Eric wasted no time bossing us about, telling us what seed goes where and how they should be harvested while doing relatively little himself. I know he owns the land, but Jesus… what a control freak! After I hastily watered and fertilised a small  line through his soil I make a comment that he was just exploiting us for free labour which was met with an unfriendly response and something like “Wir versuchen, diese Ficker helfen, und das ist, was wir bekommen? Ich sollte eine Mistgabel in seinem hinteren Ende zu setzen!” – which I can only assume is Euro-farmer speak for “He knows the truth, so let us tell the barman when he uses Google on his phone under the table at the next pub quiz!”

Eric and his pals seemed keen to show me their tool shed but I forcefully declined and quickly return to my own farm ready to start fresh the next day with some idea of how to operate a tractor without killing pedestrians.

This morning I fitted my tractor with a cultivator and headed straight to my field. Unfortunately I left the lock off and didn’t realised I’d ploughed up 300 metres of tarmac outside my own home until I hit a sewer cover.

I ploughed my fields like a pro before it dawned on me that it would take quite some time to finish. A local boy was watching and laughing as I failed to three-point-turn at the edges – accidentally jamming myself against a bridge once or twice…

Frustrated, I told him I’d give him $10 if he could do a better job. The little prick ruined my day with his perpendicular lines and right-angled cuts. I paid up, reluctantly.

My Attempt

His Attempt

I gave him a handful of extra cash and the keys to the tractor and told him to finish the job while I walked back to the farm and tried to figure out what the next step should be.

I found a spare tractor tucked away that seemed to run nicely so I took a quick tour of the rest of my farm, since I hadn’t actually surveyed the place before handing over the money to the crying guy in the blood-stained overalls. There seemed to be some sort of tourist attraction around the mountain which cut through the picturesque landscape. As I got closer I saw it offered free chairlift rides to the top, so obviously I took a ride up to survey my lands from the sky. I could see my farm, the connecting roads around the mountain and what looked like docks. There also seemed to be an old building which looked like a old-style bewery not far down the lane. Maybe they can cut me a deal on anything that I manage to grow on my dirt patches?

Not far down the pathway towards the brewery I came across several fields what must have been seeded by the previous owner as they were shoulder-high with crops ready for harvest! Without a second thought I hopped in the combine harvester sheltered nearby and began threshing the crop with the spinning blades in a concise and thought-out pattern.

I called the boy over to make him finish the job while I went to investigate what crop we have on our hands. He insisted it’s barley, but who’d ever trust someone 4 months younger than me on the subject? I told him it’s probably just some genetically modified ricicle starch and pocketed a strand to take to the brewery. I climbed back in the tractor and continued down the B-road.

The brewery confirmed that the crop was barley and they’d pay me good money or it as it saves them shipping it in from Nowheresville (which I assumed was somewhere near Denmark, based on the Scandinavian name) and it allows the brewery to continue selling their beer as “Sourced from Local Ingredients!” without actually lying for once. The head of the brewery told me that I can reach my farm much quicker by continuing down the road. I got back, attached a trailer to my tractor and decided to sneak back up on the boy, ready to receive the first fruits of our labour.

After emptying the harvester’s contents into the trailer I sped back to the brewery, narrowly avoiding another crash. The brewer handed me a cheque for $12,000 as a “taster” of things to come if I kept bringing him barley in this quantity.

I told the boy to continue harvesting but by the time I’d had a pint or three at the brewery he’d buggered off home for his tea, leaving the job half done. I quickly emptied what he had done in my absence and took it back to the brewery for another lump of cash before weaving my tractor back to the farm.

Once there, I had trouble getting into my own house as the wife was obviously out or in bed and I hadn’t the foggiest where I left my keys so I spent a few hours trying to figure out what the last few attachments I had left in the yard were for and if I had anything to bale hay with. I eventually figured out that one was a plough (which made me feel an idiot for trying to prepare a field for seeding without knowing what a plough was) but the rest I left to rust in the yard while I stumbled into town to see what the night-life was like in the small village.

Simon - Cow Owner

I met a young man in town called Simon. Lovely lad, and after a few pints of Guiness he’d sold me a cow called Brenda. I asked him where Brenda was at that moment. He must’ve thought I was asking out of curiosity, as he seemed shocked when I told him I was going to get my tractor and a torch and was going to collect Brenda immediately. He shouted something like “… 9 pints… paperwork… arrested…” but I was already out the door.

After 7 hours of stumbling around in the darkness of the unfamiliar hills near where Simon had described, I found the cow I assumed to be Brenda and proceeded to mount her and try to ride her home. Brenda was clearly against this idea, as I awoke 2 hours later with bruised ribs and the sun burning my eyes.

