Summer time

It seems that at the moment almost everyone this summer is off doing exciting things. One of my friends is off exploring the African continent and climbing mountains, my cousin is learning to fly in New Zealand and even my sister gets to go to Scarborough followed by a trip to study the wildlife of the Savannah. Karma seems to hate me though (well Clare too as she is stuck with me, poor girl), as my great summer expedition was to Dantre hospital followed by a few weeks of lying around at home suffering. Right, now all the self pity is out of the way onto the post!

I keep promising a post all about Battlefield 2, however to do so i need to play the game a bit more than i have recently, ie: more than not at all. Thus i'm again putting it back at least a couple of weeks and so probably building it up as one of the most delayed blog post of all time. Try to think of it as a train trying to get to your station where the engineering works they keep apologising for over the announcement system consists of lying the track.

So the Olympics then. I not sure what it is, but i can never get truly excited about pretty much anything in the Olympics. I do enjoy watching it, however it lacks the anticipation factor of other great sporting events. Plus some of the events are quite clearly none-sports! *Cough* Dressage *Cough* I think it is my lack of understanding of the scoring system in a lot of them that turns me off them. Maybe the BBC should do a "Everything you wanted to know about the Olympics but were to scared to ask" feature. It would certainly increase my interest. Well apart from the heat stages in most of the running events and again with Dressage, which as we all know doesn't actually have a scoring system. I also think that the Olympics should bring in a more "international sports day" feel. Lets drop some of the endless number of different boating events in favour of a mums and dads race, the egg and spoon and sack race. Now they would draw the crowds!

The main problem i have with trying to write anything for this blog is that i come up with great stuff to write about all the time, however as soon as i get on here and typing i forget all of it. Thus i'm am going to attempt a brand new technique for getting at least some of this down. I like to call it, a note pad. As i type some of the elements of the Battlefield 2 post (try not to gasp too loudly), are currently sitting on my desk. I say sitting on my desk, they are in fact buried under several feet of other detritus. Luckily i have a degree in History and Archeology so i'll be able to dig down to find it and then give a full historical account.

Now i'm off to give Medieval 2 a go! As i just found out my PC can in fact run it and the internet security software's subscription ran out making the internet a dark and scary place.

Having Your Tonsils Removed.

You'd think that over the past couple of weeks i would have found the time, as i said i would, to put up "a few half decent postings up". This has not happened and i'll tell you why; Having your tonsils removed is more draining then i ever thought i would be. (Yeah i know, what a wuss!) It has been nearly 4 weeks to the day since the operation and despite still feeling pretty awful a lot of the time, i am going back to work tomorrow. To be honest it'll be quite nice to get out of the house and be doing something, however with even writing this post is still mentally taxing enough to make me stop for a break every so often, i'm not sure exactly how efficient i'll actually be. Anyway, we'll find out tomorrow i guess. Right, enough of this self-pity! Lets talk post-op!

Daventry hospital is fantastic. Most of it looks brand new, it is spotless and the staff are all brilliant! If i ever have the option i'll take it over any other hospital hands down. It really is that good. My operation went swimmingly, so i was told by the surgeons any way and my first experience of general anesthetic was a positive one. Two breaths in and i was out like a light. I woke up, an unknown amount of time later gasping for water, which i wasn't allowed for what seemed like hours. I ended up, instead of sleeping as most people around me seemed to be doing, sitting up and reading the current Sharpe novel i have pilfered from Clare's house. I was also confronted with a small samples container in which were my tonsils! I had asked if i could keep them before the operation and although this is no-longer allowed, they had saved them for me to have a look at before they took them away. Nice touch i thought. Apparently i was recovering very quickly from the anesthesia and so i was put in a patient lounge after a little while. I was also given a egg-mayo sandwich and told that until i ate it up i wouldn't be allowed to leave. It was a bit of a challenge, however the affects of a local anesthetic they gave me during the operation hadn't faded yet so for an on-cour i asked if they had any other sandwiches on offer as i was a glutton for suffering and surprisingly hungry. Clare came along to pick me up however we ended up hanging around for another 2 hours or so because i had the heart rate of a small mouse which the nursing staff were a bit concerned about and couldn't find the cause of. Personally i think it was probably the excitement of watching Neighbours while connected to a heart monitor. The next week was spent with the most delightful affects of codeine based pain killers (thats an opiate based drug don't you know). Small walks out into the garden were the highlight of my day as the world became a warm and incredibly vibrant place, some flowers quite literally glowing before my eyes. Apparently i was quite entertaining to all who were around to witness. Coming off those is when the real pain started as while on the codeine things do hurt, but you just don't care a whole lot about it. It was like a bad bout of tonsillitis but thankfully without the fever. It is during this time that you learn the following:

Ten things you should know about having your Tonsils removed.

1) Pasta shapes, or rather the sauce they come in is like pouring liquid fire down your throat. Stick to things that have zero spice and very little tomato in.

2) Co-Coldamole = Opium Highs :-)

3) Chewing gum becomes reclassified as medicinal and you end up getting through more of it than Alex Fergison during an entire football season.

4) They deliberately give you MASSIVE tablets to take because all doctors are in fact masochists.

5) Scrambled eggs and ice cream are your best friends.

6) Water can and will hurt you. However it will take on entirely new depths of flavour.

7) Playing scrabble while on Co-Coldamole is incredibly hard!

8) You end up watching the equivalent of an entire Blockbusters worth of DvDs and television.

9) You are supposed to eat as much hard or rough foods as possible so as to scrape your throat out. So much for weeks on ice cream!

10) Going to sleep is great. However karma will balance itself out and make waking up a truly horrifying experience.


Right. That is about it really. I don't think i am actually ready to go back to work tomorrow, but then as i've already stated i am a sucker for punishment so off i go!
I cant wait for my next operation!

Next Week: Battlefield 2.

18 hours to GO time!

I've been out enjoying life recently. You know, that thing that people take endless pictures of themselves having a good time in so they can put them up in Facebook and show everyone they've ever met how much of a good time they are having. Apart from they aren't really having that good a time as they are too busy taking pictures of themselves having a good time and blah, blah, blah, i just know i've made that little stab before. Actually to say that i've been out enjoying life would only be half right because ever since i signed away my soul to them, the GSCC have been sucking in my time and life force like a black hole. A quite friendly, well paying black hole, but a black hole none the less. However i am now probably boarder line addicted to my role as glorified button pusher and envelope stuffer (that isn't a euphemism for anything) and i do enjoy having a bank account that has real money in it, rather than the couple of rubber bands, a penny and a button from a shirt i don't have anymore, so i cant really complain. Anyway, most of the above accounts for why i haven't been spending my time trying to think up posts to put up on here for the occasional amusement, though mostly the bemusement of its readership. (Which reminds me, i have to get one of those t-shirts with the slogan; "More people have read this than your web blog.")

I am having my tonsils taken out tomorrow. It will be my first ever experience of a general anesthetic and i'm frankly quite looking forward to finding out what it will be like! Clare has "volunteered" to be the person who has to stay around me for 24 hours after the operation just in case i bleed out. It will also be good to get an experience of the NHS first hand for a change and if i get to be under the temporary care of a few hot nurses (unfortunately Clare said no to the nurses uniform), so much the better. As a direct result of this i shall be off from work for a while recovering and as Tim put it, "you'll be getting a sort of summer holiday this year after all." I am looking forward to having a bit of spare time again, especially as i'm getting full pay at the same time. I have stocked up on DvDs (i got Zulu the other day for £3!) and other projects to do while i'm off my feet and i am looking forward to anyone visiting who wants to inquire as to my health. There are a few downsides, but i cant do anything about them so there is no real point in complaining. All in all it should be a decent enough couple of weeks coming up. Either way, as i'll be house bound i should at least be able put up a couple of half decent postings up!


