Brwm, brwm; beep, beep.

Communication is important.  Thought I’d start with a concise statement there so as not to be misconstrued.  Since communication is important it is equally important that the communication that you are undertaking is clear, or as clear as you can make it, so as not to be misconstrued.  Repetition can achieve this, although it can also make you look simple, and bore anyone reading, which is bad for communication.

Being misunderstood is one thing which frustrates me.  It frustrates me even more so if the person doing the misunderstanding is doing it wilfully.  There’s nothing which annoys me quite as much as someone trying to annoy me.  Which, in and of itself, is annoying.

Having been ‘the loud one’ for a portion of my life, I have been purposefully attempting to be softer and quieter when speaking, so as to salvage some dignity for myself, in the lieu of my childhood which I spent headbutting tables and dribbling water down myself for laughs (my own).  Rather than seeming dignified and considered, I come across as timid and people often can’t hear.  This is frustrating.

After spending time attempting to develop a more restrained and considered pattern of speaking and an, often needlessly, colourful way of writing, it is testing to be in a position where communication is in some way hampered.

Driving to work every day, there is an awkward junction which, since a new bypass was completed, has become a sticking point.  There are two sets of traffic lights side by side, one which directs traffic straight on and to the right, and another which directs traffic to the left.  I take the left, and often the left turn is green whilst the other is red, no problem.  However, the lights are situated on the crest of a hill, and so at the time of day I drive in, the sun is directly behind them, blinding sight and obscuring the colours from view.  Also, when the straight on light turns green, the light on the other set disappears completely.  These events mean that often someone stops at the lights when they should be driving on, causing a queue on a very steep hill, usually involving a bus, or a number of buses (the bus, of course, my nemesis).

I did this once, soon after the road had been completed, and when I stopped, uncertain as to whether or not I would be ploughed into should I drive on, a man I would describe as ‘very angry’ started beeping repeatedly and furiously at me, gurning like a beleaguered lobster, or a put-upon bichon frise.  I was quite stressed out by his aural attack, and decided that I wouldn’t subject someone to such a thing myself.

For three days in a row this week I have had to stop behind people who aren’t familiar with the quirks of the lights.  It is at that point that I realised fully just how limited the options available to car-based interaction are.  A beep of ‘hey, you can go’ is the exact same beep of ‘come on you tool, go!’  I feel bad after beeping, so I force myself to smile demurely afterwards, so at the very least any rear-view mirror interaction will dispel any suspicions of dickishness.

Recently, I had cause to remove some children from the premises where I work, and when challenged for a reason, I explained they were being punished for being “obnoxious”.  Now, with the information offered to me by 21^st Century super-magic ‘the internet’, I can offer that this word means ‘extremely unpleasant, very annoying or objectionable; offensive or odious’.  All that took was typing the word ‘obnoxious’ into a search bar embedded in an internet browser.  Children, however, are tediously devoid of resourcefulness when they decide to be.  They declared, as a group, that they didn’t understand the word ‘obnoxious’.  Given that I had invested quite a lot of my initial reasoning on the word ‘obnoxious’, I found their lack of vocabulambition, ironically, obnoxious.  Throwing them out for being ‘rude’ doesn’t have quite the same impact.  Makes me look like a screeching oldyn tymes Governess.  ‘Bad attitude’ makes them into Fonz-like dudes who are fighting the man.  My ad-libabilities are lacking still, I could only stretch to “whatever, just get out”.

Kids and cars.  Bastards.

Mousemats, Traffic and Politics

While in work today I noticed the shiny new mousemats that the centre have forked out for. Their shinyness is worth commenting upon, for they are noticably shiny. However, each individual computer in the cybercafe is attached to an LED mouse, so having a mousemat, especially one that is shiny and dimpled, makes using the computer harder. These are the petty niggles which rule my days.


I also discovered writ large upon the back of the mousemats that they are 'indestructible under normal use'. That is a quality I really look for in my mousemats. Indestructibility. This mousemat is surely the Superman of the mousemat race.


There is a stretch of road between my house and work, which is handy otherwise I would live in my workplace. HAHAHAHAHA.


There is a stretch of road between my house and work which is being given a new layer of cement or whatever it is the government have to feed the road to sate the fury of the road. It resents being driven on.


This re-tarmacking is a nuisance as it causes a huge traffic jam due to the inevitable bottle-necking. I appreciate that this is unavoidable and that the cement people (people who cement, not people made out of cement) are doing us proud and keeping us safe by spreading more molten rock on the road, but I was slightly put out by it so I feel I have the right to lash out mindlessly on the internet. And I do.


