not looking bad either. McLaren seem to have dropped the ball a little bit which is a shame, but you can't have everything I guess. Oh, and to tack an additional thought on to the sports events theme, the football was excellent, plus Liverpool won. All good!

Well, that's about it really. Solid text and no interesting anecdotes, so well done if you have managed to read all the way through this. Hopefully something interesting will happen in my life soon I can write about, but until then...

Monkey out.

The Strokes - You Only Live Once

Some people think they're always right
Others are quiet and uptight
Others they seem so very nice nice nice nice
Inside they might feel sad and wrong

Twenty-nine different attributes
Only seven that you like
Twenty ways to see the world
Twenty ways to start a fight

Oh don't don't don't get up
I can't see the sunshine
I'll be waiting for you, baby
Cause I'm through
Sit me down
Shut me up
I'll calm down
And I'll get along with you

Oh men don't notice what they got
Women think of that a lot
One thousand ways to please your man
Not even one requires a plan (I know)

Countless odd religions, too
It doesn't matter which you choose
One stubborn way to turn your back
This I've tried and now refuse

Oh don't don't don't get up
I can't see the sunshine
I'll be waiting for you, baby
Cause I'm through
Sit me down
Shut me up
I'll calm down
And I'll get along with you
Alright

Shut me up
Shut me up
And I'll get along with you

Monkey Reviews.....

2006-01-28T22:42:00.000Z

... all of his Xbox 360 games!

Condemned - Criminal Origins

Hurrah, this turned out to be excellent in the surprising way that such things as peanut butter and cornflake sandwiches turn out to be excellent. A gloomy, intense and frightening game, Condemned sees you trecking in first-person across 10 levels trying to hunt down serial killers in order to clear your character's name from a pending murder charge. Controls are tight, weapons are varied, the story line is interesting enough and enemy AI is rather nifty.

4 Monkey paws out of 5

Kameo - Elements of Power

Again, this is surprisingly good. Originally when I saw the screenshots and movies for this waaaay back in the early GameCube days (for that was Kameo's original planned platform) I wasn't exactly excited, but it all fits together like a big, colourful jigsaw. As the lead character (Kameo) you run around the world completing various levels by using her ability to change into creatures with unique attributes. The thing sees the return of the lovely Rare shine which they'd lost (Grabbed By The Ghoulies :-(!!) and the voice talent is as amusing as ever, with an entire village of weird sunflowers talking in a rather twee Yorkshire accent. Hurrah again!

3.5 Monkey paws out of 5

Dead Or Alive 4

Now, you see, I don't follow this. Fact is, I looked over various reviews of Dead Or Alive 4 (DOA4 from here on in) and they all drooled over it, calling it an immense challenge and the best beat-'em-up ever. I can't really contest the latter point, as the beat-'em-up genre is a massively overrated bloated collection of uninspiring button-mashers, but the former point is something I need to take exception to.

You see, DOA4 is hideously frustrating in single player mode. It's so bad it almost makes it worth buying two controllers and learning to play one using your foot to give yuorself some proper competition, as the AI on display here is at best cretinous, usually resorting to the cheap tactics your 5-year-old cousin would resort to to score an easy victory against you. Watch in awe as an opposition fighter kicks off a ridiculous, unblockable fist tirade which'll pin you against the scenery and finish you off without the chance of reply. Gasp in delight as your character gets punished for taking the initiative by the AI suddenly countering each and every single one ofyour moves, no matter how well-timed or placed. Scream with joy as you manage to complete a story mode having killed the most cheaply designed, artificially difficult opponent ever imagined in a video game. That's right folks, DOA4 is a barrel of laughs if you enjoy sticking pins in your eyes, stabbing yourself in the stomach with spoons or drinking bleach.

Online mode? Lag rears its ugly head. It ends up with the player having to wait until a willing friend turns up and wants to play, a scenario which is incredibly rare due to anyone with half a brain remembering how dull beat-'em-ups can get and asking you to slot in Call Of Duty 2 or Project Gotham 3 instead. Then again, if you actively enjoy watching finely sculpted computer generated jugs bounce, feel more than free to buy and enjoy DOA4. If you would rather spend £40 on a decent fight, spend it on a boxing lesson, perhaps half a dead cow you can hang from your ceiling and punch, or wait for Fight Night 3.

1 Monkey paw out of 5

Call Of Duty 2

This is fantastic, and probably my favourite game so far... just. Beautifully presented and designed, the game is pretty linear but you never notice. For the first ever time on a shooter, I found myself actually frightened to move out of my hiding hole in a basement, and actually shaking when needing to provide some quick sniping cover for my allies. Playing CoD2 is actually a very draining experience - I've seen a chum of mine practically collapse onto the sofa after playing a level from nervous exhaustion. Makes you wonder how the hell the guys did it for real back in the actual World War 2...

4.5 Monkey paws out of 5

Project Gotham Racing 3

On the other hand, this is very possibly my favourite 360 game so far. I'm a petrol head anyway so I was always likely to love this, but the feeling of racing around some picture-perfect landscapes in stupidly detailed cars is lovely. Hearing the F50 GT roar for the first time as you open up the throttle is really quite exciting, too ;-).

Not much has changed from PGR2 - cone challenges etc make their return, but this time there are no slower cars mixed into the equation, with the slowest on offer here probably being the Jaguar Xk8. The Nurburgring also makes an appearance again, and is as great as ever. I've lost many an hour drifting my dayglow orange McLaren F1 around the hills there, and probably will continue to lose many more. I'm also in the top 3% of players worldwide (well, before I got bored of racing 15-year-old American shits who really todge up Xbox Live).

4.5 Monkey paws out of 5.

Well, that's about it. I'm a bit of a grumpy Monkey at the moment - work is poor, and Jenster has no internet access so I am without my favourite source of northern-based alternate and interesting wry humour :-(. Ho-hum. Off to Fratton Park tomorrow to watch Portsmouth v Liverpool with my brother. Guess I'll slink off to bed and try to rid myself of this headache in time for the train....

Monkey out.

Last 5 songs on iTunes:

Wilco - Radio Cure
Green Day - Give Me Novacaine
Elliott Smith - Happiness
Goldfrapp - Ooh La La
Mogwai - Punk Rock

ED HARCOURT
Something To Live For

She's moving like a forest fire
Leaving no path unscathed
Too young to be as jaded as I am
But old enough to feel the strain
I hope that I can hold on to
The beauty that I'll never match
That never ending open wound
That started from a simple scratch

I want to save us
From being saved
Before we get too old
And waste away
Like some lovers
Destined to die young

And so through all the loss we've seen
Of friends who sit and think too much
Too fragile for the cold outside
Too proud to say what's on their minds

This is for the broken fools
Whose flames are gone before their time
And if you see me trip and fall
Save me from a swift decline

I want to sink beneath a drunken sea
Look into your eyes
When you take the breath from me
There's always something to live for

Happy 2006

2006-01-01T00:44:00.001Z

Er, I haven't been playing my 360 non-stop since my last post, I just have not been bothered to update this.

On a darker and apprehension-filled note, 2005 wasn't a great year for me. 2006 is going to be the year of the monkey, and I don't care who I have to step on to make it happen.

Monkey out.

Hurrah!

2005-12-02T17:29:00.000Z

Whhoooot

Xbox 360 safely installed under my T.V. Will report back with findings when I can be bothered!

Monkey out.

Er....!

2005-12-01T19:59:00.000Z

You know, today was a day when an opportunity arose for me to feel sorry for a few people, but for once in my life I am actually smiling. I seem to have actually benefited from some good luck for once, so I think I am due a little bit of smugness.