Right, i'm off to make the most of the fact i can eat up until 2am tomorrow morning! Its time for some fudge and Zulu! "Don't you, point that bloody spear, at me!"

Jon Deller: Company Man.

That's not strictly true of course, because importantly the GSCC is not in fact a company but an organisation. An arms length body of the government that is effectively apart of the department of health. (Or a QANGO if your down with the terminology.)After 6 long months of unemployment how am i finding the transition into the work of full time employ. Pretty easy actually. Yes i miss the huge amount of time to do my own thing that not having a job had and yes i do have to get up earlier in the morning, but you know what? Work really isn't that bad. Once you get to know it anyway. The first to days were by far the hardest though that was mainly down to the fairly complex computer system i am now relatively competent at using and the sheer volume of procedural documentation i had to read through. So what is it i do exactly? I hold the very exciting title of "Registration Assistant" and basically means that when someone on the Social Care Register (its a register of social carers in case the title didn't give that away), changes their name, martial status, address, work place, job, qualifications, favourite colour or dies than i am the mug that has to go onto the computer system and update their entry with said information. It also means that i have access to and huge amount of people's personal information the practical upshot of which is the i know my cousin Al's ex's middle names. If i were to become an identity thief i would be an extremely good one!

The pay is good for starters, as are the prospects, the pension and the holiday. GSCC employees get 5 "privilege days" which basically means 5 extra days paid holiday on top of what we already get and bank holidays. What is really good however is that i get 4 weeks paid sick leave and i will tell you why that is good in the next paragraph after i have finished talking about my new job. Apparently i am learning the system very quickly which pleases my line manager no end, however what i thought was the best result of my first week on the job was that i got to use the BIG shredder on Friday and it was gooood!

So why is all that sick pay an especially good thing? Because on the 10th July i will be going in for surgery to remove my tonsils. The waiting list was apparently not that long! It'll take me about 2 or 3 weeks to recover from, depending on how much of a wuss i am and be back at work so the fact that i'll be being paid over this time is fantastic!

I know its a long time to wait for a very average posting. At least i have a valid excuse now though! I'm busy working!

Next week: Jonbar attends "Staff Day" in London.
(Well technically it was this week, but i'm working a week behind at the moment.)

Finishing the Fight.

In the run up to my last week where i can still genuinely put "unemployed" as my status on Facebook, i.e: the weekend, i was graced by a visit from Jay. Apparently he's getting a bit of time off next week as well due to an up and coming exercise down in the Falklands. (Was i supposed to mention that or is it a national secret?) Anyway, as he is the only person with access to the current generation of games consoles (bar the PS3) that i see on anything like a regular basis, his visits mostly comprise of us trying out some games. This weekend i finally got to grips with Halo 3, had another decent bash at Wii Sports and had a quick look at both Army of Two and Wii Fit.

HALO 3

Possibly the biggest launch of any game, Halo 3 also had the biggest hype surrounding it in the history of gaming. I throughly enjoyed the trailers for it, especially the live action ones, (which can be viewed here: www.halo.msn.com), however after being slightly disappointed with Halo 2 i really wasn't sure what to expect from Halo 3. The Zero Punctuation review (find it yourself) only added to my doubts.

So when i finally got around to playing Halo 3 itself what did i find. Well the graphics have been improved upon from the second installment but that is a moot point when it comes to anything released on the PS3 or the x-box 360 as everything i have seen has been damn pretty. Loading times are vastly improved as well, but then i play Battlefield 2 quite a lot on my PC and connecting to servers on that is like sitting through an advert break without the adverts, so anything seems quick by comparison. But what about the actual game? Well there are several things i like, first is there seem to be more friendlies and enemies running about on this outing, obviously the Covenant and the UNSC both though they'd better commit more than a handful of soldiers at this end point in the conflict. However Covenant forces seem to have lost their edge. Let me explain, in the second game one of the alien species that make up the coalition of races of the Covenant (who call themselves the "Elites", how modest of them), got bored of being portrayed as two dimensional evil characters and decided they wanted to join the good guys team. They were the generally stronger and faster than most of the other Covenant forces you encountered in the Halo games. They were smarter too. Their place has been filled by the "Brutes", which as the name suggests are big, strong and tough but generally slow and not that clever. The other races making up the Covenant, bar the massive blue hedgehog monstrosities that like to tip over tanks and eat grenades for fun, seem to be there solely to get under the feet of everybody else.


One of the biggest pluses of this game over the last one is that they've made the vehicles able to soak up a bit more damage than they used to. (In the first game they made the drivable vehicles indestructible, in the second they made them blow up if people sneezed at them.) In fact the driving sections are the most enjoyable bit of the game, especially if you played it like i did in two player co-op mode. This is because you can roll out in whatever vehicles there are available (typically jeeps), crew them up with friendly troopers and generally cause havoc convoy style! Heading an armoured column is also fantastic, "tanks beat everything!" The flying sections aren't that great on this outing and although the inclusion of an ATV type vehicle is a fun addition, in practice you end up wishing you were driving in a Warthog Jeep (the greatest video game vehicle of all time) instead. Another annoyance is the occasionally confusing level design, especially in the worst parts of the game, the Flood levels. I have never been a massive fan of the Flood (a sort of weird hybrid of zombies and the face huggers of the Aliens movies). In both the first and second games the Flood bits were more of an annoying chore than apart of the fun and although the equivalent levels were generally better in this game they were still a bit "meh". Especially after getting lost in them for the 20th time because every infected rotting flesh coated corridor looks the same as any other.

All the old weapons are back, including the old assault rifle from the first game. However for some reason they've decided to cut the old 60 round magazines in half and limit you to a 32 round clip. It's a minor annoyance, but it does make you reload twice as much as you used to which can get a bit trying a times. The shot gun seems to also have suffered from these military cut backs and will now hold 6 rounds as opposed to 8. The addition of portable "power ups" such as the bubble shield, land mines and energy shields are fairly entertaining however there were hardly any times me or Jason actually used the things. The new brute grenade is rather good and the new flame thrower is horrifyingly effective. You can also rip machine gun turrets off their fixed tripods now This is fun the first couple of times but it slows you down a lot and you end up dropping the thing out of sheer boredom when traveling from A to B. The best weapon by far is a huge hammer full of energy powered killing goodness. However you only get very limited ammo for the thing (good job real hammers don't have "ammo" other wise i'd never have finished putting up those shelves in the attic) and the only way to replenish it is by replacing it with another one taken from a fallen enemy. It seems that alien B&Q either charge far too much for them or have only very limited stock as only a handful of your enemies are found carrying one. Its a minor quibble but finding the odd replacement battery for the thing would have been nice and added greatly to the fun. (When i say fun i mean accidentally on purpose smacking Jason in the face with it. "Jon that thing is an area affect weapon!" is now one of Jason's catch phrases.)

