I am Gok Wan. I will make you feel good. I am the moral crusader for all fat, ugly, disabled, dreary looking slags in the UK.

I will blast away your frumpiness, make you pretend that you don’t mind the way you look naked, and parade you in front of a crowd of people as they humour you, and the way you look because it all looks like it’s so, so brilliant, and it’s a moral victory against the beauty trade.

If only you knew. If only you poor fools knew. Once your dowdy ass leaves my show, my sexy show with all of it’s camp pomposity. the second you walk off camera, the feelings of inadequacy begin to creep back. Do you know why that is? I do!

It’s because you are inadequate! You’re a fugly council estate fish wife, and so are the women watching my show. You fell into my trap, and now I’m laughing all the way to the bank! Tee hee hee!

There’s  a reason why beautiful people are used in the media. It’s because they’re beautiful, you idiot. Not a single person in this country wants to look at you in your pants on the cover of a magazine. It would make them physically sick. They would have to hire extra staff in newsagents just to mop up the pools of vomit accumulating in the magazine section.

I can’t believe I’m getting away with it. I’m actually providing nothing more than hours of me making fun of stupid women, and you’re lapping it up like some kind of idiotic cat. My only obstacle now is Jenny Frost. Once people realise that’ Snog, Marry Avoid’ is the only genuine show making ugly and/or misguided shits look half decent, I’ll be out of a job.

(This post was not written by Gok Wan)

for some strange reason i took the rather silly aesthetic decision to disregard standard writing practice, by eschewing the use of capital letters at the beginning of sentences. i personally feel that in doing so it makes blocks of text look neater, and modern. especially when combined with sans serif fonts. but it also makes it bloody difficult to read the text because the only indication of where a sentence ends is a tiny punctuation mark called a full stop. which looks remarkably similar to a comma once you’re in mid flow, and sometimes it’s even easily missed.

this also brings up tough decisions like a previous post where i talk about ‘wags’. it was difficult to decided whether to use ‘wag’ or ‘WAG’. without bothering to look at the post i cannot remember which i used. but in a block of text with no other capital letters it looked wrong either way.

So, depending on how I feel, I might go back to writing like a normal person in the future. or i might not.

so fuck you.

something that seems to be lacking in the vast majority of games is some kind of pay off. whilst i enjoyed playing mass effect 2, in fact i’d say it’s one of the better games i’ve played in the last few years, what struck me was how lackluster the ending was. it was basically the same as the rest of the game with a little more jeopardy. which makes you wonder if games should have a proper ending like a book or a film might. after all, the main point of games is the gameplay, and having fun, and not always about story.

i suspect that completing a game of pong with a cutscene of you defeating the bad guy and getting the girl would seem trite. but now that we have games with complex, proper stories, you would expect their endings to be just as good as a book or a film might be. but quite often they aren’t. how often have you completed a game, and felt disappointed that there was no real payoff for all your hard work, and time?

not all games are really designed with a narrative in mind, they are simply a set of predetermined set pieces and token plot points, hashed together with a vague hackneyed story about terrorists. (modern warfare 2, for example), and maybe that’s OK, if the gameplay is worth it. but you may still feel cheated, especially if the ending is simply an nod towards a sequel. i’m looking at you rainbow six vegas. and when your sequel did come out, it was dreadful.

one thing that has thankfully become a bit more common these days is unlocking nice token gifts, either as you comlete, or reach certain points in the game. probably my favourite implementation of this was was wipeout pure on the psp. not a remarkable game, but put the wipeout series in a good place. but there’s no ending, you could have just kept racing indefinitely. but it gave you a reason to at least get gold medals on each of the career races. whenever you earned a gold medal it unlocked a piece of concept art. and wipeout’s concept art is generally pretty gorgeous.

the two uncharted games too unlocked concept art, and making of videos. the first one did this right, unlocking these things when you reached certain parts in the game. the sequel, whilst the inclusion of concept art, making of videos etc. was still nice, rather than unlocking them, you ‘paid’ for them using credits you earned doing certain things in game. which felt less like you were being rewarded, but rather having them dangled in your face until you could afford them (not that this was difficult, but it’s the principle), and not knowing whether purchasing these would then make it more difficult to afford other, what turned out to be typically pointless, in-game items.

so if you’re making a game. no matter how shit it may be, at least reward those willing to sit through it all with something gratifying. if someone sat through a game, chances are they enjoyed it to some extent. and if you enjoy something, being able to see how it all came about is gratifying enough for lack of anything else.