Simon finally found me and told me that not only was that cow not Brenda but that I had wandered into a farm that technically belonged to a neighbouring country. He drove me back to my tractor and trailer and assured me that Brenda would be delivered to the empty pens on my farm by the end of the day.

Driving home I fell asleep at the wheel, which resulted in me running over a scarecrow. I wasn’t sure if it was mine, so I quickly drove off. I later got bollocked by my wife for not coming home for 26 hours.

A Dream Come True

I get in my tractor, turn the key and hit the pedal. It’s at this moment that I remember I never learned how to operate a tractor and end up zig-zagging onto the nearby B-road and smashing front-first into an oncoming people-carrier, sending my tractor into a standing position on its rear wheels and leaving no sign of life coming from the other vehicle. In a panic, and with growing awareness that other motorists were witness to this, I quickly tried to mount the tractor and find a reverse gear but all I managed was burning rubber and a spluttering engine. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I sold my 3-bedroom house in the sub-urbs and dragged my wife and kids away from friends and family to live off the land…

7:34am and I’m trying to calm down the queue of faceless commuters I’m slowing down with my catastrophe. I try to ensure the passengers of the people-carrier are okay, but I’m getting no response. A boat even pulls up, with it’s occupants giving me a glare that says “What the fuck were you thinking?!”.

In my desperation, despair, guilt and shame I run back into the farm and come back with my combine harvester. Forsaking any attachments, I charge full-throttle into the back of my tractor in an attempt to dislodge it and get the traffic moving again however this just spins the mangled steel 90-degrees in the wrong direction with the people-carrier now on it’s side, the tractor mounting it disgracefully and my combine harvester now lodged in place in the opposite lane – slowing double the traffic.

Oh God, oh God, oh God...

8:45am. I’m hiding from the locals in the barn. I won’t come out until dark.

Full Farming Gallery…

I was never a huge fan of the job but I’m going to find myself with a lot of time on my hands and with very little money indeed, so if anyone wants to help alleviate both strains and hire me to write a piece for you on anything – to any word count – then I’m more than happy to oblige:

My skills include:

• Experience with writing, formatting and proof-reading long documents including games and technology reviews, short stories, academical arguments and lab reports.
• Broad experience and knowledge with video games, history, technology, sciences, maths and economics.
• Cynical attitude but can reason, debate and address counter-arguments internally or on paper.
• Optimistic to the future and with a good sense of humour / the absurd / irony.
• Decided to delete my entire online portfolio in 2011 out of boredom*, although some older (and less representative) articles may exist in backups.
• Can make a half-decent cup of tea, despite never drinking tea in my life.
• I’m cheap. Will work for Chicago Town Pizza and the change in your pocket.

None of those are a joke, except maybe the working for change part. I’ll either work for free and claim it was my idea or work for a standard rate and tell everyone “I’m a writer, me.”

Keep me in mind, I’m off to find work.

* – I used to run a website in 2006, which became solely a video games review site in 2008 and ran up until 2011 when I was working 7 days a week and still had no money to buy games to review. The site was making a net loss, had a microscopic fan base and no one was contributing to it and so I pulled the plug.

Well, read it then!

____________________________________________

Here at the Charming Hooligans we generally don’t approve the idea of party gaming; a party to us usually involves claymores, hunting knives and Bosnia. However we thought we’d increase our scope and test out Sega’s latest cash in – Beijing 2008.

Sunday, August 24th. The actual Olympics may have ended but Von Hooligan, Malduran and the Curly Hooligan himself decided to keep those games going. We decided early on that you were not allowed to play as USA, China or good ol’ team GB. With this in mind Malduran went Portugal, Von Hooligan (aka Rudolf Hess) went Norway and Curly Hooligan (aka Jesus) went, errr… Russia. So we got into the competitive spirit of arm-chair Olympians, kitted out with chips, comfy trousers and a game ‘diary’ to chart our adopted nation’s valiant quest towards glory.

18:20 – Opening ceremony

And we’re off! First event is the women’s javelin. After recovering over the shock at how un-womanly the women are we proceed to check the controls.

The controls are shit.

Malduran quickly gets the hang of things, but is extremely pissed at how he can’t beat Belgium. No one can, especially Rudolf Hess and Jesus, who don’t as much throw the javelin as run as far as they can outfield before being penalised.

Malduran really dislikes Belgium, as well as Rudolf Hess’ ginger Norwegian athlete. As it comes to the final throw Malduran plummets into the 25 metre mark, finishing last whilst Hess and Jesus get lucky throws, earning them Gold and Bronze respectively. The swearing begins.

18:40 – (Alleged) Women’s Shot Put

The tutorial for the shot put tells us to watch a gauge at the side which will indicate when to throw. At no point does it mention a red bar on the floor, as such Hess and Jesus foul every throw and get disqualified, Malduran finishes a respectful 5th. Belgium still dominate.