The overall pattern of the Halo games should really be commented on. For some reason each and every game is just about the same as the last one. The levels go (in all 3 games): Opening "under siege" level, sneaky sniping level, driving section with some bits on foot level, tank level, Flood Level, Run for it/ Drive for it! level - End. It would have been nice for the designers to stray from their tried and tested formula for a change as you do at times end up looking at the screen and thinking "i did this bit in the last game already!"

What was excellent and earns Halo 3 points over its forebears, was that instead of two identical characters being used in two player co-op mode they finally got around to having the second player playing as an actual character rather than an unexplained and cut scene none featuring clone of the first players character. Player 2's character is one of those ex-Covenant "we're good guys now" Elite aliens called The Arbiter. He's likable enough i suppose and the cooperation between an alien and a human who had previously been trying to kill each other is a great message for the kids and a refreshing change from the xenophobia that seems to proliferate video games. (Go on IMDB and have a look at who did the voice acting in this game, you'll be quite impressed! - Apparently the guys at Bungie are massive Firefly fans.)

So all in all Halo 3 isn't a bad game, it has a lot going for it, however it doesn't live up to the hype. You don't get to play any of the bits that the trailers showed and rather being the final battle for Earth you end up spending most of your time on yet another Halo (a massive ring shaped space station from which the games series takes its name) or on a big 6 sided star thing called the "Ark". (It builds Halos apparently.) The great big thing in the advert turns out to be just big portal creating thingy.

(*SPOILER ALERT!*) Oh and the Master Chief (The games main character) doesn't die. Check the post credits video after completing it on legendary mode. (So what was that advert all about then?) Looks like we can at some time expect a Halo 4.
I just noticed i got through i review of a Halo game and only mentioned the Master Chief twice! That much be some sort of record!

Wii Sports & Wii Fit.
(I think i've done Wii Sports before but i like it so i'm going to write about it again damn it!)

Who came up with the name "Wii" anyway? Does have a meaning in Japanese or something? However despite its stupid name and the consoles on paper utter shite'ness when compared to the graphical behemoths the 360 and Ps3, the Wii has turned out to best the most flat out fun of the three. Wii sports is great. You can play tennis, bowling , boxing (knackering), golf (the best one in my opinion) or baseball (that rounders to all us none US types). All of them are fun and fairly easy to get the hand of. Apart for the baseball for me. Apparently even Jay's little sister Alice can hit the ball for a home run easily , where as i can't even score a point. In fact Wii sports would swing a purchase out of me if i had the spare cash. I was also able to have a quick go on Wii fit. It looks, interesting... Me and Jason went for a virtual jog, however about half way in i worked out the instead of running of the spot i could just wave the Wii controller up and down and achieve the same on screen results, which is probably exploiting the game a bit but the day i get fit playing video games is the day i get a job and do something with my life! (Which is this coming Monday if anyone is interested!) One main thing to consider to all the neigh sayers of Wii Fit is that the exercises are actually quite tough, and i quote:

Jon: "So is that Wii Fit thing any good?"

Jay: "The push ups exercise made me cry."

The push up exercise made a fully fit member of the British army cry! DEAR GOD! I think that ends the arguments right there. Obliviously the department of health should provide them for every home in an effort to get us all fit and healthy for when a resurgent Russia tries to invade.

(And finally.) Army Of Two.

So a games developer has finally latched on the the fact the most people (not me i'm all alone these days...), have at least one friend and that we enjoy playing games with two player cooperation modes in them. Thus we have army of two. It looks, as Jason and Kennon were playing it while i cheered on from the side lines, like a fairly standard first person shooter. The game is about two mercenaries making money out of the war on terror and generally killing people. You can "bling out" your gun which is just as entertainingly vulgar as you might think it is and the main characters do seem a little fond of sharing a parachute. Which they do at every given opportunity. However i cant comment any more about it as i haven't actually player it myself, although i will say that the watching Kennon desperately trying to fight off suicide bombers while Jason helpfully lobbed in a grenade or two was very entertaining to watch.

Next week: My First Day & Colchester Summer Ball.

News.

I really have to stop promising you guys things. However i'm not really in the right kind of "mood" to write about Battlefield 2 or Woman's Hour. Even after riding my all time blogging high after getting feedback from literally three people about how much they liked my previous post. So this week so your going to have to settle for this News round up from the past week. So in the headlines this morning....

DONG!

I start work on the 9th of June, ending my reign of sitting around and sponging off the state.

DONG!

It'll be great to have some money for a change but damn it, why did i have loads of free time when no one was around and now that people are coming back i'll be busy working?!

DONG!

Clare was here most of this week which is always nice.

DONG!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, despite having one of the worst titles in cinema history is fantastic! Anyone how says that it is a bit too far fetched should look back on the subject matter of the 3 previous films and then realise just how stupid their statement is.

And now the weather.
Scattered showers followed by patchy sunshine is a weather man phrase that basically means; "it could rain, or it might be sunny, or it could just be cloudy." Anyone wanting you no what the "feels like factor" is on that should take a jump.

And finally.
http://rvb.roosterteeth.com/home.php
Red vs Blue have a new preview video up on their site for their up and coming series.

And thats your lot.
You'd think after months of complaining about being unemployed i'd make a bigger deal out of starting work but there you go. I guess the overall feel of the blog will switch from "oh god i'm bored and lonely" to "oh god i'm bored and underpaid". Swings and round-abouts!

Jonbar's Survival Guides: Leaving University.

This is the first in what i hope to be a series of survival guides featuring on this blog.

Our subject matter for today: How to survive leaving university.

First of all, congratulations! You've made it through at least three years of exams, assignments, heavy drinking and building up a sleep debt you may never be able to recover from. Most of you will also have built up a rather sizable monetary debt as well. But what now? You never planned for this (and if you did, your a freak). With my ten steps your lack of forward thinking probably wont hurt quite as much.

Step 1.
Ever thought about doing an MA? Better still go for a PhD. The outside world sucks just as much as it ever did and by doing these you'll gain years of extra time in wonderland. If you stick at it enough you'll quite literally never have to leave university as you'll have become a member of the teaching staff!

Step 2.
Prepare yourself for a lot of goodbyes. You will no doubt have added a lot of people to your friends list on Facebook. Some of these aren't really friends, you just met them once in a bar and added them to look popular. However you will by now have a large number of people that you at least know or might even call your: BFFs, buddies, honchos, pals, companions, peps, doggs (or dawgs), brotherz or even mates. Take a good look at them because without quite a lot of effort you'll lose regular contact over the next few years with at least half of them. You might quite literally never see some of them again. Some of them no doubt are along with you for the duration. Don't fret, this is a natural vetting of your real social network. (As opposed to your "virtual" social network.) Keeping in contact isn't as hard as it used to be, however keeping up regular meet ups will be and requires quite a bit of effort from all parties.

Step 3.
Don't be ashamed of going back home. Housing is expensive, as is renting and if you have the option heading back home for a while so that you have the opportunity to rebuild your finances a bit so much the better. But remember, things will have changed a bit in your absence. Old school friends might not be around as much as before, if at all. The pace of living is also different along with the social life. An important note at this point is a lot of people are very sniffy about people that head back home after university this can generally be put down two factors in their own lives rather than yours: 1) They didn't have a great home life before hand Or 2) They have far to much money for someone their age and doesn't understand why everyone else doesn't have comparable wealth.