In the traffic jam I nobly allowed a gargantuan cement truck to merge from a junction and go in front of me in the queue which was snailing its way forward. This was fine, I didn't feel threatened or encroached upon by the colossal truck, the tailgate of which was, at some points, almost hovering over my head. This all changed, however, when an ambulance and a police car tried to force their way through the gridlocked throng.


Again, I appreciate that the amblumance people (purposeful mispelling) and the po-po were on their way to assist in an important matter, such as to apprehend a thief who had stolen a vulnerable person's heartbeat and to re-instate said heartbeat into the vulnerable person. I momentarily forgot what the other emergency service was. Fire engines.


So I was slightly intimidated and befuddled by being jammed behind a cement truck with an angry looking amblumance man glowering at me. I would like to say to that amblumance worker; "I am not Inspector Gadget. My car cannot perform physics-defying transformations. Suck it".


It is good to see that the country is still basically functioning even though all the leaders have taken time off to go and win a popularity contest.


I am particularly galled by the Conservative 'policy' which will run a project called 'School Stars' which is essentially X-Factor in schools. I would stick my neck out and say this is a bad idea. We already have X-Factor, it is called X-Factor and it is on the television and it is cackworthy shite. Surely running that sort of project can't be a political policy? That's not going to solve anything.


How do we solve the problems? GARY BARLOW WITH KIDS!! Excuse me? GARY BARLOW WITH TEH KIDDEZ!!


It's an odd one though, I don't oppose the putting of kids on stage in a competitive form. I have fond (if occasionally bitter) memories of the various Eisteddfodau that I partook of as a child. But I think the main difference between these and 'School Stars' (apart from the obvious cynical political manipulation that is inherent in it) is that the Eisteddfod's scope is huge, with events including oration, singing, musical recital, dancing, with the main focus being on writing. I think the focus on writing is an admirable thing, I feel that writing is implicitly more creative than singing. But I suppose I would say that, I love writing. In fact, I am writing right now. While I acknowledge that singing well is a talent and not an easy thing, I feel the individuality and creativity needed for things such as writing, composing etc makes efforts in those fields more valuable, and I feel it is something of a pity that singers can make a fortune simply rehashing other people's creations. MAKE SOMETHING NEW.


The consensus seems to be that Nick Clegg won the recent debate, which of course means that he did. I don't know who I'll vote for at this point as I haven't yet taken the time to research any party's manifesto, but I feel that if the Lib Dem's can build on this burst of popularity that would be a positive thing. From an incredibly selfish point of view I would welcome them coming to power if they stay true to their pledge of scrapping tuition fees. I think if that happened I'd go back to University. Which is reason for everyone to vote Lib Dem.


These are the policies they should be leading with! Nick Clegg says he'll put Gilder back in Uni!


I suppose what we'll find out in the next couple of weeks is whether voters would prefer to see kiddies played off against each other a la X-Factor, or if they'd rather see them in University.


I'd usually be pessimistic about it, but we must bear in mind that we did get Rage Against the Machine to number one.


As a short P.S. The sight of George Osborne still makes me retch. That is all.

Ambulation

More tales from the dashboard today. Once again, this comes from driving home from work.

It seems the most excitement, or at least out of the ordinary activity, in my day stems from unusual nighttime behaviour from the drivers of Wales.

There lies an 40 em pee aitch zone just out of the gates from whither I work, this is a different zone from the last entry, just so people don't think I am obsessed with zones where the speed limit is 40 miles an hour. This isn't the case. Anyone spreading such untruth about me is fabricating it and furthermore, is clearly a buffoon.

Temporary traffic lights had been set up in this zone, as They are tearing up one lane of the road for their nefarious ends, They know who They are. I'm talking to you, Local Council. I assume that's who is in charge of repairing the roads. I could be wildly naive in my understanding of road-repairing. In fact, I most certainly am wildly naive in my understanding of Government at every level. I watch The Thick of It for the dynamic camerawork.

Back to the traffic lights; temporary.

I drove towards them in my car, and they were on green, so I deduced, thanks to my knowledge and experience of UK driving rules, that it was okay for me go straight through. Moreover, it would not only be 'OK', but any other action apart from driving through would provoke aggravation from other road-users. I was most definitely in the right, is my point.