Von Hooligan is getting increasingly defensive at his lack of skill proclaiming ‘Sega fail at life’ before quietly sulking. Curly lightens the mood by personifying the judges. In this event they are Rod and Mick and they are disgusted with the manginas on display.

18:52 – Men’s Pole Vault

Pole vault, easily the best event of the Olympics. Thankfully it’s pretty straight forward; wiggle sticks for speed, hold trigger at groove to vault – piss. Malduran and Hess quickly get to grips of things, Jesus refuses the first jump and has a sit down.

It’s apparent that Sega did not spend much money on the animations – every time you fail it plays the same sequence, instead of randomly flailing or getting impaled on the pole, shame. It’s also very skittish at allowing you to jump, as you build speed it creates a little box, which you then have to aim an arrow at in order to jump, right? Wrong, whenever Malduran aimed it at the middle he failed, at the top, he sometimes failed, and at the bottom he failed. Whenever Hess aimed it at the bottom he sailed over. The game is playing favourites.

Curly can only muster “Que?” as he tries not to get cramp from the incessant stick waggling. He also says “The animation blows” as the others whole-heartedly agree.

Hess gives up through boredom, Malduran cruises to Bronze.

19:00 – 10m Diving (No men allowed apparently)

Right, time for some poncey fun courtesy of the high dive. We expect holding buttons to do the corresponding dive, we get to move the sticks in time instead. Yay. Instead of each stick controlling one half of the body, the computer dives regardless and you have to play follow the dot. Fucking lazy.

Von Hooligan bemoans the lack of Greg Louganis style head traumas, whilst Malduran is offended by the repetitive animation – the same dive regardless. Curly Hooligan stays quiet. A discussion arises at how it could have been improved greatly, such suggestions include button bashing (works for the other events), freeform stick moving, and running bombs.

The hands are already starting to hurt as the pads wear down. We entertain the notion of demanding new pads from Sega. We know they’ll decline.

19:30 – Skeet Shooting

Men only again as we enter our expertise – shooting the bastard out of things. The controls are easy as the mandatory use of the triggers for firing re-appears. However the bullet physics are fucking diabolical, as the big ‘X’ that denotes a miss is clearly shown on the skeet each time. Malduran calls shenanigans.

Jesus is apparently a pacifist, or so claims Curly as an excuse for missing every target. He is also apparently Russian and highly camp. Discussion arises about the reality of a gay Russian. Curly is depressed at the lack of 50. cal musket shooting.

Jamaica dominates this round, Von Hooligan was not aware that Jamaica had an armed force, let alone guns. Malduran finally hits a target, only to be upstaged by Rudolf Hess. Von Hooligan is pissed at why he did not get an achievement. The notion of attacking the judges is frequently discussed.

19:52 – Judo

Controls are overly complex, all about timing sticks instead of Dragon punching people. Malduran and Hess are instantly eliminated, it turns out you actually have to know the rules of Judo before you play. Curly/Jesus takes advantage of Malduran and El Hess’ incompetence and lasts for the majority of a round. The computer then swept his legs and pinned him. We are not impressed, they made ‘Streets of Rage’ for fuck’s sake.

20:00 – Ping Pong

Ping pong isn’t a sport, we decline the match.

20:03 – 100m Dash

Curly Hooligan selects ’10 random events’ to keep the game fresh. We aren’t surprised that it has gone stale after an hour. The running is textbook ‘Track & Field’ – twat A and B or wiggle the sticks, again. Malduran gets instantly disqualified for false starting – twice. Curly and Von Hooligan start fine but are feeling the effects of all the events. They finish 8th and 7th respectively.

20:06 – 100m Butterfly

We are ripping through events now, and as such take our first trip to Beijing’s water cube. We expect straight forward controls and we’re not disappointed. Similar to the running controls but by now we’re fucking knackered. First length goes ‘swimmingly’ (Ho ho ho) but second length is a struggle. Everyone is surprised at how well we did.

Jesus – Gold Rudolf Hess – Bronze Malduran – 5th

Von Hooligan eats his 3rd cereal bar of the night, the mood is tense.

20:10 – Shot Put (again)

We return again to the women’s shot put, and no one is pleased. However it seems that it is much MUCH easier second time round. However  no one achieves a medal. We have now decided to ignore whatever Sega insists are the controls. We’re still bitter about the judo. Malduran is still angry at Belgium.

20:24 – 50m Freestyle

We are happy at the return of the swimming and also at the prospect of freestyle. Who would do which style? Who would win? What would the judge’s say?