Due to the massive level of demand on the Xbox 360 at Amazon, their PC order system crashed and basically scrambled their dispatch list. As a result, at 3.30pm today Amazon sent me an email informing me that I had been sent a machine despite having pre-ordered pretty late. I know that lots of people who ordered before me didn't get one and I do feel sorry, but for once in my life I am happy for me. I guess as I trudged down a ridiculously busy highstreet last week in freezing weather to exchange my broken copy of Mario Kart DS some ultra-geeky gaming god of some sort looked down and felt sorry for me.

Talking of Mario Kart DS, I got it online for the first time today and it is excellent! Raced a few chaps and won a couple of events, all whilst being lag-free and having a good time. This wi-fi thing was a little tricky to set up, but now it is I can imagine myself getting a lot of fun out of it.

Signing off now - I am still wary of Amazon at the moment so I will not believe my 360 has been sent until it arrives. I'll keep you posted.

Monkey out

Curse you, Nintendo!!!!!

2005-11-25T19:04:00.000Z

Gah!

I had been really looking forward today (well, in the understated way I look forward to anything) due to the fact that Mario Kart DS was finally released here and along with it, our Nintendo Wi-fi services were launched. I planned to zoom into town, pick up the Mario Kart DS bundle and the USB dongle to use as I don't have a de facto wireless system at home.

The first problem hit as soon as I got into town. There were plenty of the DS bundles about so that was okay, but when I went into Game they had no clue what the dongle was and had none in stock. Hoping this was something particular to them I went to HMV where they had plenty of the bundles but also no dongles. Finally went into Gamestation and bought my DS bundle there with the addition of Sonic Rush (so-so game - done 2 levels and am kind of bored already). At least they'd heard of the dongle in there, but they told me they had none and thought Nintendo hadn't sent it to the shops. So, on the day when the much heralded Nintendo Wi-fi system kicked off in Europe, none of the much sought-after USB dongles were to be found in shops, which I presume has drastically cut the number of Mario Kart adopters who can get online. Good old Nintendo, eh?

The problems didn't stop there. I returned from town and eventually got back to the office where I unpacked the DS, slotted in Mario Kart and was treated to an error screen. Confused, I switched off the machine, re-insterted the cartridge and tried again. Same problem. A quick blast on Sonic Rush confirmed that the DS was working perfectly, so obviously my copy of Mario Kart is duff. I spoke to plenty of people about it, and they were as shocked as I was. That kind of thing never happens, let alone on a Nintendo console. Thankfully I can swap it for a working copy tomorrow, but I was really looking forward to a bit of Mario Kart tonight :-(.

The day had already been slightly dampened when it turned out another estate agent was trying to drag something I said a month ago into a long argument we are having with them over commission. I'm already jaded with the industry as it is, and even though the facts and the majority of people involved in the case back me up it really is putting the strain on me. As a result I stood up in front of an astonished boss and work colleague and proceeded to give them a 5 minute speech on why I was fed up, why I hated what the work was doing to me and why I was offering my resignation. I proceeded to put my letter on my boss's desk and sit back down. He obviously doesn't want me to quit, but I am seriously at the end of my wire now. I'm 23 in 15 days time and I feel like I am about 50.

Roll on tomorrow I guess - hopefully things can't get much worse.

Secret message for Jenjen - seriously, don't waste your energy on the snivelling turds at Oxford. They probably all wear bow ties which spin around and drink Pimms. They are also all probably called Rupert or Humphrey. I know I have a stupid way of saying things (which is even more apparent in this case due to the fact that I am desperate to cheer 0.01% of you up somehow), but being deadly serious for a jiffy you have an amazing amount to offer and you'll prove it. You have ideas and creativity swimming around in your head that a good load of people couldn't form having been through university. Trust me.

360 Idiocy

2005-11-23T16:40:00.000Z

Posted this on a forum this afternoon. Kind of sums the general opinion up:

It's a big mess, isn't it? Reading about the American launch on BBC and the like, it seems a lot of disappointed people were given the choice of the Core System or nothing. It also seems like the Core System is not popular at all with purchasers which raises the question of why it was announced anyway. You could safely assume that - had Microsoft seen fit to do so - the Premium System would have sold just as well if it was the only package available. Take a look at Amazon on how well the Premium and Core Systems are selling; the Premium is 6th on the Amazon list which makes it the highest ordered console, whereas the Core is 306th, which is less than the PlayStation 2, the PSP and the DS bundles, and only just ahead of the current Xbox.

Then we have the amazingly poor PAL release looming on December 2nd, which I am sure is a date Microsoft are dreading. 50,000 consoles for the entire of England? The waiting lists are going to be utterly ridiculous. Both Play.com and GAME have told customers who pre-ordered after August that there is little to no chance of them getting a console on release date, which given the fact that many of those people had pre-ordered a small matter of 4 months before the release is a joke. Then we have the problem of Microsoft leaving the retailers in the dark about stock numbers, and how many Premium and Core Systems they will be getting. It is highly likely that some poor people will turn up with their guaranteed pre-order on release day, only to be turned away unless they are willing to accept a Core System. As one punter in America put it having been forced to take the Core System or go home empty-handed, "it's like buying a car without the engine".

This is going to bite Microsoft I feel. Whereas the PSP was tricky to get hold of on release day, Sony had the common sense to at least assign enough for this country so those who were waiting after pre-ordering received their console relatively quickly. Microsoft have become so preoccupied with getting the 360 out at Christmas that they've left themselves short and I believe this will have an adverse effect. Whereas consoles selling out usually increases interest, the frustration and confusion the 360 has caused is more likely to create anger and harm sales in the long run. The other thing that weighs against the 360 is how reliant it is on HDTV. Someone posted pictures of Project Gotham 3 taken from a normal PAL television the other day, and it looked like a different game to the HDTV version. To get the most out of the 360 we'll all have to invest £1,000 or so in a new telly (I assume most here have not got a HD set), which adds to the costs. HDTVs are themselves a relatively new product, so prices are still very high and out of the reach for most gamers.

I pre-ordered my console in early September and have been told it might be 2006 before I get it. I have always been willing to take the step to the next generation at the earliest opportunity, but I am seriously considering ditching the 360 for the time being. I've only played a demo machine, but what I did play represented more of a slightly prettier sidestep than a genuine step forward for gaming. Of course the games will come, but I feel the console is being released before the majority of companies could take proper advantage of the hardware. I remember unpacking my PlayStation 2 in January 2001, slotting in SSX and being blown away compared to what was available for the PSX. Having played Call Of Duty 2 on the 360, I was only slightly more impressed than the feeling I got when playing Half Life 2 on the Xbox. Don't get me wrong, CoD2 is lovely, but it's not the big step forwards that I'm used to with a new generation console.

So, yeah. In my opinion the console is being released too early, and this whole Core System thing is confusing the issue further when in reality just releasing as many Premium systems would have been better for everyone. For a company the size and wealth of Microsoft who have massive experience in such things, the whole thing is a bit cack-handed.

A day in the life of Mr Monkey

2005-11-17T16:57:00.000Z

Right – subject to PC crashing and the like, I am doing an all-day blog entry today. It’s currently 9.18am and it is bloody freezing outside, which is obviously not great because I hate cold weather. On that note, my boss has just arrived and I have to print stuff, so time for the first pause of the day! (on a messy note, I have already drawn on myself with a pink and a blue highlighter today, as well as a black biro).

It’s now 9.54am and I can already tell that this is going to be a shite day. I’m having to look at countless dull websites checking prices, and what is infinitely worse is that I am seemingly going to have to do some work on my boss’s Mac. Fantastic! In a second I’m off to the post office to pick up what I think is my new earring *insert cool smiley here*. Here’s a question for myself to answer upon my return: why am I so unbothered about potentially not getting my Xbox 360 this year?