Step 4.
Begin the job hunt! If your not royalty or doing a MA and or a PhD then there is no longer any real excuse. Your going to have to get a proper job. Start with the national press, then the local press, then the internet and then the job centre. Some good webs its are:
www.jobsgopublic.com
www.monster.co.uk
www.gradjobs.co.uk
www.insidecareers.co.uk
www.milkround.co.uk
http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/

Those should get you started. However beware that there are quite literally hundreds of thousands of job sites spread across the internet and not all of these are really that helpful. You'll generally have better luck by using the newspapers. The search facilities at your local job center are also pretty good and worth a look.

Step 4.
Enjoy, if you haven't already, your final weeks and days a university. Do the things you've been putting off until now because you might not get another chance to do them.

Step 5.
It is time to get out that hoover! Don't give your land lord (or lady) any reason to skim more than she's entitled to off your deposit. By the way, the dark stuff that has been growing on the bathroom walls and ceiling will come off. Your just not putting your back into it!

Step 6.
Clear out the fridge and freezer! If you lucky you'll have enough food to last you until you finally leave. It is amazing what you can find half buried in the permafrost! If there are items gathering mold but not an owner, chuck 'um!

Step 7.
If you can't take it with you, sell it to the next lot of people moving in. There is no point giving them things for free. Also, if you want to make back part of that deposit your land lord (or lady) stole from you, sell the next lot a load of the items that came with the property!

Step 8.
Change your online delivery and address details. Also, you cant run from credit card companies or the courts so don't try the cheap trick of moving and leaving the next bunch to deal with your debtors because they will pass them along to you. (Forwarding addresses or no, you are not that hard to track down.)

Step 9.
Repeat steps 5 and 6 because i know you didn't do a good enough job the first time round!
*And* Make sure everyone gives you back those DvDs etc.. you loaned them. The same goes for you, give them their stuff back!

Step 10.
DONT' PANIC! It'll been fine, you'll see.


Next week: Battlefield 2.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty sucks.

It really does! I know i've been promising posts about Woman's Hour or about Battlefield 2 for ages now but things keep getting in the way. Just like this, so without further ado, i give you the reasoning behind my post title.

Metal Gear Solid was a fantastic game on the original Playstation (or PS1 to all you people who are down with the kids). It was a game of sneaking around and thinking, something that is noticeably lacking in most modern games. It was fun and relatively easy to get into, the hallmarks for me of every "great" game i've ever played. Anyway, about a year or so back (maybe more, i cant remember) Jay, a guy who turns up in the subject matter of this blog far too much, passed on to me his PS2 games collection. Now i've been playing my way through these and have finally got to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Remembering how much fun the first game was i put the game disc into my aging games console and awaited the menu screen. I then utterly forgot that for some stupid reason the select button in these games is "O" not "X" and proceeded to spend 5 minutes trying to work out why the damn thing wasn't working. Once my spaz attack subsided and the game finally got its way through some rather lengthy opening cut scenes (it appears the makers were going for a Tom Clancy book film adaptation style), i finally got to play the game. After 30 minutes i put it down again, put the disc back in its box and put the box to the bottom of the game pile because, as i've mentioned before, this game sucks. Here's why: First off, the character you play is some annoyingly skinny guy who has ridiculously non-special forces long blond hair and wears a far too tight hi-tech special forces suit thing which leaves nothing to the imagination and makes him look less super-spy and more gymnastics female entry for London 2012. Oh and he has a stupid voice too, which you'll get to hear all the time by the way because, and here's what really pisses me off about this game, there is far to much dialogue. Every 5 minutes, sometimes less there is either a cut scene or some one talking to you over the radio. (All the radio sections are effectively cut scenes as well, turns out our man cant move around or doing anything else when someone is on the phone to him.) Over the radio you'll get a fantastic selection of various boring characters giving you mindlessly trivial exposition about nothing, which also includes a woman who appears to be our boys girl friend, (incidentally, her name is Rose, annoying in itself for me because it always brings back the hours i wasted going to see Titanic at the cinema) and all she seems to go on about is repeatedly asking our guy whats special about tomorrow's date for them and telling him to "be careful" when someone else is trying to radio in important intel. The other thing that made me put this game down are the controls, as for some reason they made using a gun fucking impossible. The new system of having to find a computer terminal to access your personal radar in each different "building section" also takes away much of the fun from the game and as the camera angles are mostly useless this is another aspect i dislike.

Ok rant over about a game that is so old i'm probably the only one that has played it this year in the entire world. Besides, what with my images and all i don't want to ape Zero Punctuation too much! (But the game sucked so much and ruined my day that i couldn't not write about it!)
The real reason i'm pissed off is because i have one almighty ulcer on the under side of my tongue and i cant think for the life of me how i got it. The bongela has since numbed half my tongue and its taking a lot of effort not to choke to death.

So have i heard back from the GSCC? Well no. They have both my references in now so there really isn't an excuse. I WANT MY JOB OFFER DAMN IT!
(I'm calling them tomorrow. Unless of course this post goes out tomorrow, in which case i called them today and you'll get an update next post.)

Next week: Jon's guide to leaving University.
(You will never get that Woman's Hour post! Never! Never! MWHAHAHA!)

Guurrrggghhhhhhcccc......

Guurrrggghhhhhhcccc......

The GSCC seem to have commitment issues. Or at least that is the only reason that i can think of as to why they are dragging there god damn feet so much over finally signing me up. I mean come on guys! You said that the references were "basically a formality" and that i would be on the payroll soon. Obviously my definition of soon is different to theirs as it has now been 3 weeks since those immortal words were spoken and although i don't really want to have to directly quote any piece of dialogue that George Lucas has ever written, "I have a bad feeling about this."Anyway, enough about that as i had a fantastic Bank Holiday Weekend! (So good it needed capital letters!)
First off Jason came back from the army for a visit, so in time honored tradition we went to see an action movie, went bowling and had steak for dinner. The action movie of choice was Iron Man, which was actually pretty good. Now i have read quite a few reviews of it and i have got to say they have almost all been a little harsh. Thus a defense of the film is obviously needed. Here it comes.
The first main point people have made is that Iron Man isn't actually a super hero at all, he is just a man in a powered armour suit. Ok, but then Batman was basically a guy wearing a black cape and a modified Halloween mask and you didn't have any problems calling him a super hero.
Secondly they have said that the special effects were nothing special. In fairness i don't think there has been that many films recently where the special effects were really that different from everything else. And to answer all the other points:
- I thought the fight scenes were fine. (And although the fight scenes in Transformers were generally better you cant really compare the two films!)
- Yes, i know its political stand point is very basic when it comes to American foreign policy in Afghanistan but then it is an action movie!
- Robert Downey Jr probably isn't the obvious choice for an action hero role, but then neither was Tobey Maguire. Besides, i found his performance entertaining enough.
- The bit when he frees a group of hostages that are being used as human shields is awesome!
All in all its not a bad movie. It isn't great either, but then very few films are actually any good these days thus we have to take our doses of mediocre if and when we can find them.

Bowling was epic. We totally abused the unlimited bowling deal and went for ten rounds. Jason won 6-4 but i did manage to bowl a "turkey". (Its when you get 3 strikes in a row in the final bit of a game. I don't know what that has got to do with poultry either.) Turns out bowling is awesome upper body exercise as well which is good, but i should think that it comes no where near balancing out the steak dinner. Buddies is awesome.

