Frontin' That Stupid Toy

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is how ridiculously early Christmas is promoted.

I mean we haven't even had Halloween yet, but this BBC article lists the top 12 Christmas toys this year. I haven't read the article, I just laughed at the funny names of the toys. Here's what they sound like to me:

Fijit Friends - Original title: My First Epileptic

LeapPad Explorer - Steve Jobs' final act of revenge

Doggie Doo - ...

Monster High Lagoona's Hydration Station - A horror film

Fireman Sam Pontypandy Rescue Set - A fire

Kidizoom Twist - I don't know and I'm not sure I want to

Let's Rock Elmo - An Elmo toy that you shake until it shuts the fuck up

Milky the Bunny - Original title: My First Racist

Moshling Tree House - The sequel to Monster High Lagoona's Hydration Station

Ninjago Fire Temple - Original title: My Second Racist

Nerf Vortex Nitron Blaster - A toothbrush

Star Wars Ultimate Force Tech Lightsaber Assortment - What George Lucas calls his penis

This blog has definitely become where I put stuff that is too stupid for anywhere else... Anyway this one's name comes from one of the best songs ever, Just Another Story by Jamiroquai. I'll leave you with that 9 minute acid jazz masterpiece, enjoy!

Rabbit In Your Headlines

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is the fact that I've been writing this blog for over a year now.

But anyway, the BBC news website is great for a number of reasons, but my favourite thing about it is how headlines get truncated on the front page. It often makes them completely nonsensical, while making the stories sound far more interesting than they actually are. You can read them without gaining a shred of new information, in some cases coming away knowing even less than before you saw the headline. At times they literally just seem like a random collection of words. Here, in no particular order, are 10 real examples:

10. Arrests in Israeli settler deaths. - See what I mean? Those are just some words!

9. No charges for 'burglar' stab man. - Possibly written by a child.

8. Milton Keynes pilots travel club. - I've been staring at this one for days and I still couldn't tell you what the fuck is going on.

7. Beetle's beer bottle sex wins Ig. - ...

6. Fox ties to friend under scrutiny. - Headlines involving Defence Secretary Liam Fox always just say 'Fox', which never fails to leave me utterly confused for a split-second, while I wonder how a fox could have such complex social and political interactions.

5. School remembers fire death girls. - At least this one is decipherable, I just find the phrase 'fire death girls' odd.

4. Marsh to miss start of Upstairs. - The actual story: Actress Jean Marsh will miss the start of filming Upstairs Downstairs as she's recovering from a minor stroke. What I thought: Jodie Marsh missed a step and fell down some stairs.

3. Shed sprang cricket monster. - Ok I made that one up. Using a random word generator and the format Noun, Verb, Noun, Noun. But the point is it looks like it could be real. Which all the others of these genuinely are.

2. Luck 'saved shot Facebook grass.' - It's the way those words are in quote marks that really confuses me.

1. Man charged in 1980s rapes probe. - Sorry?

Thanks for reading, the title of this blog is a clever (yes, it is.) play on the brilliant UNKLE/DJ Shadow/Thom Yorke song Rabbit In Your Headlights. I'll leave you with that awesome video, enjoy!

Down On The Street

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is the BBC programme The Street That Cut Everything.

The first problem was that it was presented by Nick Robinson, a man who seems incapable of reporting the news without incessant attempts at humour which make absolutely no sense. 'The coalition is beginning to present itself as two different dishes, which taste better together, than on their own.' WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

But last night we saw him go to a street in Preston, where he told the residents that for the next 6 weeks, the council would not exist to them. They were given back 6 weeks of their council tax, with which they'd have to provide the withdrawn services themselves. The idea was to make them see how difficult life was without the council, but it was all ridiculously skewed to make it completely impossible.

Jimmy McGovern's latest character

The programme weirdly made it look as if Nick Robinson was personally responsible for the revocation of council services, to the point where if I ever see him again my immediate response will be to panic and lock up my bins before he gets his Tory hands on them. Because in this programme, Nick Robinson takes away the bins of the residents, because they're council owned, but not before he's emptied the contents of the bins into the street. So the residents have to collect the loose rubbish and keep it in their garages, exactly like councils don't.

Nick Robinson realises he's accidentally thrown away his glasses

He also arranges for some fly-tipping, where sofas and fridges are dumped on the street, and the residents have to deal with it. I thought this experiment was about how people would cope without their council, in which case all you need to do is withdraw the council's services. Don't create more problems by orchestrating your own unrealistic situations, BBC. By doing that, they completely undermined the whole point, whatever that was.

The opening titles of Preston's version of Friends

For some reason, another thing that is withdrawn is the carer of the dad of one of the residents, even though the dad lives on a different street. This experiment is meant to just be affecting one street, yet for some reason the BBC have decided to take away care for a man with no legs who lives somewhere completely different. They also take dogs down the street and make them leave dogshit for the residents to clean up. Because obviously if we didn't have councils, dogs would be encouraged to shit everywhere. Just like how people would be encouraged to graffiti everything, which also happens. And Nick Robinson arranges for some 'youths' to be 'antisocial' in a 'car'. I'm hoping they were the children of Nick Robinson and, I don't know, Andrew Marr. Because they can't phone the council, one of the residents deals with the situation himself. He seems to forget that its all engineered for a TV programme, and threatens to get a crowbar. Which is presumably just what the council would have done.