Excuse any spelling errors in this part – it’s 11.03am now and I am having to type around a bloody Powerbook G4. The sodding thing is sapping any remaining drops of enthusiasm I had today with its constant crashing and general ineptitude. In answer to my question, I think I am not looking forward to the 360 because there really isn’t that much out for it. Project Gotham 3 looks wicked and I’ll be getting that, but all the rest of the launch titles seem like average PC shooters. Kameo might turn out to be surprisingly good though, so I’ll keep my eye on it. I’ve decided to end each instalment here with a random question I’ve lifted off an internet questionnaire. Next question for me to answer: If you were killed in a horrific accident, by which celebrity/celebrities would you want your children to be raised? (Hilariously, the Apple just crashed and lost all the work I did. Ha ha ha. Ha).

12.03pm now, and I am still fiddling about with this bloody Apple. In relation to my question, I would think probably someone cool like Josh Homme and…hmm.. I don’t know. Someone posh and silly. Sophie, Countess Of Wessex! That’ll do. A cunning blend of rough-and-ready rock star with dainty posh royalty. That’ll work perfectly! I’m off to town now to buy something within a budget of £50, although I don’t really know what. I shall report back soon, and when I do I will answer my next question: The world's being invaded. Summon any three fictional characters (from any combination of book, film, game, TV program, whatever) to help you fight the good fight. Who?

2.34pm: Old people and driving should NOT mix. Just been held up for 30 minutes because 3 cars (all driven by old folks) had rather pathetically run into each other at slow speed on a roundabout. No one was hurt which was good, but you know. I am fully in support of driving tests for the over 75s, mainly because most of my near scrapes and misses have all been due to elderly people doing something wrong. It gets to a certain stage when they start putting other road users and pedestrians at risk. I ended up buying Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy in town, and I am now about to have a lunch consisting of sushi and Red Bull. Yummy :-D. Oh, regarding the question, it would be Dogtanian, Squall from Final Fantasy 8 and Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. Next question: Do a search for jpgs on your computer. What's the 16th one that comes up?

Well, didn’t expect that. It’s now 4.40pm and for the past few hours I’ve been writing up a seriously nice house. The people who live there are really cool too, so we had a laugh. I wasn’t originally meant to go out at all which is why I haven’t written anything for ages, but never mind. At least I haven’t been tied to my desk today! In answer to my question above, rather boringly it was a picture of a house. Hmm.

As you can see, my average day is really very bloody boring. I’ve now been here at work for over 8 hours (it’s about 7 ½ since I started this entry) and it is now dark outside, yet somehow I’ve not done much. I know exactly what I am going to do when I get home too, because inexplicably I am utterly knackered and in need of a good snooze. As a result of running out of things to say, I’m going to draw a line under this now. Quick messages, the first of which is to Chimpy hoping she is alright and isn’t still scared/confused by the fact we sent each other pretty much exactly the same text at exactly the same time last night, and the other message being to Flennijeur hoping that her interview went okay :-). On that unusually friendly and sociable note, I bid you farewell. If you’ve read all the way through this then well done, but perhaps you need to do something more interesting :-P.

Monkey out.

Whoops

2005-11-16T02:26:00.000Z

I've just noticed that it has been well over a week now since I updated this thing last, which obviously is not great. Then again I have not really done anything worthy of comment other than the normal coming home from work and going straight to bed lark which I seem to occupy myself with every winter.

I've noticed that when I feel down I have two habits: eating lots, and spending lots. Recent CDs which I have bought include Mars Volta - Scab Dates Live (average really, as for once I have grown bored of trying to sit through the strange passages of noise they pass off as music on occasion), Dinosaur Jr - You're Living All Over Me (not too bad, although the lead singer has one of those unique voices that you'll either love or hate), Deep Purple - Best Of (using it as an introduction to springboard me into buying some of their albums and quite liking it so far) and Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (brilliant album, which is why I bought it). This has left only two 1970s bands of real interest to me that I don't own any records of; one of those is Yes, and the other is Black Sabbath. Expect that to be rectified soon enough.

Quickly going back to that Mars Volta live album, I will give you an example of why I have grown bored of trying to convince sceptical people they are a proper band. The first 'song' on the album is called 'Abrasions Mount The Timpani' and is a solid 4 minutes of audience noise (including what sounds like a crying baby!) prior to the band actually coming on stage. 4 minutes! I'm quite tempted to make a recording of my next car journey into Poole, burn it to a CD, call it something like 'Fluidity Guides The Wheel Orientation' and submit it to Universal Records as a challenging new piece of prog rock. By this time next year I might even have a live record of my own on the shelves.

On a gaming note, I have been told that I might not get my Xbox 360 until shortly before Christmas as best, despite having pre-ordered one a small matter of 50 days before release. It seems Microsoft have assigned only 50,000 360s to the UK for launch date, and given the general lack of quality in the launch games line up you could take the opinion that the 360 is set to be an expensive flop for the first year or so. I mean, it is all well and good Microsoft being the first company to bring out a next-gen console, but from everything I've seen so far in vidoes, reviews and the like I can only come to the conclusion that it's too early. The world is just about getting the rich vein of games from the current generation in any case, so this step to the next level doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Microsoft are obviously making this move thinking that getting a headstart in the market will get them an advantage over Sony. Problem for them is that the PS2's advantage over the Xbox isn't merely the fact it was released earlier. The PS2 built on a carefully crafted image which Sony had created for their original PlayStation since it launched over here in 1995. Everywhere you turned in early 2001, you were hit in the face with weird lifestyle adverts featuring the PS2 as the upcoming most important life accessory ever. It worked too, because everyone owned a PlayStation or knew someone with one. It was the console which bought gaming out of the bedroom and into the living room. Microsoft is fighting a brand image moulded over 10 years, and what with the disappointing outlook for the European 360 launch at least, it isn't going to start making any big inroads into Sony's market share any time soon.

Ho hum. On that note, I leave. Going to bed at 3.00am and having to wake up for work at 8.00am is going to catch up on me one of these days, you can bet on that. On a related note, the fact that this was written at an obscure hour means that I really could not give a rat's arse about any errors in punctuation, grammar and the like.

So there.

I just want to find out what you're nice to me for

2005-11-05T00:39:00.000Z

Excuse the post-punk kind of lyric there - have been listening to a lot of Dinosaur Jr lately. Would review some of it, but... eh.

'Eh' sums me up at the moment, and sadly for the time being it isn't going to get much better. I just have this swarming, looming sense of going nowhere and being permanently stuck in a corner. I have very little ambition to dig myself out of it, and right now anyone who tries to help seems to be getting the spade taken off them and me throwing it out of their reach.

I used to have some sort of desperate urge to keep in contact with all my friends from school, but it is subsiding and I really don't know if that's a good thing or a bad. I only really speak regularly to 3 people from school now, and even with those people I occasionally just completely run dry of things to talk to them about and don't speak to them for weeks on end. It's not as if I am finding lots of new friends down here either; my new workmate's constant attempts to get me to meet him and his friends at various pubs always fail. I sit at home each night playing my guitar, listening to my iPod, watching cartoons or playing games.

I'm really torn at the moment between things. On one hand I know this is probably a terrible waste and that I have so many things I can do, but some part of me tells me that if I was doing anything else I would very quickly lose interest. I really can't even imagine myself this time next year. I mean this in the least suicidal way possible (I'm never that down), but if my life were a video game I already feel like I am on the last level and it puzzles me. Despite achieving nothing in my life I feel like I've done it all. I'll obviously keep waking up at the same time each morning, selecting from the same range of shirts, going into the same office and having the exact same recurring bad day, and despite the thought of that making me feel awful, I can't really get excited about anything else.

I apologise to anyone I don't speak to outside of this blog for the next however long. I don't really know what's up with me, but I just don't think I have any positive or interesting conversations I can try and force myself to think of at the moment. I've decided to make my blog non-comments too - not because I don't like hearing from people, but because it's not really the kind of thing people can comment on. I can barely put words together which explain how I feel at the moment myself, so... yeah.

