I Have Lost My Faith In Movies

***NOTE***

I could have said so much more about this movie. But I don’t have the space. I’ll fill you in with  four words: dumb stereotyping and incompetence

I have seen a lot of movies this half term. If you read my last one then you know I’ve been doing slasher movie marathons when I should have been revising for my chemistry retakes. However, I still found the time to watch that one film that comes along once in a lifetime that will make you completely loose your faith in any film that director will ever make again. Think M. Night Shylaman and The Last Airbender. To date, it is the only film where the opening credits have literally made me turn off my TV and instead watch ANOTHER crappy Elm Street sequel.

This movie is Death Race. But first a bit of history over the declining state of Paul W.S Anderson’s movies. His first movie was uninspiring called Shopping, a movie which attempted to be dark and realistic, but came out being goofy and pretentious. Then the shit stain movie Mortal Kombat. Next came Resident Evil, which I thought was pretty damn good. Although his next one was Aliens Vs Predator, which is basically the same movie. It even has Colin Salmon playing the same role, with the same lack of identification, with similar amounts of screen-time. I hate how Colin Salmon is always wasted, whoever thought to cast him as the voice-over man in Cube is a fucking genius and should promoted instantly to head of the BBC. 

Whatever. Rotten tomatoes say he gradually getting better, yet they also say Death Race is his best. Incidentally, this movie came 3 years after AvP, which is easily his best to date. By 2008, he truly lost his touch.

Alright. I can begin. First up are those staggeringly bad opening credits I talked about.

2012 – The United States economy collapses. 

Unemployment reaches a record high.

Crime Rates Spiral out of Control. The prison system reaches breaking point. 

Private Corporations now run all correctional facilities for profit. 

This is so moronic it makes me stupid just thinking about it. Seriously, I can feel my brain wilting just typing about it. First of all, why 2012? Ever since Roland Emmerich put out his dumb movie about the world blowing up every movie writer has been cashing in on it. Although I can see why unemployment and crime rates would soar, doesn’t America have the death sentence? Surely most of the crimes committed would be muggings, a lot of which lead to stabbings, which is MURDER. Exactly what earns you the death sentence. Even if you say that one murder doesn’t warrant execution, you’d think that in a society where prisons are overflowing they’d be a bit harsher. And private corporations, whoa, don’t even get Paul W.S Anderson started on the EVIL CORPORATIONS and their MONEY MAKING! The sins of capitalism. Yet when Obama makes a (more) socialist move towards national healthcare, there are people rioting and bashing peoples heads in on the streets! God I hate America. But I Digress. 

Our main character is Jason Statham. Great. A very English accent right in the middle of a movie where everyone is profoundly American. Good casting guys. It’s the worst casting mistake since some shit-for-brains at Activision thought it would be a good idea to get Kevin “that mentally retarded northern guy” Mckidd to voice Soap Mctavish. 

Anyway, in a truly terrifying future full of bad casting and plot holes, if you want to escape from prison you have to win 5 “Death Races”, which is where you go round a track, shooting at other people while trying to cross the line fastest and where you can only survive for narrative purposes. We are told at the beginning that there are three stages. But as we get through the film we are only given two. The last one is an escape scene. Good idea. 

This movie is stupid. Every time something is built up we are given an anti-climax and a plot hole. Take the storyline of the girls in the movie. To navigate the drivers round the track, girls are bought in from a women’s prison. They are very nice. What does the movie do with them? 

In the trailer there are several shots of a sex scene of something between Statham and the main girl in the movie. Good. That could easily salvage this god-awful movie from the massive hole it dug for itself. What does the movie do? Absolutely nothing.

To make things worse, NEARLY ALL OF THE GIRLS ARE KILLED OFF. I’m serious. They’re killed graphically and violently on screen for no particular reason. There’s not even a girl navigator for the main rival of the movie because he’s a FUCKING HOMO!! 