A rather sharp turn follows the traffic lights; temporary, and I crested the corner gracefully, with a steady hand, and true steering. Imagine the vibrant disquiet that took hold of me as my eyes were filled with a vision of a wayward ambulance, converging upon my bonnet like a meteor towards a Victorian gentlewoman. So reckless was the decision of the ambulanceteers to plough down a one lane road against a red light, I would describe their motion with the verb; 'to careen'. Ambulances shouldn't careen. If they were, they would be called Careenbulances. You're right, they wouldn't. Careenmobile?

So how did I avert catastrophe and make base safely enough in condition to write this missive to the world.

Well, some would say that I was driving sensibly enough that I was able to reverse at a brisk yet safe and steady pace and avoid the mass of the rampaging ambulance. Rampagebulance.

However, here is the truth of the matter.

I reacted instantly to the dreadful vision, activating the Incorporeal Mode on my Boeing SevenFordFiesta, rendering my vehicle, and myself, ethereal, passing through the charging health-unit without suffering any physical contact. As the cockpits of our two vehicles came level, I dislodged myself from the intangibility process, and once again became Incarnate. I used the momentum I had built up, and sailed just over the driver's head, performing a nimble and concise flip as I did so, allowing me to grab hold of the driver's ears and send him in a gargantuan piledriver down the length of the ambulance.

The driver landed sickeningly in a heap at the far end of the vehicle, limbs splintering out from her torso like a deformed pine cone.

Ironically she had landed on one of the medical pallets set up in the back, although the irony was lost on all as the now-driverless ambulance sped over the lip of a sheer drop, sending the helpless crew into a fatal nosedive.

I once again became impalpable, rising gently through the roof and hovering calmly in the still evening air, high above the vehicular pogrom below, which was quickly setting the surrounding greenery into a vivid blazing torment.

Women drivers, eh?

Routines Don't Have to Be Routine

Since getting into a regular routine myself, I have begun to notice that other people go about their business with quite strict routines also. This is never more evident than on my leaving my place of work, where my routine of: iPod, engine, leave, is always followed by being stuck at the very first traffic lights. It is during this wait, where I am stuck cursing the colourful trinity, that I begin to wonder whether the black lady will be waiting by the side of the bus-stop. After driving the same route home every day, I have begun to notice landmarks, and I didn’t consciously notice the black lady until one day she was not there. I panicked.

I began to wonder who had removed the black lady from her side-of-the-bus-stop vigil, this slouchy dignitary who stands on no plinth. Then I realised that she is an actual person and not just a marker to let me know how far along my route I am, which led me to question my mental process. Instead of going on much of a journey of self-analysis, I decided to compose a song I now sing whenever there is a significant lack of black lady by the bus stop. It goes: “O-o-o-h black lady by the bus stop / where are you today? / Have they taken you away?” but then I am past the bus stop and I lose interest.

If you are wondering, when she is there as usual, I do not have a song to greet her, that would be weird. Instead I just shuffle past nervously, bowing my head, which is a difficult and dangerous thing to do in a car.

Here is another thing I observed whilst driving home. It was already dark by this time, and I was just nearing my old University, when I noticed too men standing awkwardly close to each other and jittering around aggressively. I realised that one of the men had his arms around the other, and looked to be shaking him quite violently. The man who was being held by the other was seemingly of Asian descent, it is impossible to be more specific from the brief glance I had from my side window as my pimped-out Aston Martin ZX Spectrum whooshed past sexily doing one like off Tokyo drift. The reality of the situation then sunk in as I came level to them. What I had originally believed to be a highly localised example of a racial riot was actually one guy helping his friend stay upright as he struggled to 1) stand up and 2) not fall into the road, as he tried to rollerblade. I was momentarily heartened by this, thinking that this is surely the world that Martin John Lennon King had surely dreamt about and/or been able to imagine. Turns out it is easy if we try. I soon got over this rather quickly though, as I decided to be indignant that people were attempting to learn to rollerblade in the dark on the edge of a main road. Bloody immigrants, coming over here, rollerblading on our pavements, right next to a busy road! Direct them to a skate park, that’s what I say.