Monkey out.

No time to speak!

2005-11-01T13:45:00.000Z

Can't speak. Must play game.

Wooooooo!

Monkey reviews....

2005-10-29T10:14:00.000+01:00

We Are Scientists - With Love And Squalor

Hmmm.

You know, when I popped this into my stereo last night and sat back to listen, I was quite excited for a while. For the first half of the disc the album had me fooled into believing it was going to be the first record in a while that I could enthuse about as a whole rather than picking individual songs to recommend to people. We Are Scientists are based in Brooklyn but somehow end up sounding similar to the angular 80s pop rock revival bands here in Britain such as The Departure, excepting the odd passage where the lead singer curiously sounds like Brandon Boyd from Incubus.

Anyhow, yes. For the first 6 tunes this album is great. The songs are captivating and memorable, and thankfully the band have gone for a polished production sound rather than a faux lo-fi effect. The problem is, after the first half of the album the songs begin to lose their impact. I can't quite explain why - I didn't really notice it happening myself, but by the time the last notes of final song 'What's The Word' are playing out you find yourself quite unaware that the previous 25 minutes of music has happened. I obviously originally put this down to it being the 'first listen syndrome', but it happened again on second listen. I suppose on the strength of the first half of the record I should be giving this 4/5 or something, but the way it fades off in the second half notches that down to a 3/5. Still, it's nothing massively terrible and certainly more worthy of a purchase than a whole raft of stuff out there, so ending the review on this positive note is appropriate.

3/5

This leads me nicely into my Monkeythought (tm) for the day. I always thought that owning all the albums I could want would be ace, and that having a large knowledge bank of music to recommend to people was something to aspire to. The problem is that now I have spent so much and have pretty much every album I want, things are really dull. I spend hours on websites desperately searching for something new I will like and branching off through the 'Suggested similar artists' pages hoping to come across some new band I've not heard of that play the kind of things I like (given my wide taste I'm sure that's not too hard), but as the months have passed I am finding it more and more difficult to achieve.

Albums I am genuinely looking forward to - the new Radiohead and Muse albums for example - are all a long way into the future, whilst my favourite band Queens Of The Stone Age are annoying in that they don't particularly have any similar band who I can tap into. Well, obviously that isn't their fault, but it means a very short supply of that kind of stoner rock which only Dinosaur Jr can possibly match for me with any distinction. I wouldn't say I am jaded with music really as I don't think that's possible, but I am certainly finding it very difficult to get really excited about any bands or albums at the moment. This'll obviously change the moment I hit upon some new uberband, but given my current difficulties I really can't imagine when that would be. Here's hoping it is soon.

Monkey out.

Foiled by cretins!

2005-10-28T14:43:00.000+01:00

My plans of a peaceful, succesful day today all went up in smoke this lunch with a trip into town which will in future be passed down from generation to generation as a tale of unending woe and misfortune.

My first problem hit as soon as I was in my car when I realised that sitting in my current position was making my abdominal strain feel as if it were tearing itself to shreds. I decided to drive on anyway as I was sure it would improve, but rather obviously it didn't and by the time I stopped my car in the car park some 15 minutes later at the end of my journey, I was having to employ a death grip on the steering wheel to stymie the pain. Monkey 0 - 1 Lunchbreak.

Having parked my car and walked into the shopping centre, I then became aware that my first destination was blocked off due to a one-off fashion show which had started mere moments earlier, and that to reach the sushi in Marks and Spencer I would now need to walk around a corner, along a long stretch of shops and then outside, up some steps and then back into the rear door of the shop. This need not have been a problem had I not felt like I was being knifed in the stomach, but obviously it wasn't the most fun I've ever had. Oh, and when I got there some woman pinched the last of my prefered choice, so I had to make do with the Californian tuna sushi instead. Monkey 0 - 2 Lunchbreak.

Having popped into HMV to pick up a CD (We Are Scientists - With Love And Squalor) and been delayed by a woman querying a staff member on when the new 'Xbox computer machine' was in stock, I then went to the bank to pay some money in and found myself delayed by a French woman at the start of a massive queue who obviously didn't understand a lot of what the bank staff were attempting to explain to her. Thus, my usual 5 minutes in the bank turned to 20, and to make matters worse they had the heating on full blast. Monkey 0 - 3 Lunchbreak.

To top this off, on my return journey I got stuck behind someone in one of those ridiculous Street Rover cars. There is something you can be sure of when you get behind one of these; the first thing is that someone very old will be driving it, and the second is that they will drive pathetically slowly. This turned out to be the case, and having to go at 23mph in a 40mph limit area was the kind of thing sent to give me a heart attack and/or worsen my stomach. I got into the office and my colleague asked me 'did you pick up GTA?' (Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, supposedly out for the PSP this weekend but delayed until next for whatever reason much to my annoyance, as I really want it). I told him that the game had been delayed, to which he told me 'nah, my mate's just picked up his copy from GAME in Poole - some shop in Luton or something sold a copy early and broke the high street agreement, so everywhere can sell it'. Game, set and match to lunchbreak. Monkey was down and out.

Oh well - back to work I guess. Ho hum.

Phone rage and additional ineptitude

2005-10-26T13:37:00.000+01:00

Gah.

My ignorance of the phone ringing last week obviously angered it, as yesterday I got 4 phone calls. I knew someone was trying to ring me so I answered each time, and every single time it was someone from an Indian call centre trying to sell me a Siemens 3G phone.

I'm not sure why I was called 4 times, but there we go. First time around I spoke to someone claiming to be called Gary. I told him I wasn't interested and that I have my phone contract sorted, and he was okay. Second time I spoke to 'Peter', who was a bit more pushy and wasted about 7 minutes of my time.

By the third time I was getting a little bored. The guy said he was called Frunk, to which I had to inform him that the name written on the bit of paper in front of him was actually Frank. This little chink of light was all that I needed to start off on a long-winded idiotic piece of storytelling which was really quite fun. By the end of the conversation I had convinced Frunk that I was regional distribution manger for Siemens mobile, and that as a result I got all my phones and calls free. I also convinced him that I drove a special Siemens car which was so infused with mobile technology that it is basically a large mobile phone with a steering wheel. At this point he started calling me Sir, apologised profusely for taking my time and hung up. Strike one.

You can only feel sorry, then, for poor 'John' who had the misfortune of being the 4th person from the same centre to call me in 2 hours. My yarn of before was set to be obliterated by an incredible story which started with me being one of the founding members of Siemens and concluded with me winning a large damages lawsuit from them having had all my ideas stolen by my arch enemy within the office. I obviously toned it down a little because the guy wasn't an idiot, but he believed me enough and apologised for wasting my time. Ironically though, I had turned the table on him and had wasted a good 10 minutes of his time without even letting him get a word in edgeways. Strangely enough, that was the last call I received from them.

If someone phones me as a one-off, realises I am not interested and then leaves me alone then good. If the same company rings me twice then I border on getting annoyed. If a company rings me 3 and then 4 times I lose all sense of sanity and become Mr Evil - the kind of guy that phone sales companies warn employees about. In a way I feel sorry for the guys over in India who are dropped in at the deep end by companies who pay them ridiculously badly for their time, but I just couldn't understand how in blue hell a company could ring me 4 times in the same evening. Time for me to check out the BT call blocking system methinks!

The night was then compounded by a typical piece of bungling which started when I walked out of the bathroom and straight into a coat rack I had conveniently moved to that position a mere 5 minutes before. The rack proceeded to fall backwards, which propelled me back towards the closed door which I smacked into with approaching the same force as I'd hit the rack. Having thus smashed into two things in 5 seconds, I then fell over the shoe compartment of the rack and lay on the floor for a good 5 minutes inspecting the artexed ceiling and pondering life on the whole.