Not content with that i put another 150 miles on my car and headed to Colchester so as i could see Clare and get me some lovin'! (I am going to get killed.) Highlights included watching the entire 4th season of Scrubs in a day, lying around in the sun and watching a rat see just how close it could get to a student couple without being noticed. Oh and Colchester needs its road infrastructure redesigned because the whole area seems to be some sort of test bed for every conceivable variation of round-abouts road design. Couple that with some interestingly aggressive local driving styles and it makes for some interesting motoring. You'll be pleased to know i held my own.

Next week: Either - 10 things i have learnt from Woman's Hour
OR - A Noobs Guide To Battlefield 2.

Heroes.

Ok, we'll start it where i left off in the last post. The GSCC are taking their sweet time about things, but so long as they give me a job at the end of it (and lets face it they'd better, i've had this coming a while now and too many people know about it for it all to just collaspe at the last hurdle), i'm happy.

Heroes season two, or the second volume as they keep reminding us is the proper way to refer to it in "Heroes Unmasked", is now two episodes in on BBC2. Yes, i know, i'm one of the few that actually bothered to wait for it to come to terrestial, but this is partly becuase i kind of like watching things properly (rather than the poorer versions on the web) and also because we have a pitiful download limit of 5GB here at home and 500MB online videos cut through that like a hot knife through butter. Anyway this is the season that everyone has been calling rubbish and although i can see why, (there isn't the definiate objective of "save the cheerleader, save the world"), i still like it. I'd like it more if they focused more on Hiro, who is by far the most likeable and compelling character, but then i think the show could get along just fine if it were just about him. Anyway from what i gathered, people who didn't like it kept refering to how it was more "complicated" than the last season and how it was "generally harder to follow". Great! Now we can get rid of the stupids, religate them to buggering off and picking their noses in a corner and enjoy a show with a little depth for a change! And if that means we also get questions that are raised and not answered for a couple of episodes, like in say....i dont know, LOST, then so much the better! As it is only when a TV programme strings out things for season after season that i ever have an issue with it. So as long as Heroes keeps bring me my weekly dose of Hiro Nakamura based fun for a while, i'm happy.

Right then, its back to a world of raising food prices, sprialling fuel costs and governments who take from the poor and give to the rich! What a facinating modern world we live in! Maybe we could do with some real life Heroes?

Dont say a word!

Ok so i've not posted since the 9th and its now the, erm, 23rd. Sorry but unemployment sort of takes away any reason to know the date, other than to know when your supposed to be down the job centre pretending to be better than the hordes of other useless fucktards that also cant be arsed to get a job. Ok that was overly harsh. Some of us are just unlucky fucktards.

This post is more of a sort of stop gap until i get more news. News that i dont really want to ellaborate on because after 6 months on the dole i have learnt that disappointment does infact hide behind every corner and so i dont want to jinx it. Oh what the hell! The way i see it karma owes me a thing or two, so here it goes. I think i might just about have got a real actual job that pays genuine real money for doing proper work. Its with an organisation that call themselves the GSCC. They regulate social workers. All in all it is the result of a fantastic interview with two great girls who i will official defend to the death should the need arrise, if they do in fact give me the job. My fate is currently resting in the hands of my references. Dr Chris "The Emperor" Aldous and Mr Steve "get in his shorts" Lewitt. (He shouted it at football once as an instruction to our defenders.) And if your looking for inspiration guys, here are 10 suggestions for things to say to help me get the job:

1) Despite having his finger up his nose a lot of the time, Jonathan can infact type very well with just one hand.

2) He wont spend his entire time on facebook or ebay, just most of it.

3) He sucks a solitair, so no worries about him wasting time with that. (Though he hasn't given up on minesweeper as yet.)

4) After only an hour he WILL be able to tell you what shade of teal your wall paint actually is.

5) He knows exactly what will happen in all stages of radiation sickness and so will be invaluable during the weeks that follow the Third World War.

6) He will be able to update the organisations zombie defence plan.

7) If asked he could organise a organisation wide "Activity Wednesday"!

8) He is trained in the arts of the Finbar Nile school of white balancing.

9) Jonathan can deal with anything you throw at him due to his incredable dodging skills and

remarkable ability to make the most of any surrounding cover.

10) He can un-jam a photocopier in under a minute with use only a sledge hammer and a pick axe.

Right then, coming up on Joninachinashop.blogspot.com
- Things i've learnt from Woman's Hours.

- How to survive in Battle Field 2.

Yeah, i know, i'm disappointed that there weren't pictures to go with each of those 10 points of my self greatness, but i've still got to learn a hell of a lot more research for the Battle Field 2 article, bloody land mines.....

Can YOU run it?

Well can you? Or rather can that aging machine your using cope with todays heart breakingly system heavy games? You do?! Well thats great, good for you! But for the rest of us there is this rather fantastic web tool (www.systemrequirementlab.com/referrer/srtest) which will tell you everything you need to know about just how crap, or fantastic your computer really is. I'm in a good mood now because i learnt that this PC (NOT the old battered thing in my room, the other PC) has the minimum requires for most of the games i like the look of. No, not the newest flashy games that they are still advertising for, the slightly older games that are about 2 or 3 years old now. Mind you, meeting the minimum requires doesn't mean it'll work that well, so i'm going to have to pick and choose my titles very carefully before finding they dont work and then take them back to the shop the day after!

Not to mention i'm HORRENDOUSLY poor at the moment, soon to become all the more worse off once the DVLA get my car tax through. (Yeah, so poor i had to use BLOCK CAPITALS, italics and bold to emphasize my point!)

Right, so while i'm off lying in a gutter somewhere bemoaning why i cant run Medieval 2 Total War despite the fact that its a game now gracing the bargin bin, come and kick me while i'm down by telling me what fun it was for you a few years ago and then finish me off with the proverbial machine gunning by saying how great it is having your PS3's, X-box 360's Wii's and GOD-PCs.

Though if you want to make me cry use the following sentance:

"Whats that dusty thing next to your TV? A Playstation 2? Do they still even make those?"

Well at least this week i'm not complaining about how useless my degree was or how i still haven't got a job yet... FYI i have an interview on Monday (i as surprised as you are!) so no doubt you'll get to hear all about it next week.

Jonbar's Screen Burn.

The job hunt is going ok. I've got applications for jobs with the GSCC (insert miss use of acronym here) for two different positions, the first being the rather plain and boring sounding "Registration Assistant" and the second, more exciting sounding one, "Enquiries Officer". Well i think it sounds cool as the job title has the word officer in it and implies to me that i'll get issued with a long coat and a kick ass hat. The other applications are for the position of in the foreign exchange desks of the local First Choice Travel Agents and the Co-op Travel Agents which both have the massive bonus of being partitioned off from the rest of the woefully over fake tanned staff and the general public by bullet proof glass. My final application is for a temp role at Brantano's.



I finally got round to watching the first episode of Dirty Sexy Money which is currently gracing our screens on Channel 4. It isn't bad folks. It isn't great either, but it does have its moments. It also has Donald Sutherland in the main line up which can only ever be a major bonus and no doubt put the shows investors at ease. The story so far goes along the lines of: Man is son of a man who was the family lawyer of a rich American family. Man doesn't like his upbringing that much. Man's father dies, man goes to funeral, promises wife he'd never want anything to do with rich family again. Man takes job a rich family's new lawyer. (Yes his opinion is turned round VERY quickly without any real explanation on the part of the writers, i guess they hoped we'd just go along with it.) Man discovers that his father's plane crash might not have been a accident and that one of the members of the rich family probably did it. Let the games begin. For the record if it turns out to be Donald Sutherland i want to say now that i fucking called it.