The new routine I am cultivating involves a midday viewing of the channel NHK World. NHK is a Japanese television channel, where NHK World broadcasts in English and has shows about various aspects of Japanese culture. My sister and I began watching the channel in the summer, when we were much enamoured of the show Nihongo Quick Lesson, an endearingly cheesy show teaching basic Japanese phrases. We decided to put this show on series link using our futuristic Sky Plus technology, but then decided against this as it inundated our planner with infinite repeats since the show is played so many times a day. I randomly went back to the channel a few weeks ago, as there was nothing of any merit on any other channel, so I thought I’d give it another opportunity. And NHK World delivered, though it may not be for the reasons they would have wanted. The channel is run on the same sort of format as community radio, where the news comes in every hour, although on NHK World it lasts for an entire half hour, as though it doesn’t have enough shows to fill anywhere near enough time. And it doesn’t, which is half the reason it is utterly magnificent, where shows that under-run mean that a few minutes have to be filled with footage of squirrels with a lovely piano composition over the top, and also that shows that don’t have enough material have to seek things that have nothing to do with the title of the segment. For example, a show entitled Chinese Noodle Odyssey, which is something I would consider going on, begins by telling you about noodles in China (tick), but then discusses bean paste pancakes (at least it’s still food), then going off completely and showing some traditional Chinese shadow puppets. There was also a wonderful scene where the host ate some Chinese flat bread and basically said “Eugh, that’s gross!” which is the sort of honesty that is utterly missing from Western food programs.

By far the best part of NHK World is the weather, where a woman who, when standing in profile, has the shape of the letter S talks through some weather that you ignore, and then for 5 minutes the screen is full of a list of 5 international locations with their temperature and weather, with calming nothing synth whispering over the top of it. I have decided that this is the most tasteful 5 minutes of footage that will ever be broadcast in any given hour. Anyone who doesn’t want to know the temperature of Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur in the same segment, simply doesn’t deserve a television. It feels like what I imagine television would have been like in the oldie olden days, before everything had to be loud, short and viciously screamed out of the screen into your tearful soul. It is television that can be as comfortable as radio, where even the strange mix of stilted Japanese-English and the nose-wrinkling cheese of American-English accents and dialects can meld together and be enjoyable. One segment had a Japanese-speaking Italian musical-director travelling around introducing ancient Japanese scroll-art. What beautiful individual decided that was a segment that needed to be made? Whoever they are, I love them.

So, about the footage of the squirrels. There was one squirrel which stood still and looked as though it had a marvellous punk Mohican running the length of its body, leading me to exclaim that the Japanese were bound to imagine Pokemon if there are creatures like that inhabiting their forests. The squirrel then moved and it was merely a trick made by holding its tail to its back, which disappointed me deeply but perhaps gives an insight into the creation process of some pokemon. I would like to think that someone who was tricked into believing that a squirrel could have a Mohican would then decide to fill the gap with animation once it turns out to be untrue.

In animal news that is closer to home, I think I witnessed the puppy discovering rain this afternoon. We are attempting to get him to realise that the correct location for bowel evacuation is out the back (of the house and also of his body), and it began to rain when he was out there. The sight of a small dog attacking the sky and almost doing a back-flip will certainly be my favourite image of the day.

But only because there is no such thing as a Mohiquirrel.

P.S. I just helped extricate a bottle of Ribena from a glitchy vending machine for a small child, this is not in my job description and makes me a hero.

What am I Driving At?

I am spending a lot of time driving at the moment; driving to work, driving to the radio and driving a golf ball straight onto the green. Hilarious joke I think you will agree. Incidentally, I have absolutely no interest in golf.

I amuse myself with a friend on the trips to and from the radio, and with podcasts on the way to work, but I find myself bored on the way home. “Well Gilder, simply put another podcast on your iPod!” I hear you bellow. I would, of course, do this if it did not mean I would likely be out of new podcasts by midweek. So instead I make time for a little bit of silence, for thinking about silly ideas and for hate.

One of the ideas I enjoyed toying with was of mounting a wide-angle lens camera (either still or video) onto the bumper of the car that could record the journey, where the happenings around the car can be kept seen in a far more expansive scope than can be seen from behind the windscreen. My reasons for wanting to do this are far from artistic, having their roots in petty pedantry and the constant quest for what is correct. Like a scientist, except interested exclusively with the occasions where I feel I have been wronged, or individuals have acted in a particularly foolish way.

I have chronicled before my experiences with Captain Poon and his hilarious rugby jersey, but road-based idiocy isn’t usually as amusing. I am repeatedly exasperated by jaywalkers who insist on timing their reckless road-crossing to ensure they pass as close as is humanly possible to the back of my car without actually having their foot chewed up by my tyre. In this bracket also reside the people who feel it is necessary to stand on the absolute edge of the pavement as a zebra crossing, as though they have so little time to spare that they are willing to risk having their wrists broken by a passing wing-mirror.