On a happier note, I finally got my Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story UMD. Shall post my thoughts tomorrow (if I get time to watch it between promotional calls and attempts to break my neck).

Monkey out.

He shoots, he.... scores?

2005-10-23T01:57:00.000+01:00

Before anyone gets too excited that the title is some cunning metaphor for me suddenly finding a girl I can be bothered with, I'd like to disappoint you and tell you it's not. I'd like to then further disappoint you by telling you that the majority of this post is about football, so perhaps you'd all best go and put the kettle on :-P. For your convenience though, I have marked all the football talk in red so you can skim past and read the other parts :-). Bonus point for those who find the hidden message near the end!

I've been playing a lot of this over the past 2 days:

Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (PS2)

Supposedly the 'King Of Football Games' (TM) if review scores and comments are anything to go by. I actually did not like Pro Evo 4 at all and was pretty cynical that once again number 5 had fallen foul of the classic curse of being reviewed by a bunch of drooling fanboys. In a way it delivers the goods, but it still leaves a heck of a lot to be desired.

Every year people jump on the Konami bandwagon and proclaim that people who dare criticise the series don't know about football, which makes it more amusing that I have been playing various versions of Pro Evo (formerly known as ISS) for longer than pretty much any of them anyway. When a few friends were playing the first wave of new-gen Fifa games I was to be found happily sitting in front of my TV perfecting dribbling, passing and shooting on Pro Evo 1. Before that, whilst everyone ran round buying and playing World Cup '98, I happily purchased ISS 98, slotted it into my N64 and didn't remove it all summer. I loved these games.

Thing is, I don't love Pro Evo 5. Why? It often lacks the one crucial element that makes any game good: fun. All this talk of a finely tuned system for passing, tackling and the like is true - timing is key and working the ball into space is the only way you'll ever score goals unless you have a moment of devine intervention. No complaints about that from me at all; I like having to work to get my goals. The play mechanic is fine on the whole and paces itself well, which means you end up with something which *gasp* does indeed resemble real football. Timing for tackling is important and it is a great moment when a well-timed slide tackle retrieves the ball for your team and launches a counter attack.

This is all well and good, but sadly the game lets itself down in a number of areas. Firstly, the AI hardly ever misplace a pass or tackle. I know that sounds like sour grapes, but after a while it wears thin. Earlier as Brazil I watched the Chinese national team string together an epic 15-pass move which ended in them scoring. At no single point did I have the opportunity of rescuing the ball from them, which given the general gulf in class was ridiculous. I won the match in the end, but spent a good amount of time chasing the ball as China launched wave after wave of inch-perfect passing and dribbling. Secondly, the referees are no big improvement on the last and are still prone to making utterly cretinous decisions. Ever seen a team denied a one-on-one with the opposition keeper because the referee has pulled play back to the centre circle because some guy accidently nudged into one of the attacking team? Get used to it - you'll be seeing a lot of that. Fouls are too easy to achieve now, which chops up the game and ruins the flow. Football is supposed to be a contact sport to a large degree and it's massively frustrating at the niggling nature of half the 'fouls' that are given.

The next problem lies in what is a seemingly tricky area to perfect: the goalkeepers. The same situation arises in Pro Evo 5 where a keeper can stand gormlessly watching a ball fly past his left boot and into the net, but then minutes later dive the full length of the goal to save a point-blank header which was unstoppable by anything other than some sort of uber goalkeeping robot alien thing. Some of the goals I scored today were due to rubbish 'keeping, and although the finishes themselves were well-timed, it really took away a lot of the pride of scoring.

The last main issue I have with the game is pretty general really: the presentation. For years and years now, fans of the series have been asking Konami to improve things like the commentary and the menu systems. Have they done so for this year? Heck no. Peter Brackley and Trevor Brooking make their heavily-scripted returns and, in the same tradition as the actual game itself, are only slightly different. It was amusing for a while when they became more excited about a shot that almost hit the corner flag rather than a following shot that hit the outside of the post, but after a few minutes it got boring and - once again - I found myself switching the commentary off. The players look a bit better this season, but generally they still look like 3d versions of villagers from He Man cartoons. Ho hum. The crucial thing is that the presentation currently doesn't break the game so much, but on the flipside the whole thing would be massively, massively better with fleshed-out game modes and more care taken on the audio and visual side of things.

Why are they allowed to get away with so little? The answer is that the football game market has come full circle. Where once EA could fall back and rely on their mighty license-lead fanbase each Christmas, Konami can fall back on the fanbase it's gained. I'm not for one minute suggesting that Pro Evo doesn't deserve it - the games are good all - but for the past few years Konami have shown a disquieting lack of ambition and/or willingness to make the improvements we've all wanted for years. It's important we don't let them do this and that we do criticise mistakes and the like now, for if we don't they'll only end up exactly how EA were in the early part of this decade. As it is, it's now EA who are trying to bring new ideas to the table with their games, a prime example being the new semi-management mode in Fifa 06 which makes Pro Evo's Master League look really basic and soulless. Not all of the changes EA make work, but at least they are trying. It would be nice to see the same kind of intent from Konami next season.

If I were to rate Pro Evo 5, it'd probably be about 8/10 or something. Scratch that - make it 7. The game itself is great for the most part, the football feels authentic and it's good to get your teeth into most of the time, but equally it frustrates and disappoints in some silly little areas which should have been sorted prior to release. We can always hope that this'll be sorted for number 6 of course, but whether Konami and their bulging bank balance will see fit to do anything is another matter for people less cynical than me to discuss.

That's about it really for today. This knackered house that I mentioned a few days ago is swallowing my time and energy and at the moment we're doing about 8 viewings a day. Not got any offers on the table yet, but they're coming. We're still getting the same old type of people through the door who convince us they could cope with the place and then wet themselves once they walk through the front door, but never mind. I'm still finding it intensely amusing to watch some of their expressions.

Lyrics for today:

Ed Harcourt - Loneliness

In an empty cinema
Loneliness
When your old friends drift apart
Loneliness
Wandering round the house in the dark
Loneliness
Faded glory you're a broken star
Loneliness

Loneliness, loneliness what would I do without you?

Stays around won't let you be
Loneliness
Corners me in dead-end streets
Loneliness
To bring unwanted memories
Loneliness
That find their way into my blood stream
Loneliness

Loneliness, loneliness what would I do without you?
Loneliness, loneliness is this all you have to give me?

Your love is a place for a lonely man
With too much in his head
The liars and thieves who cramp your style
Won't be there for your last breath
Be there for your last breath

Loneliness, loneliness what would I do without you?
Loneliness, loneliness is this all you have to give me?
To give me

Last 3 songs I've listened to on iTunes:

1. Nirvana - Lounge Act (not bad, not bad)
2. Morrisey - I Have Forgiven Jesus (One of the weaker songs on 'You Are The Quarry')
3. Maximo Park - The Night I Lost My Head (not too bad either - nice crunchy guitar riff!)

Amusing post-note: iTunes has crashed my PC twice today, and my iPod has reset itself twice and failed to display album artwork for the past few hours. Having had fun with an iBook creating the most super-dense icon in existence ever during the week (shall explain that later) I can't say I'm surprised. Oh, I do love Apple hardware. (fashionable pieces of impractical cack)

Monkey out.

Location, Location... ugh.

2005-10-20T19:23:00.000+01:00

Today's been an amusing day at the office, which in itself is an unusual occurence. We've just taken on a knackered 3 bedroom semi right in the centre of town which needs complete renovation - you know the kind of thing: kitchens and bathrooms, wallpaper and carpets etc etc. It's been empty a year and it's in a really sorry state. We're not even convinced the place is structurally okay, and we even openly admit that to anyone and everyone who shows interest.