ARGH! ARGH! ARGH ARGH ARGH!!!!!! I could not take this movie if I didn’t have this to talk about it on. When I was making ideas for this in my head while getting biscuits in the kitchen, I almost burst into angry tears when I thought of that last line. I still don’t know what the hell my mum was thinking when she came in and saw me breaking down over the Jaffa cakes. You see what this movie has done? It has reduced me to the point where I have lost faith even in Jaffa cakes. Just to rub it in the viewer’s face, we see a baby in the ending scene. 

This movie is completely unacceptable. The death race sequences are awesome but there are only two of them and they’re not that long. Worse, everything between them feels like cheap padding. There is no excuse for a movie with such a big budget, such a (if out of place) successful cast, such a fucking awesome idea that fails so epically. 

I could go on. But I’m not going to. Just, if you want to keep your faith in films, please, just avoid this movie.

Make Your Own Slasher Movie

Over the past week I’ve been watching a lot of 80’s slasher movies. Honestly, none of them struck me as being really great films. But anyway I’ve seen, at the last count eighteen of them.  Mostly sequels. As such I’m perfectly qualified to teach you all how to hit big on the movie scene by making your own. So here’s your handy cut out n keep guide on making it big in Hollywood.

Step one: Make your villain

This is an obvious step. And best of all it’s the quickest to do. Sit down for a while, thinking of things that scare you. Eventually you’ll end up with a good, original concept. I know I did. So here’s my villain, Prognisus. He sees wrongdoing and crime and employs stark vigilante justice, hiding behind his fake name to avoid linking himself to the murders. That’s a great concept. A slasher villain not motivated by hatred or childhood abuse, but he thinks that what he’s doing is right. Even though its murder.

BAD MOVIE MAKER. VERY BAD.

You can’t have interesting or original concepts in a slasher movie! The first thing wrong is that your villain can’t have a symbolic or meaningful name, it has to be one that is completely typical everyman name. So rather than prognisus, our main villain is called Dave.

Second thing wrong is that your villain cannot have an intriguing back-story that could make you think, it has to be one that you could comprehend even when completely unconscious. Or at the very least senselessly drunk. You get the idea. So Dave is now motivated by hatred of people. Just hatred. He just hates people for no reason. Think Jason Voorhees.

There should also be a gimmick to him. Jason has a sword and a hockey mask. Freddy has burn marks and finger knives. Leatherface has the chainsaw. Dave will have a large jaw. So large it almost touches his chest. His weapon is an axe. That was… effortless.

Step two: Make your main character

Your main character is a girl. A teenager. From an urban background. She parties a lot but is always the shyest one there. She must also be the smartest person in the whole village. Hmm. It appears I’ve left no room for you to do anything. Oh well that was quick I suppose. Onto the next one.

Step three: Your supporting cast

You always need a large supporting cast, because if you kill your main character at the start, well you’re pretty much screwed. I would say you need at least twenty of them, which isn’t an issue since all you need to do is go through a bunch of clichés in order. If you’re out of ideas, that’s not an issue either. All you need to do is watch one Roland Emmerich Film. Try Independence Day. What is also extremely important is that every woman must wear at least a D cup. Don’t worry this’ll come up later .Also, you have to develop them a little, give them whatever back story you want. Really it can be anything; you only have to refer to it once.

Step four: The storyline

This proceeds in much the same way as your villain, no originality and next to no concept. But there are a few important things you need to know about.

Number one: The murder scenes

These can go in one of two ways. If it’s a woman you want to kill, make sure you have a shower or sex scene first. No real reason for it but to get your money’s worth of those D cups. If it’s a man, well, its not important. Do whatever you want.

And in the sequels, at least one of the murder scenes must be a direct rip-off of the original. Almost direct. It must have none of what made the original scary or entertaining in any way.

Number two: Continuity

In a word, have none of it. Nothing can be the same between scenes, be it character attitudes, time of day, scenery, whatever. You name it. On a similar note, if your story makes sense, that’s not good. There must be, at the very least, eighteen plot holes per movie.

Number three: The ending

Your character (Dave), who has vanquished almost everybody in the neighbourhood, must be defeated by nothing more than the ingenuity of three teenagers, four max. Obviously these teenagers shouldn’t be the expensive ones with the large breasts, naturally it should be your main character, and two to three males. Of course you can also have your annoying best friend stereotype in place of one the males of course.