Of course it isn’t just pedestrians that annoy me, it seems as though this week the road-faring characters have been well and truly out in style and no mistake sonny Jim! People are bombing into/out of junctions, failing to indicate at roundabouts and, my very favouritest thing of all, manically swinging an all-in-one-go U-turn in the middle of the road. I’m half expecting to see a Dukes of Hazzard style jump interrupt my commute, sending a car barrel-rolling over my bonnet, playing out the horn-blast just as the windscreens come parallel and a toothless, silver-haired geezer flashes me a thumbs up and a cheeky grin. Before landing the vehicle on its roof where it bursts into flame, the trickle of fire slowly winding itself to the petrol tank as the driver struggles furiously to escape from the seatbelt that is holding him upside down in what has become a motorized oven, and before he has time to utter an antiquated expletive the flame reaches the petrol tank sending the car into a molten inferno which I see slowly shrinking in my rear-view mirror and scream to myself “That’ll serve you, you COCK~!”

As I’m sure you will have gathered by now, I have borne witness to some damn stupid feats of driving. I attempt to only get angry in retrospect, as I feel exploding behind the wheel is likely to cause a troublesome occasion. What I certainly never do is stare directly into the rear-view mirror of the car in front, gesticulating wildly and screaming muffled obscenities. The reason behind this is that, should something go awry on the road, what I want is for everything to be in order again as fast as is humanly possible, and I don’t feel that antagonising the driver in front will achieve this aim. I have to turn right on a four-way intersection in order to make my way into work every day. The traffic is passing both ways parallel to each other, and so it is only possible for me to turn right once the traffic passing in the opposite direction has cleared, but the vast quantity of furious tools that don’t understand why I don’t simply drive headlong into oncoming traffic so as to be less of a bother to them is truly astounding. I am 100% sure, however, they are incredibly busy and on their way to do something of incredible value. Such as taking their seatbelt off and driving as fast as possible into a wall.

So I have become worried about some of the things I write here, and how they would be taken in a new context, such as if I was involved in a road accident. What impact would this blog have? It is mostly intended to be frivolous, and even this somewhat more exasperated piece is really meant to be amusing, though I’m not really certain I am achieving that at this point. This query originally occurred to me as I was driving through a 40 zone that is a notoriously dangerous strip where several people have been run over and killed. This time of year it is dark by the time I pass through this stretch on the way home, so I always pay particular attention going through there, though having never seen people walking, the main impetus for vigilance is idiotic over-takers. There is a gag about over-takers soon seeing undertakers there, but I’ll be huffed if I am going to wrestle that one out properly now.

On the side of this particular bit of road, there is a wooden fence lining the road, and standing flush to the fence are steel girders. In order to explain the slightness of gap between the fence and the girders I would say that if you tried really hard, you could fit a single emaciated idiot in there, multiple if they stood side by side. So there were between 3 and 5 emaciated idiots jammed betwixt fence and girder, and I worried as I went past that they would slide something under the car, such as a rock, a Police-style stinger strip or the sliding trapper from Ghostbusters. Thankfully they did no such thing, but I was left wondering what sort of trouble I would get into if one of them foolishly darted out into the road and I ran him/her over, whether it wouldn’t be seen as accidental because I’d written a flippant blog about running someone over. Similarly should any sort of RTA occur to me, would this blog be dug out as some sort of character evidence, even if it is 2030 and I am in my forties and I look back on the person who I was when I wrote this blog and think I/he am/is an idiot? Would I be condemned because of my feeble attempts at comedy?

I later realised it definitely wouldn’t. After all, we will all have hovercars by 2030 and so there are no tyres there for people to get chewed up by. Although they might get mutated by the radioactive waves upon which my Ford Glider zips over their heads. Although hopefully I will, by then, be the President of a huge global umbrella company named Gilder Inc. and so I will be able to manufacture my own hovercars and so I could be driving the Gilder Glider. Or I could be a super-villain and be called the Giddler.

I have to drive into Cardiff tomorrow; I am going to the Chapter Arts Centre in order to attend a comedy open spot. It will be my first time in an actual comedy bill, as all my other live forays have been in competitions or fully open mic nights, so it will be interesting to see whether my stuff is able to stand alongside the material of professional comedians in any way, or whether I truly am a self-impressed pretender. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle, but true populist drama needs the extremes, so for the sake of goading a reaction out of readers I am either a genius or utterly shit.