the phenomenon of the ‘wag’ is quite possibly the most loathsome thing i have ever come across. basically on par with the holocaust. for anyone who doesn’t know, a wag is a woman who is a wife or girlfriend of a footballer.  these women are precisely the kind of women who grow up wanting to marry a footballer, because they are hateful money grabbing harridans, and footballers bring in vast sums of money.

note that i didn’t say that they earn said money, because someone who runs around in a field on some days kicking a ball, with the odd casual rape from time to time, has not earned that money.

what’s astonishing is the amount of press wags get. even the term ‘wag’ gets my hackles up. just the mention of it makes me feel ill. it conjures up images of fake tanned idiot women with hair extensions, pouting, and buying all kinds of expensive shit for the sake of it. but these women lead sad existences according to radio 4. so why is this? could it possibly be that once they’ve achieved their goals they realise what worthless shits they are? Or more likely, they’ll just never be happy with having everything they could possibly want, for the sake of having the occasional bit of inevitable domestic abuse.

they are the antithesis of what a woman should aspire to be. i don’t want to suggest what anyone should be like. but anyone who isn’t a complete fuck up can see that wags, and their habs (husbands and boyfriends, which i will talk about another day) are the lowest of the low. absolute worthless prigs.

poooooooo.

my apologies for the following post which goes into detail about things i must be vague about.

i work for a company that makes products. the vast majority of which are aimed at a professional market. but one thing we produce is very affordable, yet has professional features. this means that this particular product is aimed squarely at the consumer market, and as such is bought by any number of people who don’t know how to use it.

i know full well that this is the case, i work in technical support and each day answer a swathe of emails and phone calls about it. but today, i happened to search for this product on youtube, and it struck me just how desirable it is to a lot of people. i test these things every day with gay abandon, it’s the most mundane thing to me. we make far more exciting things.

but watching two american kids sat on their living room carpet, savouring every minute as they unbox one of these things is astonishing. they go in depth into the blurb on the packaging, and the manual and the cables and what it does. it takes me roughly 5 seconds to unbox one, and have it on the test bench for testing. and i’ve thrown so many of these things in the bin.

i can understand why you might want to watch an unboxing video for the latest and greatest in technology before it’s released, but something that’s been around for a while, and is quite niche is hardly worth posting to youtube. the tutorials teaching others how to use it on the other hand, they just make my job easier.

have you seen the new gilette fusion advert? if you have, you will be aware that it’s shit. it combines two seriously manly things.

1) shaving,

and

2) mechanics

it’s a sub sixth-form piece of barely-thought-out media studies coursework with a big budget. it’s similarly humourless and ill conceived as any number of the man is an idiot and the woman is the brilliant genius type adverts. only presumably the advertisers haven’t come up with any other way to pander to the male market without coming back to manly things.

and what could be more manly than shaving? and as we all know, mechanics are all manly men. manly, manly men who talk about manly, manly things and do manly, manly stuff. and aren’t the kind of guy you meet in the pub and who drone on endlessly about cars and try to justify beating their wives and why they hate homos and things. no.

so if you combine the two it can’t fail to attract the knuckle dragging, lunk headed, footy obsessed morons to buy what is effectively the worst razor conceived. five fucking blades guys! not only that, but get this, it vibrates!

interestingly neither of these things are even actually mentioned. no, it’s all about the strip on the razor that tells you when to buy more razors. presumably the main features of the product that make it different to others on the market, didn’t fit into the mechanic analogy. making the whole thing completely worthless.

are you stressed, feeling mithered or upset? if so, please read this relaxing tale, and imagine it all happening in your mind.

fields of green. mmmm.

you are in a field, the grass is luscious and long, and the smell of freshly baked bread is washing over you as you take in your surroundings. immediately in front of you is a grand forest of pine trees. the trees are majestic and tall. turning a little to your left are some rolling hills, which seem to go on for miles with no hint of civilisation anywhere. and to your right is the sea, gently lapping at a stretch of beautiful golden sand.

the beach. ahhhh.

you’re as light as a feather and you feel like you can go anywhere you want without even so much as a hint of effort. your feet lift off the ground and you head towards the beautiful beach. as you land carefully on your back, in the sand, a mojito appears in your hand for you to sip. the sea is a deep blue with multi-coloured fish, the sun is out, not a cloud in the sky. you’re going to get an excellent tan.