Whatever. Make sure by some bizarre stroke of luck your character is saved from the wrath of Dave, that he’s vanquished and he won’t trouble your main character again. Do anything. It doesn’t matter, he’s going to come back whatever in the sequels. Hell Jason has come back in so many stupid ways. There was one where he literally walked out of hell to… RULE CAMP CRYSTAL LAKE! AGAIN!

Well there we go there. Follow my steps and whatever you do you can’t loose. People love slasher movies. Friday the 13^th has ten sequels. Nightmare on Elm Street has eleven. Hell they even teamed up for Freddy Vs. Jason. Man was that a purple pile of shit. But anyway maybe for next time I’ll write up Freak of Another Nature, Starring Dave to illustrate how easy all this is. Hell maybe I’ll even become the next Ronny Yu (what, you don’t know who he is?) 

The Terrible Truth Behind GCSE Poetry Live

Half term. A bastard inbreed to real school holidays.

Of course I’m not dumping on it; a week with no school is a week off school. But what better way to start the holidays (I.e. the Friday before) with a trip to the O2 arena – Which is what the millennium dome would be like had it had been successful.

Being school-run there would obviously be some catches. For instance we were going to see some poets. Admittedly ones we’re doing for our course, and hear them talk about their poems. Wonderful. We would go there and catch some glorious nugget of knowledge that would shoot us towards that wondrous A* all thanks to “GCSE poetry live”. The second catch is that it’s not at the O2 arena.

Of course I’m sceptical of many poets. There is no way a trade-unionist with his fair trade black bean flip flops and T Shirts fashioned from the cannabis plant can cram much meaning and symbolism into a poem. They just write some random stuff that comes into their heads and let English teachers across the land do the tricky bit of squeezing meaning from it.

A prime example of this is “Hitcher” by Simon Armitage. If you were to read this poem the first question that would come into your mind would be “What the hell??”. The next would be “Hmmm. What was he SMOKING when he wrote this? Where can I get some????” However my English teacher assures me it’s an unappreciated art form. I assure you it isn’t. When I was in year 6, to get back at my English teacher I handed in the most stupid story I could possibly think of for my homework, delighting in that she would have to mark it. It was about a lion called Mr Teabag who was elected prime minister and appointed most of the London zoo as the cabinet. The plot revolved around a coffee machine. However even that it Tolstoy compared to Hitcher.

However we were then told that the poets would not be actually talking about their poems, No! This bit would be done by the examiners. The poets would rush through their material then piss off in their 1978 un-serviced Nissan Micras.

Not much happened until we arrived at the dominion theatre, home of the queen musical “We Will Rock You”. As we walked in to not see Freddie mercury we were sat in the front 7^th row. Just a note, people there were Sam, Luke Trevan and Amir. Anyway they were good seats, shame about the show. Anyway while we waited for the other schools to walk in (which took an HOUR!) Sam and I and some… Enlightening conversation .

Sam: Luke look! Those lights are moving!

Me: Hmm. Its obviously part of some evil plan….

Sam: You mean subliminal messaging??????

Me: Exactly! Hypnotizing us to buy more poetry! See! What’s ‘Live’ backwards!?!?

Sam: Gasp!

The first poet we say was Carol Ann Duffy. Christ she was awful.

“So I know you’re all here for the gee-cee-ee-cees”. Then everybody burst out laughing.

I mean what the hell? She’s in the damn anthology we’re doing and she can’t pronounce the name? WHAT THE HELL. She’s been in that book for more than five years and the GCSEs have been going for longer. There is really no excuse for that.

Anyway if you were watching you would have been able to see pretty quick that her favourite colour was probably beige. Or cream. She read her poems with the same sort of emotion that I’d expect from someone who is dead. Or a rock. And the way she did the last line of her poems. From the reading of “Anne Hathaway”

“Upon…the………………next……………………………….Best………………………………………………………………….………………….Bed”

Then we had an awesome guy called Daljit Nagra. Infinitely cooler than Carol Ann Douchebag with a hoodie and jeans rather than what appeared to be sandals and a large grey sheet.