I am not looking forward to driving in, as I have never driven directly there before, having been a passenger and led astray by the sat-nav last time, and then trekking quite a way to reach the actual building. Hopefully it will all go well, and I will be spared death, both in reality and in metaphority.

I think when somebody dies they go to a wonderous place, and that place is called Metaphority.

That is quite enough rubbish for one day, have a nice *insert appropriate time of day here*.

I Hate Hiatus

I have been shanghaied into a routine that sees me outside and active, which means that my agreed upon schedule for blogging has been vaporised. Any move away from the plan in terms of writing, in my case, means nothing gets done. Hence I am late in breaking out a September blog.

I have decided to stop criticising the top ten every Sunday, as this allows me to not listen to music I know I won’t enjoy. There is also enough bile on the internet without me needlessly, and feebly, adding to it for no reason. Should an appropriately evil song appear, I will mercilessly spear it.

My unplanned hiatus from blogging occurred because I have been busy starting a new job. Despite having been offered the job in the spring, administrative bumph has ensured that it is only now I can begin, to be fair I am just glad to be starting. Most everyone there seems glad to have my post filled, as various people had to multitask and take on the responsibilities of my job on top of their own. I am glad to be of use, and needless to say, but I will regardless: the money is also welcome.

My role is, largely, to make sure children playing on computers behave themselves. For the most part this is an easy enough task, though I was forced to be stern/firm with a group of potential miscreants who were attempting to act out a moribund “Outside, then” scenario, with another young sir who clearly wasn’t interested. Children should just grow up.

It is odd how little changes from generation to generation, the same kids wanting to fight, the same other kids getting dragged into it. Cyclical, repetitive and pointless, though sometimes amusing. However, I mostly find the behaviour of the children distracting and abrasive. I’m sure you are thinking that it was necessary to apply a significant amount of tongue-biting in the interview for this job, there wasn't I promise, I’m not actually as distant and disjointed as this blog perhaps suggests.

What is particularly weird about this job is that I get to see the sort of activities the computer-friendly youth of today partake in. The biggest surprise for me whilst observing was that very little has changed since I was their age (roughly 10 years ago). The appearance of YouTube is the only huge change, allowing cackling kiddos to huddle together suspiciously to electronically watch people falling over ad infinitum. Aside from that, it is flash and browser-based games that still rule the internet-use sweepstakes when it comes to children. The only major changes in those fields are graphics and connection speed.

Direction-button games involving BMX tricks and just rag-dolling a hapless, faceless blob around the screen abound, as well as an extremely basic and ugly first person shooter involving what looks like Lego men that have been pimped with steroids and a neon trim. Amazingly, though, Runescape is still being played. It has undergone huge graphical changes since I used to play it, but it is very much the same grind-happy rubbish MMORPG. I am mostly annoyed that most of the kids have characters of a higher level than any of mine ever achieved, though that only proves they are dorks. Take that lame-Os! Shaaaa~

Since I now have to travel to daily, I am driving again. I am very glad to be back behind the wheel of a car, I feel like Hercules at the end of Hercules (the Disney one, yeah) where he has got his immortality and power all back up on it. Podcasts are best enjoyed behind the wheel of a car leisurely doing 30, with the easy banter summoning Jon Richardson into the passenger seat, and Tim Key and Fordey in the back. This doesn’t mean that I am not paying attention to the road though, so calm down, anyway you are not my mother, unless of course you are.

I have a meeting for a community radio station tomorrow, as do you Dafydd, which I am looking forward to as I am itching to receive training and get some radio done. It’s an early one though, which will make the driving experience unpredictable, I am a much bigger fan of late night driving, when the roads are empty and dark. Tranquillity is hard to achieve when other human beings are out and about. Similarly, my job would be so much easier were there less humans to bother about. Human beings are so inconsiderate.

I have been broadening my musical horizons this weekend, with a foray into jazz (Duke Ellington) and ambient indie (The Mercury Program) resulting in enjoyment. I have also taken a stroll down movie soundtrack avenue, listening to the works of Ryuichi Sakamoto and also of Joe Hisaishi. Hisaishi’s live orchestra concert showcasing his Ghibli tracks is breathtaking, I’ll probably be partaking of more orchestral scores in the near future. The Cribs new album is out, I believe as of today, and I have been enjoying that, though their track referencing ‘Hari Kari’ annoys me, partly because I’m not sure the mistake is purposeful (it should be hara-kiri). The opening track ‘We Were Aborted’ is a particular personal highlight.