Well we were all thinking it

For further reasons that are never adequately explained, the residents have to take on council jobs, such as cleaning public toilets. But again, these aren't on the street. The BBC set what are essentially Big Brother style tasks all the way through, in a futile attempt to make it less fucking boring. And in the same reality TV vein, they create human conflict through these tasks and through editing, because TV patronisingly thinks that we need this ridiculous narrative in everything we watch. At one point a woman says she needs money to replace the housing benefit that the council would normally provide, because independently she can't afford to pay for housing, due to having a low income and being a single parent. A cunt then says that he's also a single parent but he manages it just fine. Well done, you have more money than she does, presumably you earn more.

Anyway, I liked what this programme was trying to do. It's main message was that cuts to local councils are a bad thing, and I agree with that. At the start of the experiment a woman says she doesn't think the council's services are worth what she pays in council tax, but by the end she has changed her mind. So that was good. In fact, it's surprising quite how biased this programme was. No wonder some Tories spoke out against it. It was openly anti-cuts. It showed that tax is basically a good thing, and that the Big Society is a bad idea. If it wasn't for the fact that I approve of the message, I'd be annoyed by the lack of impartiality shown by the BBC. But I can't help feeling that by orchestrating these ridiculous situations, by organising fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour and dogshit, and by making it into a Big Brother style reality show, they pushed it so far that the message may have been undermined.

The cunt that cut everything

This blog is named after a song by The Stooges; I will leave you with Rage Against The Machine's brilliant cover version, enjoy!

Smoke And Mirrors

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and here are five more of them.

As you've probably worked out, I watch a lot of TV, and recently I've been watching a lot of dramas. And I've noticed an annoying amount of unnecessary shots of lead characters, particularly on BBC dramas. These shots are designed to externalise how the character is feeling, but the methods they use are lazy and overdone. I'll explain 5 examples of the kind of thing I mean...

Mirrors: Vampires hate them, directors love them. Need to show how a character is feeling without the dull process of writing a decent script? Simple, just film the character looking in a mirror! If they're happy, they can smile at a mirror. And if they're sad, they can frown at a mirror. And it's realistic, because people do look in mirrors! Plus it's like a visual metaphor, because the character is literally reflecting! Oh hang on, this isn't a GCSE English class, you're just a lazy, boring director.

I've spoken before about the BBC drama 'Dive', a story which will resonate with anyone who has had to juggle teenage pregnancy and olympic diving. It's like... it's like it's talking directly to me. *Sniff* Everything was wrong with Dive, including shots of people just looking in mirrors.

This went on for 12 seconds.

Photographs: Native Americans hate them, directors love them. How can we make it clear that this character's wife is dead, bearing in mind we've spilt coffee on the laptop so can't alter the script? Simple, just have him stare at a photo of her for ages, perhaps tearing up a little! The audience will love that. Providing they're all idiots.

That isn't what's going on in this picture, and I feel bad for using it because the BBC's 'Wallander' is excellent. But you get what I mean.

Cars: Princess Diana hates them, directors love them. Want to set a depressing tone in a modern drama? Simple, have your character drive around at night in the rain! Film through the windscreen, the street lights make a cool visual effect. Plus it's another visual metaphor for how the character is feeling, because they're all alone and aimless and dejected and the rain represents their tears and FUCK OFF.

Last week's 'Exile' on the BBC was one of the best thrillers I've ever seen, with John Simm, Jim Broadbent and Olivia Colman brilliantly bringing Paul Abbott's idea to life. However, the first five minutes consisted of exactly this.

Whisky: Whisky trees hate it, directors love it. This male character is upset and there are no mirrors in this room, what the fuck do we do?! Simple, show him sitting with his head in his hands, nursing a glass of whisky. Or brandy, it doesn't really matter. And I'm not talking about 'Mad Men', in which they're constantly drinking whisky. I just mean when a throwaway shot of a man with a drink is used to convey that he is depressed. This makes me so annoyed that I have to sit with a whisky, so that if anyone saw me they'd know I was upset.

I'm genuinely sorry to use 'Exile' as an example again because I'm making it seem really bad, but I have to stress that it was absolutely amazing. But...

Windows: Steve Jobs hates them, directors love them. Does your character need to show that they're being pensive? Have you already added the line 'I'm pretty pensive about this', only to have it removed by the script editor? Simple, get a shot of them gazing out of the window! It shows they're being thoughtful and detached, and it's another visual metaphor. Probably. And people are always staring out of windows aren't they? NO. People don't do that you fucking idiot.

'The Crimson Petal And The White' was recently on the BBC and it was another superb drama. I highly recommend it, the tone is just right and the cast is perfect, notably Chris O'Dowd from The IT Crowd. But stuff like this did tend to happen...