as you lie there, and the tide comes ever closer, you start to feel the waves gently caressing your genitals, and the short shorts you’re wearing are riding up even higher than usual. a man and a woman, a beautiful couple, come strolling along the beach hand in hand gazing into each other’s eyes. they are both more beautiful than you, and anyone you’ve ever known. as they pass you they give you a funny look, as if you’d murdered their childen. they walk away in disgust.

pine forest. ooooh.

you tire of the sea, and decide to head for the forest. you gently float between the branches of the tall trees as the soft green pine needles brush against your skin. you rise up above the canopy and see that the forest stretches way into the horizon. in the distance you can see a plume of smoke. you float on over to the smoke to investigate.

in a clearing in the forest someone has made you a camp fire, and set up a big hammock. as the sun goes down and it gets darker, you sit at the glowing orange and red fire, which fills the clearing with dancing colour. as you place your hand on the  ground beside you, you find there’s something just under the scrub. it’s a copy of razzle, from 1992. you retire to the hammock with your new find. mid-session you are disturbed again by the beautiful couple, their disgusted gaze sends you flying out of the forest.

rolling hills

a new day is dawning and you find yourself in the hills, as they roll endlessly into the distance. you stand atop the tallest hill you can find, feeling the warm wind flowing around your thighs, drying out your now sodden, filthy shorts. you can see children playing on the next hill. you approach them and join in their fun. soon enough you all get tired and lie down on the hill.

besides you is a dead horse.

its face and belly are partially decomposed. it says ‘i don’t think you should have done that’, and notions toward the children as they lie there motionless. but they’re just sleeping. ‘they are just sleeping aren’t they? oh god! what have i done?’ you say, as you notice the beautiful couple again, running towards you with a hoard of angry looking police behind them.

ikea, a subject of many a lazy comedian’s act, and the subject of today’s lazy post. my trip to ikea today actually wasn’t that horrible despite having to drive to WARRINGTON in the FOG, and them not having EITHER of the THINGS i had WANTED. no, it was alright, and at least i came away having eaten some ikea meatballs and ikea cola.

whenever i visit ikea with other people, the act of making the tour round the showroom floor is awful. other people want to stop every few feet to gawp at yet more terrible furniture, and imagine what it might be like if they could fit another piece of dull furniture in their home. not that everything in ikea is horrible, but i can’t help think that things would be better if there was anywhere else to buy cheap furniture.

the experience of having to spend so much time with someone fawning over every single bloody item, and myself being totally disinterested, except for that one thing that i wanted, is so totally draining. i start feeling light headed, and lose the will to live.

yet when i visit ikea by myself, i’ll walk through the whole place quickly, checking the occasional thing to see if it’ll do what i want it to do. and if it doesn’t, i leave it. what i don’t do is just buy it anyway because it’s cheap, which appears to be what ikea is all about.

this method of doing it at pace works perfectly. so much so, today i walked around the place twice. yes twice. but this is because it turns out they don’t do extra shelves for the shelving unit they sold me a couple of years ago. so i decided there might be another way to achieve what i wanted to do, and went round again to find something that might do the trick.

love ikea. hate other people.

i completely forgot to post on friday! i am so sorry, god of oneaday. to make up i will do another desk related post. this time about my desk at work, everybody.

directly in front of me is a previous generation apple imac. attached is the standard apple keyboard, and a wireless logitech mouse on a plain black mousemat. i got rid of the apple mighty mouse, because it is the worst mouse ever designed, after the old style hockey puck type. connected to the rear of the imac is a USB cable with which i connect my ipod so that i may listen to groovy tunes whilst bashing out emails and that.

to the right of the imac is the ultraphone. it has more more buttons, settings, menus and bollocks than you might imagine a phone could ever need. typically i use the handset and the number buttons, and occasionally the quick dial and transfer buttons. it took months to actually have the confidence to use the transfer function properly, as occasionally people get lost in the phone system, and must live in a tron-like world filled with savage phone people.

to the immediate left of the imac are a couple of working products. PLEASE STOP SENDING ME WORKING PRODUCTS. I ONLY WANT FAULTY PRODUCTS PLEASE. i am going to send these back, and the customers will not be happy, and keep asking why they do not work still. it’s because YOU are doing something WRONG. BYE.

next to these is my in tray. i do not use the in tray in a traditional way. it contains several bits of paper i’ll never use, an a4 pad of paper, and it also houses my clipboard, which is distinguished by a label that reads ‘chris done a poo’, kindly added by my colleague.  in front of this is an a5 pad of paper which is used to jot down details of customer problems and very occasionally draw what i imagine a customer might look like.

remember this when you next phone technical support.