I will bring this entry to an abrupt end, as I must away to enjoy Andrew Collins and Robin Ince on the iPlayer, eat and following these two activities I will bathe and read more of ‘Kafka by the Shore’. I can only undertake activities in twos. Whilst writing this I have been listening to the music described above. Who says its only women that can multitask? Eh? Whoever they are, find them and tell them to stop lazily conforming to stereotypical trains of thought.

The Problem's Chronic

Yesterday, I completed my trophy collection on Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars. This is the best game I have played this year, and here is for why.

Despite its convoluted name, the game has a simple premise: Let’s play football with cars. This is ‘football’ in the British sense, and ‘cars’ in a very loose sense. In fact, the game goes to great length to define what it means by ‘cars’ in its title, which I need not repeat, as it is written in the opening line (and I call it Football Cars anyway). The initial attraction of this game to me was threefold: 1) it was PS3 exclusive, thus stroking my personal preference elitism, 2) it was download-only, which is THE FUTURE, and 3) it was £8, which is incredibly cheap considering even second-hand games will likely set you back anywhere upwards of £20, and new titles will hit the market for £50 and stay there indefinitely, even though they are stool.

What I usually look for in a game is story, a genuinely good narrative can, for me, excuse many graphical, technical or gameplay blunders. It is therefore unusual that Football Cars has come to rank amongst my favourite games, as it is utterly devoid of plot, there is no story here, or no pretention of one. That is the beauty of it; it is a ‘game’ in the truest sense. It is a standalone competition, a pitting of one players ability against another.

It is strange that a game where you play as a car is easily the most fluid football game I have ever played. Even the most recent Pro Evolution or Fifa titles feel like turgid clunky dross in comparison to a game in which you control, not a human being, but a lump of metal with wheels on. The reason behind this is the physics engine, and the limited, but sufficient, controls that you have. The problem of the ‘actual’ football games is that there are too many ‘moves’ you can do, and yet none of them are actually integrated into the flow of the game, feeling disconnected from everything. Often in those games, two players could clearly run full into one another and not actually meet. This is where Football Cars shines.

Despite being a ‘football’ game, Football Cars plays like a sandbox, where you are given abilities, but you are free to combine them as you choose (or are able to). The controls of the game are fairly basic; accelerate, reverse, handbrake, jump, boost. The art is in the combination, and mastering these combinations, which begin at the mundane, and are at best a joy to behold. Boosting out of a reversed handbrake turn and positioning yourself directly in line with the ball is one of the most empowering feats in modern gaming, able to endow the player with an incomparable sense of flair and cool-dudery.

The game certainly subscribes to the ‘easy to pick up, difficult to master’ school of thought, and when played for a concerted length of time, will unfold and change your perception of how the game is played. This is especially true if you play online, where any number of players will be more than happy to blow your silly little internet gaming mind. Often the ball will ricochet ponderously high into the air, leaving you stranded below, attempting to gauge when and where it will drop either by tracking its shadow or aiming your camera wildly at the sky. At least, that was the way that I used to deal with those situations. Nothing could prepare me for the first time I witnessed a player who, instead of waiting for the ball to drop, sped from the other side of the pitch, double jumped, and then used his boost to propel himself through the air at the airborne ball, and then flip, propelling the ball downwards into the floor-level goal. It isn’t often that a game can open up a whole new dimension of play using controls you have had at your fingertips all along.

In terms of the physics, they work in much the same way as they do in reality, in a very basic ‘what goes up must come down’ sense. This simplicity works in its favour. The main problem of the Pro Evolutions and Fifas is that they are not honest enough replications of reality. The way the players and the ball react is not an true recreation of how it feels to play football. The sense of uncertainty and creativity is stripped out of those titles, where the possibility of slicing or a ball bouncing unexpectedly off a post is absent, replaced by stiff pre-programmed sequences. Weirdly, Football Cars does contain these elements, and when you see a shot just miss the target, you know it is because of your mis-controlling of the car, a combination of angle and speed, whether you jumped too soon, or boosted too much. In other titles, this complicated issue is boiled down to whether you held down O button for slightly too long and your bar filled up too much and/or the game doesn’t feel like letting you score this time, sorry.