With it being in the centre of town, being relatively cheap and being a 'project' of sorts, as soon as we put the sale board up this morning we had a whole bunch of people through the door. I believe the final figure for appointments to view today ended up around the 8 mark, which is pretty phenomenal for a first day on the market for any kind of place.

Thing is, today taught me that everyone is jumping on the renovation project bandwagon. Everyone has been watching those home improvement programs on Channel 4 and now thinks that makes them an expert in buying, improving and selling for profit. It is pretty safe to assume that only about 25% of those people actually know what the hell they are talking about, which obviously puts the restoration and development of some of our country's older properties in questionable hands. Whatever the case, lots of people stand to lose lots of money on property at the moment because they do not factor hardly anything into the equation.

Just because a house is selling cheaply in an area and needs work doing, it doesn't instantly make it a winner. There are so many things that should be considered it is unreal, but first port of call is obviously making sure the money needed to put the place right won't be more than you can sell it on for. It sounds stupid and simple, but you have no idea (seriously, no idea) of the amount of people that don't even think about that. Then obviously you have to take into account ceiling prices for the area you are buying. It may be all well and nice installing a hot tub and swimming pool into the garden of the tatty old 2-bed townhouse you've just bought, but if your place is in the centre of a council estate then it's not going to add hardly anything to the value. You've got to understand the general type of person who lives in the area first before making decisions like that.

Of equal importance and on a related note, you have to make sure the changes you do make are all selling points. Installing strangely shaped windows and funky 70s tables into your property is all fantastic, but it'll more than likely put a hell of a lot of people off. The best course of action these days seems to be the classic 'shades of cream + chrome utility' look; I know it's hardly exciting, but if you're after profit rather than a home for yourself you shouldn't be designing it for yourself anyway. Likewise, once you have a plan about what you want to do, stick to it and don't start adding bits. Make sure you factor into your budget as much money as you need to make all rooms in the house as good as possible, and don't cut corners because that will show too. It is more than possible to get a neutral and well-finished job done these days without too much time or money (comparitively speaking again, of course) being spent, so make sure you sort that out.

Standing in this house during today, I saw plenty of people walking around pretending they were the development genius. Some woman decided a wall wasn't load-bearing by poking it with her little finger. Another bloke decided that the cracks in the walls near the ceiling were only settlement cracks (on a 75 year-old property!), and another guy decided he would extend the property to the side without even asking me what the situation with planning was. Now, I'm not saying I am any good at any of the things I mentioned above - I have not got the cash or ruthless business sense to even get started - but I do know a bit having worked with things like this for a few years. Only a select few people ever make mega bucks on these kinds of things, and with the flood of self-made renovation masters coming onto the market it's only going to get more saturated. If people are doing this kind of thing to enable them to get a family house in an area they would not normally be able to afford then fine, but for those who are expecting a paint-stained pot of gold at the end of the B&Q paintchart rainbow, think twice before you throw your cash away.

Quick music update - last 3 songs I listened to on my iTunes party shuffle list:

The Smiths - Rusholme Ruffians
Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Child
Super Furry Animals - Hometown Unicorn

Variety is the spice, etc etc.

Exit Monkey, stage left.

Isolation

2005-10-20T01:43:00.000+01:00

As I sit here in my little house on an even smaller hill at 1.42am, I am strangely a moderately jolly monkey. I came home from work at 6.00pm, took the phone off the hook and went to bed until 45 minutes ago. I'll only be up until I've posted this, at which point I shall return to Slumberland until I have to drag myself off to work again.

I was also rather strangely satisfied with work yesterday. For the last few weeks I've been generally quite unmotivated, but yesterday I upped my game which left the others struggling to keep up. I think I managed to put a few doubts about myself to rest by doing that in a way, and the day went a lot quicker than most tend to.

Just had a look around online, and it seems that The Warriors (PS2, Xbox) has turned out pretty well. It's out Friday, so I might allow myself to buy it as my weekly entertainment burst. Pro Evo 5 (also PS2 and Xbox) is out this Friday too, but I think I am content to wait for the PSP version which will sit nicely with Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP) which I will be buying next week. At this rate I'll never get round to completing Paper Mario though, so I might sew the purse shut as it were and get through what I've got first. For those of you who are interested in it, you can find out more about The Warriors right here, although if you aren't too excited about a mixture of Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt based on a 25-year-old film you probably shouldn't waste your time ;-).

Monkey out.

Knockout

2005-10-19T09:42:00.000+01:00

Right, most people wake up to a headache or something. Sleepy dust in the eyes. Joints just waiting to be stretched.

Not me though, no. This morning I woke up to find that at some point in the night I had rather viciously punched myself in the mouth. My usual blue bedsheet was a wash of purple and there was crusty blood in between my teeth. I have absoloutely no idea why this should have been as I have never seen fit to do it before. One of my lower teeth seems loose too, which is fantastic.

Maybe this was my brain's way of letting me know that I was acting like an idiot last night, who knows? A situation arose which I probably didn't deal with like I should have, and sadly the part of me that was supposed to realise this didn't. I don't realy know how to explain this at all and I know reading someone's abstract thought on a situation he/she hasn't explained properly is incredibly frustrating, so I won't carry on down this line.

My problem at the moment is that I have this really inexplicable and unquenchable urge to get away from people. I know it sounds pretty sad/worrying/wrong, but having to be in the public firing line 54 hours a week in a job where you're not happy means you get home at night not wanting to speak to anyone - family, friends... anything. It's not that I am massively depressed - I just really need alone time. Problem is I know that a few people might not like/be upset at this, and I'll probably end up losing a few friends. I just wish I was more bothered. I feel completely robotic at the moment.

It'll obviously be okay and sort itself out sooner or later, but for now I apologise to anyone who has to deal with me in any way. That is written to everyone, but with an extra emphasis to two people in particular who will know who they are.

Moving on, I have been recently playing this:

Lumines (PSP)

Think Tetris, except horizontally. The plan is you have to create 2x2 squares of similar colour before a 'window wiper' scrolls across and deletes them. The more squares you complete and get wiped per 'sweep', the higher the score you will achieve. It's one of those bloody annoying little games which you turn on for a 10-minute play and end up zipping away at for a good hour or two. It is almost trance-inducing in a way - the colours, music and deceptively simple nature of the game really suck you in and leave you in some sort of uber game fuzz. Good stuff!

Quick progress report on Paper Mario: I'm up to Chapter 5 now, which is approximately 60% through the game. Have taken a somewhat ridiculous 30 hours of constant painstaking exploration to get to that point, but I'll get to the end soon enough. Really good game.

There are a couple of games coming up soon that I am really looking forward to. They are:

Loco Roco (PSP)

Not much to say about this one really - it's like Marble Madness but in 2D, you control your character by tilting the ground with the shoulder buttons and you can increase your blob's size by eating flowers. This kind of simple Japanese puzzling always turns out really well and should be a regular feature in my PSP at some point next year.

Mario and Luigi 2: Partners In Time (DS)

I admit it: I sold my DS at the wrong time. I absoloutely loved Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga on the Advance and I know without a shadow of a doubt I will love this too. It's got the backbone of a relatively simple RPG dressed in the colourful world of Mario, with the added bonus of a good slice of dry self-deprecating humour. Now all I need to do is buy back a DS!

Project Gotham Racing 3 (Xbox 360)

Excuse the general quality of the above screenshot, but I thought I'd use it as it's far more significant than any of the pre-rendered stuff that everyone else peddles. You see, Project Gotham 3 looks the dog's nuts. The shot above is from a leaked handycam video of the in-game graphics. You could I suppose also lump the entire Xbox 360 into this section - I gave in to the pressure this week and pre-ordered on with aformentioned racing title and Quake 4. Roll on early December!

Well, that's about it for today. Forgive my geeky techno rabble.