Jesus and Hess get disqualified straight away, although Jesus at least clears half of the pool before we imagine a crew of burly stewards hauling him out. The swearing continues for 3 minutes. Malduran dives in and is forced to front crawl, the phrase “Freestyle my arse” is uttered at least six times, each. Von Hooligan notices that the DQ meter is too psychotic. At the start of running and swimming there is a little bar that you have to try and fill with out touching the red, however you get DQ’d as SOON as you touch the crimson fucker, as opposed to waiting in the area.

Malduran gets Gold and declares that Belgium can ‘eat his shit’.

20:29 – Ping Pong, again.

Again we groan as the over glorified school hobby returns to the screen. We decide to play half arsed, attempting to make the character dive in the process.

Curly Hooligan declares that the Ping Pong has given him Cancer. Von Hooligan responds with an AIDS revelation.

Turns out you can’t dive, what’s the point then?

20:42

As the ping pong bore-a-thon continues the inevitable subject of fantasy Olympic events is discussed.

Olympic Backgammon? Olympic Human Chess? Olympic All Day Breakfast?

All are deemed more worthy than ping pong. And hand ball.

20:43

Out come the Custard Creams, there is mild rejoice.

20:44

Rejoice is replaced with disgust as we notice that the crowd is composed of 4 different people, only multiplied.

20:45 – 1500m Dash

We expect the same as the sprint, however there is no starting mini game, and there is a different camera angle. Oh and the ability to either gracefully lunge across the finish line or prance like a King. Prancing is decreed.

We start and instantly decide upon a comedy race. El Hess starts by sprinting across to the far right outside line before dive bombing back in and into first place. We don’t realise that we are dominating until around the 400m mark, when the competitive shoving comes out.

This is the game we were expecting; fun, engaging and a bit silly. As we near the finish it’s neck and neck, until an error by Malduran allows Rudolf Hess to showboat across the finish line.

Hess – Gold Malduran – Silver Jesus – Bronze

Easily the most fun all night as well as the best result and most competitive. Von Hooligan beats Malduran by 0.01 seconds, a resounding “Ooooh” rings out.

20:51 – Diving again

No one is pleased. However Malduran has a proper go and ends up with Silver and an achievement! Nice. Von Hooligan wants to try and cripple his diver, he finishes 8th. Curly is in the middle on the scale of effort, but still manages 6th.

Belgium win the diving, we then comment about their lack of sporting prowess – they aren’t good.

21:10 – Cycling; Men’s Team Pursuit

Fresh off the back of GB’s dominance at the velodrome we pounce at the cycling, thinking that cycling dominance is part of our genes, despite the fact that Von Hooligan can’t ride a bike. The event itself is fucking ridiculous, more stick twatting instead of the more sensible button option. It also lasts far too fucking long, we don’t care how long it is in real life.

Our spirits are yet again dampened by this shockingly hard spectacle. Custard Creams however heal all.

21:20 – 100m Hurdles

Again our confidence was our downfall, as we expected a walk in the park after our triumphant 1500m earlier.

Von Hooligan doesn’t realise that he hasn’t left the starting block for 2 seconds.

The hurdles themselves were very hard, it’s hard to judge the timing as the camera is perched behind your skull. As a result Curly Hooligan crashes through the first 5 hurdles.

21:22

We are all disheartened and quit. Malduran realises that he still has the game rented for 6 more days.

21:40

We proceed to jump into Curly Hooligan’s car and kill moths with the windscreen wipers. This is easily the most fun of the night.

Overall, ‘Beijing’ forgets the purpose of its existence – it’s essentially a party game. Each event takes plenty of practice as opposed of the universal notion of picking up the pad and having fun. It was frustrating, uninformative and lazily produced. However it was never meant to dominate the market and is just a chance for people to try and feel like an Olympic athlete, despite the retarded difficulty curve. Perhaps we looked too far into it, but it gave us no choice. We got bored after an hour, but continued for a further 2 and it didn’t even prove itself as a rent worthy title.

Leave the sport to the experts, we’re happy just watching.

- Von Hooligan, Malduran and Curly Hooligan

[Fuck you, Belgium! – Malduran]

We’re going old-school. We’re playing vanilla Survival on a brand new 16-player server located at betaarchive.com:25566! The server is Whitelist-only to prevent undesirables marching in and ruining what we’ve tried to achieve, so if you read the following and decide you want in then give me a shout on Twitter @CurlyHooligan…

The Dynamic Map of the Server is available here (opens in new window).

The shared abode.

The Premise

This isn’t a build server, but it isn’t an RP server either. We just work together, share our resources and aim to explore everything the game has to offer without getting too silly or too boring. We will mix potions for each other, cook a variety of foods, craft items and weapons and enchant them to buggery. We can take on preferred roles, such as explorer, miner, farmer, crafter, etc. if everyone is happy to do so, but we’re all going to have to pitch in and not get childish or possessive over the little things.