HE WAS NOT ON THE FRONT COVER OF THE LITTLE BOOKLETS. All the other shit poets had their mug on the front cover BUT NOT THE HILARIOUS ASIAN MAN. WHAT THE HELL.

Nothing happened until lunch, which as we all know is…

RUN ABOUT DOING CRAZY SHIT TIME!

Of course we couldn’t go too crazy. Me and Amir (who thanks to me survived paintball) just explored.

Amir: Let’s go out this door! (Opens door to red and gold hallway)

Me: Left? (Opens door to identical red and gold hallway)

Amir: Umm… Ok. Forward? (Reach red and gold staircase. Go down four flights reaching a red and gold painted hallway)

Amir: ARGHH!! (Throws open door on right to reveal red and gold hall) ARGHHHH!!!! (Throws open door on left. Plaque read “Judy Garland Suite”)

Me: (Sees poets) Shit! Let’s go!!

Amir: (While running) who were all those old people??

When lunch finished we had another poet. Who had made the longest and worst poem ever. Each verse had four lines. 3 of these lines were “And she was OVER THE MOOOOOOOOOOOON……. OVER THE MOOOOOOOOOON……”. It was incredibly stupid and lasted for THREE MINUTES!

The poet was “Imtiaz Dharker” who was like the Daljit guy in stereotyping, just without the awesomeness. She was also dressed in the same sort of hemp-infused sheet that almost all the poets seemed to be wearing.

Imtiaz: Not long ago a ceiling in my house fell down. I did not resent this, see it as a bad thing. I say it as a sign that the room was trying to tell me something, communicate with me that other things had to come down as well, walls and floor. So I broke down the walls, I broke through the floor. I sold everything in the room to help the room communicate its message to me.

Amir: Is she retarded????

Not much happened after that. We had this awesome Caribbean guy called “John Agard” who was very stereotypical and very funny. Green cricket hat, grey beard and hair with dark brown skin. God he was awesome.

If you were there and you’re complaining that this is missing something huge please, feel free to sod off. Meh I think I covered a lot of the good stuff, the day was six hours so its bound to have a lot of stuff cut but there was a lot of boring stuff. Yes, I did have a few rapist jokes prepared about the chief examiner, but I’m not doing those in case he finds out and feeds my paper to a lion. 

The Puzzle Gang and The Teenagers

***NOTE***

Ok. I apologise in advance for everyone reading this. I was told that my blogs were too aggressive and that I needed to compensate. Here you go.

***

Once upon a time in greater London there was a park called winky-woo. It was a fabulous place, located in central Hampshire right next to the model train shop and the café. Children loved it there as they played and they danced till nightfall, not scared of murderers or rapists, because the wise ice cream seller James had found them all many years ago, snuck into their homes at night, and had them all put to death.

However all this enjoyment and all this fun enjoyed by the children was nothing compared to that felt by the animals. There was pom-pom the rabbit, roodoodoo the dog, cazcan the bird, and Jeremy, the old but not quite yet senile wide mouthed frog.

Every day they would meet by the pond, and laugh about how relaxing their lives were. They were simple people, not worried by recession or growing food shortages, since they were all vegetarian, and lived only on a diet, of organic celery.

One day the ice cream seller came up to them with a big smile on his face.

“Hello! Would you like some ice cream?” said James, the ice cream seller.

“Oh yes James! By the way, we really like the way you took time to learn our language!” said the animals in unison.

 “Well I have something special for you today!”

“Oh boy! Is it celeriac again?” Replied the animals brightly.

“No, this time it’s a special brew of my own, I call it ‘puzzle wuzzle’, and it tastes really yummy!”

“Ok James! Just this once!”

As the animals ate the ice cream, they began to feel very strange. Pom-pom the rabbit started to grow longer ears and his tail became fluffier! Roodoodoo the dog became much taller and his legs became stronger! Cazcan the bird’s wings got longer and more majestic, and her eyes became bigger! Jeremy the frog became much more up on his hind legs, and his tongue became much longer!