Games = Naughty

2005-10-18T14:53:00.000+01:00

Ho hum.

So, another day passes with the rather annoying presence of Jack Thompson making itself felt on the videogame industry like a slice of lemon makes itself felt on a mouth ulcer.

I'm probably giving the guy too much credit to be honest, as the impact he is making is akin to the level of annoyance a small fly makes when it buzzes around your nose during summer. He's ripe for being swatted away at this point, but the bigger example people can make out of him before he goes, the better.

For those of you who don't know what I am blabbering about, Jack Thompson is a Miami-based lawyer who has taken it upon himself to lead a little crusade against games such as Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt etc. His 'beef' seems to be that people who play such games are using them as training devices to commit proper crimes, and that as a result the games are in effect murder simulations. He has thus set about trying to get such games banned and has been whipping up the support of various parental groups and the like to join his merry band.

By looking a few inches over ---> that direction, you will see a link to Penny Arcade. I highly recommend you click it, as the guys there have had some interesting and rather unbelievable dealings with Mr Thompson over the past week. It all started when the guy was informed that Penny Arcade regularly raise thousands of dollars for a childrens' charity. He then wrote back to them informing them that their argument as basically 'invalid'. This was followed up a day later when the guy wrote a proposal, the full jist of which can be checked by clicking there, but the basic jist being that if a games company made a game where a fictional character gained revenge on games companies, he would donate $10,000 to a charity.

Sadly for him, a few developers took him up on this and began to make games based on this proposal of his. This was then met with the following from Thompson:

"I'm not interested and won't be commenting on the mod. The satirical piece entitled 'A Modest Video Game Proposal' was intended to highlight the patent hypocrisy and recklessness exhibited by the video game industry's willingness to target cops, women, homosexuals, and other groups with some of their violent games. To be fair, though, you can't expect a bunch of gamers to understand the satire if they think that Jonathon Swift, the author of 'A Modest Proposal,' is the name of a new Nike running shoe

......I will say this though, the 'video game community' (what's next, 'the necromancy community'?) surely seems exercised about someone who is a 'joke' and who is accomplishing nothing. You all seem rather bothered and worried about a nonentity. God is in this battle, and I am privileged to be a foot soldier. You all should be concerned, not about me, but about Him."

At this point, it becomes really clear that the guy is unstable somewhere. Not only does he paint an entire (and massive) community with a very general and very incorrect brush, he goes on to claim he is a foot soldier for god (how many times has that been used to somehow justify something? And for that matter, when was the last time it wasn't used by someone on some sort of moronic power-trip?) and then further goes on to put his promise of a $10,000 donation to charity as satire. If you listen carefully I'm sure you can all hear the deafening silence from thousands of unfortunate and ill kids who were set to benefit from that donation. Har har Jack, your 'satire' has come back to bite you in your own arse. This guy is supposed to be a lawyer, yet he consistantly puts himself into situations which make him look like a complete tosser. Oh, and although 'Jonathon Swift' isn't a Nike shoe, he sure as hell isn't the writer who penned 'A Modest Proposal' either. I modestly propose that perhaps Mr Thompson means Jonathan Swift?

Thing is, the chaps at Penny Arcade pointed this out to Jack. They furthermore went on to donate the $10,000 to a charity as Jack had promised, and what is more they did so under his name. This out of their own pockets, and on top of the huge amount of cash their website and attached events generate for charity every year. Jack's response? he called the cops:

"A Seattle business by the name of Penny Arcade... employs certain personnel who have decided to commence and orchestrate criminal harassment of me by various means... This company has done this because I dared to go on CBS's 60 Minutes in March and again in July to explain a wrongful death lawsuit I have brought on behalf of two police officers and a police dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama, who were shot in the head and killed by Devin Moore who obsessively trained on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to kill them."

"As you may know, this incredibly violent Rockstar Games product is actually a 'cop-killing' murder simulator. There are a bunch of computer geeks out there who think that the video game industry has a constitutional right to paint a bullseye on your back and on your officers' backs... That is what this criminal harassment of me by Penny Arcade is all about. They're even selling an 'I Hate Jack Thompson' t-shirt, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

These idiots have been so careless as to post on their www.pennyarcade.com web site what they are doing regarding the harassment of me.""I look forward to working with your fine Police Department to shut this little extortion factory down and/or arrest some of its employees."

Ay ay ay. The guy has got himself backed into a corner now, and is beginning to throw this kind of inept threat towards anyone who dares to question his little quest. Problem is now that even bodies set up to question and challenge the impact of media on young teenagers - hence the kind of people Jack should probably be trying to side with - are distancing themselves from him quite publically. He's losing credibility and support left right and centre.

The main problem the guy had was before any of his inane press releases and correspondance with any gaming companies or media. No - his problem is his short-sighted and lazy conclusion that video games are to blame for society's failings. So, a kid who played Grand Theft Auto turned up one day with a sniper rifle and shot some policemen. Do we honestly think that his mind was swayed onto doing this by playing aformentioned game? Of course it wasn't. This kid obviously had many issues with his upbringing and environment - issues that are being dangerously papered over with this ridiculous anti-game crusade. You see these cases of murder where games are implicated, and without fail the culprit has come from a broken home, has been bullied at school or has been in and out of mental health clinics. If you are trying to find a case where a perfectly normal, highly sociable and friendly kid is turned into a killer by a game alone then I presume your search will come up empty. On the same line of thought, how many people who have played any Grand Theft Auto games have not gone on to kill someone, or steal a car? GTA3 sold over 7,000,000 copies, and I dare say a good 99% of the people who bought the game are stable-minded chaps like myself, who know where to draw the line between gaming and real life.

We can't help it if there are people out there who are up the mental creek with no paddle. By blaming video games for these people we are missing the entire point. The same people could as easily watched a disturbing bit of news footage or a war movie, but Thompson seems to be ignoring those two forms of media. Why? Why not direct anger towards them too?

Probably because he knows that the games industry is a relatively soft target - one which your average Daily Mail-reading bandwagon jumper will cling onto as some sort of geeky satanic cult which swallows innocent children and spits them out as cold-blooded murderers. People who watch news and movies are mature people who obviously aren't as easily influenced as your average trainspotting Atari tshirt wearing no-life games player. Obviously.

Seriously though, games like Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto are violent. They are also not meant for sale to children, and carry age restrictions to prove this. Shouldn't Jack question why parents allow their kids to play these games in the first place? Why on earth any good parent would happily let their 12 year old play games meant for an adult? He conveniently forgets this in his argument. Bad parenting doesn't seem to be on his radar, along with such things as the level of bullying at high schools and abuse at homes these days, i.e. the things that really turn unstable teenagers into killers. He doesn't seem to realise that the world is not all sunshine and smiles, and that all forms of media carry this message, be it in the form of a report from war-torn Iraq, a film about drug abuse or a game about crime. Adults (i.e. people who are targeted by such media in the first place) have the right of choice as to whether they wish to see this for themselves or not, and a good 99% are stable enough to watch, understand and not copy. I am sure all of you reading this have seen someone get shot on T.V, have seen some people in Iraq getting blown up by bombs on the news and/or have shot someone on a computer game. The small 1% who aren't able to draw the line are not suddenly converted by the media - it's something that has festered in them from their upbringing. By blaming video games for such things, bonfires are being lit away from the real issues at foot here.

I await Jack's next move with bated breath...

2005-10-13T23:14:00.000+01:00

When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done.

When the day is done
Hope so much your race will be all run
Then you find you jumped the gun
Have to go back where you began
When the day is done.

When the night is cold
Some get by but some get old
Just to show life’s not made of gold
When the night is cold.

When the bird has flown
Got no-one to call your own
Got no place to call your home
When the bird has flown.

When the game’s been fought
You speed the ball across the court
Lost much sooner than you would have thought
Now the game’s been fought.