When we have massive stockpiles of food and equipment and things start to get a bit slow, we will work towards finding “The End”. This was added in the 1.0.0 update and we know very little about it (and frankly don’t want to know a lot beforehand). All we know is that it involves Endermen body parts and finding an elusive Stronghold – and an endurance of the events following – to “complete” the game.

The Rules (So Far)

• Please don’t intentionally damage the building, other people’s work or make life harder for other players in any way. You will be locked in the Nether for most offenses and removed from the Whitelist if you’re a real bastard.
• Beautification is secondary to function. If something gets broke, make it work again and leave it be. We don’t want to waste resources when we could have up to 16 people to cater for at any time. Most repairs to structures are being made with Cobblestone and Wooden Fence to effectively and cheaply block areas and clearly show which areas are hit most frequently to fortify better in future.
• Don’t build anything fancy. Most of our work will be done in and around the shared home (pictured) or in the clearly labelled mines, so we don’t need anyone going away to build a solid gold house 45 minutes from spawn and never being seen again. The Nether is also not essential this early into the server. When we’re ready for a Nether Portal only one will be placed, it will be placed conveniently and discrete and it will not be used lightly.
• The only things required to build at present are bridges, roads, walkways, protective walls, outposts (sleeping, crafting and storage areas away from home) and fenced areas for crops and animal farming.
• Don’t hoard. Items you have begin to use (such as picks, swords and armour) and the bare minimum supplies of food (enough to fill your food bar from empty to full), are pretty much your only “property” on the server (but items such as fishing rods, shears, etc. can be passed on to save yourself some inventory space). Everything else is fair game, and should be surrendered if asked nicely. It may sound harsh if you’re the one carrying all the diamonds, but you’re only bound to lose those diamonds if you don’t get the food, weapons and potions you ask nicely for.
• Don’t steam ahead. If 3 players are mining happily, you are free to go and do your own thing but don’t go ahead and start a new mine or raiding a dungeon for personal glory. If all other players on the server want to sleep to skip the night, please play along. Don’t do anything risky without help unless you have nothing to lose and something to gain, and play socially at all times.
• More to come…

It’s been a while since I actually watched the film, but the story unfolds with Luke Wilson playing “The Average Man”, an Army private with average stats across the board – including IQ, blood pressure, height, weight, etc. who is ordered to take part in the US government’s experiments in cryogenic freezing. What was planned as short stint in stasis to ensure the freezing was safe becomes a 500 year Futurama-esque cryo-sleep after Luke Wilson’s character is forgotten. After 500 years of the below-average breeding more ferociously than the above-average the population’s average has shifted negatively making the now-thawed “Average Man” suddenly the smartest person in the world.

We laugh at how all clothing is now a billboard for a brand, how people are influenced 100% by advertising and believe everything they hear (resulting in the presidents winning on popularity alone and the population trying to water their crops with Gatorade), how hyper-inflation has left $1,000,000 nearly worthless and how all sport is contact sport that involves blood and death on a very Smash TV/Running Man/Gladiatorial scale, but the picture painted from the first few minutes of the film is really enough to pin down the real message, which is nicely ribboned up in a feel-good comedy; Being frank, the smarter half of our population have some tough choices to make that will affect the fate of mankind on Earth.

It’s difficult to discuss without sounding like a snob, but it has become clear since Thomas Malthus first spoke out that the world cannot handle an ever-growing population and many argue that we’re already beyond the point of over-population, with only modern technology for efficient food production keeping us afloat. Major religious beliefs, lack of sex education (sometimes DUE to religious beliefs overriding the schools) and the lure of child benefits (as a way to survive without being obliged to contribute to the economy) have nudged certain underprivileged groups worldwide to experience exponential population explosions over the last century, with the offspring more likely to adopt similar outlooks and get stuck into the same socio-economic cycles.

On the other hand, the people who strive to make a difference in the world have a tendency to plan and map their route through life and tick each box as they reach them. Education for an additional 5-10 years before working, working before getting a house, a house before marriage, marriage before children. Family planning tries to fit around each partner’s career plans so the time and money (from their own pocket) to have and raise children is reduced so usually fewer children are had between “settling” and “menopause”. These children also typically have “better” upbringings, with fastidious parents more willing to pay out for private schooling, tutoring and imposing work ethic – with their own life as an example of success - as the only way to get what you want.