“Wow James! What did that marvellous ice cream to do us?” asked pom-pom

“Well pom-pom, you are now all superheroes! You can now do battle with the evils of the park!”

“Brut James, there ris no evil in this parrk!” barked Roodoodoo

“Hahaha Roodoodoo, there’s always things that need to be done in the park! What about now! Quick animals! A girl is about to be shoved into that pond by those evil teenagers!” said James, as quick as he could.

“MY YOUR’E RIGHT JAMES! WE’LL GET RIGHT ON IT!” chanted the animals.

Cazcan opened her wings and glided over to catch the girl. Pom-pom bounded over to the teenagers and used her fluffle-freeze powers to stop them in their tracks. Roodoodoo ran to the girl to make sure she was ok, and Jeremy leapfrogged to the pond and used his super-tongue to round up the evil teenagers, so that they could not escape.

“Well done animals! You have proved yourselves to be guardians of the park. There will be no more illegal activities in the park with you around! Just remember, whenever you catch someone, bring them straight to me, I will sort them out!!!” said James.

That’s it for this week, but come back soon for the next adventures of the puzzle-wuzzle gang.

Next week: what will they do when Islamic extremists try to eat their lunch on the bench! All will be revealed soon!!

"OH MY GOD LOOK AT MY LEG" "He he he way to go jackass"

While reading I today I came across something that at face value seemed to be normal. It was a piece about how people with Glaswegian accents are more likely to be attractive to the Japanese. Fine. But then I started thinking, who would do that? I mean, who would think a good way to spend their time and taxpayer funds is to find out what sort of accent a Japanese person likes. It’s like spending £40,000 finding out if I like cheese. In the big scheme of things, it’s completely irrelevant.

But when you keep reading through it, you see so many more of these stupid surveys. Turns out that people who eat less than 80% their GDA of fat are more likely to pass an IQ test. How do you even find that out?

How was that even pitched? “Ok. I know due to government cuts we don’t have much money, and there’s all this important cancer research to do, but today we’re going to feed Johnny crap for a week and see if he becomes a dunce”. If I was there I would walk up to the idiot and slap him with a fish.

On the other hand of course, there are surveys that are useful and help the public. For example, falling rates of lung cancer. Apparently this is due to the smoking ban. But there is also a report saying that due to stress we are having less sleep. This leads to a 48% greater chance of heart disease and a 15% greater chance of a stroke. So, we stop smoking, and stress levels are on the rise. Funny that.

Of course these people like to make their obscure polls seem more significant by calling them “studies” and saying things like “The trend for late nights and early mornings is a ticking time bomb for our health”. Some also give their organisations (usually with main headquarters in their mother’s attic) silly four letter acronyms. For example, the centre for the investigation of language teaching is called CILT. Thumbs up if you misread the first time btw. Anyway they also have a column about how less and less students are taking languages. Which just proves they have their head in the sand because now we have the English baccalaureate, which states you need English, maths, two sciences, a humanities AND A LANGUAGE to get into A level. Effective next year if you’re panicking.

While I like I, I really have to put my foot down on the number of stupid studies they post. I saw one about the number of broken street lamps in a small country town nobodies ever heard of. All this, and proper news like the protests in Cairo is pushed to page 9.

I will say this for I though, on page three today they put a bit about a man killed by a chicken:

A man attending an illegal cockfight in central California died after being stabbed in the leg by his bird after he attached a knife to its leg. Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, was declared dead about two hours after he was stabbed.

The article was called “Way to Go”. Uncaring bastard irony Ftw.

I Don't Have Enough Room For a Title

Normally when going to a party, I will not spend large amounts of time looking up what to do when I’m there. There is of course a very good reason for this. Nothing goes on at parties normally requires much thought.

This party however, was going to be different, I was going paintballing.

I wasn’t ever scared by the prospect, it sounded pretty fun. But I did always have slight bad feelings about what could happen. For instance, 2 of the people going were people I knew to be psychopathic. They were just as likely to shoot me as they were the enemy. This was unnerving, but nothing compared to the thoughts I was having about who the enemy might be. That started my research into getting good at paintballing. I was terrified that I would be up against a multiple army veteran that would just as gladly cut my head off with a meat cleaver as he would shoot me with a paintball.