And now some messages to the advertisement industry. Stop it with the oh look how clever we are we've made a glorified domino rally or cleverly used all the bits of the product somehow trend that seems to be their fall back position these days. Guinness i'm especially looking at you. Ok the Honda one was very good, but remember they were also the first ones to do it and as such have the right to continue with that sort of thing. Ford, i don't care how many times you say so, you did not make a violin out of a windscreen wiper! Guinness, what the hell does all that have to do with selling Stout anyway? You had a good form going with your previous offerings (also admitted having very little to do with the product, other that the fact that Guinness is black and white), you do not have to copy Honda. Oh and Sony, we love the rabbits, keep it up!



Right now the TV schedulers! Ok guys, we have almost bugger all on during the week because some witless bastard thought it'd be funny to put things on only during the weekend and Friday night. Now i know i don't have anything else to do with my time at the moment, but a lot of other people do and it can only be reasonable to assume that this is hurting viewing figures. Why the hell is ER on on Saturday evening?! Put it back to a mid week slot! That goes for Torchwood as well! Oh and can the BBC please stop wasting the licence fee on "Damages". You put it on late on Friday night, it isn't very good and no one i know of is watching it, get rid.



My highlight of the week. Friday's episode of Torchwood, purely because it proved i was in the right place when i visited Cardiff the other week! Woop!

Now call me a geek and go and do something worthwhile!

I know, no pictures. I've been quite busy recently and thus the blog is suffering (i'm as surprised as you are, fancy that, me with things to do!)

Overqualified + Under Experienced = Unemployed.

At school they tell you that if you do your work and get your grades you will be rewarded with being able to get onto the next level of qualifications - GCSEs, AS-Levels, A-Levels Degree. All the while you are pretty much promised that employers will value your qualifications and that if your lucky enough to go on to do a degree and obtain this most hallowed of educational pieces of paper it will unlock the gates to the upper levels of the employment sector. This is beyond doubt a lie. A false statement. A fabrication. As what they dont tell you is that the previous generation have pretty much pulled up the ladder and bolted that proverbial loft door shut behind them. Sure 30 to 40 years ago they would have welcomed pretty much any one with a degree or even those without into the junior ranks with open arms. No longer. Companies for the most part seem to see people in two ways. Either you have all the highest grades, or you have plenty of work experience. If you are Jonathan "call me Mr Average" Deller, they dont want to know.

It is an demoralising experience but, and you'll have to excuse a moment of incredible arrogance and self inflated worth here, at least i'll be able to get jobs that you would consider me overqualified for right?

Well actually no. On Friday i showed up for an interview at Waterstone's in Northampton for a part time job on the shop floor. The interview went well, very well. In fact if this is how i can do all of my interviews from now on, this is how i would conduct them. The manager was a very pleasant woman who seemed to be nodding a lot of my answers and was making all the right noises, if you excuse me use of that awful expression. I went home happy. Happier than i've been for quite a while. To top it all she was even going to let me know if i'd got the job the following Monday. Fantastic! I waited all day for the call, then around 5pm she called to tell me that although i'd been shortlisted i had not got the job. However, she said, if any permanent positions came up she'd be in contact immediately. Now is it me or is that a very mixed message to send someone? Yes we liked you, but sorry we only interested if it for a position at a higher grade than the one you applied for. It has put my self worth at an all time low as it is basically saying, sorry but despite all that work you did bothering to get a degree and all i still dont want to give you a job you could have applied for when you were 16.

The lesson we can take from this? Just because an interview goes really well doesn't mean you'll get the job.

Right, sorry for the vent but i needed that. Dont worry soon i'll be back to my usual happy go luck badger riding self!

Next Week: Something more amusing, i promise.

Everything you wanted to know about Airsoft but were too scared to ask.

This week i'm busy with taking Clare to her Cardiff audition. (Here's to hoping they notice me lurking in the background and launch me on a glittering film career!) So while i'm away doing that i've prepared a little guide so that people can finally stop asking me: "Jon you irregular pronoun, what in the wide WIDE world of sports is Airsoft?"

May i present to you: Jonbar's Definitive Guide To Airsoft.

First a bit of background. Airsoft originated in Japan, and as with many things that come out of Japan it is firstly over priced but secondly, and for me most importantly is actually rather fun! It was put forward as an alternative to paintballing and both "sports" (and i use the term loosely, you'll see why later on), have much in common. The First thing they have in common is that they are both based on simulated warfare, usually enacted between two separate teams "fighting" each other over various objectives. Where they differ is that with paintball you are equipped with a paintball gun which shoots fairly large circular ammunition via use of a glorified gas piston over a distance varying in my experience between 20-40 Meters. Or about as far as you could throw the thing. When they hit something the fragment on impact and leave it covered in a small blotch of paint. In Airsoft the standard "gun" uses a glorified electrically powered air piston to fire a small solid plastic ball or BB distances of about 50-70 Meters (though this varies greatly). Airsoft weapons are all almost exclusively modelled to look exactly like real fire arms. Paintball guns are not. If you've never held the real thing you won't no any better.

So the "guns" then. Well you can basically have a go with most weapons you've seen in almost every action movie or computer game and their grandmothers. Oh yes they are all here from your terrorist's (or freedom fighter's, its all subjective you know!) favourite the Ak-47 to the Mp5's of Die Hard fame or even the G36ks you see our humble but heavily armed policemen carry around at airports. Bear in mind however that most sites will be hiring out their collections of "hire guns", (thats airsoft slang for sometimes rather battered and unreliable things they give out to people who dont have their own gear) which almost exclusively consists of the following: Ak47's, Ak47 SPETZNAZ's, Mp5's of varying types, G3's (you'll have seen various Africans running around with them on the news) and maybe the odd M4. You'll also get what is known as a "high cap". No dont get excited, you wont be getting a sweet ass top hat to wear as you charge heroically through the bushes, what you've just been handed is, for no better descriptive word the guns magazine. It slots into the gun usually where a real magazine would fit into the real gun and operates a gear system to fee BBs into your gun. To do this to locate the gear winder at the bottom of the magazine and wind it until you hear a "click", and then make it "click" some more just to be on the safe side.

Airsoft sites. These vary enormously in both the costs of going to them to their quality. Bear in mind that prices does not necessarily denote the quality of the experience you'll get at differing sites. Some sites will quite happily charge you the best part of £40 for substandard guns that dont work most of the time, no camo hire and woeful eye protection that mists up every 30 seconds leaving you suck in the middle of an intense fire fight blind and with a gun that doesn't work. Others will give you the whole lot and guns that do work rather well because they've had the decency to realise that if they are going to charge rather a lot for the privilege maybe you'd like to be more than just a moving target for the sites regulars. One such excellent site is Phoenix Airsoft Adventures in Nottinghamshire, another would be the rather the splendid Ground Zero Airsoft in Hampshire. One to avoid (sorry guys but your hire equipment was WOEFUL) is Close Action Airsoft in Northamptonshire. The terrain at each site is different but they all usually consist of varying woodland with most having constructed some fortifications and other features over which teams can play take and hold, capture the flag etc... There are some Urban sites now in this country however i've yet to experience one of these. Think buildings instead of trees and you've got the right idea for those sites.