The result of this, at first glace, would be a growth in population for those without the same chances in life causing a negative shift of the meaning of average with the above-average or intellectually valued workforce essentially shrinking into the minority. It’s been seriously considered in the past that the human species may split a few hundred thousand years down the line from the lack of inter-class breeding. This may be an extreme prediction, but this social divide is no different than the geographical divides such as new rivers or mountains that force one specie to diversify into two separate species in nature. The future 500 years down the line portrayed in Idiocracy may appear to be outlandish and is likely a vision of things to come providing they were not regulated (which we hope they are), but the actual future may not differ much from this if population growth isn’t curbed.

There’s no easy way to implant the idea of controlling the birth rate into general acceptance without being compared to eugenicists of the past and sympathising with modern China’s one-child policy but simple education on sustainability, economics and sex education can increase support for having children later, when there is sufficient monetary and emotional support already available from the family. Of course despite the rational reasons to go ahead it’s still difficult to pull the trigger without politicians gambling their reputation and company resources on trying to fix a problem that the bulk of the Western world won’t perceive as a problem until it’s too late to correct. So, for now, it’s in the hands of the individuals. Which means mainly the individuals who understand it’s importance, which means they have probably read into the situation, which in turn likely places them into the above-average intelligence band.

One option is to ignore it since everybody else is, have as many children as you want or can support comfortably and then die old enough to see them grow up but young enough to die before you feel the consequences. The consequences would be a continued explosion of the global population but a more even distribution of backgrounds and genetics going through to the next generation. Another option would be to plan ahead to have only 1-2 children, so the eventual death of you and your partner keeps the your contribution to the population at a balance or slight decline, which is great for the global population but for those who aren’t willing to control birth rates will soon become a majority of the gene pool.

The sensible option seems to be adoption - to foster a child and raise them as your own. This can present opportunities to a child who previously had none and allow them to flourish while also controlling population growth – creating a home for a child in need over creating a child. The downside is that your own genetic material won’t make it into the next generation – the meaning of life, in the Darwinian view – unless you have another child. However, the increased acceptance of homosexual couples and marriages has affected the rate of adoption and some now see adoption of babies and very young children as reserved for homosexual couples who reject surrogates but are looking to raise a child.

My point, and opinion, stands at the fact of until we master terraforming and colonising far-off worlds to disperse our population we need to take action to target the causes of these problems and slow the growing global population before we hit the ceiling of Earth’s sustainability and face all the disasters that come with breaking through it. I realise there’s a horrendous amount of gray areas - both politically, scientifically and ethically - in taking most courses of action, and I also realise that most individuals alone probably can’t make a difference to the course of human evolution, but passively wishing the problems of the future away could unfurl as a disaster for mankind.

And that’s where I run out of steam on the topic. If you wish to contribute to this discussion, fact check or counter-argue, feel free to do so.

The Many Cum Faces of George Osborne

Table For One

Hungover Owls

Smile Like You’re Dead Inside

Michael Buble Being Stalked by a Velociraptor

Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber

Uncomfortable Moments with Putin

Kim Jong Il Looking At Things

Awkward Stock Photos

Captcha Art

Passed Out On Public Transport

Fake Science

Dads on Vacation

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”

- Mark Twain

“It’s now rather common to hear people say ‘I’m very offended by that’ as if that gives them certain rights. It’s [no more than a whine], it has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase – ‘I am offended by that’. Well, so fucking what?”

- Stephen Fry

“Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.”

- Ricky Gervais

I’ve noticed recently that people have become increasingly apologetic for their own opinions. One liberty of the Western world is the freedom to express yourself candidly without being punished by your peers, but a right so many of us pass up with the fear of upsetting those around us. I’m not sure if I’m treading The Guardian or The Daily Mail ground here when I say that people need to take full advantage of their right to speak their mind without fear of the repercussions.

If you can truly believe in the words you are saying and not be in any way offended or appalled by them yourself then what makes those who are negatively affected so special? It doesn’t make them right or wrong to agree or disagree with you, unless they’re doing it for the wrong reasons, but if they are the portion of the group who finds what you are saying to be offensive or disrespectful then they can either counter-argue against your manic ignorance gracefully or shut the fuck up and leave. Whether the strings of syllables you eject from your gullet are translated into words of wisdom or the ramblings of a tyrant is completely subjective and falls into the court of the recipient to let the noises fall into their designated peg-shapes within their consciousness and draw up memories and meaning from the deep well of their long-term memory, so why are you at fault if the images they conjure up are negative ones? If you are one of those people who need to prefix your next verbal belch with the tacked-on phrase “I’m sorry, but…” to emphasise just how little you want to rock everyone’s world while drawing attention to your view of things (a view which was likely copied from a popular publication) then it just makes me think you’re not certain of what you believe or that you’re only saying what you’re saying to cause a controversy you can masturbate to later.