As time grew on I was more worried. Most of the guides had a pretty large section on buying a gun. All the guns were priced at about £400. This really put me on edge, who spends £400 of their money on a paintball gun? Psychopaths. I had a very real chance of going up against someone will come along with a large knife in their back pocket, an RPG in their bag, and a nuclear bomb in the van. This really freaked me.

However when I arrived at the place this notion was dispelled instantly. We went to our designated shelter and saw our opposition: a party of 8 years olds.

This really pissed me off. The little kids would be so shit that the whole day would be boring. As I thought about organising a mutiny against the people on my team to liven things up, 2 other parties turned up. Both were made up of heavily built 20 year old males. This was scary. They looked like the sort of cleaver-wielding psychopaths that I was scared by in the beginning. Hell, one had a Taliban style towel wrapped around his head. Who does that? Terrorists. High school students versus the office of the martyr sadr. Yeah… This wasn’t going to end well.

That’s when one of the marshals turned up to tell us that the parties were going to be split into two, blue and green. This meant that half the midgets would be green, but so would half the terrorists. So that each team had people from both skill levels. Good idea. But in the way of these things, we were given the smallest, crappiest, youngest kids ever for our team. During speedball, one even stood right out in the open shooting at people. I fired above his head and he shat himself and ran for cover.

Getting ahead of myself. First event was barrels.

The premise is simple. Capture your opponents flag and don’t let yours get captured in the meantime. Good plan.

Me and my mate Amir decided to stay back and defend the flag. At the start it didn’t look too bad, we had plenty of the big guys with us as well. Yet as time wore on they buggered off and left us with the midgets.

Amir: Enemy on the right flank! Far Right!!

Midgets: Firing!

Next thing we know, there’s a guy behind us yelling “Surrender surrender!”. Guess which direction he came from.

Next was barrels V2, the first time I got shot.

Started out well. Me and Amir decided to stop being defenders and kill enemy. Good plan. We took cover by some barrels, and decided to move up. I covered Amir so he could move up to where he wanted. He got there fine. I checked my sides and it was clear, so I shouted for him to cover me. The reply I got was from behind me. He was hit.

This freaked me. There was some guy taking cover next to me, which was good. Except he got hit. I looked left and saw my other friend Nash near some other barrels. I yell to him I’m coming over and he covers me. As I get there he tells me he’s out of ammo. Completely. Rather than doing something useful like spotting for me, he walks off the pitch like he’s been hit. What an idiot.

Then the unimaginable happened. My gun stopped working, I had ammo and air, but it just died on me. Figuring I should do something constructive for this guy ahead of me like spotting, I decided to go to him.

The first sign something was wrong was the phut phut phut I heard ahead. The next sign was the MASSIVE FUCKING HEAD PAIN. As I moved about in pain, I was shot twice more in the knee and chest. This really hurts. I just held my arms up and stumbled out the field in agony. Don’t worry yourselves; I was fine ten minutes later.

 Next was bunker. I don’t have enough space to say what happened during defence, mostly because it would be space and not very interesting.

However during attack some things did happen. I was with Amir, again, and we moved as a team. For about a meter. Then he ran off to some other random piece of cover leaving me on my own with Nash. This isn’t really a bad thing, but he has this aura around him that just makes things go wrong. Happily however, he was shot and got sent off the pitch. Somewhere in this Amir had also got shot, so did another one of my friends, Tom. They were yelling advice, none of which was useful because it was all “MOVE UP”.

Good idea guys. Except such was the level of incoming that I could only poke my head out about an inch before it was spotted and shot at.

For some reason this was when a smoke grenade was triggered.

Me: NOW YOU DECIDE TO START DOING SMOKE. NOW YOU DECIDE TO DO SOMETHING YOU FUCKING MONKEY’S ASS RINGS.

Nash/Tom/Amir: MOVE UP!!