So please BBC, and TV dramas in general, give us a little more credit; we can pretty much tell how characters are feeling just by stuff that's happening to them. And if the script is good enough, we don't need these lazy, throwaway shots. As you can see from the picture at the top, 30 Rock understands. (As it does everything.) Why can't you? I will leave you with the song that this blog is named after, by the incredible Jamiroquai. Enjoy!

Question!

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and here are five of them.

I'm posing these all as questions, asking 'Why?' But they're rhetorical, so you don't get a say. Much like our democracy. Zing! Which brings me to...

5. Why did two-thirds of voters vote No to AV? I understand why you'd vote against AV if you're a Tory, but otherwise it just seems like a stupid thing to do. These people denied themselves greater representation, and denied everyone else greater representation in the process. So now, thanks to a Tory-led campaign of misinformation and fear-mongering and lies, we're stuck with a shit, unfair system for the rest of our lives. Because the overwhelming No vote won't be translated as a vote against Nick Clegg or a vote for a more proportional system, it will be translated as a vote for sticking with the status quo. And the only people who benefit are the Tories, with their elitist ideals overriding democracy. Well done, the public. I guess most of you were too busy creating inane fucking Facebook groups about Bin Laden to even bother to vote. And while we're on AV...

4. Why did the New Statesman website have a massive No To AV advert on its home page? The New Statesman openly endorsed the Yes vote. That seems like a ridiculous oversight.

3. Why is Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle on at such an annoying time? As Jack Seale tweeted, a REPEAT of Never Mind The Buzzcocks went out in the primetime 10 o'clock slot, but a BRAND NEW episode of Comedy Vehicle was hidden away at 11.20pm. But then as Andrew Collins said, its amazing that Stewart Lee is on TV at all, so we should probably just be grateful. And I am. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is exactly the kind of thing the BBC should be making. Comedy that's fresh and clever. Rather than churning out infinite repeats of lazy panel shows.

2. Why are so many people calling Bin Laden 'evil'? I thought we were beyond thinking in terms of Good vs. Evil. I thought we were pretty much agreed that morality is subjective. But I also thought people weren't so idiotic as to all reject AV, so maybe I should just dramatically lower my expectations of everyone. And talking of Bin Laden, why should we indulge this belief that his death is good because it brings people 'closure'? It's understandable that the families of his victims would be pleased, but its also misguided to think that his death somehow makes it better. And while we're still on Bin Laden...

1. Why does Bin Laden always get called 'Osama'? And the same goes for how Saddam Hussein was always referred to as Saddam. Those are their first names, aren't they? It's like calling the Prime Minister 'David.' You don't get headlines like, 'Vote 2011: David insists coalition can still work.' But you do get headlines like 'Osama's death: What next for al-Qaeda?' Since when have we been on first name terms with 'evil' men? Blair saying, 'the world is a better place with Saddam in prison' is like someone saying, 'the world is a better place with Tony in prison.' You just wouldn't say it. I mean, it would be true, but you wouldn't say 'Tony'. Ha! Eat your nuggets of hypocrisy with my peanutty satire sauce, New Labour.

Thanks for reading my angry blog. And remember how important it is to question everything. Apart from this blog. And you can answer any of those questions, this blog is a democracy. But I will always be in charge, so I guess its like democracy in Zimbabwe. I will leave you with the lovely song about death by System Of A Down, and its cool video, that this blog is named after. Enjoy!

Idiot Box

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is TV.

Obviously that's not strictly true, as you'll know if you've ever read this blog before; I love TV. Except I don't - what I love is TV shows. Lots of them. So when I'm at uni, where I don't have a TV, I always think I miss having a TV. That's until I turn one on. That's when I realise, straight away, that I really, really don't. And here's why. Here are 3 things I've seen on TV since I've been home that have made me realise just how lucky those poor Africans who have no TVs really are.

3. There's a show called Great British Hairdresser which seems to be a reality competition for hairdressers. I don't want to know why it exists, I just want to forget that it does.

2. I saw a TK Maxx advert. I know it's my own fault for watching commercial television but M*A*S*H was on Film4. In this advert, a woman says: 'The only thing better than a new pair of shoes...' at which point I was thinking, surely there's more than one thing better than a new pair of shoes? Then I realised that this was a woman, and women love shoes more than anything, except one other thing. How silly of me to forget such a well known fact about all women. So then I thought, what could this one thing that's better than a new pair of shoes be? World peace, presumably. Perhaps it's friendship. Maybe it's M*A*S*H. But no, 'the only thing better than a new pair of shoes is a new bag to match.' Of course it is. Again, I forgot this was a woman. To all women the two best things are shoes and bags. Why is it okay for adverts to be sexist? Look how Mad Men's Don Draper responded to news of this advert:

1. On the BBC news there was a whole report about Kate Middleton's dress. No, not the ITV news, the fucking BBC. And no, not in the daytime, the fucking 10 o'clock news. I know David Cameron wants to privatise public services but I didn't think he'd sell the BBC to Heat magazine.

So I'm happy to watch TV shows online or on DVD, thus avoiding things like TV news, adverts, and... TV. This blog is named after the Incubus song that I'll leave you with. Enjoy!