I appreciate that incorporating all the nuances of actual football into a game would be impossibly difficult, which is why the minimalistic representation found in Football Cars is so much more effective. The subtlety of ruling whether a tackle was a foul or not is completely hoisted out of the window, because you are a car. A ‘battle car’ at that. At times, the chaotic rough-necking in Football Cars can be frustrating, where you can be sent hurtling all over the screen for an entire minute from opponents single-mindedly crashing into you, but even this is subject to tactics, where smashing into or destroying an opponent is all well and good, but it can leave you stranded on the wrong end of the pitch with no boost, which is a very good way to lose.

Basically, this entry could be titled ‘A Love Letter to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars’, and I have composed it due to the resurgence of my activity with the game. I was enticed back to its shiny metallic dimension due to a, free, update which brought two new levels into the mix, an old school galleon and a ‘European’ style stadium (with PROPER goals). I then played online for long enough that I stopped losing 10-0 to the obscenely proficient online players, and eventually started winning consistently. This led to me unlocking the vast majority of trophies for the game, trophies being PS3’s lacklustre, though commendable, attempt to ape the 360’s achievement system. Upon checking the parameters of the trophies, the only one I didn’t have was the one that needed me to have completed every ‘Challenge’ with a 5-star rating.

‘Challenge’ sections are the bits I usually despise in games, because, usually, I lack proficiency in a number of the gaming fields, and so having a section where you are forced to play the game in a certain way and then have that style scrutinised is hugely unpleasant. Are you listening Soul Calibur? However, I was determined. And I also had a lot of time on my hands. Which I clearly still do, as now I am blog-wanking about it.

It is strange how the ‘Practise makes perfect’ cliché is so often touted, and yet so rarely put into practice. It is true. Having toiled away on certain challenges which originally seemed impossible and which I eventually mastered, I was filled with a sense of tangible achievement, which is unusual anywhere outside of school-systems. When was the last time you were congratulated for actually having achieved something? The only congratulations the average human receives is for having lived to see another year. Happy Birthday indeed. Here is where I attempt to make a heavy-handed justification for having sunk so many hours into clocking this game.

I’m sure there are a very many people who will feel that having ‘completed’ a video game is hardly an achievement at all, in completing a game, I’ve not really produced or achieved anything of value (although I hear if you fully complete Oblivion you get the cure to cancer and AIDS after the credits). Coming from a social perspective where the highest aim is to give and add to the community around you, my small achievement of having stamped my authority over a fairly niche download-only PS3 exclusive video game basically about playing football with cars, is of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. But what of this grand scheme? Pish to the scheme say I! The use of the term ‘scheme’ suggests that there is some path laid out in front of us, or that there is an ultimate, and understood, goal that we as a species are aiming for, which I, personally, object to. My achievement of being proficient at a video game may not be of practical use, such as someone else’s achievement of being proficient at fixing pipes or healing the sick. Neither is it, however, detrimental, as of someone else’s achievement of being proficient at spouting bigotry, inciting hatred or fucking up the economy (check your watch, its ham-handed satire o’clock). Furthermore, if a global controversy were unearthed and the only way to resolve it was to employ a South-Walean gamer to control a video game car via a controller then I know where you’d come knocking, yes indeed.

Essentially, my point is this. My little nothing of an achievement brought pleasure to me, and I don’t really expect it to impress or mean anything to anyone else. It doesn’t have to, my enjoying it is enough. Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars is a brilliant game, it is simple, fun and addictive, plus it is possible to listen to podcasts or the iPlayer while you play it, therefore spending your time doubly wisely.

If anyone reading this is thinking that I have wasted my time becoming Esteemed Welsh Grand Master of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and then further wasted my time by writing what is undoubtedly an over-long blog entry, essentially parading around with my metaphorical pants down and with a metaphorical erection singing “Look at me, I am good at a game”, then ponder this Mr or Mrs Wisdom-of-an-Owl: who is the bigger waster of time? Eh? Eh? Me, for having played the game, enjoyed it, gotten up to date on podcasts, kept up with my blog entries (a goal I set myself because I am so in charge of my own destiny thanks), or alternatively; you, for having read this all the way through.

It is clearly you, unless you are Barack Obama and/or Stewart Lee, which you clearly aren’t. Now go turn off the microwave before your spaghetti melts.

*Blog trivia: The title of this entry is a lyric from the Bad Religion song 'Supersonic'. Also, it is apt.