Airsoft Players. For the most part these are a like able enough bunch. However there are several types of player to watch out for if you want to tick off your spotting guide:

The Hire Gun. Everyday folk like you and me. They dont have their own gear, like you and me. Infact if you come along to one of my airsoft day events then they probably will be you and me.

The Fat Bastard. Not just fat, REALLY MASSIVE! They tend to waddle off to site behind a trees for the whole day. They wont try to take objectives, their aim for the most part of truly awful and you probably wont notice if they have a heart attack as their breathing patterns are already on the dangerous side.

The Wannabe. With out doubt the most entertaining airsoft players around, to a point. They take the games far to seriously and think they are in a real war. They will own all their own kit, including fake bayonet. They might even go around wearing the insignia of real special forces units. The amounts of money they spend on their hobby is in the £1000's. The best way to piss them off is to pick them off with your hire gun in jeans and t-shirt.

The sniper. Almost every airsoft player and their dog owns a sniper rifle these days. The ones to watch out for are the ones that can aim. Luckily most budding sharp shooters and neither very sharp or good at shooting.

The super sniper. See that guy over there dressed as a sort of green wookie? Thats him. And that suit probably cost him £100+. Show him how stupid that purchase was. Whenever you spot him in the field, point and yell: "that bush has a gun!" and direct your entire team to fire at him.

The Marshall. Not so much a player really as Airsofts answer to a referee. Any problems, go and see him or her and they can sort it out for you. Baiting the ref is ill advised.

What to do when you are "hit". In wars people get hit by bullets, in paintball you get hit by paintballs and in airsoft you get hit by BBs. In any of these circumstances you are effectively out of the fighting. Being hit by a bullet needs no explanation. With paintballing it is easy enough to spot if you've been hit, ie the paint. However airsoft requires a certain amount of honesty on the part of the players participating. I know its a disturbing and unfamiliar sensation, being honest and trusts other people, mostly likely ones you've never met to do the same, but for the most part it works. Airsoft sites and players take a very dim view of "cheaters" and bans from that site can occur to those repeating the offense. All in all it is in the best interest of all concerned not to cheat as a fair airsoft match is fun for all the family. The rules for what to do varies from site to site and sometimes from game to game. Most commonly you'll have to go to a "safe" or "dead" zone for either a predetermined amount of time or for the rest of the game.

Prices. Most sites will charge you between £25 and £40 for a day out with which you'll get a gun (which may or may not work properly - the signs of truly great and truly bad sites), camo gear (usually), ammo (amounts vary), eye / face protection (get the wire mesh ones for your own sake as they cant steam up) and cover on the sites insurance policy (woop!). If you want to buy your own gear, camos can be bought from various places at varying prices from E-bay to Army surplus stores. (Try not to buy camos from the army that have blood or bullet holes in them.) The airsoft guns themselves cost upwards of about £100 (shocking isn't it) and due to the Crime Reduction Bill of last October you now have to be a member of a site that is apart of the UKARA (United Kingdom Airsoft Rifle Association) to be able to legally purchase one. This will require you to visit a site to play 3 times in 2 months at most sites and require you to pay for site membership (which varies greatly). All airsoft retailers require UKARA proof of membership before purchase. Unless you want an attractive "two tone" gun. These come in bright green and orange and although i think they look awesome in their stand out from the crowd colouration, they are generally looked on disparagingly by most regular airsoft players. (But then what the fuck do they know, bunch of soldier wannabes to a man that they are.)

Well i hope that was a good starter guide to those of you that wanted to know what airsoft was but were frankly too scared to ask.

Next Week: An interview at Waterstones.

Blarg...

I have Tonsillitis. Again. But this has given me the option to go and have these disfunctional and cratered little puss bags (my tonsils really do have craters in them, thats how many times i've had this particular hum dinger of an illness), removed. Thus to hospital i will eventually go to catch MRSA or die of "complications" during a routine operation. What it also means is that i'm in no fit state to put up a decent post or make the accociated pictures so your just going to have to put up with this snipet from Milkround.com

Employers place unrealistic demands on fresh graduates

by Mike Barnard on 7th March 2008

Firsts and 2:1s are unfairly used to benchmark graduates when they apply for jobs.
It is claimed those with anything less than a 2:1 face an uphill struggle to be called for interview as employers look at grades first when choosing potential candidates.
The Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) reveals the findings in its Winter Review 2008, claiming employers will discard graduates with lesser qualifications.
It adds this is causing a recruitment shortfall as graduates without a first or 2:1 are ideal candidates for the jobs available, but they are being automatically discarded.
Elspeth Farrar, of the AGCAS, claims companies are placing unrealistic demands on graduates. She said: “There has been a major shift in what companies expect graduates to come out of university with and how prepared [for work] they expect them to be. In the past, employers were more prepared to take the time to train new workers themselves, but the assumption increasingly seems to be that this is the responsibility of universities.

"It seems now that companies are expecting students to come out of university work ready.”

........

At least someone else has noticed this then eh? Let this be a warning to all you lot still studying...your doomed! (Unless your a medic, engineer, accountant, maths person or one of those other lucky bastards who does a degree that really does put you straight into a job.)

On the plus side my parents brought me a Solero back from their trip to the village shop.

They also bought me some Tea Cakes!

Moving forward. Or is it back?

You'll be getting a full post tomorrow. I know, what can i possibly be doing with my time?! The only explaination i can think of is that i must be in some sort of temporal distortion or something because one minute Thought For The Day is banging on about how we should all be nicer to each other and before i know it is the six o'clock news is telling me how pretty much everyone has failed to do this.


Tomorrow then: The Juno film review and other stuff.

(Which is BELOW this post because blogger puts things in date order and i saved the original draft before making this "filler post".)

Hot Potato.

Well if my last post taught me anything it is that people dont like me when i'm bitter and talking about politics and current affairs. Though if another big war were to break out i might not be able to helpy myself from at least one or two comments. (Watch out North Korea, there is a real zinger coming your way upon the start of another gloriously un-planned bit of American foreign Policy. - Yeah i know, i'll stop now...)

Thus from now on i'm going to keep away from these minefields of opinion and stick to what i know, drawing poor quality pictures on MS Paint, writing about my job hunt and maybe reviewing the occasional film.

So without further adue....a-do...adew....sod it: The Juno review.

This is with out doubt one of the best films you will see this year. I know we're only a few months in but Juno has played a real blinder here. In fact i have very little bad to say about it, so little i'll get it out of the way now. The title credits didn't work for me, it is entirely subjective on my part, but i just didn't like the style - a sort of 80's pop video sketch format that really should be left rotting in its own juices back in that decade. My only other gripe is with Michael Cera, the guy who played the boyfriend not holding his own next to the outstanding Ellen Page, our lead. However this isn't really fair as he really didn't have that much to do. Adequate is probably the word i'm looking for here.
Right, now that's out of the way, lets talk film. The story revolves around a 16 year old girl called Juno living in Anytown USA. (No not the same Anytown USA as featured in Aliens Vs Predator Requiem!) Anyway, she finds out she's pregnant and the story follows her journey, from pregnancy test, through to telling her parents, finding a foster family consisting of some random bloke and the woman from Alias (or Elektra if you are into the whole woefully bad super hero films thing) and finally to the delivery room. I wont tell you any more about the plot just in case the small demographic this blog is frequented by hasn't seen it yet despite my recommendations. (Go out there and see it like i told you to do damn you!) What i will tell you is that the film has some good performances by a cast that knew what it was doing, shot by a equally good if not better film crew, written by someone else who also has got it together professionally and them rounded off by a person with a half decent record collection. The film was enjoyable from start to finish, although not as "hilarious" as a lot of the reviews i read before going to see it were calling it. It did make me laugh, but mostly got a consistent level of amused chuckles from myself and the audience i shared the cinema with. As i have practically already said, i whole hearted recommend this film to anyone, well maybe not to anyone who went to see Aliens Vs Predator Requiem for "the story". Yeah, guys i know, it sounds far to much like a "girly" movie, but give it a chance ok?