I, of course, mean this in a moderate sense. I realise “I’m sorry, but…” is only a few paces away from “I’m not racist, but…”. I don’t endorse the expression of racism or homophobia, and anyone who does express them in my presence is someone I no longer wish to share my presence with, but this is the point. If people don’t like what you have to say, no one is forcing them to listen and if they don’t like you as a person for it then they join the great majority of the world who don’t care or don’t care for what you have to say and from this you come to appreciate the remainder who nod along with your slurred rants about which celebrity you believe should fist themselves to death. You can’t please everyone – and trying to just gets you stuck with labels such as “two-faced” and “suck-up” which are permanent, irreversible and legally-bound titles in the workplace – so stop trying and just say it how it is. You’ll lose the love and respect of those who – in an honest world – you would’ve never got along with anyway and gained the respect of those who see fragments of their own thoughts shining out from your finger-pointing, self-important arrogance-flavoured vomit.

You won’t be the most attractive person in the world if you follow this plan of action but you’ll quickly root out those who are worth spending time with in the first place, rather than just falling in line and nodding along to someone’s temporally-scrambled plot synopsis of last night’s “Corrie” while you’re trying to eat your sandwich.

But, what do you care what I have to say? This is just my opinion.

Please note, I wrote this after drinking – something I’m not in the habit of doing. When I see this tomorrow I might add, edit or remove some parts for better flow or grammar. At an extreme, maybe I’ll even show the hypocritical nature we all (deniably) have and remove the post entirely with a hushed apology.

I’m not just being thick by saying this. Early last century lifts needed a guy to pull the lever, halt at your desired stop then open and close the doors for you – up until it was replaced by illuminated circuitry that appear irresistible to children whose parents leech benefits. Surely we’ve come far enough to operate the trains on a similar system?
It would arrive at a stop on time, open it’s doors if requested to do so by a passenger onboard or awaiting it on the station. When the scheduled time is up at said station, the doors would emit a warning and snap shut – maybe on the front wheel of a determined lycra-clad cyclist with poor transit punctuality? – and move on smoothly and without remorse.
From the ashes of Britain’s railway expertise we could revolutionise mass-transit, instead of the present and shameful condition of buying second-hand carriages from European neighbours and outsourcing railworks to countries which youths weren’t told to drop their toolbelts and head to university, fruitlessly.

As for on-rail security? The third-best solution to cryo-storing passengers or having private, lockable berths would be to permit passengers light ordinance or sharps to dissuade potential muggers, rapists, vagrants and multiple-seat-hoggers.

I wish there was more “street justice” on public transport. As I write this, two menopausal women are discussing George Clooney’s relationship status…
I mean, what is wrong with this country?!

There’s some truly disgusting human beings on my regular route and, as is natural, I labelled and aliased them all immediately.
Hairy man who grunts and spits on the tracks, suppressedly homosexual old man and “friend”, chatty bitch, plain-clothes sleeping workman, guy who steps on the train with his book in hand but without fail finds someone he knows to talk to instead, angry mechanic.
I know ‘em all!

The guys who really take the cake are the strange middle-aged men who seem to race all the passengers – as well as each other – at my final destination. What really gets these guys through the day is to be alone in the lift from the platform to the surface, so make considerable effort to sprint for the next lift and hammer the ‘UP’ button until their knuckles fuse. About 90% of the time they fail (possibly because I have become semi-competitive just to see them upset) and the 10% of success is split in a roughly 4-1 ratio in favour of the skinny guy (the other guy is ‘The Tall Guy’).
It’s incredible to hear the muted but still plainly audible “GAWD!” as you just step through the automatic doors as they are due to close, and therefore re-open. It’s even sweeter, and definitely worth the minor inconvenience to my own journey, to see the guy shift his feet, sigh and mutter as your entrance paved the way for another dozen or more people to hop on the lift. It just gets better when a cyclist attempts to squeeze in and prevent the door completing it’s function 2 or 3 times as the bike owner mutters apologies and slams his ride into the mesh of legs, suitcases and bags in vain.

It’s not even like these guys are in a hurry. I’ve actually followed one out the station once, and he slowed right down once he was out. Even stopped to fumble a cigarette out his pocket and stare towards the horizon before strolling into the park.

What a prick.

Anyway, if you follow me on Twitter (please do!) this wasn’t one of the planned topics I was to blog this weekend. This is just me. Bored.
On a train.

Have a nice weekend!

“This date has generated enormous publicity, with many predicting the end of the world, or a transformative event of some kind. This is despite no record of the Mayans themselves believing that any such event would occur. … Of course, for the vast majority of rational people, the date passes without incident – and life continues as normal on 22nd December.”

Instead, the site looks at the realistic probabilities in life based on existing, accredited sources from scientific journals, press conferences and bills passed through governments and international administrations, all of which are freely referenced on the site for you to see for yourself. Ranging from shocking to inspirational, and from the life-saving to the entirely expected – but with regular stops at the down-right bizarre – the entire site deserves nothing less than to be read from start to finish in a single sitting.