I sprinted about 20 meters before I was shot at. Luckily the guy who was shooting at me was mentally disabled and about thirty shots missed me. Also I was right next to cover so I just ducked down there.

Me: Did you throw that smoke?

Random person next to me: nope. We’re pinned down.

Me: Idea’s?

Random: Keep heads down??

What a twat. I looked around and could only see leaves and mud. Although it probably didn’t help because my friends were insisting it was safe and that I could move up. After some carefully chosen swear words with them, I got back to thinking.

Me: Ok. Here’s the plan. I will throw these leaves in the opposite direction of where we’re running. We can use the mud to coat ourselves in leaf camouflage so we can blend in with the surrounding leaves and not be spotted.

Bastard next to me: How about this. I run left you run right

Me: Oh L. Let’s go on 3.

 I ran right. As I ran I heard an “ARGH GOD MY FACE” from the left. I would like to think it was the twat next to me.

Well basically the situation right was nearly as good as the situation where I was. So I just was prone for the rest of the game.

Next big event was in the aforementioned speedball. I was doing a pretty good job of keeping the enemy pinned at the far end, when some fucking blue comes up to me and yells “SURRENDER!”. As is the way with these things, instead of raising my arms I shot him twice in the chest. This scared me because he appeared to be uninjured and then turned his gun on me. Remembering the safety speech, in which a guy was shot in the balls at point blank range and ended up with one testicle. I threw my gun far away and screamed SURRENDERED at the top of my voice. Turns out the guy was one my friends, Luke Trevan.  

Nothing much else happened. Although I did save Amir’s life in “Castles”. He was sticking his head out to the side, and I said “Get in!” and just as he came in about 7 shots hit the floor where he just was.

Although I may not have put it right, it really was a fantastic day. Sorry how long it was.

The Solution To All The World's Problems

Today I spent 2 hours of my life in a metal sweatbox, hitting things across a small distance with a bat. My mistake: a “Racket”, when I called it a bat a very angry person threatened take me outside and hit me in the face. Yes, this is badminton, the slightly less successful version of tennis.

While I can vaguely understand the reason why people play Rugby, the feeling of shoving another man’s head into the mud must be very satisfying indeed, the fun in badminton has always eluded me. If I was to hit something away from me, I do not want it to come back. If I wanted it, I wouldn’t have hit it away in the first place. I have always regarded badminton, squash, tennis and cricket as something rich medieval people might have thought up to fill the time between the chicken and turkey feasts and going down to the factories to laugh at the people who worked there. Am I rich medieval person? Nope.

So why would I want to play these things? To get fitter? Fat chance. Jumping side to side and around swinging your arms about isn’t going to make you Jet Li. Quite the opposite in fact. For fun? Perhaps. But the list of things that are more fun is completely endless. For instance, what is more fun: listening to music or running around in a small square doing a great impression of an autistic spider?

That’s why at the first opportunity I went away from badminton and went upstairs to table tennis. I like this sport. While I think most sports are designed to be as anti-social or exerting as possible, I don’t get this from table tennis. The fact you’re only 5 metres from your partner means you can talk at a normal volume, whereas in badminton you have to yell across a 30 meter court. This means it’s very hard to talk for a long time. In table tennis you are very unlikely to have this problem unless you are 4 foot tall, in which case table tennis is the least of your problems anyway.

Another reason I like table tennis is the size of the court. In badminton you have to run back and forth judging where the “Shuttlecock” will fly. In table tennis you just have arm span to worry about, since the table just isn’t wide enough to run about.

I genuinely believe that table tennis is the future of sport. Yes, football might be good, but it’s only played either by people so wimpy they demand you get sent off for flicking their earlobe, or by people who just like to run about screaming things about what you’re doing or what you’re not doing, or just for the sake of it. Of course there is a grey area with people from neither of these camps, but they are definitely a minority.

It’s hard to think of anyone like this in table tennis. Most are normal people, which means it doesn’t have a reputation of a sport for onanists or slobbering braindeads.

So there you have it. My opinion on sport. It mostly sucks, but there’s some bits that are good.