When the party’s through
Seems so very sad for you
Didn’t do the things you meant to do
Now there’s no time to start anew
Now the party’s through.

When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done.

Grumpy unsociable bastard

2005-10-10T15:54:00.000+01:00

Me, that is.

I'm beginning to worry about how I'm turning out at the moment. On Friday night I went to the pub on my own, having had an offer of going to another pub with a few mates. I sat at the bar having a few drinks, pretty much ignored the 3 or 4 people who tried to talk to me and then went home and sat around playing my guitar.

Yesterday was my only day off work all week. I could have gone out and done stuff. Instead, I sat around in my house with the curtains drawn. I even ignored the phone when it rang, which obviously was not clever. What's more worrying is the fact that it didn't bother me. I really didn't care a jot. I struggled to reply to the text messages I got, and in general just didn't want to talk to anyone. It wasn't that I was massively unhappy, more like I just didn't want to speak to people.

Song of the day today is another Elliott Smith song that never got onto any of his albums, but is really good. Only heard it for the first time yesterday and it's one of his best songs.

Elliott Smith - Division Day

There was grown man dying from fright
So surprised by the things he'd say
With a giant fantasy life
Running 'round on feet of clay

Naked except for a perpetual debt
That couldn't be stripped away
An unrightable wrong that moved him along
Closer to division day

Spent a long time living with that
Never could give it a name
And when you don't know what you are
Looking at it makes it much harder to take

Mostly they'd meet when he was asleep
And have some sick exchange
That stuck him as wrong and moved him along
Closer to division day

I can't make an exception for a bad connection
That only goes one way
Sell out for a song where I don't belong
With you on division day

The moon stood up on the ridge
Looking down where the water shines
And a man looking over the bridge
Like he done so many times

Thinking about how to stay out
Out of trouble's way
And flying to fall away from you all
It's over division day
Beautiful division day

Thinking about how to stay out
Out of trouble's way
Flying to fall away from you all
It's over division day
Beautiful division day

Song Meaning (from Song Meanings.net):

"This song is about someone who keeps getting themselves or has been in certain situations that they messed everything up in. They might have felt that they have messed everything up or just assumed, so they are planning to get away from all that negitivity and everything else so they dont feel horrible anymore. Division day could be the day when you seperate yourself from everyone."

How appropriate. Sometimes I find his songs so relevant it scares me.

What a race!

2005-10-09T13:41:00.000+01:00

Hooray - finally a decent Grand Prix to enthuse about! I had to wake up at 5.30am to watch this one (if you know me then you know quite how unusual that is in itself), but it was well worth the effort and the 3 cans of Red Bull I drank to stay awake.

My favourite driver Kimi Raikkonen (picture above) came from 17th on the grid and with a mixture of very quick driving and some brave overtaking took the lead on the last lap and won. There were loads of overtaking moves, controversial collisions and and drama and generally it was one of the best races in a few seasons. Not that this will mean much to anyone reading, but never mind :-D.

Right - time to get off the PC and make the most of my day off.

Weekend. Weekend?

2005-10-08T10:18:00.000+01:00

Ugh.

Today is Saturday, and as such should be the first day of my weekend. I've worked 9.00am - 6.30pm all week, I am tired, I feel ill and I have had no time to do things I want to do. A few days off is precisely what the doctor ordered (literally as it turns out - I have been told I should not be working at the moment).

Problem for me is that I am once again sat at my office desk staring out of the window. It's 11.04am currently and I have another 297 minutes left before I am finally allowed home to start my weekend. To say that I am pretty disillusioned with the working part of my life at the moment is the understatement of the week.

It's not that I am lazy and don't want to work long hours, but I'd at least hope to be working these hours in a job I like. I'm feel like I am rotting away here and having any enthusiasm or drive to better myself squeezed slowly out of me. I'm beginning to blur into the dull grey background of mundane desk-jotter jobs that I was always worried I might. It's frustrating.

Not trying to sound too big-headed here, but I am capeable of much more than this. I feel like I am running on about 30% capacity. My problem is that I don't fit the pencils and calculators image of a graduate student and hence no one listens when I say it. The thing is, some people just can't do the education thing. Richard Branson didn't do it and look at him. All I know is that I am good at writing, speaking and dealing with the public and organising myself in a work situation. I've been told countless times by people around me that I deal with such things very well. I haven't got a fucking clue how or why and I don't really think I would be able to do work which proves it - it's just something that is there. I can quite confidently say that I would walk into a big company's PR department and be off and running no trouble whatsoever. All I need is for someone somewhere to actually listen to what I have to say rather than staring at my rather blank education section on my C.V and filing me into their bin. I'm 22 and already I have run this office for entire fortnights acting almost alone. I arrange our advertising and deal with people who supply us with bits and bobs. I line up solicitors, arrange sales, sort out our website... everything. I've been doing it for years. When I first came here we had a naff window display, one computer on a 56k connection, no internet coverage and a stupid printer. We now have 3 PCs running on a network, our own website, a decent window display with a plasma screen and broadband.

That rant over, here is a lovely picture of my little chinchilla Flump. This was taken as she was taking a quick nap last night :-)

Well, that's about it I guess. Shall write something less angry on Monday I suspect!

Monkey monkey monkey

2005-10-07T12:04:00.000+01:00

I would go into some overblown writing about why I have decided to resume blogging, but I can't be arsed. Let's just say I got bored and decided that I may as well continue to type up the less-than-thrilling episodes which are my life.

Not much to talk about really. I have been feeling really ill for the past month now which has culminated in me having 8 bottles of blood removed from my right arm yesterday at the hospital. Not sure what is wrong with me to be honest - some days I can barely lift myself out of bed. Then again, I am so intensely lazy that I hardly ever want to lift myself out of bed anyway.

Currently playing my way through this:

Paper Mario 2: The Thousand-Year Door

It's seriously good - the kind of game that people who like quirky kinds of things such as talking mushrooms and dancing turnips (yes, you know who you are) will fit right into straight away. It's kind of an RPG with action elements - like Zelda in a way, except obviously with Mario. The graphics are really lovely and all cel-shaded, and the 2d thing isn't just a gimmick - the game actually factors it into proceedings. Mario can fold himself into things like paper planes and boats to access new areas. I'm not too far through it right now - only up to Chapter 4 of 8 as I am being painstakingly slow and trying to get everything possible. I'll let everyone know once I finish it :-).

Time for Monkey's song of the day *trumpet fanfare*. Friday's song is:

Elliott Smith - Between The Bars

Drink up, baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do
You won't but you might
The potential you'll be
That you'll never see
The promises you'll only make

Drink up with me now
And forget all about
The pressure of days
Do what I say
And I'll make you okay
And drive them away
The images stuck in your head

People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I’ll keep them still

Drink up, baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there
With your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught

Drink up one more time
And I'll make you mine
Keep you apart
Deep in my heart
Separate from the rest
Where I like you the best
And keep the things you forgot

The people you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

Song Meaning (from Song Meanings.net)

"..."Between The Bars" is referring to the bars of a jail cell, where the woman he is singing to is being confined to a cell with thoughts of who she used to be torturing her and not allowing her to break free. He's kissing her between the bars - the space which allows her face to break through, and offering to hold onto these troubling memories and images which are causing her so much pain"

I've always liked this song because it reminds me of someone. It's not really a happy memories song, but it kind of puts into words a small period of my life which really messed me up. Taught me a valuable lesson - no matter how hard you try, you can't change people. It's really beautiful.

More from Monkey tomorrow :-) Oh - before I go, I have noticed that nowadays spam comments seem to be left around blogspot. For anyone reading this - no, I am not interested in how profitable the timber industry is, and I don't want any parts for a Harley Davidson Chopper. Thanks!