What do you mean why haven't i commented on how it deals with the tricky issue of teenage pregnancy? I just told you i'm staying away from that type of thing from now on. No, i did, scroll up to the top of this post if you want.....see! I count it as both political AND current affairs!

Time for the usual update about my job hunt. Progress in this area seems about as difficult as a Rubik cube for me, if you'll excuse the incredibly poor analogy. And like a Rubik cube or even analogies for that matter, seem to be very easy to do for other people but neigh impossible for me. Its get worse because as i cannot solve a Rubik cube i'll never make it past the first couple of tests for astronaut training with NASA. Guess i'll just keep plodding on and hope that something, sometime, somewhere will turn up. 11th hour syndrome and fluke seem to me to be two of my greatest attributes so no doubt they'll kick in soon. Either that or my CV will have to its skills section cut a bit.

Anything else? Well Clare didn't get into Oxford drama school which is a little disappointing (i want a rich success actress girl damn it!), but she has plenty of others that are having her in for auditions so not a unrecoverable loss. Oh and about these drama schools, i get testing the suitability of candidates by having them recite a speech from a play for you. That makes sense, it is after all what acting types are supposed to do, if you dont count all that airy fairy nonsense. However i dont get how getting them to be Elephants or penguins or 60% elephant and 40% penguin can possibly tell you anything about someones acting ability.

Next week: Why Starting off Recruitment aren't who they say they are.

Untitled one.

A week, (or is it two?) late, i have no real excuse. Nor, really, do i need one. But in all fairness this post is huge so it should easily make up for my "deadbeat blogging."

First the stuff i promised you from the last post.

THE TAX SYSTEM. - Your guide to being royally screwed out of your hard earned cash by an ineffective and corrupt governmental body.

(DISCLAIMER: Not all figures or facts in this article may be exactly correct but are based on information possed by the author upon date of writing and thus are subject to change and abduction and re-education of the author by the government.)

First off, they should really teach this sort of thing in schools. I am not kidding around. It is just plain wrong not telling people whats in store for them. Maybe if children knew how much they are costing the state in terms of education more of them wouldn't waste it like they did. Or maybe not. In fact definitely not. It sounds harsh, but cast your mind back to the people you went to school with. Now you should have an image of some of the "problem" children (some refer to them as the schools chav infestation). You remember them, the ones that used the word "whatever" a lot and when not disrupting the class were off somewhere smoking. Now imagine trying to teach these useless bastard children about how the government is going to take a lot of any money they will earn. Yeah, they either aren't there or aren't interested. I wonder where they are now? Actually i dont care, moving on...

Technically the average tax rate in this country is about 30% of your income. But before you say thats quite reasonable remember to add the covert tax that the government calls National Insurance. Right, thats got it up to about 36%. Now apply these costs to a wage of say, lets see, the average starting salary us smart arse graduates (not those bastard engineers that backed the right horse, nor the law graduates or any of the people you knew at uni who were from "money"), which i hear is about 14-18k. So yeah, 14k. Now lets take away all that tax and you are left with about 9k a year. Yeah, hurts doesn't it. But we aren't finished here, take away council tax as well and make sure you add the 4% increase they've just put on it. That wage of yours isn't looking as good as it did now is it? And aren't all the wastes of public money even more annoying then they were? Plus what the hell has the government done for you lately? And finally how can local councils be charging more but actually now be providing less services than they did?!

Now dont jump to conclusions. I am not, despite what i've just written a right wing conservative in favour of abolishing the welfare state. Far from it. Its just taking into account all this money that "the man" takes from the hard working (yes i know, but i hope to be employed soon, i dont live this way out of choice!) people of this country, the billions (and just stand back a moment and think exactly how much that actually is) that the government takes in, dont you think that this nation of ours should be a much better than it currently is?

And now for something completely different....

How to win at online First Person Shooters!

Actually no, i'm not going to tell you.

This is because:

1) If i give you tips you'll end up using them against me.

AND

2) Because i have no idea!

It is probably best to keep away from them because most of them are populated by people that take it WAY to seriously and / or have played the game so much they have mastered all aspects of the game and are virtually unbeatable. And to quote South Park: "How do you kill that which has no life?"

In other news...

This weekend was awesome! The night out on Friday for Al's housemate Emma's birthday, the Saturday nursing a slight hangover and the Sunday of simulated combat!

All Absolutely FAN - FU - KING - TASTIC!

Even, if the people that turned up to the site were a bit, colourful....

Al has a fantastic house, great house mates and a genuinely interesting degree! Buddy you've got it made!

Now onto jobs...

Well yet again i don't have anything new to say really. I keep sending out more and more applications and as yet have gotten anything worth while from the experience. My CV is as good as its going to get and i'm applying for anything and everything that i'm qualified to. I'm not sure exactly what it is i've done to offend every employer in the entire Midlands region so much as to only deserve negative replies from some of them and utter silence from the rest. Literally the only positive response i've had is from Wolsey Construction in Banbury and even they have said that; "due to the large number of applicants, we want to keep your application on hold for 6-8 weeks". Bearing in mind that they first did this when i initially applied to them and then, 10 weeks later, they come back saying that they'd like to telephone interview me, click on this link to book one and then presented me with an e-mail response that read; "due to the large number of applicants, we want to keep your application on hold for 6-8 weeks." No doubt they would string me along like this for all eternity if they could.

On the positive side i am in the process of contacting job agencies. I have 6 difference agencies on the go and will keep to this number to keep things simple. Maybe this new route will lead to something.

......

On a final note, could Woman's hour on BBC radio 4 please stop acting surprised that having children is difficult. I mean what did all these people expect?! Lets get one thing straight Jenny Murray, raising children is hard, new born babies aren't all fun and games and that's not even starting with the issues surrounding giving birth and pregnancy.

The people (not just women, men too) phoning in were unbelievable at points! They are surprised that a new born will take up all their time and energy and don't see why all their bastard children are so time consuming. They cant seem to understand why they complain all the time and yet their parents never did and made it look easy. It is because they were from a generation that didn't complain, have constant worries about what they should be "feeling", weren't competing with their friends for most perfect parent award and were definitely not so self involved and materialistic! And it wasn't easy! They went through exactly what you did / are and without all the benefits of modern child care etc..., the difference being they didn't incessantly bitch about it! PARENTS OF BRITAIN! TOUGHEN UP ALREADY!

(Disclaimer: This is NOT a shot at all modern parents. Nor is it a shot at women. It is a shot at a minority of people, most likely just the ones that phoned into Woman's hour.)

Next week: The Juno Film review.