Just scrolling through the years that the vast majority of people alive today will live through gives you an unrivaled optimism towards the human race as a whole, as the site claims that within our lifetime (hopefully) cancer, AIDS, deafness, blindness, Alzheimer’s, infertility and other plagues we’ve come to accept as inescapable life sentences will be fully curable. There will also be printable, working screens, affordable commercial space travel, mainstream electric cars, wireless electricity and bionic augmentations available from your local Health Centre.

This all sounds like science fiction, and a pinch of salt must be taken as these claims and visions of a futuristic future have been made before and not materialised (You only have to watch 2001 – A Space Odyssey), but with the hard science and working prototypes (often posted as a YouTube video, such as the robot pack mules that walk like timid cattle) there to prove that the development is already well underway – for decades in some cases – it really is difficult to dismiss as unfeasible. If some of the site’s claims for the next decade seem a bit far-fetched or extreme for something that should be happening the next few months, you only have to look back at the events of 2011 and 2010, where scientists have created artificial DNA sequenced on a computer, started the process to create a Wooly Mammoth, started up the LHC, made leaps in artificial intelligence and robotics, created batteries that charge instantly, have illuminated traffic signs or even entire houses or communities powered by the sun, created engines powered by stacks of paper-thin conductors, shrank the micro-chip to fit 64Gb of data on something the size of your toenail, made important discoveries about the nature of the universe and brought out inventions we already take for granted such as the iPad and touchscreen smartphones. 10 years ago I thought it would’ve taken me until I was 40 or 50 years of age to be able to watch full-quality TV from a screen in my pocket, but now I’m 22 and I do it on a weekly basis without thinking twice and without anyone around me batting an eyelid.

Virgin have already successfully flew commercial spacecraft.

Of course with all this comes the bad news, such as more wars, natural disasters, exhaustion of resources due to over-population (and our ingenious solutions), the death of celebrities we love and the continued existence of those we hate. There’s also the waves of completely expected advances, such as the next wave of games consoles, more automated retail, the locations of events such as Olympics for the next decade, flatter and higher-definition screens (UHDT), more focus on touch-screens and less physical interfaces and the shrinking of technology until far into the future we can send text messages with our minds and fitting 64PB storage devices into the head of a match (scarily, everything I’ve mentioned so far will happen way before 2030, many before 2020).

The robot fly as a tool for spying has existed in science fiction for decades.

The only people who won’t benefit from the future many of us face are the technophobes and the soon to be deceased, two groups of which have a huge overlap. The exponential growth of the scientific field in all areas has brought humans more intimate with technology and whether we think that’s good or bad, it’s happening. Older generations can scoff that we sit and text and surf the net instead of engaging in actual conversation, marvel at features of technology that we see as mundane and claim they’re “too old” to get started on “Glue gling the interwebs”. It’s hard to imagine how mindblowing it must be for, say, an aging man – born into a world where entertainment consisted of climbing trees and jumping off again and disregarding all future health and safety laws – discovering Google Streetview and realising they can literally walk around the globe from the comfort of their home. This happens today, and has been accessible to us all, free of charge, for years. You can now do that by just taking out your phone and poking the screen a few times.

Personally it fills me with a sense of euphoria to think what awaits us when everything we have today goes from luxury to fundamental and regarded as on par with Stone Age, and what our grandchildren will show us excitedly, and how little we might understand it’s purpose or function at first, being content with our mouse and keyboards while they operate fully immersive virtual-reality using nothing but their mind.

Texting, surfing the web and playing games using the mind aren't so far-fetched.

To round this off, no matter how tedious or unconsequential your life may seem right now, well…

a) … you’re right, and you’re also not alone – see “Beyond 10,000 AD” …

and

b) … you will be a part of the generation responsible for making the world a greater place to live on. You will witness every global event as if it were first-hand, beamed onto your UltraHD TV or as a feature-length video receive instantly by RSS, and live without fear of suffering the same degenerative diseases as your older relatives as you will live in a world where everything seems curable, lost limbs, organs and teeth can be replaced by life-like bionics or regrown using stem cells and life expectancy will shoot above 120.

There’s a lot on this site to be awestruck by, and there really isn’t enough room here to repeat all of the highlights without being shut down for plagiarism, so I urge you to go and take a look for yourself. If you can’t wait for this idyllic future to be upon us there’s nothing stopping you jumping in and pulling your weight but otherwise just live your lot in life and sit back in awe of what your kind have created decades down the line. Who knows? Save up for a few months and you could be orbiting the Earth in a private aircraft for your retirement party.